otters are so cute
i like to watch otter videos on my facebook
otters make me happy
i want to hug all the otters
and live with them
i wish i was an otter

somewhere out there -
i found myself

swimming with sin
with the flowerbeds
with all my friends -
with no one

somewhere out there -
i found myself

between the lines
you speak,
there is little sympathy
and i just
tell myself
i will not let
this life define
me

i started driving with my
left leg perched up on the driver's seat
again. sometimes i will sing if i feel like
it and if not, i still think about how i could crash
into anything if i really wanted, if i actually
cared to, but why bother if the song is good enough?

most of the time, the song is fine.

i'm vaguely in tune with how
my dominate foot controls the machine
now. and how i am really in control now. and how
i will no longer be the passenger in the seat,
and i will no longer allow myself to live at the
mercy of someone else’s demands now.
i think i feel okay now.

and most of the time,
the song is fine.

i keep swimming
around the tiny puddle of you
in the backroads of my mind
my elbows barely fit and
you refuse to let that stop me,
i am submerged, heart-first
you are there
you are there
you are there and you make sure of it
you are not a lake,
you are not vast, you are not deep,
you do not even have a tide
but you are there
and my elbows fit (barely)

today i felt like ****
so i drank a bunch
of antioxidants
i went home to
take a bath for an hour
couldn't stand up
in the shower

i'm dead meat

mascara, bubble gum,
and hallucinogens
i take my birth control
like i take my
vitamins

(i always forget)

i'm trying to be
a good girl this time
i wake up every morning,
and stay alive
i know i'm pretty ******
but at least your mine

i'm broken glass

please
say the words you know
i want to say.
please
never change,
let me meet the skeletons in your closet,
let me hear your silent screams,
and define the word "forever" for me.
please
capture every moment
like a little piece of infinity,
so satisfactory that we savor it.
please
be my music,
play me like your guitar.
please**
melt in my mouth like molasses,
and breathe me into oblivion.

live a life like a little black disc
and rotate. warmly and popping.
i think a memory of this;

i know something eclipses your lips.

it wont ever sound as good as
a fist
being thrown against your
chest and so
that's how i know
the vibrational touch is just
static.

can you tell me
if we should
keep waiting for the system to
stay on the automatic
replay of the public
domain?

and
if so, this would include,
but not be limited to:
the never ending burden
of wiring between a disconnect;
laughing at some kind of understated
joke; or slight reference of culture.

i think of a memory of the impending.

it's sweet and bubbly, sticky and stupid; and
secretly selfish.
i think we would taste like pink icing.

but when we listen to the
lyrical content and dance around the
constructive ideology of a sunrise
within a glowing rectangle,
plugged into a wall, it’s
spewing syrupy sewage
through bluetooth airwaves, and
you stall.

that’s how i know you
won’t even tell me that, with
words, fragmented phrases;
or some unreliable catchy melody.

and
if so, i'll just have to tell
you it wasn't meant to end well.

and here is where He told me i ruined
most days spent together wrapped
in a thick blanket of mutual
disgust, where i am the reason for such misery and
where i found myself to
be the biggest burden in the life of a smallest man
who had ever lived a life parallel to mine. and here,

where the river ends, so did my feeling of uncertainty; and the dynamic that
never served me. which is also here,
i find myself where we once
stood with my dog at my side.
now i hold an empty leash, once tethered to a companion that no longer exists except within my memories.
sometimes they’ll ****** out like tiny flashes of terror and lightness
and fruitfulness. this is how i
i know He never stood inside my love.

i walked a few miles by myself and
learned to let go of the leash.
there will no longer be fingers grasping for what i thought was once tangible. these limbs now stretch out reaching for something

much greater.

you have to walk down the hallway
like it's an abandoned runway

(only if you want to feel better about yourself)

smile at people who
don't want to be smiled at

you have keep it together
make the bed and kiss him goodbye

you will say you're sorry even if you're not
say you mean it even if you don't

you'll pick up the clothes from the floor
put them in the washing machine
dry them fold them and stuff them
down your throat

the waves roar,
toes cuddle the sand
and the shoreline invites legs
with licks of salty breaths.
in and out,
the tide sighs
while tiny tourists glide
on sail boats in the distance.
and ice cold coke,
and you.

