i am so in love with someone
who is so in love with me
i can't write about it
because every time i look at her
a verse writes itself
i am hands-off
i am all-in
i am so completely ******.
it will hurt like hell.
i am doing it anyway.

I. watching a lot of sit-com television. i notice when the audience forces their track-laughter at all the bad jokes.
II. listening to music from the seventies. i had to get new music taste. all of my old favorite songs have your name written in the lyrics, i turn them off as soon as they come on.
III. reading a lot of poetry books. sometimes, people write things and i feel like they are coming directly from my fingertips, like they know exactly what you've said to me and how hard it knocked the air out of my lungs.
IV. writing. sort of. every time i try, i feel like it is more diary-entry and less poetry. i am scared that i made myself a new person and this one doesn't want to feel anything.
V. kissing people. i keep my eyes closed. this new persona i've adopted doesn't want to tell you what i think about when he puts his hand on my thigh.
VI. not calling. sometimes, i write out long messages and i do everything but press send. i feel like i have to record how many times i almost do, oh my god, i almost do, but i don't.
VII. talking about everything. i never stop talking, it is something you used to hate about me, something about a bird in my chest always trying to free itself. sometimes, i don't always say the right words. another thing you used to hate about me.
VIII. wearing everything but the clothes you gave me, everything but the sweatshirt i slept in while you were away, everything but the dress i wore when you kissed me first, everything but the t shirt i wore when you kissed me last.
IX. writing. sort of. writing about how if i had known that was our last kiss i would have dressed nicer, or held on longer, or not walked away, or kept myself from crying.
X. doing everything, absolutely everything, so i have no time to slow down and miss you. i haven't slowed down enough to tell if it is working. i can't tell if i am a new person without you or not a person at all.

its not a love poem.
its a poem about your mouth,
your hands on my thighs
and around my throat and,
its not a love poem.
its a poem about your eyes,
all the way across a room or
an inch away from mine, like theres a difference,
like you've
already gotten a taste and you're asking
for just a little, baby just give me a little bit more.
its not a love poem.
its a poem about your words, all of your
unkind, your hands around my throat, your
eyes that have twisted my gasps into mockery,
all empty like you've tasted just a little bit of blood
on my lips, on my wrists, my thighs,
and its an inch away, just a little bit,
baby just let me give you a little bit more

love knows things i do not.
love knows your hand on my cheek,
it knows what your lips taste like,
what your sheets smell like in the morning,
your legs tangled with mine.
it knows the light falling in your room,
the dust over your bookcase,
which books you haven't touched in years.
love knows what you say when you're upset,
the insults that you don't mean,
how you cry when you're angry,
how you sit at the end of the bed
with your hands in your lap
and stare at the linen while mumbling an apology you wrote on a napkin before coming home.
love knows that you will come home.
but,
i know things love does not.
i know what it feels like to search for answers
that aren't written for me.
i know the distance between us.
i know every mile.

lovers who are just not quite ready for each other;
we watch the clock on the wall like it is telling us a secret
tick listen, tock please listen, tick keep it together, tock keep listening.
write about me to pass your time
i will catch up later.
when it is you and me, i breathe in smoke
and there are no clocks.
it's too late to keep your hands to yourself
there is space between us designated for the minutes that move
we stare, we watch, we are listening with our ears to the walls
good and bad, yes and no,
i write about you when
i think about you
to pass this time,
to wait
and wait
for our time
tick its okay, tock i will catch up later, tick wait for me, tock wait for me.

ive been told
many great poets relied
on mind altering drugs
opiates and pills
in order to force their hand
to the paper
in order to jumpstart their brain
like a side of the road
two degrees
junkyard car

i have nothing to write about
when I abstain from your name
and calling you my ******
gives you the power to roll my eyes
back into my head
with pleasure
it gives you the power to **** me
typical bathroom scene
slumped over your
"i miss you"
choking on the apologies
i couldn't spit out
in the middle of winter

ill never be a great
and self destructive artist
not because i light your memories up under a spoon
not because I let you infect me
not because I roll you up and set you on fire
and breathe in your sentences

ill never be a great
self destructive artist
because there's no jumpstart
or moment
of connection
ive tried
every drug i can find
and im still
sitting with the shower running
letting it burn me
begging to feel something

because really
what's the difference
between numbing me
and telling me
you don't love me anymore

i have played this scene so many times
back and forth; it feels nostalgic like a memory.
i am lying next to you,
legs tangled up,
running your hand through my messy hair
using your chest as a pillow
your breathing is some tired syncopation and your heartbeat is an alarm clock,
it is lazy-
whatever happened before is over
it has become quiet
no shirt, blankets in a ball at the end of the bed
maybe i was crying, maybe we were having ***, maybe you yelled and i got defensive, maybe it was nothing at all
it is still,
we say sorry without speaking,
it is understood and we come to agreements
we fall asleep and wake up and whatever happened before is over.
it plays in my head so often
it feels like i am recalling your smile
domestic moments,
some moments where you are here after it is over.
some painful, fake, imaginary memories where you stay,
you stay, you stay.

it sounds like something you say to someone you can't stop thinking about and maybe when i told you i hated you i was a hypocrite and maybe i have always been a hypocrite but i did i do i hate how you planted seeds in my lungs and watched me choke on the roots i hate how you filled me with beautiful things just to see the smoke when you lit it up into flames i hate how you were a liar and you told me you loved me and you didn't mean it i hate how you created me from something destructive and ****** and you watched me want you and you watched me love you and you watched me suffocate and im a hypocrite because i hate you and i feel like an idiot for doing anything for you i hate how you made me be the person i never wanted to be i hate that our odds never improved i hate that you didn't love me i hate that you lied to me i hate that i let you i do not miss you ive told you there is nothing here for you under a cheap tapestry there is nothing here for you do not mind the girl behind the curtain writing poetry about the boy that broke her heart there is nothing here for you i can repeat it while i move boxes of our memories out of my chest out of my heart i can repeat it when its late and i want to tell you i miss you (i do not miss you) i can repeat it until it sets the forests in me on fire and i think i am on fire because i never got to be angry i sat in tears and never got to be angry i wasn't able to hate you and now i hate you i do not miss you there is nothing here for you and im a hypocrite because i am a liar because i love you because i miss you because if you told me you missed me too i would resume position and give you everything but anger is easier than acceptance and i can't play with fire anymore i do not miss you i do not miss you i do not miss you

sometimes i know i need to
write about you because my
body will start to buzz like
there is electricity inside of
my veins and i will itch
to get rid of your eyes in
the back of my head, and even
if i don't exactly know what to
do with my hands they will
trace themselves over your
memories and they will whisper;
do you remember when you
were in love? do you remember
when you had it all? and i keep
writing to erase, i write and drink
and try not to remember how it
feels to lose you, every time i open
my eyes i lose you again. i write
to keep my hands busy so my chest
doesn't ache and no parts of me
whisper your name to the dark but
i could write for-ever and
i would still break pencils in half
and keep my hands clasped to
avoid any painful wandering;
*of course i remember.
how could i forget?

