"angel, come clean,"
the river whispers
as if i were not
already in love with it,
as if it did not
harmonize with
the sound of my
beating heart,
thump-thump-thumping
in ethereal cacophany

scarlet drips between my thighs
and off my wrists,
and when i sink beneath
an ocean of blue,
it runs red,
and
relief sprouts out
of lungs, finally, finally--

and then
i dream of
water rising
and collapsing
lungs,
all that breath swallowed up
like a siren song

heaven is a ***** liar
pleading for forgiveness;
the truth is buried
at the bottom of
a freshwater river
in the decaying hands of
a skeleton
who yearned for
eternal solace

stress blooming forward
in chest like
erratic butterflies flapping
away
and thoughts spiraling
down towards
my stomach where
they do not dissolve
in acid, no matter how
desperately
i ache for them
to leave me

times when
i think about my
future - they are not
etched in stone, they
are fleeting and temporary and as
miniscule as grains of sand

how could they be anything
more than dust
when the possibility
of any greatness
or worthiness
or meaning
is so
tiny, so
small
as to not
even
be there at all

fire and brimstone
and a grotesque attempt
at spontaneous combustion,
words crawling out of throats
and
hands, trembling
and
body, trembling, all over
and
sheer force of memory
splitting through rationality
until a bomb deteroriates
everything we used to
love,
including myself.

i can't help but bleed out the good in me

everything is meaningless and i
mean it. there's no point to this
there's no point to me there's no
point in existing other than to
breathe and love and make sense
of why we're here and
i'm sick of people telling me that the smart ones
are the sad ones
because i'm not smart,
i'm sick.
i'm vomiting up all the
feelings that are so overused
and overexaggerated that i cannot
tell what is normal or not
until someone informs me
that daydreaming
of slashing wrists and leaking
red when i
drop a glass of water
isn't normal. i used
to think everyone was
this way and i used to
think there'd be some
cure
to this, some magic pill
filled with stardust
and a tendency for
chemical codependency
that would make
me stop throwing up
all the feelings
bottled in the pit of
my stomach. (the
magic pill made me throw up,
just not the bad things. only
the good ones.) and
i can't stop thinking about
how everything is meaningless
and we are all here
and they are all there
and no one will ever
know one another completely
and that's not okay with me.
it's not.

don't tell me how to write poetry or how to write stories or how to write at all. don't tell me there's a rhyme or reason to this; don't tell me that i should be using iambic pentameter or separating each line into delicate sestets or  molding metaphors out of things that were never intended to be meaningful. don't tell me that there are rules i need to follow and that nothing i ever make will be precious and valuable and wholesome unless it conforms to the artistic, intellectual way of doing things because i am not artistic and i am not intellectual and i will write however i please because my writing is imbedded layers beneath my skin, so far down i could never tear it out in any way that wasn't raw or real or rustic. don't make those parts of me insincere simply to hold them to ideals set by different old writers in older times with different old feelings and dreams and beliefs than mine. don't tell me how to write. don't tell me how to not be me.

sometimes i feel
so much
i don't know
where
to put
it all
(is it supposed
to flow
out like a
river
or explode
out of my
mouth
or swallow
me
whole?)

my dog was full of smiles
when she was in pain,
from the ends of
her large, worn paws
to the greying hairs of
her head, because she
was dying -

but we gave her pizza
as her last meal since she
always
loved it.
more than us.
more than her life, probably,
even when she was so dizzyingly
overcome with
dementia and arthritis and hurt, so much
*******
hurt.

and i cried when we lost her
because it was so sudden, sobbed awful, wet tears into
my brother's torn t-shirt
since we didn't have time to change into better
clothes when we put her down. to help her. to save her.

yet somehow, knowing that we
gave her up
hurts worse than if we'd
lost her in her sleep.

and someday, i might
get into a car accident, and
my guts will splatter along the walls of some beat-down car in brooklyn
and someone i never knew will have
to clean me up. my friends
will lose me my family
will lose me my significant other
will lose me. they may
never
get over it.

