I was a part of my own Secret Ops, seeking out shelter from affection. I do not need to be held but you are compromising my position. Every time you kiss my neck my heart goes off to the point where I can be detected on a sonar transmission and the last thing I need is for others to find me. I notice the small details of love when I'm around you, the way you rub circles into my thumb when you hold my hand as if you were winding up my heart beats like a child's toy so it can keep beating even after you're gone, how you run your fingers through my hair like it was sand on a beautiful beach and you just want to watch it slip between them, or how you smile after you kiss me like the whole world melted around you and the only thing left standing was me. But I did not ask for this, I was undercover when you tried to capture me. You rescued me once but I thanked you for that, I didn't know that you were still expecting gratitude. Do not be mistaken, I do not mind being the choice of lust because I will dive into those endeavors with you if give me the map, but I do not want this to be confused with the roads of love. I fear that this may end with twisted perspectives, and I never want to break your heart. I've found comfort in your presence for nearly a decade now and for that comfort to turn into discord would be a tragedy. I don't want to fall into anything with you other than your sheets, if you take my hand and plant kisses on me like flower seeds, maybe I'll start to grow on you but for now I enjoy my gardens in the ground so I can walk away without tearing out the roots.

I felt time slow down, but it was a gradual shift. Like the ceiling fan that was previously on high suddenly being turned off but the blades continue to spin from sheer momentum. From the moment the alcohol hit my system, I thought about you. I lose sleep waiting for you to talk to me, but I've found a graveyard in this home. The only beings still awake with me are the ones you could see the through, people or ghosts. I would sleep better on your floor than I ever could in my bed. Treat me like your dog and I will gladly beg for your crumbs. This is hungry work and I should have worshiped you sooner. You've got molds of your hand prints on the sidewalk out front of your house and I think that's why you are so similar to the concrete. You preserve precious memories in the form of tangible keepsakes while staying completely solid. But I know that if I were to be concrete, I would crack myself apart just to let the smallest flowers grow because I have kept too many things buried when they needed to be said. I am the Queen of the Bitten Tongue, I have permanent divots on my taste buds, the words crowd around my teeth like plaque and I think that's why I started carrying floss with me every where I go so I could pick out the words that threaten to stain them. I'm glad my braces fixed the gap or else you would know a lot more than you should because the letters would drip out like a leaky faucet; word by word until they filled up the sink and have no choice but to over flow because these words will never go down smooth. They have thorns covering their every edge so when you hear them, they rip your eardrums to pieces. Leaving no part of you unaltered. I never wanted to hurt you so that's why I'm so quiet. Sometimes after speaking, I find it hard to stop my mouth from bleeding but it usually gets swallowed just like my pride. I would kiss your scars for the rest of time even if they were still open but you're so good at being closed off from me. I'm tired of taking your detours, having to turn around because the bridge to your heart is down due to construction but I never ordered any materials for this project. So who is the one working on your heart? My concrete queen, I would kiss your feet like the pavement you provide, take endless road trips down your winding roads but I'm afraid of the *** holes that I get stuck in constantly. You have no idea how unproductive it is to fall in and out of you as often as I do. I'm addicted to the pain of falling into you, but I wouldn't mind crashing into your sheets as long as I can have the throne next to you.

I always had trouble with my keyboard.
Some of the letters were too tight and never moved,
you had to slam them in order to get the words you wanted
and even the most sincere love letter
could sound like a strongly worded email to the nearest Costco
because you found that same 3 pound box of popcorn at Walmart for like 50 cents cheaper.

But the other keys were loose and fell out,
I always put them back on
but I always seemed to lose U.
It was like no matter how much I put U back together
U always fell on the floor.
My friends all urged me to forget about it
and get myself a new keyboard,
they said "come on Alyssa,
you know you need something that stays longer than a few weeks"
but I was too scared that the price of finding something new
outweighed my frustration for picking U up
and just putting U back together again.

Sometimes I wish U could be tough,
that way I didn't have to be terrified of breaking U
if I didn't feel gentle that day,
in case I really was writing that strongly worded email to Costco.
Because there are days when I am not soft and warm,
when I feel more like the lawn mower than the soft grass underneath of it.
Some days I feel like ripping out the X on my keyboard
because it has not moved once since I got it
and replacing it with U
just so U could finally stay where I put it
even if it meant I didn't use U anymore.
At least I would always know
U wouldn't move without my permission.
But that would mean that X would be falling out of place,
and God knows that I need to keep my X's where they belong.

But this isn't about the X,
and this wasn't about U,
this was about my inability to change
and my constant fear of imminent loneliness.
You see I'm not so afraid of being alone,
but feeling lonely scares the living hell out of me
so I would rather find someone broken and patch them up,
make sure they need me a lot more than I need them
so I know they won't leave first,
than find someone who has all of their pieces
and is capable of staying intact without my help.
That is the one who knows that they are so much better without me,
that I am just dead weight
and I am more likely to cause their death by drowning them
than helping them swim to shore.

But for Christmas I asked for a gift card to Best Buy
so I could buy myself a new keyboard.
I just hope I'm strong enough
to throw U out
when it gets here.

I am in a constant battle for control.
I am hard to deal with
because my therapist says
OCD will not rest
OCD does not care what time it is
OCD does not care where you are
OCD does not care who is watching.
Usually when I obsess over things
I see my life falling to shambles
I see people not loving me anymore
I see germs sneaking into my skin.
When my uncle, my aunt, and my friend all died
in a matter of three months,
i performed rituals every hour on the hour
sometimes even more.
My therapist says this will not go away.
My therapist says to come see her so we can try to cope with this.
My therapist does not understand that WE are not coping.
I am coping
not her
not anyone else
me.
My therapist is a sick person
she is still recovering from alcoholism
so how can she help me
if all she sees is a bottle of bourbon when she looks at me.
I am not a bottle of bourbon
I am a bottle of OCD and depression and anxiety
I am a bottle of drugs and alcohol and death
I am a bottle being smashed over your head
I am not coping
I am drowning
And people have stopped loving me
And my life is falling into shambles
And I think I may be getting sick
so what the **** are these rituals even doing for me
anyway.
I have stopped taking medication because
wanting to die has become habitual
and I fear that will become a ritual too.
If I die
all people will talk about is how much they loved me
even if they didn't.
If I die,
there will be no room to have my life fall to pieces
because I will be in peace.
If I die,
I cannot get sick because the soil
will be taking care of my body but
who will perform my rituals
once I'm gone?

He is
vitamin.
He is corkscrew instead of broken bottle,
he is my mending.
He is the knock after the door bell
in fear that the person inside didn’t hear.
He is heard.
He is small talk but larger weapon,
he is floor mates with double-barreled liquor bottles,
pulling the trigger on his own body
making silence of this always murmuring home.
He is the walls holding his secrets,
they hear what he says in his sleep
and maybe that's where all the cracks come from.
But he turned southern drawl
into quiet croon.
He is speaking tongues
meant for sweet tea and small city,
able to walk its entirety in under an hour
but that's only because he stopped looking.
Mistaking familiar scene
and forgetting to pause at the
architecture tourists swoon over for days.
He is virtuous.
He is “i miss you” texts at 2 am before falling asleep.
He is
missing.
He is the inconspicuous biting of own lips
to make them smoother,
make them easier to kiss.
He is already easy to kiss.
He is permanent ink but feels temporary tattoo,
wants people to stop trying to scratch him off.
He is not going anywhere without a paid removal.
He is fingers running through hair,
the soft trail of fingernails over skin,
the goosebumps left behind.
He is the half-asleep roll-over into waiting arms,
he is the arms.
He is the first kiss on the nose,
he is brand new city and memorized street signs.
He is the statue in the street
separating two churches from advancing towards each other.
He is street art too beautiful to take a picture of
because the pixels couldn’t do the life justice.
He is the kind of thing you have to place your palm on.
He is small hand snaked between rib and arm
just to hold onto bicep,
just to let people know this hand is here for him.
He is gentle shake begging wake,
the tighter squeeze of comfort.
He is safety.
He is 276 miles of memory,
4 hours of nostalgia I am willing to drive.
He is There,
and I am Here.
And There does not know
how lucky it truly is.

