perhaps i beckon love
and failure
in proportion.

i know dresses don't fit me like a tube sock
and the skin around my fingernails is raw
but i'm tired of walking away from a love story
and feeling as if i'll never
walk home to one.

my mother may not be perfect
but she is brave.
my best friend may not be perfect
but she is brave.
the ones who flinch away from touch may not be perfect
but they are brave.
they are brave without being questioned
in front of millions
they are brave without having their stories torn apart
and dug up
and denied
and perhaps even believed but still pushed aside
so as not to ruin the life
of the man who ruined theirs.
they are brave without an audience.

imagine how brave she must be
to relive her trauma
in every single question and torment and threat
plastered on television screens
and dissected by men who think
their careers carry more weight
than the abuse they have all inflicted before.

dr. ford is brave
and then some.

****,
I saw you liked an insta post on
something that I might have done long ago
and you even commented on it and now I don't know
if you're annoyed with me or if you want me to go
but I'm already far away and each and every day
I've been staring at the wall for all the hours I'm awake
you're occupied with your school work
trying to pass the time
and I can't even write you a song because my
poems rarely rhyme.
I keep wondering if I did something to make you not like me
but it's kinda hard to **** things up when all I do is sleep.
I know it's my anxiety that makes me feel like this
but just this afternoon I wrote a paper about your kiss
it's probably a ******* that never could compare to
the way you make me feel, I could never even dare
to try to put exactly what you mean to me into words
and I'm sorry that I'm paranoid
I think I'm getting worse.

i see myself in you and it hurts.
you are heavy on me, collapsing my sternum and by kissing my chest with your fist and
it makes me remember what love is. love
is broken glass and love is warm and reminiscent and
love is something you would like to forget and something you will always remember.
i feel it coming out of my pores;
oozing, memories of you on brittanys floor,
memories of me retching inside my bathtub and
memories of you smiling down at me;
i think of your tongue and how it can be so soft and yet so sharp sometimes and your hands that can be so smooth and yet so rough and
it embeds itself into my skull like a scalpel, medical grade and shimmering like your lopsided grin,
the doctors say ill never get this out of me.
(i wouldnt want to anyway.)

that's all you are, he said: love addiction.
everything is a drug these days but it's all
pluh-see-boh, haven't you heard?
keep grinding the sugar into the carpet.
keep telling yourself it's not the amphetamines making you jumpy.
all the scabs you're carving out hook themselves onto me and they're
rah-vuh-ness, can't you see i'm getting oh-so-thin?
my skin is healing over the ants.
yesterday i picked them up because i saw them drowning
i was almost distracted by the dandelions, you sneaky *******, because they look just like your freckles dotting the lawn
but they were suffocating under the ice-cream i dropped
it melted and crushed the flowers too. they're swollen and ripe and bowtie boy says it's
feh-cun-duh-tee, can't you give that to me?
i know your hands are starving.
i know you're empty and all you dream is to lick the sweat from my slick thighs
holding my virginal knuckles tight in your callouses
take me back home when you're sober,
roh-mee-oh

i promised you i wouldnt do this to you and i did.
i wait through crying. i watch you as your knees kiss my carpet ever so softly and i wait for the deafening sound of your hands against my ears to stop making them ring and i
wait for a break in your tears to mutter a backbitten apology before everything goes silent again.
through all of this my ghost remains sanguine and
he kisses my carcass with wanting and
i think of how i could never regret this,
not even if you lost your ****** job in the projects and
not even when you stop going to school or
stop pretending like you mean something to the world and
i think of his perfect smile and the way his hair falls into his eyes when he ***** me and i will never regret hurting you.
i promised you i wouldnt do this to you but i did.
i never meant to hurt you but i will do it again.