you know
people are constantly mourning
the version of myself
they created in their minds
but i've really never changed

i'm talking about ten years old
all of a sudden i've become an adult
ready for the push and shove
i'm talking about twelve years old
i'm apathetic and anxious
and antisocial
i'm talking about thirteen years old
i'm a *****
i'm talking back too much
i'm talking about fourteen years old
the time i bleached my hair
and suddenly i was a new kid in class
someone entirely else
you can approach me now
except for my father
because now i look like my mother
which means now i'm ready
to be the outlet of his rage
i'm talking about fifteen years old
freshman year of high school and i'm scared
but friends 1 2 and 3 from last year
see my instagram photos and
decide i'm **** and a ***** and a ****
and i'm so very very very changed.
sixteen years old my hair is back dark
and i'm wearing extra layers
and oh no you can't talk to me anymore
people can't know you associate
i no longer look pretty for your social media
seventeen years old
i cut my hair and dyed it purple
no one talks to me anymore
not even the kind ones
apparently i'm too far gone
eighteen years old
i've been through black, blonde, purple, brown and blue
i'm supposed to be more adult now
so my mother thinks i just must be cruel
i cut off all my hair
they think that changed me, too
nineteen years old
great news, i'm transgender
they're holding funerals for me back home
i dye my hair pink
my friends who i've known for only months, weeks, say

i can't recognize you
you've changed

I like to think that your bed
is still filled with feathers
with your weight, and pressure
releases the crush and the sigh
of something more fragile
and something more stable

I've lately had the dream
where you look at me and ask
if I sometimes feel we were meant to be
I'm honest when I say yes

I was out again this evening
the prairie fields are already dying
my final farewell to summer, I suppose
Adventure of desire
turned to desire for adventure
I'll blame it on my horoscope and laugh
It didn't matter,
as long as I could still see the mountains
from the rearview mirror
I felt everything at once,
feeling swarming like pigments
before the muddy, brown crash
From omnipotence to pure isolation
A month of tired, restless hysteria
I may hold no expectation,
but still with my hopes I must be careful
As long as the void prevails,
I am my own creator
But the prairie is dying
and so I presume my morning routine

isolation and aroma
our tent was crowded and friendly
fires in the early morning
that never seemed to give out
phone died a week ago
and for once i am living
i jumped a cliff and got lost in the forest below it
i was bruised and cold but the music was loud
and their dancing brought me home
drunk singing and emphatic fiddling
i saw what the spirit meant
mine is still there
i haven't felt in a while

it is the long weekend
How could those days be fading so soon
Fake tattoos on my arms
I've come to terms with
My lack of soul
And I seek only the mission ahead
Where I am to leave
And never be heard from again
But theres a calc test tomorrow
It's too much to ask
For me to set aside my daydreams
Of settling in the void

If I can sing
however that may be
my soul as a poem
will never end
I will never die
for performance
is my eternal thread
when the conscience
descends into a string
the ring will still be there

so i've finally come full circle
i've retreated to the feeling of joy!
though i can't say i'm relieved
knowing i'll always be the same
at the end of the line,
i'll be able to calculate my centripetal velocity
with how ******* often i come around
to the same exact conclusion

I've decided to renounce the world
Build a walking house
And eat enchanted bacon

I'm feeling that old theatrical feeling
Where I become a creature in facepaint
A shadow taken form in gowns and robes
and I myself am the echo of footsteps on the stage
I feel that aching feeling
of looking into your eyes and feeling horrible things
like my desires to love and keep you and take you with me
into a place where it is always night
and we live inside the walls and watch the curtains from the side
and we come to life and circle the ghost light
I cannot have you
but we will always be the same
and I will always feel your name
forming at my lips
when I kiss these walls goodnight

I need to stop writing
poetry about boys

It's easy to remember
that life isn't terminal
takes a moment longer
to see death isn't either
At times I wonder what use
it is to give my bones to the soil
to crumble into other forms
to replenish the earth
When the earth is where it ends
The earth is what will stop
Rotating about its axis
Revolving around the sun
It is not meant to last
It cannot be protected
We will die first
The earth will die last
And none will exist to remember

I despise your envy
I am not the cause of your self-pity
I am my own to worry of

The smell of childhood ***
creeps out with the morning
like rays of light through the trees, the scattered pupils watch
Talking through the fence

All this summer makes me sick
memories of my hometown
and the ant colony men
who've been alone for too long
and only look for ways
to spread their disease

Feet don’t fail me now
She sings and sings and sings
Belting in the backyard
Humid and sweet and exciting
Skyborn burns that fill me with orange and blue
Sun-bleached skin in darkened strings
Of deep and burdening things
Mediating the cracks in the sidewalk
Burying the butterfly i once called “Vernus”
Rays of light and every bit of dust
Eyes wide and the noises loud
Small and running
Heated stoves ring me home
Before dark, i am alone
Me and the world
I feel the possibility in my fingertips
I witness myself again and again
I can feel
I am aware
Of what i am not, of who i will be
Infuriation and envy
I hold everything within and I let it release
Leaping across the streets in wedges
Power seeps into my heels
My beating heart shakes me
Into my bedroom window
Into the moon
Into my backyard
I left it there

