A - A7 - E7 - Cmaj7
Am - A - C - G

G - Cmaj7 - G - cmaj7
G - Cmaj7 - G - strum

A - Am - C - Am
A - Am - C - strum individually 1st fret, 5th - 3rd - 2nd chord

i’m just tryin to get by
some days i’m just tryin to get high
this society taught me not to cry
so this society can deal with my
battered ego tonight

cause i’m just trying to understand
i’m just getting a better grasp on this hand
but no one can play cards
and no one can make art
without thinkin ‘bout the hands
those around them have landed
our world is not simple
everyone's been branded
and everyone stuffs a few cards up their sleeves
and everyone leaves a trail of unused aces
when they leave

br) because you’re not the only one
who wants to run away to nepal
and you’re not the only one
who sees this nation is a maze
made of, shifting walls
and you’re not the only one
who’s afraid to take out a loan
and you’re not the only one
who feels uncomfortable alone with police
and in, shopping malls

i’m just tryin to get by
some days i’m just tryin to get high
it was this society that taught me not to cry
so this society can deal with
my battered ego tonight

this place hurts us all
and i wonder why we stay here
and fall for all the pretty ways to stall
away the mindless days
high heels and guns can intimidate
but not mediate, a fall

When i was eight my dad would bring me to a movie store, i was always curious about that back door, i didn’t know it was where they stored the ****, girls plastered on their backs and worn by men like casual dress their mouths all open in silent ****** and yet bets are they’ve never gotten that far and tonight i wonder where these screaming lick lipping girls are because I’ve never had one in me. And i think maybe most girls don’t because only men know that back door, that back entrance, where all the women love them on command, and real girls exist only as a figment of their imagination. When women’s pleasure is locked discreetly away you have to wonder whether men will ever taste chapped lips, touch fleshy hips, and love the bliss of a body on a body not a lifeless video hobby.

what texture did the skin take on
before it gave up and swallowed you?
did you ever for a second think
that you could be safe when
your fingers never stop twitching
every time you examine your neck in the mirror

there was a time before your hands
were reasons to hold on tight to anything
that could breathe
don’t tell me they’ve always been
this hungry

you must have known a night
before you had to bury them beneath pillows
to keep them from biting at your ribcage
fenced in by notions you put in your own head
they weren’t always this restless

there are ways to think about dying
without burning it into your skin
and there are nights that crackle like pyres
when you slip and let the embers sink in
and you think what is a body
but a vessel for sacrifice
but living on sharpened stakes
never felt so good
stop convincing yourself
it feels good

this depression is overgrown
you’ve never weeded the garden
didn’t water the flowers
and then turned away from your withering
too ashamed to call it your own

don’t you wonder when this self-hate
became the only trait that stayed hidden and safe
take those itching fingers to the shovel
and dig fresh beds to lay in
stop lying in the excuses
and uproot this grave

how does one climb out of a life
when every day is the same
when did you get so forfeiting
that you stopped attempting
to pull your body out of this?

i know it’s hard
to convince yourself this woman is not
the sum of her parts
don’t believe the man who spits at you
when you don’t agree to be the object of his rage
is sane
he will stay the same
but it’s up to you to stop
believing him right
and seeing yourself through his eyes

you are not a statistic
or a receptacle for pain
stop blaming your ribs
for holding on so tightly to your heart
for all the ways that you hate them
your organs are still smarter than you are

because they hold on
like deadbolts and locks
when you manifest the world’s sickness
in your brain
stop blaming yourself
and take the reigns

get a grip
that isn’t cataclysmic
learn to live
instead of picking at scabs
just to feel a pulse
you have gotten in too deep
and you are above this

i like everything about you just the way you are as you are when i met you. point blank.

i don’t have any preconception of who you feel you once were but aren’t now, that you wish you still were. that person doesn’t exist in my mind. the past doesn’t settle into my conscious. it’s just faint musings of something that doesn’t seem real or tangible to reality.

the person you currently loathe, i adore. the person you pine after, i feel nothing for other than what i feel about you now, because i don’t see him and you as separate or different selves the way you do. you are you. no matter what you perceive yourself as being, you are yourself perfectly.

and yet at the same time actually, i see you as very separate internally, with the work you’ve been doing, even if you don’t totally see that yet, because i know if him and i met when he existed in that state of mind we have both previously occupied in loneliness, neither of us would have been able to make sense of the other the way we can now. we both would have been too lost.

if that makes any sense. self vs internal self. treading water vs being swallowed alive. together vs loneliness. you vs a shell of who you are now.

it’s such a complicated balancing act but i wouldn’t have it any other way. when we backslide we are betraying no one but ourselves, even when it feels like we’re accomplishing and internalizing something greater than ourselves. we’re emptying our lives with our bodies, and it’s not fair to the selves we’re struggling to keep intact now for us to do that. we have things to live for. you have things to live for.

i like you now, not then. even if you see things flipped around. i don’t see any see-saw or scale that tips or drops to equal self-acceptance, nowadays with this disorder, i just see an hourglass. i know. i know it’s not that simple. but you’re the only one who sees value in what was. the people who love you now don’t see that, only how it has hurt and tortured you for far too long, and how much the person you are right now deserves to be free of it.

antioxidants, to help
we are poisoning ourselves with every breath
the records in the corner
crumbling underneath the dust in their crates
crunchy warm voices bounce off the sunrise
spinning around and crashing like cymbals
mist at 7 am and a cup of black coffee with two teaspoons of sugar
far away from life
in a corner, under a desk
all my friends want to be cool
i want to hide and be happy in a field
with a mug of steamed milk, with a sweet person
who tells me many things that make me smile
and query, and discuss
they will be the kind of person
i would braid my hair around
when i was listening intently, who would interrupt
themselves to point out a bird startling
and spreading it's wings
or how beautiful winter is under the surface of the sadness
how death is somehow majestic, in the way that
the earth can bring itself back to life after it has lain still and alone
for many months, she can still yield all the possibilities
of fruits in spring
he seemed confused by this idea
i was not upset by this
i was just a bit melancholy but not because of him
because of everything around us
he sees it as cold and uncomfortable
he doesn't understand why i walk outside every night
to teach my body to acclimate to the conditions, this winter
so i can accept it and become it without freezing over inside
and learn to love it as much as the warmth
he rolls his eyes, they all do, they roll their eyes and turn away
and ask why i don't put on more layers instead
why not three sweaters instead of one
why not fight it more, to keep your last skin thin and flawless
i only have one left, i dunno
one skin left, have to get it weathered quickly
before life boomerangs back
this skin is careless and has nothing left to care about
she laughs until she's crying and holding her belly
and she doesn't feel anything but tightening
everything is corroding us from the inside out already
i want to at least breathe in the direction of the moon
once a night

when i say i don't need you
what i mean is
i could need you
if you chose to want me to