it repeats in my head like a
mantra or a desperate prayer,
hands clasped tight over a
crucifix necklace. but i cant envision
myself praying just to god, i am so
desperate at this point i am yelling
my invocations to any force that will
listen and my eyes are shut tight like
a little girl wishing for time to
slow down, reciting
"please dont get sick of me please
dont get sick of me
please dont get sick of me" and i
am never sure of what happens when
i open my eyes and i am terrified to
unfold my palms as if someone will
catch me by my wrists and hit my hands
with a ruler and assume i have ever wanted
anything this bad before in my whole life

ive spent my life indebted to people
like my presence costs $2.50 an hour
and the global minimum wage isn't high enough
to sit down and listen to me mumble about how sad it is that people at grocery stores artificially dye flowers to make them bluer than your eyes as if the world is a losing competition against your hands around my neck
i have not spent all my life afraid
its worse than nostalgia
and not as present as deja vu
but i used to dive off of cliffs
and fall in ignorance
but ive known since i was young
everything costs something
$2.50 an hour
a lifetime
a century
whichever comes first
i was told to be afraid
because no one wants to stick around a raincloud with no umbrella
and every word i say is fragranced with an apology
i lost the person i used to be
there was no funeral or mourning
i can't even bring myself to thank the people who dont mind getting their clothes soaked

ive been thinking a lot, you know, about being alone. about my body as a vacant room. about the loneliness of a room with someone in it that wishes they were somewhere else. no matter what corner i turn to, every room is empty.
ive been thinking about forming habits, too. about how they say it takes three weeks to develop a habit and four weeks for your skin cells to regenerate. as the days get closer i wonder if my skin will know that you're gone when the clock runs out on the last day. if it will feel like how you touched me before you left in some expulsion of your last traces. if my hands will shake and i will wish you were next to me again, all over me like you're hiding me from the world.
ive been thinking about how you hid me from the world. i get to this part and i stop writing. you asked me to fight everyone with you and start over, you asked me to run away and build from scratch and it sounded like seduction. you made it sound so good, i get to the part where i wanted it and i stop writing.
mostly ive been thinking about being alone, though. because i can't afford to write it down, i can't afford to break this habit. my skin wont know your touch but these words are burned into my hands, and thighs, my neck and face and chest. ive been thinking about your name burned into my chest. stamped, branded and
ive been thinking about if my dying skin cells are going to miss yours, ive been thinking about if youre dying to see me and if your skin itches like mine does. if every room you enter is empty when youre waiting for me to walk through the door like i used to, as it keeps getting closer, you want to keep the skin that knows my touch because its the only part of me you have left.

you felt like a still life.
i laid next to you and held your hand
and tunnel visioned on your IV
while everyone sat around you in a circle
coloring you in without looking up from their paper
convinced they can capture the color of your lips
as if they exist in a way that isnt
completely unique to you.
scratching their pencils in an echo
that stretched across the grand-*******-canyon.
(i'm no artist
but i traced a smiley face into your palm)
i've watched your eyes fall over your pale skin
cursing your own body for making you into
a stone cut marble statue
instead of a vibrant painting on the wall.
(this poem does your portrait no justice)
if i could drown myself in a thesaurus
i would come up with words that are
synonymous to the hole you are leaving in my chest,
you felt like a still life.
you reached out and ghosted your hand over river water
you reached out and pulled budding flowers from trees
you reached out and broke pencils and snapped necks
you reached out for please do not touch signs
(you reached out and your arms fell short of distance.)
and i refuse to believe your legacy will stay in this artwork,
that your vibrant light will be caged in the chest of those who know you,
that your masterpiece will be shoveled into the storage rooms,
and pushed around and cracked at the edges,
that eventually i will forget how your voice sounds
and how you reach out and touch right through me
(and how you clung to your body and forgave it for betraying you.)
i can only imagine
that you will leave me
(with a grief that is waiting in a sickly anticipation
crawling up my legs and surrounding me like ivy)
i dont know anything about grieving
but it sounds so heavy, like a cement weight subject
a sixteen-year-old isnt supposed to teach.
(with deafening echos of people who scribble over your eyelids)
(with a calling into the earth like there are stones in my stomach and i make a home in the bottom of a riverbed)
and don't understand what it means
to watch art be nothing more than art
when your words become quotes
and your life becomes dates
and your eyes become a memorial
(i will live with you
trapped in the holes)
covering the parts of me i left at your bedside
drenched in the ironic taste of brushstrokes and immortality
you still feel like a still life
you are your own genre
you give art a new definition
(and i will spend the rest of my time
getting your details right)

i talk about leaving in a whisper, like i
shouldn't raise my voice too loud and jolt my
self awake in the process.
in secret, hiding in the corners that you
blocked off in red tape. you dont need
this anymore, you scribble out pieces and
make me look more like you. you dont need
any of this.
you dont need this. you
have me.
behind closed doors, i try to gather my strength
to break down the frame. i press my palms against
the wood and check the lock.
i talk about walking away and my feet are planted. i tell
everyone that i am moving, but they can see my stillness.
what's taking so long? over and over, like an alarm clock
to my sleeping figure, what are you still doing here?
i talk about leaving, but i can't hear it without freezing.
eyes wide and stunned, i can't hear it without trying to
hide inside of myself.
it's just leaving, but i can't stop my voice from wavering.
it's just leaving, but my fists don't make the door budge.
it's just leaving, but it circles around my brain like a fish
trying not to fall down the drain. trying not to break down
the door.
it's just leaving, they tell me,
i am anchored to my pain.
where would i go? i reply.

