they locked lips as the evening sank further
and further
and further
the sun took one last peek
i stood in shock
and heard the band slow their music
slicing open my heart
pulling its strings
and i am still here
half dead
but wishing someone would also do that to me
or that the moonlight could help me breathe
choose the tongue over comfortability

i would like to love you like everyone else does
like a morning dove
awaiting morning
like a beautiful sunset
still forming
i would like to love you easily and breathlessly
count all the syllables in the words you say
watch you walk
watch you stay
watch you walk away anyway.
i’m so difficult to love:
i move in rhythms
i push away—i shove
i erode the land i pave
i can’t mend the things i break.
i can’t be in love with you—
that would mean i would have to stay.
i am disgusting, you are ravishing.
you are hourglass sand in my hands
and i have stab wounds too
you fall through
every time
through every corner of dying skin.
you would abhor me if you could just stop adoring me—
i haven’t felt useless since the day we met
but i have a selfish need to push, pull,
yawn and stretch
and move violently in indignation.
you were in the wake, you moving piece of innocence
you had no clue who you were meeting
and now i’m sure you regret
it.
i can’t be who you want me to
cause then i’d have to stay
and i’m not sure how not to move these legs.

in the end, i know that
i will watch you watch me walk away.

i love you,
and that terrifies me.
pull you by the cars
tell you how i feel
let you contemplate.
even though i rejected you many times,
it was all a lie.
because i love you,
i’m just so terrified.
how would you react
if i texted you right now at almost midnight
and said i adore your company
and want to be your girl?
would you ask me if i was drunk or sick or stupid or dumb
or would you say ‘yes’ in an instant, barely even thinking?
would you apologize for losing feelings because i had told you ‘no’ countless times before?
or would you say ‘i love you too,
and that terrifies me’?

my cousin’s cousin has a boyfriend
she’s younger than i am.
i want love
but i’m not pretty enough
and it always seems like i’m not slim enough.
i’m not enough.
my poetry *****
it’s unoriginal, it’s bland, it’s not traditional.
it’s the only thing i like to do.
i’m not cool, i’m not popular
i barely have six friends.
it’s ok i guess
but my cousin’s cousin has a boyfriend
and i am so lonely.

i’ve been stuck
and you’re here.
your silky clothes,
your gentle understanding.
does the night seem heavy to you?
does it make you die inside?
does it make your bones shake
and your heart ache?
does the day take its toll,
leaving you an empty shell?
does it bring sadness in its arms?
does it leave hope dead in your yard?
all i’ve known is the void,
a sizable gap inside of my body,
a place no one dares to explore.
how am i stuck in a rotting bed,
in a world that’s unforgiving but won’t take the blame?
what will i do when the branches i climb collapse
and break these legs of mine?
fragile limbs.
frost bite.
what will you do
when the hole in my heart gets bigger
and i cannot hold it inside of me anymore?
if you cradle me, like the baby, the child i once was,
will i see my parents in your eyes?
will all this confusion make it even clearer
that your strength will carry me out of the deepest ditch?
my limbs are failing.
will you lift me to bed when i cannot climb the stairs?
lay me to rest, away from all the pain
and suffering in the living room
making jokes at someone else’s expense.
no one ever asks me to stay.



but you do.
you always do.

don’t be a stranger he said to me,
strange how i feel like a stranger
speaking my own words, telling my own stories.
strange how i feel paralyzed,
strange how my muscles don’t move out of habit,
strange how i’m lonely in my own mind.
don’t be a stranger he said to me,
even stranger that i feel grateful
for something so minuscule.
strange how once i was lost
and couldn’t comprehend being found.
even stranger how someone’s once kind words became daggers,
myself being the one to make them as such.
don’t be a stranger he said to me,
the strangest thing since i feel so weak.
every week,
a reminder that my thoughts aren’t pretty, my love not craved.
the strangest thing is i cannot carry the world,
as silly as it sounds, i know.
the strangest thing is i expect superhuman out of myself
when i expect nothing out of everyone else.
don’t be a stranger he said to me,
don’t be a passerby on the road, putting your head down as you move by.
don’t be afraid to show someone you love them,
don’t be afraid to take life by the reins and make yourself matter,
don’t be embarrassed of the love you are giving, of the kindness you are gifting,
don’t be alone when you know someone deeply cares for your calls,
don’t shove and sulk and make a mess,
don’t make yourself feel sorry for yourself,
don’t die alone,
don’t exit with silence,
don’t regret what you feel,
don’t think your life was anyone’s mistake,
don’t be a stranger.
please, i beg.