I slid down a hill
on nothing but a tarp and hose water
in the middle hick town new york
with a family i didn’t even know
because my best friend thought we would have fun.
We did.
But the next day we got so high
we thought we could make dub step from our mouths.
When we tried it sober
it sounded nothing like dub step.
Just kind of like a beat up basement home
and not enough people for a party.
Kind of like the soft music you play after a panic attack,
everything sounds so
forced.
This one time,
I kissed a girl so ******* the mouth
that she took a step back and just said
”…thank you.”
I have no idea what she was thanking me for,
but i learned to thank her body
in more ways than just prayer.
She sounded like an orchestra,
Bach or back but god ******
if she didn’t leave scratches on everything instrument.
One time,
I got thrown into a mosh pit
and some big dude carried me out
and punched the person who pushed me in
so hard in the face that i swear
i saw his mothers veins give out.
It was like an amtrak railway collision,
fist and apology, metal and music,
the kind of rock you get stuck in-between
next to that hard place.

One time,
I slid into my best friend
because we thought we would have fun.
We did.
She had to take a step back
and said nothing but Thank You.
A broken body prayer healed
with blankets like tarp, claiming her my new york.
It was like being thrown into a mosh pit
but there wasn’t anyone there to carry me out
because it wasn’t an accident.
Just a mistake.
Now we don’t talk and last night
I got so high that I tried to make music from my mouth,
replay her symphony, echo it
in my beat up basement of a chest.
The hollow wind chime of organs or intestines,
ragged breathing from the smoke
she snake charmed down my throat.
She was so smooth. Soft.
Kind of like the music you play
after a panic attack,
everything feels so
forced.

In my house
Opposite Day meant
breakfast for dinner.
Food anarchy
in the form of
scrambled eggs bleeding ketchup
and melting the opposition in cheese
while the toast was a golden brown
and the win was spread easy over top of it.
My mother defended our tummies
with sizzling bacon lining our stomach
not allowing any gross vegetables to stake their claim.
I never tell my mom
but I secretly wait to eat until dinner on Opposite Day.
I know I should eat breakfast and lunch
but it’s just one day.
Plus sometimes
it doesn’t feel too bad.

The emptiness of my stomach
allows more room for comfort,
more room for the entrance of someone else.
I’ve always been so full of love
that I can barely eat
and I never really figured out
how to fill myself back up
once they’re gone.
I count those calories
like the table-for-two
that’s only seating one,
like half-empty beds
where I find myself
curled up darkness
to its waning moon,
only to roll over and uncover
its everything light
and I am trying my hardest
not to feel so heavy.

When your parents start to notice
you remind yourself that it’s Opposite Day
and you’re really telling the truth
when the lie comes out as
“I already ate before you got home”
and “no, I promise I’m not hungry”
because you can feel your stomach
devouring itself from the inside-out
and I guess that can count as a meal
when other people’s stares have made you feel
roasted-pig stuffed full with an apple in mouth.
But doesn’t that mean
that even food should eat too?
This is when you become vegetarian;
smaller menu to choose from
and more of an opportunity to say
you can’t eat what mom made for dinner.

When the weight starts slipping
so does your relationship
and he tells you that he blames himself
because at first
he didn’t notice you were shrinking
he just thought you needed some space.
Your skin, molding to your skeleton,
allows him to count each fragment of bone in your hand
as he takes his heart back from you
and all you’re left with
is the sinking feeling in your chest
that started the starving in the first place.

I know this constant, raging war
does not seem like it will ever end in happiness,
only in uncomfortable settling;
but you should remind yourself
that you should not feel guilty
for nourishing your working body,
that these sturdy pillars
cannot remain standing if you keep chipping at the cement
that one day
you will wish to be soft and warm,
not just for a lover
but for a beautiful crying child
who points at the dimensions of a Barbie Doll
and then at her own wonderful body
so you can envelope her in the love
you wish you had back then, too.
you will tell her
that skeletons are meant for the grave
and not for her hands to play with,
she should not find comfort
in the spaces between her ribs
only in the space between your arms.
you will tell her
the soft edges of your hips
are what love feels like,
so if there comes a night
where she has been empty for too long
and all of her battles seem lost,
you should turn on that frying pan
and melt her opposition in cheese,
and spread this first win
over her golden brown toast
and hopefully this will stop the emptiness
from staking its claim anymore.

August 28, 1922.** Clarence Samuels is holding his wife’s hand, she’s groaning out limbs by the minute, pushing hard enough for life to cry out of her. He can no longer feel his fingertips from the vice grip she has on his knuckles, but that is just one more piece of himself he would give for his family.
November 16, 1924. Clarence’s daughter is over two years old, and they are taking walks to the beach. She takes interest in a dark feathered bird with a snowy underbelly like the way God only sees things in black or white, its combination of threat and promise. She asks Clarence what it is, says she would like to have one, would like to be one. But he notices, those birds only come around when it’s raining and he hasn’t seen the storm clouds yet.
March 31st, 1925. The Samuels’ daughter hasn’t stopped vomiting in two days, her radiance turning achromatic. The doctors have been prescribing medication but nothing seems to work because she cannot keep down any form of help. So Clarence starts looking up that shadowy bird they saw in the fall. Maybe that could take her mind off her affliction, maybe it would help him too.
September 4, 1925. Clarence now whispers “I love you” like the flickering flames of prayer candles, but hasn’t seen the inside of a chapel since the funeral, since he stopped being able to look into his wife’s eyes. His days are filled with sacrilegious drunk, his kitchen floor littered with whiskey labels and scotch tops, wondering what he is if not slain by this everything holy. He’s scrawling out letters to his daughter on the napkins he took from under his drinks at the bar. He’s got enough to write a book or his suicide letter.
September 30, 1925. Clarence notices that instead of crawling out of bed, the bed is crawling away from him. He chokes on the muscle memory he still retains when he walks into his daughters empty room, now turned office because his wife seems to be the only one working, the only thing still working. On the desk is his research of the bird that haunts him since that November, the Parasitic Jaeger. Their name begs question of the godless nights spent bent wave sea sick over the toilet seat, innards cascading past the roof of his mouth, making friends with the holes in his teeth. He has managed to drink himself swiss bone garden.
October 1, 1925. Clarence walks to the beach, clutching a picture of his daughter. He planned on drowning himself in the tide to mimic her, choked up on bile and lungs. Before he stepped foot in the water, the Parasitic Jaeger flew past him chasing a gull.
October 1st, Clarence went home and slept.
October 2nd, Clarence returned to the beach all guilt and full body, BAC hitting a record .25 and he slipped into the sea only to watch the same Jaeger chasing another gull. Clarence watched as the gull emptied itself open casket into the water and flew away while the Jaeger feasted on the sick. Clarence took another small step into the shore line, now chest deep in more than regret. The bird turned his head slowly towards the human moving closer him. Clarence, open arms and locked eyes whispered, “I am sick too, do not forget me.”

