kiss a girl
with cigarettes on her breath
to know how it tastes
to be thrown away

kiss a boy
soaked in whiskey
to know the taste
of regret

when i think about you
i think about being so close
that our heartbeats are touching

i think about laying in your
dark blue bed sheets
cologned in your honey breath
wanting you to rip me open
and fall in love with my organs

i remember all i want for christmas
is for you to let me be
in the same room as you
and how when you cracked your neck
it sounded like a question

i think of how you left before your
scent could soak into my pillowcases
and i think about hating you for that

then i think about you, starved skinny
and her fishnets getting caught on
everything and you loving it

and i think of the violin in the next room
that sounded like "**** me **** me **** me"
and telling you that being held
does not make you a prisoner

and i think about the ambien hearted girl
and you shaking her to wake her up
while i'm jealous of the dying/dead

still am

1) be more honest with others about how i feel. i have no reason to waste my time trying not to "hurt your feelings" if i need to call you out for problematic behavior.
2) be more assertive. i've spent way too much time biting my tongue. it's time to get what you want.
3) learn to say no. i am not obligated to do anything that would harm me physically, mentally, or emotionally under any circumstances.
4) get out more. spend less time in bed. don't turn down people that want to hang out and don't cancel plans just because you're depressed and fatigued. you're always pleased with the outcome of pushing yourself to get out there. remember that, but also know your limits.
5) don't act so vulnerable. smile less. speak louder. express anger when needed.
6) think with my brain, not my heart. do what i need to do. think clearly now, write about my feelings later.

earlier tonight, i walked across a busy street
with my hands in my pockets and my eyes closed
in such a desperate need to once again,
feel the weight of your body on top of mine.
about two or three different car horns
pierced through the atmosphere,
but i paid no attention to it.

it all just sounded like God laughing.

thinking of you
kept me up again
and i may be
dreaming myself
through
existence,

but when you
live in my brain
but don't sleep
in my arms,
i finally
understand
distance.

here i am

gripping my pen
tight enough to
turn my knuckles
white

while trying
to write about
letting go

you've seen all the bad
you've seen the nasty parts of people
the parts that betray and take advantage
so you know better
you're terrifyingly intelligent
and dangerously aware
but the love you give
is purer because of this.
don't let anyone make you feel
like damaged goods.

you bent your neck like you were trying to break it
as he posed looking contemplative, a little agitated
as if he wished he were somewhere else

and then it starts-
the race for "i cared less"
the emptiest chest
the slowest heart beat
no starters
no ready, set,
you'll know it when
you feel it

and dear, i know
he was a childhood home
he was warm wooden floors
and the view from your bedroom window
but he also feels like
ringing the doorbell to an abandoned house
and expecting somebody to let you in
you are the kind of girl who gets halloween flowers
you liked the part where he looked dead in the shower

*he didn't complete you, he showed you how to begin

there was beauty, love, fire, stillness, and i gave it all to you
you put both of your hands around my neck
had a grip on me like your favorite coffee mug
mouths never moved, just trembled

when you went home, your "i love you" started sounding like an apology
now every car crash sounds like the last time i heard you say my name

how many licks does it take
to get to the center of
your universe?

i'll never know

i don't want a boyfriend
or a girlfriend
i want someone to care
i don't want the responsibility
of taking care of someone else
when i can barely handle myself

i want someone to help me
function like a normal human being
and run me a warm bath
when i can't get out of my bed
in fear that the heaviness of
the dull, numbing sadness
trapped in my bones
will cause my body to shatter
and turn to dust
upon impact with the floor.
i want somebody who won't
get angry with me when i
don't feel like talking-

someone who knows that
doesn't mean anything.

the summer i had you was the shortest
the first autumn without you was the hardest
that winter i wasn't sure was the coldest

i try to remember the spring
but only recall sharp teeth
and paper dreams
and the one time i let my breath hold me
and violently refusing to get out of bed
until the sky stopped bleeding
your blood was dark blue
everything you hated about yourself spilled a mess
and i thought it looked better on me than you
so pinned my hair back with a railroad tie
then i flashed a big smile to uninterested eyes
bottled every single one of your sighs
set it on my dresser next to my chanel no. 5
you had such a dangerous tongue
even being the gentlest you could be
every word felt like a paper cut
so i sharpened the ends of each bone in my body
and screamed till i ran out of breath
"i'm ready"

i'm punching the walls until they bleed
eyes wide for days without a minute of sleep
i am your bedroom when it's too dark to see
and i am your heart when you hand it to me
i was freezing and wet under the pale sky
with a cigarette in my hand, we made it inside
starting forest fires with the bat of an eye
everything is warm between you and i

the days of the week
named after phases of the moon
we made love on waning crescent
& slept in when it was new

january stole your breath again
now you're crouched in the corner, rocking back & forth
hoping she gives it back before the season ends

i fell in love with you sober.
you were drunk.
i saw you at your worst;
open and raw
and flayed to the bone,
and i loved you.
you were honest--
too honest
and rude at times,
but i appreciated that.
you knew how to
have a good time.

