This is how I say no

When you text me, I take a minute,
Count the days I haven't seen you on my hand. I remind myself that wanting doesn't make it healthy,
and that permanence is a word foreign to you anyway.
 I'll reach for you, with all the lonely in my fingertips,
I miss you, I want to say,
And it would be true
But this is not the you,
this physical manifestation of a connection,
That I need
I miss the laughter,
the comfortable conversations where
We don't need to hear anything but notes
Your symphony to the silence,
There is something
In the way I can say
That all of this empty will go away,
In your strumming I hear the sound,
In your absence it's you that has been found.

It was one of those times that silence became laden, and alone dropped like cinder blocks from the sky,
The quiet strumming,
Close enough to feel the rhythmic noise, far enough for me to ache for even a glance a semblance of a smile.
Half wanting you to look me in the eye, and call out smalls, the other half wanting you to grind my face back into the bed, and do it again.

I felt the distance in the rhythm of the strings as you played, the sadness in the "you look comfortable"
I knew this is what the fear felt like,
All those stories about the boy who never called you back
Rushed into my head like a wave of "
you were never good enough"
Then every story I've heard, brought memories of frantic girls asking me for advice, for help, I want to go to them, I understand now.
 How the want, fills you with echoing,
The voices gasping in the darkness
The curiousity, not knowing what another hand touching you feels like.
Part of you eager to know, nervous in your buzzed state

When I am anxious I will no longer reach for you
I will reach for my pen, my gym bag,
 I will run, far, run until my lungs explode with emptiness
I will write my fingers raw, a future they are able to feel
In a way I am punishing myself. In every way I am punishing myself
For knowing better, for wanting it
For
Grappling for things are not there.

It is a balancing act, walking a tight rope in a windstorm, I know, that I've fucked up
But I am too much optimist to let you go
I hold on to bits, small meaningless trivialities, I know you're not capable of this

Gauntlet

Your sigh in the darkness plays like a symphony in my head
It is stuck on repeat as if to remind me I
am the last quest in a hopeless journey
It is stuck in time to remind me of your rythmic fingers in the dim glow of candles
It is the goodbye,
it is me being right when I said this is just another way you disappear, slowly,
It is knowing, and having known that there is not room for me in this journey, and knowing you do not want there to be.
It is the sinking feeling in my stomach when you said you can not listen to a song we've sang so many times, that was you, stopping the beat, blowing out the flame, and walking away.

Everywhere I go feels like a farewell tour.
I say goodbye to my heart being trapped in four walls
 the small town, presenting its emptiness in the stars
Exhales with the sounds of complacency
As I breathe with too much wanting inside for suburbia to contain.

Unfinished

I am whirlwind and smooth sailing,
Waterspouts tall enough to disappear into a shanty heaven,
You are whirlpools and dark gray skies, embracing sailors, and dragging them into your depths
If I were to say we were opposites, it would suggest that we are no more than just two disasters coexsisting
But I have tasted the ocean floor, enough to know how much it longs to see day light
And you have seen birds fly through my towers, only to emerge on the other side and leave me empty once again.

I am just so annoyed.

So here I am, again,
Left to be ignored,
As if I really am disposable
As if I really haven't bent over backwards
As if you dont really want me, you've just been lonely for too long, and I've been unhappy for long enough for you to think my body looks like an empty house. You move in, fill all my spaces with your life, let your needs gnaw on my wooden frame
not caring if I collapse around you,
because I have always just been a catalyst,
A support system for every idea,
an ego boost asking for smile, for my words, for the reason I stick around, the truth is
I don't know, leaving has never really been my forte, and maybe I just like pretending things mean more than they do, like my needing, my undeniable want to be needed, transitioning into wanting to be heard too, but I can only have one.

It is the curse of knowing
All too well
How to make yourself disposable
Let yourself be forgotten,
and apologize when they remember.
You are an ocean, vast but below the surface
Your depths are unknown,
you mask them in riptides
Scary enough to make people weary, cautious on your shores,
 Mysterious enough for those to try to see, before they realize that being
Carried miles away from land is not worth it
Not for your mess, waves in places there shouldn't be, a constant silent storm,
But you never tell, never dare to ask for help.

Wanting/idealism

"And so the lion fell in love with the lamb."
-Stephanie Meyer

Okay, lets pretend for a minute that I didn't preface this poem with a quote from Twilight, just like I pretend like I can't relate to wanting something dangerous for you, like the male preying mantis moments before he gets his head bitten off. He just wanted love, we all just wanted love. Sure, maybe my lion is a little off, a little more insecure, but he bites,
licks his teeth and only says things to get a rise.
 Maybe it is the warning signs,
 after throwing off my blanket of security, and burning it
I search for something that offers nothing, makes no promises, only
 speaks pretty words
and the occasional smile.
Maybe I just have a thing for lions,
don't judge,
as if you've never wanted something, knowing full well it will destroy you,
Looking at you, staring into your five empty shot glasses, as if seeing them full again would stop the spinning feeling, as if seeing yourself in saftey again would stop your spinning feelings,
 I fell... like anyone would,
 more magnetic than anything.
Pulled in by my own docility, a lamb
It is so easy, when I am away I think of the harshness in your words,
The aggression in your movement,
but those goddamn eyes,
They are so much more intense in my head,
I see you, like the lion, waiting for the chance.

All I know

I lose us in words I do not know how to say                           yet,
They sit, thick in my throat
 Threatening to choke me
If only they could find the time.
That is all they are waiting for
like a gauntlent pending its drop
But I cannot dwell on this,
my feet find their way to the ground
I am unsteady, but still I wander
I pretend the uncertainty is the leaves, crushed under my feet as I move on
The words are the puddles I kick through, making my shoes slightly more laden and heavy, but I do not stop
Not for the weight,
not for those who yell that I am too much of a dreamer
Far too in the clouds to find my way on pavement
 I laugh because they think I am searching,
But there is nothing to be found
I allow the journey to manifest itself,
and that is all I know.