Beautiful Boy Pt. I

Beautiful boy,
Beautiful boy,
I ride the curves, the slope of your shoulders.
Your warmth disturbs my heart, never colder.

Patience and passion,
Your manner, your fashion,
We're relaxed now- you bend, and I'll dip.
So loose and velveteen, but I'm in your grip.

Your grip-
Soft hands, I recall your name,
Sweat dews as if on a window pane;
Mine, parched, as dry as cotton wisps
Specially made to absorb your fingertips.

Fruit popsicles on the deck,
In the rain, goosebumps on my neck.
Beautiful boy,
Beautiful boy,
The love you see is simply a humble fleck
of gold in the roaring river.

Leaving You

Requited, revenged, satisfied-
Now are you?
Deliberate, manipulative words-
Are they true?

Expectant, everyday, inevitable
calls
Leave me panicked,
Leave me punching
the walls.

Satiate your madness,
Quench your insecurity,
Defile my fondness.
Mock love's sanctity-

Mock love's sanctity
and you'll lose it.
You will only lose me
if you chose it.

Hospital Bed

This skin is not my own- I scratch and claw but the pain isn't mine.
I wish sadness was like a limb that I could amputate at will
that I could hungrily kill.
I guess it'll just cling like a leach
while I float through oblivion,
missing school,
crying lots,
taking naps,
and giving up.

Certainty, certainty, give me certainty.
give me your love and~
like it was before~
don't take it back.

I feel like I'm in a hospital bed-
filled with dread-
waiting for the news.

The doctors come in,
look me dead in the eyes,
and tell me I'll die.

But then a nurse'll come in
and tell me their prognosis is a lie,
and I have every hope to live.

You give me hope sometimes
And it makes me feel high
Like all's I'll have to do is try-
to give you love that is sweet,
words that are kind
smother you in kisses
and it'll all be alright.

They go back and forth
back and forth
you call me every day
every day
and say
you love me,
then you don't.
you say
you love me,
then you don't.

My Only Possessions

All’s I can do is love you, admire you, 

and put that love and admiration out into the universe,

to be warped and manipulated until what started as pure and labyrinthine 

becomes mediocre, gelastic, asinine-

as they breach the gap between my heart, my true emotions, to your perception. 

Covetous of me to assume cohesive tranquility between us, 

to anticipate your gracious, familiar voice to reverberate through the chasm of my vulnerability,

for your gentle mind to bear the burden of empathy.

Who am I to demand peace and comfort-

to orchestrate reactions that are not my own.

I can only control

my thoughts,

my heart and soul, 

which will perpetually, forever, and unceasingly

ponder you

and adore you without bounds.

If my intentions aren’t pure, I don’t comprehend purity.

In my deathbed, that is all I’ll have, lining the creases of my burial dress,

recollections of you, images of you and our memories;

The only things I’ll have to my name-

the experiences I own.

Those are my only possessions.

A Girl Of His Own

by Brianna Burkholder (April 2012)

For Vincent,

Who didn't know,

Wasn't omniscient.

For Van Gogh,

A Starry Night

of my own.

For he,

sans companion,

always lonely.

Always melancholy,

for critics didn't

know their folly.

For critics,

who saw the color,

but not the mystic.

For Vicent,

I made a red-haired

sentiment.

For Van Gogh,

a girl of his own.