I have forgotten
how to kiss,
but might revisit
making love
to the switchblade
in my purse.

Everything smells like cigarette smoke,
and nothing smells
like the butterflies in my gut.

But strangers like the camels I smoke.
So I purge my nervous stomach
onto the blank canvas in front of me;

and I bathe myself in nervous applause,
while my insides
wrestle with the snake left in my belly,
never to be seen
by the audience, because
lovers don't like that.

I forget what I wanted to write about.

I forget because I'm cold,
and I'm on the front porch
of my parents' house while they're both asleep.
Because they know I smoke, but
I don't like to rub it in. Like,
"This is what you've taught me to avoid!
And this
is all I rely on!"
And that's all I hear.
And I don't want them
to hear that.

And I forget
what I wanted rely on,
but when I think about it,
it sounds like music notes in my head,
and there's no way you can hear the song,
because it fades in the distance
(on a minor chord)
when I toss the cigarette butt
into the ivy, where my parents won't see it
as a constant reminder of how
I fell so hard.

So you can't hear what I hear.
And I can't really hear it either,
but when I wake up
in the afternoon
on my parents' couch,
all I know is
there's something I should be listening to,
and maybe it's the wisps of my dream,
or maybe it's something bigger
I can't quite grasp, but,
I should hear it.
And I can't.

So, at two PM, I fall back asleep,
trying to hear it again.
Or maybe, I wake up,
and wander around wearing oversized clothes
and wait to put on deodorant unless
I go outside,
and until then, I eat everything in the house
until I feel satisfied
and I never will.

I've been paid to pour sticky-sweet
dancing-juice down the throats
of men who can't afford
a hooker
but want the salt of Bourbon Street
on their tongues when they wake up.
I've stumbled up to my door,
dropping the keys and loudly spitting out a
"Shh!"
to myself, to retain some sense
of dignity.
I've woken up with an army in my head,
shouts muddled because their leader
has been shot, and all they can do now
is stomp around and
make loud noise and
hurt.

It never hurt as much
as being awake without a hangover
and having nothing physical
to nurse.

I want to move to Portland
because a boy who never loved me
loves the West
and maybe I need to be there
to discover what I don't know I'm missing.

Sometimes you just need a change
while still being wrapped
in the warm blanket of memories
only the quiet end of a friendship
can leave you with.
And Portland isn't New York or Paris–
it isn't an exclamation point,
it's an ellipsis,
and the boy and I died
with an ellipsis.

So maybe I need an ellipsis,
a warm blanket,
the comfort zone of a flight
that lands in an unknown city
that I've never seen before.

But I bet, stepping off that plane,
I'll be able to smell memories
in the crisp, strange Portland air.

You fell asleep, your arm
slung across my middle.
I stayed up with
a cigarette
and Good Will Hunting playing on TV.
You would shuffle around
in your sleep, but with every movement,
you kept your hand
curled around my belly.
Even in your dreams, you were
intimate.

I wiggled into a new position
at one point, and I
almost woke you up.
You startled–
mumbled something in your sleep.
Every word was
incomprehensible, until I heard escape
"I love you, baby."
And it was
brilliant– the innocence
that you sighed
in your slumber.

And I loved you.

The next day, you saw a bike,
dirty yellow and
abandoned by its owner.
You straddled the seat and
rode in tight circles.
And all I could think was,
your legs are so skinny.
You were all
skin and bones, pedaling that bike.
All I saw
was you
naked.
More naked than you
had ever been.

And I didn't love you.

"And what my therapist says, is,
she says she thinks you're
fucked up, too."

"Well that's great. I'm glad
she didn't bring you up."

"She didn't. And maybe that's why
she didn't
Fuck Me Up, either."

I don't use paper and pencil now.
My thoughts are too fleeting
to subscribe
to anything but a "delete" key.

You hastily slid my pink thong past my ankles
half an hour ago,
but only now,
when I can feel a stickiness
drip down the insides of my thighs,
am I finally naked.
It dawns on me that I want to tell you something–
something important–
I want to tell you
"I love you,"
before I can pause to wonder if I mean it–
but leftover sex
dribbles out of me
faster than any words can, and suddenly
I am empty again
and have nothing
to say.