You were as stealthy as a slow gas leak, by the time i knew i was in love with you, i had succumbed to you. You were in the drivers seat of my car lighting a cigarette with the windows up so i could breathe you in. I quit smoking so your secondhand smoke was all you would allow. I watched as you brought the cigarette to your lips and dragged in as if your life depended on it. It was your third one today and i told you that you should stop, maybe breathe me in for a second. Do you know what i would give to become second hand smoke from your lips? All you would have to do is kiss me and i would vanish into thin air, become a noble gas in the periodic table but there is nothing noble about the element of disappearance. I have been shrinking away from you ever since you held my hand in that convenience store a year ago. I'm trying to convince myself to get over you because all i am to you is someone to **** slowly through your second hand smoke. I never knew I could get so addicted to nicotine until it came from under your tongue. When you're gone, it's hard for me to breathe which doesnt make sense because when youre here my lungs are filled with your sweet black tar. But you will be gone for months when you leave in two weeks. You said you'd write to me, but written words can't carry your second hand smoke. You can't build a home out of a human being, but that doesn't mean i cant find a home in your bed.

It's been 3 months since you've had a cigarette and you're doing just fine. The Marines whipped you into shape and you've lost ten pounds since i last saw you. Your muscles have been trained to be lethal and i think i would let you **** me if you had the chance. But you've kicked the habit and now your body no longer craves the daily dose of nicotine it so desired for a year. I never wanted to be your cigarette, you only used me when you were bored and stomped on me to finish me off when your lips couldn't. I only wanted to be your drugs, let you die for me. But it seems you've kicked that habit too. Now I'm not sure where i belong because your lungs seem so much stronger without me.

You have wrinkles at all the creases of your appendages, which gives me no other choice but to believe that angels were the ones to sew on your extremities. They took thread made of silk and carefully attached your body parts together, one by one. With one small kiss from above, the silk dissolved into your skin and the scars turned into wrinkles that i would someday memorize with my eyes closed. Not only did the heaven's create every inch of your body, but your soul as well. You're constantly telling me that old souls are common among those whose bodies look worn in close proximity. But in close proximity, i can't help but see lines of life, not death. You see tire tracks and old skin, but i see footprints in the sand and a body reborn. You see muddy brown pools inside of pure white, but i see a coconut cracked open to let the milk absorb into your body and maybe that's why you melt in my hands. Your voice is like the sound of every hello ever said to me at once. When you sing to me, i hear every soft "goodnight". I would always tell you to not let the bed bugs bite, and if they did, bite them back. But your teeth could never harm a being so vulnerable standing right in front of them, which is why i never bled because of you. I only received tiny black and blue marks on the soft flesh that connects my neck to my shoulder. When i sighed your name, my mouth tasted unworthy and frightened that if i spoke too loudly you might shatter. The thought of you is so fragile and intoxicating that i am consumed by you for hours even after you're gone, wondering if you're safe and tucked in your bed or if you're tucked inside of somebody else's. When i spoke to you, sunflowers sprouted from my tongue just so i could trap my words in something tangible enough to give to you by the handful. But mostly, i swallowed my words along with my pride and sunflower seeds that rooted into my spine. If you're quiet enough you can hear the stems snapping with all the pressure.

When I remember that angels created you, it also dawns on me that you must have fallen from the heavens. There is only two explanations that i could possibly think of for this: 1. You slipped out because you saw that i needed help. Because that is what we do, that is what humans do, they stay alive for each other. 2. You are the devil in disguise. I have to remember not to trust you because the devil was once an angel too. He was the most beautiful angel of all. And i can't help but think, as you lay in front of me with nothing but your grey bed sheets and a smile on your face, you are the most beautiful, astounding angel i have ever met; and i can't help but fear that underneath the hairpin curl of your lips is the devil's tongue.

Mom is sweet,
only likes candles that
smell good enough
to cause cavities.
I make sure to get her one
every year.
Become supplier when
her warm vanilla sugar habit
burns down the last wick.
She says it makes the house
smell home.
Turns bitter taste of argument
into something she can swallow,
wants to be able to inhale love.
Says that when candle smoke
feels more like a lover's arms
than your actual lover's arms
there's something about her that
burns out too.

When warm vanilla sugar//mom
cries
she melts.
Divorce making the cavities
in her mouth rot
faster than she can burn out
this flame. Her bedroom
the wick and my father spitting lighter fluid
while swearing he loves her.
I'm sure he does
but this wildfire of a marriage
cannot be contained in this house.
Needs to branch out,
call in reinforcements.
My policeman of a father
was never a trained fireman,
can only call in a blaze when he sees it.
So I stood by and watched while
their marriage burned
but never kept the house warm.

Now I cannot light a candle
without feeling loss. The memory
of my parents slow dancing
at my aunt's wedding
sits shot gun in my car.
It's the four lighters I carry
around with me at once.
It smells like ash.
But my mom says she'll buy
me a candle for christmas,
one that smells like family dinners,
one that smells like coming home
to both parents.
She says I can burn it in my new bedroom,
says we don't have to live in
the memory of a house,
can live in the parts of us
that go home for the holidays.
The parts that smell like
warm vanilla sugar,
a lover's arms,
a wedding's slow dance.
And maybe one day
every day can smell like that
too.

If you disappear
I will never ask where you went.
Your absence will not cause me pain,
Only pleasure.
I promised that this would be the last time,
And i never break promises.

When i left you,
I got so drunk i tried to hug my mom
but i hit my head on the kitchen counter instead.
My first problem
was that i tried to snake myself between her arms
instead of just asking for a hug.
It was almost like it was too easy,
too vulnerable of a question
but what's more vulnerable
than a drunk heart
with only soft flesh protecting it?
You are a  dull knife.
I wish you were sharper,
**** me with one wound,
but you have to keep trying to break through me.
This hurts a lot more than it would
if i were dead.

The problem with being the strong
one is that people forget
that sometimes you
need a hand
to hold
too.

"There's comfort at the bottom of a swimming pool,
I'm holding my breath for you."
....except i'm not.
You are the shallow end of my pool;
dangerous if i dive head-first.
You tried to warn me before I jumped
but you forgot to show me your signs
and I never asked.
I just assumed you had more depth.
It was like you were trying to get me to drown for you
so you could save me
but you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party,
you can't be the car crash
and the paramedics,
you can't be the flatline
and the CPR.

You are the reason the lakes at my summer camp
have signs that say "Look Before You Jump"
because there could be creatures down there
that you don't want to touch you
but you are the deep sea monster
that National Geographic didn't want to discover.
They cower in the corner of their bedrooms
when they dream of what you're capable of.
You can swim among the krill
but still scare away the whales that eat them.
You had the ability to hold up my sinking ship
but you could still slip through my fingers like tap water.

I ******* want to kiss you sometimes
and others I really do want concrete
between you and my skin
like the small bridge next to my house
almost as if you are the babbling lake
and I am the jogger at 6 am.
The sun isn't quite up yet
but you haven't stopped creating noise in my head
since the moment I crossed your path.
I remember the reflection of the sunrise in your body
and the beautiful shade of pink you turned
when I tried to take a picture of it.
I was a little too out of breath to stay much longer
but you were quick to remind me that you'd be here again tomorrow morning
but I think I slept in and missed you.

I don't hold my breath for you anymore
because I'm no longer drowning.
I am not submerged in the Sea of You;
the tangled tendrils of your seaweed have let my ankles go
and I am free to swim back to land.
And although I know I haven't been to the ocean in weeks,
sometimes I still find sand in my hair,
sometimes I still feel the waves crashing over my head.

