Things do not happen for a reason because
All they know how to do
is happen

Praying with your hands tied together

h

Next two years, college, poetry, poetry,
You, me, ***, condoms, birthcontrol?
Mother, permission, cleaning room, cleaning life, windex, lemon scented windex.
Windows, escape, Ani Difranco, 32 flavors, 32 flavors and then some
I am 32 flavors and then some.
My grades are 1 A, 2 Bs, 3 Cs and 2 Ds?
Atleast I vary. Colleges look for variation.
I can cross my eyes. Only one other person in my family can cross their eyes.
This was my last quarter to make an impression.
Impress. Smile. Eye contact. I have to meet your mother.
I have to go shopping
With your mother.
I lied to my mother
Mothers dont like lying
My parents asked me if something tragic happened to me
I used to wish that something tragic would happen to me
Nothing tragic has happened to me
Unless you call immense boredom with tiny people on a tiny state tragic
Which for a matter of fact I do.
You ask me whats going on
I’m a smart girl
Im flattered that you think so
But I doubt your surgeon parents will agree
How many AP classes am I taking...
0.
This is so out of character.
Youve never avoided your problems like this before
Silly parents
You’d avoid your problems too if they were
Life ambition, college, ***, condoms, birthcontrol?
1 A, 2 Bs, 3 Cs and 2 Ds, cleaning room, cleaning life
Cleaning out my character
Because I have to impress your mother.
Should we get you a therapist?
We shouldve gotten you a therapist last year
Dealing with stress is hard for anyone
You just need help.
I do not want your help.
Dealing with stress is not hard
Put your head in the sand and listen to Ani Difranco
32 Flavors
32 flavors and then some
I am 32 flavors and then some

His kisses were safe but never made me feel anything
Yours make me feel like i could fit our galaxy inside my body
but despite both
i want to be the one to make myself feel something

Freshman year we went camping for 3 days
I loved the scenery but hated staying there
i guess thats how you perceived me

Your head was so big that there wasn't even room for my body
In a place full of people i thought the most important person was you
In a car with the two of us, you also thought it was you.

The strobe lights are invading my sights
The smell of bodies creep into my nose
The room is shaking
but i feel nothing but you.

The first time was tedious.
I counted 55 tiles on the ceiling to the rhythm
of frantic pumping of teenage desperation.
This promptly ended in a high five and
now my friends won't make fun of me for being a ****** anymore.
Thanks

The second time was filled with
I don't want to have *** today
and always ended in a blur
of make shift *******
and wanting to be far away on the other side
of the newly christened couch.

The third time made me cry
I had never let anyone take me from behind
So when the first thing you asked me to do was lay on my stomach
I felt the need to please someone who I had never met
and to be the girl that you needed.
So I faced the mattress and immediately felt your hand
push my cheek into the pillow case.
This was the only time you were able to finish.

The fourth time I felt wanted.
The next day I felt isolated.
I still think about you and you still don't make eye contact

I needed the fifth time to be good.
I needed to feel better
I needed you to be a good person.
I should've know no one ever ***** me to give me what I need
Its always selfish.

It is the season of summer
which means my face will be all roses
before noon.
Which means I am celebrating the happenings
of those I wish had wanted me back
and those I will never want in return.
The air is thick with fog
like an open mouth filled with smoke
consistent with melancholy regret

We are told that everything we do, has a consequence.
Those who dangle their hearts in front of dogs
could be left with a tattered ones.
Those who swim in deep water could drown
Especially those who never learned to stay afloat by themselves

you say that love is more complicated than cause and effect

and that mouths speak what brains think and hands touch what hearts want
And sometimes you feel like you're being controlled
not by your soul but by a group of ruthless
limbs and organs that could be exchanged
when you die anyways.

and that carrying love is like

seeing the entire sky after only seeing out your window.
hearing the gunfire voice that you still learn to sing along to.
feeling the cold without your coat to keep you comfortable, warm and safe
and you are left disoriented, deaf, and numb

but you come back even after the consequence
with a sewn up heart
and a new life jacket.

you say that they will always come back to the ocean
even after its left them gasping.