the mirror plays favorites
she twiddles the beauty queen’s golden hair
she puckers up so lipstick can be placed on her full lips
her hair the perfect length to play with
not dry, but smooth and so healthy

she picks the prom queen’s silky dress with dignity
it’s perfect for her malnourished body
it lays and sits so beautifully
the mirror sees her and appreciates the craft she created
grins, and puts silver and gold expensive earrings on her ears

but when i approach,
she turns her face in disgust
throws an outfit at me; ripped jeans and a tacky t-shirt
she says i’m too fat and that i should keep my legs far apart so people don’t notice how weird i look
she grimaces at me and i walk away bashfully
‘never letting her look at me again’
i say
but
i always come back for her critical opinion
and i accept it
that’s exactly what i am
not beautiful, a fat failure

same man who told me i would be his girl
ripped my heart out and slammed it onto the floor.
haunted by betrayal, it twists around my room
it sits upon my bed and it refuses to listen to you
or me.
same guilt pressed against my skin
my own friends lost so much sight of me.
i’m sorry.
he was accidental tears falling from my eyes
makeup worn to disguise
the melancholy deep within my soul.
same man who told me i would be the one to take home
told me to go.
stretched out on the beach,
nothing but the sky and sea
reaching towards a meaning you would never give to me.
somehow now it’s all my fault
i misread all your calls
i had mistaken your sudden advances for something meaningful.
you’re a narcissist, a crawling goblin,
a regretted kiss, your knife still sharpened
over my silk body, over my salty tears
over all these doubts
you couldn’t heal
carved a heart shape out of my chest
left in a dying mess
i bet you’re happy
knowing you hurt someone like me
for the hundredth time
do you ever learn?
before you hurt people like
me
who just want to be seen
by a man who tells us we’re beautiful?
does it burn you to see the fireworks sink from the sky
beside your bedside?
or do you never regret anything
never apologize when you’re mean
never have to take accountability
for your stupid actions.
you are the glass shards in my back
aching intensely
the extra teeth in my mouth just puncturing me
you are a brutish maniac, a life threatening heart attack
you are a dead man
run ahead, man.
same man who loved me for months
says he’s done
with this.
same man who betrayed me
still thinks he’s holy.
same man who broke my heart
still thinks he’s an injured part.
oh, you never knew me
but i must not have known you too well, either.

they told you to book it in the opposite direction
with your back turned
never glance behind.
but you didn’t run
your feet stayed stationed, loyal soldiers
digging into the never-yet conquered land.
i made myself smaller,
a beautiful thoughtless daydream for your sharp obtuse thinking
but you weren’t even vicious like i made it up plainly in my mind.
i exaggerated your feelings
now i’m the only one left reeling
with my brain a foreigner in my own skull.
they told you to run,
but you stayed and hoped i would change.
forgive me for loving you in a psychotic way
where i locked up my affection in a jail cell
and never let it see the light of day
for your crystal-shining eyes
to see my true stance on you and us.
forget me
for your life could blossom if you free yourself from my shade
that prevents your soil from bringing up flowers
construct me a tower where i can hide
and you’ll never have to see my revolting face ever again.
they had told you to book it,
to blast down the road
and never look back
but you turned around
and smiled,
showing pristine white teeth,
and said you wouldn’t be leaving
because you had realized you loved me.
you were too naive to assume that i would accept that kind of adoration for myself
so i left you under the flickering street light
and when i looked back,
i could just see you crying

i became skinny, but i still hated myself
i worked my **** off trying to “lose weight”
i was always skinny
what was i on?
i watched my slim figure in the mirror
and
cried
i was never good enough
i still don’t think i am
no—
i will never be enough
cause i think i’m ugly despite one or two people calling me pretty
my clothes don’t fit and i panic
i told my friend i needed to lose weight
and she said i was super skinny
i don’t know why
it shocked me
cause the body dysmorphia is vicious
and she is my biggest bully
my legs are muscular
i walk all day, run at night
i swear
i’m not lying about that
yes
i pace around my room
cause apparently that’ll shed pounds
heck, i’m one hundred and twenty pounds
yes—
i said it
it’s mostly muscle
but i think i’m fat
perhaps, i haven’t thought about my weight or my legs for a long while
but yesterday i saw my stomach in the mirror
and i can’t stop thinking about that
i’m gonna start doing ab exercises
so i can be toned
and i know i’ll be happy
by those results
i’m still ugly though
i am so sorry for the self deprivation
but it’s come the time when i accept that i will never be beautiful
and i don’t know
perhaps that’s perfectly valid

the red light distorts the cigarette smoke coming out of your nose. in the haze, i’m caught up writing prose with a bottle of coke in my left hand. trying not to choke on the heavy smoke ruminating throughout the suffocating room. your eyes the same shade of blood red as the lights. i’m boarding windows claiming i need no fresh air in my paper mâché lungs. pollute me more.

