It disturbs me - love
It disturbs me how much I want love but how unattainable it seems to be. 
It disturbs me how I often think that no one truly loves each other, just accepting the best next thing, an epidemic of settling. 
It disturbs me that this isn’t love, just the perception of it, the motions and the nods towards it, the 30 minutes of pleasure that leads into us never speaking again. 
It disturbs me that I’m told and mostly believe that we were born for love, born into love, born because of love, but it is the most rare resource manifested in this world. 
It disturbs me to think scientifically about love, because at it’s core, there are chemicals and data to explain it away, making any form of art or dreamy thought of love to be pragmatically pointless. 
It disturbs me i think so much on love, but so rarely if ever live in it.
It disturbs me how out of love I am.

Cursed love
All my dreams seem to come true, with a twist, as if each perverse discretely, for a minute unnoticeable, cursed from the inception, the one in my head long ago. All the things I imagined I wanted came to me as specters in midnight cloaks, poisoned and poisoning. Thinking I could fuck my way into someone’s love, now I find myself with an empty bottle of a mislabeled hex.

Turtles
Whenever I see turtles I think of you
And dandelion leaves, you come in threes
Your softness was always what I saw
You taught me new names for love.

Now I break my rhyme and rhythm because if it is all broken then let it all be broken, these hands this mouth, the melodrama and the mood swings, the hot headedness glowing color red that lives in my head, the nonsensical never stopping self sabotage, us sabotage, until the heat burns through my pillow after never sleeping a moment at night, and I’m thinking about turtles, and I’m thinking about dandelions, and I’m thinking about softness, and I’m thinking about love, and how they are all gone now, ushered out into the rain, ushering in the ghosts with big brains, how I’m so scared I’ll never see them, how anhedonic I left myself, fearing any word or meaning that comes close to gone.

May
It’s only May and I think it’s better for you to look for somebody else.
We are just two hollowing logs from an old pier, still standing straight out of the water, but the boats keep falling by, they keep rolling by and by, avoiding us, never touching us.
Feel free to ruin my day but never my life. Know that my ghosting was never meant in a foul spirit, tell yourself what I have made my dating mantra - if they never respond, they never were meant to be.

Gotta go
I’ll fake my death and leave town by midnight,
An Irish exit of the decade, a tab never closed.
Late night loner, midnight roamer, a contestant for the twilight rodeo.
I’l buzz my hair and dye it blonde,
I’ll flaunt my crisis and burn cigarettes on my jacket,
Chip my teeth on beer bottles and grit through a smile,
I’ll show you how I can’t commit to a phrase
“I’m afraid of commitment”, how we commit so well to that belief.
Your words, your affection, and your love are the ropes tying me to you.
But why do I see them as also tying me down.
You won’t know how I feel about you,
Until you see the packed car and exhaust flumes,
I’ll tattoo your name with a heart next to “MOM”,
Kiss you blackout like you’re the only one, my true love,
Because baby you are, and they all are too,
But you’re my number 1, don’t you doubt it,
My ride or die on this fire train headed toward the cliffs,
And you will never know how much I miss you,
How much I wish I could make myself stay.

Gone gone
We lie in bed and talk about Nashville. I’m afraid to ask your name, to blow your cover, to blow my cover that I’ve been imaging us together for the past 7 minutes. Fading like the rays scattered over this page as I write. Fading from the place in my mind where I keep hope stored away. I assured you that I’m a nice person, you did the same. I tell you I’m a busy person, you tell me you are too, offendedly. I’m always thinking I’ll walk in on love in hook ups, when it least expected it, walk it on it dressing, chest bare, half-naked. Caught love in the act of being true. But my mind does more than store hope, it knows reality. So I laugh, compliment your decor, find my one lost sock, “ciao”, and I’m gone. Gone gone.

Sexescape
When life seems to get too boring, and the mid-afternoon clouds keep rolling in, I often want to escape myself, to let someone else in. I text you telling you I’m free, the desperation-desire-nonchalance balanced on the fulcrum, I’d give you parts of my self, even my own thoughts to get away from some darker shades. I become the drive by sexcapade right after coffee and right before gym, the convenience of opening a door, of casual forgettable small talk, the forgetting of your name despite multiple greetings, the jumping right into it without the pomp and circumstance. I often think to myself, what would your lover think of this, is he also out there doing it, has he been out here doing me? I love how trivial you’ve made our times together, without a promise for the next, without the kiss goodbye, just a “see you” and out. We’ve become our momentary, nearly non-existent escape.

Trendy slut
My friend called me a trendy slut, the way my buttons come undone at the top and the bottom of my seam. The way I move my body and smize indiscriminately. The way I’ll have a man over, love him to death, and ask his name as he walks out my door. The trends are biting shoulders, pulling on the chain around your neck, sucking your thumb,  face pressed up against the wall with an arm to my side, and never asking if this is even real. I keep the conversation light, the questions minimal, and our bodies close.

Real life pornstar
“I’m having the dumbest anxiety but it’s really bad and like I’m nearly crying at the doctor rn lmao”

“Why what’s going on??”

“Okay guy I’m kinda seeing
Clearly I know he’s into me but I just stumbled upon his twitter literally bc it was recommended to me and he’s one of those viral twitter gays who are hot online and many gay pornstars are hitting on him. And now I’m nervous af about tomorrow bc I don’t stack up to gay porn stars. And I want to cry and never eat again.”