Atoms are 99.99% empty space.
And that is the only thing keeping me from losing myself
In the thought that we never actually held hands
We never touched
We never kissed
We were never in contact.
Except I'm still left with
Your smell
Your thought
Your vision
Your .001 of matter that happened to touch the most important .001 of me.

And sometimes i wish that i could pull my teeth out and
feed them to your new girlfriend.
Because she doesn't like Good Will Hunting and
is afraid of lady bugs.
And god knows she needs some fangs
because she's mostly bark
and even when she does bite
its only soft gums that barely penetrate your skin
and i pity you for dating someone
who seems to take after my mother
and i wonder if maybe
i was born into the wrong life.

Decided you didn't want me
after you figured out you couldn't finish
unless you couldn't see my face.
Learned that if it was anyone
but the other girl
that you'd rather not be aware of who.
So you could atleast pretend
you still had the one you really wanted

The church was laced with sculptures and paintings of Jesus leaving most of the family feeling unholy. One girls red lace bra strap peeked out from under her black knit sweater, and to further the discomfort was blatantly hidden by a prudish and insensitive aunt who wore her hair in a too-tight bun. “You may feel a sense of happiness during the ceremony” claimed a sit-in priest before we went to sit in the pews. He then left the immediate family to enter when ready, leaving the room black on black on heartbroken.

I want someone to write about
Someone who will bend me over a gravestone
and make jokes about ******* the life out of me.

Play my heart stings
the way that you attempted
to make noise from an untuned guitar.

A half filled Kool-aid filled water bottle
lays next to your pile of tangled emotions
that you've finally let pour out
Of your locked up body.
You claim that society has turned us all
Into casualties of greed and competition.
That people have been born into lives
that teach them to focus on being successful
rather than being happy.
So as you cry under your covers at night
struggling to breathe at a normal pace
please remember that you don't have to be society
to be happy.  
Learn to be your own world
refuse to be a casualty of society.

Her name was Mave.  
She had gorgeous long red hair
and green like apples eyes.
She liked to collect circular rocks
because they gave her luck.
She was terrified of driving
because just the idea of trusting others
with giant metal machines going at 70 mph
made her head hurt.
She loved freckles because she said
that they looked like little hearts on peoples faces.
She hated pumpkins and carrots. First of all because
they were orange just like her hair, and she liked to think
that the color was special and not given to things as mundane as a food.
Second of all, shed like to believe that shed be caught dead
before she ever asked for anything pumpkin flavored and conform to the 'white girl'.
and carrots just tasted funny.
She was inconsistent, and while some said it kept them on their toes
the truth is, all it did was keep them wrapped around her finger.
She was careless and didn't think much before she acted.
It could be seen as spontaneous, but actually it was just hurtful.
She loved the winter, because her cheeks matched her hair
and she stood out against the pure white snow.
She loved summer as well because she didn't need to be held
to anyones expectations and she could simply disappear.
She was an all or nothing type girl. Its why she either summer
or its polar opposite winter.
Its why she wanted to either be your lover
or be a stranger.

You're sitting on bench outside a class you're skipping
smoking a cigarette you know won't be your last
with a person you don't really love
because you think it won't matter in the end anyways.

When I was little my father
Used to take me to the beach
With my tiny baby body wrapped up in his arms and
His coat that fit the 6 foot 8 inched
Man with room for an extra 4 foot girl
Who was too cold to walk by herself.
I loved the sea only beach it
Provided the beach
Which provided the walks
Which resulted in my dad with the
Extra large, forest green windbreaker.
I didn’t care for the ice cold water
Or the frigid air
Only for the effect that It had, that ended
With me inside that forest green windbreaker.
I didn’t even really like the walk because 2
Of my legs equaled one of his
But I loved how 2 of his arms equaled
One of my 4 foot bodies.

Dear you ignorant narcissistic fuxk boys,

I left my favorite bra in the backseat of your car...I know that i took one of all your matching socks, but its my favorite and makes me feel pretty like you never did.

