A smile fading into your face
Mirrors the stars fading into the sky.
Moving MOVING at an easy pace
Well hello, (hello!) GOOD bye!

We have nowhere to be and nothing to do
As I’m whispering secrets into your sleeve.
You may feel something like (I love you),
Or your skin might hear ‘please don’t ever leave.’

As hours and days of nearing bliss
Paint the color of morning onto our cheeks,
Just close your eyes and picture this
I’ve been lucidly asleep for weeks.

Do something you’re afraid of
[fall]

Like the night I lay my head on your shoulder,
I needed you to stay alive,
I needed you in order to stay alive.
The night we saved each other’s lives.

It was everything,
and your heart kept beating (against my ear)
and the tv talked to itself.
We went to sleep afraid that it was nothing.



Like that night you told me you were in love with me.
It was nowhere special.
It was the couch in your room.
And thats what made it real.

I said nothing back
and the trees tapped against the window
and eyes around the world were closing.
I did not speak, but I kissed you.



Like the night you drove me home
after the world broke our hearts.
It was 1am
We were two, two was one, and one was alone.

I wanted to stop moving
and the floating snow brought silence in through the open windows
and the street lights made moving shadows on your skin.
The earth moved as black pavement rushed beneath us.



Like tonight as the weight of moments that were years is breaking our necks.
I’ll pick up my eyes and look at you
waiting for me in the openness of the street
brighter than a star.

Standing there like an open door
and the wind is blowing through your hair
and when every breath is a leap of faith,
I will never stop falling.

not what you think but a little smaller.
you forgot to paint your t-shirt
with any colors.
it's something to marvel at in the day
and to dread in the night,
and fill with the lush scent
of your iron perfume, like manufactured lilacs.

you dance for something temporary
and lift yourself from dreamlessness
to be touched by a crude ex-lover
because he slipped thirty-five dollars
beneath your door.
and you don't know what to do,
so you try only to love him again
and learn to accept his dry humor.

but coffee is to dark,
and juice is too light
and your relationship is too formal
and his touch is too soft
and your moans are too loud
and your *** is too slow
and your eyes are too dry
and your lips hurt
and your toes cramp
and you think about your mother
and you forget to breathe.

It never made a difference what I did or didn’t say to you.
You didn’t listen to me either way.
I could have told you the truth all along and maybe
then it would have made a difference. But I’m too lazy,
and I’m too tired, and it’s about time I gave up for once.
You gave up on me straight away and I thought I could pull you back up.
I guess I’m not always right.
I guess I’m only trapped in what boundaries you give me.

You make me so angry, but its worthless pounding on the door of a sound-proof room. I did anyway, and it only made my knuckles raw.
You hurt me. Does that mean anything to you?

      I found myself screaming.
      I found myself losing it.
      I found myself in the middle of nowhere, with no one, and nothing to say,
      wordlessly livid.
      Every thought inside if me no longer made sense.
      It felt like I’d lost control of my own life,
      all because I lost control of you.

      I was simply a flea on a tick on a dog on a hill on an island in the ocean of the world, which is barely a speck in the universe.
      I was a moment that no one heard—especially not you—
      a tree that fell silently in an empty forest,
      a lie that was told to a dreaming deaf mute,
      a ransom held for 12:03 P.M. that no one can pay, that no one even understands.
      I was a thought removed from a frontal lobe
      (“Pass the scalpel,” whispered remorsefully from behind a doctor’s mask).
      I was trapped in a memory you’d forgotten,
      and it was all I can do not to be completely erased.

Remember me! I wanted to shout, for waiting was no longer hoping. In my own sharp memory, I was surrounded by ice. It was fierce, yet completely withdrawn into the open window of your soul. All I could see was debris and packed boxes, stacked upon each other in the clotted, fatal shape of a skyscraper. The darkness of your fond shape wrapped me within myself, when I thought I was wrapped into you. You led me down a path that you knew I would be lost on, and you left me there without a word.

       I’m still stuck in this desolate world that we created,
       and as soon as you think of me, as soon as you return, I will greet you:
       “Welcome to every second in despair, every moment lost, every
       minute growing angrier; welcome to the storm is coming, to running
       from the monsters that aren’t even there, to burning fevers; welcome
       to dead but alive, to quivering and empty, to uncomfortably full,” I
       will say.

“Welcome to loneliness.”

I knocked on your door at 3 AM because I was cold,
but you let me inside for different reasons.
I was wearing my mother's jacket and perfume
and I think you thought I was her,
but my lips are fuller and my hands are harder.
I felt your smile and you felt mine,
and you told me about being gone
so we left.

