I used to rip the roots of new relationships
out of the fertile soil
because I couldn't stand
to see another one wilt.
I guess I stopped growing.

But the neighboring plants
did not stop reaching for the sun
when my petals started to drop.
You asked me for an inch to bloom,
and I gave you acres.

he liked how she wore rain boots in the summer
and wished to build her home in the marshes
where she could sing with the toads
and play a cattail harp, reed symphony.
she kept a journal
she would draw rain clouds
and snow,
he'd watch her fingers loop around the pencil,
brow wrinkled with concentrated focus.
i guess he loved her.
as much as anybody could.
loved the bottlecap eyes
and wide mouth full of crooked teeth,
cause when she smiled
his heart went crooked too
and she was the type of girl
who he could visit museums with
and they'd both stare at
the same painting
and think something quite
different.

she was a wash of milky moonlight
with purple iris veins
her fingernails glimmered like
the insides of shells as she laid
a delicate palm on the sleeping boy's
brow.
"i am your winter, i am your heartbreak"
she whispered into his dreams
and a shadow passed over his slumbering frame,
and it was nothing but night and rain
inside his subconscious.
she left with the scars of past regrets
and frosted jars filled with all the tragedies of
first love
the springs that turned rotten and foul
into a sticky heat  when flower buds die before they bloom.
with slow blinking eyes
the boy awoke
with his chest opened wide.
he clutched at his dilapidated heart
and wished for the icy caress of sleep
to pull him back under.

im a bag of meat scraps.
you know, that **** they throw to the pigs,
so it becomes a sick scene of hog eating hog
animistic cannibalism
i'm the girl with cobwebs in her hair
and the bruises on her ankles that she claims
she got from "falling down the stairs"
the kindergartner whose valentine box is empty
and starts to expect a life without love.
all the things that go wrong in the world, all the mutations, and outcasts,
i become them all.
i am a breathing mistake
and i am what the artists paint.
i and you and we
are beautiful

I realized it was not your job to keep me afloat, so I stopped looking for places in conversation where you said something shallow and I tried to add depth. I stopped saving the text messages you sent past 3 AM because those words were not formed with love for me to cling on to, no, they were baited lines waiting for me to bite. Hook, line, and sinker I surfaced gasping for breathe in unfamiliar air. Writhing around in my discomfort, hoping you would throw me back into the water rather than watch me struggle. They never tell you how many fish in the sea are actually sharks waiting to sink their teeth.

the moon's pale hair
dusted the top of the water tower
spattered in graffiti rust.
i want so much to flick the dirt
from under my nails
and the dried blood smeared on lips.
i took a seminar on how to give back
and we learned to cut up plastic cup holders
and draw crosses on our hands.
i hung your painting in the room with the ink stains.
i feel nothing while i pass through this life,
paper mache carnations
king of clubs
missing buttons
all collect under my nails.
i just want to scrub
until it's fleshy pink
and i can write poetry again

I've been spending most of my time
finding ways to feel fulfilled
but honestly I am twenty-two and life is a cycle,
monotonous,
i sleep more than i ever have before
and i avoid responsibility like
the plague.

to be worthy of someone's time would be great
but i am in a constant tug-of-war
with my standpoint on relationships.
yeah, having a partner could be fun
'cause i could belong to someone
and i guess now that i think of it,
that sounds exhausting.
i should go back to bed.

i stay up until 3:00 am,
listening to the same songs on repeat
tweeting my thoughts like a lost prophet
serving a sermon to her open palms
i'm hopeful you will think i'm clever
i want your attention,
not your surrender.

my mom tells me to be careful every time i leave the house
i shrug and say "yeah okay" but promise nothing else
we drink beer in basements and watch kids sing their hearts out,
only alive when it's dark out,
i end up on some foreign couch with two beards and a ukelele
you couldn't thrill me if you paid me.

I have come to find that two broken people don't make a whole.
Half-full or half-empty hearts,
regardless of perspective,
do not refill when spilled together.

Can't help it— when I
see ink sink into paper,
I think: me on you.