in school we were taught about the atom, how all matter can be reduced
we also learned how to sew and use contraception
how to say no to drugs but
they didn't teach us about the other things we need to say no to
those harder drugs like narcissism, like charm
and the withdrawal symptoms, and the coping mechanisms

so yes, i pretend that i am dead.
mom isn't hurting though,
it is an ideal death.
because i have left my body, that body, that mind that was woven into his magic
there is a theory: that the moment of your departure
you step into another life where it resumes as if nothing has occurred
walking out of a car crash into your destination, safely arrived, oblivious of the world behind that one
every thing learnt best forgotten
i tell myself that i am dead, and nothing can touch me where i am now

but,
i also remember the lesson on the great continent of pangaea, breaking into bits
and sometimes i miss the self i was before i settled into my own crumbs

i didn't know
that the heart could break in
so many directions at once
a windowshield that started to crack with
just one pebble, but here we are,
still driving
on an uneven road
filled with rocks

because you didn't think the southwest was beautiful in a desolate way
all of those ancient layers of rock
stayed standing despite the earth shifting around them
perhaps they are stargates that we have once passed through in other forms
only to come back to where it began
you quoted nietzsche to me:
"time is a flat circle"
in fact you said that many times
i have already done this, i have already made my choices
i have resorted to convenience when i thrived on the uncertainty
coming and going is all the same when there is no end
you're an old bruise i keep pressing on
the blood underneath fresh and flowing to the haunted spots you keep leaving in me
maybe i hope you can cover enough area that i finally dissolve
the ******* in me wants a reason to hurt
i really should not feed her, but she is begging
and i have a hard time saying what is enough
when i am so good at turning nothings into somethings,
and somethings into nothings

sometimes self-care is buying a nice pillow, something softer than you were
something that can stand the weight of my head, my thoughts

mascara stains

other times it is going to the gym and sweating you out, one heavy step at a time

going nowhere
but at least away

don't tell me that
all men with bouquets of flowers
also have knives in their pockets
not when you fed me poison every day
and called it medicine

the truth is a bomb and the blast
is a woman standing in front of a man with red lipstick marks
where she could be fixed up pretty and brightly
could be made brand new,
a cellophane covered easter basket shining with glitters and bows
just a vessel to hold eggs, to hold their growth, to burst forth
she knows she is not worthy of a sunday morning
that he unwraps her every day and does not find a gift
but just another thing that
occupies too much
of his very limited
space

step one: create an atmospheric barrier between yourself and others, fill it with auric spikes, like the black fence encirling the haunted house nobody wants to go near. become the whispering voice in the hallways, become the creak in the staircase, and sink into it.

step two: disengage the emotional counterpart in yourself, be the intellect or be nothing. be air, undisturbed. when they walk through you, only be still.

step three: do not be tempted by the scattered sweets they drop behind them to reel you into their cage, do not eat what they give you, do not be hungry for anything, do not crave nourishment where it cannot be found.

step four: do not fuss about your hair, your skin, that machine you are in. exist simply and softly, do not turn on the lights in the morning if you don't have to, do not speak, and that is important.
though they will dare you, do not ever speak, for they know your replies and have only fire to stuff back into your throat.

i remember you as the boy who drew mazes next to me-
endless kubrikian structures with #2 pencils,
always leaned a little too close,
crooked on your elbow, making jokes until i laughed
my ugly girl chortle

you might remember me as the girl you did call ugly-
in front of your friends, my only few friends,
i didn't laugh when i was the joke that day
but i blamed my ambitious pigtails, and the metal grinding against my teeth
hopeful for future beauty
i couldn't blame you

i couldn't even blame you a few years later when i grew *******,
and we rode bicycles to the track
where you put your maze-making hands in my back-to-school-sale jeans
i said stop
you said it's okay
so i said it's okay

i still don't know if it was but i do know you called later that day
i sat nervous and twirling the thick cord around my fingers, my chest, my neck

you made me so many things at once,
things that i could not yet name

i remember you saying sorry
and me saying it's okay

a dialogue that,
to this day, i have not escaped.

