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Sep 2016 · 364
Lies and Lies
Lauren R Sep 2016
I won't be free until my wings are clipped.
The ocean still smells like blood.
I can still remember the color of your eyes.
The most cliché line, the most cliché lie.
There's no future, there's no answer.
The most therapeutic thing is anger.
(Here I am, lost without you.)
Sep 2016 · 390
Vicodin
Lauren R Sep 2016
4 weeks and this is not at an end.
You're not yourself, haven't been in months.
You might never be again.
Plaster over the scar on your forehead.
Staple shut your eyelids, tear off your eyelashes.
You might never wanna see me again.
The curve of your knuckles, the part of your hair,
I watch myself burn and turn to gold again.
Stay in bed, dreaming of fresh rose and lemon.
Play Russian Roulette with the pills in mom's cabinet.
You're not clean, haven't been in months.
You might never be again.
Sep 2016 · 496
Twenty-Two Days
Lauren R Sep 2016
I'm so tired of writing about how you broke my heart.
I'm tired of herding lambs into the ocean, watching them entangle and fade into the sea foam.
I listen to their cries, how it sounds like the great barrier reef dying, the coral dissipating and the sharks shedding their fins.
I guess the number of tabs it takes for your brain to think in color.
I guess the number of bowls you've smoked trying to unlearn my name.
I guess the number of days until you're running the track marks up your arm.
I ***** my eyes shut and say, "stop thinking about him."
I watch as your face morphs into a rose, spreading petals across my ribs like tumbleweeds.
My heart strings braid themselves to keep from snapping.
This isn't happening.
Sep 2016 · 1.9k
Masterpiece
Lauren R Sep 2016
I repaint the Sistine Chapel with only my tongue
just to see your face again.
Oh, your holy chocolate covered soul,
holy bird bone finger tips.
How you snap like a star and then burn again.
Sep 2016 · 364
Twenty-One Days
Lauren R Sep 2016
You looked me in the eye today for the first time in three weeks. The silent conversation went like this:

"Hey, it's me. Haven't heard from you in a while. Call me back."

Hello, promise breaker. I bet you never thought you'd see the scar on my forehead again. Here it is, my mother's voice paired along with it, "αντίο". You don't speak the language I hate myself in. You don't see what I see, two tabs a day does this to me.

"Uh, hey. It's been a while. Gimme a call. Bye."

My hair is parted to the other side, like it? Of course you don't. You hate change. You hate looking at the empty spot in your heart. I packed my **** up and moved out a month ago. Took all my liquor and all my cologne and boxes of chocolate and handwritten letters too.

"Getting kinda worried. Call me back. I love you."

Speaking of my letters, have you read them lately, Lauren? Have you read all the times I called sunshine? Wanna think of it now? Wanna think of how you've cried yourself to sleep over me every night for the past week? That's what I thought.

"Look, I'm not mad. We can fix this. Please call me."

Okay, yeah. No one knows about us. No one knows I'm hiding. Let's keep it that way? Hey- quit crying. Guys don't go for that. I'm not there to see it either. Waste that on someone else.

"Please pick up."

You're gonna miss me. You're gonna miss loving me. You're gonna miss the silent denial that it's over. You're gonna miss being upset with me because at least I was there. You're gonna miss my eyes when I stared at you like you were my whole **** world. You're gonna miss crying into my t-shirts. You're gonna miss me keeping you up all night. You're gonna miss my sense of style, me always sending you new shoes. You're gonna miss my sense of humor. You're gonna wish I was ruining your life. You're gonna wish I was there at all.

*"... Love you."
Please pick up the phone.
Sep 2016 · 764
Not Fair
Lauren R Sep 2016
Maybe it's better this way
My God, I can't have everything I want
Maybe I can't love you

Maybe it's better this way
My God, maybe you're happier
One less hole in my heart
But you leave behind two
Sep 2016 · 478
Restless
Lauren R Sep 2016
I can't sleep
without you crawling
into my mind
and under my skin
Aug 2016 · 461
Afterlife
Lauren R Aug 2016
Afterlife, oh my god, what an awful word.

Tired of a life of crying off all my mascara, crying off the fragile wrapping paper of my eyelids, tired of my brain wringing itself for answers in the small hours of the morning.

No, you don't care. I look to the empty spot on my bed where you'd sit, head resting on my shoulder, laptop playing The Doors Movie in front of us. Our lost laughter floats through the air and gets tangled in my ceiling fan. The spot where you told me you loved me is covered by a trash can now. You don't bat an eye at where I used to sleep on your floor, throw my backpack. My twenty page birthday card to you is no longer propped up against all the robots you built as a kid. You don't sleep with the blanket I bought you for Christmas anymore.

