when you hear someone
discussing
the wedding
instead of
the marriage,
just remember

the phoniest
are also
the loneliest

I smoke to try and clear my head,
but it doesn't help.
chain smoking won't stop the fact
that I think you're cute.

today I felt nothing
but the hole in the back of my skull
isn't that sad
no
go awaY

loneliness
is when you have watched your favorite show
so many times
that you, as well as your family,
know the complicated theme song
and everybody sings along every night
as you sit down for dinner in front of the TV
and then you watch it at midnight
when no one's awake
and you let it play without singing

love
is eavesdropping on a sister and brother
walking behind you,
the sister as high as a kite
and the younger brother wearing a leather jacket
as he holds her hand to lead her through a forest,
and you realize they love each other
more deeply than you could ever understand
and they always have
and always will

happiness
is
healthy babies being born,
healthy soldiers coming home

sadness*
is
a newlywed
dying
on her honeymoon

to person #1:
I will never forget how quiet it was
as the darkness of the room
and the warmth of your breath
pressed themselves against my neck.
you whispered that when you shot a gun,
you didn't squeeze the trigger
like you were supposed to,
but pulling works just fine, too,
and I could feel your thumb against my cheek
and I wanted to be the only gun
cocked back and aimed at your temple
and I thought about oranges
and your heartbeat was really fast
and I cried a lot
when you said your heart was failing.

what if we were castle turrets?
our tasseled but torn flags whipping the clouds,
dragons tearing off the shingles
with their nostalgic disorders.
we could be sagittarius.
emerging from the groves with purple,
bruised collarbones
only because they stretched miles within
our bodies like archers' bows, bitten
& shooting unintended victims.
which i guess is what i was always scared of,
mulling your jeans around in my room
and eating frozen strawberries alone,
staining my fingers with more than just
your sharpie-written love letters.
milky-white plant smoke can permeate hands
just like your smell can permeate my canyons,
sending tremors inside of their fibers
giving us scars that we don't like to burden,
sending rocks into our jagged feelings.
what if we were golden like our naked skin
under the olive branches that inevitably
mean hate, anger, shame, and the bee sting
of slaps from loved ones?
diamonds can pour through our smiles,
fill our upturned palms
and give the rubies of our tattoos to a shrouded god.
i've been listening to song lyrics & hurricanes,
& i understand now.
i understand what it would feel like
to belong to someone.

he kisses my hair
when i cry,
because he reminds
me of dill,
and i remind him
of scout.

i take too much medicine
during the day
so while i'm sleeping
nightmares come to toy with
my fragile subconscious
& i crack like a
wooden puppet
when it's strings are snipped.

it's like watching
a black & white film
& all of a sudden,
it turns to color.
prisms twirl in your eyes,
& gasps escape from
your mouth like thick
serpents crawling
through your teeth.

flies buzz everywhere
in a place where i could always
count on the walls being clean.

paranoia is a repulsive,
monstrous, sluggish thing,
that creeps through your brain
cutting off everything you know
in order to leave you
discarded & ***** with
nothing.

always burning,
because my eyes roll back into my head
when i see you.
always tasting,
because my mouth tastes like bitter cinnamon.
always blind,
because the magenta of sunrays
filters through my retina &
dapples my brain.
white eyes, ****** nails,
always grasping,
because everything is silent underwater.

the other day
I filled up my tank
and got the cost to a clean dollar amount
right on the dot.
seeing that .00,
I thought it would feel great.
it really wasn't all that exciting.
I just figured it was all too expensive anyway
and so I just left.

somebody once told me,
"we fell in love with each other's words,
not each other's hearts."
well, I don't get it.
don't words come from your heart?
you're lucky you even got them.
I mean, we are what we say, right?
like, what would we be
if we had the sweetest hearts
but said the meanest things?
would we be liars?
who's to say?
if you were showered in flower petals of sweet nothing's,
then that person's heart must at least believe
what the mouth is spilling,
right?
I don't know.
maybe I'm just confused.

but ignoring somebody.
when ignoring happens,
the heart doesn't "think" about anything at all.
and it probably hasn't for a while.
so, thanks.

with tobacco sitting open
in dusty papers on our kitchen table,
still warm from the glow
on your mint and cedar skin,
and with the sky cloudy and quiet in our window,
you kissed my crooked mouth
like the ghost hand that held the door open for you.

