****** knuckles ****** knuckles ****** knuckles

it's four am and my head is all tweezers in sockets and
fingers in throats and
never enough sleep

****** mary ****** mary ****** mary

come and take my eyes from their sockets
with a melon baller
and hold me till i'm not screaming anymore

****** nose ****** nose ****** nose

it's almost tolerable
that my bed is empty when my nostrils burn
and everything tastes like pills

red to the core;
the always bleeding girl.

yeah, but you're not.

waking up next to a girl you don't love feels like
howling
waking up next to a girl you don't love feels like
hoping she doesn't leave her smell on your sheets
waking up next to a girl you don't love feels like
scrambling for your clothes the second you notice sunlight peeking through the blinds
waking up next to a girl you don't love feels like
washing your hands of the smell of her ****
waking up next to a girl you don't love feels like
brushing your teeth before you kiss her
waking up next to a girl you don't love feels like
******* in the morning is just as ***** as it was at night
waking up next to a girl you don't love feels like
howling
waking up next to a girl you don't love feels like
howling until your voice is hoarse and your mouth forgets how to form words

"it'd probably be really nice to be in love with you"

sure, but i'm not

if you're reading this really in the morning
im your ex girlfriend probably
and youre trying to see whats up
im in love and im a lot happier than i was with you
but im still not totally happy, i hope thats satisfying
being an ex girlfriend is such a minor part of my identity, wow
my poetry about other stuff still *****
but my love poems are a lot better now bc i mean them, lol.

if you're reading this at maybe five thirty pm
and you just got off work
and you follow me on hellopoetry.com because you liked a poem
i wrote in 2013 and thought you'd stick around
i'm just gonna spoil the ending for you now:
i'm only gonna get worse

if you're reading this when you should be sleeping
and you're middle name's elizabeth and you lie
about hating shoplifting
i love you too

one time
i was in the third grade
mrs. jernigan's class
i answered a question on the board
i dont remember the question but the answer was he'll
and i wrote it on the board w a smelly blue expo marker
and smiled so big when i walked back to my seat
trusting every person who told me i was smart
and everyone who said i was pretty
and then everyone
in mrs. jernigan's third grade class laughed
because instead of he'll,
the contraction that would grant me power and status
in mrs. jernigan's third grade class,
i had written
hell

and then the smelly little dude in front of me, keith,
turned around and said
"your ***** are too big
for your shirt"

pink striations bloom on my neck,
curving and running like rivers
or the creek behind your childhood home
because when faced with the thought of living
in a skin void of your touch,
what am i supposed to do
but scratch?

would you still love me if i wasn't soft and beautiful?

i hate feeling like i can't move my own mountains,
like i am waiting to hand someone else the shovel
or whatever the **** people use to move mountains.
i hate how much i hate my sweat,
i want it to pour, i want to drown in my stick and my stink
but instead i will smell like baby powder and cocoa butter kiss and va va vanilla.

my nails are short and a little bit yellow
i wear baseball tees and flannel and i can drink like a man

but my doors are still being opened,
old men still love me,
my mountains
are all still being moved
without me

i almost never have dreams, just nightmares and nightmares and on luckier nights, just blackness.

on the luckiest nights, it's just her

memories of her doe eyes peering up at me through thick naked lashes
skin soft as satin
and i get to watch her mouth "i love you" over and over and over again

and when she falls asleep beside me
i'm not so scared
of the nightmares and the nightmares and the nightmares
or the
blackness

because falling asleep with her
means waking up with her
and she is hazy and soft and on fire in the sunshine
and all sorts of messy hair and boxer briefs and sticky spit
and then i can't even remember
what i was so afraid of