So today you'll be in love this girl from the internet and tomorrow you be in love with that girl from the internet and today your mother will ask you to look up from your phone for two seconds and tomorrow you will be ******* over a girl that you can't that you can't look in the eye because her eyes are miles and away and they're always watching you with disinterest, until you lose interest; some Catholic girl told me that long distance relationships make it easy to fall I to son and I got to understanding why God stays so far away. I know how to ruin myself with one hand, I know how to tear you apart with two. I know how stop taking care of myself until I'm overgrown with weeds just to watch you grow; some idiot said you don't forget how to ride a bike so I got lazy and stopped using one and some idiot said you don't forget your first love and I did the same thing. I saw the train coming and I laid you down on the tracks like I cared, and I did but I just don't know how and that's how the deal, no one knows how to do anything, hardly anyone knows how to derail trains.
And today I'll fail my test becase I didn't study, tomorrow I'll remember that a year ago you said my name for the first time; today I'll sit on my hands until they tingle just to make sure that I'm alive; we'll delve into the meanings of 'love' and 'lust', but in the end they'll both still feel the same, I'll wonder if you track dirt into your house with your boots or if you just track hurt, you'll always keep me right where you can see you but never where I can hold you. We'll speak well about each other and keep our dark secrets tucked into the waistbands of our skirts like crisp white shirts. I can't understand why anyone would want to live in the first world, where all we do is keep things we love in dusty boxes and sit in traffic and hurt the people we love and write about it.
And then we'll leave the internet and grow up and be gray and our tweets will die out like people do and then we won't think about it much. We won't think about it much.

i don't think i've ever felt that my life was completely my own and i don't think i ever will. i am thrown off-guard by people who simply choose to live. mesmerized by people who throw themselves into their life, as if that is all they are here to do. mind-boggled by people who've never considered the possibility that their life may be bigger than their own, that it could be -- easily -- if they'd only let it. contentment is not in my vocabulary, it is not in my bones; i don't sing in the shower, i breathe.

I learned my first lesson in love when I was seven years old, sitting cross-legged at the kitchen table while my mother chopped garlic and told me that no man would make me happy. The year I turned sixteen, I lost my virginity at three in the afternoon in a claustrophobic studio apartment, to a tall twenty-four year old I had met just the day before. After we finished he asked me for a dollar to do laundry, and I said that I didn’t have one, and he kissed me on the forehead and told me to hurry home before it gets dark. After that I spent my time learning the shapes of men, the shapes of men smoking on the sidewalks and the shapes of men straight on the other side of the bed at midnight. The feel of men when they held my hand and showed me where they wanted me to touch. The feel of each man, all different and all the same. I learned the taste of cheap wine they gave me before they undressed me, learned a new language of just yes, please, and thank you. I learned that in the morning some men will hand you a cigarette and pretend to know your name, and some men will make scrambled eggs and pretend to know your name, and some men will remember your name while they’re politely asking you to leave. The year I turned sixteen, I met a man with terrible posture, from a place that seemed not so far away at the time. The first time we touched, awash in the static of the crowd, that was when I felt safe for the very first time. The first time the shape of a man made me feel safe.

Somewhere there is a nurse putting clean sheets on what was once someone's death bed. Somewhere there is a police officer laying awake at two in the morning contemplating breaking his thumbs so he won't have to pull another trigger. Somewhere there is a body bag taking the shape of a person. Somewhere a warden has accidentally called a prisoner by their first name. Somewhere there is a man getting ready to pay for his glass of whiskey, his '1 year' AA token falls out of his wallet onto the bar counter. Somewhere the glass is completely empty, somewhere it's overflowing. Somewhere a therapist sitting in an empty session reading the local newspaper's obituary section wondering what she could've done. Somewhere a bullet has fallen in love with a heart, giving a whole new meaning to the 'kiss of death'. Somewhere the girl that never speaks is raising her hand but immediately putting it back down after the sound of her classmates' laughter bounces back and forth from the back of her mind to the front. Somewhere the silence at the dinner table is making a dent in a child's suit of armor. Somewhere a 70 year old man starts skipping instead of walking, he stops taking his medication. Somewhere there is a mother too drunk to sign her daughter's permission slip. Somewhere a man has stolen all of the flowers from a grave, so he can somehow feel as though he's  being missed. Somewhere a child is asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she realizes ''myself'' isn't a good enough answer. Somewhere a mirror has been mistaken for a stranger. Somewhere someone is being loved by another person the only way they know how to love; whether it's through kisses, bruises, sleeping too closely to the other, or fifteen missed calls. Somewhere a man is falling in love with the automated voice inside of a voice mail because at least she will listen to him. Somewhere a 911 operator is walking into her house, hearing screams that aren't actually there. Somewhere these short stories are being broadcasted on the news,  printed in the paper, whispered to a friend, or rotting in the back of someone's head. Somewhere I am whispering all of these things to a silent room full of people, none of them look up.

A man spoke the truth,
and had his tongue removed.
His hands were left intact,
so he started to write the facts.
The men that articulate falsehoods,
came back to take his hands.
They searched far and wide,
including foreign lands.
He sat with pen and paper,
locked away on his own accord.
The men took his hands,
hoping thoughts could reach The Lord.
But this did not deter him,
because he lived for the truth.
And as long as he lived,
he would continue like in his youth.
But without a tongue he couldn't say:
You'll have to **** me to get your way.