The times they-are a-changin;
you ain't going nowhere.

Not dark yet,
rainy day women

subterranean homesick blues,
if not for you --
when the deal goes down,
lay, lady, lay.

I shall be released;
blowin' in the wind,
like a rolling stone

Down the highway.

Girl from the north county;
mr tambourine man,
jokerman,
ring them bells.

With god on our side,
to Ramona—
it takes a lot to laugh,
it takes a train to cry

Hungry and begging,
Wanting to devour.
The humble skin protecting the collarbone,
Midriff exposed, taste of your lips inspires,
Sparks to ignite and burst.
Busting open my mouth,
Teeth falling out.
Intimacy is such a fear,
Unsure if love can exist in my *****,
or if it is an untouchable force.
Because my fire was stolen,
before it burned.

It should be the most desired sight of all
the person whom you hope to live and die
so, this fire feels like love against our skin
we ramble on, in stasis,
caught ablaze and smoke
fills our lungs. There are sirens too loud
and too few to do any rescuing.

Kiss me you, fool.

Before the sky envelops us,
there's a mammoth of an alien
peaking through the sky's cracks,
tentacles grabbing.

No mercy.

There are no words,
for stars littering the sky
at daylight, and there's no use
in semantics for what unravels
in front of us.

But mathematics and optics,
equations letting sight pierce
through time. We are gorgeous as
we gasp for air, our life forces divided,
and allotted to some place distant.

What would our ancestors say?
Too proud to hike up death's skirt
and steal a look. Isn't this what we are?

Hungry.

Would they be proud
or would we be considered fools
to think we are untouchable?
Why not let our lips spark like
the bolts igniting the sky,
why not resort ourselves to ghosts
and haunt each other's great relatives

Shouldn't we give in
and behave as if
we're the last of our kind?

The obsession was endless
tears undeserving, a hated addiction.
"let me breathe,
or I might just die"
scrawled on the bathroom wall.

Oh! How excited I'd be,
to meet the ground, six feet underneath.
Unafraid of missing the northern lights,
exhausted with these caustic words
flying like bullets out of my own mind.

Gossipy little words throughout my ears-
spreading heinous lies about my character
but he scrawled threats I know I might take seriously.

Scars lined up like cheerleaders upon a gymnasium floor.
Death shoves to take his spot at the top of the bleachers,
looming over those laughing scars.

An announcement is made;
Bookworms writhe at the thought of a human's words going to waste,
Stoners rush out of the way,
Jocks make haste to find what to say
Death just laughs
while, other kids pray.

Call upon the troubadours
who are unaware of the telephone:
to them it was ghosts coming through on wires.
Darkness empowered imagination,
and light caused it to surrender.
Now I ask, "How's the weather?"
And you bring up the past.

The fire that still burns between us
extinguished by time.
Time has this rotting effect--
when a clock can be reconstructed,
but never turned back.

Used to be in lust,
but I just say fine
the only time I meant it was
when you were mine,
living inside my mind.

They sent me away in April
when we stopped talking completely-
I saw you outside my barred windows
looking out upon the horizon
met with kisses from the pavement.

My vertigo didn't plague me anymore,
when all I wanted was to soar.

They reintroduced us inside a paper cup,
you were blue, white, and green.
Tasted of nothing,
there again,
self-immolation seemed like something out of a movie scene.

Saw you in my dreams,
but never awoke with you next to me.
You were never watching over me in the mirror reflection.
You stopped coming, ending the affection.

I'm still wondering where you've gone,
when I was released
they said you'd take your time
but perhaps with the changing chemicals running amuck
in my brain,
you'd show me a sign?

I was fifteen years old.

Holding your heartbeat between my hands,
watching wrists restrained to wires,
attached to monitors reading your chest.
As the child, I did not want my mother to leave me,
but instead, I chose not to leave you.
There was not any time left to admire
the natural color of your hair showing through,
stealing a final glance at your emerald eyes.
When the overcast of death held you firmly,
I find myself loathing what it is capable of.
Only in a hospital gown,
were you swept off your feet.

Death’s arms pulled at what piece
of you I still cradled,
reminiscent to the time I held
a bird with a broken wing,
helpless.
I tried to put it back into the nest,
but the mother rejected it.
Your body rejected medicine
the same way.

Projector screens play,
movie reels in sermon preach,
how to breathe

Autumn Of A Broken Heart



You spoke like a true gentlemen:
“Hate me for breaking your heart”
Anger held itself stable in my clenched fists.

