Well it just doesn't sit well,
That I've taken this throne from the ill,
I **** myself just to dream,
And dream of killing myself just to lie still.
I may be King, I am King on my own,
Yet the peasant I was, is crying for home,
And this crown cuts me deep, severs the nerves
That I've bled, just to bleed, into this 'future' I've been led to believe-
Is everything we've all been working towards

It is morning in early April. My spine’s a little sore.
My eyes, a little bruised. But so are yours.
We’ve spent all night staring out at the horizon, straining to see the sun.
But it will never come. Vacantly, my mind wanders, my hand rests atop yours.
There is a forever in the stillness, settled in the damp cling of my dress laced with dew.
Your brow is covered in sweat, sticking sweeps of currant-colored hair to your forehead,
Which is creased in frustration.
You’re getting fed up. Still, I am waiting.
Because when the daylight arrives, I will have to go.
I will uncreak my bent knees and step heel first into the muddy hillside,
And there, just across the field from my outstretched hand, you will be waiting.
With your pleased smile, and eyes glowing full as Ophir. We will stop wilting.
And you’ll say, you’ve been dreaming of me. You’ll say we’ll travel the world.
I will look behind me, where you were so weary just moments ago, and you’ll have dissapeared.
Yes! Will be my answer.
And the day will take us far from here.

And I only ever wanted to be symbiotic,
To be loved and in love.
Trained myself to forgive every hang-up I thought someone
Could throw at me,
And guarded myself not knowing, my guards could be the end
Of some things beautiful.
And beyond the hurt, we're still here word-for-word
Don't you want me?
Don't you regard me?
Isn't that more than enough, more than enough and just,
Breathtaking?
I never thought of vows someone and I could make as truth,
But here you are.
With no need to seek or try, in fact sometimes in failing,
We just are.
Maybe four years isn't enough to know someone but
Regarding the fragility of life I-
Oh,
Just shut up and kiss me.

She's slowing down, she's not as strong as she once was
I can't breathe, I'm not as young as I once was
She asks how can she can live it down, all the pain that she's fought through
Don't know when, when I gave up the follow through
And she's down on her knees, ****** knuckles in the sand
If this war is over, why am I still living it
There's a monster she killed, she killed but she became it, screaming
If only I knew then what I know now
She'd turn the gun around, and **** the one she was meant to

My friend asked me today what melancholy means.

I didn’t know how to respond without her getting upset that I was sad, again.
She guessed boredom. Well, a kind of.
A nostalgic boredom, longing for a when or a why. Then I reconsidered, and I told her, “I feel like Pittsburgh”. Like the snow outside when the heater was too high inside, or a cup of cocoa at cafe Rachel. Like texting a friend and writing for the paper while wearing lined leggings under my pajamas. Like being lost in love, buffeted by the storms that held me.

We sailed under spotty streetlights. Cutting through cold air, listening to an empty radio station. I thought again, and then, agreed that melancholy was my nothing. Because somehow, all the little things took my everything.

But that isn’t true either. Is it.

In the span of a conversation, you gave me the universe
It was pillow talk, cuddled up, we talked about the galaxies,
It was sharing the passenger seat of my car, debating about stars.
In the span of a weekend, you gave me ever after,
And I gave you stories and support and humor and care-free,
The first lines of Chapter 1, dreams and plans
So when you left, you left me the night sky, only, the constellations had diminished,
And I left you with pages & the index of a book we never finished.

Laying in the recovery room,
Bleary from the pain
"It's an 8.5!"
And waiting,
For the medication to drip in
I lay alone in the bed,
Pump on my arm,
Weights on my legs,
And a tube blowing warm air
Under the thin hospital blanket

I looked to the gap in the curtain,
And imagined you walk in,
A smile on your face, so certain
Like being there was where you'd always been
And your eyes lit up when you saw me,
And you said to me, "let's take you home"
But I was blind and it was hard to breathe
Thinking, would you have come, if you'd known?

Dear dad,
I know I'm not the daughter you wanted,
But who knows?
Sometimes it feels like it's been
forever,
Sometimes it feels like you're still
here
I love you, I know I never said that enough,
I know I'll never get to say it again.
I love you.
I miss hugging you, I miss struggling to keep up with you.
I miss not understanding your speeches.
Fearing you, as I still fear, what you'd have to say
About, and to me now.
I love you anyway.
I wish I could be with you, to put off fireworks, like we used to.
There are so many stories unwritten and so many arcs retconned,
Since you died, my life took a different turn,
Than wherever I was headed, with you alive.
Some years I do better than others,
But this year I'm falling apart.
The 4th will someday be the best memory, and the best day to celebrate
Your life, and all the 4ths we spent together.
Until that day, the 4th is a day without light.
Goodnight, oh, but never goodbye.

