i think i always knew that eventually,
i'd write about you.
i dont like to admit that i remember anyone who's gone
or was never here to begin with but
i've dragged five skeletons from my bed so far and
a wound half-clean is a wound infected.
i dont want to admit that your effect on me lasted longer than i'd hoped
despite my stubborn patience,
waiting for the stains to fade on their own.
i like to pretend that if you saw me as i am now
you might
see me the way i pretended you did
and the way i always felt on the verge of swallowing my tongue
would be mutual.
when i think about love i see you laughing, even though i know
that's not what i felt
but it's the closest i've ever been,
and i think that's good enough.
it's been eight months since we've spoken but i still imagine you reading these
alone and quiet,
or maybe in the midst of sound and laughter with my words
as a welcome cage.
but we're strangers now if we weren't already
and even when i saw you every day and
my poems were the only thing anyone
could respect,
i dont think you ever read them. i never asked you to,
it'd be too personal. and besides,
i knew this feeling wouldn't last.
i know this feeling won't last.
i can still see the way you looked at the ground when you smiled.
can you still see the way i tried too hard?
can you still see the way i felt like my bones were ground to dust
with the effort of not drawing your hands on every blank page
of my sketchbook.
this isn't my poem to write, and
yours isn't my name to say, i know.
i don't know if you were perfect or if i just
didn't know you at all.
don't think of me as weak. don't see me as sad.
just see me as a girl who mixed up all her emotions, a girl who
mistook loneliness for love,
and it stuck.
i don't think of you every day anymore,
but when it hits it hurts.
i don't know if i want to run home and rip apart every street to find you
and be honest for the first time
in my sorry life,
or hide in soggy peat until roots grow from my skin.
i know i don't love you but knowledge changes nothing except maybe
adding shame for feeling sick
anyway.
i'd like to see your sketchbook now.
i'd like to see what you draw now, i'd like to know
if you love your art now
the way you didnt when i knew you.
i'd like to know if you're loved where you are,
like you should be,
and if my name is any more
than an unused entry
in a dictionary youve never used.
ive been wearing clothes you'd probably like.
ive been drinking things you'd probably like.
i think i'm becoming more like you
every day
without wanting to, and i don't know if thats something you'd love
or hate.
this is the twentythird condolence letter i've written to you
but never sent,
but now at least its somewhere other than grafted to the roof of my mouth.
i don't know.
the only places i saw you were heat and concrete and dust
and sometimes
rain so heavy it pinned you to the earth, but here
the soil is so rich i feel like i could burst into leaves if i touch it and
like there are death caps beneath my skin,
growing in the damp air, i dont know.
i dont know .
sometimes this place is so pretty it makes me sick.
reminds me of how far-removed i am from anyone who makes me feel
real.
is there another version of me in your mind?
one more similar to the body i left behind,
more similar to the one i pretended to be for you,
do you think of me and panic? do you think of me to feel real?
my fingers have been hooked through your clavicle for the past two hours and i still
can't look your skeleton in the face
without feeling ashamed
for feeling.
you know a language i don't.
tell me the truth in a way i dont understand
so it's not another thing i have to know.
was my act convincing or were you looking at the ground
so the pity didn't show on your face?
was the reason you stopped watching me draw because you were afraid
one day
you'd see yourself on the page?
it hasn't happened yet.
i hope it never does, but sometimes
i can't help picturing you laughing,
looking down like my eyes are too bright
to look directly at.
sometimes i can't help picturing us in the heat back home,
sitting in the grass and
neither of us is crying, but i think
the stains you left on my skin are probably
art enough.
i have polished your bones bright white.
i have stuffed the eye sockets with paper so i can look you in the face.
shame fractures my sternum just from
the line of your jaw,
but the roof of my mouth is clear, and my sketchbook is still someplace where
i havent burned your image.
maybe tonight you won't be in the background of all my dreams. maybe tonight
i'll dream of saying goodbye.

