I swallowed
the sound of your name
like it was a star--
five points,  
the type they
teach you to draw
in kindergarten.

It hurt
on its way down,
stalagmites of constellation
catching on my uvula,
hanging on with
astronomical strength.

But this is no cliffhanger.

Do you know what happens next?

I stopped breathing.

You've never deserved
your name,
you know.
"Light giving,"
it means.

Oh,
and how I gave into
the sublime
fallacy
of it.

Because
all you ever did was steal
the moons from my irises.

You treated me like
I was the dirt beneath
your fingernails
(you forsake
the dust on your windowsill--
but don't you know
all dust comes from
the wondrous galaxy that
dwells before us?)

I reached out to you
only to get
c u t
          o f f
at the hands

Still,
I couldn't let you
go,
didn't know how to.
Even when my flame
was reduced
to these weeping cinders,
even when the idealization
I held between my palms
found itself exiled
to this mausoleum
of severed trust,
hatred blossoming
in rosettes against
crumbling tombstones.

The epitaph reads,
"At a loss for words."

Tell me this:
what sort of
"light giver"
doesn't believe in
in the possibility of magic--
in the pinnacle of light itself?

You always thought me
a foolish girl
for dreaming--
naive girl,
silly girl,
wrists blooming
in paper cuts,
always one fairytale
away from insanity.

Until
one day,
I stopped believing
altogether.

And all it took
was a single glance
from those eyes--
glacial sapphires,
your grandest seduction.

Hell itself would have
hardened itself to tundra
at the sight of them.

You always had a way
of contaminating
the things I loved
with a frostbite so lethal,
I would have
gladly dismembered
every hypothermic part
of myself
(every fragment of soul
you ever touched).

Like a shooting star,
I fell for you--
hopelessly.

Catastrophically.

And then the heavens went
dark.

⚠Trigger Warning; the following poem contains subject matter pertaining to suicide and self-harm ⚠
----------------------
May 30th, 2018

These wayward breaths
lead me to
the Dead Sea.

"This is where you belong;"
whisper the spirits
of The Deep--
"this is where all
broken things
come to die."

The Dead Sea
is my bathtub-
ramshackle tiles,
contorted shower rod
bowing under the weight
of the fraying curtain.

The water sprints
in a scalding race
from the tap,
its gurgling clamour
veiling the sound
of Billie Eilish
playing on the speaker
(isn't it lovely all alone?)

I stare at the Exacto Knife
clutched between my
water-pruned fingertips.

And
the moment you pick
up a knife instead of a
shoddy razor blade
from a dollar store
pencil sharpener,
you know you've
hit rock bottom
(did you know
the Dead Sea is
the lowest
point on earth?;
have you ever experienced
the remarkable plummet
of that kind of low?)

I trace the patterns
of invisible
constellations
on the terrain of
my flesh;
at first,
I am too afraid  
to press down
but when I do--
my god,
when I do--
I draw blood
with the same artistry
borne from a
painter's hand,
each laceration
a brush stroke closer
to someplace beyond this
sadness.

I pin the anemic bodies
of poems
to the bed of palm
like they are cadavers
waiting to be
d  i  s  s  e  c  t  e  d.

This is the
only
way
I know to
make sense of things,
each enjambed line
a heartbeat closer
to understanding this
sadness
(or letting
go
         of
it).

I gawk at the contents
of the shelves
that live amongst the
curdling strips of wallpaper.
Yellowing mason jars,
each containing some
tragic specimen swimming in  
formaldehyde tears--
Plath's last breaths;
Sexton's paper cut fingertips;
Van Gogh's severed flesh.

The sight of this
ghastly collection
sends the scars on my wrists
into a spiralling ache.

I once made the mistake
of assuming poetry
would instantaneously
exorcize the aching--
it only brought me closer.

But I must remember
that bleeding is the last stop
on the route to mending;
it's gotta hurt
before it can heal.

