"Are you from around here?"
You would have rolled your eyes at the city sky
Muttered something about Westernization
No stars in the sky
But baby, here they have the lights.

A man asked about you today
He said "and your lover?"
I told him you were long gone,
Feared the exposure of city lights
New York doesn't love me like you do
I said "my lover is a runaway fugitive"
Anything but the truth.

i injected caster sugar into my veins and i’m still waiting for the high to hit. i drew a smiley face on the desk at school and they called me a delinquent and i think they overreacted a bit, and they said that dreamers never go anywhere in life, but i’m writing this on the moon.

One day I’m going to see your stormy, blue eyes again and they will flash with recognition of my face and I will try telling myself that seeing you again is not fate.

In a mess, I awake to the feeling
I didn’t do it,
so I puke and I crawl and I drink
just to do it all again.
At night, I am needlessly obsessive in
wasting time,
only maudlin with alcohol stained tears
alone in a bathroom stall.
In the harsh darkness, my shadow falls
to its knees
reckless and voluntarily debauched
can’t stop the sins from slipping out.
At times, I have discovered myself
to be obscene
so I scream instead of honeyed whispering
begging for the familiar collapse.
Crazed, I shake my hair out and leave
before you notice,
walking like a shameless heretic
to find the next version of myself.
For a moment, I twist and turn sour
in your mouth,
and if you thought kissing me would save me,
you were wrong.

It comes in blankets
Grey blankets that cover the sky
And it churns in blue and black
Like purple bruises painting the sky
I want to cry
But the tears won’t come
So I’m stuck looking out window
Searching for any bit of sun I can see
Only stormy eyes show themselves though
And tears streak cheeks
And if I cry myself to sleep every night
That’s only for me and the stars to know
They twinkle knowingly at me in the dark
And I want to yell at them
Don’t tell a soul
But they ignore me
They tell me I’m sad
And I knew that already
But I only see the stars when my grey blankets are gone

A single point in time
A new body
Insignificant and important
Another cry
Another pair of eyes
A child
Stumbling
Blindly
Toward
**
Toward
Blindly
Stumblin­g
An adult
Another pair of eyes
Another cry
Insignificant and important
A seasoned body
A single point in time

You held my hand long enough that your fingers were imprinted in my skin and my palm remembered the shape of yours and it was engraved in my body forever.

When I was younger, I used to run away from home and hide in somebody’s garden and hide there for hours and hours but it was only five minutes and I would go home and nobody would notice I had run away.

It’s been a year
The clock strikes midnight
And its been a year
But this isn’t Cinderella
Or another stupid fairytale
Because it’s been a year
Since anyone has loved you
Or at least pretended they did
There have been people
Who have itched to touch you
Feel your skin under their hands
Sure,
But in the end
You’re left without being desired
For anything more than your body
Maybe it’s easier to make-believe the passion
For romance
But all of the endings are the same
Crying yourself to sleep is your
Happily ever after

I was always your daughter.
You weren't always my father.

She calls you in the middle of the night
Her voice as sharp as knives
And she says she wants to die
Not to **** herself
Never
Only she doesn't want to be alive
No one knows better than you

I never know if when you say goodbye
It will be the last time
Your voice is an echo in my head
But I don't know where it's coming from
You never told me you loved me
And I think that's because you never did
But even if it's a lie
I wish it was "I love you"
Pulsing in my ears
Instead of "goodbye"

It could be so easy to leave you.
Leave you wondering.
Because I have unashamedly given you my all and I have gotten nothing in return.
All empty silence.
It could be so easy to leave you when you have faded out to feel like you were never there in the first place.

Did we make it home
After years of wandering?
Can we see the lights?

I’m not scared I will never know you
I’m more scared you and I are more alike than we know
Desperate and unprecedented in the worst way
Do I really want to love you?

I know you far better than you realize
I know myself the way I know you
We have the same souls
I don’t fall in love with strangers
But I could never love myself either
And if we are made of the same thing
Can I really stay with you?

