I might've been an only
child but I was never the
favourite. you trailed behind us at every
social event, pulling on my
hair and stepping on the backs of my
shoes. the bottoms of them were so
worn out from years of me trying to run
away that I could feel every footstep in my
lungs. at christmas none of my presents could be
wrapped, because we'd learned the first
year that it wasn't a good
idea. she made me spend hours tearing it off in a straight
line, using a ruler as
guidance. I was too young to read the
numbers on it. this year, I bought her a
necklace. I knew I had to give her something even though I wanted to
take. she never mentioned it on our Christmas cards, but it was
there, it was
there in the spacing of our
names and the negative space between our warm
bodies; we weren't allowed to
touch. she hates you so
much that she could never bear
leaving you. vacuums became my
lullaby and my father quickly grew
used to never getting kissed on the
mouth. I hate you. you were a thorn
stuck into the centrepiece of our perfect
family, and my psychotherapist says you're the
reason I still let myself
bleed.

I cry myself to sleep thinking of our last kiss
dear god I hope I've never made someone else feel like this 
I once thought I found god in the bend of your spine
I don't know why but you're the only thing that's ever made me feel alive
there's a pack on the counter and it keeps screaming your name 
my comfort is empty hallways, I know they feel the same
everything I write has your name between the lines
the only days I could breathe right were when you were mine
sometimes I see your ghost laying in my empty bed
for all of this pain, I think there's something to be said
the echo of your voice is a reminder I really hate
when I hear it I know I better call my shrink up before it's too late
depakote, klonopin, ambien, prozac
dear god if you're there, tell me where my head's at 
do her hands feel better in yours than mine 
I'm sorry this is so messy but I have to get it down in time 
I'm sick of people on main street asking me what I'm crying about
I make a fist and tell them a loves a love until it burns itself out.

i.
you are the cruelest person I've ever
met but my heart still beats really
fast whenever I think about 
you. I'm afraid if I touch 
you I'll burst into 
flames again. my 
hands haven't stopped shaking since you
left and I never got to thank you for teaching me the meaning of the word
hurt. I found my 
poems at the bottom of your
garbage can and I still can't 
sleep alone. I 
kissed you a lot, and sometimes, you kissed me
too.  

ii.
your skin rings up memories of moonlight and 
granite, a gaping
desert lying open like
it's as vulnerable as
you when it gets
dark. you have a murderous look in your
eye but you never broke a hair on my
head, you saved every phone log of every time I ever
called you. i heard your last girlfriend got arrested for domestic 
abuse and you never wrote to tell me. did it
hurt you more than 
I could? I hope you found what you were
looking for out there and I hope you never
lose it unless you
want to. 

iii.
something about your
eyes makes me want to know everything about the middle of the
night, I watch you
move and I whimper inside my
head. I haven't touched you in what seems like two whole
lifetimes, if I ever even did at
all. I hope I can again some
day. years later and your music stillI makes my ears
raw. I hope that bullet didn't
hurt too bad, I hope 
it brought you the happy. I'm sorry I never
could. 

iiii.
we are a modern day romeo and juli
et, it took me two 
years to realize how lovely your
lips looked and I'm still wrecking 
barriers, I'm still 
damning christ. my best friend has made it
clear she does not want me as a 
sister. I wish they'd let me
love you because you, you are all I've got
left. I might be the bullet but I will never be the
shooter, I'll take everything on
myself. you are so fragile and i am so 
sorry.

my aunt miscarried in october.
i remember thinking: strange, her
baby died in the
month when the dead were supposed to come back to
life. her
face sags more now, it's almost as if the
baby tugged at every inch of
her on its way down to the
underworld. my
uncle has gained a few pounds, too. the
weight of absence sits heavy on his once muscular
shoulders. i
thought i tasted true
sadness when he left
me, but i didn't account for the
bitterness of having to sell baby
shoes never once
worn. my
aunt still has her list of favourite baby
names hanging on her bedroom
door, but she turns it around
some days when she's feeling extra
sad. my
uncle doesn't talk to my
aunt much anymore. i
wonder if he blames
her. i
wonder if he blames
himself. i
wonder why the world takes things from you too
early on, and if you
complain you're thought of as a bad
person. i
wonder if you stop living when part of you
dies.

when we were
kids my best friend said she
wanted to be famous when she grew
up, she wanted to have her name in the
papers.  

in third grade she moved to new york
city, where they have billboards of famous people on every
corner.

in third grade too much was
happening to me at
once and I never had the time to
miss her.

