socks
warm socks
socks like winter
socks that might come off in your boots
when trudging through foot-deep snow
but will be just right for lying atop mountains of pillows
as many pillows as are in your house
your house that smells
like you

there’s no snow now
just rain
and rain and rain and rain
and rain
but it’s cold enough outside these walls
and cold enough inside our skulls
to warrant hot chocolate, hats and hand-holding
and cuddles until we feel ourselves bleeding
enough sun from our chests, however fleeting,
enough laughter from our eyes
enough love from our lungs
enough warmth rom our sock-clad feet
enough spark from where my fingers meet
your hair
to forget the red skin sap
and sticky spilling squeezed lashes of yesterday
let’s just pretend we can forget yesterday
i’d like to forget yesterday

socks yes
we’ll put on socks
we’ll put on warm socks
and switch our clothes
until we can’t even pretend to know
any other smell than each other
and we won’t tell your mother how sad we are
we won’t tell her that anything bled but my eyes
and then maybe she’ll let you stay the night
and you’ll stay
talking about how beautiful the sunset is while i cry
and watch you glow

so that’s how it’ll be
we’ll put on socks
and put up walls of blankets
and only let each other inside
you’ll hold my hand
i’ll stroke your hair
and maybe we’ll be warm like that
while the rain keeps falling outside

nope
i lied
i lied i lied
i lied i lied i lied
i lied i lied
i lied
what did i think this was,
some kind of fairytale?
some magic world where
all the storms in my head
could just be waved to a calm
and i could just cary on living
my life
in a normal
healthy
happy
way?
am i that naive,
even now?
have i not been shown
enough times just how very sick
i am?
can i not be capable of giving
a **** about myself
just once?
am i just doomed
to sit and punch myself
in the stomach again and again
and again and again and again
and again
till my knuckles turn blue
and oh, what then?
do i care?
does it matter what happens to me
when there are fifty-two reasons
it shouldn’t matter
and fifty-three
why it does?
i don’t know
i don’t know don’t know
don’t know
but it’s time to go
the heck
to sleep, so
why am i still writing?

if i woke up one day
and we were made of water
you and me
and everyone and
everything,
if we were all just liquid that held its form
if we died in a splash and were born in a storm,
held in place by a force (that didn’t conform
to any scientific or common-sense norm)
that held the water
in a human shape
and never ever spilled;

if liquid and gas were all that existed
if instead of crying we just kind of misted
from liquid eyes down liquid cheeks,
drove in liquid cars down liquid streets,
sat at liquid tables with liquid seats
slept in liquid beds
with liquid sheets
walked through liquid forests with liquid trees
and liquid leaves that fell
on liquid grass;

if it were liquid knees we had to bend
watery letters to stamp and send
fluid hearts to break and mend
a solution of time to save and spend
and not for out lives
could we comprehend
the meaning of words like “shatter”
and “solidify”;

if i woke up in a world like that
i’d run the 12.3 miles
to your flat
and open the door
like a hurricane
and throw my liquid arms around you
like a safety blanket or a scarf or
like some kind of human sweater
or something

i don’t know
i just really want to feel
our internal oceans
move together.

you’re not close enough
i’m tired of solid touch
i want to be everywhere
i want to encompass you
like a river i want our skin
to meld and mix
like food dye
to create a new color
just for you and me.
i want to be
forever changed
in every place
you touch.

I don’t want to be dark anymore
I want the weight on my soul to crack
and shatter off in tiny fragments
and with the first free beat of my heart
I want to expel every piece of it
out from my body like a firework
a profound breaking of the capsule that once bound me
in order to set my beauty free.

I don’t want to be dark anymore
I want to take my mind and wash it in a stream
and let every pesky piece of worry be uncaught
and released from the crevices of memory and matter
so that my thoughts float transparent through my head,
clear and bright like fresh cleaned pennies,
cool and soft like august clouds.

I don’t want to be dark anymore
I want to make a little glass door in my chest
and give my heart some sunshine
because with some sunshine some flowers might grow
and then maybe the floor of my room
could be scattered with soil instead of tissues
petals instead of fingernails
and leaf clippings instead of old expired medicine caps.

I don’t need to be happy
I just want to glow
I think I could glow like that.

it’s a low key sort of love
and I don’t mean that as in “to a lesser degree”
what I really mean is that if written as music
this sort of love would be played soft
very soft on the lowest key
so soft and low it would almost be imperceptible
but you’d feel it anyway
like an odd fuzzy vibration tickling your ear
in an odd sort of warm sort of way

it’s a low key sort of love
you’ll feel it when a stranger compliments your eyebrows
when there’s rain on a glass roof of a porch in the woods
when someone that doesn’t know you that well calls you by name
when you get silly when you’re sleepy with friends on a long car ride home
when someone leans their head against your shoulder
or glances your way for a beat on a train
or whispers a secret
or brushes your hand
or has a pet that likes you for no reason at all

it’s a low key sort of love
you’ll feel it more than you’ll hear it or see
but it'll seep into your veins
and run through your blood like a shimmer
so faint and so gentle
you won’t even notice that that night
you’ll glow in the dark

they thought i might **** myself
where they wrong?
i’m having a hard time being alive right now
(i said)
i’m sorry (i said)
(i said) it kills me
i can’t be the leader
you want me to be
the leader i should be
i’m not the woman
not the man nor the girl
i am the phone call you received.
were they wrong?

(i asked)
do you hate me?
(he said) no
there was no way that was possible
he could never hate me
(he said)

and i’ve since learned not to ask such silly questions
because he never said he loved me, no
he never said
that

they thought i might **** myself
were they wrong?
i still don’t know
no one ever took me seriously before
so what was different this time
did my eyes lose their shine
when i joked of self destruction?
did i lose the spark the life
the bit of intention in the arch of my brows
that told others quite precisely how even i
was surprised
by the words i had said.

but was it dull eyes?
or was it instead
the fact that they shone too much?
was my skin hot to the touch when i sent that email?
when I spoke those words did my breath catch
did my pulse quicken
did my pupils dilate
did ever space, every punctuation i wrote scream
not despair or insecurity
but a longing for purity
an animal hunger
a frightening calm
were they wrong?

