I am twenty-one years old and
I have saved two lives—
a girl whose throat closed despite her
and a boy who thought he had no other choice.
By all accounts, I am
a heroine,
a savior,
some divine-palmed human spread thin
among peers who are the same. The same—
who fear the dark as fully as I
and need the quiet, sometimes,
when the din of all the mouths talking at once
becomes more heavy than loud.
Be gentle, love, approach me slowly—
do not touch my shoulder when
my eyes turn to glass and
know that I hate to be hugged
because your arms will trap my fear somewhere
within me.
I suppose there’s a reason no one writes
what happened to Odysseus
and how the gods felt after their story ended.

I don't remember how we started talking
I don't remember becoming friends
I don't remember when I started using
Stupid words that I would never use
I don't remember how it started
I don’t remember when that smile got me
I don't remember falling in love
I don’t remember
I remember talking about the boys you
Chased
I remember holding you as the same
Boys made you cry
I remember coming over just to ******* life
I remember doing anything to make you smile
I remember watching us break apart
I remember you finding him
I remember falling in a hole
I remember the pain seeing you with him
I remember wishing it was me
I remember

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.

Love got drunk one day
And slipped away as quickly as it came.
Leaving impressions and marks and a ******* memory
Why did it have to do that?

He told me
Perhaps the brightest insight
To human history
Since Copernicus Said
Hey maybe
We’re not so important
That the world
(literally)
Revolves around us
But perhaps it is us
Who revolve around the world
(as it should be.)
What my Copernicus said was
Individualism
Is the single most sign
Of continual human progress.
That without it
We just become droids
Or peons
Or mindless beings
Without sentience
Without intelligence
Without the single most important vocabulary word
“Why?”

You can see why he intrigued me.

Ever-going quest to
Make love stay.
Slipping out of my suitcase
Man it was cramped in there
I looked up
And saw my name written in the sky.
*******.
Always finding new ways
To tell the world
What we are
And what we could be
If I cashed in my chips
And went all-in
For just one hand.

Tears came
Hanging ten on the edge of eyes
Refusing to fall
Uncertain of their plight
So they do what people do
When they are scared
And they freeze.

It crushed me to know
I’ve cashed in my chips
One too many times
He thought I’m incredible
When really
I’m un-credible.

Love didn’t stay.
It took the next flight to Vegas
To gamble some other poor soul’s life
Leaving me
To look up a nameless sky.

"Just until I'm thin enough"*
She will say until the day that she is nothing but a bag of brittle bones.

Counting calories, telling lies
She'll keep this up until she dies.
Empty eyes, empty stomach, empty heart, empty mind;
What I've become is enough to drive myself mad
Empty, empty, empty. I'm nothing but sad.
So here it is girls, the rumors were true
I try so hard to be as skinny as you.
A monster, A *******, empty, empty girl;
I'm killing myself with my poor mental health.
Starving for beauty, beauty is pain
My head hurts so bad, I'm going insane.
Clutching my ribs, my thighs caving in
They were right--
Anorexia wins.

I'm a white, male,
American dreamsicle
who says "****"
way too much
to not be cool.

I read about my father issues
on my mother's face.
I hate things and people
because the news told me to.
Art is ****** and ****** is art;
when Billy killed Sue,
my heart raced.
Do drugs with me
or do none at all;
promise me when we're high
we won't fall.

There are ******* on the street
and the cops are shooting them.
There are ******* kissing
and old, white men are scared.
There are mentally ill people
and they are "seeking attention".
There are women with voices
and old, white men are scared.

I am an American Dreamsicle:
cold, unhealthy, and killing your kids.
You can buy me for 40% off
and I promise to take 60% of your ideals.
I am what my parents don't want me to be
and that is the appeal.
Little do I know, I am every thing you are
and that is my cancer.

I walked into the laundry room
to a couple folding into each other.
Her chartreuse camisole and his
evergreen boxers pined for a bough
break in the noise of twenty-something
cents rattling in the dryers.  
They talked about peeling off
and sorting each other's skin layers
by darks and lights, trying to find
a neutral blush they could blend on.  

My towels had three minutes
left on the spin cycle, so I walked past them into the dim-lit room, took
a seat on a dryer, and turned around
to face the cream brick wall and
pipes cutting on a diagonal, dividing
it into lights and darks.