there are ten things that say I can be loved by you
     and there are five things that say I can't.

  It's unfortunate that the ten things are letters and
  the five things are words.
  I modify weights so that outcomes change,
  but in the end, I know my feelings are cursed.

"I always try."
   but
     "You don't care about me."

I love people like they’re gods.

With an offering at my side,
What do you want me to do while I am begging,
And you give me silent air?

When I want breathes, I stay home
And hold my sins in my lungs,
And count the seconds I am alive with dragged nails on skin.
This is why I can’t keep them long enough to draw blood.

I go to church for screams.
I go to let my heart beat in the hands of the Father.
Run me ragged, I want to have a use again.
Take my spirit, my soul and have me wonder if it’s one and the same.

To have him hold my body down and rip the sin out
If some should stay, I’d rather you leave me nothing.

Why am I a bug trapped to this Holy Bible?
Dust particles floating like flies,
Maybe this time you’ll make a sound.

And call for me.

Open the gates and I could be starving
And I could be gone to the world
And I’ll still tell you I miss you and I love you forever

Because people have left so much, the only word I know is stay
And they have so much left to say, the only word they know is sorry.

My skin peels
and in the places reborn
I apply products that charge me for beauty and self-esteem.
This isn't really what I need.

My skin peels
the salicylic acid burns my flesh,
but it whispers, “I am not the pains
of my father,”
and I believe it.

I stand in the mirror
and lock eyes to skin.
You are not the pains of your father.
You are not the pains of your father.


My eyes refocus, and I realize
I've been talking to myself again.

My skin peels,
and in the places reborn
what's underneath is revealed:
Raw flesh and parental issues.
When will my showers clean me instead?

Do you not see me sit and consume her?
The ex, the past lover.

I tell you she’s only good on the outside,
That the closer you get to the center
No matter how soft her skin,
How sweet she is just under her flesh,
She could be perfectly in-season, temptations taking months to taste.
you always find a way to that hard, dark, sour core—
Unbreakable by design.

That’s what gets passed on to her next in line,
I tell you.

You nod distracted,
You aren’t paying attention anymore.
I am beyond being seen,
So, I **** her in plain sight.
And in my words, a part of you that still listens understands.

Your subconscious stores her name amongst the other dark things
That turns your stomach inside itself and warps the corners of your mouth, sour.
And you finish reading your article.

I crack her in-half and expose the pit, where sweetness could be
But she refuses to die easy.
She cuts superficially, and no blood falls from my hands.
Does that make me beyond saving,
beyond human?
Or did my body make a pact that there would always be a last time when your name could hurt me?

I eat her until all the soft connecting tissue is gone.  
And next time I ask,
You tell me, oddly enough,
you don’t eat peaches anymore.

I'll never know her like I do tonight.
Hazy hazel eyes alive with the low-battery alert on her phone.
She floats in the thoughts I throw her;
Spinal cord melts under the electric current of her brain.
        She looks for dreams.

Body stretched like mountains,
foothills and ranges cradle the sky and trace seas like her signature.
She made the mountaintop in her image.

She cups my head,
with the numb of the low-buzz of her caffeinated thoughts
telling me the secrets of the world.

Knowing her place teaches me mine.
         I belong with her: heart, blood, and sky.

She sits with me and feels human.
I sink back into the gentle waves of her voice.
The only thing she speaks is body,
so write a story on my skin.

She asks me to translate into words
the exact shift of her kisses,
and I take a deep breathe and dive into her
    again
          and
               again.

Words follow strict rules in her room,
but tonight we leave caution on her floor,
in favor of the cause and effect of her spheres of influence
pulling insecurity apart,
one filthy, dark thought at a time.
Maybe, she'll fill me with a vocabulary God can't forgive.

Like invisible ink,
she stains the individual cells of my being
with her.
'Till all I can read are the words
she left all over me.
My hands, my thighs, my head.
        Surrender, give it all to me: mind, thoughts, and sea.