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.

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 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

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

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

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

"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"

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.

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

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.

you don't know me
did you used to?
oh
oh my god why aren't i sure?
i'm not sure i'm not i'm not i'm
not oh god oh god
who are you?

stick with me here i'm just
i'm trying to remember the talks we had in my driveway
the texts you sent me from airports that made my heart glow
should i list these things to help myself?
your eyes, my hair
funny looks when you'd stare
at me after saying something dumb
before we started laughing
and i thought how good we were together
i thought how good we were like that
i'm trying i am i am
but loneliness has skimmed the dreaminess from the top of my head
and left me instead
with a vision so broad i can't find the tunnel to you
and now my hands won't stop shaking
and my breath feels all floaty
as if even as i breathe slowly
nothing's happening at all
i don't remember who you are

i miss you but i don't
i miss who you were
and i know about change and time and hearts
i know that sometimes people grow apart
i'm not a child
but i was
such a short time ago
and so were you
so where's the damage at?

i'm scared, love
did i know you then?
do you know me now?
and was the person i am now
hidden inside the child i was?
and if so, did you only know the mask i wore
or did i let you see my face?
please help, i guess i didn't realize
how terribly alone we really are

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.

When you leave
I can feel warmth in the space where you were
for hours.
The kiss you left blossoms from my cheek
and doodles roses all over my skin,
doodles roses all over around and through my skin.
I am transparent;
someone that might look at me
just after you’ve left
would see nothing,
well at least nothing but
the mist your breath left on my hair,
the shimmer your hands gave softly my cheeks,
and those roses that started with your kiss,
the roses that finished themselves in your absence,
drawing their glow like a memory,
a thought, a guess of how you might draw them
if you were here.
I don’t stir;
any movement might erase the lovely imprint
you’ve left on my pillow
and any rustling might shake
any lingering trace there might still be of you
from the air,
but if the quiet stays unbroken
and the sheets stay just like this,
I can let myself believe
that your eyes would gaze back at me
if I were to open mine
or that you might just kiss me again.
I can listen to my own breaths
and imagine that they are also yours,
feel the beat of my own heart
and pretend that I am resting against your chest,
or even that our chests
are one and the same.
I can plant and grow a whole garden of roses like that,
roses just for now,
roses just for you.
(With me
no matter what it is
it’s always just for you).

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

you make me wonder about you
you do
you make me wonder about you
and about how new
your shirt is and where those scuffed shoes
have been, how your knee got black and blue
(and whether your heart is those colors too)
whether or not you keep up on the news
how long you've done that thing that you do
with your tongue when you're laughing, and who
it was you first kissed until your lips turned blue
and whether or not you have any clue
how every word from your mouth is thoughtful and true
or how adorable it is every time that you
get excited by star wars
or ninja masks

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

it’s funny
because i learned to love you, but
i never learned to love or hate the dark
and i don’t understand why
because you are so much alike

there’s no start
no middle,
no ending
to you
and therefore no mending
for me
in my head
because i keep trying to hold you
to get a grasp on something
to make it
make sense
to try to feel even the slightest bit less
dispensable
but you just keep going and going and going
and going and going
and going
and i always fall short
no matter what i do
there’s just no holding on to you

i don’t know how to proceed
i don’t know what the darkness needs
from me
or what i need from it
or how to fall asleep
without the upstairs bathroom light lit

it fills in all the holes, I guess
that’s something.
all the rips and tears
(and other types of tears)
and the peeling paint chips
and broken pencils
and crumpled diary entries
and breaths full of anything but oxygen
and phone calls that ring and ring and ring and ring and ring
and ring and ring
and ring

it’s ink (the dark)
it’s thick
hard to move in
and the stains don’t come out
of my clothes and skin,
its blotchy evidence
forever dinned
into me,
into who i am
but I’m not exactly in the interest
of giving a **** just now
because it fills the desperation,
doesn’t it?
all the stupid aches and
intrusive emptiness
that have been shredding through
this tired little room
at least three thousand
nine hundred
and seventy two times a day every day
since you left
(what with all the tiny gaps and chinks
and leaks and cracks, despised
because they could have otherwise
been occupied
by you.)

it’s ink
it comes and it goes
and when i wake everyone knows
because it’s caked on my eyes.
everyone sees the stains.
they might not notice, but all the pain
they see in me is reflected
in their eyes
when they greet me
and i just want
the dark to come back
so i can at the very least
be surrounded
by something that knows me.

i wish you were here
you know i do,

but you’re not.

