bite into a peach pit
crack open your gum blood pacifier
palm the damp thumping stone
shrink when he touches it
thumb through your own shoulders
look for a new feeling
Mar 2, 2017
Mar 2, 2017 at 9:51 PM UTC
We are all addicted to something that's killing us, but makes our pain go away,
and when I helped you stumble from parking garage into the dewey moon speckled asphalt, you swam out into the street like you didn’t notice your waterlogged chest was leaking.
I followed you to the hidden brook.
We crashed into each other and fell onto the wet grass
and I secretly asked it to drink us up.
But your fingertips swallowed my palm like a parched fish, and I wondered how you could still be so thirsty.
The stars bathed your pale skin in a gleaming light show,
so I traced my own constellations and named them after your smile.
The way you kissed me, it was like you were afraid of breaking me.
But baby, you tasted like explosives,
and later, you drove me home with burns in my cheeks.
Through the window, the watery red moonlight plastered your face in speckled crimson.
You left a somber sound below my brain,
deep enough that whales have called back to me through the dark.
You are the gravity that swings blood through the blue highways under my skin
and floods my flushed cheeks when I’m pulled into your arms.
Your hands have long since graced my back
or cheek,
or wrists,
but your fingertips wrote love letters on the surface of my skin
which I admire every night after my head goes quiet;
When my thoughts rest on your charming lips, and hands;
when they whip through your hair like the wind of my breath
to find your eyes,
tongue,
and teeth,
and guide your waist with the sway of the sea.
And now I find myself missing the nights when you'd kiss self worth into my skin under the glowing canopy of red christmas lights and cinnamon whiskey, when I’d write stories on your back and pull the sky around your shoulders and pretend that I didn’t notice that your thighs are smaller than mine.
I’d ignore the fact that I could feel every gram of fat on my body rubbing up against itself, shifting under my stretching skin,
my jiggling oily layers caked in something more shameful than sin.
Because at the time, your kisses were my only testaments to the fact that I deserved to take up space.
And I know that you’ve held somebody who hates themselves in your arms before
because when I tell you that you’re beautiful, her echo chokes out “No I’m not”.
So I tell you that you better learn to love yourself like I do,
because I never. want. to hear. her. voice. again.
I don’t tell you that sometimes, it feels like there is a living breathing monster tucked in the corners of my mirrors and underneath my toilet seat,
because I never want you to think that its your responsibility to save me when you’re still drowning.
Oct 24, 2014
Oct 24, 2014 at 4:24 PM UTC
your coughs sound like crinkling pack wrappers
my hovering hope whistling straight through your
lingering smoke
i'm sifting though your hair
cracking the rope around my wrists
you watch and just
exhale your crackling smoke
and i'm clinging to your upper lip
like crumbling coke
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 2:40 PM UTC
Deep breaths are rare
More often ash drags through the streets
I see those eyes on top of every mountain peak
I used to look away when yours and mine would meet
We'd watch wrinkled heartbeats sputter-crash against concrete
You held me firm and hollow for a flawless month
I left my heart to blister in the August sun
I'd soon let it dry up before those blinding sunshine eyes
If it meant I'd get to kiss your ink and collar one last time
Close enough to singe my hair, but turn my body gold
You're my midnight fireball
Impossible to hold
Aug 24, 2014
Aug 24, 2014 at 7:18 PM UTC
he promised he'd take her out on the town at a quarter past three
and by a quarter of three she was dead in the living room
with her father's linens draped around her ankles
and below her skin, a purple fountain flowing
he promised her father he'd mend the holes in the linen
which had stained dark after her ascension
after her stomach acid bore craters into the floor polish
after her tongue fell from her lips to kiss the lace
and then men with suitcases took her body away at a quarter past three
they came without breaking or collapsing in the living room
they shrouded her in clinical-white sheets
and walked out the door bearing stoic expressions
leaving nothing but the world behind them
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 6:52 AM UTC
tongue tied up with xanthan gum from candied walnuts crystal fruit turning throats from song to rock i can't swallow up these numb capsules without throwing up i can't swallow without throwing up
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 11:40 AM UTC
she was spinning
for the thousandth time
and never fell once,
though gravity pulled at her ears
in circles around her skull,
and the ground yanked
at the corners of her eyelids.
she was blind
and couldn’t see the point at which
her heels rotated against carpet,
but she could hear the washing winds
that swelled inside her ears,
whose disembodied whispers
echoed out of her pearly eyes,
whose voices broke her knees
every time her head shut itself tight.
in the night,
she broke herself back open
to stop falling on an axis.
she peeled the whispers from her bleached skin
in succession,
replaced them in a wooden box,
and buried them under her damp sink,
where they crawled around
in the dark’s ink.
Nov 18, 2013
Nov 18, 2013 at 1:50 PM UTC
you have the privilege
of not having had experienced
the love you'd nurtured
being ripped from your arms
and throat
and chest,
until you became a cavity.
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 11:59 AM UTC
are you feeling dark and gloomy?
black as a dusty chalkboard
spooky like foggy street lights
like bruises
and
gooey, scabby knees
are you feeling spooky?
do you want to hide in your white room
and put out cigarettes on your tongue
or press them to your curtains
do you want to set the room on fire?
how far will you go to turn your insides out?
you paint those walls with charcoal
from the inside of your lungs
are you hurt?
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 11:07 AM UTC
I’ve never seen his skin,
But I’ve traced the curve of his ribs
Drawing star maps on his anatomy
I’ve witnessed the blade of his hip
Scratched his spine
And run fingertips across his collar
And last night I couldn’t sleep
Watching a set of fragile wings smaller than my pinkie nail
Circle the glow of my lamp, transfixed
After bobbing in and out of the lampshade,
It sputtered and fell onto my bedside table
Moths never know light is lethal
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 12:30 PM UTC