I just found out she died of an
asthma attack six
months ago.

I heard she was the first child to
die from her hometown in more than fifty
years.

I guess she got her picture in the
paper, even if she never
grew up.

misophonia is not getting angry when you hear people breathing or eating. misophonia is 'i'm supposed to feel
stronger because there's a scientific
reason behind all the pain clenched like a fist inside my own body, I'm
supposed to feel better.' that's what doctors say. but the answer is a long list of riddles the doctors can't
decode. 'we know why your heart is
breaking, but we don't know how to
stop it.' misophonia is the maximum number of pills I can hold without dropping any. it's the moment when my doctor says she won't allow me to go to a college more than two hours away. it's the effort to smash my own bones on cement just to drown out the sound of somebody talking about what they had for dinner. it's that autocorrect and spellcheck still don't  recognize it as a word. it's about hearing sounds so menacing and monumental that not a night goes by where they don't swallow me whole. it's the fear of leaving my house and hearing something bad. it's my hands not feeling like hands and everything I try to touch turning into snow. it's having to bring headphones everywhere in case I hear a word I hate. it's my doctor telling me with a sad look on her face that she'd be surprised if I make it to 45 years old. it's having to ask directors if any of my trigger words are in the script before I see a show. it's the knowledge that I'm a quickly ticking time bomb, that it gets worse over time. that I might wake up tomorrow morning not being able to stand the sound of my mother's voice. it's the fact that the most common result of misophonia is self harm but I've made it this far without it. it's my chest igniting every time I hear someone start to talk. (I'm sorry I can't marry you, I can't stand the sound of your voice in the morning). it's simple words that can cause my composure to break like a separation of continents, like all that hurt never meant anything. years of wishing, on my knees, that I was deaf so I could skip the chapters when my whole body feels like a slowly melting candle, like I'm not allowed to be afraid of fire. it's in 9th grade when the bell rang to go home and I was sitting in the back row of English class with my fingers pressed so far into my ears they popped, trembling, until Mrs Gitsis asked someone to take me to the counseling centre. it's not 'ew, I hate the sound of people chewing.' do you lose sleep because the reverberations of that sound won't leave your head? do you have to lock the windows on your second floor to feel safe? it's having to wear gloves in 90 degree weather because I can't see my hands without them. it's waking up at 3am to arms that turn into stumps, unable to go get help because the sound of footsteps makes me want to die. it's reaching for a knife every time somebody says a common word. misophonia is being taken out of school because I can't sit with other kids in the cafeteria. it's hearing clapping after a show that's supposed to be for me transforming into screeching metal tires reverberating around my skull at frequencies i didn't know were possible. it's feeling every nerve ending in my body start to tingle seconds before someone says a trigger word, like god feels bad for all he's done so far and he's trying to send me a sign. it's the fact that most therapists haven't even heard of it. it's the fact that the ones who have don't know a cure. it's that there is no cure. it's when all someone has to do is repeat sentences, words, and phrases they know will break me. it's when my second therapist told me I was making it up. it's when my parents told me I just wanted to boss people around. it's when I started not being able to eat dinner with my family anymore. it's growing up in a household with a parent affected by serious OCD who has to vacuum 24/7 but I can't hear a vacuum or else I'll try to see my pulse from the inside. it's the sadness and anger that clenches itself around my heart like a fist until I feel like the dust I was created from. it's when something as simple as the sound of a drawer closing makes me wish I were dead. it's the knowledge that one day I won't be able to handle feeling like an abandoned building and the volcano inside of my head will erupt. it's the knowledge that I can't get help. I can't ever get help.