(i asked)
does it scare you
when i get like that
does it scare you? do i
scare you?
(she said) yes
always (she said)

and i’ve since learned not to ask such silly questions.
because she never said it wasn’t my fault, no
she never said
that

and i’m so tired of trying
to puzzle out Fact from Truth
because they aren’t the same no
they’re not and i’m just so tired
of trying
because they thought i might **** myself
and I can’t get over the Fact
that I couldn’t ever realize how not okay
i really was
until someone showed me what okay meant
and told me i wasn’t it
not because of what i said
but because they saw the Truth in my eyes
that were either too shiny
or not shiny enough.

the Truth was there
they weren’t wrong
they thought i might **** myself
and they weren’t wrong.

(they asked)
do i hate me?
does it scare me?
(they asked)
and i didn’t respond
because i didn’t know
and still don’t

and they’ve since learned not to ask such silly questions
because i never said they were right, no
i never said
that.

Be patient with me.
It’s dark where I am.
I know
you want to help
but please,

this is my journey.

You shouldn’t feel bad-
how can you save me
from an invisible ocean?

It must be hard for you
to watch me strain
against water you can’t see.

I’m sorry
I’m not good for much these days,
but it’s like I said-
it’s dark where I am,
my sea extending
in all directions.

It’s thick
and black
and violent
there are no ladders,
there is no calm,
and with every wave
I’m closer to drowning.

I know there’s light somewhere
(I catch glimpses sometimes)
I know there’s a way out

it’s just that
all the waves here look the same,
my navigator seems to have left me,
and I’ve never been particularly good
at reading maps.

good things are twisted and reversed
in my mind and I don’t understand why
my brain poisons purity.

a compliment turns into
sarcastic pity,
a one word reply
a hateful confession
against me.
labored breathing,
no matter how innocent the cause
and I am back
to blurry blue bathroom floors
and a heart 300 decibels too high,
a heart that cares too much,
a heart so easily broken
that no one dares to try
to even get close anymore,
maybe for fear of breaking it
but much more likely for fear
that my poison
will leak
and every sweet situation
will be soured
with my apparent inability to function
the way I’ve been told I should.

You’re so **** pretty
and I don’t just mean
your long eyelashes
or your majestic flowy hair
or the way your eyes go all crinkle
and your face goes all squish
when you smile,
nope.
You’re just
you’re so **** pretty
just as a human being
just in who you are
and how you try
and I just can’t think
of any solid reason why
you have to deal
with so much ****.

Bad things happen to good people,
sure,
and I’ve always known that the world
doesn’t always operate based on
common sense
but I guess
I never fully understood the full scope
of that concept
until I saw you cry.
Because when you walked up
(it’s no exaggeration to say)
you were glowing.
You literally
blinded everyone
but you kept insisting
that you could only absorb light,
not emit
and I just don’t get it.

My parents are doctors
so believe me
I know very well that the heart
is an ***** the size
of your fist,
no more and
no less.
I know it,
I do but you’re just
going to have to believe me
when I say
that there are times when I’m
talking to you
when my own personal
fist-sized *****
just swells right up
and expands
to push against
the sides
of its ribcage,
because if it’s true
it it’s really true
that the brightest star
in all the universe
might look in the mirror
and mistake itself
for a black hole,
then surely
surely no natural laws
no physical properties
no rules or
biological normalities apply
to the human heart?
Surely.

There aren’t many things I can say
with full confidence.
The future frightens me
the past confuses me
and I frankly am not sure why
I’m still here
in the present (???)
but like it or not
here I’ve been
for eighteen (better or worse) years
and in that time
there haven’t been many people
that it often bothers me
to be in a room without
(which would be totally irrelevant
if it weren’t for the fact that I walked
into Westminster Abbey today
and just wished
the mega-posh British security guard
was you)

There was some expanse of time
when I could still count my age
on just two hands
so I wouldn’t have to speak when asked
When my mom still hugged me
in a fluffy towel
when I’d just got out from a bath
When lava lamps
were very popular

There were two in my science classroom
one in my best friend’s room
plenty on tv and in books and magazines
and one on my sister’s desk

I think I sort of wanted one
of my own
but didn’t want to ask
so I just always turned
my sister’s on
when she wasn’t around
watching it sideways and upside-down
and backwards and forwards and right-side-up
marveling at how
it always seemed
to look the same
and making sure
I turned it off
well before she came home
so she wouldn’t know

It was the same thing over and over
up and down
heat up and rise
cool down and sink
blub blub blub
repeat repeat
but it never got old
always in motion
so it always seemed different
despite the same old substance
being inside

I am glad I learned to understand
the intricate beauty of lava lamps
If I hadn’t
I might have had a harder time
tolerating the workings of my very mind
than I already did when I realized
it was all the same
all the same

The mind bubbles up
the same old goop
over and over
tricking us into thinking it’s new
by catching interest
in those moments of change
of transition from
too hot to sink to
too cold to rise
It’s the same old brain goop
the same old thoughts
the same old themes
the same memories and wishes
and dreams
It’s easy to feel trapped
when you’re floating in goo
and not watching from outside

But that never bothered me that
was the thing
Sitting at my sister’s desk
watching the same goop
never bored me
All that mattered was that
I was having a nice time
and the lava was pretty
and I knew my mom would be there
to hug me when I had my next bath

a hypocrite.
you made me one.
and to be quite honest
I’m a tad bit irked at you

because I promised myself, I
really did
promise I wouldn’t feel this way,
told myself I’d stay above the influence
of the oh-so-popular chemical switches
that get so dizzily thrown for
a happy distortion of reality
because that’s what it all is, isn’t it?
it’s chemicals,
reactions in your brain
and I promised
I promised
I wouldn’t go all weak kneed all
fluff brained all
googly doe eyed, not
for anything not
for anyone and certainly
not for you
(no offense)

but I guess here we are.
I’ve broken my promises
and it’s 100% your fault

who told you you could do that?
tell me
who gave you the rights
to my heart because surely,
surely it couldn’t have been me?
oh please tell me it wasn’t me
i’ve never surrendered anything
not already stolen.
nothing not already stolen
but you’re not a thief
so why do I rest in your hands?
I really don’t understand
how you made
the queen of anxiety herself
let go of something for once.

and kid, I don’t know what to do about
how everything is suddenly clouded by you
because I sat down to write today
unable to not think about the way
your breath kept hitching
when I ****** your neck
how the little spasms in your chest
got quicker and harder
the deeper I went
how your eyes closed
and your mouth was open
your lips quivering like they held back a sea
how your eyebrows were pressed
but then relaxed
and the way that you kissed me
when I got back to your lips
like every cell
in your body
depended on it.

you tasted like love
I don’t know how else
to say it
but you tasted looked sounded
smelled and certainly
felt like love
so cut the crap.