more? there’s nothing to give.
not with my sore pale hands
clutching every last fiber that stands
between our two shapes.
not with my bloodshot eyes
pleading for responses that eat at every surface.
not with my black dying heart
wincing at the sight of every disaster that, in vain, keeps me alive.
not with my hollow brain
the fight or flight tendencies defining the reactions i give.

you want more?
there’s nothing to give.
there never was anything
to give.

i am a skeleton.
you gave me your all
and all i could hand back
was a piece of my femur.
the love inside of you
makes my love seem small
i’m so ashamed
of my silence.
i walk backwards down a stairway
seeing
the walls i put up
too big too tall
for you to cross.
i need to love
but i’m too flimsy
my bones
are weak.
the love inside of you
taught me about the love inside of me
and it doesn’t have a home
since i left you a ghost
in a house by the highway.
we live a few miles from each others smiles,
dive in the pool at nighttime
the lights are so bright.
i swim with the bugs and we hold each other.
how hard is it for me
to show you what i see?
i lied for my pride—
he said we were beautiful.
the love inside of you is growing stronger
the love inside of me is begging for forever
but i have no skin
nothing to hold onto.
i killed myself briskly
if you had a word in
i wouldn’t have stopped breathing.
it’s car trips and teenage years
i want us to roam free
two kids with our bones and our aches and our loves
we can’t express
i deny till i’m upset
that you want someone else in your pool
in your house
in car rides at midnight
instead of my feet that can’t reach the pedal right.
i make things a joke and you laugh
and i know that the other girl won’t
make you lean back as you laugh,
though i don’t know this for sure.
the love inside of you is trying to call on the love inside of me
but i soiled it all.
i’m blue and i’m scared we may never be anything
except two kids with shotguns pointed at each other
though you are the bluffer
and i just don’t know how to fake anything.

i am not your dog; do not pet me once, then expect my loyalty.
i am not the woman in your dreams
completing your r.e.m sleep.
i am not your dog, do not train me once, then expect me to behave.
i am not a slave
to your blaze
to the fire on your tongue.
i am love personified.
i am a pain unresolved,
but free.

mind; so generous and kind
you can be.
so smart and so free-living
you can be.
i’m homesick for you
in another dimension.
held captive by the dying hands of others.
mind; so wondrous and loving
you can be.
i wasn’t sure what i had before in this garden of weeds,
but you were always there,
always there for me
and i’ve taken you for granted
made you my supposed enemy.
mind; so delicate and beautiful
you can be.
when the loneliness was the only comfort
you were right all along;
i want to be alone.
alone with you.

every morning, it’s the same monotonous routine.
i’ll die and be buried in the soil.
perhaps someone may lay a coffin in the ground
in the shape of my emptiness,
the vast surface area of loneliness.
i’ve loved in spite of every distraction
in spite of every dying emotion
in my brain.
i have walked in hands of friendships just to feel some sense of relief
but all they’ve done is empty me.
i sit on my bed every night,
nothing changes except the length of my sighs
knowing fully i’ll never escape.
i can’t tell the ones i love,
they’ll worry for me,
and they need some happiness in their lives too.
i can’t tell friends, i shove them away,
wondering why people never choose to stay.
i’m erratic and sick of my own games:
to watch on the sidelines and never take part.
so sick of the routines,
all i want to do is donate my heart
to you.
take good care of it and water it and this proves i have no clue what to do with it.
please make it a home, with a hearth
and make it happy,
i’ve tried, but i’ll never bring it peace.
no matter how long i sleep
the same emptiness stays until i am it
and it is all me.
i’m packing my bags,
i’m moving upstate,
i ache to be someone you tolerate but don’t hate.
i can’t be someone else,
i’ll always be six feet underneath as you gaze upon me
and your eyes are so alive
and i love you,
i do,
what has this come to?
my frail body lying in a bed of dirt—
i’m dead before i hit the ground.
the same day all over
can i just lay with you
until night falls softly upon your pillow
and you call me a friend,
i’m someone to defend,
worth someone to you.
i keep the room quite tidy
tidy enough so the emptiness has a satisfactory space.
but you’re in the kitchen
and i’m hugging my knees
i’m scared i’ll die lonely
empty pews in the church,
with the emptiness clinging to my fraying shirt sleeves.
what have i become?
the same monotonous cycle
defining every aspect in my life.
i’ve loved till my heart was whimpering in pain,
and i’ve recorded every sound to revisit its anguish
and i’ve served every doubt till it’s wasted in a bar.
i’ve loved every human who stopped just to tell me that i was worth existing,
even just for a second,
i’ve loved myself more for every joke you’ve ever laughed at
i’ve loved every second with you in it
and i want you to have my heart
because you can do great things with it.
i know you can
because the emptiness feels fuller when you’re around
and it sits down in a swivel chair and it listens to you
and actually smiles.
i was revived every time you’ve said my name
even by mistake,
i was less lonely some days,
just replaying the sounds till my cheeks hurt
and you’ll never know,
but just keep my heart warm.
keep it by the fire.
keep it by yourself
and
it’s certain to be safe.

