Lying makes a placeholder for the inevitable truth. The lie will become the truth, as a rectangle can be squeezed back into a square.

Nothing works out in the end.
All of us will be gone.
Our name will not be remembered.

The signs and lights will fade to black.
The Hollywood sign will collapse of old age, like us.
Poppies shrivel up, their red coats falling onto the scorched earth.
Grapes transcend into wrinkly sacs of bitter wine.

The way your hand slipped in mine,
the fingerprints will rub away.
Our heart beats slow,
diminish.
Our laughter evanesce,
wanes
as our voices descend past the Pacific ocean.

I crave human affection as much as
a flower demands photosynthesis
hiding beneath a shaded tree. It has
no control over capriciousness
from the sun.

Just hearing the prospect of my brother's proposal
plunged me into an ocean
where I am not allowed to surface. I can only
struggle and hope some fisherman,
or a dolphin, or jellyfish
to rescue me,
   n u d g e me,
ssstttingg me back to the currents above.
I have this anchor locked to my tears, and I can't make

a sound. If they notice, I will begin to cry.
I don't want them to know
that I'm bad again. They are not the right
people who should know.
I just want someone to care about me
as much as I care about them.
I deserve love, like everyone deserves air.

I am last season's remains
a cracked, dry petal
fallen off a prinses irene tulip.
I beg for attention,
for human affection
much like a plant demands
water to live. Please tell me the lonely
winter is over.

I am alive and I am terrified.
Why does the future have to be
this question mark, this puddle of murkiness
wagging its finger to beg you to come
closer,
closer
closer.

Darkness lurches above me in
halos circling brightly, making no sense

I can see you, Future
I can see everything I want to see
but the waters won’t clear, the question mark
won’t turn into an exclamation point,

and you make me travel down the path
farther
farther
farther
into the unknown.

The first bite of a strawberry,
bulbous soft ruby,
tastes so extremely bitter
as your friendship was to me
that after several berries,
my tongue dissolves the sour
sting of disappointment
slowly
diminishing.

I will drag my knife along your skin,
sharp blade down into your fragile, shaking canvas,
incising an increasing beat of whimpers and whines.
Please hold still. I promise this will hurt.

I will expose your clattering bones,
rip out your chattering teeth,
erase every impugned utterance
you muttered against me.
I will carve my letters slowly
on your unzipped frame,
sliding the burgundy blood across to
blot
       clot
              dot.    

This is only preparation for what is about to follow.

I will puncture your throbbing organs,
slash your stretched cartilage
with an unwritten script.
Before I press further,
I’ll assure you, you are still alive.

I will twist each phrase,
haunt you to believe it is your fault,
force you to beg the slightest escape.
I will permanently etch my name
deep in the frozen chambers
of your quivering heart.

I will open up the blueprint as a demolition expert,
remove whole fractions of your fractured soul,
leave you a horrid wreck in the abyss
of a mess you just made.

You will not get rid of me,
though no trace of evidence is left behind.

My hands have been clean from the start.

Two linked sugars
make up a disaccharide.
And that’s what we are-
simple, plain table sugar
dully passed back and forth
to sweeten our taste.
Sometimes I'll accidentally
switch the shakers for breakfast,
hand you the salt
just to change up the spice.
And sometimes I regret
the bitter words
you exchange in return
for breaking the boring
status quo.

A shred of gasoline spills
each time I give myself to you.
I continue to light my breaking limbs on fire
each time you glance at me.
The flames burn and lick and spread
each time we crash we disintegrate we exist no more.

Against the perimeter of my childhood backyard
cluttered rows of privet hedges produced
tiny ruby berries, easily crushed if stepped on.
They always fell from the branches
in the slightest trail of wind.

Cougars prowled my playground.
My parents, hesitant to let me out alone,
planted the bushes
in the hopes the cougars would
eat the Ligustrum ovalifolium and never return.

I knew the berries were toxic
and could make me ***** more than what I consumed,
a time bomb in my stomach.
Mother said the poison could make
me shiver harder than a winter day.

When, once, I raised a berry to my lips
Mother plunged forward
and slapped it out of my fingers,
a strange mixture of anger and concern in her eyes.
I was never to pick one again.

I didn’t understand the problem
until I saw two cougars laying behind a privet—
a mama and her cub
no longer breathing in sync.

