Find yourself among the sea.
(We all know you'd **** to be clean)
You're dissolved memories rotting with purity
Unobstructed details of a killing spree.

You're ragged knots hanging in the tree
Vain attempts at writing new memories.
But god my god, you're too blind to see
Hell is with you in your veins as you sleep.

So bless me, or curse me, really
Whatever's easiest for you.
Your gut wrenching sorrow is getting old, too.

Do me a favor
Just once for me, please.
Count your blessings four by four by four
And with the scripture you hold to the highest degree
Shout to the condemned what exactly it is that you see.

I think my heart may rip out of my chest.
Today I woke up feeling like I was still asleep. I don't think I washed the dreams off my skin.
I am typing with a bandaged finger, a testament to my carelessness.
I don't know how to guard the things that matter most. I am casual. I am not careful enough.
I don't know how to hold onto things before they change.
I am a human wearing a chameleons skin but I am not predisposed to adaptation.

My life is a work of art
But it has never been scripted for you.
It doesn’t have to taste sweet on your tongue.
It doesn’t have to be soft or comfortable.
You do not even have to enjoy it.
No.
My life is not for you to consume numbly.
It is not meant to be a safe space for you to form opinions.
I am still carving out the obsidian I’m crafted from.
And I do not have to listen to you to know where to chisel.
I have never written for you. Or loved for you.
With you maybe, but not for.
My life is not meant to be eaten like an apple
Whose core is too harsh.
I am poison.
And I never told you to taste me.

You’re all skeletons and veins
(or something like that)
Just a pile of bones hanging on an empty frame
With walls that feel too close for comfort
(You romanticize the dark as she sings your name)
I want the moon to light up your bed
And your flesh as we wait for the dark
We’re counting empty minutes so we can feel our ribs as they sink
Finding empty beds of flowers and empty bottles and empty seats
Stones carved in cemeteries with graves emblazoned with no names
Skeletons and souls, we are hanging hearts on empty frames

I fell asleep to you after binges of Chinese food. And movies playing too loud, warping my mind to include translucent holographic dreams and 90's cartoons.
I am used to quick moving waters, cutting the banks of the rivers that flow through my bones. I am versed in their tongue but not quite you- stopped and steady after nights of solitude.
How can I sleep with insomnia that tastes like the sweetest dessert that has ever graced my lips, my tongue, my skin. I am too messy to be compartmentalized. I am too messy for you. I am too messy. I am.

Romanticizing fantasy or refusing to see what’s in front of me-
It has always felt the same.
I have never been scared of silence and stillness
But I’ll take it back again.

I will steal your soul and bones without condition.
Like barbed wire rooftops-
I would kiss your sorrow sans inhibition.

So take me or break me, it's really all the same.
I'm the mirror that shattered and sliced your fingers
                         -your favorite superstition.

I am not scared of the dead.
I am scared of the living.
I am scared of broken bones.  
Of the way they curl my skin like pages torn from an old book, simply by slicing my flesh with their words.
I have felt enough for this life and the next.
I have no fear left for the deceased.
For the ghosts of those past. They hold no power over my mortality.
But the living- they have stabbed and ripped and cut like I am an animal ready for consumption.
I am not scared of the dead.
I am envious of their peace.

You have chattering teeth that spill like oil hollographic on wet pavement
Lying between rows, saying that I miss you is not the same as

I am lonely (but don't know how to be alone)

And the ghost that resides between your bones was best suited with flesh
Far from that whose felt heaviest when it was close to yours

(Mine)

You have found the hole in the wall, the silk stained sheets drenched with sweat that poured from your skin when the words

Like and love

Were intertwined with once upon a time.
But you have hands grown cold like the drink you held between your palms when you realized that you didn't choose me along

I chose myself

You have a traveler's soul.
And a mind that wanders just as restlessly
As a ship lost at sea
Refusing to sink and become forgotten.

You have the eyes of hand woven tapestries
Hung on the walls of childhood homes.
Laden with memories and first kisses
Riddled with promises and Sunday afternoons.

You have the bones of a life felt from the other side.
A spirit touched by what it means
To be human
And what it means to be broken.

