One time
I planned to show you.
I wanted to hear what you thought of me
And how I made you feel.
But now there's no way I can.
Because some parts of me, you don't need to see.
And I don't need to show you.
It would only end badly.
I wish I could.

Your lips may be my barbiturate
But your words are my poison.

I need you to dissolve me
Liquidate my mind
So I no longer must suffer from the toxins.
You cannot hurt a liquid.

Quick, put your lips to mine!
Crash them together to calm me, sedate me.
Your kiss will melt my thoughts
Allowing me to pick out the solids.
To pick out your crystallized contamination.

I need to build up a tolerance
An amount of your fatalism that I can take.
But I cannot do that right now-
Your poison has sent me to a coma.
Your poison is coursing through my bloodstream.

Night breezes cool hot cheeks,
But breezes can only be fleeting.
My skin can't cool for long
Because my temper's so hot.

Every car that passes,
I wonder if it's you.
It never is.
And I know better than to really hope.

You should know to find me here.
If you would think, you would know.
I guess it's just your
Selective memory acting up again.

You say you don't want to leave us like this
But you didn't seem to mind making us this way.
Maybe you should pick a direction you want us to go.

I can't keep doing this.

Pop-reggae in my brain
Fan buzzing in my ear
Music down the hall...
Which should I focus on?

Bright red lips
Forming a perfect circle.
A fairytale hole
On a pale pale face.
Her eyes are rimmed
Black
With midnight mascara.
Hair a frustrated mess
Of dark curls
On top of her head.
The lace of her cami
Is flush to her *******
And minimal green cotton
Lays low on her hips.

She is Betty
She is Veronica
She is Snow and Cindy and Belle.

Everything becomes her
And through her archetypal appearance
She becomes everything.

I want to know what your favorite is
Because I think it would tell me lots about you.

Whether you care most about intent
Or style or diction or timing.
Or if meaning is your all.

And then maybe I can use that for us
And see what you notice most there:
Intent, style, diction, meaning.
When our lips touch, do you judge it by the repetition
Or by the desire?

Slowly, I will come to understand you.

A  book left in my view
A possible display of affection?
Or just a coincidence.
I've written down
My secret love affair
How my soul intertwines with that author's.
How he may be dead, but he makes me feel alive.
Maybe she noticed?
Maybe it's for me?

More likely, I am once again
Pretending the world is made for me.

I don't understand people
Who don't value
INDEPENDENCE
As the highest good.
It is what I crave
It is what I work for
Constantly.

It's unfortunate that the man I will spend my life with
Doesn't seem to care for it at all.

All right.
Your pictures are officially deleted
From my camera and my Facebook.
The prints are out of their frames
Your ticket stubs are out of my box
(Until I can look at them with fond memories
Instead of sadness.)
And the sweet things you've given me are in a drawer.

All of you, hidden away.
Just like who you are was hidden away.
I'm still not sure if I ever really knew you.

I'm just glad I'm finally feeling it.
I've not had one sorrow, one lament
But you can't live without that, I guess.
So, now's the time.

Here's to the past.

It was mine.
MINE.
Mine
Like a toy belongs to a little girl
Who's always had to share.
Mine
Like a private journal
I accidentally left in the open.
Mine
Like the boy who has my heart
And doesn't know what to do with it.

It was mine.
I didn't want to share.

I felt something today.

It wasn't positive
Or productive
And it was excessive.

But still.

I felt something.

It's just good to know that I haven't become permanently detached from humanity yet.

I feel like I should write something
But I don't know what to say.
I've been sitting here
Waiting
All night.
I'm not even sure what I'm waiting for.
An epiphany?
An explosion?
I don't know.
All I know is
I'm here
Alone
And I don't know what to say.

I am empty.
People can only prove they exist
By having relationships with others.
If no one knows who you are, then you aren't.
I called my lover.
We had nothing to say.
The phone felt fragile in my hands
But maybe it was just our words that made it feel so.
I called my mother
She rushed me off
Shallow words filling the scurried silence.

If my strongest relationship are this tenuous,
How can my existence not be?

