my throat is a forest fire,
a burning map that never leads to
'the depths of virginia'

your hands are made of water,
icy cold and haunting and
I don't know what else to say except
"please"

I sometimes think that we should have a history book
rewritten with our names, because I'll be ******* if
we are not rewarded for the way we forget about our past

I WONDER IF WHAT WE TALK ABOUT AFTER MIDNIGHT
HAS ANY IMPACT ON THE WAY YOUR HEART BEATS AND IF
IT DOES IS IT WATERED DOWN BECAUSE OF BEFORE
AND I WANT TO KNOW IF MY WORDS HAVE THE SAME
EFFECT ON YOU AS YOURS ON ME AND I WANT TO SWIM
in the James River and forget how to sway my limbs around to float

this is not a love poem
this is not an "I miss you, come back" poem
this is a confession
this is a love letter
written on the palms of my hands because I know
you'll never get over how badly they shake

maybe I'm confused or lovesick or homesick
for a home that can only be found inside of warm chests
but I needed to write this for someone, for myself

maybe my questions don't need answers,
maybe they just need to be heard.

there was a rip in my stockings,
inner limb, long and exposed.

"i like your tights"

clunky boots, shorts, a skirt, a dress.
i was wearing them when your fingers played
with my insides.
legs long enough to drown in,
did you imagine them tangled, bruised?
my thighs are my gems, they will quiver,
damp under the sheer, ripped, flowered, polka-dotted
material.

daddy, lover, with your palms along
my calves, your teeth ridging the edge.
baby boy, with your nails tearing my hips.

i will be your black-eyed beauty.
the night you spoke my name in inked lights,
the night your lips tasted like cigarettes and chocolate,
my tights shredded.


knee high socks and blood red lipstick,
i’ve been wearing nothing but ripped
tights.

it has been seven days and I have smoked six packs of cigarettes, been in the car for five days, slept four nights, made three new friends each afternoon, stole from the same two stores, and died once. I don't remember the last time I had a meal, although you've tried so hard to cook for me.

I keep saying "I should stop" and hearing "just one more" and wondering how long it's been now, a year or a minute, and I have decided a lifetime can be lived in a single moment. however I am not alive. I can not decide if this is a blessing or an omen.

on mornings when the sun leaks through the spines of the pine trees, we drive back to where you ran away from. there is a sign at the entrance that says "drive as if your kid lives here." I wonder what your parents think when they see that. I wonder if they wake up in the morning and make you breakfast thinking you'll come down to the kitchen with messy hair and a crooked smile. you say you're too prideful to fall back to love. but I think you are lost in this jungle. these houses all look the same anyways. you must have lost your way.

I have sat in the backseat of at least a hundred drug deals and my favorite part is watching the eyes of the kids right before they open the car door that has been kissed with ice and dented from the product of your recklessness. half of their bodies are shaking and the other half are motionless, paralyzed, fingers skinny and stained with smoke like some characters from a book, and although I thought I was once a writer I am simply the antagonist of this tragedy.

I have learned that people keep the plastic on their cigarette packs to put their drugs in later, so I started giving them mine, and they started telling me they loved me. they started clinging to me like precious gold, and they told me my eyes were emeralds, and my body was their greatest treasure stolen away from an old ship beneath miles of ocean, and I started to believe every word as if it were written in blood. but I have found that you are only loved for how willing you are to hop in the trunk, how many pulls you take from the bottle, and how many words you can memorize from their favorite songs.

I have tattooed the lyrics on the backs of my eyelids and I will close my eyes and sing forever if it means someone will just look at me different for once. when these songs came on as we jumped in your parents bed, I pretended not to think of all the other times I heard them. when you woke me up by dancing your fingers across my skin at three thirty in the morning, I pretended to be asleep. when you told me you liked your coffee black, I pretended that wasn't some form of poetry.

I managed to betray the boy who loves me in the back of his car but he still held me when everyone fell asleep. he was shaking. they are always shaking. but not me, not anymore, because the blood has been drained. the sun now shines above the tree tops and the pines wait in vain for warmth to return. the world smiles at me with bleached teeth and hungry blue eyes. but even with this boundless mind and these knuckles lined with silver, I have never been so worthless. I have never felt so cold.

I promised my mother that I would never smoke cigarettes but here I am with you. It seems to be that I am addicted and you are the nicotine, how cliché. I remember in middle school when someone showed me how battery acid melts styrofoam instantly, and that was just one of the many deadly chemicals in those little white sticks. I imagine your touch to be something like that, my skin melting to the bone as you pour yourself over me. It's funny, because I watched my mother smoke for years, when she were upset or anxious she would smoke more to feed her addiction and calm down; I think I may have found my newest addiction. There is something so flammable about you and I will light you over and over again and inhale you because I need a rush. Soon it will turn into a dependency but I don't mind. "I can quit anytime." know I promised I would never touch those cancer sticks but if that was the only form I could find you in, I would smoke a pack a day for the rest of my life.