hopeless romantic here.
hi.
i know you probably tell your parents that love doesn’t feel like it does in the movies
it’s overrated
i am guessing that’s what you say
but i
ok, maybe i am naive
but i
i don’t think love will feel like it does in the movies either
it will be better
and i hold that hope in my heart
that one day i will walk out of a restaurant
and i will see a familiar face
because soulmates are real
(the ones who don’t have them, or so they say, their partner died or couldn’t cross the layer between love and selfishness)
they are real
i think so at least
call me stupid
hopeless romantic
yes,
that’s me
i don’t get offended by that name
i swear it gets better than this
it gets better
love makes it better
it might be hard
but what have you ever done that was worth your time that wasn’t hard?
huh?
i want another person to be my safety, my rock, my eternity
bathe me in their river
cause it gets better
it does get better
and love makes it better

please
take all the time you need with me
i have been waiting for forever
what’s a couple more weeks?

chomping on crunchy bones- my frail bones
how hard is it to just be a skeleton
unbothered, just straight-up dead
under the grave, just a small feeble corpse
let me rest in peace, you deadly humans,
let me be
i can’t stand the silence let alone the laughter
of the ****** bodies with crooked souls
let me rest in peace
it’s like an inferno down below
why can’t it be just like before?
when i was just a skeleton in the grave
before they sawed my bones
before i lost my own
head
in these weeds
in these plunging depths
let me rest in peace, you foul idiots

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”

plenty of phrases, soaked through the bone
eyelashes moving with eyeballs closed
it’s almost halloween
it’s almost time to party
for our souls
for our bones
for our skeletons we push inside our closets, we have a place to hide, don’t we?
but loneliness is an illness i would rather contend with
it’s familiar and frost-bite warm
i should’ve been warned
about “love” and hasty infatuation
these are my bones
creaky and unknown
they are alone
beside these muscles
that i keep so i
can convince myself i’m fine
beneath a cloak of darkness, of fear
you shouldn’t come to me
you shouldn’t dare
pack a suitcase full of your organs
don’t come to my part of this ghost town
let’s hide our skeletons away, so no one sees, so no one stays
to love us
we don’t deserve it
it’s almost halloween
and i will try to be me
behind a cave
carved makeup on my face
i will try to keep a smile
i will try to leave this denial
i will heat my body up with something besides the hesitation
this presentation, i will perform
with the skeleton in my room
that hides during storms
that is afraid of collecting friends like memories
someone take these bones from
me

i’m sick of the fake world of social interaction
slouching, but pretending when someone asks
“haha, you should totally go for it,” when i don’t even support such a decision

also you should have showed me that story too
although it’s so cringe and i could do without
it
but i’m bad with people, talking, chatting
being a person of substance
substantially
i spilled my sticky juice down my hands
and pretended like it wasn’t uncomfortable and awkward
some weird kid i try to call my friend just hit my other friend’s boyfriend
like an infantile sociopath
now i am getting off topic
but
in my classroom
why are people saying being like that is a sin?
they aren’t even smart enough to believe who God really is
how sad that they’ll never be wasted
until they get burned
and maybe yesterday was awful
but maybe today is way worse
because i am fed up with everyone
(i don’t wanna curse)
i hope there’s no more rolling eyes and annoyed glances coming out from me
or maybe you should just be less annoying
yeah, be less annoying,
children

i was never what you truly wanted, i was just someone to look to.
look for me on the road
either scattered or waving hesitantly,
warm sunlight beaming down upon my shoulders.
you were what i truly wanted, i was just too scared to tell you.
deathly afraid you’ll see how much you mean to me
and then you’ll disappear into the corpse of our love.
i’m so terrified to tell you,
so sick of being unsure.
sick of being second;
all i want is to be heard.
and if you do not adore me
how will this all go?
when i love you till i’m dying quick,
how fast will you hold me?
oh, how fast you know me.
when no one quite understands,
i hear your voice and smile,
wishing you would speak to me,
i haven’t seen you in a while.
i’m always second pick
i’m sick of being pushed to the side
i miss you—i miss us.
i miss every conversation.
every contemplation of whether i’m in love with you,
every expectation you had of me,
every quiet moment where i didn’t feel like exploding.
i wonder if you know that you know me better than anyone.
i wonder if you know you’re all i think about when i’m lonely.
i wonder if you know i love you.