To me
Christianity doesn't mean
Love and Jesus and kindness.
Christianity is
Having an excuse
To dress up once a week.
Christianity is
Not letting friends
Eat on the couch.
Christianity is
Group chanting every Sunday
With people who smell like death.
Christianity is
Depriving yourself of a lot of good music
And hoping that all this deprivation makes a difference.
I don't see why it would.
To me, Christianity is basing your life
Around a tiny beam of hope.
I need more basis than that.

Recreated
In the image of who I want to be.
Reborn
From a newly discovered stage of development.

I am renewed and reevaluated.
Now vibrant and breathless
Open and waiting
For you, always for you.

For me, too.
But in a different way.
Finally, facing my id.
Finally, flying.

It's your turn to work.
For a year
I have shuttled my life
Backandforth
Backandforth
For you.
To see you.
But now it's your turn.
You can come see me.
Use your gas
Use your time
I can't do all the work
All the time.

This is supposed to be equal.

Also, get a job
And get some independence.
It's time to be an adult.

The blanket's too warm.
The water's too sweet.
I feel too empty.

My dreams are empty, too
But nevertheless, filled with something I don't like.

I don't understand my psyche.
I don't know where this stuff comes from.

I just wish it would leave
So I can be happy.

It wasn't a big deal.
He just asked for some help
Can you help me find this shirt
Can you let me in the dressing room
Can you fit me for a jacket.
But I was petrified.
Terrified.
What if I do it wrong
What if I say the wrong thing
What if I upset him.
What will happen?

In reality, nothing.
but in my mind
Everything I am frightened of.
In my mind
I am burning.

I haven't written in days.
I need to get my rhythm back
My meter, my stanzas, my rhymes
If I so choose to use them.

I don't want to sound like someone else
But I don't remember my voice.
I'm like Ariel in the Little Mermaid
Giving up my voice on a whim.
She didn't mind the choice
But I am neither mermaid nor songstress.

You're distracted me to the point of...
I don't know, exactly.
But I can't won't don't recall my words.

I need to feel again
Because it's been a week without a soul.

"Hehehe, I'm a poet
And I didn't even know it!"
Haha, I'm a poet
And I'm gonna ******* you with a can of bugspray.

Just feel don't know
Need love want hope
End up all alone
End up in a retirement home

Taste heart smell sun
Dance shake shimmy fun
Run into guy with a gun
Run in the convent be a nun

Worship jesus worship god
Hate the devil hate the rod
Celibate and frozen solid
No one ever sees your ***

Age wrinkle die alone
Empty heart empty throne
Wasted life on fake credo
Now you die, now you go

You're an anomaly.
Your frizzy hair
And strange birthmarks
Give off a less than fantastic impression
To the shallow.
You are soft spoken
You are obsessed with fan fiction.

I hear that you write...

I know that you are
A home schooled super-christian.
Maybe that's part of the reason
For my lack of understanding.

You are an alien
In my socially awkward agnostic world.

You make my heart burn
But in the **** way, not the kind you get Tums for.
And I think about you a lot
And I think about why I think about you so much a lot too.
And I wonder what your favorite food is
Because someday I won't be a broke college kid and maybe
I could figure out to make an easy version of it for you.
You make my insides coil up like a Slinky when you look at me
Which is new for me and I think it's just because I like you a lot
But I like your effect on me a lot too.
I look at you too much and I hope you don't think it's weird
Because I just think that you're kind of fascinating
And I write about you too much and I hope you don't think I'm obsessive
Because I'm not.
You just hang out in my brain a lot.


Anyway
Write me back.

Let me live in the palms of your hands;
They can be my palm trees, indeed,
And your arms my desert island.
I will survive on the salt water
And coconut meat
That I'll search throughout your body for.
I'll spend my days exploring, learning
All the mountains and caverns you hold.
I will be the first native
And you will be my first home.

You are the bad seed.
She killed them all.
It happened. What will you do?*

Why do you make me try to reinforce my possible schizophrenia
When you are only here to have fun?

Who cares.
Let's have some *****.

Claw pierces flesh
And rips through layers of fat and muscle.
Tears capillaries in twain
While absorbing my blood.
It drinks in my cells
While the liquid oxidizes for the few moments it feels the air.

Claw is cleaned
Blood mysteriously vanishing.
Muscle reconnects
Fat melts back together.
Capillaries clot and join
So as to spill no more pathogenic juice.

Where does the blood go?
Where does the air between my cells go?
How is the hole in my flesh refilled?