I've a heart,
I keep on display,
the one with many sutures in it.
I've begun to aclimate to this idea of survival-
woodldand creatures tear into my ribs.
Taking what they must to survive
those trees have more of a right to live than I.
They've been here before, hearing a young girl weep
and a man of his word promise to never come back.

I've eyes,
displayed in a case.
The shade of reality is so bleak,
that I've sewn on my own eyelashes
to fan away any realism.

Imagination is my friend, yet a forlorn enemy
all at once,
the calls end along with the saturation of happiness worn
as a ring around my mouth-
but I taste passion fruit upon my lips.

It began to rot
and so does the flesh of every good man I’d known,
he lays in my arms,
a pile of bones.

Fingers shake clasping a camera between them,
there's no film in it,
just an urge to capture fragments of time
before they decompose
into a grave of forgotten moments

Inadvertently,
I speak of my own funeral
in the present tense.
My frame resembles a cadaver
in the summer months,
limp from depression
but encouraged by mania

Fingers shake,
causing an earthquake between the fault lines of my palms
close my eyes and I've become a paperboat
floating on a pond,
cattails brush my edges
where incisions were made
they dazzle with coats of glitter
and star stickers

Like madness pirouettes through flames,
the wet edges of pages
are destroyed and what I was made of
could not remain.

such a gentle color,
maroon is under the starlit night
I am fragile,
but not enough to crumple in your grasp.

There's a singing wound upon my hand,
obtained from a skirmish with rose bushes.
A row of sopranos upon my right arm
await their turn,
altos sing melody this time.

I've always admired blood’s crimson shade
if that makes me a sinner,
so be it.

If writing my sincerest feelings upon sheets
then wrapping myself in them
inspires me to be a ghoul, so be it.

Had wanting happiness splashed across my face,
like freckles kissed on the flesh from strobes of the sun-
makes me naive, so be it.

God thinks all suicidal individuals have an
impeccable sense of humor,
so be it.
Satan is bound to believe he's the one to drive
someone to commit suicide,
“he becomes more powerful”

So be it.

Sickly creature found
clawing up the rocks
with hell below,
there isn't a sound.

She is a girl,
but resembles a ghoul.

How sad it is
that she couldn't smile,
she never found living worthwhile.

You-
as a human being,
have morality to make her feel loved
even if you never meant it.
You- as a human being,
benevolently take advantage of vulnerability
and see it as doing a favor.

You're the patron saint,
savior for suicidal girls everywhere.

Her frame looked beautiful stretched out,
skin was the perfect canvas
to plant unmeant kisses,
matching the color of her underwear
you'd never see.

The bones fashioned into a bed
you lay in,
again, it isn't a sin
when she's barely breathing.

Seething with melancholy,
tasting the despair on pouted lips.
You had *** with her misery,
and ****** when she had unmoving hips;
Saw the lines up and down her thighs
so he cuts the ****-
and became a decent person by “loving”
a girl who didn't believe she could be.




Just the distance between a ceiling fan
and chair held her back,
from being free.

She’ll make up another one like you,
or assume the worst of everyone for the rest of
the days she decides to see.
Rests in her own bed
re-living the grip of your hands
reaching for her pants

She’ll bare a toothy grin in your direction,
make a joke about suicide or hoping to be dead
and you'll never know what to say-
just that you can find blame in everything,
but what's inside her head

But even with you there-
she's always alone.


No need to be held and caressed
as if it will subdue the demons that rest inside,
or that she'll wake up the next day no longer depressed.

Put that sad music to rest,
dressing her sorrow in lace,
paints her face,
and collapses farthest from grace.

Toothpaste residue washes down the drain,
mouthwash follows.
I waste my time cleaning these bones inside my mouth,
to be opalescent with their crooked demeanor.
Wondering what others think of me,
thinking about how today has been endless
and tomorrow will follow suit.

Spending time gazing into the mirror,
trying to change.
& we'd prefer to be found
with alcohol in our blood,
laying somewhere cold in a snowbank.

A bullet inside the glass I'm drinking from,
I bite down as my brain erupts,
splatters the wall.
Ending my ****** writer's block...

the mortician left to inform the world,
of the irony in never including yourself as a character.
Everyone's face is shadowed and misplaced,
like a Picasso painting.
Those faces have haunting features,
an appearance that shouldn't matter,
it's the judgement within those eyes.