I forgot to think about chemicals then
I forgot to worry
about what was real or not
I forgot
I was so caught
so caught
so caught up in you
I forgot how to be scared
I forgot myself
I forgot everything I’ve ever believed
I forgot what it means to breathe
to the rhythm of anything
but the beat of your heart
and the touch of your hands.

either I’ve been wrong for forever
or I’m lying to myself now
but nothing has every felt more real
than this
more real than you, so
let me just say it–
I think I might love you.

your mother told you
when she sent you away to learn the dance;
she said to always tell the truth.
her words may seem wise to another, but you know, don’t you?
you know from your short time,
it echoes in your head
brushes across your chest
whispers:
pretty words don’t hold up
in the dark.
because you have eye bags that would never pass airport security
(“it’s genetic”)
how will they fly you out to your dances?
your face is always blotchy. you don’t wear makeup and you sniffle a lot.
(“just allergies”)
no stage eyeliner for you.
tell me, ballerina boy
did you really stop dancing
because
your feet are sore?
or is it perhaps because
you’re ready
to retire your shoes
forever?
did you really sprain your foot?
or did you break your mind?
you, my love
are full of lies
because you and I both know
that the critics don’t matter.
but what of your faithful fans,
what will they say?
who will take your spot
in the dance,
who will take over the role
that was created with a sole purpose
of you playing it?
no one will, my love.
that role was yours alone.

i think once you've wondered about stars and pondered determinism
and sat in a lake in the dark and the calm
and listened to loon calls that echo like rolling thunder
and seen the reflection of the moon in the water
i think maybe then you stop caring so much
about mosquitoes on your leg
or stitches in your side
(if maybe not about missed calls
or skated-over questions)
i think once you learn that nothing is a contract
that no one exists for you
and you exist for no one
once you've heard a thousand voices
and still find that you remember theirs
i think then maybe you can feel that the weight
the particles of existence lay forever on your skin
is not a weight
but a nod from the abyss
a kiss from the universe, whispering
goodnight sweet impermanent softness
goodnight wingless butterfly beauties
goodnight precious pointless seekers of the seekless
goodnight limited
goodnight limitless
goodnight home
if luck were a thing of flesh and blood
how lucky you'd be
to have nothing expected of you
in this patchwork of nothingness sewn from a thread
that never took your insecurity
your fear, your love
that never took your anything into account
when it drew speckled stars across darkened water
and bounced echoing birdcalls
haphazardly against your eardrums

you walk into bathrooms singing
singing
it’s sweet and soft
high in your register
not spoken
just floating on your breath like a dream

my voice teacher would say you need to support your tone
but I like it the way you do it
you do it the way a mother might sing a child to sleep
but you sing only for yourself
not to sleep or to perform
not making any fuss
just letting the wordless song be sung
by you
to you
for you
with no accompaniment but the sure click of your heels
against the bathroom tile

I spend a lot of time in bathrooms
(at least I used to and these days
I find myself returning more and more
to old habits)
the walls know me
the tiles are familiar
the locks protect me more than any living thing ever did

the sinks know my blood
the floors know my rage
the toilet knows that my insides are acid
and not sugary sweet like I once thought they were
(I respect it for not pretending
like others have tried)

I spend a lot of time in bathrooms
I want to thank you because
you make it easier
because you walk into bathrooms singing

you stop by the mirrors and
fix your makeup maybe
or adjust your jacket or swish your skirt
and I hope it’s not strange
but sometimes I watch you through the crack in my stall
(not so long that it’s creepy
just a beat that’s all)
and you always make me feel just a little bit better
because you’re so **** pretty
and so **** aware of it
your voice is sweet
you know it
and you’re not afraid

I love that
please keep singing
I don’t care if I’m there to listen
I just hope you sing

Sometimes your sister turns 21
and you don’t post on her Facebook wall on her birthday
mostly because you’re a piece of garbage
but also because there simply aren’t enough words
in the english language to accurately describe to her
how great she is,
and even more so
because even if there were enough words,
you’re not entirely sure what
you’d want to say anyway
because you’re kind of shocked
and you don’t really know what to do
honestly
because oh shoot
you can remember exactly how she looked
before she got braces
and oh man
you see her smile
and find yourself looking through years
and years
of everything she’s been through
and finding the same exact smile as before
just with different teeth
and oh wow
you look at her hands
and see them as they were
when they held a book in front of your face
and taught you how to read
and oh gosh
you see her cry and get straight up confused
as to why such an
exceptional
being
should have to ever be sad
and uGH
you sometimes get a smell that reminds you
of a very specific time with her
and it makes you weirdly emotional
and oh no
where the heck did the time go and
aaaahhh
you just know that no one is going to make
a better adult
then her
and ohmanohmanohman you think about your life
and just realize
that you’d be absolutely nowhere without her
because you’re a tiny lil bean sprout
and she’s the whoooole big sun just
showin you the hEckiN wAY to evERytHiNg and
you think about how much of who you are has
come to be defined by
the things she’s taught you
and you look at her
and then at everyone else in the world
and you realize it’s time.
It's time for her to help them like she’s helped you.
And you realize she’s ready.
You realize she’s made it.
She’s there.