I can hear your voice now, calling me "*****" and "buzzkill" in the smoke heavy air to your smoke heavy friends. I can feel your tongue erasing the muscle memory it needs to form my name.

I can feel my cheeks become wet again. I can feel my eyes blurring as you add me to the blocked callers list on your new phone, without a heart next to my name.

You're in a car, listening to music you hate, with your grandparents. I'm here, trying to forget what you do and don't love.

When love is gone
Where does it go?
And where do we go?
****, never thought we'd get here
Aug 2016 · 653
Rosy
Lauren R Aug 2016
Life in the shape of gummy bears, Jell-O shots, foldable chairs, and Xanax.

Bending palm tree leaves into pillow cases, codeine mirrors only show you the faces of everyone who's scared of you.

Watch the pink drip from my lips onto the floor, coating the the tile in what it means to be truly lost.

(Hide me away for another day, I beg of you, the sun sets in the wrong direction these days.)
Lauren R Aug 2016
A locked box has the bodies of three different birds, all blue, all lyricists, all beautiful and stuffed with Xanax and newspaper. I paid my childhood best friend's brother to taxidermy them, stitch up their stomachs once and for all.

My closet only has memories. A bracelet with a feather on it that smells like fear, looks like betrayal, **** dealer, track pants, self-proclaimed whiny *****. A painting I made when I was six. All the pills I stole from my boyfriend, thirty-seven. All the pills that would've knocked my world out cold, skin cold, heart still, pulse still, veins finally at rest. A knife a psychopath gave me. Yes, he was a romantic, and yes, he did ruin my life, so in essence, still just a romantic. A fox hat I bought standing next to one of my under appreciated best friends, recovered anorexic. He's at college right now, falling in something close to love, probably another early grave. A too big teddy bear from someone I thought was the formula for the speed of light once. He's trying to force feed pills and slip **** into all my friend turned surrogate son's sentences. I am wishing I could lay a curse on his name. His mother already did it for me.

A drawer beside my bed, packed full of ****. Candy wrappers, gum, crumbs, marks of my self-proclaimed obesity, all 120 pounds of me feeling like the weight of the world and everyone's eyes. My inhaler, because these lungs don't want me to run. Pictures and letters from the ones I love, because I'm a romantic. Plastic dinosaurs, dried flowers, pennies, dimes, lotion, Neosporin, a deck of Tarot cards.

I'm just a vessel for all the things I can't fit inside my mouth. I can't tell into you what I've seen, I can only pull out the receipts. I can give you the ****** tissues my boyfriend handed me. Tell me how your stomach retches. I can give you the poem a crazy person wrote me. Tell me how you feel his void. I can give you my heart. Tell me how heavy it all is.
Pack rat
Aug 2016 · 586
Only in My Dreams
Lauren R Aug 2016
We were friends again.
Just friends.
We sat, every Sunday morning,
(I work Saturdays)
in a diner.
You leaned over
the black hole
of your coffee,
pouring milk,
creating a galaxy
of bitter sugar.
You looked up to me,
who was just watching,
and said something,
probably nothing.
The comfortable space
between us smelled like
leather booths and orange juice
and small family restaurants and
scrambled eggs.
We got in your car
littered with what made
you, well, you.
I rode shotgun.
I would say I miss you, but you stop by on occasion between the hours of 2am and 12pm. It's for the best.
Aug 2016 · 2.6k
Skeletons Can't Smile
Lauren R Aug 2016
Oh son of beginners mistake
Son of pure unclean intention
Son of mothers midnight run to bar
Son of broken swan wing
Son of brokenness
Son of lack of sunlight
Son of ***** laundry

Boy of unknowing
Boy of drinking antifreeze
Boy of missing eyed crows
Boy of missing childhood
Boy of sorrow
Boy of stitches
Boy of afraid of manhood
Boy of afraid

Young God of suicide attempts
God of lying to himself that he ever wanted to die
God of lying to himself
God of lying
God of unholiness
God of shotgun misfire
God of unkempt basements
God of homeless dogs
God of death and life all at the same time
You ain't no God. You are a poser with wings and a capital letter to begin your wretched name.  

You won't be happy when you die, you are split between so many titles and you do not know which to choose. You are no one. No one. You are absolutely no one.

