who said this would ever be fun?
i am a gaping wound
just passed back in forth between my mind and my heart.
i don’t know how to breathe without an oxygen tank
pumping filtered air into my body.
i’d much rather be dead than have some machine breathe for me.
i am a gaping wound
at every party, i wasn’t invited.
i just stand in the background
and watch everyone else
live till they puke
love till they collapse.
special: why did i ever feel so?
every place hurts
because i smell your scent here
i see traces of your sweat on every chair.
everywhere i look, you had been there before.
dancing with your heart on your sleeve,
you learned how to live at such a young age,
can you teach me how to breathe by myself?
show me the ropes, i can repeat it,
even if you only do it once, i’ll break my ankles and shatter my lungs piecing together any little part i remember.
teach me how to breathe without apologizing,
how to lucid dream,
how to be someone you would never ever forget
even if you get dementia and your brain doesn’t remember how to function anymore.
i am a gaping wound,
but please wipe the blood and bandage me up.
never mind; i don’t wanna damage you too.

i thought i broke my ribs laughing,
young and dying to be seen
i have no better place to be at 12 a.m, but beside you.
i wanna love you
so unapologetically.
you’re the cure to my illnesses.
we ran like little kids and the playground was blue, illuminated by the lights of little houses.
we ran and bolted and had no regrets;
i have no regrets.
i want to love you
like that playground loved school children
its only purpose to love the laughter till it disappears along with the breeze.
i had to disappear too.
i am older now,
and lost and you grabbed my hand and took me with you
and you are so wonderful,
allowing me to become a little kid again
chasing in the street
laughing till our ribs are soft and shattering.
what are we now?
swim with me.
let’s leap from the dock and become one.
i am a kid and you are who i look up to with wide eyes
and a tender soul
hold me in your lap
let me sleep and hold me
hold me
hold me.
so softly
so my ribs do not shatter.

she touches me—
leaves me for extinct
while you
graze your fingers up my arms
and i am a desert revived by your touch.
i feel like if i showed you my favorite songs
you would nod along
and appreciate every sound.
her mouth is like a razor-blade
splitting the hairs on my skin
like a viper, she pounces
streaked red crimson blood
with bite marks like tattoos.
you’re a calm ripple to her tsunami waters;
i drown under her oppression,
i live for just a taste of your connection.

i harbored the monster inside of me
fed it juice and the best parts of me.
now honestly,
i just wish he would go away.

everything we ever did is now collapsing in front of my feet
barefoot and dragging over glass shards, fire sparks, and your skull.
i feed the monster
my insecurities
and it lays them in its teeth.
takes you from my liquid hands
leaving me empty handed
every
time.

everything you are is everything i am not
….will never be
radically selfish, i am, causing you pain.
the monster screams and screeches and i have to give in
every
time.

my teeth are glass and they puncture your perfect skin.
the monster laughs at my attempts
he tells me you don’t want me here, don’t love me.
he feeds me lies;
i believe them
and i am ashamed
for i let him get away with it
every
time.

i am ashamed that i have let you burn
every
single
time.

everything you ever did for me
is wasted and washed away.
i want to forgive myself,
but he will not let me.
he will not let me be free.

the moon—she knows of who she is;
i have no idea who i am.

perhaps a jellyfish
who stings when she’s provoked
not always under duress, sometimes
just because she feels threatened by the enormous depths of the sea.
perhaps a lover,
a silly little heart
that glows when it’s full
that beats when nerves flood in.
perhaps a sailor,
wandering and contemplating a world
where one could be free
and devoid of responsibilities,
chasing the stars and seas
yet somehow sees them as omens
she must avoid.
perhaps a daughter
with harp string fingertips
with legs that waltz with no regrets,
who breaks her back to measure up
and sings the craving to bed at night.
perhaps a flame,
one swallowing all the elements
destroying every path,
begging that they’ll stay.
perhaps a girl
who loves unashamedly
and naked and like an ember
like a forest fire
like a jellyfish
like a navigator of the seas
like a throbbing heart
like a delicate daughter,
perhaps everything all at once
everything and everyone that ever breathed in my vicinity
perhaps an amalgamation of all the creatures leaping in my chest,
scraping at my rib cage—thoughts dying to be uttered
said
muttered.

perhaps no one.

there used to be a terrifying place i had to go
but you came in with your skyscraper touch, now i have vertigo.
not sick to my stomach, just a little bit distressed
how you would want to see me loved limitlessly and dressed.
these wounds are boils
little coils round my throat
and you look at me long enough for me to almost explode.
never been a volcano, always an accidental surge
now i guess you mean it this time, i will surely self-implode.
never dying alone,
saw you in your overcoat,
we drove twenty miles south to a sweet girl’s house
then, when you saw me falling asleep you said it was time to go.
oh, i’ve never been so carefully watched over,
always straddled the line of being a complete soulless loner.
you are not my owner, when we get much older
do you think we’d be happy with our heads on the other’s shoulders?

when i skipped in the street
and you blinked your flashlight fifteen times at me
my high beams bursting through the windows of the neighbors,
i started to feel like she wrote those songs for us
and for our teenage recklessness.
can you teach me how to stay,
how to sit still and just love
with no shame and no repercussions?
because how are you so close in my rearview mirror
and then so much farther than you appear?
i would’ve cranked the heater, the same for you
the same simple cares
that you bestowed on
someone as wretched as me.
i would’ve called you my favorite person,
denying your insecurities and making them seem insignificant,
just as you had.
i would’ve laid in your lap retrieving my phone
as we laugh with our entire stomachs
and your friend says there must be something between us;
how does that make you feel?
i would’ve said it was finally time to go if i saw you sleeping,
almost too tired to drive home.
i would’ve asked you to drive safely for fear of deer around,
the same as you had.
i would’ve invited you to my cracking house,
just as you did,
answering the doorbell and smiling,
“you can take your shoes off”

“i love you as you are”