“Yesterday i carved your name into the surface of an ice cubethen held it against my chest til it melted into my aching porestoday i cried so hard the neighbors knocked on my doorand asked if I wanted to borrow some sugar.”

“Rocking ChairSad is. Scared is. That is all. The rocking chair I live in rocks like a paper boat. Sometimes I am all words, and no boot. No muster. No yes. All lag and tired pray, all miss my hometown. Miss the woods and the quiet porch and the talking slow. I caught the snow on my tongue. Snow angel, I. My heart a blue lamp. My mother calling me home. We cannot be called home enough times in our lives. Dear lonely, what is your name? I will open my front door and ring it through the streets.”

“And if there’s one thing in this world I’ve ever known for sure, it’s that this girl is gonna crush me like a small bug, leave me so fucking broken there’ll be body bags beneath my eyes from nights I cried so hard the stars died. But I’m like, go ahead. I’m all yours. I would kiss you in the middle of the ocean during a lightning storm, cause I’d rather be left for dead than left to wonder what thunder sounds like.”

“I’m never gonna waitthat extra twenty minutesto text you back,and I’m never gonna playhard to getwhen I know your lifehas been hard enough already.When we all know everyone’s lifehas been hard enough alreadyit’s hard to watchthe game we make of love,like everyone’s playing checkerswith their scars,saying checkmatewhenever they get outwithout a broken heart.Just to be clearI don’t want to get outwithout a broken heart.I intend to leave this lifeso shatteredthere’s gonna have to bea thousand separate heavensfor all of my flying parts.”

“Loveisn't always magic.But if I offered my body to the magician,if I told him to cut me in halfso after that I could come to you wholeand ask for you backwould you listenfor this dark alley love song?For the winter we heated our home from the steam off our own bodies?”

“..when a war ends, what does that look like exactly?do the cells in the body stop detonating themselves?does the orphanage stop screaming for its mother?when the sand in the desert has been melted down to glassand our reflection is not something we can stand to look atdoes the white flag make for a perfect blindfold?yesterday i was told a storyabout this little girl in Iraq, six-years-old,who cannot fall asleepbecause when she doesshe dreams of nothingbut the day she watched her dog eat her neighbor's corpse.if you told her war is overdo you think she can sleep?”

“The trauma said, ‘Don’t write these poems.Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.”