sometimes i write to no one
nobody is filling the void deep in my soul
so i make up fantasy men to take up the space
to fill in the cracks with their vibrant smiles
cheekbones accentuated
i instruct these prosthetics to heat my freezing
cold heart
stuck in a plain old reverie with kisses and children dancing in a ballroom
these fake and imagined life forms leave behind a vestige of fantastical beauties
these creations are flowing like water in secret caverns
dancing around my empty body
healing my blemishes but they still return to the creations’ surprise
they lift my limp limbs and lower me over the ancient greek pond
letting me drink the rich and luscious stream
filling my body with water, weighing me down
more mass and a bigger center of gravity
btw i am almost dead by the time they finish these rituals
these fantasy men care for me day in and day out, but they are sculpted from my mind
not real, this is not reality
they make me feel “happier” and “fuller” in my eyes but i know this is all a façade
naked and no one shall know
that the girl who waits here for fantastical sculptures to touch her and clothe her is a deep and dark disappointment
some say, “what an ingrate.”
some don’t even bother to care
nobody truly cares
and i figured this out many months ago
i am finally letting go
and as i turn to these creations i have created inside of my head
they blow and dissolve into the wind
therefore i have virtually no one
so i weep into my pruny hands
then draw the conclusion that i will never be loved
at least i know one thing for certain  :/

you look like every teenage dream
every boy in a magazine
vogue and all the other ones.
you wore leather pants and a luxurious belt
and i almost forgot how it feels to have felt so infatuated.
you took that microphone and shoved it up my nose,
you don’t believe in miracles.
i taught you sadness, you taught me madness,
we breathe in deep red lights.
i can’t embellish you in free verse if you don’t love me first,
i miss when i used to use you as my muse.
i’ve never been in love, but if it would happen to me, i know i would fall in love with you.
cause you don’t believe in miracles,



but i do.

there were people dining in a roller skating rink
i was a waitress in a tiny skirt
you saw me
possibly in the corner of your eye
i was pretending i didn’t see you
but it didn’t matter
cause you saw me.
you were so excited
for...me?
i thought you hated me
but you brought me over and
begged with your eyes for me
to extend my arms and
embrace you
i did, cause why not?
and then
it faded to black.
now it’s back to reality.
yes, it was just a dream.

my innocence floated away in fourth grade
when all my classmates grew up and it petrified me.
the world has ruined my bones, has ruined the soil where i planted my first milkweed for the monarch butterflies
we have all been destroyed
we just don't realize
or maybe we do, we just shower and bask in it.  
every soul is so uncouth and the world now stings more than the crack of the whip.
termites are crawling inside our mouths
moths are being inhaled through our nostrils.
when i was nine, everything had a clear answer and i was always happy
but now that my innocence has been scraped from the bark of a crabapple tree
i am so bewildered and i can’t find any sanctuary and life is so unendurable.
restore my patient calm and timid mind
i loathe this planet and this wicked institutionalized harbor where i now have to spend my days
all because i lost my innocence in fourth grade

ships sinking
as you stare across the bay
memorize the smile on my lips
the hallucinations i’ve secretly kept

breathe me in, don’t spit me out
i’ve outcasted myself enough times for the both of us
don’t give me that solemn stare

take me back to the roller rink
to the depths of my heart i haven’t explored
to the party of yours that i missed

i’m so sorry for the past inconveniences that haunt you and quite visibly me
can we be friends again before the ship sinks into the void of indigo ocean water?
making you smile so often was quite possibly my greatest accomplishment

there is nothing on this sinking ship except naivety and

(in my quiet solitude
though uninhabited, i see a force that wears the skin of a wolf
and it circles around me like a vulture to its prey.
there is yet to be found a validity
alive in this misfortune
obscenity has a spiteful home here.

have these bones grown too brittle?
have you turned into a surge of unnecessary memory?
the pressure folding my lungs like cards
the violence raising me as a scapegoat.
have you seen these ugly acidic tears turn the ground into a salt mine?
if you have looked for me, you have not seen me.
my intuition pulls and hides and repositions me
these conditions we instill are making us suffocate.
and these borders are making me unfamiliar
to the uproar i had grown so accustomed to.
to the sewer, we were flushed
and we lost the foundation that was hardly standing beneath our groaning feet.