a terrible poem about how i fell in love
when i was a child and i grew with it
like moss on an abandoned building,
and i stopped being a child but
i held onto it with the winsom that only
a fresh-faced little girl knew how to
handle things with care,
how to touch gentle, the only way
you can when your heart
has never been broken.

a terrible poem about how i write about
you every day and i'm not sure if anyone
who reads it knows what you did to me or why
i cry in airports and i don't think i can write
enough terrible poetry to explain it

a terrible poem about how i leave my bed and
i see my friends and i do whatever i think my
ribcage can handle and i'm not sure if its a desperate attempt
to forget or a desperate attempt to revive
that girl who knew how to
feel things without breaking her wrists,
how to love things without suffocating them,
how to touch gentle because her heart
had never been broken.

i feel like i am the only one who gets upset about how quickly the earth moves and it took a lot of time and a lot of people to sit me down and explain why i can't feel each second and each rotation like a carnival ride and i think messing with my placemat at the dinner table asking why we all don't get dizzy was the first time my family made me feel stupid. this isn't poetry as much as not being able to sleep but when you're a writer i doubt there's much of a difference. things go over my head a lot so i always ask people to be blunt with me but sometimes the force trauma hurts so bad i want to throw up honesty and i can't admit that i like beating around the bush better than knowing exactly what's happening and being able to cross off and narrow down like a game where i never learned how to deal with feeling genuine emotions for other people because there is a strange comfort in ambiguity knowing that even though things change all the time and the earth spins at a million miles an hour that's not the reason why im sick

Maybe it's because
No one helped me up
When I scraped my knees
On pavement
And every
"not good enough"
I receive feels like
An avalanche
And I ponder
Moving words
From present
To past tense
Maybe it's because
My hands shake too much
And my mouth moves faster
Than my brain allows it to
Maybe it's because
I'm too focused on myself
And write ****** poetry
That doesn't compare
To car crash love stories
Maybe it's because
I dream about change
But hide in
Blankets and
Behind baggy clothing
Trying to find a source
of this
Unhappiness
Maybe it's because
I was dealt a ****** hand
I was treated unfairly
Or maybe it's because
I allowed myself
To take these things
And scream
About how miserable I am
Without trying
To change them

im calling to tell you that this is the last time i will call
you until i call you again and repeat it like an automated voice message.
im calling to tell you that i hope i get your answering machine because
i know its that stupid preset recording and
i want to touch you but i dont think
i could stomach the sound of your voice.
im calling to tell you that i dont know what to do with my hands
and i keep picking up the phone to tell you i hate you but
it dissolves and drips down my throat as i wait for the beep instead and
im calling to tell you *sorry, in advance, about the poems.
i just wanted to stop calling.

it is late, cut holes in old linen sheets
let light pour through into a space we have designated as our own
"our kingdom," you whisper, "you and me versus the winter."
it is lazy sunday morning, time trails behind us and you count freckles on my face
familiar like old habits, strumming against my stomach like your favorite guitar.
it is tired, staring at glow-in-the-dark stars like a discount planetarium
"a serious question," we know these words are never serious. you dont always have to ask, just kiss me, just kiss me, just kiss me.
it is tuesday afternoons, barefoot dancing in refrigerator lights
like safe habits, like a home to go to when the people you love cannot contain you.
like free space to be completely not contained, like breaking necklaces,
"please dont leave, not yet, a few more minutes."
write poems, i will turn them into songs.
make movements, i will turn them into habits,
running my hand up and down your arm like executive function
hushed whisper, a just-you-and-me whisper;
it is a poem every time you open your mouth.
you are the sunlight coming through the linen,
you are the lazy sunday morning,
you are what i hold onto during winter,
you are my hope for spring.

Last night I read a poem about God, and
it sounded so good I almost believed it.
God, hands out the window and hair blowing,
God, smoking a cigarette in a passenger's seat.
Even when you humanize all of your fears,
You can still
Spit them out in the middle.
God, moving her lips with the music and the hot sun,
God, breaking the law with that look.
God, being small enough to cower over and close
Enough to stare in the face,
Where do you take someone like that when they ask?
All the way, I suppose.
The seat next to me is godless, and I almost believed it.
I imagine someone being strong enough to
Cleanse me just by looking at me,
I imagine holding onto something that feels holy and
Not having to deal with burnt palms.
If I could take God anywhere, I would take her to
My grandfathers grave. I would take her to my
Best friends grave, I would take her to the site of
My life changing and,
I would watch her chain smoke cigarettes and cough it all out.
God, with her sharp teeth and quiet tongue and
God, with her hair pulled back and her gaze removed.
If God was in my passenger seat, I would take her to
All of my hurt and ask her to pick it up.
I would ask her to take it all back,
And she would laugh.
God, that laugh.

I never understood when people would tell me,
“You are just like your mother.”
Always with a tone in their voice I didn’t quite comprehend.
I run back to my dad at the grocery store
After wandering through the aisles alone and he rolls his eyes.
“You are just like your mother.”
I thought he meant always getting lost and I wonder how
Many times he had to lap around the store to find her sniffing candles
With someone she hasn’t seen in five years,
Laughing like a joke shes told over and over.
See, I always thought I was like just like my dad.
We have the same eyes, and we don’t like to approach people
The way she can so easily catch an audience.
But when I make a joke a little too loud at a family reunion
My cousins laugh,
“You are just like your mother.”
I wonder what arguments she has invoked with her words.
How she has said what
No one wants to hear, but always like she picks it out
Of the middle of the air it was sitting in.
When I get upset and my ears start ringing, and I hold onto
My stubbornness like it is my last breath, my older sister tells me,
“You are just like our mother.” I figure she has better eyes to see
How shes grown,
How shes learned patience at my hands and taught to extend
Love in all directions as a choice.
Love is not always a choice, but loving yourself enough to see that you’re wasting it
Looks like my mom picking me up from my worst day and standing in
Line to buy me a milkshake as I cry in a chick-fil-a.
She told me about a story of a time she held on too tight to someone even though
She knew it was the wrong thing to do.
“I think you’re a lot like me. You always want to see the love.”
Just like my mother, I learn the hard way. And sometimes I do it more than once;
The way she will teach a nine year old how to read over and over again
Until he stops sounding it out and it rolls off of the tongue.
I know that I’m capable of sharing, of teaching, of patience,
Of honesty and love because my mother
Taught those things to me.
I think of everything I love most about myself, and all of the possibilities
For what I can become in the reflection of my mother helping me curl my hair for the prom I’m not going to.
When she needs to remind me I am quick witted, I am eloquent, I am smart, I am beautiful, I grin and say
“I am just like my mother.”