what a bed to inhabit in
when the illness strikes the body
there’s no caring mother to nurse the health back.
what a bed i set up
a sunken-in *****
a ***** to sink in until the seasoned chill sickens the soul.
there’s a body next to me, but he lays still, rarely speaks a word
and when he does,
the answer does not find him.
i lay in wonder all night long until the moonlight dwindles
and the sun starts singing its choruses.
the body beside me, he listens,
until my swimming legs cast him aside,
the noise drowns out in this swimming pool cage.
every sorrow that has laid claim on my terrain
every dagger pointed and aimed at my skull
is digging itself into the mattress.
i just sit and wallow
on the sinking bed
and the boredom teems until the man beside me
starts sweating.
i have to throw the sheets off and sob and carry on until the morning comes.
again and again

ice is sharp and cold and you don’t wanna get frostbite during the winter months
i never wanted to step on the cracks
i never wanted to fall in so deep
painfully sobbing and at the very edge of drowning
i never wanted to get hypothermia from my fatal accident
i only wanted to step over the cracks
and return safely to the promised land of warm beds and train tracks

my sweet girl, you have broken me
in two, in three,
in a thousand shattered pieces
blowing in the wild winds.
i would like to love the impossibility of you
shamelessly diving into the body of water
that is you.

my sweet girl,
there will be no one left out there to
doubt you.
you'll be understood by those you
respect the most,
loved completely by the world that tossed
and turned you
like a bobbing ship on the open seas.

my sweet girl,
you'll be singing up tempo songs,
dreaming broadway dreams.
you'll be happy and without liver disease.
the panic will fall off your bones,
leaking into the clear shallow streams.

why, sweet girl, must you waste such a
beautiful existence hating yourself?
why must you deny yourself the love
you truly deserve?
why worry your mother to death?
oh, sweet girl,
why must you contain yourself for those
you have never met?
oh, sweet girl, when i saw you crawl out
of your cocoon, i wept,
for the change that would only make a greater world,
was finally appearing.

for the millionth number i can’t count of times you’ve made my heart want to spout out profanities and send a flood a ‘rushing your way
i hate to say
but i will with my entire chest cavity
i do not owe you.
i am not your pretty princess ready to bend to your wind or your will
i am starting these words with “i” because even that you didn’t allow
my opinions didn’t matter, my music taste didn’t matter
for the meaningless songs of yours i just smiled along to and tried to humor you about them so you wouldn’t feel slighted were awful
you can’t treat people like objects who are only supposed to serve you and expect me to love you back
and the audacity for your mind to be so clogged and to think that you will make mine too
i can forgive your crimes, i will forgive your crimes,
don’t you even dare think that i won’t.
you’re pathetic and that’s honestly incredibly sad
that your parents never loved you and all the experiences with awful people is the only love you’ve ever had.
tearing people’s skin off and expecting them to kneel at your feet,
you thief,
you merciless useless shell of a woman
what mercy do you think you will receive when you give me nothing when i have done absolutely nothing to hurt you
and trust me, i’d be the first one to know.
where’s that conscience of yours?
not in that heart of steel, nor in those dying robotic eyes
you are nothing to me
after how you play me like a toy
like a mendable device,
i will still be so nice, so smiley, so personable, so favorable to you
and my brain tells me that you don’t have an empathetic bone in your body,
and it would be a million trillion times right.
it makes sense when your parents haven’t taught you a single moral in your almost eighteen years of living, although you act like you’re three years old with a problem with sharing.
sorry, i’m using correct grammar, something you don’t know.
how many times can someone make excuses to just avoid you?
why will i haul you around this town just for you to call me the b word and act like it’s some kind of silly goofy joke.
i am not laughing.
are you?
oh, of course you are, you plotting sinister smarty
and i feel remorseful for saying those things about you when you say way worse and never move your tongue to apologize.
it’s just one word girl.
oh wait, it might be too hard for you to pronounce.
“i’m sorry” takes too much effort.
you never loved me
and i always knew that, but admitting that to myself would make me feel more alone, but now i don’t care at all
i am completely apathetic to you.
completely indifferent to you.
i never loved you.
come on, it was obvious.
it is obvious.
get a grip.
treating your friends like trash on a dirt road is not how kindhearted people act.
you are childish, childless, erratic, insane, a literal crisis in and of itself.
you are not my friend.
you are not my support system.
you are no one to me except a brutal dictator, picking and choosing what i can and can’t do with my life.
heck, i treat the ground i walk on with muddy shoes better than you treat me.
must be nice to feel so high up, but know deep down that you are just so low.
so low i can’t even see you from here;
i don’t want to.
you are utterly awful and i forgive you for that,
some people just can’t help their insufferableness
i think i just made up a new word,
but it defines you perfectly so i will devote it to you,
you slimy intolerably unempathetic (another word) angsty teenager.
get a grip and be nicer.
it really is not that hard to treat me like a human being.
i’ve been doing it to you this whole time
and you’re lucky i haven’t complained once.
so for now;
leave me alone.