Why can't we peel off the skin and lies,
like an age old band aid?
Revealing the shredded bones
beneath the act of aging.
We're all so weak,
with conflicted truths,
signs of emotion are signs of weakness:

Still so many of us fortunate souls are lead to wonder why?


why? why?why?

The desire to be nothing
pertained to me,
trading smeared blue inked letters
written in my woes and goodbyes,
that were premature.

Oh, how the piano with its' keys have broken off,
means the musician lost his will to play,
drowning himself on a west coast beach-
A poet with her repressed memories,
have made themselves a home in her troubled mind.
And we all have;
so many words,
so many truths,
so many secrets,
and these words drown her so.

Dear Death,

She was not ready. Though, born with overcast under her eyes and frosted lips. Once, lotus petals in early spring. They have now cracked and begin to wilt. There was much more to speak of; rigor mortis sets in as they begin trying to find me. As this body was a vessel- I inch away from the scalpel.
We are unrequited lovers. I weaken them while, you sweep them off their feet. They're always infatuated with the scent of your cloak. But grow resentful towards the sterile scent of hospitals. She is your mistress now. You will take her, leave me with the ashes.

And I'll hold nothing, but they blame me for what you've done. You're the thief, I'm the devil's advocate for disease. I loathe yet, love you for all your ruthlessness. Teach me how to be that powerful. They've come so close to finding me and I must fade, but we'll meet again.

Cancer

There must be something more;
lillypads and ponds seen in past lives
Heaven once lived inside my home,
but the polluting of lungs that comes with us as we age--
invites purgatory.

Well, each time my father smokes there must be an entire  section of clouds reserved for him.
Desperate for faith,
I've been turning the key points from farewell letters into psalms.

There might not be much left,
when I'm writing my own version of the Bible in blood.

Spoke with an angel in a nightmare,
her voice out of tune with the weather,
she weeps so pretty,
but when she sings.
Time stops & the bones,
of the waking world shatter.
Forlorn,
eerie,
soprano soundescapes
the windpipes,
an eclipse forms from her wallowed pout.

The pouring of light emphasizes on
sorrowful words spoken,
the world places a sympathetic ear to
the chest of the sky.
The pounding doesn't stop.

Sky is slate,
a skulking cat,
with slit eyes.
The introduction of a silver tressed girl
and her delight
for crimson,
red and sheets of whiteForeign
fables pour from
the wrists,
dripping down the elbow.
A pirouetting figure,
with dandelion wisp limbs,
struts past to sing of her disease.

Legs swing in the urge to
jut off a 1,000ft building,
the chilly breeze used to be endearing,
but once you're screaming-
"You are my sunshine,"
in a desolate parking lot.
Wearing happiness
under the eyelids,and a powdered capsule between the lips.

Telephone wires no better than a noose,
choke back everything you want to say.
Weep into the static sound,
nobody's listening.
nobody wants to know-
what's on your mind.

Grabbing at thin air,
mistaking it for potential
or meaning.
Angle the reflection of the mirror properly--
there's a hollowed out torso with;
protruding bones,
that absently cut the days into,
hours, minutes and seconds.
I wanted to break my jaw this week,
I'm not using it for anything.
But chewing my words to never be regurgitated
into anything but rejected suicide notes.
Those letters never fit well,
and the phrases are cliché.
Atleast all those wadded ***** of paper
are weightless in the winds,
like the wings she wore upon her back.
That I desperately wanted
and the red inked margins—
wounds I haven't the courage to make.
So I've cut myself to pieces,
rearranged them more than once,
And just break
and break
and break
and break
and break

I never liked people who call trauma "interesting"
especially in reference to those white raised lines
cascading skin, or young worship of praying
for the hurt to stop in my sleep.

Devoting years to stupid diets,
melting away the jiggle of my thighs,
sometimes when I indulge, my brain receives texts
but I don't reply.

You certainly don't, so why
should we give energy to the notion,
I am only as interesting as my suffering. Saving
ourselves isn't a definitive moment,
though I strive to find purpose within myself,
slivers who I'm meant to be
come through
in conversations with you.

All those years,
living life like an obituary. I want
to show you I'm more than a picture
that told herself shallow things like,
ugly people are a statistic and pretty
people are a portrait-
these things bore me.

But your head resting between my thighs
as I hold you

doesn't

knowing our imperfections
keep us young

doesn't

a meaningful life in love

doesn't.

