what scared me the most
is that those few moments before i could tell for sure
when i couldn't tell if the problem was inability to find
a pulse or a vein-
the weak, venomous veins-
were the only few moments that were still quiet
because nothing has seemed to stop since then
the screaming hasn't stopped since then
the screaming hasn't stopped since i started it

it could've been her

she comes back into the room
completely naked
and she doesn't say anything
and neither do i
she just sort of

stands there

for a minute

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

a rose by any other name would smell as sweet

dear percocet,

i love you, destroy me.
leave me breathless, leave me light
rip the inhibition away along with my sadness,
you are a highway full of toll roads  i'll never get off of
with a very clear, dark destination
(you're worth it)
someone on the internet said that love is defined by sacrifice

what wouldn't i give?

"Percocet can slow or stop your breathing. An overdose can be fatal."

the peonies in the front yard are just starting to bloom.

the only thing i lust for anymore is sleep.
my fingers are aching to touch another human being,
and when a woman lugging around her child
in a stroller asked me the time,
i dropped the package i'd been collecting
from the post office
while fumbling for my phone.
i cried on the way home,
and applied a thick coat
of red lipstick.
thinking perhaps the camouflage of confidence
would hide the fact that i am merely
wilting husk of vapidity.

the peonies in my yard will die
in six weeks.

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.

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

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.

should i shave my head female
symptoms of a psychotic break
amber rose twerks to *** drop
hot bald women
how to will your hallucinations away
should i shave my head quiz
what does it mean if i can't feel anything again
borderline personality disorder and psychotic breaks
bipolar disorder and psychotic breaks
ptsd and psychotic breaks
jeremih down on me
facebook
overcoming bitterness ptsd
how to force yourself to stick to the goals you set
malaria
tegan and sara walking with a ghost
sad people smoking cigarettes youtube
******* myself and not make anyone sad

I feel calmest kissing strangers,
gently edging their head closer to mine,
tongue crashing against their lips
like full tides against a shore
and hand on their thigh.
I feel safest popping pills,
knowing the way my head will feel like
a balloon that has been let go.
I feel free when the silly boys
pull a ****** on and look at me like I am holy
while they *** inside of the cosmos between my legs.
I'd rather be reckless than restless,
I'd rather be full of the wrong things than empty.

"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.

Did it make you feel good
to give a girl twelve years your junior
enough ******
to **** her?

Does it get you hard
when you see her
fall back,
susceptible to you?

Did it make you feel like a man
to make her blood
almost as toxic
as you?

How do you fall asleep at night?

everyone needs
to leave me alo
ne because it hu
rts me too look
at them and I d
on't know wher
e I am and the
bed reeks of s
ex and laundry
detergent and
when I die will
my hair be stra
ightened? mak
e up my own fu
cking lyrics and
cry a lot and c
ount my allies
on my fingertip
s when did eve
ryone start hati
ng me?? am I
going to hell? i
s this hell? mu
sic isn't beaut
iful anymore b
ecause of you,
you ******* fu
ck why do I ev
en bother with
you why did I
even talk to yo
u you were alm
ost as ****** a
s I am!!! I'm sca
red to stick it t
o the man

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

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!"

maybe it was your brooding eyes
maybe it was your veins
maybe it was the fact that i can't stop imagining you with
your hands scraping at my back
because when i'm with you,
i can't help but feel like i'm radiating


visions of you running your lips down my back
keep me awake
and i can't ******* sit still
let me taste your ivory skin
let me feel your eyelashes under my lips
because, ****, without you i suffer

and i'm greedy with my touch
because i can't seem to get enough of you
no matter how much i grab
bite
kiss
lick

even thinking about this makes me shiver
**** me with no regret

Your face is tattooed on the inside of my eyelids,
I take your words like medication,
your scent of sunflowers and thunderstorms is so clear to me that
I pretend it lingers on my skin.

Visions of linoleum floors
soaked in your blood;
needles lying on the ground,
your body shaking and taken away
haunt me.
The possible future is filling
my nightmares and I don't know
how to tell you to stop.

You are my drug of choice
but I wish you'd change yours.

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.