if you are missing him, remember this. remember how cruel he was to you, how every time he drove away the moonlight made your skin look bruised, it made you feel soft. remember that you are not. you might break but you will always heal. think of the nights where he turned away and refused to let you touch him, nights where he moaned your best friends' names into your mouth while you tried to prove how much you loved him, nights where he'd refuse to stop yelling until you put your hands on him. do not think of his hands, or his mouth, or any of the bones in his body. they're not for you. they're not for anybody but himself and you should pity the fact he doesn't know how to love them. you gave your best to him and he crumpled it up until it looked like your worst. don't feel sorry for being emotional, he was a gaping wound in your chest and things like that deserve a good cry. if you're missing him, remember how distant he was, how when you'd sink down on him he wouldn't be looking at your face. how his shoes were always graffitied with the numbers of other girls. how in the middle of a date he asked another girl her name. I know it hurts, it's going to be okay, I promise. remember how unhelpful he was? how little he cared, moving so fast he could never type the 'I?' he blamed you for loving him too much, for being too sad: both things were his fault. I know it doesn't seem like it but I promise there is somebody much, much more lovely, somebody who will treat you like a cloud, and won't throw a fit when you start to rain. you just have to wait.

say burning bush, say you don't
forgive me. what do you
mean, just friends? if that's what god intended as 
platonomy I don't think I want to 
meet him. 

I don't know 
why but there's something peculiar in how the minute your sister wasn't 
around we discovered how 
neatly my fingers fit into
yours. as everyone 
knows by now, what happens back 
stage stays back
stage and the walls still whisper of what we 
saw in each other's 
eyes right before we
fell into each other. I'm going to
burn for wishing I'd used my
mouth. 

I fit over his
hips like they were made for
me but maybe things are meant to be
asymmetrical, like the way the strings of your
hoodie are always
askew. maybe god finds
calm in violence, maybe he does this 
stuff so we don't forget how it
hurts. 

touching you means an
explosion and I wish they'd see it as bright
colours instead of just a loud
noise, because you, I think 
I could love
you.

when he tells you he’s decided it’s over, you leave the hotel, leave him sitting on the sheet with only the moonlight to hold him, walk down the smoke-filled hallways that have seen so many broken people trying to get somewhere else. anywhere else. you should’ve known this would happen, coming to a hotel. they are pit stops, things that lie between the before and after. you would happily stay stuck in the middle, forever. if he let it. if he let you. you remember that line about homesickness while passing through the lobby, something that looks like a living room that has been abandoned. like inside of your chest, inside of your heart. you are always letting people come, and take what they want. but he always gave it back in the morning, and for the first time you don’t want it anymore. you will learn to live with the gaping wound in your centre because its like a sign on the side of the road, a banner stapled to a tree in the woods, carved graffiti underneath a park bench. matt was here. he was here and he left. people leave. outside, in the parking lot, you are focused on *****, on a mission you won’t dare back down from. a man is swearing at his car, nuts and bolts scattered across the frozen blacktop. you used to lie on the blacktop at recess to keep warm, to heat up the parts of you that were cold, the parts no one could see. he asks if you know how to change a tire, and you say no, but that you are familiar with the way things fall apart.

it didn’t take much to get him mad. one wrong word and he’d erupt like a volcano, destroying everything in his path. how could you ever think it was okay to let your children know by heart the sound their mother makes when she’s pushed down the stairs? one night the mirror at the bottom cracked, a shard lodging itself into the centre of her forehead. this is a sign, i would’ve said if i was old enough to understand. take a reflection back on why you still think you need him. i haven’t talked to him in four years but it doesn’t make much of a difference, the seed of our last name still sprouts in my heart like an arsenic root. i wonder what he’s doing now, i’ve spent the time trying to fit into the holes in the walls that the beer bottles left. i don’t know anything about him except the colour of his anger and how he could never open up without the turn of a corkscrew. if his point was to teach his children never to touch alcohol, he got the point across. one night in our house was enough to understand that. he’d throw full bottles at the walls, saying he had a tough day, but the stains on our carpet still say he never loved us. maybe, i told them, the day he drove away for good, if we had the potential to **** him he might’ve loved us just as much.

being a poet is not
sentimental. it’s not
pretty. there’s nothing romantic about diving off a
bridge just to hear the water reverberate the sound of your ex lover’s
name. rain sounds like nothing but
falling blood and you’re always angry that it ruins your
shoes but is never enough to really
**** you. being a poet is a degenerative
brain disease, i heard
once. there’s some things doctors can’t
fix. there’s other things doctors can’t
name. all medicine starts to sound like it’s named after
a god. words never say what you actually
mean. you’re bleeding stanzas at the
mouth and everyone files past
you like you’re a waste of
time. when people tell you you say pretty
words you erupt like the earthquake in los
angeles this morning because the words might sound
pretty but what you’re saying
isn’t. everything weighs so *******
heavy on your shoulders and you hold the names of your ex
lovers names on your
tongue until they melt into
blood. i don’t know where your
hands are, nobody
does. the wolves are the only things that even have a
hint of what your thriving heart is shouting. you’re bound to feel too
much and at the funeral service of a man you’ve never
met you’re going to be crying in the
corner while everyone wonders who you
are and why you even
care. your words save so many lives but they’re bound to miss a
few, especially
yours.

