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

he'll never be you.

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

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.

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

would you even like
reading ten honest words
from me?

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

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 don't want to meet you in a coffee shop several years from now, when i've undoubtedly put on weight and still lost half my hair to the e.d. when i starve for a week or bend over the toilet because i finally cracked i'm not thinking of  several years from now. i'm thinking about a year from now. i'm thinking about three months. two. one. next week, tomorrow, yesterday. i'm thinking about hopping on a plane, or a bus, or just ******* walking until i reach you. until i can show you, show you what you've done to me and show you the brilliance of it all. no, the insanity of it all. the way my skin stretches over my thighs like tiger stripes and the little ridges on my fingernails from not getting enough calcium. all for you. i want to show you what i've done for you, no, what you did to me -- is there a difference? i doubt it makes a difference when you've become the ******* voice in my head.

i just want to be beautiful enough for you. right now.

i wasted a ******* long time
trying to make
the good ones stay.

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.

they say we accept the love
we think we deserve
so where's the love i deserve
where's the love
where's the love

on nights i cannot sleep
i blame it all on you
i let myself think back
to the very first day we met
and starting there, i fold
each day like the layers of an
accordian until i convince myself
that every note of yours
has affected every one of
mine,
and though yours will always be sweet
mine are now and forever off-key.

i miss a lot of people daily and
sometimes i think about living
until i'm eighty
like this
constantly clinging
to the past
i'm not sure when i became
gatsby
and you became
daisy
but i'm realizing i miss nick, too
and jordan
and every guest
who came to my parties

is it time for me to get
shot
yet?

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.

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.

your love is too tainted
[by the memory of a boy
who will never be more
than a memory]
to give anybody else.

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.

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.

i wonder if you're drowning me
in a glass bottle
dreaming of the day you drink too much
and i come to your rescue
i want to want to
but the truth is
i don't give a ****
and i can't apologize
enough
for not loving you.

just put down the bottle, babe.
there aren't enough tears
in the universe
to bring someone back
who never cared
to start.

i'll let you learn from my mistakes
if you'll let me.

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

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

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.

but i think i was born
saying goodbye.

just call me
baby
one
last
time.

when you are old enough to speak
do not call love
a mental disease
do not resent it, do not fight it
because love is pure
and love is good
it's only when you throw
life into the mix
that it becomes toxic.

he told me he loved me, did you know that? weeks ago . . . and i've been thinking about saying it back for days, but every time -- every ******* time -- i think about it, there you are. with your stupid name and your stupid self and ******* i loved you, you know that? i loved you so much that the thought of saying it to anyone else physically hurts. it feels like it'd be physically impossible to get the words out. two years down the road and here i am, tongue-tied in front of a boy you don't even know, screaming at my memories of you for not being able to catch me.

i don't believe in being in love
i believe that there are people i love
and there are people you love
and there are a few people we love
but we will never love
each other
because that's
a fairytale --
-- and everything else in them
was false.

when you asked me why i never wrote
i told you i forgot
but if you'd looked beneath my bed
you would have known the truth

i wrote you
i wrote you a hundred times
and another hundred
in my dreams.

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

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.

i’m 6
you’re tall like a “big kid”
i’m small, i fit in your lap
you like pokémon cards
[and the spice girls, that’s our secret]
last week you tried to runaway
you didn’t know where to go, came home
you should have gone
under the table

i’m 13
i have the coolest brother because
you work at an amusement park and
this roller coaster is fast
[your friends say your girlfriend is, too]
you aren’t mikey anymore but
not michael II either because
you’re purging daddy out
so you go by mike

i’m 17
i’m watching your band
again and
your phone keeps ringing
[she’s calling about mike’s baby]
i think i’ll pick it up, mikey
tell her you still like the spice girls

i’m 22
cleveland state?
it’s part of her deal
you’re stuck in ohio
[just like daddy]
but you’re getting out of columbus:
i gave you bus fare
under the table

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.

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

i want to be like the bee
and sting you everytime you say
i feel nothing
i'll only get to sting you once, really
i'd die for you and it scares me
but what's more terrifying than living for nothing
and if i do -- die for you -- i'll know:
a little stinger
the remains of myself
will always be part of me,
will always be part of
you.

everybody talks about their boys
like they're daisy chains
or paper dolls
nearly identical and
dispensable
but for me there's only
you.

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.

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.

snakes get a new skin
every one
two
three months

we get one every
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven years

in five year's time
i'll have a skin
you never
touched

and i'll still probably
be conflicted
on how i feel
about that.

maybe if he smelled like you
i wouldn't cry
when he ***** me.

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 should be sleeping but i'd rather
think circles around three months
that you called
a waste of your time.

you lied at some point
i just don't know
when.

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.

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.

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.

it doesn't take much for the people here
to part like the red sea
or collapse like paper dolls.

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

there is a poet with
the same name as my
ex-lover
's mistress
and every time i read her poetry
i weep
because it is so beautiful
but i cannot love it
because i imagine it was strung
by Her
just like Him.

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