Heartache is an actor,
mumbling his soliloquy on the wide empty stage of my tongue
while the people in the back complain that they can't hear.
when people speak of a love not returned,
if you're lucky,
you can still hear a thin warm ribbon of blood
wrapping around teeth,
almost undetectable,
and the name hangs heavy in the room
like silver tinsel after christmas
if the  still oozes hot, black heartache
or else it is a wound that has scabbed over.
the lover is left lying like
a ribbed dog on a dry path,
summer's dust coating organs and throats
purple and bruised,
church bells ringing through tall grass.

but you heard every word that Heartache was saying.
you smarted away from me,
as if I had bitten you.
I think maybe
you could taste all of this war
waging among the rafters
in the high ceilings of my mouth.
and all I could taste was copper pennies
for months after you left.

I drive myself to the edges of town,
hoping I can find solace
in not being able to see the lines on the road
through the rain
I drive people mad
hoping I can seek gratitude
in the capacity of kindness I find
when I am lonesome.

as I sit in a ****** café,
instead finding solace and gratitude
at the bottom of the best **** tea I've ever had,
I find both my gas tank
and my desire for human intimacy
are on reserve
and I can't afford to fill up either.

to person #3:
I will never forget how dizzy I was
when i could see the lights cresting the dark hill
cut like a razor into the blueberry sky.
the bottles of sleeping pills
you knock back
are wrapped in cold,
gold-tinged plastic
so when you told me that i was golden
i knew i was just the next bitter pill
that you had to choke down
and would eventually contribute to your suicide

A B C D E F G
find out what you mean to me
if you don't, i don't care,
i'll pull down your underwear

H I J K L M N
i think you'll always be
my best friend
and really, who cares
if you're a man?
we drew our cooties pink
with a highlighter pen

we painted our faces
with turquoise and yellow
& really, your brown eyes are
gorgeous, fellow,
we sat in the sand and built
columns out of leaves,
& wore our crowns like
daisy weaves

O P Q R S T
you make up most of me
with your smiles, your laugh,
your hair, your ears,
our marijuana and our beers,
as we grow older,
our hair grows longer,
& we don't care to cut it
because it feels good knotted
in the summer

U V W X Y Z
we make cookies at night
and pick up bugs in the grass,
we hold hands on the road
our feet like moon rays stroking brass.

yellow and blue,
yellow and blue,
isn't it nice
when I think about you?

summer crickets
and somersaults,
can I really claim
that this wasn't my fault?

sprinkles of freckles
and sparkling green eyes,
were all of our days
just drawn out goodbyes?

daisy doodles
and bright white smiles
crashing my car
and sprinting for miles

sunshine lemons
and trampolines,
come to think of it,
we were so ******* mean

yellow and blue,
yellow and blue,
when the river's run dry...
what do I do?

I told you that you kissed like you were in a hurry.
and that sounds bad
because everything's always in a hurry,
especially trains and people and heartbeats
especially the eventual wane of affection
and we both know that heaven forbid
our kisses should have an expiration date
when that inevitable phase chisels down
and god forbid
our kisses should be the cause

but that's not what I meant.
I meant
you kiss like you mean it
and I've never been kissed with meaning.
you kiss like the world is on your lips
you kiss like that excited feeling that you get
when one is on a train and hurtling towards a destination and the train could never go fast enough.
you kiss with your hands and your eyes and your voice like silver
you kiss like nothing could stop you,
as if your personality could kick down doors.

you know what, **** it.
I'm not going to pretend like I'm an articulate person.
all I know is that I've been floating around all day,
kissing people's cheeks
and grinning to myself
and feeling my heart flutter
because I get to see you all over again
and kiss you
and I've never been this unapologetically, unashamedly happy in my life.
and everybody can see it written all over my ******* face,
but I don't give eight cares about them.

