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?

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.

i wrote you a relentless slew of love letters and gave you all my artwork.  you left them all scattered haphazardly throughout your room, never once bothering to keep them safe.  you never valued anything i gave to you, even in knowing they were all extensions of my tumultuous, uncontainable love for you.  i stopped giving you those things made of my love because you tread thoughtlessly upon them with your bare feet, underwriting my creations.
2. you said i was worth the work, but you never put it in.  i showed you the trainwreck of scars laddering my skin, the bones protruding from beneath, told you about how i swallowed all those pills wishing for a quick ending, then starved for years because i thought i deserved death slow & painful.  i told you i hated myself.  i told you i felt unlovable.  i cried in front of you, exposed in a splendor of shame & total vulnerability, & all you had in response was an awkward little laugh & “well, you don’t look too skinny” you left for work & i cried my heart out.  i don’t blame you for being foolish & insensitive, but regardless, *******.  
3. when you are high, which is always, you become replaceable with any other body.  you repeat the same stories, tell the same jokes, expect me to find you relentlessly charming. you zone in on youtube videos that are not ******* funny, stop laughing at them, it is all so pointless. you are redolent with intellect wasted away on the drugs, mere chemicals that entertain you far more than i ever did.
4. the moment you took me for granted, i knew i was going to walk away.
5. the night after my sister tried to **** herself, after i sought you out for comfort & all you gave me was apathy, i traced a razor across my skin, contemplating her decision.  i didn’t tell you, but i’m not sorry.
6. you always felt the need to remind me i was free, but i already knew.  i am my own person.  this is something i have always known.  you never had the power to influence the way i lived my life or the people i loved & still love & will always love.  don’t ever think you had that power over me.
7. don’t ever tell me i do not need to change.  there are things i have to fix about myself.  not all of my flaws are beautiful.  do not romanticize me.  do not turn me into some idea you have of me in your head.  i am not a beautiful and heavenly creature, I am a human girl & i have made mistakes.
8. i care about you, but i care about myself more, & this is why i am walking away.
9. the damage is irreparable.  i wasted my time believing you could love me the way i wanted you to, but you can’t & you won’t & that is okay.  i do not resent you for it, but you need to let me go.  i am not your dream girl & you are not for me. do not cling to the illusion of who you think i am.  let me go.
10. i am leaving because this time, i don’t just think i deserve better.  i know.

we exist together
on some alternate continuum of
the physical world, a secret
corner of consciousness,
chances reality & the universe
would never grant us.

(somewhere in this mad world, i am
yours)

forget age & years & impossibility.
i knew
from the moment i memorized you.  you & your
brittle ribs &
soft lips &
geisha feet.  you
infinities of beautiful & eyes
Lake Michigan, sparkling waters hold
indefinite light.

(i love you, but
your bones show through)

you pretty lost girl,
the raddest human i’ve ever seen.
be my porcelain dolltoy &
i’ll kiss your every waking limb.

you were the only one
who thought to ask & i could have
cried, because you knew.  you knew, & it was
all right.  because you were
the first,
you were
the only
& forgive me for my
bright eyes
feverish
on you.

i will give to you a piece of myself that will attach itself to your heart.  no matter how meticulously you carve with a scalpel, no amount of time spent playing self-surgeon will remove this part of me from your organs & flesh.  it will evade your every attempt to erase me.  you will never erase me.
2. when i said i loved you too, it wasn’t a reflexive gesture said only to complement your whispered ‘i love you.’  i said the words because i couldn’t bear not to.
3. the coffee i bring to you every morning & the goodnight-kisses stamped ceaselessly to your forehead will tell you all the things i cannot say.
4. by some fated or perhaps coincidental quirk of the universe, we became us.  i will clap a hand across your mouth any time you question how or why because it is irrelevant.  
5. i will bend until i break for you.  i will bleed rivers & hurt until i gasp with pain because you are allowed to see me at my ugliest (no pain like this body).
6. there will be bad days & good days.  you will wonder if i am worth the work & i will try desperately to prove you wrong.  i will push & shove & scream, but beneath it all, i will wish i could be selfish enough to ask you not to leave.
7. never will i ever learn how not to love you.