It felt like the cement floor had open me up and enveloped me like a rib cage longing for a heart. I was slightly out of grasp, or just slightly out of touch. I have never heard the night sky sing like this with sadness or the cooing creak of cicadas. The red church sat with judgmental green doors blinking at me as strangers walked the steps inside to see a home I have never known or wanted. I have never needed that sort of love. The medicine I have tasted comes from binges of technicolor cartoons on nights that lasted too long. Time has been running out since it started and I can’t tell if it’s better to count what was or what will be. And the church with its emerald eyes has sat with its gaze cast at my window, as if to say I am picking wrong I am picking wrong. I cannot escape the anvil that straps itself to my chest when I go to bed. Maybe someone is praying for me.

If my flesh had a language it would be cooed in stretch marks.
My skin would spill its secrets in a whisper
Saying
"Look and see how much you've grown.
How beautiful you're woven, like a tapestry of love and stardust.
And I think you should know there are
no
mistakes.
Every crook and crevice of your soul and bones are adored.
Wear your marks like kisses from the cosmos.
Every inch of your body is like opal gleaming in the sunlight"

I have written about you on napkins in coffee shops and restaurants that traverse continents.  I've written your name on foreign pages in cities you'll never be, at least not with me. I've etched your name onto trees but your initials always feel out of place alongside my own, or at least that's how it seems. You have always traded a taste of ink for words you'll never let me read. You're darkened melancholy that you think tastes too sweet. You had me, oh you had me and I've written down the verse. But the tape is skipping, the record is broken, a melody and a curse

Bless yourself, you ended up in my poetry.
You call them poems, after all, and I'm sure you know this is as close as you'd get to having me.
Cast away the demons you claim sleep under your bed.
You know that even after making my skin crawl that you're all in my head.

Father, son and holy ghost-
The only thing I believe in are phantoms, but you already knew that didn't you.
So what's so cathartic about the way  you cleanse me of my sins?
Do you mask mine in your own, does my purity make you feel clean?

You're the darkest night when the stars don't want to be seen.
Laying ice upon my spine you see that maybe I'm not right for your skies.
You're stitches in my side from a crack that didn't show.
You touched me to pieces but even you have to go.

I want to be your reformation
So holy a scripture you forget damnation
I want to be the heaviest book you've ever read
In a tongue so thick your skin will shed

Where’s the step between comfort and apology because I think I’ve yet to find that place.
Instead I think my blood will boil before it curdles.
(Leave memories of how your skin made me feel)
Where do you turn to in the dark and who do you watch.
When your footsteps shatter the silence you left when you said you would never go.  
(But you left anyway)
How can you expect to trust a soul, if you don’t even trust your own.

And why have you gotten me stuck in the place between the two.

Come and look at the way my skin sheds at the sight of the setting sun
And see the stars placed along my vertebrae
Settled
In nooks your fingers will never touch.
Trace the outline of the skin along my thigh with a gaze
Shaded
By eclipses.
Breathe the scent upon my flesh settled with stardust and your fetishes.

You are tangled memories and oh my god you had your grip on me. You planted your seeds and wrapped your fingers around my ribs and warped the cage that homes my heart, my tragedies. You tangled my flesh and stole my skin and I think that’s a sin- you were always my favorite sin but you lost me oh my god you lost me and you left me in the cemetery to decay in the breeze. You’ve gone and left to find your home in someone else’s veins but you’ll never find bones that break quite the same as the ones that I wear. You were gas stations and memories and cigarette smoke you kissed onto me. You were gin and sin and poetry read in your bed as your flesh was pressed against me. You were rooftops and coffee shops oh my god you were mornings of lazy limbs and tangled trees-you were the nights I couldn’t sleep. You had your chance to be with me and lost your grip and set me free.

You are wilted
And I have found you climbing iron lattices that I have only known in passing
Like the forget-me-nots you’d pick the petals of
“He loves me
He loves me not”
If only I could become immortal.

