you were ready for a conflict that never ended–
teeth bared, fists clenched, furious and broken,
spitting blood
on the image of a one-day corpse of yourself that
always threatened to become reality.
you learned to love with your claws out,
battling self hatred the way most people
have to deal with traffic on their way to work—
you hid your vulnerabilities like a lost lover, smiled so wide that it could tuck pain into your back pocket without anyone ever noticing,
but even so,
your heart rate never slowed down
because it set its pace with how fast you struggled to
outrun yourself, an agony you never asked for,
and no matter how much time you spent in the shower,
your heart will always have the stench of someone else’s misplaced guilt.

there is this though:
the sting of an open palm will fade
the slamming doors will only be the wind
the abuse will no longer rule your mind
the dust will settle
one day, i promise, you will be able to lay down your armor
but for now i understand why distrust is braided into every fiber of your being
because
kids like us
we speak a language they can never learn.

– *(i know the wars you fought, i fought them too)

is the title of my self-published poetry book-- it will have stuff not seen by anyone or hello poetry, so tune in, if you wanna.

• it was always you-- until relatively recently
• you're not the epitome of romance so you say, but why did you hold me like you want to romance me
• i was sorry if it seemed like i moved on the first few months -- i was never good at being open
• i could've let you help me
• did you like being undefined or did you want something more concrete because i felt as though i was the one with a happy broken heart and you found something perfect for you
•i miss you, always missed you and will miss you if you leave again

and i'm not original--
but art is art,
and i guess i'm andy warhol.

all she wants to do
is make beautiful things,
but she doesn't even know what beauty is.

this looks nice, so simple, minimalism.
but is it a masterpiece?

question everything. the head is full.

what is art?
what is purpose?
what is pleasing?
what is ugly?
what is permanence?
what is thieving?

and of course there is the, "why?"

it continues.
it continues.

she thinks.
there is no answer.
simply a carousel of questions.

it's been nine summers since we left last off,
i never wanted to associate anguish with your face
but it hits me that there are certain things
i can never forget,
i cannot forget,
i will not forget,
that you made me,
shaped me in your delicate hands,
wove me under a spell that i have yet to
get out of--
you know you gave my childhood magic.
we lived in a kingdom of treehouse stories
and secret handshakes, our domain behind
white picket fences. we left our child selves
in your yard, remember?
i picked up the pieces of half
drowned memories, and put them by your bedside,
in case you thought to look and perhaps it was presumptuous of me to say you felt the same way
when i am the only one who is overdosed on nostalgia.

i'm sorry.
i am homesick for the arms i am not privileged to
be held with, homesick for the stairs that
creaked in your house, homesick
for a love i never deserved but always wanted.
i'm the old pick up truck your father threw away,
the ramshackle closet that got replaced,
the old curtains, oh god, oh, but this
is not about me,
this is about us.

we both agreed that we always hated the small town life
and planned to run away
but why is it now that i'm still holding onto spider webs
and your packed suitcase has flown you across the globe?
is it sad to say that in my dreams
we're still waiting in an empty parking lot,
and your head resting on my shoulder, the lights on the pavement,
it's already over, it already passed and the cars aren't there,
and the moment is gone.

maybe it's not the saddest thing in the world
to lose your best friend when the love
was never meant to be,
and maybe it's not the saddest thing to love
someone who will never love you as a lover,
maybe it's not the saddest thing to lose
someone who promised forever, even
if forever was only until we parted ways,
maybe it's not the saddest thing to lose
the first true friend you ever had,
maybe it's not the saddest thing to
never be able to walk up your front porch and have you come running
out to see me of all people,
but
it is the most painful happiness to see your smile
and knowing that i am not the reason.

i might come off of being anonymous on this site.... with that being said however, i will probably unlink my tumblr on that bio because that's for my own private pleasure, my blog is more secret i suppose. as well as the private and anonymous twitter i have.