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.

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.

I fell out of love with myself as others fell in, stumbling
Through the winter of my life in search of a body bag
Or the percussive clatter of bones beneath the façade of a porcelain doll,
Pretty & perfect with empty eyes to cast upon the world.
my body was made to be carved into something beautiful.
the dizziness threads in & out, veering in & out of consciousness,
my eyes are brimming with psychedelic stars.  
I am alone, cold & wanting, awash in
the terrible potential for human connection.

darling, there will be days when our cheeks are slicked wet from the rainstorms within our hearts, when i will be rendered unable to disengage from the safety of my blankets, when i will ask for you to hold me until i no longer feel as if i am breaking.  there will be nights when i smoke countless cigarettes until my throat is ragged & it is easier not to speak, when i will not allow myself to eat because i believe i do not deserve it, when i will call long after you have fallen to sleep, desperately seeking your voice through the static because i am afraid i will forget the way it resonates in my eardrums.

but even this certain pain, my love, my own one, will make us better.  you will see me destroyed & vulnerable, flawed with need.  we will strip each other bare to our truest of selves & fall in love with that sheer beauty beneath.  i give you my undying adoration, the ever-present reaching of my arms, my boundless, uncontained love.  

you are the spark of stars illuminating my night sky, you are coursing with urgency through my bloodstream, you are everywhere & our time is now.  i will love you fragile.  i will love you strong.  
oh darling, i will kiss your fingertips each & every night before together we dream.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

& tell me you picture me naked before falling to sleep at night because you like me vulnerable.  i like me raw & wanting beneath your steady frame, the stars flee into the night when I cry out against your collarbones, a sweet, shivering finale. broken into a million parts, we puzzle piece each other back together stroke by stroke.  the trees in your backyard shudder with the lost weight of autumn while i lay you down & love you.  kiss my fragile limbs with your everything, adhering some flesh to these bird bones with your cathartic touch until I am better.  until I am whole.  turn off the lights & we’ll do our ghost thing in the dark.  dans la nuit, nous dansons, either way.

hello, your baby-brown-eyes flutter rad vibes into my shivery heart a mess with unsung feeling, we will stargaze a thousand nights together, this i know, my beautiful.  your beautiful is torturous & seductive as hell, i long, i yearn, i spin, perpetuate circles my head bowed to your toes, tell me your gory & everything.  i will keep you secret, i will keep you safe.  summer's kiss bestowed upon our rosy cheeks, we will walk through winterland with hands clasped tight, it is salvation.  hallelujah your unabashed love, your brimming heat, your humanity.  connection to connection, we become live wires every time our minds marry themselves in electric emotion, light the night, so ******* beautiful.  feel the love i send to you even when i am gone.  together in entangled wavelengths, in constant thought.  together in conscious attachment ascending rhyme or reason, in knowledge & understanding, in open wounds.

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.

we smoke hand-rolled cigarettes just to be awash in the splendor of it all, but i don’t tell you i like to feel the disintegration of my organs in a thick cloud of menthol & formaldehyde.  i don’t tell you i still press fingers to the back of my raw-skinned throat, just to know i haven’t lost the courage.  without new scars healing on my delicate wrists & sweet-sour pills dancing in my blood, i am nothing worth remembering.  every night, i fall asleep with my cat snuggled warm against my clattering bones & measure my stomach with trembling palms, afraid that i have suddenly erupted from my wispy shape into something breathing.  a girl of no substance, dark matter where flesh once lived, hollowed perfection in the stiff arrangement of limbs on a crooked frame.  you kiss my knees goodnight; we don’t mention you are sad again or that i am becoming a skeleton.  your teeth are serrated, sweet against my neck.  your hips are songbirds, dipping into my belly, begging with a lust i can’t feel anymore.  your body is heavy & all i want is sleep, the sweetness of a pillow beneath my icy cheek, the passage of time without the constant obsession over infinite sins.  i never promised you a rose garden, so welcome in the monster.