(Say, do you know the route to the nearest bar? I'm going to drink myself open, flesh off bone, apathetic skeleton, closest thing to happy. I'm going to drink myself away from you, this world, myself.)
This is 2 years old now
Aug 2016 · 592
αντίο
Lauren R Aug 2016
"You never cared."
A bird bath in California empties.
"Oh yeah? Remember Christmas Eve?"
A mountain in Greece chews through itself.
"**** that, what color do I match yellow with? Do you even remember?"
Everyone in Boston swallows Vicodin until they throw up and die.
"You don't even spell your name right."
Quincy's streets wish the water dry.
"You have a family. Do you know what I'd ******* give for that?"
All the colleges in New York shoot themselves up and down.
"Your mother isn't human. Shut up."
A small town in Massachusetts washes all its white skin off.
"This leaving, this is for good isn't it?"
A forest is consumed by the songs of an imaginary bird.
"It isn't as hard as I imagined it to be."
Every door shuts, all at once. We all go deaf. Deaf. Deaf. Echo.
"Where's my happy ending? Huh?"
Echo.
Aug 2016 · 490
Grecian
Lauren R Aug 2016
10 miles. My current distance from the first time I noticed you cared. You were smoking ****. You blew the smoke away from my face. You knew I was allergic. You wanted to hold my lungs like cherry pits in the palms of your kitten's milk bowl hands, china dish. I wanted to thank you, I wanted to hand my heart over.

8 miles. The distance between me and you. The distance I tried to fill with footsteps, with begging rides from father, with bus, with FaceTime calls, with long texts. The distance that burned its way into my curtains, floated to my ceiling and stuck, burrowed its way into the night and sighed.

.8 miles. The distance between you and the person I replaced you with. The distance between a Red Dwarf and the moonlight that filled my heart up with Lindt chocolate and new yelling mother and darker messy hair and lower too loud laughs. I wash your favorite red plaid shirt from my hands and my Rolling Stones tank top, your cheek from mine, your jokes from my sheets.

0 miles. My current distance from the first time I noticed you stopped caring. I told you to stop flirting with addiction. You dragged your fingers up my arm, tied the tourniquet, choked out my blood, found the vein, breathed out hard, and then replaced me with all the drugs you could ever want and all the empty you could ever hold.

I guess some old habits never really die, only the people sick enough to try to stop them.
God, what are you doing?
Aug 2016 · 961
Junkie
Lauren R Aug 2016
I watch you take your life out of the sunlight
And smash it down the sewer
Squeezing it through the pipelines
Smoking it out
I watch you take your future
And put cigarettes out on it
I watch you take a knife to my throat
Slice the most delicate skin and richest blood
And tell me
I didn't know everything
All along
I'm so tired of you
Aug 2016 · 371
Title Optional
Lauren R Aug 2016
I dig up the contents of your soul:
Scissor Sisters songs sung out of tune
3 stray hairs at a crime scene
An urn gathering dust on a sidewalk
Elvis Presley's shoes, worn down soles
An unflattering camouflage hat
The cries of the elderly, alone and alone again
Your mother, trying to define love
The oldest oak in Boston
The carcass of a deer, shot to the left of her heart
I'm writing these poems in real time in a Stop & Shop parking lot
Aug 2016 · 768
A Recipe
Lauren R Aug 2016
The part of my brain that absorbs every person I listen to  
(I stash your body in the microwave)
The hour of the night that I finally breathe
(Birds chirp the tune of your taped double homicide confession)
The perfect silence after a car crash
(Father smashes the last of your family portraits)
A lost dog with more fleas than teeth
(The birch in your grandmother's backyard calls you back to its roots)
Aug 2016 · 846
Bricks and Feathers
Lauren R Aug 2016
A day in the life of an alley cat, struck dead on the least busy street in the smallest town in Nebraska.
1 am: Druggy, *** you money, ******, don't deserve love, not easy to tell mom. I think of you. Your lungs are begging for my scold. Control is the word you use when no other fits the sentence. You occupy my mind when I am restless, testing the limits of kindness and low voices.
4 am: Your smile, the warmest hot chocolate of your eyes, your knuckles, the baby fat that melted from you, it haunts me. It's like I caught of a glimpse of the wrong angel, the half rotten, beyond gone, but still glowing angel. I killed you with a .45 and a gallon of mouthwash. You dripped into the Earth as a puddle beneath my toes. Gracious Lord, do not forgive me. I know I don't.
8 am: Insomnia without poetry. Tired without body. Maggots without mouths. Catholic priest, without sympathy. God without mercy. Drug abuse, without the realization of undignified addiction. Suicide without the comfort of killing, certainty.
3 pm: Sentiment, true and real, above annoyance and protectiveness. I am now a ghost above a body, finally weightless, finally free of His hands.
6 pm: Joy breaks open like a candy, soft center.
10 pm: Life tears my fingers open, unwraps the flesh from bone like Christmas. I feel my tongue fall out. Dusty antique radios are cleaned, losing authenticity. Their songs scream, sounding a lot like Billy Joel, after the catgut snaps. I feel my mind crawl out of the china cabinet.
11 pm: Nothing. There's really nothing to say at all.
A rough couple of days
Aug 2016 · 997
Untitled
Lauren R Aug 2016
Moon child dances over water
Long hair covering eyes, color not seen by man before, unimaginable
Fresh bruises of rose, lemon, lavender
Appear on her soles
Aug 2016 · 443
Nowhere, MA
Lauren R Aug 2016
Stars fall from the black canopy tops of the forest I used to trespass in as a child, finding the definition of apparition and swamp and UFO.