When this kind of thing happens,
here’s what you do kiddo alright listen up:
you write a stupid message for her
and you post it on her frikking Facebook wall okay
just do it okay
it doesn’t matter if it’s four days late,
it doesn’t matter if it’s 4 in the morning
it doesn’t matter if you still haven’t
placed the words just right do you hear me
your sister is 21 years old
and these are the best words you have
and she’s very much worth it so just post it okay
just do it.

i find motifs in my journal entries
themes that appear consistently throughout any given expanse of time
shown in any given clump of pages
or in any given pen before it ran out of ink
there are words that pop up so often i look back and think about the girl
who sat on her bed with sleepy eyes
and tussled hair
flashlight aimed crookedly at lazy scribbled thoughts
and wonder if she noticed the recurring narrative beneath the narrative
those motifs that carried most of the flow of her thoughts
but looking back, I remember that she didn’t know
or notice that all her words were roads
that lead her back to you
or to her
or him
or anyone
no, not anyone, everyone that ever mattered
has their own clump of pages unknowingly dedicated to them
like an author of fiction unintentionally writes about their own life
what i write intentionally about my own life is unintentionally about you
or her
or him
is it human nature to always have a person that comes up when you draw a blank?
almost like white noise
a drone that plays when the faucet of stories you tell yourself runs dry
a word or name you think as you fall asleep
or that comes to you when you’re in too deep of a thought hole
and pulls you back to the top
or maybe pushes you deeper
but whatever the case, now i know
that i can measure my time on this earth in phases
measure it in clumps of pages
or the ink of a pen that spelled out your name
when i had only just been talking about the weather

your hair was long
when I first knew you.
it was straight and golden
mussed all together from weeks
and weeks without seeing a brush.

now it falls unordered
a frizzy explosion
of uneven curls
just as wild as it ever was
but darker
and shorter
more like a lion’s mane
than a waterfall
more like you
and less like all the weight
of all the world
was woven into its strands
to make it fall so straight.

and you talked about tomorrows
like a breeze
you did.
whatever direction felt right
is where you’d go
and it made me smile to think
that I was sailing a boat
not with someone who knew the wind
or where it blows
but with the wind her very self.

your tomorrow now
is much more solid
than it’s ever really been.
you’ve kept the wind with you
(as I always knew you would)
and it’s not that I
don’t know how to sail
I just miss having the wind with me
always
always.
I always used
to have the wind.

maybe I relied too much on you
maybe I always knew you’d leave
maybe I convinced myself
I’d never have to look
for something I thought I had
something I never really had to begin with.

maybe I miss you.

no one talks to me
about tomorrows anymore.
I think I know why.
I think you were right
to shed all that weight
from your hair
to shed the weight
of tomorrow
maybe even
to shed my weight.

maybe you were right
to shed my weight and I’m sorry
I’m sorry because I know
I know I meant more to you
than that
I know if you read this
you would shake your head
I know what I meant to you.
I just don't know what I mean to me.

your hair was long
when I first knew you.
I want to see
what it looks like
tomorrow.
will you let me see it then?

turn the page
turn the page and leave it be
let yourself let it go
I know
I keep telling myself and
I keep hearing from them
my mom and my dad
my therapist and my friends
turn the page
just one page
just one at a time
and soon enough the sheets will be clean again
I know
I know and I’m sorry
I’m trying, I am
and I know it doesn’t seem hard to turn one page
but my fingers are bitten, barren, and ******
and so dry you could use them to sand a bench
so dry that any time I try to turn a page
it’s difficult to grasp a sheet
my fingers slip off
and I never turn just one
I always skip a step and
go too far
I go too far and think I’m okay,
think I can forget
but the point of turning pages isn’t forgetting
and my journal wasn’t written neatly in pencil anyway
it wasn’t even stained permanently with sensible ink
there’s blood on my pages
mine and his and hers
and tears of course
mine running blue
his running purple
hers running black
all of them plucked from my shoulders and arms
combed from my hair where they fell
when I screamed my impermanence
retched my insufficiency
screeched  and hiccuped and sobbed my uselessness,
when my cracked lips and raw hands and broken frame
begged to not be forgiven
and all they did was nod and hug me
and cry on my shoulders and arms and hair,
cry from beautiful eyes that told me I was loved
eyes that left when I told them to leave
and stayed when I told them to stay
eyes that saw me
that knew me
that told me I had worth
that told me they loved me
that gave me everything I didn’t deserve
that were hurt by me beyond repair
but forgave me anyway
I want to do it for them
those specific pairs of eyes
so I’m trying to turn the page
I’m trying
but there’s so much blood
and it’s not all mine
and I’m trying to remember what you told me
about licking my fingers to unstick the pages
but wouldn’t you know my mouth is drier even than my hands
either from the medication or from talking too much
or maybe from not talking nearly as much as I should
but whatever the reason at least I'm trying and
I know they’re glad I’m trying
because they know there was a time when I wouldn’t have
and I’m constantly unsure whether
I’m going back there or not
back to when it was like that
when I wouldn’t have tried
sometimes I think I am
sometimes I want to
sometimes I find myself missing the familiarity
so I stop brushing my teeth again
stop eating food again
stare at my ceiling and cry silently again
think about every awful thing that ever happened
and watch as my nightmares of pink bathtubs
turn into fantasies again
but their eyes
their eyes that spilled over and told me I was loved
that forgave me
that did everything they didn’t have to
they want me here
they want me to come back to them
and I think I want that too
I want that for them
maybe even for me
so I’ll just have to keep trying
to get that page flipped
one page at a time and maybe
maybe someday bathtubs will just be for baths

stars are supposed to make people think about existence
about space
about time
about who we are
and why we are
and why we’re here
and where we go when it’s over

stars are supposed to make people think about stuff like that
you know
because a lot of people consistently forget what they’re here for
(heck
most people don’t even know what they’re here for at the start of it all)

me
i don’t need a reminder to think
i’ve got all the thought bases covered
covered well and good that's for sure

i need a reminder to take a rest
that’s what you are to me
and i guess that's what i've made of the stars

you’re both something that should be one thing
but end up being exactly the other
not the thing I’m told I should need
but what I actually need
something that’s real
something far away
distant
hard to understand
but there nonetheless
always there
you’re always there

and it’s not that you’ve always been “there”
not “there for me” no
no that’s not who you are
and not who i need you to be
maybe you’re meant to be that for others
(i guess i wouldn’t know)
but never to me

because you’re not here for me
you’re just here
you just come as you are

you hate being fake
so you live your life honestly
and i love you for that

i love you for that

it’s a curious thing
because i’m not much older than you
but your eyes are closed
and your lashes are such
that they look to be drawn
by some artist’s brush
and all i can think
is how awfully much
i’d like to read you to sleep

and all i can see
is how each time we touch
the pain gets a little less deep

you feel like a child
you feel like you’re mine
i feel like i’m yours
so pass me the twine
and i’ll tie your left hand pinky to mine
so no one can make me leave

You didn’t know what you were doing
and I think that was the worst part,
the fact that you just threw her heart
right away without even taking
the time
to break it first.

