there’s a gun in my hand
(metaphorically speaking)
and i wrote this for u,
every last tear and laugh
and droplet of blood that
you drew out of my flesh,
blades for kisses while
the drugs reached your
veins-down the rabbit
hole you went once
again; and maybe i
should be sorry about
it, perhaps loving you
was just as mad as the
pills you swallowed,
because all i seemed
to be was a game
that you made, but
there’s a gun in my
hand, and it won’t
go away

o love, tell me, where did you go? you adandoned my bones here ages ago. centuries past, a ticking time bomb. broken clock, two blinks, blood, it drips in awaiting. no home, sharpened teeth, empty gaps lie underneath. take me anywhere, get me crazy. i am suffocating underneath this dirt. derealization is a coffin made to fit my exact measurements. swallow the worms, choke on the maggots, taste the filth in your heart. pain rots the membrane. decomposing, a corpse girl within. but still breathing, still abandoned, all alone again.

shattered glass
and empty pill
bottles are
scattered cross
the floor, blood
stains and the
realization that
he’s never going
to come back
for more, an
angel in disguise
as peach puke
skies litter her
crossweb veins,
sadness drapes
her eyes shut
as home becomes
a shallow grave

there is a sensitive innocence
in the way you touch you hair
the thoughts held underneath
and the words that simper there,
i wonder if you’re still breathing
or whether you’re already dead
i trust his cruelty has you seething
why don’t you cut off his head?
there are no more angels here
they’ve all decided to fly away
across the moon & into a grave
we have nothing more to say
no–not even a goodbye song
will be muttered in his wake
for he’s already left you empty
there’s nothing more to take

life is a journey, and it’s just that. it just is and we just are. threads weaving together and apart as life goes on, an unending timeline of salt and sugar, home and joy and pain and blood. we fall and fail and fly too close to the sun, land on the moon, kiss our lovers and tell the stories of the past. nostalgia is a burial ground for memories and we unearth them often, we feel their bite and dwell on that feeling. the feeling we had in this exact moment of time, the place where we decided to remember it forever. and we will not be forgotten. even when our bones turn to ash and our bodies are in the ground, headstones weathered with lichen and a whole new world moving without us, we will prevail. in words and stories, in that very feeling we once carried to our end. it dwells in the hearts we touched, the places we changed, the hands we held. because we are never truly alone, only lost in ourselves. but our ghosts will remain as memories and warmth and immortal voices-the sounds of cries and laughter. for we may one day bade all goodbye, but the souls of our history live on in newfound wonder, they shall never fully die.

young love, have you forgotten to remember me? i am miles away from happiness and still dreaming of your lips. the cigarette taste, hands wandering the soft curves of my skin. but it seems that i’m alone again, and you want her instead.

i think that love has been lost on me. all things that begin blooming in potential seem to fall into waste these days. soil and ash. dust and death. and it’s not fair because i miss you, and i want you here by my side. i watch the others-smiling, happy, glowing-and wish that could be mine.

perpetual happenings, like rain sliding down my window and discarded filth on city streets, is what i often akin us to. our daring hands and youthful eyes got too caught up in the carefree dosages of first love. perhaps our parents taught us otherwise, but to this day i cannot remember. because when you entered my life like a revelation, it split into two parts. the before, without you. and the after, all you. the saddest thing being, i no longer know the girl who never worried about seeing ghosts after people left.

[an omen of a better age]
to wish a good morn' to the sun, to the sea, to the birds with songs that greet the residents each day set out yonder for each dwindling lifeline. ancient stone sculptures slowly cracking beneath golden light, woven basket filled to the brim with fresh bread loaves as she meanders through the streets-a walk she seems doomed to repeat for the rest of her lonely days. but as the sea waves crash against the rocky shores, salt suctioning against barnacles, she sees him. standing upon a balcony, paintbrush balanced perfectly between finger and knuckle, dark hair and light eyes just as gray as the sea. her red dress sways enticingly in the wind, as if to say yes, yes, go. walk to him. for he is the sea to your sky. meant to become one in the very end. but she does not summon enough courage within her beating heart to make the steps over the mossy stone tiles, and she continues on her way. it takes her one year. one year of looks, of smiles, of fantasy and reality for them to mutter any words out between lips to one another. but after the first are spoken, they begin to seek each other out as often as can be made possible. even with the hardships to endure, the money to be scrambled for, the work to be done, they fall for one another. madly, deeply, forever in love. he paints her during their days of freedom, oil paint stretching over a once blank canvas-dark hair, eyes, and bright cloth. sometimes, she wears nothing but the hair spattered over her skin like thunderclouds. she becomes his beloved muse, the only work of art he shall ever focus his undivided attention on for the rest of his short life. when the sun falls behind the sea and the moon reflects her silver glow upon the surface of the earth, this is when the couple makes love. feverish, heated, sweat glistening on foreheads as their bodies mesh together as one, all sound, moans of pleasure, splitting into the silence of the night. but these moments between the lovers do not-will not-last forever. alas, a death beyond what anyone could have perceived as possible befalls them, a shipwreck near the port of their very destination. drowning together, hand in hand, murdered by the sea that they had once looked upon with such adoration. but even in death, their love remains unparalleled to any other of its kind. a romance so intricate and timeless, deemed by the gods to remain in the paintings hung upon walls as history embarks undisturbed journey. this romanticism pertaining to art and blossoms, lovers meeting in a bed of roses / nectar / lust / freedom, praying for endearment and immortality. until the very last breath escapes these lips of passion, and the souls residing within the fragile beings slip in between the veil, fading into the dark at last. bones resting in peace beneath the glassy surface of the ocean as the spirits rejoice in the arms of angels. auspicium melioris aevi.