we reach the same point in the middle of every night,
cards folded,
lights turned off,
i sit on the edge of the bed and wait for an approving word
like a trained animal,
waiting for your hand to extend to me as an act of peace
in the middle of the war.
in the morning, there are notes where you've messed up the sheets without me.
the shower is on while i'm sleeping, the words are scrawled on the mirror.
the cereal made for one is spilled in the sink, it is spelled out in the bowl.

every night we wait for a slight movement,
some reason to pull our hair out and punch walls
some violent excuse for violence that is aimed towards how
i am too stubborn and you are too hot-headed and
i pretend not to notice when you stay out late,
i crawl into bed without permission and the fan echos the sentences
so i don't have to open my mouth when you stumble in
with someone else's perfume closing the bedroom door.

there is a disconnect, the words i am too terrified to say are
painted on every picture you look at,
on the edge of another woman's fingertips,
in your hand of cards each night.
and i dream that i scream it,
i write it on the brick side of abandoned buildings,
the top of cardboard boxes,
***** doors of train-cars,
every place you pass has my handwriting, marking my territory
making you look at what you've done to me.
it is everywhere,
the soles of your shoes,
the stoplights on the busy streets to work,
i follow you like a ghost,
the back of a notebook you bought me with pages torn out
and edges folded:
*you used to love me, baby, dont you remember?
you used to love me.

My grief and I are well-acquainted.
Two strangers sharing the same body.
How else to explain grief but as a mirror?
The grief and my body.
The grief or my body,
It is my grief every time.
I torture it,
I lay in it,
I set it on fire.
A still burning star,
A still living thing,
A still life of my first night alone.
The room is still, too.
It does not breathe
It does not turn over, reach for my hand,
Cough, or flutter its eyelids open onto my face.
It is just a room with two bodies.
I hold my grief,
I do.
I hold it until it stops bleeding,
Until it too is a lifeless thing,
I hold it.
How many more times can I say I miss you
without flinching?
How do you write about what it should've been without sounding like an *******?
Without losing yourself in the fantasy?
Like a hymn,
I give my grief to God but it doesn't go anywhere.
This is where the poet in me stops breathing,
And it hurts,
It hurts,
It hurts to breathe.
Pulsating through my body like adrenaline,
Fueling these poems with empty traces of your name.
The grief opens my mouth and says your name.
Over and over,
Chanting pleas of worship.
How are you still standing?
The grief knocks me over,
Like mid-day waves against the rocks,
And now I am a hollow body of devotion,
I tend to my grief like a garden
On my hands and knees,
and watch it
Grow into weeds.
At least there is life here somewhere.
I lay in my grief.
Two bodies laying in the dirt.
How can you just stand there and watch me die?

i'd do everyone around us a big favor
and apologize
i'd do them an even bigger favor
and forget you
but baby you knew
my stubborn masochism was my best quality
when you told me you didn't love me
so tell me
does it feel good
when i make you feel wanted
when i pull you close to me
and hold my tongue
when i regurgitate your fantasies and choke on your scripts
is it everything you wanted it to be
am i lifeless enough
am i suffocating enough
tell me
did you keep me within drunk arms reach
because you knew
i could learn to take your blows
like a ******* champ
is it everything you wanted it to be
do you see the way you hurt me
in the way i left you
you cornered me and expected me not to show my teeth
you shouldn't have been
surprised when i fought back
there's nothing wrong with being a monster
can't you see who you made me be in your reflection?
look closer

i wanted to write you poetry but my hands haven't stopped shaking since you told me you didn't believe in love but you believed someone would one day put up with me and i can't tell whats ending and whats beginning im sure i'd like to say our relationship began last night but it would taste sour in my mouth to lie like that and i like how you say youll never grow up and you want to throw away what you have and kiss people and taste like alcohol all the time youre not realistic and your head is under water i can't even try to make myself write about you because every adjective is risky and i am on thin ice between hating you and caring too much what you think

there is a version of me who is covered in ash.
that girl would rather jump into the fire than put it out.
there is a version of me who is scared to be
the fallout, scared to be the end of the
sentence and the last touch.
i want to hold that girl in both hands.
i want to touch that girl gently.
that girl never listened.
i want to tell her in a language she will understand:
you have been wandering through the smoke for
so long, you can't see that this is just a room. this is
just four walls of a house, with a boy and a bed drenched in gasoline.
this is just a boy, this is not a home, this is just smoke and mirrors.
there is a version of me who wanted to save him from the flames.
i want to brush the dirt from that girls forehead and hold
onto her shoulders until she stops shaking. i want to tell her in
a language she will understand:
it will always feel like this. it will always feel like gasping for
air, you never know when its safe to be yourself or when its safer to be a version he wants. it will always feel like planning an escape route you never use. why wont he open the window? why wont he let you breathe?
there is a version of me who needs someone, and i wish to God that i could cover her eyes with both hands until the pain dissipates and it is just a room once again. until it stops burning.
that girl is so brave.
that girl tried to leave so many times.
when she puts one hand on the doorknob, i want to stand behind her.
this is just an empty room with scorched walls. there is nothing
more than the nothing that is left.
when she asks. "where will i go?"
i want to whisper, "you will come home to your heart."

