My anxiety is not me.

My anxiety is shaking hands.
My anxiety is imaginative.
My anxiety is sleepless nights.
My anxiety is never satisfied.

My anxiety sits on my shoulder.

My anxiety keeps me from making important phone calls.
My anxiety forces me to want to isolate myself.
My anxiety makes me cry over nothing.
My anxiety makes me cry over everything.
My anxiety tells me a C may as well be an F.
But my anxiety forces me to avoid important tasks I have to deal with. Everything scares me.

What am I so scared of?

My anxiety wakes me up vomiting.
My anxiety forces me to pull away from the people I so badly want to fall into.
My anxiety keeps me from living.

My anxiety makes me at least two to twenty minutes late everywhere because I don’t believe I am ever prepared,
so I have to retrace my every other step,
constantly checking and re checking.
Constantly doubting.

My anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through my mind.
My anxiety is a menace, a monster, a fish with teeth,
black yarn, lawn chairs sinking in the sand.

My anxiety rules me.

Twenty distrusted fingers. Thieves.
They robbed her in the dead of day.
The putrid smell of **** and pain. Blood and puke.
Loss and loss.
A child’s scream.,
The sound of no one hearing.
Ten fingers scratching at windows fogged.
Tension, clenching, attention
All on her.
Snow in October.
2012.

This is not a ******* love story, but I was sure that I loved him.

I was mad at you for such a long time. That sounds so **** stupid and obvious. It's like, "Well no ****, I was angry." I wish I could be more poetic about us. I wanted to turn this ******* into something beautiful, but it just wasn't. It was ugly, brutal *******. But still, you swear we were perfect.

I honestly thought we were some June and Johnny Cash ****. You'd kiss my shoulders and ask to hear my poetry. I would read you something, and you'd just sigh, looking at me with those oceans. I wanted to swim in you, I didn't give a **** if the waves were choppy or the tide was coming in. I just wanted to be with you.

The night we drove up into the Hollywood Hills and just stopped the car. I'd seen that view before. It wasn't new, just some lights. A city. But the proximity of our bodies sent my head spinning. You leaned against the fence and told me about your family. I wanted to just kiss you and look at all those stupid, beautiful lights with you. I thought wow I bet no one has ever seen a view this beautiful before. But I wasn't talking about the city.

But, we were not June and Johnny. We were the movie version. You were some method actor and i was the poor girl you were running lines with. Only, I was unaware. You see, I thought we were falling in love.

You projected your love for another onto me, and when you realized I wasn't the girl you dreamed of, you let go. Put me out and stepped on me just like your ****** Newports. You pulled out the smoke and mirrors (yet again) and did your famous disappearing act, one i knew all too well. Our fingertips unlocked and you pranced away like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.

And i believed, falsely, that  I was nothing.

Maybe that is why you shut the door to my apartment and walked straight into her arms. I was not enough, or she was just more. I wasn't your June. I was a body and hands. A mouth. God, how you loved my mouth. Someone to hold all you skeletons in my closet, to stroke your back and ego when you needed love. That is all that i ever was. But she was more, and i fell to the ******* floor when i heard your footsteps stomping down my staircase.

I stayed there on the floor, looking up at the ceiling and making note of each crack and imperfection. I am so ******* stupid, I keep telling myself. I couldnt get up from that stupid floor. Everything was stupid. I hated myself. I hated you guys together. I hated that just a week before, you came to my hometown and ****** me in my childhood home. You ****** me in the house my dad died in. I ******* hated it all.

I was in some shell-shocked denial, the kind that took a hold of my legs and gave me some weird paralysis. I did not want to believe you were that kind of man. Or maybe, that i was that kind of woman. The kind of woman who could be destroyed by someone walking away. I had lost my dad. I had lost more important relationships. You shouldn't have meant that much.

I didn't want to admit how much I had invested in you. I didn't want to hear your words like surround sound. Your ******* ******* words. "I haven't felt like this in such a long time. Maybe ever." Stop. "Its ****** ******* insatiable, Kacie, I cant get enough of you." No. I couldnt use my legs to get back up.

A week later, i went home. I was so sick with everything that had happened. I was so terrified I'd run into you o camous, or worse, run into  you with her. I knew my legs would give out if that ever happened. I'd just be strolling along, headed to my screenwriting class, and there I would see you both.

Happy. Cute. Blonde. Together.

