There is pretty
bubbling
a faulty science experiment
on the verge of the most compliant shade of peach
blanketing itself even beneath the dirt
of my fingernails.

Daddy can you open this?
Because spoonful’s of
Mommy can’t
Never sat well
on the tip of your tongue
nor the bottom of your stomach.

The click
Resonating in my ears like a clatter
of spinning off the head
Of a bottle of red polish
Black clouds of acetone
and nights worth drowning
in salty tear-duct rain
spill over your fingers flawlessly
the way you wish pretty would
on every square inch
of your not-pretty-enough.
But pretty is all sealed up
In the same transparent plastic wrap
That clutches each brain stem
The way grubby clawed tentacle-men
grab your ***
choke every dose of ill-met
red lipstick mirror encounters
from you
and every you
ten-years in the making.

You look so pretty
on the outside
but no one wants to see
your landmines
zip modesty up to your neck
every morning
before you leave your apartment
to enter a circus
the confines of impending death
each man and each billboard
equally a lion
but please
for the love
of your ugly-*******-face
ugly-*******-face
ugly-*******-face
be pretty
hold white teeth to your skull
and your skull to a fragile pair
of rose-meadow-shoulders
remember to ignore the thorns
relentlessly.

Pretty is easy
as a puncture wound.
Pretty is the only green light
In one thousand miles.
Don’t be a girl—
You’ll be okay.

Within this sacred pulse of blood and pulp
there is more to be heard than a quiet throbbing
this beat after beat of humanity
the background noise of life.
My ear is pressed against his chest
but I hear song birds calling these steady cues home
migrating to the warmest places
until next time.
Biology flushing through his arteries is just a facade
for marching bands and parades place their feet to the ground with each beat
the elephant in your mouth
attempting to follow rhythmically
tripping over its own trunk
it knows what real music is
swallowed by the barrier of a fluctuating chest or not
wholesome is a sound loud enough
to shatter water-soaked ear drums.

If there is ever a time
that I do not ask you to come home
or to come closer
please worry
please proceed anyway
despite whatever my pleas may be.
I only want you to show me
what it means
to be loved to death.
If you love me like you say
I will tempt your softness
I will nurture a knife under the bed we share
our so-called-sanctuary.
Do you mind its company?
The moment you do
you'll find yourself empty
with nothing left in my tracks
but the knife
where my silhouette used to be
and a locked door.
I will miss you
until I won't anymore
and you'll beg the walls of your own bedroom
for me to come back.
I'll be **** sorry
when I forget the directions
but remember your address.

I think I fell in love with him long before I even knew I did. I think I had fallen in love with him between trying to figure out if I had already or not. When he cried the day he thought I was going to smoke a blunt with a couple of kids older than me, and the day he told his best friend: "I think I'm falling in love with her." Up until right now, lying on my bed with my head rested on my crossed arms, listening to the sounds of his breaths lull him into deeper states of sleep; dreaming dreams you and I can attempt to imagine, but only a beautiful human being like him has the privilege to see for himself.
Sometimes when we're on the phone for a while, and I know he's tired because I can hear the rasp in his voice return just like the night before, when he was at the verge of sleep, I don't say anything. I just let him. I just let the silence fill the void between the crease of his struggling eyes, and I remain silent. I let his eyes close. Because I like when he falls asleep. It's comforting, and peaceful, and less lonely hearing his little intakes of breaths every so often.
Sometimes I don't want to hang up, because I know I'll be lonely again once the sleepy silence between our call has ended. I usually draw it out for an hour or so before I force myself to hang up, but never before confessing my love to him every night, quietly, as honestly as I can. Of course he can't hear me, but I always hope that maybe somewhere in his unconscious mind, my words are able to reach him. Maybe in his dreams. Or maybe they never do, seeing as though, occasionally, I remind him in the morning of what I said to him, and he smiles, and pleads for me to never stop.
And that's what makes it worth it. That's why I say words he may never hear. Because somewhere along the line, heard or unheard, my subtle words are still able to put a smile on his face. And I think that's all any of us strive for, is to smile, and to find love, and for love to find us. Whether or not we even know it ourselves.

