you'll slide your words
around my neck,
won't allow the leash
too much slack.

check my hands when i come back,
bring me peace with a kiss of my neck.

but like the dust beneath your feet
you overlook the small things,
like the way we first met.

a drunk girl spilling her words,
did you really think her instincts were dead?

has no one ever told you
you can't tame a wild animal
by holding the small of their back
and you've mistaken this one
for a house cat.

a list of everything you thought you knew about him

a list of everything he promised he would do to make up for his bad behavior

a list of all the things he said we would do together and never did

a list of ways in which our relationship was drenched in misogyny from the begining

a list of every detail you forgot was important to me

a list of every anniversary, birthday &special moment you missed because you cared more about your pride than you did me

a list of every manipulative ****** up thing you’ve ever said, to me, at me, around me

a list of every girl you flirted with in front of me just so you could see me crumble by the end of the night

a list of every girl you may or may not have ****** while we were on a break

a list of every girl you may or may not have ****** while we were dating

a list of every time you looked at me with loathing in your eyes

a list of every time i told you i loved you and “thank you” was your reply

I’ve created a list,
it’s in my head.

It’s things
I’ve never said.

“Who knows
if we’re meant to be,
my love.”

But the tide still
moves,
and I’ve still got you.

“Maybe I like holding hand guns,”
she said.

They all ask
“When will you go for a nice boy?”

But I’d rather enjoy
my cold one.

Let the ice drip down my back,
cooling my romance off-

“it’s another hot one,”
she insists.

Like’s to see how numb she can get
before the sickness sets in.

Stuck in the dark,
thinks beauty must be dead.

The demons have started to look soft,
and the sweet words have gone to her head.

"What’s a boy without danger?"
A lust that’s dead.

I hate the overhead lights that
drain the deepen shadows of our
Sunday's from the bed-
it holds no purpose for the artist
in her head, an unbelievable feat
of emotions made logical with out any angle.

I roll over and expect to see your sleeping face, sharp nosed, dark messy hair. Your chest collapsing in a constant peaceful slumber.

I wonder when my hand will find yours again.
Or if the next hand you find will be of some delicate uncomplicated girl next door, who will never understand your darkest demons,
like I swear I do.

Sometimes,
all the shadows
come at once
and every touch
you ever gave me,
feels like knives
gently slicing
my melting body.

Your hair texture,
imprinted on the insides
of my hands,
no matter how hard
I wash them.

And your scent,
imbedded in my
skin
so deep,
I get nauseous
just being around
me.

Pancakes
and french toast.

She had a sweet tooth
for mornings
laying flat
on her back.

Just like yours,
cotton wrinkles
indented on
freckles.

Saliva soaked
collarbones,
last nights
tequila
on your tongue.

He’d roll you over,
breakfast taco.
Kiss your neck,
turn it purple.

Smirk covered coffee,
smoke lingering
'round
chocolate covered
sleepy eyes.

All you've ever known,
simple sweets
and bacon grease;
she kept you
on your'
toes.

"I'll be back for the summer,"
and he'll pretend
you’re more
than just a morning
of goodbyes.

The problem with casual ***
is not a problem at all.

The problem with casual ***,
is that I still inhale
when you kiss my neck
and exhale
into a deep lull.

You lift up my dress
and your mouth curves a smile
that flattens into my stomach,
you laying on top of me,
breathing for just a while.

Our eyes don’t meet,
they gravitate,
slide down our bodies
melting beneath a small graze
of hands,
or touching feet.

I didn’t think I liked you,
but why does your hand
touching my back
always have to feel
warmer
than the blanket
that covers me?

But should I question my sanity,
when someone I decide to sleep with
can barely sleep
when they sleep next to me.

We find ourselves like a bed
stripped of its sheets-
nothing left to be hidden.

All the stains hang on threads
of all things that can't be washed clean,
no rinse and repeat
like your mother's crisp cotton,
once solid white sheets.

The barista doesn’t look
you in eye anymore.

You’re wearing that blue checkered
romper from the night before,
the one that leaves little
to the imagination
of the scholarly humans,
all up before the ripe time of 10.

