i am tired, and my bones are sore and at times
i want to curl up within the ground and
have the tufts of grass and dried up leaves call
me home.
at moments i am so tired of others,
their teeth, too much shown and how it all
seems like paint still trying to dry.
i am tired of men waggling their lips, and i am tired
of women always defending and i am tired of people
pushing my veins inwards.

i feel like weeds trying to grow in botanical gardens.
i cannot fit.
i cannot speak enough or be quiet enough.
i am shoved into outlines designed for others.

i do not know where my fingers should lie, and when i am
drunk and screaming i (almost) feel the most
alive, but then
when i am surrounded by history in beautifully spaced
architecture, i am
(almost) alive.

where do i start and where do i end.

why do bruises on me look like jewelry?
i am nothing. but i am you.
if i bite his shoulders hard enough, i can find bones.
i can find the Great Wall of China.
these lines on hundred year old parchment has become my salvation.

i want to be alone,
yet i want his nails digging me up.
i want to hear her tongue on her teeth,
yet my lungs can't expand
enough.

why must my heart be like feathers falling too
quickly?
i cannot help but feel and love and feel and love
and it is all too much.
he has been in my dreams, a shadow
who kisses my eyebrows and walks with
patience besides me.
i believe this is the flesh him even though i know.
his questions are nothing of substance, and i
know he is eager to slip my veil off again and
again and again.
but can't he see my rib bones poking through my chest?

i am in love with his tongue, and perhaps nothing
else.
he reads poetry but holds no compassion.
eager to lick but quick to bite my
lips together.

i am so much more than my open legs.
i am so much more than my ripped tights and rimmed eyes.

but he stares at me like fish in tanks.
eyes too wide and mouth agape.
i am not the food placed on the surface, waiting to be
swallowed and digested.

when i try to pry open his chest,
he pushes me down.
lathers me in silver until my throat is
hollow.

he is a writer
but refuses to see the words in
people.

he is running down my legs. sticky
inside my thighs. like the glue you
used in elementary school. the kind that
peeled off your finger tips.
he is inside of me, dampening my
underwear, seeping on my fingerprints.

i do not know if he likes me,
but his touches feel almost like
love.
but it's not love.

i am the girl, sticky with him and
attempting to recreate my spine.
i am the girl, marks like warning
signs on my *******, but all i can say is
(harder).

i want, this girl to jump inside that lake and
drown.
and wake baptized, fresh, alive.

he is inside my hair. he likes my
hair. he loves my hair.
but this is not love.

i tell him to pull, but he is too
gentle.
i am the girl spilling out her
teeth.
and you are the boy chewing up my
guts.
it is not love.

he is the foreign boy who smells, not like
the ads or the films or novels.
he smells like early mornings and that is where i am always
finding his lips.
he is sinking in my intestines, writhing and thriving, he is the upchuck
threatening beneath my
molars.
i am the girl crashing hard and burning diamonds.
within this room he has shredded me.

it is not love. he is not love.
but it is something.
something.
something.

he wants to taste me.
i wonder what i am on his tongue,
like candy floss, fluffy and dissolving, or
steak, rough yet succulent.
his tongue pin ******, the lips
like leaves, shifting through open
streets.
to be this alive and breathing,
with alcohol in my liver and his strands
of hair underneath my fingernails.

a secret.

i feel alive, though.
so alive.
the cigarettes and cologne are stuck
in my ribs, latching themselves between
bits of flesh.

i have been told my eyes are embers.

i wanna burn him to the ground.

she had never fallen in love with a man with tattoos.
no, the guy with the 'friend' tattoos didn't count.
they looked like **** and she remembered
how one used to bleed.

she had wondered what attracted her to this one.
he was bitter, and sour, lemons and limes
puckering up.
he complained.
his job was never enough, his food,
his bed.
she had no reason. perhaps it was his voice,
the accent with spiked inflection and soft spoken
syllables. she knew it definitely was the tattoos.

covered. black ink. pressed into skin.
maybe it was the pain she thought.
the hours spent. what are the stories? she'd ask.
there are no stories.
do you regret?
no. he says.

he likes to ****. she likes that about
him. he likes to read.
******* and tattoos. pain and pleasure. pleasure and pain.
she wonders if he can read her like she can read him.

they are both unhappy. they are both stuck.
but he gives her the pain, the pleasure.
he gives her the moment of forgetting, she hadn't had that.
she traces his tattoos with her peeling fingers.

does this hurt? no. he says.
can i hurt you? yes. she says.

what is it about the tattoos? is it the
artwork? the needle prodding.
inside, tearing the pores, the atoms,
blood bubbles bursting.

she thinks and bites his lip.
why are we addicted to this strange pain?

she's not in love with this man, but she
is in love with the hurt.
she craves it.

within my guts, perhaps there is no longer
slivers of withdrawal, of doubt,
but i can only wonder why i keep envisioning
my ****** gums,
stained like smashed cherries.
i know i love you, but you are now
the static pieces of glass in my palms
and i must be patient, but it is sinking
on the back of my tongue, and i am attempting
not to choke, not to swallow
so my insides are not shredded.
i would shred my skin and take my veins,
tie it together into bows, or boy scout knots,
if i knew i could curve your lips.
i would hang the veins inside your room,
connecting bits and pieces of my eyelashes,
if if if i knew it would lift you up from
tomorrow.
but i am not the girl who can tear herself in and out,
because my bits have gone already.

i know i love you, but i am so tired.
so tired. so tired.
i can't blame you, i can't bite your cheeks until
it sits like butterflies in your spine.

i do not know how to hold a shaking room.

yes, i know the way his mouth twitches when he smiles,
how his eyes will turn to different shades of green when the hours
change,
and how he lends his fingers when you need assistance,
and how his room was our paradise, and i know how we screamed
to those songs in his car late at night, the snow pressed against
the windows

but what i don’t know, dear friends,
is how my words are empty pill bottles,
"he forced me"
and your cheeks tighten, your eyelashes dry,
i don’t know how my bruises, the blood caked on my thighs
are not as important as his pride,
the way he speaks of money like his one true love,

but what i don’t know is how when you were passed out,
sleeping away through **** hazes and drunken episodes,
his fingers scraped the back of my neck, and pushed and pushed
and pushed until
my teeth were coated with fear,
my throat gurgling with guilt

to my friends, i do not understand,
and when you mention his name, i am back in that room,
fifteen and in love and afraid,
with you under blankets,
oblivious