Loud music is silent, silent thoughts are loud.
Is that my heartbeat?
Or yours?
pounding in my ears
My skin writhes uncomfortably on my bones as if it doesn’t belong there.
My marrow craves you; my deepest crevice calls for you in a low throaty voice
I want to know how your skin feels
traveling up my body like your eyes do
I want to feel the way your fingertips explore me
Are they
gentle
searching
rough
h e  s  i   t     a     n        t
I want to know if energy flows through you
the way it flows through me
because my energy sits low in my hip bones
I can feel the vibrations formed by the whispers about you
My dents and depressions exhale your name into the atmosphere
I hope it will reach you,
I hope you can hear me wanting you

Do you remember when the light in our eyes was brighter than the light of the stars,
when we used to tell each other reasons that we didn’t believe in god?
Tonight the clouds closed their eyes, clenched their fists, and swallowed the stars.
The older I get the less the moon stays to kiss me goodnight.
Tonight I’m praying to a rhetorical question.
I used to tell you that the silence was one of the reasons I didn’t believe.
Being friends with you has taught me that the silence is the response.
I’ve learned that my prayers are selfish.

The past few months i’ve peeled you off of me like a layer of dead skin.
I left my fragile exoskeleton on the shelf next to the questions you never asked me and the ***** you never gave.
I know all the reasons you hate me.
They’re the same reasons I hate myself;
I don’t know if that makes it hurt more or less,
but I would rather rot alone
than be pluto caught in your orbit.

My jealousy is oozing out in purple ink and sloppy cursive
because my stained lungs have finally given out.
I stopped shouting at you when I realized that
no one has ever fully heard something that weren’t ready to hear.
You only ever needed one reason to believe that the sky was empty,
Because god looked back at you in every mirror you passed.
Tonight I’m praying to a perverted question
just to prove you wrong.

Sincerely,
–if you need me i’m right where you left me

Does it make you feel powerful to tell me that
I do not own my body?
Do you get satisfaction from looking down on me
from the pedestal you’ve clawed and crawled your way onto?
Tell me,
does it make you feel good to threaten me
with words that come out of your mouth so empty
but land on my shoulders so heavy
Tell me,
do you get high from the nauseous look in her eyes
as she meets yours, slowly trespassing along her body?

Does it sound like music to hear the tremble in her voice,
look like art to see her to resent her femininity,
feel like silk to touch what you have no business touching?

Tell me what it is.
Tell me what you think you can get from me,
what it is you think I owe you.

Tell me that it is necessary, justify your theft –
Do you feed off of dehumanization,
can you pocket the profit from her sense of security,
shelter yourself with their rights, their body, their life?

Where did you learn to value your impulses over her innocence?
Where did you learn to assert yourself where you do not belong?
Where did you learn to rip a woman apart piece by piece
starting with her dignity and ending with her self-worth?

Tell me,
what does it feel like to own your body?

No, not all. but enough.

1) I am afraid of silent waiting rooms because I’ve never learned how to be alone with myself.
2) I am afraid of not being good enough because I’ve been told that these days, good isn’t enough. 

3) I am afraid of still being on the first question while the rest of the class turns their exams in.
4) I am afraid of walking to the bus station too slowly, and having to desperately sprint at the end to catch up.
5) I am afraid of indecision. The only thing worse than making a wrong decision is being the coward who didn’t make one at all. 

6) I am afraid of being lazy, so lazy that my suicide will be a pack a day and an unbuckled seatbelt.
7) I am afraid of how fast you are going, and

8) I am afraid of you leaving me behind.

9) I am afraid of being weak – of taking twice as long to wait for the elevator instead of just taking the stairs.
10) I am afraid of failure; more importantly, I am afraid of those unbearable seconds of silence that come afterward.

11) I am afraid of believing wholly and completely in eternal sunshine because I won't have an umbrella when I need one and

12) I am afraid of asking to borrow your extra umbrella.

13) I am afraid of good-old-fashion bad luck because can it make the rest of my fear arbitrary anxiety. 

14) I am afraid of saying, “I miss you, I love you, please stay longer this time…”

15) I am afraid of naivety because nothing is ever said without a reason. 

16) I am afraid of overestimating myself because someone once told me you see yourself as ten times more beautiful than you actually are.

17) I am afraid of giving my love to those who do not deserve it because they will not give theirs back to me.  

18) I am afraid of wasting my time, because I do not have time to waste.
19) I am afraid of limiting myself. God knows there is always more I could be doing. Should be doing.

20) I am afraid of being honest. Honest like children. Honest like poetry.

My thoughts slowly slip through my stagnant lips with every exhale
My worries and my fears escape through my pores
The thick weight of responsibility dissipates, hollowing my bones.

I fill my body with breath and salt and sand and sun
I fill my body with breath until every neglected cavity is illuminated and
Every vital piece of me is enveloped in airy peace
I fill it until I am light enough to swim in sunlight
I fill my body until I grow large enough to be seen from the edge of the universe.

I am called, not by name, but by the grandiose water warriors that wage a war within the waves
I wonder to myself, are the crashes and cries of the waves of pleasure or pain?
Their tiny foot soldiers invade my quiet meditation
And I begin to defend my exposed skin against the grainy troops.

The receding tide seems to have slowed time with it’s leisurely pattern
Minutes and hours and days all dance past me to the beat of a nearby drum
And the ever present sun heats my body
Beginning with the soles of my feet and the crooks of my elbows
It seeps through each layer until my heart struggles to pump my boiling blood.
Through the comfortable darkness, a playful light jitters just above my eyelids
It taints the usual blackness, leaving me gazing into a flaming abyss.

An affectionate breeze bathes me with reassuring coolness
And kisses my burning skin with it’s gentle lips
The wind’s frigid fingertips awaken
Every pore, every hair follicle, every minuscule portion of my surface area
And abandons my mass as abruptly as it had greeted me

I am deflated, as seventeen years escape in a hiss through a gap in my teeth
My lungs collapse, with the sweetest sigh of relief
And releases my contents in a single


Exhale.