so i will
send reckless text messages
and tell them that i love them because ******* it
if they don't love me back, i will
not wait for signs that
will never come, i will
learn four new languages so
i can meet so many more of the people who
may change me, i will
go to therapy and learn
from it, i will
create art that bleeds from my fingertips, i will
weave patterns into the fabric
of other people's lives, i will
hug my little brother when he
needs one, i will
kiss them with reckless abandon even when my parents do not
want me to, i will
be okay with who i am, i will
work on who i am, i will
love who i am.

i will
eat my ******* pizza,
just like my dog.

in case i get into that car accident tomorrow.

i am mentally ill.

i have been since i was born,
or at least, that’s what i’ve been told.
although perhaps
i never knew it, perhaps
the symptoms
were triggered by trauma, perhaps
it was something that never really seemed
like an illness to me until i knew
what was considered normal. but
i am mentally ill, or mentally disordered, or mentally whatever.

and i ******* hate it.

i hate it
because i cannot think logically most of the time.
i hate it
because whatever chemical imbalances
are inside of me
make me want to scream
and bleed
and punch the walls of my home
until there are more holes than stable ground. i hate it
because me having to speak in front of
my ******* friends is cause enough to
cry for three days, because
my friends don’t understand why
i am ecstatic
around them one day when sadness
crushes my skull the next, because
my friends don’t see logic in a matter of feeling
that doesn’t make sense to them let alone me.

i hate it because
i cannot give a logical reason for this.
i hate it because
i don’t understand why i am the way i am
or what i did to deserve this.
i hate it because
i don’t understand my illness,
i don’t understand how people can
just go out into the world and be happy,
i don’t understand what it’s like to
have something go wrong in life
and react in a way considered to be “healthy”.

i hate it
because my younger brother sits
in class and suffers from his own depression
but refuses to speak up
because he believes his depression
is absolutely nothing
compared to mine,
when to me
it is everything.
i hate it because
he might be cutting himself open
every night
or at least wanting to

and

i hate it because
when i texted all of my friends
as i sat sobbing on my front porch
at ten pm
on a school night
with a bottle of pills
nestled safely in my jacket pocket,
several of them thought it was a suicide note
but none of them cared enough to push further
in my answer of “i’m fine don’t worry about me goodnight”.
i hate it because
the only person who noticed it thoroughly enough
was my ex-boyfriend,
who i scared half to death
when i told him “i’m sorry”
and “i loved you a lot before we broke up”
and “you’ll understand”
and he replied with “oh my god
please don’t
please don’t
please don’t”.

i hate it because
i ignored him.
i hate it because
i wanted out.

i hate it because
the sky fell through the earth’s floor
like shattered glass and the blood-orange
sunset bled towards the grass; i hate it because
i lay softly on the earth of my front yard
and allowed the blades of grass to soothe me
towards the afterlife; i hate it because
the world spun and spun and spun and
my vision blurred and
my heart threatened to beat so far out of my chest
and i could not stop my breathing
but i kept on taking more pills like a child eating candy.

i hate it because
when i realised i wasn’t dead,
i cried.
i hate it because
i had thirty two new notifications
from my ex and the people he had contacted
to see if i was dead
but most of them were from him,
all missed calls and texts and
heavy breathing on the other side of the phone
once he saw me calling. i hate it because
his hands were shaking
and i was talking
and sobbing
with an ex love
on my front porch as the sun and moon switched places
with half a bottle of pills in my system
and the taste of blood in my mouth
instead of talking to my friends
and family
and people
who were supposed to care about me.

i hate it because
the next day i had a pulsing headache
and a suicidal mindset
and all of my friends were cracking jokes
about how they believed i was going to **** myself
when they had no idea
how hard i’d been attempting to do so.
i hate it because
i smiled and lied through gritted teeth
and cried in the bathrooms
when a teacher pulled me aside to say -
he thought something was
“off” with me. i hate it because
i still wanted to die.

