A cigarette to calm the mind,

a bowl to ease the fight between spirit and society,

a lover’s touch to hold my pieces together.

For these,

I am an addict. 

I am cravings and desires.

I want,

I need,

I yearn.

I am not a mess,
just someone who
occasionally falls apart
trying to find balance
in the stars
and in your eyes.

but there are places
balance cannot exist,
us two on a see-saw
the weight of unspoken
words
always lifting
one of us
over the other

or how the planets
might one day
get a little tipsy,
just like us,
and spiral
everything
out of control.

But I am no longer afraid
of black holes
stretching my cells
three miles wide

just of poetry
how it can never
stay inside me
spewing out things
I don't want to believe

and often of you
how I never know
what's what
inside your mind, and who
you've chosen to be,
half of me
or the empty space,
cold when you leave.

a booth for two
and a light for dimming
my feet placed across from me
on the empty seat
where she would be,
my usual,
my only drink,
leaving a watery ring
of the the patterned wood
and there's an empty spot
where hers should be.
the waitress wants to talk
and I think she'd listen
but what would I say
if I couldn't find the words
to try to fill that vacant booth
or to explain
this love
combined of my coffee and of
my aquarius, usually
on the opposite seat,
that I simply cannot
fathom.

One arm wrapped delicately around her waist,
you can feel her wasting away even though
she says she ate not two hours ago,
she only consumed one more part of herself,
so recklessly trying to vanish
from this world she does not understand.
Drink after endless drink calms the monster
scratching at her bones looking for an escape
because he is eating her alive,
tearing every docile limb from its foundation
trying to make her feel something
hoping hope and passion can break
the haze of whiskey on an empty stomach.
-
When somebody is dedicated to a lifelong
suicide you cannot save them, only love them
through each poor decision ; one arm around her waist
trying so hard to protect her from this world,
the evil upon us.

Everything around me swirled

like ink in the rain

drastically surging waves crashing

against me, stringing what I couldn’t quite grasp

across my entirety

until I lay helpless, inside myself

because I had no idea

how to put your pieces back together

even if it was in my place to do so

even if you let me

I wanted to stitch you back to

someone who was happy

but I kept forgetting

how to understand

the world around me

as a stage and choreography

I knew that I wanted to blurt my next line

but the cue was never given

and all these things

wrapped ropes around me

choking my words

chaining them to my lungs

and I meant to try

but I just don’t

know

how.

*i’m sorry.

Mountains’ majesty

a cave of amethyst brews

confidence in its own perfection

near the peak peeking into the

crayon colored clouds.


Desire for a moment free from earth

where right above our heads

the world is colorfully candid

through a foggy wine-stained film.


Glossy sun through glossy eyes

entices the mind enough

to lift legs one thousand and two

steps up the mountain

coiling through indigo trees

on turquoise trails until

we pass the purple threshold

where it’s best to pass the time.


Pomegranate lips smile

stretching pomegranate skin

yours tastes like otter pops and ***,

mine I imagine is similar

with a hint of bad decisions.


This reality is unrealistically appetizing

contorting trails contort minds

peaking at the sunset so close

I swear we’re almost there.

just a coffee, please
the words I utter,
at least three times a day.
any room for cream?
no, thank you.*

please and thank you
for the cure to my headache
to my heartache,
for understanding
when I don't want to talk
and when I do,
for loving the coffee
as much as I do.
You make it
like it's the only beautiful thing
you'll make today,
and I'll love it
like it's the only thing
I'll ever truly love.

Saying your name will always hurt.

I believed you when
you said that you would love me
forever.
I nodded benignly through my tears
when you said you never
wanted to hurt me like this again,
and that's why
you did it then.
I wanted to kiss you
when you reached
for my hand and told me
this was only because you wanted
to be there for me.
I tried to forgive you,
so we could be friends
like you wanted
because until then
I was amazed by the way
you knew and understood me,
you were my safety blanket when
I hadn't felt safe before
and because of this I was
blind to the ropes you tied to me
like I was a broken marionette.