And i'd ******* want to die and my body would stop working. My legs would stop. I would fall over. I'd be on the floor in front of everyone saying, "No, I am fine! don't worry!" she she would look at me with some disgusting sympathy. Like, "Ohhh, you poor thing! I'm sorry! We didn't mean for this to happen!"

I just couldn't deal with it. I needed to go home.

I got home while my mom was still at work. I opened my door and dramatically flung my near-lifeless body on the couch. I was just so done. I wanted to hibernate for the next five months. And then, when i started to silently cry, a furry angel jumped up and joined me. Bo, the dog my dad adopted only a month before he left, nestled his giant head into the crook of my neck. I cried and he kissed me. I buried my head into his neck and just sobbed into this beautiful, loving creature.

He loved me in a way you never did, or could. And the sad truth? I'm not sure you know how to love anything deeply the way a dog loves.

But I do. And now I am twenty years old, giving all of myself to a man who saw what you did years too late.

I stood in the musty, off-white bathroom of the hotel and grinned at myself in the mirror. I was drunk and in my boxers. I needed to shave. Mitchell was asleep on one of the beds, snoring, a beer balanced on his ever growing beer belly. It was an impressive size for Mitchell only being 25.
He was in town for a court date. I was ecstatic when I heard, I hadn’t seen Mitchell since we were about nineteen.  I took his beer from him, set it on the nightstand, and shook his shoulder.  I said, wake up *******, come smoke a cig with me.
We stood outside freezing in the winter air, chain-smoking, watching the ****** do their rounds. Mitchell said something about finding one to score. I exhaled my smoke and snickered in reply.
“You don’t wanna stick it in ***** ******,” from behind me. Surprised, I turned around. A petite girl, puffing her non-menthol cigarette, with a slender nose and tattoos on her arms. Mitchell smartly replied that what if he did want to stick it in ***** ******. I wanted to know her name.
I asked what the hell she was doing at such a run-down hotel, why I had never seen her around town before. Between exhales she told me “I’m living with this guy but I hate him… I don’t even know what I’m doing with him.” Mitchell had gone inside. I invited her up to my room. While we walked, I studied the way her long, dyed red hair graced her plump ***. My god, that plump ***.
“I’m trying to get into some **** tonight” she said, “Are there any bars on this street?”
I was still thinking about her ***. I opened the door to our room.
“Um, I think there’s one,” I told her that we have drinks, though, and tossed her a beer.
I talked her ear off for a good hour. I can really get goin’ after a little alcohol is in me. What’s her name? I’m too drunk to remember to ask. I’ll call her red. She played with that long *** red hair and looked around a lot, antsy to…get into some ****.
“I’m not gonna *******, you know” she said.. I was taken aback by such a blunt, matter-of-fact statement.
“Oh come on,” I said, “My girlfriend’s ****** two different guys this week. I’m just trying to get even.”
“You *******!” She got up from the bed and hit me with a pillow, laughing, “You mother ******* *******!” A mouth on this one;  I liked her.
We goofed around for a bit until she suggested we walk around the hotel. We were halfway down our hallway when we saw and smelled a group of people ahead of us with a doobie. They gave the rest of it to red and invited us in their room. I met her eyes, blue, swimming in excitement and thriving in the spontaneity.
We walked into this room and met the strangest group of people I’ve ever laid my eyes on. There was a skinny, tall black boy with chains and a big bag of herb, two gothic girls with every lip piercing known to man, a preppy high school girl who kept losing her lipstick, a short black boy with a sizeable bag of white stuff; he told us to call him Doc. I think there were some more people there too.
Anyway red is chatting away with the high school girl, found out they had went to the same high school. We were sitting beside each other passing a doobie from the guy with the chains. Next thing I know, the shorter boy slaps a heaping pile of the white stuff on the table in front of red and I. Split it, he told us. That we did. Red did a few lines and sat back and closed her eyes. It was alright, she said. I did some myself. Now, I do forget whose idea it was, probably red’s. Somehow it got suggested that I do a line off her ***.  I mean she obviously had a nice ****, who wouldn’t want to snort a line of coke off a round ***?
Next thing I know, she is *** naked, face down in front of me and I’m trying not to get hard, which is difficult when you’re as ****** up as I was. The tall skinny dude was behind us, asleep, using his bag of *** as his pillow. We laughed at this. The girls smoked in the corner, and the other shorter guy watched a little too closely at me spreading the powder on reds white ***. It was as white as the substance. I couldn’t believe this girl; she won’t let me see her naked but insists I snort drugs off her bare ***.
After I was finished we all drank and smoked more, got more ****** up. Red and I eventually left and walked back to my room. Mitchell was open-mouthed snoring. I was being drunk and annoying; I rolled on top of her and just laid there. I rolled off and walked to the other side and lit a cigarette in our nonsmoking room.
“I’ll get you, you *******” she said, “You just wait!”
“Just don’t bite it off,” I said, “or you’ll make a half dozen women very unhappy.”
She climbed up to the top of the bed and perched there, cross-legged, watching the small television which illuminated her face. The news was on. Why is she so intent on the news? Now I know you aren’t sane I told her.
“Be quiet, she said, I want to watch the news!”
And there we sat at the top of a ****** hotel bed, coked out, watching the news. She held the hand with her cigarette in the air and let out a laugh. I accepted her like this.