You are the earth  I think
I have caught my fingers in your vines before.
like- a promise spoken in runes long ago.
"I will love you even when the sun sets-
my moon, you have found a space like opal
you will always gleam like a stone in the light.
You wander like a willow in the winter and I-
I don't think I have ever seen so beautiful a sight"

You’re my favorite word.
And I could take you in endless combinations
Letters lining your spine like a poem you read as a child
The one where you had felt love for the first time
But had forgotten that this is what it sounded like.
You are like medicine
That I didn’t know I needed but needed.
Your warmth is like the summer air.
And I think you taste like the rain in the moonlight.

I taste like heaven and hell.

Like the nightmares you had where you were left in the middle of the ocean.
Drowning
You woke up crying.

Or the one where you watched everyone you loved die.
But
It was you shooting.

I taste like the hidden corners of your closet where you keep your diaries.
With pages filled with how you’d touch me.

I am the burnt sugar on the edge of the pan.
The drops of ice cream that leave your fingers sticky.

I want pieces of you like the landscape that surround your bones.
I want you like the moons that engulf your soul.

I want pieces of your mind engraved in mine.
I want each continent of your flesh pressed against my own.

I want your teeth cutting boundaries of where no one else can go.
I want my body to be a Mecca but only for your own.

One day someone will make this body of mine bloom like a garden of wild roses.
I think I would pick each petal off and dry what remained.
My body is a desert but my roses don't need rain.

Come kiss me.

I will put away my teeth for you.

I will find the softest part of my skin and let you touch it.

I will not be hard or walled up.

I am spinning around myself and talking in foreign tongues.

So I can find a way to tell you-

I am hurting but I am still enough.

I was told once that apathy was in my blood.
Climbing like squid ink midnight black through the ocean begging for the forlorn sun.
I have seen atrocities in these veins of mine, calling to the moon for forgiveness, I have howled a hollow cry- it has made my bones crack.
There is no room in these ribs for complacence. For apathy or for those who don't protect the petals of the heart that I wear like a fruit ripe for picking.
I am delicate but I am not hollow. I am full to the brim and I will run my tongue across the dripping pearls of honey which leak from my sides when roses coated in gold ***** me with their thorns.
I am not scared of the weight I must hold to carry these onyx bones.  I am not worried about apathy. I am not worried about the way my blood will curdle when it is tainted with poison or lust or desire. I am not worried about the way that I will sound when my heart is ripped from my chest and held between calloused palms.
I have never worried about the song I will sing when I have nothing left on my lips except the shallow cry I will leave to the world- the one that says
I have loved and I will never have to be enough for you.

Crush me between your fingers-
I will smell like fallen leaves.
Soft on autumn mornings I was caught between your teeth.
And I wove myself into your sweaters that you wore to stop the breeze.
Your cold set in my bones and I think I’ve lost all heat.

Lying on my stomach I remember the way your fingers felt unbuttoning my flesh.
The way your teeth left cursive along my spine
Beckoning me to open like a book that you were never allowed to read.
I will unfold for you with the promise that you will only sign your name in blood
Along the edge of my sanity and only if you take me out of my mind.
I am not looking to lay anywhere except six feet under
Where I can feel your fire without fear of burning myself with your flame.
So I beg you-
Cover me in gasoline
Strike me where you please
And leave your sigil in my ashes.

I found you sitting along the pages of your favorite book, on my bookshelf, replacing your favorite words with question marks and X's.
I think you wanted your flesh to be as easy to read but it wasn't.
Instead you took trains to faraway towns so you could find names for the words you could feel but not spell.
And you found home along skeleton streets empty with memories, ghost towns that mirrored your hometown but felt harder to leave.

I’ll let you see me. And I can shed a cloak like stardust if you promise the darkness won’t scare you away. I know it is frightening to see truth turn from white to midnight onyx in the span of half a day. I could be gentle too, and soft like morning skies. An alabaster shell you’ve polished well, a haven for saltwater tides. But I will fold and curl and settle along the veins wrapped in your skin. I’ll nest and breathe and home myself in pieces you’re terrified to miss. And when the sun rises and greets your dawning skin, I too shall find a path along your bones and leave before the light comes in.

