My anxiety is not me.
My anxiety is shaking hands.
My anxiety is imaginative.
My anxiety is sleepless nights.
My anxiety is never satisfied.
My anxiety sits on my shoulder.
My anxiety keeps me from making important phone calls.
My anxiety forces me to want to isolate myself.
My anxiety makes me cry over nothing.
My anxiety makes me cry over everything.
My anxiety tells me a C may as well be an F.
But my anxiety forces me to avoid important tasks I have to deal with. Everything scares me.
What am I so scared of?
My anxiety wakes me up vomiting.
My anxiety forces me to pull away from the people I so badly want to fall into.
My anxiety keeps me from living.
My anxiety makes me at least two to twenty minutes late everywhere because I don’t believe I am ever prepared,
so I have to retrace my every other step,
constantly checking and re checking.
Constantly doubting.
My anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through my mind.
My anxiety is a menace, a monster, a fish with teeth,
black yarn, lawn chairs sinking in the sand.
My anxiety rules me.
May 6, 2016
May 6, 2016 at 3:00 AM UTC
Twenty distrusted fingers. Thieves.
They robbed her in the dead of day.
The putrid smell of **** and pain. Blood and puke.
Loss and loss.
A child’s scream.,
The sound of no one hearing.
Ten fingers scratching at windows fogged.
Tension, clenching, attention
All on her.
Snow in October.
2012.
May 6, 2016
May 6, 2016 at 2:49 AM UTC
I am eleven again
feeling like tomorrow
is a couple yesterday's ago
smothered in cayenne pepper
hot enough to take off taste buds
and tonight i am eating a meal
only worth burning
it tastes like my parents' anniversary
it tastes like a zinfandel
left on the counter too long
it's a bad story, see
there's no silverware 'cause my mom sold it
to keep the lights on
after my brother passed
when I was eleven
and somewhere in heaven
somebody in a suit
doing commentary
on this fiasco
is telling someone else
in a suit that
"you have to eat love with your hands"
so we sit, four plates on the table
for the two of us
my brother's long gone
dad's even further away & he's not the one who's buried
i carry both their names like anchors
that i cannot unmoor from
while she looks at the empty table
and says something about the news
she says something else
but she's not talking
we aren't proud of this, see
my dad likes to wax his car
he's proud of it
and my mom says
she sees a lot of him in my hands
says, I touch the things i find
like they didn't belong
to people sleeping in the ground
she says i touch photo albums
the same way-
you know,
I never used to believe
that history could repeat itself
not until i could
fast forward seventeen years
and still wake up to smoke alarms
how i would go into our kitchen
to find it empty
and the dinner smoldering & my mother in her bedroom
looking through family photos
like it's a just another summer day
and the sirens are just the birds
i don't ask, i never say a word
in this moment
i am an archeologist
afraid to dig up the past
cause history repeats itself-
you see
my brother is dead
and my father is gone
they have been for some years now
and my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets their place at the table
like they're still here,
and in the confusion
ends up ankle deep
in pictures of how it used to be ...
she let's dinner burn
and douses it in red pepper
hoping i won't know the difference
Feb 9, 2016
Feb 9, 2016 at 6:35 PM UTC
This is not a ******* love story, but I was sure that I loved him.
I was mad at you for such a long time. That sounds so **** stupid and obvious. It's like, "Well no **** I was angry." I wish I could be more poetic about us. I wanted to turn this ******** into something beautiful, but it just wasn't. It was ugly, brutal ******** But still, you swear we were perfect.
I honestly thought we were some June and Johnny Cash **** You'd kiss my shoulders and ask to hear my poetry. I would read you something, and you'd just sigh, looking at me with those oceans. I wanted to swim in you, I didn't give a **** if the waves were choppy or the tide was coming in. I just wanted to be with you.
The night we drove up into the Hollywood Hills and just stopped the car. I'd seen that view before. It wasn't new, just some lights. A city. But the proximity of our bodies sent my head spinning. You leaned against the fence and told me about your family. I wanted to just kiss you and look at all those stupid, beautiful lights with you. I thought wow I bet no one has ever seen a view this beautiful before. But I wasn't talking about the city.
But, we were not June and Johnny. We were the movie version. You were some method actor and i was the poor girl you were running lines with. Only, I was unaware. You see, I thought we were falling in love.
You projected your love for another onto me, and when you realized I wasn't the girl you dreamed of, you let go. Put me out and stepped on me just like your ****** Newports. You pulled out the smoke and mirrors (yet again) and did your famous disappearing act, one i knew all too well. Our fingertips unlocked and you pranced away like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.
And i believed, falsely, that I was nothing.
Maybe that is why you shut the door to my apartment and walked straight into her arms. I was not enough, or she was just more. I wasn't your June. I was a body and hands. A mouth. God, how you loved my mouth. Someone to hold all you skeletons in my closet, to stroke your back and ego when you needed love. That is all that i ever was. But she was more, and i fell to the ******* floor when i heard your footsteps stomping down my staircase.