but how do i tell you
there are little dead girls
rotting like black pebbles
in my ovaries
and i'm still scavenging for the gold
trapped inside burn crusted skins
determined to pull every survivor from
the tomb before the world shifts beneath me again
and lava eats away at the bedrock

i can't let you be the next explosion
that crunches through
my chest and floods it's way
into the cavities of my armor
how do i say this and not come off harsh?
i have **** to do
i can walk with you but i can't walk for you
and i won't walk because of you
unless you walk because of me

if you let go
of my arm and instead
held my hand
if you would look at my eyes
instead of the door
because i'm sitting right here
in front of you, just waiting
for the moment
when you finally notice
i'm not manipulating or planning
i'm not waiting to crush you

i'm not doing anything to you at all
except hoping that you'll
look me in the face
and ask how my day was
and genuinely want to know
and actually listen to what i say
you will notice
you like me a lot better

i still stay up most nights
because sleep ran away
with the part of me that's missing
but i don't imagine that it's with you
because you will not be allowed
to take the valuable bits of me
if you just feel like sampling

and i don't run along fault lines anymore
searching for where the destruction begins
i don't think of you when i'm sad
because i won't allow any person the power
to shift my entire life into collapse

it's too easy to hand me a weapon
and think i won't use it because we all love ourselves
too much to do that, you're making the assumption
that all human beings feel like human beings,
and that's a dangerous thing

you see we all taste our feelings
a bit differently. sword swallowing
is something i do every single day
every muscle in my body is torn
every secret is ripped open and displayed

i feel nothing inside me is sacred
and now i am truly dispensable
but in that, i've found peace
i am nothing, i am guilty of this
but in that silence
there is only freedom
a blank page waiting to be punctured
with only the most carefully cultivated thoughts and feelings

and in the process of decay i have become everything
have been everything at least once
and even through my anger i understand
the people i truly hate
and even through my adoration i see the flaws
in the people i truly love

this is not to tell you i think you are a bad person
but you're a person who would hand me swords
just to see what i would do with them
because you live for yourself, alone
and you're a scary type of person for me
to get too close to, when i live to create love
to the best of my abilities
even when i'm alone

and while i understand it isn't personal and so on
i cannot sit through another year of not knowing
who you are and what you want from me
so i will make this choice for you

lost friends were barely the beginning
no holds barred a death grip bending
wonder "what if" brings the bold ending
another story of my half hearted glory still pending
the forecast is gorgeous with a chance of importance
miss muppet eats her porridge, facade painting waits for mourning
gorged til morsels turned to acid moons, her stomach waning spoons of poison
and then the spider climbed on down the chimney spout
he loved her with a death grip, couldn't bear to let her out
she slipped away limping doubt

i am never what you ordered, right?
less forward then when you saw my light
came in for the warmth he runs from night
as it fell he left burning for a fight
confused by simple misery
mistook for complex mystery
from porcelain skin to bleeding tin
she was a sordid sort of fantasy
the lemons in the leopards tree
crouching he protects and heeds
the bitter fruit he cannot eat
so long as he may wrap his limbs
round such a lovely sacred tree
they see succubi laced in leaves
a lovely sight with poison teeth
but wrong the masses stood, as always
a daughter of zion missing her wings
fought through mobs, yearning to be free
nuclear body in a derelict land freezing
the pure love escaped her at beelzebub's hand
replaced with lust and sacrament
she had no home, but hut in sand
she dreams of warm days soon arriving,
dry eyes, dry land
living light in tears just drying
the purest kind she's never finding
in her mind the road seems endless
she loses sight of truth in it's windings
sits in trees ******* pulp
from the vitriol
at night that came
to burn him down
the windchimes tinkling
the golden sound

she made a pact with the devil
the night knights left the bevel
he told her for a piece of her broken heart
he'd offer peace and settlement
and on the day the angels touched down
he watched her wings part, unearthly sound
puffed his chest, lest the ego deathed
to brag at the world what he had found
and asked in awe where he was to start
understanding all the fragments of her heart
she left in the morning and never came back
the gods don't like the selfish calf
the flaunting of deities, the crass obsessions
they want their daughters depicted
in inked diary wraps
preserved for life
he whispered to her ear
these men want nothing
but to consume you to death

i have broken three to six hearts
since i started to warp
showed the spiders my hands
threw down my arms, too tired to explain
being human is hard when
the ananse have more legs than cards
the only fable was aesop and his art
the cyclical change of a fractal of parts
i am not the same being
as when i started writing these words

Kids with guns
playing hostage outside
my kitchen window
trapping their sister in the chicken coop
behind the tenement house

Kids with funds
riding scholarships to Harvard
saying someday I’ll be the one
who pushes that little red button

Kids with needles
saying at the end of all this
I will wine and dine the devil
to persist my own mess
they go off so silently

we all turn to memory
and fade to the black flickering
insides of eyelids and run out film reels
the bottom of oceans and the bedrock of glaciers
the whole earth will hum for half a second
before the next bang hits

1

decide not to hurt her. but don’t decide to pull her back. if she wants to go she can go. I do not plan on stopping you. it’s not my choice. nonetheless I must warn you; I do not pick up phone calls from numbers I don’t know. if you don’t plan on showing me your scars I don’t plan on showing you mine, I will live inside myself without your help. stop pretending you’re in control.  your presence does not make me a better or worse person.

2

drink beers, sliding your sleeve over the x on your hand. sway like you never stood so still to pretend you were just a charicature so no one caught your scared stench. you **** the stench. you grab it and rip it right out of yourself. **** your rules I will ******* fly, I will ******* dance, I will ******* love. you cannot stop me. you are not my guilt, so stop.

3

look at his eyes as he says it doesn't really matter where you go anymore. safety is not a cold room, an exorcism, or a catechism. mushroom clouds are dancing like rotted sugarplums and fairies with crippled wings in my head. through continuous trial and error life has taught me you can run but you can't hide. don’t take off your coat until you’re two drinks too deep to care if anyone sees the dried blood. laugh at the people who stare, laugh at yourself, laugh at their ******* social rituals. always remember not to let them get you. you are not paying any debts.

4

think about tasting sweat and his pulse. search for it. find none. and you do not require just any pulse. ask him if you are scary, let him touch your open wounds, let him lie and tell you he doesn’t think you’re depressing to be with. even still, you let him win. know that he would gladly take on a less complicated girl. feel like target practice. feel like a faulty product with no receipt. feel like a body, always, you are feeling like a body. it consumes you before you can consume it, filling yourself with holes. This bleeding is further beneath the surface. split skin doesn’t let any more sunshine in. go back to bed sweety. don’t believe in humans. don’t believe in love. they are equally transitory. they are equally fragile. they are equally hungry.