Do you ever have a moment
that suddenly it     SLAMS             into you
                                                             ­     you          are    alive.
And seven billion people     write the same story. You wonder,
  alone in the crowded Seattle-Tacoma airport, if someone
   will ever hold your empty heart       like the man in a gray business suit
   and the woman wearing a striped neckerchief. Will someone ever be upset your flight didn’t depart at the expected time, and give            the bouquet of rhododendrons to a stranger. Will someone               ever burst into a full sprint
upon first glance at you, deliriously happy that you are
      home.
Will someone ever    acknowledge that
  you are alive,   breathing for a change, wishing    for a slow dance,
loss of insanity. Will someone ever, in the passengers
   of the world,
                   notice you.

Reglossing, rewashing, removing, returning,
she kept using the same cloth to wipe up this mess.
All of the same mistakes constantly repeating,
spools of half-hearted "I'm sorry's" unwinding,
foolproof promise to cover for her missed absence.

I persist reloading, rewinding, replaying
watching the film of our lives together, pausing
at moments where temporarily, I confess,
unpredictable happiness ceased repeating.
This trainwreck of a show carries on, blistering
slides that I want to swipe clean, but her name suppress
stained slates developing, deflecting, destroying.

I throw away the footage, romanticizing  
sheer ideas of finally making progress
forgetting her. But relapse results repeating
bad habits. There is not a remedy. I cling
to the seasons of the past, wanting to digress
reminding, rewinding, removing, regretting.
'Til the cloth clears again, chaos keeps repeating.

One day someone will hold my body, reach
intimate places, steal breaths from my throat
and his cold barb-wired fingers will breach
my silk-woven skin, leaving me to choke.
I'm afraid I'm not sufficient enough
to let his love crawl in me, sweeping dust
away that no one has bothered to touch
after all these years. Certainly he must
not want to encounter a tornado
that destructs everything that could save me.
When he's done, there will not be a halo
above his head. He precariously
set my heart up for more disappointment.
He took my trust with the lack of consent.

Two linked sugars make up a disaccharide. And that's
what we are. Simple, plain
table sugar, dully passed back
and forth to sweeten our taste.
Sometimes I'll accidentally switch
the shakers for breakfast, hand

you the salt, and you hand
me a spice so harsh that
my tongue curls at the unexpected switch.
I do not prefer the boring, plain
predictable exchange of taste
I followed for so many years back.

So I turn my back
to you, hold up my hand
as a shield of what you would say next. "Have you lost your taste,"
you say, anger overshadowing your faded love, "that
I've grown plain
to you?" I knew then to make the switch

into freedom from the same scene replayed. I get up and turn the light switch
off and leave you in the dark. "When you get back
from work," I say to the plain
dining room, "you will find this ring off my hand."
I can barely see your eyes glowing in the only source of morning light. "That's
absurd," you exclaim. "All because of how I want my cereal to taste?"

I shake my head. "It's not the physical taste. It's the taste
of you that makes me want to switch
out of this marriage. You aren't giving me what I want, and that
is my reason to back
out of this. You offered your hand
to hold mine, to support me, but it's all so plain."

I continue, "And isn't it plain
to see that my taste
in relationships lack passion? I give out my hand
to anything that flicks the switch
of love. You give me the nudge to turn it back
off." With that

I exit the house and try to restore my taste the way I had it back
to my actual preferences. I switch from the plain
safety and run with the risk that I never had at hand.

How do I get a carving out of a tree?
The smug shape of your G+E
outlines with a stupid, misshaped heart
etched into the evergreen.
You ruined my favorite tree
with five words.
A sentence I knew you would inevitably say
at some point of our lives together.
I really wanted to doubt myself for once,
and be proved wrong in the right way.
But you just had to keep me incorrect.

I call the local lumberjack and ask him,
"Cut down the tree as soon as possible."
I think that's how you get a carving out of a tree.

It's so stupid to feel lonely in a room
full of laughing people, enjoying their company with family.
I myself am with family, but I feel so
secluded, put aside, a thought floating
after a quick glance at the girl who's been quiet
for far too long, who usually
sparks the conversation before others.
Tonight, it is too loud.
Dancing waiters and a conga line,
trays of cheap champagne passed around,
Andrew discussing a promising proposal,
kept me so removed from table 351
and the restaurant itself. I cannot control
anything.
The conversation carries on without me.

I am the typewriter and you were
backspacing backspacing backspa
all my words as if I had never said them.
You knew I meant
every letter I slammed down
furiously into the keyboard
writing about you
about your lack of making time
closing me off last minute
ignoring any plans we made at all.
I don't get why you had to leave my
thoughts as if they were not validated.
If someone cared for you as much as I do,
I sure hope you don't backspace on them
before they can get a word out.