whether you think adam and eve were human bodies
created by the hands of an insurmountable man or
collections of stardust created by the most
beautiful explosion there's ever
been, i know that when they were first being taught to taste
language they were shown a picture of me in place of the words
'natural disaster.' it's not my
fault i burn down every
building i touch. girls try to
save me and boys try to
change me but it's all just dust in the
end, i'll always go to bed smelling like
smoke. sometimes
i imagine myself as the lost rings of
neptune, floating
aimlessly in space, being as bright as the corona of a cracked open
sun, but everything always ends in
damage. meteorites are bound to
shoot from my trembling hands like
lasers. i once had a
boy who was the most exquisite
galaxy i'd ever
met and the minute he
kissed me he erupted like a
volcano, like
everything i'd ever said never
meant a thing. at his
funeral i cast apologies his family's
way by means of making
magnolias spring up from beneath
their feet. when people
die, the universe grows a
garden up to them, their souls floating in outer
space, using the tears of their
loved ones as
nourishment. cry for me. please
believe me, i didn't mean for katrina to
happen, and i'm
sorry sandy was a result of my
stomach flu. the
earthquake in los angeles this morning was my
fault, i'm sorry i can't keep my hands in
control anymore.

he asked what I wanted to do. I said
write poetry
or
die.
he said
they were the same.

when the lighting shatters every last thing you ever thought you needed I'll be here, I'll still be here, my hands wide open like they're soaked in blood, I will pry every last tendon from my bone to prove to you I know what hurt looks like, this, no: this, is not what they call getting better. sometimes our hearts beat for no other reason than they don't know how to stop, sometimes people turn away and leave and never come back and we don't know why, mother, can you hear me? you said there'd be days like this but you never told me how to handle them when they turn into my every day. remember that one time in December? when you finally realized I might need some help or I'd die younger than our dog? I was upstairs contemplating killing myself and you were downstairs screaming about ***** dishes. this is not healing, I'm not going to pretend I know what that is, but I know something's changed, the stars aren't telling me to self-destruct anymore, and that's gotta count for something, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k39eiQnym2I

watch my poem i won my local poetry slam with

you remember his lips on
yours, how they felt like tar and you knew he was something
you did not want to stick to. the aftermath was like climbing out of a
net while covered in honey, he told you, smiling, how sweet you
were but you’re clenching your fists waiting for the
bees. sting me here and here and here and
here, cut off my hands so i never have to know what
losing your child before it’s fourth
birthday feels like.

when you were little, your
mother used to read you bedtime
stories about princes and dragons and lots of happy ever
afters. but where is the ‘after’ when your best friend
hates you? where is the
‘before?’

your therapist is reading you an
eliot poem in hopes it’ll calm you
down, in hopes you’ll replace memories of that
boy with bob
dylan and that couch with thoughts of empty
fields. every time it comes into your
head, bob won’t write songs about
you and the field screams ‘i am not
empty, i am
open.’

call you Vada, accuse you of being in
love with your teacher and killing your
mother; the first thing you ever ruined on
accident. you wish you were thomas
j, you wish you were genetically pre
dispositioned to crumble like a heart made of
sand when a bee sticks himself
into you.

your best friend won’t be your
best friend anymore and you’re ripping pages out of the
calendar and swallowing january
whole, there’s more ways to die than to stay
alive. suicides are their own
language, the suicidal are like
carpenters, they always ask ‘what
tools’ instead of
‘why build’.

you’re begging to the god your best
friend believes in to let you die
young. every minute of the
afterward feels like one more
tally on his list of worst
betrayals. satan is
smiling because you’re playing the game he
invented.

but what if the devil
doesn’t know he’s the devil?

it started out with a crash and a
blast and it ended in a mouthful of
bees.