5

think about the fear. think about it. ******* choke on it. do not deny it is there. they never really cared. you don’t really need them to care. So this is what getting older really means. remembering the streets you grew up on before they painted limbs into the pavement. It's hidden in the exhale at the end of the way most people say tired. when what we really mean is, the way things were still lives in my head and i can't deal with the present because it's just a ribbon wrapped around a nuclear bomb. Humming. You tell him you don't think running is worth the effort. He calls you a liar with affection. You are choosing your bus tickets. Like a car driving from a tornado. You just want to see how far you can get. before...

his eyes were singing ghostly blues
blue weather clung tight to the sky that day
his hair was light, just barely blonde
how lucky you are, i told him
how lucky you are
i am so young but i know
how lucky you are

don’t talk to me like that, he said
but he held my hand
the ******* sewn to his left arm
harmless men can be forced
to bring harm to others
at the drop of a dictator’s hand

i had barely ever seen snow fall and he said
he’d never seen snow quite like this
red stuck gummed to the crystals
and the stove pipe chimneys choked out
skin charred like burnt paper
so white
they had died in the dark

i’m sorry, he said
how old are you, he said
five years old, i said
he shook his head
and led me towards the doors
of buchenwald

her shoulder blades were made of a thousand paper cranes
so breakable and small
when they hunched she seemed to whisper
i could fly away from here
and you won’t ever know me at all

we thought about the ice age
we made picture books
and discussed the likelihood that we’d find her
captured in an iceberg
her bones all melting into snow

and we had a leader once
but he’s been gone since the temperature
dropped so low
we all know, he’s somewhere we’ll all eventually go
sometimes my acceptance is the only thing i have to offer

now we sing and chase in circles
waiting for the part where we all
fall down

the day you come around
will be anything but beautiful

I am underwater
the bottom of a pond
I am not drowning
I am limitless
deep under my own skin
no longer shallow
like puddles and schoolgirls
dancing with deities
I am happy to be here
I am a child
And now I am

I smiled at the EMTs like a paralyzed child. A little girl asked if I was 'the lady who fell'. I didn't know what to say so I just smiled at her. I do a lot of smiling to get through my day. I just felt this hatred for what is happening right now. I know, they know, it's only a matter of time. A ball of yarn, unravels, and when you unravel it, it becomes nothing but a very long string. This string is the timeline to a life that I was looking for, thought I always wanted, where i marked the string, events occurred. You have to remember which color the event felt like, and be able to keep track of the black markers of years and birthdays and birthdays and birthdays. Understand your life on a one dimensional scale. It's humbling. But the problem is I lost the view of the shore from the ocean, and I began to unravel blank white string, adding gaps to my timeline, they get longer and longer. Save your string, do not unravel, you'll see the end when it comes. Just go, do something, stop caring, create new marks, imprints.

chase the dream? or does the dream chase you
will i ever clean up this spilled ink,
or this messy ******* room?
all these unknotted strands of excess
stressed by lessons in having less
and not caring when it’s left
i don't care what is left

let me undress and leave my jacket
for someone else who needs to have it
i have enough to take this test
everyone survives their own sadness
in order to progress
i can share

and it smells like you’ve
been ******* someone else
but today, i don’t really care
or think that it’s my fault
and i think you can tell
the world is too big and too small
for those thoughts to manifest themselves
to fall into the small of my back
no more carrying rocks around in my backpack
the wealth of having nothing is the unrobbable stolen eyes
the stealth of the wise, being whole with parts,
it's the holy art of being too tired for lying to self
i guess jadedness is a start
but i'm looking for something else

options options options keep making me stumble on
and today the wind said no one ever listens him out
when he speaks for too long
and today the earth said no one cares
about her body heaving through each breath of this song
and yesterday i understood them but now
something is off kilter, something is wrong

i can feel when they cease to breathe
just like us when we sit in public places
hostile when someone gets in our space and
braced for impact, so enraged by this stranger
pull away, pull yourself up
she's about to go, so much love
how could we lose it all
in the flood of manmade lakes
the depths all caked in mud
like the inside of our stomachs
did you not notice what was at stake?

but now she is demanding a toll
for our rubble, so let's clean up the blood
the sky is chaotic and exotic
let everything love everything for once
this spoiled patch of stumps
is all we have left
so let's sit in the warm sun
pull our ringed fingertips up
to touch the clouds as they run
away from us again

the wasps caught in the cusp of our lungs
squirming towards our fleshy throats
that book i never wrote
it was a ******* masterpiece
the scars i stole
hurt like a headache in my hands
and where again do i find the right spot to sit
where is safest to land
and when do i know it’s the time to leave
i will wait, i will create, abate hate with silence
until she comes to, and cries, don't you see
it's time, and have you done everything you could
and then whispers
and if you didn't, would you

would you return and rewind to where it begun
grow up learn a trade, and marry a man, and have a son
or run to the apple orchard, and dance with someone
and touch the bottom of the pond
when it is at it's stillest and then wonder
will it ever be possible without ripples
and how many of these lakes are human limits
with potential unsung
barely digging into the bedrock soil

have you learned to love everything yet
and accept what you do not know
instead of seeing each error as a small death
each progression as an excuse to grow
and grow and grow

life isn't a saying
there is no chasing involved
there is only you and gravity and resolve

love me when it's convenient
love me when it is useful
love me when love is necessary
on the terms that
i stay simple, i stay beautiful

love me because your mother thought
i was pretty, i was quiet
love me because your father looks at me
like a *****, successful diet
love me until i’m not always sweet
love me until it’s not easy enough
leave me at the station
kiss me like your lips
have become strangers
just for me
and wish me luck

love me until somebody else better comes along
love me until i misstep to the words of the song
love me until those nights
you see me when i’m not strong
love me until it’s not profitable
until it rubs you wrong

my words are no longer useful
when they are not lucrative
your eyes are no longer protective
they are punitive

i am no longer a friend
just the tail end of another
distended friendship ready to
split hairs and end it
not a person but a thing
not a person but a problem
you’ve been dissecting

you don’t want to bend back
and mend, it’s easier to
wait it out, pretend away the tension
show your teeth, your venom’s condescesion
not so lost in your eyes
so resenting my mention

and i’ve been taught
not to stop giving
until you’re ready
for me to stop

and i’ve been trained
to drink up the blood when it puddles in
to treat people i attach love to
like my king pins
no one is just a lapsed vein

and i’ve been told
i’m not allowed to pull the plug
once i open my body
and let you dig into my love
so here i am, watch me now

to keep my ugly hidden
to keep my thoughts restrained
to keep the stains upon myself
cloistered and contained

by nature we are greedy
and you can’t seem to stop taking
because you’ve grown bitter dancing feet
and i'm aching, you say i'm not grounded
yet i’m a burden underfoot
and you wish i’d just break life
or break life in
and forget what it took

you want me to be punished
or you want me to go
you think i don’t know
oh you think i don’t know
you wish i’d just open,
then you wish that i’d fold
i don’t melt in the heat,
but i crack from the cold

your affection is grotesque
and my voice has a certain note
that makes you want to wrap each finger
tightly around my throat
you hate me, more than you love me
but i don’t want to be loved
if love barely stays afloat
you hate me, much more than you love me
and i was never told love
was so naturally cutthroat