Coyotes break the sound barrier over the water of the river that I used to fall in, pick bugs out of.

I find myself lying awake in the small hours of the morning, thorns pushing into my back and jail birds clanging the chains around the branches of the trees above me, the sky shaking to the tune of their wails and wings flapping desperately, cracks of heat lightening rattling them alive.

Night is the loudest color. I find this through broken flashlights. I find this through "Do Not Enter" signs. Hear me. Hear me. Hear me.
Aug 2016 · 1.1k
Mr. Robot
Lauren R Aug 2016
Wash the soap from between
the folds of my brain

Lose my mind in the living room
T.V is all static

Panic in the dark
for what seems like hours

*Control is an illusion
Good show, flosses my cavity filled brain
Aug 2016 · 1.0k
What is Softness?
Lauren R Aug 2016
I want to write about the debilitating soulfulness with which I love you and your broken heart and gentle hugs.

I can't seem to find the words to describe how soft the blue of your eyes is.

I can't find the right bat of my eyelashes to show you what my mind is wrapped around.

I cannot laugh in the right way to express bubbling joy, swelling memories.

My heart aches itself to the size of a quasar, begging to find a word greater than love.
Aug 2016 · 719
Stitches for the Soul
Lauren R Aug 2016
Sink into the
softest bits of my
skin

Let me bottle
the scent of
your t-shirt
after you have
held onto me

Let me be the
gentle waves
that rock you to sleep

(A simple love)
I love my friends dearly
Aug 2016 · 548
Rabbit Hole
Lauren R Aug 2016
Fingers like crayons,
melting over flames,
dripping on your eyelids.
You have your
technicolor world
without the ecstasy.
You told me it wasn't possible.
You told me it wasn't possible
to get drunk without your dad.
You told me it was Pepsi,
it was Diet Coke.
You told me it was love.
It was something like
decay,
in fall,
in the brush,
the words your mother
swept under the rug.
Aug 2016 · 703
Minuscule
Lauren R Aug 2016
In the smallest winter nights,
sailing in the eyes of Stan Lee,
Winona Rider,
Joseph Stalin,
the slightest cross unfolds, unfurls into a tree.
Jesus's face is written in the leaves.
Don't believe me?
Look into your mother's eyelashes.
Lauren R Aug 2016
The oriel breaks the spell of night to read me fairytales in languages only the stars understand.

I count my fingers every day like I count the trees in my backyard, checking to make sure nothing changed because change means growing up and my body tells me that growing up is nothing more than learning to give up on seeing with your eyes.

I let the beach be hell, sand like tiny reminders of growing smaller every day, growing less visible.

I let the lake be heaven, no waves and no war, no machine guns, no fascists, no animal testing, no mothers with knives, no fathers with voices.

I feel the cardinal ripen and rot off the branches of the poplar tree, begging to see the final season of the Sopranos, just like my friend did when his legs and mouth stopped running.

I see the tattoos of everywhere you said you hated, Paris, Michigan, Dakota, and England appear on the soles of my feet. I crush them every time I walk to your house.

The albatross speaks only three words, let it be. Let it be.
Listen to what the Earth speaks to you
Aug 2016 · 459
Humming Bird
Lauren R Aug 2016
Call me humming bird:
Flitting like time
Feathers like skipping stones
Beak like protest
Wings like home
Aug 2016 · 865
The Experience Called God
Lauren R Aug 2016
I want to undress the sorrow that bites the wings off doves, make it bear, make it holy, make it scream.

I want to sing to the anger that shakes your hands, beads the sweat upon your palms. I want to soothe it to sadness, soothe it to scared, soothe it to self-loathing, and then soothe it again. I want to rub its shaking shoulders and kiss its forehead until it is serene, sleeping in the backseat.

I want to whisper the stories from all my birthdays and what age means to the God that chokes the air from your blood and puts fear into the stomach of mothers. I want to calm the waves of your heart, be the lighthouse to the way you felt at age five, wrapped in the forgiving and fragile skinned arms of your grandfather.

