i spit my love like seeds from a watermelon. my mother tried to teach me differently once, teach me that love was giving away the fleshy bits of yourself; my father tried to lead by example, baring the hairline cracks in his pride whenever she threatened to leave. i don’t take after either one of them (i never did.) i could never give myself away completely, like my mother. but i could never keep completely to myself, like my father. i tried — oh god, how i tried. but the dam of my ribs couldn’t hold back all that love forever, nor would it dare burst. my feelings leak out in spurts. so small, so fast, you could miss them if you blinked (and you wouldn’t be the first.) i used to collect them in a jar. now i just roll them in wads of paper & shoot them at your head.

you think i hate you.

i remember when the people i know
became the people i knew. it started in high school,
kids i’d grown up with dropping off the face of the planet before anything could hold them here; like they were hoping to die
early enough that we could all pretend they’d never been here at all.
we all wanted to erase ourselves. sometimes
i get jealous of the people who succeeded.

those days, i would've followed you off a cliff
these days, i'd call 911 --
because i know, now,
that love isn't wanting someone
so much that you'd die for them
but wanting what's best for them
and knowing
that isn't always you.

so i will collect ladders until
i can reach
and rearrange them

i'm not afraid of moving cross country -- i'm afraid of the leaving, of untucking myself from this pocket of america i call home; my hate has cultured so well here, snapping threads and poking holes for breathing. the dirt under my nails from all the times i tried to dig myself to somewhere better is as much a part of me as my lungs, my brain, my heart; always be-be-beating to remind me to keep going.

to keep looking for loopholes.

i'm not afraid of moving cross country -- i'm afraid of tucking myself away in a new pocket of this country, far, far away only to realize that i hate it there as well; only to snag my nails on new threads, only to find myself sharpening toothbrushes when i'm nervous, only to dig holes in myself in my sleep. i'm afraid of losing my pulse, that be-beat-beat.

but mostly, i'm afraid of never losing it.

i can only love in hindsight
myself,
my body,
the boys who get the two confused.

i am sick to death
of stepping on everyones toes
just to walk in a straight line.

stiff from lack of sleep
i dream of monogamy
and all the pretty little things
i'm meant to dream of
(but never do)

massage my shoulder blades
and i'll take flight

sometimes,
the s y l l a b l e s of your name
still feel like staples in my chest.

if this is a warzone,
then call it a warzone.

there are horror films
where my heart
should be.

my mother loved me so
she burnt my heart out
before i met you

my father loved me so
he handed me his anger
before i met you

my family loved me so
there was nothing left
when i met you.

i don't think i've ever felt that my life was completely my own and i don't think i ever will. i am thrown off-guard by people who simply choose to live. mesmerized by people who throw themselves into their life, as if that is all they are here to do. mind-boggled by people who've never considered the possibility that their life may be bigger than their own, that it could be -- easily -- if they'd only let it. contentment is not in my vocabulary, it is not in my bones; i don't sing in the shower, i breathe.

true pain is the kind
that is u n f i x a b l e
the kind that doesn't
come with an instruction
manual and a simple
way to make up for it
pain that never goes away
because it never can
true suffering is found
in this pain
and true strength is found
in living through it
or, rather,
learning to live
despite it.

there are no words
in the dictionary
to explain the pain
i'm in it's
as if it's been
super glued
to my insides,
then tied in
a knot

i cannot convey
i cannot convey
i cannot convey
this pain

but please do not try to fix me;
my brokenness is all
i have left.

tell me i've got my father's eyes
i'll tell you daddy's got the eyes of god
black and blue

tell me i've got my mother's heart
i'll tell you they're identical
*black and blue

i'm not sorry
that i wanted sleep
more than your ****.

our college lists intersect
only once
and i wonder if
i can take that as a metaphor
for the way our lives
will run parallel
to each other
but never, again,
perpendicular
and i wonder if
the thought
will ever cease
depressing me.

i make a fat joke about myself and
"i don't ever wanna hear you say something like that again," he says
he asks if i am unclear as to why
and i want to ask
if he is unclear as to why
i made it in the first place.

pushing for love is scary. people like to say that it's worth it. but love is a bitter boomerang; you push too hard and it comes back swinging, comes back pushing you, comes back beating you to the ground until you can't breathe. true love leaves you gasping for air, but not in the poetic sense. love leaves you tied to the bottom of the ocean with rocks in your pockets. trapped in a plane with your head out the window. inside of a plastic bag. love is suffocation. pushing for suffocation is scary.

there's something scratchy in my throat. behind my tongue. between my lips. it's ever-present, ever-changing, ever-clawing to be set free. it sits solemnly as i wake, stretching its own claws as i wind up, holding out for the moment i realize that i am conscious. once again. for another day. holding out for the moment i'm smiling, thinking this will be a better day. then it howls. scratches up, up, up. itches my tongue. pounds against my teeth, slithers between my lips, hisses. **maybe not.