Yesterday after i wore one of your old sweaters, I sat next to a girl in class who smelt like your deodorant. It must have ******* with her head cause i did too.

I forgot (maybe intentionally) to get rid of all your sticky notes that you used to leave in my wallet. Sometimes its nice to remember when we were in a beauty of a soon to be hurricane. It doesn't matter, you wanted a housewife anyways.

I used to fall asleep thinking about what pictures would line our fireplace. Our baby girl, our other baby girl, a family vacation, and a picture of us...with a crack in the glass right down the  middle of my face. Oh wait, thats what happened when you threw it at the wall behind my head.

Sometimes i want to tell you these things, but then i remember all i want is my bra back.

I think we both know its best
to forget about it
before we try to remember it
live through it.
I think you know that its best
that we stop trying to make this work
before we turn in to children
running around in a circle
trying to see who get dizzy first.
Maybe I'm a bad bad person
for saying i loved you
and then leaving
but baby i know

Everything we do, has a consequence. So if you plan on wrapping me around your finger, you best prepare to lose circulation.

Destruction of our own kind
toys at the comprehension abilities
that lack.
Those who can't understand
that
As we
diminish
demoralize
those who produce life
as we
******
oppress
half our countries history
to allow those who are threatened
by the ever forming modernization
we **** off our masses
we break our chance at reproduction
until there is no one left to control
but oneself.

I used to dream about a place filled
with things that other people forgot to love
all cramped up in cages
all for sale.
I go to the cash register that is
accompanied by a gruff old man with
***** finger nails and ****** knuckles
and i ask how much it is to buy the whole store.
He asks me why, while glaring at
my cherry halter dress and reading my chapped pink lips.
He snaps that only people who
never had the capacity to love in the first place
could possibly run the store.
I tell him that i want to love them all
and that is all i ever wanted
even though I'm just realizing this now.
I place my neatly groomed hands on his grimy countertop and
I tell him that when i get a hold of this place
ill let them all out of the cages
and water the plant
and feed the dogs
hug the humans
dress up the dolls
and wear all the jewelry.
He replies with a swift punch to the counter top too close to my open palms that have just now reached to hold his hands
This noise causes all the babies to start crying
and i am thankful that my mother hated me enough to never have another child
I cautiously take my hands back
and tell him that i never had anyone to give love to
and that i have enough to go around now.
His face changes from a stone frown
slowly to an evil grin and he begins to approach me.
He grabs my thin boney wrists and forces me into a cage that has a wilted flower in it
the cage is right next to an old woman.
I scream and shake the cage and tell him i have enough love.
He shakes his head and says
not enough to save yourself.
I cry and look down and see a raggity ann doll.
She has makeup smeared all over her sewed on lips
and i vaguely remember doing the same thing to mine
before i lost it under my bed
and before i gave up trying to look for her.
I run my fingers through her hair
and cry because i know now how easy it is to forget.

From being a teenage girl
In a public high school
I see my fair share of drug deals
And stoners lighting up in the bathroom
Kids over dosing in the parking lot.
Ive been to a good amount of parties
Where my best friends sprawl out all over their
Newest boy interests, sipping down alcohol
To take off just a little bit of pressure.
Ive held hair back as someone throws up
And admits that they did it on purpose
Because they ate that piece of pizza
And that they hate making them self gag.
Ive smelled the marajuana
Lacing the words about how youre fine
And how your ‘so relaxed’ now
And you dont care about anything
And so now ive relaized that
These things are drugs
For when you feel everything
To make you feel nothing