the minute the man walked onto the train
with his forty in a paper bag
i noticed the
salty
sickening
smell of
trash. he’s got a petty criminal’s
sneaker drag,
he had that looking for trouble
vision lag,
and he looked me straight in the eye
so call me trouble but the body language
of that
kind of guy
makes my throat a foreign land spit travels through
in tentative swallows,
the aura of quiet anger
around that
kind of guy
makes for a swollen tongue
that’s rough as a desert is dry. with his lumpy coat and
strange emotionless
maliciousness
i know his kind of dog and
it’s one gentle pat away from viciousness
it felt just like old times,
reeked bad news in the sunday paper lines and
sliced my memory like a quick surgeon’s incision
so i averted my gaze but
kept him at the corner of my vision.
he talked about how he lived nearby,
he was on his way,
he was on time
but them guys they,
only talk to dealers and they
only tell lies. and i gently squeezed
the scabs on my knees
and tried to hold my breath or at least breathe
shallow
until his presence wasn’t so threatening
but truly, it always was, because,
it was going to be
until he stepped through the automatic sliding subway doors
and surfaced
got swept away in the city above me.
his body had to be far away
from my body
for me to feel safe.

M) C - G - Am - F
1 ) bridges F - Am - G - F -F - C - G - F - F - Am - G - F

strum pattern 1 - 2 - 1

M) yesterday somebody told me that my poetry
didn’t contribute to my community
so i put it to some lyrics and picked up a ukelele
because apparently nowadays
you’ve gotta get a little bit more crazy
cause you’re not the only one who’s jaded
it’s amazing how we front

1) so i don’t want any more of this beer
and sometimes i still question why i’m here
talking away like it’ll pass the day
but i don’t wanna just give directions, i can steer
M) so **** the world that made me
because i am thirsty and chasing
the spill of all these messy messy messy messy messy messy years,

M) but you can’t clean up your reality
when it’s splattered on the pavement
so maybe i’m just angry,
because my words are the catalyst and
1) everyone saves themselves
i’m just like everybody else
M) so okay, okay
maybe i’ll just finish this forty for my health
just today

M) you should have stuck to dreams
it would’ve been so much easier
you should’ve kept the confessions to yourself,
now they’re hangin from the speakers
1) in this little room full of people
i don’t know you but i’d like to meet ya
have a chat and then perhaps maybe you will realize that
nobodies as bad as you first see them as

M) so hold my hand, and then you’ll understand
we all get sweaty palms after a bit too long
and if you let go, i will understand
because hands are comforting to fall back on
but we, we are all so strong
unconsciously strong
1) and no one needs sympathy
we all live life on our own terms
beliefs and ideologies
respect is the easiest remedy

M) and when you can feel your blind purpose vibrating
in every bone of your body
it’s much harder to hate anyone
cause their emotions are kinda sloppy
cause you get like that too sometimes,
when you cry
so despite the differences, you always
try to empathize

1) ‘cause some people feel alone in packed rooms
and in some way or another they all embody you
you, they are the people who are here right now with
you, and you are them too

M) while you’re singing this song hopefully
some people are humming along
and can stand here with you for a minute
look around with new uninhibition
and you don't think that's a word but
i know it's a concept and at times
it’s hard to tell if anyone ever gets
that at all

M) it’s just so hard to connect
when we’re talking so loud
we can barely
hear ourselves when we fall
there’s not a sound at-

“momma bought us a pie”
my head is a nest of baby bluebirds
the supermarket is too clean
for the **** that you put in your mouth

Excuse me I just get so unruly when
The temptress strikes
and the tempest struggles
to please his restless wife
ease the heaving spikes of her waves
rolling out of her mouth
onto his chest
all the compressed cities
she confessed to distressing abreast
her fury when he loved her gently
and then crept out when she slept
A fly on her dresser he dressed and left her
and lying alone in bed she never felt more like a conquest
she was never quite the perfect thing
he imagined her to be
I confess she was never quite a thing
but right now I don't think she'd agree
the day I dug my first dog a grave
I could say with complete certainty
this is all the love I have to give before I die
even if it's not enough for you
It's enough for me

the quietness of content
between two people
walking down the sidewalk
after splitting a pint and a crepe
is something new to me

the quietness of unsettled
emptiness in the dregs
of heaving lungs in a public toilet
is familiarly foreign
and suddenly unwanted

i occupy booth seats
instead of the space between
two metal dividers
and a toilet paper dispenser

i study the dimples of your cheeks
and the scent of your hair
i've become a student
learning the feeling of having
instead of a teacher of wanting

i do not see any crookedness
to your teeth or my own
i taste lager and nutella
strawberries on your breath
and don't ask
what else?
no sign of do not disturb
in my eyes
only, please continue
speaking

when i sway to the counter
and ask for the check
i am surprised by our obvious pleasure
when the waitress giggles
"oh i'm sorry,
i didn't want to disturb you"
i didn't realize we looked so happy
so together in a moment
shared over candles and two forks
on a coffee shop table

i admit it was
effortless

i see now that
food, love, humans
the things i made complicated
were

effortless

every time i chew away
at my fingernails, my hands
break beneath the weight
of the blood spilt inside of these lips
they just couldn't bear the sight of open wounds
the body count, stitched into my gums
bullets aching inside my clenched teeth
there is war in my footfalls
anger in my love

it's hard to touch someone who reminds you
not to walk alone at night
and to always add laughter to a tight lipped smile, just to get along
i never wanted to be a martyr
the same way philomena never meant
to suffer because she is a bad liar
and all he sees is a noose on a ******
that is to say suffering, comes to the ones with stone cold tongues
and all that really means is love me

so diocletian subjected young philomena
to scourgings, she survived
drowning, she was too good at holding her breath
arrows, they went right through her
and then decapitation
there's no coming back from that one
secretly he simply loved
to see her in pain
she refused to eat her words as she praised him
she just refused to eat her words
so she never praised him

you never fully unpacked your clothes
the whole time you live in there

and now i know things that make my mind bulge
feeling like whenever i come back to reality
it's too vivid through my eyes
and that's why i never noticed that you hadn't
until someone mentioned it
too much for my stomach
it turns so easily

it's amazing what the human brain can prevent, form getting in
if you really try, if you fight for it
i'm sorry i'm so frightened
or i'd send this in a letter
but i know that they'd derhyme it
and figure out
we all love you, and you love us
and we love heaven, and heaven loves you