in a perfect world,
we'd spend mornings in bed,
tracing each others limbs
with just the very tips of
our fingers.
we'd eat tons of food together
and steal cigarettes
from the neighbor,
like we used to.
i'd laugh at you
and smile about your face
again.

i was 6 years old
and he told me that
i wouldn't dare tell my mother
about what happened
when she went to sleep

i never understood
why it's called "making love"
when all i ever wanted to do
was crawl into a deep dark pit
and erase my existence
from everyone's memories.

so the second time
my arms were held beside
my shaking body
as i whispered "stop"
into a boys mouth
with hate so heavily
coating his tongue
and teeth
it rubbed off into me
i didn't say a word
in the morning
because that's how i
was raised.

love is a foreign word
to the people like me
who didn't just
lose their virginity.
i threw mine into a well
and never looked back

sometimes,
i feel so empty
that i cut my own skin.
not to try to let anything out,
but to see if something will crawl in.

the first time we
touched, your
grandmother's
wedding china
trembled in its
cabinet

but i learned that
you compulsively
avoid punishment
by devouring the
nearest misses and
digesting them as
innocence.

yesterday
we got lost in the woods
(i thought we were going somewhere)
but you didn't kiss me back
and then you told me you liked me.
i don't know
what i'm supposed
to do with that.

last night
you threw me on your floor
and dug into my back
like you wanted to hold on.
then you walked me to my car
opened up the door
and said "drive safe,
call me when you get home."
you never answered and
you haven't texted me back
and i still don't know
what i'm supposed
to do with that.

i wish i could
string my phrases
together with
a lace of
simplicity and
modesty.

but i am
complexed
by you.

i wonder
when you’ll realize,
the emptiness
of a bottle
doesn’t replace
the emptiness
you feel.

i held you
very carefully,
got scared,
and put you back
exactly
how i found you,
like a gun.

i spent the day with him.
i listened to him
talk about drugs for hours,
then let him **** me
till it hurt
to look at him.
i'm not in love,
i just lust for him
in a tired, quiet way.

we were on his porch
when i snuck away
for just a few minutes to
call you and say
to your voice mail:
"the sky's on fire.
it's orange, red and pink.
it's really something you should see."

and it's back to him
and his nicotine lips.
he's an old soul
he's a free spirit
he's creative and
he's slept with everyone i know.

i wish you were here.

i wanna sleep in
spend the weekend on my back
my bed is a grave

i will not be nice
i feel lousy all the time
i can't stand myself

your sharp jaw
your inordinate blush
the way you put yourself together.
if i could make dreams out of cold hands and dark tresses, you'd be my winter palace.
but when all of this is over,
when the sky lays dark and stormy,
i will run.
i will run home with no shoes on,
pound my fists into the pavement
till they're black, blue, and ******.
i will hold them open for you and say
"this is it. these are the most vulnerable parts of me,
and this is what i'm trying to give to you."
i will scream my own name
into your mouth
just to hear the echo in your chest.
it feels like you've tied my hands behind my back,
sucker punched me in the nose,
and i'm spitting out, "thank you,
thank you. this is all i want."

i can only
think about you
in sad, short gasps.

you said you could never hate me,
but what if i told you
what i did,
what i've been doing
who i've been doing*
and how old he is
and who he's married to
and what if i told you
that i think i like it?

you said you could never hate me,
but what if i told you
i thought of him
when you squeezed my hand
one
two times
and gave me a half smile?
what if i told you
that when he did that
i thought he was
pumping blood
straight into
my body.

you said you could never hate me,
i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry.
i'm sorry.
i'm sorry i'm sorry.
i'm so sorry.

this is about letting myself be happy, about falling in love and forgetting the rest. doing this for myself because nobody else will, because nobody else can. because the nights won’t be lonely anymore with you there and there are some things that only happen once in your life and this is one of those things, you are one of those things. how extraordinary it is to even sit in the same room as you.