the fury i breathe through my tired nostrils
entangles me
like a vine in a rainforest that only knows how to be sunny.
if you have looked for me, you would have seen a corpse instead.
a semblance of what used to exist.
a current swept over terrain that remains, that never
changes.
the barriers across miles of lands picked over, lands filled with dry tumbleweed, lands uncooperative with human life,
we rested upon.
in painful oblivion,
we lost the voice of the siren.
our qualms swelled
manically filling us with unease inscrutable to our undeveloped skulls.
we wear our burdens like unwashed clothes.
we walk within the hands of famine and loss and destruction.
we hear each other’s names, but all it causes is…)


pain.

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.

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.

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

IF ALL THE PLACES I WENT WERE STRETCHED OUT ON MY PALMS, I’D SCREAM FOR THE PLACES I HAVEN’T GONE, THE EXPERIENCES I NEVER EXPERIENCED. I COULD SCREAM AND SHOUT AT THE WORLD, BUT ALL IT WOULD EVER DO IS TOSS ME IN THE DUNGEON OR WRING ME OUT LIKE A WASHCLOTH USED TOO MANY TIMES. I FEEL THE SHEETS I AM GRIPPING TIGHTLY ONTO, I FEEL MY HEART SURGING AND RELEASING AND I AM A HUMAN. A LIVING BREATHING DEPRESSED ANXIETY FILLED ORGANISM. IF ALL THE PLACES I HAVEN’T GONE REVOLTED AGAINST ME, I’D BE IN FOR A ROUGH RIDE, BUT THE WORLD DOESN’T RUN LIKE THAT. THE PEOPLE WITH MACHINES INSTEAD OF HEARTS AND SCOWLS INSTEAD OF SMILES ARE TAKING OVER, THEY ARE POISONING THE SOIL, DAMPENING THE DRYWALL. THEY SELF DESTRUCT TO THE SOUND OF THE TRUTH OR THE WORD “RIGHT.” THEY WEAR DARK SPRAY PAINTED SUNGLASSES TO COVER THEIR EYES FROM THEIR ISSUES ARISING. THEY ARE GUILTY. THEY ARE CRUEL. THEY AREN’T THE NICE KIND HEROES FOR MANKIND THEY MAKE THEMSELVES OUT TO BE. THEY ARE ALIVE, THEY DO NOT GET TO SPEAK FOR THE UNBORN OR FOR THE PLACES THEY’VE NEVER STEPPED FOOT IN. YEARS AND CENTURIES AGO, EXPLORERS WERE LOOKING FOR THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH, INSTEAD THEY FOUND THE FOUNTAIN WHERE HALFWITTED ADULTS MADE LIFE THREATENING DECISIONS FOR THE YOUTH OF TODAY AND TOMORROW AND CALLED IT FAIR. THERE IS NO FOUNTAIN OF SALVATION, THERE IS NO FOUNTAIN FOR THE YOUTH IN ANY COUNTRY OR PLANET IN THIS UNIVERSE. THERE IS NO REST. AND THERE IS ALWAYS UNREST OVER THE RIGHTEOUS WAYS. PEOPLE ALWAYS FIND A WAY TO ASSOCIATE WITH DEMONS AND LABEL IT “FUN AND MORALLY CORRECT.”

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.