in any case, i guess i'll link my youtube where i release spoken word poetry videos and such if you're that curious (i'm not looking for views, i think i'm looking for a sense of openness and less secrecy here, alot of reasons really. but go ahead and check it out if you wanna, if not, that's fine too) and i'll delete some of the darker stuff off of here and make it more PG-13, in the event that i link my youtube back to this site.

also, if this happens, i am going to change my username again to match my other pages so it all links together (sorry i know every time somebody does this, or last time i did this -- i was previously known as "brooklyn baby" -- it's just very confusing)...

i am working on self publishing a book of poetic stuff also and have been busy putting together my Society 6 shop which has other art, but i'm thinking i'll scan some handwritten poems too.

so yes, i realize this is not a poem and it's crap posting, and nobody wants to read an announcement on a website specifically built for poetry, but i guess i needed to make clarifications for those of you that follow along or care about this strange little mind of mine.

sincerely yours,
a girl of little habits **

----
update: i have since updated.. link in bio is my latest spoken word poetry video.

a boy who spits out apologies like they’re tied to the roof of his mouth,
a girl who’s apologetic about existing.

a boy with eyes as reflective as sea spray
a girl who always fantasized about drowning in the ocean.

a boy that has hands that look like chiseled marble
a girl that’s used to being carved by other people.

a boy, struck with the thoughts that makes him unaware he’s art
a girl, who’s seen the greatest works in European museums, seen the crowns of kings, blood in the bathtub, lovers leave without grace, struck with the knowledge she has never seen a masterpiece like him.

there are moments when i can’t decide if i
want to die                            sooner or later.
and some days it’s like the        first regret,
the first time you hurt someone;   but then
you do it on purpose, revel in a   sickening
way, the manner in which you      discover
that empathy is a             two-edged sword
and   drowning       sounds            less than
gruesome and                more of a    fantasy.

i didn’t know how to hurt you until i hurt so much myself.

i learned slamming doors and  altercations
with the mirror from my mother           and
that’s why my fists are     bruised    and my
insides are   tarnished with      self-loathing.
to “forget” to look both ways before i cross
the street is as much a     bad habit of mine
as the tendency to     bleed   for people who
don’t           deserve         my             wounds.

i never thought i’d make it to my 18th birthday.

the real purpose of changing my pillow cases so often
is not for       cleanliness                but because I figured
my     nightmares        were multiplying on my sheets.
i haven’t had as many lately         but I fear that they’ll
come back, so i keep my                             superstitions.
i cannot figure out a way to tell you how often     sleep
felt like i was                            practicing for my funeral.

if God embodies the     clock work theory, then    i am
the first     rough draft                         of a masterpiece,
the intention was supposed to be                        poetry,
but instead I leave my   love              on ***** windows
and use   stolen    ink to                                 write down
all      of              my                                    bad intentions.

does this confession count if i address my diary to a deity?

if God is an                  artist
He must be          frustrated    
with His                 creations—
screaming in the       echoes
of                  space         time,

“when will she learn that
   breaking every pen will
   only stain her own hands?”

The night you told me I didn’t put stars in your eyes anymore was the night
I didn’t see any stars myself. I thought we were written in constellations but that was more hopes
of my own then fate. Yes, I was upset. But I wasn’t in love. And that’s why it didn’t hurt.
I never lied when I said there was a moment when I thought we were some type of forever.
Do you remember the time when you were out by the lake of New Hampshire with the most gorgeous sunrise,
and you told me all you could think about was how much better it’d be if I was there to see it too?
I told you it didn’t matter but when I woke up the next morning, I felt detached from where I was.
There’s a part of me that wishes I saw that sunrise too.
But that’s just how it is.
All I have is stories of “has been”s and “could’ve been”s. A collection of “almost” and never seen sunrises—
the memories carefully stacked on top of each other, organized and filed away, collecting dust.
Somewhere I still think we exist though, an eternal splotch of sunshine and mutual caring, some place where our love didn’t hurt.
Somewhere there’s a lace wedding veil and a matching tux that were actually worn. Somewhere there’s the unfinished scrapbook I put together that has more pages added to it. Somewhere there’s a collection of passports from all the road trips we should’ve taken.
Somewhere out there, we are the type of forever I intended us to be.
Somewhere, in a little cabin in New Hampshire, surrounded by evergreens and daffodils,
there’s a little girl with the same name as my favorite movie character
with your hazel eyes and my dark hair.

