❝ i tried for so long

just to stitch myself back together.

but still

i unravel at the sight of you . ❞

2015

❝ my heart still reaches for you— you know.

it aches like a phantom limb,

both knowing and not knowing

that you are a piece of me

that has long since been removed. ❞

2016

❝ i was told by my father that i ought to come with a warning. he said people deserved to know what exactly they were getting themselves into.

so consider this yours:

my love is gasoline

and your lips are matches.

kiss me

and you’ll watch me ignite. ❞

2017

❝ three months after you left me, i missed you so much that i started to look for you in the faces of other strangers.

i tried not to notice it at first

but you’d left pieces of yourself around town knowing i’d follow them; deliberately leading me out of the ruins you’d left behind by etching your name in every shadow and tree so that i could no longer see the world without thinking of you.

i think, in this way,

it was both comforting and painful—

to know you were everywhere

but just not here. ❞

2018

❝ i’m pulling on these strings much too hard;

the ribbons of my thoughts are still tattered and

i ought to be careful with how i hold them.

but here they come now— barely strung together,

incohesive, fragile as a butterfly wing,

thin as gossamer, as weightless as tissue paper,

more translucent than a lily drowned underwater,

and they come tumbling out of my mouth

unspooling onto paper from the repository in my chest

that carries all broken things. ❞

2019

❝ i look forward to my thirties–

suede blue jeans, faux mink coats,

plastic jewelry and velveteen dreams.

lime green loveseat, tye dye sheets

weekends in manhattan

art installations to see, cocktails to drink!

i hope i never stop loving love

and that i’ll stay truer than ever

to the little girl who dreamt of days like these. ❞

2020

❝ i missed you;

just short of letting go and turning back,

caught at the juncture between then and now.

stuck in that moment like cough syrup

drowning in the words i can’t swallow—

the possibilities of a sentence

i’d never be brave enough to admit.

filling up on an iv drip that tastes of you,

saccharine sweet

with a lingering bitter aftertaste,

medicine for the soul –

classic cherry-flavored caitlin. ❞

2021

❝ doe eyes shyly peek over

an uneasy grin, ringed blue from the otter pop

you said i couldn’t have until i’ve eaten all my vegetables,

and i know i’ve got broccoli in my teeth but still i’ve only got sunny gummy smiles hanging underneath the apple blossoms in my cheeks.

you say play time’s over but barbie’s still swinging like a trapeze artist. you tell me to stop laughing but i’m falling to pieces over the way she dangles so helplessly from your hands.

my sides are bursting at the seams, tears streaming. i laugh and i laugh and i laugh until you knock the laughter straight out of my mouth and the echo rattles in my head like loose teeth.

you didn’t understand the timing then but i just think there’s something beautiful in the tragedy of things

like the enduring sweetness of spoiled peaches. ❞

2022