"To each her own"
I say to my friends
who are insisting
they need to lose weight,
As I choke on a
piece of pizza
I ate too quick

My surrender was a spicy-chicken sandwich. No lettuce.
I placed it on the kitchen island:
a white flag, asking for forgiveness.

There was no smile. Quiet acceptance.
My wallet would grow thin
with the make-up gifts.

If only we could have solved it
rather than masking the issues
with the scent of mediocre fast-food.

A flash of quick wit
"I still love you" in a five-second clip
better be careful, I say.
I might believe you and
slide back on what I've gained.

and just like the Snapchat picture
you'll disappear again

The King of the
Emotionless
strikes again,
too careless to notice
the war he began.

He retreats back
to the castle
to smoke a ****,
and sleep alone
in his empty bed.

and so my life rushes by.

no more razor scooter afternoons,

Barbie jeep and a kickball marathon,

walking home from school in spring, swinging a Powerpuff Girls backpack.

jumping on hot black trampolines, burning our small feet,

running to the park to see if we were able to hold on to monkey bars.

no more alligator tag evenings, falling down in wood chips but brushing it off-

I have always been a tough cookie.

and I become an adult soon enough, a victim of my own past and a

culprit of my future, but nothing in between.

Honda Civic and a movie marathon,

liquored-up nights,

high as the midnight sky, staring up at stars as far as the atlantic.

Singlehandedly turn dreams into
        nightmares
I see aqua eyes in the back of
      your head
I feel a gnawing, a longing,
     if only for a few moments
as I shake myself awake.
All dreams end up the same.

Fall 2011

you have forgotten me.
I bent over backwards
I sat on broken limbs
I crawled on hands and knees
for what?
I went in knowing about
the uneven playing fields.
Hurting those I cared for
who jumped through fiery hoops for me
I am not the kind of person I want to be.

We're sixteen again,
sneaking around at night,
pouring rain in the summertime,
quiet whispers in your teenage bed,
heavy breaths and covered mouths,
don't wake up the rents

And like I'm sixteen,
not turning twenty-two,
I don't know better than to break my addiction
and I come back again
to feel the poisoned fingers on my skin

you have been tainted by the
poison of another woman's
touch

before was the
sweet taste of ****** on your
tongue

the way you felt was
innocent as you
extended trust.

all I sense when you are in me now is
another brown-haired girl
feeling you,


hazy marijuana smoke
spewing from her open
mouth.

find me here.

against a car door.

a tilt of the chin.

but nothing more.

strawberry blonde.

a dark brunette.

blue and green eyes.

meshed and matched.

eight-hundred miles,

here it’s nineteen.

a train-wreck

i am waiting to see.

the scent of summer,wafting in
(consisting of freshly mowed
grass and warmth)
tempts me to think of you:
ridiculous how we met
where we've been

but my hopes are High
(mostly)that the coming season will provide
better opportunities:for people who won't
ruin my life
(try to ruin my;life) again

it's entirely.your fault;
you put my heart away
(for no good reason)
you're one of every who
hates getting hurt
(yet never those who get hurt,
hurt others)
and the man,you,(who performed the hurt)
doesn't deserve
to have another woman's taste:
on the tip of his tongue

Never in the right place at the right moment.
Always a servant to time,
never enough but always too much,
too few minutes to decide
who I want to be
or where I want to go
and I remain in the wrong place
at the incorrect hour
and I'll never know who's waiting there
because there's only so many
ticks on a clock
and time won't freeze
for those who are too early
or too late
and I miss opportunities
to find my fate
and instead rest on the clock's face
left with no choice
but to wait

"Ten things you understand
if you're this or that"
screams the title of another Internet list,
where people go to feel they're not alone,
scroll through a generalized view of our age group,
a world so relate-able you're no longer you,
you're a '90s kid' or a 'tomboyish girl';
we all want to be unique,
yet we buy into this stereotyping technique
to feel connected with people we'll never meet.
Is it strange that I want to define 'me'?
not a lengthy list on a computer screen,
not strangers who lump me into a category.
I'll tell me what I want to be.