here i am again:
amongst the visceral shadows
standing on the outside
while Gods candle
makes a mockery of me
opening umbrellas inside
because i can't get away
from this god ****** downpour
******* with my left hand
because i was once told
'it feels like someone else is doing it'
it gets me wondering about
the difference between losing you
an finding out i never had you

You see
I keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
and something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
it's strange,
somehow i dream but don't sleep
and i wake up

Tired
of feeling like
im something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
of wondering if you can
even tell the difference
between the absence of my voice
and silence

The other day
i almost started sobbing at work
when a woman asked about our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
that's why i rest
in my shadows
in anxious recluse

Now
I haunt the windows
of this house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you are near again

I just seem to stand here
in all of this quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice,
but
since you've been gone i wonder
if when you pushed yourself
away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else was doing it...

there should only be one of us here
you have no idea that i will break your heart

whenever i approach the truth
you back away from it

you don't want to know
but you should know

the more you love me the more i will ruin you
i will take my darkness and push it inside you

lying away beside you,
these thoughts run circles in my head

i have done unforgivable things
(you inhale, you exhale)

i have taken advantage of other peoples weakness in order to cover my own,
i have slept with boys even though i know they would later make me want to die

all  the imperfections on your skin are simply places for flowers to bloom in
I wonder if you realize every daisy i plant is just another for me to rip out

every spot that i will kiss
is just another you will never be able to look at again

and you will spend hours trying to hide them from view,
worried everyone can see the stains i left on you

oh, but don't worry your pretty little head
i don't intend to hurt you
i never want to
however, empirics show it's all i can do

There are dreamers
and there are realists in this world.
You'd think the dreamers
would find the dreamers
and
the realists
would find the realists,
but more often than not
the opposite is true
You see ,
the dreamers need the realists
to keep them from soaring
too close to the sun
and the realists...
well, without the dreamers
they might never get off the ground

On Monday I didn't go to school
because you wanted to take me out instead
We walked around the park downtown all afternoon
finally we perched ourselves in the gazebo
immersing ourselves in each other's thoughts
and wading in traded words.
My attention was shattered when a
lady bug landed on my knee. I was baffled-
I exclaimed that it's orange. You laughed and I
coaxed it onto my finger. And you told me
"Some of them are green you know"
I didn't know. I said "maybe those ones just aren't ripe yet"
I played with the bug for a few more seconds
until I felt your gaze, and I lifted my emerald greens
to your cup-of-coffee mahognies. You were looking at me
the way I imagined Gatsby must have looked at Daisy.
And you smiled a little too wide
for the stupid thing I had just said. You touched my chin
and kissed me gently, and i could feel your lips
still frozen in a grin.
But when I looked back down my coveted orange lady bug
had flown away-
and left no trace that he ever came.

There is a crack down my center
diremption black-balling an existential ease
The Moon knows who I am
sighing my name in her bending light
beaming to my tattered rim

Oh, lustrous bulb emblazoned in elevation
a sister to mine
she dangles in confidence
companionless, wandering among stars
and ever-changing, ricochet
between lunar phases evasive

Her metallic optimism calls to my insomniac iris, but
our stunning single source of light
does possess a polar
of two, where
a potent cynicism sleeps soundly
out of view, in
darkness everlasting

Pale in her weariness is she
scaling east to west, but
sabbatical she is not
for methodical hands protest in sway
But what would come of us if The Moon came
crashing
down?

Decapitate yourself and see-
prisoners of our own perception are we
Our minds are a trap,
for how easy it is
for things to go in; but near impossible
to set them free

So be careful what you put in there
They may never find
a way
out

I will love you through a thousand lives
I love you vertically
Horizontally, I shall love you too
I will even love you in a ten foot descent
and long after to the visceral heavens
I ascend

People say
it's annoying that
I flip two luckys
in every cigarette pack
but maybe i find it annoying
that people notice when
i lose three pounds
but not when
i wear a
new
pair
of
jeans.

