There's a demon in my head and it's finally figured out how to turn my skin transparent and show itself. It escapes through the blank stares in my eyes and as much as I try I can't stop it from venting through my teeth with whatever air is left in my lungs. It's slowly killing me and making my blood toxic.

an unread book,
a pair of broken headphones,
the shirt of someone who is perfect in my eyes.
a bic lighter,
a glass of water,
a succulent that i could never seem to keep alive.

condensation forms on the surface of the table
as the water begs to bring life back to the plant,
but the lonely plant only speaks of the sun
and the way it desires his light.

I had always figured that in a few years, today’s date would be tattooed on the inside of my left wrist. Now the only tattoos I have are the scars you left in the depths of my mind, and the memory of a summer I won’t forget.

The only thing
that breaks my heart more
than realizing you don't love me
is the look on your face
when you confess to me
how much you used to.

we're told almost every day to never be selfish, but in a world like ours, how can we not be? even calling this world "ours" is selfish, but no one ever mentions that. do what you want. be who you are. be selfish. because in the end, the only person who you'll always be forced to impress, is you.

The one thing
that will always remind me of you
is the ocean
and his eyes are so blue
that they look like water
and how sad is it to say
that every time I look into the eyes
of the one I love
a part of me
is still thinking of you.

The gravity of the moon
never gives up trying
to pull the ocean closer
to his surface,
and no matter how far you are
I promise to do the same
for you.

It’s been thirteen months and I’ve forgotten your scent. I don’t remember the way it feels for your fingertips to brush against my bare skin. I can’t recall the spark that would reignite every time our lips came in contact. I can’t remember the way your tongue would taste in the early hours of the day. I don’t even remember what your voice sounded like whispering through the phone at 5am. But it’s been thirteen months, and I won’t dare forget the way it felt to watch you walk out of my life just as quickly and unexpectedly as you walked into it.

if it were up to me
i would show up at your house
dressed as the love of your life.
i would drag you from your bed
rip your heart from your chest
and leave your lifeless body at the door
for your mother to find.

i would tear every good feeling
straight out of your stomach
and replace them with memories
of all the things that made you love me.

i would burn the remaining pieces
and scatter the ashes
along beaches we planned to get married
and cities we were supposed to live.

i would leave your mind
hollow and unattended
and force you to feel me forgetting you,

sort of like what you did to me.

it's 5:36am
and i woke up from the pounding
in my head
and for some reason
you haven't even gone to sleep at all
and after two whole years
without your touch
can someone please tell me why
the moment i opened my eyes
you were the first person i ran to
to make the pounding stop
and jesus christ,
it stopped
i'm scared

The mirror looking back at her
screams compliments over the loud music
coming from the stereo behind.
With artfully smudged eyeliner,
she slips into the little black dress
purchased from the cheap lingerie shop
down the street from her apartment complex.
Six inches above the concrete sidewalk
clicking with every step,
a lit cigarette dangling at her teeth,
she walks proudly to the ball
twenty minutes past midnight.

The morning after;
spiked hot coffee in hand
to cure mistakes of the previous night
and a knock on the door
greets a worsening headache.
The door opens to a well dressed man
and a tiny glass slipper
atop a diamond-studded throne.
He holds the delicate shoe to her foot,
toe nails painted black,
and patiently waits for a response.

“Those aren’t my red stilettos.”

Maybe the reason
I haven't been writing
Is because it's always been my way
Of coping with sadness
And recently all I think about
Is the way it feels
For your tongue
To brush against my skin
And finally
I'm not sad

i never thought
i was the type of girl
whose tragedies turned into fears
until i caught a glimpse
of my demons
creeping back up on me;
this time,
they came from the reflection
in your eyes
instead of his suffocating tongue

I expected my first night at a college
to be like in the movies,
and to an extent it was.
Walking down streets on wet asphalt,
halloween night without a raincoat.
Half of my expectations
must have been coated
in a thick fog,
surprising me with consistent images
of you.
We snuck into the bathroom
of an unfamiliar apartment
just to manage one last kiss
before we sobered up.

