I enjoyed the words falling from your lips,
Closed my eyes tight and traced the braille of your ribcage,
Found comfort in the debts of your mind, and
Rested easy in that ship-wreck you called a heart

Their minds, a mysterious, contemptuous place in which many tried to dive into, and others,
The squeamish, ran after realizing just how cold the water really was.
Their collapsed hearts pump cold blood; the walls bear the claw marks of a legion of memories clawing
Their way out.
They are monsters, but maybe
They need one another to warm the icy blood coursing through their veins.

It was I who enslaved me,
  And you who set me free.

You stole my warmth
  When all I wanted was the cold.

You drank all my glucose
  And left me bone dry

But I like the bitter,
  And I like the bite

Because things are much safer
  Up at this height.

So I bid you adieu
  And curtsy from above.

I do ask one thing though, my love,
  Keep my heart, for I have no use for it now

An emotionless temptress
  With vengeance behind these eyes.

And now her mind is numb
  and the atoms take the blade (or the toothpick)

And they press firmly into the wrist
  they do it for they know no better

They have no mind, or mother, for lessons now
  and the atoms take her down the hall

In the bathroom, above the porcelain
  eyes stare at the wall

And the mind grows anxious
  and the lungs ask for air

The stomach lining fizzes
  and the fingers slip down, bare

And seconds turn to minutes
  as eyes begin to drown

And down goes the anxiety
  as well as the sludge, brown

All is dizzy in a head too alone
  so she sits for a moment

To bury the bone
  and walks from the bathroom

With a secret
  and a *moan

I spilled ink on a white dove
folded it neatly,
pressed it in an envelope,
and sealed it with a kiss -
making sure to spread my saliva all over its open lips.

On the front I wrote your name,
but I practiced it a dozen times
(call it a baker's).
I put mine in the corner
and coaxed it towards the center.

I took it to the post office
and woke in the morning with the receipt
tattooed on my chest
along with the look on the clerk's face
when I asked for the insurance
on an envelope painted red.

But, dear, I think she messed up
because I waited but never heard the beating
of bird wings in my mailbox again.

He turned on the light and I shouted because nothing felt as good against my bleeding heart than the blanket of black I had surrounded it with.
Light means inspiration and joy and painting with purple while listening to music, but black lets time stand still.
Black doesn't tell you to inhale deeply because there are more atoms in your lungs than stars in the universe.
Black holds on to you and doesn't care that your blood gets on her clothes.

I pressed my body into yours hoping our ribcages would fracture into one another and butterflies would pour out with scintillating wings in shades of orange and yellow and blue and we would marvel at the beauty of their colors in the fading light but from the depths of our bleeding cavities would flutter the stammering, shamefaced creatures with plum-black wings and cracks navigating their way through the chalky paste of dust and blood clinging to their delicate bodies --
and these were the butterflies to marvel at --
these were the insects we found comfort in as our abdomens bled out

My soul will not rest. It will not quiet. How did we get here with our souls in different states? It's you I needed next to me when everyone else was a flake. The world seems brighter with you by my side like we were here to destroy it and rip out its insides. With a straight posture and blood on our hands, we would walk side-by-side to conquer the land. Now I'm alone drifting in this sea when it's you that I want here with me.
Sincerely, a friend.

And if your chest is warm then I envy your soul - to rest in such a safe and cavernous hole - and if your hands aren't ice cold then I envy the woman who gets to press her lips to your palms because mine like to chap and all too often my teeth tease my tongue, but the taste of blood is truly an acquired one. And sometimes I touch my fingers to my throat just to feel if there's a pulse - and most of the time there's not - but that doesn't mean I'm not living.

Because these are the days of the dead.

The dead who walk among us with blood and gasoline coursing through their veins and an inferno in their heart that you could not put out with a dozen of your big, red, fire trucks.

The kind of thinking that gets me in trouble
Lavender and Lemon and bouquets on the counter

Here comes the white smoke
Here comes the sound
My bags on the floorboards my sanity stripped down

I've gone to the west coast
Now I'm headed for home

Don't know where that is
But I was built to roam

I can't write about you
I can't write about this
How my hands kept drifting towards the nape of your neck like an addict to the needle
My fingertips a fiend for your skin
But I would look down and they were still placed safely in my lap
I tried to count the hairs on your head but got lost in the redness of your ears
Forget the play you were the main act
And I would have stayed to watch you forever

When she chooses me
God she chooses me
All hands and teeth and nails and she's saying things to me like
Put your hands on my neck
And whispering things like
*** into me

But when she doesn't choose me
It's a distance I've never known
A shoulder car colder than this winter
My toes are frozen in my boots
My stomach growls insistently
My tongue sprouts hair and sticks painfully to my mouth
Though I don't protest
I simply sit at the shoreline awaiting the next pummeling of blood, salt, and passion

Years since you kissed my forehead.
                            slept in my bed.
                            pushed me against the wall.
All slowed to a crawl after just one night.
The night I said no; you took it a little too far.
My skin exposed, but my soul stayed closed.
My mind is a private safe, in which only one holds the key.
But, Darling, it's not you,
And, Dearest, it's not me.

