i hit the restart button
but every decision,
every trial
it always ends the same

fearful, regretfully human side
of which I decide
to indulgence in my youth,
or to maintenance
of my stone body
Will I live
or Will I breathe

you can't scare me
with the concept of hell
you'd think, if you're there an eternity
you'd get used to it eventually

I've learned a new language
And all you can think of
Is my love for Leslie Cheung
As if it isn't magnificent
A wonderful thing
To have love and also to learn

I want to recreate with you
all our missed chances
Forge a sensory moment
From the unhinged twitches
that our bodies bury underground
I'll direct you this time
I want to see what's in you

they say the moon landing killed poetry
but those who came back
all became poets

from emphatic crayola scribbles on the wall
peering out the window
to the night's direful blackness
where the hollow moon peered back to me
a dry and powdered luminosity
I had never before felt so perceived
than by that of the lifeless moon

I remember nothing before that moment

the sun rises while i ascend
another sleepless night
lifted by the waking world
still, i am truly alone

this aloneness has gone so far i can't even conceptualize it anymore
this dark matter
what happens when you shine a light
beyond the event horizon?
what happens when you touch me

i can't even imagine
it having any place to land

Firmly believing
That the past doesn't dictate your future
How do I advertise myself to you in that sense
Whatever story I have to tell
Is buried in the footprints
I left on the way here

i know
they don’t want me around
i’m working on
keeping quiet

a year ago today
from everything
your prevalence
mocks the highest
standard to my being
every bit of strength
bred from a passing year of mourning
diminished by your hand

oh to live a life with journey and
not these
microbial sparks
little waves that seem to spark through
like a cobweb soul
painting geometry i can hardly
understand

It started with my mother
“Cat, you are a beauty”
“You look like your father, with a touch of beauty”
“You look like your father, with a hint of me”
“You look like your father”

the air is cooler
and the taste is bitter
these last moments of comfort
are my only solace
for what's to come

it hurts, real bad
I can only say that to myself
‘less I submit to selection
nature’s way of letting me go
but that’ll hurt worse

i am the world's
younger sister
and older brother

i thought that your heartbreak: circa 2017
had built me to handle my own
& alone I have been
& alone I have lived
I was wrong, but couldn’t have known
I hadn’t known that isolation
made me brittle enough to break
to crumble under the faintest touch
fingertips
that long have been sought
and all I know is the ache

need me a guy
who photoshops in a fringe
amiright

i love the city, there are
so many more: lights, and
people looking to ****

please
please
you remind me
of a boy much taller
you remind me of a tower
but you will not collapse
why do i
study your face
like you study the script
i haven't given it the time of day
maybe i miss the feeling
i wish i missed myself
there's nothing i can do
to come back
but you remind me of a boy
who was much worse
you didn't say goodbye to me today
you won't tomorrow
alright

“It’s been a rough week”
My freshman english teacher
and my freshman debate coach
both look only to me
as an affirmation,
as opposed to a reminder
that it hasn’t only
started this week

i hate the flesh
the way it splits
squishes splats its
seafoamy decay
over the bulbous form
bone and meat of the
body

i hate the yellow rot
and purple blood
and oyster tongue and
other organs spilling out
its desperate escape
from that desolate
hole of a tomb

Remember those foggy days, Afton?
I was with you when the snow melted

an exorcist
mines in my brain like its digging for gold
ow that hurts mister
can i eat dinner now please

who i am is a product
of my mother
of my father
however hateful,
and however proud
as a flower doesn't choose its color
this, I've become

from my mother I learned
that there exists love
fruitful, but sour
bled from vanity
never a man but a child
could one ever love
that is what I learned from my mother

from my father I learned
to let the past go
that what is left home
will be torn apart
and what you hold onto
will be torn from your hands
that is what I learned from my father

I learn fast
and grew up young
born from my mother
captive of my father
splitting my life into integrated sectors
dividing my time and pleasures
into two, neat halves
the halves are muddy
but separate nonetheless
and in two different directions,
I am going one

I miss you, prairie lands
Honey dew, grasses
Where have the fields gone
now erupted into hills
no more vastness only
full
where is the room for air
and where
are the puppies who burrow in the soil
and the big blue skies who's hand
pumps clouds like giant fists of love
where do they lay
but in my memory