by nightfall, i am just a creature.
of habit one could say or
of countless wild misgivings.
a creature with her hands clutched at her stomach
that moves up and down
when the breath begins—
she is human
much to her dismay.
she claws at the human form she was
blessed—no, cursed—with.
the pale moon stares with fluttering open eyes.
i wish i could just hide
in the bushes and wait for
some other creature
to lessen the ache
that prances in my bones
like leaping frogs that never tire.
much to my dismay,
there are many nightfalls where
others do not question their positions,
do not wonder why or
pine for
another
body, a warmer climate to indulge themselves in.
i am but a creature
whose body is battered and sick,
where illness spreads throughout.
i regurgitate any satisfaction
that lingers
a bit too long for comfort.
this mouth shuts slowly
but opens again
and all the creatures of habit slip out again
from its opening

and the rest flood from the stomach walls
and i am not human anymore—
rather something purging itself of the danger
of its own grip
from the inside
out.

i start to mourn the life that i could’ve had, but killed
and so i sit
sabotaging the only shining starry nights in my life,
and i sing restlessly into an empty jungle,
hoping to hear a familiar call.
one sound to reassure me that i am not the only one left,
singing unknowingly into the thicket
waiting for something to whisper back
—something that has gone extinct.

i hate the sun

why?

maybe it’s because i am never truly fully happy
or because i don’t want my ***** pale and wretched skin illuminated in the light for everyone and their mother to see
maybe because the sun shined when i was having a crisis and now i resent his rays
or because the sun is gorgeous and i am not and jealousy can eat someone alive
i am sick of watching the sun rise and fall almost every single day
only a few clouds bid me goodnight
maybe that’s why i find comfort in the gray and the gloom
because i can hide in the cracks and crevices and in the light from the moon
i hate the sun because he understands how much i despise him and yet he still returns over and over again
my family say that i sound crazy
sound like a vampire or something
i just retreat and retreat
the sun shouldn’t follow me shouldn’t define me shouldn’t label me depressed for hating the extra light
but i will still hate the brightness of the sun no matter what

never thought i was worth it until somebody told me so
he told me never to doubt myself or feel any insecurity
and now my hands are ****** and the rope is tight around my neck
and now i wonder if i ever love again must i have to forget?
every shattered promise clinging to my sleeve
but i am freezing now, can i come home?
or at least observe you watching television
with a coffee mug and imagine it was me you never stopped dreaming of.
outside the snow is creating blankets i must wrap myself around
cause the cold is my muse and i must never let her down.
unless you want to keep me warm,
keep me safe in someone’s locket
doesn’t have to be your own
the loners never let you know
until it’s too late.
i never want to be your burden—love me for your sake.
love me so the cold does not preserve me in her arms
and leave me someone you must deal with when you inevitably shovel the driveway.
can you walk me home in time for the dinner bell to ring?
will you stay if no one’s home
or will you leave me to my own devices,
watching every human that i have ever loved disintegrate in my cold ****** hands?
i’ll wipe the prints on every item,
never leave no evidence.
i will crawl until my knees bust open and the floor is wet
from my tears that i feared would always seal my fate.
can you take me home, hand in hand, coats on shoulders, giggly negative self-talk?
but maybe make a stop
and i’ll make a home in your bed
just enough room for me to remember to forget
that this love will never ever happen again
and no amount of begging
will produce the results the same.
you must lay me in the corner,
tell me “stay where you are made,
don’t cause a scene, don’t make me regret bringing you like some kind of dead
weight.”
i will listen; that’s the best thing that i could ever do,
let me think high of myself for one minute or a few.
i won’t chew the food you give me
i just want to be forgiven
want to live without a knife lodged deep into my rib cage
i’ve learned nothings fair in love and war
there is nothing poetic about it
you’ll be left by your best friends,
your enemies will never mourn you.
and if you win there’s no virtue
to uncover
you’ve taken something in your hands that wasn’t even yours to begin with.
let me stay until i’m warm again
until their fingernails don’t puncture skin,
their violence becomes normalcy,
so i will know when to hide from the cold that slowly creeps
and calls me its daughter like i ever belonged to it
i believe you, i believe it,
just didn’t want to believe
that you’d leave
me on the porch for some yellow tv screen.
i’ll be as quiet as you want, you know i should never reveal my presence
once i do, the men deem me too much of something—something that they must rid of.
and i’ll forget the torture, long as you forget the power
instilled into your bones as far as any time must go.
i have tried in vain to get you to love me,
or at least see my skeleton
as i was made,
i’m just a body,
just something you can’t offend.
i have defended all my reasons as they lie flat on the floor,
sat in grass outside your house and waited for
the door
to open
much to my surprise,
no one loves you when you’re dying
when the love you once thought could happen
starts crumbling like a sandcastle
and wind chill makes you contemplate the reason why you keep going.
you’ve never been worthwhile
you’re just a silhouette,
of someone stronger who sleeps in comforters
and the cold is not their hollow mother.
can you walk me home at midnight
but if i ever stop trying
what’s the point in telling anyone i feel like i’m dying?
will you lift my wobbly legs, walking drunk back from the station?
i’m so sick of being cold;
i just want to go to sleep.
never thought i was worth it until someone told me so;
he must have lied through his teeth the entire time.
how could someone love me when i’m giving into weather,
when my pulse feels more like a broken clock
rather than a living thing?
how could someone love me
when every house i’ve built has no heater,
no place to lull the wind to just a sound
that can never enter?
how could someone love me,
cold and broken,
alone, with nothing left?
outside your porch beckoning for the warm light through the window
will you carry me home?
i’m sorry,
i’ll forget i ever asked you in the morning.