I still haven't hung up.

I don't think I will.

I try to tell my boyfriend that I am depressed
less than three times a day
after that
it gets a little depressing
like maybe it’s a ghost that if I don’t acknowledge
it will glide back into the thin layer between the underworld and mine.
I don’t know how to talk about wanting to die
without personifying it
addressing it as a pronoun
saying its name and capitalizing the first letter
tightening the slick leather collar around its neck that reads: “If lost please call…”
sticking its freshly birthed hand on certificate
but all I can say
is when I'm sitting in an all-white walled in 9 by 5 room
and the ceiling becomes latex,
seals itself a vacuum over my face,
all I can think about
is what a touch of cardinal could do for this room
but the thought of my brains turning brown and ugly,
after a few hours of the three people I cared about forgetting about me,
is enough to do nothing
until my sweat becomes comfortable with mattress
and out of necessity
I move.

A boy with bruises for under eyes in two o’clock poetry
stayed ten minutes after just to tell our professor
that he felt like a dead body
and when I went home that day
I laid in bed long enough to watch my plant
follow the grace of the sun
eight limbs strung wide open
a gradient of striped canary strewn across my bedroom floor
as it left me.
I thought
maybe the dead body boy
will schedule to be known as existing only to his bed
the same days as me
so that our agendas and the ******* Gods and the other planets
that are of no use to me
can align
and when I don't show up in the world for a week and neither does he
everyone will think there must just be something contagious going around
maybe there is—
Do you think that throwing your dinner away and smashing the plate,
allowing shower water to run cold over hot flesh,
and treating sleeping as an affair that I can only participate with eyes cemented open
is a new symptom of the next bat-**** virus everyone will lose their minds over?
Asking nurses if there's any way to make permanent
the needle still pierced through soft pit of inside elbow skin and spewing
the hauling behind you of a sweet 20 pound IV like a
dead
body?

When I wake up in the morning,

I don't

know the difference between dreaming in increments—
and being alive.

You're falling in love
just out of high school
visualising pedestrians full of life
of memories
in your local grocery store's small-town parking lot
dreary day and grey sky
only because he left you empty
in this lonely world
too petite for two people
whose souls have always been too large for this type of crowd
manifested by people always staring
when we burst with color
at the flick of our fingers on cheeks
or warming cold hands
and when you stopped cramming into this space
when you stopped trying to fit
you made it your destiny to absorb
to fill rather than to squeeze
finding solace in places most unusual
because every ******* thing
still reminds me of you
even when the clouds don't want me to see
the sun fights for it's moment of fame
screaming
"Please see his face one last time,"
and I do
I obey
leaving me worse off
but better than I was before
because you can cut the string around my index finger
with your knee quivering smile
but I'll remember
I'll still keep your promise safe in my palm
in the center of my lungs
and I don't care if you trash it
as long as you keep mine.

Something of youthful cut grass
blading itself through a crisp March
as to guide crickets into breaking their backs
so that eyelids may kiss pillows in matrimony
so that the smell of the approaching summer
in its fleeting Shelby Cobra
driving so smoothly when running away
but leaking a trailed gallon of purposeful gasoline
when trying to get to the other side of culpability.

I dissipate fragment by fragment
into the dark
equating to pollen that has had its day
as satin-skinned camellias
in a swift breeze.

A tongue swollen with nectar sweat
the wind strokes its fingers through my solstice hair
drunk with humidity
enticing sleek branches
to swoon with the cadence
of sweltering heat.

I always save the best for last and I dream words that spell out your name in my sleep
I think that's why I always wake up with my chest numb
It's exhausted its bones trying to save the nimble thing behind it that pulls at every string attached to our lives
Looking for someone worth the ache
Trying to find someone worth breaking for.