you only invited me because you hate parties.
you've been in the corner for an hour with some bitter biting drink
and you're pretending you're not crying,
and i'm pretending i'm not trying
to comfort you.
happy nineteenth.
happy birthday to a girl born just to know
how it feels
to be ripped in three.
happy birthday to a girl born to be the confessional
for every sinner on the street.
junkies catch your arm just  to be sick on your skirt.
you tried to fell a forest with a silver axe and ended
with bent metal and blisters on your hands
you ******* fool,
you never read the fairy tales
that i drank until i could spit them on command.
you never read the myths that made better friends
than anyone i've ever met.
you opened the bottle
when the demon inside promised you love.
you didn't run when it jumped down your throat
because the movies taught you romance
is taking a sick man inside your belly
and letting him push the lining till it bursts,
you let rats gnaw your achilles tendon to shreds for fear of letting them starve,
sometimes
you can't tell if your soul is gallant or gaunt.
you can't tell if you're the crusader
or the ***** the savior forgot to heal.
the only ocean you've seen is the one the hero is thrown into
from his storm-caught ship
sometimes it's hard for you to imagine water any deeper
than a foot above your head.
let me tell you a story -
once i fell in waters ten fathoms deep
once i tried to breathe underwater
and panicked when i could.
sometimes the most frightening thing is knowing you might survive.
don't be afraid of your weakness,
be afraid of your own monstrous strength:
the bruises you find when you wake are caused by your own fists.
throw your silver axe back to the fae.
you could rip these redwoods up from the roots
and fell the whole forest in a night.
stop painting salt mazes on the walls for the slugs to follow,
this room is only a prison because you won't try the door
you're afraid of how you'll carry yourself when the muzzle of a gun
is not pressed in the small of your back.
be afraid.
be so afraid you run without thinking. be so afraid that you care about nothing
but self-preservation,
and abandon the hero who needs your blood to fill
some empty part of him.
if he needs your pain to learn, he can stay ignorant.
i found two baseball bats beneath my bed
only one belongs to me,
the other must be yours.
bludgeon the demon in the bottle.
leave the body to the wolves.
you don't have to be the protagonist
to be the hero.
one more year and you'll have conquered two decades.
we can make it that far.

what is eloquency
how can i spin a ribbon made out of letters do i get an instruction manual all bound up in fake leather with thin smooth smooth pages and tiny creeping lines of words upon words
if i read enough words, maybe they'll leave a mark on my heart and then i can spin them back out again
drop them on the page, a drop of ink landing as type-written letters all smudged gray and printed on thicker strong paper
and the words, oh the words, i'll soon know them all
i can spit them back out into candy colored shapes whirling and twirling around in the air
mesmerizing people with the sound of their letters
i'd like to be a wordsmith, a manipulator of words

once upon a time,
you asked me to tell you stories.
they never made sense but they made you laugh
but when it was your turn you'd shrug and look at the floor.
you can't weave fiction, you're too
cerebral,
ive always been the creative one.
now im stuffing your essays in the space between my ribs
and pretending thats enough.
youve always been more politics than poetry -
you hate poetry.
but you always came when i performed
(said my poems were the only ones you could stand.
said the others were static noise)
youre miles away, youre chasing cemeteries and im chasing you.
ive always been more
successful,
youve always been kinder.
when i cry you speak softly and i scream.
when you cry i laugh and you
go quiet
and i feel sick.
you still believe in duty and honor and
honest politicians
though i tried to convince you that everyone lies,
just like you.
i took you outside at night and taught you the only constellation i know,
told you about
desperate boys and girls like mountains,
and redwood forests at three a.m.
and blew smoke in your face.
now its your turn.
tell me a story.
tell me how they broke you to bits and built you up again.
tell me how youre afraid to die.
tell me how ive hurt you and youll never trust me quite the same again.
tell me about your favorite book
again,
describe the dragon so vivid my own monsters seem like broken dolls.
i'll offer you a drink and you'll refuse.
(i'm so sorry that you're gentle
and i'm cruel.
i'm sorry for treating you sweet then snapping your wrist.
come back.
this time i'll be kind.
this time i'll listen.)

what
if
i
tookabreakfromlife
what
if
my
heartturnedblackasice
-but-
i
know
i
won'tbedyingsoon
-so-­
i'll
on-
ly
cursemypellucidmind

Don’t stand so close to me
God knows I hate you for it
standing miles high and reaching down
arms stretched out in the 2am
screaming pull yourself up god ******

but my flailing hand passes through yours
like some sort of hologram
leave a message after the beep—you're not there
my nails are filled with dirt from the grave I’m digging

because hello my name is Atlas
and I got this world on my shoulders
it weighs four years
and they call it high school
they colored me Goliath
—some intellectual behemoth
and potential equals mgh, variable being height
but David felled me in an empty forest
and I didn’t make a sound

they rushed me toward a hospital
morphine (or was it lexapro?)
running through leaking veins
sir, her GPA is flat lining
please just let her go

but I keep thinking of that song
Pale Green Things
and--what happened to my baby?!--
my grandmother getting the call

so I’ll let my spine tear through my rice paper back
as I curl up to hold it in
and hope to God
that some other kid  
will bring in his daddy’s paranoia
(hidden in a cardboard box beneath the bed)
to show and tell

and he’d let me take a little lead home
please not in the head
I never liked a mess