i want to move into the hollow of your heart,
pack all i own into my battered backpack
& lay it out to rest on your bedroom shelves,
run run run down
the ice-slick streets in winter until i finally reach you,
until i am home/to be alone/with you

there are years that ache like bruises on my thighs
& years that are soft like rabbit ears, like flannel pajamas
like the way it feels to have found you.
at last, at last:
the morning birds murmur their musings
as we sip cocoa so sweet & so hot it scalds my throat
but not, but not,
but not nearly as much
as your mouth brands my lips yours.

someday, someday,
someday, pretty baby,
time will pass in kisses,
the coffeepot hisses,
you will find yourself waking
in a cathedral of our warmth
new-day light spilling over our bodies,
the ocean-state sheets –
you will know.
you will know – i will tell you now,
but someday you will know -
you are going to be safe,
finally safe, forever.

i will love you.  i will love you.  i will love you.

all of life’s a game & i’m playing to win
this means making love to myself & apologizing to my ruined skin
this means i give a smile to every stranger who looks me in the eye
this means the word may be sharp to the touch but i am trying to be very soft.

we’re all a mess of broken hearts & tangled brain wires
empty stomachs, borderline suicide bids, a telephone call away
from an emergency waiting to happen,
but i’m sick & tired of being bitter.
this is how you thaw.
this is how you taste sweeter.
this is how you live, now,

dear brokenness: i do not belong in your cemetery.
my roots have spread wide & deep,
i am anchored to this earth with everything i have left.
you gave me a shovel, said to dig my own grave
& i used it to plant a garden around me.
here is where i learn to love me.
here is when i hold my own hand.
here is how you start over.

when every day is all pen ink running dry & shaky caffeine fingers,
panic attack fever & ***** bathroom stall tears,
remember you already survived yourself.  remember you took poison pills
& they couldn’t even **** you. mama never said there’d be days like these
but this has always been more hailstorms than sweater weather.

give me something ****** & sentient,  i need
to be touched so badly,
even if it comes sharp knuckles & bruises.
i need everyone to love me but all i see is you.
glassy-eyed & giving my all,
finally on the verge of becoming,
this is what i give you.
this is my offering.

& then you tell me i’m doing so good
& kiss the splash of coffee from my nose
see, i want the whole world remembered in my neurons,
in my fingertips, in the backs of my eyelids
i want an infinity of foreign places burned into my brain
but if you’re the only country i rest my roots into
i want nothing else.

all the strangeness & sadness in the world
gets under my skin at three a.m. with the lights off
the world falls fast asleep
as my fingers pray their nervous way
to grasp at my stomach, measuring.
always measuring.
there’s always pills with breakfast
& food i don’t want to eat, a room
full of faces & i can’t even recognize my own.

when it’s cold & my lips are numb, teeth clattering,
i am finally alive. winter is a wild thing,
dragging out the demons until they go for the throat.
i want a feeling so hard it hurts.
i want any feeling at all.

listen: there’s a million reasons i have to stay alive
even though there are days when the one not to
is the only thought to occupy my mind.

my sadness is not sweet
it’s the mornings i can’t drag myself out of bed
because i’m so violently miserable
& you haven’t even left yet.

it wasn’t always cherry chapstick kisses & origami lilies,
but i tell myself not to remember  the way i cried over you,
learning the way loss tastes like saltwater,
feels like the hectic seaside, storming away
i never knew a girl could crack me open at the hinges
until you

we were always too supernova
never knowing quite what was happening
when we met skin to skin & flared from the intensity
those days were an amusement park ride, sometimes up
more often down
but we were never wrong, or at least
i think we could’ve Made It or even been Forever
given a fair chance
i always wished i was more rabbit fur to the touch,
less gun muzzle nuzzling your ribs
my sadness was a burden i didn’t want you to bear
my sadness is the dead tree limb hanging from the apple tree
i’m sorry i didn’t make you more chocolate frosting
i’m sorry i didn’t know the right words to say
i’m sorry i wasn’t enough to help you be whole again

it wasn’t always you & i, even though
it’s hard to remember anything before
& it’s been five years
five years
i’m still too ******* soft for you
i’m still too sentimental

my poems are rarely about you anymore
but every heart metaphor & ragged feeling
had to come from somewhere
when i dredge up the memories,
the happy bits come up before the rest
the way you wanted to eat noodles with me at midnight
the way we knew how to hold each other from the first time
the way i wasn’t bones with you & my eyes were bright

i’ve always been into you like a moth to the lamplight
& you’re going to be safe forever
they’re going to love you
& i miss you like winter & nighttime smoke fixes
but i’m okay now
& i hope you are too

all i know of my sadness is this:
it kills me or i learn to live with open wounds.
nineteen years & i’m tired of half-life,
treating the disease as if it can be cured
when these are the cards i’ve been dealt.

but i have no place to heal.
my parent’s house is not my home.
i thought i’d grown roots too deep to damage.
but i ripped myself out by accident.  chose my own path.
the trouble is, i’m running blind through the brambles.
trying to right the wrongs.  every step i make towards where i want to be,
something else has to give.  
the scratches left on my bare limbs just won’t heal.

the truth is, i’m halfway to giving up on getting better.
the truth is, i need a promise that the future is worth fighting for.
the truth is, i’m not sure i’m okay.

i am my own lighthouse.  my own lanternlight.
i am my own constellations when i’m drowning in the blackness.
but i don’t want to be alone.
i’ve been alone far too long
& i don’t want to be alone.
not again.  not ever.

they say, everything is temporary
they say, some die yearning for a hand to hold
& i swear, i will not be one of them.

