I.
i chased you around
the playground and tried
to kiss your cheek but you
pushed me down and shoved
my face into the ground.
by your hand i learned that
no one wanted me.

II.
you knew that i loved you
and you liked stringing me along,
knowing that i would have given
you anything. but you never gave me
that one sick pleasure, and instead just
kept unraveling me. loving you
was like loving a ghost, one who made
me open up my
wrists like waterfalls.

III.
first kiss, first slap to
the face. i knew that you were
off limits but you knew
just how to make me hurt
myself a little bit more, and i
ate it up like the chocolate that
was your skin. you kissed me
after hitting me, and i never noticed
the difference.

IV.
you were a savior that
i needed so desperately, and you
cleaned up the hate that bled
out of me and kissed my torn up
wrists. but then the yelling began
and you were more of the same,
you grabbed at my heart and my arms
and tore them open, just like they had been
before.

V.
my heart was never so
alive as when i was with you.
the smiles you gave me were
treasures that i could not stop
digging up, but when the time came
that i was no longer shiny and
new, you went looking
for someone who was.

VI.
you told me to swim into the night,
and i heeded every word. you wanted
me to be so much better, but i was bad
at following orders. you never
looked at me with the lust that i craved.
you just wanted to fix me so that someone
else could love me.

VII. you craved me like a knife
in your gut. i was the shot to the foot
that you needed to get out of
the trap that you called home, but
you miscalculated my naughtiness, and
i sent you on your way, thirsting for a
kiss that never came.

VIII.
you were easy-- nothing more,
nothing less. the kisses we
exchanged were empty breaths, and
you were nothing but a failed
experiment. you wanted me in
the smallest of ways, but that was
okay with me.

IX.
you were someone that i could
never love, but then again, so
am i. the way that we smiled
across the room made the screaming
in my ear more bearable. you were just
a friend, not even mine, really. but you
were just what i needed when
the screaming was deafening.

X.
the spark that you lit inside
my heart is pushing me onward.
the way i crave your name
on my tongue is overpowering and
nauseating at the same
time. there is not much left
to say but i know that if i saw you
again, there would be so much left
to do.

white stocking feet, black bow
askew. lips ruby red, she waited
for you to come. she leads you
by the hand, etches her name
into your heart with the
razor of which she's grown
so fond. she smiles
with those garnet lips, the ones
that match her arms and the gentle
drips that slide down your chest.
she moves in with her hips,
those hips that beg
to be touched, and you look her in
the eye. her mouth opens,
tongues collide, but then she pulls
away, whispers in your ear
"you don't know
who you're dealing with" and slips
away, a thief in the
night, a starry-eyed
temptress, a
white stocking devil

she's all stitched
together, but she's falling apart
at the seams. she's a raggedy ann made up
of despair and button eyes. clumps of hair
fall into her hands, but she won't
admit that something's wrong,
even as she tries to throw up
everything she hates about
herself. only food comes up,
but that'll have to be good
enough. she watches the numbers go
up and down, until her feet barely
have the strength to step
on the scale. her eyes are vacant,
dead and black. her smile is stitched
on, a crooked red mess of yarn and
blood. her ribs are showing, and when
the mirror finally admits that
there's a gap between her thighs, she only smiles
slightly before biting her lip and
noticing the extra skin around her
shoulders. bits of her brain have been worn
thin from lack of sleep and love. she used to cut  
herself until the knife got too heavy
and her arms got too weak to take
the little nicks to the wrist without
threatening to take her whole. on
thanksgiving day, she hid in the bathroom, head
down, with no blessings to count. on christmas
she gave santa all her cookies and sat under the
tree, drinking hot chocolate with cold hands
and pale lips, and a throat so scarred
she could hardly swallow. one day, her tooth fell
out, and she smiled, hiding it under her
pillow, knowing that soon she'd be falling
apart in oh, so many ways. she's a ragged
doll, with stitches all up and down, until
the day she finally cuts the right knot, when
she'll begin to unravel and brittle
bones will fall to the floor with a clatter
and her soul, forever trapped in a cage of
ribs and skin, will finally be free.

it's been awhile since i could get
to sleep. i've been tossing and
turning like a ship caught

in a storm and all i can think about is
the way you looked at me like
i was something more.

i remember the moment
it all became a game,
how our hands grazed each other, just

barely. an intake of breath escaped me, and that
was all you needed to know that i was not
immune to your touch. we began

testing the waters, trying to see
who would be the first
to break when the waves got rough.

i guess i won. you've gone to shore
and i'm still out at sea, trying to live
in a past that's long gone. we used to talk

at midnight, and i told you that one day you'd
be nothing more than a ghost
in my head, one more scar

on a wrist that's about to give out,
since i may talk the talk, but
it's so hard to walk when i'm carrying all

these ghosts inside me that
only want to pull me under.
you're the one who lost

the game, but i'm the one
who's drowning. so who's the real
winner after all?

once i told you
that one day you'd haunt me...
now you do.

Our love was like those cigarettes you smoked,
so hot it can put a hole in your heart,
the smoke fills our veins and we began to choke,
and the cigarette died before the fire could start.

A house full of spectres,
a mouth full of rye,
left out in the darkness,
someone will cry.

death was a reason,
tears were for show,
once out of the bottle,
these spectres wont go.

Hands, plural to make us one
Near the end of August the heat told me to stop
It's vicious, wanting you
No milder than the jaws of winter

And every person not you cuts
On the street, our wounded lips
Before October and on silver screens
Your face projected on everything

You wanted the cinema, I thought
So I spoke fumbled niceties at your door
But the camera was stuck in my eye

And the words I scripted shifted into your mouth
The breaths I take, the breaths I shout
Your smile corroded in the rain
Your endless longing,
My endless shame

It keeps me in this thought
That what I feel has no name
But the credits crept up with the dregs of December
Money is noisy, and I liked your quietudes

But the snow will blanket my blood-buoyant bright
And I will drown into night
To lay by you until dawn
To lay by you until you are gone

rain
    rain
drops from the tips
of eyelashes
        and drips
onto quivering lips