A child, not of speaking age, sat
   across me at tea time. The mother
fed her cake and cucumber
sandwiches, and the young girl
screeched with
                            a sour face

staring at me as if I held the solution
to erasing the taste of sweets and crunchy water.
I feigned a smile.
      It occurred to me that even as old as she was,
she had opinions on things she would forget. No one
remembers not liking cucumbers that young.

sometimes you never really know
how the carpet looks
until you stare at it so long
that the fabric melts in
you start to feel cross that you cant
distinguish
whether it is purple with yellow waves
or yellow with purple waves
or if it's just really
ugly carpet to begin with.

there's a part of me that keeps
checking in to see how
your life is going. I can't shield
my curiosity from the pain
when I see that you have replaced
me in each pose
every sunset
and a single smile that
was not catapulted at me.

I feel the loneliest at an airport
because my soulmate could be walking around
searching for me
and light up at the glimpse of my face,
stammering to find a conversation point;

or they are getting on a flight
after hearing my laugh
remembering the sound across the nation.

Didn’t I ever think to be authentic
collecting words, snapping photographs
exclaiming I am enamored with language and art

when honestly, I am merely a fraud
to what I love. My hands aren’t stained with ink,
my eyes aren’t trained to learn new techniques
paper is not my friend nor is a roll of film
tossing around in my bag of nonexistent records that
I actually love my hobbies.

I feel that I am not quite
an owner of my interests,
stealing passion from others and wishing
they were my own.

The disappointment that resides in me,
as much as I tell it to go away,
swallows my entire body.

It eats away at my flesh and rarely
leaves enough time for skin to regenerate.
The disappointment that resides in me

licks its lips hungrily
at the sight of my blood, salivates
and swallows my entire body.

This cannot be healthy,
I say to myself. There has to be a way to invalidate
the disappointment that resides in me.

I wonder if there was ever a phase of sobriety
when my expectations' weight
did not swallow my entire body.

I suppose I must return to reality
and succumb to incubate
the disappointment that resides in me,
that swallows my entire body.

They say that the Arizona trout is found
only in this state,
and I wonder if I had not found you
who else would have taken me in?
The sore problem is maybe
you have discovered me on accident
when there was someone else out there
that needed you instead.
I'm petrified at the thought
that if I swim away,
no one would ever find me again.

The president of the horticulture club
thumbs the violet leaves of a aconite
ignoring the shooting pain crawling on her skin.
The other members glare at her,
waiting for the reaction-
touch the frail plant
and your mouth is sure to set on fire.
The contact she has on the flower
is insanely dangerous.
Potent alkaloids bloom overhead
and she continues to breathe in deeply as if she is trying to swallow
the strong, acrid taste of the atmosphere,
which should have sent her into a frenzy of disorientation
and seizures of her small limbs
but at last, she glances
at the frozen treasurer and spoke calmly, her mouth slouching,
"Are you writing this down?
I want the future of this club
to know to never touch plants
without doing their research."
Then she blinks,
slumps against the bench,
undeterred.

Whoever swoops into my heart next
please don't make a nest
and then fly away when you're ready to be on your own.
Don't use me as a shelter
to keep you from the drowning rain
and expect me to feed you
when nothing else is living.
It’s hard holding a home sturdy
sufficiently well for my aching soul.
The branches are already trembling
the weeping wind echoing
lost, diminished cries
of the ones who took off.
I know I push you away
when you get too close,
but this is where you fight to hold on longer.
I keep losing the ones I love
because they have not loved me
enough to stay.

i met you in my dreams
somewhere
between my drunk
universes that i believe
you and i are alive and together
we chase each other through
sunrises above shots of tequlia
and raindrops searching for a glass
of promise to hold.
i am only dreaming of you
and i hope you only dream of me.

Gimpse in the mirror, hair cascading down
emerald eyes piercing the reflection that isn't entirely yours.
Suddenly you see yourself age 78
overlooking the sea on the balcony, wrinkles traced in hands.
The Bainbridge ferry streams along like always,
dropping off passengers on King Street.
Girls and boys strolling down the avenue
happiness and dreams circling their trails.

You are only twenty. You should be experiencing this too.

Holidays at the pond
reminded you that you were always going to be alone
and look at where you are now.
No one will see the lights with you. No one wants to see
a smile at the bokeh, the incandescent halos
wrapped around the bridges.

You only wanted to be happy.

Underneath the rushing world
our situation at a glance
has yet to quietly unfurl.
I am only a lonely girl
who's never had a slow-song dance
above the big rushing world.
And you, you look like you could twirl
me, and trap my heart in a trance,
which has yet to slowly unfurl.

