"don't let anyone you wouldn't want to be
inside you"
stuffy grandmothers whisper after bar mitzfahs
or quinceaneras or senior proms
while they are whisked away by the rough hands of boys.

protecting the inches between her legs
will always be more important than anything else.

ankles crossed sitting on the washing machine
until her mom slaps her across the face.

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"

you don't believe in god
neither do i, most of the time
but neither of us would ever touch a ouija board
and we talk about gas station karma and
you rap your beaten knuckles on wood

and maybe it was just the right place and the right time
and maybe we were just both ****** up at the right times

but i met you
and you met me
and all i wanted to do was meet you over and over again

now when i wake up at night your arms are around me
and i believe in magic

Don't lie to me.
Don't pull me into your *******.
The self-concocted issues.
You are not brave for pulling through.

You are a coward.

People don't want each other
for their
issues.

*****.

I will always decide which parts of me you are allowed to love.
Are you braver for hurting me or am I braver for letting you?
How many of my thoughts are free of muse; why can't I convince myself that my pain is profound?

waking up from nightmares
of waking up in a morgue,
i question if i really want to die.
but then each word
i hear feels
like a hot needle against my skin
and i sleep for hours
hoping to wake up
on that cold
metal
slab.

utopia lives in the space between never and again
and it screams to me louder than
cicadas at dusk
(nymphs
leaving
the chrysalis)

like ******* on her **** and letting it dry
or scrubbing the leaves on a fern
i can't tell if our meeting was
unintentional
or
unnecessary

either way,
your loss.

i love the way it feels to throw up,
all burning and hoarse throats and saliva and stench;
an ephemeral reminder that you have insides and that they work.

and trust me, when you tell someone you have to puke
they get out of your ******* way

and your body
will do it's best
to get all the bad out
because no matter how hard you try it just keeps finding its way in
when your voice isn't loud enough and words like no
or stop
or please
start feeling like using an umbrella made of newspaper in a thunderstorm.

wastebaskets full of bile and half-digested bits of whatever you had for breakfast
are your nauseous little body's final declaration of
yeah,
**what is happening to me is definitely not ******* okay

when my lips touched yours i knew it was a lie
but you never let me taste the truth.

when i saw you, my thrilled, sparkling eyes
never matched your red, faded ones.

when i traced the curves of your body
you moaned harder than you should have.

when you touched me
i finally felt right

but you were never there when you were with me
so i know that i am still wrong.

when my lips touched yours i knew you were a lie
but all i ever gave you was the truth.

an empty bottle of barefoot wine
lies,
crucified,
in the middle of the sea of plush carpet
you watch her reach slender shaking fingers out
to the thick,
cheap
green glass
and the bottle spins
oh god,
does the bottle spin
to the saccharine nervous laughter of girls still barely children
and before you know it, the battered cork is facing you,
confronting
you.
thin pink lips let out whispers about how "is she gonna kiss a girl?
that's kind of
gross."
and suddenly you're meeting her hazy eyes
and then watching her lips,
wet
from thirty dollar lip gloss and wine stolen from target.
she licks them.
your palms are pressing into the plush beige
leaving stains
when you lift them
to let your fingertips hover around her waist
and then your eyes are closed and
your lips are pressed against hers,
hard.
before you could remember how she tastes,
you're both crouched back down on your
respective spots in the circle
and she laughs
and she says
"i can't believe i did that!

i'm so drunk!"

its late afternoon in the winter and the sun is dripping into the horizon,
the creams golds crimsons making love to each other in the reflections in the snow. the air is frigid and whistles as i push further and further down on the accelerator.
60. 70. 80. 90. 100. 110. the steering wheel is practically vibrating and i have to grip it with both hands to keep it steady, my fingers are turning blue. there are fields and farmers' markets nearly hidden by the walls of snow plowed away earlier today. my knuckles are white, the pool of my ***** in the passenger seat on top looks like it's freezing over on the edges.
my phone is ringing, i know it's not him, i can't look at it anyway. the sun hasn't stopped dripping below the horizon, the glow of my phone lights up the whole car. the radio is playing a song i don't know, it's so loud that i can feel the beat in my heart, but not even my pulse has a sense of rhythm beating ten beats between 1 and 3, my phone is still ringing, i know it's him but i know it's not. the ***** has developed a film, this car is putrid and i am inside of it.

i know i should pull over but i can't get far enough away.

i slow back to 80 and throw up outside of the window, i don't stop.

