Recall the tale of Icarus. Chose to be Icarus.

Hey! So I've noticed in a lot of your poems you post the hashtag poets of instagram and I was wondering what your instagram is or if you have a public poetry instagram??

Achilles, I put you in every daydream, in every fantasy. 

HOW TO LOVE A MORTAL:

“I once loved a God,” she says, despair in her eyes and liquor on her lips.

hi! i'm your poetry secret santa. i was wondering what topics you like poetry about, and what you'd want your poem to possibly be about? also who are your favorite poets so i could get an idea of what you like

You can have all the happy memories, I'll sit in my shower lungs heaving, head spinning, trying not to gag on the realization that you twisted me into something I'm not. You can remain a complete picture but I am constantly walking around missing a piece of me. You can keep all our shared friends, I'll stay with those who stood by me no matter what and I'll choke on bitterness as I think about those I thought would choose my side. You can have the memories of our late night conversations fueled by tea with too much honey and ramen with too much ginger, I'll keep all the times I bit my tongue so as to not anger you on a loop. I should have spoken up. You can walk around with your head held high knowing you've emerged victorious, everyone thinks I'm abrasive and crass so it's obviously my fault. I'll take the broken pieces of our friendship and hold them close to my heart until I inevitably decided to burn them like you burned the bridges between us. You can smile knowing you'll never have to apologize, I will think of endless apologies until I finally accept that I'm not the one to blame, by then it'll be too late there'll be nothing left to fix because you got to keep your dignity as you walked away while I fell to my knees spitting fire. You can stay awake at night missing me, but I will sleep soundly because it's better to be with you in my dreams then without you in reality. You will delete all our messages and burn all our pictures, I will thumb through our memories thinking about where it went wrong and I'll look at us laughing and wonder if this fallout has been brewing since the beginning. I will hurt and ache without you beside me, you will carry on like nothing happened.

When he was declared MIA a dream died with him.  A young man cut down in the prime of his life. Sent away to a war he didn’t want to fight, forced to leave his dream on the east coast in small venues and bars no one remembers the names of. His voice still echoes off the walls and is forever embedded into the floors where he once sang. The night he said goodbye he had to leave his band and his dreams on the pier and when he died that band and an entire generation of dreamers died with him. Now 55 years later I sit listening to the song Springsteen immortalized him in and cry because he could have been a legend.  A boy from my home state, who died on my birthday, whose legacy lives on in the one thing he loved most-music.

To my history teacher: I'm sorry. I'm sorry that sometimes my binder for your class, the smallest binder I carry, is the heaviest in my backpack and carrying it for any longer feels as if my spine will break, the weight of all that death and hatred follows me around, attached to me like a ball and chain. I'm sorry that sometimes your classroom becomes a war-zone that I don't want to be in and your explanations a battle I don't want to fight. Bodies fall to the ground and lie in heaps around me as I watch the documentary you've put on. I'm sorry that sometimes my spine tenses up with how much I want to grab you by your shoulders and shake you and ask how you can stand in front of the class and make jokes about assassinations and genocides.  I'm sorry that sometimes I understand that laughing it off is the only way to not loose yourself amongst the carnage. I'm sorry that sometimes my hands shake on the desk and my friends have to grab them so they stop. Its just that watching bodies burn never gets easier and I will never get used to watching boys barely older than me get their bodies blown to pieces. (The seemingly endless sea of death that came from the Vietnam War makes me feel nauseous and knowing they were barely adults makes it worse.) I'm sorry that my eyes glaze over and some times I have to fight to keep them open, its just no amount of caffeine will ever wake me up enough to deal with the amount of death and racism and horror you teach in your class. I'm sorry that being your student has turned me off from majoring in history (tell me how you do it, how do you sleep at night knowing that I've cried over some of the things you've showed us. I guess its what you sacrifice to help make sure we don't make the same mistakes as those who came before.), I'm sorry that I don't think I will ever be able to fully look you in the eye again. But most of all I'm sorry that the binder I carry for your class weighs me down more than anything else I keep in my backpack.

