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.

I was wild, with a hunger in my eyes,
It's still there, but faint
Still, I feel,  most of me has died
I can feel the planet breathing. I can
feel the seconds ticking.
There's the knowing, and not knowing, and painful crying
For no good reason.
Until I fall back into rote.
I'm a ghost. I'm a glass child. I'm stinging.

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

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 am lost and alone in an empty home,
With as many tears as would make a sea,
I have written and fought and gallantly lost,
I have utterly forgot how to be me

I sell dreams and memories at the marketplace,
In a back alley of this bustling city
We set up our stalls at noon, or 3, or we don't set up at all
Every third Sunday, or second Saturday
Amid the leather rings and pastel postcards and records,
Of artist that have yet to be,
I stand against an old brick wall with a hat at my feet
"Buy a dream, sweetest of black cherries,
Dripping waterfalls and lovers' gazes,"
I chant throughout the day.
I've got a little notepad with a magic pen,
They draw a circle and they see
Confused and drunk they sway before me,
Hooked on whatever plays behind their eyelids
They touch, taste, smell, hear, whatever I wish them to
"Buy a memory, repressed or treasured, melancholy extra,
3 quid for a memory"
Therapists have sent weary patrons traveling far and wide to me
I see their suspicious eyes as they throw money my way,
Some regulars come to me as druggies,
Some need me more than others,
They leave me bright-eyed but weary,
I never give a fantasy for free.

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.

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.

Maybe I'm incapable of love.
I keep it all boxed away,
Like matchsticks.
Until they leave,
And then, only then,
I take those matches out
When I want to burn myself.

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.

So I'll try to take control of the darkness again,
If only though, the pen in my hand
If there's nothing to gain, then there's nothing to prove
If there's nothing to lose, then there's nothing to lose

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.

Kiss me quick,
I swear I'm going nowhere
But you open your eyes
To tell me I wasn't there

I want to be the needle
In your lobotomy
I want to see you writhing
On the floor in agony
I want to be your dreams
When you sleep at night
I want to be the vice
Holding you tight
I want to be the poison,
You can't help but to breathe

I want to hear you say that you'll only love me

So kiss me quick,
I swear I'm going nowhere,
But you open your eyes
To tell me I wasn't there

I'm trying to protect the little girl inside of me.
Protect her from reality.
Of losing skin and losing faith.
Of doing more than she can take.

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

In the museum of hands and arms and moving bodies,
There is a door.
Beyond the smoke and fly paper and Cheshire grins.
Had I made it to the door.
Had I become just like them
My flesh torn raw and tendons burning
Against their acid, make-shift garb
Had I not held readings of poetry,
To garner their harrowing attention
As I sought to free myself of the Pupa
In gauzy tops and linen skirts did we dance as the criminally insane
To a waltz of unsung potential
Did I not willingly take the potions and laugh, as they laugh
Did I not willfully indoctrinate the freshest among us
Those fighting, frightened souls, eyes trained on the door.
The door.
How I see it now, a beacon and damnation
That I can never step outside it, now.

I doubt I will ever get better again
But my doctor just tells me "take your medicine"
One happy pill, and one for infection
One to stop my organs destroying themselves
One for the pain, one for indigestion
Some are required, some are suggestions
Some really work and some are just liars

I miss you so—
I've been so sad, kept, unloving
Though you used to visit
So many eons ago
It's been empires rising
Sands shifting
My marble hands to flakes then dust
Worrying memoirs and records
You're a pious devil
Reading them
Laughing at our gardens, overgrown
Shaping the stars and commanding them
To burn

I want to know how my name tastes on your tongue
I want to make your blood sing

I want to recreate the warmth of summer in Williamsburg
With the cool breeze by the willow tree

I want to know the places you've walked and trace the footsteps
As I walk through gardens and hills and cities
And I will do it all alone, if I must

I wish the world for thee

Good morning, moonshine.

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.

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that hurt very bad.
Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.

I pace this room like a ghost / picking up books
Trying to fold myself in them. I want to be a soulmate,
another half, I want to be like stardust, some white powder
You can inhale or **** on to get you high I want
To be the reason and the drive but like a drug I am also,
I am the reason you shake, you sweat, you worry and turn from the bottle, syringe, or pipe
Until I'm some forgotten college memory you were just trying
Like a memory either fond or full of regret but a memory you won't forget all the same /
While you hope your child doesn't try something like me, doesn't get hooked on someone like me because I am a stain on a perfect track record,
An expulsion from school or work, god if you'd only hid me better
I promise I can get you out of whatever you need to escape this. time.
Only I can't promise I'll get you where you're headed and if you
survive
See I'm not the heroine of your story, I might just be an echo
Of a star trying to burn her way home, through any means necessary
But unlike that star, that drug, that ghost, I care if I hurt those people around me and in that, around me, I'll always feel alone.

Sitting at the park, pen in one hand, knife clenched in the other
When the sprinklers go by I can see the children on the swings,
Lost souls running on the playground
Some day soon I won't be able to shake off the delusions
It's not safe to be a practicing witch,
And no one should play with spirits.

I'm halfway between "**** you" and "**** me" and it keeps sliding.

Lost in the waves again. Goodbye for now.

Lord,
don't let my feelings take me down sober
It's late at night, and everything's over
Disconnect, and let's have it over-

What's the use in telling you how to be my friend
I remember saying silly things, like this won't ever
end
Now I'm sure we'll each hear it all the time but right now

I gotta just let it out

So I swallow pride like an overdue book
I bet I bought every line, hooked
But this is how it'll be-
Sorry

I don't need to hear the words, they don't change
Signal's down, went out of range, and I
Got the skid marks to prove it
But I wish you'd try to say them anyway, ****

When the rain falls down it makes a pretty mist
With everyone we've kissed, could you even miss
Well I'm sure the next one will at least remember my lips-
Until the next one

So I tell all my friends I'm testing around
Shooting game, jobs and boys and doctors
Who won't remember my name
Well, if it's all the same-

I'd rather you dropped me like a stone,
I'm skipping here, and I'm all alone
But I've grown fond of the lake and I've made it mine
Come on in, the water's fine!