the sea purrs,
the sun begins to set
along the dusty horizon.
laughter becomes muffled
and the sand now naked,
stripped of umbrellas,
leaving behind
only foot prints.
a half-melted strawberry sundae,
and you.

you've got a lot to say
when you sigh
and you don't say anything
like:
you don't know what it's like everyday
and:
you're too young to understand why
you
tell me that it's not so simple
that
life isn't always the way it seems
and
seven hundred other cliches
about the time you almost jumped
and
how you're tired of just settling
how you're
being a fog that's settled at dawn
you're
fighting the urge to lay down and yawn
you
like to sleep,
to escape
i like to sleep
so i can dream
dreams of eyes that say everything,
like a glance
that radiates what your thoughts sing,
a moment
where all things feel invincible
a time
where i don't feel so invisible
where it all comes into place
laced in between your fingers
and then you kiss my face
but,
you don't say anything at all

how long does it take to drown?
tumultuous and predictable
does it hurt?
i don’t know where she begins and ends.
you’re good with kids,
but i think you’re being impulsive.
you should think about staying here.
think about the beauty,
amex black cards,
and impeding lateness.
you would think about
becoming something else.
i bet you’re going to be homeless,
or a dream that never existed,
just like a sick scam,
and then die.

which then,
means your little darling
will dissolve.

i wish that you'd wear your seatbelt
because i want you and no one else
i wish we were both sedated
because then there would be no reason
to say we couldnt make it
and the car is empty now,
and i can't seem to figure it out -
because now my heart is in my throat
because i don't remember a word
that you spoke
because the music skimmed the air
and i hang on to every note -
now the melody is diguised
in those little lies
while the love we shared slowly died...
so,
i wish that i didn't wear my seatbelt
because now i want to be anyone
but myself

i'm using the light to cast shadows upon your  body
shadows that tell us a story
of when i was 3 years old and my father left
of when i was 13 years old had an empty hole inside my chest
of when i was 16 years old and just ******* dramatic
of when i am 19 years old and just ******* sarcastic
i'm using the light to cast shadows upon your body
i'm trying to tell you that i am more than sorry -
i'm a sad case of sore eyes
wrapped in these cast shadows
hoping that this isn't something you will realize
and that all i ever wanted was a happy ending to my shadow stories

turtles are my favorite animal
because they have a shell
which is mostly convenient
because sometimes earth
can feel more like hell

you are my favorite criminal
because you make me smile
you are guilty
and you are gentle
but it's okay
you seem to make it
all worthwhile  

i am my favorite artist
because i hate everything that i do
and i try to stay inside this shell
but all these words and ideas
keep leading me back to you

**** me in the sistine chapel
with your lips against my neck
and your breath still hot and lingering
"at least she died happy," they'll say
"or least, 'happy' for being...her"

when i take my last breath,
it is't michelangelo's masterpieces
on the ceiling i'll be focused on
*it's you i want to see before i go

I wanted to tell you
that I'm sorry I almost crashed your car
I guess that's just what happens when you're
sixteen and dumb

I wanted to tell you
that I'm sorry I drank all your *****,
and didn't call you back
I guess that's what happens when you're
sixteen and numb

I wanted to tell you
that I'm sorry I can't remember
the words you said to me before you left
I guess that's what happens with you're
sixteen and young

your eyes are melting
like the polar ice caps
and I am swimming in your sea
there is nowhere I'd rather be
than watching television
while you sleep

I'm tracing the lines
of your smile
I'm watching your
chest fall and rise
for a little while

but I'm hardly
holding a grudge
and I'm not trying to be
something that you'll
just get tired of

it's just that
I love you so much
and sometimes
I don't think that it's
enough

i am made of venom and sea foam and false hope -

i am a series of "connect the dots" that never really seemed to make the full picture........

i am momentarily momentous -
a monster of my craft.

i am the seconds before
you take the lid off of a shaken up
bottle of coke, or some other similar generic soft drink.