And now it’s noon
and you’ve slept through
3 phone calls and you’re not even sure
if you’re bank account will allow
for the $2 iced coffee
you’re about to **** down.

But you buy
all the overpriced
caffeine anyway,
because today’s a new day
and if you stop moving
you might notice the wound,
and the pain,
and start to bleed,
and realize its going to make
a mess so maybe
its time for an Irish exit
and leave.

Take out all my casualties
Hang them up to dry
Each one a similar color
But different size.

Reach in my pocket
There you'll find
The ones you forgot about
That makes nine.

I am
water droplets,
molecules
splitting down
the center.

Dividing and
dissolving.

Salt enhanced
rain water,
rolling down
hot skinned
cheek bones.

every morning i forget who i am
i paint my toes red once a month with ****** nail polish
i got for free at my old job
i drink luke warm coffee
too jittery to make a full nother ***

every morning i forget who i am
i wake up in a fog of everything I’ve ever not finished
and attach it to failure and attach that to my personality

i forget why i take photos or that i like photos

i forget that i don’t love you anymore
i forget you made me hate me
i forget you made my life a living hell for as long as i allowed you too
i forget that i’m not allowing that anymore
i forget that i love myself now
so every morning i relearn how

been trying to throw up for days,

cold hands replaced
for freezing eyes
and tongues glazing over
saying the words

“good-bye.”

so,

“I’ll see you around,”

you had to slip in
one more
     little
                                         white

                                         lie.

I woke up to cold cotton sheets
twisted around my drunk worn body.

Stomach to mattress
my head,
a mess in a pillow.

Silently spoon feeding my affections
like the smoke that was falling from the tip
of your desires,

or cigarette.

French kissing your worst fears
became the adrenaline rush of a first date.

But still,
thankful that you came,
and went.

Icing, no cake to cover,
too sweet,
a rich lick of lust
and a cardboard heart underneath.

Oil spills into skies,
my thoughts polluted by your dizzy daydream
of color and lies.

I always drove backwards,
a hill and a midnight parking lot.

The condensation creeping up on us,
gazes drifting from street lights to soaked eyelashes,
every last part of you wants to go back.

But,

it’s like how you get into heaven,
you must die first.

Its funny,
you calling me
“good girl.”

Hands running
down my thighs
and
your lips
leaving saliva,
sticky little white lies.

My back arched
and my eyes closed,
pretending.

I’m this
******
up
feminist.

But tell me,
what to do
when you assume
because we kiss
your hands
have any place
on MY body.

And tell me how,
you wish
for me
to be
your'
“good girl”
when you have yet
to ask
if it’s okay
that you are already
sticking your fingers
inside of me.

The fog spread like peach jam
overtop the overpasses.

Deep inhalations
held in our tired palms
as we watched exit signs
pass by
and marked each mile
we could no longer turn back
further.

A colony of sparkling starlets
lay a glow on the dashboard.

A small slip of fumbling thumbs  
or perhaps a trip
in the wrong direction
sent me backwards
a tipsy turn
or subconscious fear of directions.

But soon,
she found herself trapped
between diluted affections
and a car headed fast
in but one direction.

you make my heart feel like rotten plum
soupy pulp beneath thin skin
waited too long to take a bite

now i’d like to see how you feel
watching someone else
sink their teeth in

i forget to take my contacts out at night but i bet the shape of your collarbones is probably still the same
crooked half moons covered in cream

just like the type of gum you chew

spearmint

and the cigarettes you don’t smoke

marlboro reds

and i bet you still swear too much

****

i forgot that forgetting is hard and that tears on cotton t-shirts will always remind me of the first time i was going to have to start forgetting about you

yet i still forget to put my clothes in the dryer

it’s hard to forget the taste of kraft macaroni and cheese on your lips at my parents house
 
or sinking into buttery leather in a dark room
planting kisses on the smooth insides of your elbow

i forgot that forgetting is hard but i think that if the trees can shed their leaves then it must be possible for you to shed me

how come forgetting you has become so hard when i can so easily forget my dad’s birthday or my brothers favorite band

i forgot that forgetting is hard when you brushed back my hair with the same hand that wrote me a sweet symphony of words worth remembering

and ******* if i never realized that forgetting would be so hard when
i was looking at the pink duct tape around the side mirror of your car while you were deciding whether or not to first kiss me.

