& i can fix

a million things
[and your heart is one of them]

i can make you tea
make you breakfast
brush your hair
kiss your forehead
& tell you it’s all going to be

o

k

i can wrap my arms and legs around you
and crush you with empathy
let my tears drip down your forehead like anointing oil
or holy water
i can baptize you in a hundred things, i can burn you and
create anew from the ashes in my arms

i can let you fill my bones with your tears
my heart with your heartbreaks
my lungs with your sobs
my insides with your hurt

i can make you a thousand salves
and a hundred tinctures to keep you from hurting
but i can’t fix myself.

I want to fly to Neverland

But like hook

The  crocodile

with his Stomach full of my past

Always follows

Tick-tocking

No matter where I go

i’m that girl

the girl who looks   good

U
N
D
E
R
the dark
     Under the guise of too many shots
That girl
            who will make you come in her mouth But never come over
That girl
            you can **** but can’t Call
That girl
            the one who will ******* like your ****** is the center of her universe, the sum of her self worth, the essence of her being
but can’t hold hands with in
                                       public I’m
                                                    that girl

But I’m also THAT girl.

The girl who believes in a revolution of thought in body that girl who will

NEVER
let you define her worth, her ****’ worth, or her ******’s worth.

THAT girl who will spit flames or warrior women in your mouth at any suggestion
that women are the ‘weaker ***’

THAT girl who will always answer

                                            catcalls with

                                          a

                                             * ROAR

THAT girl.

I’m a feminist with a chipped shoulder, a chip that has been worked at and worked at by boys
               like

                      you*

boys made of salt and misogyny

boys who “are apologies that should have been made to women long ago”

boys that have made me what I am.

& maybe that’s why you thought I wasn’t good enough—

because I am THAT girl.

& in these moments
after sitting in a dripping wet and muggy forest
the world seems okay.
my decisions seem right
and all my hopes are in bloom.

i am selfish in my adoration
                 - in my observation
as if this light, this moon is
mine&
mine alone.
as if no other being is looking upon same
face as i
as if this face is put on just for me.
as if she is my mother and she has no daughter quite as grand as i.

i bottle her clear, unlying light with my
eyes &
hide those bottles away deep my
                                                      chest
somewhere close to my heart so few may see it.

her beams are a lullaby sweeping over mountain ridges
that i like to pretend only i can hear as she sings over the
loud whispering of the trees.
i like to think that i am sole and secular in being bathed in her
spectacular, white-gold luminescence.
her engulfing gaze is the emanating heat of my blankets, encompassing me like a child.
i do not share this warmth- no,
no instead i wrap it tightly around me, i burrow down within it
and let it dissolve the cold of the world untouched by her light.
her light keeps the true night away—
even the creatures who ride the wind, howling and furious still.
they skitter around her;
quiet and heavy with awe as if they know they are in her territory and their kind are not welcome there.

her grandeur is not to be shared nor looked upon by unworthy eyes.
it would be vain to think that no other shall gaze up at her as i do
                                   but i shall be vain.
i shall be vain and i shall try to trap her essence within my veins to keep
the undeserving away.
i am gluttonous with her abundant shine &
in quiet, lonely moments like this i {selfishly}
like to think
that she is smiling just for me.

he snaps his barbed jaws made of thin sticks— you know
the kind that
SNAP and CRACK ominously underfoot when the woods have grown too
quiet, too calm, for all to be well
teeth gnashing— this the sound of dead leaves skittering against pavement and river rocks at dusk (that time when you need to settle down and get a fire started, but you’re not quite sure of where you are)
              homeless
wandering the woods in search for something he will never find
hysterical, eternally lost his

eyes

are the dim, barely there glow of camp fires that go out too early
fingers the cold that creeps around the base of your sleeping bag and along your neck
cheek bones the sun-bleached sides of mountains
his voice is the unrecognizable call from some animal you cannot identify in the depths of the woods, but not so deep that you cannot imagine it coming towards you. not so deep that the sound doesn’t make your hair stand on end.

his feet are bound with the ghost skins of snakes that lurk under rocks, darting out only when you have one foot precariously balanced on its side.

he travels — howling and yowling like some hell cat out of deep
mountain lore— starved, half crazed, ravenous
fever hot and parched
his mouth a voracious, vacuous, vorpal cave
that leads down into his river stomach— that part of the river you thought was deep, but revealed its true nature with the electric sting of broken legs after jumping.
his howl is the pounding of the wind at your tent
angry hands running broken glass claws against your skin as you walk against it.

he is jealous of those who wonder the wood for he has no true home.
his ribs the skeletons of eerie, too thick mountain laurel trees and the hollow shells of long fallen oaks.
the light of the moon burns his moth-wing skin on nights when the forest is full of her radiance. so he yowls, furious and powerless
rattling and shaking his bones — the dead arms of trees that stretch out over too steep mountains, acid burnt and raw

his name could have been pestilence to the christians
but only the Natives know his name and only whisper it lowly
and on nights when the wind is calm and he cannot hear their summons—
Windigo.

his only purpose is that he has none.
his motivation is endless hunger
that is older than the mountain itself-
or maybe it was born with the mountain…
he in his rabid madness has long forgotten the origin of his emptiness.
he is hungry, and you are in his wood.

sometimes the hardest part of the day can be waking up

i went up like five
and down like ten more
world spinning head on the
                                               floor

hands shakingshakingshaking like wind blown leeeeaaaaaavvvvesssss

twice wasn’t enough, but the third time is always the charm—

i’m saving that for another day.

i’ve flirted with death

called him up on a tuesday
whispered sweet nothings— or maybe sweet somethings—
to him while his parents were asleep in the next room.
we cast devious glances at one another from over a bowl filled with
***** and blood, he knowing tonight would not be

the night

because I wasn’t ready— not yet anyways.

it was the loudest and most quiet moment of my life
my hands like the weights of Ma’at ten pills in one
nothing in the other

the world feels so different now
like i am playing with some otherworld
watching them watching me
waitingwaitingwaiting
on me to stop playing pussyfoot with the last round

i’m moving and i guess that means i’m living

i’m living so i guess i should be moving, but all i want to do

is

sleep.

i’ve set fire and doused it with gasoline
i’m burning and i guess as long as you’re
burning you’re alive.

but sometimes waking up in the morning can be good
it can put a wicked animal grin on your face
mouth full of broken glass and breath a chemical fire
as you wonder
if that didn’t **** me
what will?

death didn’t catch me
district twelve wins again