The costumes would come off
and we would go back to pretending
you were just a friend.

Never leave me unattended. I will rip myself to shreds and burn my own insides, skin over ash. You will have nightmares for weeks.

Never question my train of thought. The brakes are broken and the lever to change direction was torn from its wires years ago. Colliding metal is the closest it gets to reality.

Never wash your hands in my sink. Slowly turn the knobs and only blood will exit from the antique pipes. If you’re lucky, you are type A.

Never sit in the passenger seat of my car. I will close you in when no one is looking, and the fumes from my angst will quickly make you still. If you can breathe by morning, the odds must be in your favor.

Good luck.

I look around a room full of strangers and wonder how many of them send pills down their throat every morning just to feel normal, and how many of them are strong enough to deal with their ****** up minds on their own, and how I am not.

It can be anything as simple as not wearing your seat belt.
It becomes difficult to take your medication,
without wondering how much is too much.
Looking in the mirror is like looking into the face of a ghost,
and eventually you won't bother looking at all
because it's not like you ever see anything anyway.
Everything feels out of reach,
and no one ever notices.

My mother lost her oldest brother to
a car accident
that didn't mix well with liquor
and on the way to his funeral, she ran
two red lights.

The path to a mind of insanity
can be seen as a gaping hole,
the one inside left hollow and empty.

Running from all signs of conformity
the truth is we are the ones who are full
of things only thought of as insanity.

Running from our own form of what we see
through the eyes which sit inside the skull
and wishing to be anything but empty.

“Don’t get caught up in the world’s vanity
or you will end up as nothing but cold”
are the words driving us towards insanity.

If the ones only filled with shallow glee
could understand our minds were carved from gold
and they will be the ones left aged and empty,

they would be forced to politely agree
upon the ones who have always been whole.
They are the jury and we plead insanity
while their minds and the prison cells stay empty.

If I would have known you would **** me up this badly, I would have chosen a different locker on the first day of high school. I would have pulled away the moment you put your arm around me and asked me to hold your project from a ceramics class as you attempted to impress me, and succeeded. I would have never become friends with your twin sister. I would have never said yes when you asked me to prom, and I would have sat on my hands when you tried to hold them in the car on the ride there. I would have looked the other way when you kissed me afterwards. I would have said no when you asked me to be yours, and I would have told you I was busy before you came home with me the same day. I would have never said I love you, or agreed to meet you at that park at 4am in the first place. I would have never been seen with you by my neighbor, kissing on park benches in the rain, pretending we were the only ones left in the universe. I would have never let you get mad at me that way, when we screamed at each other outside the only house I’ve ever called home, when I couldn’t even make it inside before tears started falling from my face. I would have never had that water fight with you at the park that used to remind me of my childhood (now it only reminds me of you.) I would have never broken up with you, and gotten back together, and broken up with you, and gotten back together, and broken up with you, and still been in love with you but hidden it under someone else’s bed sheets. I would have never gotten high with you and forgotten all about him for those two short hours. I would have never talked to you on the phone like we used to, until I realized it was six o’clock in the morning and I had class at eight. I would have never listened to that song on repeat for weeks, even though I can’t stand reggae.
I would have never answered the phone when you called and told me you never wanted to speak to me again. I wouldn’t be sitting here, writing to your ghost, as if I would ever have the nerve to say this to your face.

in a perfect world
we would relive that night
over and over again.
3am would creep up on us
and i'd tell you i love you
for the first time.
i'd get lost in your far from ordinary eyes
instead of in the depths of my mind.

in a perfect world
i'd go to sleep at night
and have nightmares of losing you
and wake with tears on my cheeks.
now it's the good dreams of you
that leave me with a heavy heart
and a lonely bed.

in a perfect world
i would get into trouble
for staying up until 5am
to whisper to you over the phone.
my mother doesn't have a reason
to get angry anymore,
only to be confused
as to why i'm always alone.
she can't quite understand
that when i pushed you away
an important part of my being
followed you.

It took one night in the same room
with the next four months left up to the universe
to figure out that the greatest plans
will never be the ones we make in advance
and with the help of you words
to pick the lock on my brain
there is no way in hell that I could ever allow myself
to ignore every sign along the way
and walk past the capability
of being in love with you.