You hugged me, I melted into you, and

Let the old air spill from my lungs like steam from hot coffee as it hits my morning mug.

I took that one, last, long inhale before the fear set in,

And the air caught in my lungs, and panic fogged my eyes.

My knees went weak and I fought to find your anchorous eyes.

"Help me -- Help me" was all my trembling lips could demand,

Like a child drowning in the deep-end.

His hands tightened around my waist, holding nearly all my body weight

As my knees finally gave way and I fell to the floor

Like water slipping through his fingers.

He had no chance of saving me,

And with that, I hit the floor

Let me use you just how I want to. Let me kiss you when you try and tell me no. Let me smoke half your cigarettes because if it's killing you, we'll ****, let it **** me too. Let our ribs grow together like roots under the pavement.

Kiss me me like you want the world to stop. Kiss me for all the lovers who don't anymore. If our lips are watercolor then I want our mouths to bleed across the page.

Love me in May and then into December because winter's are hard but summer's are far harder. The air is swollen and my lungs are weak but your voice is strong and your body is mighty.

My homework is done
But my mind won't go numb
It's pulsing with words and writhing with consonants
I can't seem to keep my fingers from this keyboard
I have nothing to say
And no reason to at all
But still the spastic ******* on these moist keys continues

Stay away from the blue-eyed boy down the road because God knows blue-eyed boys are trouble. He's poured ice in his chest and painted his thin lips red to convince you they still have life.

Instead, find the boy with dark eyes and coltish legs and feed him flowers blooming from cacti and honey warmed over the stove and watch his features soften under your touch.

And let yours soften too.

plat, plat, plat*
went the blood as it spat on the floor.
He entered the tub a few hours before.
She slipped in, with him, to rest her bleary eyes.
With a razor, she chose to never arise, and
him, with pills, a bit counter-clockwise.
Entwined, they were found in an eternal embrace,
though the events prior could never be traced.

Her whole life had been make-believe, a myriad of people coming and going, and she, always looking at life through rose-tinted glasses. Like a carefully choreographed dance she knew precisely when to laugh, to smile. She could feign excitement and curiosity with her eyes, alone, better than anyone I knew. From the outside she appeared perfect, as people like her often do, but I saw something in her others overlooked: the way her ****** expressions loosened their grip on the facade, the way the energy drained from her eyes when she thought no one was looking, and, in that moment, you could see a glimpse of the girl she really was. A girl lying in a dark room, at an odd hour, with the moonlight cascading down on her, and no one around to impress but herself: the only person she never quite figured out.

Lying in bed she feels his touch
                                            in the crook of her waist
A heavy arm in the space between
                                            her ribcage
                                                   and hip bone.
She feels his hand,
                     gently on her shoulder,
                                             with fingers encasing her rotary cup.
She feels the weighty rise and fall
                                                   of his
                                                             b
                                                                 r
                                                                    e
                                                                       a
                                                                           t
                                                                              h
                                                                                  sooth her back to sleep.
She feels it all,
                       but, upon turning,
                                                      finds nothing but apathetic sheets.

It is one to lose a lover
It is two to lose a friend
It is me who never wanted
to truly see the end
You never see it coming
i suppose that's always said
This poem ***** a lot
but so did you,
Your ex-best friend

She woke up slow,
from one of those deep sleeps
where consciousness frays her way out
from the debts of your dreams.

Slowly becoming aware of the
breath rising and falling next to her,
the paper-weight arm holding her in place,
the way the sofa pulled her from the edge, into his chest.

Finding a smile on her lips that she
had not feigned to please those around her,
and thinking, "if bombs rained from the sky the
way water does in April, I would find solace here."

With magnets in his bones and rapturous
tidal waves pushing her into his body,
she thought, *"only death herself
could drag me from such bliss that I feel now"

I swear she's an angel with scapulae for wings
She sleeps with her back to me
so I can feel their beating in my chest
How I want to be the sin for which an angel fell

Her golden mane falls drunkenly on her shoulders
One day I found a 14 karat thread
clinging to the shower wall
And I  tore out one of my own just to be there with yours

If I could, I would
grow your hair from my pores
Just to feel that much
closer once more

Maybe it wasn't you, but it sure wasn't me.
Not then, not with you, not when my blood still ran red.
But when sap and dirt dripped out my ears and my brain drowned in skeletons and sickness
and I looked to you like a puppy drowing in the deep-end and you held your hands near your shoulders like the West was pulling them to her, like she was taking you away from me.
I splashed my way out, and I dressed up my bones, wrapped and bandaged them for some other day when they felt stronger.
I learned you couldn't save me, that it wasn't your job.
That tasks like living weren't right to pawn off to others.
That duties like breathing belonged to the dying.