I dont have a tendency to write things when im happy,
Only when things are breaking or crashing down.
Dysfuntion usually laces the words that end up on my paper
Going down my readers throat, so that im not the only one
Whos infected with mayhem.
I am still writing about dysfuntion
But with the flavor of fantastic confusion.
Because I used to think that when you met someone
Youd know right away, that they were important.
Until now, I found out that you could meet your best friends ex
As a sophomore in spanish 3 and wait for another year
And still not know that they make you smile.
That my dear is dysfunction.
You can then finally meet them in a class
That you werent going to take in the first place.
And let them read about your biggest fears and happiest moments
Finding out that you dont have one bit of trouble letting them in.
Still you wait though, because its highschool
You will either break up soon or break up when you graduate
So why bother in the first place, if you know itll only end in distaster and heart break.
But they stay and they let you figure things out
And you ask for time
And you ask for time
And you ask for time
And thats what they give you.
And you question and question and question
And they answer and answer and answer
Until you have no choice but to accept that they are special
Because they dont make you nervous when they say the word girlfriend
And they don’t make it awkward when you ask them questions not fit for 3 weeks
They arent juvinille with the expectations of hand holding and careless I love yous.
So you let them come to your house and meet your parents and you go to theirs
You make the mistake of developing a loose mouth, and take oppurtunities
To tell your uncles and aunts about how wonderful they are and you feel yourself
Digging a hole deeper and deeper into the ground made of them.
And you know that when it ends, you will be so deep
That it will take you forever to get out.
But you stay and that is dysfuntion in its finest
Because you know the longer you stay, the more itll hurt to leave
But you stay anyways because they make you smile, and they make you laugh
And they make you happy.
So if this is what type of dysfuntion my writing will be laced with then
Let it come by the gallons.

I had a record.
3 years of highschool
And not once, had I cried over a boy
Not
Even
Once.
You my dear,
Really ****** that one up.
3 months and 14 days
After you pinky promised
We'd try, and that we would keep each other
In the loop
You forgot to tell me
That your "jesus loving" " babe" existed.
So now I'm left
Thinking I was special
And that you were different
But actually I'm just an emotional teenage girl
And you're a ****-faced *******
Whom I wasted 8 months and 14 days loving

You stopped filling my bucket
and now i am empty

All people are created equal.
*******.
If you say that then you have no respect
No one is equal to another
because that would mean that
every one of us is replaceable.
You equal you, no one else.
No one is less and no one is more
but no one is equal.

Don't talk to me like you know me
Talk to me like you love me
She just wants him to adore her
Even if she yells at him and says words she doesn’t mean
Or if she sings out of tune, or that her hair is frizzy
Or she doesnt wear make up, or if she swears too much
Or if she wants to believe in love, but at the same time she doesn't.
She wants to be that girl. The one he cant stop thinking about
The one who looks pretty in a neon pink rain coat in the rain
With her hair dripping water in thin streams of uncontrolling.
She doesnt want it to be love, though that would be nice.
But she wants him to tell her that she is special
And that she is his one. And that he cares about her
In the morning and the afternoon and in the night
And especially when its raining
With her mascaras running and her hair laying flat
On her rain soaked face.

You're on your way to college
And suddenly you're singing
along to all the songs that you
listened to when you were sad
in middle school.

You will be lonely
he will not know better.
That is not an excuse

To grow up means to exhale
All that you've inhaled as a child and to inhale adult mindsets.
Breathe out. I will grow into what in meant to be.
Breathe in. I will create myself into something of my choosing
Breathe out. I want something that has instant gratification
Breathe in. I want to be happy tomorrow too
Breathe out. I have to find someone that makes me better
Breathe in. *I will make myself better

Up until i was 12 years old
i used to only read this giant dictionary.
See this book had a whole section
dedicated to names.
Boys names
Girls names
Their meanings
Their roots.
I would sit up in my room
with my hair hanging in front of my face
in my sisters old Beatles t-shirt
and highlight the names that made me happy.
Now this may seem cute and nice, but really its not.
I would pretend that i was having kids
and that these were the names.
i would plan their likes and attitudes.
Big events in their lives.
Interests,hobbies, all the way down to favorite foods.
The fact is that this makes me a hypocrite
because one of the scariest things in my life
is expectations and for 12 years
i sat and planned my unborn children.
and this is why i don't want to have kids anymore
because i don't want them to have to live up to my expectations
because what if i don't love them anymore if they don't.
because i sure don't love me anymore.