there was a time
where i would've tied rope around each star
and handpicked every comet
and gift-wrapped them
if you asked me to

where i woke up in a hospital bed
with your apology still laced in my IV
begging for contact
like i was addicted
to the way every goodnight
sounded like a suicide note

i remember the first time
you told me you wanted to kiss me
like you were sharing a secret
with a part of me i can't get to anymore

the moment it exited your lips
and echoed inside of my ribcage
i could feel you reach for it through my lungs
sacrificing me to the burden you carried

there was a time
where i would have jumped off of trains
and written you poetry
about how everything you do is lethal

and my death wish is no longer imminent
and i could tell you that you were the sun and I was Icarus
and i got too close and everything i remember went up in flames
and my arm hurts from trying to capture the stars
and trying to leave the world in darkness
that i didn't care if the plants would die and the oceans would still
if it meant you told me you missed me

but ive attached new memories
to the ones you burned for me
ive made up moments for the time ive lost

and i don't listen to your favorite songs every day
like you're trying to tell me something you couldn't reach through me and take back
because you weren't
you never were

and if i could go back in time
id tell the girl stacking ladders to the sky
rearranging your name in constellations
that you're not even worth
a nightlight

to bring back what you love the most. to reach your
hands into the dirt and take it from its resting place, all
the dust you would brush off of its skin.  
i bury my losses in my stomach. i swallow every
grievance and eat loss whole. its not enough
just to lose you. i want to devour you.
to hold everything in your teeth for so long that
it turns into nothing, wet and falling apart against
your tongue. you cant repay what you owe just by
looking at it, just by being there. you have to do more
than just hold it to fix it.
nothing you bring back to life will ever be the same, cracks
form in new places and life grows in the space where your
skull meets the grass. if you lay still for too long, you will
hear the bugs whisper and feel the ground move.
to be reborn in
all of the places you're used to, like a mountain range
changing with every rock that falls.
to be able to look at the same person twice without flinching.
i just want all the things i can't have, my stomach twists when
i think about where you're lying under the pavement. to bring
back what you deserved to have taken away, to get on your
knees and beg for rain to wash this taste out of your mouth.
all the words you would spit up, all the stories you would
tell and bile you would choke on,
to bring back what you love the most.
to look at yourself.
to look at anything in the eyes.

its one of those moments where i want
to crawl into your skin, underneath your
eyelids and trace my fingers on your neck
the moon has nothing to say to you anymore,
the ocean is defiant, She won't look you in the eyes.
the stars keep falling in and
out of place How did you let it get this far? and
your head is between your knees and you're chanting
I dont know, I dont know, I dont know, and
i want to wrap my arms around every part of
you that hurts, twist my limbs over the pieces
of you that ache for the sunlight, How did
you let it get this far? There is no force in the
Universe that respects me enough to respond. All
eyes of the world on my fingers burning marks
into your flesh, How did you let it get this far?
There are black holes, it
is all empty, planets are hanging on your answer and
its one of those moments where i want to expand
into the palms of your hands and tell you that you are your own God. and I would let
you tear me apart with your teeth.

my hands are shaky
my eyes are the kind of dry that only happens when you wake up after crying
my breath catches in my throat like there is a roadblock in my lungs
i regret every word i write and stick into permanence
but i don't know how else to explain the whirlwind feeling in my stomach
i want to go back and mute our conversations
push my future self to stop before staining my favorite songs with memories that hurt my chest
i want to go back and tell myself,
"darling girl,
take a break
sleep early
watch the sunrise a different day"
but you were magnetic, baby
and i could help myself but that was no fun
ive always struggled with emotional permanence
i grew up being told i was trouble
the absence of feeling is the absence of memory
in a repeated cycle that sets flame to the things we created together
i watch it burn with tools to smother the fire
but my arms are paralyzed
i want to go back
and tell myself that
sitting on the kitchen floor
scratching poetry into the floorboards
was not a valuable consumption of my time
feeling cold in june was a waste of hot days and
we could have been so good
if i had let us
if you had let us
here is my promise;
july will be sun kissed and sweet
my mistakes will fall off of me like water
weightless and improving
i will find new music
i will create more
there is nothing wrong with putting your heart into the wrong thing
there is nothing wrong with being naive,
i can't keep falling apart when june refuses to bend to my expectations
july will be without you
sun kissed and sweet
i will not fall asleep trying not to cry
no morning headaches and sad poetry
it will be new
i will make it new

i have these dreams, smelling
the three-AM summer night
through the screen of my window.

my hands are pressed against my
stomach. i am in bed and i keep my
eyes shut the entire time. i am
trying to hold everything inside.
my hands trail up and down my
arms, im begging
myself not to forget your lips,
i am holding every place you touched me
permanent. i am tattooing the way you
look at me to the spaces of my ******* ribcage.

in these dreams, you have always just
left. i can still smell you on my skin and
in my hair, on the clothes that need to
be washed, on the sheets.

my fingers are gripping the bedframe
and im begging it not to change. the Sun falls
in and the dust falls over and over the blankets
in a rhythm that makes it look like your
side of the bed has life in it again. my hands are
around my throat and on the back of my head,
looking for places that have a trace of you on
them, looking for pieces of you that you might have
forgotten to take with you.

in these dreams, i am hollowing out the
walls of my body, trying to find every memory
so i can feel it vein-deep and to the bone, you have
always just left. i am always just looking around for things
to replace the space you used to occupy.

when i wake up, and its still dark out, the dust stays where
it always has. the Sun won't even help me pretend that you're
still here. when i wake up, its like you have just
left all over again.

i’m so sad that it doesn’t even feel like you anymore. it’s
vein deep and in the pit of my stomach, it’s
all around me and when i lie down it
clings to me like blankets in the summertime. and it
used to be you, you mouth, your hands, your words,
all wrapped up and ticking like a time bomb, but now it
is just me without you, my own mouth that feels like it’s
been scraped raw on the inside, my own hands that
never stop shaking when it rains or when it’s
too quiet or too dark, my own words that i haven’t
been able to collect back, all scattered on the floor
of your bedroom and underneath a mix of your clothes
and mine that neither of us have touched.
this used to be poetry about how it felt when you left me
but now it’s just poetry about how it felt when i
was not enough to make you stay.

because it echoes inside of my head
and i stare at a blank screen waiting
for the grace of God to light everything up
to light me up
to follow my parents footsteps and pretend im not in
desperate need of a deep breath
we are putting on a show and i am the star of their exasperated
"just get through it, alright?"