I apologize in advance for the ash swirling in the wind, but this morning i woke up and clutched your name with such reckless devotion that it turned to dust. Every syllable fell to the floor. I tried to reconcile my wounds but the infections are swelling like the tide. I wish this melancholy would come like the waves so my body could stop feeling so dehydrated. I never wanted that girl to break your heart, only to hand it back to me. She stood on ground previously reserved for my feet. I don't hate her, but i can't be her friend. I loved your hands that were so thin but trained to destroy life. Particularly mine every time they brushed by my body without stopping to linger. You thought of every stop sign as a yield so that explains why you were always in a rush but never why you were constantly late. I've always waited for you. You know I hate being late but i don't mind walking in and being the cause of turned heads with you. You've smoothed out my complexion because i don't experience anxiety with you so my worry lines have disappeared. The only breaking out I've done is coming out of my shell because you taught me to live life with the sunshine in my face rather than fluorescent light bulbs. The artificial suns never seem to be turned on in my room because i only wanted you with the lights off. Not because I'm afraid of my body but because I don't need light to memorize your every shape and contour. Like a blind man learning Braille, i wanted to spend hours memorizing you so i could read you properly. When you came back your body was a different shape, rougher, more defined. And when i asked to sharpen up my memory of you, you turned away and i think thats why i had trouble reading your letters because your Braille required something new to continue. But i dont come with upgrades or new technology every time you come back, i am the same as before. Like Windows 4 i am starting to run slower than the last time you saw me and a few things have become unrecognizable even to myself so when you asked me what's new my brain started yelling ERROR 404 and i broke down.  No doctor, no repairman, not even you knew how to put me back together again and i felt like Humpty Dumpty and you were the king who sent all of the horses and all of the men. But what i would give to be your queen. Sit beside you in a throne and have portraits painted of you and i until there were halls and ballrooms filled of us. I wanted to carve pictures into all of the vertebrae in my back but i realized you took my spine with you when you left. You unfortunately left my heart untouched which made it ache more because you have never hurt me. Although I wanted you to **** me so i had a reason to hate you but i cant help but resent you every time you say my name with no love at all. You've always protected me, but safety is your only concern especially because i am not beautiful enough to cause a rupture in your make up, not even a quicker pace of your heart beats were produced when you saw me. I wanted to anatomically break you down and rewire your nerves so the next time i held your hand your only response would be to hold on so tight that only the jaws of life could tear us apart. But the jaws of life dont seem as terrifying as your hands leaving on their own. But now they're thousands of miles away and my heart was left in tact but it's slowly tearing itself to pieces without you here.

My mother always told me to be careful what i say in mixed company, for some words could offend one party but not the other. But instead of being cautious of the words i spit out, i am more scared of the words i swallow. I have caused a rip in the balance of life, taking years from others i am undeserving of. I should have died a long time ago, but instead i am here stealing oxygen from those who need it more.
I was told that when i sleep, i mumble incoherent sentences. But your walls hear what you say in your sleep, and thats where all the cracks come from. I have choked on bits of the ceiling that has broken off from my sorry language and i think thats why i wake up in fits of not breathing. That persistent feeling of falling is not an illusion, its God trying to tell me He wants me back, that i am not welcome in this bed, so Hes trying to find a way to pull me through my roof but He is not stronger than the forces of suffering. I am Suffering. I am the sacrificial lamb that must be given back to the heavens. I am the ambrosia stolen from the gods and they're descending to take me back.
Every ***** in my body has the natural instinct to survive, but my heart is telling me to escape, that it'll fight off the rest so i can do what needs to be done. My heart is the kindest of them all, it has met my soul that is too old for my body. My soul is crying out to the clouds, wanting to be released but thats why i have refrained from sticking that knife to my veins for nearly a year in fear of what i might let out. Sometimes its blood, sometimes its  pain, but sometimes its freedom and tonight i will be drunk in my liberation until God has seen my insides deflate, watch a sadness so heavy that it grinds my bones to dust. God does not know what this body is capable of, God has seen nothing yet.

You are the spectacle of love that I am trying to forget.
But somehow i can't get your image to be removed from my brain
like it was branded on the inside of my eyelids.
All I ever saw was you.
You made flowers grow in my lungs
and although they are beautiful
it's getting a little too hard to breathe.
I am asthmatic
so when I started to wheeze,
you lit a cigarette so I could become addicted to that too.
I never knew I could need nicotine
until it came from under your tongue,
a numberless cigarette lit twixt your fingers,
burning like the bridges
between your heart and mine.
You started to need the tobacco
a lot more than you needed me
and your body frame started to dwindle
because i was not enough to keep you stable.
I blame myself
because at first I didn't notice that you were shrinking
I just thought you needed some space.
Your skin became tighter,
your knuckles turning so white
I couldn't tell if it was your bones
but I could still count each fragment with clear definition.
That night i buried my heart in your backyard,
like a dog trying to save a treat for next spring,
but I never came back for it.
It's been three months
and i'm still picking shards of you out of my skin.
You dug yourself so deep into my flesh
that you almost became a part of my DNA.
But just like the wrong blood type
my body rejected you
no matter how much i thought i needed you to survive.
But my mother did not raise me
with a wolf in my chest
so i can howl every time i lost you.
You are not the moon,
you are not the sun.
And i am not a flower.
I need more than warmth to get me out of bed in the morning.
This world is not a garden
and you are not the rain.
You do not decide when i get to be loved.

You were a wild, wild man.
Not only did you provoke my search of eternal life
but you also showed me the strength of death.
Your soft brown eyes have seen ungodly things
you watched your father's name turn to dust in your mouth
as you spit out things to call him.
His absence has not only caused a rip in your being,
but a restlessness in your heart as well.
You've chased after women and power
and all you've gotten was broken pieces.
I patched you up the first time only to be left,
only to be bruised and battered
physically and mentally.
But you have returned to me,
seeking shelter and guidance
which I will gladly provide.
Your talk of loving my body and skin
has produced an unwelcome feeling in my stomach.
I know I will be left,
bruised and battered,
but I do not mind the broken skin and purple marks
with a sweet mouth like yours.
I've only got two things left to ask;
one will bring you hell
and one will bring you heaven,
will you hit me like a man?
and love me like a woman?

The naked truth about men is that they are ferocious creatures of the night, constantly preying on the lonely and the weak in hopes that they'll get laid and maybe rip a few hearts out in the process. They believe that if they consistently make the muscles in your face turn towards the sky that they can finally make your undergarments fall to the ground. The can stick their claws into the holes of your vertebrae and rip out the nerves wiring from your neck to your tailbone in one foul swoop. They will sink their teeth into your flesh and only tear at it inch by inch because they know you will become numb to them soon enough if they tear you apart too fast. But if they take their time to shred you to pieces inch by inch, the pain becomes almost as worse as the anticipation.

The naked truth about men is that once they've seen you naked they think they own you; body and soul. They begin to taunt you with things like love and dinners just to see you naked again. However, you must comprehend that once they see you naked, a part of them dies inside because there is nothing left to explore. Everything leading up to your nakedness is just the chase of getting you naked. Once the act is accomplished there is nothing else to chase, nothing else to acquire. The truth is that you will eventually become an old toy to the man that saw you naked. That man doesn't love you, he loves the sight of naked flesh against his own. That man doesn't love you, he loves the sound of tearing clothes. That man doesn't love you, he loves the taste of your soft skin in his mouth.

The naked truth about men is that this doesn't apply to every man, but a grand majority of them. The naked truth about men is that it is hard to figure out which man is a good one and which ones are there to throw you away in 4 months and 6 days. The naked truth about men is that only 1 out of 10 men look good naked. And the naked truth about men is that 10 out of 10 men will like you naked.

