walking with wedges always seems like the best, until
you’re walking home at seven in the morning.
i still taste cold pizza and the pina colada hookah.
i waited for you to breathe me in like the vapors,
youth has never tasted so beautiful, love.
i used to think i was the period in every sentence,
but you’re the comma and i’m the semi colon,
we’re never ending, sticking between awkward
phrases and short cut
sentences.
he never sunk his teeth so deep, and i am so bruised
i think my bones are bleeding.
youth has never tasted so beautiful, love.
i did not feel alive until five in the morning, when all i could feel
were his fingers digging in my cells, searching for everything
i thought i could never become.
i never felt this alive in his arms, and now i see all he did
was pull the blindfold until i saw inky blackness,
pushed the pillow in my mouth as i continue to cough up chunks.
let me run through the soggy leaves, breathing in the crisp air until
i collapse.
youth has never tasted so ******* beautiful,
love

i think i have finally found myself, in between the cushions of
crumble filled and beer stained backseats of his car. through the spaces
of his fingers, all i taste is *** and lingering
regrets.
i think i can finally disappear, among nights that never end,
with tongues that never parch.
a little touching never hurt nobody, and i think my veins
are nothing but fire tonight.
i had lost myself in his red car with a stupid license plate,
and eyes that held me, shut me, locked me up.
i had lost myself in this idea that you can’t be alone too long,
for your own fingers can only do so
much.
i have found myself, while stumbling and purging through
crisp nights, touching car doors, fur, strangers hands.
i have found myself amid his arms, but i’m still looking for the other
pieces,
i think they might be inside you, you,
you. let me take a look, darling, we have nowhere to be
tonight.

yes, i have not removed an inch of makeup, these
past three days.
i can still taste beers and united kingdom’s colloquialisms
on my burdened  
tongue.
and i have holes in stockings and black-and-blues
brushing my collarbone.
weekends, two and a half days, winding among unbolted
doors that lead to what you want but can’t admit
sober.
yes, i still feel every inch when i saunter through flaxen
leaves. how did i never notice such colors
before?
let the world be your oyster, except i’m vegetarian. so let it be my
sea. ocean. every drop that i never tasted.
fingers taste much better when they’re being
shoved beneath your front teeth.
five in the morning is the perfect time for screaming at lies
you cannot see through. for falling onto beds that cannot hold
more than one person but you trytrytry anyway.
yes, i do not know where i am going anymore,
but this tingling in my toes must mean
something.

I had chewed up lips and a consciousness that slipped between your fingers and my thin laced skin. I was fifteen, in love with you and pointy objects and the desire to one day feel alive.

Nights were our favorites. You held me high on your shoulders while I spread my arms and screamed. Your fingers pricked my thighs and I could feel your molecules forming with my molecules and when I saw my breath coming in little puffs of cotton ***** in the air all I could think of, Is this what life is?

Sometimes you would run with me on your shoulders and I had to latch on for dear life. My nails in your gold speckled hair, “Don’t you dare close your eyes,” you’d say and I’d cry from the wind, from the adrenaline, from the thought of you ever letting go. Little crystal streams ending nowhere.

But eventually, you did, you dropped me hard and fast and I fell upon the cold frosted grass. No warning, no squeeze of assurance. The wind knocked out of me, tears freshly stained upon acne scarred cheeks. I tried to lift my head to see you, but you were gone. All I had was the tethered swing set, the stars. And this is what life is, I thought. It’s flying until you can’t. Falling until you cannot breathe and then it’s over.
With a thud.

sometimes i just want to chop all of my hair off and dye it a deep purple,
but i know even then i’ll still like the
sound of spoons clinking in mugs
and i’ll still cry when i hear styrofoam
squeaking past.
sometimes i just want to buy a ticket for nowhere, anywhere,
leaving no letters, no goodbyes, but all my things neat
intact. and i will have nothing but the clothes clinging to me,
ten piercings, three tattoos, and a body too sluggish for someone
so young.
sometimes i just want to wake up at four in the morning and see what color your eyes are
when the sun hits them a certain way, with bursts of gold and specks
of pixie dust.
how do i always end these with you?
i don’t know what i want, but it always seems to be
you. you. you.

i guess i need more mentally disturbed
friends.
i’m feeling lately like the scab that’s been picked off,
forgotten, dried up, designating.
people don’t understand when i say my heart feels like it will
explode out of my lungs, throughmythroat and get caught between
myteeth.
my anxieties need a **** buddy, because making eye contact
is even too
much. and i wish i could stop assuming the worst.
"jesus, you worry too much"
i can’t help that i find the flaws, the nit picky things,
the traits that i want to squish like
blueberries.
i can’t help that when i sit alone in my car,
i think too often of swerving into highways and wondering what a deer
sees before it
dies.
that’s why i don’t talk about this, i never can anyway,
they swell and sit upon my tongue like when you ate that pepper whole
and all i tasted was flames.  
my anxieties and i are the kind of friends where we speak nicely
and are all smiles in front of one another,
but as soon as we turn around,
all we say is venom.

remember when all we had was each other?
i wake up with the same joints creaking, but this time
thunderstorms applaud through my
spine.
my lips haven’t kissed yours enough, and i’m so parched, parched
parched.
poker face, but you have flipped through my every chapter,
every volume, swallowed the covers.
remember when all we had each other?
i’m terrified

that there’s so much more than
you.