i know its over
because it has slowed to this gradual
remedial stop
after so much time and fake kinetic energy
and all i am left to do
is ponder the imaginary hypocrisy of something real
that is unable to be created
but destroyed in an instant
that manages to take hours
like my own personal paradox
my own personal big bang
i starve while watching everyone eat full meals

but, i suppose, my pauses cause bitterness and i know its over
because it took you this infinite instant to form
"i don't care anymore"
and you watched the expressions dance across my blank face
like you were my very own god
and in those words
that instant
that feeling
that remedial stop
you were telling me
"you don't need a deep breath.
you need an oxygen mask."

love is your recovery room
it is not the accident that puts you there
it doesn't matter how many times
i push my pencil into paper
and pass metaphors off as my own

i know its over
because i know you well enough
to know what it looks like
when color drains from your face
when your eyes gloss over like you've never said my name before
you are worse than a corpse
alive and breathing while i stay hooked into an IV with your words pushing through my bloodstream

i can write and write and write
about how much i know
how well i can pretend
how many big breaths i need

but it will not make it less over
it will not change the fact that
while i sit in the middle of my own big bang
while i choke on this instant
i use my last words
to apologize for making so much noise
i use my last words
to ask if you're breathing alright

i let the dark in.
                    i keep the window open and i stare into the trees.
i think about holding onto the edge of anything, i think about
my fingers and if they desire anything enough to
   keep their grip.
when i was younger i always thought that when
bad things happened
there would be witnesses.

who is watching my ache?
                   where are all of the eyes when i need them?
bad things happen quietly.
i keep looking for a beginning,
looking for an end,
                i can't find either. it's over.
in silence, i let all of the dark in.
                  i don't think i'll ever know how to let go.
                  i don't think i'll ever know what i'm holding onto.
bad things happen softly,
there is violence in
everything gentle and
poison in everything kind.

when i was younger i thought that everyone
died in a comfortable bed, surrounded by
their families.
i thought that when bad things happened,
there would be witnesses.

                    so where is everyone?
is it just me staring into this dark?
                       i witness my own tragedy.
      i do nothing but look at flesh and bone.
every animal is greedy, every
           body wants to get away with something.
ive spent too much time on my hands and knees.
if there is blood i don't know where it begins and
            where it ends.
i don't know if i can keep watching this grief.
    i just can't find a place to put it down.

no one ever taught me
not to make homes out of the people i kiss,
not to make space in my ribcage for every meaningless "i love you"
so, more out of habit than kindness,
i have given myself to every undeserving wanderer.
i have watched them walk away with my pieces.
no one ever taught me how to keep myself whole in love
it echos through the walls of my chest,
what is left? what is left?

take a girl. take
all of her hurt, all of the nails piercing her hands, all
of the dead flowers taped to her skin. take her hair,
tree branches woven through and choppy bangs,
take her chest, how you can practically see her
heartbeat move the rest of her body. take her rib cage,
cracked open and tacked together, held up with fishing line
and guarded with rose bushes. take a girl who has never
been touched tenderly, who prepared for the storm so
vigorously she erased the calm that anticipates the rain.
take a girl with bugs in her brain, who can't help but
look like she's walked through hell barefoot, who
can't help but retrace her steps, who lusts after the heat
and overlooks the blackened char that coats her figure.
take a girl who runs, bolts at the first manifestation of desertion,
who obliterates the promises that lie in front of her just to
watch how easily they erupt. take a girl and call her "chaos"
because it is what she was birthed into and assembled from,
dark dirt packed into the crevices of her smile. take this girl and
give her to a boy. watch
him touch her gently, so gently it feels like he does not touch her
at all. so gently she wants him to ravage her.
give her to a boy that covers her face with his hands, clean hands
that he has scrubbed raw, clean hands that have learned gentle
through trial and error. give her to a boy that has always
done the leaving, he packs his things in the middle of the night
and only takes what he needs. the rest can stay. he is made
up of "look, don't touch," he is stone like marble with cracks running like stitches up his side. he has scars that cover his
clean hands, his arms, his chest, his back. take a girl and give
her to a boy, and watch her trace her fingers over his flesh gently,
so gently it makes him shiver,
so gently she wants to devastate him.
watch them interact like animals in the wild, people who have
grown with their fists up, people who have started from empty
and have learned what it takes to present entirety. watch them
tear each other apart without moving, eyes fixed on their
reserve, begging to know more without flinching.
watch them pull each other apart and fold the pieces around
in their palms, they stick every moment back into it's place,
gently, so gently that they want to rip what each other has
been wrongly taught into shreds, so gently that they want to
scrub what has stained them until it is clean. take a girl and
give her to a boy, let her kiss him so gently that they
want to do something stupid. so gently that they want to make
a mess of each other, so gently that they want to fall in love.

all beauty is
is the beginning of abhorrence,
it is horror that is easy to look at.
when can you twist your body
and turn it ******?
i can do it on command,
i have skilled the viciousness of my mouth to bite
willingly, to tear without reserve.
all poetry is
is running hands over skin,
touching yourself.
i make templates to map out the faults of my words.
i curve my neck towards my blame,
i rehash my faith on repulsion.
this madness has a frame to hold onto
in the middle of the transition
from something digestible
to something noxious.
beauty morphs itself into something
that burns to cover with your palms,
like a child trying to trap light between fingers,
maybe you should learn to keep your hands
to yourself.
all love is
is pressing our soles into the dirt and our
deception into the other side of the bed while we
construct a way out.
if we never love each other,
there is no refuge to fall from,
only towards.
when can i take my love
and make it hurt?
where can i place my lust so
you can watch it burn,
so you can watch it brand the only
body i can still stand to identify?
i can spit this truth from my lips without choking.
i don't care what it looks like while it is lying
dead on the floor.
this is the disgust that is so final, this is
what all beauty mutates into; something holy that
i can't love because i can't recognize.