That’s it I guess–just that
you didn’t know and that
you didn’t break her heart
not because you loved her too much,
but because you didn’t want to feel the guilt
so instead you flattened out her breath and built
an airplane out of her lungs to fly
her heart to her
so she could break it herself,
alone in the dark
with a box full of tissues
a text to her mom
7 unanswered calls
and a silver hammer
for good measure.

You didn’t know,
you didn’t know what you’d done.
You thought maybe you both had won
because you both got sent your hearts
still intact
but you were wrong.
It doesn’t work like that.

Her lungs
were creased by your hands,
remember?
made sharp by your distinct ability
to see her vital oxygenation
as an art project,
just some ancient origami solution
to make pain look pretty.

Sharp lungs
biting breaths–
they pierced the heart
that sat on them;
it shattered the moment she lifted it
from their folded wings,
the ones that could still
feel your touch
on their edges.

You sent her her heart in the mail.
You didn’t break it you
didn’t even
break it.
Do you think that’s love?

last night i had a dream i was dying
at first it was a lot of pain
but then it was quiet
and it happened at the end
of a Finding Dory sequel

i read a poem about heartbreak
and it made me think
that what i want isn’t to hear you speak
to me like you used to,
i just want to repeat
the words you did say, not just in my head
not silent, not stuck in the back of my throat
but out loud with some tissues and a tv remote
to press skip when you kissed me and play when you spoke
and try to hear if you really meant what you wrote
out in texts and letters at one in the morning
or in the passenger seat of your mom’s mini van
that i think she may now have retired

my therapist told me
that saying that the reason i’ll never **** myself
is that it would hurt the people in my life
is an admittance of my own self-worth
do you agree?
i think if i died it would **** you
and i don’t think death speaks to you
in the same language as it does to me
so maybe you wouldn’t like that
i know i wouldn’t like that
i know i wouldn’t like you to die

It’s as if the moon has gone on vacation
and left me to control the tides
with a broom to sweep the water
and a jet boat to get from shore to shore

Yes

Yes that’s just what it’s like

and when people ask
I can only tell them
That my brain feels like a whiffle ball
when I wish it was a baseball
That getting up and doing things
is like ordering from an incompetent waitress
that just started working this job
and only does it for a little extra cash
That my inspiration is stuck in that moment
when you’ve just woken up
and as soon as you’ve realized the dream you just had
it’s gone
just a feeling
washed away

That’s what it’s like yes
That’s what it’s like
but that’s not in any way
what it actually is
and if I am stopped from that
if I am asked instead
to stop with the analogies
and tell my truth
and say how I am
I don’t know what to do

The honest truth is
I don’t know
I don’t know how I’m feeling at all
I keep making these choices
and running away
I’m isolating myself
because the times I want to tell someone most desperately
are the same times I wish to see no one ever again
are the same times I want to walk out my door
and into the woods
drop everything
and never come back

Do you want the truth?
I’m scared
so scared
so scared always
so petrified
Don’t ask me why
Everything in me
is too big for words to fit
too much to find the start of it
or the end of it
to untangle it
It’s not something from which I can just
pull pieces and bits
to lay out for you to examine
when you ask how I am
It’s a giant hopeless mess I can’t make sense of

Don’t make me look at it
It’s too much
too much
too hard to look at
to try to break apart
so please
just try to trust me on this one

It’s as if the moon has gone on vacation
and left me to control the tides
with a broom to sweep the water
and a jet boat to get from shore to shore

Yes

Yes that’s just what it’s like

i need a distraction
something to be heard
above the perpetual
electric buzzing,
human eclectic
humming,
cognitive corrective numbing
is my mind running
straight, or am i becoming
a paradox?

how many distractions
can possibly fit in
before i finally
get enough
to distract
from all the distractions
i never asked for?
millions of distractions
(from who knows what place)
but i think
i think i need to make the space
for just one more
to add the the show
because i really just don’t know,

i don’t know what to say
when asked
about the weather.

i need a distraction
but please
don’t give me something
that tries to be heard
by screaming
a half-pitch higher
than all the other screaming screamers
because i spent years holding
my breath
when my mom
drove over bridges,
my dog never stopped barking
when you yelled and
as many times as i’ve tried
i’ve never been able to write my name
with a sharpie
on my frayed black leggings
in the dark
so i know nothing works that way.

distract me
(yes)
but do it with a whisper.

because i agree,
it really is,
it’s a kicker
that the sunshine fits her
so well
but won’t fit us.

but it would never fit you or i
that’s not who we are.
(we’re just people that cry
when we look at the stars,
just some kids with souls
that hold black holes
and whisper lies
in the dark)

but we’ve still got a chance.
our dark could defy
what her sunshine denies…

but i guess it must make me sick to think about
because it is exactly why
i need a distraction

because i’m always thinking
so i’m always sick

because there’s a black hole just
of thought
inside my tummy
and it hurts sometimes
because if i look inside
myself
I’ll be ****** straight in
and all i’ll hear
is the numbing din

because my brain
won’t stop growing fuzz

because it is all mossy mountains
and nebulous fog
when all i want
is a big flat lake
and a clear open sky
but in the wake
of this motorboat mind
i guess that’s kind of
hard to find

so please
until i do find
something of that kind
i need a distraction

and though i might not be willing
to get lost in my own brain jungle
i’ll get lost in you
any day.

distract me.

when you were in it it just was
and when it started to leave you wept
and you thought you wept for the place
but you didn't
you wept for what was ignorance of the things that never were
lost
for the negative space of your world
found
a silent goodbye to the part of yourself that trusted
that where you were was a beautiful place
always a beautiful place.

and you resisted the guilt, the cognizant thinking
the inexplicable summer sadness
the unbearable uncertainty and dreaded impermanence
that came with the repressed and bottled message
you threw adrift in your brain sea
never to be found by a living thing.

