Since you left I’ve become a morning person, eager to start the day so that I may more quickly reach its end. Allowing my mind to wander only on paper, so that I may cultivate a product more fruitful than my own self-destruction.

I once read that a hive of honeybees will travel over 90,000 miles, the equivalent of three orbits around the earth, to collect 1 kg of honey. I aim to work at least half as hard, to pollinate my own raison det’re. I wish to renew my zest for life -- to live freely on my own, when there is no hand present to squeeze for reassurance.

I miss tracing the constellations along your skin as I’d watch you sleep, the ones I carefully mapped and memorized, their location as sacred as a secret garden whose flowers only I had been fortunate enough to see bloom.

3000 miles now lay between us, and still you pull my tides like mother moon. I wonder for how long I will remain your own orbiting pearl in a grandiose sky.

In the evening, I pitch up half of the tent made from the curvature of our bodies synced side by side. As I lay alone in my queen sized mattress, my heart mistakes the trees rustling in the cool night air, for the rustling of the sheets when you’d heave and sigh next to me. Your restless body a perpetual opposing force to the serenity upon your face -- a ship set out to sea on turbulent waters, armed with a hardy captain. I should’ve painted you.

I fight to stand up to me, for me.
To one day uncover the bell jar.
To unlock the latch on the attic window,
and release the stale air
that drowns my thoughts
and suffocates my will.

No longer am I
to be my own iceberg.

I am a lost boy
in the guise of a dreamer,
a little girl
in the guise of a woman.

I dwell between
worlds of fantasy
and my own neurosis.

I sleep between the lines
of my favorite wordsmiths.

I indulge in my vices
and surrender to my heart.

I walk through fire,
and run towards smoke.

I give love
like a match to a flame,
and leave piles of ashes
at my own two feet.

Being with you was like dancing in a monsoon on a sweltering Carolina summer's day. It was floating on your back in the ocean with your eyes closed. It was the buzz of babbling bumblebees in a rose garden. It was moonlight breaking through my curtains at 3am when I can’t sleep.

I am
the porcelain doll
I had as a little girl: fair,
fragile and lifeless.

I exist
only in limbo;
between grey and black,
between fighting and releasing.

All of the mirrors
have turned into shattered frames.
Every picture
houses a strange woman
whose gaze I dare not meet.

At what point
do the haunted,
become the ghouls?        

This house
no longer feels a home,
just an orderly sanctuary
for a disorderly soul.
I am a prisoner
in a pretty palace,
in which I am self-imposed.          

Is there
a sadness so great,
it cannot be tamed?

And if
I should disintegrate
from this very spot, into ash?
I am not a phoenix I fear,
but a sparrow.

I wonder if the Moon and the Sun
are so enamored with one another...
That if they were to both constantly appear in the sky,
neither would ever wish to set.

Or are they rather more like brother and sister?
Constantly vying for the spotlight
and for the attention of Mother Earth?

When the Moon appears in the sky of day,
does she wish to steal the show? 

Or simply long to see her lover,
before her kinsman arrive to settle in for nightfall,
joining hands to light up the sky
like a string of hundreds of thousands of chandeliers,
meticulously hung aloft the milky way?

Perhaps, the hues that bleed
across the stage at sunset,
are the spilled tears of the golden child.
Who must now cover her blushing face,
and bid adieu to the pearl
that ignites her life bearing flame.

Green eyed devil walked into a bar,
on a southern summer's day.
He had a poker face
and a pisces heart,
singed wings and a look of disarray.

We played hide and seek,
until there was nowhere to hide.
I was a fish caught on a hook,
and the hook was a bass line.

Just one dose
of his cyanide lips,
and I begged him
to deliver me to evil
with his electric hips.

I said, 'Possess my body.
Baby, gyrate my soul.'
He tasted like whiskey and poetry,
he felt like rock and roll.
We made the night ours,
and the night killed the day.
We were two colliding storms,
dancing in the rain.

Oh forgive me father
for I have sinned,
but dear lord, did you see that grin?
It's funny how hell can seem just like heaven.

You were forged in fire long before
their warm breath ever caressed your neck,
and you will continue to engulf the world in flames
long after they have tried to extinguish your light.

Perfection is unattainable
Well, I’m a perfect fool
Comparison is the thief of joy
Lessons I wish I had learned in school

Pretty sure I’ll miss you for the rest of time
Along country roads and abandoned homes
is where you’ll live inside of my mind

Godless yet sacred,
nothing felt sweeter than Sunday’s by your side
I’m still sticking my thumb out in my dreams,
praying for one last ride

My father would often say,
‘The only thing ever guaranteed is change.’

I never liked it.

When the seasons transform around you,
and the world turns, for the better or for the end, you find
being a caterpillar was the prime — filled with its humble
and wholesome beginnings.

Being a butterfly is a tough act,
you’re in constant fear of the peril of your wings wilting.

you’re the type of person
who claims they like rainy weather,
but when they hear thunder
they run for cover

forgive me
for not warning you
that i was a storm

i remember the first time your lips
touched mine, and how it felt like
the entire universe had just been
handed to me on your tongue

why must I see you in every
corner, taste you in every breath.
is it not enough my heart is
haunted. must my mind be as well.

part of me
wants to burn all
of your things,
burn them one by one,
like i’m peeling off the layers
of my heart
that you bruised

instead,
they’re sitting in the attic
in a box labeled,
“don’t open”

The call of the ocean
has long echoed in my soul,
an ancient power that is turbulent,
haunting
and never fails to enchant.

Perhaps,
it is to blame
for why I allowed you
to drown me.

After all,
a shipwrecked mermaid
is quite the paradox,
but I had always told you
your eyes held
a beautiful sea storm.

I pray that one day my body
will have forgotten your touch.
Along with the jarring hum
of a foreign object, searching
for a home in a locked building.

I wish that my parent’s actions,
weren’t always geared towards war.

I wish that they would’ve fought for themselves,
and not for what they could take from each other.

I wish that I could’ve been just a daughter,
and not a strategy.

I wish I could love myself,
so that I wasn’t so desperate for others to.
I wish I believed that love is something I deserve.

I wish my diagnoses motivated me to take better care of myself,
as opposed to leaving my fate up to natural selection.


I wish I wasn’t so OK with the notion of dying young.

I wish I could hold on to more than a mere temporary escape.

I wish for I do not have the will to do more than wish.
I wish because I have always been a fish out of water,
and yet somehow these days I can’t seem to stop drowning.