i always thought
the pool was so cloudy
from body heat & red-hot emotion.
god, she's such a good swimmer.
she twirls under the crystalline blue
& when she emerges,
she takes a breath,
& then explodes into movement.
she glides through the water like air,
& i don't know how.
i tell her she should be a fish.
she laughs & claims she wishes,
then she would be able to
swim in the ocean,
where the water isn't cloudy
with liars' sins, cheaters' tricks,
& ******' rancid perfume.

you make my heart
beat fast and hot,
but i don't
know what to do.

when i open my mouth,
the passion drains out,
and i'm still
thinking of you.

it's like my veins
pumped steel & diesel,
& then were
introduced to blood;

the molecules
cover the floor,
atoms yearning for more,
and i'm in the room
while it floods.

to person #2:
I will never forget how much empathy I felt
when you were hunched over at your desk,
scribbling about valentines day
being your favorite holiday,
when all of a sudden
you yelled "god ******" at the top of your lungs
and threw your pencil down
along with your fists.
you asked me what I would wish for
if I could have anything
and you never said please or thank you,
ever, as long as I'd known you
and you told me I was a piece of work
with that stupid little smile on your face
that I just wanted to smack off.
but you played jazz beautifully
and you smelled so strongly of soap next to me
as if you went home and scrubbed
every single skin cell off of your body
to make sure you were a new person
at the start of each day.

K's room is too hot,
W's room is too cold,
A's room is too smelly,
M's room is too beige.
nothing is right.

i feel like i don't belong here
the totem pole is turning from
candy red to blood crimson
i am tired.
sunshine yellow to disease ocre
i am sick.
ocean blue to empty cerulean
faces of guardians turning
to demons, splintering
i am DEAD.

i am not myself
here.

a wise man once told me
that to be thrown in love,
one's spirit must fly
to age four.
there, you would find
your eyes as tourmaline
and your heart
as a malleable ore.

now i am
in love with you
and i feel about eighty years old
and i've found
that youth, then experience,
respectively,
is like living in silver,
then gold.

the pages you wrote your letters on
ripped cleanly and easily
and for that,
I am grateful.

"See, the thing about life is,
You're quite lucky, really, until you're not.
That's how it is with everything.
There's really no grey area; everything's just windin' down to when you're **** outta luck,
And when you're there, it's quite sobering, isn't it?
Take Skipper, for example.
You know, you fill 'er up,
And you think to yourself
'Man. I am so ******* lucky.
How did I get so ******* lucky?'
Because you can go wherever the hell you want to on that 300-or-so miles of gas.
Because you, my friend, are the perpetual white, privileged, American girl who has liquid gold pumped into her lousy little heart every fifteen days or so.
Because you can.
And you feel good. Really good.
But then, you forget about it.
The thing is, you are 'so-*******-lucky' for like two weeks or so; you just don't notice, see.
'Cause nobody notices.
You just drive because that's what you do.
And you've got other things to think about; where you're going, who you're seeing, how you're getting there.
And you're 'so-*******-lucky' until you hear that sickening little beep that tells you you're on reserve.
And everybody does the same thing.
Everybody asks a lot of stupid questions.
Your almost-empty tank consumes your mind.
How can I pay for the next one?
Man, I should really get a better job.
Let's see, when did the reserve light go on?
How much is left in there?
Can I get home?
Can I even get to the next gas station?
What if I just left this godforsaken town and let my car just break down somewhere and I would finally be free?
Will my parents be angry that I'm filling up after half a week?
Will they question where I've been?
Do I even have my license with me?
Maybe I shouldn't have driven around so much.
Oh god, maybe I shouldn't sneak around as much as I do.
Why am I driving at night just for the sake of driving when there are starving kids in Africa?
Ugh, I disgust myself.
The gas tank owns you.
Emptiness owns you.
And such is life, you know?
Because we don't even understand things unless they're full or empty.
As humans, we just don't.
We're always waiting for the reserve light to turn and the questions to be answered and that ache in our hearts to go away.
You know, we always sneak around 'trying to get home' on fumes.
We go slower, thinking that'll help, and we turn off the ignition faster, not bothering to finish up that last good song as your car wastes fuel in the driveway.
We're consumed by the thought of when our engines are just going to die.
Because you're just ******* empty at that point, my friend.
And then you're not so ******* lucky anymore."