"What happened to her?"
It's better if you Don't. Ask.
See she wears Depression on her face,
In bloodshot eyes and dark circles,
In early age lines and pale cheeks,
In bitten, chapped lips.
You want to ask, "what happened to her?"
But it's better if you don't look too closely,
Or the spider-web cracks across her porcelain mask
Will break
You can already see the black smoke eking through
Joined to the shadowy frame of the one who walks beside her
Caressing her filigree skin and flicking a lighter.
She says, "I want someone to take the pain,
**** it, smoke it, love it, beat it, praise it, blaze it, lemon-glaze it,
Kiss it, kick it, shoot it, carve it, wear it, taste it, light it on fire."
But all we ever say is "you're looking so much better now"
So much better now.
Like a marionette in a little side show, colorful, with ribbons.
A broken smile, and sad, sad eyes.
So beautifully tragic, it must all be for show.
Though the silver she draws with, its ink a bright red,
Is more telling than any lie she has fed
Fed on, cried on, choked on, drowned with, like a gluttonous pig.
So what happened to her? And the life she once led?
Those honeyed dreams turned to mutinous greys in her head?
It's better if you turn away and smile,
And pretend your heart inside isn't as dead,
She only wears the pain most hold inside, swallowing a painful life from a flask sewn into the flesh of her hip,
It's better if you didn't ask.

.

And how can you say I think nothing but of myself! Am I as narcissistic as my father?
When I memorize every detail garnered of those I speak with, on a daily basis. When I take their history and position into account when regarding their words?
When I often choose the phrases which will please them most? When I am counseled and skilled in only my words. My concern is often naught but for those I love, my own desires be ******. Though when they make appearance, I cannot reconcile them to silence.
It's true, I am a vain and pride thing, that regards herself as well when she speaks,
But I thought you knew better than that.

Though in my heart, where the footsteps of strangers linger,
dusted by the ashes of my torches burning
Pyres,
There is nothing softer than the vastness of our different worlds
In which for my expression
There is nothing more silent than the words.
So let me say them, let me sound them off in time,
To the clank of the weights wound ‘round your feet,
And the drums in your mind,
To a future reminiscent
Of your heart’s steady beat.

Let it be mine.

I want to be beautiful poetry, but instead I am vapid stanzas,
An indrawn breath between the lines.
The dampened air before the rain, and the traffic light that never turns
I am the catch in a song and the dying embers of firelight,
I am an inland lighthouse.
I am an abandoned wasps' nest and a mangy alley cat,
A tarnished ring in a landfill,
But I am also pearlescent, the destination after a long journey,
Beautiful, in its own way.

It's bad again, wish I could tell you different
That the laundry and trash aren't piling up
Tell you I don't have to talk myself down from panic attacks
I get them every other day and some days, twice
I wish I could tell you anything at all, but I'm coping
Hopefully I'm coping.
I wish I could tell you I make more than I spend
I wish I could say I'll come home for a weekend
And when my ex sent me old photos from a vacation,
I wish I could tell you I'm still the girl who's in them

You slip from the bed,
Remove the gauze, pull on your long johns
Jumper and coat
And the sutures on my heart begin to itch
Grab your keys, head for the door
I'm running, but I don't know what I'm running for,
Hear the rumble of your truck's engine
Beating on the wood, the brass doorknob won't turn
Why do I know you're leaving?
Through the fogged up window I can see your exhaust
But it's not processing so I lay my head against the floor
Well it's 2am so don't give me a reason
Just wish I'd gotten there before
I just have to go back to our bedroom, just to be sure

You look at me,
Filled with adoration and pride.
You look to me,
For a love I fear I cannot hide.
You look at me,
With trepidation and disappointment,
You look at me one moment,
Like I'll shy away, like you want me near,
Then you look at me,
Like I am stronger than I appear,
Still you look at me.
Dismissive or attentive,
And I look at you, oh yes I look at you,
Look on with pride, with love, with fear
I look at you, like you'll never see me looking,
Like I'm too afraid to show my feelings,
Like I don't see you watching too,
When I look at you
What are you feeling, I wonder, what must I be?
That you look at me.

For I am lonelier still, surrounded by those who cannot fall and break along side me, but only stand in my light when it matches theirs.

