Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t just been the backseat of your car,
Intoxicated. My first drunk hook up. My first. Period.
I picture myself being champagne on Valentine’s Day.
I picture myself being you, nervous in the car, holding Starbucks
because you know I love coffee. Sometimes, I picture myself as her,
calling you a stalker and ignoring your calls,
but then I see myself. I call you beautiful,
turn you into poetry, laugh at your bad jokes,
I see myself as I become your drunk Wednesday night
when you’re sad. I see myself as I say no,
I become a “this is not a good idea”
and you a “we’ll deal with the consequences in the morning.”
We laugh because this hurts too much.
You take her out for dinner and I burrow money
for Plan B because you forgot you don’t like condoms
and clearly have no idea how children are made.
I have already named him. He has your curls and
my anxiety. He is smart. Except, I never wanted kids and
you would be a great father. Instead, you tell her
the beach reminds you of her and I cry in a McDonald’s
bathroom with my friend as relief floods through me that
the test comes negative. I stop talking to you,
move forward, meet someone new and before long
see myself becoming you. Because isn’t that the cycle?
Bad men turn good women into bad women who turn
good men into bad men. I’ll set him free so he can hurt
someone like me, and I drink red wine as I read her
poems about him and me.

i too wish i could pirouette
on the flames of fire;
dive straight into an ocean
without knowing how to float;
shoot into space
and breathe my own oxygen

but purple flowers grow in my lungs
and i cannot stop the weeds that come with them
oh, it drains and it hurts -
the blue leaks out of me
like a nosebleed stream
and i swallow them back in past my lips.

then i face the corners of my walls
for forty-two days,
for forty-two days without a party
where the world still whirls in wavelike motion
and i stand in a pool of blue

almost like sorcery
after forty-two days
the pads of my feet tread blue
all up my capillaries, up my veins
into the arteries they go -
and back to the red flowers

they are purple again

The burn
of skin,
the smell concerns
your friends and family.
They know they’re next, but
they’ll try their best
to fight me off
but I'll bite off
chunks of their skin
to reveal their succulent blood
that lies within.
Let it pour over my tongue,
let the taste
erase
my thoughts
they melt away
with the bitter taste of ****** on my lips.
Cannibalistic.
My mind-
it’s twisted!
as your skin between my teeth.
The smell-
They claim it reeks but
its all I live for!
It's just a shame it's what they die for.
Not!

I am,
nobody’s something.
Nothing special, and yet to know if I’ll remain so. I play an extra in everyone else’s movie. There’s brighter and more beautiful. A more catching story, a slyer smile.
I am,
anybody’s nothing.
They pick me up and consider me for a moment, scrutinizing my rosy eyes and cloudy head, then deciding I’m simply not for them, and set me back down.
I am,
Somebody’s anything.
Sometimes I catch a second glance, a look of possibility and care. I’m taken and toyed with, told I give tunnel vision. But only for my storefront view. As soon as the buyers remorse kicks in I’m blamed for my own heartache.
So what am I?
I’m a cloud in the fog.
A tear in a rainstorm.
A flashlight next to the sun.
I’m there. Here.
Just not significantly existing in a way that makes me
Somebody’s something.