i hate it because
i can’t think straight most days.
i hate it because
sometimes everything is okay
and fine
and i can breathe without the alien invasion of
“panic attacks from the planet post-traumatic stress disorder”
and cinnamon doesn’t trigger memories
i would like to forget.
i hate it because
people don’t take mental health seriously
enough to understand why
i leave classrooms in the middle of the day
or why some kids miss school for
two weeks without explanation or why sometimes teachers
with dead eyes are more dead inside
than the human skeletons dancing in the science classrooms.
i hate it because
teenagers make suicide jokes
near people who are dying.
i hate it because
i don’t know if i got out of bed
last tuesday or how long it’s been since i last showered
or if i still love writing as much as
i used to
or if it’s just habit now.

i hate it
because my illness makes me hate myself.

i hate it because
my illness
does not define me
but it sure feels like it does.
i hate it because i cannot explain my illness myself.
i hate it because i hate my illness
and every part of it that creates me, shapes me, moves me
like a ******* puppet.

but ******* it all
if i am going to let it ****** who
i am supposed to be any longer.

ink scratches appear on skin in the
morning as the sunrise falls
into the streets. cars are
screeching and
smoking is rising and
screams are echoing off of the graffitied brick walls -

there's a woman dancing
on the ledge and
she nearly
trips, nearly
dies, nearly
cries out, but her hand grasps
the gate holding her
to the concrete cracked beneath her
feet. sirens are blaring and people are yelling till their lungs
burst and she is laughing because she -

the lines separating happiness and paranoia are faded
when the brain chemistry of a human being
is constructed of hopelessness and oh god why'd he leave me
and the kisses from people who
slowly ruin our bodies, our hearts, ourselves, and -
and -
and -
there is no such thing as black or white; merely grey,
and paintings have no colour when
chemicals in our brains are exploding
chemicals in our brains are spasming
chemicals in our brains are murdering us.

and the woman laughs as she
dances off the edge, the blood
orange sunrise bleeding into
the highways as
black
and
white
and
grey.

everything grey.

i am -
i am homesick for a person who
left when i forced him to leave,
pushing him out the door,
arms shaking,
tears cracking in the back of my throat,
and i hope i don't ruin you
when i know you will ruin me

and now - now it is
too late at night and
i hope the moon is not my only friend
because he has forgotten me
for a girl with ginger hair and a scar above her lip
who is just like me,
except that she's thin and vegan and doesn't like harry potter

and i -
i am convincing myself not to send text messages
i should have sent
before my eyes turned ancient with the ache
of heartbreak and he
refused to look at them.

messages i should have sent

2:14 am, day one
i miss you

3:23 am, day two
i still miss you
3: 24 am, day two
**** why did i make you go

6: 25 pm, one week later
do you remember when i thought
you hated me and when you thought
i hated you? that was
all lies.
is it still a lie?

6:26 pm, one month later
can we
still be friends? it's so hard to see you
in the hallway without
bursting
into
tears
and
flames.

12:01 am, three months later
halloween doesn't
taste the same and
sugar is more sour and sweet and the
moonlight dancing across the haunted street
is not beautiful to me anymore
because you are not apart of this.

4:34 am, seven months later
it is
the day of love and we spoke
for the first time in person since the
school dance a few months ago and my
heart
hurts so badly

3:57 am, eight months later
i am trying to love new people, better
people, and he tells me i am the world
to him but i
don't want him to love me because
he's
not
you

2:31 am, nine months later
i put you first, i always ******* put you
first, and i never made you feel a ****
thing.
2:33 am, nine months later
i still ******* miss you.
******* it.

now
i am trying to convince myself
i don't love you anymore
but it's growing so difficult because
                                                 because
maybe i still do
and i don't want to, i don't want this, i don't want him.
i don't.

he ignores me without reason
and does not try to be
my friend
and does not
look me in the eye

and he is the tear in my heart.

so, hello again,    
                        poetry.
will you be my lover now?