Now I can't believe
you saw my scars and didn't kiss them,
let alone allow me to tell you their story.
I can't believe you ****** my friend
two weeks after
you took knives to the places in my heart
you knew would hurt me most.
But mostly,
I can't believe you expected me
to crawl back into your arms after all this.

I want to throw at you
all the notebooks I've wasted
writing about you.
I want to scream at you for
treating my heart like either
(I can't decide which is more true)
a playtoy or something that
you could save,
neither of which were right.

I realize you're worth none of this.
You're not the girl I fell in love with,
you're not the girl I trusted with all of me,
and I don't miss you
I miss that girl.

I tried to hard to forgive you,
but you don't deserve that.

All I can do is forget.

(Sincerely) *******.

I felt empty. I didn’t know how to explain it either, I felt empty in the most hopeful way. My dancing skin cells all ached for you, and while I knew that sooner or later you would be in my arms, in that moment I still felt so empty without you.

It had been four hours since the blue, flowered tab dissolved under my tongue. The bitter taste of it was gone and I was left with a distorted world and the attention span of a goldfish.

I found myself in a park searching for you. I don’t remember how I got there. From the top of the slide I watched a filmstrip in the streetlight’s glare; two people were holding each other, they were dancing and smiling and laughing. I watched the patterns in the snow. I watched the tree branches grow and shrink, curling themselves like contortionists and I finally understood Dr. Seuss’s secret to writing his books. His worlds were not reality and this wasn’t either.

There was a person next to me. I don’t know when he got there. I knew him, but I might as well not have; he was just as much as a stranger as any.

“See that house over there?” I found myself saying, “Their sidewalk is moving. We should tell them their sidewalk is moving. They should call somebody about that.”

We burst into laughter.

In reality, their sidewalk was not moving. But this was not reality, and their sidewalk was turning over itself like it was ribbon instead of cement.

I got bored of the Truffula Trees. I parachuted down the slide to follow the footprints in the snow, footprints I was entirely sure were from the Star-Bellied Sneeches. They led me down street after street, I could not read the signs because of the flashing lights that overtook my vision.

I stopped in the middle of the street where the ground was a thick layer of ice. The stranger asked me how I was feeling, I replied with “I don’t even know where I am right now,” a saying not uncommon to come out of my mouth.

I couldn’t tell if it was five minutes or three hours later, but we were back at an apartment familiar to me. It was the stranger’s. You were still nowhere to be found, and the daydreams of your lips on my neck were driving me crazy. Even in this unreal world, I still remembered your taste and there was nothing I needed more.

For hours I watched the ceiling and the walls, silent. The world had been carved from crayons and somebody had a giant blowdryer to melt it all. I watched as the walls drip, drip, dripped onto the floor.

A light from somewhere else turned on and it was reflecting with the already glaring light.
“I feel like I’m inside of a CD,” I said to the stranger, trying to make him understand my Dr. Seuss world. “The lights are jumping everywhere, like the lights when you hold a CD in the sun. Do you hear the music too?”

With the empty feeling, the crayon walls and ceiling, and the jumping lights, I had to close my eyes. It felt so nice. I wanted reality back. I watched the kaleidoscope on the inside of my eyelids and tried to sleep.

I still wondered where you were. I wondered why anything would stop us from being together right now, why is there a force in the world that could willingly take my home away from me? Without you, I realized I am nothing more than cells escaping the body they form; I am not a being but rather a mind living in an alternate reality. In the Dr. Seuss world I float, in the real world I am anchored to you.

As I drifted off to sleep, hoping to wake up in the real world because I was sick of the patterns moving on inanimate objects, your words hung in my ear. “Goodnight my beautiful girl, I love you so.”

You are my home. I am empty, aimless, and unreal without you. I do not find comfort in Dr. Seuss’s worlds, nor do I find comfort in the real world.

When the world is made of melting crayon and my cells are bouncing out of their perimeters, you are real and you are refuge for the lost and drugged girl.