I know I’m trespassing. Is that why he’s here? I’m not smoking, or drinking, or skinny dipping. I could be doing drugs. But I’m not. I’m just trying to find my own peace of mind. What’s so wrong with that? The summer homes are long abandoned. There are no lights from boats on the lake. It’s too cold for anything to live around here. So what if you’re not supposed to be at the park this late? Dusk is a concept! My emotions are a racket.
                I said, what are you going to do? He said nothing. How about you.

                I think that’s why I’m sitting on the wet rocks. Craving a smoke and chewing my fingernails. I could be a lot of things. I could do a lot of things. I’m just not sure. I’m waiting on something that’s out of my hands. I’m waiting for the typewriter to end its round. The press to run. The stars to fall out of the sky, gathering in my ****** and coughing up dust. I’m waiting for this to become us.

                I’m thinking I should have bought red lipstick. The summer I painted the Denver room with make-up. I’m thinking, I should have broken the board into half again, the day I got the news. I’m thinking I should have walked farther into the ocean the weekend they announced it terminal. I’m thinking I should have moved in with you. Now every empty doorway is another reminder of the space that used to be filled. And I’m too small to fit into the cracks in these walls. But for hell’s sake I’ve got to try. I don’t want to be that.

                I don’t want to be another “why?”

I'm sick of this christmas music
The holy and tinsel and
The way my too-tired friends will jaunt around
Telling me the girl who stared them down in their first week at College was a *****, and the guy who never slept alone was trying to make up for the Lab he missed last Tuesday, and how they snuck a look at the group behind conformity buildings one and two on game night
Then we'll walk into the consumerist shops glitzed up, marveling at the sales, and we're broke, but I'll pay for you,
And we'll ***** and fit and smile tight because we missed each other we missed these outings we missed this performance we used to put on
We'll run out of things to complain about.
In the middle of World Market or Ross I'll sing a verse from the song on the speakers and curse when it cuts out for a cashier's announcement.
You'll groan and promptly leave me in the aisle.
Not entirely lost, but I'm sick of trying to find you. You never leave me in the store anyway.
There are children who witnessed our display.
One is lost and yet not lost like me.
"Hey!" I shout for you, for you'll come and grin to the child, not the fake teeth you flashed me bared, you'll ask if they need help, I'll sing them a song, and I'll carry them.
You'll find their mother, who will look at us as if to say "couldn't you have waited to return them?"
It's now dark and snowing and I can't drive. So I drag you to party city and buy something stupid I'll wear when we get to our other friend's party or your house for dinner, or the junior high to delight in misery and our mutual hate.
But I love you.
I love singing songs to you off key.
I love showing you my scars and letting you rip them apart.
This is my favorite kind of Christmas.

They're watching me, in the reflection off the water,
The sunspots behind my eyelids,
The tread of my tires.
They're watching me from the corner of the room,
The feedback when I sing into the mic,
The shadows in the corners of my eyes.

I'm not possessed, but the angels of death,

Keep watch, over their own- made flesh.

It started with the scarf
Plaid and Disney and good around your neck
Until I grabbed and yanked and felt the fool
It started when you said someone texted you
and I wanted their face under the heel of my boot
It started with German
insults, games, study packets
It started with your crush
Latino, taken, and oil to you
It started with your tears
Beautiful while you cry
Beautiful after working in stables
Beautiful when just woken up
Oh I just need to get serious
It started with the first time I stayed over
It started when we became family
It started when our hearts broke
and we exchanged some of the pieces
It started when you became my best friend
or something more
With little inside jokes and our hands around each others' throats

I have always loved broken things,
That I, in lack of care,
Became a broken thing, too

This mask is painted-
Lips and eyes, delicate but fractured
With little breaks and
spidery lines,
Like the fraying of my
dresses.

I can't remember what I
look like, anymore. The
roots showing beneath
this wig or the broken skin beneath this
porcelain

You say it's pretty. Say
I'm beautiful beneath
It's all an artifice,
Lying to save the truth I
cannot unleash

And your skin is
statuesque- perfect, and
your hinges don't creak
like mine,
And I wonder if they've
wired you up,
Finely tuned your
neurons, just like mine
So you can speak and
laugh without a mask
So you can act the part
of "fine"

So well, I find, I've fallen
in love,
Well so what, that
knowledge was just a
matter of finding
The right code to
program into.
A right set of Action and
Response

Can you even live with a
clockwork heart? With
tubes and chemicals as
veins.
Can you cry bitter,
Mercury tears?
Can your electrodes
spark, like mine?