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.

you call me e because i said i liked it; this is something more sacred than any god & ******* if my ******* heart doesn't riot every time your bright eyes trip over mine.  be wild with me, mon chere, be free.  we can capture an entourage of looks in each other’s’ faces with careful photographs, but there’s nothing quite like the topography of your cheekbones between my trembling palms.  your every word falls softly beautiful – did you know that?

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.

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.

we waited for nightfall before making love to the moon,
smoking hand-rolled cigarettes in the breathless aftermath, a
poetry of flesh on flesh & your bright eyes on mine.  i didn’t apologize for the asymmetry of my ******* or the silver scars laddering my wrists,
the cartography of a suicide left incomplete.  you look at me  like i am something worth loving
& all i need are your grasping palms, your shameless love, your
beautiful heart beating against my chattering bones.  we erupt into a star-stained sky,
explosions of everything trapped within us spinning into the stoic dark.  you infinities of beautiful & i give you my all.

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.

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.

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.

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.

there’s a reason for the way my heart quivers
when you speak, when you are silent,
you are here, you are not here.  but your name stills my lips,
courses through my ebbing veins, i feel you
igniting my bones all the same.

i love with the whole of my being: give my all,
give you my everything, with the knowledge
that it might never be enough.
you may realize
i am not worth the work.  i will give you
the potential to ruin me & if you do,
every second will be precious
because this means you will have meant
to me.

what matters is this: you make me feel
like a person.  your smile never ceases
to scrub my soul soft & clean
with light & i want
all of you, your every insignificant
thought, your slightest
expressions, your seething
hurt.  give me
your goriest depths &
i will believe them beautiful.

& if you leave, when
you leave, there will be nothing to
forgive.  i will watch
your lovely, retreating form with
a smile smoldering my lips because
you happened to me,
you mattered,
& this will sometimes be difficult
to recall to memory, but i will not
forget.

you have taught me to be brave,
brazen, unabashed, unafraid.
the wanting you is worth the probability
of losing & failing.  you are worth it.  
i give you myself, i give you
my love.

the future is your fingers threading my hair.
my manic hands clutching at your t-shirt
to desperately hold you closer. your breath
becoming my breath. the deathless
entanglement
of our more-than-selves.

[i dive within the catacombs of my heart
for an answer & emerge with
youyouyou]

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.

you are quiet sometimes,
the stillness lingering in the
pauses between words, the breaths
of reflection.  i like
the way your heart is sweet.  i like
the residue of pain residing in your
forehead, a permanent flesh memory
of the suffering we were both
ignited with,
engulfed in,
lost to.

you too have thrown yourself
down the rabbit hole, begging for
an ending, but
i will not be another
sad story.  we are not
tragedies today & i will breathe
with reason & for
you.

i am sinking to the seabed
with the weight of the world; tell me
i am not alone, wallowing down in
these depths.  tell me
one thing i’ll believe is
true.

i can swear a million promises & wish on
dandelion seeds that this is forever,

but then again,
someday, the earth will fall in love
with my body & you will forget
my name.

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.

i’m not supposed to try and write to you or contact you or even think of you as often as i do, but i miss you.  i ******* miss you like winter & nighttime smoke fixes & pure unadulterated bliss.  it hurts to care for you as much as i do because we are an impossibility, the insolvable equation with no easy compromise.  you aren’t supposed to think about me either, but i must cross your mind sometimes, if you meant half the things you said.  i just want you to worry about me, to care for me, to wonder about me.  i need to matter, because i’m worthless without someone to pull me from disaster time after time.  i’m  bleeding again & this time it’s deep.  caring for my body has been pushed to the sidelines in favor of oblivion & self-destruction.  the weeks after graduation, i spent them in a ****** blur of mindlessness & self-hatred in the lucid moments that were few & far between.  i wish i told you why i wrote all that poetry, that it was all personal, that i lied when i said i was okay.  i need a friend, a body beside me, anyone to talk to at three in the morning when i’m crying & don’t know why.  this hurts like everything else, but you are a strand of something wishful, because maybe you care more than you said & you want to save me as much as i want to be saved.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.