i am unescapable, and
i am going to be a big deal from now on.

i am not sorry.

i am everywhere, gliding into senses, talking the way i want to, barely living, but
i am living.
i am freaking out in my very own stupid gutter.

i am never going to be the same.

i am everywhere,
everything,
and nowhere.

sometimes when i'm driving,
sometimes when it's a little past midnight,
i play that song on my radio
and i turn it up loud
in hopes that you'll be able to hear it
and it's not that i do it
to wallow in my self-pity
i do it because it
feels like a blow to my face
everytime i hear the songs spew out of my speakers
and to be honest,
that feels better than nothing
sometimes i leave little things behind,
sometimes i leave little pieces of my heart
in old songs
with old memories

there is better weather
somewhere else

put the flowers on the shelf

tell me you're sorry
and love no one else

tell me you're sorry
and love no one else

touch my neck
and i start to melt
but you don't ever
tell me how you really felt

you are so much more convincing
when you are just being
yourself

i don't even want to be a human anymore;
i want to be a song, a melody
so catchy
you can't get me out of your head -
for an eternity

inspiration is
a ******* waste
i just liked the way
your tounge tasted,
you called me "baby"
and carried my limbs when
my ligaments felt achy

In 1948 I was twelve years old and I thought I wanted to be  
alone.

In 1948 I was sick.
At least that is what my mother told me.
She said I saw things that weren’t there.  
Like the sun in the bathroom  
at midnight. She said my little friends
in the feathered grass weren’t real.

In 1948, I think I was infected.
Sometimes I dreamed about things
I know I shouldn’t. I’m not allowed  
to talk about it. If I could, I would run away
out West. There are cornfields there. And nothing.
I think I want a whole lot of  
nothing. And corn.

In 1948 I spent the summer
In Maine with my mom
and stepfather.
I was alone most of the time
in the field. My house in the distance
spun in circles, and I dreamed  
about not being in Maine with my mom  
and stepfather.

In 1948 I was right.
Everything is real. I still have to keep my eyes open  
when I fall asleep because I know the bookshelf
Talks to me at night, the stairs  
always spiral in and out of view,  
and my friends in the grass were real.
They still speak to me  
inside my head.  

In 1948, I was twelve.  
All I wanted was to be alone.

roots stick out
of the ground,
like i don't
stick out in
a crowd.

dogs are picking
up sticks,
i watch them
do their tricks
they get a good treat,
i'm alone at the park.

now i'm listening to
forensic files
in my basement.
i'm talking to walls
but they never listen.
sometimes
nothing ever makes
sense.
maybe i'm just a stick.

i'm still bitter,
i watched it set fire in the
summer
and crumble in the
winter

i'm still sorry
i felt it softly spoken
from your bedroom
it rolled off your tounge
and then suddenly it turned
soggy

i'm still lost
i searched for you
in the night time
the morning light
couldn't save me
and you just couldn't
seem to get
your ******* point
across

i blew the speakers out of the
2024 toyota rav4 that i let you trick me into buying. there is now
a slight humming noise that escapes the sound
system in a way that reminds me of your
not so sunny disposition.
it reverberates in the stillness of my
new apartment. i hear it inside
my head. i watch it loop around.

(my neck, your hands)

i see a blinking light at the end of the tunnel, it’s green and it’s still in memory,
ready for playback. i don’t stop at mcdonald’s for fries anymore. i don’t remember how to eat.

i drive my car in silence now.

my brother thinks i write poems about killing john lennon. the truth is it would
be much nicer if the obsession had died by someone else’s hand. instead i write
about how

there’s something ceremonial about cleaning up a blood spill. i’m peering over
the sink to see it swirl down the drain most of the time or try to
figure out if it’s yours or
mine.

this is when close my eyes and
i know lady macbeth weeps
somewhere holding chekhov’s gun
to her head. if i tilt my head
a certain way i see her face in the mirror and you can only
scrub and scrub until
the discoloration is dissolved, but
what if you don’t know how
to get this type of
invisible stain lifted from my threads?

when you figure it out, let me know.