when I first met you,
you didn't talk
and I liked that
because I wouldn't shut up.
we were too young
and pumped with too much serotonin
and wasted naps that we could have taken
but didn't think we needed to.
we never felt our hearts
because we had hardly known they were there
before,
a muscle that has never been cramped
(and oh, how we wish now that
we knew the quickest way to assuage
an internal ache we cannot ice)
your nails were black and shiny,
like your eyes,
and you told me you were a wolf
and I believed you
because you left your paw prints everywhere
but not your voice.

over the years,
we found plungers and tried to stick them
all over us,
trying to **** the glowing skin off our bones.
now,
we try and drown the butterflies and knots
with beer and stomach acid
at two in the morning,
playing video games
donned in our lace *******, pearls, and stilettos
and crying.

now that your blackness has been ripped from the walls to reveal a hidden art piece,
you radiate amber.
your laughter drips like honey from your teeth
and it has not yet expired
in my dusty, overcrowded pantry.
I want to cover myself in the smell of your skin,
oranges and forest fires, vanilla flowers and ennui,
like the soft blankets
we so often hide under.
I will never forget how small your hands are,
reminding me that I have been in love before
and I am in love with you now,
in simplicity, purity, and clemency,
and I just pray to god that lasts.
so let's keep sorting pennies into words
and communicating with each other through soup cans
and let's be good enough for each other
because when you really love someone
only their opinion matters.
and who needs anybody else?
because really,
those people that say that all good things must come to an end,
they're ******.
let's keep proving them wrong.
here's to you.

I will always be a little bit depressed.
I will always have that little spot in my heart
that you can feel lying in bed,
that feels like an unfinished apple
browning in the air.
I will always be a little depressed
with the sound of the swamp cooler overheard
and the sound of crickets outside at night
and the deep blue color of the sky
on a southern evening.
and the train running through town
across towns where the moonlight
seeps through shut blinds
where the tall grass climbs the pale blue walls
of a small townhouse under a telephone wire
and across the country,
where the desert spreads out from a lone house
like the mountains are
shying away from it
where a scared and tired young girl
tries to fall asleep with all the lights on
where fluorescent-and-concrete street lights
flicker on but nobody drives that night
and therefore nobody needs them
these things are all so sad
and so the question begs to be asked,
who can't connect with them?
ipso facto,
who isn't a little bit sad?

the balance between
pleasing a new guest
who will be staying for a while
& pleasing someone who
has lived here for years
is a hard one
to stabilize.

i look into the glass bottle
that holds my ibuprofen
to pass my time
because the pills are blue
& translucent
& glassy
& it makes me feel like
i'm staring into the sea.

her hair is knotted
after a good night's sleep.
his eyes are red
because he can't control
his insomnia.
she drinks a cup of weak coffee,
sitting by the window
in her favorite dress,
the pink sunlight streaming in
through yellow-stained glass.
he walks in, makes himself
a cup of too-strong tea,
and waits.

she does not know what to do.
he feels lucky to be there.
i am standing
on the edge of the precipice,
closing my chocolate eyes,
the convoluted orb
shining orange
through my golden eyelids;
monsters are
swimming in trees below.

my lungs start to wheeze,
my breath is a tease.

the debris, the smoke,
could make me choke,
but the sparks could never reach me.

glitter skin
& rainbow lashes,
a million smiles
have turned to ashes.

to you:
i walked through the grocery store
and i ran my fingers over every bottle full of *****
and it reminded me of you
because you're full of things that people like
and things that people become addicted to
and truth serums
and good stories
and poison
but there always seems to be a thin layer of glass around you
because i don't really understand you
and i don't think i ever will
until i can see the bottom of the bottle
feeling miserable

i've never liked to hike before
until i met the trek
from the volcano to the shore.

