in 7th grade it was red, bood red, wine red. short and choppy and red, i hated myself. i cried until it grew, thinking my problems rooted in what was left of my hair. i lied that year, red lips spewing black oil, sticky and hard to wash out. in 8th grade, the summer i was a fairy, it was raven black, green under the redwood sun, too thick bangs covering my greek caterpillar eyebrows. a boy had a crush on me and girls carved words into their ankles, i didnt understand. i dont think they understod either. in 9th grade my hair was long, overgrown, knotted. stained colors i no longer could recognize, hugging my neck and back and shoulders when you ****** me over, i buzzed it off in the end.

my good friends dog died. she was old and she liked to sleep next to the heater and they took her away and never brought her back. she told me in the first period locker rooms, when my buzzcut was still patchy from trich and unsteady hands and it was still cold outside. she cried and cried and told no one else. just me. no one posted pictures of her dead dog, said goodbyes, made instagram posts about it. she was just gone. we went to her house and her bed was empty and no one said anything. like she never happened. my friend was terrified of remembering her and i was terrified of forgetting her;

my hair is laced with flowers and my mind has gone. i've spent so much time trying to turn pollen into pixie dust, and one day, as i was singing nursery rhymes, i swear the butterflies led me somewhere like my home.

my heart is heavy enough to restrict me from flying.
bathtub full of flowers, mind filled with honey, honey, honey.

peter pan will grow up to be an old man working a desk job, and hamlet ends up in a place between the depths of heaven and hell. even god doesn't know what to do with them anymore.  he's got no clue for me either for my mind has gone.

white gown and angelic smile, i'll sing to you until you remember.
forever means nothing if you just age until you're a particle of dust.

i have remembrances of you, remnants of you. they're tattooed to my prefrontal cortex, and they cloud my judgement. my mind has gone. love isn't real, but i see signs anywhere i look, and they're singing nursery rhymes.

my fingers start to prune, and i duck my head under the water.
it's only for a while, now. father i won't be long.

i've tried to separate my soul into several pieces of dust and scatter them until i can't feel anything at all, including love for you. i picture myself far, far away; maybe some place close to where you are now, or maybe in a void where everything i've ever said loses all its meaning.

what a wonderful day that would be.

i bent my body into a canvas of pillared secrets, and opened my eyes into a land of streetlights and headlights, but never into stars. now i'm drunk on the light of the moon. literal moon-shine. don't look back, it says. don't look back. but i turn my headache head anyway until i am an owl, accompanied by the vastness of everything i'd forgotten.

i'm scraping dreams from my skin
with my fingernails.

dreams where you move down here.
where i'm your little spoon
and i'm in your tee shirt.

water beats down
and my skin is raw.

oh, silly little me.

i can't scrape away the pain
in my chest with fingernails

and red hot water.