On these tracks, there is a pearl
among the others in a stance,
underneath the rushing world.
Suddenly the train stops and hurls
you toward me. This is my chance.
I should take it. But it unfurls,

I need to say before this whirl
    I have not met you. In advance
underneath the rushing world
our love will not ever unfurl.

You sold me a false dream. You told me that I could make it home after I graduated. High school. College. I’m still ******* here. I told you that I was a failure, I failed at achieving my dream of finally escaping hell. Everyone else got their form of happiness. My turn will never arrive.
You told me that the future would be a happy time, but when I thought of the future ten years ago, I didn't think I would still feel like this.
You told me that people loved me, but they never showed it. No one put in as much effort into the relationship as I did. It was always me who responded first, initiated the conversation, sent reminders that hey, I guess we’re still friends, even though you don't act like it.
You forgot that I did not work well with the routine of muttering in my head, “I’m fine, just relax and breathe.” You told me that I needed to make the most of where I was, which was like forcing a fish to live on land and expecting them to breathe.
You told me that I moved on, and then I didn't, and then I did. Quit playing games.
You told me that it was okay to tell that guy extremely intimate details, but I ended up disappointed.
You told me to assume that someone I loved would be just as willing to love me fiercely in return. You told me that someone special will come along. Where are they?
You told me that I have to make everyone in my family happy, but everyone has different expectations and I’m struggling to fulfill one person’s wishes without upsetting the other.
You told me I need to go out more, accept invitations to attend some concert in Dallas, or hang out at her house for New Year’s Eve. I hate going out.
You told me to pretend that I was in a cliché high school movie at a party and try to flirt with a guy. He didn't like me. He was more interested in my brother.
You told me that no one cared how badly I presented my speech in my last Spanish class, but I felt everyone’s pity cutting into my mouth.
You told me that my soul is the one thing I can’t compromise, but it’s already shattered into irreparable fragments.
You told me that people would admire the way I loved sunsets, the lights on the streets after dark, the small things. No one has told me that they noticed my habits.

I placed myself back into my body and walked away from the mirror.

i believe in permanent strings
rather than stitches that come undone in a week.

Reminding, rewinding, removing, regretting
Tears blind eyes in corneas, splintering spliced sight
There is no world where I can't stop forgetting.
I have a picture of you, watching the sunrise
stratus clouds stretched along the gold blanket of sky
the waves before you striking the dock gently.
I can't find myself behind the camera,
Remembering my thoughts as I snapped
the shutter. I forget.
I go through my own ocean
where I am tossed between wanting to be shipwrecked for good
or rescued by you. I want to either let you go entirely,
or keep hanging on. But I am gripping a rope on its last thread.
I know you have already let go. I haven't. I don't think I will.

the worst kind of crying
is that film residing in your throat
glazing over your vocal chords.
your stomach is twisted
into tiny intricate knots, triple tied.
your eyes bead in the corners,
glistening but not dripping.
you feel that you will never
be as sad as this moment.
your brain shuts off
a failed attempt to detach itself
from the veins fusing and tightening
stars heighten without blinking.
you have become so unaware of your actual body
the sadness eats away
at whatever remains. and even then
you are much too empty
to be dissembled.

I will drag my knife along your skin,
sharp blade down into your fragile, shaking canvas,
incising an increasing beat of whimpers and whines.
Please hold still. I promise this will hurt.

I will expose your clattering bones,
rip out your chattering teeth,
erase every impugned utterance
you muttered against me.
I will carve my letters slowly
on your unzipped frame,
sliding the burgundy blood across to
blot
       clot
              dot.    

This is only preparation for what is about to follow.

I will puncture your throbbing organs,
slash your stretched cartilage
with an unwritten script.
Before I press further,
I’ll assure you, you are still alive.

I will twist each phrase,
haunt you to believe it is your fault,
force you to beg the slightest escape.
I will permanently etch my name
deep in the frozen chambers
of your quivering heart.

I will open up the blueprint as a demolition expert,
remove whole fractions of your fractured soul,
leave you a horrid wreck in the abyss
of a mess you just made.

You will not get rid of me,
though no trace of evidence is left behind.

My hands have been clean from the start.

Watching the exchange of two people in love
really validates the small percent of hope
I have left in marriage. It completely overshadows
the bad experiences I've seen between my parents.
You see how she absolutely lights up
when he talks, like the stars have arrived
after a rainy day. For those few moments
of seeing real love, I forgot all my cynical
views and desperately wished I had that exchange.
Hearing him say "This is why I married you"
after she said some intelligent remark about our
parts of speech work sheet, and her smile
spoke all the words unsaid. How so in love she still
is, with this man from their wedding ten years ago, and a kid throughout their ongoing journey. They are a story
so rarely told, and I want to shout to the world that love
remains alive.