emerging from the cold grey sea
wet and sleepy
to meet fields of grass
where light plays in the sweet-smelling air, like
the pleasure of cold water
or warm honey.

past the crevices,
tramping through fields of laurel & mantis,
the golden mountains ***** to greet me
like a kiss on the fingertips
after a story read and chocolate melted
in a house with tea rose air
until --

hark! a black pit,
the gorge leading
to the Path of Everywhere!
opening and flooding with
the world of color
and putting forth sadness and insight!
gaze upon the silent wonder!

the air up here speaks to the ocean
with a silver voice as a constant decision.

i often sit by the eyelet and breathe in the warm black,
dangling my feet in the thick air,
and it seems to dive through it
would be to find a home in that i could live.

to person #4:
you told me that your tear ducts were broken
as we sat in a diner while the morning turned pale.
isn't that somehow worse?
sadness without tears
is like art without paint.
i like you
because my cheeks and my feet
are so often dripping with blue acrylic,
so much so
that i can't tell when they're dry.

amber lips are
getting too red.
the cat's eyes are
getting too cloudy.
the scratches
in the wood paneling
are getting too deep
& the church bell
that you can hear
from the mountains
is getting too loud.
the stack of pillows on
my desk chair is
about to fall over,
& the neighbors
are getting too high.
the molding
is getting too cracked.
the paint is
getting too faded
& my screams
are getting too quiet.

when the wrinkles stretching like dusty roads across your achilles tendons
turn into the red and green highways tangling themselves across a map
and when the valley of your lower back accepts my kisses like low-hanging clouds
over fields of tall yellow grass
when your shoulder blades reach up towards me
like lightning rubbing the clouds in the darkness of the morning;
your eyes like a tempest,
always foggy blue with waves overflowing out of the corners
when they just can't take the cold icy winds or boundaries of the shore;
when i see your lovely eyes when looking at dusty roads and maps and valleys and grass and clouds and oceans,
that's when i give my entire world to you.

i thought of you
when i was trying to pour
fertilizer into that
little red cranker
that we leave by the gate
& i spilled half of it
onto the ground.

the only reason i know
is because one time,
my best friend
who is also your best friend
(we do have a lot
in common)
went to a concert with me
& asked to be dropped off at
your house.
your big, nice,
well-landscaped house.

when your best friend
started liking me,
& i liked him back,
i went to his house all the time
his small,
untidy,
noisy,
uncomfortable house.

now i feel myself thinking about you
when i'm spending too many seconds
fertilizing my small lawn
in front of my own
cozy, familiar, warm
but suddenly empty
house

& i find myself wishing
i could stand in front of our house
hand-in-hand
with you

call me your puppet
and snip my strings
for i have seven, respectively
one for my head
two for my hands
two for my feet
one for my heart
and one for my mouth -
they are called
LUST for knowledge;
GREED for your skin;
WRATH in thrown punches and lit matches and blood and middle fingers;
SLOTH-like motivation;
VANITY of my light footsteps like deer hooves;
ENVY of people who aren't ******* anxious all the time and ******* down coffee all day;
GLUTTONY of unnecessary words.

a dedicated hound stands at unwavering attention
on a hot summer's day
tied to a stake of sadness by a string of loneliness
paws in the dust

a black cat slithers by
pauses a moment, then continues on his way
the hound pulls and pulls at the string,
becomes excited,
and when the cat has faded from the dog's short memory,
as all cats eventually do,
the rowdiness still remains
but the dog can't remember what for

so long were the days when I had something
before I knew I wanted it,
and I didn't quite know where it came from
but it was always there.
when the light from the snow outside my window would wake me up at noon.
when your black eyes felt warm in mine.
when the snow eventually melted,
revealing a world that smelled
like lilies and honey
from an unknown source in the night
wafting through the window
for a week straight.