there are things that no one has bothered to teach people like you
the ones who change friends with the weather and sit at tables crowded with people who don't know your name as if it can trick your brain into thinking you're less alone than the lack of people surrounding you
and it works almost like magic
pandora's box is presented in front of you
and you have no hands on your shoulder telling you not to peek
the gods above you are silent, no matter how tightly you push your palms together, your requests fall on deaf ears
with no warnings or red ribbons or safety locks
all of your past experiences forgotten
all of your mother's advice shoved deep into the parts of your chest that are closed off to the public
all of the nights that come seven months later hidden under your pillowcase
you forget the taunting "daddy issues" and how you flinch every time someone raises their voice
you exist openly, in a way that you've heard is synonymous with recklessness for the ones who haven't documented the way you stay up for hours each night begging the stars to send someone to love you
begging the gods who have shunned you
to stop losing your pieces when you hit the pavement
there are things that no one has bothered to teach people like you
there are lessons that you've had to learn from experience
your cautiousness clashes with recklessness and your abandonment fears are categorized as something else entirely
and no matter how you paint this picture
it is not poetic
you do not fall in love
you fall and fall and fall apart

i make up rules for myself and then i break them.
i have spent so much time picking out seeds from my brain.
i am trying to remove the rot i planted.
i promise i will smoke less,
and drink less, and
write more.
i promise i will spend less time living inside of my brain.
i can't explain this method of self-destruction.
it is not detonating.
it is perpetual loneliness, like sand through an hourglass.
i dissolve.
a steady rain
for days.
and maybe its stylistic,
as every writer enters a page the same way,
to pour.
to let the flood cleanse your skin, to feel
relief, reborn.
i make up these rules for myself as terms for falling apart.
i am only human, i have been buried with these words
and have the grief to prove it.
i smoke too much,
i drink too much,
i haven't been able to make it out of a poem alive
in months.

i am young. i am in the habit of saying things i think i mean because
i have no one to tell me right from wrong. i am in the habit
of giving everything i have to every one i pass because i have
no one to tell me what is enough and what is too much. it is
all just enough, i give every piece of me to every stranger with
warm hands and it is all just enough, i fall into myself in an
endless spiral of every stranger with a gentle first touch and it
is all just enough. part of how to stop being young is learning
to choose your words carefully, learning what i mean and what
i want to speak into meaning are very different things. part
of how to stop being so young is to learn that i should not have
to empty myself into a gentle touch or a warm hand because
there is no place for me to go besides inside of myself. no one has
the capacity to contain me, no one has the ability to hold all of
what i involve in their cupped hands. i fall through the cracks
in their fingers and onto the floor like sand, how to stop being
young is learning that i am concrete, i cannot push myself into
anyone and expect them to carry me on their shoulders. how to
stop being young is learning that i don't need anyone to fill me
up, to fix me, to calm my brain, to keep me kind or save me.
but i am young. i am in the habit of wanting what i can't have,
i am in the habit of wanting to love so hard it kills me, and that
being said i miss you so much it hurts my skin.

it is a vision. an image. a clear view from the reflection of a surface of water.
you reach your hand out and it passes through, you pull
your hand back and your memories drip into the
pool and disperse. it makes sense. it is like clockwork. in and out.
it is a vision, image, reflection that has
no shape or form, but it falls off of your fingertips and formulates
rings around your mind.
we are standing in an empty room. i tell you that you
can do whatever you want with this space and all you
do is pull me close. it makes sense. it is like clockwork. it is
less like falling in love and more like opening your eyes,
letting your fists unclench when you didn't realize how
tightly you were holding onto what hurts. that's the
problem with letting go where you are used to holding on,
like muscle memory. like clockwork. it is less like
falling in love and more like i have been here this whole time
with my hands over my chest, always just a second-and-a-half
away, just missing you, on the other side of the pool just
waiting for your hands to grab hold of me. we are standing
in an empty room and i tell you that this is all i have and
i am waiting for you to reach through me. it is less like falling in
love and more like catching up. like, of course, there you are. finally.  
i've been looking all over for you.
and it makes sense.

i do not deserve what you did to me
what youve done to me
i have no poetry to write
i have no words to waste
i hope you remember that
there is absolutely nothing here for you anymore
i hope you never forget how that sounds
when you wake up
i hope you remember that
i could've given you every star if you asked
there is absolutely nothing here for you

there are ghosts that sing our story.
not inside of me, they surround and encompass
me and stick to me. i peel them off of me like
a wet blanket, like clothes that haven't dried all
the way through, like glue on the sticky hands
of a child. they write better than i ever could,
they wrote you this poem after i promised my
hands i would never compose another lyric about
how you left. you just left. you just keep leaving.
there are no words that can rhyme with your
descending footsteps, there are no
metaphors that can complement
the pen stain of your lips on mine. there are ghosts
that hum our story, they write about how we used
to puff cigarettes that we hated and drink ***** from the bottle
and walk around barefoot in the damp grass. they
scribble out all of our memories, like smoke tapping the
ceiling of the room with all of our remnants shelved
away. they have nowhere to go but up to the floorboards
of a chamber i can't get to. there are ghosts that keep
me awake, they whisper what you gave me and what
you took, they write you poems about how you can keep
what you have, about how i don't want it back. i would
never write you this poem. i would sit here and let the
hurt hit my face like rain, but i would keep the deluge
to myself. i would keep my stubborn arms folded across
my chest to keep my heart in its place. there are ghosts
that are not inside of me, they besiege me and they
say your name over and over. these ghosts still love you.
these ghosts know the things that i do not. they wrote you
this poem, they will write you poems like this until i forget
that your name sounds like sharpening a knife.
until i uncross my arms, until i let my
heart steady itself. there are ghosts that will love you until
the day i die. until the day i learn to love you until the day
i die, until the day i learn to exist in consensus with them,
until i become pliant, until i dry myself off, until i step out
of the rain and open doors to new places and let the
smoke of what we were never able to be find somewhere
else to go. go upwards, go out the window, go through the floorboards
of a room i am learning to unlock. there are ghosts that stand next
to me and catenate me just like shadows, they know the things
that i do not. they wrote you this poem.

