My pen begs for paper
like I would reach for your hand,
to touch the white stretch of heaven
and feel suspended in what must be love.
Like ink my veins pump the fuel
that burns in my eyes and reflects in yours.

You hide behind sarcasm
and climb high into the branches of
your blooming wit, but
I see you blushing through your smile.
It rests upon the edge of paradise
and I want a taste of your bliss.

You make me want to believe
, that we could be pure if we try
and simultaneously throb for a devil's release
as I ache for your body, wrapped
around these hollow bones of mine.

Is it wrong to dream, when you tread my mind sore
in the golden hours of the day
you hang from my lashes,
and you turn to pitch black
and the moon and the stars-
you are the night that loves me
when you lull me to sleep
and the night that falls sudden
when the world turns me dry.

I write to create, to inspire...
I breath to live and love to breath...
But foremost I love living for your breath
that breathes fresh into these bones.
You inspire.
You create.
I love to live, but only-
for loving you.

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.

how are you?i hope youre well.im damp and sore, but
living.
ive been walking through the rain all day.i know i'm foolish.
i know it rains all the time here and water just makes the blue bleed from my hair.
my shoes are soaked. my knees are muddy,
all my sentences keep breaking before
i can complete them.
sorry for not being pretty while i cry.
he led me through the woods while i slipped in the mud behind him.i dont want to be here.i want to go home
but i don't know how to leave, i need you to lead me back.
sorry.i know its not your job to
clean up after my mistakes,
i keep killing myself for unworthy causes.
tell me how much you need me.tell me you don't love me.
i am not grinning, i'm baring my teeth at my reflection.
he keeps speaking to me.im just trying to watch the rain,
would you do the same?
you're uncomfortable with silence, i know.
your shoulders, sloped, broad but weak.
my lips,  wet from rain, sticky from smoke.
hot-headed and cold-handed, i burned my tongue
on the inside of my own mouth.
when i held your hand, your fingers froze
and broke off one by one.
{frostbite never tasted so sweet.}
did you say that or did i think it?i thought we understood each other.
im biting my cheek and wondering why nothing feels right.
this is the fiftythird glass of water
i've drunk today.i can drink things other than guinness.i know
you dont like me when im drunk.
you dont like me when im high.you dont like me when ive been awake for 72 hours,
biting my knuckles and bleeding on my best shirt,
but thats ok.
ive been fracturing bones in dark rooms all my life.
i broke my shoulder on a closet door,
hiding from a celebration,
no crying so no one hears.
my mouth tastes so bitter, no wonder
you never wanted to kiss me.
don't slam the door so hard.i feel it in my skull like it hit me
and not the doorjamb.
don't ask me if im hungry.in my mind,
ive been vomiting for the past two weeks.
i am piercing my tongue with steel.
i could say it started two years ago
that i fired a shotgun in my mouth and
the wounds said they loved me enough to stay and
ive been spitting buckshot ever since.i could say
two years ago,
i kissed someone who didnt care and now,
just the taste of strawberries makes me want to tear out my tongue, but
you know already know
my mythomania is less a disorder and more
a habit i cultivated
to convince myself i was worthwhile.
i like to pretend something made me this way, something made me
see myself as a broken lock
and not a person.
it hurts to admit i've been like this from birth.
im deconstructing clocks in my head.
im extracting your loose fingernails like
garden spikes from soil.
ive had this dream before.
im descending distorted stairs in the dark,
im walking on sheet ice.
im sleeping until the sun sets and waking up in a cold sweat.i dreamt that i couldnt stop dreaming about you.i dreamt of
gently pressing needles through my tongue
while you read my diary.
i am a house half-constructed.a candle half-lit, and you are a forest half-grown
or half-burned,
sometimes it's hard to tell.
i am waking with knots in my hair for the first time in years.im combing them out.
im drying my hair and thinking of you.
im throwing out my umbrella.

they took my hand, held it,
told me how soft it was. {you've never worked a day in your life.}
maybe ive lost track of myself,
forgotten the present for
a glorified past;
i had callouses there.rough armor-skin scraping my arms, or
i thought i did, but
you can never trust the body and how it undoes its own defenses.
i wore away my purpose and
i am waiting to believe i am real.
there are gaps in my mouth and when i breathe i hiss; you told me dont worry,
i still love you,
i made a necklace from your teeth.
her shirt rides up and i think of kissing the small of her back.
somehow i have grown soft,
my thighs give to any hand that presses.my arms have lost their harshness.
i feel unsafe.my clavicle is too thin to be a shield, you told me
you like the way
my skin yields to you, you asked me why
i grow my fingernails so long.
have i always been this vulnerable?i dont like how fragile i feel,
delicate and weak, this is not me.this is not me.
i remember being sharp edges to dig into ribs.
crude bone,
body strong enough at least to hold the door shut.  
identity strong enough at least to sketch a line between me
and you.
stark boundaries of light and dark make me so afraid
that i blur it all to gray.
the back of my hand is streaked red
from all the lipstick ive rubbed off, strangers ask
how i hurt myself so much.when you left your lipstick on my mouth,
i wore it like a bruise
and lost it on the mouth of a nameless boy.
i never meant to grow up like this.i do not feel like myself and
i do not feel anything for you
though i want to.do you remember the first word you realized meant more
than its definition,
the sum of its parts?
my mother told me my twin died in the womb and when i found the word 'implosion,' i knew
nothing would fit better.
i am a slow implosion.
pragmatic destruction, dissociating others,
shrapnel within, never without.
the roof back home is sloped, i think of slipping
while it rains.the trails here are gnarled.
the trees are too tall to climb.
look at this:
im pressing rabbit's feet into your hands, im weaving 4-leaf clovers
into your hair.im filling your pockets with coins. im just unlucky in life, you said.
unlucky in who i give pieces of myself to.
im always betting on the wrong horse, falling for bluffs and parlor tricks,
misdirection, legerdemain,
sleight-of-hand.
take them, i dont want them, you need them more than me.
i dont want luck and complacency, i want to grow rough again, i want to feel safe.
you love me and it hurts, i want my teeth back.you knocked them out but that does not make them yours.
maybe this is how its supposed to be, maybe this is how it works,
maybe love is a ****** brick and soft bruised arms but all i want is my edges back,
caution tape, this girl is
a demolition zone.
you are not in this room and this is what matters.
you have never been in this room and
this is what matters.

Cotton sheets
on a winter’s night.

She entered the room,
her clothes fell to the floor.

’You’re on my side?’
‘I know,’ and
slid to my side
to let her skin
lie in the warmth
I left for her.

And then she
thanked me,
in cotton sheets.