hello cinematic sky dripping dead birds &
your moonshine eyes.  nothing burns sweeter than
the liquor on our tongues when they twine tighter
than a newborn's clenched fist.  you so lost ships. you
empty cornfield.  wanna bury my body in your fleshly limbs.
feel the tattoo of your heart.  there's a bullet with
my name on it.  you can be a pistol or you can be
the stars.  either way, i beneath you always. watch the
fireflies make love as my lights go out.

you try to stroke the bowl of my belly, it's not romantic & sends the sea swimming my muddy eyes a flood.  your mouth sounds out words; they ask how i'm feeling, but i don't tell you what i didn't eat for breakfast this morning or the triple digit number of calories shoved down my throat yesterday.  i don't mention the measuring tape noosed about my waist, just to keep those twenty-two inches slender.  how could i explain how sometimes i gently imagine wild animals tearing off my flesh them teeth scalpel sharp until me a pile of glittering bones.  until i am perfect.  you desert mirage.  you so so very sweet leaf tea dancing on my tongue & these days, i miss you like summer when you drive to the movies.  wanna wrap my narrow ankles round & round your blue black throat & sink my teeth deep in your lower lip.

my bones are yours for holding & we watch the planets collide.  your naked knees bowed against my newborn flesh.  i don’t trust anyone with the moon & where were you when the world collapsed?  the universe broke when i learned to love you, forbidden symmetry found in some terrible tangle of muscles & tissue.  i wore my favorite old t-shirt, cotton stained with blotted cream & coffee, you clung to me, frenetic fingers begging for some semblance of union.  we so blurred lines became invincible in our quaking presence.  we are entwined, a knotted strand of genetic material & starstuff, quoting communist daughters’ poetry & commanding a listen.  listen.  carl sagan is my personal jesus, I tell you, for nothing is romantic like biology.  there are notches in my hips for your resting elbows, your trembling palms, this is where you belong.  young eyes cracked open wide, we are spinning into the depths of some luminous night, human shells shed far behind.  we are divine.  we are celestial.  this is who we are.

i am a china doll waiting to be dropped. i am thin-legged spiders starving on the ceiling.
i am easy prey. i am an accident waiting to happen.
i am storm clouds closing in.  i am a hummingbird’s last breath.
i am a riverbed gone dry.  i am a shot of whiskey with twice the aftertaste.
i was nothing but a wasteland.  i have a history of disaster.
i have left bloodstains on everything i’ve ever touched.  i do not know how to feel real anymore.
i am lying when i pretend i’m not shatter-proof fragile.  i am saying my goodbyes before hellos.
i love with the whole of my heart.  i am waiting to be told i’m worth keeping.
i am sleepy eyelids.  i am the waning moon.
i am terrified.  i am euphoria.
i will not apologize for my sadness any longer.
i am not defined by the rainstorm in my brain.
i am my own one.  i am human and i need your love.
i belong to everyone.  i belong to the fireflies making love against the night sky.
i am something else.  i am beautiful because i am.
i am alive, if barely.

all my life, i have waited for promises.
she left, he left,
they dissipated with ease,
smoke fading into the morning air
i have learned to stand
on my own two feet,
a little unsteady &
a little unsure, but
i’m still here after
trying not to be.
swallowed poison, spit food
from my stomach, sharpened
blades against my skin.
& here i am.
isn’t it beautiful?
isn’t the world worth
staying a little longer for?

now, i know enough not
to threaten myself with
certain oblivion.  that i will not
be another sad story.  that
there are somewheres i have
never travelled, *** that must
be had, faces i have not yet
split into smiles with my own.  
& i don’t quite know who i am,
no certainty nor sureness, but
i’m ready for the good to come.

& now there’s you & i don’t think
i’ve wanted this badly.  me, i’m on the verge
of becoming the best of myself &
then there’s you.  give me your forever &
i’ll kiss you every morning.  give me your forever
& i’ll never regret a thing.  give me your
forever & i will go until no end
to love you for the rest
of your days.

i’m sorry to sound so confessional but
after trying to sink these feelings to
the bottom of the seabed, i learned
that words float.  you are not a shipwreck
waiting to happen.  you are mine
& i am yours &
let’s just see
what sort
of world
we are
as one.

you dream with eyes wide open, & i want to be part of that ****** ***** nestled within the lacing of your ribs.  say something or don’t even speak, just run your fingers down the curve of my spine & tell me you love me.  take me to neverland & don’t look back, our secret world, & ******* if i don’t love the way you make me feel infinite.  no more clipping my own wings, i will not be an emergency waiting to happen.  stay with me until the sun supernovas and we explode together in a shower of sparks & stardust.  stay with me.  you sing lullabies with your reaching arms & kiss my eyelids closed, soothing me to sleep with whispery words & strokes of skin on skin.  maybe there’s a rainstorm in my brain, but wait with me until the sky breaks through & our cheeks are bathed at last in blue.

your piercing eyes undress me
before your fingers even reach for my clothes,
strip them aside to reveal my yielding skin,
trembling beneath your skin
with wanting for you.   you touch me
& i don’t apologize
for my naked stomach,
the battle scars lining my thighs,
the way i cry out against your neck.  
your murmured you’re beautiful is the only
i believe, & my love, i feel i might be
when we are one.  
just yesterday,
i stamped my lips ceaselessly
down your body, left a trail of kisses
in my wake.  you were part of me
just yesterday, & now i’m counting the hours
until you will be
again.