if i decide to stop
i’ll be in the car
singing let it be
or yellow submarine
with
all the phonies
in my passenger
seat. maybe if you are nice to me,
i’ll let you click the button,

(your hands, my mouth)

it’ll be ready for playback.

i miss my blonde summer
hair
i miss the way you were
there
and how when we talked about nothing
and it always turned into
something
i miss the hazy days
together
and the way they went on
forever
sometimes though,
i felt
alone
and sometimes though,
you were
home
(whenever i was with you)
but most times though,
you
weren't
and that
hurt
and now i know i was
wrong
for believing you when
you sang your stupid, stupid
songs
quivering lips softly
bitten
while the end was starting to be
written
i really did
care....
guess it's too good to be true
when he makes you feel like you're dancing on air

what does it mean to be in love?

is it:
a synchronized system of sighs
?
is it:

an everlasting eternity of evolution
?
is it:

like placing hot coals on your heart?

tell me -
how every freckle formed on your face
,
and how 
you got that scar that runs through 
your nose like a river

tell me -

who is it that you want to be 
when you look in the mirror 
every morning,
what stops you from jumping off the roof
,
and how many times have you actually prayed to god
?
tell me -
what is a synchronized system of sighs?
what does it mean to be in love?

your seat was empty at the table today.

if you could feel
the way I feel
you probably
wouldn't be here
right now

i keep telling myself:
stop romanticizing everyone who ****** up your life
**they ****** up your life

it feels good -
now that you've erased me



don't come back

there is nothing poetic
about the way you smash your drums in
like you smash memories

there is nothing poetic about the way you recite words
that mean everything to you

but do not live by

there is nothing poetic about how you look to the left
because the right way is never your way 

there is nothing poetic deep under your ‘skin’
there is nothing poetic about finding a better place to ‘fit in’
there is nothing poetic about the way you percieve the world or what kind of music you listen to or the way you dress or the way you feel when you are alone and looking at the stars

there is nothing poetic about the smell of camp fire or peter pan or metallica
because we’re off to neverland 

only, you’re off to nowhere 

there is nothing poetic about you

there is nothing poetic about you

it smells like limes,
like salt and not pepper,
and like the ocean and like
everything that i have ever
thought was comforting.
like my father's kisses at
2am because he is going
to work his second job
and it will not be enough.
it smells like fighting. it
doesn't ever smell strong
enough for it to end. And it
never ends. It won't stop anyone
from yawing loudly in public.
It won't stop you from taking
advantage of her. It won't keep
you from being the person you
are. I think sometimes it smells
like the expressions we never
have enough courage to say
but i think that sounds cliche, too.
it smells like limes, it smells like the
illness that haunts the people in their
beds. It smells like limes. It smells like
life.

i'm taking it more gracefully this time,
i'm learning to love
in ways that make you mine

i'm taking it more softly this time,
i'm leaving all of my
hard parts behind

i'm taking it more graciously this time,
i'm finding ways to thank you
for all of your time

i used to write about being sad -
the things i know:
how my fingers constantly grasped for
metacarpals the never really
fit with in mine
and how only the fire
that i poured down my throat
made me utter the words,
"i love you".
now i struggle upon embracing
how the drowsy-eyed glances
turned into sacharine stares,
the whispers of "you could love me",
places on top of mountains,
and freckles that i can count;
every single one of them.
if they say,
"write about what you know",
then where do i even start
about all of the things i don't?

i do a little dance
with guilt
during the day,
and then i
let anger **** me at night.

i stole this purse from the goodwill
on main by accident.
do you see how it dangles from my
helpless arm? the rearview mirror
shows me that i have so many lines
on my face now that didn't used to be there.
i place it on the steering wheel of my
vehicle
and watch all the people
drive away in the parking lot after work.

the water droplets form.

i think they watch me while i watch
them with some kind of
conviction.
i want to reach out and touch the invisible clock
that holds us all together.
i know it’s jagged and flowing
and it ticks and ticks and
ticks.

we can feel it bend like a web in the wind.

i wonder if they ever worry about these things like i do.

if grains of sand pass through
a glass tube
for an unpredictable amount of time,
i no longer want to invoke
a feeling you cannot replace
with the keys of a car or piano.
so i sing myself to sleep at night,

“time is a web, it catches us all.”