I used to be
the weeds
that grow in your backyard
a forever nuisance
now I am the rose
you lay on your
father's coffin

My name is Janey and I am four
I like coloring books and playing hopscotch
and today i learned a word called "war"
Mommy says that's where you're going
"He's a super hero, Janey
he'll come back stronger than before"
and she hugged me a little too tight
I laugh "Let go of me!" She laughs.
But she's looking at the floor.

My name is Janey and I am six
I like dancing and drawing pictures
Mommy misses you a whole lot, I see it
Every morning when she wakes up sad,
until she brews her dark brown drink
and then i have my mommy back
"When will he be home, do you think?"
She shoos me away and says "Just a little
while more,Janey dear" so i offer my pinky,
I want her to promise me
Our fingers lock
But she looks unsure.

My name is Janey and I am eight
i like playing in the lake and reading books
i don't know much, but I know one thing,
that you're not here
And you're not coming back
Things have changed a whole lot
I still talk to mommy while
she drinks her happy drink, it's not brown though
It's clear
And i don't ask about you anymore.

I was only fifteen when I met a boy
who made the butterflies consume me
and my feet crumble beneath me
I was only  fifteen but I knew what i wanted
and it was him.

They say be careful what you wish for
and this still remains true,
I should have bundled my wishes up
and taken them all back.
Because I met a boy who destroyed my heart
As soon as I laid it in his hands.
Then I swore up and down that I would wrap
Barbed wire around my bruised heart
And never let it out again.

Three years later I sat down in a chair
And let a woman pierce my body,
Lacing ink through my skin,
Reminding me to me brave
I had done worse things to my body than stick a needle and ink
But yet again I swore I would never sit back down in that chair.

I’m now eighteen and I’ve met a boy
Who makes my heart sing a tune it hasn’t before
Who makes me feel safe and whole
I no longer want to keep my heart in barbed wire.
I no longer want to seal it up.
Because I’ve almost forgotten how it felt
To have my heart yanked out of my chest
And handed back to me.

That’s the beautiful thing,
You do it all over again
Because you forget.
Mothers forget the pain of bearing their first-born child
People forget what it fells like to have ink poked into their skin
You forget what if feels like to have your heart broken.

And you do it all over again.

I swim in verdancy on my back; let the greyness wash my face
Atop the top of the toppest valley

Only half of me is here; I am only half here
Inhale, Exhale

I Take in the masterpiece above me; branches intertwining
People could learn from the trees

On my left I have Nothing; Nothing sticks around
Until he grew restless and took the path on my right

As my lids fall in tire; the Earth embraces me in sweet arms
Lying in my bed of worries

The wind so tender, so dear, kneels down to meet my cheek
And the leaves mutter in joy

When Nothing goes right; I find solace in trees
Let myself drown in the shade of natural love.

And patiently I wait for the sun to wake up
to illuminate the masterpiece

Nothing they say is true;
My body is but a graveyard
where you bore
ten feet down and burried
my trust in men

My body is a graveyard and I am haunted
harboring all these dead secrets
everyone seems they have forgotten
inside me they are rotting

The girl in the mirror,
did she just escape a fire?
Haunted by the burn of liquor
Haunted by your searing fingers
(twenty of them)

Push me down harder
Pry me open quicker
I love the way it hurts

Each day I start with a book
A yawn, a stretch, and I thump down the steps
Eager as each day before

A navy armchair and fluorescent desk lamp
Are the only friends of mine

Each day I start with a book
Switch on my lamp, find my page, and I’m lost in thickening daze
Just as each day before

I’m grateful for my friends; My armchair keeps my limbs at rest
As my lamp illuminates forgotten words

Each day I start with a book
But a week or so ago,
Something was not quite right
Perched on my chair, I switched on my lamp
But something was off

“Now, not a moment’s more thought, time is ticking away” I say
So I crack open my book, and find my page
Eager as each day before

Each day I start with a book
But just the other morning,
Perched on my chair, I switch on my lamp, and squint at the page
I never had to squint before

But I was so far lost in the plot
I didn’t give it another thought

Each day I start with a book
But on this day, I notice my dimming lamp
Her light, reliably fluorescent white
Now shone dull yellow-gold
But I was intent on finishing my book
Eager as each day before



That was the last day I started with a book
I perched on my chair, and for hours I sat, eyes lazily scrolling forgotten words
I read late into the night

And I was just getting to the good part, when
everything went dark.