he’s interested in disasters,
the kind of catastrophes that the media has a field day with,
the kind of accidental atrocities that are awe-inspiring in their horrid glory,
the kind of things that have self destructed spectacularly – so much so that the remaining debris becomes a masterpiece on the ocean floor, a memorial for beautified trauma.

and I guess that’s why he’s interested in me.

tangled in my bed, you’re holding the bits of my smile that i didn’t even know fell out.
there, in the the gravities of messy sheets and intimate eye contact,
we come upon the part of the story when it reaches a climatic point of dizzying anticipation,
the type of expectation
that whispers sweetly on my skin as if it had the plot of our collision written on it.
here is the precipice of something scary; my tentative hands outstretched—
a coincidental incident; your hands reaching back,
folding me into your body.
everything is the same: the sun still came up to light our faces and
this little town hasn’t changed.
but everything is different, oh god.
the day i sat down in a mostly empty hallway
was the day that i realized i am the worst of unintentional catalysts.
the blush of borrowed luck stains my knuckles and i clench my fists in hopes that it will stay
before i let a safe house like you shelter a storm like me.
i’m so afraid of breaking you.
i’m afraid of my own vulnerabilities.
i’m afraid of letting people into the places where there’s still some wholeness to me. i know—i’m a walking contradiction.
touch and go,
stay and leave,
everything seems to fold.
what is that saying.
“the best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry”?
  never had a plan when it came to things like us but please understand
there are certain fragilities i can’t fathom in me and that i’m afraid of my destruction as i am of my own creations.

      but for now, this is the first chapter in our book.
this is the first day I wake up.
this is where we start.

he's the saddest story i ever read,
a walking tragedy written with spilled blood of innocence
on pages of stolen youth.

he holds forgotten chapters of words
that he never got to speak, a novel that holds his painful secrets like a requiem.
he knows death intimately as his first love
and has bruised knuckles and empty hands to show for hardships.

but still, he smiles.
even when the aroma of
perfume lingers and
the ring she never got to wear still shines.

America the Brave,
did you ever look beyond the porch, and see the smoke?
I have felt each gunshot wound and bookmarked each media news story
and even catalogued some photographs
for you to look over again.
because it seems you have a strange habit of forgetting
all the times
where places that children should be learning and laughing
began to look like cemeteries, the doors closing like a cruel purgatory,
when another **** maniac rages in with a legal firearm –
“mommy, I’m okay, but all my friends are dead.”
red crayons will never look the same—
I’ve found that bleach does not clean out
the stains on the carpet and words alone do not console the masses.

America the Free,
have you heard the terrifying orchestra of screeching tires on pavement?
didn’t you learn that running away is the same as running to meet a date with the reaper?
America, please tell me why
I cannot look for safety in a blue uniform, tell me why
the word “police” inspires more fear and pain
than it stands for justice?
there, in the empty streets, are the echoes of the voices in the night that you failed to hear when the sound of
sirens drowned the world in shades of wrong--
“I can’t breathe.”
“I don’t have a gun, stop shooting.”
“please don’t let me die.”
I stand at the gates between crossroads but nobody looks each other
even if there’s the unspoken truth
that some of us are more likely to be studying obituaries than studying to
be finishing our high school and college degrees.

America the Bold,
  please listen when I tell you that there is a pain you cannot hide
beneath IPhones and reality television,
when all I see is hallowed eyes,
empty hands, and
more parents that shouldn’t have to know
what it’s like to buy caskets in mass production, before they even knew how to read, before they could sing praises of your liberty, before they even had a chance to pray for a different fate, one they actually deserved.