A straightlaced blonde is on my bed
Instead of a wild curly brunette,
   rolling a joint on a dorm room desk
Aryan-raced pale hair
  on an attention-deficit head
Cold feet covering mind in the pink sheet
   under which we rest.
I would enjoy the plain
   light skin on mine
If the past's dark eyes ceased to shine.

you telling me you love me
through our glass phone screens
is only temporary relief
from the distance between.

the truth is you will always be
Ivy League;
I merely dream
of getting to you.

I lost it all a year ago:
not a lover, but
a friend,
one after another,
in domino effect.

And as this year
takes its final
curtain call,
I’ve been left
(almost nearly)
on my own
to greet
the year of
2017

As the loneliness creeps in

"The lonely stoner seems to free her mind at night"
the words echo through the halls of an
empty brain
A stereo plays the anthem of the ***-smoking archetype
But it's reality: Can she free her mind
if there's nothing that's tied down?

shallow is the understatement
to express your intents
towards our pseudo friendship

you are far above,
wrapped in your nonchalant cloud
your only concerns:
"will the weather be nice enough
to golf tomorrow?

are the wheels on my new car
shined well enough?"

just because you do not try
to be any deeper in life
than a kiddie pool
does not mean I should stoop down to you

Never forget
there is always a person
who remembers who you
were when you drove a
Ford Taurus
and your ****** eyes
set sight on me

She knows you only as
a shiny new car;
a house with a table:
to line up
white powder,  
a bottle of Adderal
you are willing to give her;
nightly **** hits
and going inside her.

I am the one who
knows your heart.
Let me know when
you've re-found yourself.

I made a
Mind bending (time altering) attempt at telepathy.
I tried reaching out so that you think of me-
your New Yorker with a midwestern heart.
On my sleeve, an open wound for everyone to see.

Did my subconscious at least interrupt your sleep?

I don't believe in heaven,
couldn't find a reason.
If I get to live after I die,
I'd rather live another life.

I have been wrong
about many things
and wronged by
many men

I hope this time
I might be right
for once in
my quarter
of a life

and my world
will change
in the best
of ways

Tick

I yawn to the alarm
I drag my feet to shower
I tug on matching clothes.

Tick.

I scarf down plain cereal
Find socks, then put them on;
Cover with scuffed shoes, and I am done.

Tick.

Ihear the whirring of my engine; Soon
I park, I walk in,
I pretend to learn, I wanderlessly walk out.

Tick.

I stop at the red hexagons
Iwork five hours straight,
I go home to rest on my pillow

Tomorrow's the same day.

what did I ever do to you?

Guess you’re just a past,

from high school and the boys,

forget me and the rest.

Every new one says

“How could he do that to you?

You’re amazing, you’re great, you’re the best”

but they do the same as the last.

Someone out there who will handle my neuroses?

My jealousy, my protective, my

distrust and inability of sleeping?

For now I’ll slip into a sun-soaked summer coma

I’ll forget you and remember alcoholic nights

puffing sweet-scented smoke into clear air;

Fine with me if you don’t want to see

pink cheeks and light brown hair.

skips on a vinyl, replayed so often
there's nothing left but broken sound.

a crinkled old photo floating
to the floor.

the continual blurring of video footage
in my brain.

the memories faded
but the feeling never went away.

To fall apart
and be exposed,
a skeleton of pure white bone,
skin of tarnished tan,
is not a way to live.

I came to the point
where no one but I
could inflate my body
with a rush of warm air
to fix a broken me

I have a new heart
that I made myself

I can't decide who I was
when I let him take the worst of me,
and bring it out for everyone to see.
He had my soul, and threw it
into the icy waters of Lake Ontario.
It has never been found,
not on the shores of the South Carolina sea,
not in the open palms of the past charmed;
not in the pieces he left behind
for me to quarantine in
the darkest part of my mind.

I may never find that soul again.

Giving more
than a drunken 'hey'
is hard to manage
in this day and age.
Even a woman like me
wants more than that.
No ***** calls
is a bit of a stretch.
Pet my head,
tell me I'm pretty,
ask me to sleep in your bed.
I'll still be that girl
you text for ***
at 2 AM.