I'm trying to find what speaks to me in moments of lucidity.
Grasping at forgotten dreams of nightmares I've been conjuring.
And the lies I weave within myself have a taste like acid that my stomach's felt.

But no sweetness lies within my mind and no honey runs along my spine.

I find lackluster ghosts within my soles
Always telling me where I should go.
But heaven sent I am not
And I'm proving that with impure thought.

So why is it that in seconds of dreams I care not to know what's happening?
Can my soul descend from where it is
Or am I stuck inside this bend?

All I want for dinner is you.
To taste leftover Chinese food on your tongue.
I have always been easily amused- but you- you not so much.
So I will wrap you delicately and consume you inch by inch.
You will taste like coffee and lavender lemonade. Like 2am French fries and insomnia.
Your flesh will feel like tired limbs and early mornings. Like hesitant kisses and Full Moons.
You will be warm. Warmer than me- so warm I may melt.

Men with your sort of name are dangerous.
The way each letter makes your tongue work as if it knew you would never be easy.
The way you sound sharp and ready to break me like the bones you wear.
You carry the weight of ghosts I'll never know, the way each vowel kisses the next.
Men like you are dangerous, and your obscurity makes you all the more sinister

I felt the Strawberry Moon on your fingertips. You traced it on the palm of my hand. Your magic is different, I felt it, it was softer than I’ve ever been. You touched me and I felt velvet crushed against my skin. I heard my heart stutter your name and then cower against my ribs again. You draped yourself along the lines of my hands and I can’t, I can’t, I can’t seem to let you in. I am an open palm waiting for a knife and my fingers curl against the blade without a fight. But for you, I have melted and left a stain on your skin. I have felt the trace of your fingertips and I wonder if I’ll ever get back to how I was again. Your strawberry rays have captivated me, I swear, I know nothing like you. You wrote your secrets on the palm of my hand but I couldn’t understand the language you left them in.

I grow gardens between my thighs
and bloom roses red like rubies.
My spine is lined with barbed wire for those who dare to climb me.
I bleed rivers of deadly nightshade
and sharped thorns between my shoulders.
Every inch of this golden body is dripping in amber honey.

I am trying to unweave the narrative that I've written in my mind that says pride is a sin.
That says- other people have the right to love your body but I do not.

And I am trying to navigate the space between where I see my body, and how others see my body because I've been told it's not a space that is safe for swimming.
The water is too deep too rocky to salty for life.
For me.

I am not scared of drowning anymore.

You taste like heaven.
I swear every inch of your skin is woven from amber honey.
And sometimes I think you are my Sun.
And that I am
Weak
To the pull of your gravity.
I could orbit you for eternity and be caught in your spell immortally.

You are west. Black oceans and dream worlds
Laid out like mystic landscapes along ridges of desert that become transparent
Against luminous flesh under moonlight.
Tapestries woven from threads of destiny and braids of sunlight and
Crystal crafted witchcraft that ventures into Hades.
The deepest black in ink ridden scrying bowls
That sing of kaleidoscopic visions and prophetic daydreams.

My body sounds like an ocean
Like waves kissing the shore
The way my flesh stretches round my bones
In an embrace that whispers “till death”
Like a lover who chooses herself
I have picked you over and over
And like the shoreline
I
Will
Never
Stop
Chasing
You

I let the television play as I write
So I can forget all the static in my brain so I can forget all the buzzing in my ears
So I can forget all the thoughts running over and over.
You’re a rerun I’ve grown tired of but you’re on a channel I can’t get rid of.
I’m stuck and I wonder if I’m stuck on you or-
If maybe I just ran out of batteries.
I think your empty chatter feeds the emptiness more than the blood does in my veins.
You’re the sort of memory etched on my flesh that I turn the television on to forget.

You think you know me. But you see only what I show you. A reflection of the symphony inside my ribs, caged for eternity in a heart that you feel beating but will never hear.

I have shown you what is lost. I hope for redemption besides your flesh but I am not looking to be saved by you. I use you the same way you use me. At night, the darkness peers in and I allow it to consume me, the way you consume me.  Bite by bite. Inch by inch. Slowly.