i couldn’t remember your middle
name if you asked me to.
lee or mary?
i’m an island
and you’re nebraska,
surrounded by a
million proud people
positive in a combined effort.
i’m still the same girl who said we would move in together when we were older, but we were twelve and so naïve to the
idea of broken relationships.
the middle of june stings me each year
when the calendar tells me
it was the time you were born
and i can’t write you a note
because i’m too afraid to invest too
much of myself in a girl i don’t even
recognize anymore.
right in the pupils,
you didn’t smile.
i’ll be quiet for the sake of you
i’ll go under your radar
till you forget my meaning
to you.
this love is so selfish or
what would i even call it?
i don’t even think about
you or your prairies
just the childhood memories
shot in the heart of me
by one big arrow
it says “don’t let anyone
be your best friend
because it will end.”
i should have taken that advice
and ran for my unworthy life.

when you figured out i could drive
you took advantage of me real fast—
“i love you’s” and all that fake allegiance.
well, guess what—i will burn the town we found leave it in wreckage
i will be more than who i am around you;
spirit sucker
undercover.
i hate how you talk to people
all crass and aggressive.
selfish little clinger
i’ll leave these daggers in my flesh
that you placed there for me
after you got mad i didn’t give you everything.

is it crazy how weak i feel falling in love?
it is stronger to start to cling onto an unfamiliar season
and wade through its frozen river.
it is stronger to let a fragment of yourself stray into the bog,
approach a stranger with olive branch eyes
reaching out for a piece of your soul
you weren’t sure even existed.
is it crazy how weakness is all i think of love?
a mistake, a mishap, something to do-over.
i need stronger arms, stronger limbs.
i was so much more as a child,
playing with love in my hands; bending it whichever way i deemed fit.
there is possibility in adamant denial:
a curse for a lover disguised as apathetic.
i am stronger in love than it seems,
only weakness is simple to grab onto
allowing the tiredness to creep onto my eyelids
and the force of sleep beckons me.
loving is giving up,
loving is sinking into quicksand in shallow waters.
love is strength masquerading as weakness,
a pale creature moving in the bog.
how come i am so scared of love when that is all i am made up of?
every little embrace, every small favor, every tiny chuckle,
every good cry, every rekindling, every intermingled life in mine.
i am strong for believing in something as fragile as love,
that could crumble in my hands at any moment,
yet gently still holding it so that it may remain.

my father hasn’t been himself,
i’m piling clothes on each shelf
while the cold is attaching its lifeless embrace around my thighs that are too big
and a stomach too normally abnormal.
i write about living,
i try to live for writing;
always end up living for nothing.
maybe the ache seems like a home,
or a house
i just passed on the open road.
constantly familiar since a younger version of me
opened the vault
and it slipped out.
my eyes haven’t watered the flowers underneath my bed
since the summer came and went.
love came knocking at the front door;
the latch wouldn’t open up.
now every car makes it look as if it’s him behind every wheel.
i pass that house with a sore throat—
a lump in the back;
something’s unraveling inside of me.
i am neither tall nor strong,
every sadness almost takes the breath out of me
and i haven’t been like myself,
but when have i ever?

and i’m swallowing each impossible love
and letting it fill my stomach lining.
i have touched this ****** with shaky palms.
i have taken my fill,
i have loved, lost, loved, and gave birth to a body i never conceived i would.
i have been in my own company
each night with stacked dishes and undone laundry
and puffy eyes that cannot seem to shrink.
i’m swallowing each sweet nothing as if it belongs to me—as if you belong to me.
through flesh and blood, i see your insides.
they are living. your aura. the soft delicate smooth manner in which you exist.
i live to see the sunrise from your bedroom window in a nightgown,
observing whole towns awakening
as our hearts have never known another
as clearly worth living for.
we are alive and i’m swallowing each emotion
i forced myself to deny.
i breathe what i feel, i am what i want, i am wanting
and oh dear, there is nothing wrong with that.