Could you refrain from pointless text messages
that force me to politely respond
when all i want to do is pour out my thoughts
about how you really need to move on
because you've already been replaced with a boy who has more freckles than you do
and who doesn't have a constant need to be dominant.
Could you please stop smiling at me in the hallway like we are still friends
because we aren't and no matter what you convince yourself
you will never convince me that we were anything but an experiment
to see if two people could really spend the same day of every week
at the same time
doing the same thing
and fall in love within the limits
of our parents
and the answer is no its not possible
and you can't convince me that its love
despite how many times those 3 words escaped my mouth
i will not let myself believe that your everlasting need for competition
and my constant shrinking is what love is
and that the fact that whenever i see you i get irritated
is what happens when two people stop loving each other.
I don't believe that thats even possible
and if love is truly one person growing and the other shrinking
one falling in love even more and the other suffocating in resentment
then i want nothing to do with it.

Look for the people
who fall in love with your laugh.
Not ones who fall in love with your style
or your haircut
or your makeup.
Look for people who
love your sneeze
your eye color
the way you wake up in the morning
how you talk when your drunk
how you hold your pointer finger on your nose when your nervous.
Fall in love with the people who fall in love
with the things about you
that are unchangeable.
that way you know they they have
truly and honestly have
fallen in love with you.

Teach yourself to let emotions
pour loudly and unapologetically out of your mouth.

Learn to decipher the intentions of your peers
and learn to by pass all those who cannot handle your full extent.

“Ladies first”. He uses his theoretical masculinity
To duck his way out of everything. He crosses his legs and looks accusingly at her.
She stands and tells him that he reminded her wasted energy,
Of the tall glasses of apple juice,
Drunkenly tossed at the electrical outlet,
To get some type of “Zap”
Though she said it more like,
“Zzzaap” wiggling her fingers to try and show a current of energy.
She said it as if she didn’t really know,
What type of reaction she was looking for.
He is quiet until he isn’t.
She reminded him of a seconds old baby.
Blue because the reality of oxygen hadn’t touched her yet,
And he was still waiting for her to turn into a peachy color and embrace reality.
“Before we met, I hadn’t slept in my bed for weeks,
You couldn’t even get through a coffee date”.
Her eyes are fiery and she says something that a person with fiery eyes would say
“Before we met, I didn’t need to have ******* with people to feel intimacy”.
That is an explainable response.
Anyone would say that
So I guess that implies that everyone has fiery eyes.
He scoffs and begins to stand and she mimics him
“Don’t make me throw apple juice at you”
“I’m a broken outlet remember”
“I haven’t thrown apple juice at you yet, we don’t know that”
“It doesn’t matter. You can’t breathe with me around,
And I’m more of a margarita guy anyways”
He leaves
She cries
They both have fiery eyes.

I need to learn how not to open my mouth
in desperation to fill the empty silence
that should've been words
if this were to work.
I need to understand that maybe
your not saying anything simply
because you have nothing to say
not because your angry or bored
but simply because you don't need to say anything
why do i need to say anything anyways
i always just blurt some
ignorant, high pitched statement
that honestly has nothing to do with us

Tangled blonde ripples being torn through by the harsh fingers of your sister

the same way that he pulls through them now

You aren't worth my words

She spent days building ice castles in the sun
He spent days trying to light fire to his house in the rain.
She drank coffee laced with poison to nurse her soul back to health
He took tablets of visions so he could hide from himself.
And when they met the fires thrived
the poison killed
and the visions overcame
and the ice castles turned
to puddles

I wish on you the knowing-knowing
that your being is tangled up in the talons of a hawk
that is already trying to flee the room.

And that your being in filled with flesh and emotions,
heart and lust, nerves and purpose, as I am.

That when he holds a sign that claims sanctuary,
make sure he is promising your own

Not the promise to the end of his hunger for touch,
for confirmation that he will not be alone indefinitely.