they've had us chasing death for so long
extinction for redemption as if that makes any sense
heaven is freedom, heaven is your eyes when the stars are out
heaven is all the battle scars on your worn hands because
you survived and today's breath is sweeter to your lungs
than any breath before, because unlike you, it has forgotten all of them
it just follows your patterns and hopes that you love it
you love it, the circuits do you remember how they
widened your eyes, the branches of trees can be limbs chopped off
but remember you told me, and i know it to be true;
they always grow back. they always grow back.
you will grow back. don't fall so fast that you can't catch you in a year or two
you are your worst enemy and your best friend
and you know better than anyone how to be your own best friend
your inner child is safe in this letter
your inner child is stamped into the fabric of my mind like a siren of eyes
your inner child is deep below the concrete floor,
incubating inside the earth with your name
don't let them take your name, god why don't i have the guts to send you this letter
i guess i'm afraid you'll never get it
i wish that i could help you, i know you're not crazy
and you, last month, i know you're not crazy
and you, last year, i know you're not crazy
and you, still on the inside, i know that it's scary
you know everything that i want to tell you already
in your gut, in your instinct of instincts, it's just being barred
your eyes are not black, they are shadowed
but i still see a gleaming inside you
a glow that snaps it's neck back into place
when no one's listening
this world is such a distressing illusion
and yet look at me afraid of becoming
if i speak clearly enough to be felt i guess that's all i can offer
i'm trying,
i don't want to die
you are hearing things, and they're not in your mind
this world is hazy now,
it's hard to believe, but don't fall just yet,
create your own vibrational frequency
they know us well. you are worthy of respect
you are worthy of love, happiness, kindness
you are everything and everything is you
and we can't lose something so precious

The hill tops are far enough away
That you never hold your hands to the window
But you’re secretly hoping they’ll grab you, run
Under tables and over the green couch of the
Woman standing alone at the window
On a snowy day, so go
But always come back again

Your body is made of half hearted attempts at
Scrubbing tiles and then ripping them out
To lay new boards, to secure every crack
Adhesives and bubble wrap
You’ll need it when you’re moving everywhere
Shaking like a leaf
So place the tiles back together
As if nothing had ever rotted in here

Armed to the teeth with excuses
Still looking for answers
Yet calling it useless
Stop fighting and leaning on your crutch
But i want to get off this ride
It’s costing far too much
And I’m not interested in luck

So I breathe quietly as we leave the hospital
Because I should have known better
And instead of less, you have become
More than can be stomached
You take up space like a deer at the crest of
Grass beside the edge of the highway
And you just want to turn into this beautiful person
So she can get her money’s worth
This beautiful animal

It wraps around a telephone pole
As if it were just sleeping on the curb
Baby nausea, baby *****, baby lay down on the pavement
And when you close your eyes
It’s nothing but the gentle imprint
Blades of grass leave on your skin

The bones are barbed
The organs are on display
We don’t make mistakes here
We just slip about the day
I refuse to look directly at headlights

1
"New Latin, from Greek boulimia great hunger, from bou-, augmentative prefix (from bous head of cattle) + limoshunger

First Known Use: 14th century”

when i first got to california i would study the way ocean waves crashed upon the shores of beaches, it’s was bone crushing, pulp softening kind of tides. packs of tides keep rushing to the beach and throwing themselves down into it’s stand, as the beach absorbs each one.
it does not recoil.
i want to learn the earth’s secrets
i am attracted to water, tides of brevity, yet unrelenting to the sand
and the shells and sand they make regenerate, breaking down continuously
then hardening and heaving their particles back to the ocean
trusting it will be brought to some shore
the waves of the pacific quiet the waves inside my skull.

a constant pounding, a wave of bulls crashing through
uncharted territories even now.

i am coauthor of too many mistold memoirs
someone else wrote about me from afar.

2
it’s funny, no, i shouldn’t say that
it’s strange, how quickly one becomes commodity
how the pall of your skin has a scent
but your eyes are lassos
how, without your consent, your body can be bent
cut, *******, and transformed into an unanswerable question
drawing whole packs to your lone presence
dryly plucking the last drops of milk from a straw
you look up as they circle, giggling
and hunker into their places, surrounding

they’re the classic eclecticism of boys looking for fast entertainment
sure, let me be your dancing bull, wave the red cloth and dare me
because i am not the bull and i won’t let you have this one.
mr big ****, his homie in your face laughing at you
shy guy, and sarcastic dude who’s ******* bored
they say you don’t look like you grew up here
you think, “what, in this in-n-out?”
you say, “no, i’m from the east coast.”
whenever these things happen,
your words become bitten off at the ends

you hold onto your empty cup a bit too long as serious mr big **** talks at you
your head swimming with frustration and mistrust
homie who laughs jabs his finger into your face
pointing to the special sauce leaking from your burger
"aren’t you gonna eat that?"
you smile at him and you don’t know why but you just smile
you take a bite and chew with your mouth open
you haven’t got an appetite

you begin to cajole and retort casually with them,
seeing how long the game will last before it gets dumb
as if your harassers are friends
until the words “*******” enter your periphery
and in a fit of disgust you stuff the last bite down
and exit the pathetic scene
as you walk out to ringing laughter you find yourself
un-panicked but fatigued by the run in
thinking, when will i learn how to handle this ****?
and why should i have to learn to regularly handle harassment?
i never asked for this attention
never asked.

my body is not a question.


3
a slow burn of metaphors accompanies every bout of insanity
this week i’m convinced that i’m drowning from the inside out
when he comes over it’s hard to look at him, with his sweet eyes and adoration
after rushing around picking up the little pieces of myself off the carpet
hissing in disgust “stupid *****, stupid ******* ****”
and putting it all back together before he got here
because i feel less than nothing
far from beautiful

4
i would often imagine what people would do
after i died, if it would be
a mess of bad jokes about entitled white girls
with selfish insecurities
or a mess of bad sentiments about how i was a modest hard working girl who
who
who am i most days, except for someone
who ******* tried her hardest
i don’t like the idea of dying young, giving other people
control of how i’m remembered
i want to establish that image for myself
what a dream, what a dream.

who should get my trinkets, my instruments,
who got the glass collection, the tea cupboard
the patterned hats, the quartz stones and golden tooth
i thought about how the funeral would go
how my mother would cope
if my father could stand it
i have been making sand castles
and cooking messy cakes with frosting dripping jimmies
i have been reading books and
writing essays and working every run of the mill job
to keep my mother from crying
and my father from falling asleep in the stillness at night
regretting his regrets because i fall asleep in the stillness at night
regretting myself and thinking of him
regretting his regrets as his life stands behind him
and he drifts into a dream land where we do not exist but clouds

and i wonder, now, if i could still let this happen
if i could stand it, how much time i have to turn it around
i have been told you must invest
twice the time it took to dig the hole
in order to get out
if i start now, i can see the light by the time i’m roughly
37

i give my untouched binge food to homeless people
because watching them receive it
feels a lot more satisfying than the pain of eating it
fighting the weight of nausea
i hold back and return my wallet to my purse
as i whip around the burger king drive thru
and opt for dollar store cheese crackers in their little 16 cent per meal packages instead
that is to say, the package is the meal
i cannot fill my stomach these days,
with frozen organs and weeping ulcers
sweating and puking on the side of the road
i cannot sweat and puke on the side of the road these days
because i do not want to die, and must get better by 37
and these days, thesedays i have nightmares of men
with wild eyes and yellow teeth, bodying the window of my car
their hands groping for my face through the cracked window
pressing a gaping maw spittled against the glass
as i scream the deep scream of terror that comes from inside one’s stomach
when no one can hear or when a wild animal
is slaughtered by a larger feral creature, death drifting through the forest
home owners turning away with cold pressed spines
and wonder what died

i hear them talking about me from the hallway
more often than i speak of it myself
my bones crack, my muscles moan
i have no time left for sleep
the waves keep crashing down
i spend 12 hours in a day worrying about others
and try to take another 12 for myself but never quite
end up having that many
i wonder if you still think after hearing this poem
that this is a selfish insecurity
it is blurry childhood,
stab wounds from a series of sadness,
an insatiable wish to fill
the spaces of unmet need with small animals like me
wrapped up in unassuming parcels
forgotten under a christmas trees
eaten by maggots.