I held a whirlwind of your emotions in my hand
and it was the first time I'd felt so much
without even moving.
You asked me to throw them, but I couldn't do it,
so I put them in my coat pocket and cried without telling you.
There was something you whispered to me
at half past six that is sitting in that pocket, too,
but I just can't bring myself to look for it.

And the whole time I was waiting for you to hit me;
I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't her.
In the passion of your memories
you would grab my hand and shake it,
the weird part was that I let you, I didn't protest.

You were kind at 9 AM when I left because I was warm,
but you pushed me out the door for reasons I don't understand.
Maybe because I wasn't her,
or maybe you just needed your sleep--
but I am content with a pocket full of your emotions and memories,
and you are content being alone.

I float like a rock
and sink in clean air.
The scent of me alone
is enough to make any head turn.

I can promise you nothing
because I claim the title "starving artist,"
and every time I bleed,
I do it for the sake of humanity.

I live on a crucifix created by Picasso
and crawl to work on my knees.
The Pink Floyd blaring through my headphones
is louder than the sound of my heartbeat.

I cry when I see art that doesn't make sense
and I feel sad even if I do understand it.
I don't use razors to shave
and yearn each moment for rainy days.

I am nothing to no one,
I am not real or imaginary--
simply a popped balloon at a six-year-old's birthday party.
But let's not cry over spilled paint.

She held her fists between her lips
and chewed them
as if they were caramels
or beef jerky (she loved meat).
Stopping only to taste her own fear,
she became an enemy of herself
and dreaded the taste of her hands.

She kept her eyes averted
or crossed because she was crazy,
and chuckled silently
behind her eyebrows.
Maybe she was keeping up an image
to show that she was afraid of change,
or maybe she wasn't.

She kept her mind
under her tongue
and pressed down on her thoughts
until they were altered.
She let her ideas mix with her spit
and swallowed them until she was full,
or until her mind was empty.

Whisper, she said in a voice that was not real
because it did not exist
it was not true that she lied, for she was not real and neither were her truths.

there is pain in my eyes, she would feel it, and she would not fix it.
there is no cure for relentless tears which sometimes come of will,
but today stung and dried out my eyes. she can't touch them.

who is real anymore? god, i will be on your side if you agree to a few conditions.
(i will think later—now i am writing.)
keep in touch, alright, dear? she asks but there is no answer. typical.

it is okay, it is not okay, there is a choice i have to choose.
and she can do it for me, i am tired of being the one who knows.
maybe the leaves carry enough weight to fall on my shoulders,
and that is better than the load i currently carry.
(oh the beauty of alliteration.)

i don't want to know, i want to face the sun, even if it blinds me,
and i will be just like everyone else and that's how it is.
(i can't capitalize, i hate pressing the shift button.)

take into account the fact that i am not a bird, or a deer, or dead, or alive.
and at this point you will see who i really am.
i don't expect you to understand until your late thirties,
at which point you will not even remember this moment,
this moment where you read the thoughts that flow through my mind and onto here,
taking up a space that matters to nearly no one and effects none at all.

i have no choice in the matter, i can't make me into someone else or something else.
can i ask you politely to stop ******* making me feel like it's not enough?
here is fall, where the leaves shall drop and land on my shoulders,
and god help me forget the reasons i am asking for weight in the first place
and help me remember how to lie and make things okay;
because, god, what is life but one ******* lie you have told me?

Whisper, she says in a voice that is not real, make sure no one else will hear this lie.

She felt the rocks and glass
beneath her feet.
They pinched and tugged at her skin,
pulling themselves through each layer
and burrowing in-
as if to hibernate
between her toes.
The asphalt was cold
and had a certain degree of pleasure
in its sharp, penetrating lumps.

She needed someone to hate,
or wanted someone to blame for where she was.
No, not her mother;
no, her mother did what she had to do,
and it was what she had to do
that had given her daughter that first gasping breath
which sets the course of an entire lifetime.

She stood at the corner
clenching her teeth and fists and toes,
taking turns resting one foot on the other.
Blood spotted her feet
and tickled her bones in patterns
like snowflakes:
each one different,
and like kisses:
soft.

Cars sped swiftly past,
dimming their bright lights in respect for her tired eyes.
One halted,
the door swinging ajar,
and only a pale, hairy hand presenting a one hundred dollar bill was visible,
floating ominously in the dark and grimy city air.

He washed her feet and touched her nose,
and when she woke in his bed
the pain had shifted to somewhere familiar,
somewhere that constantly ached;
empty and cold
just like a chilled beer mug.
Her ears rang when he kissed her.

Greedily, he took more.
And he touched her heart with his cold, pale fingertips
until she could no longer feel any
pain.