I want to be the lung unchanged by smoker's death wish. I want to be the alcohol that slips passed your lips and makes you tell your mom that you love her, tell your sister it wasn't her fault, tell your dad that you're healing. I want to be the ****** that moves under your marked skin, the blood that can't pass the tourniquet.

I want to feel myself inside your throat, climbing to taste your teeth and thread string through the spaces between your words, make a tapestry of every missing apology.

I want to be the wind shaking the curtains of every girl who has starved herself, cold and realizing that a woman is not a body, a woman is the bearer of life and bearer of tenderness. A girl eating an apple, telling the grass that the moon is everyone's mother and will never let the tides rise or fall without a gentle tug on the sleeve of the oceans, "breathe".

I want to be the life that moves through the earth, the snapshots in motion that we call time, the peace that the bottom of our lungs must feel.
God is a collective
Jul 2016 · 608
A Colder Type of Weather
Lauren R Jul 2016
How do I speak up for myself
when every man I meet
pulls out my teeth?

What do I say to the skeletons in the closet?
Their bones know no warmth, their bodies are long gone.
The only conversations I have with them are their ankles and fingers sighing forward against the door, only moved by the wind.

You speak to me,
want to bring me up tough,
but I'm a gentle, soft winged bird.
These songs aren't sung about war,
I only breathe about love and loving.

(I wish I could take myself to where the sun is always shining and skin is never blue, where the Earth is always quiet.)
Lauren R Jul 2016
Every time I'm with you, I can see your eyes dull. Which shade of blue were you last time I saw you? Maybe you're just tired from work, maybe you're just tired of your mom telling you to get a job. Maybe you're just avoiding my question because you don't know how to answer. Maybe you're avoiding it because you're scared. Maybe you're somewhere far away from here.

I can see the way you look out the window. What are you looking for? Maybe an escape, maybe the trees are just in bloom. Maybe you're just quiet because you're reading a book, playing some stupid game or something. Maybe you're just sitting and thinking, maybe you're just as scared as usual.

I haven't seen you in months. What medication are you on? In what ways is it making you more depressed this time? What happened to your therapist? Has your mom noticed yet?

I sit in silent worry every night. Maybe it's just jealousy of the pillow you cry into. Maybe I just want to talk to you. Maybe I'm tired of losing everyone I dream about.
I'm in tears, partially, always
Jul 2016 · 460
Man Child
Lauren R Jul 2016
If you don't think anyone understands you, open your ******* mouth
Because someone needs to unknot your thoughts
You can't
Jul 2016 · 368
In the Deep
Lauren R Jul 2016
I'm just biding my time until
Your blue eyes roll back in your head
And then I'll feed you to the fishes
Dead and already drowned
Where you'll finally be weightless
Jul 2016 · 664
Too Much Too Little
Lauren R Jul 2016
Can words ever really be enough?

So picture this:
Mother's perfume
Cannabis car seats
Lover's knuckles
Best friend's scars
Saddest sunset

Watch me as I turn every word into
My grandpa, gardening
My best friend, taking a selfie
Me, worrying if you hate me
A tree, rotting in its grave
The way the world is so quiet
Jul 2016 · 385
Pin Drop
Lauren R Jul 2016
The phantom ghosts of all your ex-lovers
Line up behind you in the mirror
Shrunk to your size;
You cannot see them
They are staring right through you
Jul 2016 · 1.5k
Ghosting
Lauren R Jul 2016
Hey great-grandma,
You haven't written in 7 years. My heart is hissing, what does that mean? Why won't it stop going so fast? It's beating the **** out of me, grandma. I can't keep up with it.

Dearest great-aunt,
Hey, where've you been? I've been stuck throwing up my lungs the last few weeks. Coffin shopping is a lot harder than it looks aunty.

Dear uncle,
You haven't even asked about my hospital trip. Nerve pain. Yeah, I'm okay, but I don't want to say "I love you" to my boyfriend tomorrow. No, he didn't do anything wrong. He just forces me to swallow antacids until my eyes roll back and I die. How long? A year and a half, we started dating February tenth. It snowed.

Hello me,
You haven't shown up in a while. Please call.

Love,
No Body
Jul 2016 · 372
Coals
Lauren R Jul 2016
Maybe I should be breaking
Finer, thinner angel wings
But your bones will do
And I won't set down my teeth
Until I've chewed through my tongue
At 4 am
********
Being in love is overrated
Jul 2016 · 2.2k
Who Needs Explanation
Lauren R Jul 2016
As my lungs crinkle and deflate into themselves,
I'm reminded that breathing is easy
I just **** at it.