A slow chilly breeze
that haunts the night,
unaccounted for,
unclaimed space taken over.

You know I’ve never
done well with
vague directions
and misconstrued sayings-
words that will pull
your devils arms each direction.

I don’t want to sit on my porch,
stare at my screen,
wait for you decide
if the coffee I’ve brewed
this morning is too strong,
not the best it’s ever been.

And how many times will I let
my hands shake and eyes divert
toward exit signs until I realize,
we never closed the door.

Let in all the voices
and found a way to make
exclusive,
something we would have
to fight for.

Break the lines
we never crossed
and call the whole situation

elusive.

I’m so tired of sleeping without you and I’m so tired of my attempts to fall completely into you

only to be bounced back like a trampoline you leave me wondering if my feet will ever touch the ground since you first kissed me.

Senior year is about telling everyone what you will do after you graduate and go off into the real world.
The real world is about i’m not really sure but i think i have to start paying taxes.
Paying taxes is about paying your dues in the place you live, which might be called your home.
Home is about the place you feel most comfortable.
Comfortable isn’t about growing.
Comfortable is about the deep breathe you take after getting good news.
Good news is about the funny youtube videos that your’ chronically optimistic friend tags you in on Facebook.
Facebook is about having a place to post the things you hope other will people care about in your life.
Life is about trying to love more than you hate.
Hate is about a bad taste in your mouth and tears running down yours cheeks.
Hate is about breaking dishes for no reason.
Love is about washing dishes for no reason.
Love is about a fluttering butterfly that could have left but chooses to stay.
Staying is about not leaving.
Leaving is about change.
Change is about going to your favorite restaurant and ordering something different.
Change is about your heart beating twice as fast.
Change is about a pursuit of happiness.
Happiness is about laughing when you least expect to.

If we are to ever to end,
you will remember me
for how many times
I hurt you.

And I will remember
the way you always kept
the knife
beneath my neck.

You throw your words at me,
and I'll catch them
with light hands
each time.

My blankets full of things,
I like to
hide beneath
during the night.

driving my love for you
into
the *******
ground

To love you
today.



It's time to go
somewhere warmer.

I can’t see you anymore.
There’s sugar coating my eyeballs
and the curves of your words,
rolling around my mind,
like a bouncing ball
that’s dying.

After we say goodbye,
they stay,
echoes of you
out to play.

You asked before you kissed me
and now I wonder
if you will ever say
that you’ll miss me.

she compares her sweet tooth
to that of a good long scream,
the kind where your throat hurts a little after
and your eyes water,
the type of scream where your neighbors start to wonder
if either you’ve been murdered,
or you've just had the best ****** of your life,
because it sounds just a little too pleasureful
to be the sound of of an inevitable death.

we’ve gathered up all our assets
put them in a room

made sure to pour the gas over
before the match is thrown

It's like when you were a kid
and you tripped down the sidewalk,
but you didn't fall hard enough to bleed,
and nothing appears to be wrong,
from the outside,
at least,
so you shove those tear drops
back down your eye holes,
and get up,
and keep walking,

like **** that sidewalk.

the sea, the rain and the stars,
they must feel this way too-

tangled with desire
and always the beloved,
never able to give it back
in quite the same way it's received.

Don't you think peaches are made of these?

Thighs slicked with coconut oil
on a hot summer day.

Think of us breathing in the southern heat-
think of us singing with no defeat.

But we can't miss this anymore,
our sleepy eyes will now reside
behind screen lights and subject lines,
traffic lights constantly blinking yellow
and your 3 favorite songs on repeat,
I look down as I walk away
so I won't have to say the words
"goodbye"

do you know how it feels
to dance around the aloneness so often
your arms feel like a temporary poncho
made of plastic rap
ready to rip
at the slightest sign of stress.

