Your father was raised in Panama. I can imagine him vividly... The floral silk shirt with velvety red cravat, tan leather loafers, waxed-to-perfection moustache, and a big cigar. It was the late sixties and he was beautiful. I've never seen a photo but I can tell by the way you talked about him. His joi de vivre oozed into your stories and I recognized it: the distilled essence of his elegance was passed to you, and you shared it with me.

We met by our mutual attraction for showing off... I wanted to be treated like a delicate porcelain treasure - you wanted a plastic toy with the price tag of an heirloom. Twenty five years my senior and you still hadn't learned your lesson about girls like me... I may have broken your heart, but you should've known a tryst between the free-spirited edge of seventeen and a businessman with dreams of Panama would burn out in the end, just like your father's cigar.

My heartbeat sending up an erratic hymnal to the hand tightening around my neck: The same hand that grabbed my thigh under the table. Only God saw. The mouth that asked forgiveness on Sundays is on my collarbones in the park after sundown. It still gives me a stomach ache to think about you. Your fingers wrapped carefully around my throat wasn't the reason I couldn't breathe. I miss it already even though in the moment I wished I was anywhere else; my world was closing in again and I felt trapped. It happened on the same bench where I sat alone in grade school and wrote haikus about birds and waterfalls. Something must be wrong with me for thinking you were a blessing that I deserved.

It's duller now

I only see you in my suggested friends list... or in tagged posts.
Or in your sister's comment threads.

But I still remember when seeing you on my timeline made me burn up. At first it was ginger, spicy and sweet. Talking to you made me feel like I had the universe in my head; probably because you told me you were studying the string theory and you knew how stars formed.

After a while I didn't feel a burn anymore. I didn't feel anything in my head except empty and I didn't know how to remedy it, except by putting all of myself towards keeping you from feeling the same. I lost myself; you found me, absorbed my strength, and said you had none to give back when I needed it.

The night you tried to **** yourself wasn't ginger, cayenne, or even the weak sting of crushed black pepper. It was pure peppermint oil: molten silver and acidic. I have no other words for it. It hurt almost as bad as when, after weeks of not knowing if you were dead or alive, you texted me.

"So, your cousin is pretty amazing... we've only been talking a week but I think I'm in love with her?"

That was cayenne...
But now I guess I've built up a tolerance.

Snapchat me at 11 pm
Are you drunk for courage or for remission?

"I like you"
"You're beautiful"
"I want to *******"
You say, "call me" and we talk until 3am because I think I like you too and mostly because I know, we know, we're both so lonely.

It seems like you only talk to me when you're drunk but my mind tells me it's better than being ignored, like after Halloween when you couldn’t look me in the eyes. I thought it was the kiss and I still don't know if you remember or if you just pretended to forget. I remember, because you don't forget cinnamon liquor - like your skin, warm and bright.

I left town last week and you snapchatted me saying you missed me, at 3am again, in my new bed. You're leaving in August and I'm scared. Because I'll miss you too.

Writing letters in Spanish to Penthouse magazine because everything sounds better in español.
It was a beautiful loving thing before it all exploded like a train wreck.
Are you furious?
A country that douses itself in English and then drowns you at the hearth.

Cherry vanilla
Obsessive compulsive
Mint and lemon-grass handwash

The only things that matter?

Thoughts from when I first woke up this morning... Still in that fuzzy bit where you don't open your eyes and no matter how you're laying, it's always comfortable. A feeling I take for granted. I think about you kissing my ******* and not about how you're falling in love with my best friend; but if she's happy, I'm happy. Good morning.

I. Clawing inside the walls of my stomach it hurts too good I don't get out of bed to feed it but if I move it stops for a bit I love feeling empty when I first wake up it feels clean and pure nothing has corrupted my body yet and there's nothing in it making it harder to breathe or think

II. This sunburn is reminding me of all the times my brain wanted me to peel my skin off. I always caught myself right before it was too late but it never leaves.

III. I ate something and my sunburn is almost healed but the thoughts still visit from time to time.

I don't want to age. I don't want to get older; I don't want to have what comes with age. I don't want to have wrinkles, I don't want to lose my beauty, eyesight, my hearing, my sense of flavour and exploration. I don't want to get comfortable and I never want to get weaker than I already am.
Most of all I don't want to gain any wisdom; I want to continue down the spiraling path of self-destruction and use my youthful ignorance as an excuse for the way I'm acting. Because I don't think I'll get better with age and people can only excuse it for so long.

In the dream we were in a hotel in New York. We were walking in tandem towards a really tall glass elevator. We got in and went up to the hotel room;  we were both carrying powder blue suit cases and the same expression. He unlocked the door, outside the room the carpet was plush and forest green.  Keys jangle, tumblers fall, cut to us in the bathroom. Him on the toilet, dressed in tuxedo pants and a Hawaiian shirt, head in his hands looking tired. Me in the tub, the water is transparent purple and the floors are marble. I say something: inaudible. He slips out the tiny white box and shakes one, two, three times - always. A thin cigarette shimmies out of cardboard, into his hand, into mine and finally he lights it. Smoke curls up like a cliche and we do that until it's gone. We both know it's over, but the audience... The audience knows he's found the girl he wanted. She's got strawberry hair and only listens to Bright eyes. Who is she? Stage left, pan to elevator door sliding open and he's leaving. He's got his powder blue and baby pink beside him and I'm still in the tub with the ashes.