Roses In Spring

His voice has the same qualities as a locomotive
words engorge my jugular to be so easily cut across.
The girl who is caretaker of this soul, she fails.
She doesn't light cigarettes or catch the residue of smoke in lemony stains upon the walls.
Why poison your lungs?
When oak lives in the backyard that kills your kneecaps.

Standing in a powder blue dress
matching the sky, matching the call I'm making.

He never responds in prose,
just in the growth of roses.
Handfuls of amanita phalloides in my palms
trade pulling my own roots
for mother nature's.

Knowing he sees me as I pirouette towards my own demise.
Never responding,
dusting myself off,
gave an earth shattering grin.

As a younger girl I believed in me,
and he existed as well as honeybees did.
Cherry blossom lips became mine as I grew older,
and my eyelids painted like a hummingbird's feathers
pretty boys and girls asked about the weather
and I awaited your response, but it never comes.

Just in the vague appearance of the sun.

Love will set us free.
Heartstrings strumming songs for you,
angel. Hum with me.

There's something honest in hurting enough to display your brokenness like an archive.
There's a wooden fence in the backyard that leads to a small pond; frogs croak, the southern sun pulverizes our skin. I used to imagine sneaking down to that pond late at night, slitting my wrists. I was suicidal, I'm not sure if I am anymore. It played out so beautiful in my mind- almost how Ophelia drowned.
      Water lilies cover my dying face, metaphorical really. Water is dyed a maroon color and my skin has the life drawn from it. This was the summer my family welcomed a new child and all I could do was devote time to my demise.

Hallunicuated hearing my mother's dissapointed words scold me.
She's a ghost and I still  wanted to trade places. My father got re-married, I lost even more of my mind. Hysterical tears and maniacal nights with the same songs on repeat. I tore through my skin like a dying garden, hoped for death like someone with nothing. I have so much; my father, my home, my sisters. I felt I didn't have anyone.

Found solace on my skin-
writing novels, not stories.
Brick surface, room on the right where I built walls with no desire to fight. Large window with the vast world outside, but I never participated. I'd weep until, the sun awoke. I'd swear the moon warned me to quiet down.

Bled so much,
I could have saved several lives
instead, of trying to take my own.

I knew you to be forever young,
mother permanently thirty-nine
calloused skin, brittle haired woman.
You'd certainly scold me for
my lack of bedtimes.
Mountains in Havre
captured youth-
and tea parties in the backyard
there's so much to learn
from your songs unsung-
lung cancer has a contrived way
of expressing its attachment,
it cannot live without you.
I know you to be younger than I,
forever.

Anesthesiologist places mask on patient,
coaching easier breaths,
stillness.
Finished-
he leaves, leaves
leaves, leaves.

Surgeon enters with shiny tray of metal tools,
Patient’s rib cage rattles,
rapid breathing, sporadic monitor
panic breaks hospital windows
shattered,
everything is shattered.

Patient cries of days lived in uncertainty,
mutters about metaphorical agony.
Surgeon is insecure in performing procedure—
due to patient’s complaints,
“Pain is a parasite inside my ears, laying eggs inside the brain, where maggots squirm through my eye making a home in the skull.”
Patient feels no pain,
but screams of
impalement by life - -

God, what would your diagnosis be?
God claims, “the heart fights for purpose.”
Patient believes there isn’t one.
A suggestion;
reason with patient to make payment or rental of new
blood circulation, chambers, ventricles, valves, atriums.

Patient takes scalpel,
opening own chest
with hand inside
Patient is unable to find source of hurting
but reports numbness.

current status,
human.

—V.H.

I've stood in front of an angel teary eyed,
nodding that I was ready for departure.
Spoken to a Heavenly Father,
with a weeping tone caught in my throat
that I didn't have the strength to keep living.

The devil had me in chains,
but Angels spoke to me once
"You are enough" they sang

Static in my mind,
as I hear the shakiness of photos falling off the wall,
the beast has come to feed on my head-
it wants me dead.

There aren't enough prayers to lift me
from what's breaking my spirit,
Spirits wept and spoke inaudibly,
"Let it happen, there's not much to be done"

Ethereal, but they could detect darkness all through my body,
in shades of red, grays, and blacks.
They frame my figure and display it in the gallery
of tortured souls.

Nightmares had predicted such a tragic ending,
when I bled,
the beast could track me down.
His claws are long and sharp, cutting into my skin
Its disease infecting my blood.

It likes the parts of my brain that are seeped in ink,
it loves when I'm alone and all I do is think.