n n bk bknkj

you're the only one
who's ever made the space between my legs feel so anxious

i just wanna submit to your touch
because your gaze just can't satiate this
need
anymore

you make my jaw tense
and my hands
grasp
at anything i can reach

these unfamiliar feelings
are the only things keeping me
hazy

sift through me

make me quake

when you touch me i want my whole body to
slide into the ridges of your fingerprints
so i can leave parts of me
on everything you love

and i love it when the sun rises now
because
when the light hits the side of your face in that way that it does
i can feel the blood moving through every part of my body

and being alone isn't so bad
when i'm alone with you

and before i could say that i loved you
i wanted so badly to only want you once
(okay twice)
(okay three times)
because i can't
get
enough
and i will always be terrified
you can

and now i get to tell you i love you
whenever
i want
and you're mine
and i am yours
(keep me)

(please keep me)

i feel like such an inconvenience to you
and i love it

i'd **** myself
if i wasn't so sure
you'd use her pain
to get to her

again

her skin is a shade of white not natural
her lips were blue in the morning
she refuses to tell the doctors about
the ******
the blow
the pills
but i tell her that it's okay because
every time i look at her for more than
a few seconds my face gets hot
and not in the way it used to
but in the way that makes you itch

the sunset is hazy through sheer curtains
she hasn't woken up for a few hours
the sunset is hazy
her eyes don't open all the way
the sunset is hazy
and falling away like a broken yolk

her eyes are brown
but when they meet mine
i swear, it's like staring into a kaleidoscope

the way your touch can make all my other senses mute
2. even looking at a photograph of your eyes makes my pulse speed
3. the voice you use when you read poetry out loud
4. your smell
5. how scrunched up your face gets when you laugh really hard
6. your mattress on the floor
7. the way you ******* spoil our shows
8. when you sing along to your songs
9. how deeply you hate and love your friends
10. your love of your mom's cooking
11. every moment with you is a balance of comfortable and exciting
12. you make my heart race constantly
13. the caution in your touch and your voice
14. when you lift one eyebrow
15. how soft your hair is (baby bird)
16. the way you look in your staples uniform
17. how sad you get when you leave me
18. the way you smoke
19. the stacks of letters and journals in your room
20. when you jump out of the window of your truck
21. "i wanna be what you need"
22. you drive so ******* fast and so ******* badly
23. the shoes you wear
24. i have never felt more awake than when i am with you
25. your watch
26. the silly faces you make
27. the way i can't stop ******* adding things to this list

All punching bags, blue razors, sports, meat;
men are fascinating when they gather.

What must it feel like to gain acceptance through *******?
Why do you wanna *** on my face?

There is no tenderness here,
there is no failure.

I love God, because She will always be soft lips,
wide hips and breast tissue,
She kisses me on the mouth after.

Your perfume is Diesel Brave Tattoo, the bottle is shaped like a fist,
and I saw your jaw clench when I called it perfume.


DON'T RELAX.
DON'T BE POLITE TO ME.
DON'T TOUCH ME.
DON'T TOUCH ME.
DON'T TOUCH ME.

EAT MY *****.

i wish i could say
you make me feel
things i never have before

spent virginity:
what if the blood never stops
running

over-sexed middle aged housewife
parisian waif extinguisher 
net kid superstar 
lover of latino boys and tall girls

the first night we kissed
I was keeping track of how many people i tasted 
and I always said you counted
as a lot more than just one

i find you slipping out of the ugliest parts of me
a scar on my thigh everyone thinks is from my dog but was really from your teeth (a different
kind
of beast)
how i can't explain to my parents why i can't go to the airport or the zoo anymore
the hot water that turns my skin pink (i can't feel a thing)
all my friends want to **** me and i let them

for a long time it seemed too easy to give you the blame
how could something that evil
stem from someone who kissed
so
softly?

maybe it was because my mom told me i looked **** when i wasn't even ten years old
maybe it was because my friend christopher told me when a boy kisses you you've won
maybe it was because you distracted me from being in love with someone of the wrong ***
maybe it was because i was too afraid to say no at first

really i know
it was just you

but
why?

you go to bed believing everything will be different
but then you wake up
and nothing
ever
is

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

i am afraid to face you sober.
i don't want to look into eyes that aren't dilated.
don't read me passages from your book about living clean.
i like you when you're high.

when you're sober you don't like me.
when she was sober she didn't like me.
why doesn't anyone like me.

i am not afraid of reality.
i am afraid to be your reality.