America the Beautiful,
for all your Spacious skies, and amber waves…
have you looked at the ugliness of your ****** palms?

in love with so many people and beautiful songs and sunsets i've witnessed--
pieces of my heart on every street corner and welcome mats where
i am able to feel human,
adorn the sweetest of tragic heartache.

there is no point to any of it. but there doesn't have to be.


i just do.

All I can remember though is the taste-- skin and sin and the way you made me shudder your name, oh god, such fire.
But maybe it wasn't enough, because as much as I loved the burning, maybe you just felt the aftermath.

Was my love the taste of ash to that archaic soul of yours?
You love your smoke though, breathing in my burning.

Baby, I'm a moon and you were a killer asteroid that left craters with the immensity of your short lived love.

But the hurting never felt so sweet.

(i miss you so much, i wonder where you are.)

i miss you the way someone misses a step on the stairway, a sharp jolt of realization, followed by a falling and crash.
i miss you the way birds miss winter, when they migrate to a perpetual spring.
i miss you like hot fudge sundaes in summer, sugar and sweet and all gone.

(i miss you so much, i wonder if you're happy)

i miss you like a favorite library book that has to be returned.
i miss you like a forgotten holiday.
i miss you like a lost love letter that never got sent.

(i miss you so much, i wonder what you're doing)

i miss the way your strong callused hands would wrap around mine, giving me strength. i miss your forest eyes. i miss the smell of aftershave clinging to my clothes. I miss the smell of us clinging to my sheets. i miss the way i once  kissed you gently, but you grabbed my face, hey, and made me kiss you more thoroughly, that's more like it, with a smug look on your face. i miss the feeling of your hands on my waist while you held me as if i was a tiny doll to your large frame. i miss the intimacy of our faces pressed close together and you tasting my smile as you touched my lips to yours. i miss your **** smirk. i miss your tattoos and tracing the indent of your spine as you let me explore you closer. i miss taking pictures with my old ipod and you'd kiss me with your eyes open and i would open mine and all the sensations that came with being around you.

and all of this is a stupid run on sentence and i am a stupid pining fool and you're somewhere, but i've been nowhere
ever since i started
missing
you.

Easily infatuated
With beautiful bodies,
And sharp curious minds.

Longing to peer closer
at those startling star-lit eyes--
brief moments and motions captured on a page...

Je veux comprendre.

we are the raging portrait of lust, tangled in a mess of sensation, kaleidoscope of color and melodies of sanction--
we hum with ancient urges and vibrations.

fingers and hard planes, bodies like constellations, lips that are stained in stardust--
flying comets, gravity is our force.
we can't deny physics, we can't change our course.

worship, cherish, release. over and over. til i hear nothing but your name emanating from my throat, enthralled.

darling, love is luminescent
and we are its very stars.

sorry I reek of loneliness.

the desire for all new edges
shape us--
the places we left
are just fine without us,
they don't need our words or time.
all harsh breath clawing out, whoosh
sharp and crisp the sound together
entwined, mesh of
lips, neck, throat,
clenching the sheets that wrinkles haphazardly,
screaming, "oh, god."
the pieces fitting so well
we'll never move again.

the floorboards always chattered
when we bothered them,
groaning and creaking at the weight of sin,
strained at the pounds of flesh
that gravity tugged with deliberate patience.
but our steps became slower, the passion mundane, and i can almost hear them sigh,
whether in relief or regret, i still don't know.

and the walls were not much quieter, especially when the wind went to kiss the roof the way we would kiss each other--strange familiarity.
etched into your palms and written on old postage stamps
addressed to the letters i never got to send you--déjà vu.
but then again, our fall out felt just as familiar.