need a friend?
the doubts live inside of me like citizens
that walk slowly in courthouses ready to sue.
all their passions are out of wack,
they only know how to survive by shooting down others.
every hollow house i was led to, hand in hand,
as i trusted you to guide me.
i need a friend.
i need the fever, the fire, the rage, the shooting star, the red seething blood.
any warmth to remind myself of tenderness,
even if it is without at the core.
i need anticipatory silence, waiting your filthy hands to slap the dinner table and i rush to clean the shattered plates.
don’t hurt me,
be gentle,
don’t make me smaller.
make me smaller,
make me writhe,
make me smaller,
quieter, less of a burden.
be responsive,
make me spill.
i need a friend.
the panic has large hands that choke me,
has a large frame to push me deep
and never lift me out.
though, i will not make do with violence,
i am not silent when it comes to love that festers.
need a friend?
the breaths i take will be for you.
the day is wicked
and you are so tender,
i would like this meal to be filling,
i would like you to stay a while.

i went to the trampoline park yesterday
and let me tell you- i have never felt more free
bounding and jumping into the air
i felt my soul condense and release
and turn into flames and dragons and mythical creatures
i felt the pressure leave me
it escaped from my gaping mouth
i stopped caring for a few hours
and it felt as if time was going super slow
it’s funny how today
the next day
i feel sore
as if it hurts me to be free
as if it is detrimental for me to get ideas about escaping
like i should be trapped in this crammed atmosphere
sore and beaten, nothing more than a menace
i can’t be free
i can’t be free
i will never be free

you sold your savior in the papers
he was a lanky man, with eyes red and bloodshot
the press shoved his face in everyone’s faces
tangled his poster beauty in bleached hair
does it pay to be lied to
does it make it seem more bearable?
and have you seen their intimidation tactics
their ways to force you to believe their scam
your savior looks like he would abandon you in a minute in a strange situation
be careful who you trust
being truthful is inferior, supposedly
so is being a decent human being apparently?
such behavior is anomalous to me
if you want a savior, then go be free



southern skies
it’s all north from here—catharsis
you didn’t like your savior
impossible to please, ever consider locking yourself up in a cage with the lanky man in your dreams?
he has belts and chains and violent ways
and he uses his pain to manipulate
it’s all north from here—it’s evil in disguise
when lying is the only thing that soothes your mind
he was red and unrelenting
and it was the heat stroke that made it serious
did he save you or he did just come to scramble up the honesty?
it’s all south from here—secure in doubt, a running nightmare, sleep paralysis woman
if you want a savior, too bad, he already left you
with the moonlight, with the pure fright
bring a flashlight
—
but it’s not his fault you abandoned him
left him by the gas station
with his hands buried in his chest, his knees clutched breathlessly
it’s not his mistake you’re misguided, he wants you to be his child
you’re a flame and he’s just gasoline
lit him up and now the boils are forming
how dare you throw him out in the garden?
bruised, purple marks of bitten flesh
left by such a disingenuous mess
oh, the soothing ocean waves
against the southern palisades
you dug him into his grave
don’t you dare cry now that he’s laid
you punished him for a mistake
he bleeds for you—for your pain
“insane head on that woman, she just needs someone to hold her”
that’s what they all say
but a woman doesn’t just blindly rage without a whisper in her left ear
but you sold your savior out
for a couple dimes, you proud?
do your teeth sink into the battleground
right above his bleeding crown?
panic sets in, he’s abandoned
you made him your weapon
to wield against the inevitable
against the powerful
don’t you dare start feeling sorry
you may have confused him amidst your fury
but your savior is perfect, ain’t he?
such a perfect—perfect reflection of what you
want to see

you eat flesh in a cleaned room
with a seaside view.
you devour the world
(or so you think)
with a single swallow.
in dreams that feel like
apparitions,
you appear.
you clutch your ego against your chest
as if it’s a blessing.
your iron lung fills my head
with black smoke.
i envy those who can say no.

recently,
i apologize on the behalf of other people.
you’re smiling with blood in your teeth
the enamel worn through,
yellow in color.
staying afloat has become impossible.
you’re the ambushing shark
in a pool of my nerves and tissues.
somehow drowning with your fangs
around my rouge shadow.

your ego has eaten you alive.
you push against the walls of your pursuer.
it chokes back your spinal cord.
completely empty,
betrayed by your own creation
you must be angry
while i sit and watch,
blood on my lips,
solid foundation.