i felt hollow for the first time
a year ago today.
like i didn't belong to myself.
like no matter how many showers i took,
i couldn't scrub this new stranger away
to find myself again
at the core.
the day before the 50th anniversary of kennedy's death
i had something carved out of me
under a sky of grey
and i didn't believe i would ever feel whole again.
i came home. the news was on.
the only thing that made me smile that day
was the headline:
apparently a new volcanic island sprung out of the ocean
off the coast of japan,
just like that.
last night, my roommate and i discussed
the fact that jackie o was wearing a pink dress
and her husband's blood
and she didn't take either off for days.
this morning i woke up
and my roommate gave me a lollipop.
i ****** away the red shell
like i ****** you off my bones
and i found nothing in the middle
but a core of sweet chocolate.
i looked at my map, right at the spot
off the coast of japan,
and thought about how i'm celebrating that island's birthday
right alongside it.
maybe everyone else forgot about it, but i never will.
tomorrow will be the 51st anniversary
of the most famous ****** in the world,
and still, nobody knows who pulled the trigger.
it is raining outside.
the sky is crying
like i was
a year ago today.

one thing I've noticed about tacoma
is how many churches there are.
there's one about every three blocks.
and here I am, on my way to the hospital
counting all the churches on the way
starving myself under the grey clouds
to make room in my stomach
for your body and your blood
that pours from your veins like merlot
every time you get drunk
and then split your lip
on some nameless disciple's fist.
so I get it.
maybe we're all just looking for someone to worship

i wear my starry night socks
whenever i need a little reminder
that the most brilliant people
can be stark staring mad
and still be appreciated

i've been wearing them
a lot lately.

everyone always tells me
(question: what's your favorite color?
answer: blue)
that if you love something
(question: what's your favorite book?
answer: infinite jest)
you have to let it go
(question: what scares you most?
answer: rejection)
and see if it comes back
(question: have you ever seen someone die?
answer: yes)

i think
(question: is it better now?
answer: yes)
maybe we're both waiting
(question: do you love me?
answer: I ******* do)
for that to happen
(question: do you miss me?
answer:      )

the first time you saw me and I saw you
I was crying in the drivers seat of my car.
I mean really sobbing.
a ****** song was blasting on the radio,
probably so loud you could hear it
through the walls of my car.
at that point I had nothing to lose
and so I didn't even turn it down.
I didn't try and wipe the tears away,
because the look on your face didn't make me feel bad and I think that's some sort of gift you have.
you were looking right through my windshield
and you knew I was watching you, too.

I need you to know:
I wish that wasn't your first impression of me
because I'm not always like that.
but I cry an awful lot
and I'm usually embarrassed by that.
so, I guess, in a way, I'm glad you got to see me sad
because it wasn't fake.
I just wish I knew what you thought.
maybe someday I will.

it was one of those nights where you wake up, see the sun coming in grey through the window, and forget whether or not you slept.

her advice to me was: "when you want to feel unique, say a sentence that you think no one has ever said before." but it was different than that. I felt alone. I didn't want to say something that would put me further on the island I felt I was becoming. I yearned to be a part of something bigger than myself. so I carefully formulated in my mind the words that many many people have wrapped their teeth around, letting it hiss through the gaps:

"I've never felt so happy in my entire life."

I whispered it into the heavy night air of august. no one heard me except for myself, and I thought of that tree that fell in the forest that didn't make a noise because nobody was around to hear it. of course I didn't feel like that moment was more special than the rest. we were just laying in bed on a wednesday night. I was leaving home again very soon. maybe one day I would look back and realize that it was the truth, because I sure didn't believe it now. but I thought of everyone who had let that slip through the molasses of spit and ooze over their chapped lips, maybe lovers behind blinds, laying exactly like we were, in bed on a wednesday, and I thought of every situation that prompted that and for a second I became them.

I let myself sink into the sound of the fan overhead and the smell of violets coming off her skin. I closed my eyes and fell asleep just in time for morning to break.

I looked at you
and I was at peace,
thinking you had a beautiful family
and wishing you
nothing but happiness.

i miss you sometimes
i shouldn't