there is no privacy anymore
tinker with your settings,
imaginary dragons, but to no true avail,
your scathing privacy has since sailed,
only to return for another sinking

what you forgot,
is very well remembered
in a some very overlooked place

see me in my summer camp class photo,
blonde crew cut and goofiest of grins,
find my poems of eons ago,
in living tricolor,
to my now better understood
"eternal" embarrassment,
they writ on, vainly looking
for a way to enjoy a
natural unnatural aging,
a wordlessly, self-destructing death
on a someday,
though the probability is that
someone's gigabytes
will cloud store them forevermore
because accumulation is
cheap and easy and
whatever

everything you need but didn't want,
the tangled webs, births and deaths,
multiple divorces and successes,
ancestors, progenitors,
children who no longer acknowledge
parenthood,
the detritus of lives writ even larger than the
original reality life show

confrontation tween my suppression
of long term memories that  
are dangling participles,
going gone being been,
confusion resultant in
the tenses of existence,
I was therefore I still must be
but no longer
the me
I pretended to be

there is no privacy anymore,
especially,
not even from thine own
prying eyes and faulty memories...

when they ask what is my name,
to better trace my leavings,
I will
like Jehovah to Moses respond,

I Am that I Am
(אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה,  ehyeh ašer ehyeh)

yes, loving you
was a mistake but
never has guilt tasted so good
until
"hello" was painted across your lips.

you will never be forgotten.
ever.
your name twisted into metaphors and colors and distractions will forever
be painted across pages and pages of her favorite brand of notebook,
no matter how many she burns
there will always be one she forgot,
and she will only find it once she had almost forgotten you.
she will find the one Papyrus notebook
and all of your metaphors and colors and disractions will come flooding back,
just like how the ocean in your eyes
flooded her heart all those years ago.

Depression is were you want to be alone,
But at the same time you dont want to be lonely.
Depression is where everything is going right,
But you're still sad.
Depression is wanting to go out,
But at the same time not wanting to socialize.
Depression is feeling trapped,
Trapped in your own mind
and no one understands.
Depression is having scars on your thighs and arms,
Scars from the battle you fought.
Depression is having sleepless nights,
Depression is shouting for help,
But no one hears you.
Depression is fighting demons deep
inside you.
Depression is not something to laugh at,                                    
So grow up if you think depression is just an act,
Depression is something serious.

They call me.

Waving to me from the up-turned leaves
On the trees lining the street
Before a storm settles in.

They call me.

Humming softly after sunset,
Ushering in the blue of dusk.

They call me.

Whispering along the howling wind
That rustles the grass and bangs the shutters.

They call me.

Coming down on me like a firing squad
The rain pummeling into my back
As I desperately try to remember.
As I desperately try to forget.

They call me.

You were the one who warned us.
You were the one who taught us.
We were shown everything.
Told everything.
How to protect ourselves.
How to fight back.
What your weaknesses were,
Because you thought they were ours too.

You were wrong.

They call me.

You didn't realize who we were.
You didn't know what we were,
Or why.

We never meant any harm.
We didn't choose this.
We never got a choice.

To us, choice is nothing but a fairytale
That we've become too old to believe in.

They call me.

The songs of the Old Religion
Rumble towards me
Within the fog.

**"We are the granddaughters  of the witches you weren't able to burn."

I am slowly learning to disregard the insatiable desire to be special. I think it began, the soft piano ballad of epiphanic freedom that danced in my head, when you mentioned that “Van Gogh was her thing” while I stood there in my overall dress, admiring his sunflowers at the art museum. And then again on South Street, while we thumbed through old records and I picked up Morrissey and you mentioned her name like it was stuck in your teeth. Each time, I felt a paintbrush on my cheeks, covering my skin in grey and fading me into a quiet, concealed background that hummed “everything you’ve ever loved has been loved before, and everything you are has already been,” on an endless loop. It echoed in your wrists that I stared at, walking (home) in the middle of the street, and I felt like a ghost moving forward in an eternal line, waiting to haunt anyone who thought I was worth it. But no one keeps my name folded in their wallet. Only girls who are able to carve their names into paintings and vinyl live in pockets and dust bunnies and bathroom mirrors. And so be it, that I am grey and humming in the background. I am forgotten Sundays and chipped fingernail polish and borrowed sheets. I’m the song you’ll get stuck in your head, but it will remind you of someone else. I am 2 in the afternoon, I am the last day of winter, I am a face on the sidewalk that won’t show up in your dreams. And I am everywhere, and I am nothing at all.

a lady lights a cigarette
glowing red cherry
lips, puffing without
regret
a cigarette, burning
smoking, grey breathing
choking and
tap tap the
falling ashes

it is over with
a definitive flick —
a lady lights a cigarette
she can see her spirit
dancing in the smoke