just no, god, really, you should know that you made the colors bleed out of my clothes and onto my floor when you wrapped your arms around me. or that if you rolled up my sleeves on my shirts pink roses would probably grow out from underneath. start from the veins in my arms and break out. gradually turning into stems. turning into flowers. i’d say the same for my legs but i’m weak at the knees, weak at the knees getting out of my car. take a deep breath and kiss him on the lips, close my eyes and put my hands on both sides of his face. do you remember how this felt? your eyes are shut do you remember? could you time travel from now to the first time this happened because i did. your eyes were shut then too just like this. you’re back, you’re back, you’re back. i can see you again. and when i’m back in the bed i handed over my heart in, would you know that i’m better now? that you never had to worry. this is better because we need it.

and we’ll go on a date to the movies late at night and i can rest my head on you the whole time while you hold my hand and let go only so i can move my fingers up and down the inside of your palm while it rests against your leg. let’s be the last to get up, sit in the dark with the credits so i can tell you how i feel about you just a little bit. tell you like i tried to tell the complete strangers who would sit at that table in that little diner in my town because i wrote your name on a window ledge. so when they look out at the cars, at the people, maybe they’d notice, maybe they’d know i needed them to know i was happy.

you make me feel is what you do, you bring back the constantly fading parts. you’re the one and if i had to explain the way you’re beautiful it’d probably be like the pocket watch necklace i found at a secondhand store the morning after you texted me. the battery is dead and the time is stuck with both the hands over the one roman numeral, and the lady who worked there said it’d need a new battery but it doesn’t need to be fixed for me to love it. you’re beautiful like when i hold your hand i want to know every line. i want to trace veins in your arms, i want to run my fingers over the back of your hands on the knuckles.

you’re a lot like when it rains at night when i’m in bed, and i just lay there instead of going to sleep and i miss nobody in particular but i just miss places, moments. it’s coming down so slow and gold cause the street light is shining on it. i’d want you there, could i hold your hand while we watch it and could you please try for a second to know that i feel that way about you.

you feel more like images than words, like my favorite sounds or like movies that changed my life, i’ll meet you in another life when we are both cats. there aren’t so many stars here. you’re beautiful like knowing they’re up there, anyways. you’re as beautiful for as sad as i get when clouds hide them. you’re as influential to me as my suicide attempt was, and i hope that makes sense because i mean it in the best way because it changed my whole life.

i can feel you changing my life when i got out of my car and walked up to your door it was like i knew right then you can’t go back from this, and it’s scary and it’s so hard to be alive again because i signed all the papers, i signed away everything it’s all gone it was boarded all up and forgotten, and you’re dusting everything, taking all the sheets on the furniture off, and tearing off the bad wallpaper. just let me in, let me try and i won’t go anywhere, i just want to live inside you almost. i just want to do what you’re doing for me for you too, you are so beautiful in ways i will never be able to tell you but god will i try.

i just wanna lay in your lousy arms, and feel real little. i feel little already but you can’t function in the world by being how you feel, but i want you to let me be what i feel and i just want that to be something that’s okay, and i hope you kiss it all away, all the parts that i pretend i am. could you draw in my hands with your finger and push down my fingers when they try to curl up, and could i stop you by holding your hand and kissing you on your neck, just soft, just really soft cause i’m really small and let me lay my head on your chest so i can tell you i can hear your heart beating, and it sounds a lot lamer in words here than when we’re there under your covers, than when i’m feeling like i just opened up your chest and climbed inside, cause it feels like you let me even if you didn’t let me. i just want to honestly believe for a few minutes that i don’t have to ever leave that moment, how we let ourselves believe anything like that i’ll never know but i want you to try because things would be better.

i was like a bird that flew out in front of your car in the morning that didn’t get hit, i was like a ghost but you picked me up, and your hands didn’t fall right through me. you picked me up and the way you said my name didn’t hurt. it’s like we were driving on the highway in the dark with our headlights off but we made it home. we made it home singing. these are the kinds of nights where you close your eyes and you feel like they’re never closed, i’m just staring at your beautiful ******* face with the glow of the tv on it. stuck in this memory with the right soundtrack. you were just smiling, and there i was becoming real, and i’ve been trying to tell you, you make me feel real. and everyone’s been telling me to stay away from you, but how could you love someone who never hurt you, who never made you prove how much you wanted it, how much you wanted them. you’re supposed to chase him, why didn’t you chase him?