You are a guitar
and its woodsy scent
when it has never been played.

You are the forest
as background to a storm,
car windows down
and no sound but the glass
cutting the wind in half
and the pounding in our chests.

You are summer at 3am
when sleep is unnecessary
and the stars are most vulnerable.

You are the scent
of
cedar
and rain
and home.

I don't think about you, but you're always here. My head has my heart convinced you're dead. So why is it that you still speak through the songs I listen to when it rains? Jesus Christ, I can't grasp the fact that you're gone. You're gone and all I can do to keep myself sane is pretend I don't care. I know they see the hurt in my eyes and they hear the shaking in my voice when your name manages to escape from my tongue. Everything on this God dammed planet reminds me that you're not coming back. My mind has been lost for thirteen months now and I'm too much of a coward to admit you stole it. The thought of you alone makes my stomach hurt and my heart beat louder than ever. Do you hear that?

I can’t stop thinking
about how you always hated your teeth
and the way the ones in the front go sinking
towards each other like mountains too steep
to climb. You say it happened in a car
accident, that the force from the crash
is what shoved them together that way but I know you far
too well not to point out that you are the last
person who would admit that you were
born with any sort of flaw at all.
You are the type of person to slur
your words until they fall
from your tongue wearing a disguise,
just to get me to grieve over your demise.

i kicked you out years ago but i could never force you to leave permanently in fact i'd probably call you and tell you to come home if you hadn't blocked my number because at this point what do i have to lose? you ripped out my insides and took them with you when you left and everyone seems to believe i can buy a new being just like the one you stole from me but the heart that's filled with you is worth more than all the money in the world.

Every day the pieces of you that still remain under my bed
crawl closer and closer to the front door
in an attempt to escape, unnoticed
and with one starving hand out the door
I ****** them up and drag them back to the home I've forced upon them
because I can't bear the thought of them dying in anyone's presence
other than my own.

I remember when the clouds began to look like a vortex
Hovering above the trees
Ready to inhale anything in their path,
And I remember when the walls of my own bedroom
Started to feel like barricades
Secluding me from all the things
That made me feel anything at all,
And I remember my own voice
Passing quietly through the empty hearts
Of the ones I thought had been listening all along
And came hurling back toward me
Like a car spun out of control across wet asphalt,
And I remember when the only ones around
To keep me company
Were the echoes between my own skin and bones.

What a relief
That when you left
They followed close behind.

it’s march twenty-third
a year from the day we began
and i’m laying in bed
in the early evening
and i didn’t even text you at midnight last night
to say happy anniversary and that i love you
and i have no idea where you are
or what you’re doing
and a train just went by
but you probably didn’t hear it
and it’s march twenty-third
but we haven’t spoken since september
and i miss you

I keep waking up at 4am and it's making me realize why you were always such a morning person. I guess my thoughts are deeper when they don't get much sleep.

i'm stuck in this ******* clear box with nothing but my conscious mind and my lifeless body and all i can do is watch everyone around me move on with their lives. this anxiety has left me stagnant  for the past two years and i'm not strong enough to physically push it out of the way. they all say to follow my dreams, do what i want. but they're only contradicting themselves by not allowing me to venture out. how the **** am i supposed to get out of this box when it's locked from the outside and i'm the only one who has the key?

I wake up every morning with a throbbing skull and I tell everyone it's hereditary but I know it's just you in the back of my head telling me you don't love me anymore. I guess when my heart of glass shattered you picked up the pieces and have carried them around with you ever since because you seem to be the only person with a match to the missing parts, and after giving you the only section that's still whole you have the nerve to tell me about her. "She means nothing" and I believe you but that doesn't matter when I'm the one who trusted in you when everyone else called you a fake.

She's probably never even noticed your eyes.

Sitting next to a stranger, I wonder what kind of life she goes home to.

The positive,
A mother who is kind and gentle and reassuring,
Who teaches her to be her own person rather than those surrounding her.
A father with dark skin from the sun,
Dedicated to his garden and enthused to teach her about it,
And also to teach her about life and change and fairness.

