i just wanted to  pick your bones
white daisies in a field
and weave them together
a halo to float over my head
so wherever i'd go a part of you hung in the air
a soft constant breeze.

and maybe you'll let me.
maybe you'll string your veins like lights to light my journey
when the cobbled streets are black
and your back in rink-a-**** town
and i'm off getting my wings.

you like to breath air into my dreams,
lifting my balloons, and even though  you'll be here in this gray
town you never
made me feel sorry.

sorry that i've got to leave.
and maybe you'll give me your hands too,

so when it's colder than a winter month, i can wrap my fingers in them
and i'll be warm on the inside
too

a furious fire was forged
inside me again
from the embers
of a former scorn.

it burned unknowingly still,
until you revived the flames
with her name.

i laid next to the open window
letting frozen air in,
debating a sober slumber
in the snow.

i will always be second –
competing with a ghost.
i guess that's why you haunt me
like this.

you are all i know of pain
when your absence hit me so bitterly,
it carved out numerous tunnels and caverns
in my anatomy,
   unfamiliar territory to me.
alone,
i had to map out these unexplored caves,
knowing every inch, every rock
of my sadness,
of my beautiful, and dark
emotions that have given me a soul
completed with dimensions,
i am a being with layers;
thanks to your winter chilled departure.

You are coming so close
to knowing
about my poems

paint with blood
upon the earth
tie my lungs into ribbons.
i am only happy when i'm
dying.
when depression slits my wrists

there was a girl
with a chipped tooth
and holes in her stockings.
she hides behind a veil of hair.
stupid boys will
touch her
and she can only stare
at the ceiling
cracks.

There is something living in me,
an anonymous being devouring my dreams
and driving me out of my mind.
I have stepped down from my position to
operate this machine,
and the creature has turned autopilot.

I wake up suddenly when I have not been sleeping.
I forget my lines.
My smile has gone into hiding.
The dark crescent moons waxing below my eyes
are swallowing my face like the night sky.
The skin that shelters these two residents
has become more and more translucent,
and still I cannot see who has moved in with me.

How can you defeat an invisible enemy?
One who always knows your strategy,
whose voice and footsteps sound like yours,
who leaves on lights and opens doors,
who gets to breathe every time you inhale,
I am failing constantly
and through this, it prevails.

If you spend enough time with demons,
they soon become your friends.
A part of you to love and defend.
But careful that you do remember,
how easily your heart dismembers.
Do not trust the darkness inside,
who feeds on your doubts and batters your pride.
The parasite feels no remorse
when it feasts on its final course.

I know it is hard to find the light
with wool pulled over your eyes.
You are the sheep, but deep asleep
a lion is ready to rise.

the night has slipped from the tips of my fingers,
finding solace in bottomless sweaters
sleeves that swallow hands
and mouths that swallow
bourbon brooks
trickling through a loss of consciousness.
i yearn on winter bones for the loss of knowledge;
a slow mind,
and sweaty delirium.
i want to watch my finger nails go purple
from malnutrition, seeping into the cracks of an old house-
to become an eighteenth century ghost
and i'd measure my heart breaks in dust.
when the world falls away;
and it falls away often-
i find solace in thinking that nothing can amount to nothing
and one day you all will be as i am.

a thin willow wisp,
a frayed cardigan
  a story that was once told and lost through years of
the telephone game;
while the rich culture faded with every new tongue