i guess what i wanted more than anything was for you to see youself the way i saw you, to know that i love you in this bizarre unreal way where i don’t even know everything about you but i want to. and all i can feel is how closed these doors are. i find myself so desperate for any part of you, even the parts you gave no one because they aren’t important. no one watches for those kinds of things, the number of freckles on your arm or the way you squeeze my hand twice, but here i am in love with you, in love with your quirks, in love with how utterly human you are, how nobody appreciated the most appreciatable things about a person. this is all the b footage that i can’t stop watching, i am drowning in the parts everybody saw but nobody watched. that’s where i fell in love with you.

just oh my god, i really am so in love with you and everything makes so much sense when i’m with you, and that sounds so stupid and cliche but it really does,  it makes sense because you’re my other half and it feels like i’m done making the pieces that never fit fit, your hands were really meant to hold mine, i think i really believe again in this childish way that i threw out months ago that soulmates are real, because you are mine in every sense of the word.

you try to alter fate;
fate is
persistant,
stubborn,
resistant.

he is a spoilt child
who stomps his foot on the floor
to get what he wants.

you’re the one
who cuts the telephone line
and then tries to call for help.

i fell in love with death
and she apologized.
i asked why
but as i began to close my eyes,
i understood.

i understood
when i burned down
all the churches
because i was upset
your shoulders
weren’t framed
in a single one.

i’m in love with my biggest dissapointment.

how does it feel, when you realize you break off and shut up the ones with the light to guide you home when you turn them out, always turning off the lights. what’s a map to a match in this big, dark, cave of nervous hands and wanting lips,
lets not talk about the kiss. slurred slurred liquor bottle, throttle down the angry path of your father, let’s not talk about this. don’t say a word about your mother and those black tar veins of yours, your heart of crystals, no, don’t go there.

don’t ******* go there,
you’ll be trapped in endless pit of stockholm syndrome and marlboro black 100’s and not eating for 3 days to still, never be good enough.

i’m so sorry i’ll never amount to romantically ruining your life in a room of people who couldn’t care less about the eyes that cry and the bones in your chest. i really am.

i trace the cracks
in the pavement
with my foot
and bear the right
to miss you.
the *******
on my left hand
holding the cigarette
to my mouth
are turning pink
like my cheeks
when the winter
kisses them.
the smoke fills
my tiny lungs
until they can’t expand
any further
and when i hold it
for a few seconds,
i feel nostalgic
about that love seat
in your garage
and how your mom
was still alive and
things were so different.
i exhale
and watch the
cancerous contents
spill from my mouth
and remember the way
your lips look
so much better,
remember wishing
i could be your addiction,
remember how
you made death beautiful.

you’re not dead yet,
but you might as well be.
it hurts less and less
every time
i visit your grave;
the shell of
the person
you used to be.
i figured out
the different between
me and you;
i feel love,
but you shoot it
into your veins.
i hide my hands
inside my sleeves
and cringe
at the thought
of not being able
to call myself
“yours”
anymore.
i’ll take my slow,
last drag
and put out
what i thought
was going to be
a life time
of trying
to figure you out.

it was a love,
so sudden and fierce,
it scars your palms
when you press them
together to pray
and you only prayed
when his sad, tired eyes
looked at you
when he said your name
and it hurt the both of you
for different reasons.

don't talk to me
about holiness,
i've been on fire
for a year now.

he didn’t pray,
but he took a few seconds
to catch his existential breath
and when he did that,
he closed his eyes
and the doctor asks him
to read the bottom line
and it’s the name bullies called him
in the 6th grade.

that’s when you put
your head on his chest
and felt his heart beating
all the way inside yours.
then he tells you he feels like
flowers are growing from his knees
because they get weak
when he thinks of her,
but he didn’t mean
to say that and
he’s sorry.

he’s sorry and so are you,
and things start to burn,
like that time in 3rd grade
you put the candle
too close to the curtain
and watched your life
turn to ashes,

except it hurts
3 times worse
when it’s a beautiful boy
you didn’t know
was capable
of liking
someone
like
you.

his is drug withdrawal,
but with a boy.
he’s just sitting
on my bed side table
staring at me and i
keep cutting him
into lines,
but i can’t inhale him.

can’t inhale him cause
my nose is filled with blood
and if i tried,
i’d just be swallowing that.

when you were 6,
you made homes for faeries under trees.
now you just hope they choose to live in your lungs,
help you appreciate the magic of breathing.
i am your collapsable lover
and you've got a body like a wreck
i can't stop looking at.

i know a boy who’s afraid of the dark
and that’s why he won’t ever kiss me.
i took nothing but hours, left nothing but bruises.
you responded to my tears calmly,
with only a shrug.
you put your hoodie on & went out for a cigarette.
i left before you came back.

*i am a glass girl with diamond wrists,
this is how i love.