It's stronger than me, coming to life when I write about it.
I hear it's heavy footsteps, deep breaths
and smell my death-
resembling the inside of its foul, jagged mouth

Angels will carry me to a place I might consider home,
they'll admire my suffering because,

I've become a martyr
to the imbalance of chemicals in my brain,
and with every moment my heart was beating,
I made efforts to fight off everyone else's pain.

Perhaps, when I meet heaven
I'll have a cigarette
and not be bothered by everything in white.
When my skin touches its surface much of it will turn gray.
Willing to die, they'll recognize my own lack of willpower
in letting it rip my heart from my chest.

It pounded so loudly in the beast's clutches,
it squeezed it between its palm and erupted--
painting the living in sinner's blood.

Wish I knew how to write about happy things,
and everyone I knew didn’t have such troubled heads.
So when, very rarely, I say a prayer-
a part of me knew which part of the fire to put out.
We can hold hands, smoldering the smoke
but we all know-- we are the fire starters.
And these insincere prayers leave us empty,
while making me a liar. Because I don’t believe in
the initiative of a higher power.
And though we are the fire starters,
have been the fire bringers there is
power inside of us to end the fire.
If only close contact could ***** out the flame.
I know the smoke will remain surrounding us,
no matter how tightly we hold one another.

Crazy little thing called love–
a kind of magic,

See what a fool I've been,
Radio Ga Ga;
jealousy,
liar --
breakthru,

don't stop me now.

The show must go on,
spread your wings,
these are the days of our lives—

love of my life.

Keep yourself alive,
too much love with **** you;
I'm going slightly mad,
save me.

Who wants to live forever?
under pressure

I'm sorry I'm collapsible,
while, you are all mighty.
Cutting out more shapes like my sister's and I.
Allowing us to be worshipped
for what lies between our legs
not admired for what's inside our brains.

Penned this down to ask him:
How the moon illuminates heinous crimes?
Or compares the bruises upon my chest
to the sunsetting skies?

Don't pray to not be *****,
or a woman to be paid (not in compliments)
So by all means- tell me how respected she is
that your fist is mighty,
Adams apple mightier
She just crumbles beneath your palms.

I'm sorry I'm so shredded,
they can't read the apologies I've recited upon the palms of my hand, but my father has possession of the ink to write over a women's existence like it's his right.

Mother is ashes,
father leaves a trail of them below his feet,
In that moment, I realized-
A woman will die to survive.
While, all a man has to do is thrive off her oxygen.

Suicide notes don’t serve their purpose,
just an antiquity of my youth
please don’t promise me your presence-
I know so well,
you must leave with the night’s pin
pricking of stars.
And I,
A child belonging to the sun
hidden-
as twilight’s cloak slips out of my fingers.

Closure and I’s skin never touches,
comfort does not embrace me
and redemption refuses to look me in the eyes.

I’ll never forgive others for dying
But I hope they can forgive my weary spirit
Authenticity in pain
is such a rarity
in this aging process

God it hurts, god it grows old
But I cannot depend on figments any longer;
Too tired of my own silence,
talk ****** talk
instead I substitute ink for
the pool of blood at my feet

Have always known how to plant roses
upon the grave of my sorrow

open my mouth: speak up
make my own choices
life: death

The need to conceal my inner most demons,
no attention drawn to myself, a paper bag over my head.
Another placed over my head,
a smile scribbled on its surface.

My attempts go unnoticed,
as I'm the only one pointing out my flaws.
The bag has the same tired word scribbled on the inside,
"failure"
and the ink stains my face.
I had never approved of labels,
but there are ones that cannot be removed.
We have these facades,
we orchestrate
at the expense of an existence
we're refusing to live in.

We’re always having these discussions about
God and
my unorthodox question:
if the stars belonged to the souls of delinquents,
Laughter filled the air, we were breathing in
while carbon dioxide was rolling off your tongue.

What a waste of youth,
I pollute this sky.
Looking at the clouds,
perceiving their shapes is such a bore.

Three minutes, twenty-eight seconds
Without a thought,
you offered friendly affection
, clutching the wheel.
Hands flooded purple in your tight grip

This felt out of character

you saw something that had to be fixed
in me,
I dozed off.
Vague dreams-
Swirled around the car
then
Debris buried me.
When I wake up,
Its fragments are cakes under my nails.

Had the world shifted?
Or is it these thoughts?