Perhaps this is just me being too metaphorical again when
i say, it’s strangely fitting
that as summer’s thick air gave way to
the slow set-in of Fall season, I was
falling too.


Or maybe I am only acknowledging now.
Because, you see, day to day
Summer looks the same.
Sometimes it rains or the
temperature fluctuates,
but unlike the other seasons,
new buds don’t bloom
Leaves are the same verdant hue every day
the trees don’t go barren.
Summer is redundant.
But in redundancy there is
simplicity and
predictability
from which I pry comfort
and happiness.
The same way I found comfort in the
predictability
that each humid day would be spent with you.
And we continued like summer, nothing changing,
but enjoying the
simplicity and
predictability.
Because everyone knows,
after summer there is always a
Fall.


And Fall has this way of
sneaking
right up under you.
The temperature will drop a couple of degrees
every day.
The air gradually grows brisk more and more
brisk.
And it’s not really noticeable.
Until the morning when I walk outside and decide
Wow it is really chilly-- I might need
a coat.
And I finally see
and feel
that Fall is here.
Although I admitted I wanted
a coat,
that it would be in my best interest,
I didn’t yet
need it.


I denied a true desire, pushed it to
the side,
forced the thought out of my head,
because giving in to the
warmth of
a coat
would mean that this Fall was all too real-
When what I really miss is the summer,
the sunny days,
the predictability
the simplicity
of us.


But of course as this Fall progresses
the wind’s teeth grow sharper
and the air is biting and more
biting.
My denial for a coat becomes more irrational,
no longer do I want
a coat--
it is a need
a craving, the same raw craving i have for
you.


And now here we are at Autumn’s close,
the air is growing frigid and more
frigid
and I can’t fathom going a day or even
part of a day without
a coat.
Dear, you
are
my coat. And I swim in my regret for
denying avidity
for so long.
I guess I just didn’t want
this Fall to start because
where there is a start there is an
end. And trailing
the heels of Autumn’s cusp,
is winter’s dreadful near.
So daunting is December’s bareness,
how Trees in the winter are experts at letting
things go.
I don’t want to have to
learn from the trees, please--
Don’t make me write about
Winter.

Five months ago
I gave you a rose
pale in pink, rich in pretty
you touched my face, thanked me kindly
stood the Rose proud beside your bed
to watch the dreams pour from your head
  
But pretty does fade...
color does drain...
and five months later
the Rose stands the same place
  
You loved it fully while
it was alive
You loved it like you did not know
it was soon to die
And when it did-- you did not
bat an eye
only loved what was left like it had
never died.

Standing before
the whispering ocean
adorned in frosted saltwater sapphire
she wears ever-present like his gaze
hot around her neck
Her face holds no flaw;
icy  features forever frozen
into a frigid upside down grin
by the hand of a man
with a dream
snowflakes gather in heaps
falling in lazy cascade from her lashes
every time the Ice Queen blinks

He scorches
in blinding zeal to vent jealous wrath
Destruction is his only goal
with orange flicks of flailing arms
his chosen human victims he consoles
flaunting his demonic charm
Fire restless fire roaring higher
spews his wall of flame
But the thing about fire
is one often is burned  trying to put it out.
Oh, ferocious fire, try as I may
your scintillating sin knows no tame.

Let it be widely known
a front of chill colliding with one of warm
creates
the perfect storm.

A burning Desire roars deep
within, an existing scarlet desire that
i will not feed, drip drop
drip
but always she exists
  
golden-maned lion, velvet-pawed lion
I know your hunger gnaws, and
I hear your hunger gnaws, no- I  
feel your hunger gnaws
dispatched to my direction
  
I think
You think that I cannot hear you
I think  
you think that I do fear you
But do you know
to whom you speak? These weathered hands
have gripped Tragedy
by its neck and dropped it on its head
You tug at my sleeve with eyes fixed
potent in plea for a satisfaction begging
for a satisfaction that
grant it I won't
  
Golden-maned lion
I will starve you til every rib shows.

You're asleep and I'm sad
i wanted to stay up all night
and talk with you about
your day and why the sky is blue

everything is so easy with us,
our words flow back and forth steadily,
like the gliding of a ship
atop a calm sea

when i feel broken
you mend me with your words
when i have nothing to say,
you effortlessly occupy the silence

you fill this gap inside me
in a way that makes me forget
i was ever incomplete

i'd tell you all of this,
but you're asleep.