“Goodnight my beautiful girl, I love you so.” The words tasted so sweet I almost wanted to cry.

dust swimming in the afternoon sun

from the thump of a leg against sheets

a woken body adjusting itself

among the nest of cotton

and tangles of a lover’s legs

dust freeing itself

from the covers of a long day’s sleep

whisping through the air

blowing from the curtains

ebbing with the rise and fall

of steady breathing

in the afternoon sun

sleeping bodies awakening

the dust all around them

She calls is jesus,
I call it chemicals.
Her enlightenment
reached in a book
of unknown origin
Sunday rituals
that remind me of
a sinister cult-like
mindset.
She has faith
in something intangible,
unprovable,
full acceptance of not knowing
Her god is an excuse.
My enlightenment,
a yellow glass design
the science behind
a lighter,
and the earth in my bowl.
A tiny blue, orange, yellow
pill, whichever is
most pertinent.
A tab, a stem, a cap, a line,
close my eyes and see
my own god in the patterns
of my enlightenment.
She calls it jesus,
I call it chemicals.

I've always been afraid
of spiders,
for instance,
of the dark
of

But I've never been consumed
by this kind of fear
that opens a black hole.
Tears apart my limbs,
rips skin from skin
creating perilous fractures
that let the life escape from me.

My bones are shaking,
they're cold.

This kind of terror
when you
callously mocked
the
"hopeless romantic"
saying that you
never should let
romance control
life decisions,

And it's so quiet now,
but I wanted to believe
you would do
something stupid for me

as I would do the stupidest things
for you.

The old bench creaked underneath her as she sat down, pulling a cigarette from behind her ear and lighting it. She looked aged, although she wasn't more than twenty-two. Beneath her thin legs, the bench felt like the sandpaper carpet she had sat on for hours in astonished silence. Her eyes shut tightly, trying not to envision that room, trying not remember the sound of heart beating angrily.

Muffled screams that, if they weren't absorbed into his unyielding hand, would have filled the house and escaped the windows with anguish. Thrashing, thirty-seven minutes of useless thrashing against rough arms and legs, their massive power pinning her to the mattress. Crying. More thrashing. More attempted screaming. Thirty-seven minutes of the kind of fear that paralyzes a person. He removed his hand from its cover over mouth and stood. The room remained dark until he reached the door, one long, violent arm reaching back to flick the lights on, then the door was shut. Footsteps descending the staircase, a mockingly gentle shutting of the front door, then the house was still.

Her hands shook with anxiety, panic tracing every fiber of her being. She could remember only the white room with coarse carpet and a single queen-sized mattress. Nothing else. She recalled how the mint green sheet looked so new, but there was no blanket, how the spider she saw tiptoeing on the walls didn't frighten her like it usually would, how the light on the ceiling shone too brightly.

Forcing her eyes open, she escaped the room and returned to the present. The cigarette she forgot to smoke was burning filter, so she stubbed it out on the faded, wooden bench, retied the white apron around her waist and slipped in through the back door of her mama's restaurant. The fear slowly subsided as she talked to faceless customers, building in the back of her mind until it decided to return again.

There are some things man cannot find the words to describe.
When he tries to make sense of this feeling of perpetual solidarity he realizes he cannot convey it properly. He then becomes more lonely, disconnected from the souls of others.
Holding tight to the notion that one day this will suddenly change and he will have found purpose in life.
Maybe time will stop where love begins.
Maybe finding another soul akin to his will halt impending death and he will begin to live his life.
Because, if he feels this aloneness and finds no meaning in it, he thinks he cannot truly be living.
The act of living implies loneliness. When he is alone without distractions he must feel the reality of his emotions, and without them could we call his life a life at all?
The one of an already dead man, there must be a reason he continues on.
Maybe time will stop where love begins.

The night I convinced myself
I was tied with ropes
to the demands of others,
and I could only
cut myself free,
was the night that began
                           the free fall
                               of my own perpetual
                                   freedom.
     When I realized I could
do anything I wanted
behind closed doors
because there was absolutely
no way anybody could restrain me.
Unfortunately, as the world
sometimes decides,
the things that made me happy
were the things that made others upset, uncomfortable,
disgruntled them
because they could not see
the beauty I did
in a collection of scars
the storybook on my body
in the smoke rising from my lips.
The things that made me free
also, are killing me.
But no one can seem to see
the absolute romanticism
in the control of my own death,
                                           freedom.