you, with your scarless skin & healthy limbs,
breath unhindered by ash & smoke,
you don’t quite understand
the ways i like to bleed.  i am not my own
anymore.  so many moons have come & gone
since i last belonged to myself.  maybe i’m
a mess of me.  maybe my kisses sometimes taste
like melancholy
& remind you of a pain you’ve long since
forgotten.

but the tides are turning with my name
spelled in sea foam.  this time, i’m no longer
losing.  i can trace my healing wounds
through the rough fabric of my jeans
& no longer try
to cut them back open.  these nights
there is no salty slick of tears
staining my cheeks, no liquor lingering
on my tongue.  winter is passing, & finally
i am thawing.

my palms tremble
with the weight of your presence,
safely held in my heart.  you are
a rainstorm threatening to drown me &
i don’t want to have to survive you.
i have lived enough loss to know i’m ready
for the good days.
you & i are not just sunshine & flowers, but
the thought of you is forever burned into my brain,
always occupying,
always there.
darling, i love you endlessly & know
i’m yours.

i want it all.
your sleepy murmurs in my ear
as you drift away on a sea of dreams, the
gentle strokes of your fingers,
soft against my spine, the way
you hold me with your whole body.

i watched the moonlight draining onto
your bedroom walls as i lay beside your
slumbering warmth & felt something like happiness
radiating from my core.  your sheets danced with shadowplay
as i listened to your steady breaths
in & out,
couldn’t bear to slip away.

here’s the truth:
your arms feel like home,
like safety,
like a place i never want to leave.  
when you held me in that meadow,
wrapped in dreams & lust & a stark-flecked sky,
whispered the first i-love-you,
i wanted it all.

i want it all,
want to be yours,
crave you in the most indelible of ways,
urgent & deathless.
it’s finally time.  throwing out the razors.
cleansing the smoke from my lungs.
trading the bad habits i wear like shackles
to drown in your skin & sweat & sunshine.

maybe i don’t have a good reason for wanting it.
maybe i just know.

she warned me
that, when taken in overdose,
the white pills cause seizures,
anaphylaxis,
heart arrhythmia,
ending in death.
she warned me
never take
too many.

never give a girl
who tried twice
the ammunition
to try again.

i’m bleeding again
& i don’t care enough
for my own skin
to disinfect
& bandage
the damage.

so i’ll sing myself to sleep
choking on half-breaths
left breathless
at knowing
everything’s breaking
again.

i can’t believe i’d forgotten how
you would talk to me until two, sometimes three
in the morning, nonstop messages
fingers taking flight over the keys,
telling me stories, sometimes just
listening, incessantly
exposing yourself in
uncompromised open wounds.

now, it’s not quite the way it was
now, i tell myself
this doesn’t mean anything.
that we shift & settle
like dust
upon past incarnations
of us, but i miss what you gave me
early in the morning,
filling the space within my chest
that is often
empty, giving me truths &
performing absolutions
for all my past sins.

the truth is, i am no longer
the shiny new toy you are
desperate to play with
every second
of every day
i am the book at your bedside,
measuring my days by
when you turn my pages
& when you don’t
wanting you to devour me
whole
once again.

i mean, you fed me mouthfuls of beautiful words
& sang pretty promises in my ears.  so forgive me for wanting you
to be my last.  forgive me for thinking i might be something
worth keeping.  it’s just i could have sworn
our hearts beat together back
when you first leaned in to steal a kiss.  maybe i’m
a mess of foolish hopes and dreams.  maybe i’m
disaster.  but i know how you like your coffee &
the words to all your favorite songs.  i remember
everything about you.  memorized every
freckle & scar.  & you always seem to be preparing me
for the day you leave.  tonight, i’ll bandage my own
wounds.  read through pages of other people’s words.
try to forget the way loss feels
scalpel-sharp on my skin.  try to pretend
i’m yours
a little longer.

there’s smoke on my breath again
& everyone looks at me like i disappoint
i’m still trying to be better than i was
bandage my wounds
but every ugly thought splits them open
my head is fraying,
ripping at the seams
i don’t know how to fix this.

i don’t care that my heart beats off tempo anymore
not even when i’m certain it’ll give out
maybe i’m just waiting
for a sudden seize
& then nothing at all.
maybe i’d like
nothing more.

maybe it’s getting bad again
i don’t know
i don’t know
but the nights are sleepless
& my head spins when i stand too fast
my body is tired
my brain is giving up.

tonight i need to forget myself
but i can’t bring myself to say
i need you
i won’t tell you i’m aching
& all i need is your voice,
your words,
your soothing songs.
i won’t tell you.

so i’ll lie awake again,
swathed in sheets,
playing with what-ifs and worst-cases
i’ve been playing with sharp things
far too long now
but tonight,
i want that calm again.

i still remember
when you held your burning cigarette
only a gasp away
from the delicate skin
of your wrist.
your mother kicked you out
your father was drinking again
i didn’t know the right words to say,
so i didn’t say anything at all.
i don’t think you even realized
you were crying.
do you remember the night
we shared a stolen bottle of wine
told secret after secret
made love by candlelight,
the golden glow dripping over our bodies
casting languid shadows
& how after my parents had long since fallen asleep
i crept from my bedroom to the basement where you slept
curled against your listless warmth
finally sleeping through the night
without a single
bad dream.

will you forget the way you held me as i shook
uncontrollable spasms of tears & i’m sorry’s
i scared you with the sins
i commited upon my own skin
the way i never knew
how to love myself.
i’m sorry

i don’t want you to forget
how we were
how we loved
how you gave me the best of yourself
taught me of my own worth.
there are so many memories i cannot vanquish
but i no longer want to lose them,
losing you may have left me raw
but i will never stop loving.