If beginnings are always so simple, endings must be just as hard.
To watch you go would be to let you cut my wrists open and bleed on every letter you've written me, every kiss that still lingers on my not-the-same-without-you lips.
To un-grip the fingerprints that make your palms what they are
would be me losing my identity all over again
and letting the thought of your laugh get the best of me.
I'm holding my breath until the next time I see you.
7 years is a long time when 2 days are long enough
And 200 miles is too far away
when my heart cannot stretch that far without falling apart.
I can feel my body slip into survival mode
shielding itself from something that could **** more than a physical threat.
I want to cling my anxious onto you
sew myself to the back of your shirt
Search your vertebrae like it's the answer to why I can't breathe at a steady pace when I can't hold you for a second longer
Why someone so medicinal to my wounds would be taken away quicker than I was ever able to take them all in.
I'm trying to bottle it all up but all you can do is shake.
I know you say you only want the best but empty bottles like me were never meant to be opened.
You were the only one with hands strong enough to do it.

My best side has always been colder without you right next to me.
I've always kept both my palms empty in case you ever wanted to hold a place you can comfortably call home
just in case you like the parking spaces for your heart more vacant, than simply empty.
But there has been no time for space ever since meeting you became my only vision, my only dream in this truthful illusion I've pet-named, life.
Somewhere within the darkest hours, between 1 and 3, honesty reveals it's shy face.
That is when I accept,
that my heart resides with you.
Because with you, is the only time that it accepts to beat.
I'd be a lair if I said that even amidst sunlight, I do not find room for two.
Laying next to you in bed
decaying while smiling into each others eyes, has become my only goal.
And you must know:
Falling asleep to the sound of sirens as loud as a million little laughs echoed from your deep, deep chest, is quieter when my own mouth is there to consume the noise; always my favorite desert, and your specialty.
I will be there to engrave your smile lines into my memory, whether you like it or not.
Like breaks in pavements that line busy streets
the ones you see every morning on your way to work, tempting you to turn around
but you don't dare break your mothers back.
And I am so, so sorry.
Love is no longer a choice, and anyone who's ever had one, has not ever taken one glimpse, at you.
They have never tasted sugar, without anything occupying their tongues.
I want a tattoo, an, "Until death do us part", not an, until the so called permanent fades.
Sinking my knees in quick sand for you to see,
love is something I always define with the few simple letters that spell out: "You."
"Only you."
"You are all."
You are it.
I just don't want you to be the blink of my eye.
I will not give up, until your lava hands are coursing my skin to unconsciousness
until erosion cannot talk back to us.

I want to undress for you.
I want to discard the clothes from my body piece by piece and show you the warmth that lives under my skin for you.
I want to prove to you with every ounce of sunlight you've put in me, that each step my heart takes is only to get closer to yours.
I want to strip for you.
I want to strip myself of every impurity and lay myself in front of you, vulnerably, left with nothing else but every little trace of every memory of your lips having touched my body.
You are planted into every part of me.
I hope that you never stop growing.
I hope that one day I can learn to sprout into something that is as beautiful as the way you look at me.

Please wait
Help is on the way
cereal box bursting plastic seams
full to the brim
Help is on the way
too many high-sodium high-carbs      
everything that goes up must come down
everything gripped white-palmed hits this polished rock bottom
Help is on the way
is the backpack-bearing bearded man with dirt slathered across flip-flop bare feet not accepted in addition to cash?
See store for details.
I am afraid he will ask me
if I can spare some change but
I have to keep quarters for laundry
pods 25% off
wish I could give him deliverance, tell him
Help is on the way
Please wait
wish I could be a Pharmacists Who Care(s)
I just Pick Up, Go.
Did he fail to follow the instructions
on life
on pin-pad reverberates high-pitched privilege
I am one of the guilty ones
I look at him as if he were already expired
stuff my guilt in the bagging area
please keep all items in the bagging area
I want to leave this one out.
Where is my expiration date
am I only Good Thru a Beauty Guarantee am I only Good Thru 40% percent of my body am I only Good Thru what is seen on tv?
System processing
Please wait
Thank you for shopping

I am barely one millimeter tall
dragging my body limp across
the sidewalk and I try my best not to make eye contact any contact
with those glaring flashlights rising from the dead off their hard-helmeted heads
I'm still trying to keep mine twisted at one-hundred-eighty degrees
but stuck in the bulls-eye of a man-made hurricane    I wouldn't mind hearing a snapping neck any neck.

