do you ever wonder
about the difference between
looking at something
and the hallucination created
when looking past it?
if you look at your hand
it's all you can see
but if you look past your hand
there are now two of them
sometimes it's hard for me
to remember which is real
it gets me thinking
about how my father
used to wake me up
in the morning by rubbing
his stubble across my face
i spent my 11th birthday
under the assumption
that he might come back
if i drank his aftershave
like maybe if i could turn blue
if i could be his favorite color
on our bathroom floor
he would forget why he left
the paramedics were all sobing
as they pumped memories
out of my stomach
i coughed up the day the post-it note with your new address on it
burned a hole in our refrigerator
coughed up the day
the divorce papers came
and my mother
took a baseball bat to the mailbox
i've been choking on the splinters
for 17 years
it's been 17 years
since the last dinner plate
exploded on our dining room wall
17 years since my mother
started accidentally setting your place at the dinner table
17 years since italian night
at the restaurant on the corner
where the juke box
spat tired music
and like so many other things
it stopped working when you left
i guess it's no coincidence
since the juke box went quiet
that the cds in my car
only skip on "i miss you"
i've been hemorrhaging memories
for so long
and now that i'm looking back
i can no longer tell
the mirage from the truth
sometimes i swear
you showed up to my graduation
and last time
i was at your apartment
i can't remember
if the imprints of my hands
are in clay hanging on your wall
or if they were left in the mud
the day god had the audacity
to let it rain
or maybe it's like the time
i saw someone crying on a bridge
now that i think about it
i can't remember if it was me

I was told that a simple
painkiller
would numb the pain
in my head
sometimes two if
unbearable

but I have taken
eleven already
and I can still hear
the voices telling me
how much of a
failure I am
and it hurts

and I have taken twelve already
and it's all lies
the voices
keep going

thirteen
I can't feel my hands
anymore

fourteen
why didn't anyone help
me when I tried
to scream

fifteen
they were supposed to
numb
the voices
not my
voice

*sixt …

breathless air fills the room
and a cup of coffee somehow changes that
lifeless sound of nothing there
and a cup of coffee somehow changes that
the void in any occasion is somehow filled
by just a cup of coffee
pure and simple, bold and black
with floral hints, burnt flavor must lack
sit and wait
and then you'll see
that every void is gone, you're free

Do you ever think
that maybe
our hearts
are on the left side
because,
love,
isn't always right?
-K.L.

you're beautiful
not the stereotypical kind
more like a forest fire
destroying everything
yet still lighting up the whole sky