reminded briefly that by definition a house can be a synonym for home, but webster never left any clues as to how to keep it that way.
our sheets are twisted and the tired joints of our fingers that held together the seams of memories and intangible bonds between us threaten to let loose as we slept.

tell me. when did we wake up strangers?

fall asleep, the rhythm and
the sway-- breathe quiet and slow.
inhale.
exhale.
inhale.
exhale.
The motions are
a smooth, slow, steady delicacy--
the touch of air like butterflies over bare skin.
the sign to be close, mingled breath and entwined bodies.
how we can care, open the kinder side of a heart, arms and embrace enfolded.
tuck each other's limbs in each other:
just make sure that all the
stray corners hold.

sheep at night, (1 a.m.)
(but i always thought that sheep were not the best farm animal to represent insomnia.). eventually sheep turns to old memories, choke down like hard candies. hurts to swallow. or maybe that's just the tears.

(2 a.m.)or bottles of beer on a wall, except i'm
numbering the ones on your floor, shattered. drinking never made you better but it never stopped you from opening another. and another.

(3 a.m.) numbers of leaves on clovers. i picked so many and i found one four-leaf one. i lost it and never found another. is it possible to lose luck as it is to gain it? if that's the case, it explains where you went.

i counted. i have.

i count but i've lost track.

I paint on canvas but
baby can you paint me
with your tongue?

2 a.m.
I'm blurry
and lusting for bodies and love.

when it began:
dissonance.
a mind disjointed,
filled with a million words,
a thousand broken promises
and maybe a few nolstalgic memories.
there's nothing to romanticize when
everything collides.

A lonely hour catalyst:
chain reactions like fast paced domino sets,
falling rapid and helpless,
trailing below.
wavelengths of a thought process contaminated by restlessness.

note:
let sleeping poets lie (awake)
to dream out their dreams
and make futile wishes on dead comets
and empty sunrises.

this house is cool and dark,
occupants in the meleé of sleep:
outwards, peaceful;
inwards, facing demons and dark fantasies.

Morning light ushers through glass and open panels, gently probes,
but to no avail....they lay rest in quiet.
I greet her at the window with a tired smile.

we know each other well.

awake, I am.
dreaming, I am not.
but who's to say it isn't an illusion
since no one else can tell me so?

stuck at crossroads. urge to feel and  taste outside air.
Morning and I will leave the quiet residents to sleep in,
and I will run my restless bones
until I know the world once more.

all i ever do is ache. there are places where the color in my cheek blotches and it is in those spots that resides a quiet desperate yearning for the touch of your lips--

tears leave just as many wayward streaks as dripping paint on canvas, only i'm not art.

how can I miss the hands that I never even got to hold?
i'm pretty sure palm readers know more intimacies than any soul on earth. i have yet to discern a single line of yours. or our lines. where do we begin? lines are infinite but existence is but a piece. does that make our love a line fragment? or are we more substantial than that?

how do i miss old places that i've never been to? i can't remember if color value was the same as valuing us. One can only make shapes when there is light and shadow but i'm not sure how to shade us from impending erasure on this page. how can i reminisce about the touch of your skin when all I got was a brief glance off your arm? i swear it made a mark on me but i never once could find it. my bruises still linger though. darling, is it possible to love without letting go?

these are the things that consume me.

i.
I have a bad habit of flirting with thunder and lightening.
but it seems you don't mind, fellow storm.

ii.
You might consider yourself fluid, but what about in the sheets?
They say the largest bodies of liquid are pulled by the moon's magnetism and honey, we are 90 percent water--
I guess that makes us pretty wild. Let's converge.

iii.
Weave me like you weave your words and I swear I'll set us both free.

do i look like a temporary replacement
or is it just written in subtle letters
in the spaces between my eyelids?

tell me if i talk too much.
i remember every word of endearment to be passed through
your lips. are they meaningless?
does "beautiful" slide off the tongue so easy, it has forgotten its own
meaning whenever you speak it?
does the word "amazing" leave a rancid taste in your mouth?
how many other places has it been? i'm sure it left an imprint on
the tongue of your ex lovers.

