My life can be described as a man on the road
Never ending road trips to god knows where
Beaten up truck
Don’t give  f*ck
Wind lacing grease through my hair
As the radio blares

Hitchhikers hopping along for the ride
We get talking til I get them where they want to be
You know, then they’re done with me
Leave me with a bumper slap goodbye  

Least they had a destination
But see nothing can beat the sensation of finding one
Without maps or gas station attendants
I honestly can’t decide which one causes the worst headaches
Advil a poor girl’s novacaine
So I keep moving forward
Better to just be lost than be reminded of it
I’ll avoid me what shows me where I am
What shows me where to go
But I’ll get there
We always do

I want to blame this feeling
This tongue tied nausea inside me
On the alcohol
On this hangover
But a small part of me
The same part that told me
To put the shots down
And that beer is a bad chaser
Whispers that maybe it’s not the hangover at all

Maybe I have a flesh eating virus
Or a tape worm
Maybe it’s kinda like that but kinda not
Like maybe my regrets are eating me alive
From the inside out
Maybe there is a parasite in me
Or perhaps I am said parasite.

What’s in a name?

What’s in a name?
Jack ****, that’s what’s in a name.
Because the name of a person will not change who they are.
If the word ‘war’ was defined as freedom from violence and disturbance,
what we now know as “peace” could easily be referred to as ‘war’

Because what makes a chicken so, chickeny?
Who looked at this tasty bird and thought to themselves.
This is a chicken.
It wouldn’t matter if you called it an eagle it would still taste the same in nugget form.

Because if Jimmy liked Sheila because she was hot, smart, and funny,
Why wouldn’t he like her if her name was Lauren?
He would like her the same no matter the name.
(Unless he only dates girls named Sheila,
In that case it just makes Jimmy a **** with peculiar taste.)

That’s the thing people don’t get about disease.
It doesn’t appear with the diagnosis, no.
It’s been there.
Living and writhing inside of you.
Just because you give it a name
Doesn’t invalidate the before.
So when they roll their eyes
And say you’re using it as an excuse now
An excuse to stay home, in bed
An excuse to not be in their presence
Tell them no.
Tell them everything you used before was an excuse.
Because now, you can finally give it a name.

There is a difference between holding your breath
And not breathing at all
One takes a lot more effort
One is the product of carrying too much
The other of carrying nothing at all

When I walk into a crowded room
I will hold my breath until my lungs find a reason to relax
My face will flush and I will eye the exits
And I will imagine any possible scenario that would allow me to leave
Which is to say,
I’d rather be in danger than be here

I’d rather be in a secluded single bed hospital room
Than brushing shoulders with conversations that don’t concern me
Smiling uncomfortably to an offensive joke because
You don’t know me enough to know the fire in my bones
That I could ignite and burn you to the ground.

You also don’t know how I wish I could extinguish that
How I burn down everything I touch
How I wish my embers would die down
Lacking oxygen might not be the worst thing

No, being alone in a crowded room wouldn’t either
Saying unironically that I stand alone in a crowded room
As if it has never been said before- might just be
Or maybe my sparks are burning this poem up too
Ruining its changes

You gotta understand,
The thing about fire is
It is a beautiful beast
A chaotic dancer who knows both sides of
Everything beautiful and everything not


In my eyes fire eats its beauty
It eats the life from inside out as it spits remnants of relics
Too tough to melt
So when we are in the flames
Like our salem sisters we think
How can something
so grand
So intriguing
So important
Be burnt down by a people so ignorant
Only to reveal what is truly important
How could you not see that as a compliment

How can you not see that we are all the flames
And that we are all also being eaten by them
As we consume everything around us in turn
And that maybe we just need to catch our breath.