Often I get worried that my words aren't beautiful enough, when they come out of my mouth they seem to be swimming in saliva and uncertainty
and I get angry and spit and shout and say nothing.
Slammed like poetry readings.
I’m not following in your footsteps,
just repeating the rhythm.
(Teach me about good music
So that when do the dishes and hum
my teenie-bopper, headed-to-oblivion melodies,
you know it is malicious.)
Sometimes i feel like the best way to understand the world is to sit in my bedroom
and look out the window, trapped like the cat,
who, when he sleeps, twitches his paws and
i think he is dreaming of meadows, but really he is dreaming
of the living room chair.
“You should have named that cat Hamlet, he so pensive”
I named him Oreo.

She stayed in the bath
Until the water got
Milky with self-pity.

She got out, naked.
She held the cat on her lap
Her naked thighs red.

His claws left white marks
Red lines of blood on old scars
Stray fur stuck to her skin.

Blue flannel PJ’s
She giggles in spite of herself,
Milky with self-pity

I found it in the glass cabinet.
The tequila, that is,
Not you.

Is nights like these,
The ones where your image is burned into my retinas,
Upside-down and backwards,
Upside-down and backwards,
You are burned upside-down and back wards.

And not even marathons of ****** crime TV shows and remove you from me.

These are the nights that in find my self in the glass cabinet.

But there are nights that I welcome you.
The nights where I smear charcoal across my face,
Across my page,
Upside-down and backwards
Upside-down and backwards
Seeking the blue that is your eyes.

You are a welcome guest those nights,
But I am not.

It’s funny to me that you loved Salinger so,
Seeing, as you are not as lucky as Holden.
But your borrowed the book anyways.

You are the reason that I can't wear belts,
Because I always picture you in a way that I shouldn't
It's your fault my pants sag.

And you made out with a senior and I was jealous
And you were screaming.

You knew didn’t you?
That you were going to leave me?

I cannot tell if I am angry.

You are gone.

I am upside-down and backwards
Upside down and backwards

And we are broken.

Scars
Raised lines of white puffy flesh
Scattered across my body
I cannot tell if they contain the demons or release them.

I know very little of you or of love
But I know that you should not have to hold my hand
and feel every battle the I have lost with my demons
Contained in white puffy flesh.

And when you put your hand on the small of my back
You should not feel useless carved across my skin
Written in my white puffy flesh.
You should not trace the thoughts of a girl who finds solace in secret sharpness.

So run.

Run.

Before I trap you in my Infiniti.

I do not have a fingerprint, you see, only scars in the shape of my life.

My secret sharpness.

My hair runs down to my ****, so that I can hide my back.
But what of the times that we rest side by side.
And I crack you toes and you fear arthritis and boredom.
I'll put my hair up is that I can trace your bones.
I am exposed.

So I will run.
Before I latch my veins to you heart.
Hurry!
Before we become one.
Before my scars stretch and envelope you.

I can't tell if our white puffy flesh contains or releases my demons.

You never realize how
Dark the night is
Until some one snuffs out
Your candle.

And you have to
***** around in the dark
For some matches.

You swear you put them
Next to the coffee machine,
But it doesn't matter now.

That flame
Can not
Be relit,
No matter how hard
You try.

You must find
Another source of light,
Something more reliable.

A flashlight perhaps.

But one day
That will be snuffed out too.
Not even batteries
Last
Forever.