at 4 am I am reading Nabokov,
thinking about the taste of your lips,
the feel of your fingertips
I know that I am alive,
but sometimes I see smoke seep out of my skin,
and I swear you were the arsonist
to the burning building that is my body
I thought that if I stared at a fixed point for long enough
that I could be saved,
but you never made me feel safe
I was in love with you-
you were in love with something else
as I crawled on my hands and knees
trying to find a place to breathe,
to bleed
I don't know what to do with this body
I never could find a fire escape
everything I am collapses
to the sound of you leaving
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC
I always see the end of things when they begin,
but none of my escape plans ever went anything like this
my emptiness is a bruise,
and it hurts to be touched
his hands aren't like your soft ones
and he can't see through me
I still beg him not to leave
because God, I'm so empty
I take off my skirt
my mouth is now a graveyard of his cells
I try to remember when my heart wasn't an empty casket
I wake up in mourning
I still felt you in my sleep
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 12:43 PM UTC
sometimes I still choke on how much I love you
and the shower makes me cry
because I remember getting caught
in the rain with you
I'm sick of holding my breath
like I'm at the bottom of the Atlantic
and I'm waiting for you to love me again
for a while I found comfort
in losing my oxygen
but now I'm tired
of the way I love you unconditionally
and the fact that it's been months
since you last called me
my chest is so black and blue and bruised
and I will not be the kind of girl
to bend over backwards for you
if you ever want to find me
I will be standing ankle deep
in the Pacific
and breathing
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 10:31 PM UTC
inside me is a house of mirrors
i look at everything from every angle
until i am lost in it
i take these pills to stop
the negative reflections of my haunted body
and sometimes i think that
it would take the whole bottle
to do the trick
i don't wear my mess with pride
i have been shattered so many times
that i'll end up with years of bad luck
and the glass shatters my stomach
until i can't feel anything else
i'm cutting my tongue
on the shards i threw up
and i'll keep on tasting this blood
until i stop trying to find a way out
Feb 11, 2014
Feb 11, 2014 at 10:11 PM UTC
she wrote out a to do list
on the corner of a college rejection letter
and tried to tell herself that her list
(1. get his smell off your skin)
was as easy as they used to be
she waited until midnight
and the moon lit her up with light
(and she thought, “God,
just like his skin")
she scrubbed his fingerprints off the shower head
and she felt the water break her
(like being underneath his skin)
and she watched as the scalding heat
turned her into a blood-shaped girl
she saw him on the steps of his house
(as she definitely did not drive past at this hour)
and she touched the skin of her knee
and smoothed down her skirt
and never saw him again when he wasn’t there
Jan 29, 2014
Jan 29, 2014 at 5:57 PM UTC
once you fell asleep i scoured dictionaries for a word to describe what you mean
when you awoke you caught me on the floor at 3 am
with Merriam-Webster's in my hand
and Oxford American's open face down on my leg
as i traced useless words with my fingers
and rolled them around on my tongue
"love", you whisper
"there isn't a word for everything"
Aug 21, 2013
Aug 21, 2013 at 4:59 PM UTC
the coolness of the Atlantic hits us like an epiphany
you tuck a willow in my hair
as i taste summer in the air and insanity on your tongue
those nights when we felt like fireflies trapped in mason jars
and we watched all the others follow the lifeless lights of city streets
enduring the foggy-eyed mornings that follow with a blanket on the floor with you
a forest fire ripping through my head
(i loved you)
a bass drop of a song in the backseat of your friend’s car
my heart flutters like sparrows to the sound of thunder
and the sun trembles over the horizon
i know how this will end, just like i know you
but for now we are young
the wind hits our broken pieces and fills the holes
i count up all our mistakes and they seem beautiful
as we wait for the fiery effervescence of violent waves
i hope we remember how they sound when we get old
we let the meaning of everything cloud over us for a while
(i loved you)
broken air conditioners and laughing out loud for no one to hear
and we wonder if we exist at all and i think how strange this is
as phosphorescent waters swish and spill
i scream inside so there is no echo
my sleep took over slowly that night
i used up all my colored film on you
and i found the pictures in the glove compartment today
i love(d) you
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 12:06 PM UTC
there are heaps of clothes on my bedroom floor
but none of them are yours
and my mind is traveling horrifying distances
to a place here you stretch yourself over me
like skin does to our bones
i want you to crawl inside of me and live in my ribcage
i want you to taste the daylight in me
to take all of my darkness away
until we reach a hot, incandescent point of no return
the astronomy of our bodies contains supernovas when we collide
touch me and i'll burn
without you my fragmented and lifeless heart resembles dying stars
i will be as beautiful in my own descent
so you can make a wish on me
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 11:58 AM UTC
i don't care about the story you have carved into me
or about the shape of your fingers that leave tiny oval bruises around my hips
i can't see your heart, but i see your ribs through your shirt
and i see the bits of skin that stretch over the bumps of your spine
and it makes me think of how the sea looks ripples over the surface before it pounds to the shore
looking at you reminds me that we are made of water and dust
i don't care to bring you back to life
but the white of your flesh reminds me of piano keys
so maybe i will write a melody onto you
that will turn your eyes into skeleton keys
and they will open someone else's heart
Jul 9, 2013
Jul 9, 2013 at 10:15 PM UTC
never tell a sad girl that she is an artist
or she will spend the rest of her life crying out for the moon
and pressing flowers into books
she will hide stashes of poems under the mattress like a ******
and she will try to start fires with her tongue
her fingertips stained blue from the sadness in her spine
her eyes will become maps of new cities
but when she closes them
she will be like that girl in the old photographs again
with the floral dresses and tragically fair hair
who held hands and cried
and felt no need to write about it
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 10:11 PM UTC