I was infatuated with you in another life
and by “another life” I mean
last week.

There wasn’t much between us, but
you are the only one who’s ever made me wet
without touching me.
So, it was good to see you
and it is good to see you
and it will probably always be good to see you
the way it’s always good to see the sun.

Sunlight brings my freckles out,
but it makes your entire body glow
until you’re the brightest thing in the room,
the center of the universe for the day.

But I’m a Cancer, baby.
Like the moon,
I revolve around the earth,
not the sun.
Not you.

So why can’t I look at you
without feeling like I missed out on something?

You talk about your past lovers like cuts of meat;
The ******* on this one, the thick thighs on that one, the firm *** on the other.
You call them Chicken, Cow, Pig.
You call me Dear.

I walk into your abattoir  of my own accord
and tie myself to the gambrel,
ask you to slaughter me, please, slaughter me.
Always the slaughterer, never the slaughtered,
I want to know what it feels like.

You do as I ask: strip away my skin, slice open my chest, remove my vital organs.
You have to separate my consciousness
from my carcass
to finish.

I am venison, fresh.
You mount my head on your wall
next to the others and
shut my eyes.

you won’t catch me
thanking you for much, but thank you
for waiting to leave me until
there was sunlight.

from the platform, someone asks
where is this going?
from the tracks, two q-trains answer
with horns that sound like
i'm yours, i’m yours, i’m yours, but
when one pulls in
the other pulls away.

women don’t die,
they vanish into thin air or
they melt
into a puddle on the linoleum.
plath didn’t die,
she dropped the deadweight —
see: her headless body on the kitchen floor
bloated & ready for consumption.

i set a clock to quit you. it says it’s been “4ds, 6hs, 22m” since i’ve talked to you. have you ever noticed how, if you’re quiet enough, you can always hear a ticking clock, no matter where you are? so, today, i’m trying to be very, very loud. i talk to everyone but you. i talk to the barista at the coffee shop; i talk to the attendant at the subway station; i talk to the security guard at the school. by the end of the day, i even talk to the man on the street corner shouting GOD SAID ADAM AND EVE, NOT ADAM AND STEVE. i yell back that ADAM WAS AN ******* AND IF HE WERE REAL, EVE WOULD’VE LEFT HIM AND STEVE WOULD’VE, TOO. i talk to the people who stand around on the subway platform asking you to join their cult even though i’m afraid, if they ask nicely enough, i might say yes. i talk to the other drunk at the bar like do you think god believes in himself? He hands me a chip.

the summer we got together, we had nothing better to do.
in the autumn, the sun got low and so did i.
in the winter, you got cold and we froze.
in the spring, my inhibitions melted
and flooded the apartment
i took the trash out in my barefeet.

i came back inside with glass in my toes.
if you’re going to bleed, you said, bleed out the window.
i left ****** footprints all over the carpet.
you were so angry, you ****** on everything we had
i put it all in the washer, even our bodies.

when we were clean
you looked like a stranger
but i would still leave with you.

in my dream, i eat dinner with your family. except, they don’t look like your family until you sit down across the table. then, they all grow faces: your mom, your dad, and your three brothers. their wives are also at the table and, when you say mrs. kennedy, we all turn to look at you. now you look at me like i just grew a face, too, then at my hands; i have a diamond ring on every finger of each hand. you grab me by the elbow and drag me away from the table. you pull out a flipbook of all the girls you’ve slept with, all tall brunettes like me. then there’s actually me, on my back and on my knees and on top of you. look, you finally admit, i only wanted to *******. i wake up.

in my next dream, we eat lunch at a table outside with your children. there are four of them: a tall japanese boy, a little black girl, and a set of freckled, white fraternal twins. they are all named john, like your father, even the girls. the boy twin is on a leash but, when he tries to run into oncoming traffic, you let him. they’re not really your kids, anyway. they’re the babies your ex’s carried to term to try to make you stay. it didn’t work, you say, like it’s something to be proud of. i don’t want to have your kids, anyway, i am reminding you, when the boy comes limping back screaming mommy. i wake up.

in my last dream, you eat breakfast in bed with your new girl. she smiles with her entire mouth. her face is stuck like that, top teeth cemented to bottom teeth. she laughs at your jokes through the enamel. wanna go for round two? you ask and she answers you like yeth. she gets on her knees and you push her head down to **** you off, your **** banging against those teeth. open up, babe, you say, open up. she can’t. i sleep through the night.

let’s be adults about this. let’s slam the dishes as we do them. let’s scrape what’s left on everyone’s plates into the garbage disposal; i’ll flip the switch when your sleeve gets caught. let’s put away the kitchen knives, chop chop chop, and see who finishes with the most fingers left. let’s put the nubs in tupperware and put some aside for susan, just let me spit in the container first — or would you rather *** in it? she’d probably prefer it. let’s answer the phone when she calls, answer your phone, answer it. answer and i’ll put your head in the microwave and turn it on high, i’ll blow the house up, i’ll

keep your voice down
the children are outside
quietly dividing up their toys.

lost my **** last night. keys, wallet, id. i have a theory that this is the universe in which i take every wrong turn. i walked down high street until i hit a dead end and kept walking. with all this midwest in my mouth i’m lucky i made it this far, but i don’t feel lucky. my friends keep bragging about how dumb they were to end up here. they almost make me miss hating myself for not breaking 2000 on the sat. really, i miss addy. i went back to the white boy, but it isn’t the same. i left that version of myself in michigan. leaving myself was the first wrong turn, but when i tried to make a u-ey i spun out and ended up here.