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.

a child approached me the other day
and said
"I just want someone to hold me"
this child
who didn't know me at all
who trusted too much and too fast
began to pour onto me their every sorrow
told me stories of the people who were hurting them
told me stories of their family
and the people they like
and the people they'd like to kiss
and I
was paralyzed
I wanted to say,
"You can't say these things to strangers,
You need to be careful,
You need to keep these things to yourself"
but instead,
I heard their words and I heard myself
at that age
crying out the same words
the same pleas
to strangers the same as I
and I saw an opportunity
to breach time
and talk to myself again
to save myself by
saving this child
I said
"I understand, and that's terrible
and I am so sorry that those people are hurting you
and I promise you it is not your fault
and I promise you it will get better
and I am here for you if you need to talk,
or to vent
and I am here
and I promise you
and I promise."

I know that I'm not dangerous
but still I
don't want this child to believe it's okay
to talk to anyone like this
so I
try to fulfill these wishes
try to help this person
without encouraging that behavior
even though I know
because I Was Them
that it will do nothing
to end the desperation
and the loneliness
that they will try
again and again
from one to another
and another
to fill that aching void that only wishes to be seen by someone
or
to be held

It is dangerous, to be so young and need to be held.

I feel so old, being for the first time on the receiving end of such an encounter.
It makes my blood boil
to think of the others
who've taken advantage of such

I have to
help them
before someone else
hurts them further

even though it is tricky

if I can help, at least one person

maybe I can be helped

that long ago

child

could be helped

.                   knowing you made me human
losing you doesn't mean i can't be

no, I have not grown
there is no new wisdom in my eyes
I gave you no prejudice to remark on my behavior
You are a stranger
and my blood is not your compromise

i can't fall asleep without someone's phantom
i cannot be the arms around me.
i've tried.
i've danced with jackets and i've fabricated the warmth
but still i lie awake
ten years old and the monster in the closet
takes form of a lover who lulls me
i wake up and invent their names
to give purpose to fantasy
and to trick me into worth

My understanding of the universe and death and life have come to a standstill.
It seemed before I had a solid grasp.
It isn't as if I'm blown away now or know something I didn't before
but the brutality of it all
Suddenly I wish it weren't so
I know my mother is gone,
but I wish there was a heaven
I know she died on the floor
but I wish she felt us in that room
I know that I can die on the plane
but I feel now that I am obligated to live
Death is random
and death has demonstrated that
and yet now it's hard for me to accept
that I can't just change that
moving forward
I understood it
I got it
I accepted it
and yet now
I just wish it weren't so.

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

as a child
the people who interacted with me were
people who
actively hurt me
whether it was familial
or predatory
or in some other form, all the same

i don't know how to act, interact
i don't know the words people say
or the things people do
i never got to learn
how to be kind

i was never exposed to it
although i desperately want to
i greatly struggle
with how to give it

kindness

i want to show that to you
someone, please
show me how to

Cant go on
I cant go on
I cant go on

I miss
Leaning over you
And wrapping my arms around you
Before I left,
You suddenly got so tall
But you let me hug you all the same
I'll miss you too, I was thinking

solitude is a favorable theme
however ironic
to my human orientation
and tendency to love
sometimes that means to live without

I made my mother cry
Hurts to see I'll never change

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

drawn to my sister planet
we tear out our hairs
the fiery sorts of dissent
into the depths of my apathy
climactic orbit in yearning
pushed against your clamour
i long to be obliterated
dispel this feeling of unfeeling
remove me

i'm in the back of your car with your friends
i've watched your movie for the third time now
i text you that I miss you
although the last thing you want on your mind
is how to reply
to a girl of my kind
who you've avoided for this long
to say that you love me
to promise you'll see me
to never follow through
i text you that I miss you

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

the blood on the pavement never seems to dry
that is my nectar
i'll drink for eternity

nobody
nobody
nobody
nobody
nobody

sometimes at my most suicidal
i get premonitions
and experience memories from the future
whether its months or years ahead
i get a sneak peak
that lets me know i'm not going to die soon
its disappointing now
relieving later
and scary
when i have no more visions
to look forward to
to still experience

she is so terribly personal
do i burn her?
but she is so terribly beautiful
i'll rip the pages out again
soon she'll be only her exterior

my spine is cracking more
these days
what happened to my pen
that used to litter my journals
with chicken scratches
that were more raw
than this clarity will ever be
why did I turn her off
and shut her away
where she now erupts
my mother says I've gotten smaller
and look for once like a child
I feel, for once, like a child
Everything I'm feeling,
I've felt once before
that horrifies me
comfort in dreaming
reliance in hope
I am building myself to fall
but I'm pretending not to know
feigning ignorance
to comfort my lack of motivation
to console the last shot
I'm young enough to do it all over
old enough for it to mean nothing