you tell me i am a bleeding heart in place of
an insult, a slap, a swift shove into a bathroom counter
say it like it's easy, too easy
to be this way, like i
crawled out of my mother's belly
begging for my veins to turn into highways that travel through the cities of
hard-working men and women hardly making it work
your freedom for greed comes at the greatest cost, and we are all
paying for it
the children hiding under classroom tables are
paying for it
the one choosing opiates over antibiotics because the
pain is intolerable and it is cheaper to die than to stay alive is
paying for it

and yes, we write so much about dying,
we serenade the dark side with guitar riffs and cannabis
call me a bleeding heart because i want to scoop all of us up like fragile eggs
in an abandoned bird's nest
and whisper softly
i know, i know it hurts to live
like this but we have to keep going
we have to keep trying

intent is nothing to a gun in the mouth a shove off a cliff nobody
meant to be power hungry and carnivorous but
the chips have fallen the angels are falling
our halos our ego spotlights
look at me look at us how bright
like high beams in the mirror

nobody can see each other
anymore

weeks were spent prying you open with a crowbar, with a scalpel

wire hangers in all your doors  
when i finally got inside
the car wouldn't even start

take me nowhere cowboy we have already come so far

in the coldest months i let the hair grow like ivy up the sides of an old house,
my old house of a body
let the blemishes form, i invited the oils into my pores and the dirt under my fingernails

i wanted to be ugly- (but not too much so)
i wanted eyes to not rest on me for long
i wanted to dissipate into the background

a chameleon girl,
a blurry figure at the edge of the movie screen
a girl just walking by
with no plotline or context
when she opens her mouth only ravens fly out
she wanted to erase all the places she had been hurt
but she could not reach far enough
so she became invisible, instead.

this year i am letting silence speak for itself
i spent too much time bulldozing over its insinuations,
the clear echo of hurt, the ringing of your nothings

they say when you die you hear a buzzing
i heard it when i pressed my ear against the shower wall
‎everything else was far away

maybe my soul is already leaving my body
maybe i already died and continued to somehow live

you asked me who would hurt a face like that
then you spent the next two years showing me the answer:
a boy who does not like women, who has to put them in their rightful place
as cherry trees only to be picked from when men are hungry, (and they are always hungry)

someone who would hurt a face like this doesn't speak carefully,
is an entire thesaurus for cruelty
they hurt so they won't get hurt
even though they are never the ones who end up leaving
the burden is on me, it always has been
there are trenches in my neck from holding us together
i have the back of a thousand year old witch
still casting curses in my garden
to all those someones itching to pick my fruit
chanting
stay away stay away

this won't just go away because you have conveniently removed yourself from it,
forgot how your tongue formed the words
the echoes are marching bands down a long, long street
and my ears keep ringing

you are lucky to sleep so soundly
while i toss and turn until i am pulled toward the beacon of day
i am a slave to time and pain against your simple animal rhythms
eat sleep drink drink eat sleep
and sometimes bleed

(but the way you bleed, and the way i bleed,
are very different things.)

maybe you're right
we don't have anything in common
i am a ball of yarn unraveling in your hands
and you like to play with the string

pretend to know me:
at my very core there is a door that leads to another
you will find nothing that you find sense in
a collective molecular abnormality
a genetic dysfunction
a soul made of equations that have not yet scratched the surface of geometry
i am not something to be solved in your laboratory mind,
under scrutiny i change my shape and very essence before you
i am not the box you put me in, nor am i the ribbons, the tape, the thin festive paper that rips easily
i am underneath that and underneath that
and the atmosphere surrounding it
but don't you dare tell me who i am
the years have not been kind and i have suffered, too,
and i deserve to keep the truth of my being to myself,
that deep well guarded
by creatures only found in mythologies
i find comfort in fiction, because i have been forsaken by reality
i do not hand myself over to others
and i will not hand it over to you.