this, i promise you
you will always live in my mind.

these nights are better spent my lips your lips & why do i still bother with pretense why can’t i say i need you at three in the morning, eyes red & raw with tears, fingernails scratching my skin to a mess of ragged lines?  the pain of missing you is not poetry.  as the moon waxes & wanes, i count my days in photographs & little blue pills but surviving is hardly a victory anymore.  at almost nineteen, you’d think i could live with myself by now.  or would have at least learned how to eat pancakes for breakfast without shuddering & seething into a breakdown.  they should have locked me up years ago & held the key hostage until i proved i could deal.  medicated me until i couldn't over-think, but me, i like my mind static over gossamer sheets of oblivion, i like my cheeks wet & lungs gasping over clouds of apathy.  some days, i fall in love with my disorders.  some days, i want to cut their gory innards & watch them bleed out on my bedroom floor.

i confess i’m a little in love with my sadness.  the way it flays me open & scours with acid.  how it is the only thing i can count on to stick around.  i can count on my mind to craft its own disaster.  i can count on my brain to betray my body.  you learn to love what is given to you.  so i learned to love what keeps me up at night.  i broke my own heart long before anyone else came around to step on the pieces.  me, i’m a secret you won’t want to keep.  shove me out the door.  secure the locks.  tell me to leave before i strike sparks from your skin.  tell me i’m as worthless as i feel.  tell me i’m nothing anyone would want to have.  tell me there are countless girls you’d find easier to love.  be cruel to me.  be the monster i am to myself.  please.  if you’re going to break me, get it over with.  make the first cut.  i’ll be gone from the moment the words find themselves on your pretty mouth.  but honestly?  of all the things i wanted, you’re the best i’ve ever held as my own.  let me pretend you think of me in forevers.  let me dream a little while longer.

sometimes i talk too fast & my friends don’t know how to handle me, not when my brain races in labyrinthine circles that don’t make sense to anyone outside of it, sometimes i lick the blood from my wounds only to cut them open again, sometimes i want to kiss your thighs, sometimes i want to die.  why does every morning taste like loss on my sleepy lips?  i don’t know why i love you to pieces when i promised i’d never rip you apart like the rest of them.  the coffee i drink these days is too bitter, its acidic aftertaste makes me wince & reminds me of all the times he screamed for me to eat & made me cry too hard to catch my breath.  i’m talking to the spiders on my ceiling again.  i’m talking about new beginnings.  or giving up again.  the truth is i’m afraid of myself.  the truth is i’m asking someone else to take control.  you’ll find me in the space between dreams & nightmares.  you’ll find me if you look hard enough.  just come.  please, prove to me i’m a lost cause worth fighting for.  give me your fragile heart.  give me your tender eyes.  my dear, i would **** to make you smile.  i would spend the rest of my life doing nothing else.

my skin is redolent with the feel of you
your ceaselessly stamped kisses,
tongue dancing over my stomach,
branding my flesh with the seal
of your delicate mouth.  
the scars that traipse my thighs
long for the fingers that trace them
in quiet compassion.  i yearn for you most
when you have long since left.  now, it is
one fifty seven & in five hours
i will rise to meet the morning,
your name still burning
on my lips.
i cannot absolve
my body from yours,
even when the memory
keeps me restless
& awake through
endless nights.

in the moment the cars collided,
i thought i must be dead,
certain the impact could not be survivable,
certain i was finally released, but
the hit should have come harder.

shattered glass & a violent blow to the head
was not enough to sever my tie to life.
the crash left me bruised blue-black
& awash in the aftermath
of sudden exhilaration
at finally tasting oblivion
even if only for a second,
even if i still came through alive.
i didn’t want to be.

this summer, i flirted fearlessly
with suicide.  swallowed poison pills
& played with sharp things
in hopes of writing an end.
when the headlights raged in,
blinding me with light & sound,
i was ready.
i thought, take me.
i thought, let me go.
i thought, set me free.

months later, lying in my bed,
immobilized with my first panic attack,
the tears came bitter & unyielding.
i told you i thought i might be dying again,
but this time, i wasn’t ready.
this time, i had a reason
to stick around
a little bit
longer.

the only difference between august and november
was you.
i wish i had the self-preservation
to want life on my own,
to be self-sustaining,
to need nothing but myself
but the wiring of my brain
is painful & incomplete.

you are everywhere i look,
your sweaters residing in my dresser drawers,
photographs of us filling my scrapbook,
songs i can never listen to the same again
without being reminded of you.

you said, i love you
you said, you are beautiful
you said, how could anyone walk away from you?
all my life, i have learned the art of losing
no one can be counted on to stay.
all i want, all i need, is something lasting
something permanent.
i search for just one indelible thing
& hoping it will be you,
that cracks me open at the fault lines.
leaves me breathless & choking
on dreams that might just
slip away
again.

please don’t think there’s more of me.
i am not what i used to be.
these days, i am just
the palest impression of myself
a fraction of my own existence.

lately, i am any girl
buried beneath clinical diagnoses,
verdicts made by women smart enough
to have multiple Ph.Ds,
but not sad enough to know
how ‘major depressive disorder’
has discolored our years,
left the days stained blue-black,
bruised raw with pain.

this leaves me with my own two hands,
trying to find the romance in mornings spent alone
emptying the coffee ***
escaping into other lives written twelve point font
on well-loved pages
but i am always left wanting.

i am alone & this is not beautiful
my sadness swallows me whole.
when things are bad, it leaves me
paralyzed in my bed as the daylight dwindles,
bent into myself stifling the sounds of sobbing
with my fist
so the neighbors won’t hear.