Daniel Johnston was an underground American singer-songwriter known for his nonconformist stoutheartedness, vibrant and vulnerable use of lyrics, and DIY-esque recordings. Johnston suffered from many mental illnesses in his lifetime, nevertheless, his creativity shone through as a driving force throughout his artistic career. Johnston is more widely known for his album, Hi, How Are You, which received some mainstream recognition after Kurt Cobain was photographed in the 1990s wearing a t-shirt with the album artwork on it. Daniel Johnston passed away on September 11, 2019, at his home in Walker, Texas. This was also the same day my husband told me he hated me for the first time.
I remember the way the grass felt under my skin when he said those words, the way my face flushed and how my vision became slurred, toppled over, motion sickness-like. When someone says something like that to you and you actually feel it with every fiber of their being it does something so irreconcilable to you. I had never told anyone I hated them before and I vowed that day I would never make someone feel the way I felt in that moment as long as I lived.
I’m embarrassed to say that we weren’t even ******* married yet on that day. When I told him about how I couldn’t get that memory out of my head 5 years later, when I was asking him for a divorce, when I finally saw things as they should have been, as they have always been, how incredibly wrong they have been, his immediate response was “you tell me you hate me all the time.”
It’s hard to explain to people when they ask why I stayed so long, as if it really wasn’t so terrible, I could have left at any time and then I think about how he said to my friend when I was moving my things out, how what he’s done “wasn’t really that bad because look at how she’s grown up and how her dad treated her mom I mean, she should be used to it, shouldn’t she?”

She should be used to it.

I won’t go into detail about all of the terrible things, about the way I think about the worst things of myself because of someone else’s repeated phrases and subtleties, how when I close my eyes in the shower, I'm nineteen and think of the bedsheets against my face, how the cotton felt like razor blades and the hands that were supposed to hold my cheeks, the spaces between my fingers, certainly not around my neck, for a split second before he came to, and we had to pretend like everything was okay and we were in love, and it didn't mean anything because it didn't leave a mark and he didn't actually hurt me, and it was the first and only time, and then the drug problem that wasn’t a problem because we don’t talk about problems and problems can’t exist if we don’t talk about them, naturally. You can fill in the blanks.
I don’t want to explore the darkest parts because I’m scared I’ll never come out.
Instead, I’ll say that I lived a life with him that I imagined I would have grown to accept if I hadn’t been able to embrace how totally unknown you are to yourself unless you start looking. Neither of us really tried to figure each other out, let alone ourselves. I can’t fault him for that, but I can hold myself accountable.
I don’t want sympathy like he does when he logs into his social media accounts and posts for his friends and family to watch his very public slow paced downfall. I just want to portray a slice of my truth. I want to be able to log into Facebook and not worry about people reading about my divorce publicly from the man who feels like he needs to clear the air of something he’s so clearly dirtied. I want to wake up feeling proud of myself for finally finding the words to describe the ways in which I have personally tortured myself through the means of another person. I want to be able to let go. When I had to leave, I had to lose everything. All I have is nothing. I am nothing. Sometimes all I feel is nothing. But I’ve learned becoming nothing is better than being someone's object or accessory. I would rather be nothing.

One day when I am far away from this point in my life, when my hair has grown back and I have gained a few pounds, rather than at the rate at which I am losing, I know I’ll be able to look back and forgive myself. I know I can forgive those who have done injustice unto me, however, it is so much harder to forgive myself for such a total abandonment of self.

For now, I'll settle with the sentiment of knowing that I am not (that much of) a *****, I am not a bad partner, I am not a terrible person or a stupid ******* **** who messes everything up and makes everything her fault.

Was everything really ever my fault?

I know I am brave, I am kind, I am empathetic (to a fault, but I’m working on it), I am smart, I am funny (sometimes), I am capable of being independent, I am a gentle morning after a night out, I am a flashbulb capturing a moment of pure elation, a smile in slow motion, I am a still dancing flame that cannot be snuffed out.