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

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

Home was having my best friend
hold my hair back
because I'd had one too many shots.

Home was listening to him
play a combination of notes
that told the stories of lovers' pasts.

Home was kissing a beautiful dark-haired girl
and laughing because
her saliva tasted like sativa.

Home was a place of sunshine,
peasant skirts, reggae.
Boys covered in dreadlocks smiling up at me from their yoga.

Home was falling asleep
on Vicodin
and sadness.

but now I am just lost.

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

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

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

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.

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?

it feels like the skin is at war with itself,
fingernails as artillery,
and i hear them whispering like these pinprick bullet wounds
aren't critical until i can feel the pain-
but there is a bomb that will go off inside of me

i can feel the clock ticking down inside of me so loud i am vibrating,
it's so loud you can see my hands shaking

and bruises bloom like flowers on the cemetery my body is becoming
and i can feel my blood being replaced with embalming fluid

"stop this" i moan,
and she says back, "just stop yourself"

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

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.

*****.

lines of blue
and indigo
drawn just under your skin.
the beginning sketch
of a human.
pumping your
sustenance all
the way
to
your fingertips.
hide the tip of a needle
in them.
our hearts beat
in synonymy.
i love your veins
even when you make them
collapse.
i love you
when you collapse.

I do not bite my fingernails
at the thought of you
crawling back and infecting me;
I refuse to be your host.

I will flick you away
like ashes
and you will burn
and crumble
in the wind.

I will not let you touch me.
I will drown you.

You will be gone.

I am here. I am here. I am here.

you cut the brown boy
into two lines while i roll a dollar bill
you're telling me about how i should let you shoot up
just once
so you can know what it's like.
i loved the way ****** tasted, the way it felt sitting in my nose.
unlike blow or pills, you don't let it drain into your throat
it just sits there
and pushes into you.
you cut the brown boy
and when we snort it it tastes like sugar
sweeter than the coke cut with B12 that had me up all night
and i can taste it all over my body
like the sour sweet is pacing through my body to the beating of my heart
i feel it in my arms
i feel it in my nose
i feel it between my legs.
i felt so warm, and then i was on top of you.
kissing on your neck and grinding on your lap, i can feel your heartbeat and it is so
s
l
o
w.
the sun is setting outside
and your skin is ignited with the orange flame.
you taste like cherries and cucumbers and ******.
the warmth is even brighter when you are inside of me,
i am holding you so close that i'm scared if we go still we will just
melt into each other.
"i love you
i love you
i love you" we whisper back and forth;
you grip my hands while i ***

we're outside for a cigarette in your car
we're going to go buy some molly in a city far away
your eyelids are still sagging
and everything is still so slow
i can see the yellow of the nicotine in the smoke.

whenever i have *** it feels like
i am subletting my body to fingers
and mouths and
genitals
every gentle touch reminds me
of how i am
******* beautiful,
a bombshell,
suicide blonde,
a perverted venue
surrounded by a thorny cage of ***** hair.

every time our eyes meet,
i can feel you walking the tightrope
between living out the torture **** fantasies you have
and falling in love with me.

whenever i have ***,
i scratch your back until i can feel
the skin come off and under my fingernails

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

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

spent virginity:
what if the blood never stops
running

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

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?

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.

7:06
bringing a new weight to the words "high and dry,"
she crushes ten 0.5 milligram pills of xanax with the **** end of a spoon,
puts half of it up her nose, mixes the rest into a bottle of water along with a koolaid packet.

8:47
bringing a new weight to the words "high and dry,"
she pulls three more pills from an empty lipstick tube in her bag,
chases them with her koolaid xanax cocktail and checks her email:
for every day that she doesn't change her underwear, she makes twenty dollars,
mrsympatico@gmail.com tells her.

9:32
bringing a new weight to the words "high and dry,"
she snorts three more fat discolored lines in a public bathroom with her best friend.
her friend crushed the pills with a pen that clicked every time she pressed down;
breathe in fast and hold your ******* breath.

10:15
bringing a new weight to the words "high and dry,"
she takes her last pill of the day.
today has cost her at least thirty dollars
as she makes a career out of killing herself.