Lazy hat
Hanging haphazardly
Lazy cigarette
Dangling carelessly
Between middle and index fingers
good morning.

The moths think they are butterflies. They have never seen themselves in a mirror; they fly around the room, their wings whispering “I am beautiful, look, look, I am gorgeous.”
I can feel the moths brush on my skin, I sense the slight dust left on me when they depart. I don’t mind. They don’t know. They land on my hands, holding them, they make themselves into necklaces for me, flitting about in a circle around my neck, they sit on my shoulders and tell me stories of beautiful things.
I wish I could see the beautiful things the moths see. Through kaleidoscoped eyes everything is a magnificent painting: colors dancing, real-life objects turned into waving patterns of fractals. Nothing is real to the moths. They don’t see things as concrete, there is nothing to be taken seriously as to them life is nothing but a game.
The moths are real. They understand more about the human’s world than we do ourselves. I think the moths like me, they seem to never stop grazing my goose-bump ridden skin. I feel like I am a lightbulb in a dark room to them. I can feel so much energy pulsating through me, I must be exhaling florescent lights in place of the words that I feel I should be speaking out loud. Any words at all, the flow of captivating conversation will never be less than blissful.
But the moths can’t speak to me. They can’t hear my voice. They don’t need to, they understand.
These petite, grey-shaded, winged insects understand more than most walking, talking human beings. I can feel my connection to them like a static in the air, raising the fine hairs on the back of my neck. They travel to the brightest of places, and mentally, I am flying with them. We bond, through pure understanding of the other, coexisting blissfully knowing we are in the company of creatures with whom we are guaranteed a buzzing sense of community. We are the same creatures; at this moment I cannot understand why human beings continue to take totalitarian power over all other living things. Don’t they see that they are not threatened?
It is astonishing how our species sits on a throne, screened to the one glaring advantage the rest of living beings have over us. Humans communicate greedily, so much more than is necessary, on a massive scale and with such complications that miscommunications occur frequently, evoking emotion-driven actions against others whom we feel have wronged us. The moths don’t take revenge, and the trees never would act out unreasonably.
The other creatures continue to be ever-more calm and rational than us, understanding how to remain content at all times. They only stand in the background watching patiently, leaving all others to their own peace, and giddily accepting those of us who decide to venture into the wood and lay with them. Beginning a journey into the woods means losing all faith we had in humankind. That is replaced with a comforting wholeness we feel in ourselves. We must offer ourselves up to the trees, the sun, the mammals, the amphibians, every last biological structure right down to the moths. They welcome us to their world because they know we are the few who understand, who are completely willing to become one with them.
It is a backwards world I am living in. The ones I cannot speak to understand me. Those who can, use their ill-learned language to criticize and resent me as I fly, mentally, away from the corruption that has become normal.
But I don’t care. I’m reaching into the depths of my mind and and learning to understand the human brain in every way it works. I am going on explorations more beautiful than ever perceived as possible by the outsiders. I have souvenirs by the handful: a constellation painted in my mind, a stray cloud I picked up on my way home, a *** leaf flower-pressed in an orange and blue book, a notebook filled with our own kind of knowledge, friends who have found me in these woods, with whom I possess a happy-go-lucky unity unscathed by normal human tendencies, and an alternate breed of knowledge that lives peacefully yet thirstily in every cell of my glowing body.
The moths feel all of this. We become one with each other because I have become content with myself; those who walk in the woods possess no intent to hurt and the moths feel safe. Those who walk in the woods do not walk; we fly.
16 hours later.
I awake and there are no moths. There is no trace of them. There are no trees, no flowers; the alternate world I imagined is mockingly false. The forest is no longer vivid, for it has been hidden behind clouds of smog. The vibrant lights I once saw coming from my mouth are no longer animating my words.
In the morning this society I exist in is still mind-numbingly dull. But mentally, I am perpetually flying.