5
dear body,

they tell me we could have a heart attack
but i laugh at them
ask if i think I’m invincible and i laugh at them
i am far from it, because if i am anything i am a sponge
which doesn’t cause me to feel any less
just soak up the mess when there’s a spill
and continue to expand, adjust to the pressure, and then expand again
invincible is a generous word to use
for what i think i am
because i am weak, helpless, but angry

like a feral child biting doctors and snarling
or a person who lifts a car off an infant when the body gives you no choice
but to respond to the adrenaline of fear
pass the boundaries of what you believed to be true to save a life

i am simply adaptable, good at surviving
i have trained my body to be strong even when I am weak
my mind to stay sharp when my teeth have eroded
because the doctor doesn’t love you, and your mother
she’s sort of lying. like the government or dr jekyll.
you know not to trust people with empty eyes or bitter hearts
you will fight if it gets you out of this cell and closer to sunlight.
endurance is the only pride i cling to.

6
he picks up the book my mother was reading
"what’s this?" he skims the page looks at the block lettered heading "SUFFERING"
"suffering…" he looks up for a second,
then at me, and i wonder
if he knows, so i smile at him

when I was younger I didn’t get it
but now I fully understand how people
can keep secrets from their husbands and wives for years
some **** is too deep to allow
those you love
to wade in it

7
she swallowed me whole and after
clawing my way out of her stomach
I am still picking my fingernails
out of her teeth

8
i am paying for my grubby child hands
the baby bird bones in the backyard
of my childhood home
are singing warning bells to me from across a continent
they pierce my dreams when i finally sleep
the corn acres cresting golden hills in the dawn are gone
another night alone in a city far way from home
and my wings are still just feather and bone
muscle dead below, still holding the hilltops on her shoulders

you fall to the waves crashing down or
you pump the sore tendons of your weak wings
and you fly
there’s no other choice
your body is not a question
it is an answer
-

have you ever felt a home in your bones?
safety in the way it cushions the weight of your moaning head
upon falling at it's thresholds
you want to know what tender feelings
you hold in safe places
but they
never question the way your severed vessel
still toes the shoreline,
roaming the foam licking at the crests
of crescent moons left in the remnants of crab shells
pressed into particle upon particle of scruples
unspoken in the weeks that forgot you

they rush ahead

and you stand stock stuck, still mustering
the guts of every animal they left on the beach
in the road, and you too leave them
for fear of that lethal touch
mistaking broken shards of beer bottles
for sea glass, some days you tried to remember
and forgot

they are savages
the agile hunger pains
gnaw at the bandages

but you still love, in nausea,
ad naseam, you study them, reverential
try to reference their satiation with fondness
still sunken in repugnance for your own likeness

you collect them like passengers
pieces of you and worlds unto their own kind
he says you are two of a kind
you think not, because he is one

each thrown to the riverbed below
becoming rocks filling up the moat
cranking down the drawbridge
over a river filled with sea glass
the true form of whom you have settled with
knowing you may never know

and in forgiveness you live with
the sickness of knowing nothing
and the sentience of understanding everything
and when you stand by the water
they tell you that your eyes have a brilliant glow
and you let them find you stunning
in a memory upon a time ago
you conceal yourself in the
minds of many

while the solecism in his praise
still rings heavy in your throat
two thousand
nine hundred
and sixty eight
miles away
from home

no,

i don't feel beautiful
but i feel dangerously effective

i still have not stumbled into strength
i have tripped and fallen
and hit my head on it
a few times

but i still have not drank
from the cup of the powerful
pervaded by wasted persuasion and doubt full
security in vacillating hours of uncertainty
turning eyes away from the ******
of crows in the front yard

sore stomach, gutter bored
tired of listening to concerns
about the unimportant things
while winter worms it's way in
to the earth singing suffering
while ice meteors fall from storm clouds
in ohio

i wonder where they come from
and all you really want to know
is what i think about
what you are thinking about
and i wonder if you have ever wondered
what i was thinking about
but i do not make hopeful bets
on boys who live in cities
and do not think
about storm clouds in ohio

Lost in flesh
Inside your head You see him again in the Past dripping with so much blood it escaped into the pond from rivers along the length of his limbs
I don’t know his face, still, barely
I remember him swaying like a lightening rod and begging for help, not even that
Gurgling the word, and it took me a second to register how wide open his head was
I didn’t gag, but I didn’t breathe either
I dropped my keys and yelled too
A precious reminder of the tides beneath the foam
There seems to be no desire left
It collapses in on itself like the old barns succumbing to blustery wind out in the yard
Where the wild things grow
A heart made of the soft river stones that shine but shed their soft talcum brill
A young woman is perched on a bridge
Somewhere else but it is happening
Right now
Some kid is waiting for the right stop
Thinking his body is so heavy
And counting the steps to his front door
Outside my honda some kids are loud like a muffled faucet dripping laughter from the other room
Evening feels further away than it used to feel
Everyone feels further away too
I would try to tell you a story now but
Everything seems less important when the mist returns in the morning in this place
It’s a fatal question to dance around in circles of frustration
Watching some others offer it’s existence up for capital
When you can’t pin it down with an arrow or settle it’s parameters with measurements
Or wrestle it down like a bucking bull and a faithless matador doing his duty to his country
It can’t be as simple as the ways in which we quantify
Even the process of writing has become dispassionate, there seems to be no use in what the meaning is
The question looks quaint at arms length
The boy is home in bed, thinking about buying beer tomorrow and if he was hit by a car or someone shot him how long does it take to bleed out and just
So yes, I would try to tell you a story to explain myself better but, I can’t
I’d tell you a story but the truth is I’m confused by how much there is to tell
The intricacies of the truth, the aspersions of summing up the contents after breaking them down
The way nothing always happens for A Reason
The way most things always happen for some type of reason but not A Reason
The way I feel today
The way a fly poops on what it lands but you can’t see that
The way these things are never sold, nor told, nor need to be believed to be true.
You know the way it goes, do we die in our own **** or do we **** before we die
and did the chicken even know the road was a road when it was crossing to the other side?
The man is 65. I remember this because a girl and a guy had seen the man and I
and he told her this. He tried to laugh and
he choked on his own blood. He had wrapped his face in a brown tshirt
And placed his hat over the wound
Covered by that. He looked like Freddy from that movie Freddie vs Jason
but somehow mostly formidable in that he
was soaked in the red, drying in the sun
like glistening crusting paint, chipping away
I don’t pray very much but I did today after the ambulance came, I prayed all Monday
I thought about who that man was
A young woman is perched on a bridge Somewhere else but it is happening right now
And she is suddenly having it, she’s having the truth and she doesn’t say anything but she
Puts her hands in her pockets and doesn’t move
And then does, and presses a cigarette to her mouth and doesn’t move
And the filter gets soggy and
She sits there and decides to light it
And finally she moves away from the murky dark water and walks to her car
The mouth of the maw glistening against moonlight slated shadows
The seeker holds her heart and picks up the stones as she goes, doesn’t look back