I am a jungle and you must cross my tangled flesh intentionally, carving out a path decisively or you will be lost under the moon without any sympathy. I dare you to find a forest more treacherous than that of my heart. A territory uninhabited. You are a savage and I think I’d let you in.

You are strings of pearls that cross thresholds between worlds
Little beads of ecstasy threaded through debris
You’re a smile in the morning when the sun is fresh and bright
You are scratches in the dark when the day has turned to night

You hover in the space between heaven and hell praying that if there’s a god he lets you in.
And your vain attempt at kissing darkness only gets you through this life with one foot in reality and the other foot in your grave.
Darkness doesn’t promise anything except blurred edges and escaped time and there comes a point when pity doesn’t look pretty, even on you.
So hold yourself to esteem higher than the lords, and pray that your ego will be the death of you.

You are west
black oceans on crystal.

And I have seen the way you move with lust
like a vulture
with eyes that crave flesh
like there's nothing left
                                      to
                                          eat.

And she said:
       “ I have been here before
   Swimming along your rocky shores.
And I have felt your waves echo along my ribs
and beat along my heart.”
I have
       seen you in sandy planes like Mars.
                (You) have transported me to a world I feel but can’t remember.
I have
           wandered here along these rows of pines.
            They turn their faces to me like ghosts I’ve spoken to
            but remain nameless with unfamiliarity.

But I have felt these tremors once before.
walking along your rocky shores.

My body is my altar and I'll let you worship at it if you want
But you shall not find any holy books along the shelf of my ribs
You will not find any ancient scriptures along my spine
You will not find any commandments carved in stone except
"I worship at a temple with closed doors
I worship at a temple that belongs to itself
I pray to an altar thats last candle has burned but there is no darkness here
There is no yearning to be lit
I worship at a temple whose stillness should not be mistaken for emptiness
I worship as an artist overcome by his muse

You came to me in a dream once, with crystal covered mountains dripping with nostalgia.
Ice cream on your tongue tasted sweeter than you ever did. You apologized for that too.
I have carved a path from the ice to trek for days that felt heavier when there was no one to miss- no distraction from the shell that I have worn that has formed from the inside out.
I think I am softer, more tender, more loving than perhaps I actually am.
I am the rigid shell of a soul who is too scared to feel everything that should be felt and now I am left to wander in snowy banks with the boots you lent me that never fit.

Coo words at me one more time-
I've never been keen to believe you.
Knotting promises into cord to cut me,
I'll never be someone you're a part of.

The lies my flesh has told you
Has put me at risk for you to fall in love with.

But I am not responsible for the way my body shatters your expectations.
You cannot shame a sinner without a shame for sin.
Or a lover in love with the way her body bends.

And the silence I keep for the way you make me quiver
Is not an excuse to make your misery quicker.

I have loved and lied to plenty of men
The biggest I've told is "it's not in your head."

I exist in a dimension you deserve no part of.
My love is eternal but you've only ever been lusted for.

Eager flesh finds ways to claw in memories when nails are stripped to the skin.
Find pieces left with torn edges like tragedies but don't let your demons in.

Weave vines through your ribs and roses through your eyes, for this life you'll have to fare.
Cemeteries feel so empty without your bones to bare.

And I beg you to bury the parts of yourself that remain unclean.
I only want your sin if its in between my sheets.

I want it slowly.

Like smoke
Creeping from your chimney.
Like you- a house lived in once but
Abandoned all too quickly.
I want to be those bricks laid
one by one
meticulously.
I want your sin to move me.
I want your bones to break me.

I want it heavy
Like the bags of stone you gave me.
Quartz and onyx or an attempt to save me?
Like you- molten flesh cooled quickly.

I think I would die to have your soul inside me.

You’re all bones and no talk.
All dislocated ribs and shackled thoughts.
Contain them contain them, don’t you dare let them escape.
Hold on to what makes you broken, I’ve heard broken thoughts carry less weight.
So guard your bones that home your soul.
Sharpen your ribs and polish your throne.
Count the minutes and the hours and the seconds as they go.
You can’t expect royalty when you’re six feet below.