My smile glistens like cracked glass.
The dancing never stops.

this year*:

the one person i thought was my soulmate left my life without so much as one word

i fell out of love with the first girl i fell in love with

i was reunited with someone i hoped would be my new mother

i was repeatedly disappointed

i met the most amazing friend i only ever imagined having

i quit my job

i got a new job

i fell in love with a pathological liar

i went to my grandfather's funeral

i was lied to by the pathological liar (surprise!)

i was there for her when she went to detox

i was there for her when she relapsed

i had a rather epiphanic moment where i was brought to inexplicable sobs and repeated screams  on my knees saying "help me" in desperate hopes of being heard by some unknowable God

i quit the new job and got hired back at the old one

i lost trust in all humans, including myself

i moved in with my dad

i got to know the depths of fragility

i was manipulated and in turn, i manipulated

i had random panic attacks

i met Regina Spektor

i wrote poems

i wrote songs

i painted

i read books

i drank a lot of coffee

i smoked many cigarettes

i laughed less

i cried less

i felt less

i denied anti-depressants

i worked on letting go of unhealthy persons, including my mother

which lead to learning the repetitive lesson that overnight success does not exist

i booked a flight to Mississippi

i learned how to be alone without being lonely

i became even more infatuated with the moon

i wanted to die,

i'm still alive.

i made mistakes,

i learned from them.

this year has been a whirlwind, a teenage drama gone half right topped with a questionable ending

2013, here i come.

Let me rip pages
     out of my world
          and scatter them
                around your life.

Love is a riddle
A Gideon's knot of emotion
That can only be untangled
By two sets of hands
And a pair of hearts

In the half light of the
Dying sun
Blood falls from her lips
Puts dark beads in
The sand
Around her fingers.

She traces the shape
Of her teeth
With
A tender tongue.
Taste of rust and redness.

A grimacing bloodstained
Smile
Stretches her aching cheeks
As tears slide from
A swelling eye and
The air
Echoes with the sound
Of her
Breaking laughter.

The waves moan in reply,
Licking up
The droplets of blood
And caressing
Her kneeling legs.
She breathes deeply through
A bruised nose.
It won't be long now.
Closes her eyes.

Morning finds her sleeping,
Face down
And out to sea
Her body haloed by a
A ring of dark color
Obscured
By the blackest blue.

The fishes are her pallbearers,
The horizon is her headstone.