She was fifteen and messy haired, a sweet girl you would call "honey" without a tone of patronage, fuzzy pink sweater and braces and eyes that folded when she smiled, so much so we called her Squints McGee.
But what could so easily be hidden behind eyes crinkled with laughter and warm purple slippers were the names others whispered as she walked by, snakes that slithered out of slit lips and silent stealthy glares,
NAMES THEY CALL MY BEST FRIEND
****
*****
*****
Easy
Names that hurt me as I walked beside her, protecting her as a younger sister, my beautiful best friend. Begging others "don't judge her, you don't understand, just get to know her"
Parked outside the football field on January or was it November ish evening- fingers nervously tapping out confessions on the dashboard, honest melting eyes, she told me everything. What he promised her, what he stole from her, unwrapping her like a Christmas present, greedily, gift paper in strips on the living room floor.
I was seventeen and tall, with brown hair and hips that led boys in Whataburger late at night to make sounds as I walked by. I wore combat boots and wrote poetry on my phone and was known as the worst driver in my high school. But what could so easily be masked behind thick glasses lenses and chunky earrings was the ****** war raging in my brain
NAMES HE CALLED ME THAT NIGHT
****
*****
*****
Easy
And laying backstage at theatre rehearsal, I told her. Whispered I loved him and he was the one, he just made a mistake. He would come back, I was sure of it. But at home I dug razors into my thoughts and screamed emptiness into my pillow.
If he loved me, why did he hurt me? Break my body into pieces and choose the parts he wanted, squeeze my trust between his fingers, paint my mind with his anger and his drug addiction.
If he loved her, why did he hurt her? Kidnap her innocence and stamp her with a fragile mark, make her body a punchline to his friends, publish her secrets to the football team.
Because of him the word love will forever be associated with pain, the act of *** tainted with punishment, the idea of a companion smeared with abandonment.
Because of you I had a panic attack in my shower on Christmas Eve, naked and shaking on the cold tile floor, where blood looks oddly orange and my hair swirls into lines that look like a map to my messy mind.
And when my mother found me. And I told her the truth. Two years from the day she picked me up from the park late at night and begged me to tell her if I was hurt and I lied.
She told me the same thing had happened to her once too.
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 12:24 AM UTC
"I've been doing so well," I type as I slide a thin silver blade down my hipbone. "I'm clean and I've been taking my medication and I've even been running." Blood gathers at the edges, draw swirls in the warmth.
Bright blue screen lights up my hopes and my heart does a flip.
"Can we talk later? I'm really tired."
"Of course! Sorry for keeping you up."
It's 3:49 in the ******* afternoon.
Remember when you were my best friend and you walked two miles to my house in the middle of the night because I told you I felt alone?
Remember when I was out of town for a day and you missed me so bad you bought me cupcakes?
Remember when you told me I was the only person you'd ever been in love with?
I'm so sorry.
I miss you.
Please.
Jul 11, 2015
Jul 11, 2015 at 5:53 PM UTC
I would trade my future for one last minute with you,
Cut into my memories and give the best slice to you,
Dance in the street wearing only my flaws for you,
Buy the finest brushes to paint my thoughts for you.
imissyouandiloveyouandineedyou
But life isn't fair, and my ****** job can only buy so many plane rides a year to see you.
And all of the love in the world from me can't generate love from you.
If I wrapped up the galaxy in a fancy box with a bow, it wouldn't mean a thing to you.
I could hide myself in my broken pieces, but I would have to send a map to you.
imissyouandiloveyouandineedyou
Jun 30, 2015
Jun 30, 2015 at 11:48 AM UTC
From her dark purple lips hangs a cigarette with pink smoke, and headphones with no music play a tune inside her head, and she paints bright red words loud as a FRAGILE stamp on her skin, and maybe on yours too, but only when you seem particularly insightful. She knows every word to every song of a band you’ve never heard of, and when they play and she’s driving the car, she will literally pull over and close her eyes to absorb the sound into her bloodstream, which seems to be composed of tiny bits of the galaxy and maple syrup and diary entries she never lets you read. She will kiss you in the movies, but only in parts heavily dripping of gore and violence, a metaphor she’s explained countless times but you will just never understand. She will paint her nails with your name sprawled across the middle finger, hold your hand in the gas station while shaming glossy magazine covers and everything that’s just soooo wrong with societies expectations of women today (despite the fact she’s somehow maniacally maintained her perfect body in the three weeks you’ve known her), and tell you that you’re her favorite season, a thought that your mind will spin around in its head like you ran around your 3rd grade classroom when your teacher was introducing concepts of matter and announced “now switch from a solid to a gas!”
But she will never tell you she loves you.
She will curse under her breath when you climb your courage without a harness to break the cold silence of the night, while laying on your back on the street under the stars. She will whisper “I’m so sorry” and speed off into the night, running with an elegant skirt she found in a thrift shop- made in 1956 or some other far-off year- flicking like a black-and-white movie behind her, the last thing you see before she disappears into the night, before she disappears from the audience’s cares and back into your mind.