because sometimes
metaphors aren't obvious enough

i have lost myself
again
in the rain, in the sky, in you -

but the rain is going to pour
without you inside of it and
you will not land on my tongue

and the sky is will be lovely
without you residing in the clouds
and you will not remind me of its colour

not anymore

words tangled in my ear like vines
and cackled laughter, hands balled
up in fists, a cacophony of everything
i'd ever been terrified of. my
mother never pondered where
the violet-blue patches of skin had
appeared nor where i'd lost
my tooth the last day of second
grade, discovered three days
later by a janitor in a pool
of blood from a fight
broken out on the little
girl with no one else.

the tooth fairy gave me a dollar
for the gap between my teeth
but the tooth itself had cost me
so
   much
         more

i'm trying to make memories with people who won't **** me but you're still there, and maybe you're always going to be there, and some memories do not heal for they are too powerful to drown in the ruin of myself and your poison is still lurking in my throat. nothing terrifies the marrow in my bones more than knowing that you are the pain in the back of my mind, and it has been six months since you left me dead, six months since my poems were all written on the moon instead of dreaming of the stars, six months since you slurred that you swallowed tablets to detox me from you, six months. you. you are your smirk, you are your dumb pick up lines, you are your flirtatious text messages despite the lack of a relationship we hold, you are your stupid ******* rocker jeans and the way your eyes used to glint in the navy shade of 4am, smoke curled along the edge of your lip, your hand reaching for the belt loop of my jeans. nimble fingers hold guitar picks and make music as opposed to love and there was no love there at all, just the idea of it embedded in your teeth and in my hands in your hair and the smell of art and lust and strawberry chapstick and the wreckage of my being up in flames.

is my blood still lingering on the cracks of your lips? have i stained you?

i-

well,
      ****.

i've spent my whole life
searching for an escape route
that has never appeared
at the fondest of times
but ******* it, i
will paint that sign myself,
in the rusted blood seeping
from my heart,
if it means this will end

i do not know if this
scares you

but someday,
i will no longer
drown your memory
by writing ****** poems
at 1:13 am

and you won't exist to me

you kiss me hard with your teeth and
blood coats the roof of my mouth, metallic
and sharp, and i will envelop
myself in darkness
for that is where
i belong

and when fireworks stop cracking on the
night sky
and when the stars
refrain from blinking down at
streetlights guiding the path to our future
and when you kiss me goodbye with
burning lips
and my own are unscathed whilst my neck is
blooming third-degree burns,
flesh melting on the site
and when the sun turns to moonlight
because its own flames have known
no heat
and when i will stop finding metaphors
about firefirefirefirefirefire
and when every winter
you'd put us through ceases
its frozen barricade
and when i stop
discovering myself hovering over the
edge of a lake donning memories
that refuse to drown
and when i
stop wishing there was some possibility
of drowning myself in the bathtub -

i will finally have the guts
to say

i don't love you

stage 1 of therapy and i have not
made progress. the whispers
stalk me through the battlegrounds
of school corridors - "she tried
to off herself with anxiety pills and left
no letter full of blood"- there's
no part of me left to imagine.
why are my secrets never my own? do
they not belong to me, do they
not belong to me, do i
not belong to me?

stage 2 of therapy and i
am still so terrified
of funerals
and of coffins
and of suicide notes
and i
am so horrified that my heart is drowning
my body is bleeding i won't admit
this pains me so much and i must've
loved everyone so hard, so deeply
there's nothing left to share
this hurts so
this hurts so
this hurts so bad
the repetition is crushing my skull.

stage 3 of therapy and i am
not dead. i am not dead.
i am not dead. i think i'm
losing my sense of self and
everything lacks meaning
and i am dying
and the breath is struggling
and the lungs are struggling
and everything is struggling
and i am dying.
but i am not dead.

stage 4 of therapy and i haven't yet
shot down the parts of myself
attempting to strangle the blood
straight out of me
but i haven't shot myself, either.
which is progress.
progress.
little
by little
progress, a word which i have never
yet delighted in the pleasures of feeling.
progress.