My father tells me what should be my first memory of hearing:
A car scuttles up the gravel hill in front of the home I loved.
I drop my chalk and run to the end of the driveway,
as if I am chasing the exhaust of fumes sputtering out the tail pipe,
wondering what on earth is that strain of air
since I was not given sound from birth.

At my testing, the audiologist put me in a soundproof booth:
The ocean has forgotten to pull its stitches together for the life of it.
I want to scream that I feel like I am drowning
as the waves tormented me into debilitation,
kicking for a gasp of air, just anything to break the current.
I cannot keep myself afloat.

My friend’s voice is the most beautiful I’ve ever heard:
Her laugh makes me want to jump in euphoric joy, like she’s dosed me with ecstasy.
I can see her smile and it speaks all the words I don't need to hear.
When she repeats a story for the third time, I do not mind
that she trusts me with her voice and her whimsical light
since she is the only one patient enough to put up with my aggravating nuisances.

That night at the David Gray concert, my God what a beautiful night:
I am so familiarized with the stretching of violin strings and guitar plucks,
Gray’s hypnotic vocals roaring into my heart with the bass thumping
into my disabled ears, rendered quite useless until I have tasted such delightful surprise
with so many of my favorite noises encasing me into their world,
that I have forgotten my own disability.

It peeves me when I am with others:
The muffling of girls whispering once the lights are out;
my stepfather keeping the TV volume low and does not provide caption while the movie rolls;
how I answer the question with the wrong response and receive confused glares.
I am a lonesome tree in the woods
with no one around to see my inevitable fall as the fire plagues on.

A technical transition last July:
Misery trenched my mind as everything rang louder-
the shuffling of my hair against my ears bothered me very much so;
I heard women talking from three tables over at the pizza place.
First given nothing, now having too much,
I am not appreciative of all the sounds in the frantic tussle of daily life.

A forest begins to chill at four o clock:
The leaves flutter on the terrain in a dance no one knows,
the sun warms me in a song with lyrics I can’t comprehend.
I am relishing what is given to me, that even though I am broken,
I still realize that I would much rather be deaf
than to ever go blind.

I put my trust in an already
broken vase and
handed it to you.
I said, "If this cracks
even a little bit,
my trust will ooze out
and the shard that splits
is a piece of my heart
that ran away again."
It's taken me so long
to find that piece
and convince it to
fit back where it was supposed to.
But it always struggle to accept.
This is where I urge you
to not drop me.

The scary thing about
how time heals
is that I forgot
the only person I wanted to remember.
I force myself to be okay with that.
I started to lose

all the details about her, all the fights I knew I'd lose
before the arguments began, because I couldn't stand to think about
her being upset with me. I was quick to let her think that
the tension between us healed
that neither of us could remember
the reason we were fighting in the first place. I forgot

her coffee order when she's sad, I forgot
how she freaked out when she lost
the callback to someone we despised. I forgot how she remembers
that I counted how many chicken nuggets I ordered. She was all about
knowing the little things that kept me at ease, that healed
my stress away from her. But then I knew that,

with the poison I kept on the tip of my tongue, that
would be impossible. She tended to forget
even though she was the one to heal
me emotionally when no one else could, she would lose
me at the same time with disappointment. It was not her fault. About
four years now, I'm still alone in pictures. I remember

that we were always together in a single frame. I remember
I kept my mouth closed and she smiled with her teeth. That
passenger seat remained empty, beneath a full moon about
to transform into new. Once I forget
eclipses only last a few hours, I lose
the nostalgia that never did get me healed.

Replaying my memories will not heal
what I once had. I will not remember
everything I thought I'd never lose.
Once it hits, I am on the floor, pressing into the cold tiles, so close that
I can reimagine her skin, and I will never forget
all of the things I thought about.

I believe she can no longer heal me and that kills me.
I can't remember to forget her.
I constantly wonder about her, and the universe I lost.

thorns lay down in my arachnoid
membrane, splintering my scalp at the mere
memory of anxiety-
splicing and slicing into my brain
drawing blood, swirling pools
killing me slowly
not all at once,
not all too quickly,
but miserably constant
in a stream that never empties
poisonous venom.

my future always seem so happy,
but when i thought of the future ten years ago,
i didnt think i would still feel like this.

It's getting easier to say goodbye to you.
Every time I migrate away from home to find warmth,
leave you behind in the cold,
I am taking back a piece of my soul
that I have left in your icy hands.
You still have the same hold, the same capture,
but I am learning that it's much easier
to keep my heart to myself.