Take the gun from off your back and shoot down the wild birds from the sky
They come easily if you wait
If you wait
When my ankles swell with the storms
You carry me over your shoulder like the corpse of a Canadian goose
I am your prize
You've blown a bullet through my aching bones and I am your prize

I want to be loved
Intense and filled with passion
More than I can love

There once was a illness from China
That spread through contact and saliva
Now we drink way too much
And stay inside to avoid touch
I’ll be a drunk at the end of this virus

I am from a town that told me how to walk,
Taught me to step lightly
So my foot steps would be soft
I don’t want to wake the dead
I was born in a town that cannot decide
Between sleep and insomnia
I nod along and watch my step
I shiver at night
This town has been keeping me safe
So they say
But I am restless with the evening
And the hillsides

i called you,
and when you came
i wanted you to go away

there was never a time I wasn’t faking it
sipping on lies like wine and always wanting more
I can’t remember not being thirsty

with liquor, my words run rampant
they slip from my tongue so easily and dance in the streets
they’re willing to burn down cities
they’re willing to cut throats
they’re willing to ruin anything good
another reason I stopped drinking-- I can’t keep feeding myself frenzies

Sorry for the nightmares
And the crying when the sky is dark
Maybe you know more than you should
Understand more than you ought to
Even when the tears come
Loneliness won't come before you

I said my love doesn’t live here anymore
He’s gone, moved away
Left everything behind
Every little memory
It doesn’t matter anymore
That’s what you said
But I can see you touch
Every tangible reminiscence
Of someone who abandoned me

[my lungs are like broken mirrors, reflecting my air into my stomach, while each breath is like choking down shards of glass. every time i swallow, they cut and scrape my esophagus so that i am gagging on my own metallic pools of blood.]

By the time I’ve stopped trying to hate you, I’ve started to hate myself. And, it’s certainly not the first time and I’m still hoping that it’s the last, but this hurt, this sadness, this deep ache that tightens itself around my neck, threatens to choke the remaining life out of me and I’m scared my reckless mind just might let it. Because this bitterness is dipping into my blood and it slithers into my soul and I want to scream the sickness out because the crying has stopping working. All of my backup plans are crumbling to dust around me and my memories dance around my head like haunted specters. I’m done. I’m done with this anger and resentment towards people who are too busy to care. Too vain to reach out. They do not deserve my rage when they cannot be bothered to love me if I am not there to remind them I exist. I do exist and I am worthy of being loved. So I refuse to sit here and play the martyr, still waiting for a fictional apology. I’m not sorry. I am finished. The End.

She wears sweaters and sleepless nights on her skin like pink dresses in the summertime
insomnia should finally win her this fashion contest
But she isn't skinny enough
At night she screams herself awake and no one else
They don't hear her when she talks when the sun is up either
Her toes curl up and the rest of her follows
This is just another body wishing itself real

You said that maybe we are meant to meet the wrong people
To fall in love with beautiful beings that will never love us back
To be hurt by the ones we trust most with our hearts
You said that maybe we were never intended to be anything more than what we are now
Because if yesterday was love, then what is today?
And what is tomorrow?
You said that you couldn't love me
But you still haven’t left me
I am stuck is this backwards, in-between, all hoping idea that if I waited long enough, you will love me again
I am trying to stop deluding myself
You said that maybe you love me and that it just might not be the right kind
But I need you to make up your mind

You left me trembling with your words....

There are times when the ache to be home rests in the pit of my stomach like something empty and heavy. Maybe the insides of my chest have shattered into tiny shards that sink into my skin and force salt water from my eyes. The reality comes only late at night, wrapped not in your arms, but unfamiliar blankets in an unfamiliar place. I'm trying to learn to call this place home but you were always it for me.

sometimes I forget we come from similar pain
that we both died a bit one day in April
I forget that my wounds are your wounds
it's the love only a mother could have
one that breaks hearts in unison

there was always going to be something greater than my want
just look at us
i begged my hands and knees ******
still the universe said: don't
so here we aren't

today, I chose to unmake the memories
I untangled your hands from around my heart and set it back into my chest
this looks like forgetting but it’s not
it’s more than that
it’s erasing the lines of warmth I’ve penciled in over the hurt
I’ve stopped pouring sugar over the unsatisfaction
and started remembering us correctly
you see, I cannot recall myself stronger, less of a coward
when I was unwilling to rock a sinking boat
I must erase the imagined version of us where you knew exactly what I wanted
because I told you
the truth is, you cannot iron out the heartache without ruining the lies
it is impossible to handpick only the good memories
you cannot invent a fullness where there was something empty
so,
today, I chose to see the truth
to see all of our failures and shortcomings unredacted
and come out unscathed despite it