“There are three things I want you to learn how to say. One. "I love you" and don't just say it as an empty phrase, say it with feeling, say it to every person who comes to mind when you think of those three little words. I know it's scary, I know it's difficult, but open yourself up and shout it. Don't mumble, don't say it under your breath, when you love someone, whether platonically or romantically, it deserves to be shouted from every rooftop. Two. "Goodbye" There will be some people in your life that come in and just wreck everything, they mess up your plans, they hurt you, and make you feel less than what you are, so please learn how to say goodbye to them. But I also want you to learn how to say goodbye to even the people you want to stay. not everyone stays, and saying goodbye is like setting someone free, and it won't always come easy, and it won't always come without heartbreak, but not everyone stays, and it will do you a world of good to learn how to tell them goodbye. Three. "I am worth it." there will be waves of sorrow in your life, and you will feel as if you were the sand that the tide carries away, you will feel as if it carries away your worth it will feel like you are the left over rubble of a building that had been burned down, and you will feel less, but please learn to say these words. say them in the mirror when you have just woken up, say them when your lover turns their back on you, say them when you are opening up the refrigerator sing them, yell them, whisper them, and please, believe them. You are more than sand that can just be washed away, and you are more than just a few pieces of broken cement, please, you are worth it. ”
—These will be the three bravest things you will ever learn how to say
Writer's Block.
1.
Dream about people you’ve never met and lips
you’ve never kissed and go ahead and
turn those lips into a love story.
2.
Let your laptop go uncharged for three nights
straight and forget all of the ideas you
thought you had.
3.
Think about the oceans you saw with boys who
threw their trash into the water when they
thought you weren’t looking.
4.
If the waves are indescribable, write about the
sinking feeling that hit when you
had to drive away.
5.
Get drunk on cheap wine alone in your room
and wax poetic for hours until something
sticks.
6.
Fall asleep at the foot of your bed or on the
bathroom floor or out on the patio in the
sticky summer heat.
7.
Write in your old notebooks that you hid under
your bed when you were just
sixteen.
8.
Chew the meatiest words with your
mouth wide open.
9.
Cringe and swallow every line
until there’s nothing left but the bones.
“When you say that I am beautiful, please, tell me why. I don't want you to just say it to flatter me, or make me blush, it will work in your favor, sure, but if you're going to tell me that I am beautiful, make me believe it. Because, I wake up with myself every morning, and I know what my hair looks like, and I have probably seen the way my eyes look more than you have. I know how my eyebrows look, simply because I have refused to pluck them, my ears and nose are rather average, and I have memorized the small gaps and overlaps of my teeth, so I know what I look like, you don't need to remind me of my facial features, you're going to have to try a little harder. I know I talk with my hands, and I know I stutter from time to time, I trip when I walk, over nothing but my toes, and I bite my nails, did you know that? I pick at my cuticles when I am nervous and crack my knuckles in any emotional state. I probably giggle too much and smile way too often, and overuse the words, "I love you" are these things that make me beautiful, or just make me who I am? I don't know, you're going to have to make me believe it. I make things, out of junk and I cannot draw a simple stick figure, I spend way too much time writing, and not enough time talking, and I can't even whistle a short melody, let alone sing one. My heart is everywhere but beating inside my chest, and I look at world maps and think about the different faces in each different place and I wonder if these hearts feel worthy of love sometimes. Take a look at my thoughts, dig and dig and dig deeper, do you still think I am beautiful? Why? ”
—I know who I am, but am I beautiful?
Half Moon Beautiful
There is lonely in you
There is this sadness
sinking like an abandoned ship
that people will call beautiful
a few years down the line.
There is a ghost town
of wiped away smiles,
So many fingerprints
collecting dust on your skin,
so many voices echoing
between your ribs.
There is silence in you.
There is this straightjacket on your heart,
this memory of a beat that is screaming
to prove its sanity, there is a home
as broken as its missing family.
