i didn't know how angry
a scar could be until i saw
one on myself it was something
like a pocket-sized chilean coast
dragged across my knee disrupting  
and hills still dispersing as an acl
torn but unseen like how the many
excerpts of dreams were wiped clean
the anger is always ephemeral but
it always comes back whenever
i want to feel breeze in hair perhaps
i just miss the delaware river scene
and a long ago when my pencils
moved too quickly for my thoughts
yes indeed maybe i just miss loving
the journey not for the end like the
part where i did not know anything yet
still believed that it was all for the better

i sit and watch you and wait like a dog
always just two steps behind you and
always just begging you for scraps

as if two seconds of your attention
would be enough to fill my empty, empty stomach
as if two mere seconds would ever be enough

but you can't even give that-
my friends say i'm too nice and you just call out my name
and when i see that familiar self-satisfied smile on your face

i just become a bad liar and i just look the other way
and i go back to pretending like your bare minimum
is enough to fix my bellyache

passports, abstracts, and cigarettes
i swear it was all just for the aesthetics
thin walls, smoke screens, and window tints
we crawled through one just for the hell of it

it's nineteen and nose rings, i got asked for an id
we're twenty-one in jersey, you like my con artistry
i borrowed a street sign and failed to book an uber ride
everything is so much messier than i would've liked

i tired of people pleasing, and you never reply
we don't really need to talk about it
i try my best to not really think about it
said that i'm conceited, hedonistic, manipulative

but some nights i just want to drink until i start to lie
see, if coping was a job and paid an hourly wage
i'd be working overtime, id have a career drive
and i'd be a millionaire after six shots, or maybe five

my mom called, i cried by the dhall, on facetime
been thinking about how lucky we are to be alive
even if to deal with mornings and swollen eyes
even if dad's always on the night shift, even with
this big rift caused by the distance and the lack of time
just because we made out once doesn't mean you're mine
i got glimpses of a pink top, my blanket of a jacket
i bet it would look classier if you were wearing it
but you're distant and cold and partying is getting old
i'm forever out of polaroid film and cheap distractions
so i took an amtrak home, straight from south station
the flight back to boston was short but still exhausting
and when i walk home alone, the silence is unsettling
seems we're both better than i thought at method acting

my friends are all laughing
and the weather has been kind
i am about halfway to happy

and it is okay if i look utterly
atrocious in every picture
you've taken of me

i hate my smile with passion
and almost all of the time
but i like to think that

my smile is most
beautiful and genuine
when it is mirrored

by yours

drunk kissing blurry faces under neon lights
i'm sorry that your party had to end with a fight
but that creep was overstepping everywhere tonight

after sharing reservations about people getting high
your friend won't stop asking for my marly lights
these cigs for aesthetics are going to ruin our lives

debrief time: your parents argue, divorce is in sight
romance is everywhere, you're convinced that i'm blind
hey, out of curiosity, have you ever wished on a satellite?

someone i know was stuck in singapore
when her father passed away in china
and lately, i think i've developed a fear
of flying, but for all of the wrong reasons

so while others' stomachs perform flips and
all the engines and babies incessantly whine
and while someone worries about their own death
i sit, wholly at peace with the possibility of mine

but still terrified for everything after you drop me off
i am so terrified to just board this plane and fly away
every time i have to turn and leave home again
i am terrified it will be the last time i see your face