Maybe,
we’ve been ignoring all
the red flags.

Let them pass us by,
roll your eyes at morality
and let their manipulation
chip away at personality.

Comfort let me believe
four years of knowing me
meant that you knew
what’s better
than me.

I guess it’s just that
I never felt like
I was settling,
for anything.

Because settling
would have meant

down,

and babe,
to me,

you’re on the highest
of pedestals.

But,
I’m slowly learning
how to get you
back on the ground.

Run away,
and maybe someday
you’ll come running back to me.

Run away,
and maybe this day
a clear blue sky will greet you, with a glass half full
of stars beneath your soft lit eyelids, sashaying
through fields of a dream.

You ran away,
and it’s okay.

I’ve fallen all over you,
but I know the way back up.

Just take the stairs,
even if it’s hard
and your heart beats heavy
and your breathing,
fast not steady.

I can show you the way,
back from hell.
I even left a light on,
show and tell.

She is a Thursday evening;
the cake before the baking.

She is a run and a jump,
or the extra squeeze
at the end of a hug.

She is the last glass of red wine,
when you’re already a little drunk.

She is the letter you wrote,
but won’t ever send.

She is skipping down the center lane,
of every place you’ve even been.

A fickle friend,
for your mind to chase.

The girl in the song,
who just wants to have fun.

She loves you,
she loves you not.

The one who got away,
or the one to get away from.

blurring the lines between real and fake

i begin to wonder what life feels like looking through your eyes

my photos above your wall street desk

your hair always perfectly combed to one side

i feel like i don’t know you at all

like a specimen

i looked at you for so long

and it all still seems somehow foreign and familiar
the way you move around your room after a day of work
putting everything back in its exact place
like it never happened in the first place

do you think about what you eat everyday and what that says about you?

do you ever get tired of walking the same way home?
do you like to fall asleep warm at night?

when was the last time you felt pure joy when looking at something?

what color best describes your mood right now?

are you a sun person or a moon person?

if the sun were a fruit what fruit would it be?

if the moon were a cookie what would it taste like?

do you ever get nervous when you walk into a room full of people?

do you ever walk down the street and see things that make you want to cry?

do you ever get sad looking at children realizing that part of you is gone forever?

do you ever wish you could read books twice for the first time?

You held me there,
beneath your thick-skinned, heavy-hand
wrapped tightly round the frames
of my feeble heart strings.

You pushed all your fears
of my absence
into a weight I placed
deep beneath my ribcage.

Hollow and heavy,
I begged to be
the lucky one.

Recollected and spoon fed,
it took me a moment,
to see that the hand I clung to
so desperately,
was the same
that gave my demons all their energy.

And I suppose I was hypnotized,
by the way you could kiss doubt
into the back of my neck,
and call it something else.

But one day I fell asleep,
all alone
and woke to see
somewhere in my sleepwalk,
I had crawled out from underneath.
Just to find you,

far away

but still,
looking back at me.

where my mind should be,

animals locked up in cages
waiting to be let out so they too
can play.

I realize now,
you have me
misread.

You’re in love
with left-overs.

Fun summers with
your dream-boy,
his pasty skin and
***** bed.

Waiting for a text
or
phone-call,

patient and alone,
in your head.

Dreary eyes
tied to
screens,

only ever seeing
each other
for a few days

and then
every night
in your’ sleep-
no,

dreams.

In theory,
it’s less
than romantic.

And I just thought
you should know,
my love notes
aren’t about
giving in
to old habits.

They clarify
all the reasons
I know how
to live happily
without it.

I wanna say I lost,
lost them all in a white girls bag,
filled with peppermint gum wrappers
and made of Micheal Kors.

Let them go like candy
when it’s too old.

Gave no reason
but at least I tried.


They said I had too much pride, or maybe
it’s because it’s about being slutty,

I do like too many guys
and girls,
but maybe that’s why.

I’m not a mystery, nothing here to solve,
I’m nice,
I like myself
and you
but I like me
better than any of you all.