Walking down the avenue,
admiring how my cigarette smoke
mingles with the snow.
Gentle wisps rising,
quiet kisses falling,
but they meet midair
to dance.
I could watch this silent beauty
for days, until

a wrinkled old man closing up shop
scowls at me.
"Those things will kill you, lady."

I pause.
Shocked at the sound.

"That's the plan," I mumble,
and clumsily stride away.

The snow keeps falling
but nothing sticks.

Tonight I will dream
that I am
falling.
I will clutch for safety
and grab nothing.
It will dawn on me
that I am
twelve stories high,
and the unforgiving ground
is quickly approaching.
My face to the sky,
I will accept my fate
and brace for impact.
A moment before
I am no more than
a starburst on the pavement–
I will wake.

Gasping for air, strangely
metallic in taste,
I will take a moment
to realize I am still alive.
My eyes will be open, but I will see
nothing but darkness.
My ears will be alert
to nothing but
my dry sobs.
Still paralyzed from the dream,
I will take inventory
of my legs, my arms, my spine,
and only when they are all found in tact
will the air stop tasting
like blood.

Shaking, I will turn blindly
to my left, wanting only
to murmur into your sleepy ear,
"I had a bad dream."
My fingertips will reach
for your shoulder, your back,
eager to trace your warmth
under my palm.
I will know
that the only way to calm my breathing
will be to tell my bones
that you are lying tangent to me,
wrapping yourself around my curves,
so close that if I am
silent, I might be able
to hear your heart beat–
and this will bring me back to life,
for my bones know
that you would never let me
fall.

Tonight, I will dream
that I am
falling.
I will prepare myself
to meet Death.
And I will whisper to you
in the dark, until I remember
my voice cannot carry
a thousand miles in the wind
to where you are sleeping.
So I will close my eyes,
force my chest still,
and wait for the nightmare
to strike again,
knowing it is better
than being awake.

My poetry's only
poetry
because
I can understand it
drunk.

My fingers flit across
ivory keys
like irate flies, landing
for a moment before
restlessly taking off
again – this is not
where I should be,
they say, and
continue searching,
until finally the flies
and I
find a chord, but it
won't come out right, and
I can't yell at any
one fly in particular
because I don't know who
it is that's
fucking things up, so
I just keep banging on
this damn monster
of an instrument and there's
anger in the middle
of Debussy, and he never
wrote me anger, it's just
a moment of unrestrained emotion
where it shouldn't be –
I kind of like it
a little – I like all
emotion, because truly,
it's so fucking hard
to come by, but –
it shouldn't be
there, I shout,
in the middle of goddamn Debussy,
and now my fingers
are bleeding a bit,
leaving behind pretty little
droplets of a scarlet
me, and Plath called them
redcoats, and I think
that's so much nicer
than what they actually
are – a bright red
trail of mistakes – and
Bukowski said
I should be doing this
drunk, and I
listened, but I'm
no fucking Chuck,
so all I'm left with is
a mess – I ruined
this baby grand piano –
but I can feel my
heartbeat in the tips
of my fingers, the
flies, and maybe someday,
I think, I can put myself
in the music and not have to
bleed all over
the keys just to
see myself in something – maybe
have some restraint,
just enough so that
a meager audience
can't see my blood, just
hear my heartbeat –
the flies' collective
heartbeat – so
I push out my bench and
stand up and stretch
before I walk away from
the piano, leaving
the blood to clean up
tomorrow, and
this is poetry.

I made myself throw up tonight.

It was pretty
satisfying.

A lot of clear, chewed up
liquid
spewed out of my mouth.
I saw it after it
poured into the porcelain toilet

(I closed my eyes
for the feature)

and it was
pleasant, yet fulfilling.

There was a bit of
color to it;
I couldn't tell if it was
the oatmeal cookie
I gave in to, or
the cranberry
I forced upon the vodka.
Either way, I liked it.

I've never shoved my finger
down my throat
before.
The results were
gratifying.
Like,
I could control my body.
Beauty.

Beauty,
I said.

Beauty.

(You wouldn't understand
unless you've blessed your
gag reflexes
with a polished fingernail
and received
a purging of
absolute sin
in response.)

death sauntered up to
the bar, a few drinks deep.

what's a pretty little
thing like you
doing in an ugly little
place like this?

i laughed
like it was funny.

i make poor decisions
i said.

why not make
better ones
he asked.

i'm having too much
fun
i lied.

his lips stretched across
his teeth
in a semblance of
a smile. he thought i meant
i'd be a good night's
fuck.

let's get out of here
he said.

i drained the last of
my empty glass,
slipped my hand into
my empty pocket,
fruitlessly shook
my empty pack of smokes.

they were all full
an hour ago. or
maybe a year ago. you
lose track of time in
an ugly little
place like this.

that's not what i meant
i thought.

okay
i said.

we grabbed our coats and
walked out into
the cold.