my knuckles cracked on solid concrete
and i swear
i shattered every bone in my body
one by one, crunching and
crackling and crying -
pause.
wait.
let me reiterate:
how dare you say
you miss me
when you stare
at me with eyes colder than the frozen tundra
accumulating along the walls of your arteries,
when i'm breaking my hands
over you using yours to
hold another's,
when you stare at me
like you never knew me at all
when you stare
at me as if
i'm dying, as if i'm
crumbling into dirt and dust and ruin
before you
but there's a question
which goes up in flames
each time i glance back
at you -
does love ever die?
and if so,
when will i?

it's okay to be sad.
it's just not okay to stay that way.

i think my eyes were blue
before he thieved the colour
from the insides of me

everything is strange and eerily quiet
and i am not allowed the delicacy
of feeling sad
and i am not allowed
to feel anything
i am hiding bad habits underneath
makeup and there are blooming
bruises on my arms and
she is so beautiful but she's dousing me in kerosene
nights and lighting matches for her cigarettes on top of me
but i - i - i am not allowed to feel this
i am not allowed to feel this
sixteen years is not enough, it's
never going to enough, i am
never going to be
enough

there's no relief in death
but there's some sweet ecstasy within it
which i've been literally dying to try.

all my love's going to drown.

someone asked me over the phone
if i wanted to **** myself and i
regurgitated every pitiable
answer you'd expect to discern from
the most normal of people and a few years
ago i never would've lied but acting
is a state of mind as opposed to a
state of art and it's so necessary for me
because someone asked
me over the phone if i wanted
to **** myself and the truth
was so difficult to handle
that i bled black blood from
the wound in my mouth, the
hole had been singed there
when i began feeling
like the knife lodged in
my stomach wasn't nearly
enough pain yet when do we
begin to enjoy the euphoric
disasters of adventures
with a warning sign shrieking
out: DANGER DEATH AHEAD
when do we stop crying when
we take too many pills when
do we stop praying to a god
who never loved us in the
first place when does
our innocence rust from
its original golden surface but
there isn't an answer to that
rambling of a sentence i'm afraid
and the dark rainclouds moving
in the distance have thunder resounding
in my headaches and getting
closer by the hour and i want
to cry, i used to be so much
sweeter than this but someone
asked me over the phone if
i wanted to **** myself

and i lied
because i did.

the biting arctic winds have
snapped my frozen bones
in two pieces, the fragments
swirling in the air
and the oxygen goes
up in flames - my voice
has lilted and wavered
and cracked and
i don't want to say this
because i've never
delighted in admitting
the idiotic tendencies
of things and feelings
but i love you.

oh, god,
i love you.

darling, i should never
call you that. "darling"- it's
a synonym for everything
i used to feel with you and all
the guilt which follows it. so
badly have i wanted to stop
using it, to stop referring
to you as that, but your
name hurts too much.

darling, did i ever
mention that i traveled to
the moon? because i did,
on a night where the earth
was spinning too quickly that
all the colours bled into one
and the painting made me
*****. it's not a kind story
and ever since then, i haven't
been kind either.

darling, what's the
difference between heartache
and dying? i'm tasting flakes
of flaming ash on my tongue
and it's scorched my mouth
so bad i cannot speak everything
i feel (not that i would've
anyway). you're everything
drawn on the back of my
eyelids and everything
knifing my stomach and
everything, oh god,
you're everything.

darling, you're
nothing, you're
absolutely nothing,
you don't mean a thing
to me.

darling, i realise that
seems ironic but i've
never been anything but
that. i've been treading on
the moonlight and inhaling
charcoal and the bullet-wounds
have cracked against
the silence of your
absence.

darling, i think
i'm losing my mind.

i want to go home
and swallow each tablet
in the bottle of pills
which are supposed to
make me not want to
do so.

i can taste
heartache and it tastes
like blood and shattered promises.

i do not miss you
except that i do

in the beginning of my first
year of high school, i was
the girl with messy hair
who tried to off herself
in summer's past, the one
with tired eyes who skipped
lunch despite empty stomachs
feeling heavier, the freshman
with open wounds grazing
the veins in her arms who
sprinted out of classrooms
due to the sporadic nature
of panic attacks.

i'd like to say that i've
transitioned out of the cocoon
of panic disorders and ptsd and
depression, but somehow,
the butterfly wings haven't grown in yet.