I think I got nasty,
maybe it was when I took a fall,
sticky with blood and word phrasings.

Drunk and disorderly,
but I promise, I took pictures of it all!

They might call me crazy but
I’ve already called them all.

I’ll always be late to breakfast
but never mistake me for being
flaky
like your breakfast biscuit,
topped with gravy-
fake tasting excuses,
its like you wrote the lyrics-
“drive me crazy.”

sometimes i remember what i think i wanted to say,
what i was trying to say the entire time.

i go to write it down,
it disappears.

i don’t remember what poems i showed you,
but i remember hating myself afterword.

wanting to know how or why i felt all these things,
and you took photos of empty spaces.

you were all big words,
our relationship was your bed and me naked in it,
trying to take up less space
and i guess i succeeded in that-
i've disappeared altogether now.

you hated my unfiltered words
because they made me sound broken,
waiting to be fixed.
you were always trying to put me back together
and i was always trying to be
less than ten thousand pieces-
or at least enough to fill you with.

The pastures of my sanity lie between
the first kiss of my lips
and making macaroni and cheese for one.

I’m not fluent in French
but I can speak in tongues,
better than any linguist.

And lust.
My favorite word to say,
and be.

Touch my finger to my lip,
have I gotten your attention yet?

The more I pretend to love,
the more I love to hate.

A silly game,
I’m playing it,
with you.

But the more of you I kiss,
the less of you I like.

And now,
I
the object of your so called affection,
have poisoned you
with foreshortened importance,
and plead with you-
to please retreat.

Yet you still crave me,
like some ignorant child
who’s never believed in candy
until someone told them,
it’s quite sweet.

gave up sweet months of time to be by your side
and for what?
for what conversation did we ever had that changed me for the better?
your taste in everything was politically vanilla
you fetishized my looks to the point of my own self-destruction
you made me question every flaw that fell outside the coloring book lines of
Your Dream Girl

our relationship was
sweet n’ low
i’m still looking for the real sugar

It was with a boy, a parking lot, and a hill.

mid-afternoon, mid-september, on a sunday.

stammering words,
holding eyes,
catching breathes

at the top,
around the dead grassed corner,
between two trees,
we sat and watched the leaves wander down.

gripping gazes and stealing secrets,
fields of flowers in my head growing
with the ideas of you.

wide open spaces,
they have this funny way of making the one you fall in love with
seem like eternal possibility,
like the ***** of the hill to the parking lot
was full of more then potential.

teasing through purple flip phones
and lips bitten to hide myself from smirking at the screen
meant parents asking questions,
where have you been?

we forged gaps of time between impossible increments,
just to kiss each other,
in a car parked in a parking lot
at the bottom of a hill,
on a late night in november,
where each and every latent october leaf had already all fallen
in love,
with you.

i don’t want to hold you if you won’t hold back
don’t want to run my fingers across the skin of your back and
don’t want to whisper that i love you in your ear
(but i do love you)
because I’ve run the love out of you
(and now i can’t real it back in)

you left a bruise on my forearm
pressed in by a thick thumb and index

used to joke about my fragile limbs
how easily you could break me

“tell me when it hurts”
you used to say,

the burn of gripped knuckles
holding soft flesh
insides my thigh

"enough to leave a mark?"
i never checked afterword.

all the air that knocked me down
came from the deflated balloons
of your lips

popped with
the same thorn stemmed flower
you plucked for me
after our first funeral

left it on my windowsill
watched it die
then tapped it to my wall

a reminder
something can be as beautiful
living
as it is
dead

one day
i ripped the tape from the wall
because your ashes needed to be burned
and spread


because i didn’t miss you anymore

I close my eyes and feel the sun come untucked from the clouds,
bleeding blood orange through my eyelids.

No one really knows you and I the way we know our footsteps,
coming home across wood floors late at night.

The way we used to sit on windowsills,
or crosslegged across from one another on your bed.

Our arms sank into the crevices of one another,
I wanted to feel the weight of you to crush me,
if only just to feel the peace of the street.