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.

the atmosphere seems bleaker through the second story windows
on the first floor, there i scramble, breaking through the wake of the waves in my illusion crawling mind
creating a line of sea water from the teardrops that tumble onto my shaky hands
trudging through the unbeknownst woods,
seeing mini faces carved into tree logs
and then i collapse
over and over again.
every day feels like a shank in the veins
as if a phantom has taken the reins with its cold bony hands
and i am left to sit in the carriage of death
with Belonging, Happiness, Optimism, and Life itself.
do i look as stormy and gloomy as the earth through the second story windows of this prison?
i hope not.

seized—
deceased people around me
see the anxiety that
towers over me
like a dictator hungry
for tyranny

frightened—
held by the nightmares
that heighten my senses
tighten my vessels
take into account
my unenlightened downfall

conquered—
off my rocker
stabbed with blades,
they knocked her
out and she cried
but not ta’
worry, she’s
bonkers;
shocker

captured—
years since i’ve felt rapture
left my optimism
in a time capsule
fractured my bones
discarded them in a chapter
book
lost my laughter
caught in disaster

just when i assume the worst has passed,
the peril continues
strong and decided
seizing me,
frightening me,
conquering me,
capturing me

the reflection of tangerine sunset on the rainy road and the wide expanse of kansas is the pretty i want to be.

the mystery soaking in the wound.
some sun-tanned lady with a ballgown.
a rose bush absent of the thorns.

the burial sight of an isolated victim.
an unspoken but understood shadow.
the willow tree’s branches after a nightly frost.

the strange white light before death.
the neatly tidied vanity.
a polite aftershock after a raging earthquake.

the sandals,
the beachside condominiums,
the skyline with white stripes.

my amiability
surging through the atmosphere,
singing for salvation.

no one cares what books i read
my “best” friend cries on the phone to me
she says it’s just a matter of time
before we go on vacation together
or the april child she loves will
wind up at her ivy-covered door
with lips filled in apologies
or half-hearted “i adore yous.”

she says it’s just a strange world
comparing each of my companions to her
i don’t allow myself to get worried
with her obvious emotional manipulation
her selfish need to conspire against me
constantly thinking it’s for the best.

her mother speaks so softly
tells her not to get so out of hand
tries not to let her wash her life away
in a trailer park fever dream
with cigarette smoke and boys that come
and go, but they never know
the brutal need for her to skin her victims
package them away in garage bins
and leave them to handle their mangled limbs
by themselves

one day, i think i will freak out
and rip up the bluebird-colored tablecloth
and pluck the shards of glass
from my weakened arteries
and she will meltdown in a sweaty bar
turn soggy and white in the face
and her relatives will all disown her

she says i’m one of the only friends
to chose from
to swim in a pool by the ocean
she wants the florida marsh in my hair
the cypress smile sticky on my top lip
but she doesn’t care about me
and my irregular temperature
my august windstorms
my maine hemispheric cold-spouts

her merely view through telescopic lenses
magnifying me
but she says slurs and she thinks it’s ok
and it’s not
multiple skeletons lying upright in her closet
as i try to open the doors
she slams them shut
freckles from the sun and the never-ending daytime hour she rarely sleeps and
maybe that’s her issue
all blue and purple, bruised legs
and egos falling on the floor
like dominoes
springtime wishful thinking,
but winter betrayal sinkhole in my backyard

she says it’s about time for
her to come to my house
deposits her eggs for me to chew on
or take care of or whatever
she thinks this transactional
friendship is
or how it looks from the inside
lurking along the corners of the creaky fence

she moves in muscular anomaly
she uses me like a chess piece
bent to her inconsistencies
face flat on farmland
and flannels torn to holes
from her constant urge to
crunch up all my simple pleasures
leaving them like mush
and stomach acid lingers
on their polyester remnants
smelling like old shoes worn by
some old storyteller

but i am in hibernation,
comatose on the dewy grass
my liver sits untouched inside of my belly
crabapple seeds are planted
but rarely the trees ever sprout or venture
farther than one foot
buried inside infertile ground

she waits attentively for my eyes to bat open
for the coma to subside
so when the morning wetness climbs
atop my powdered-coconut nightgown
sallow in complexion
i rest with shut pupils
so the fools don’t bolt into
the inmost part of me  

she tells herself he’ll write her a letter
stained with decaf coffee or maybe
his own sweat or spit or
passion dipped into a quill pen
and out onto the parchment
pathetic diction and apathetic vindication
she tells me one day,
he will regurgitate it back for her
onto her palms and she will recite
every word like a well-thought out poem
sprawled out upon her chest
heaving his misleading justifications

but i won’t be waiting
for her
as the florida air stains her soul
from the inside out
until her heart is black as coal
and her hands are stained from the
peeling of my brain cavity that
leaks blood she thinks
makes oddly-familiar patterns
across her guilty figure

would it be easier if i was prettier?

