My brain is a factory,
producing every toxic part of me.
******* until my hand gets lazy,
fantasizing about Lexi Belle
and being Martin Scorsese.

My blood is a vacuum,
alone in a crowded room;
my white blood cells like to
travel to my *****,
so I can someday infect
designer uterine walls.

Locked and loaded,
my heart exploded.
The tissue and issues
attracted crocodiles
that swam from the mall,
for miles and miles.

Store-bought baby, my body isn't ready,
to be stripped down to the bone,
and sold to teenage radios,
that'll broadcast my American moans.

Caucasian nightmare:
my skin is not fair.
Peel enough off with chemicals,
until I decide there's no more,
and hide the layers in bathroom stalls,
located in the bleach of Baltimore.

it’s interesting to think about all the right people who might’ve come into your life at the wrong time.
but then again,
i often wonder if time could’ve saved or wrecked us at all.
maybe from the start, we were destined to be nothing more than strangers.
even if i had been weighed down, glued to one spot,
nomadic tensions silenced,
it seems likely that, still, our friendly smiles and cordial jokes would’ve been
limited, somehow,
by unseen barriers,
by the cruel overseer that is fate.

i think i meant something to you, once.
not a lot, but something.
and now,
now i’m just there.
a solid. something that takes up space.
you still sit close to me,
but not as close as you did when we first met.

and i wonder, sometimes, if i did something wrong,
if there was something i could’ve done, or not done, to change things,
to make things better,
to stop us from drifting silently onto the end of the growing list of tragedies my life’s friendships have been.

but maybe there was nothing i could do.
that thought, while terrifying, is perhaps the most comforting one.
after all, it is better to be left helpless from the start than to be burdened with the knowledge that the stones you threw became part of the landslide.

i hope, maybe, that we can salvage what’s left,
perhaps even grow it into something better.
but somewhere inside, i know that’s fool’s talk.
i doubt i ever meant much to you, anyway.
i always was, and always will be, just another shadow,
another stranger,
another change of season.
i suppose i was your winter —
a barrage of snow and ice that danced in clumsily,
not bothering to think about what would happen once spring came.

i hope you’ll remember me when i’m gone.
even now, it’s nice to think that i cross your mind as much as you cross mine.
but my hopes seldom match my reality.

so, still, i am just another.
watching.
waiting.
being.
i am nothing, and in being nothing i suppose that i, too, am everything.

but i will never be your everything.

and i could say that i regret that,
but perhaps i’m still holding onto that last bit of hope.

always the optimist,
and yet even more so the pessimist.

i thought you might be both, too.
i thought we might find a way to complete one another,
much like how the land completes the sea.

but i suppose i am left the earth without its ocean,
the ground without its rain.

it’s a horrible thing, detachment.
my roots never quite find what they’re looking for in the soil.

i had just hoped you would be different.

(a.m.)

I woke up in the middle of the night
"He is the 100% perfect boy for me" I said and cried

I loved him because he was the only boy that was actually afraid of loosing me.

When I turned sixteen, I brought a girl home drunk and stumbling
A day later, I was interviewed by the government criminal investigation
Two months later, she was disowned by her parents
Last I heard, she's at a rehab in Florida

It's been a long time since I've seen her.

When I was fourteen, I hid cigarettes in my backpack, and lighters in my wallet
Used to sit in the middle of a basketball court and watch my stress float away in a noxious grey cloud
I stashed my twelve dollar pack of coors in a bush behind the half-wall

It's been a long time since I've seen those.

I was thirteen when I found a papercutter in the drawer of the art room.
Took it home with me, fell asleep to the sound of it scathing in and out of its sheath
I once got so frustrated I wanted to slice my throat with it
I threw it out the window

It's been a long time since I've seen it.

When I was fifteen, I went out with friends and got wasted on chocolate liquor
Two weeks later, *****
the day after, tequila
and the week before, strawberry daiquiri
I don't remember much.

It's been a long time since I've done that.

When I was thirteen, I wrote poetry to sort out my emotions

It's been a long time since I've done that...

You are a poem
Comparing your white skin to paper
Blue veins to blue lines
your story written on you
like the ink on this paper

i believed
in breathing
until i realized
every breath
i take
brings me
closer
to death