She was everything I wanted to be for as long as I could remember, a terrible destruction of the human mind, a horrific enigma that perfection was so messed up that perfection itself could never learn how to love. Manic Pixie Dream Girl was my role model, Manic Pixie Dream Girl wore shirts from France hand-painted with Swedish fables, Manic Pixie Dream Girl knew every Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros song on the xylophone but only played with her eyes closed, Manic Pixie Dream Girl hated her sister and her parents and told everyone she was a mess they didn’t want to clean up. A disgusting idea that a woman only exists to make a man happy, to cure a man of his dark cloud of spinning inhibitions, and if she dares become real then she no longer is deemed entertaining. Manic Pixie Dream Girl was my goal, and with this in mind I embarked upon puberty with a music taste straight out of a Wes Anderson movie and teal eyeliner and the idea that being broken was desirable.
Until I actually was.
Manic Pixie Dream Boy refused to listen to the radio, wanted to be a famous actor, planned days to simply lay in bed all day, and smoked over a pack a day despite asthma so bad I worried every time we went up the stairs. Manic Pixie Dream Boy wore clothes with animals on them, but said he didn’t believe in giraffes, Manic Pixie Dream Boy hated school but loved to learn, Manic Pixie Dream Boy was perfect. Until he became the thing I so desired, telling me relationships weren’t for him and he couldn’t possibly ever fall in love, he was too broken.
But now I was Manic Pixie Dream Girl, wasn’t I? Broken, just as she was? Just as I had so desired to be when re-watching The (500) Days of Summer over and over again in middle school?
I hate you Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I hate telling the kind boy with the good grades and nice intentions that I couldn’t possibly love again, I detest the enigma I now am.
But when new boy with blue eyes darker than the Pacific coast tells me to lay down with him in the gravel and tells me that he hates the number 63 more than wheat-brewed beer, I say yes and give into manic dreams again.
Jun 22, 2015
Jun 22, 2015 at 1:39 AM UTC
Today I want to die, but tomorrow I may be fine.
Such is the constant battle in my heart and on my mind.
I'm falling in love with the idea of being sick
I'm comfortable dating a guy who is a real ****
I see myself as nothing but my illness and my pain
My mind can only be described as unfriendly and insane
I ******* hating rhyming
So I'll stop all this **** now
Today is a bad day.
May 20, 2015
May 20, 2015 at 1:33 PM UTC
My stomach began to hurt about two days ago. That was the morning I woke up to an empty bed and throbbing head and no messages from you, no "hey darling I got here in one piece," no "goodnight dear." But then again I never date guys who talk like that. My stomach hurt all day and I wanted to talk to you so bad I gave into temptation and you said everything was good and you had "forgotten" to text me and I brushed it off later and didn't ask for the story when your friends kept teasing you about "the married woman you hit on."
My stomach still hurts and it's been two days now and today I told you it hurt and you said "I'm sorry" when all I needed to hear was "I love you, I'm here" and I cried harder than the sky did all the way home and tried to take a nap but now I sit here trying to scrawl down thoughts in the messy way I do when my mind screams with the need to spit them out. I can't understand how it always ends up like this, always hurts like this, LOVE ISNT SUPPOSED TO FEEL LIKE THIS. You've taken my mind in your hands and molded it and my body bends easily to your will and my words will never tell you how much you hurt me because I can't lose you and my head needs to get it out and everyone tells me that my poetry is best when it feels the most real well it feels PRETTY ******* REAL RIGHT NOW and the sickest part is that its when I am most ****** up that I can create the most beautiful things.
You're an artist. Finger-paint my messy mind because no brush strokes could do it justice. See the way that side is always a little smudged, darling? See the way my hands always shake a little, spiderweb lines that map out my grotesque sickness? See my broken inability to understand why you couldn't possibly love me, I know you can't love me, I've seen me I've felt me I've heard me.
You were perfect. Take that label and shove it up your *** hahahahaha. Or maybe stick it on my chest to be worn like a badge of detestable irony, I wish I could hate you but every time I try to breathe out the words "I'm leaving" my mouth says "kiss me" instead.
And all my friends and their cookie cutter boyfriends live their days in warm snuggles and cookies and I breathe blood bubbles and think about throwing my toaster in the shower just for ***** and giggles.
You were mine, are mine? Never mine.
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 5:42 PM UTC
"Nina, why do you always date ***** questions my best friend in the way that implies an answer is not needed nor wanted in the warm light of his front porch in the car that belongs to me but he offers to drive when my stomach is sick and a new ****** is laid like fresh paint on my mind.
The question itself spins like a coin in my head that will never lay flat, like a bad autotune job, like a Rube Goldberg that will never halt, like it has too much truth to it.