i am a black hole
and you
are the stars.

i was a poet.
my words
counted
structured
organized
picked and chosen
so carefully
i stifled my heart
in the process
but i loved you --
-- silently
from the bottom of coffee cups
in the transactions of homework
[your spanish, my english]
and my phone history;
all those calls i missed
hitting the mute button
when you played piano
and you understood
you knew my words
didn't say much at all.

but i am a poet.
and fifteen months
after my words were too late
he fell for them, instead
the counting
their structure
my organization
i picked and i chose
like a calculator
starving my heart
in the process
but he loved me --
-- gullibly
from the bottom of his heart
in the middle of the night
never mind my phone history;
all those drunk calls i made
to you
feeding him pretty words
so he could love me
because he didn't understand
he didn't know my words
didn't say much at all.

i think i like boys better
in my dreams.

i care about you more than i should. there's no rational reason for me to; it's been long enough, with few enough words between us and small enough talk. we've dissolved into strangers, but to me you'll never be estranged; i think about you everyday, even when you should be the farthest thing from my mind. when i'm putting on my uniform for a school you never attended. when i'm driving down a road that you couldn't even name with a map. when i'm dissecting a cat, for christ's sake, committing an act so clinical it could be performed by a robot. i shouldn't feel anything, especially not for you. but i do. i still do.

it doesn't consume me the way it once did, thinking about you. you don't consume me the way you once did. i don't ache at the thought of you.

but still. there you are. you've made yourself comfortable in the back of my mind and something tells me you've no plans to leave.

and something tells me i'm okay with that.

i think part of me is still
waiting for prince charming
and it sickens me.

i didn't donate blood today. i could've, but i didn't. my friends did. all day, people talked about the donors like they were heroes. we watched a video about donating, about a little girl whose live was saved thanks to a donation. my friends' blood will save lives. but i didn't donate today, because my blood is thick with misguided bits of you and to burden someone else with that would be to condemn them, too, to hell.+

maybe sad
is just my happy
but my god,
i hope not.
i'm so sick of being
miserable.

i am heavy
[with ugly emotion
that nobody
deserves.]

somedays you just
need kind words
[even if they're not meant for you.]

fill
me
up

this is the world
and i'm supposed to exist in it
today
and i am not prepared
at all.

and all of my demons?
they look just
like
you.

i think people die because they're all used up. whether they're 18 or 80, something inside them has run out of fuel. something inside them wants to be loved, or idolized, or immortalized or whatever they're after and they've run out of whatever makes it happen. so they die or they **** themselves and they fulfill their greatest desire; to be lost, to be mourned, and to escape the void they've been digging themselves out of their entire lives. six feet under.

i think my heart
grew strings
trying to forget you.

i could write so many ******* poems
about your stupid,
******* face.

i tried to write an open letter to your new girlfriend. i sat for hours, writing draft after draft, typing over backspace after backspace, all in vain. i realized at the end of it, i had no words for her. i had no wistful compliments, or tips dipped in nostalgia, or even warnings -- i realized none of those are mine to give. i remembered that there have been at least a dozen girls between me and her; you are no longer mine to giveaway. i am no longer the ex. i was never really the ex, but i am no longer the anything. i'm a girl you used to know. years ago. a girl you'll come across in the yearbook, decades from now, and blink -- was that really her name? you'll swear to yourself that it was more beautiful, back when you moaned it in my ear. you'll show me to your kids, or even your wife, laughing and saying there's my high school . . . you'll pause and stick-in the word 'girlfriend' because it's the closest thing that fits, but we both know better. i was never your girlfriend, i was just your ******* girl.

there is no fondness to this story. there is nothing for you to tell your kids, unless you're ready to ******* jade them; there's the girl who starved for me in year nine, there's the girl who didn't say she loved me until it was over, there's the girl who couldn't function with or without me.

there's your girl. one of your girls. a notch in your belt. now that i think about it, maybe you'll just flip past me in the yearbook. and maybe, if we ever see each other again, all you'll do is blink.

and leaving all the you --
the sweatshirts
and the cologne
and the memories --
on the curb.

i have bullet marks for pores
on every inch of skin
you touched.

i swear to god,
every bit of my body
is crying
besides my eyes.

what is love
to someone without
a heart.

he'll never be you.

the only time i feel a thing
for him
is when we argue.

he told me about how ***** his family's money was
stocks under the table and
overcharging black girls
to pull out their babies
i told him he didn't reflect that at all,
and he said he tried to keep his head out of the clouds
as if what i'd said
had been a compliment
as if it wasn't my way of saying
he was too boring
to have a story like that.

i miss you . . .
like, i miss talking to you
is that weird . . .?
i'm sorry.

i wish you'd stop saying you miss me
to smooth things over
it's almost as bad as when you say i love you
as if your words might fix
my eating disorder.