"i loved it"
that's what i'll proclaim
and pounce on any opportunity to say
how sweet it was, all of it
the peaches on my porch
the leeches in the lake
the alphabet song, story time
libraries and secrets and sunshine and play
imagination, creation
disbelief, fascination at things
i now take as given

"i loved it"
i'll announce to anyone who'll listen
recounting the laughter and the adventure
the brightness of eyes and sun
the thrill of the unknown
curiosity, shoelaces, flower stickers, beach sand
and they'll smile and speak of toyland
nostalgic awe collecting in the corners of their eyes
and i will smile and offer in agreement
"i loved it"

because i will have forgotten the hopelessness, the fear
the harsh words and hard hands
the mind games the guilt
the disgusted eyes and false goodbyes
that a set of small hands I barely remember
set aside on my bedside table
under a white sheet just barely covering the edges
and a sign written shakily in pink glitter pen
"do not disturb; she's sleeping"

and whenever i face my tooth brushing reflection
or lie awake in a stranger's bed
when i find myself wandering alone in a crowned place
and a memory sparks and burns slowly, etched in scattered flecks in my brain
that quickly become clearer
their touch certain and desperate
their trace slow to fade
i'll shut my eyes and wait
for all those frozen thoughts to melt away
and they will
i'll make them
washed off down squeezed lashes,
brushed to the side they'll fall
and i will rest my head against the wall
fill my head with thoughts of "tragic beauty"
grit my teeth into a smile
and when my heart has been ground into a powder so fine
it resembles an ocean
and in liquid form can almost be called whole again
i'll believe myself when my mouth finds the shape of
"i loved it"

i think that sometimes the earth
rotates in such a way that she never
exactly asked for, a way she
never particularly wanted or loved or
even thought made any sense in any way at all.

chaotically thrown against the walls of her own mind (and
having to watch as others have the same thing done to them
or to their friends) has often made her wonder:
is it her?

is it her that is responsible? unreasonable as it sometimes seems,
she often thinks it might be true.

the earth’s rotation only exists in her eyes, doesn’t it? that’s only natural,
her perception is all that she knows for sure so it makes sense to her in
every way: she must be the cause, she has to be.

cracked in the middle, aren’t i? (she thinks)
okay, but what does that mean? does she see it as a fault, as if every crack
oozes sticky black insufficiency, staining all it touches? no. no, it’s
less that than an awakening. she’s not wrong for being cracked;
everything good can only get in if a few cracks are there. besides, can’t
she see that she glows? surely she knows the inside of her is golden and
the only way to release it is through those cracks she so despises? surely.

kind soft and radiant, she glows even as the earth rotates against her, and
i love her for that. i love her. sometimes the hardest most cracked and
darkest shells house the brightest most beautiful royal souls.

i hold your hand
and brush lightly my thumb
back and forth against yours.
my shoulder is strong beneath you head.
i reach up my left hand to catch a tear
that's gotten away from you, and
careful not to let my fingers  shake,
i put every ounce of my attention into that motion
trying to make you understand
feeling the feeling words pouring from my finger
to your cheek, hot like blood through veins
a whisper, a shout, a certainty
"i am here i am here i am here"
but you are lonely lonely lonely
and so cold you shiver
in my drafty old house.

i've been all over the world
you've been all over the country
but i think you're more worldly than me.
you asked me
of all the places i've been
where i'd like to go back to
and i thought of the answer
but could not speak so my eyes
spoke for me
spilling over salted memories
turned red with a thousand sunsets long past
and largely forgotten.
cried over
slept through
driven under
kiss strewn.
and you said speak
i'd thought it already
so it couldn't hurt me anymore.
your patience is much greater than you say
and your kindness is much less estranged than you wonder
because you waited until i looked up
tears on cheeks like rain on windows
a mark on my forehead from where it rested
against your wrinkled sweatshirt
mascara dust smudged across sticky lashes
bleeding as i whispered
(i want to go home)
(but you did go home) you said
(yes, i did) i agreed.
(and it wasn't a good time?)
(no it wasn't)
(but you want to go home?)
(yes i do. i had a home and now it's gone)
but you said you'd never had a home before
then you held up our hands and said
maybe this was home
you said
maybe we're living in houses
built out of each other.

everyone's face drips
you know
you've seen it
your face drips too
sticky skin sap sinking down
down
you don't see but you can feel it
in a cognitive mirror that shudders
and 72 silver tears from your mother
all the while he looks for his brother in the dark like he always has
45 minutes on a bike in the rain
but you feel nothing but her breath
you're gone from this world
a dropped thread in a quilted universe that was never patched for you
her dewy rasps from burned lungs tired lungs
innocent lungs crushed
by a heart too biBreath too fast for one so small
pigtails flying behind her
like the piece of string that flew off the back of his car that december
and just as fleeting.

hold your breath and pull it from your stomach
the dark is the safest place to touch my hand
so let's just watch that silver strand come up
silent and sure in its way
slipping past sharp lungs
drenched lungs, crystals floating on the surface
the salt from a father's sweat and a mother's tears
grown quickly thick from wordless fears
they thought we couldn't hear
"these are not children of the night"
they whispered, certain
but we're not children
we're stars that don't know how to implode
but we'd better find out because i know
the dark is the safest place to touch my hand
so if we keep on shining like the floorboards don't feel it
i won't know how to face us anymore

hold your breath and pull it from your stomach
through your mouth, out like a circus clown
glowing faint like the street lamps of your hometown
blood and ink and bathroom sinks don't matter
when they're knit in a scarf of impermanence
wrapped around some lopsided snowman
knocked off and away by the neighborhood dog
and soon forgotten
lost in a flurry of teacups and time
and floor-scattered tissues

hold your breath and pull it from your stomach
i'll wait to make sure you breathe again
and in the silence
we can play cat's cradle

I want to stab myself with love
I want to rip open my chest
and tear off my ribs one by one
and scream kindness like a gunshot
to fill the empty space.