you want to see me stripped on the floor
a motor of a girl gasping for breath
crawling with her blistered knuckles
her wounds harsh and fresh
can’t you just breathe in deeply?
exhale, then inhale me
oh, for your sake baby
push it in then leave me diseased
you only see a body
you only see a body
you only see a body
you only see my body


—i wish so hard that you would just see me

unlikeable
write it on my
                            F      A      C       E

the air is heavy
incapable of breathing it
it clings to my mouth
******* in the
                    weights

i’ve never hated being alone more
but i know i am not just alone
i am lonely
when the sky falls
turns purple and pink
i am left in an empty battlefield
full of unloaded guns

oh, what have i come to?
but what am i kidding
i have always been unlikeable
i should have known

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’ve watched the same show for over two weeks
and when my favorite character was falling apart,
it put a damper on my mood.
i am that attached..
to fiction.
it wasn’t even real and i still cried in my bed
with my hair concealing my eyes.
i never like to think of myself as the most empathetic person out there,
it was a sudden jolt in my nature.
perhaps i see myself in his wild eyes,
not the wicked side,
but something in him that reflects in my heart.
i’m repulsed by my poetry.
i wouldn’t even consider it poetic in any way.
i tell my close friends that i write poetry
and i like to think that they scoff at that idea.
i told my retiring teacher that i wrote poetry
and she gave me her email.
what makes her think i’m good enough to be read throughly by an english teacher of forty years?
kinda ironic since i’m posting on a poetry website.
i’m embarrassed of my efforts,
ashamed of my achievements.
see, i’ve never been good at anything
i played basketball in middle school
and my friend would always say that i bombed a shot or i needed to do something more involving.
my past crush even said i was too short to play or something.
i tried being nice for a day because my sister and mother were telling me i was too mean,
i swear i’m not.
but i tried to be nice
and bad things still happened
and i called people rude names.
i’m not good at staying prompt to journaling
like tumblr girls at their highest.
catch my drift, i have never been good at anything,
and poetry is the only thing that makes me feel like i’m alive
who cares if it’s actually well written?
it’s self expression.
i hope everyone at least tries to write one poem once in their lifetime,
it changed my life.
step one: find a muse, trust me, if you have a good one, you might not even experience writers block
(that’s an overestimate, but sure)
step two: write about anything and everything.
write about your drive to work, how the highway signs started to feel like heartbeats because they were so repetitive.
write about your dreadful day at school and about the teacher who freaked out.
step three: find a metaphor in everything.
trust me, if you look hard enough, there’s always a metaphor.
step four: see yourself in other people. capture the conversation the bus passengers had. write from different perspectives;
you’ll learn a lot about empathy.
step five: don’t listen to my advice because i’m not qualified.
don’t listen to the writer of bad poems.
there’s no use in fearing rejection,
i get rejected by myself on the daily.
you’ll never be something to someone if you don’t just say it.
tell them you like them.
tell them they make your world glimmer
and they make bad days a little more bearable.
and if they shrug, it’s ok, souls don’t have the same meaning to everyone
and that’s beautiful.
you’ll live.
rejection is inevitable.
when i’m invested in a show or a person, it becomes my obsession.
when i lie awake at night, i’m wondering what will happen next,
what character is going to get killed off next.
i want my poems to be lengthier and
luckily i can rant like nobody’s business.
i feel less anxious when i throw my feelings onto paper,
and i think things through.
no need to have to suffer through all your chaotic thoughts alone.
write.
that’s advice to me.
write when your favorite character is stressed,
write when you feel peeping eyes on your back.
write when the world churns you out of shape like butter.
write when the music doesn’t seem to calm your inner self.
the world can be wrong,
that’s a possibility.
you are allowed to critique it,
you are allowed to believe in miracles
and you are allowed to ask God if you can’t conjure up an answer all by yourself.
that’s why they say He’s always listening.
they lie about lots of other things,
but definitely not that.
writing is not for everyone,
it picks its candidates with reasoning.
i guess i was chosen
and i won’t let my muses down.
they live inside of my heart even when i wanna tear them out.
i won’t send my poetry to my old teacher,
and i won’t live another day without the benefits of writing.
i still have two more seasons to binge watch of this show
and more and more reasons to be alive.
the world is wrong,
but i never said i was right.
i have no vendettas
and writing has infiltrated my mind.
no tickets are accepted at admission.
come another time.