The negative,
A mother who was adventurous and spontaneous and wondrous,
Who taught her that not everyone is guaranteed
Enough time to live out their dreams.
A father with eyes as blue as her own, but with less joy,
Fortunate enough to be where he is,
But wishing that life hadn't torn him from his other half.

This thing has been eating at me for years now.
How ironic.
It welcomes itself into my skin and feeds off bones and thoughts that aren't even my own anymore. But don't make it angry because it'll bury itself so deep in my stomach that it'll start to sound like my own voice screaming at me through my bloodshot eyes. I've tried again and again to **** it in its sleep, but it only gets stronger the harder I try, and after all my attempts to ****** this ******* monster, I realize I've been looking in the mirror the whole time.

It's funny how you never look for company
until there's no one left to keep it.

I loved the way you found subtle ways
to criticize my every move,
as long as it was worded well.
I loved the way you lied to all your friends
about me;
I'm sure they know
what a lovely person I am.
I loved the way you clung to me;
I know you didn't mean to leave
when the lights came back on.
I loved the way you told me all your secrets;
the ones about your ex
and how infatuated with her you still are.
I loved the way you told me
we should stop talking
because you "would rather not hook up"
as if calling me three days later
would make me believe
I had wanted to in the first place.

I love the way
I am finally over it.

I was sixteen years old when I effectively vomited for the first time. As my mother’s pasta and the words of a boy I thought loved me flooded my esophagus I grasped the cold sides of the toilet seat with sweaty palms and bitten down fingernails. I looked into the mirror as if my reflection had finally transformed into a wax figure I had been burning at for years and I knew it would never go back to its original form. I’d seen that look before, in girls wiping their lips in high school bathrooms, girls who wore baggy clothes and flinched when boys playfully poked at their stomachs, girls who put rocks in their pockets before being weighed at doctors’ appointments and covered up bruises over fragile bones with whatever makeup they could find in their mother’s drawer. I sit in health class as the teacher speaks of the dangers of eating disorders from a third person point of view and it seems as if the only sound anyone is hearing is the growling coming from my stomach. I stand up from a lunch table in the cafeteria and freeze at the words of a girl telling me I’ve gotten as skinny as my three month prematurely born best friend. I walk through the front door and immediately remove every piece of clothing that might weigh even an ounce and I step onto the scale with hopes of seeing my importance rise as the numbers fall but no one ever told me that I am worth so much more than 96 pounds.

I remember when I was the one
Who would give your eyes life
As if the only reason
They were open in the first place
Was to see my smile
But now after seeing you
For the first time in six months
I realize I am actually the reason
That your current eyes
Hold so much pain

I've started removing the happier pictures of us from my walls and now their empty rectangular skeletons are left all over the surface of the paint.
I can't decide if it is an aesthetically pleasing coincidence or a ****** up metaphor for the way I left you but it's funny how time can rot everything and everyone in its path.
I'm sorry for being happy without you.

I was sixteen years old when I effectively vomited for the first time. As my mother’s pasta and the words of a boy I thought loved me flooded my esophagus I grasped the cold sides of the toilet seat with sweaty palms and bitten down fingernails. I looked into the mirror as if my reflection had finally transformed into a wax figure I had been burning at for years and I knew it would never go back to its original form. I’d seen that look before, in girls wiping their lips in high school bathrooms, girls who wore baggy clothes and flinched when boys playfully poked at their stomachs, girls who put rocks in their pockets before being weighed at doctors’ appointments and covered up bruises over fragile bones with whatever makeup they could find in their mother’s drawer. I sit in health class as the teacher speaks of the dangers of eating disorders from a third person point of view and it seems as if the only sound anyone is hearing is the growling coming from my empty stomach. I stand up from a lunch table in the cafeteria and freeze at the words of a girl telling me I’ve gotten as skinny as my three month prematurely born best friend. I walk through the front door and immediately remove every piece of clothing that might weigh even an ounce and I step onto the scale with hopes of seeing my importance rise as the numbers fall but no one ever told me that I am worth so much more than 96 pounds.