I feel it,
a pair of brown eyes,
with the perfect
music playing
and
the return of
feelings and the
spark, spark, spark
still there
after a year away

I'll be waiting
because he could be
the one I need
and ****
Father Time
for trying to take that
away from me

I must stop trying to
find the fatal flaw before
my cold feet freeze to the floor
and I become glued in my ways;
refusing to see past
the points that could ruin everything and
I fall into my own trap and
never find happiness
in another human being

“You don’t want to be with me. I’m damaged goods,” she says, a coy smile creeping across her face.  
“I don’t care,” he pulls her in with his hands around her waist. It’s the perfect height. He ignores the telltale signs of a liar and she tilts her chin up to meet his lips.
She hides her mischievous look behind a long sheet of black hair.
He barely notices the dragon’s heat rising from her chest.
She’s the green-eyed monster, getting poised to strike again.

so we meet again.

you’re the long stretch

between insomniacs

and their view of the

sun rising east.

even the birds are asleep.

(Words taken and rearranged from an article off CNN.)


These neighborhoods in
St. Louis are on edge.
One bullet in the face.
Witnesses heard him say,
“Stop, stop. Don’t shoot.”
A police officer committed a crime.
The officer thought
One of them had a hand gun.
She had lost a son.
He was 18, just like Michael Brown.
He was a young black man
killed by a white police officer.

October arrived with the force of a hurricane.
I am left with nothing but a cold bed
and the crunch of the first fallen leaf.
No one to give warmth but I,
as 2015 eagerly waits
at the alter
to be given away.

I cannot deal with
excessive positivity
when I am the most
Negative Nancy
of the 21st Century

unsure of what to say
in a cryptic state,
the balancing beam of
appearing happy while
still being me,
the jaded queen of
uncertainty

I begged for this
and I have it now,
and already I have
saturated it in
self-doubt

Autumn encroaches
and one year ago
you met a girl
she owned the hot glue gun
and I held the hammer
she may well be the one
and I’ve felt no love for anyone
since it was my cheek
that your lips touched
she fixed the heart I shattered
and I was left with
no pieces to hang on to
in memoriam

she can keep yours and
I will hold my own

My head pounds with the
course of one night's gin
(and a thrown-in whiskey sour)
and I realize this town isn't for me
any longer.

In December,
bathed in the light
of a holiday tree,
a man hinted that
he had love for me

then left
for eight weeks
to a place
I cannot reach

I am not the one
who decides
the fate
and nor is he

It rests in
the powers of Time
that be

(c) sea 2017

Our cold hands are grasped
as I rest my hungover head
on your shoulder.

I watch you drive
the salt-covered streets
of my hometown.

I smile gently at myself,
as I coat you with lies,
daydreams about our future.

Reminding myself that in a few days
I must leave again,
and it cannot be like this:

Normal.

If you were here
you'd be my anti-anxiety
instead of the leaf

my medication would be
a strawberry-blonde
head of hair
nuzzling my cheek

I see your sign.
The Gods of Strawberry-blondes have spoken.

You knew I'd know
when you clicked the button.

I see your sign, and I ask you, once more
to show me you miss me in a way
I'll know it's yours.

fall returns to the hills with gusto;
and as the wind sweeps in
I realize I am alone,
yet I am far from lonely
for the first autumn in years

fighting against something

that may or may not be meant

to happen is a pointless endeavor.

I have always enjoyed putting

myself up for something that very,

very easily could have me totally

shot the ****

down.

it is insane to me
how life exists
at four o'clock in the
******* morning
lungs still breathe



(c) SEA 2016

Under the identical night sky as yours,
I fill my lungs with the sweet smoke,
knowing you're doing the same thing
miles away.
you, the need to fit in,
me, wishing to forget my sins
you, a sense of belonging with your friends,
me, alone, wondering who I became.

through the haze, I see your face.

A pair of black Converse
on a tiled green floor
represent something more:
a different age
when I'd not yet discovered
who I would be

It was he who took advantage
and swung in,
like a knight I didn't need;
I was convinced that
the Stormy Sea
was the worst kind of me.

I was persuaded by
a dark-haired boy
who told me that
I would be nothing
but a wretched flea

I stand by the dark blue
skies as they change
to black, and I condemn
this terrible November man:
I switched to blue All-Stars
and kicked my way out of
the deep abyss.