arms wrapped around my
waist feeling more like a chain link
fence I could not
jump reminding me of the
christmas my entire
family bought me boxes and boxes of
rulers to see if i measured up to their standard of
beauty of what a young woman should
weigh but personally I've liked feeling like an oversized bag of
sugar when everyone else is withering away to
nothing to the sound of your voice when I say it on a windy
day see I can keep you right
here if we're still in love in
winter and you get
cold at night you can go right
here in the folds of my
love if you get cold if you get
cold see I have so much to
give the truth is I never really gave a
**** about you but you were the only
person who could embrace
me without making some sort of
joke and I've never had a history of
humour

here's to those with seasonal affective disorder that made it through the east coast's incredibly long winter. and here's to those that didn't.

once a boy called me for three hours just to talk about my favourite
movie. i never said i
loved him. like everything
else, winter murdered whatever we
had and the next
summer was very
foreign. once a boy loved
me and never told
me. the last night he walked away from my
porch i pictured him as a cloud of
tears, as a white
flag. once i loved a
boy and when i told him, he said ‘i
know.’ my best friend tells me i’m good at making
fists. i try to find
god in vintage wallpaper and downtown
bars, sitting so
long that my ears flood with the signal
notes of a lonely man’s
saxophone. here, you can smell cemeteries and
playgrounds on the same
street. here,
boys never love you
back. once, i broke a rock in my bare
hand. once, a boy i hardly ever
talked to told me that i was a good
poet in the way i explained
things and asked me please not to become a
dead one. i didn’t know what i
meant when i told him i’d
try. once i loved a boy so full of
anger that his god begged him for
mercy. i think i almost
loved a boy once.

people tell me i’m
lucky because at least i lost
him knowing that he
loved me, at least it wasn’t as painful as a
breakup. if this isn’t
pain then please tell me words for this swallowing
wound in the middle of my
chest, explain how i can’t find my own
hands even in broad
daylight and every time i think i
see him around our
house i know to take it as a
sign that i need to call my shrink back up, tell her
about the ghost at the core of my
life.

i can still feel his
hands in mine, long pianist man
fingers and encompassing
palms, wide open like a
map soaked in
blood.

he was so long
gone by the time that they
found him, his own fragile
mother couldn’t identify the
body, i was the only
one who knew how my hands were supposed to fit his
hips, the only good part of him
left.

my doctor tells me that i’ve passed the threshold for
grief, this isn’t healthy, she
tells me. how am i expected to know the meaning of that
word when the only thing i can
explain is the incessant ringing in my
ear, the sound of the
bullet that went farther than i ever
dared.

we were supposed to get
married, he just didn’t have the
money, but he gave me everything else off his very own
back. at night i stay up repeating the names of the
children we were going to
have, all three of
them. now they seem like more of an
insult to the holy
trinity.

god, how did you feel when satan
fell? i demand you on your
knees, begging me to
believe in you again. do you know how it feels to be in love with a
ghost?

there’s people whose dads don’t even know their
face but that doesn’t change what i
have. that somehow doesn’t lessen the
blow. that’s
nice you got bit by a
shark and all but nobody ever asks me about
my scars, the ones you can’t
see. i try to take
baths to feel
whole again but the water hits me like a
fist when i drop down too
fast, like all the hurt in the
world never meant
anything. i guess what i’m trying to
say is that i love you, i love
you, and i remember the
night you punched my name into the bedroom
wall because i tried too hard to
save you, i tried too
hard to **** the poison out of
something already
pure. i guess
i was hoping you’d question how i could smell a broken
bone from three miles
away, how i could find bandages in the blackest
dark. i guess
i was hoping you might end up saving
me, too.

'please don't ever
hurt me,' you whimper into the softer side of his
neck. he knows exactly where to put his
hands on someone who hurts
everywhere. 'the only way I could ever
bruise you is by kissing you too
hard,' he says back.

you collect his moans like cut out passages from the
bible, he's the reason people get in fights about
god. he might not be a real
thing but there's no *******
way the universe created your boy by
itself.

you want to scream that you
love him from every rooftop in every
city that is warless, every Spanish
town that doesn't have a
cross on the front
gate.

yes, you do believe the story about Jesus being draped from a
cross like your great grandmother's
laundry, but like the buckets being passed around at
church, not all of it was
holy.

he is splayed out on his
back in front of you, his shirt on the
floor and his arms out to the
sides. as you push down on his
hips he bites his lip until it
bleeds the colour he knows is your
favourite. 'the only way I could ever
hurt you is by holding your hand too
tightly,' you promise him, leaning into him like a
corner.