I find this mask is so hard
to remove, and so easy
to wear,
That lately I've worn it to
sleep
I've begun to forget if I've
ever been without it,
before,
But it itches my skin raw,
and it chafes and sweats,
and I cry though
porcelain cannot weep.

My bones are weary. It isn't a pleasant state to find oneself in. You wouldn't say so.
Little bones in the neck start to grind together, muscles pulling crisscross and backwards down the planes of your back.
At any moment the fear may present itself; that these bones will squish meat and blood so tightly that they must burst through skin and you are certain, of more than just your own sleep deprivation, that it will **** you.
You’ll see stars, feel the heaviness in the muscles of your arms as they slowly deaden, for how impossible their dream of reaching up and cupping starlight. If only you could embrace it.
Fill your glass up with sparkling dust and drink ‘till you are infused with it. Like more than you were your first summer night - warm, dark - spotted with fireflies, whose wonder stared and blinked back into you as a thousand suns.
Drink until the heat builds and spirals into every nerve, every particle of marrow, until it is lifted from pressure, lifted from being, lifted to a state of not but pure release.
Then remember that you are a story. That stories do not behave, do not twinkle in as timing permits, nor align as a physical presence.
I am glacier inside, I feel the snowbanks drifting through my mind. The little icicles behind my eyes and the floes bobbing sluggish though my heart. I don't know how to thaw.

Programming Incomplete:
"I don't wish to be alone"
Soundlessly voiced.
Recorded - Self Sentience is Shut Down
Program Rebooted.
Subject remains silent.
Lagging in Productivity.
Time Unmarked.
Logistics, programming, efficiency logistics sufficiently run.
Sufficient.
Program is reinstated.

I miss the old days, they say
When a hungry heart could pay the soul,
In what little money could not
Though we are histories,
Ages past and generations of believers,
Reaching past the veil, inviting spirits to encompass
What we are nary to offer
Writhing in our insistence to break apart
The bones that gnaw at us, begging for snippets
Of performances, a story, glory
Divinity we forbid ourselves, they say
Why, if I could fly, in song,
Why, if I could enchant those hungry hearts like mine,
I think that would be fine

I am both angered by being abandoned,
And adamant and understanding that it is anyone's choice to leave
But when I die, do not dare say you are devastated.
Do not dare speak my name, nor mourn.
As I respect that I am difficult and you must leave,
Respect me when I say I do not want your grief or your thoughts,
Or your tarnished memories of me.
If you've chosen to be gone, then leave be.

Sometimes the nights up here sink into my bones.
There was no quiet in Cali, not really. Even as the apartments and small homes slept, there were the haggard and homeless on the streets. The lamplights never went off, and security made rounds around the gates and shopping center. All rounded off neatly with the late-night patrons of the 24hr Walgreen's.
I was one of them.
No, there's a peace to the PNW. The fog that blankets everything, keeping the night sweet, secluded. Somewhat lonely.
(I would hate to not have a friend up here)
There's a way the stillness of the hours after midnight sink into me.
Surrounded by trees, grass, dirt. Bugs and owls and coyotes.
The earth breathes here, the night is a living entity.
It breathes me in, and though I may be at odds with the nights up here
Sometimes
Sometimes, we are at peace. A peaceful understanding.
As I sit, and let it wash away who I was and who I am.

Someone slipped into my bed, last night
Carrying the scent of my perfume
They lifted the covers and curled against me
I turned and threw my legs over their slight, lithe frame
I awoke much the same, but alone, with the distinct feeling,
Someone slipped into my bed, last night

You don't want to talk, and maybe that's okay
Maybe you don't think anyone would care, either way.
I just want to tell you, I think your soul is beautiful,
I think you're worth the fight.
I know you're doing awful, I know your world is gray, I know you're not alright.
I'm not here to tell you it'll all work out, I'm not here to pick you up and dust you off, I'm not here to bring color into your world.
But I am here to tell you that I think you're an incredible girl.
He/they/whatever.
I'm here to tell you not to sever all your ties,
I'm here to tell you to save your goodbyes.
And save your lies. You don't have to be fine.
You can be fine some other **** time.
Right now, it's okay to break, and break hard.
Until you're better, whether that's years or days,
I'll be your faithful guard.
You can scream, shout, cry an entire lake.
You don't have to cling to your last card,
You can have played your hand, had your one last stand,
It's okay
I'll be your one-man fan, reminding you that what you want to do, you absolutely can, and will do anyway.