So I write,
bear the sting
of these words
as they stitch together
the tattered patchwork
of my heart;
until the scars meet
at the pinnacle
of my anatomy,
crisscross,
bright constellations
flowering from the darkness,
starlit tulips
that shake the
sorrowed dew drops
from their rain-torn petals,
celestial hieroglyphs
waiting to be read--
This is your history;
not your future.

No matter how
you sugarcoat it,
there is never
a nice way
of calling someone
fat.

I.E.

“You would have been beautiful
in the Renaissance era
[because in the Renaissance era
they painted portraits
of chubby girls like you—
back then,
fat was artistry.]


I still don’t know what
I was more upset about:
The backhanded compliment--
"would have"
being synonymous for
"no longer"--
or the fact that
I was conditioned
to believe the
Mona Lisa
was anything short of  
sublime.

To any girl who should come to love him after me: this is my cautionary tale.
___________________
li­stening to the same song on repeat until you hate it / butterfly wings pinned to cork / empty bandaid boxes / hungover mornings / broken glass beneath feet / panic attacks / swallowing pool water / paper cuts / seeing your mother cry / cold bed sheets in the winter / slamming on the brakes / starless skies / scabby knuckles / lipstick on your teeth  / bruised eyelids / unanswered text messages relapsing / pills that don't wash down the right way / hospital waiting rooms / cliffhangers / wine stained linens / splinters under fingernails / second best / cracked snow globes / writer's block / bit tongues / trigger warnings / pipe dreams  / names carved into flesh / dissolved forevers / chipped sand dollars / misplaced secrets / loose compass needles / aeroplanes in want of shooting stars / hunger in want of beauty / heartbreak in want of love / staying in want of leaving / goodbye / this poem / he  / will / never /  read/  it

When I say
I wish I was beautiful,
I mean I wish I could
sculpt myself into the same loveliness
borne in the eyes of Marble Goddesses
In Ancient Greece,
I know I would have been pretty
you know;
curls a liberated wreath atop my head,
a nose as grand as Mount Olympus,
body as curvaceous as the summits
of Mediterranean waves.

I mean I wish I could
steal Orion's Belt  from the sky
and wear it around my waist
to cinch away all the extra room
I know I take up,
cuz there's no gravity
in outer space--
it's impossible to feel fat
in outer space.

I mean I wish I could
be as cliche as a rose,
because,
despite being starkly unoriginal,
everyone loves roses the same way
everyone loves photoshop sleekness
and Tumblr physique.

I mean I wish I was
lucid dreams / leather journals / dewdrops on leaves / fairy lights / eyelashes on pillowcases / moon-gazing /  listenin' to Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time / standing ovations / the butterflies in your fingertips / frost congealed on tree branches / lightning storms / Disneyland fireworks / soft bed sheets / champagne kisses / polaroid photographs /  whales howling at sea / midnight inspirations / double rainbows / bed time stories / the skyline at golden hour / foggy 7 AM’s / snow under streetlights / the colour purple / when I say I wish I was beautiful I mean I wish I was
a poem.

Most days,
she feels so lost,
that you would think
there was once a time
when she belonged to someone,
that she had accidentally
been misplaced somehow.

But you must first have something--
want something--
before you can lose it.

(And no one has ever wanted her.)

She is a translucent thing,
you see.

She must walk through walls,
for no one--
neither friend nor foe--
seems to notice her
when she enters a room.
(or when she leaves one.)

She’ll slip away
from a crowd so easily,
it was almost as if she was
never even there at all.
It only takes a second–
a breath,
a bat of an eyelash;
by the time you’ve turned around,
she’s gone.

(she's always been good at disappearing,
or maybe you're just bad at paying attention.)

But it’s no matter;
her presence does not faze you,
so what makes her
absence
any different?

No one would care
to love a girl like her,
anyway.
A girl so
o u t
                o f
p l a c e.