I want to pull my heart up from my throat
—scraping, bleeding—
pierce it with a thousand needles
answer plant seeds of hope to sprout, wild and fevered
quick and ready and sure
like flowers in the rain.

I want my limbs to get caught on a snag of beauty
and be torn from me, stuck in the brambles
because like attracts like
and I am beauty
but my body, it doesn't know.

I want to strip from myself my ligaments and tendons
like wires from a wall
—if I'm truly an electrician of the soul
I should know what's gone wrong—
with a little compassion sewn into my veins
maybe I'd be like new.

you said music could breathe through veins just as well as blood
and the way you said it felt so real
that when the notes in me got caught in clots
that my heart was too weak to flush smooth
and no breath in or out could resolve the cognitive dissonance that came
when i choked on my newfound ability to make the senseless make sense
i found the uncertainly certain notion of belonging in the rubble of my fallen back shelf
knowing my body was built for melody
i let the chords bleed from clenched ribs teeth and fists
while i remembered your voice whispering
that being a child of song was never my choice to make
like it or not.
and now i answer to the sound of my own heart breaking.
i let it crush me
and let the earth craft harmony
from my freshest precious cracks
and now the music chooses me again.

I want to go back and redo high school with you and talk less about school and less about my anxieties and more about the way the rain sounds and how the universe is and the way your eyes squeeze when you’re genuinely smiling as opposed to being sarcastic. I would have loved to have made your eyes squeeze like that more than I made them wide with half-hidden concern. I want to go back to the person I was and tell her that grades and tests and rules aren’t real but that you sure are, that time isn’t as expansive as she thinks it to be so she should make your house her second home and learn the pattern of your mothers laugh by heart and speak to you like a free waterfall of who she is and expect nothing less from you while you’re still there with her. Her time where she is is fleeting, so she really ought to be spending more of it with you and less of it worrying endlessly about things that will eventually stop making sense. I want to go and relive those four years like they should have been lived: like they mattered. Nothing ever mattered more than you.

i’m tired
and it’s not because
i don’t sleep or because
my days are long or because
i need a rest
or a break
or something
it’s just that all this nothing
has made me numb
and I ask
that you please don’t inquire
as to why
because I really don’t know
how it happened
but i seem to have misplaced
the very last
of the last
of my reasons to live
and it’s strange to me
because there was sunshine once, I know
there was.
there was sunshine
and when some trees grew to block it
it was horrible,
but at least then
I knew.
I knew.
but as I stand now
in an open field
devoid of any tree that might try
to keep my sunshine from me
I don’t know
I don’t know why
but all I can see is darkness,
all I ever see
is darkness
and I just find it strange
because I’m still so very used to
the way things used to be
when the sun was gone,
back when I would lie in bed
and hear my heart beat too hard
and feel my chest press too tight
and listen
as every single toxic sob that caught
on every single bitter breath
dissolved its rhythm
into familiar chaotic spasms
that shook
and echoed
in my head
and clouded my perception
for days after.
i can so easily
fall into remembering a time
when it was normal
for me to feel myself breaking
when it was normal for me
to let it happen,
back when I would
squeeze my eyes shut
and watch the night swim,
but all of that
it just seems so strange to me now
because all I do anymore
is stare at the ceiling
hearing nothing,
feeling nothing, trapped
in nothing
and all I ever see
is darkness
and I don’t know,
I don’t know whether
my sun is coming back
and that’s
not
even
what’s
scary.

what’s scary is that
I don’t know whether
I want it to
you see
I’m not quite sure whether
I care.

at some point the problem stopped being that i had all these words in my head i wasn’t saying
and became me having nothing to say at all
calls or what’s wrong
a chorus of are you okay
fifteen thousand talk to meh echoing around my cavernous skull
i want to i want to i want
(believe me)
to
but words don’t choose me as their home anymore
i can’t hardly blame them
i’m sure they tell stories, the words
sure i’m a big bad that little verb and noun children have learned to fear
hearing takes of words that entered me
and were never set free
so now mr. and mr. adverb, mrs. and mrs. conjunction, mx. and mx. pronoun
they all caution oh no stay away from her
she’ll eat you alive she will
her lips will never let you out not even
in her sleep
stay away, stay away
so now i have no words
now i am empty
i inflict irreversible pain by deflecting questions i have no answer to
and drown in the probability of senselessness
and take showers in the dark
where words won’t reflect off me
where the water will hit and slide down my skin
and i’m not expected to take it in
or give anything back

your humor is clay
it’s thick and often dark
fun to grasp
naturally occurring
unpredictable yet familiar
something that delighted me as a child
and has only become more precious now
as we grow taller
as the nostalgia grows thicker and
as the time carved out for such things
grows shorter and thinner to match

your humor is clay
and i miss laughter
i fear that if i took time
for sculpting pots now
i wouldn’t remember how
to make everything symmetrical
i fear my pots
would look like tears
and yours would still
look like suns

you insisted we were music and i laughed
and told you no
we were a record
and though we housed music inside us
a stranger to our world might look at us spinning
and forget what was there
before they even became aware of it.
that beauty was hidden in the dark thick grooved and hard
you can't just run your bathroom sink expecting to think of shining rivers
when you know whose blood has been washed down the drain
and just how much.

i think i was right
but for the wrong reasons.
i think there were nights when we spun and spun
scratched by some needle just out of our control
scraped in just the right places to make us sing or scream
but only just enough so we wouldn't bleed
i think we learned to worship the sting that came
from being a found thing in the world of the lost
after all, there are smart phones and ipods and streams
but i guess even shipwrecks have anchors.
maybe that's what you meant.

it's midnight here and time feels frozen
and i wonder if it really were
and i were to walk through borders and stop signs
past silent horns and stilled traffic lights

windshield wipers caught mid slash and
music stopped in every father's daughter's minivan and
desperate drivers with tired eyes
suspended in lives
that i will never understand
it's been three months since i last touched your hand
you are a thirty minute hourglass and i'm exhausted sand
you are a thirty minute hourglass and i'm exhausted sand
you are a thirty minute hourglass and i'm exhausted