rummaging through the drawers
of my closet, i find pieces of you
tucked into your old t-shirts
and the notes which cracked
my frowns into grins and the
guitar pick you'd left behind
along with your heart-

oh how i long to throw them to the flames.

i swear to god i'm not
envious of her i just
want to break her precious
fingers when she touches him
i just want to sever the
thinned space between
them i just want to shove
her from his grasp i just
want my hands to stop shaking
when i see them together i
just want to see him stop
gazing at her with eyes
brighter than moonbeams.

i swear to god i'm not jealous.

why does it hurt so much, so intensely, so often?

every night i see you in my
dreams and you write to me
sometimes and it makes me
feel as though the earth beneath
my feet was tugged from
me and i keep falling onto
shards of broken glass and cracked
heartbeats and yet there's this
cavernous hole in the gap in
my chest from where i tore out
my heart, shredding the threads
keeping my heartstrings together
so they could hold the wounded
***** there and throwing it to
the blood-eyed devil who
swallowed it whole and i am nothing
without the pain which has
molded me from ash and dirt
and dust

but i wonder
why love is still a thing to yearn for
especially because it hurts so bad

tell me someone will love me
fully clothed
and

tell me someone will love me
with blood on my hands
and

tell me someone will love me
shaking, trembling, convulsing
and

tell me someone will love me
when they're searching for gold and i am rustic bronze
and

tell me someone will love me
with veins ripped apart
and

tell me someone will love me
with a starved stomach and empty eyes
and

tell me someone will love me
when i am dying
and

i'm asking you
//please love me//

someone once asked me what
love is like and my breath
ripped against my throat and
it took me three and one fourth seconds
too long to construct some
well-thought answer, and i
said the one syllable i could
manage would fill in the lost
puzzle piece for the question:

fire

and god, love is a fire
which singes the insides of your
unromanticized stomach and it
lilts and dances and flares in
orange-yellows and red-blues
and somehow the self-intoxication
of the high from the burning
feels so right. at some point,

the flames begin to engrave
acidic holes in your skin, circular
cigarette burns in your lungs,
lick the linings of your throat
with its fire and it hurts so bad
you throw the cure on top of it:
water, and the forest fire dies
with you. and at
some point you light up
another match, let the flames
erupt again. but

for now, there's only
ash and dust and exhausted
eyes and bones with singes
in the cracks and puddles from
quenched flames and
i'd wonder why the fire stopped
burning

except i'm glad it did.

i wanted to scream so loudly
the cells circulating my body would
freeze - sadly, the ice which
settled in my blood cells refused
to cave in. the weight of this
has not left  me yet and she
was more beautiful than a
monarch in flight before
she clipped her wings
clean off and the wind
from the act blew us
all away and i'm failing
in this attempt to discover
any merits in thinking about someone
who is unable to come home

yet i'm still texting her
"please come back".

wind whistles through
the hollows of trees' tranquil
leaves and the silence cracks
against the coffin being shut
and i cry till my eyes
can sob no more

a girl the year above me
killed herself today and i can't
stop thinking, can't stop spinning,
can't stop hurting; there's a gaping wound
in my chest the size of her heart but
i didn't know her, no, not at all,
and everyone is crying
but everyone is crying together.

there's a fever grinding
against the front of my skull
and ice is crushing along the
bends of my spine and i
haven't cried since i found out
i was dying

i am terrified of the voice
of my father because it
sounds of unknown irony -  how
the one who is called to
love is able to spin fear and
anxious hands and nervous thoughts
through words screamed
so loud the blood vessels in my
eyes break instead
of his.

my skeleton never liked me
very much. it cracks in unusual
places, ribcage poking out of its
skin prison, the frailty of it
breaking beneath the musical
whispers of the wind through hollow
spaces.  i see

light bursting beneath the flash
of a camera and my skin
incinerates - do not look do not touch
do not look - and the charcoal in
my lungs is set on fire. i wake up
with ash beneath my tongue
far too often. my skin

despises me now that i have
bruises in places no one could
kiss better. there's this scar above
my right knee, which dislocates when
my life falls out of its socket, and it
reopens and blood pours from the
renewed wound too often. i think

i have a body that likes to believe it is dying.