One of the hell-bent helmets removes itself to reveal a heavy-set sweating neck
the ******* a skateboard and I recoil synonymously at the sight of too many men too tall
it's seventy-five out but it's beginning to feel negative twenty degrees
I walk as quickly as my frost-gnawed legs allow me to move across
this soup line but they're feeding the wrong kind of hungry who wait for their ***** coins to flip heads
to see who goes first to play tackle-the-red-flags with little girls and the rules don't prohibit contact.

I can't imagine these helmets in human form not even when they ask for my number to keep in contact
I think of the time I was sent home for possessing tempting shoulders and a somehow sultry neck
all I see are claw machines and me, a come-here-doll, resisting the balance being ripped from my head
I forget about pacing myself on the ledge of this concrete just so I can stand tall
I hear the voice of an ex-friend who moved across
town tell me that you "just have to be smart", but you don't learn morals from earning degrees.

I'm thinking about the degree
of which it would mean if I were to reverse the prey predator roles and dare to make contact
blood sharing the same bed with safety sparks a flame across
my brain, I don't want to imagine trembling while holding this pocket knife over the apples of their necks
but I am a no choice girl because every time my mother calls she warns me that I'm not tall
enough to even chop the branches from their heads.

The fifth one in line yells something at me about giving head
silently I measure the trajectory of getting the hell out of this corner the exact angle the degree
what lie is there to tell that is tall
enough that they won't be able to see the panic beneath my contacts
I swat away the possibility of nearby lips staining bruises onto my neck
I keep the idea of my big-knuckled boyfriend like pepper-spray in my back pocket waiting at the street across.  

Hey *****, you seem a little cross
you shouldn't dress the way women dress to turn heads
one day you might make a man break his neck.
It finally began nearing seventy-five degrees
again as I fumbled through my contacts
dialed the first boy I knew, doubling as the tallest.  

I'm on the acceptance stage of mourning the fact that I'll never be tall enough to come across as mean when I come in contact
with non-human beings willing to burn holes in the back of girls heads at four-hundred degrees, who put their ****** trophies on the back-burner as long as it means getting some neck.

"Thank you."

Matched a crisp white shirt
as if she knew.
Even a red dress was dull next to her
absolutely beaming
illuminating the night with just her laugh
and one simple sentence
"You look gorgeous."

"Thank you."

The most important thank you I would ever give.
I flashed her a smile that did not attempt to compare,
that happily strayed from the limelight
to let hers take the stage
the way it naturally did
with a humble glow
though it was an outright shooting star
a comet that would impact.
My smile did not shine like hers,
but instead radiated gratitude
a contentedness only obtainable in her presence.
She gave me the best accessory to a prom dress
ever imagined.

“Thank you,”

the second time
was a heavyweight in my exhausted mouth
that I let drop to the floor.
Apologies for a loss that is not mine
but is the world’s
was not enough
for cars that still drove to slam their breaks
for people who still laughed to mourn
for the Earth to halt its rotation
to a complete stillness
as if the sky was not guilty for being so vivid
as if the sun was not ludicrous for shining so brightly
when they should have looked broken
waiting for her return
on a brilliant day
tarnished much too soon.

Every shadow that reflects against the hospital floor
Before materializing in front of the grand jury
as a hundred and so pounds of grief
is suddenly so heavy
breathing becomes a sport
resisting tears composed of, “This is all a nightmare,”
becomes reality.
Each body that steps foot into the room,
the longest walk of your life,
is another tally of unwanted confirmation
another sentence in the eulogy
another flower to be laid at her grave.
The only verdict the jury can pronounce
is to remember
and to forget at the same time.

“Thank you.”

Although this aching has made itself a home beneath my skin
although it has been 4 days and everyone’s faces have frozen in time
since the exact moment we heard
as if we left with the hospital chained to our backs
protruding from our veins that it runs cold through
although I wish you could live in places other than the purple bags beneath my eyes,
if I look hard enough,
I find you alive in my heart.

