Outside of a bar in a North Carolina strip mall, stone cold sober because I am scared to use my fake, I feel drunk as you sit next to me. Perhaps I am. I'd have to be to think maybe, maybe, maybe, when I know, I know, I know.

Your hand brushes against mine, and you're saying the most beautiful words I've ever heard, and the fire in my heart spreads up, down, left, right. But it cannot spread just four inches outside of my body. It cannot set you on fire, too.

We listen to each other and hear two very different things. You are birdsong outside of my window that I am eager to hear; I am traffic outside of your window you've learned to tune out at bedtime.  

If there are nine million bicycles in Beijing, then Beijing is my insides and bicycles are your name, because it is written on my insides nine million times. But there are no bicycles on Antarctica. There is no use for them there, just as there's no use for my name to be perched on a straight girl's ribs.

You tell me my weird hobby of listening to French rap music is awesome, that it's so cool that I'm teaching myself three languages, and that you want to be me when you grow up - I laugh, because you're several years older than me. Selfishly I catch every droplet of your praise.  I ruminate on it for hours, for days. It means more to me than it should.

My name sounds like a compliment from your mouth. I try not to say yours too often, so you don't grow tired of me being around. If I can't set your insides on fire, I want you to want to be my friend. Even that feels like I ask for too much.

In every scene, I see you in the foreground of the narrative. For me, it would be on honor to be one of your background characters. Narratives are richer with them anyway.

I look at you and you are the Harry Potter movie marathon I wait months for. For you, I am the 2 am infomercial you fell asleep to. But I don't mind half as much as I should. Even white noise has its place in someone's life.

i. reward ten thousand dollars
it scares me to think you will drive me home one day, one night, one night when i am very drunk and the stars do not glisten because there are no stars left! i am sure of the reason:
upon being conceived you swallowed them all whole. this is not purposefully clandestine so much as misunderstood knowledge:
in our lifetime these celestial objects will be mistaken, much like a well-intentioned teratoma, for
cancer
countless times you will be plucked, yet unripe, from the fire that will as soon liquify your flesh and cleanse your soul

ii. wanted, dead or alive
psychosis is not a watershed.
it is an amalgamation of the bugs who have crawled up your legs and gorged themselves on your fruity blood before hibernating
it is a room of walls plastered with ******* of nauseating pale cadavers, of empty homes, of longing hands, of breast buds and tied legs and virginal lips and bare ***** and stained sheets
it was in you forever and there is nothing to blame but an imbalance, for
you are the duality of...girlhood.
you are soiled ******* and unkempt hair, abused plush dolls and sticky hands, infected wounds and sunburn sting, stale cereal and coloring pages
you are satin veils and vain slumber, tired tears and starving entrails, hesitant touch and static vhs, shrill laughter and breathy song
you are itchy bug bites. you are snow in my eyelashes.
you are a lissome angel pregnant, god bless you, with a fetal (fatal?) evil; perhaps my fear begins here, or perhaps it greets me when your aura bites my eyelids...alack!
it must be so. **** orange light suffuses my thin veins. the sun exudes apprehension and abruptly the car is totaled and
this is why you cannot drive me home. even when i have become quite inebriated:
it is not natural for the air to be so warm; only ere our galactic body closes her eyes.
surely you will **** me. you are no creature of the night. run me over; crush me between your toes; let my nectar grow trees in the cracks of this, our, every godforsaken town.

iii. have you seen me?
her neotenous thighs stick, like sap, to the concrete floor, water seeps beneath the cinderblock. dust collects between her fingers in which she clutches, with the brutality of youth, a softened - if garishly colored - carton of apple juice. four-o'clock sun pierces the thick glass window (if one will call it such) and she feels listless; rather than squint she pores over the illumination with intent that, in her unsuspecting naivete, she is not yet aware she holds. before she ***** in enough light to blind her she hears a voice that feels familiar:
come upstairs
soon enough it will be ruefully forgotten
soon enough she will realize she was bagged and thrown in the trunk
too late she will wish to exact her revenge

Cleaning out old files in my mind.
Sweeping away rot and decay,
To make way for new mess.
This endless paradox of insanity.

Pushing the chair away,
Waiting for someone new to fill your space.
This table was once full,
A family of people.
Now it's just me. My poems,
Yet somehow it feels crowded.

An empty room with no air to breathe,
Suffocated in my minds inabilities.
Indecisiveness, breaking news!
"Hey look, everyone. This kid is insane."
In truth I don't know what I am,
Who I'll be or where I'm heading...

Terrified of behind left behind by my mind,
Stuck in a moment that happened years ago,
Clawing with every cigarette he smokes and bottle he drinks.
But the climb is never easy with whiskey stained hands and ash covered feet.

You were letters of a time away and floating on my air as rain pelted our windows and soaked my hair.

Cold with our own ambition and the sky swarmed by grey clouds ridden with my nightmares, dreams, essays that i turned in past the due date and wine you took from the back of your mothers liquor cabinet.

Your car sneezed and coughed cancer cells perpetuating when you turned the key. from the dents on the side and the tobacco scent on the seats i knew you took this from the junkyard on the south side of the boulevard.

You thought you were the problem but I was the one snacking on empty prescription bottles and then chewing glass for dessert blood running down my chin and giggling at the hopelessness that I felt in my soul.

I swallowed broken vases and cut up my esophagus as you spoon fed me unrequited love. i thought we were going to
make it but we only got to the gas station before the car broke down and i went home.

every 98 seconds
a person is shattered like a piece of glass
or perhaps in the view of the perpetrator,
used and discarded like a piece of trash

The demons just want me to be dead,
They want to bury the secrets in my head,
Sunlight kills their dark souls,
And there's no light to hold,
I'd give anything for a savior,
Give my firstborn as a favor,
I just want to not fight for every breath,
To not fight inside my own head,
I'm so tired, so tired, so tired,
And the voices multiply like a choir,
They tell me what to say,
To make everyone think I'm okay,
But inside I'm punching myself over and over,
And I try to quiet it by not being sober,

But you can't stay high forever,
I always nose dive and take a header,
Straight into the ground of which I bleed upon,
This life just seems played out and done,

I'd pray to God if I didn't think he'd forsaken,
This child of which followed him with other children,
But then I found the dark side of life,
The kind that has no spark of life,
Who's dull eyes stare out from sunken skulls,
Knees aching on basement floors,
Don't be fooled by the bible,
The devil is a female,
And she takes innocence,
While faking she's innocent,
So beware of golden hair,
And skin that's fair,
Because it'll make you wish for death,
For the rest of your entire life,

But you can't stay high forever,
I always nose dive and take a header,
Straight into the ground of which I bleed upon,
This life just seems played out and done.