yesterday i could see myself falling apart
its harder than i thought to miss you
and my chest is tight
and i always feel like everyone is looking at me
i never know what they want with me
and i travel all over and meet so many new people
i beg myself to fall in love someone tangible
sometime i can do more than just miss
someone who can be real
but it doesn't work anymore.
i wish it was still easy
and i could fall in love with everyone i met
like i used to when i was younger
and less afraid of what the world can give to me
less afraid of what i can handle
i am older now and i am so terrified
because i am in love
and i hate it
all anyone has done in my life is fall apart
and i don't know what id do if you fell apart
i need you and that is the scariest part of my world
i cannot replace you with a temporary solution
or a quick fix
you are it
you are it
i wrote this to ask you to stay
please don't fall apart on me
i am not strong enough to do this alone anymore

it is called she, hers, her and it was named after a poem i wrote on april 15th of 2017 after i had gotten my heart broken and i decided to turn it into art because i didn't know what else to do with it. im not great with speaking words, my mother always tells me that prose is not my forte, and i believe her. anyway, i wrote a book of poems, because its the only thing i know how to do. actually, i've written two. you can find the other one on my twitter (@altyrlog) because i feel like im breaking rules by linking things here. sorry, hellopoetry. they are both free to read in PDF form.

she hers her: http://docdro.id/s4EJay8

thank you for sticking by me and giving me the encouragement i need when i throw up words and put them into stanzas and then plaster them all over the place. you make me want to not give up.

he says “we end nicely. with a hug and a kiss. we end before it gets bad so we can never hate each other.
and in five years i’m going to call you
and ask you to marry me. please
say yes.” and i’m laying in the bed of a boy
that broke my heart and i’m
crying and saying “in five years
i will be just like every other girl
you’ve loved. i will know better by then.”
and he doesnt reply so
eventually i say “i could have
loved you forever if you had
let me. you win. you win, you win,
you win.” and instead of
saying anything he pulls
me close for a second and it feels like normal,
like maybe everything is going to be okay, but every
inch between us is cold we
can both feel it on our skin. “this doesn’t feel like
winning. i will love you for the rest
of my life. this doesn’t feel like winning.”

i cant help but replay it
like an old tape, flipped over and
shoved into dusty corners of bedrooms,
labels scratched off, there is a scrapbook
of the first time you touched me and there are
no pictures, this story has written itself and has been
stuck to the refrigerator like surviving it is some
accomplishment that i am patted on the back for and
it repeats, its stuck somewhere and i stare and flip it
over hoping that each time i hear your voice it will say
something different, something softer, something
sweeter there is a notebook somewhere quiet
and it sits by itself with my ink scratched into its pages
it has words you promised me that i haven't touched like
every time i hear this song there is ringing in my ears it
is static, there is torture dripping off the lines where you said
i am yours, i am yours, i am yours and i cant force myself
to let go of it just yet, it has made comfort in my chest it has
made its own home and i keep waiting for this story to
end differently, i keep waiting to write about something else
but its all over, i cant help but replay it, in every part of me and all encompassing like a virus like something i fall asleep
wishing i hadn't heard, i cant help it baby i am
yours, i am yours, i am yours

he can't write sober.  the mind of a man who
drinks too much whiskey and touches girls without
blinking. whos body is cold no matter how large the fire in
front of him is. he just can't write sober. i feel like the girls he touches,
rough coarse hands on peach fuzz skin. tongues battling in
and out of holes in my cheeks. angry apathetic grunts and dissatisfied sighs. im afraid this is where my life is headed. i am afraid i am the girls he touches and bitterly touches and fiercely touches and
he can't write sober, but he doesn't always drink. sometimes
his hands shake too much to drink. sometimes he smokes,
sometimes he crushes up pills and snorts them. sometimes
he doesn't bother crushing them up at all, he downs a
stiff drink with three pink or white circles and he sits in a
chair in the living room until he can see his hands move
in front of him, until he can pick up a pencil without wanting
to snap it. he can't write sober, so he doesn't. so he waits
for his mind to come to a tachycardic rhythm and he writes.
and when he does, he writes and writes for days. he can't write
sober but when he's not sober he will write for miles, he will
tell you about why he touches girls like me with soft pink skin
that is fresh, that is easy to bite into, that is full of life and not
stained rough and harsh. he can't write sober, so when
hes not sober he will tell you her name. he will not be able to do anything but tell you her name, her name her name her name-
he gets stuck, when hes not sober. when hes nodding in and out
of consciousness. he gets stuck on her name. he gets stuck on how
she felt under his hands, they weren't rough and calloused when
she touched him. he gets stuck on how she smells, he tries to
speak it onto the page but he can't, not sober anyway. like lavender.
stuck on her name and the lavender, the pretty girls with short
hair that sort of look like her, her name, her name and the
lavender on her neck and her wrists. her pretty wrists. how she
left and she looked like a ballerina in a performance, grabbing her
coat and her hat to cover her ears. that short hair never covered her ears. she looked like a dancer. the lavender, her name and her name and her name like a dancer. holding out her hand for him,
her small pink hand, her fresh hand, and
he can't catch her sober. can't keep up with her movements sober.
can't smell her sober, can't say her name sober. but when hes not
sober, he can write it all down. nod in and out, the lavender, her
name, what was her name again? what did she smell like?
until he passes out in that chair, by that fire, i feel like the girls
he discards and the whiskey he drinks. he can't do any of it sober.
so he doesn't, he doesn't have to.
her name, drink.
lavender, drink.
like a ballerina, drink.
her name, drink. her name, drink. her name, drink.
her hands, drink. her ears, drink.

i cut our dreams from the carcass of someone who didn't know any better.
i slice fresh pieces off of the things you speak into wanting,
a knife in the fist of someone who doesn't know any better;
begging to tinge the skin with devotion in place of disease.
i drain blood from soft and nameless remains, i hand pick silence
from marble statues and posed family photos,
i carve into the stomach of someone who didn't know any better.
i take her lungs and her ribs, i take her bones and
i take her heart and i ring my ***** hands
in a kitchen sink until the red washes down the drain,
chunks of carnality pressed into the palm of someone who doesn't know any better;
devout offerings to the darkness in the corner, to the chains on
the wall. i rip our love from the body of a stranger who didn't know
any better, i'm holding her
chest in my hands and i'm begging her discarded scraps to sink
into my fervor in place of condemnation;
i'm holding her chest in my hands and i'm chanting prayer;
"creatures must fall apart
to gratify the selfish wanting of warm bodies.
there is no creation without devastation;
if not you, me.
if not your flesh, mine."