i.  its feeding off my body,
    the emotions turned to physical symptoms: i feel sadness like an
    ache in my stomach. i feel loneliness in my chest.
    my whole body is a callus.
          (how many bruises do you have?)
    im jealous cause i want you and it makes you want me more.
    i get high cause i love you and it makes me wanna puke.
                                                           ­                  i'll bite all your nails off.
    *******, just **** me already cause it makes you want me more
    and you need that security. its a give and
    take, mutual reconciliation,
    symbiosis.

ii.       i never fall for the body count, this **** means nothing to me.
          **** your blunt, that's my blunt now. i think i have control.
          
          so, *******, that's my blunt, that's my
          bad. you can do whatever you want to me; my pride isn't at
          stake, that's someone else's problem now. i have nothing so i
          have nothing to lose, we both know that i only came to
          smoke and you only invited me because
          i'm fresh meat. it's a give and take, supply and demand,
          symbiosis.

recently
I got a little older,
learned a lesson or two,
like how loving someone
could never be as poetic
as I wanted it to.
like how nothing
would ever be as poetic
as I wanted it to.
how can I accept
that the miracle of love
isn’t really a miracle at all?
how can I wrap myself
in someone’s arms
when I know
that there isn’t any sort
of poetic loving involved?
how do I unlearn
the romantic thoughts
that taught me
about the fireworks,
the butterflies,
and the fluttering fingers
in the dark.
and accept that
maybe kissing
won’t be as spiritual as I thought.
maybe it’s really just a mouth on mine.
how do I unlearn my innocent heart
who lulled me into a false sense of hope
for a lover who would call
the way my body moves
art.
a lover who would feel
the poetry
in every word
I spoke in the dark.

how am i supposed to write about being delicate when i am a pressurized ball of rage, coiled tightly like a snake reeling to strike, how am i expected to
write about the soft parts of myself when all i feel is this ugliness within me, swirling like a swarm of flies, dark,
dark like peeling away the layers of my skin,
imagine what i could do to myself uninterrupted.
imagine what i could do to myself uninterrupted.

how am i expected to love you when im overwhelmed with this hatred,
this loathing, ripe and so so so so close to erupting,
like a brain swell, and
how can i
explain this violence inside of me, so gory, so beautiful,
imagine what i could do to myself with this rage.
imagine what i could do to myself with this rage.

i am not beautiful. i am filmy eyes and dirt crusted nails and i want you to know that i am not beautiful. i did not appear here in a swath of light, all oozing with virginity, i appeared here with my mother kicking and screaming. my life has been years of lying in wait like a dog. i cant afford to be patient anymore.

i. reward ten thousand dollars
it scares me to think you will drive me home one day, one night, one night when i am very drunk and the stars do not glisten because there are no stars left! i am sure of the reason:
upon being conceived you swallowed them all whole. this is not purposefully clandestine so much as misunderstood knowledge:
in our lifetime these celestial objects will be mistaken, much like a well-intentioned teratoma, for
cancer
countless times you will be plucked, yet unripe, from the fire that will as soon liquify your flesh and cleanse your soul

ii. wanted, dead or alive
psychosis is not a watershed.
it is an amalgamation of the bugs who have crawled up your legs and gorged themselves on your fruity blood before hibernating
it is a room of walls plastered with ******* of nauseating pale cadavers, of empty homes, of longing hands, of breast buds and tied legs and virginal lips and bare ***** and stained sheets
it was in you forever and there is nothing to blame but an imbalance, for
you are the duality of...girlhood.
you are soiled ******* and unkempt hair, abused plush dolls and sticky hands, infected wounds and sunburn sting, stale cereal and coloring pages
you are satin veils and vain slumber, tired tears and starving entrails, hesitant touch and static vhs, shrill laughter and breathy song
you are itchy bug bites. you are snow in my eyelashes.
you are a lissome angel pregnant, god bless you, with a fetal (fatal?) evil; perhaps my fear begins here, or perhaps it greets me when your aura bites my eyelids...alack!
it must be so. **** orange light suffuses my thin veins. the sun exudes apprehension and abruptly the car is totaled and
this is why you cannot drive me home. even when i have become quite inebriated:
it is not natural for the air to be so warm; only ere our galactic body closes her eyes.
surely you will **** me. you are no creature of the night. run me over; crush me between your toes; let my nectar grow trees in the cracks of this, our, every godforsaken town.

iii. have you seen me?
her neotenous thighs stick, like sap, to the concrete floor, water seeps beneath the cinderblock. dust collects between her fingers in which she clutches, with the brutality of youth, a softened - if garishly colored - carton of apple juice. four-o'clock sun pierces the thick glass window (if one will call it such) and she feels listless; rather than squint she pores over the illumination with intent that, in her unsuspecting naivete, she is not yet aware she holds. before she ***** in enough light to blind her she hears a voice that feels familiar:
come upstairs
soon enough it will be ruefully forgotten
soon enough she will realize she was bagged and thrown in the trunk
too late she will wish to exact her revenge

I

You ask me to write about you
and I say I can’t.
I say I can’t write when I’m happy and
you haven’t broken my heart yet.
I lied.
The truth is, I haven’t learned how to make poetry
out of my flaws yet.