Friends gathered around a bonfire in the dead of the night. Smoke hangs in the air as we huddle close together; thighs pressed to thighs and legs sprawled across laps as the warm light from the embers illuminates our smiles.  Sticky fingers covered in melted chocolate and splashed soda. The stars laugh at our antics and the moon reflects in our eyes. We warm our hands and our souls over the flames, taking in the heat. The warmth seeps into our world wearied bones, giving us hope that one day we'll be as and as alive and the fire in front in front of us. Christmas music sung loudly at the tops of our lungs, off beat and out of tune but we don't care. We burn down a scarecrow and as it goes up in flames we cheer, roaring with the wind. Polaroid pictures taken at random intervals. Old friends and new friends gathered together as we throw our hearts in the fire.

It's mid history essay when I start typing the word faggot over and over and over hoping and praying that the next time my brother screams it at me in anger it will have lost all meaning and instead of it igniting a house fire that spreads from town house to town house within me, it'll simmer out and die.   It won't. My hands will still shake with the need to scream the history of the word from the tops of my lungs until he understands that I am not the sticks they used as kindling to burn those who came before me at the stake. I won't, because he will never understand the weight of that word because he throws it around like it weighs nothing.

1. The sun feels nice on your skin but the burn it leaves after doesn’t seem worth it. (You’ll always think  it is.) 2. Coffee drank on the porch in the early morning sun as the sea breeze blows by is the best self care. 3. Checking out everyone you find attractive will not keep his eyes from haunting your dreams. 4. The moon illuminating the sand and the crashing waves calls to your inner void and it longs to pull you deeper and deeper. Don’t let it. 5. Walking miles upon miles every day seems like a good way to forget your woes, but when you lay in bed the following night and your feet ache and your legs are sore and you’re still over thinking everything, you’ll realize you can’t escape your problems. 6. You’ll be about to take a shower when your mom will tell you for the first time that she no longer cares for you and it will feel like a stab through your heart. Pull out the blade and add it to the piles of knives and daggers you’ve been pulling out of your back since before you can remember. 7. Live music while cool sand fills in the gaps between your toes will help block out the chill you feel that comes from the pit in your stomach.  8. Throwing yourself from the balcony seems like a good idea until you realize you don’t want to be the first death the sand coated children will experience. (Going down in history as the youngest fire fighter to kill themselves is a shame you don’t want to burden you’re parents with.) 9. The salt on your skin and in your hair feels like coming home in a way. Cherish it. (Along with the salt that gets in your mouth.) 10. Asphalt blackens the soles of your feet. Let that be the only dark part of you. (It isn’t but you want it to be.) 11. Try to refrain from bumming a cigarette off your friends. Quitting is good, even though sometimes you wish you had the nicotine to stop your shaking hands. 12. Early morning light can make anything look soft. Including the glares being sent at you. (The harsh sun of the afternoon will reveal the truth.) 13. Sea-shell shards are like you, pretty but incomplete. 14. Walking ages to find the perfect viewing spot for fireworks in fun, and when you find the perfect place you’re in heaven. 100% bliss as the fireworks go off. 15. Moon flowers are your favorite because like you they thrive in darkness. 16. Pretty boys who work in the farthest arcade on the boardwalk have glowing smiles that leave you seeing stars for hours afterwards. (They will also give you candy that rots your teeth.) 17. Walking miles barefoot will cause the soles of your feet to turn raw and bleed. 18. Looking at your best friends bracelet as it hugs your wrist is a great reminder of whats waiting back for you in Pennington. (Don’t let that reminder stop you from enjoying your trip.) 19. Blood red moons will fade to orange until it eventually turns back to it’s original color. The earths shadow is what turns it red. You wish it would stay red. (It won’t.) You wish the red color didn’t make you think of the way blood from self inflicted wounds used to turn the shower water red. (Eventually it won’t.) 20. Poseidon is not kind, the waves will try to pull you under. You want them too. 21. Surf shops have the softest sweatshirts. 22. Eating candy will rot your teeth, but nothing will ever compare to the decay of your heart. 23. Infection doesn’t smell much different than loneliness. 24. Watching the purge alone will get your adrenaline pumping but the nightmares it will give will haunt you for weeks. (At least his eyes can’t haunt you while you hunt for crooked politicians.) 25. Holding your breath until your lungs ache and your head feels like its gonna explode is a great distraction from the hurricane of your thoughts. 26. The island floods fast in the pouring rain. Your clothes are soaked and you’re freezing. Try not to think of warm brown eyes. Shivering is better. 27. Saying goodbye doesn’t get easier no matter how many times you’ve had to do it. Taking pictures of the pool and the condos across the street will help with the ache leaving gives.  28. Car rides on cloudy days are the best. Putting in your headphones and staring out the water droplet covered windows almost makes the ache of going back home bearable. 29. Unpacking the van makes your heart ache and as you find sand on everything you wish you had sand beneath your feet, not grass. 30. You’ve never been on for the beach, but this trip made the ocean seem less like a war zone and more like a peace treaty.

