Speak your truth, like it's easy, like it wants to crawl up your throat and jump from your mouth, to splatter and splash everyone and everything
Speak your truth, like you do, like you will, let it soak through your skin like so much sweat
It's not easy to open, to pull back the sheet metal, your hands will blister and bleed, but pull through the fear, because you're there underneath, dressed only in your truth

She popped another into her mouth and closed her eyes.
The chocolate melted into an explosion of warm sweetness and it was another step away from him.
She knew he liked her hardness, where she was close to the skin, her shoulders and hips.
His hands almost never ventured to the softness.
He'd told her he didn't like lush women, soft women.
He'd met her at a particularly not soft time in her life but he didn't seem to understand it was temporary.
She was built on hedonistic passions, sensory excess, too much of every single good thing.
She wasn't going to change any of that.

you say I'm forward
as opposed to backward I suppose
upside down, right side up
but I just need to get lost

not think about to do lists
and appointments
and IEPs
and solving the mental health riddles
of these people I've created

I want to feel like I'm normal

so let me get lost, forward and backward
in your bed or my bed, your skin and my skin
I need to not think about tomorrow
tonight

I'm a human hole, a whole human.
Maybe we're all these holes, big gaping holes of want and need
We can't fill it so we hide it, under clothes, under beds, wherever we can fit it
It's always empty, always yawning, always wanting more
But hidden we can put on a big smile, keep your attention elsewhere           
  look up here
                                                         no over there
don't look right at me

It would be good, I think, if we could show each other our holes
poke a finger in, see what it feels like, push our bodies through, see if we can all fill each other up and be un holey
holy
complete

Swinging on the trapeze
the crowd below calling out
telling me not to grab his hands so quickly
learn to fly on my own
but I need hands to hold onto
even if they are new
and I don't recognize the feel of them

do you see that?
over there reflected in the window
what is that?
Behind me in the mirror
I feel hot breath on my neck
but something tells me not to turn around
it's just the warm breeze
keep going forward and don't turn around

sometimes I think I can hear it
making odd sounds that
seem hissed through a smiling mouth
if there is a mouth
I wouldn't know because
I never turn around, look under the bed
but it's in the corner of my eye
then it's gone
It hides in the horizon of my memories
in the shadows then it disappears in the light
or only hides better
but I know it's there
behind us all, waiting to lap us up
while we go about our meaningless business

the ones who do turn around, who look behind the door
we know them when we see them
but we pretend there's something wrong
something broken about them
because admitting they're right
means we have to turn around, face the thing

that's really only time itself
watching us waste it, waiting to lap us up

full disclosure
I hold some secrets
full disclosure
I don't think I'm ready for this.

But your ghost ship
tempts me beyond all reason
and I have permission to board

Easing in
Slow and deliberate
I know where I'm going
Familiar place but foreign
I don't speak the language
But I get by
Exploring the terrain with my eyes and hands and mouth
I relax into the slow and steady pace 
I can see the perfection through the haze and smoke
Determined, I continue to my destination
I'm coming

Close enough
Is close enough
Enough?

so hot you're almost steaming
dark and brooding
I love how you fill my mouth
as you tickle the back of my throat
you taste a little sweet
and a little spicy if I'm honest
that flavor that I've never found anywhere else
I hold you in my hands
I feel your heat, your possibility
I wrap my body around you
and take you in

I don't know where you are right now
but I can see your face, the way you push your hair back
I love your face
and I don't know
maybe I shouldn't, maybe I should be trying to forget
and I will later today
try I mean
and try to forget that tonight I should be wrapped in your arms, in your bed
but right now I'm thinking of your face and how lovely you are

Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes
in my head before I can collect my thoughts
a timer, tick tock, tick tock
my life the hands on a clock
moving faster now

why do I care
I'm getting what I came for
I don't get to decide when, I never did

both of them
have the same tattoo

it's not that I like my boys
broken
but rather men who know
that they can break
and put themselves back together again

I'm not sure which is true
Those days I don't care or
These days that I do

Are all those kisses
Trying to convince me
Or trying to convince you

I made it that far
did not reach out
stretching further all the time
I'm getting better
bit by bit
giving up your drug
hit by hit

Fresh page, fresh year
I've scrolled down to a white screen
Fingers on keys
Ready to strike
Can't wait to see what happens next

It sounds silly and like a teenage crush

you're Sweet Valley High paperbacks
and Sassy magazine

you're 12 free cassettes and the journal under my bed
The Cure and everlasting days at the community pool

you're all the things my heart invented late one afternoon
at the end of summer
when everything is baked and brown and you think things will always be that way

You're the way things change when you don't want them to

I can't know how your mind works any more than I can read it
We learned lessons, that love is this ownership
this “you are mine” *******
but no one is anyone's
we are beings, being, existing, trying to get through this life
and we bump into each other
sometimes it hurts and sometimes it doesn't

I can't make you be a thing for my use
to give me what I want, to make me feel what I want to feel
those are my responsibilities alone
alone
I guess that's where it comes back to
but I don't need you to raise babies
we're past that
biologically there's no reason for us to hold on to just each other
And you can't be here whenever I need you, you're there when you can be
you are not mine, and I am not yours

strange creature, this hope
it creeps up behind you
and tickles your spine
you swat it away
but like a determined cat
it winds around your ankles
demanding your attention

I lay traps and you hit the trip wires 
bare skin, bare sin, radiating heat
I want to rage, slam my fists against your chest, backspace it out, anything
But there's no going back now.

My head on your shoulder
my line of vision your lips
everything inside becomes mercury and flows
warm and thick and heavy

My wine marinated tongue can’t seem to form
the words, they keep swirling around the ooze
viscous and sweet
in a language I can’t speak