Has the world shifted or is it my thoughts?
The person sitting next to you is a shapeshifter.
That chip on my shoulder too big to be diminished
just wreckage, please, climb out
Crash.
Fantasized our vehicle rolling
Off the highway.
Encouraged you to go on
Flourish in the life you thought was impossible.
Old friend, what a delightful time I had.

Please remember a grin
and it’s childlike two.
Fondly recalling the first ride.
You had said,
“I’m glad you’re in my life.”


Sorry, I bummed so many rides,
Nobody trusted me to drive.
Sorry, I asked so many questions about the afterlife.

Old friend.

Food is tasteless,
but my bitterness is an aftertaste-
mouthwash can't cleanse.

Fragmented into pieces
in the palm of someone's hand,
the ache in slow-motion that I can't be fixed.

Never worrying about my happiness,
doing what makes everyone else feel good
leaky faucet with not enough to give
but too much to stop.

They're always talking to the next lover
and I plant kisses all on the surface of my suffering.

Limp cloth tries to dance our silhouette to life,
White, paper, teeth, famished for ideas of
you & I- in the same sentence.
The light’s glare, that I should look toward
is imprinted in my mind.  There’s a look of
yours I’ve familiarized myself with, it is all-knowing.
You lick your lips as a sign of defeat.
We’re both stalemates to time,
its’ unforgiving mark- bound to be alone.
Always afraid of change, taking place.
Is there redemption? Or are we fated to smother?
Is there a pardon? I’m left here.
Though, the seasons do change, leaves falling,
as our patience wears thin of each other.
Here I am, left to tend
to the non moving skeletons, we both surrendered.

Is there redemption or are we fated to smother?

Why must death tarnish,
all beauty that once was?
The rose color in my cheeks wilts,
and a wreath of hospital bracelets,
looms over my head.

My existence has the desire,
to smother your heart-
in my memoriam.

Though life never felt meaningful;
babies breath did not sprout from my throat,
not every word I speak is made from beauty.

Sickness does take it’s place below my feet,
in my genes.
But the crown of thorns, cancer will one day call my name
in the moment of a better mind frame.

The loved ones who could sympathize for ulcers
in my stomach,
can justify the
malignant tumor that grows,
taking the place of a life
that I’m able to flourish in.

Brain doesn't work the way i want it,
and I can't figure out how to loosen my grip on those broken parts,
I've collected.
Nor let love "heal" me.

Those parts are no good when I can't build
anything worthwhile that makes this easier.
The thought to resort back to rubies dripping down my skin,
opened back up
& it lets the sickness have breathing room.

The wounds not needing sutures,
but time-
for scars to remain.
Another way demons flow in through my veins.

Slits on the surface of my body,
distress the canvas that is my skin,
I'm trying to be okay again,
trying to not let the darkness in.

But each time I destroy myself,
in attempt to reinvent the brokenness.
I show everyone I hurt,
but I can't recall what the reason was.

Used to imagine dying was so simple,
but you don't become a ghost with suicide.
There's no need to hold onto it;
let the pain go,
You don't haunt the walls,
or sob for the living to hear.

There's no cure for what ails me,
but I'm trying to remember how to survive
and have a heart that beats happily.

At sixteen, I was easily impressed with conversations of tattoos, septum rings, and pipedreams that internal biases created a tendency to wonder if you’d smoke those too in the art room.
When you spoke of the desire for a “creation of Adam painting to be inked across the canvas of your arm.”
I was enchanted though, unaware my embrace and unorthodox philosophy of loving the dead back to life would never work; I mourned in consumption of you and remained in a ramshackle shelter where we had class together.

An oxymoron, truly.

There was something sinister that washed down the room's rusted sink than your murky paint water. Every day, as if on schedule I lamented the opening of my veins in preparation for the inevitable.
You re-arranged yours with the help of a syringe and my mind questioned how best to save your life.
The focus of my grief was full of wonder in who would die first, but at least loved.
I began to know, the meaning of fixation so well, my lips tasted different even a shared laugh felt pathetic, but not as much as knowing neither of us could drive.
I became your girlfriend Suicide, experienced and immersed in toxicity.
I hated myself so passionately in undoing myself so vigorously all in act of loving you.
Breaths were not allowed unless you said so.
My world became the word "sorry"- your prevalent command, love should not make you guilty in having a heart that beats.
But it was like a ******* thunderstorm when you opened your mouth,
"Are there are any tats you want?"
  I remember you asked.