in the moonlight, i dream of being you
partially blue, but all there
unafraid and unbelievably able
if i were to be stable
perhaps i could be capable
of holding my arms outstretched
to reach a release that yearns for me
perhaps i could be capable
of moving the whole ocean around
in a tiny bottle
to lay in the riptide
consumed by the violent rise
and fall of the swells of
dwelling little white-caps
i could be more than you would ever know
i could be a you you’ve never known
never shown
never grown
up to be a “when push comes to shove” kind of
love-
r
i could be a you you’ve never heard of
never dreamt of
never conceived of
never believed of
but, of course,
the good ones never know
never show
never grow
up to be machines
always own up to be-
ing flee-
ing
i could be a me many have never heard of
i could be a me that is silent and swift like a dove
a silence warm, reached out in a hug
a soft streetlight that shines light not so bright as to blind
but as to awaken the right light in one’s eye
and in the moonlight,
i dream of being who i can fully be.

the house i grew up in
festered with a body—a garden perpetually filled with weeds
the rainwater refused to fall
the roof caved in
stricken with a sense of unending
discouragement

i miss the poor girl i used to be
who smiled after she tasted her salty tears.
she tried to seek the positive out of situations.
the chains in the train yard wouldn’t dare shackle to her.
she stayed locked—unwillingly—in a strangulation cage meant for wild animals.
she couldn’t scream or thrash
for the danger she faced was inside her own home
grappling with the concept of his nature
bound into his fibers of being
chasing a reason for such cruelty that was instilled on me

when these songbirds are trying to explain to me
the own reality that confronts me.
like a shark to its ****,
eating so slowly, so monstrously
without a care.
anger is a ghostly emotion—apparently—and i was told that my entire life.
you can’t make mistakes for things you can’t help
or you can’t hurt someone because you didn’t mean to.
you didn’t mean to hurt me, so the stain on my mind doesn’t exist, right?
the pain i have endured, it doesn’t mean a thing.

nights staying up
praying for a difference
praying for deliverance
scared to wake up the next morning
scared the beast would crawl in between the walls
and plant itself into a vase inside my room.
woke up to crashing, banging, screaming, flailing, falling, yelping, sobbing, screeching.
living in an intricate world faced with devastation.

left me alone in empty bedrooms
arms around my kneecaps
clambering about for stability
for refuge
devoid in a void
clumps of hair collapse onto the floor
with a sore scalp and arms
spit on weeds to stir growth in them
no seeds, no roots, no living things
sprouted from the rouge colored fluid

police sirens would go off, thinking they would finally take you away
instead it was brutal beating and
no one came to save me.
the world i felt was icy cold, with icicles plopping down from trees onto the crystallized ground where my tiny feet stood.

the beast would shred the tapestries,
drown the happiness,
banish goodness.
claws as sharp as razor blades—attached to my skin and it wouldn’t free me.

came upon purgatory with tears blamed on allergies,
weariness blamed on tiredness,
fear twisted into nervousness.
do you think the inhabitants believed me when i watched the garden soak up with water?
no, they didn’t.
and i didn’t want to believe either.
the neurons inside my brain painted as façades, shapeless and blurry
for i could not worry if i left my mind in an alleyway
bound to be found one day
by a friend; not isolation, not consternation
but something that could bring forgiveness.

but violence—it’s red and unavoidable—
haunting every cell
like a tornado whooshing along a path
paved with fresh cement and bright bloomed roses
ripping up piles of dirt
flinging it around every corner.
it knew i looked up every night to find Heaven,
gleaming in the blanket of night.
from the gold gates to the strikes of my enemies.