i stretched my tonsils wide and swallowed the sun
and all that i got was this mouth full of blood
i swallowed again
and relished the crack
my knees hitting the mud
the earth was the first
not to fight back

so i collapsed upon her back, forgot institution
and didn't try to get back up
just lay quietly in disollution, swept up in the flash flood
looking for some kind of nameless crudely chiseled love
chasing a faintly tricky latently burdensome buzz
tainted by ***** nail beds
and haunted by swerving white trucks
socially taught to get up and never come down
emotionally taught to get down and forget what it's like being up
luck no longer has meaning
that is just the universe being
i want to give up and go with it
i want to revisit that rattling requisite
i am ready for this ego to lift

“Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando
Invenies Occultum Lapidem,”
“Visit the interior of the earth and become pure
you will find the hidden stone.”
when the time is right
i'll turn from red to white
drenched in a vitriol bath
my bones will surface
bright as gold under the light of the night
sinners worst dream
alchemist's delight

swallow the demons and
stay awake
no matter what you do
don't miss a minute
forget what pain is
form callouses
you will not be ashamed
of your right to breath
and grow out of this

when they cover me
White sheet on face
Earth burying box

dance on my grave.

i want every child
at my funeral
to dig their hands
into my soil

take a part of me again
broken so you can live
let me hold you

love me like
The fall
when it comes

i am the roots
you are the leaves

when I asked you what happened last night
you said. “Nothing”
I asked you why
is there a used ******
nestled neatly in the space between
my bed. and wall
You don’t look me in the eye when you say
“We had ***”
because you know. “We”
didn’t have ***.
after you fed me a fifth shot
of the liquor you brought
you watched me spill over and
swooped in
to drink your fill

we lived inside of clocks
we had bodies of heartstrings that will be plucked
a vibrating mass of shifting cogs
and locks built behind bars and red rock walls
and i still don't know you after a couple years
the key is sawed after a few brief fears
reformed the locks

Sometimes I sit
in my nook by the
heater in the kitchen
with a cup of coffee
a glass of water and
a cigarette
and I just stare at
this website while
silently worrying
how many people have
actually read this?
680 individual human beings
680 parts that contribute to
the whole
that's a lot to me
seeing as i am only
one person

the words never seem to touch the tone
i am meaning to say i want to
weigh them with my tongue like pebbles
clattering under my teeth
i was never as lonely as when
i couldn’t speak
you must have felt that loneliness
you couldn’t swallow
we all have days when we get in our car
and think about what we could really do
if we wanted to
drive to the store or off a cliff
you choose the first
never let your brain teach your hands
to slip around the other one
possibilities are dangerous
when there are so many ways
to play in traffic
let me count the limbs
in this car wreck
let us count the ways
we have all been wrecked
by a promise or a minute
with a weapon in your hands
that you never thought about
until you were going to fast you wanted
to stop

i see dead things, they coat the insides of my lungs
the scent of roadkill stings my eyes
the sight of mangled twisted carcass
saps the sadness from my gums
i see things in a red tinge, ever since i began to
absorb the fringes of weeping trees,
and stories of all the things i feared knowing
all scarlet letters that look apple-sweet
and hues of unhinged cringesom nights spent in the bath pooling
forties and bad memories and them stitched in the back seat,
sidewalks singed with a strange bitter heat speckled with white lies
while bruised fruits are dancing 4/4 measures on my concrete cheeks
grass curled, fists rustily sprung, wounds wound tight, see
my heart is beating 3/4ths of the time, waltzing meaty and slowcooked
falling from the bones, down to the knees
clinging to the ground with all my might, i thought of her
taking a lighter to the split ends of her hair in the bathroom
i didn't move, so as not to drag the blood through the streets
i will not let you see, i will not let them see
but there are never any band aids when i need them
and i wear my feelings on my sleeve and you read them
keep up a finicky fight with a world i don't believe in
i wish i knew exactly why we're fighting to begin with
you swallowed whole and chewed on the bones
and i'm getting ******* so i want to know
if you can just be ******* happy now
everything is slimy and porous and tinged with copper tones of terrible
how can anyone be easy to love and why is love so angry when no one is

i don't wish you happy birthday
i'm sure it will be anyways
i half heartedly hope
it isn't

being brave is
loving yourself
when no one else
will

I doubt your mother’s ever told you.
The alternative to sanity is losing your mind.

When someone you love is gone they are replaced by an ocean of memories.

Your mind is a swimming pool and you’re just a bug, moving rhythmically, fending off the crushing weight,

and then one day you get so cold you stiffen like a corkscrew and sink like a stone,

driving your screaming body into the concrete.

And when they finally find the bodies of lost divers in the caves beneath our world, they are curled in fetal position, burrowed into the smallest crack they can find in the stalagmites of the cold walls,

hands and feet destroyed from ripping at the rock with blind death instincts,
grappling for a tiny passage back to the light.

Everybody wants to be a model
So her outsides fit how she’s dying on the inside
Everybody wants to be roadkill
Pegged up for examination but mostly for display
I guess it doesn’t matter how the victim felt
It doesn’t matter how wet leaves slipping from under feet feels
It doesn’t matter how cold it is
It doesn’t matter how another cigarette tastes
It doesn’t matter how his eyes looked when he walked past
It doesn’t matter how a cold gun feels
You can’t feel a gun, technically
Is anyone out there? Can you help?
Does your brain
Hesitate too long almost all the time?
Do you need to breathe through your mouth just to keep going when your nose can’t work? Do you feel dizzy? These are deep places with no air, in the future. You need to be able to breath with utmost control
And take up the least amount per capita in your lungs possible
By prepping your lungs for the atmosphere
Of the mask world you are not dying,
They hum in every bright viscous corner
Of Hollywood Blvd and time square
You are not dying
You are winning
And you angle down just to show everyone you can make the illusion of beauty appear sick
I focus on the version of me I see in my mind every time I forget to feel better. You want to be me, I am sick. I want to be better, I forget you. I want to breathe with my lungs again