today, my best friend’s
boyfriend pulled a bag of
coke out of his jacket
pocket at the restaurant
table. i asked him if he wanted to
****
himself. he said drugs have never been a
dial tone, the only people they
do any damage to are the ones who don’t know what they’re
doing. i was born holding these names in my
mouth: river, jimi, darby, amy, jim… and
i’ll die knowing how much they
weigh. drugs aren’t a
privilege. i knew this long before my best
friend found her boyfriend on his bathroom
floor, blood dripping out of his
mouth like a lost
lifeline, like a wounded
animal she could never have
saved. i know i’d rather kiss junkies than
angels but i don’t want to taste that
pain, i don’t want my
mouth to mean something more than it
does. drugs bring you to the
top of the tallest thing you know
of, then strike you like a lightning
bolt until you crash into the
ground like the grey sisters in nyc
did once. i asked if he wanted to ****
himself, and he never even
heard me.

he still holds your name in his
mouth like his first
communion, his hands would still fit the mold of your
hips if only you'd
let him try. you can remember the light of
after, the gleam of the scissors as you tried to make him
pretty, his strength littering the floor sort of like the plates in your
kitchen now, that kind of
damage. it must've took a whole lot of
something for that to
happen, they say to you. the
aftermath is not
pretty. without his flower petal
ponytail he is no longer
pretty.

it's not a coincidence that his name sounds like falling
cities, how you never bothered to learn to sleep
alone.

evil is a little boy in a black
hood trying to be
good. do you ever think about how many
tears the mother of the
devil has cried? not all the planets in our known solar
system could fathom that kind of
treason.

being home alone at night is my achilles
heel. perhaps we were meant to splinter like
this, he thought when he took his last
breath. perhaps
we were made for
this, and nothing
else.

when he says he
loves me, i want to dip him in
chocolate. when he says he's leaving
anyway, my eyes burn like they've been soaked in
bleach. come, baby, let me straighten your
spine, let me read to you the novels of your
fingertips.

some things, i guess, are doomed from the
start. some countries don't have words for
'all right.' some people never stop
bleeding.

you are alive. you are here, presently, surrounded by reasons why you must stay alive. even if the noose of your grief holding up your happiness shows no signs of letting up, stay. if you can't count every reason to die on your fingers, grab your friends and start using their hands to count the reasons you need to be here, with these people, these places, these moments. think of old men smiling to themselves as they drive by their childhood homes. sure, it was sad for them to leave. but they gave the wound a while to heal and sixty years later their wife is waiting for them at home with a plate of cookies and their son is just about to have his first kid and their daughter is the most beautiful starburst ever let out of heaven and that old man, that old man is happy. everybody has a crumpled suicide note if you dig deep enough. everybody's adolescence is stained with forgotten kisses and broken beer bottles and ****** knuckles and several prayers to dine with the dead and you are not alone. you are not alone in wondering if this is the end. the show will go on with or without you, and you need to love the sound of the applause because, baby, your big scene is coming up.

if you listen closely you
can still hear the titanic’s jazz
band lulling its mourners to
sleep, saying
they’re sorry it had to end this
way, the
iceberg was born with
revenge in her bloodstream and
as sweet as 1500
deaths tasted, she
is still bitter, because
everybody cries for the
passengers, but
god, dear god, what about
the **** ship?

you

they’re passing you the **** for the first time, rubber yellows and greens and reds so bright that you can see them despite the flattened beer boxes covering the windows. keeping others out. letting you stay in. you are always trying to get in. you pretend to breathe in, pretend that your entire chest isn’t already full of something else. don’t worry, it’s not going to **** you, they promise, passing it around again. ‘yes’, you say, studying his profile in the sliver of streetlight coming through the cracks between the boxes, hazy with smoke that burns your ******* insides out, ‘it will’. you can feel his hand on your leg, inching between your thighs, willing him to crawl up inside of you until you are someone else. until the shell of you is finally filled. they notice you’re shivering, ask if you’re cold. ask about the art exhibit you attended earlier. ‘it was nothing,’ you say, looking at his smile, bright square teeth illuminated by the persistent streetlight. ‘just ******* nothing.’ he is smiling, laughing the laugh that makes your head spin, spilling **** water all over your four thighs until he is squirming in wet discomfort, something he makes you do, alone. anywhere but here. especially here. they ask if you’re high, you’re not. he tells you you’re high, looking you in the eye, and you are. ‘i’m high out of my ******* mind.’ and you want to stay there. stay in the claustrophobic car that doesn’t even start while your friends are quoting memes in the front seats, while your boyfriend sits on your other side, smoking a cigar, while you stare at his staring, hear his begging for fresh air, wanting to get out. you should’ve known it would come to this. you should’ve known. you’ve been told before. your friends are choking and laughing and moving, somewhere far away, and all you can think about is how when loving a wild spirit, you are always left watching the door.