please speak to me in a series
of sentences beloved + passionate,
this temporary oasis settling
into our curves and bones,
3 little words forcing a way out
from behind grinding teeth,
and the velvet of honesty
upon our hearts not shown.

here’s to the days it seems as though love is hiding in plain sight. a forgotten warmth, promising all things to be whispered behind nervous palms underneath the moon. the question is written inside her eyes clear as day, a flash of hurt crossing their bridge when she’s pushed to the distant regions of his mind for another. roses are her favorite flower and maybe he’s not one for clichés. the streets are empty now, the distance between them measured in trees. but their branches still do not cross.

lazy summer days of green,
with the scent of soft flowers
in dark hair & stones in tired
palms, always failing to skip
and yet still rippling, shifting,
breaking the surface of
the still glass blue before
our dancing toes;
and maybe that's all it's
supposed to be, really–
hearts wide open and
vivid in the simplicity
of blooming hearts,
a lifetime of memories
nipping at heels pressed
far into the dirt, & yet
we still run wild alongside
twisted branches that
sway to the music carried
upon wind and waves–
granting our permission
as it dares us to relish in
possibility, letting the
present hit us full on
as a true home is found
among other people

tomorrow seems so distant
but the sky above our
heads is blue
and although my
flesh may not
be the same shade
that's the way
i'm feeling too,
pale knees bruised
by past transgressions
band-aids slowly
peel off from the skin
and even my bed isn't
a safe place to sleep
when i'm standing
in the face of
self destruction

mascara stained cheeks
and ripped fishnet
stockings, smoke
drifting out cherry
lips as the stars laugh
above her tired mind,
she loves him,
she loves him not,
she wants him,
but no-
no she does not

i am bent and i am worn
an old book with yellow
pages that are turning
to dust,
but please, i beg of you,
read me if you must,
and tell me how this
story is supposed
to end for us

sort of in doubt of my progress every time i hear a tired sigh, watch a pair of eyes roll upward, try to ignore the whispers in the dark late at night. it seems like the weight of this body is catching up to me all at once, holding me down in an iron fist of the unknown. my pen runs dry and my fingertips bleed ink and the corner of my bedroom is my favorite spot to shut my eyes and sleep. my limbs are heavy, these aching parts begging to be freed. ghosts eat away at my brain like gray poison, but i can never ******* scare them away.

she learned as a kid to dress her burns with dignity and to bury her nose inside books to mask a sinking loneliness. but as she grew up, so did the rest of the world surrounding her. and she found that reading could not manage to heal every hurt that blossomed on fragile skin. some wounds were meant to be rubbed in salt. these realizations came quietly, a blade slowly creeping up against ones throat. and the fear of unwavering change settled into the pit of her belly like a sapling, forming bruises and ruin over aging scars.

in the darkness i lie,
thoughts breaking down
my door and bringing
stolen images and
memories with them-
(all of that hopeless
blue boy)
because sometimes
i wish i could go back
to the exact moment when
it all started and cut him
out of my timeline in
completion-our existences
growing apart as regret
lessens her grip with a
new course of fate while
the months blur on by-
but i’m still continuing
forward, on a single lined
path that will only cease
with my breath, for sorrow
still knows how to choke up
my throat with a sudden
rememberance at dawn, the
dream still lingering around
the sides of my head like
poison-ignoring the pain from
past faults and struggling not
to want the sound of his soft sighs
with hungry lips pressed up gently
against my ears once more

i'm turning to my future now, and you don't get to follow me there. i no longer wonder how you're spending these summer nights, approximately 26.8 miles away from where i lay in bed. tonight, the scars will start to fade and my lips won't part at the memory of kissing you. it took two years to get here, my journal pages filled with pieces of exhilaration and transgression. i can no longer question what i was to you, and how you viewed me inside that tired mind. because maybe i was a mess of a girl holding onto the first boy i'd ever loved. maybe the bitter things weren't loud enough in our heads to stop what we'd begun before it stretched out too far. but the journey had me seeing despair and i couldn't let you go without hearing you say "i love you too" to me inside of my car. but that was the last time i ever saw you. you will never touch or talk to me again. and the cracks lining my heart have started to feel less tender and more cherished.

undone at the heart but still beating through it all. the ribcage vibrates with the weight of my agony. always longing, never reaching. the cusp is where i sit (feet dangling as i dream about him) but another is always quicker to dive in and take what might have been mine if only i dared to not miss a chance.

i have worn holes in my skin
trying to fill myself up with
you in places that you never
belonged,
i forgot how to breathe, write,
dream anything else besides
the ways you took what was
not meant as yours,
but i still let you have them,
have me,
and although they say history
cannot be rewritten,
i proved that theory wrong
each and every time i
let you back into my
life, into my heart-
only to break me
back apart