“Oh my god, social media will be the end of us. You are the real life pornstar and you know the online guys aren’t that hot in real life
Does he make you feel this way too or is it just your head”

“LMFAO!!!
Okay thank you for making me laugh
Me a real life pornstar took me out
And no he doesn’t make me feel that way at all”

“it’s true”

“It’s fully in my head. He makes me feel good”

“Ok good! Because one ever should
These are good things then! Maybe try to avoid his twitter because I’ve even been there too and it’s never a good feeling”

“No literally going onto someone’s social media will always make you feel worse
It’s true
But I doubt he feels that way about mine lmao”

“You have no idea if that’s true though! It’s something I think most people deal with so it’s very likely he does”

“Okay that’s facts”

Intimate parts
I keep our convos to a minimum then spill oatmeal on the floor.
Skulls knocking each other, standing on the bed,
It’s the awkward imperfection that make me so into you.
There’s also the blemish and your peculiar shyness,
Are you scared of me?
Are you disappointed of me?
Or a possible untapped ineptness I haven’t quite figured out,
But I tell you anyways about my week 
And how wish I could never be drunk again.
And you tell me how you have never been drunk until now.
I lean up to signal it’s time for you to go, and you understood.
A kiss, a “see you next time”, a connection that feels so disconnected.
That’s who we are together, just strangers sharing our most intimate parts.

Paris boy
I will always think of him as the boy with the peculiar, unexpected French accent. As windows open, curtains breezing in the wind, lying naked together on a bed, discussing all our great loves, that in truth may not have been that great. The comfort I felt in spilling my own self, of sharing intimacy in a rare, so unashamed talking of all the others we too would rather, or yet, would like to also be with. We walked in the rainy streets, untediously, talking about work and its frustrations, too self-absorbed with our own comforts to realize how far we've gained all we dreamed for.

Moments of Softness
Moments of softness   
           and lying in bed
                        my leg draped over yours
                                       a side eye smile
                                                      hand on your thigh
                                      and the softness in a moment
                       on this rainy day cut short
           flights leaving the city at night
Left here in all this softness blank
           there are connections
                       that are so momentary
                                      but still so soft
                                                      that creep on my mind
                                      a defining feeling
                       of reuniting with forgotten love
           how right soft moments can be
The kind we fall in love with
           there is no bleakness
                       in being soft
                                      to speak with the body
                                                      to intertwine who we are
                                      there are things we avoid
                       to let our moment simmer
           in the near-heavens untouched
Like the soft moment
           now untouched far away
                       walking out my door
                                     my name on your mouth
                                                     left softly with me.

sf
san francisco keeps popping up in my life
i’m told, it’s a very beautiful city
compared to some others
how much it has changed
and i can never stop thinking about it

as if summoning and conjuring 
you send me a picture of none other
there it is, san francisco,
distant clouds, rainfall, and a rainbow 
sun partitioned to the left 

Beauty so terrifying just for me
How is beauty so terrifying when it’s just me,
When I live surrounded by heaven 
But I only speak to myself in angelic words.
What is a celebration if only with my two hands,
Where is the countenance if I have only one body.
In the celestial rocks among the galaxial dust,
I view my the world I know, the life I have, thinking 
There is no love on this planet, or there’s too much,
Convinced I may not know how to identify it
Or worse, identifying what I know I can’t have,
That if there is love, it must be overflowing, 
And must be overflowing away from me,
Or if there is no love, it is only because my eyes can’t see,
That after too many supernovas, solar flares, 
I have finally burnt out my ability to see the face of beauty.
Am I enough of a person to take this in alone?
To find the ways to make peace with these thoughts,
To take myself somewhere new without my history tied around me,
Untethered by the swelling of my tongue unable
To call the forsaken names of cloak-and-dagger love.
I’ll be terrified there, drifting my arms into the beauty,
So alone it’ll be as if it were all made for me.

Greenblue
Us, it’s green
		and it’s blue
and everything
				feels
		so
new.

Now you’re here
		and you’re near
And you’re		
				everything 
I fear.

and I say 
		love
and you’re love
				and we’re
		so very
in love.


We 	shift
	with 	the 	waves
		and 	dip
			into 	the 	depths
		with 	sheen
	of 	aquamarine
submerged 	low
	in 	beauteous
			gulping 	in
	the 	salty 	sea
transforming
	us 	into 	crystal 
		gems 	we 	become
	our 	very 	own
priceless 
	gardens
		of 	rare 	jewels.


Now we’re blue
		after we’re green
and we become
				so very
		clearly
seen.

And in the deep	
		we come to	
sleep holding
				all 
		we
keep.

And you’re me
		and everything
I ever have
				you
		mean
so much
				almost
		everything
to me.

Can I ask you something?

				the joy			
		remember			we loved
	you			the truths			when we found
Do		trust				we hated				each other?
	I			the hurt			after we lost
		forget				we accepted
				the feeling
				




The spirit moves you
Feel free if the spirit moves you as it moves in me, through me to show how much I love, to finally believe and accept that I don’t have to suffer for love and that love is not suffering. I’ll write down the ways that affection has become my tradition. I will trace on your hand what forms love takes, shapeless wondering forms that found its way here.