dealing with depression when there’s no one else around
doesn’t go down easy, but then again
neither is hard liquor
at least it takes the edge off
at least something makes the suffering
of living less of a burden to bear.

call it semantics, but this isn’t living
once we come into being,
once we have consciousness,
we are dying real slow.  
we **** time until it comes back
to throw us six feet under.
karma’s karma.

you are made of many girls,
all longing to be lighter,
softer, sweeter, less hurt,
less intense, not
a burden to bear.

your kiss scalds with the promise
of forevers. you swore your allegiance
to boys who were unsure of you,
left them dizzied & breathless,
yearning for the empty space
you once filled,
the missing lodestone,
left them lost.

you struggled ceaselessly through the fire,
rubbed salt in your own wounds.
i can still trace the story of your suffering
in scar tissue sewn across wrists.
but you need never apologize.
the wildfires burning in your wake
may have scorched & singed your skin,
but you are not yet scattered ashes.

do not say ‘I’m sorry’ for survival.
your brain is a battleground,
marred with years of misuse,
but you need never apologize for what you are.
when they ask about your flaws, tell them
what it took to get from then to now.
tell them you are lionhearted.

remember, you are a cosmic body.
your bones are  made of starstuff
& when you breathe in,
welcome the universe
filling your lungs.

here in my hot sheets,
you are an archangel slumbering;
that holier-than-jesus smile & *******
if you don’t know how lovely you are,
sharp ***** hips & bitten lips.

i just want to touch you,
please, i want to press curious fingers
to your whispering veins & learn the life
racing through them.

you are an infinity of strangers i would like to know &
these bones are not my bones anymore,
i am not my own anymore,
not since you sent earthquakes
through my body, felt
every shiver & shake.

let me bury myself in
your listless limbs,
sleep away the sickness
& the winter.  go ahead.
steal my breath away.
take my heart.
it was all yours
from the start.

you say love a string of nonsense words hung like christmas lights about our ankles & fades like broken radios losing their verve.  i say everything in case you might stay awhile but you all out the back door faster than a vulture to the ****.  my fingers twining yours & it’s not romantic when you whirl me into motion like some blue-eyed marionette.  you say i’m so familiar & don’t believe me when i swear i’m alright.  the truth is an emergency waiting to happen.  you so skinny thighs & ******* beautiful.  you sharp teeth sunk deep into my flesh & we all out of gauze.

seven years old: the first time i felt the onslaught
of crippling sadness, inexplicable & heavier on my heart
than any childhood misfortunes had readied me for.  small body shaking,
pulse racing, convulsing with tears, i collapsed sobbing
into my mother’s lap.  she stroked my hair,
touched the wetness on my cheeks, asked
what i could possibly be so upset about?

i didn’t have an answer.

twelve years old i am sitting on my carpet playing with razors,
delighting in the heady rush of breaking skin & blood.
never before have i committed such deliberate sins
upon my body, knowing that acting out
virulent self-hatred
was not the way to deal
but this is the beginning of everything
that follows in its wake.
i am dousing my weeping wounds in rubbing alcohol
because it hurts me more.

fifteen years old, skipping breakfast,
tossing school lunches in the trash,
begging off dinner because i’m sick/my stomach hurts/
i don’t feel like eating/please don’t make me/
just leave me alone/
just leave me the **** alone.
learning to subsist on nothing,
taking the plunge down the rabbit hole,
headfirst,
just to see how far
it goes.

seventeen, rock bottom.  eighty-nine pounds,
a haphazardly placed collection of scars,
i cry every morning & night.  i am horrifically in love
& i’m killing him.  no amount of apologies can make up
for what i’ve done.

eighteen, the summer turns into a nightmare.  
i begin to forget things.  like how it used to be okay sometimes.
there are pills sleeping beneath my mattress again.
i contemplate killing myself every day,
decide i’m not worth the effort.
far more punishing to exist half-human.
far better to wreck myself beyond redemption.

look at me now, wearing a smile
that doesn’t quite fit my face.  i can pretend to be okay
most of the time, but my head,
my head is a warzone of agony,
high on anxiety, low on dopamine,
struggling to get by doesn’t begin to describe my days.

this is how i am &
i don’t know how to survive this.
i don’t know if i can live with myself.

don’t pretend you have seen what i carry inside of me there is a wildfire between my ribs i am afire with thoughts whose intensity would burn you alive maybe i am just a girl but if you had seen the things i’ve seen you’d understand why i am the way i am i don’t mean to be sad but i am done damming up my tears for you i am finished with self-restraint i will bleed rivers & watch myself ignite because i know what i am & i will hurt if i have to i will not pretend i am okay just you wait i am not your dream i am a nightmare

more than anything, i need your love.
i didn’t dare to ask for it, but
your unexplained adoration slunk seamlessly
into the passing days until i let my guard down
& believed you when you said you felt
the same.

you don’t even know the half of it.
you couldn’t understand how i gave you myself
from the beginning, trusting you to be the one
not to break me, but giving you that crushing capacity
all the same.