And when you start to allow him to take bites
of your meaty being, He is not there for your taste

just because you've fallen in love with your predator
doesn't mean you should give him your bones

Make sure she's tall but not taller than you.
Make sure he's opinionated but knows how to be quiet
Make sure she's invested in something, but not too much because thats just annoying.
She should be skinny but not boney
Curvy but not fat.
He should have a certain hair color but not dyed
Her Hair long but not frizzy
He's Kind but not passive
She's Smart but not smarter than you
Once high school began I realized that people are smallest between grades 9-12.
This is when you start letting other people crawl in the the gapping hole
Which is the negative space that used to be self confidence.
You stop being proud of your sailing bruises because people say that they look ugly on your legs
You stop dying your hair because people say they like natural
You start to nod at the ignorant things that enter your ears
And start to ask others if you have the right to be angry.
Taking up space begins to be a challenged you have to concentrate on
Because the galaxies that you were apart of before
Start to shrink to just a single planet.
Stop saying that you don’t, care when you do
And stop changing yourself for anyone other than your own two eyes
Stop accepting words that prove that they know you
And start asking people to talk to you like they love you.
Take in the people that love you because of your sneeze
And because that you take pride in your scars.
That will still want to play with your hair if its short and blue
Take the people that love you for things you can’t change.
Teach people that the difference between love and lust is friendship
That just because you call them your best friend doesn't mean you’ve friend zoned them.
That just because they can regurgitate facts about you, doesn't mean they care about you.
Dye your hair green
Cry because you succumbed to their wishes of straight hair and skimpy clothes
Leave them because they encouraged you to.
Deny the next persons demands
Take up space and don’t apologize for it.

Ask me why the tea cups have faces on them
Ill tell you how they laugh at things when its not appropriate for me to.

Ask me about why they are filled with shots of tequila
and I'll say that tea doesn't make this conversation any easier.

Sometimes I try to write about you
and how you crushed me into little
pieces of broken heart.
And how you let me sail away in an ocean of
peach flavored *****, and didn't even come to wave me off.

I try to write about how you made me feel small
and unwanted.
How i couldn't manage to handle it gracefully
like girls in the movies do.

But all I can ever think is ******* for clouding my brain and making me unable to do the only thing that makes me feel important.

Women washing their hair
Down the drain of lost cause and subpar advances
Strands cling to necks, to fingers, to *******.
You cling to hands, to shoulders, to waists
But just like the dead pieces of myself
You go down the drain.

I had always wanted to grow my hair long
So watching it spin around
With the suds from my shampoo
Was a little like saying goodbye to you.
I knew I wanted it to stay attached to my body
But that I needed to let it go so I could grow
Longer
Healthier hair.

So I lather it in conditioner and use a wide tooth comb
To get rid of all the left over pieces.
But even when I get rid of the dead hair
Its still stuck in my drain.

You always said you wished I had long hair.
So I told you I'd dye my short hair, green.
You threatened to leave me.
I told you if you ever got a buzz cut, I'd cry.
Neither of us knew that I'd cry because my hair got longer and
when I did cry, you got a buzz cut.
Suddenly I was the one leaving.

To be guilty of stepping on cracks in hope that your mother breaks.

Stepping on daisies and crushing all the four leaf clovers you can find.

Thats the reason that i found her toothbrush
Got kicked out of school
Can’t find anyone who doesn’t make me feel less.

The problem is
People only see as far as the last sentence in the newspaper article.
They see that my best friend stabbed his father.
They see that he was planning it.
They see that he failed in his attempt to **** him.
They see that at 1:30 am he was arrested at the scene.
They see he will be tried as an adult for premeditated attempted ******.
They don't see anything else.

At our little brothers baseball games we would search for quarters to get airheads.
On the bus we would share stories about our latest failures.
He was trying to get sober.
He had failed to **** himself twice.
He had serious mental problems that everyone underestimated
He needed help.
He didn't get it.

He's alone in a juvenile detention center, isolated.
Mentally unstable and yet again without a support system.
Doomed for the rest of his life.

So excuse me when i tell you to shove it up your ***
When you say that i should stay away in fear of being remembered
Because all he'll do is remember you forgot him when he needed you most.