Today, I am aware of just how little I knew what I wanted.
I had sworn it was my mother's birthdate in Roman numerals, you disapproved and all in the spirit of mourning... I compensated and titled every poem about you in a similar fashion with the day we met,
but these journals had become a grave and shared spaces a graveyard.
Until sixteen, I was incapable of understanding this kind of ache.
I lied to myself,
that the mourning ceased in this season of my life, worse- I was your Adam.

An everlong ache.
I wish it had put me in my place because I did practically the same, instead of just blades that dug in
like your dulled needles, the pain felt in awareness never was. Always so obedient.
You held that deflated balloon filled with ****** over my head every moonless night in your mother's apartment.
I had to have known to beg was not love.
This was worship, utterly painful,
I recognize the role I have long feared as a martyr.
Your claim that I had made you so sad you couldn't feel anything became an incapacity for me though,
the sacrifices made in justifying broken things
function with the belief of no reparations are needed
and rather everyone should be as broken as you are.

You taught me the bruises from your crooked teeth landscaping my throat were entitlement.
Ownership.
These colors upon my flesh never meant you needed me.
You never wanted me, adamant you deserved me.
I was of convenience. This pain gave me something.
You were responsible for my rebirth, shut the door.
Another door opened that revealed who you are, rather another scar canvassing my body that I live with the intent of tattooing over.

Who are you outside of my apartment door?
Someone with the capacity to entertain sadness
other than yours. You don't tell others what they already know- hating yourself is counterproductive. You can show patience
for an over-apologizer who cannot catch their breath. You're an expert at comfort as your tongue grows bouquets of lilacs to soothe, whispering sweet nothings. You believe in that place to plant them.
You're nobody's apparition but mine. So I welcomed your black shoes and wiped them off in the welcome mat of my brain matter.
Those footprints aren't yours, just as you don't eat animals alive, but you still are
and I am just a bone.
You're not in search of something to taste. You are merely repulsed by the thought of the remains. You simply love more because of your sophisticated palette.
You paddleboat on the coast, secretly embarrassed to admit you're happy, but cannot help condemn the curve of your lip. You hate to admit it, but you are someone who enjoys being alive. You think being a nihilist is a choice; someone just wakes up one day with the will to withdraw while indulging
the world without consequence. You don't poison yourself just to withstand two hours in the same room. You find vigor in the softness of the skin that is not mine, you feast, but you share a table.
You have your sunglasses on- they aren't atop the fireplace where I kept them safe in my backpack. I wished I had kept them. I believe the vengeful spirit will always come back for what was theirs. But that is not who you are.
And it would really just be another reason
to see you again.
You are someone who returns, but not to my arms.

To shrink my resentment for
how open wounds heal faster
than any other part of me. The heart
is the last to leave the fight; blood, carnage
always willingly bright eyed
and bushy tailed at the idea
of opportunity. These eyes,
wet + tired of having to see,
to blink. My heart to
believe I write
things worth reading. This brain
to avoid the guilt in
taking up space in my skull
where words rented out vacancy.
My tongue, encouraged to
speak something meaningful
enough to save every life,
but mine. These stupid
words, verse like munchausen syndrome.
I cannot breathe or survive
on poetry. Why
would I ever want these words
to draw your blood? They already siphon mine with poison. I am already
guilted with anxiety and creation
remains only as rumination.

Already lost myself. There
is no beauty and
I can't make everyone
else lose me too.

I'll wake up
this afternoon
write something happy,
manifest it as truth.
believe in it like
a scar compensates
enough to prove
pain to be real. Like
this ink
proves I'm insistent
that I bleed.

To open my ribcage,
ink would spill around
***** feet and form
verses created inside this
sad sea of a mind, drowning
what surrounds. A firm
believer in common courtesy,
but not for myself as I never
write the line where I survive
maybe at least one
where I float above the surface &
remember to breathe.

It is not your fault.
You only know that,
it is in your nature to
know pain
like the back of your hand
as you administer it

To know,
children, little girls
are to be docile dolls
in which resentment can be  
hidden under the dress
that's the perfect color
in the tulle, we twirl
and do this dance
it is but, fate's job
for the strings to be cut

The puppeteer, songstress must go down. Her children
to be reborn as the next soprano.