[one night, when i confessed how much i feared losing you,
you told me,
reassuringly,
“there will be other people.”
but you only made me cry. how could you possibly feel how i feel
when you could see my future in the hands of others & i only have eyes
for you?]

i’m sorry i’m not as whole as i’d like to be.
i’m sorry for apologizing to you
instead of kissing your forehead.
i’m sorry i carved the word “worthless” onto my skin
when i was seventeen
& that you can still read it.

there will always be the loose ends,
the fragments,
pieces of myself that remain
raw & ragged & will never be
okay,
like the nervous, automatic game
played by my palms, as they strain to clutch
my naked stomach,
the moment i awake,
measuring
with practiced fingers,
confirming i have not became an excess.
“too much” used to be far less literal until
i gave my shrinking self-worth a body to
dwindle in comraderie.

i am waiting for you decide you need someone
with more skin than scar tissue.
i am waiting for you to discover i am far more empty
than full.

i am waiting for these jarring epiphanies to come to you
in a rush of suddenly,
a wave of understanding breaking over your bowed head,
the realization i am not
what you want.

if there’s one thing i know for sure,
you could walk away from me & never look back
& i would only blame myself.

this is just to say
it’s been ten lonely days
& where are you tonight, love,
when i lie awake
beneath glow-in-the-dark stars plastered all above?

but they’re nothing like the real ones embedded in dark skies
& my daydreams do no justice to your understated eyes.
you are more than i’ve imagined a person could ever be,
though it wouldn’t shock my system if you decided soon to flee

& forgive me for being so confessional,
i don’t mean to write an ending before we’ve lived this out in full

it’s just i think that you’re entwined
in the fibers of my mind,
when every thought that fires
in my brain
is laced with your name

this time, i want nothing but to desperately adore you
tell me you’ll stick around & this time it might be true,
i’ll pretend that i don’t know how i am difficult to hold,
all rough edges & teenage vices, quickly growing old.

i wear wounds on my skin & sadness on my sleeve,
scream & shake & starve for a little reprieve,
& you are the best i have to medicate the pain
so stay a little longer & i’ll try to do the same.

i loved you before i knew what i was looking for.  
i loved you before i knew what love is, carelessly left
the pieces of us scattered on your bedroom floor,
pretended i didn’t know
i was breaking you.

when i told you i didn’t think we were meant for each other,
what i really meant was
you deserved better than the likes of me.
i spent weeks locked in the hospital
for playing with suicide,
had an almost-child once,
could handle the taste of liquor better than
your fragile lips, none of this
i told you.

i loved you, but you needed someone
with more skin than scar tissue.
i loved you, but i didn’t trust myself
not to leave you with more damage
than you could bear.

we were lovers once,
sought solace in one another’s skin & sweat,
gasping with a slip of lips down the spine.
we were lovers once
& then we weren’t.
it’s still strange to me
how that could be.
i always thought you’d be the last,
called you salvation,
you called me
yours so i wouldn’t be surprised
to reach within your ribs & rediscover
pieces of myself long since forgotten
& i don’t know who i am anymore
but you knew me best,
i ran to you bleeding & crying & starving
only to evade your every attempt to help me escape
the voices making madness in my head, only to rage more
& push back against your sweetness, your concern,
your unconditional love, we shared that
with each other but we stopped making each other
better & when i pointed this out to you
i thought i broke you,
watched you cry so hard it took your breath away
& this whole summer i was afraid
you’d decide living wasn’t worth the effort.
we have both worn angry cuts on our skin,
but the last time i saw you,
ours have both faded into mere scars.
we’ve put down the razorblades & stopped
flirting with suicide,
& though we still have our vices,
i look at us now & we’ve never been
happier.
so i smoke my cigarette & take some photographs
while you inhale a line of ******* & we both smile
because sometimes life is just grand,
somehow
it’s okay we’re still medicating
the human condition
because we are proof
that fundamental love does not go away
that it is possible to heal
that we were never broken.
those two years of my life are forever yours.
you own that.
you kept me safe.
you loved me when i couldn’t love myself,
unyielding,
ceaseless,
& i’m grateful.
just look at us now.
we never thought we’d make it.
i never thought we’d still be alive
so breathe in your chemicals,
swallow your pills,
do your worst &
i love you nonetheless.

see it’s never quite the way it is
in the beginning of everything,
that desperate, urgent discovery of
one another’s every facet,
paragraphs of conversations
that never seem to cease,
& you’re both a little obsessed
& then you’re the only one still hooked
because there will always come a settling
when being in love becomes a fact of existence
instead of a phenomenon,
when things
change.

i hate the way i want you,
every minute & always.
i hate waiting for a sign
that i’m not the only one still jonesing.
the mornings come in cold
as they drown my dreams,
dreams spent reminiscing
your angel lips.

& call me madness but i swear that
if i took a blade to my skin tonight,
desire would pour from those blue, ebbing veins
resting beneath my wrists,
all that wanting
bleeding out & puddling
on the floor.

some days, i feel sick with loving you,
body tense & aching.
why does everyone associate love with the heart
when i feel it deep in the recesses of my stomach,
the gory bits inside me twisting with a hunger
nothing else can soothe.

wanting breaks over me in waves,
the crushing knowledge that i crave you
maddeningly, the rush of your fingers tripping down
my spine, your listless, brimming
heat, those indefinite
probing
eyes.
would you hold me like it hurts
not to?
would you sit with me until our minds coalesce
with the passing of time & certainty?

tell me, how does it feel to be the focus of my
desperate tunnel vision?
you have left every cell of my body intoxicated
with longing,
touched the scars of my skin as if
they are the most beautiful marks
i posses,
loved me with all your fervor & complexity.

the manic nights mean lying terribly awake in sweat-soaked sheets,
sleep evades & the only racing thought that pervades is
i need you
which scares me to breaking,
to think that i am only whole
in having you,
but there is a space within me
& you are the missing piece.