"it's not too bad" that's just what you'll say
and your voicemail sounds so far away
well that's too bad
always scared that you're okay
it's not hard to say "i'll keep you safe"
when you've never had to save the day
it's not that i think that you're to blame
i just think the shots have changed

maybe people aren't meant to be beacons
maybe they aren't meant to glow
maybe i should have known that the glasses i placed
just so on my face
just so, just for you
had far too many special effects
to know what was real and what was a hex
or a trick of the light
or a slight of my hand
maybe people aren't meant to be beacons

positivity feels like a drop of water in a desert
and i'm tired of calling you with nothing to say
because if the desert were an ocean, i'd be the curve of a wave
something forever shifting, steep then still, steep then still
constant, but not the same
(splash splash, ripple ripple
a storm and a tide shift and a push of an oar
but then i guess even shipwrecks have anchors)

it's something my math teacher taught me to think of in numbers
the idea of a shifting wave
a fundamental of calculus, easily measured by tangent lines and graph paper,
a protractor and a trusty dixon ticonderoga number 2
(the best pencil in the world, i've been told)

but textbooks, backpacks, and the smell of dry erase
never gave me any clue of how to deal with seasickness.

do you like that world?
do you sit at your desk staring at chemical equations
considering a list of things that dead white men did or didn't do
a pencil in one hand (dixon ticonderoga number 2)
a knife in the other,
blood and ink and a bathroom sink
spilled like oil on pavement across your mind
(thick and dark in a toxic puddle, bad for the earth
but if you look at it sideways, sometimes you see rainbows)

when you go to bed and your hands shake and your breath
shivers out of you like a ghost,
are you satisfied with your world of locker slams and ABCs
and choices that you're told are yours?

maybe you're the desert
maybe i'm your drop of water
i'm tired of calling you with nothing to say
because really i'd guess i have too many words
i'm an ocean, motion sick from my own fluctuating sea,
and i would never want for you to be like me,
you're beautiful with your mountains and rocks and sand
i just with i could make you understand
how ever part of you glows when you talk about music
or how free your voice sings when you talk to me
while you're aimlessly doodling masterpieces
on some stupid vocab sheet.

One second I was holding your hand and the next I was frightened to let it go
because there we were

horizontal
and quiet

casually taking the bandaids off our hearts one by one in the dark

and with our foreheads touching my eyes and yours were like lighthouses across a bay
just forgetting about their responsibility to guide the boats for a while,
and simply just blinking back at each other
on a plane of existence only inhabited
by them

and while we lay there like that you whispered some words
and I whispered them back
thinking that maybe all the stories I’d been told when I was younger
hadn’t been such b.s. after all.

I think I’ve earned the right to talk freely about wanting to die.
It’s been so many times I thought I’d got the feeling down
I thought I knew what it was like.
It was always just the same,

like a five thousand pound weight on my chest
like my heart torn in half
like my mind numb and
my stomach hallow and
my brain bleeding.
It’s never felt sweet before,

never felt like staring at the sun for too long,
never felt like some chaotic spasm in my chest,
like my bandaid-coated heart couldn’t manage this much beauty
this much love
this much light
so it just decided that to quit existing would probably just be easier

because it never knew it could be allowed to feel this good
or to beat so strongly and truly
for someone else.

It’s never felt like this.

i laid in bed
and listened to you breathe from miles away
quickly
deeply
deliberate
like breath from underwater through a straw
100 feet long

when my eyes fluttered closed
your breath blew through my head
and picked up powdered paint
i hadn't known
was lying around
and blew slow swirls of color through the sky
falling softly in your pause between exhale
and inhale
but being spun into motion once more
never getting to the ground
suspended by the idea of you
bright purples and blues
in improvised kaleidoscopes
that i wondered if you could see
from where you were

the pull of a bow on a string is just that–
a pull, and not a push.
pushed music can ring though your ears and tickle your mind,
can tease through expression or alter your spine
but pulled music can make you glow.

it's a sort of art that has long been forgotten by most,
the noticing of the way emotion glitters the air,
scattered particles drifting by, soft and slow
like stars, faint in their flickering glow,
fallen from passing thoughts and floating glances
from gestures and movements and crystalline fingers,
spun off from spoken words
that swirl like kaleidoscopes from parted lips,
brushed from questions and bedsheets,
or risen in quiet steam
from a memory that's been stirred like hot tea
with a wooden stick
or a silver spoon.

with a bow and a string, you can do something special–
you can catch a feeling-star.
you can summon a single speck to dance in your hand
and pull
and watch as a focused strand is drawn out from the mess,
watch as it curves and twists and spirals through the air,
your instrument the loom
from which your feeling-scarf is knit.

and it will wrap around you, warm and safe
it will seep inside you,
deep into the chasm, your empty chest
and whisper nothing but sweet impermanence,
nothing but i am here and
i am now and
i will will be gone in the blink of an eye but oh,
you love me, you love me, you love–

and it will hurt, much later
it will sting and it will burn
and everything you thought was true will go all backwards and bent,
but pain reminds us that we're alive, time is a crooked bow
and you'll know  it was worth it because trust me,
you'll glow.

my aunt never read the last chapter of the return of the king
just so, my tongue and lips are heavy with all the 'g's 'o's and 'b's
of all the goodbyes i never asked them to shape

goodbye sounds like a bathtub
a place where you sit and you soak and bubbles float
and you think a but
and you sift through the dirt that rests on your skin
and try to ignore the dirt that lives in your skull
and rests in the crevices of memory fences
where the paint has worn away,
leaving a map of paint chips scattered on the ground
to lead you to where your sea meets your sky,
that cognitive horizon, clouded by brainfog,
its map fallen from fence posts stripped from trees where lilacs used to grow
and now line your thoughts like the cellophane
that lined the caramels that came out of piñatas at your old birthday parties

i think about that sometimes
how the return of the king must have been so important to my aunt
that she went and stripped posts from her own lilac tree
or maybe it was an apple blossom (my aunt is from connecticut)
but whatever it was, she built that memory fence
she waited to say goodbye and then she never did
and i'm sure she sits in bathtubs sometimes and looks at the soap
and wonders if it would be easier to wash her face
if she knew what it would look like afterwards