I have never felt so alone
or distant from the human world
in my entire life.
I don't have my life together
and the more i try to grab at the seams to pull it together,
the faster the stitches break.
I look like i'm playing a game of Jacks;
i drop the ball
and i see how many things i can grab
before the ball bounces back down
but i've grabbed too many things
and they're falling through my fingers.
I feel like a torture victim
with a wet cloth over my face
and pouring a gallon of water on me,
sputtering water out of my mouth and gasping for air.
I don't belong to anyone;
no friends
no love
no one.
I am a nomad trailing through the west
stopping at the villages for food
and then continuing my uncertain journey
almost hoping to die so this will be over.
I think a lot about killing myself,
not like a point on a map but rather
like a glowing exit sign at a show that's never been
quite bad enough to make me want to leave.
But i keep telling myself that
the sunrise will come
all i have to do is wake up.
But that's the problem,
i don't wake up because i don't sleep
and when you don't sleep you can't have dreams
and you always promised me that you'd see me in them.
But now
i close my eyes and think of you
i imagine what you look like in your sleep.
They say that when you can't sleep
you are awake in someone else's dreams
and i'm hoping that's what caused the insomnia.
I feel detached from my body
almost like a zombie that feeds on sadness and pride;
i can't swallow back either of those
long enough to tell you i love you.
This journey has gotten too terrifying to continue much longer
i apologize for the short notice
but i think i want to die today.
The show might finally be over,
everyone else seems to be getting out of their seats to leave
and i might just have to follow.

I am selfish enough to want to get better
but i am backwards enough to not take any steps to get there.
I like the sound of Mozart in the morning
if your voice is unavailable.
I am willing to take a man
and hide him away in my pocket
as long as no one else can see him.
I am more than a human being
but less than a ship
because I can drown on command
but have no external survival devices for those around me when I'm gone.
I am like water
because I can slip through your fingers
but I am able to stay solid as long as I stay away from your lips.
I am like the sound you hear
in unbearable silence
driving away at your eardrums begging to be heard.
I am the branch accidentally tapping on your window
because he made me do it
and the Wind is a hard fellow to deny.
I am that three-leaf clover you mistook for a lucky one
so you split one leaf to make four
just to make others believe you've found something great.
I am the illusion of a father figure that your father should have been
although he is still here
and you have not found enough space in your heart for forgiveness.
I am the claw marks on your back after you've been ******
not by a man who loves you
but by a stranger who's sole purpose was to not let you get away.
I am composed of sweet smiles and sad eyes
of carbon monoxide
of unimaginable poisons and tales.
I am the fear of your future wrapped up in a bottle
I am the fear of your tomorrows molded gently into pink raised lines on your body
I am the fear of yourself suspended gracefully in the air disguised as smoke
but i am indefinitely known as the words you are afraid to speak
in fear that they might shatter.

It was 3 o'clock in the morning
and everything hurt.
There were ads for some movie I now vowed never to see
because I saw the freckles on your face in every dot above the "i",
I saw your arms spread eagle
the last time I saw you yelling
in every lower case "t",
I saw myself in every capital and lowercase "P"
because I can't remember
how many sentences I started or ended with "please"
and just in case
I wanted to cover all ground.
Not like spreading myself across the cement
because I don't quite want to jump,
but you were the only rooftop I've ever visited
that I haven't felt the urge to leap off of.

You, with the soft heart and heavy tongue,
you with the debatable blueprints but wonderful execution,
you with the kaleidoscope eyes and binoculars in hand.
I saw the potential of how much I could fall in love with you;
you didn't have to be the building with the most windows,
you didn't have to be that small flower shop
with the butterfly stickers next to the bank,
you didn't have to be the mistletoe
in the middle of a dimly lit street.  
You just had to be the rooftop to show me it was there.

But when the depression hit,
you locked the door
and I was stuck in the stairwell
staring through the windowpane,
trying to remember what the streetlights looked like in the dark
but you were so certain that everything shut off when you did
and you didn't want me to be sad too.
I tried to remind you
that when the sun comes up again,
everything will still be there,
everything will come alive in the morning
you just have to stay intact long enough to see it.
But I couldn't stay awake long enough to stop you from crumbling.

I woke up to rubble,
yellow police tape and detectives,
crowbars prying your locked door open.
I got invested
and now I'm being investigated
and interrogated
and "WERE YOU THE ONE WHO PUT THE BOMBS HERE".
No sir,
I only told him I couldn't stay awake for him.
I didn't mean to make him think
that I would rather be unconscious
than watch him self-destruct,
I just meant I felt comfortable enough
to wait until he opened the door for me again.
But he can't now.

And I can't lock my doors anymore.
"Aren't you afraid of what you'll let in?"
I'm more afraid of what's being let out.
Your ghost follows me around
and is far too large to fit through the dog door,
and I don't want to look at you when you leave.
So I stay right where I am,
sitting on top of my roof
but your cement blocks will never feel the same
as my slate shingles.
I would rather be made rubble by your ruin
than made shelter for someone else.
When I shut down,
the streetlights are still on,
that means the sun will rise
and I with the heavy heart and soft tongue,
I with flawless blueprints but too anxious to start,
I with the color-blind eyes and microscope in pocket,
will try again in the morning
to not look so much like the police lines you left.

Bodies were galloping around,
almost forced to breathe in the other's
carbon dioxide due to close proximity.
Mouths were salivating
at the thought of another drink,
another boy,
another girl,
another blunt.
You could smell the stench
of body odor and drugs
throughout every corner of this house
that belonged to a girl whose face
and name i did not know
nor was i cohesive enough to remember even if i did.
In mid thought i felt strong hands
grip my hips and turn me
in the direction of the stairs.
"I'll get you out of here"
the voice said but i wasn't sure
if i had asked to be saved.
The 75% proof ***** in my blood stream
reassured me that it was a friend
not foe
so i let the hands guide me
through the house
up the stairs
through the door
in the bed.
The face i saw was no friend
no foe
just stranger.
Rough stranger,
tough stranger,
my way or your dead stranger.
Tall stranger,
too strong stranger,
i don't care if this isn't what you want stranger.
Forceful stranger,
stealing stranger,
tell anyone and i'll deny it stranger.

They describe in text books
how women should protect themselves
by kicking and screaming and punching,
but they didn't write about
how i wouldn't even try to fight,
how he would spit on me after he was done like a pile of trash,
how i would repeat the word "no" until it was worthless.
I started guessing names
because I wanted to put a name to the hands that defiled me.
Michael, Jacob, Aaron, Eric, Ryan, Brian,
****** bag, *******, *******
*******
*******.

He left me screaming into nothing
because the music was too loud for anyone to hear me.
I yelled at him
I'M SEVENTEEN
I'M SEVENTEEN
I'M SEVENTEEN
Maybe he thought that's what my name was
because he never bothered to ask.

I was Seventeen, but to him I was Consensual.

I stood there staring
at the distance between you and i
There are worlds, universes even, or perhaps
three measly steps.
Your hand twitched
and I thought for a moment you wanted to hold my hand
but i realized how stupid that sounded
and i kept that idea locked in the vault in my brain.

Your eyes refused to look at me as if i
was a foul beast whose appearance was so repulsing
that if you looked at me even the slightest bit
your eyes would shrivel up
and your heart might collapse.

But as i stood there measuring the distance
between us
i realized i had begun to miss you.
And that's really something,
to miss a person who is standing right in front of you.

You are the wrinkled sheet I have no intention of smoothing out
the empty bottles on my night desk
the clothes fallen and never picked up.
You have become a bother
but something i cannot bear to part with
in fear i will need you once you're gone.
If i smooth out the wrinkles
I'll miss the marks they left on my body
but i'll miss your body more.
You are the scars that will never go away.