Not a display of
sexuality–

a display of
emotional
response.

Tired, I sat on the floor of the shower
and let the water run until
I could feel each individual drop
hit the space between my shoulder blades
like a bullet,
trace the curve of my hunched spine,
and dejectedly slink
to the ground,
where the drain waited hungrily,
ready to swallow all I had to offer,
be it water
or blood.

i slide the paper off the straw, and
the smell of Jack Daniels reminds me of
memories i can't quite
remember

When things were good, they were
weightless.
We could stumble down the streets
at four in the morning,
wearing hickeys like tattoos
we'd be ashamed of at dawn.
Sneaking wristbands from friends
with fake IDs,
or faker tits.
And if we were low on cash,
we might take turns
lifting our shirts, shifting our bras,
until a flash of something sacred
earned a free drink.
I could have been
ashamed
if gravity were working.
But we were all
weightless.
Mistakes just floated away.

Our dresses were too short, and
our dresses were too tight, and
the boys wore shirts
that were good at hiding stains.
Sometimes we didn't even need words;
we could walk into
a smokey, sticky bar
and fall in love with a boy's arms
while he fell in love
with a too-short dress
and the chance to see underneath it.
And we knew
we'd be waking up
with those hickey-tattoos.
But we didn't care, because
we were all
weightless.
The boys just floated away.

Maybe we wouldn't find any
dance-floor-love,
but that was always okay, because
we were in love
with ourselves.
Our hazy heads
whispered pretty words,
and as we burned our throats
with shots of pure love,
pretty words began to slur
into a pretty song, but we could
never remember the melody
when we awoke.
So the next night
we'd shimmy into our too-tight dresses
and start sucking down
more liquid love
until we began hearing
that pretty song again.
We half-knew our sober hearts
would never be able to recall
the tune,
but it never mattered.
We were all
weightless.
Notes just floated away.

These nights, things are
heavier.
I'll pour myself some love,
but it burns like regret now.
I don't wear any too-tight dresses
because I don't much miss
the dance floor.
I don't miss the hickeys
or the four A.M. walks.
I don't miss the shirts
being lifted and pulled.
I don't miss the smoke
flooding the bars.
But I do miss the song
that I'll never quite know.
For though I am grounded,
that tune is forever
weightless,
and the notes will just float away.

We sat.
Thigh flush with thigh.
Such absolute silence, I swore
I could hear our cigarettes burning.
Such absolute stillness, you swore
you could see the world turning.
One arm draped around my shoulders,
you pointed the other
towards the trees, glowing by the stars.
"Look," you murmured, "fall
has finally caught up with us,"
and we stared at
a hint of color–
the leaves had at last begun to blush.

Your quiet breaths whispered
the unspoken words– that soon,
the trees would stand naked.
Your heavy eyelids blinked
a silent message– that soon,
the moon would set, hailing morning.
And my feeble body knew,
in every ache, in every crevice,
in every inch of skin, pound of flesh,
in every frail bone and every drop of blood–

in every touch,
my feeble body knew

the wordless truth– that soon,
the ashes would fall to our feet
and our cigarettes
would gently die.

But at that moment, we sat,
thigh flush with thigh,
and heard no ashes drop,
saw no morning come,
watched no leaves fall,
and pretended there existed
no plane waiting to take me back
to where cigarettes burn
too slowly.

I want nothing
but to write.
To purge my body of
the weakness,
coiling around my stomach
like
Eve's seductive tempter.
To write, before dusk takes over
and I commit
an unoriginal sin.
But the forbidden fruit
smells like bourbon, and
I'm just
so
thirsty.
If I could write–
if I could tell blank paper
of my split soul, hovering
between agony and apathy–
then I could find
what I need.
But words have lost their luster,
stories are just
selfish vomit on pages,
and this pen
is running low on ink.

Shit.

So I will write my last,
a suicide note
for the dying poet in me,
and pour myself
a round to serve the snake.