I stayed there on the floor, looking up at the ceiling and making note of each crack and imperfection. I am so ******* stupid, I keep telling myself. I couldnt get up from that stupid floor. Everything was stupid. I hated myself. I hated you guys together. I hated that just a week before, you came to my hometown and ****** me in my childhood home. You ****** me in the house my dad died in. I ******* hated it all.
I was in some shell-shocked denial, the kind that took a hold of my legs and gave me some weird paralysis. I did not want to believe you were that kind of man. Or maybe, that i was that kind of woman. The kind of woman who could be destroyed by someone walking away. I had lost my dad. I had lost more important relationships. You shouldn't have meant that much.
I didn't want to admit how much I had invested in you. I didn't want to hear your words like surround sound. Your ******** ******* words. "I haven't felt like this in such a long time. Maybe ever." Stop. "Its ****** ******* insatiable, Kacie, I cant get enough of you." No. I couldnt use my legs to get back up.
A week later, i went home. I was so sick with everything that had happened. I was so terrified I'd run into you o camous, or worse, run into you with her. I knew my legs would give out if that ever happened. I'd just be strolling along, headed to my screenwriting class, and there I would see you both.
Happy. Cute. Blonde. Together.
And i'd ******* want to die and my body would stop working. My legs would stop. I would fall over. I'd be on the floor in front of everyone saying, "No, I am fine! don't worry!" she she would look at me with some disgusting sympathy. Like, "Ohhh, you poor thing! I'm sorry! We didn't mean for this to happen!"
I just couldn't deal with it. I needed to go home.
I got home while my mom was still at work. I opened my door and dramatically flung my near-lifeless body on the couch. I was just so done. I wanted to hibernate for the next five months. And then, when i started to silently cry, a furry angel jumped up and joined me. Bo, the dog my dad adopted only a month before he left, nestled his giant head into the crook of my neck. I cried and he kissed me. I buried my head into his neck and just sobbed into this beautiful, loving creature.
He loved me in a way you never did, or could. And the sad truth? I'm not sure you know how to love anything deeply the way a dog loves.
But I do. And now I am twenty years old, giving all of myself to a man who saw what you did years too late.
Sep 10, 2015
Sep 10, 2015 at 12:13 PM UTC
I stood in the musty, off-white bathroom of the hotel and grinned at myself in the mirror. I was drunk and in my boxers. I needed to shave. Mitchell was asleep on one of the beds, snoring, a beer balanced on his ever growing beer belly. It was an impressive size for Mitchell only being 25.
He was in town for a court date. I was ecstatic when I heard, I hadn’t seen Mitchell since we were about nineteen. I took his beer from him, set it on the nightstand, and shook his shoulder. I said, wake up ******* come smoke a cig with me.
We stood outside freezing in the winter air, chain-smoking, watching the ****** do their rounds. Mitchell said something about finding one to score. I exhaled my smoke and snickered in reply.
“You don’t wanna stick it in ***** ****** from behind me. Surprised, I turned around. A petite girl, puffing her non-menthol cigarette, with a slender nose and tattoos on her arms. Mitchell smartly replied that what if he did want to stick it in ***** ****** I wanted to know her name.
I asked what the hell she was doing at such a run-down hotel, why I had never seen her around town before. Between exhales she told me “I’m living with this guy but I hate him… I don’t even know what I’m doing with him.” Mitchell had gone inside. I invited her up to my room. While we walked, I studied the way her long, dyed red hair graced her plump *** My god, that plump ***
“I’m trying to get into some **** tonight” she said, “Are there any bars on this street?”
I was still thinking about her *** I opened the door to our room.
“Um, I think there’s one,” I told her that we have drinks, though, and tossed her a beer.
I talked her ear off for a good hour. I can really get goin’ after a little alcohol is in me. What’s her name? I’m too drunk to remember to ask. I’ll call her red. She played with that long *** red hair and looked around a lot, antsy to…get into some ****
“I’m not gonna **** you, you know” she said.. I was taken aback by such a blunt, matter-of-fact statement.
“Oh come on,” I said, “My girlfriend’s ****** two different guys this week. I’m just trying to get even.”
“You son of a ***** She got up from the bed and hit me with a pillow, laughing, “You mother ******* ******* A mouth on this one; I liked her.
We goofed around for a bit until she suggested we walk around the hotel. We were halfway down our hallway when we saw and smelled a group of people ahead of us with a doobie. They gave the rest of it to red and invited us in their room. I met her eyes, blue, swimming in excitement and thriving in the spontaneity.
We walked into this room and met the strangest group of people I’ve ever laid my eyes on. There was a skinny, tall black boy with chains and a big bag of herb, two gothic girls with every lip piercing known to man, a preppy high school girl who kept losing her lipstick, a short black boy with a sizeable bag of white stuff; he told us to call him Doc. I think there were some more people there too.