i have a love affair with my scars,
a collector's cove
   of secret treasures

and late at night,
i stroke them like the memories
   of old lovers

note to self:
you do not live for yourself this time around,
your love will be taken for granted and
your body will be wrung out
like a used rag after
it is your use, do not question the place
you have been set so carefully
maybe in your next life you will
wear diamonds on your finger
not be born to prepare for the worst
you will be wrapped in silver blankets
your skin a warm shower, not
just something barely holding it all together

you might listen if i could write melodies and not treacheries
of spirit, violations of the psyche
stabs that pinch just right (just wrong)

you might just listen
if i was a songstress seductress
a siren in your bed in your head
(i could make you listen)

the boys will always win because they have fists
and if we cry too hard, too much
they can shove them in our mouths
spit in our hair
trample our dreams
destroy things without consequence
fear a great fuel, a great devil they welcome
and tango with
fists are stronger than feelings because there is no time for such
distasteful, factless,
imaginary concepts
such wastes of space, such wastes of time

i still admire the innocence in others
objectively,
like watching a movie already knowing the ending
but still suspending my disbelief for a few seconds of tenderness
where skin doesn’t feel like sandpaper
and nails against dry clay
(a feeling you never got used to.)

a relief to think that somebody must exist with purity, a somebody, truly
for somebody
else
before they have withered
before they have been neglected to be
placed in direct sunlight

i built a fortress around your body
when i realized that's all it was
i spent years asleep in a cold desert
waiting to be awoken
waiting for your moments of clarity
those sweet miniscule pieces of time that stretched on and on that i took in like oxygen, like *****

i started to fall out of love on september 18th,
all morning i stared at how the lights made rainbows on the
motel floor
i wanted to chain-
smoke cigarettes all day and watch
those diamonds dance
while our love rotted away, unseen
in the corner of the room
my sanctuary now a crime scene
though there was no blood from the kinds of things that were murdered here

those colors the only thing left in your wake,
the only truly beautiful thing left

i danced with death all night
and woke up in his arms
now everytime we kiss
the edges
of life
grow
soft
-e
r

you are a burning house
and i walk through flames

i journeyed to the other side and begged to be haunted
so i wouldn't feel alone
there is too much space in my head, too many places to fill with fears

even the demons want to leave.

i became restless when
the path suddenly opened up before me
the cocoon in which i spent these years curled up inside
has now cursed me with an itch
that refuses to reside
i have only just noticed the mold on my edges
in this cupboard for too long

a still life, a stale life

but i dare not say that the time was ever wasted;
i have grown gardens of strength
through floods and fires i have resurrected myself countlessly,
standing in those currents that should have knocked me down

and now in them i walk on,
towards the mouth of the river

i want to be swallowed whole

on a diet of
   cigarettes and wine
if anyone asks
   "i'm fine,
      i'm fine."

war, hunted lives.
hungering toward clarity
choke
          unerring
                         inequality

beloved
          pneumonia.

aloneness
   wonderful desperation

   spoke changing language,
pulled mask,
                        revelations

bedroom--where

  Mind
      becomes
  
      dangerous

perpetually
         haunted

writing    
      waiting,
                       listening.

poems--are
indeterminate
analysis questions
giving purpose
to existing.

his words hung in the air
like windchimes
after a storm.

take my voice and set it on fire because
i will not stop
you have built yourself up so high that to
come down now would be an admission
of your simplicity, ignorance and intolerance
that you hold above your head as a torch
convinced you are a gift from the gods
but you have been using our hearts as bricks for your castle  
and when that moon falls out of the sky
we are all going to the same ground
and only then
will i finally bite my tongue

my limits were pressed
first, lightly,
as flowers between the pages of an old book
then forcefully, as it shuts

there is no entirely benevolent being:
god, must know, suffering.
he placed us here, knowing
that our capacity for feeling was not
as it should be

there is no plan, destiny, reason
just another layer of purgatory
just hearts that crush too easily
just monsters that look, and sound, like men

i may be an optimist,
but the truth never escapes me
the soldiers in my chest have long
abandoned their posts
with the foreknowledge that
some wars
will never be won

when the rain came,
all was drained from me then
i wore black for days to mourn myself

to those who think they could love me:
tread lightly,
for my ice is thin
in every season