run run red fire truck
mom is out of ***
dad is out of luck
he was taking a lighter
to the candles about the Christmas party
mommy dropped a cup of Bacardi
she screamed when it shattered
and daddy dropped his flame
ever since that day
we haven’t said her name
she cracked like burning honey
when she lit up like
the Christmas tree
it’s so easy to become
Nothing

this is the feeling of ghosting into rooms
watching them read your memoirs
slow burns coals to old news
swallowing loosely fluming cooled fumes
yelling “stop stop your interpretation’s skewed”

you didn’t get the bruise
you didn’t eat the apple
wish i could remove all the words
and ways in which we could
describe the truth. the sapling

but they do not hear you
grappling but slackening
traveling across the map
to watch it all unraveling
picasso pats you on the back
this is static, your hair only glows
in through window cracks
don’t have it

keratin, bear the din, see through
transient setience, the void speaks to
this is the illusion
you cared for
there’s no taking it back
you’re where you always were
infinite lines don’t
point towards the earth

this is lock jaw with no key
when you take all the attachments in your life
and smash them on the ground
without heed to the deepest reaches
the only way your heart beats
is in tune to the way the rain breathes
watch it wash away and exhale out
this is drowning in a sea
and being found face down in a puddle
laughed at on the sidewalk

he kicks you in
you don’t care but you did
this time you saw it coming
band aids are pointless

"you wanted to be everything"
you still cannot swim
and they’ve got it all wrong
she just wants to be nothing
but they say that’s negative
at least it’s something

this is me being realistic
this dream is ******* ballistic
and we find ourselves transistic
because were or weren’t we meant
to love and live through this
but this time it was you
you ruined the script

lately i have been asking you how
to start this book
but you told me only i knew

i don't know where to start
the days jumble together like derailed cars
overflowing off of the train tracks

and he said we were all loose threads
just the unsure ends of
stories we reached out and bent
to fit us better
loose ends of letters
i wrote when i was fifteen
and the odds seemed better
than they do when i have to pay taxes
and the odds seemed better
than my simple right
of trying to survive

I go into a paper store. I'm becoming enamored with notebooks. I buy them and stab at my decrepit brain sometimes. Sometimes I doodle, for mental health reasons. I would like to publish a short book of my brain and my doodles someday.

I try to make small talk, if I had a therapist I imagine she would tell me to do things like that in order to overcome my anxiety, but i don't have a therapist, so I operate on strict protocol of making small talk with at least two people a week. I'm afraid if I didn't I might forget how to, I've forgotten how to before, and I didn't speak to anyone in a way that made me feel anything for a very long time.

It can be scary because when you go back to talking the words don't come out the way other people's do, and you begin to wonder if you were ever a person as well, or just versed in the movements and sounds it makes, from imitation and delusioning oneself into believing one is a real breathing person too.

Cats sometimes think they're dogs, and dogs sometimes also believe themselves cats. Not mistake themselves for, believe themselves into being whatever it is they believe they are. If it were just a mistake we wouldn't be so sensitive about it. It's the fact that we really truly believed we were the same as everyone else before we were in introduced to the belief that they had held unbeknownst to us, that we are different.

I say hello to the clerk. He is young and attractive with a pleasingly soft colored brownish hair and beard. He seems smart, quick, and grumpy. He seems like someone who always understands what is going on exactly. Or in his way. Sometimes i am unsure how much i should believe sure people.

I busy myself pretending to look at notebooks and paper but finding nothing I can afford to buy. I stare through the color coordinated envelopes and they ooze together and i realize i have no reason to be here, this store didn't have any nice pens or notebooks.

I idled to not seem oddly abrupt in my exit and heard a song i very much liked, playing on the speakers above.

I love this song. I said.

Yeah, she's great. He said, not looking up. I walked around the stand of paper, pretending to inspect it.

I was hearing her in a lot of different songs and thought she was different than what you usually hear, she doesn't just write what people want to hear. this album is one of my favorites.

Yeah, it's really good. He looked at me as if the air between us was asking me out loud what i wanted him to say.

I pretended to fix a stack of colored papers. Well, i like your music, have a nice day, thanks.

Bye. I walked out and didn't stop to think about it. If i think about it i recoil physically and that looks odd in public. I put my anxiety to the back, in a neat box labeled, a guy at a paper store.

I am sitting in my car an hour later. My meter hasn't run out yet so im determined to stay until it does. I throw a dead lighter i was keeping out my window onto the side walk. I realize this is littering but i figure in a city this big someone will pick it up and i don't move to get it. Sometimes i have moments where i realize i don't need things. I liked it though. But it's just another thing. Meaningless.

I stare down at my notebook and hear someone stop outside my car and i look over. The guy with the nice colored brown hair from the paper store is on the sidewalk next to me. I almost jump. He is bending over to pick up the lighter. I am holding my breath as if it will make me temporarily invisible but i am very visible. Somehow he still seems not to see me.

He holds a black backpack strap with one hand and examines the lighter with the other. He tries lighting it and gets the lifeless sparks, but decides to take it anyways and puts it securely in his pocket. He continues to walk.

1

being needed less is a pain that follows you
stretches and bounces as it lands at your feet
soon you learn how to dribble it

2

” someday” you said, ” we’ll all lose contact”
is that really the only option?
I get quiet when it hurts
but I still ask ” you think it has
to be that way?”

3

You are empty airwaves
I am an open phone line
I would call you
but I have a feeling you don’t want that

Sent: 4:31PM
Today i remembered i miss you
and its been awhile

you refuse
to let me help
you move in

this is a new place
that i am not a part of

your life seems as small as your hands
you can't take your eyes off of them
as we melt, we wondered who the hell we were
before we were the way we are
like alice grows and shrinks inside a looking glass
an atom splinters inside a single cell
and a poison apple meets tongue
dripping with blood that blooms on the doorstep
this morning adam asked you
if it was his or the shadows in the forest
because he couldn't admit it was yours
four score and five lifetimes later
he hunts to capture
and you move lightly on your belly
through the underbrush, breathing gently
steady in the darkness, treading lightly
he knocks on the threshold and begs to be invited in
but he could not enter, not ever
as he stands in sin, a scar on skin, a rib in hand

you grimace behind a curtain
from the hollow bones beneath your thin skin
jumping is hard
walking after you get back up
is harder
you leave a ****** fingerprint
on every new surface
you lean against
springing back up and laughing
when it hurts so bad
you collapse into it
but if you don't stand you fall
and if you fall you won't
get back up this time
you fear the failure of another word
jumbled and mischaracterized
your voice feels foreign
like character acting
and your body is not forgiving
any more failed promises
and neither is the world
you struggle to keep up
but it seems like forever
that you've been dragging a broken leg
and we don't appreciate
the stains you've brought into our house
so what are you going to do
when every surface has been wiped clean
and they all give up and vanish
will you still believe as you do inside now
that you are not a worthy person