You have ached and
your agony was ignored
so you demonstrated it
you sang with the voice
of the unheard

and somewhere, perhaps,
like the phantom you are
when we both sing, it is the same song
and our throats warble at the same time
in unison
our voices are capable of more love
then we were for each other

The answer after being asked,
"How I'm doing?" was caught in my airway.
So I take a blade
and slashed across my throat-
Ink oozed from the seeping wound,
stanzas splashed across each page,
putting a hand upon my chest,
I felt purpose-
ripped it out.
My heart it bleeds,
in truths of me and
in thoughts of you.
The wonderment of what it was
that coursed through my veins,
describing the phenomenon
of how it rains,
or we allow ourselves to express pain.
Losing blood
and shying away from what other's think,
when transfusion began
they gave me ink.
Speaking of honesty,
I promise you-
when fear takes over,
I'll write for me &
I'll write for you.

My body is the bird
between a dog's gnashing teeth;
feathery and tossed. Potential
bruising in need of nurturing
or some ice. Even agony requires
a place to put its' head down at night.
For the comings and goings of
loveless transactions upon myself.
My body is also a broken bone,
desperate to fashion itself back together.

The whole of me--
empty pill bottle after pill bottle
hoping to fill itself up,
full of space, so capable of suffocation.
When tipped over on its' side, it's a spitting image
of the father I've only ever known
to run from anything that comes undone

I am also the snaggletooth
belonging to the woman of whom
I belong to. I have hit the radial artery
with my eyes

Bleeding out seems titillating,
but I refuse to touch my pout to
Death's puny ****. It's a danger to touch
skin-to-skin, bound to get addicted.

For fear of closeness,
for fear, we become too much alike.
My face is the same as the blood in the sink,
inspired by neglect and the old war in my head.
For fear, sour breath can't be manipulated,
for fear, we'll share the same pair of eyes.

The lavender surrounds me
that my head will lull into
and my eyes will open
aware it disappeared
and so you fade like
the aged oak that once carried me in its' arms
that lived on 409
and the desire to cross that
street one more time

Ed and his wife are likely
no longer with us
but I wonder what it's like
to not have to make the effort
to have a home
seek you out
and want you
to still be in its' life
but I wonder if I stand here,
next to that stop sign
where I caught up to it
in size

find a piece of you that remains in this world
I can feel the softness of your palm
that never was
I almost know what it feels like to belong
someone's love to pour over me
and not feel greedy or ashamed for needing it so badly

I ache
to be held
to be touched
A moment of tenderness,
touch of my shoulder blade.
dad's warmth for me died
when you did
I wonder if it is selfish
to inquire, that you come home
your spirit can live in my heart
possess me like you want me
as if being my mother
was a privilege

Dad told everyone at my graduation party,
I was unplanned and that lavender where
he and I felt it in our hands,
he put a bushel in my hair
pushes me away
in the home of my own mind.

It whispers, it tries to tickle my arm
but it tricks me and admits
what my own parents, alive and dead
refuse to do.

Resentment has always made its home
in my arms, like warm candlelight caressing
my face as I give life to the wick
It always stings, as your palms did
or not knowing ******* the things
inside of you that made you want to die

I wonder
if it was
the same
when you were
a child

It starts with the difficulty
I have
in seeing you as human,
as if sharing the same blood only
inflicts disease.
Both damaged creatures
inside
I'm filled with love for
the undesired.
As if I am diseased,
having been taught many lessons
in human agony
and I am resentful of my empathy
burrowed for awhile
then gone forever
never felt entitled to any
of the tears I've cried, have never
felt entitled to
what I've been put through.
Back in the 90s, I can see
that tube down your throat
and I feel it too

vacuumed the contents of my stomach
but I doubt they were equipped to clean
up the clutter and dander
still, I write about you
in the spirit of your suffering
like the rat
who missed its'
poisoning

I see your parched lips
like that of a dying rose,
the small cracks forming
are like an indentation of their own.

You speak in that same tone they once called me,
as if it isn't patronizing
to be treated as a child,
despite having adult skin.

This treatment makes me wiser
of the cruelty of love
or even the fear in thinking it exists.
The lost luster,
apparent just in this one bad day
and I remember the reoccurrence of rain,
with its strange heat smacking my face
I wore the same look you have now.

The feeling of leather,
the hurt of words,
an admission in not knowing what one was doing even in their creation.
It is not a need,
to water our own flowers that wilted so long ago.

I have established their presence,
but we still try.
Life blossoms through you,
those opportunities
the talent,
the potential
and urge to believe
you can trust somebody
to do better than you’re doing yourself.

There it is,
this beautiful symptom
and these gardens the cause.
The same thirst
we all died from as a sprout,
same blood we shared
being clipped too soon and
placed in a vase.