When I finally spoke, I said
"I believe there are Gods
but there are no Gods watching over me tonight.
If you put more worlds between us
I won't be able to find my way home."
With that he put one more world in between us
then three more universes followed
and then six more steps.
I saw his back turn then.
I saw his eyes go ark when he turned.

All I could think of was
"If a body catch a body comin' through the rye"
and Holden Caufield's voice thundered through my brain.
He said "We should go after him
but you have to be in the mood for that sort of thing."

And I said all i could think of to you
and for a boy who was never good with words
you sure knew the right ones to leave me with.

You caused a dive-bomb reaction in the pit of my stomach.
10 days until you're gone.
In ten days you could fall in love
if you try hard enough
in ten days you could get addicted to something
like nicotine or your hands on my waist
in ten days you could learn a new language
and whisper it on the crook of my neck
like every night when you told me
me pareció mi hogar en ti
which roughly translates to
i've found my home in you
i am constantly trying to convince myself
that you can't make a home out of a human being,
but when i'm lying in my own bed
i can't help but catch myself saying
"i want to go home"
there are still nights that i lie awake and wish you were next to me
although the love you had for me died
as soon as you found Rachel.
I have always felt like a girl,
but around you i felt like a woman.
you made love to the curves on my hips
without ever having to remove clothing
and i had no idea that fingertips could cause liberation
until you kissed mine.
As soon as your lips touched my skin
i knew i would dream about you for as long as i live.
You always had what i needed,
drugs, alcohol, love, emotion, friendship.
Every day for years i would make my way to your house
and you would have a the drugs waiting for me
and as soon as i felt i could fly through the clouds
i ended up swimming in your body
unable to force myself to stay above surface level
because you always drowned.
The screaming matches that were produced
about you wanting to die
scared the living hell out of me because
i realized i was not enough for you.
you told me nothing was sacred,
that no spine was too straight to snap into submission,
that every layer of skin could be clawed off,
and that's why you feared the scars on my body.
Your first stare was a look of horror,
but then it was a look of love and you knelt down next to me
and kissed every inch of my body and i thank my body
for learning how to thank yours.

In ten days you will be gone,
and you can never love someone as much as you can miss them.

I told myself that if i were to talk to you first then i was losing the battle, but i was unaware that a battle had begun seeing as though we haven't exchanged more than a few words in weeks and haven't seen each other in months. But the fact of the matter is that i am still hopelessly in love with everything about you and you have no idea. It's around that time in the fall where we went pumpkin picking and you were so happy because your parents were getting along and you kissed my face and picked the smallest pumpkin and cradled it because you thought it reminded you of me. you had me take pictures of you while you posed in weird ways for facebook and then we ran away from everyone in the sunflower maze and suddenly i wasn't lost anymore. We went deeper and deeper into the forest of flowers and you picked one for me, and a butterfly landed on it and i couldn't help but smile because beautiful things happen when you least expect them to.

We all sat in the hayride; your parents, your sister, and you and me. And you looped your finger in the belt loop of my jeans so you could latch on to me in someway and somehow along the way that need for closeness died. In the last few months of our friendship, I slept in another room, in another bed, and i could hardly keep eye contact with you because you were always talking about getting something for some girl hundreds of miles away or you managed to bring up her name over 17,000 times and i just couldn't take it anymore. You loved me once, you needed me once, and all of a sudden it vanished with the newest toy. I don't even know if you're still together. Probably not. You always liked to have a new person around that you could **** and **** over. It demolished me that i turned into one of those people, and it hurt so much to the point where i couldn't breathe. Do you know how hard it is to take away a persons lungs without having to perform surgery?

But i dreamt that i knocked on your door on Halloween and said "trick or treat" and the trick was that you loved me but could never see me again, and the treat was that you killed me.

She is drunk.
I am drunk.
This is not a poem.
She is beautiful.
I am not.
This
Is not a poem.
Tomorrow i will be sober
And she will want to be drunk
And this is
Not a poem.
She is leaving me
And i am not
And this is not
A poem.
She is crying
I am (trying) not to
And this is not a
Poem.
She is beautiful
And i am drunk
And this is not a poem

I am not
    tall
not jack and the
giant growth spurt,
been small bean
tiny roots my
whole life.
I am
adult child
tippy toes to kiss
those who turn
their cheek every time.
I am not
sunny enough for
anyone to live off me.
I am
9:30 pm
blacked out drunk
photo in front of
my universities chapel
because i never remember
when i find god
or if i ever
really did.
i am
that last bit of
cough syrup you saved
for the day you
got better,
the autosave
on google drive
before your laptop ***** you
and crashes in the middle
of your midterm paper.
I try my hardest
to make you better,
keep you intact,
but i can’t change
why you needed me
in the first place.
I am not
made right,
cookie crumbles
instead of melt in your
mouth
i am hard
to swallow.
151 christening
the back of my throat
while you whimper
after one shot of
strawberry lemonade svedka.
That’s sangria to me, that’s
water
to me.
I promise you
I will teach you how
to chug,
how to make wince
look like wink
look like smooth
waterfall thunder
crashing into gut
as long as you
are willing to open throat.
I am not
batten-down-the-hatches
outdoor basement lock
i am
panic room
all the food and drink
you need in me
i am plentiful
i am enough
sometimes
i am too much
i am the
over drinker the
too ****** the
too much fight
too much love
not enough balance
i am
clumsy
not enough equilibrium
between my ears
maybe that’s why i am
queen of miscommunication
queen of misunderstandings
queen of “can you
say that again? i
didn’t quite hear you.
I am drowning
through waves of
something that looks a lot
like water but it
burns good enough to
quench”
I am
******* disguised as
train wreck
i needed an excuse
to be in the hospital
just to check out
of life for a few days,
lay in bed for a few days
feel too small
to go to work for a few days
because i am
tired of having to act big
seem tall
when i am
small bean
tiny roots
have been my whole life.
But i am
starting somewhere
i am growing
going somewhere
i am
just waiting for
the next rainfall
to wash away these
pesticides.
I am waiting
for the day i become
balanced and
i can stand up without
bumping into some
other clumsy part of me,
i can look at her
and ask her why she’s still
here because
i am
here now.
i am
plentiful
I am
enough.

Today, I am sick.
My mental illness is shaped like a prison
and I am in the waiting room
wanting to ask
"What are you in here for"
like
what kind of crime has your head committed
that you are trying to lock it up
with prescriptions
and weekly meetings filled
with uncomfortable confessions
and numb palms from sitting on your hands for too long.
They say it's like playing in traffic,
a red-light-green-light game
where we beg for help
but don't know how to move
when we're asked to explain how we got here.
Do you even remember
what you're running from anymore?
Tell us about the days
where you can't tell if waking up
is a trench or a hill.
What has your head told you to do
and have you done it?
How did it feel when it was over?
Did your head congratulate you
when you were done?
Did you get a prize
like new scars?
Or three more handles of liquor?
The last time you prayed
did you have trouble unlocking your fingers?
Did the weight of God
keep your hands closed tight
in hopes that you wouldn't forget him
like the last time you saw Him
in the bottom of the pill bottle
and you smiled back?
Everyone here says the word Friday
like it hurts
because we know that the weekend is here
but we just can't seem to feel it.

Today we are sick
and nobody notices because our noses aren't running
we aren't openly bleeding in front of the one's we love
we do it in secret
just in case they ever catch us.
Today, we wanted them to catch us.
Stick out their hands
like a safety net
but it doesn't matter what height we fall from
because bones hitting bones
like a head on car collision
will never feel like warm sheets
blanketing our bodies
but we can't help but wonder
if the sheet they will cover us with
after they find us
will be warm too.