one in the morning.  i’m on the second bottle of cheap red wine & am smoking my third cigarette in the last hour.  fourth time writing you a letter.  so far, there are only five words on the page: why did you ******* leave? in six hours, my mother’s shrill alarm will rouse her & she’ll come to my bedroom to ask why i’m awake so early.  i won’t mention why it’s seven in the morning & i haven’t fallen asleep yet because that sort of thinking only leads back to you.  there are eight razorblades remaining in the package beneath my mattress.  now, i have nine gashes on my wrist, nine more good reasons i still need you.  it’s been ten days since you hung up the phone & left me to wallow in empty static.  eleven since i whispered my first “i love you” in your ear.  the clock on my wall hits all twelve numbers twice a day, same as always even though time has lost all semblance of meaning.  here’s the deal: i’ll you give you thirteen more unlucky days to come back to me, but if you’ve left for good, i’m gone.

some days i wish i smoked less & laughed more, that my hair was longer & caught sunlight in its dull strands, my smile less irreparably crooked, my body softer & sweeter to sink into.  that fictional characters whose stories end in tragedy didn’t bring me to tears.  that i was something easier to love.  
these days, i clutch at my skin with virulent self-hatred & try to be different.  these days, i am not much of anything at all.  these days, i am not worth loving.
but other days, i imagine dying my hair a ridiculous color & piercing my bottom lip, wearing a lot of grungy clothes & getting ****** out of my mind every morning.  i think of asking for crayons & a children’s menu when you take me somewhere expensive for dinner to see if i embarrass you.  of making love to you in front of a big-picture window & not caring who might see.
honestly, i don’t care if you disapprove of me.  maybe i don’t love myself enough, but i have at least enough self-respect to never change for your benefit.
i don’t care if you think i’m unattractive or childish.  i don’t intend to live long enough for looks or acting my age to matter much.  someday, you’ll find a girl who is perfectly pretty, who takes good care of her body, who doesn’t always make you think so much.
me, i like myself a challenge.  all sharp angles & rough edges.  unsure of whether or not you’ll stick around to find out what lies beneath the exterior.  me, i’m i & that is enough.  for now.

even after all this time, your still, quiet form slumbering beside me never ceases to amaze me, those long eyelashes, longer than the length of my thumbnail, fluttering against my cheek still make my heart quiver, the essence of you lingering on my lips hasn’t failed to stay sacred to me.  all this time & the simple happenstance of your perpetuate presence warms me to the core.  i cannot, have not, will never take you for granted, not when your soothing silence is as captivating as when you speak, not when you are the most breathtaking discovery i continue to make day by day by day.  you have taught me how to savor, drink my coffee in slow sips sluicing down my throat, the pauses between swallows made for languid eye contact with you.  you have laid me down & loved me to breathy, shivering pieces, we have charted the topography of one another’s bodies with needing fingers, a little more “touch me” than i knew i could feel.  my head always races in labyrinthine circles but you slow it to a halt with your lips & skin & brimming heat.  i mean, maybe i’m a little broken, maybe even a lot, but with you, i don’t mind so much anymore.

my god, i want you
with such startling intensity
it frightens me,
to think i might have left pieces
of myself lodged in your skin
when i held you so tight
& darling,
i’m a live wire,
branding you to the core
with unashamed desire,
i have no apologies
for the way you ignite me.

never did i expect anyone
to illicit this response,
a chemical reaction coursing
from synapse to synapse,
you are infinities beyond any substance
i’ve ever tasted,
no formula able to replicate
the way it feels
with your lips pressed against
my skin.

you have laid me down
& loved me,
coaxed sounds from my throat
i didn’t know i had within me,
learned my body with an urgency
that left me breathless,
taught me not to be afraid
of your eyes upon me
undone.

&
oh, my love,
my love,
my
love.

so now i am forever imbued with the salt of sweat from your skin, the scent of you lingering, potent & pure, heavy on me long after our comings & goings.  our love has been made here in this bed where i lay my head to sleep at night, sheets tangled in a shambled aftermath.  i know what it is to have you now & this only leaves me wanting more, wanting you, every inch beneath my lips, i cannot get enough.  nothing is more beautiful than your breath un eve n, sweet against my neck, & your body on mine.  i feel every cell of your being react when i touch you, a poetry of flesh on flesh, the catalyst to a breathless finale.  lying naked there beside you, your palm grazing my stomach, cuddled close to the cocoon of your warmth, i am bliss.  you & me are we is us is one & i am finally waking.

just stay with me forever and read this
writing on my walls s l o w l y without a single
pause.
here is where the meaning lies,
in someone else’s train of words.

there’s no one quite like you,
angel bones and raw beauty with a
perceptivity like something foreign.

i’ll listen; your words follow me like
lost ships to phantom harbors.
you are the tides coaxing in the sea.
maybe someday, I’ll tell you
every/thing.

here in the une ve n silences between lines,
i don’t have to be perfect; you don’t care,
and that has made
all the difference.

I wear a bodysuit of glass and blades,
plucking at my shrunken skin.
for every time he howls,
shattering cries,
I am torn.

here is the secret
no one knows: my bones show through.
beneath the whispers of cotton and muscle,
this girl is an empty vessel,
slowing, submissive, sinking,
the depths, constant calling,
it would be so necessary
to let go.

the lone wolf growling in my belly,
sharp teeth scraping at
the carcass of skin
and bone.

nothing will deaden
his hunger; I don’t know
what he wants,
so I give him
everything,
my skeleton, in
sacrificial offering
so that one of us
will be satisfied,
so that I will
be enough.
& at last, I am
home.

sometimes, a kiss is not just a kiss.  sometimes, it tastes like absolution & leaves fires of desire burning in its aftermath.  i wrote in my journal that i loved you on october ninth.  three weeks before i was brave enough to actually confess that to you.  that night, you held me with your whole body & i loved you with my longing limbs.  that night, you left my eyes wet & wanting because finally, there was you.

