you were beautiful
for awhile
and in my memories
you still are
but in reality
she has tainted
everything
you were to me
so thoroughly
that there's
nothing left
of you
for me to
admire.

i'm sure
you are
relieved.

i've found
that life
is easiest to digest
in poetry.

i see so much beauty
through these ugly eyes
what a waste, what a waste

i don't feel like i've
really been born
yet

it seems like life doesn't
start until the age
of 18 or 21

i asked for directions and
he pointed to the sky but
i still don't understand how
the bible can be a road map
or prayer a flashlight
so i think that i will cross myself
and remember how to see
in the dark.

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.

sometimes i write lies
but mostly i write about you
and sometimes
i don't know the difference

did you know that it only takes one
deformed cell to give you cancer and
i sometimes want to scream in the middle of a lecture
because i smoked that one cigarette in october
and what if i have cancer
and i wasted all the autumns, winters, and springs
of my life as a robot of the american dream
taking classes and making grades
and earning letters on a page
and if i die too soon from cancer
everything i’ve accomplished
will fit on an 8x11 sheet of paper.

it would be a
privilege
to drown
with you.

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

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

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.

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

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

i wish i were
awake enough
to live my life.

even if i climbed to
the highest steeple of the highest church
prayers would not be able
to save you.

all the boys
who do
end up in the
trash.

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

you still won't stay up
into the late hours of the night
to talk to me.

i don't know why i thought it'd be
different
this time.

*******.
i missed you.
but *******.

i do not need lullabies
at twelve at night, when some wake up screaming
or before i go to bed

i need lullabies
when i am happy
laying under the porch light
feeling lightheaded and woozy
but knowing that i have succeeded, today
and not inhaled a thing.

sing me a lullaby
to remind me that i am a little girl inside
who does not know definitions and statistics
and does not understand that happiness can ****.

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

your ******* face

i hope you choke
on every i love you
**** you
****
you.

i haven't been thinking about you lately, i swear i haven't, but i was just thinking about parties and trashing myself and how anyone who isn't trashing themselves is just preserving their own corpse and i was thinking about death, lots of it, and i was suddenly hit with the realization that i am going to die [as i occasionally remember] and i had the sudden sensation to tell someone i think i am going to die and i picked up the phone and i nearly typed it all out, until i realized how he would react. how alarmed he would be. how he'd think i was speaking about suicide and try to talk me off a roof i'm not standing on. and then i thought about you. i thought about all of our talks and how i could say anything around you and you'd absorb it and yeah, sometimes you made me feel stupid, but most times you made me feel heard. sometimes you even had crazy things to say yourself and i, of course [being in love with you], ate them right up, right out of your lap. and i miss that. but talking to you is completely out of the question and he'll never understand.

our dads left
matching bruises
where our hearts
should be

and when you kissed me
i realized all those lullabies?
they'd never fixed me
touching bruises with love --
or otherwise
only makes us blue

i'm sorry, so sorry
we should have been
something beautiful.

if i hadn't already used up
all my kisses on missing you
i'd make it better.

there are two full cycles of the seasons
and three summers
between us
i'd like to think that when i see you,
there won't be silence
but i have learned from the second spring
that there will be nothing but
a hello, how are you
or a when did you get into town?
to commemorate the winter
we spent together
two full cycles of the seasons ago.

i'd write you letters
ten words
at a time
but

would you even like
reading ten honest words
from me?

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

just call me
baby
one
last
time.

i still listen to every song you
introduced me to and lately
i haven't been quite so sad
when i do.

i think i like boys better
in my dreams.

fill
me
up

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.

wanting you is like
wanting a celebrity
but there are only 200 kids in this school
more boys than girls
so how is it that i've faded
into your fan base so easily

am i really that
unremarkable

i just can't get over
that night by the lake
do i even have to say
which one i mean?

it was so cold, so, so cold
and we didn't say a word
but i could feel every part of you
against every last part of me

months later
i carved us into
the wood

*heaven was here.

whenever i try to forget you
it feels like a mouse is gently
gnawing off my limbs.

this brain feels useless
without you in it.

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.

we don't sleep because
we have nothing to
wake up for.

i don't really know
if i ever mattered
or if i ever will

god forbid i wonder if i *do

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

i've told the story of
how you broke my heart
so many times
that there is no heartache
left only for me;
i'm empty.

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.

garrett,
did you know that
you were there when the
numbness started?
i looked over to you and said
with him gone
i have nothing
to angst over
you laughed
isn't that a good thing?
and at the time i felt
relieved.

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

i don't speak science and
i don't speak God.
i wish i spoke either,
i wish i spoke both.

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