i loved your big, strong arms
but your beating heart is gone
your beating heart
is gone.

i can't believe i wasted
poetry
on you.

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.

when the lights go out
all i think of is you
all i can think of is you

and i still blister
like you loved me yesterday.

it's  t e n  'o  c l o c k
go to bed
but the night's still young

it's  e l e v e n  'o  c l o c k
go to bed
but i have work to finish

it's  m i d n i g h t
and don't you know, it's unhealthy
to go to bed so late?
mum,
i think it's even less healthy
to be this sad.

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 ****.

i think my heart
grew strings
trying to forget you.

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

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

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

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

every time i listen to the radio
i think
this could have been our song
our song
our song

i swear i haven't been able to
listen to a love song
without thinking of you
since.

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

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

i could never be with you
nothing about you is
quite right
your flaws aren't lovable
but it's nice to think
that they could be
that i could
be with you
if they were.

your ******* face

i kissed a boy
i had no feelings for
because his drugs
made me forget
about the boy who
took all my feelings
with him.

one day i’ll take you to the field
we won’t go together, i’ll take you there
because i’m not the type of girl to ever be “with” anyone

i’ll bring my boom box and wish it was from the 90’s
and i’ll find droopy flowers to play with
even though i know you think it’s stupid

you’ll pick through my cd collection
and i’ll pretend to be embarrassed when you find albums by the bands you hate
you’re supposed to think it’s endearing
you’ll pick country music
and i’ll pretend it’s a compromise
because i gave up awhile ago

in the dark i won’t see your ***** hair
and i won’t have to stare into your empty eyes
you’ll just **** me,
my back will grind into the grass,
and i’ll try to enjoy it
while you hold me close and wish i was Her.

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.

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.

you say you miss me
like it's a chore.

i think i'm bleeding.

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

i kept the voicemails you left
months after they went stale
and sometimes i'd lock myself
into the bathroom
just to listen to them
without being accused of
being a packrat

the day that my sister
accidentally deleted
every single one
was the only time
i cried over you.

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.

i got in a fight with her daughter
the other day and now it's like
i'm a kid again
and she's the woman
who thinks children should be seen
and not heard

but i should be seen; i need to be heard

i'm going to scream until my throat bleeds.

the people here are
static on the television
food with preservatives
plastic flowers.

there's sleet between my teeth
and a thunderstorm in my mind
there's a hurricane in my heart
and a drought beneath my bed

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

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.

my chest feels so empty
and my eyes feel so heavy
and it's only 3:30 pm

on days like this, i wonder
how i got through it
before you

because the after is
proving to be
rough.

i guess my philosophy is that
movie times were scheduled for
double features
and we were given opposable thumbs
so we'd have five fingers

his name left my lips
too many times to count last night
and it was embarrassing
not because everyone heard me
but because everyone thinks
i want him
when all i'll ever want
is you

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

fragile [promises]
[are] the ones [made]
[too early.]

there are pieces of me
that will never be
happy.

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

they apologized
to clear their
conscience
not because
they were sorry.

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

i swear to god i'm learning
how to gracefully release
those not meant for me.

but more often than not
my wishful thinking
gets the best of me --

why couldn't you
why couldn't you be meant
why couldn't you be meant for me?

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

i am a black hole
and you
are the stars.

it would be a
privilege
to drown
with you.

i
never
meant
to
want
you
this
much.

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.

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