The horror streaks down from the bathroom walls &
Into the basement where we’d lay for the following weeks
I could not get the smell out of my brain,
Eucalyptus and spearmint and
The bloating pieces of your body soaking up the leaky sink
Skin beginning to soften and swell and bruise
The staircase leads me to a room of shadow
Where every other crevice hides a little spider
Who is too shy to crawl about and too sad to spin its web
I can’t stop seeing it reliving it there are no
Metaphors to capture this grief

There is no time, either

So with an hour two I have to pack my life away
And if it can’t fit into this backpack, it might as well
Have never mattered, or existed at all
It’s like they’re beating it into my head,
“She’s dead, she’s dead”
I leave the house with an empty bag
She’s dead, she’s dead

My grandmother’s guest room, my father’s guest room
I can’t get the decency of a living room couch
But it doesn’t matter, if I’m not alone
Maybe I am alone
I’m the only one in this room
What the ****
What the **** is poetry when you’re dead

So we’re getting up again, pulling some clothes from my bag
Don’t need these pants, don’t need that shirt,
I have enough socks to last
I don’t need anything that I can’t fit underneath the seat
On the airplane back to New York
So we’re going again
Let’s just go.
It’s another day at this point.

But am I on the plane or am I
Back in the kitchen
Watching her spurt her poisonous spit all over the hardwood
Violent spasms and slams and ****** fluids flushing in large,
Bellowing waves, struggling to find any shore
I am so far away from everyone that I know
The plane lands
I find my next gate

There are songs I’ve loved all my life
That I’ve tried to apply many meanings to
Something I could imagine and manifest
And sing and sing and dream and
Lie awake wondering if I could ever be
In their position, even as I lie
Feeling the exact same thing
Through the music, I feel everything
Completely, for the first time
Now that I am old,
The tune is merely familiar
It is the air that I breathe
The cause for my sobs and terrors
The creation of my sorrow heart’s tomb
Has become my morning coffee
The taste a bit bitter, the cup a bit small
Nothing that couldn’t be fixed
By a bit of cream

Another plane lands
I realize I’ve lost my luggage,
Send a text to my dad
Who believes this has everything to do
With my plan to pay off student loans
Or more so, that I might have the audacity
Of asking him to buy me a meal, every now and then.
It’s alright, that wasn’t part of the contract
I feel silly for forgetting
My phone battery dies, and the screen goes blank

I am a ghost to everyone
Can’t you feel me slipping away?

Everyone that I’ve known
I could be gone to them forever

I arrive in New York
I make it home
But I know better, I know what happens next
I haven’t slept in weeks but I’m in a dream
I’m in New York, but I’m in the bathroom
Watching the ooze,
Smelling the gore
All the different ways a set of fingers can twitch
Before they lose their ***** and stop forever
Blonde hair on the floor
Cold, hard skin
Softening once again, in the pools of this memory
I can’t escape you, I can’t find the exit
The doors to this house are all imaginary
It’s been so long
Time hasn’t passed at all

But I am in New York,
Somehow

That’s right, I remember it now.
I learned my lesson, I’ve done it all before
This memory is going to stay
But I am the one to leave
Over and over
And over
It’s gonna be this way forever, I’m sure

There isn’t a way to avoid it,
Go around or under it
You just have to leave
You just have to keep leaving

So I enter the doorway
Get dinner
I sleep on the bare mattress,
I don’t ever,
ever,
unpack my bags.

there is nothing
i can do
there is nothing
left for me
i could leave
right now
and not a thing
would change

i can do it
                       i can undo it

Every day
Feels like another test
To see how much more I can take

I used to think of ancient people
as such ominous
all-knowing beings
in their footprints and their art
it was supreme,
it was transcending
they knew things about the universe
that i could never imagine
but theyre the same
as you and i
theyre just the same

I expected the relapse
but still there is a warmth
One year ago, on this day
Two years ago, on this day
I never should have left you,
my dearest friend
I never knew how cruelly
our time would be taken for granted
This was never the end
I'll be seeing you

no man is deep
as a woman's womb

sometimes life is
going about your day
and then remembering
all the times your mom tried to **** herself