Today we are tired of being sick
tired of waking up looking like police chalk lines
tired of walking into the therapy rooms
like they are our parish
but we're too afraid God might smite us on the way in.
We shouldn't have to flinch
when certain words are said
that pull us back loading gun
but are too weak to pull the trigger.

Today WE are the triggered,
the empty promise of tomorrow being filled
with another prescription
another drink
another list of second hand hope
coming from someone who is probably
still trying to remember what it says.
We would rather tiptoe between eggshells
and take our time
than let you know we are struggling.
We are STRUGGLING.
And it makes us so very tired.

So today I am tired
and I will tell you that
instead of reminding you
that every day I am sick.

do not call me tweaking off of some back alley coke asking me where i’ve been all night. i’ve been trying to mix the messages you’ve been sending me into some cheap low-tolerance whiskey and coke. Slurring you into existence. i’ve been struggling to tell the difference between “i’m so high, i love you” and “i’m so high i love you”. You begged me to come take care of you, so you could hand over your burdens, place that white powder in my finger tips telling me “it’s not so bad, just take a hit”
Dear boy,
when you crashed your car at 2 am because the ***** in your blood stream got so tired that it needed a place to rest, i drove four hours to pick up your ****** dress shirt only to wash it and you never asked for it back. It hangs in my closet like the last memory i have of us in that restaurant on carry street. we ate dinner and you were picking my bruises out of your teeth, asking me “hey, did i get it all out? i still feel like there’s something in there” i tell you, no, there's nothing left of me. Your broken jawed apologies barely have enough force to break skin. I guess i’ve always been the brave one in that way.
Dear boy,
when i have to beg you to look both ways before crossing the street, please just tell me that you’ll make it home safe.
Dear boy,
when we were talking about the different kinds of slang in our states, you told me mid sentence that you missed me and i had to look that up just in case that was some kind of slang i had never heard of. So I told you that i loved you, because i’m sure you had never heard that either.
Dear boy,
i love you.
Dear boy,
I’m so high i love you. I wore your shirt to bed last night. I think that’s why I woke up early morning afraid of the street lights.
Dear boy,
you are probably stumbling through someone else’s doorstep right now, begging for them to take care of you because that’s what you think love is. And i’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Love isn’t so bad, just, take the hit.

Today I woke up
and I was not myself.
I mean, I haven’t known
who I really am in almost two years
so it really shouldn’t have been a surprise.
The splitting of the mind
comes from unforgivable trauma
and weak bodies trying to form apologies.
It doesn’t feel like
different people inside of me
yet
but I have had
different people inside of me
and one of them was
unwelcome.
My fertile grounds
were turned over
maybe for better soil
maybe so I couldn’t see his face
maybe so he could be made Stranger.
My Way or You’re Dead Stranger
I Don’t Care If This Isn’t What You Want Stranger
Tell Anyone And I’ll Deny It Stranger.
I don’t know his name
but his hands ripped my mental
into two different pieces
the way a beggar
reluctantly breaks bread with a wealthy man
even though they both know
the beggar needs it more.
The numbness broke over me
like a cracked egg
and seeped over every inch of my body
until the other half of me
cleaned myself up
and said
“Don’t worry,
I’m here now.
I’ll take care of the pain.”
Last year
I lost three people
in three months
to drugs
and I watched one of them die
from my front porch,
each of their deaths
pulling another piece of my mind
away from the others,
further splitting me
into the million little pieces
I had already been reduced to.
Every drink burning its way down my throat,
every blade fed to my skin
has been a welcoming parade for the different parts of me
trying to drown myself back to normal
thinking that hopefully
the flood would wash myself back together
would wash myself holy
but God, am I so full of holes.
I am so terrified of waking up
because I don’t know who is going to be there when I do.
I don’t need names for them
because they are still me,
they just have the control.
I sometimes feel like the metal claw
being fought over by children
because they can’t choose which stuffed animal they want
and sometimes
no matter how precise they are
no matter how patient they are
sometimes I still miss what they’re looking for
sometimes I never know what they’re looking for.
I am just too broken to keep working.

I told my therapist about you the last time i saw her.
She asked me about the time
when “no”
did not have definition,
only used as a syllable,
a filler word,
something to spice up things in the bedroom.

I told her I loved you.
That we had slept together
several times before it happened
and that for some reason
I still stayed with you after.
It happened in the early morning,
before my mind had any time
to wipe the sleep from its creases.
They say that’s best time to work out,
get up early and run
before the body knows what it’s getting itself into.
Maybe I should’ve started running
before my body made itself something
that you wanted to get into.

I haven’t stopped running since.
Dropping numbers on the scale
like my clumsy hands
turned pounds into soap bars
and my sweat made it harder hold on to.
Now my hip bones rub against my skin
in a competition with my ribs
to see who can break through first.

You used to say you liked the way
my edges didn’t feel like edges
but soft good mornings.
But I didn’t want to remind myself anymore
of your
good mornings
and my always mournings,
black sheets covering my face,
my body.
I am the widow at my own funeral
but nobody knew that I died that day.

I didn’t want an open casket,
I didn’t want open anything.
The space between my thighs
felt like valleys,
miles of emptiness
that you saw as potential,
and I only wanted them to be closed shut,
wired together, locked jaw,
I had nothing to say to you.

I didn’t cry when it was over,
when you rested your body on top of mine
laid your head in the crook of my neck
and whispered how much I meant to you.
I made pretend husband and wife,
made pretend love.

I told myself you loved me
that I should’ve been willing
to open myself armory,
a place to leave your weapons,
maybe that’s why I felt bombs in the pit of my stomach,
you felt my bones rattle under your hands
the aftershock of surprise explosions.
Every time you held me,
it was my anxiety
not love
that made me tremble for you,

You said
if you could wake up next to me every morning
you wouldn’t have to drink so much,
just swallow me.
But i promise
if i could
I would drown you,
drain you.
I wanted to leave you empty,
wanted to leave you
the way you left me,
digging my own grave
with hands crumbling
like broken heirlooms;
something that meant a lot to someone
a long time ago.
But it’s been 4 months
and i’m still picking shards of you
out of my skin,
you dug yourself
so deep into my flesh
that I thought you started to become part
of my DNA.
But like the wrong blood type,
my body rejected you
no matter how much I thought
I needed you to survive.

But here I am,
all splintered finger nails surviving,
turning demons into salt piles and burned bones,
forgetting what your name sounds like
when it rolls off my tongue,
forgetting why I ever thought
I needed you in the first place.

Every week
I see two different psychologists.
They told me to define Recovery.
Doctors visits,
blue prescription pads,
handfuls of pills
putting medicine in me
hoping that i don't get sick.
Do i take them all at once?
My anxiety made me
rip the label off the bottle
because that's what i do when i get nervous
i tear things away and
maybe that's where you went
but Doc said
i had to take them to get better,
so why not say bottoms up?
face-up in a casket.
Wait.

They told me to define Addiction:
hands shaking from a clean blood stream,
need to feel *****,
match the fingerprints on the bottle
with the ones on my own throat;
trying to stop the substance
even though i made the choice
to swallow.
I am always swallowing,
a constant cycle of open throat
throwing liquor down the hatch
tossing a few pills back
just to hear the splash.
Is it six feet down?
Tell me how far my empty goes.
Wait.

