they say the cigarettes you smoke
remind you of other people.
i think they could have a point.
the way they burn me up and fade away
reminds me a whole lot of you.

i open the front door & a small
man with his shirt buttoned all
the way up asks me if i'd like to
buy a pocket bible, so i can
worship wherever i go. i ask if i
can fit it in a flask & if it's okay
to take with whiskey. his eyelids
shut like a casket as he touches
his forehead, chest, right shoulder
then left shoulder. tells me i'm
going to hell. i crawl back
onto my bar stool and drink from
the ceramic mug you glued back
together the night you saw my face
and pictured a room full of soft
things shattering. i can hear the
sound of a train & it's such a shame
that the nearest railroad is under
construction. it's such a shame that
the floor of my mind is set up like
a child's playroom with plastic
train tracks set in the center & a
younger version of myself is sitting
in front of them playing with a
replica of the train my whole body
was begging to be kissed by.
ugh, kissing. my god. i'm so high.
kiss me in my death spot, the
spot that'll be where my life ends.
replace my train tracks with
a dollhouse. tell the soft things
that i love them. open my front door,
tell the small man to unbutton his
shirt, that not everyone buys
pants with pockets in them.
wake me up when i'm sober &
tell me to write an ending to this.
i cannot think of an ending. please
don't let me become it

The lines that are etched in my skin
don't signify that I'm not right, not okay.
To me, they're a sign that I'm here and alive,
that I lived through a whole new day.

I made a place for myself
in my skin, not some medicine-cabinet shelf.
Yet, you still try to offer me help.

I get it. You're disappointed.
I'm fine. I get your point...
but you still tell me to change my ways.

If I'm suffering madness,
please don't mistake it as sadness,
I've got it all under control.

I'm remarkably glad
for the moments I've had,
I'd never think to trade them away.

So don't look at my skin
and the way that it bruises,
or the cracks that form canyons within.

Please, just look at my soul.
It's under control.
I wear these wounds proudly, I'd say.

he stands tall,
you get on your knees
& he shoves his gun barrel
between your lips,
he presses it to the
back of your throat &
asks you to look him
in the eyes, says not to
flinch when he pulls
the trigger or even try
to think of a last word
that doesn't end with
the final syllable of his
name. the fingers on his
left hand slide from the
front of your throat to
the back all in one gentle
motion, like this has
happened before. this
is a normal friday night,
this is the place where
all girls who **** like
they're trying to turn
modern architecture into
ruins go to die.

some nights you will feel
like there are a thousand galaxies
exploding in every inch of you
and you are burning too bright
to ever be looked at directly,
and some nights you will feel
impossibly small, like your
whole body could slip through
the spaced between atoms and
never reappear in this world again,
and some nights you will feel
like a paper doll, carefully crafted
and easily blown away, fragile,
too delicate to ever be touched,
and some nights you will feel
like each cell in your body is
made of the strength that holds
the whole planet together,
and that is okay because you are
made of stardust and miniscule
atoms and breakable bones
and the building blocks of
everything in the universe,
and you are too alive to never
feel anything more than human

I want to be seen,
I want everybody and everyone
From miles between
To see
me.

I want to be spotted
I want the world to know
That inside,
I am Blotchy
and Rotted.

And I want to be kissed
and missed
But not much,
I want to make it on her list
of the ones shes
Kissed
and the ones
she wished
she'd kiss again.

it's during that awful time of semi-consciousness
while my mind is still riding that razor line
between this world and the one in my mind
where my soul lays bare to unflinching introspection
that my stomach clenches into a knot tied tight
my heart races then stops while lungs struggle for air
and every mistake i continue to make drags
their wretched ******* fingernails across my eyes
i recoil from my self sick of the battered skin i'm in
fighting the urge to choke on false hope and failing
while sickly sweet desperate promises for change
spill from my mouth like ***** past my cracked lips
and i know i'm still alive because i'm not dead yet

you tell me that you're very sad
i cannot help; it makes me mad
that i can't take the pain away
(i scrabble for the words to say)

i sit and hear you talk to me
and wish that you could only see
the things i'd do to make you smile
(and when you've gone, i sit awhile

and cry. because i'm sad as well
but know it would be wrong to tell
when you are fighting with the grey)
i so want you to be okay.

I could put millions of stars in the sky on a perfect July night and I'd still think of you as the view

I wouldn't mind to have all of my little-girl dreams crushed by your fingers that trace my skin so perfectly

I hadn't cried in years.  
I was always taught that strength
was not having the courage to let yourself feel but
******* it up, holding it in.
I am sick of "You're going soft on us, honey"
Today I came to understand that
you are completely okay with writing the same poem
over and over again.
This is a metaphor for the way you ****** her in my bed.
This is a metaphor for the night you copy and pasted love letters.
This is a metaphor for what really happened-
I never fall in the same place twice.
Except when I do.
I think the critical difference between the two of us,
critical because there are many differences
but- I think our hamartia, our fatal flaw,
our end scene is this:
if people didn't like my poetry, if nobody listened,
if I walked out on stage and nobody snapped their
fingers, I would still write for just your eyes.
I would still cramp my crooked, birth defect,
quadruple jointed fingers writing to you about the nights
you loved me back,
for a minute there you loved me back.
And you loved 20,000 other people back.
And you loved small towns back and big cities back and the entire west coast
back when you drove through, making temporary homes out of people
who should have been permanent
and I loved you.
And I hadn't cried in years.
Not because I wasn't sad, but because I was taught that showing emotion
was weakness.
So if my father made me memorize the How To's of strength,
if I were going by the book, today I'd be so fragile
you could say hello and I'd shatter so suddenly you'd
forget you were the one that let go.