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Alexa Jun 2018
i know, i know i'm a *******
i love the sting of your spit on my face

you open your mouth and let words fly.
open your throat any wider and i'll see your tonsils.

every moment, you can only ever be angry with me,
maybe in love the next.

but i envy you for it, the truth's never been mine
though I can't find honesty in the way you say
you've had enough of me.

you won't ever apologize, but I see "I'm sorry" in your eyes,
every time you open the door again

i guess i'm just in love with the way you say goodbye
Alexa Jun 2018
disclaimer: because I started writing about smoking cigarettes but it sounded a lot more like falling in love


i wish i could spit the taste off my tongue as i breathe in,
but it lays stale and heavy in my mouth.
your hand grasps my shoulder, body leaned forward
your lips wrapped around a cigarette and i wonder:
does your mouth taste like my mine?

the smell will never leave this house.
you hold me close on a couch,
breathing air into my smoke.
your hands fumble, drop a torch on an already abandoned floor
and run your fingers through my hair.
i don't mind the smell later, it follows me for days.
for you, it takes three washes
for me to be erased.

my arm barely feels the pain as you flick
your last cigarette at me. the ember fades
into the snow as you walk away.
i've barely finished mine and
for some reason, in the dark
the tension in my lungs
never lets up.


i'm laying in an empty bathtub, fully clothed and
i can't stop yelling out about how much i love:
"i need a cigarette! can I smoke in here? please can I? please."
i can't
and
i grasp the sides of porcelain, weeping for linoleum,
trying to get outside, closer to you
because my mouth tastes like nothing and if
i could get the taste back, maybe i could get the feeling of
you back into my mouth and hands and

when i go outside, no one has a lighter
and i remember you always lit mine.
Alexa Jun 2018
I just hate that parts of me blow away whenever you get blown.
But I get it,
your *** is the only religion I want to be forced to swallow.
Alexa Jun 2018
“Maybe Olive?”
My skin has always been a canvas for someone else’s violence and frustration. Bruises only highlight the depth of skill from hangers, brushes, belts, hands, and fists. Each leave a color wheel on my flesh.  Later I never shied away from pain. Inflicting patterns of geometric shapes on my wrists, indicates a lack of creativity. All it ever got me was red and red and red. I poured the color into my vision and when my hands shook while enduring the pain, I felt red acrylic paint singing in my veins. It paved the path to grey. Now charcoals shade in color on cheeks. No fingers mold the structure of my body. I become shapeless, dirtying the mouths that try to breathe life into a sculpture destined to collapse. Shoddy past craftsmanship finally bringing the imperfections to light. The vicious clay dries and cracks, dusting and crumbling. Idle as it wait for a new artist to make it whole or get rid of the project completely. Make room for a fresh canvas, maybe then I’ll remember the hue of my own skin.
Alexa Jun 2018
My successful cousins' vessels have been gentrified

though they’ve always had blue eyes 

so maybe that’s what was bound to happen.

Their tawny skin tone could always be explained

by a well-placed tan or an out of the blue vacation.

The only thing that gives them away is their last names 

and their parents hid them behind their firsts. 

The language that should be as familiar to them as
worn down shoes
 is muddled,
diluted by misplaced vowels and consonants.
And I’m no hypocrite,
my tongue has trouble forming 
similar words
yet they’ve never sounded wrong in my mouth.
Alexa Jun 2018
Cigarettes and you
are one in the same.
Inhaling your scent is so very deadly;
To my heart instead
of my lungs.
Though I can’t
seem to get enough of either.
Regarding my head,
the thoughts that seem to swell
when you're near, disappear with the smoke.
Two addictions that
I can’t shake off.
Alexa Jun 2018
I say your name like a prayer. It protects me from conversations that I can’t bear to hear, to rehash with myself or others. I can’t write it without unloading reverence into syllables and letters. I praise vowels for the ease they provide to your name and abhor them in the same breath. It is far too easy to let it slip off my tongue, an eternal mantra. I have no control over words that spill past my lips.
           I’m condemned to a phrase for the rest of my life. And the only complaint I have is that I wish you had a prettier name. Or maybe one less biblical. Sanctimonious. Transcendent. It keeps lifting me up and pulling down, down to where I’m forced to gaze upon it as a savior. Pleading to get me out a world where your name doesn’t mean everything. I can’t bear to be somewhere your aphorisms aren’t holy. Take me Home, where your words are ambrosia. The only food I will ever need.
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