But maybe I'm not-

Lord,
don't let my feelings take me down sober
It's late at night, and everything's over
Disconnect, and let it be over

I let the sticky fingered kids grab me
Collected forced fingers like candy
Again turned away from the bottle,
Trying to leave this me and us behind full throttle-

I'll be a social butterfly in the house of a lepidopterist
Be another number on a manager's list
Talk to someone I pay to hear me instead of you
God I hope I do as well as you

Hiding out my pain somewhere else
Because it's not easy trying not to be myself
Until I wash it all away with pain and time
Well, my worries shouldn't be yours.

They aren't even mine

Why don't I tell you everything? Or how about how I'm feeling?
I don't share that much with my friends, of course.
If you want more, you open your door more!
Men.

Lord don't let my feelings take me down sober
I'm chill as ****, so now this sad poem's over
It's behind me now,
I feel a lot older.

I can feel an echo of the kinship
I felt with these songs in the cold and dark, isolated on that hill
I can't feel them resonate now, though,
I remember still, and so think I should feel
But I don't see the path back, or ahead, the light I desperately
Asked someone for once,
The memory of dreams
Desolation at reaching futilely for them,
Or peace with this rooted spot
Whispers flow through me with the music
Whittling away the hollow bones inside me,
This brittle bark shedding from my skin so like the tree
Inked to my ankle,
Dying and dormant and bent
An echo of springs past like
The outro of a song that hasn't played for a while
And clouded remembrance of the lyrics
I haven't lived in a while

And just like that,
I know my magical world is gone
It ended in a drunken haze,
On the last note of a higher-octane song

And where did the magic go,
When they spent the very last of it
And can I get it back,
If the old lyricists ever re-writ
Their last musical pieces
Capture the stars again from the sky
And re-map the venues with them,
To play one night like we will die.

My heart is a ******* traitor

I get back up, every time. I get back up.
So maybe I don't get back up the same. So maybe I'm a little lost
And a little bruised and a little fed up.
I get back up. And I let you look down on me and belittle me,
For staring you hard in the eyes and panting as I hoist my weight off my knees and elbows, and rise back up to spit at your feet.

I let you see my tears and my pleas and my need, so maybe it's not your fault if you've forgotten
All the times I've gotten back up from having fallen,
And I do it on my own all the time.
I don't feel sorry for how many times I've grabbed a shovel. I feel sorry you haven't seen all the things I've buried and gotten on top of, when I've used the shovel to dig myself out instead of hitting rock bottom.
What it is, is a pity you forgot everything that made me strong.

Because I will keep rising, long after you're gone.

Ghost kisses across my skin, scars
You dream you can save me
I'm made of stars, they burn bright,
Say love can save me, be the one thing that won't hurt
Only self love can save me and I'm content to have the memory of notes unsung,
Of nights unspent,
Of kisses too long ago to have had,
to be burnt

I stop running and the nightmares find me
The mast creaks
Within the rotted core the ghouls call
Alone on the high sea
Whirlpools dip and carry me
And winds run us aground

I stop running and the helm locks
The sand swells
Leaves in heat chitter
As sun bakes through my skin
The salt boils
I become leather

I stop running and I’m buried
By the thoughts you once had
Little memories that kept me afloat
All the time in the world that we had made
If I don’t run, they begin to overflow,
And a captain must go down with her boat.

You wake up my mind, make it clatter around with tinny bells that knock against my skull, igniting sparks. There's loud red and subdued white brights popping as my heart starts racing,
I can't just put my phone back down and walk away
And I'll step a little lighter and I'll smile a little brighter and I'll love a little more
Disgust tangy and savory at the back of my teeth, caught up between tongue and gums tangling over things I want to say
I put you from my mind, for a time, that lasted just about a month, a lonely little month drawn out into scraped knees and burned oil
Still, I am still while electricity races within, warming me to a steaming glow, fresh from the pools of acknowledgement
Your involvement, blending into my icy life, dying out
Searching for any sign you leave since you left, that you care,
But I don't know if I can stand the cold anymore.

You win some, you lose a lot.

I'm writing into the disquiet night,
More words, words, words
Which you will never read

I'm trying to love him - the way I should have loved you,
Like someone who's grown, like someone who knows
How to heal with someone, how to slow
How to forgive, and how to talk
%^&$, how to calm down and how to unlock

I'm trying to give him peace
I'm trying to find my own release
I'm trying to let go, find how to say no

I'm trying to love him - like I should have loved you,
In another time, with a better mind, with a clear conscious
And a blatant state of intent, with the words of love I kept hidden,
If I'd been better, what then? but I,
All I can do, is fail to love him,
The way I will always love you.

That ice you hold in the center of your chest
You never let it thaw, you never let it rest
And I know where my sun sets,
But you,
You've never been that far west
//
Playing faded cards with a jar of hearts
I'll never win against a gambling man,
You know how to sugar me up
I always forget not to show you my hand
//

But you are a coward,
Even in your conviction of being courageous,
You will remain alone. And this is ridiculous.

I know all you want is to come home.

Sometimes I wander to my broken heart, though,
I whisper the names which used to make it sing,
I take it out to the Ocean
And cast a line out to find the missing pieces
But what I told you, the truth is,
I wouldn't want them back
Because then I'd miss this,
These fishing trips.