when it's dark i can light a
candle & drink the wax
with the can of my first beer,
how stupid didn't i realize
it was your mouth all along.

when it's night i can wish
upon a shooting star & bury the
remaining flame in
my neck, like how you
did with your breath.

let me hold your hands, taste your lips
one last time. press your body
against mine, one last time.
dig me like a child
even if it hurts, or feels gross.

am i too heavy, am i trying to
pole dance on a mcdonald's straw?
i shouldn't have gone away
even if you'd told me to,
i should've clung to you oh

even more, even more.

xvi. where do you go when your house isn't home?

i ******* crawl out of my body, swim infinite miles of the ocean, stretch my neck to the skies, replace my head with the moon. i ******* yearn for your presence, try to break the mirror with my weak stare, can't go further, fitting room doesn't fit whatsoever, all the buttons escape from my ***** and hair falls like tiny dandelions in a rainstorm.
i grow potatoes in my mouth, when i speak i smell of my root, when i am on my period i talk about stomachache at dinner table, when i search for space my tummy is the balloons at pingkan's 8th birthday party which i couldn't bring home. blow the candles i forgot to make a wish for a moment the fate seems seamless, bright red lipstick, brown mascara, outfits i can't ever wear to school, or to be honest, not anywhere because when i try to walk, every step is a ******* hysterical cry, when i use my toes every cell in my body violently shakes.
my house isn't home. my house isn't home. my house isn't home. my house isn't home. my house isn't home how do you know that? how did you barge into my clichés? how dare you claim something that even i won't bring myself to think about?
i ******* crawl out of my body, not as soon as possible, i do it right now, right ******* now so i know the years i've spent trying to nourish the flesh i don't really own are worthless, the years i've devoted myself to my worldly lover are the ones that have been consuming my tiny soul, if you ask me now of course no one is satisfied, no one is satisfied until i don't want to call you mine anymore.
i ******* crawl out of my body.
in a desperate attempt to make the hideous pleasing to watch, i sell blindfolds on the street, i light the matches in the rain, i dream of dead grandmother and christmas feast. i turn into a cold statue, i left the tenderness for stupid microorganisms, my divorced bones blame me for everything i did not do. i used to do the right things now i just do nothing, it's ******* useless anyway, i can blink five thousand times and still believe that time is what the clocks and calendars say. (my grandmother was a buddhist.)
i ******* crawl out of my body. i don't want to experience this anymore, i am not into this kind of thing, i long for your presence, all i've got from this building is an infinite count of absences. my body is a building, it has no level, no room, no door, no window, no furniture. my body a giant concrete boring box, i do not even live there anymore, nobody lives there anymore, they are all gone to a poppy field in the middle of nowhere (actually somewhere, only that i am not invited). i ******* crawl out of my body, did that answer your question?
i ******* crawl. out. of. it.

they're saying "all you do is drink and cry", "I think you're bad for everyone" and you're not saying anything and I'm saying I love you,
I ******* love you
And maybe I needed something to bring me back to reality maybe these bathtubs are always a little too deep for me but I fit so perfectly in small spaces because I learned when I was 14 that i was never gonna grow into a butterfly
but my aunt still calls me hers and I'd still flutter my eyelashes on yours while the earth turned to ash because I like things ending so softly
and you are a ******* miracle if I've ever seen one I want to sleep with you so badly, on a trampoline in the summer and I want to watch you do bad things and smile so sweetly at you and you'll know that I don't give a **** what you do as long as you're still loving me while you're doing it because baby we've got this one life and I've been loving you as long as I have known what love is and I know it's in the way you whisper and I know it's in the way you say you're my world and if the world stopped turning tomorrow we'd be the only things still moving with excitement you make me so nervous and calm and nervous and calm and deep breath you make me nervous I bet you'll make me nervous when we're older and I'm making you pancakes and I feel your eyes on me and I burn my fingers but you always kiss them better baby
you're an alleyway and the kitten that sleeps there
you're the rain on the windowpane and the water breaking the levee
I'm drowning in everything I have ever said to you so if I say one last thing one last thing,
while you're not saying anything,
I love you,
I ******* love you

the cool of the winter
does nothing to keep us from panting
and sweating,
our bodies tangled in heated kisses.
the chill of his hands
and the warmth of my hips do not divide,
they multiply and i'm sure that if the sun
and the moon could come together
to make one noise,
it would sound like his voice.
you'd think the stars in the sky
would be brighter than his smile
but even sirius can't outshine him.
his eyes are filled
with planets
that have not yet been discovered
and stars that shine
ten times brighter than the sun;
his body is a galaxy
that i'm not scared to get lost in.