They told me define Empty.
The hollow nothing disguised as a chest,
a bedroom after death,
my stomach on a good day,
your eyes after i told you i loved you
and my voicemail when you stopped calling.
I used to ignore your calls
so I could keep your voice tucked away
in the dark corners of my phone
but ever since you left
your voice has echoed off my walls,
turning plastic bag and i'm made infant
and i couldn't stop suffocating in your name
so now i sleep on the floor of my sisters room.
I would rather stay awake from her snores
than be haunted by a ghost
of someone who's still alive.
Wait.

Are you?
I haven't heard about you in a while,
I mean i know your friends said
you weren't doing too well.
I didn't think it was that serious.
You were never doing too well.

My psychologists told me define Regret.
Regret is never getting to apologize to the dead.
Regret is crying more last night
than I did at your funeral.
Regret is ***** after too much alcohol
and not enough prescription.
Regret is the burn marks that don't need cigarettes.
It is knowing I should have picked up
the last time you called.
Because you didn't leave a voicemail.
All you left was your voice.
Empty is the sound of your voice.
Addiction is the sound of your voice.
Recovery can never be the sound of your voice.
Regret is that it used to be.

I have been inside my head for the past few days. Human contact has not taken me out of it like it typically would. My eyes have sunk deeper into my skull because of the lack of sleep, the more insomnia medication I take the less I sleep and I would think it would be the opposite. Perhaps it's the meals I've been missing, or maybe it's the people I've been missing, but either way I think my eyes have gone looking for something to fill this empty chest. If my heart is there, then I can't feel it beating and that's a terrifying thing to experience. They say the body's natural calming system is to listen to itself breathe and understand that oxygen is entering your lungs and you are alive. But I find that to be a rather uncomforting system. I have never wanted to be alive so why should my lungs working bring me any sense of equanimity.
I spent half the drive home swerving last minute out of the way of light poles because i kept remembering that i wanted my sister to have the car when im dead and my parents shouldnt have to pay to fix it. I have ****** up my life immensely and i cannot fix it nor restore it to its natural order. I am left with broken pieces and i cant tell if its of others or just myself so i'll settle for both and apologize to everyone. I have cleaned my entire room 6 times. I have painted my nails. I have a nice dress picked out. All that is left is calculating the amount of pills i need to take to greet my friends in heaven. If there is one. I sure hope there is not a hell because i never did well in the heat. I think i know why suicide is a sin, because life and death is the only thing God can control and by killing myself i am beating him at his own game.

You know how you wake up?
You swing your legs out of bed
and walk.
You don't look for the ground
to make sure the floor's there.
Because the floor's always there.
Until one day,
it's not.
And you swing your legs out
and instead of your feet hitting the floor,
you fall right through.
No warning
to let you brace yourself.
No signs
to let you know it's leaving.
It just
leaves.
And now, you're constantly checking the ground
as you walk to make sure
you don't fall again.
I never expected to fall right through
the way I did.
I used to wake up for you.
Now, i don't even know
how to get out of bed.

I have this theory that when you're born, you have a blank heart and God writes something on it like Happy or Sad or Angry and that's who you are. But I was born three weeks early because I think God wanted to write something on me so badly that He just couldn't wait. He thought he was so **** clever so He called me out early and wrote Unknown on my heart. I imagine Him laughing, drunk off wine telling everyone at the gates to look down and watch me fumble around trying to figure out what the **** He meant by it. Was I meant to be the laughing stock of the Gods? Or were they so unaware of my path that they didn't try to give me a predetermined one? Was God slurring "**** it, she'll figure it out"? I'm like a puppet with the strings cut, I don't know how to properly function without some guidance. But when God happens, no one really knows what to do, and that's why we have to pray. Because if God doesn't listen to us, then who will?

You told me you were ready, that this was not a huge deal to you. I had been waiting a long time for this to happen and you told me you were ready, so i believed you until i stepped one foot in the door and i could see the fear deep inside your corneas. That fear has been resonating there for the past few days, knowing that you had lied to, not only yourself, but me as well. You were not ready for this but you told me otherwise. So i took you out to dinner and you did not eat your food, you even had the audacity to tell me that i was making you nauseous, that you were holding back *****. So i told you that if you were that scared i would just go home but you insisted that i stayed. We drove back to your house and i laid on your couch and you cuddled up next to me. I knew in my head that you were not ready so i did not try anything. I wrapped my arms around you and we watched the movie together. But at the last second, before i left, you kissed me. And all hell broke loose after that. I felt as if i stole you away from your body, stole you away from the things that you are comfortable with. I felt guilty and angry that I was the one you chose to be your first. You were not ready for this and i could feel your body trembling underneath of me as if in agreement to what i was thinking but i let it happen anyway. And if there was any way that i could reverse what happened and never meet you in the first place, i would do it in a heartbeat. i broke your heart and i was your first. I think i'm more broken about this than you are. But the thing was, you never really kissed me. You did this because you were afraid to lose me. As if giving yourself to me was a form of glue, that if our skin touched together we would become inseparable but that is not how this works. You kissed your fear instead of me.

Today is grandmother's birthday. I have to watch her deteriorate at an exceedingly quickening pace as more days pass without you here. To watch another human being fall apart and live with no life left in them is more excruciating than if it were happening inside of me. She refers to you as her baby boy, although you were nothing short of a man. 28 years old, decorated in art from your neck to your toes. But nonetheless, you wore battle scars in the form of collapsed veins and sleepy eyes as if you never got enough sleep. You were My JD, mine, JD. When I think about you, I am left with a hole the size of the Pacific Ocean in my chest, which is truly appropriate because I drown in your name. If you could walk into grandmother's house, you would probably drop dead again. Her entire property has become a shrine to your existence, photos are overwhelming the premises enough to the point where you could walk into a maze of JD. Grandmother has not removed your sweatshirt except to bathe. Although she would still wear it in the shower if she did not fear to lose your smell. Sometimes I catch her close her eyes and breathe in what's left of you when she holds the cloth to her nose. Grandmother is smoking again. Nicotine and tobacco smoke kills the taste buds on the tongue, but she tastes you every time she drags in because you, JD, are everything she is. Mother gave up her dreams to take care of Grandmother, Mother dropped out of art school with a full scholarship because her only art was the life of Grandmother. And you, JD, were selfishly stealing the life from Grandmother that Mother worked so endlessly to retrieve. Now, I am not accusing you of being a bad man, JD, I know too much of you to know you as a bad man. You were intelligent beyond belief, knowledge swarmed in your brain and I think that's why you were always so sad. The ****** was to **** the things inside of you. The methamphetamine was to **** the things inside of you. The alcohol was to **** the things inside of you. All I wanted to do was to bring those things back to life because you saw them as a burden instead of the gift that you could harness and control. You were a good man, you made bad choices, but you were never a bad man. You have been the only man to make me feel like a princess with just a smile. JD. I saw you in my dreams, and you smiled like you knew the whole universe's secrets and I believe maybe you did because you are up there in the stars. When I saw you for the very last time, I kissed your cheek and cried. My JD, you are still the only man capable of making me feel like a princess and prisoner all at the same time. Grandmother has shut off your phone so the texts I have been sending you daily are not delivering and soon someone will have your phone number and those texts will be sent to someone undeserving of your 10 digits, digits as in numbers or fingers? Either way, no one was ever good enough to hold your hand other than mine. I was never ashamed of you. I hope you know that because the last time I saw you breathing, I'm not sure if I told you any of this. I am unsure if I told you I loved you, but if there was any way to fill this Pacific Ocean raging in my chest, I would hope it would be because you visited me in my sleep for the rest of time. I would settle for never dreaming of another boy as long as you held my hand in my dreams.

you are my first thought
you are my last thought
you are my only thought
you are my first
you are my last
you are my only
you are
my
my
mine