Recently I've made the mistake of falling of falling in love with a Greek god. And I know Gods do not love, but I couldn't help myself. His eyes are liquid ember and his smile is pure unrestricted sunshine. How could I not fall in love? His hair is dark enough to be mistaken with the night sky and the stars seem to get tangled around his fingers. It's foolish of me to have believed that he would ever look at me at all for I am just a mere mortal offering myself up to a god. Everything about him screams perfection that was crafted among the heavens. Who am I to believe he will ever love me back? I should have known that to love a God is to condemn myself to heartbreak, because he will never love me back.

My mouth tastes like decay and infection. I don't think it ever properly healed from the daggers I spat the first time I fought with my best friend. And I've never been one to think about consequences and I don't think I've ever stopped spitting daggers. And yes my eyes can never stay just one color and I know how nice they look in the sunlight, with their clear blue and soft hazel. But i promise when I'm angry they turn from a clear lake into a turbulent sea. And they've never been very expressive, so if my eyes soften when I look at you, it's just a trick of the light because I lost my ability to be soft the first time I was thrown to the ground. And I know my hands are smooth, but I've spent years hardening them against the words thrown at me in my own home. So please take a closer look and you'll see the scars decorating my fingers. Yes, my shoulders make good pillows. I've had the tear stained faces of my friends buried in them far too many times to count. But it's hard to  look at them as something of comfort when they stiffen and suddenly I turn into the monster I swore I'd never become. And yes I'm capable of loving my friends. But my heart is black. And girls with black hearts don't get love stories unless they end in heartbreak.

A wave of dread crashes over me. He knows. And as he steps away I'm left reaching out over the abyss that separates us. Every inch feels like he's putting continents between us. The way he tenses his shoulders is a stab through my heart. Even as the distance between us grows I still look at you the same way I do a sunrise over the river, With complete awe and adoration. Yet you still look at me with nothing but polite friendliness in your brown eyes. And oh God it hurts so much knowing you'll never want me the way I want you, that I'll never know what it's like to have your hands tangled in mine. So I'll watch you burst with warmth and color spreading joy and laughter to those around you, and I'll try to not smile as wide when you laugh, and I'll try not to let on to the way my hands shake when you're near. And I'll never again build up the courage to approach you in fear of you stepping away like last time. And when my heart shatters while you look at someone else  the way I look at you, I'll force a smile and pretend the spark in my eyes is happiness for you and not my tears about to fall.

It's gotten to the point where I'm day dreaming about what being with you would be like because you're so sweet and your smile is the only thing on my mind as of late and I'd willingly give you everything I have. I want to be with you so bad it's ripping me apart at the seams. I'm drunk on the thought of your eyes looking at me with so much warmth that I feel I'll never be cold again. I've tried smoking as a way to get you out of my mind, but instead of exhaling my feelings, the smoke makes me wish that the mint flavor in my mouth was from you and not the menthol of my cigarette. But no matter what I do, the thought of you won't leave my mind. And I'm surprisingly okay with that.