1 a.m.
I decide it’s about time to go to bed.
My shivering body eagerly slips under the white down comforter,
the closest feeling to home, second to
your arms wrapped around me.
                                                             ­                                  i miss you.
Per usual, I am improperly dressed
my bare skin is cold to the touch,
I forget that 20 degree weather is actually cold
without you to curl up with.

2:04 a.m.
My decision to sleep was futile.

3 a.m.
I search for the moon in the clouds outside my window
but even the moon is sleeping, in love with the stars
who will hold it close for billions of years
until they’re dust like the rest of us.
                                                             ­                            i miss you.

3:37 a.m.
I may be restless and I may be a growing insomniac
but I have come to realize
that nighttime holds the world I have always wanted to live in:
the falseness is gone, there are no careers or school,
families have all fallen asleep
and the only ones I wish to talk to understand why
sleeping right now would be a waste of time.
The world changes after bedtime, only laughter and freedom can matter
nobody will tell me to put my clothes on,
and staying up with you
is like having my own storybook.
The traffic lights are empty, the forest is open to roam,
the sky is dark and the streetlights only light up what is necessary,
in this little town you can still see the stars,
and there’s not much to do
but when all the people lock their houses and fall asleep
and we get bored of driving around,
the little diner will still be open, empty at this hour
minus the waitress and the cook,
who I don’t think mind anyway.

4 a.m.
I imagine your mouth millimeters from my neck,
whispering things that melt the thin varnish of frost that my sparse clothes could not protect me from.

4:18 a.m.**
At this time I am positively sleepless, you’re still not in my bed but the hope never goes away.
I’m unwilling to waste the last hour
before alarms ring, starbucks opens, and the average people begin to
roam around me and I must put up with reality until it goes to bed again.

Tell me the ******* truth
you say,
but I'll tell you that

I am a writer.
what *I do is write.
By default,
half the things that I do speak aloud
are romanticized
exaggerated
or maybe entirely false.

I am a writer
my memory is not history
I am no historian,
I can promise you that.
My memory is poetry.
Poetry is beautiful,
cutting, shocking, striking,
and sometimes
history just
isn't.

I am a writer
I say,
and that is the ******* truth.

Blizzards hidden under sunshine images,

tales of love, a cloud of smoke

in the afternoon sun, lovers hiding from something

they can’t see. Beautiful life, whiskey in the parlor

and cigarettes in the living room

waiting for a heat wave, addiction growing,

trying to battle the frost

because I’ve decided I don’t

want to die here, I’m sure you feel the same-

She eats her spaghetti

with a fork like a shovel,

ignoring the etiquette lessons

from her mother so many years ago.

You can tell her there’s

tomato sauce staining

her mouth like lipstick

smeared from the night before,

but she’ll just laugh

and wipe it away with her sleeve

when she’s finished.

You would think

such a messy eater would

leave bits of her meal

all over the table

but when she’s done,

there’s no trace of

her haphazard manners

and she disappears

again.

i can't believe
the things that escape my lungs sometimes
the words that fall out

because i regret them
like i've regretted nothing before

after so long, how could i
just let them escape
haphazardly

i can't believe
what i've done

i loved you two years ago when i met you
i loved you when i hadn't seen you in months
i loved you when we kissed for the first time
i loved you when i had no choice but to
try to forget you
i loved you that night
we ended up in your bed
i loved you when i told you we needed to talk
i loved you when i told you
promised that i wouldn't

but the heart does not
keep promises very well.

i'm sorry,
i fell in love.

i'm so sorry
that it terrifies me like this.

once,
i didn't sleep
for two and a half days.
i counted the hours,
60 of them,
to get through the nights.
i counted the
continually
frightening thoughts,
to get through the days.

and did you know,
after 72 hours
of wakefulness, a person can
count themselves
legally insane?

well i knew i had to sleep before then,
because my already
off-kilter mind
did not need to be
legal.

but i kept myself up
for 60 good hours,
taking little red pills when i felt tired,
until i decided
i'd had enough,
curled up in my bed
and became something
relatively sane
again.