I am nineteen years old and I am no longer drowned in a sea of panic when my father asks me what I've had to eat today. When my boyfriend glides his hands under my shirt and over the top of my waistline my head is not consumed by the thought that my stomach is not flat enough for his liking. I do not sit in class and think about the flesh of my thighs bulging from the holes in my jeans that a boy once told me looked like tumors under my skin.
Okay, there are days when the only one who knows I am my own worst enemy is the mirror and okay, I still politely insist that the lights be turned off before I let him touch me with satin fingertips and okay, I still have a way of instantaneously counting calories in my head the same way I counted on myself to stop years ago but
I only weighed myself once today.

is it completely wrong of me to say
i'm tired of being in love
with only one person?
growing up is supposed to be fun,
but what if you feel
all of that fun
is passing right by your window?
is it selfish to stop building
what i've been building for a year
to start from scratch on something
i'm not even sure is real?

we opened its stiff windows
and the room above the kitchen
could breathe again.
hot and stuffy like a car
with its doors sealed tight
in the middle of July,
the summer air
rushed into its lungs
as if it had just taken
a first breath from an inhaler.
meaningless,
useless,
simply a "spare"
used only for things to be seen
once or twice a year;
soon to be a room full of strangers
only to be seen
once or twice a year.

The smell of her hair
is not lavender or perfume.
It is chlorine summers
and cigarette smoke at a party,
a good party.
Her skin is not velvet.
It is fresh, white linen
that feels like home
the second it is smoothed over the mattress.
Her voice is not a whispering mother.
It is the ocean against the shore
seeping deep into the sand,
wishing it could stay longer.

The demons dance and sing when others come around
And everyone claps along with encouraging words
But when I'm alone in my room
All they do is growl and hiss
And nip at my fingers from under the bed

It’s such a naïve thing to say
That I miss you the second you exit my line of vision
And compared to every day for the rest of our lives
This moment is only a glitch in time
But it’s as if every time we say goodnight
It’ll be the last time
Because each night away from you feels like a lifetime
And the only lifetime I ever wish to have
Is the one where we only exist together,
Skin on skin
In an apartment made of us
With nothing but the air we’ve exhaled
Occupying the space between our bodies,
However little that space may remain.

I assure you over and over that I love you
but the vision of his face overshadows yours every time.
The motivation to touch you only appears
when I've become overly hungry for him
and I would lend you a glimpse
of what's lurking inside my mind
but you wouldn't be able to see
through the thick fog anyway.
Even with you inside of me I still feel empty.

we sit in my car in silence and i reach for the lighter but only because of the chance your skin might come in contact with mine. you tell me about her and i know she doesn't deserve you because she doesn't know how lucky she is to be in a bed with you, skin on skin on skin. i pour my heart out to you and when you leave we hug and you smell just the same as you did three years ago. you smell like poetry and the sunrise and endless youth.

i can't even write anymore because all the blood you spilled when you punctured my heart has flooded into my brain. my words come out muffled but on paper they just look like your smile.

you touch my face and it feels like the rain that’s falling outside your window but it’s warm and comforting and i feel at home or is this my home? is a home a structure with a roof or can it be a person? is a home a heart or just a place to sleep? if so then i want to live in you and sleep in your mind so i can see what your dreams consist of and then maybe i can figure out what it is you need me to be and at this point i’ll be anything as long as you hold me but please don’t let go because my head is filled with thoughts so heavy i might sink down to the bottom of the ocean and the only way you could possibly get me back is if you turned yourself inside out and crawled inside because you are the ocean and if i have to drown in you just to be near you then that’s ok with me.

They cut down all the trees that stood in the entrance to your neighborhood
and I wondered if it was a sign that we were meant to end after all,

because what are the chances that on the same day
I sat next to your mother's girlfriend in a parking lot
nowhere near her house or yours
and ignored her glances
when only a week before I would have made pleasant conversation?

How perfectly in tune would the universe need to be
for me to find out only hours later
that he has a birthmark on the outside of his wrist
just like you do?