new york, you are a grim reaper. there should be a minimum age required to move to you, a number of years one must have lived to move to you, before you’re allowed to take the rest of them. new york, you kept me out until all hours and rose me from the dead each morning. jesus —now there’s a guy who knew his stuff: one resurrection was more than enough, thanks. you tell me he drank, too. was it his fault, too? new york, you are slowly killing me, but everywhere else i am already dead.

there are hours before bed
i think i'll turn in now instead
i think i'll burn instead

i want to be everything all at once forever
— casually, like: **** dude, they said you could be president, too? i’ll rock paper scissors you for it
i **** at rock paper scissors, but i **** more at sticking with things that only make me ½, ⅓, ¼ happy
not to mention things i’m bad at but do you even know how good i am at a subject you don’t teach?
columbia, harvard, princeton, yale, brown, dartmouth, upenn, and cornell do
they just don’t know they do, so shhh. i wrote someone else’s name on those essays
i don’t care who knows mine, i’m just trying to keep it out of the obituaries
just one more year ‘till i’m too old to die young
— but who’s counting?
not me, not me, not me.

how i like my people emotionally unavailable. how much trouble they are. how much trouble i am. how i’m not trying to be difficult, i’m trying to look out for myself, because nobody else is going to except, maybe, my mother, but she can’t really do anything for me. how she asked if i was drinking because i was sad and i said no (i don’t know what i am. the drinking is coincidental.) how i’ve felt 21 since i was ******* 14. that time my friend said “i used to be a person” and i said “me, too.” how procedurals take advantage of people who don’t know any better, how they use them to explain things. the girl who had chad’s baby. diego && all the other names i love but can never use. feeling like someone’s inverse. intelligence. how tired i am; too tired to do this, to do anything. how to tell someone i’ve been preparing from/recovering from monday for whole days and i’m still not ready. how there has to be more than this, there has to be more than this, there has to be, there has to. my happiest moment, my saddest moment, the worst act of violence i have ever witnessed: katie in the bathroom with the butcher knife. a day i would live over and over again if i could (i don’t know what day. not today.) the word no. no, no, no. how that is the only word i can manage now. no, i didn’t sleep. no, i didn’t do anything. no, i didn’t get out of bed today. no. blow. a metaphor about my ribs turning into seatbelts. that time cameron drove without a license. something a man says in the street “she was young, wasn’t shah?” how he wanted my body so badly he took it from me. this sentence:

baby, you can get it back.

she says report, report, report it
i’m trying to tell her
how difficult it was
to even disclose to her
how my ribs
turned into seatbelts.

how do i tell you
ive been recovering from/preparing for
monday
for whole days
and im still not ready.

stop throwing yourself to wolves who don't find you appetizing.

my day starts and ends in room 701
i always had a thing for coming
full circle.

"my greatest fear is having everyone i've ever loved in a room."

"they all love you, what's scary about that?"

"i said everyone i've ever loved; i never said anything about them loving me."

i go to the hospital because thats what you're supposed to do. because everyone seems to change their minds about their ******* dads when they seem them lying helplessly in a bed for invalids. but i don't. i look at him and i don't feel a **** thing. until the machines shut off, he's alive. as long as he's alive, he's the man that grabbed my wrist so hard it still doesn't bend right. a terminal diagnosis doesn't change that.

all thats left keeping him alive is that life support and all the people in this room, people he's hurt, who are crying over him like he said a kind word to them in his life. *******.

when the doctor comes in and tells us its time, my sister starts wailing. i think its a stalling tactic. so i pull it out myself.

stop crying, its over.

what am i supposed to do when
walking through life feels like
walking through a museum of
empty rooms

i miss high school
not really, but y'know
i miss all the things
i got to be.

there's smoke in the street
i want to choke on it

in the city
they're so afraid of people ending their lives
they child lock all the windows

or maybe they just
don't want to clean up the mess.

if only i could
**** myself
w/o anyone knowing
just
remove myself
and leave life behind me.

have you ever told a lie so many times
you start to believe
it?
i'm trying to unlearn my own *******
but the stories i've told
feel truer than the truth

they asked me what i wanted the headline of my life to be
at a time when it took everything in me
to keep my name out of the obituaries.

i drew a picture of you and
branded my name
on your ***

my father was a curator
and my mother sold guns
under their roof we made
art and war.

i was used to it:
the settling, unsettling
but never settling in
never settling down.

"oh, he's horribly depressed,"
she said with a smile.

i have a good cry
over the lives
i did not get to live

you kissed my skinned knees
to "make it better"
(a kiss for each bruise)
i wonder what it'd feel like to really
be kissed by you.

there are apples in the cafeteria
shrink-wrapped like they were
meant to be shipped off to outer space
but ended up here somehow

it's strange to write about myself as an entity
i have always thought of myself in terms of other people
the gap between them
a body of negative space.

as the fourth in my father’s string of children, i had to be everything. i was simultaneously the oldest, youngest, and middle child. not to mention, as the six of us were spread across three wives, the only child to my mother. i was a little of everything and a lot of nothing.

there are pieces of me
that will never be
happy.

my brother born blue
you'll never know exhaustion
but you still sleep-in

i bore my eyes into my screen and wait for it to burn out my eye sockets so i can’t see its faults. burning dots when you close your eyes. i want my brain to catch flame. i want my heart reduced to a foot pedal. start and stop and start and stop. i want to wither away until i am nothing but what is necessary; until i cannot cry over cracked glass, excess flesh, the holes in my life that will never be filled (because i can’t turn back time any easier than i can stop biting my nails.) i want to be a wind-up doll with nothing between the ears, nothing behind the eyes, nothing in my rib cage. i want to walk until i can’t feel my legs and keep walking.

we twist and twist and twist
like dishrags over an empty sink
where do all the drops of us go
where do they go
where do we go
eighteen
and i feel like i’m running dry