I hear Lou Dog bark- good dog- and hope he's still out there, biting pornstars because for sure, not all Rastafarian dogs go to heaven. The music's down here.

But you're just the most boring cliche with a pretty face.
And I'm still surprised you're on this side of the dirt.
What a conscience you have.

(Huh?)
I forget which jar I left my brain in this week
Jul 2016 · 391
Sodapop
Lauren R Jul 2016
Gonna get a dog
Name him Adderral
Hope he doesn't run away
That mangy mutt
Stay, boy, stay

I was born to love people too much
I resist telling them what I want
This is not how people should exist  

Come back here boy,
I haven't finished crying to you
Just yet
Jul 2016 · 374
Mint Condition
Lauren R Jul 2016
(Mouthwash, shaken up in the kitchen cabinet and lunch for two.)

I bottled every bit of sorry you gave me, even if the sentiment wasn't there and nothing you ever told me about the knives I took from you was true.
How could you take my sense of safety? How could you rob me of my intuition? How could you choke the life out of me?
You didn't have hands, not even claws, you had jaws the size of Arizona and a tongue so arid the flies didn't think to find the leftover bits of corpses in between your teeth.
Give me the truth.
What's wrong with you?

I just want you to once imagine, without ink on your skin, without the superficial cuts on your wrists, every lie you ever told to be more like everyone else, different, I want you to imagine the color of my eyes.

(You stripped me of my happiness, turpentine. Jail breaker. Head nodder. You erased my chances. Hope is the sunset. Hope is the sunset.)
I am fatally petty
Jun 2016 · 583
Sweet
Lauren R Jun 2016
If you're so broken, why don't you find the bottle opener, cupcake?
Why don't you lick the frosting off the bottom of the bowl, stoner?
When you say you're just pitiful, I see rain puddles drooling from the pockmarks of your cheeks.
I wish you'd realize that the sun isn't just shining out of my broken skin knuckles.
Jun 2016 · 534
Prettiest Flaws
Lauren R Jun 2016
I'm a chemist too, Walter. Don't believe me? Just take a look at my blood. This iron, albuterol sulfate, acetaminophen, all this? I did it.

Don't force my hand, sweetheart.
Don't bite the poet that feeds.
Don't lick the flames that keep that rage you have going, you'll lose your identity.
Don't make your mother scream if you don't want to count bruises.
Don't be too soft, child.
Don't be too ugly, boy/girl/parasite.

Your God's a lion, recently fed, drowsy.*

I wish you'd believe me when I say I'm sick, Dad. My tongue's falling out.
Jun 2016 · 443
Swindle
Lauren R Jun 2016
2 a.m. The most rotten noise you can imagine.

I'm sick of you, baby.

Yeah? So, I know, God. God, what a name to have in this household. You're the only one with wings, the only one heaven sings for. It must be nice to look like something worth saving and brushing off and eating whole. It must be real tough to be so magnificent, always having to figure out who left which lipstick print on your shoes.

That's beside the point. Here, we're watching the movie of the life you could've lived. The one without guilt pin pricking your fingertips when you close your eyes. The one without whiskey bottle music combo, glass break handshake with death, mother without tear streaked face, father without closed fist, family without empty, love without "please don't leave", what a show, kid. What a way to be.

Father's sneer.

**** yourself.

Find sister's Oxy. Weakness.

Off topic.

I bathe myself in crystal ****, shimmering, lovely shades of nothing. I eat myself out of my walls. I tie my limbs into knots, look at my palms and see someone's blood, I can't taste who's, I spend the rest of the night obsessed. I have a dream about my boyfriend, he has no scars, he has no body, he is just eyelashes and whimpering. I can still see him. I swat a dozen flies until my grandmother reincarnated falls to the ground, telling me it's alright.

Tell me, what's the secret to being so light? Is it dropping all your insides at Love's front door? Tell me, how do I get over the rainbow from here?
This is about nothing. Do you believe me?
Jun 2016 · 1.6k
Floydian
Lauren R Jun 2016
Talking to yourself in the mirror is more of a religious experience than getting on your knees and whimpering to the sky.

Today, 6:36 am, I got up and said "Good morning, Green Eyes, let's forget."

Getting home, 2:36, I wiped the blood from my front teeth and said "Good going *****, crying in class? What are you made of?" Sticks and stones, I thought. Sticks and stones.

A droning sound.

A year ago, you swallowed pills and opened your thighs, air crawling into places that air should never have the privilege (read: incredible misfortune) of touching, holding. I laid in bed, shined a laser pointer at my door for hours with "Goodbye Cruel World" on rickety repeat.