& now there is you & i cling manic to your delicate frame.  our fingers make love every time they entwine.  you kiss me tongue deep, whisper your love into my neck, & i forget how to hate myself a little more each time.  the number on the scale is a great unknown, but i am not afraid, not when you touch me urgently with such tenderness & stroke my stomach.

all i need is you & i will give the best of myself.  put down the liquor & the cigarettes that only serve to **** me quicker.  smash the mirrors with my fists & look to my reflection in the glow of your eyes instead  to see that i am beautiful.  with you, i do not need to carve myself into something worth loving.  with you, all i want to feel is love.  & my god, all i want to have is you.

anxiety: my heart wakes me up, tattooing irregular beats against
my ribs, pulse racing, breath shaking.  i cannot tell
if this is real or psychosomatic.  these days,
i think about death all the time,
no longer by suicide.  now, i am
an accident waiting to happen,
fragile from years of misuse &
neglect.  the shallow inhales
of my lungs tell me
i am not okay.

depression:  this is a gray day.  i swallow my meds even though
they take away my mania.  so i drink black coffee until my mind
races itself in circles, chasing its tail like a rabid dog.
i keep the razors hidden in my sock drawer,
just in case.  

anorexia: my ribs ****** forward from my skin again, the sharp
protrusion of my bones beginning to show through.  i am eating
but drinking my weight in water
& mainlining caffeine to keep my metabolism high & my weight
low.  i am still child-sized & i don't want to grow.  
they lift me easily with their arms & marvel
at my featherweight body.  
the compliments i get only make me
eat less.

self-harm: on the days when i am low, i trace
the silver stretch of scars scattered over my skin
with a yearning for a blade between my fingers
just one last time.  i swear to you, the bleeding is over,
but i need to know
i am still brave
enough
to hold a sharp edge against my flesh
& press down,
hard.

addiction: a month ago,
i downed four adderall in one sitting,
luxuriating in the heady rush & lack of pain,
the quiet & the calm.
when i lived at home, i stole
my mother's vicodin & took the whole bottle.
i'm not sorry.  
when the boy who only cared about ******* me
offered mdma for free,
i accepted, but i shouldn't have trusted him
to keep me safe,
blacking out on his kitchen
floor.
drink red wine to forget
my insecurity, inhale
thick, sweet smoke to feel
some semblance of happy,
drag on cigarettes
down to their filters
until i feel properly
alive.

all i want is to be better, but
where to begin?

sigmund freud believed we all carry within ourselves
a suicide impulse, some
strange & counter-evolutionary desire
to return to that moment
of perfect, untainted stillness
before birth.

i don't know if i agree, but
i know enough to know
i want to feel that quiet
instead of the voices
in my head.

you don't need to give me more reasons
to pick myself apart; i never said
i was perfect.  
you don't need to point out
the flaws i already hate myself for.

the truth is this: i have found someone
who makes me feel like me again,
who i will expose myself to,
in uncompromised vulnerability,
& who will love every bit of ugly,
who will make me better.

my lungs do not know how to be lungs,
i am becoming bones again,
the scars on my wrists threatening to arise
as fresh again..

i have never once thought myself good enough
& now he is teaching me how to believe
just that.  everything else is falling
beneath me; it is all a ball & chain
around my ankles,
while your words rail through me,
bullets giving me just one more reason
to bleed again.

these tears are not for you,
i am not for you,
i am trying to be better,
& please, just let me fight
the urge to seek that silence
without giving me another reason
to throw myself
headlong down
the rabbit
hole.

up & away floats my red balloon heart
      lifted
lightened &        (when) you kiss me feverish, the spring flowers
crushed beneath (our) bare feet & i think this must be the price
to the universe paid for love so sweet & so unrelenting, darling, you are
the stillest of seas after storms have swept past, the softest
lips i have ever touched my body
your body & be gentle with me:
in your arms is some kind of otherworld, the dis joint ed
passing of time
bothtooquick and  f a r  t o o  s l o w but i am left always quite wanting
more & we become galaxies
when the lights go out, starlit & desperate for expansion
from the confines of our selves so, o love of mine, let us
mudddy the space between you & i
with uncharted exploration.  a poetry of flesh on
flesh & i will lay you down tonight.

the blue-black night danced over our bodies, the moonlight waltzed in through your car windows. i tremble to the rhythm of your breath as you learn my legs with urgent fingers.  as your skin adheres to mine, i feel the wanting electric coursing in currents through the rush of my blood.  we are a tangle of killer chemistry & searching mouths.  so you bite my bottom lip & that is so ******* rad.  our clothes are nothing but pretext.  there is no stopping the way you puzzle piece me together.  your every touch is an absolution & i want it all.  the wind shakes free the dying leaves & we sing each other lullabies with fiery kisses.

so it would seem that we have both been yearning, the eager entanglement of our loose limbs leaves me just a little drunk, forgive me for my clumsy fingers & breathless gasps.  i am dizzy with the weight of your lips, kissing me tongue-deep, awash in your scent & splendor.  i cannot get enough of you, now that you dared tell me you loved me beneath the starry-eyed blanket of nightfall, clasped in your radiant warmth & body heat, while the wild things sang.  here, intertwined within a mess of quilts, we are learning each other’s flawed perfection.  i do not apologize for my soft stomach or the sea of scars laddering my legs, & you breathe that i am beautiful.  there is no cocktail of chemicals beating through my blood tonight, only the weight of your body on my body & the poetry of us.