are you so very hardened by life that you cannot love?
you lived and died in that tangled southern wilderness,
the branches reached out to you then and they
still reach out to you now
you feast on knowledge of the men who have passed,
wrote down their minds in great big books
but you have yet to be wise

we were trapped in there for so long that the hand on the clock forgot the direction it was going
that still sameness, over and over
that void, our voids, never being filled, and i tried
to cover them with beautiful things but the walls screamed
“lies, you’re lying, you are not in love and you never will be”
i formed habits i never had, sleeping pills and 42 proof

i just wanted to close my eyes for a while
i just wanted to be held for a while

i never knew what you really felt like, a piece of glass between us
so many times i broke through, but i always paid the price
my fingers bled and you’d build it up again
so i grew comfortable on the other side

we have been ghosts floating next to each other in here for eternity,
but each too immersed in our own death, to notice.

i am a hotel room, a refuge to many but a true home to none
i am the rack of coats, all of the pockets turned out
i am unmade sheets
i am old curtains, worn from looking outside
i am the bible in the drawer, my significance long forgotten
i am the light that doesn't work as well as it should
i am the television set missing the remote
i am the complimentary notepad with no notes
i am mass-produced framed artwork, lackluster and faded
i am the armchair with questionable stains
i am the heavy darkness at night, the feeling someone is watching
i am repetitive carpet designs and tasteless coffee
i am the morning, an almost-hot shower
i am an empty hotel room, a refuge to many,
but a true home to none.

she said,
   "tell me the things you say
   with your touch,
   because i cannot distinguish as  
   much
   is it fact or is it fiction,
   you're such a lovely contradiction, but
   how does one keep mixing
   cruelty with gentleness
   i assume it is not simple
   but must it be so complex?"
he waited, then thoughtfully replied,
   "everything is true,
   yet it is also all a lie."

virginia filled her pockets with rocks
and walked into a river
sylvia taped her doors shut
and crawled inside her oven
anne took a swig
and started her car to nowhere
ernest, like his fathers before him
an old fashion shotgun to the head
them and us and i
we were given too many thoughts to manage
and we failed to keep the dam up
to keep out all of those endless loops of words that
just kept flowing,
kept us reminiscing of a deeper emptiness that could never be articulated
the world of writing was never meant for the faint of heart
but so often madness has met creativity
and became the most arduous of lovers

i have such violent longings,
they are quite disquieting but
hardly disheartening

enough was never a destination i reached,
a thing i could acquire and hold in my hands
i was cursed from the birth with "more" on my tongue

i want your volcanic mouth
and all the dangerous things that come out

you leave me in ashes

the poet in me is lost
it left my body while i slept, while i wept
and the shades of life have since grown duller
colors reach out to touch me
they say see me, see me
i once filled your endless cup of a spirit
with something,
an awing otherness
but all i see is the pit from whence it ascended
it's just black, black and black

as for me, i am just the
moss,
overgrown and unnoticed
growing over that stone
you call a heart

an undeniable emptiness,
shake me and there will be
no rattle
the mice that
lived in me
have ceased their playful ways
when they broke their necks
seeking nourishment
fools futilely falling for
tricks tried and true
stuck on repeat repeat repeat

i have been practicing the art of
concealment
because i once thought that love
was a wide open field
where i could spin in careless circles
and scream at the top of my lungs
my every lucid thought
but have since realized
it is instead
a cold, haunted house
with creaking doors
that only open
with the hardest push
and the strongest of intentions
to get inside.

i am the honeybee, finally having enough of you swatting me away
giving you every ounce of poison i can gather in my stomach
and losing myself
in the process

we're going backwards; the universe
reverting back to a singularity
at once a bright star, i have
since collapsed
unto myself, to
nothing-
ness.

how does one so gracefully intertwine love and hate
as if it was an indistinguishable entity ever shifting through fluid states

an amoeba
elusive
esoteric

passion, not a substance but an undefined thing
it might not even exist if not on some quantum microscopic level where i live, where i have always lived
among the threads of the underworld  
tearing through realities
deciphering the dead languages that
may suggest an inclination of truth

we are stuck inside of a perpetual mirage
thirsting in the driest desert
believing we have finally reached water  
when there is nothing but sand