it's one o'clock in the morning
and it smells of drugstore perfume, daisies
mixed with something attempting
to be sweeter than sugar
when its truly salt
swirled together with
arsenic and my vapid feelings.

it's one o'clock in the morning
and it feels like static, like the fuzziness
on television screens and the
sensation of the wires in my
brain snapping from this exhaustion
that was never there till i
gave up on the phantom innocence i'd been
clinging to in the hopes it
was still clinging onto the shreds of
clothing at my feet.

it's one o'clock in the morning
and it looks as though everything has been
painted monochrome. it's a series
of hazy greys and blurry whites, but
it's mostly a black delved so dark
i can't see anything through it; it's
not transparent enough to even
glance at the stars blinking down
toward the earth because the nighttime
won't let me see anything but mysteries
and untouched memories.

it's one o'clock in the morning
and it tastes like blood, so much
blood. there's metal on my tongue
and it's everywhere because there's no
knife anywhere, just this transpiercing
pain in my stomach and my lungs are
being sliced open and the gore of my guts
is spilling onto the tile floor and there's
blood covering my hands and my
face is cracking against concrete and
i'm puking rainbows again
and it tastes of heartsickness.

it's one o'clock in the morning
and it sounds like nothing. it's
the kind of nothing that
everyone notices: the breath that
stops when one gets the news
that their loved one is leaving
them for good, the nothing after
a performance that's left everyone
contemplating the universe and love
and whether i actually want to
live at all, the silence following
the coffin being shut. it's the nothingness
of sobs and heartbreak and
death. it's the sound of
loneliness - particularly mine.

the curves on my
frame are the lines of
a sketch bent slightly
too far; i'm an awkward
angle in geometry
class no one dares to
find and this tiny black

dress is revealing too
much in too little
time. the whispers of
crisscrossed marked
thighs and starry knees
swirl before me and i'm

gone, disconnected. they say
black is slimming but
i've never felt more
potent and i hope
to god no one can see
right through me.

formal dances aren't
ideal for the invisible.

it's a friday night and i am sat at the top of the bleachers with three packs of maltesers i told the cashier were for my friends with a blurry grin and the hot chocolate in my hands lied. it's lukewarm and tastes of milk, not sweets, and the taste of it still taints my lips because i'm forcing myself to drink it anyways. the stars are yellow set against navy hues and they're blinking down at me.

there's announcers shouting something about the game occurring on the field but i'm not listening, never listening, never apathetic or empathic enough to want to. the music blares, cheers roar, announcers boom, the scoreboard flashes-  it's cold enough to be huddled beneath blankets but i've only got a sweatshirt hiding my hands, hiding my fingers, hiding me. my ribs shiver and the ghosts in the spaces between them gather closer for a warmth that won't come. the moon says hello to me and i struggle to catch enough air to say it back.

my friends are nowhere to be found and i can't feel my fingertips and the flavor of lukewarm hot chocolate leaves me and i'm closing my eyes, shutting them tight, disconnecting.

there's suddenly no one here, just me and the blackness behind my eyelids. it's like i'm watching humans but never being one of them. maybe i'm meant to be an alien- maybe that one star blinking at me is a planet welcoming me home- maybe if i lay my lungs to rest they'll leave me be.

i can feel my heart giving up on me.

"her writing depresses me" he says

my voice quivers, falls up toward
space and crashes
down
against the sea-salt waves. my voice

s-s-s-stutters, repeats the first
syllable five times and once again
for an even six, repeats, repeats,
repeats. my voice is

quiet and every teacher i've
ever had calls on me with a
"speak up!" but no one ever
listens.

writing is the only voice i've ever known
you will not take that from me.

everything i've ever known
turns to dust, spiraling in a
constellation of tremors and
hyperventilation and worry,
so much worry, and every
moment in which i exist i
can feel my heart threaten
to beat straight out of my
ribcage and maybe i
want it to.