One arm wrapped delicately around her waist,
you can feel her wasting away even though
she says she ate not two hours ago,
she only consumed one more part of herself,
so recklessly trying to vanish
from this world she does not understand.
Drink after endless drink calms the monster
scratching at her bones looking for an escape
because he is eating her alive,
tearing every docile limb from its foundation
trying to make her feel something
hoping hope and passion can break
the haze of whiskey on an empty stomach.

When somebody is dedicated to a lifelong
suicide you cannot save them, only love them
through each poor decision ; one arm around her waist
trying so hard to protect her from this world,
the evil upon us.

I guess there are
a lot of people with problems out there.

I guess

they have a lot
of the problems
that I have too.

I’m still trying to
remember that
we’re not really all alone.

I don’t know what’s
past this universe
but I know that there’s you
and there’s me

and I guess

we share a lot of our problems,
and a lot of other things too

you make me feel,
like I
am not so

alone

and a little more
like myself,

like I can’t even describe,
and I hope
I can do the same
for you.

I love you more than
I can even

understand.

i know i drunkenly kissed you on the porch
at 3 in the morning, i let you put your hands on me like
i knew what i was getting myself into.
what i meant to do was ask you about your family
and what the word love means to you, instead of
connecting with people i choose to ****** them
because they can’t hurt me when i refuse to feel
anything but a nameless body pressed to mine.
these things do not make me happy.
alone now, 3 in the morning, craving my whiskey so i can forget that there’s no one to hug me,
the most comfort i’ve felt in too long was at the bottom of the bottle,
and that’s left me with nothing but a migraine.

I have a compelling desire

to tell you every secret

I’ve ever held.

The ones I’ve

tucked away,hushed

in the crevices

between trepidation and faith

I want to whisper new words

I’ve never told anybody aloud before

into your ear,syllables falling

off me onto you,

so they can be said,

on my part,

and so you can brush them around your mind

if only just to humor me.

I long to tell you

everything that darts through my neurons

too hasty to catch on my tongue

too unintelligible to capture with pencil.

Because I want nothing more

than to utter every secret I’ve ever held

to make room to hold yours.

i hate everything
except
tobacco
and nicotine.
you're
no exception.

as a writer

i have a soft spot

for romance

but nothing else

i don’t think

i’ll ever have to resist

the urge to kiss you

ever again.

and that makes my bones

shiver, protected in my skin

protected by you.

He spent most of his time driving around. It was aimless really, but he figured that’s what life was, and driving was better than sitting.
“Where have you been?” his parents would ask.
“Nowhere.” was always his response.
This angered them tremendously. But what was the proper answer? He truly was going nowhere, too apathetic to do anything but follow the same empty streets for endless hours.
“Where am I supposed to go?” he countered one night. Silence fell with the weight of a train. They had no answers. “No, really,” he began to rant, “where the **** am I supposed to go? The church? The bar? The playground?” He didn’t realize he had started yelling, angrily mocking the small town, population: 2,036.
“Son,” his dad chimed in, “I know there’s not much for you around here-” the boy cut him off by turning around and calmly walking towards the door, stopping the fighting as soon as it had started. It wasn’t worth it.
He stepped out into the dark, the warm air was inviting. In the ignition the keys turned smoothly and the engine purred as he reversed onto the dimly lit street. His destination: nowhere, population: him.
Two hours later he found himself staggering on the edge of a cliff. He recalled a random collection of winding dirt roads, but had no idea how he ended up at this particular spot, in fact he had no idea where he was. Toes curled and uncurled, indecisive about the 50 foot fall into a black, choppy lake. The moon’s reflection peered up at him, calling fall into me, I am safe.
What does it matter anyway? This thought wasn’t shocking. Truthfully, it didn’t matter; there was nowhere else to go.
He released the tension in all of his muscles and fell, limp, towards the reflection of the moon.
There was a note, fluttering, under the windshield wipers of his car, parked only feet from the cliff.
*I’m going somewhere.

one night

we

fell in love

and she asked me

for my

soul

i told her

darling,

i would,

but i’m afriad

it’s already been sold.

