lemonade mouth taste, sugarless lemonade
thought we were past this phase but i guess
i was wrong again this time. my heartbeat is
breaking my rib cage, diaphragm disappearing
leaving me breathless and bleeding. you smiled
again today so i started digging my own grave:
six feet deep, shovel clanging like your laughter,
making me torn between slowing down and
working faster, eager to hear it over and over
but hesitant to let it be over. it’s a bittersweet
symphony, and you’ve reduced me back down
to cliches again. i wish that i knew how to just
be your friend, neptune and jupiter and nothing
more, but your eyes are just so warm. how can
we not be venus and the sun? i’m spinning,
reeling backwards with you at my center,
the planet of the goddess of love-- i’m mercury,
one day with you feels like two years (would
two years with you feel like one day? probably)
and my mood swings so drastically around you
because i’m too close to have any kind of
atmosphere, always running too hot or too cold,
no middle ground-- but who am i to talk, with
you and your solar flares, your cold spots. how
do i get into the goldilocks zone with you? just
right for life, just right for evolving into something.

friendship tastes like
fizzy apple soda,
straight out of a glass
bottle, washed-out green.
it’s sugary sweet,
smoothly carbonated,
but kicks the edges
of my tongue with sour.
it’s syrupy, tingling as it
bubbles up over
onto my skin, sticky.
lick it off, wipe my hands
onto the hem of my
tank top. the feeling
lingers though, buzzing
on my skin like flies.
the bottle is empty now,
and i’m counting quarters,
scrounging up change
to quench my thirst
for green bittersweet.

I THINK MY PROBLEM IS FLINGING MYSELF OFF CLIFFS WITHOUT BOTHERING TO SEE HOW DEEP THE RAVINE IS. I CARE TOO MUCH TOO FAST UNTIL I'M *BURNING

i guess what i'm learning is that you have to have your tragedies if you're ever going to learn anything and i guess i never realized that you were just a lesson the whole time. i didn't want to let go of hope and trust and i have never been able to burn bridges very well after all. i keep matches in my pockets but i've never really liked the smell of gasoline for long enough to keep it with me. after all, i never needed it. i like to keep all my paths open. it was up to you to destroy us and wow you did it so well that i can barely feel it, the decimation of nerve endings like beating a dead horse that can't feel anymore. i don't need you anymore. i can't feel you anymore. do you know what it's like to lose a limb, feel the phantom pains of old heartache that was never really broken but never quite something other than love? maybe for you it was just something to pass the time and maybe for you it was just another smile in a hallway of a maze of old faces that you just don't recognize anymore. maybe i'll be a face you just don't recognize anymore. after all i don't think that i could recognize you anymore from a line up of old haunts and ghosts and skeletons from my closet and memories and the past. i tend to avoid burning bridges but i do tend to build cement walls right beside them. i don't know if you've set that way ablaze because i can't see it anymore, it's behind the thick brick cement that keeps me safe from everyone that might try to hurt me and hiding is what i do best after all. hiding and falling because i can't stop looking at the stars maybe that's why i call myself icarus maybe that's why i feel like a tragedy. maybe i was your lesson or maybe i was just a story, a piece of poetry to read once and then put back on the shelf in its collection, nothing impressive or important, just another part of ovid's collection. you were helios to me and that was my mistake from the start. how dare you make me ever believe you were a god? as if you could ever be close to heavenly after all

maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is that the only person who never saw this coming
was me.
maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is because my mother shook and cried as she
strapped wax wings on me and said,
“do not look at the stars”
because she knew childish wonder
would only **** me.
maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is that i wish i had been that light, i wish i had
been able to see those stars and really
touch them.
maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is because i’m a ******* tragedy but nobody
seems to realize it except me.
no one ever felt the fall quite like
me.
maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is because the only person i’ve ever disappointed
is myself, my own ambition, my own dreams.
maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is because i always feel like i’m
falling.

are you collecting the old counts of how
they slaughtered your son and his power-hungry heart,
twenty three knives to the torso,
the killing blow delivered by a beloved friend?
or are those the scrolls that you wish
dust would settle over forever, relics and reliefs of
everything you see behind your closed eyelids.
a politician’s mother
must be all the more clever; her son will not
be going into battle to die with honor
but rather with deceit. give her-- you-- a laurel wreath,
the irony of the goddess nike standing
golden over the tomb of your son: emperor,
caesar. mother of summer, of boiling july,
are you not the sun? are you not the constellations
freckling burnt pale skin? are you not
the fiercest and brightest of warriors, quietly,
without warning?

fireflies blink patterns of constellations
like glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to your
bedroom ceiling. sometimes,
home is not where we expect it to be.
sometimes you know that you just have
to leave. light a candle at your own vigil,
your own funeral, then take to the sky
on trembling wings. it’s okay: you can
still visit if need be. but the future is not
certain (you never liked tellers of fortune
anyway.) so stick to your runes and
what your dusty old books tell you, words
in dead languages speaking easier
than the tongues around you. maybe
you’re just too stuck in the past-- after all,
most stars are already gone by the time
the light reaches your skies. there’s
nothing wrong with never burning bridges,
but keep the matches in your pocket
just in case.

who needs sleep when there are galaxies to be seen
teeming with suns spinning with planets with other lives to be living?
there’s a chill setting in the marrow of your bones
where dead flowers continue to grow, under your ribs
like longing, like homesickness, like fighting a feeling of needing to be
anywhere but this
place, this planet, this universe.
no one will ever know the heartache that lives in the lump in your throat
that grows when you look up and know that there is somewhere else
that you’d rather be. you just don’t have a name for it yet.
it just hasn’t told you its name yet.
maybe in the dusty bindings of old books, you’ll find
the secret to a future set in stars
that always seem just a little too out of reach.
maybe a different sun will be better at warming the cold winter
that long ago set itself up in your body.
maybe a different sun will show you what summer feels like,
the way freedom can feel when you’re free of longing.

Find sanctuaries under other people’s rib cages.
Count all their heartbeats, each exhale,
Wipe down dusty lungs and old notebook pages.
Bite down on bones and fingernails.
Whisper to yourself, “I will prevail.”
Peek out from behind the diaphragm and skin.
The world is foggy through this veil;
This is how familiarity begins.

Old highways only lead you to stages,
ravine edges and steep drops with no rail,
where wanderers have pilgrimed for ages.
You hesitate to fly; you fear you will fail,
unable to follow wanderlust’s trail.
You’re weighed down by all your past sins
and the mountains you turn to scale.
This is how familiarity begins.

In someone else’s heart, a hurricane rages,
sleet and thunder and head-sized hail.
Memory lane’s speed limit has no gauges.
The mountain drops angry avalanches of shale,
So close your eyes and determine to prevail.
There’s no way to count your wins;
The sun is rising and the sky turns pale.
This is how familiarity begins.

Curious, how feelings are so frail
under mountains and ribs, the outs and ins.
Veins and dirt roads trace the trail:
You’ll start to see how familiarity begins.