Anyway red is chatting away with the high school girl, found out they had went to the same high school. We were sitting beside each other passing a doobie from the guy with the chains. Next thing I know, the shorter boy slaps a heaping pile of the white stuff on the table in front of red and I. Split it, he told us. That we did. Red did a few lines and sat back and closed her eyes. It was alright, she said. I did some myself. Now, I do forget whose idea it was, probably red’s. Somehow it got suggested that I do a line off her *** I mean she obviously had a nice **** who wouldn’t want to snort a line of coke off a round ***
Next thing I know, she is *** naked, face down in front of me and I’m trying not to get hard, which is difficult when you’re as ****** up as I was. The tall skinny dude was behind us, asleep, using his bag of *** as his pillow. We laughed at this. The girls smoked in the corner, and the other shorter guy watched a little too closely at me spreading the powder on reds white *** It was as white as the substance. I couldn’t believe this girl; she won’t let me see her naked but insists I snort drugs off her bare ***
After I was finished we all drank and smoked more, got more ****** up. Red and I eventually left and walked back to my room. Mitchell was open-mouthed snoring. I was being drunk and annoying; I rolled on top of her and just laid there. I rolled off and walked to the other side and lit a cigarette in our nonsmoking room.
“I’ll get you, you ******* she said, “You just wait!”
“Just don’t bite it off,” I said, “or you’ll make a half dozen women very unhappy.”
She climbed up to the top of the bed and perched there, cross-legged, watching the small television which illuminated her face. The news was on. Why is she so intent on the news? Now I know you aren’t sane I told her.
“Be quiet, she said, I want to watch the news!”
And there we sat at the top of a ****** hotel bed, coked out, watching the news. She held the hand with her cigarette in the air and let out a laugh. I accepted her like this.
Sep 8, 2015
Sep 8, 2015 at 12:26 AM UTC
here i am again:
amongst the visceral shadows
standing on the outside
while Gods candle
makes a mockery of me
opening umbrellas inside
because i can't get away
from this god ****** downpour
************ with my left hand
because i was once told
'it feels like someone else is doing it'
it gets me wondering about
the difference between losing you
an finding out i never had you
You see
I keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
and something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
it's strange,
somehow i dream but don't sleep
and i wake up
Tired
of feeling like
im something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
of wondering if you can
even tell the difference
between the absence of my voice
and silence
The other day
i almost started sobbing at work
when a woman asked about our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
that's why i rest
in my shadows
in anxious recluse
Now
I haunt the windows
of this house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you are near again
I just seem to stand here
in all of this quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice,
but
since you've been gone i wonder
if when you pushed yourself
away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else was doing it...
Aug 17, 2014
Aug 17, 2014 at 9:13 PM UTC
there should only be one of us here
you have no idea that i will break your heart
whenever i approach the truth
you back away from it
you don't want to know
but you should know
the more you love me the more i will ruin you
i will take my darkness and push it inside you
lying away beside you,
these thoughts run circles in my head
i have done unforgivable things
(you inhale, you exhale)
i have taken advantage of other peoples weakness in order to cover my own,
i have slept with boys even though i know they would later make me want to die
all the imperfections on your skin are simply places for flowers to bloom in
I wonder if you realize every daisy i plant is just another for me to rip out
every spot that i will kiss
is just another you will never be able to look at again
and you will spend hours trying to hide them from view,
worried everyone can see the stains i left on you
oh, but don't worry your pretty little head
i don't intend to hurt you
i never want to
however, empirics show it's all i can do
Jul 15, 2014
Jul 15, 2014 at 8:37 PM UTC
There are dreamers
and there are realists in this world.
You'd think the dreamers
would find the dreamers
and
the realists
would find the realists,
but more often than not
the opposite is true
You see ,
the dreamers need the realists
to keep them from soaring
too close to the sun
and the realists...
well, without the dreamers
they might never get off the ground
Jun 19, 2014
Jun 19, 2014 at 8:39 AM UTC
On Monday I didn't go to school
because you wanted to take me out instead
We walked around the park downtown all afternoon
finally we perched ourselves in the gazebo
immersing ourselves in each other's thoughts
and wading in traded words.
My attention was shattered when a
lady bug landed on my knee. I was baffled-
I exclaimed that it's orange. You laughed and I
coaxed it onto my finger. And you told me
"Some of them are green you know"
I didn't know. I said "maybe those ones just aren't ripe yet"
I played with the bug for a few more seconds
until I felt your gaze, and I lifted my emerald greens
to your cup-of-coffee mahognies. You were looking at me
the way I imagined Gatsby must have looked at Daisy.
And you smiled a little too wide
for the stupid thing I had just said. You touched my chin
and kissed me gently, and i could feel your lips
still frozen in a grin.
But when I looked back down my coveted orange lady bug
had flown away-
and left no trace that he ever came.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 10:31 AM UTC
There is a crack down my center
diremption black-balling an existential ease
The Moon knows who I am
sighing my name in her bending light
beaming to my tattered rim
Oh, lustrous bulb emblazoned in elevation
a sister to mine
she dangles in confidence
companionless, wandering among stars
and ever-changing, ricochet
between lunar phases evasive
Her metallic optimism calls to my insomniac iris, but
our stunning single source of light
does possess a polar
of two, where
a potent cynicism sleeps soundly
out of view, in
darkness everlasting
Pale in her weariness is she
scaling east to west, but
sabbatical she is not
for methodical hands protest in sway
But what would come of us if The Moon came
crashing
down?
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 9:01 AM UTC