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?

you say you love me
and then you say my *** changed your life
every word you say is
like breaking your back slamming an
axe into a tree only to
pull it out and
slam it in again

i can't escape this ego
but ill be ****** if i CANT GET THE **** OUT OF THIS BODY

i wish you would ******* die
so i would have an excuse
to miss you

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

"sit on my lap, grind on me, let me kiss your neck"
"i think maybe we could make each other happy"
"how much"
"you aint a car ** ma, i wanna lay you down in a bed"
"with your hands on me, im more than okay"
"i could write poems about you. i won't, but i could"
"i miss my delicious little girl"
"how much"
"i have pills for you baby"
"this is my first ****** in front of someone"
"i dont love you but i wish i did. i wish i did."
"you taste like raspberries and im starving"
"how much"
"how much"
"how much"

they had to watch you the first night you were there;
your body was shaking and your mind was strained
and the librium wasn't helping.
you sat with me the next day
and I examined your tall,
gangly frame.
your eyes were
the color of a lake in indiana.
you held the door for me
every time
and hid a photograph of your mother
in your plain black sock.
one day
you told me that the drugs
weren't to get high anymore,
they were to get normal.
you cried when I left
and i cried because you cared.
"i'll miss you!
love you"

how do i mourn a concept?
how did i lose something
that was never really there?

cut me a line, tell me it's gonna be okay

hold me until i stop shaking
remind me to eat

cut me a line, lie to me and tell me you'll stay

pull your fingers through my hair
shake me awake, **** me to sleep

cut me a line, tell me i'm going to die

today a little girl
not past the age of seven
told me that she wished
she was like me.

my lungs were suddenly
filled with fire
and in between the
pounding
of my heartbeat
i realized

i cannot remember
that last time
i wanted to be
like me.

even when all you want
is to
trip
trip
trip
i want to catch you when you fall.

even when all  you crave are
needles
needles
needles
i still crave you.

even  when  all you feel
is
cold
cold
cold
you are still new to me.

even when you are gone
i love you.

i love you.

for two years
every day had a purpose:
get more ******.
weeks became punctuated with
Narcan in mcdonalds bathrooms
and breaking your ribs
trying to make you breathe again-
when my hands come down on your chest
i go back to the seventh grade
someone is explaining that birds' bones are hollow because they were born to fly-

why is there such sick pleasure in this?
it was never as simple as wanting to get high-
first day: i can't think of the baby that died I need to get high
second day: I can't think about the boy that ***** me I need to get high
over and over and over
we would make love on the ******,
forgive our faults as soon as we found a vein
sharing a needle, you've been deeper inside of me than anyone-

i'm sober now. moved thirty miles north.
they took you away from me and the ******
my days aren't marked with purpose anymore
it's been fourteen days since I finally thought of the child I'm still scared to mourn
and the boy whose name I am too scared to whisper when I am alone

I have not left my house in fourteen days
and i can't breathe deeply;
I broke my rib on day one

i'm so sick
of hearing you
apologize.

if you
come to me
crying
begging for my forgiveness
and telling me
you're the reason
that i am
****** up
i will
punch
you
in
your
*******
face.

grow up.

n

slurred words of "**** me"
and "that feels nice"
blurry visions of your eyes 
getting a view of the back 
of your head 

people ask why it happened
"I don't know. 
I was high."

is it still an excuse if staying high
was only to feel normal?

deleted

i wish i was brave enough
to write a poem for every person i kissed, ******,
loved.
i wish i could've loved her the way she wanted,
could've made things
easier.
i wish i could stay high for three weeks, three months,
the rest of my life.

thank you
for the wishes
genie.

falling in love

laughing for real full minutes and it doesn’t stop being funny every time i think about it

music loud windows down driving fast alone

jealousy

rage with hitting and screaming

physically too hot

guilt

being almost home

smiling or crying at a painting

right after finishing a really good movie late at night wide awake

having to fight another person physically to stay alive

seeing the person you love the most get really hurt or die

finding out a favorite Facebook friend died from RIP posts

not being able to leave

right after finally being done being mad and crying for hours

high on ******

*** that makes you cry

kissing someone special for the first time

I am so alone that I am choking on it
so many people love me and nobody knows me;

fading tattoos on my body like an epitaph for my heart.

Littered in bruises from people I don't know
but
they might as well be from me.

It's still a better day than yesterday.