so i guess the dark will have to do.

my mind is cluttered in the way
my room was cluttered at home
in the upstairs drafty guest room
of my family's house,
small and bright in morning and memory
big and dark in night and dreamings;
***** laundry that once lay strewn
over futon and desk
(or flowed over from rifled-through drawers
or across the floor, banished there in a fit of frustration
when looking for some lost found thing)
now lies over sticky dark brain parts
covering, protecting, cluttering;
the moldy cups of tea that once lined windowsill and dresser top
now lounge sideways, tipped and wet
spilling remnants of calm that have since grown sour
across a cognitive carpet that soaks them up, thirsty;
pens and paper, pastels and watercolor,
charcoal and graphite and brushes and shavings
sketchbooks and journals with pages ripped out
crumpled and thrown towards the trash can in the corner
(whose rim has long been set ajar
by tissues and bandaids and cellar tape)
all these things now wait in new corners
(different corners
mind corners)
and scatter every drawer of thought,
a familiar symbol of disorganized beauty,
of the genius that whispered secretless secrets into gifted hope chests,
of the artist whose tears breathed rainbow ribbons
down innocent cheeks
in the dark.
my mind is cluttered
and it is full
of the same things that have always lived there
even though
i now live elsewhere
and have since learned to tie my shoes
without much thought.

this journal met me when i hurt.
i took it out of my bag with shaky hands
breathed ice on each page
and wrote each word
detached
separate
(and tired,
*******
i was so tired).

this journal felt
my 3am bloodstains
in every pen stroke.
it watched me close my eyes
and furrow my brow
and saw just exactly how
lost I was
in the fog
(much too lost for poetry logs
and remembering historic dates).

and you can be sure
that every pencil tip that broke
against this journal’s lined sheets
shook
like some sort of sign shooting
from my heart, an electric line routing
through my fingertips
and into the graphite,
allowing me to hear the soft
crack
of the lead
and recognize
somewhere in my foggy head
that we were the same,
me and Number 2.
apply enough pressure?
we both snap in two.

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

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.

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.

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

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

were were all of us in love with the dark and closet doors
drawn to the feeling of close, of cold against warm
of drawn in, of quiet, of knees pulled up to chins
the world was too bright, too harsh for our eyes
and they never did find sunglasses to fit in the light
so we simply went out and bought our own
and wore them in the dark

and we go to parties every night
parties where silence is the music that plays
over out collective heartbeat drum set as it picks up pace
in empty rooms that carry sound
like a cast carries a broken arm–
gently, painfully, purposefully.
we go to parties where we sit
with our cheap sunglasses to protect our eyes
using darkness to shield us from darkness, and ties
that we know will have to be broken
so we just sit in the silence and listen

our bodies are canvases
for a thousand watercolor words left unsaid,
our knuckles are painted white and red,
our parties are places where the things in our heads
are proven to be real.
we are all of us in love with the dark and closet doors.

thank god for tea
thank god for whistles and steam and milk and honey and mugs
thank god for teabags
and warmth and sweet and bitter and soft and sleep and mornings
thank god for kettles
and quiet and windows and pillows and jars and an absence of tears
thank god for tea
because i get cold
and my hands shake without something to hold
and my brain quakes when it isn't told something
anything to do
outside of itself so
thank god for tea
and grandmas and books and kittens and libraries
thank god for teapots
and sunsets and toothpaste and thermoses and treetops
thank god for soft chairs to sit in and sip
crisscross applesauce with a mug at your lips
because i get frightened
and i get cold
and if the only thing that's bold
in this house is this strong cup of tea
and not me
i'll take what i can get

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

there's something about the movies that screams intimacy to me
i don't mean rented flicks on a tv screen
i mean popcorn and soda straws
hands sticky from sweets
gum stuck lazily on soft red folding seats
and a fabric wall that looks like a tablecloth

come and see a movie with me
the dark is a safe place to touch my hand
and when the characters on screen step outside
and our faces are painted in colored light
you'll remember that you did
and then you'll smile
and i'll know

it's safe to cry in theaters, isn't it?
safe yes, because the reality on screen
is not reality itself
people cry all the time at things of fiction and fancy–
it's the real things that scare them past the point
of letting emotion spill

sit with me at a movie
watch with me a reflection of the world we live in
or don't live in
whichever the case may be
i want to get lost in a story together
one that both does and doesn't belong to us
but that we're allowed to explore regardless

and anyway
i know the dark is the safest place
the safest place to touch your hand