Summer burns out, becomes fall
And you are still here.

I want to watch fall fall with you
See the cedar trees turn to pollen
And the sun cool to a new amber.

Winter will wither,
And I will want you with me.
Warm me in the cold, shield me from the wind
I will do both for you.
The year will change,
And so will we.

And when spring springs no more
And we shed our safety nets
I hope you will stay.
I will stay.

The changes will come.
I want to watch you change.
I want to watch the world evolve.
I want you to see me evolve.

The wine isn't as good as I remember.
It's sour, and the sweet aftertaste isn't there.
It does the job though.
Two gulps and I'm chilled out
Ready to take on all the socialization that life's going to force on me.
Instead of uncomfortable and anxious
I will be a calm observer.
The scent of my breath will make her upset
But it's what I need to face the rest of the night.
The world is more beautiful
The leaves on the oak become beautiful green Styrofoam
The smell of the bushes enchants my senses.
Because of the wine, everything is better.

He must have a sensor.
A sensor that can tell
When I'm low
And when I feel like nothing.
He has a magic light
That comes on in his ship
That shows him when I'm vulnerable.

This happens way too often to be coincidence.

We're both here
But we're not together.
I'm just waiting
For you to see me again.

Please
See me soon.

Who's that pale chick
Mumbling to herself about
Fictional schools of witchcraft and wizardry
And trolleys and snakes?

Oh that's just Christine
She's not that bad
If she tells you she's a
Reanimated corpse
Walking among the living by using brains as sustenance
Don't pay any attention.
She's probably just kidding.

I am a ****** woman.
My every move is connected
To a ****** act
In my mind.
When I bend down to fold at work
I'm arching into you.
When I **** on an ice cube
It's you in my mouth.
Dancing is nothing but ***.

One of these days it might get me in trouble
But I don't think anyone notices.

My hands aren't big enough to be a substitute for yours.
Wrong size, wrong texture, wrong angle.

I need you, warm on my ****.
I need your fingers swirling in me.
I need you talking to me
And looking at me with that predatory stare.

I need you now.

It's embarrassing
To never have an ******.
It's shameful
To not enjoy ***.
I crave it, sometimes.
I think of ***
And flesh
And joining
As much as anyone else.
But every time I try
It's just a big pile of ****.
It's horrible to know
That every time my juices get flowing,
There's no point.
In the end, I always feel like a shame to humankind.

Shaking limbs and rumbling stomachs
Poor vision and cold toes.
These are what I have to keep me through the night.
I know not where they came from
Or why they've come for me.
They are here
As an elite task force
Created to bring malaise and confusion to their victims.

I don't know why they came
And I don't know who I am
And I don't know anything.

Forgive me.

I think too much.
I was thinking
Wondering where I weas going with this whole
"Poetry" shindig.
I was thinking
Maybe when I'm eighty
When I'm dead
When I die
Someone will look through my computer
And see my blog.
Maybe they'll read my poems
Declare my a virtuoso
Claim that I should've been revered in my time
And declare it a shame that I have passed.
They will show them to a publisher
And distribute them worldwide.
I will become a literary Picasso
And live through it.
Those who knew me will mourn with ferocity
Ashamed that they never knew.
I will be loved for an eternity.

In all likelihood, that will never happen.
It is near impossible.
Will I even keep this up that long?
But it's nice to hope.

But I can tell that I'm thinking too much.
I was taught
That poetry should come from the heart
Unfiltered
No thinking.
Just your soul on paper
With a rhythmic beat, if possible.
So not only will I never be even considered
As a poetic woman.
But I am doing this all wrong

calm
d
o
w
n


not everything is about you
not everything is important
and those two aren't mutually inclusive

you are lovely
but your firehair
goes to the inside as well

Show me something new.
Or not even new, really.
Just show me something wonderful.
I promise I'm still interested.

Show me how your face looks
When you're thinking.
I can't handle that other face anymore.
You know the one.
You've been showing it a lot.

Show me what music looks like to you
And what meaning words have for you.
Show me your sun and your moon.
Show me something I haven't seen in a while.

If you don't want to, give me a chance.
I'll try to show you how music swirls in my head
And how words are made of both stone and water.
I'll show you that some days, you're my sun.
And other days my sun is explosive.
I'll tell you how the moon sings to me some nights
And other nights just lets me talk.