I once said I was on cloud nine, but who's counting, anyways? I would, but, you see, I have too many things to tell you at once, more than I can count one one or two or six thousand hands - even still, the sun in your hair is doing a pretty good job of saying the words that they haven't made up for you yet. In my mind, the world would be happier it they'd stop looking for heaven in the sky because the universe that exists where my fingertips stop and your skin starts is not clothed in all white and there are no pearly gates but in this small fraction of a moment, nobody is dying. In some way, something taught us to tilt our heads back and stare at the starry expanse of the celestial universe above us as though we were looking for the answers to every thing we've ever been to afraid to ask but, in my peripheral vision, something about you glittered and my neck was tired from staring and calling out to whatever existed beyond our world and getting a divine busy tone, it was nice to see something beautiful in these human realms, for once. So if there is room to buid even the smallest shelter in the spaces between the small spaces in your teeth, I promise to construct one out of gentle words; if there was a scripture to make the veins under your skin sing praises a little louder, then I would write and rewrite the Bible until my hands bled. Just let me be the reason you are hungry but do not starve, let me show you the way that a body can unfold without crumpling first; I will trace a pattern onto your skin without so much as a single sound, but still, it could, perhaps, be something close to music.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.
For it no longer echoes in my ears, in my fingers,
in my tongue. These endless digits fallen instantaneously
numb like a local anesthetic or winter basement nights
alone in the dark.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.
It's melodic tones and overtures, the way it wraps
around words like my hands around your curves.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.
And how I fed on it like the word of God.

This is the day I forget the sound of your voice.

I wrote you eight poems. They tasted like ground-up cinnamon.
The lights came, I told them I had nothing else to write.
When they laughed, my bones split with them.
There were brambles at the bottom of our garden, they held their heat like the arms they scratched.
They grew back every time like they were reminding us that nothing else could exist in the chemicals.
The chemicals said no.
My skin told me I didn't want to be there. My hands ached.
I held my breath for the length of the factory. I held my breath every first time you touched me.
When we turned the corner in the dark your indicator flashing against the wall made me feel like flying. I still feel that when I don't think about it.
There is a hole near the top corner of the front door. I leave the back window unlocked. Maybe you will find a way in. Maybe you are still trying.
I held my breath for you.

Maybe I am a crybaby. Maybe I am the person that feels twice as hard because she has a father that doesn't feel anything and maybe I love too much because I watched 2 parents that didn't know how to do it but they pretended because l talked to myself since I was too young to understand why the sky is blue and maybe the things I said scared them. Maybe I made up friends, not for the sake of having some, but for the sake of knowing that at least they understand and at least they won't judge me because I scratched my legs until I bled and they don't know that I'm making up all these happy stories of vacations I've never been on so I don't feel so sad in school while everyone talks about what they did over the summer because all mom and dad ever did was scream at each other run from their problems while I drew in my room. Maybe I grew out of my imaginary friends because I'm not even worth their imaginary time and their imaginary presence the imaginary way they pretended to care. Maybe I called my dad even though I know what he did because I still loved him because he's still my ******* dad and he loved his son and he wouldn't tell him that it's wrong to break baby birds' necks and it's wrong to sneak into your sister's room and hurt her. Maybe he hasn't picked up on the fact that life is a big cycle, but you can't let your child hurt because your father let you hurt and his father let him hurt. Maybe I left long voicemails talking about one day being able to see him without a supervisor because I hated the way she wrote everything I said down, including the time I cried because he wouldn't stop prying me about if my mother would let us go out of state together. Maybe I don't need razors and cigarettes because my body isn't even worth the pain at this point. Or, maybe I'm just a coward who can't face death or who doesn't want to hurt more than she already does. Maybe I love too many sick people. Maybe I love too many normal people. Maybe everyone's sick and I just don't realize it yet. Maybe I self-loathe too often, maybe I shouldn't have said those things to people I thought gave a ****,; maybe it's a dream and I'll wake up and be five again. Maybe I don't want to be five again because being five was more hell than being alive. Maybe we wish some people we love were dead because it's too painful to know that they are somewhere loving some stranger when they couldn't ******* call their own child back. But I don't know. I don't know a thing. Not a **** thing. Maybe my ghosts sing because they've got nothing ******* better to do, because their fists just slide through every wall they try to punch. Maybe the dead don't rise because there's something about this life that makes Hades look like paradise I don't know. I don't know a **** thing. Maybe the wolf is howling at what the moon took from him. Maybe the stars are self-conscious and don't like to be stared at. Maybe we're always alone. Maybe we're always ******* alone. But I don't know. I do not know a **** thing.

There are gargoyles where your eyes should be. I know that even if there is water flowing from those grotesque trenches, you promised me that you would keep the demons from inside of you, when you were the demon the whole time.
  I have lain at your feet like a bear pelt rug and felt your toes curl into me while you read your favorite book. I have seen all of your dark ways and I have felt every cigarette you put on me in the form of your mouth. You linger in the back of my throat like a violent coughing spell, and I think I loved the burning sensation, and there is no doubt in my mind that when you slam the door I wish it was my body you were shoving into the doorjam.
  If you turn off the lights and you find that you can still see me vividly, you should remember that I know every crease in your feet and every corner of your mouth. I don't easily forget the people I have dropped to my knees for. You are every piece of paper I have ripped into shreds on your honor and strewn across the room like our clothes. Now my heart doesn't feel so good in your hands, does it?

Treat me like your favorite sweater. Give me a use and make me stick to it. I know you only want me during certain periods of time, but maybe the rare last minute occasion will come and you'll use me. Put holes in me and pull my threads. I'll go with everything, blend in, keep you warm, make you feel safe. Spill hot coffee on me and throw me in the hamper. Toss me under the bed, but frantically look for me when the occasion comes and you need me because there isn't anybody else. Bury your face into me and breathe. Eventually I'll become too tainted for outside use. I'll sit in your room for days, weeks, months. Then spring will roll around. Throw me in a bag and toss me away. I've accomplished my purpose. You don't need me around anymore.