i'm sorry, i'm not usually so passive aggressive,
but i swear i can feel you leaving me and my insecurities to howl at a lonely moon.

my parents always told me i was a forgetful child,
who's little
pattering feet would go quickly running
back upstairs to double check,
even triple check the things i would need
or forget to carry with me,
as if i was a marionette puppet pulled by the knots on my fingers.

but it seemed as though no matter how many bows i could tie on my fingers and how many post-it notes were stapled around the house, my mind was a clutter of litter--
filled with little odds and ends
and useless junk to day to day living.
if my brain was a room it would resemble a crowded attic, full with the pieces of myself that i longed to get rid of but refused to, whether out of sheer stubbornness or fear, i still don't know.

it all changed when you came along. i was inspired to a point of frenzy. I was uncluttered, with the exception of my thoughts, because they were full of you. if my brain was a room, it would be a museum of glittering proportions, a massive archive of our affections.. this is art, a romanticized portrait of our time together. you had tattooed love etched on your skin, from all the things you grew passionate about and i swear i looked at my own skin and saw your ink seeping in between the cracks of my ribcage-- i used all of it to write out devotion. you were my favorite collection of destructive metaphors i sunk into.

but it's funny because you outgrew our memories. i am a worn museum, a discarded trunk show, filled with artifacts of past lives we have lived and the empty promises we made. no one wants to visit a dusty museum when there's a new shopping center in town. so i pull my venetian blinds down and make my way downstairs without double checking.

how is it forgetting seemed so easy in my youth? because no matter how many knots i untie from my fingers, no matter how many bows i pull loose from my ragged hands, no matter how many "forget me not's" i have ripped from our dead garden, i have yet to forget a single day with you.

I AM SCREAMING INSIDE AND I SWEAR IT'S ALL I CAN DO. HOW DO I SAY I LOVE YOU? HOW DO I TELL YOU I WOULD CAPTURE THE MOON AND BRING IT BACK TO YOUR BEDROOM JUST TO SEE IT REFLECT YOUR LIGHT? HOW MANY WAYS CAN I SAY THAT YOU BREATHE LIFE INTO ME?

I AM AN EMPTY HUSK WAITING TO BE FILLED BY THE MOTIONS IN YOUR LIPS AND THE WAY YOU SAY MY NAME IN SOFT TONES. I AM NOTHING BUT A VESSEL FOR CREATIVITY WHICH YOU POUR YOUR SOUL INTO. YOU'RE JUST AS MUCH AS ART AS YOU ARE AN ARTIST AND I CAN ONLY TRY TO MATCH SOMETHING NEAR PERFECT.

HOW CAN I EXPRESS HOW MUCH THIS MEANS TO ME? HOW DO I PAINT THE STARS TO MATCH YOUR BRILLIANCE?  HOW DO I DRAW THE AFFECTION BETWEEN A BLANKET OF NIGHT AND YOUR SKIN? HOW DO I SKETCH THE SUN WHEN I'M BLINDED BY YOU?

IS THERE ANY WAY TO SHOW YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU?

i can't put in words quite how elated this makes me. i'm embracing the feelings you give me. some of these feelings i have yet to name but they are more a part of me now then my ghosts. there is so many lights in me. there is so much shadow too. but it all is jumbled now, tossed and turned; a welcome turbulence.

i don't know whether to laugh or cry or kiss your face. maybe even do all three. there is not enough of me for you to touch because all of me doesn't encompass this intangible cast of craziness that expands beyond my body. i am finally breathing. i'm not free yet but god i'm close. freedom tastes like time spent with you and you linger all around me.

i can't barely express this, truly. i have the urge to shout from car windows and city tops. i want to run and tumble. i want to lay with you in spring grass and get lost in fields and woods. i want to do so many things, things out of my reach, out of my body.

god, these words will not be enough. but i still try.