the mind i knew grew cold
the situation was dense, kidnapped in the notion that suffering was forever—in certain circumstances it can be—finding fault in my own soul
instead of in the soil in the battlegrounds of a labyrinth

a corpse unlike any other.
shell of an aging body
built on the foundation of red violent tendencies.
flesh of an unidentifiable creature
alone in its reality
doomed to linger.
for forever.

i don’t crave your big green eyes
but you’re using them to watch over somebody else.
i know this relationship is over
but i wish i could’ve ended it with somebody else.
and i don’t like that you’re sharing drinks with another woman
who sells her body to get money
wouldn’t you have liked to be with somebody else?
she has your favorite songs on cds and i never did
i wish you could’ve ended up loving somebody else.
somebody who’s rude to waiters, somebody who is only good for a first date or
at least somebody else.
now i have to hide my cold hands under my winter coat
cause you’re too busy holding somebody else’s.
your dog still loves me more
but he has to spend some time with somebody else.
just like you went and forgot me
cause it was more beneficial to see yourself with somebody else.
now you’re happy go lucky
since you’ve replaced me with somebody else.
lonely eating ice cream
while you’re shoving it down in the house of somebody else.
perhaps, i don’t miss your company
i’ve just been enjoying it more with somebody else.
or maybe this is hopeless
and i should let you make love to somebody else.

i don’t want your body
but i hate to think about you with somebody else.

the weak have never been strong
or maybe they’ve been strong too long,
holding on
to something that makes them quiver.
being loved,
does it feel impossible when the night swallows you whole and spits you up?

has it been love this entire time,
this entire period of sulking in haziness?
there are saviors on each corner
singing pretty lies
but they’ll never save me as you had.
there’s been apprehension
since the dawn of time
but this time,
i just wanted you to be sure of something.

the weak have never been strong;
never have i been able to lift myself off the edge of the cliff.
i’m extending both arms to you
as if you’ll save me once and once again
a masterpiece strewn on ***** carpet,  
a death rattle heard from the backyard.

my lungs do not know love,
but they understand fear.
nothing is meant to be.
i turn to dust.
i hear sirens in my ear,
has it been love this entire time?
some creature that was eating away at my heart
that i had to **** in order to stay alive.

that some creature always looked suspiciously like you.

apparently the opposite of love is fear
so why do you think running away from him skittishly after he burned you
means he loves you?

there is music made by the delicate
cadence of my mortal heart when your name
is spoken from this constructed abyss
absent of the means for real happiness
there is a chapter of my life that is 
undisclosed, there are seeds planted in the
soil where your heavy feet once trod by day
there is a rose bush neglected by soft
gardening hands by the landfill where your
hollow corpse lays, as ***** rainwater trickles
down my spine, in places your fingers will
ne’er reside, confiding in your shadow
dare say if the infrastructure faces a
sudden hurricane surge—friends forever.

i don’t wanna be that girl who uses her body
i don’t wanna be a little toy for one night and one night only
i am not that kinda girl

i will not be the kind of girl you can just push around
i will not be the laughed at puppet in some circus show for morons
i will not be her

i hope i am never the kind of girl who throws away her life
i hope i am never the person who loses her head and doesn’t go to church
i hope i am never her

and right now
i don’t wanna be the girl who cries cause she’s lost and lonely
but i am
and i am sorry that i let you down

i wanted to be a prodigy at spanish
so i could be better than someone
at something, anything
i guess i will never be better
and i should just accept that sooner
or
later

through tsunami waves
like fortresses
pounding with such force and restlessness
lay a hand upon this chasm
fissures along this human body.
blinked two times;
a signal for help.
you, an undercover perpetrator, spilt this ****** blood
there’s no rhyme or reason
for the capture of such purity.
the eagerness of the flesh
descending upon uneasiness.
one heart unmoored
one mourned
two hearts unbreakable
by a force of nature
so undeniable,
death is willing to submit to its feet.

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.