he reminds you of the last time you were in florida, sunscreen-white skin, hiding the damage underneath. skin like the ivory you saw on the elephant on the safari, making you think, ****, they are going to **** you for that. making you understand why.

your sleepy hands dove into his sleepy hair in that sleepy hotel plenty of other people have ****** in, loved each other in. not like this. never, anything, like this. because it wasn’t *******, not like in the movies, not like your friends talk about while you’re looking at your hands under the table, trying not to cry. you are trying to tell them how he is different, how he can carve your heart right of your chest, how you’d hand him the knife.

you try to convey the type of special he is, the kind that lives in the staticky silence after you tell your estranged father over the phone that you still love him. your knowledge of your father consists of 10 numbers you couldn’t care less about.

you dug out the box in your closet, kept for times like this, and stowed away the pieces you have left of the boy, pieces you got away with. broken rays of sunlight you captured in your bag the moment after he first kissed you, the sun breaking through his curtain because it just needed a ******* glimpse of his jawline, the slopes of his back, roadmaps you wanted to explore with him, confetti that used to be pictures of him, of his hands, thuds and melodies you made on the unfamiliar bedspread, ones that crawled into your ears when he played you his music. you couldn’t help but think of his hands, long palm-tree fingers plucking something out on the piano like he knew just how to break you. you wish he could introduce you like that to his friends, all of his friends. this is chloe. i wrote her two weeks ago. i’ve erased some parts, edited them, changed them. added in better ones.

you keep having this dream, where he is in an unfamiliar body of water in front of your florida condo. washing your sunset painting off of his back, pinks and purples and reds, too many reds, saltwater curling his hair. he’s surrounded by swimming babies, babies that don’t look a thing like you. the ocean could sweep him away, if you let it. if he lets it.

he tells you you are beautiful, tries to make sure you know that hurting still hurts when you do it yourself. you want to tell him that he is beautiful, too, but that would be too easy. he wants to tell you to take him to the most wonderful place you know of, but you don’t know where he was born. countries away, and everything else. you want to tell him to take you to the top of the tallest mountain on earth and not show you the way home. you want to say, okay, you have been inside me, now it’s my turn. crawl into his ribcage, sit on his hipbones, and make a home there.

when it’s ending, you remember the hole you dug in the beach, too close to the waves. you are used to living in the negative space. just because the tide filled it in, doesn’t mean there was never a hole there, never something missing.

when you say you love him, not like that, it’s too late. when he says he is leaving, he’s already packed. when he says goodbye, he is already so far away.

my heart
will never be as heavy as the ones of the
children who are forced to learn the anatomy of a gun
in two seconds
flat. it doesn't matter if you believe in
god. god finds calm in
violence, god doesn't come
here, to the schools that are named after presidents and
townspeople who've done good
deeds, places
that were supposed to be
safe.

my heart
will never be as heavy as the ones of the
parents who sent their kids to
school in dresses and ironed
khakis and two little
pigtails and got them back in
body bags. there are no
flags here. no Purple Hearts
for the kids who couldn't wait long enough to find
god.

the
people living next door to me probably wrote newspaper articles about their neighbour’s
promiscuity, thinking
we were ******* when
really doors were just being
slammed with an exuberant amount of
passion. anger
holds more truth than love sometimes and
often, winter forbids happiness to
be. i
cut my hair to teach myself
loss and i guess it came in handy when
you left. too much,
you said. i was too much. too much
hugging, kissing, writing,
clinging,
clinging,
clinging. i
was the dryer sheet desperate enough in
love with your tshirt that i had no
plans to ever let
go. i
don’t hug you as much anymore, and
i never kiss you. but
i do still call you twice a day. i guess
i’m still working on that ‘not clinging’ thing. i guess
i’m just as awful as my neighbours
thought. but
there’s a difference, i wore you out, you wore me down.

