If you are what you eat,
my best friend is tortilla soup.
Warm and comforting;
a perfect companion for cold, bleak nights.

If you are what you smell,
my father is a California wildfire;
pungent and strong,
but a sweet warm oak like a
winter stove. A smell
strong enough to remain with you
even after many days since his absence.

If you are what you hear,
my grandma is the coos
of too many grandchildren,
who eventually grow to songs
of her praises,
louder than a preacher
who lives his weekdays only
for his Sunday sermons.

If you are what you see,
My sister is the wide eyes
That forget to meet your gaze
And misaligned smiles,
Of the children
That society too often
Forgets to love.

if you are what you touch,
my mother is the soft tufts
of translucent blonde hair,
And the heat of fevered-foreheads
of the babies she thought
she may never have.

If you are what you know,
I am love.

If you are what you eat,
my best friend is tortilla soup.
Warm and comforting
a perfect companion for cold, bleak nights.

If you are what you smell,
my father is a California wildfire;
pungent and strong,
but a sweet warm oak like a
winter stove.
A smell
strong enough to remain with you
even after many days since his absence.

If you are what you hear,
my grandma is the coos
of too many grandchildren,
which eventually grow to songs
of her praises,
louder than a preacher
who lives his weekdays only
for his Sunday sermons.

If you are what you see,
my mother is the shells
of little, pink snails
that she collected as pets,
until a woman,
who some would call a mother,
would salt them and
cast them on her roof;
a morbid decoration
like those that lined her soul.

If you are what you touch,
my sister is the soft tufts
of translucent blonde hair,
of the babies she thought
she may never have.

If you are what you know,
I am love.

Why don't you ever read my poetry?
You said you wanted to,
"grasp the concepts of my dimensions"
but you don't read my poetry.
Where I lay out a map of my dimensions,
and a key to my concepts,
for you alone to grasp,
but instead you stare at my surfaces
from your screen
and decide you know better.
Like your favorite cliche,
I lead you like a horse to water,
but you don't even bother.
You listen to songs that
only one of us likes
and say you heard me there.
You look at your own reflection
in the mirror and say you saw me there,
in the pools of your own eyes,
when I stand just behind your shoulder.

I can't pay my rent today.
I can't write poetry, either,
because I took a pill,
that I spent my rent money on,
and I can't write on this pill.
But this pill promised me
it would make me beautiful.

Imagine making a cocktail
with crushed glass
instead of ice.
It would **** you,
but it'd be so beautiful.
Blood would drip from your lips
like lipstick, deadly and red,
but it'd be so beautiful.

Imagine paying your rent with poetry.
You'd be back on the streets,
and strangers probably would think
that maybe, pretty white girl,
you're a self-inflicted martyr,
a heroine against the culture
or maybe just that
you just do ******,

but it'd be so beautiful.

How to Write a Poem:

***** your finger and bleed directly onto the page.
Buy a typewriter from a thrift store and poetically sit in a coffee
shop until your muse walks in.
Sleep with your professor and let her write your poems for you.
Hold private seances at the cemetery.
Read your high school yearbook
until your poems seethe with forgotten teenage angst.
Specifically berate your current lover
but then assure him the words aren’t about him.
Drink yourself into oblivion
but blame your inner artist for your demons.
List all the sins of your mother
and conveniently forget those of your father.
Clutch your pen until a stigmata appears in your hands.
Speak your truth,
but tell your friends
your poems aren’t from your own point-of-view.

I’m currently sitting in the coldest clinic,
Across from, probably,
the cheapest Mexican restaurant in Western Arizona.

The floors are sterile white,
And I giggle at the thought
of you
recognizing the irony
Of my emptiness.

The walls are also white and look slick with Lysol.
They radiate that dampness
that I swear that they smell
like loneliness,

We didn’t make love,
So much as **** in the dirt,
But the truth is
I’d rather wake up hot in the afternoon
on the dirt and the ground
(After you’ve already left)
Than wake up next to
The wrong person
in the wrong bed.

From earthy and raw
so quickly
to empty and white.

My youth was short and blurred.
I imagine it felt like the last few moments of Kurt Cobain’s life;
All light and no color.
Though I was born a winter baby,
Summers irrevocably held my heart.
They tasted like the sunscreen that dripped
onto my chlorine-damp lips
And smelled sweet like the honeysuckles
That strangled the Forget-Me-Nots,
Whose roots twisted between the cemeteries
Of our once-pets beneath.