I could spend my life,
Studying for a test I'll never take
I could spend my life,
Worrying about a failing grade or expulsion
But then I'd never live,
And I've given all I could give
Taken all I could take, and you crushed it in your hand
So I don't have an after-high school plan,
I've given adulthood all I can-
I could spend my life,
Wishing dreams would just come true
Or I could spend my life, just being me and doing what little I can do

I know they don't know how I love like an inferno
It consumes me, flames lick anyone who comes too close
Like a whip licks delicate skin on the flick of a lash
I cannot stop running my mouth, I want to share, say
Everything I want to find the weakest points and say the words
That cut you down I want to, kiss it all better, this burning crash
Is easy to ride right into the ground

They don't know how my emotions hit like a tornado,
Want me to get a job and keep a stable life without ripping the
Roof off this house and destroying everything we've nailed down
I cannot calm the core, there's anger in the eye and you
Cannot calm me, but root me to the spot
If you try to sate me I will take out this entire town
I can't stop the tornado but I've installed a warning

Like a tornado siren test and a fire hazard sign set to yellow
Always ready to crank it up to deadly degrees
Wild and devastating with a serrated edge at least
There's a sort of serene beauty to the aftermath,
Waking up from a hurricane to the calm debris-ridden sea
And maybe you ask her if she's burned herself out yet, and if she's
not crying,
You bring her a blanket and tea

The cuts are warm on my hips
Blood and heat is primal, tangible,
Human and animal
I escape into my mind more and more and more and more
I can't remember the dreams, but being
Someone else, with different thought patterns
Different goals, different family, different loves
I can feel the cuts in my thigh while I dream
Holding and encasing, pressing in and blanketing
I know the dreams don't want to break, but break like a fever
If I didn't have to wake
I'd never live a life I'm willing to take.

I ******* let you in
And together we burned everything

You sound so dead,
Your voice isn't making its way to me,
Leave a message saying, left a message,
Could you be holed up with a bottle?
Could you be waiting on somebody?
I can't afford to grab your tab anymore,
Baby but your tears are killing me,
You say they kick you when you're down,
I saw the mud on your shirt
You say you've nobody to turn to,
Your feelings are always hurt
But I get the messages too late to pick you up
I just can't pick up
Why do you always leave a message if I'll never pick up?

.come back to bed
Such a sweet little lie
Such innocuous fragility,
Distorted intimacy,
The sweet naive kind
That leaves hardened hearts weak
Sleep-laden words could always undo
Or terrify me.

There're torn pages, fire licking, floating through the air,
Naught save ashes, paper, charred on the ground
There's no way to read them now

I admit, the first light, flame, flicker, wasn't easy
I was guarded and yet unburned,

But the second light, that one was easier,
And it seared my skin, as well as within me,
Carving out this hole, well it hurt

I can see the fog horn hasn't been lit
Staring at the wall of white
I hear voices of my friends, in the trenches
I can't help thinking,
"How could they all make it?
With you here, trying to fake it?”

It's icy cold in the winter
And it gets colder as you get thinner
As you pull yourself into doubt, into grief
I was in danger of slipping

Always in danger of the cliff before my feet
I've been sitting here on the ledge
But it's time to walk along the lonely ridge

Someone once told me, you've got to know your cards
If you see a bridge, well, it's your choice whether to burn it
But burning's not so easy when the match is in their hand
I tell you friend, I ran along and fell
The future has always been tomorrow, forever
But now the future's here in the palm of my tattooed hand
I can't see it, but it's glowing so brightly
Maybe I'm blinded, but it's as dark as an abyss

I see mist is floating towards me
Holding closer, dreams ignore me
Will I ever escape, will my boat come in,
Or did it sink?
I sit and think, again.

The constellations on my ceiling glow bright for an instant, then fade
And I can count a 1,000 stars in the galaxy, but I know there are 1,001
Because you're next to me
And the way that the moonlight hits your eyelashes, when you breathe
Deeply, oh I can count how many hours we've spent together
But I want to count more
Because the curl of the steam off your coffee just does something to me,
The way that your eyes hood and you smile when you look right through me,
And when we're walking outside, hand in hand, how our fingers fit perfectly
And I want this to be mine, these little bright moments, just to count
So I'll just take my time, don't wake me up, I'm not ready
When my eyes start to droop, and you pull me right to you like a puzzle piece
Like you can't sleep without me,
I just want to be the 1,002nd star in your galaxy.

Wrapped up in all this hurt,
We can't heal each other
Try to put the pain to words,
Why do I even bother?
Through this hate and animosity,
You say you wanted to be closer,
But I know you just want to be free
So be free