"I want to climb
mountains someday"

so I led him uphill
to a field of tangerine tulips
strung against cupid's bow

he left his backpack
for the Appalachian trail

too heavy to carry
as he claimed the top of me
for his own land

You found me like a shipwreck,
weathered down to the frame and
splintered by salt and storm.

You became the nails, the boards;
the rudder and the raised sails.

Your heart is my compass,
and it guides me back home.

Her voice, a bird's song
could lighten any burden
except for her own

Little girl in a blue
snow globe.
Pressed white shirt and tartan skirt.
Hair slipping
out of a ponytail or braid or something
like that.
Laughter like a current
to be lost in by a boatman.
Her first time at the beach.
Writing
childish saltwater sonnets
in the sand with her toes.

Paper-plane sky
kisses
sea brimming
out of its seams.
Singing, on-off key,
school choir tone,
'Never Let Me Go'.
Who needs, she needs
nothing
but
the horizon
cupped
in outstretched palms.
Innocence stored
in jagged-shiny shells
waiting to be
buried
in hot, bare sand.

Time comes to shore, oceans
grow warmer,
shallow.
No more of kid braids
but a woman in
azure.
Her whole life having been
a half-moon run
out of deep, dry wells
in search of,
in search of...
in search of
what, but
hope.
Cracking oyster shells
looking for
pearls.

Time again comes to shore.
Cigarette pants for tartan skirt,
in a blue-almost-black.
Staring out
at water lapping before her,
before her, after the sky.
Before,
after.
The horizon is a pretty picture
she wants to hang
on the wall of her heart.
But she, schoolgirl trapped in snow globe,
remembers
textbook phrases like
'Humans are made up of 75%
water.'
So we are drowning every moment,
she thinks dryly.

Water within,
inevitable.
Maybe her skin or nerves or vocal cords
sensed it all those years ago
in the schoolgirl's snow globe.
Like crying, like love,
like fearing, like dying.
Shifting, receding, flowing in
and out.

Could emotions be tides she dares,
dares not
row, row,
row through?

Where did it all leak away?
Was it in the salt
running down her face?
If she is 75% water,
where has it drained
to leave the heart parched,
and her tartan days a distant drought
of memory?

Snow globe melts away.
Wade in, wade in,
have your fill,
until skin is slick
with better pain.
You told the ocean years ago,
you sang in schoolgirl choir tones,
never,
never,
never let me go.

Now it never will.

Apathy
is not
pathetic.

Apathetic
is
nothing less than pandemic.
But
nothing less common
than soles wearing out
between hot, molten asphalt
and the swellling skin.

you've been begging to just cave in.

But I can't live and not care.
Fiction is nothing to compare-
except all of the scenery that matters.

A horizon is subjective.
So the billboards
and the spider chords
have still taught me nothing.

I am opening my eyes to the green.
I am shaking like a lantern unseen.
I am a seed
planted on top of a building
waiting for sunlight.

People are smiling with the back of their teeth;
Hookers are toiling themselves off their feet;
The cops avoid the crooks on their beat;
Scammers are conning cause we all want to cheat;
Fishes are breathing on the banks of the creek;
Government fingers can't stop the slow leaks;
The searchers stopped searching, there's nothing to seek;
Voyeurs are seeing without sneaking a peek;
The strong are loosing to the strength of the weak;
The jocks are surrounded by the number of geeks;
The circus is posting jobs for the freaks;
The Colonel's chicken has twelve secret beaks;
The beds are empty as no one can sleep;
The weeds are filling the cracks in our streets;
The guards are chained in castle keeps;
And all about us grows weary and bleak;
Our tongues are loose,
Still nobody speaks.

You gain a deep understanding of the future of being lonely in a bar in Fenton in the rain with a man ten years older than you. You swallow down the three dollar beer he bought you ‘cause everyone in the bar, singing a country song you don’t know at the top of their lungs, knows that’s all it takes to get “those” girls out of their pants.

And you kiss him like you’d rather not and you **** him like a teenager because that’s the person you think he wants instead of you. He’s the first guy to ever put his mouth on you and it’s electric, a live wire, but everything else he does, every touch, every hissed word under his breath, every time his eyes meet yours is just another way you’re both lying to yourselves and each other. “I’m with you, so no, I’m not lonely. If you’re not alone, you can’t be lonely.”

You lay in his bed for awhile. You don’t want to be with him but you don’t want to go home, either. It’s raining outside the truck and it’s raining on your face because you don’t want to keep doing this until you’re his age, but you fail to see any other alternatives when you’re still not looking people in the eye.

He’s not your type, but you’re drunk and you’re desperate and all the couch cushions are already on the floor. You pick him up in person, which is new, but instead of making you feel like you’re in control of this speeding train with no brakes, you feel like it was all out of your hands. Like you have no choice but to keep building this story so you can be one of “those” girls.

Like if you’re going to try to get to know someone, you’re going to do it with your clothes off.

And he says it doesn’t have to be a one time thing, which is sweet in a way that makes your skin crawl, and his number is in your phone, but you already know you needed to know about him laying flat on your back on the floor of your friends’ apartment with a towel in your mouth so you won’t scream existentially or otherwise.

And the new one? He’s kind of like the old, except he’s ticklish and wears glasses and has crooked teeth when he smiles. The *** should by all rights be bad, but he left ringlet bruises around your wrist and pulled your hair hard enough for you to remember that this is real, that it’s really happening, that your heart is still beating in your chest, that no matter how lonely you are, that doesn’t mean you’re alone.

Make no mistake. The new one is not love. You’re not going to sign off on that again. He’s leaving in a month and you’re going to feel your heart beat against his chest as often as you can to remind yourself there is a real difference between being lonely and being alone.

dysphoria can be defined as a general unease or dissatisfaction, a discontent
but dysphoria
feels more like a disconnect
my heartbeat feels more like a defect
when it throbs against my shrinking ribcage I can feel that it's making a dent
dysphoria
comes from a greek root meaning "hard to bear"
it is hard to bear
****, it's hard to breathe
literally
physically
I cannot breathe
I cannot be free
dysphoria is when you have to close your eyes while you shower so you can't see
each breath shakes as it comes out of me
there is medical material clung so tightly to my body
it has become an extension of me
and nothing on me belongs to me
I am trapped beneath waves of what I can't stand to be
my body of water
feels more like an anchor
I am drowning
and you can tug at my spine but you cannot feel me
I cannot even feel me
I would do anything to make these ends meet
dysphoria grabs hastily
a current does not care your worth, it just pulls you under
dysphoria does not care if you deserve better
dysphoria is a disconnect
and I haven't found directions
to the end

Skin as pale as lilies,
     now livid with interrupted bloom.
Bruises as dark as that Irish lake,
     five of them, of a brutish nightshade hue.
Body as limp as the towel they used to rub you warm to no avail,
     dotted over with dirt, your shirt torn through.
Eyes as vacant as the echo in a tomb,
     once blue before, now glazed over with vitreous dew.
Oh Clerval, how I have forsaken you.