"Why do you always date *****
Because they don't seem like ***** when our eyes meet and the slope of their smile makes my nose crinkle with an incessant desire to smell the warm scent of their chest as my head lays pillowed on it in the early morning calm before the loud realization of what events transpired the night before, before flashbacks of mixed bodies and sweaty whispers, before he decides he's seen enough of me, devoured his piece of meat, he's not hungry anymore.
When will I be his favorite food? The one he can have for breakfast lunch and dinner and still crave, the one he will always ask for seconds of, the one who is home to him. Every time I meet someone I call all of my friends and swear he's the ever so infamous "one," and every time I fall for the ******* lie that he "will not break me," YOU WILL NOT BREAK ME?! Then why am I shattered, laying in pieces on the cold tile floor, my mind a messy oozing disaster? But maybe my heart has always been just a taped up broken mess since Paula left, maybe when Aaron and Spain and Mitchell came along it was all too easy for them to pull at the poorly tied knotted strings I had sewn into my heart, maybe my soul was just a little too welcoming, maybe my mouth was a little too eager to feel theirs against it. But I can swear that when you "made love to me" it was really just ******* or else why would you take the one piece of me left only to complain after that I hadn't shaved. Well I've shaved every day since, cut bleeding patterns into my mortified anxiety, ripped tears from my eyes before I dare let them fall, and watched you kiss her over and over again. But if you asked me back I'd still say yes, rip the shredded heart from the box I've tended to keep it in and place it back in your hands to wear like a new notch in your belt, a new trophy for your collection.
"Why do you always date *****
Because some wretched inner part of my being believes I deserve it.
Apr 12, 2015
Apr 12, 2015 at 9:02 PM UTC
A slam poem
Your contact picture was taken the day you forgot to buy me a Christmas present
And when I scroll through my phone and see your name I remember crying until my pillow was painted black with streams of dashed hopes and childish mistakes.
On our third date you took the clip out of my hair and put it in yours and I haven't worn it since. Now I keep that clip in a desk drawer and try not to remember the way your voice cracked when you whispered my name and breathed your secrets into my mouth before trying to rip them back out through my heart when you decided you'd had enough of laughing over clips in your hair.
At night I lay awake and command my mind to conjure up any thought that's not you in your grey tuxedo, you in your painted skin that you outgrew when you smoked your first cigarette, peeling layers of who you were when you still filmed ghost hunting videos and touch-ups of who you are now, with your tears like rare prizes I wish I could collect in bottles and auction off to every past girl you've ever loved. And **** there's a lot of girls.
But in the grand essay of your every past love I am the typo on the third page that knocks down your grade two points, the ****** you would do anything to hit backspace on, the messy extra letter that somehow is overlooked by your meticulous eye because it's 2 am and you stopped giving a **** at 10. I am the coffee stain that gives away your procrastination like a badge worn across your chest, like a bruise on your forehead she may notice when she leans in to kiss you, like a tear in your favorite tie that she will see when she slides it off your neck and slips it sensually onto her own, not knowing I think about hanging myself with that very tie 1036 times a day if only I thought for one second it would awaken you from the slumber you fell into when you found whiskey and me that one December night on the countertop that wasn't even our own.
And I awake every morning drenched in heartache and heavily breathing out the rhythm your heart would drum as I lay at night with my head on your chest and my heart in your hands and my body in your mind. I was the glass sculpture you couldn't resist playing with no matter how many times you were warned not to, I was the wet paint sign you couldn't resist testing, I was the fire alarm you just had to pull.
But I would burn my tongue on coffee watching the sunrise with you again and again and again if it would resurrect the Christmas lights that burned like dying stars in my stomach in the fleeting moment where I truly believed you could love me, your kisses like butterfly wings that became bats all too quickly, your love like a fever that broke too fast- sweating and crying in bed at 2 am-I MISS YOU AND I HATE YOU AND I NEED YOU.
Yet maybe I knew along that this would happen. Yes, maybe I saw you as an opportunity to rekindle my old romance with anger and pain and depression, maybe when my friends told me you were bad news, I rejoiced in the idea of my old friends returning so much so that I opened the door and said "come on in," arms opened wide, play dough mind in their hands.
Or maybe I just really loved you.
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 7:10 PM UTC
Close my eyes and breathe in and get through the day and whisper a prayer and hope with all of my heart that I don't run into you.
Lay in bed and clench my hands into fists to squeeze out all that's left of you holding them and try not to breathe in too fast or else the hole in my chest will surely cave in further and don't think of you, don't think of you, don't think of you.
Clean my room and don't notice the things you left behind when you left so quickly.
Make my bed and don't remember the way it was always just a little too small for the both of us.
Take a walk and don't walk past your house, or the restaurant we went on our first date, or the park where we kissed the first time, or the hill where you coughed a little too much and left me alone in the angry cold to lie on the grass and want to die.
Don't think about that. Definitely don't think about that.
Mar 22, 2015
Mar 22, 2015 at 3:41 PM UTC