forget the drugs. yeah, they’re going
around and yeah, they’re pretty
dangerous, but they don’t take as many
lives. stop searching kids’
lockers and start looking for the deeper
stuff, the things that leave heavier
inflictions. yeah, i
know it’s nearly one
hundred degrees outside, and
there’s girls in here wearing
long sleeved sweaters. they’re
hiding something more
sinister, something
that can’t be measured in
kilos.

to whoever loves him next:

1. he always refuses to believe that he has beautiful hands. hold them as much as he lets you and don't let him forget it.

2. when you have an anxiety attack or simply just a bad night, he most likely won't try to help you. this doesn't mean he doesn't love you.

3. remind him ever day that he sounds like wind chimes in a blizzard.

4. he acts much older than he really is sometimes. this will trick you. when you get mad at him for doing something stupid, remind yourself how young he is.

5. he likes it rough but please be gentle with him.

6. when he gets so angry it looks like there's fireworks shooting from his fists, do the opposite of whatever he tells you. he'll melt into you soon enough.

7. on the nights where he refuses to let you touch him, keep far away. trust me.

8. don't ever let him see how sad you are. he'll leave.

9. on dates he'll ask other girl's their names. ignore it and remember you're the one he's with.

10. if he doesn't feel like hanging out, don't ask him twice.

11. do not ever, ever take him for granted, no matter how young he acts or how many times he throws his fist at the wall. he is so ******* beautiful and you might not realize it until you lose him.

12. when you lose him, you will cry, you will try to die. everything inside of you will shrivel away.

dear girl who kissed the boy i love: i hope you found the spot that makes him laugh, i hope you found god in his ******* hands

love will start out by igniting fireworks in your ribcage and leave you feeling like a gunshot aftermath

satan dwells
within my head
he will not rest
til i am dead

if you are ever at a bus
stop then take a good look at the person not standing near
everyone and know that this person is a
writer. know that their hands are in
pain and know that they have cried themselves
dry in front of darkened
mirrors because they can’t stand the sight of
themselves. know that the night into which their lover
fled is that which owns their
soul. they know much more than
you yet they would give anything
not to understand. they’re wearing long sleeves for a
reason and they are taking the
bus only because they know that their life has no
purpose, no more than that of an abandoned
cigarette. know that these people with the very melancholy
eyes and the pigeon-toed
feet are writers and that they will love
you even when they can’t
love themselves.

there were nights when you'd turn
away and you'd refuse to let me
touch you. if you want to know what a broken
bone feels like put your hand right
here.

when I heard of
Katrina I had no one to hold my hair
back, I had no one to tell me that hansel and gretel don't end up
eating each other.

lately I've been cutting up
bibles and bleeding with the
moon, there's things we know how to
fix and things we
don't.

if church was your
bedroom I ****** the sixth
genesis out of you, I pulled adam's second
son from your hair while you moaned the fall of jerusalem into my
mouth.

when we were good god considered shutting down
heaven but when we were bad, when we were
bad satan cried himself to
sleep.

lately I've been spinning in
circles and counting calendar
days like your kisses, you don't
know what I've been
up to, last week I went to my own
funeral.

everybody was dressed a hell of a lot like
me, all black and black and
cobwebs, crying into their
hands so hard it seemed like a collective
effort to break the world
open.

you weren't
there, I touched everybody's
face but you weren't
there, it took me only two
minutes to figure out where you'd
be.

her hands were gripped around the back of your
neck like a noose, lying in your
bed, still covered with a ton of my stray
hairs that had fallen out last
time you swore you'd try to be
gentle.

when she said your
name i imploded in on myself like a chemical
war, all the bones in my body trying to get
out. did you tell her you loved her,
too?

I took some of my stray
hair and stuck it to your
back, if she took as much time on you as
I did she'll find it soon
enough, and I hope she
does. I hope
she breaks you. I hope
you wake up and she's
gone so that you know what
hurt tastes like. I hope
you lose her as quickly as I lost
you, and you can't drag yourself out of all the
rot she leaves behind on your bedroom
floor.

I hope she doesn't go to your
funeral, because I sure as hell am
not.