When I fall for a guy
it's like
doing ******.

Barely eating
because he turns
my stomach inside
out
when he kisses me
with tongue (and he knows it).

Restless sleeping
because I hear
my skin begging
him to touch me (and he knows it).

I trace lustful
track marks,
reveling in the ravaged
fallout
but ignoring

the dark hollows
under my eyes
and ribs poking out
from crop tops--
they don't bother me

so naturally

my friends give
a full length Ted Talk
on "Being Independent:
Don't Get Attached and
Give Him Everything He Wants 101"

Family doesn't even ask
but tell me he's not
good
enough,
handing out cryptic warnings
like condoms from the RA
that isn't worth listening to.

So naturally

I ruin their interventions
with sleepover
sexcapades that not
even a wine-drunk
binge can fool
me into thinking is real.

His pretty words whispered
into my ear
are needles
into my arm--facilitating
illusions that are
just
delusions.

For My Cousin Jason*

I hide behind the shed in my backyard hoping to smoke
long, lingering grief away, imagining how you float
among back-lit clouds because I refuse
to remember how your body must have flung
into our grandparents' mint-rimmed pool that you claimed
was a sanctuary, I couldn't have believed the coroner's
conclusion, judging the crack in your skull--

            a suicide.

5:37 AM. Your mom found you face down, surrounded
by strange black waters--

           your blood

in barely-there morning sun, making us wonder
why you chose a late night swim to clear your hazy
brain where ship-wrecked joy drifted to the unperturbed
floor of a soul too weak to surface from hideous ocean-sized distortions we never would have found within lined-spine
daydream books of childhood. Even then I knew

          escapes

were your thing: and I wish I had sent a makeshift summer
reading list or voiced some pep talks when I had writer's block
at two in the morning because then I'd know if you wanted
to find your grave in a shallow end.

My last memory of…you
I drove all the way through town, chain-smoking through half
my pack as I burned deep inside from stoking the ashed embers of a fire
I had attempted to smother before it burned us both out after it had licked

Its way up my whole body—

But I reveled in how it ate me from the
deepest
inside while I let the tobacco
consume the healthy volume of my lungs leaving me breathless which I prayed
would either make you notice the red in my cheeks
or make you worry about me
in contrast from the systematic silence that had deafened our
friendship and scarred
any possibility of our future, but
when I got there you told me to drop the habit so it didn’t linger in my hair.
You also pointed out where the butts had rubbed away my lipstick and with a look that made
me want to smack
you across the face, but
also crush your lips
with mine because it
deepened your gaze
and sharpened your jaw
instead I said I’d gladly put the rest on you. Your friends, the Miss Priss Brigade,
saw chipped nail polish and slightly dull skin and last summer’s leftovers and I knew

we’d never end up
unfiltered and imperfect in the barely industrialized studio flirtingly touching
and kissing and dreaming and enchanting ourselves with the what-ifs of a future
we saw through wine glasses worn

by teenagers who didn’t know love from illusion.

I sit on our recliner,
Luna bar wrapper on the floor.
My robe is cinched
too tight, a reminder--
your fingers should meet
around my waist, but my ****
and *** should spill out of your palms
because defined curves and wiles
are the definition of a divine
woman worthy of insta-fame,
tumblr posts, and right
swipes.

I'll twist and turn and pose
in front of any mirror, desperate
for a flat-planed stomach and fuller
cleavage, the whole time
wondering if you look at me bent
over the bathroom counter, fixing my eyeliner,
and think that I'm a dime disguised
in a size 0 dress.

If my sides could shrink as fast
as my self-esteem, I'd never crunch
my abs into idealistic numbers again.