Thank you
For being the smiles on our faces,
the laughter deep in our chests
hidden like treasures buried in the depths of the sea.

Thank you
For being the thin crease of sunlight that melts through my blinds
when I am tucked away in the darkness of my bed.

Thank you
For being our continuation,
for letting those two words pour from us eternally
in hopes that a lifetime of “thank yous”
will fly the distance to your ears
so that you may echo with
“You’re welcome”
Loudly enough that the words may etch themselves permanently
into our hearts.

Day 1:
When you wake up missing someone, and go to bed mourning them, remember that the first week is always the worst.

Day 7:
When your body begins to pull you out of bed and begs your legs to run as far and as fast as they can, realize that the only destination you're really seeking is their arms, their embrace; that home encased in steady beats and familiar warmth.

3 am:
When your feet can no longer support the weight of your heavy soul and your car won't stop pestering you to take a ride, don't waste your gas.
Don't spend your sparse tears all in one place.
He wants to kiss you too.
That's all that matters.

12 pm:
Everything reminds you of him, you're watching his face dissolve in a crowd of strangers, you lose sight of him.
When you see a tall boy and a shy girl cooing in the corner where you once swam in his eyes and confessed your love without spoken words, do not fall to your knees.
Do not avenge fate.
What was once a wonderful thing of yours can now be shared with people you wish you could be again.

Day 30:
When you find that food is your last resort, a full stomach is increasingly scarce, and days pass of nothing but your bed swallowing you whole and your bedroom seeming more like a dungeon, open your window and remember why you always woke up in the first place.
Recall why you used to smile, and your remedy, his smile back, will make the sun choose to shine again.

Hour 3:
When your lips and your hearts leap towards each other to certain death, do not procrastinate putting your tears on a silver platter.
Do not mourn what will be mourned far too soon—just love the way you didn't want to.
And don't let go.

Day 1:
When 3 hours feels like day 1 all over again, lick your lips, keep holding on to him although his embrace expired for some time now.
Most importantly, pretend he hasn't left yet.
Ask yourself:
When can I love you this much again?

I rip my chest plates apart, the most rickety china you own.
I throw my heart on the ground because I can feel my love for you too heavily in the depths of my decaying bones.
You burn right through me and I let you sometimes.
I imagine the weight of you never being too much to leave me strength less, because I've watched your chest rise and fall like the world was making way for you in the remainder of its eternity, as if the galaxy decides to lose itself in the stars when you exhale fervor into the crook of my neck.
It isn't too much. I will never get enough.
I’m knocking at your door,
but instead of knuckles,
my heart is in my fist,
And I am beating against your chest.
You draw really well, and I hope you know I’d give you permission to make art on my skin.
I’ll be your canvas if you let me in.

Are you hurt from all the acid on his lips you've consumed
Begging to be kissed, or to be killed.
In the slow moment of blue pulses, closed eyes: you're holding a dandelion behind your back.
You don't want to pick it apart,
you have to.
Squeeze your eyes shut for the full effect.
A train could come.
You could die just like this.
His kiss is escaping
You don't open your eyes
He opens them for you.
What do you see that you don't want to?
You have 30 seconds to make a decision: Love or happiness.
There is a cliff in front of you
headlights and a horn behind you.
He is a head on collision
He is what really kills you
the way "on impact" never could.
The only way you could ever really die.

And I die everyday.

I have written poems about you
with tears strung decoratively among my face.
I have composed sonnets with the taste of your mouth still stinging on my tongue.
I have vowed to you nothing less than everything I have, down to the core of my fragile bones
when my spine went missing till the very day I met you.
I have recited oaths I learned from the patterns in which you toss in bed.
I have spat heavy loud "I love you's" as if they were the only words I ever knew
and the last I could ever speak.