The optimistic existentialist

getting by on

the vapid knowledge that

nothing has meaning

but thinking it might

someday.

The shallowest

deep-thinker you’ve ever met

in a constant war

between vanity and philosophy,

drowning in mirror-hating narcissism

and my humble ego.

Introverted loud-mouth

socially inclined,socially incapable

assertion-loathing people-person.

Vengeful peace-maker,

violent pacifist

fists littered with deceptive,

fallacious,faint purple bruises.

All these things are the

drip drip drip

of drops in the bucket

of a level-headed psychopath.

I dare you

to dive into the water,

headfirst,

of my mind

where I constantly contradict myself,

like it’s a game.

The garbage man came
as I drank my coffee, flavors mixing
with my cigarette and
The Great Gatsby.
I watched him pick up the dumpster,
overturn it in his truck
and I thought of asking
what he could do about
my garbage, my treasures;
a torn bumper on
the corner of 11th and Montana Avenue,
a broken lucky cigarette,
proving my superstitions to be false, maybe,
and a half-full soul
trying to find its way
back into my heart,
that I gave to her
many years ago
but it wasn't my heart I wanted back,
just her, because
she at the time, was elsewhere
and that I couldn't handle.
I stayed silent as
he drove away
with things unwanted
wishing he could too
pick up the things
I so greatly miss
and return them to me.

Seven ruler-straight
horizontal lines
Two solidly thicker
vertical lines connect
those to the
palm of my hand
And one in the shape
of a hot, bent, metal stick
almost hiding in my
arm's crease.
They look so soft now
but I remember when
each one of them was
ragged and ******
and I was crying out
for someone to help me.
I never left without my sweatshirt,
I tried to blame it on the cat
because I couldn't explain to anybody
my reasons for harming myself,
you can't just
describe your demons
that easily.

These scars are a map,
a storybook on my body
of the time I needed so badly
for somebody to hold me.
When nobody came with a rag
to soak up the blood I was
trying to get out of me
I realized that
I was either going to have to
learn to love myself
or let myself die right there.

I am happy to have these scars
for they mean that I chose the former,
escaped that dismal ending
I had chosen for myself.
They prove to me
that if I can come from the edge of death
to the person I am today
there's no reason
that I can't do anything else.

need to take

a second to breathe

must take

a moment to eat

a scattering of a heartbeat

to sleep

and bathe in the whimsy

something,

someone

will whisk it all away

close my eyes and kiss me

tell me to forget.

remind me

to function

because i often forget

i still have to be

living later on.

my legs are twitching with the need to run

to chase a moment, a year,

a lifetime that’s slipping away.

my hands are numb, fingertips brushing

working on autopilot,

following the logic

of things that need to be done

before anything can happen.

my body,

it’s exploding.

waves crashing inside me

yearning, urging, and tearing

at my stationary being,

at my hollow bones attached to tried muscle

and tired skin.

psychologically imploding

with the need to live

and breathe

and do.

experience.

but i’m trapped in this prison of a cultureless culture

in these shackles of people, zombified,

telling me what i can and can’t be

bound to the ground

by the word no;

darling you can’t,

darling you’re too young,

darling you’re trapped,

darling you can’t leave,

darling, you’re stuck.

and with my lips aflame,

trying to release my need to be,

when i simply can’t be,

not yet.

my body, it’s rotting.

twiddling my thumbs,

until life is allowed to start.

I could write about ignorance

and hate,

I could write about

poverty, war,

and family.

I could write about the faces

that they show in the news,

stories that

are too large

to pin down.

And I could write about the trees,

with their leaves hanging

by tiny stems

or the sunset

and whatever color

it decided to be today.

I could write about all these things

that are so important

to the world,

but darling,

all I really want to do

is write about you.

I can’t summon
the ability
nor motivation
to do the
simplest act as
lifting a pencil
to write poems
I may only read
nor finding the words
to speak
the novels I used to be
so fond of.
I want to care like
The bees care about the flowers
Or the way lips
Care about kisses.
I simply just
Cannot.