When I grow up, I want to be Betty White.

Sometimes, I can have beautiful words streaming out of my veins, ink splattering the paper in a pattern that stains my arms and rebounds off my face, and sometimes I have strangers waiting in the wings of the city to recite the shadows of words temporarily tattooed onto the arches of my cheekbones.

Other times, I can have phrases plastered to the back of my throat, the taste of uncooperative syllabes coating the enamel of my teeth, and no amount of dry heaving or quality time spent between my forehead and the floor will convince them to shake loose. They want to crawl out, I’m sure, though not without context.

She told me that whenever I needed her, I could feel down my arms and into my hands, tracing the lines that sit inside my palms, and remember the warmth of her fingers intertwined with mine.

I told her I’m not very good with imagery.

She laughed. She told me that instead, I could remember the smell of her hair on every one of the millions of unwashed pillow cases we’d left behind in shady motels, that I could taste her on the sand dunes we’d climbed together, desperate to touch the sky with our claws, that I could hear the sound of her voice inside the waves breaking against the side of the conch shell we’d found when we were searching for the spot where we had first kissed under the moon, and I said

I don’t remember.

And she said, Why are you being difficult?

And I said, Sometimes, hands are meant to be empty.

And she laughed, whispering, Not yours.

Anyone who wants just inbox me. I like pretty much everyone and find everything hilarious. Plus I need tumblr friends.

…

Everybody just needs to let me love them.

So tired of what I’ve been writing lately. 

So the pink of your lungs bleed out and onto my floor, coating the inside of me like newly shed dew drop tears.

All the bleach in the world wouldn’t get it out of my carpets.

30 Day Poetry Challenge: Day 1

Write a poem where each line starts with the letter from your first name. Cannot be about you or your name.

So.

Here we are again.

Arranging the rays of sunlight, just so

Radiating off the words you so graciously

Addressed to me. What the hell do

You think you’re doing, exactly?

Always falling for you is starting to get old.