You seem so lost, lover.
You seem like you’ve been searching for a key
but only finding notes to songs
you don’t have the voice box to open
you are the kind of broken that doesn’t hide.
Your smile might as well be a crack
your dimple a scar, your laughter a scream
You are sadness even in your ecstasy.
Hey, you breathtaker
hey, you half moon beautiful.
how did you get here?
Don’t tell me you’re not exquisite.
don’t tell me you’re not magnetic.
when there is so much masterpiece in your magic.
You are so unapologetically lost.
Don’t be this beautiful
and expect me not to fall.
I like how your left hand slides down my face and how your fingers trace the cliff of my chin, slipping the stones from my spine-
I lose the bitter in my bones to taste the saccharine that sleeps on your lips.
I like how even when my eyes are closed under the 1AM glow of residential streetlights and I pause to gather all of your secrets under my tongue, I know you’re smiling because the sound of your breath skips across my face like apple blossoms in June;
and I know those only bloom in May but there’s an honesty in the way the freckles on your cheeks speak to the fallen stars on my skin.
I like how hours seem like minutes and that when I’m driving, the faintness of your hand in mine leaves whispers in their creases that I’ll listen to when I get home.
I like how these last lines took me 2 hours to write because looking for metaphors to describe how I get lost in your hair, is like trying to differentiate between the constellations for me (I’ve never taken astronomy).
I like how I can recall all of that based on the albums we’ve shuffled through and that the stereo still playing in my head falls silent when I try to find notions that rhyme with sublime.
if you needed a sign
The sad truth is that
no one is going to
stop you on the street
and shake you until
your true potential spills out.
You’re going to have to do it yourself.
You may be young, full of love
(if only you knew where to give it!)
and talent
(if only you knew where to use it!)
and you will do yourself a great injustice
if you wait to live until
someone tells you to.
There is no hidden world where all
of your problems will go away.
The ”real world” that your parents swear
you’ll enter someday does not exist. There
are bills you may have to pay, there are
commitments you may have, but
above all, there is now.
Quit waiting until
you become someone else
before you
like yourself.
Kid, you put so much of your energy into
fighting to stay alive,
that you forgot
to live.
Don’t require yourself to
have a college degree,
new friends, a lover,
or live in a new city
before you allow yourself to be happy.
Decide what you would like to
bring into the world and then do it.
If you needed a sign,
this is it.
I’ve always lost myself
trying to find
the meaning in things.
I’ve also tied myself
to those things
that have meant the most to me.
They have left me broken
and you’d think
after twenty four years,
I’d be use to it
but I am still delicate.
I scare myself
with how easy it is
to not feel a thing
only to preserve
the last breaths of life
I have inside me.
Maybe one day I’ll be ready
to not feel as safe
as I do alone.
I will find comfort like leaves
ripping off trees
and be happy as the wind blows.
I would rather wear a string
of flowers than a string
of pearls.
I would rather not be married.
I would rather love you without
a paper license.
I want us to say fuck the world
and to grow our hair long,
maybe tattoo our bodies with
wise buddhist chants.
I want us to get drunk together
and make love in a car together
and laugh at things
that make us want to give up
on life.
I want us to appreciate everything
on this planet that we grow on.
I don’t want bills to govern us,
I don’t want society to govern us,
I don’t want blue-collar jobs
or gallons of money.
Let’s start a garden
where the grass refuses to grow.
Home
Longing takes
so much of love’s breath,
what can remain
when figures are confirmed,
static, constant?
Passion pricks patience’s fingers,
makes mincemeat of comfort
with wait and calm and other
words living hearts can’t translate.
Don’t look at me with quiet eyes
bartering memories for touches
like fingerprints on new glass —
your silence isn’t mine to take.
Your words pound
walls with kick-drum echoes
bleeding rhythm my veins,
my mad refrain, your love —
I can’t be sure it’s not a dream.
I woke up
and you weren’t there.