I'm not done talking to you.
I'm not done hearing.

I worry you feel the opposite.

Silence is always the safest answer.
My dad used to get mad at me
For not participating in conversations.
I was just smart enough to know
That most of the time the response in my mind
Should not be voiced
In fear of judgement
Or anger
Or just plain discomfort.
It is a trait I have brought with me from childhood.

Often not responding is the best response of all.

I changed all my passwords
So they don't include your name.
I switched to 'single' on that website.
I'm taking down all your pictures
And putting them away.
You say you won't let me go
But I hope you will.
You deserve better than me, anyway.

The thing is, I didn't cry.
You did the exact same thing as last time
But I had my will.
I didn't even cry.

I like milk in my tea
And condoms on my *****.
I'm pretty good at Sudoku
And at laying there while you pound me.
I have a lot of traits.
I guess patience is the most surprising.

You know it's only because it's you
But I'm completely okay with that.
I'll be anything you want me to be
Because you do the same for me.

They say this pill will help me sleep.
My soul it will let me keep.
Yet I toss and turn for hours on end
Trying my energy to spend.
I lay here in this soft warm bed
And try to empty out my head.
I thought these pills would help me sleep
Instead they only make me weep.

One sober night
And I can't remember how to interact with others
And I don't think anything's as funny as it was
And I don't think anyone's as interesting as they were.

The world loses its sparkle
And everything is made of dust, not diamonds.
I sit silently
Waiting for anything of importance to happen
But it never does.

Why would I ever stop drinking?

You don't even realize what you say.
It makes me sad.
Not because of your words
But the idea behind them.
They convey that you have never
Had to sit alone in a herd of students.
They show that you have never
Been surprised that someone wanted to see you
Outside of a forced environment.
That has been my reality
For eight-teen years
And you have no clue what I mean.
How is it that we have had such different experiences?
I'm glad
That you never had to feel
Completely out of place.
Alone.
You've always had a friend or a lover.
I have been alone
For most of my life.
Not just in love
but in general.
For ten years, I had no friends.
For the next five, I had one.
We have had completely different experiences
And I envy you.

I wish I missed people.
I feel like by never missing anyone
I demean the relationships I have.
I just can't help it.
Sometimes I wish someone in particular was with me
But those feelings are always short
And fleeting.
By never needing anyone
When I know how much the other person misses me
I feel like I'm not as committed to them as they are to me.
It's not on purpose.
I tell them I miss them when they say it first
but it's always a lie.

Maybe I'm just a sociopath.

It seems strange to be alone
Here, without you.
Only with the dark night
And the bright screen of my computer
As companions.

My bed is far smaller than yours
But there's far too much room
Because you aren't here with me.

I shouldn't miss you like this.
I shouldn't care for you so much.

I never missed him.
When did I start missing you?

Your heart feels like rubber
When it fills
A balloon when it empties.
Your thigh has fallen against my wrist
And your hand is resting on my hip.
We sit silently
Sometimes I can feel your head
Fall into my hair.
To sniff? To feel?
Black sky surrounds us
And we are in a vortex
We are the only living beings.
Pink Floyd is playing
Softly
From somewhere in the depths
Of the cosmos.
We talk
And listen
For hours.
Far too late into the night.
But when I come home
My core is melting
And the buzz of my high won't let me hear the signal.

"DANGER!"

In space, no one can hear you scream.
However, they can't hear you make that
Weird snort when you laugh, either.
I guess you gotta choose your priorities.

She would hate to hear it, but they are a lot alike.

I will surely pay for this later.

My shallow breaths
Not in enough, not out enough
Drown me in oxygen, not h20.
Forgetting what "slow down" means
Is a dangerous thing.

And my hammering heart
Too fast, too hard
Pounding out an imprint on my shirt
An engraved bloated pear, for all to see.
Does it starve when not in love?

And you, there.
Slowed down, not as time
As an individual. A marker of time.
A maker of metaphor.
Remind me to breathe
Remind me to
s l o w d o w n.

And me, here.
Too fast, too slow.
A potato imprint
Of changing, of change.
A penny for a thought
A nickel for a word
A quarter for a second
Stolen from my mind.