Throughout our childhood, our grandmother would turn to us,
in her yellow-lit kitchen, brandishing a rubber spatula or meat
tenderizer to warn us against falling to temptation. She’d witnessed
too many good people disappear into what she called
a consumption of the soul,

              and as my cousins licked sugary batter off their spoons,
no one could have known that one day the candy-coating
would melt from their eyes to see their mother
for what she had done the last six years that now showed in her trembling hands, glossed vision, and a temperament that splashed into anger, flowed into melancholy as easily as she had found herself downing bleary bubbles at the brim of a precipiced fountain.
She was promised her very own message in a bottle, and this keep-sake

manifested in cousin Libby’s dreams, floating down a wine river
that gushed from the slashes in her mother’s wrists. Somehow I knew
these nightmares were born from warm and heady “sleep well”s
mumbled from across the darkest of rooms which held so many glass
ghouls with names and strengths so real, they even scared

my grandmother into silence as she stirred the pecan pie for Easter dinner. She offered to let me lick the spoon clean, but I simply
asked for straight sugar instead.

Every single time we go to your car to light up a cap or a bowl
that never leaves us with nothing, we can feel something, even if it’s just the stinging in our fingertips as we draw ships and cats
on the windows, convinced we could make masterpieces
if we really wanted to. When we finally gather enough ambition to move inside, I sit on a couch somewhere and think about how my life
has led to a moment like this and I question every insecurity, every decision, and every conviction, but I just can’t get over how nice
it would be to taste cake or cream cheese bagels right now
and eventually we end up watching the same shows with the same people who make the same mistakes every single episode and it really does remind me of that video you showed
me with the disturbing sitcom theme song that never ended,
and that’s what this night is all about.

Disregard my silent replies, I’m listening,
I just keep staring in the mirror and wondering if lacquered eyes
and lazy expressions are what you think looks good
on me because whenever you look at me, I try to focus on your face before you kiss over my ribs and I take my socks off
because there’s safety in socks and maybe that’s why we feel
such a devastation when they can’t be found. I’ve lost mine in your
room and I think maybe that stands for something, but here’s the thing:
I just don’t understand why everything you do makes me so nervous.

TRIGGER WARNING*

They met at a dance recital.

His eerie blue eyes watched her, stalked her,
riveted by sinewy skin and the way her legs stretched and parted
skillfully, seductively: she knew how to captivate her audience.

They had mutual friends.

Her curiosity thirsted for more, for she had been taken
over by an empty lust, broken by another, but the way he spoke:
she felt as pretty as his charms sounded.

They went on a date.

He kissed her, pinched her, and spread those legs
that comprised his fantasies, not caring about the bruises he left
when he took off her lacey coverings, pinning her to the floor.

They learned more about each other.

She saw the empty, carnal look in his eyes, but her pleas
and shoves were not enough to lessen the weight of him, to push
his hands or his hips away, as he broke her over and over again.

They ended the night with a kiss.

He grabbed her face like a starving man grabs his first meal,
forcing an intimacy she could never get back, but he said,
“You liked it, didn’t you.”

They kept in touch.

She tried blocking his calls, his messages, asking her if she’d
come over to his place. Like the continuous force he prodded her with,
the pounding in her head beat out a thumping heart-line of no’s.

Standing on the scenic overlook,
(the one just a few miles out)
the city lights shine brighter than stars--
multicolored luminescence burning
its image on the insides of my eyelids,

and you, who drove me here,
(some 3AM adventure created
from a series of “I-don’t-know”s)
inch closer to the precipice,
sinking knee-deep in snow before
facing me with eyes that seem
backlit by street lamps and 24-hour signs.

You told me how you so loved
the feeling of being awake and alone,
while the city slept and yet--
I felt only loneliness,
stinging silence scratching marks,
my ribs battered from working
too hard, and I could feel them
cave in beneath solidarity’s weight--

alone, though you stood beside me
speaking of snowflake matters
that melted as they touched my ears,
your words dripping into my hair,
wasted on a mind preoccupied
with retrospective tunnel-vision:

First: the morning I woke to find my mother
screaming and stomping loud,
her plate broken on the carpet and
when she left, my father’s eyes, they
turned to sea-glass as he stood blank
(gone, I suppose, in a different way),
leaving me responsible for my little sister,
who hid behind the corner.

Then: the time I found my little sister
crying into my jersey-knit sheets and
asking me to help her skip school--
she couldn’t bear to face the boys
whose uninvited touch lingered
painful on her adolescent skin
(self-inflicted cuts would appear
in the following months)--
the memory drowned with whiskey and ***.

Later: my mother’s cancer--
no, liver failure that nearly killed
everyone who waited in the white-walled
hospital, bad food sour on our tongues,
stomachs cramping hard as if we felt
the surgery deep inside our own livers--
and I with my classwork, face buried,
because no one should see me cry.

I suppose the sandbag solidarity fell upon me
in parts, dragged me from lofty childhood,
each moment a simultaneous end and beginning
to all that followed and held me far behind--
further still, though you stand only
one foot away from me, near enough to reach
(and I can imagine my hand outstretched)--
somehow the cityscape seems closer.

My friend Ana has many followers.
She feeds us promises and fills our dreams
when we cannot, will not, sate the cries
of our bodies because those are easy to hush
during the din of day, but not in the void,
night when

my friend Ana comes through a glowing
screen in the form of thigh gaps, community forum posts,
and calorie counting apps where our intake dwindles,
anticipating the moment we take in the waist of  our skirts
so maybe that boy with the blue-jean eyes notices
our size 0 because on a scale of 1 to 10, we don’t fit.

My friend Ana remains forever in our minds,
teaching us to listen to our inner strength as muscle tone
ebbs, seething when we reach for some bread, but loving
the sweat-drenched skin as we run nowhere on a treadmill that we believe leads to a salvation as perfect as the symmetry of ribs—

of cheekbones that jut out from a thin and beautiful face
which smiles at muted murmurs and falls as I look
in the mirror at bodies shaped so divine, you might see
premature grace because
Ana never dies.

Talking to my God
mutes the background of worldly idolatries,
voices that whisper of fear and hate and jealousy
and box me in until I’m stuck
in a dark corner of my ghoul-filled soul,
but the light that gleams from my heart
up to my closed lids finds me
walking on water to answer the call of the Lord,
for I cannot drown in the river of my sorrows
when He raises my chin and shows me the way
to an eternal place that will lift my spirit
if I raise my hands in worship.
I’d rather ask forgiveness
from that Savior in the Sky who listens to a sinner’s
valley-ramblings than shun the thirst for hope in this world,
even if it means chasing pride with holy water.

Talking to my God,
and the praise pours out, smoother
than the oil that blessed me as I stood
before my friend, our heads bowing
not from the shame that men forced upon us,
the lights we’ve lost and the suffering that broke us,
but from a conviction that resides in our hearts:
*Let us love one another, for love is from God.

Desks and chairs and messy hair
Student rankings, must compare.
Always having something due--
Wake up at eight, slept at two.

Coffee, Red Bull, I need more
To push through my every chore.
My health and sanity is growing ill,
But all I need is an Adderall pill.

"It will be worth it in the end," I'm told,
But this college thing is getting old.
Always working and losing sleep
Because I have straight As to keep.

"Amazing essay," "Good job!" they say,
But they don't know of the price I pay.
They never listen to what I need or want
Unless it's in Times New Roman, 12 pt font.