Goodbye cruel world, I'm leaving you today. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

A year ago, you took pictures of your snapped veins, wishbone fingers still gripping a razor, you smiling. I threw up.

Goodbye all you people.

My friend is going through what I did, caring. Caring a lot. Caring into the school guidance department and caring into crying the whole day. Caring until she can't sleep. Caring until the morning to repeat the cycle. Caring, slowly bleeding out/dying/wishing you were God, same thing.

There's nothing you can say.

I feel bad, I feel bad that your wrist split open. I want to butterfly stitch it for you, hold you, brush your hair back, and back, and back.

To make me change my mind.

What's the point in killing yourself anyway? Right. So I'll do it for you.

*Goodbye.
Jun 2016 · 668
Instinct
Lauren R Jun 2016
You wash the bubbles of your skin down the drain every night, scraping with a facecloth, hoping to cleanse the ugly from yourself; the putrid stench of your muscles beneath every mistake you've breathed or uttered into this Earth's air. You lick your wounds.
                                                     Bone fracture
You run your fingertips across the bridge of her nose, down to her chin, tip her head  up to meet your hungry eyes, good dog. Now, roll over, show me where your heart is. When she resists, when she bites, your hands don't work like human's do.
                                                    Loneliness
­                                                    without
     ­                                               overflow

Your brain meets another that you read to be feral. Fear, for a moment. Fear, buried under something like happiness. (Insanity) You lick your lips, starving. She can taste your teeth. She can taste the raw meat you have pulled from every past lover. The blood in your drool when you sleep, the sharpness in your stare, the way you mumble sweet nothings, she's known beasts like you.
                                                    Someone like
                                                    you, comfort for a
                                                    moment

You'­re just rough around the edges, you tell her. The world tells you to beat your mutt brain to death. You tell yourself that it's just the phase of the moon. The tides move your blood. The tides pull your ancient mind, tug on the sleeve of your consciousness.
                                                    Living like a car
                                                      accident

­You **** what you don't need. You don't eat what you ****. You don't know what you ****. You don't know where your hands have landed, which throats they have crushed. You will drag your claws across the cold skin, watch it wrinkle and rip, no blood moving; cold, congealed.
                                                    Dead kittens in  
                                                     the air vents

You share the rage of something forgotten by time. Something with blood boiling and eyes like hawks, wings of angels, burning brightly against the backdrop of night.
                                                    The smell of
                                                      strawberri­es

People try to care. They try to wrap their tongues around your ideas and around your ankles. They try to cry the same tears you do. They try to touch the sky and earth like you do. But they never will. No one gets you. No one can move you.
                                                    Your mother's
                                                     arthritis

Curled under the wheels of cars, spit out onto the side of the highway. Cooking in the sun, roadkill is no fun if you don't like to play with your food. The semi trucks barrel by. You feel the gentle shove towards their snouts, their mashing teeth, their twitching tongues, slick with the inside of your bones.
                                                    The way you
                                                     haven't cried in
                                                     years, you say

You meet a girl. You eat her whole. You meet a soulmate. You eat her whole. You shake in your mother's arms. You eat her whole. You look in the mirror. You eat her whole. You visit a therapist. You eat her whole. You see God. You eat her whole.
                                                    Holes in dry
                                                     wall

Your lips don't twist anymore. Your heart doesn't twitch anymore, dead animal. The wind doesn't call to you anymore. You wonder where your mind went, where you left it, in which forest, under which overpass.
                                                   Calling
You­ feel the world shift against you, all eyes on you, knowing what you've done. Where you've been. Who you are.
                                                        And calling
You saw off the barrels of guns.
                                                             *And calling
A need for human closeness results in cannibalistic extremes
Jun 2016 · 1.9k
Paint Bucket
Lauren R Jun 2016
The sunset strings its rosary in beads of strawberry and mother's love as the day comes to an end. The light lays and prays.  

When you miss something, you think of the small, fleeting moments that you gave no attention to before. You start to think of the way she pronounced things, tongue smooth over teeth and so unlike you. You think of the way her eyes moved when she laughed, the way she touched your shoulder gently when she looked at you, blue eyes and butterfly pink lips.

I wonder what it will take to pry me away from you. I wonder how much will ever be too much. What weight will stop my heart from giving anymore?

I saw the way you moved over the kitchen floor, your small feet gliding on the tile, dancing to your own humming. The sun was stinging my eyes, trying to count her days and count her blessings.

It felt like God almost cared about me again.

But God doesn't care about me.
He doesn't care what you like.
He doesn't even care.