II

I’m afraid your love might suffocate me.
I still love someone I can never have and
now you love someone you can never have.

III

I know I have so much to work on.
I am a broken person who has been together
too many times. The water is leaking and the flowers are wilting.
You deserve someone who will love you as much as you love them.

IV

My mother told me to be with someone who loves me
more than I love them.
I can not do that.
I want can’t-live-with-out-you love. Even if it tears through me
with the strength of a category 5 hurricane.  Even if I can’t use my lungs for the months after.

V
I’m going to break his heart.
Because I can’t grow to love him.
I know everyday I am trash
but it feels good to be loved like this.
I am fragile and so is this love.

VI

I think it’s safer for both of us to leave the vase alone.

i remember sitting, next to her, on her basement floor. limbs numb and useless, pathetic. i looked her in the eyes.
“im done with the pills. really, this time. im done.”
i used to let her touch my thighs, so in return she answered me with translucent sincerity. the kind of honesty that wears masks.
“you’re just saying that because youre broke.”
this was before all those nights swaying under bathroom lights, clinging to the edges of the tiles on the floor and feeling the rot from in between the linoleum squares collect under my fingernails. i nodded in agreement, because she was right. she was always right, about everything. i learned to accept this and it soon became a comfort.
i remember apologizing. i remember always apologizing. i remember how she pressed her palms on the small of my back, giggling, “are my hands cold?” i shivered and recoiled, sorries spilling out like buttons for the sudden movement. “yes,” sorries spilling out like organs for the lie. your hands were never cold, i just never learned how to deal with the pressure. i still press on my bruises. i still can never get the hang of a temporary tattoo.
if i had the chance i would tell her i missed her. i would tell her how it took me almost ten years to get used to another pair of blue eyes, i would tell her i see her face everywhere. i would tell her how leo died and how ill see her brother soon, isn’t that crazy? isn’t it crazy how i haven’t seen john since you left me? i can see myself now, standing in front of her, skin glistening like vaseline. i see myself harrowed, cut open with glass, insulation spilling out of my guts just like her basement walls and speaking so softly you can barely hear,
“see? i can be soft too, i swear i can be soft too!”

I. I FEAR BEING POINTLESS
     i understand what you say without words,
     i feel your energy,
     i feel it flowing, animate, extending his
     tendrils and writhing like roadkill.
     you stand beside me. retching.
     re-opening wounds in spite of the hands
     that feed you because you just
     don’t have enough teeth to bite with yet and
     you comment on how this is kind of gross,
     isn’t it? the way it oozes like that?
     pulsing in my eardrums, i say no, this is
     beautiful,
     because i can hear what you’re saying
     like a deaf barn dog hears dinner bells

II. I FEAR I WILL BE LEFT BEHIND
     i feel dust caking, dry as soon as it hits the
     sweat on my eyebrow. i try to imagine my
     flesh growing under the weight of it,
     melding together, increasing in mass.
     ive felt heavier lately anyway,
     i keep scratching my legs ‘cause theres
     something in those veins in there, im telling
     you, it breathes at night when it thinks
     im asleep

III. I FEAR MIRRORS AND SCALES
     i keep remembering things i shouldn’t,
     i remember all the daycares ive filtered
     through. i remember (her), and her gameboy
     color and physiological tremor, speaking
     to me through the fruit snacks she fed me.
     i tried telling her how this felt.
     i tried telling her how inhuman i was, how
     something just didn’t feel right, is this
     normal? is this part of growing up?
     do you become an adult when you notice
     what’s missing? no,
     you become an adult when you realize you
     are made to break apart, you become an
     adult when you realize your joints are
     perforated, you become an adult when
     being fearless terrifies you.

(you collect phobias and arrange them on a platter, born from desperation, you feed into them and they respirate knowing you are absolutely nothing without them)

delusions:
i feel your energy like a lung collapse and
carry it in my chest like cholera, i feel it when i inhale and exhale and it rots the flesh around my ribs. i imagine living in this place and figure it’s not all too bad, insects boring holes in week-old ravioli unattended on the crusted over stove and the smell of *** and the humidity and small talk while we’re waiting for the drugs like how often are you and your boyfriend having ***? and are you going to the fair tonight? and where does your mother think you are?

hallucinations:
she speaks to me from the corner, her and her ***** fingernails picking marshmallows out of dollar store halloween cereal and flushing them cause she doesn’t need the calories and she tells me that strawberry blonde is her new favorite color. i imagine the deterioration of her teeth in my mind as a time lapse, i find myself wishing i was the crust in her gums. i find myself wishing i was the stains on her shorts, the feel of her hands, i want to be the knife in your back

disorganized speech or behavior:
it takes me a minute to realize she’s speaking to me, more like speaking at me, asking me why my hands twitch and i clench them so they stop. i want to tell her i think her crooked teeth are beautiful. i want her to tell me she likes the color of my eyes or the dip in my waist or the scars on my hands, she just tells me this is all part of the process, what process?  she says be patient, she says my time will come, she says she feels the same things i feel and i realize this scares me