Dreaming in increments
Maneuvering vitamin D
like stability can bend between hands
without breaking bones,
like muting sunshine with an unwashed sleeve.
I promised I’d call my best friend
To disrupt that fleshy carcass
Face shoved against cage
Thing that she’s going through.
I promised that the new year
Would be as shiny as I was afraid;
I guess it’s a break-up,
Like when I watched my stomach walk out on me
Exclaim that this is the last time
As my boyfriend foamed at the mouth
And all of his cells turned blue
I heard a bark somewhere under a far-away street light
And I knew that this is how it would be
At least for another year.

I hold walking a blind man across the street
and letting pen and paper meet in the middle of the same bar
after thirty days of limited communication
on an even pair of shoulders.
Brushing blush painted hands
down a body you've never seen in daylight
through a familiar dilation of pupils
but still a body you've seen with your fingertips
feigned with your mouth agape
as you've counted how many light-bulbs it would take
to fix every burnt out barbed wire
strung hair like fairy lights
across the least visited
lonely patches of human existence.
The starving man hand in hand with
each naked pedestrian
in a field made of all the synonyms
that have baked within your flesh
skipping across it
like dead bodies
cannot possibly ruin.

I believe that the sound of beauty lies somewhere loosely with the stars you've been holding in your eyes ever since you muttered that they were too hot to hang onto anymore, that fingers were slipping and the universe was too large, too cold anyway to fall in love over and over again with overlapping atmospheres.
Look at me with your lips.
Since when did we start kissing with our eyes, and why did it have to be me to soothe your wounds with my mouth.
I'm trying to find you somewhere in all the blood in my sink, more drowning than swimming, but all I'm getting at is that I should have loved you harder.
Tell me yourself then, why is it so hard to light a fire when the matches are 200 miles away?
You've always been my only light, my only primary source of survival, and without you I'm slowly leaving the place that was never really mine at all.
It started with the small of my back, that you should have been touching, that place on my shoulder that isn't quite right without being pushed against yours.
9 pm.
Not such romantic timing.
I'm always late with you anyway.
This time I'm splitting open my ears trying too hard to hear a scream that isn't there.
It ended with the numbing of my heart
where you should have been the whole time
where I'd never let you go.


(-a.r.)

I fell in love with the way our fingers intertwined and your breath when it was heavily against mine. I fell in love with loving you, you were a novel rated 5 stars: "The novel of a lifetime!", but my lifetime especially.
I fell in love with you without a trace and without a doubt. The only freckles that have frightened me are the ones I've faced that scatter across your arms in the summer, because caring about freckles, and also a dimple, and then a smile, more than you care about yourself, is scarier than I had originally thought.

You fell in love with holding me, and imploring me to love myself because you loved all the curves of my body and the way my jeans hugged my hips. You fell in love with the way my pupils time traveled, while your heart played the role of the time traveling machine.

Lastly, we fell in love with each other.
And I wonder if you contemplate why it is called falling as often as I.
I wonder if you find out the way I do every time we kiss.

I might be the only one who wonders what it would look like if daises transpired from your heart to your mouth.
If thunderstorms stop pouring from your eye sockets long enough to wonder if sunsets know what they’re competing with
if tides are aware of what they’re up against
in a world this large and with only one you
“What’s your favorite place on Earth?”
And lately I've been answering with wherever you are.
Earth has never been my favorite place anyway
and if all lips could kiss like we think they should
puddles would be lakes of pink and red and your teeth that I can’t seem to give up.
Tight skin and warm hands spare me a lie
when tongues drift into steps you never knew the language to before.
If I don't believe in heaven
and if young love is aimless
you are doing a **** good job.
I think that birds sing in the morning as soon as you open your eyes and I relate to them
I can only hope to be the flight of wings you hear in your dreams
I can only attempt to let this paper take shape of you.

Face to face
gritting teeth
where sleep is my enemy
death is my best friend
my body is stripped
bare
naked
on your bed
cold like an operating table
and sticking to my skin enough
that it just might be.
I can't pull it away
without wishing it was off
I can't sit in a white room
without puking up last night's breakfast
and I might let you split me open
minus your doctors degree
******* insides
banana-strawberry smoothie
with a dash of something evil
a flavor that has always made your taste buds tremble
with disgusting delight.
Tell me again
with a scalpel in your hand
why you're giving up now?