And if all good things must come to an end, then let me just say amen to everything that makes you you. Amen to the smallest of moments and the tiniest of hints that someday, the sun would burn out.
Jun 2016 · 973
Poppy Seeds
Lauren R Jun 2016
Two dead girls, flayed into leaves on the forest floor. Butterfly knife not so flitting, more like flying through the air, cutting whatever it dares come across. Mostly pearls, but then again you see a lot of baby opossums drifting up from the side of the road these days.

Cotton, cotton filling the mouths of anger hungry boys, not so sharp jaws and those dull blue eyes you see on every magazine cover. Who knew death looked so fresh dressed in tattoos and bruises that are the same color as your moms wedding night wine?

Tell me, boy, where did you get your emotions? Is that mania an heirloom? Or did you buy it from whoever first sold you that Xanax? Did you rip them from the heart of the first girl you told looked beautiful in blood?

You ***** ******* liar. You filthy thief of virgins' teeth, swaddling your broken skin knuckles in baby bonnets.

I hope God finds His way under your greasy fingernails, your greedy skin and stained teeth. I hope the waves that toss your thoughts only curl towards the bottom and your heart only strains it's sides to reach your father's ghost.

There are so many messy, sloppy secrets behind every self hating fool with a pension for roadside crying and cheap liquor shopping. A desire for so many I'm-only-trying-to-pay-off-my-loans ladies, covered in last weeks work and warm old men cigarette breath and guilt. I hope for all eternity that you find something worth panhandling for, whether it be disease or love. I hope God finds you in the sewers, whimpering your sister's name and your brother's license plate.

(The devil went to find what's his, down in Los Angeles where you last hid.)
Jun 2016 · 352
Love like a Broken Jaw
Lauren R Jun 2016
What's with all these girls living with the consequences of pretty? Picking up jokes with a habit and some smokes. She can't read his blood. She can't see his frayed veins, they bleed inside out. She doesn't know which direction eyes are supposed to roll.

That abrasive touch, one of lying and of lust and I haven't felt the curves of hips in months, it mottled her slender shoulders. He is brusque, unsure and shaking, do you want something to drink? No, she just wants something to hold, something full of leaving and full of feathers and dust. She takes his hand, a comfort object that feels a lot like how her great grandfather described war. The calluses read like mountains.

But can anyone ever really be sure of anything? She can't tell the difference between a boy and an idea. She can't know the way to where owls sleep, sighing out proverbs while they dream. She can't ask him if he really knows how to keep his knuckles clean.

(Which way to the hospital? Yup, it's a .32, right through my left eye socket. Yes, again. Ain't nothin' left there no more.)
Jun 2016 · 324
Chemical Imbalance
Lauren R Jun 2016
Looking at you
Is hopeless;
Just like you and your
Chemical imbalance:
Pills.
Me and my chemistry
with your ****** up brain.

I want your touch.
I want your rejection.
I don't want a boyfriend,
I want a mess.

(This is all fantasy, your teeth are too straight for someone as crooked as me.)
This is old
May 2016 · 325
Casualty
Lauren R May 2016
The moon weeped
the color of your hair,
dripping onto the  
morning (mourning?) dew
stippled grass.
The color of your eyes
seeped
into the cracks
of every sidewalk
you melted
on.
May 2016 · 889
Bow Tie Noose
Lauren R May 2016
Bow Tie Noose

I saw you die in mid-January. Your caramel eyes rolled back white like ****** hard candies when you hanged yourself with the bow and bell I tied around your neck. I want to lay you down in a coffin made for kittens, old shoebox turned grave. I'll wrap your wrists in silk, cover your eyes with your hands, let guilt leap out of your mouth with a quiet gaseous slipping pop, death swelling your stomach just above your jutting ribs. This is the fullest you've looked since eighth grade, you've been starving and your blood is all drained. I'll put you under the only living thing to weep for you, a sad old willow tree. She's on her last leg and I guess, so are we. It will be summer, fresh lemonade. Shooting rabbits from the back of a pick up truck, ******* the blood from a pin hole in the neck. Dad likes them dry by July.

I'll watch flowers grow in place of cardboard. I'll remember your tiny birdy bones in your hands and see them melting to the flesh of your eyelids, nature taking you back to melted wax figure. Your teeth are more recognizable than your face.

When winter comes again, you'll wash up in the spring and the police will wonder who did this. I'll pluck a bone from inside your eye socket where it fell to rest. I'll look at your clothes, the new skin over your bones, it's all the same. Your cheeks aren't so smiley now that you're not in there to scare yourself into happiness. At least you won't be lying while lying in a grave, I'll keep your bones in the drawer with your letters and the police dogs won't smell a thing.
Winter is a cold cold thing
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