you know how the song goes:
a stitch away from making it
and a scar away from falling apart.
holding on gets hard when
the light at the end of the tunnel
goes dark.

my friend told me he doesn’t purposely
befriend actively suicidal people anymore.
so when a 14-year old friend
was hospitalized for an attempt,
he was shocked.
I’m not fourteen
and i don’t go to the hospital for anything,
but when i was fifteen i
asked my mom to start taking me to therapy.
she told me,
sweetie,
you can just talk to me about anything.
so i started writing poetry instead.
but poems can’t diagnose me,
poems can’t prescribe me meds to
fix the chemical catastrophe in my head
poems can’t cure me.
but neither can people.

there was a boy that i used to call sunshine,
but he told me that he would
rather be the moon.

i deleted your number from my contacts
once you stopped using mine.
you don’t keep me up at night.
i’ve stopped losing sleep over you.

i haven’t broken the habit of checking
people’s wrists when they move
because of all the girls i knew in grade school.
i have a friend with the first letter of help
permanently scarred on his stomach.
we’ve never talked about it.
i don’t know if either of us know how to,
or if either of us really want to,
or if either of us really need to.

when my brother was 18, he was convinced
that he wanted to go into psychiatry.
i think the closest we’ve ever been
was when i had a mental break over
orange juice at one thirty in the morning,
watching him play GTA on his Xbox 360.
when my brother was 17, he was convinced
that his future was in professional photography.
i’m 17 and i don’t have a ******* clue.
I’m 17 and i don’t think I’ve ever felt so much
like I’m just constantly drowning.

they say a captain goes down with his ship
and I’ve set myself up for losing all my friends.

she’s got year-round summer skin
and winter has never been my friend.

i sleep seven hours a night
and i wake up exhausted.

my cat has all his claws
and when he crashes through my bedroom
when i’m on the brink of extinction
it leaves me haunted, hearing
breathing and footsteps that aren’t really there.
so i’ll put studs in all my jackets
and wrap myself in blankets.

i wish you were here,
i wish i was there.

the first rated R movie
that i saw when i turned 17
was that one that brought back ryan reynolds,
starring a moody teen with
the best superhero name ever,
a CGI man who acted as her mentor,
a pretty girl like a damsel in distress,
and the bad guy called himself ajax
but his real name was francis.
i cried
a lot.
i’m not sure why, really, but when the credits
started rolling and it was everything that i’d
been waiting for in a movie for the anti-hero
that I’ve been in love with since i was 13,
i sat in those velvet seats and started sobbing.

when i was six, my dad took my
9 year old brother and i
to see ‘revenge of the sith’ when it came out
in 2005.
the scene on mustafar, the volcanic planet,
the downfall of anakin skywalker
stuck with me until i was 12 and rewatched
all six of those old movies,
stuck with me until i was 16 and rewatched
all six of those old movies.
when i was a kid those scenes were scary,
now i see a mimic of Shakespearean tragedy.

i pick things apart until i know that they’ll scar,
but scars have always faded for me.
the first mark that ever lasted for
more than a month was when i
burned myself getting a cake out of the oven.
i remember my brother telling me
that he wouldn’t care about the burn
if i ******* up the cake.
we laughed about it because it was a joke.
i still think about it.

i still check to see if you
watch my Snapchat story.

i rip the hems out of all of my clothing
compulsively. I’m sorry.
i’ll pick up all the balled-up threads from
the carpet eventually.

i keep ticket stubs and scraps of notes
hazardously strewn across my bedroom,
because i’m too sentimental for my own good
but organization has never come naturally.

solar systems are borne from my fingertips.
supernovas power my lungs.
stardust glitters in my veins
(i tell myself these things in order to
keep thinking straight)

hey, look at the moon.
see how she reflects the sun for you?
it’s because she’s got nothing
of her own to give away willingly.
i gave you everything willingly
i spent too many nights
shredding notebook paper into pieces
of white birthday party confetti.

i swallowed six painkillers today.
I’m passive like aggressive,
letting my liver slip into uselessness.

it’s really hard to write poetry about bruises.

nothing has ever given me a rush quite like leaving,
like sitting in an airport moments away from getting on a plane.
i’m a little scared of heights,
in the way that they make my heart go racing
and i don’t like feeling my pulse leave my chest,
but i’ve always loved leaning over the edge.
i’m scared of heights in the way that i’m scared of planes:
i love the concept and the purpose and the view,
but nothing scares me like going into airplane bathrooms,
when i haven’t slept in two hours too many
and the mirrors are like a funhouse from a scary movie.
airplane bathrooms are like a portal into the past,
except this time i can see every crack and fissure
and misplaced hair in the outline of who i’m trying to be.
i don’t like airplanes in the sense that time doesn’t exist,
that where you’re landing is different from where you were beginning,
that i can sleep for seven hours only to find out
that i’m two hours behind where i lifted off.
i’m scared of missing things, i guess.
i don’t like airplanes in the way that i’m scared of what lies ahead:
because i really like going,
and i really like getting there,
but landings make my ears hurt like hell and
takeoffs make my stomach churn.
i know where i am and i think i have a vague sense of where i want to be,
i know when i’m real and when i’m dreaming,
but it’s the in between that loses me.
i’m scared of the dark,
but differently than heights or flying,
because that’s just a loss of time.
i’m scared of the dark because it’s a loss of everything.
if you can’t see it then how can it exist until you’re
bumping your knees on coffee tables and stubbing your toes on walls
and the cat’s eyes are reflecting light from nowhere
and you’re waiting for the claws.
i’m scared of the dark because the dark is uncertainty
hiding all the truths that we want to believe,
because the dark is all the spots ahead of us that aren’t set in concrete,
because the dark is deep and suffocating,
because i don’t like not being able to see.

I CAN’T EVEN THINK OF YOU WITHOUT FEELING LIKE MY CHEST IS CAVING IN
YOU WERE EVERYTHING AND NOTHING THAT I’LL EVER NEED
YOU LOOKED AT ME LIKE I WAS A MASTERPIECE
BUT MAYBE I WAS JUST PROJECTING.
YOUR SMILES COULD LIGHT UP ROOMS AND I WAS A VACUUM,
TAKING IN EVERY STRAY PIECE THAT I COULD GET AHOLD OF.
HOW SELFISH OF ME,
TO THINK THAT YOUR STARRY EYES COULD EVER STRAY EARTH-BOUND,
COULD EVER STRAY TO ME.
NEITHER OF US HAVE EVER BEEN FANS OF GRAVITY,
BUT WHILE I WAS DREAMING YOU WERE CREATING
AND SUDDENLY YOU WERE ON THE MOON WHILE I WASN’T EVEN TAKING OFF.
IT’S BEEN A YEAR AND I’M STILL WRITING POEMS ABOUT YOU.
IT’S BEEN A YEAR AND I STILL HAVEN’T HEARD BACK FROM YOU.
HEY, MAN IN THE MOON,
I ******* MISS YOU.

Has anyone else found it ironic that we
cross our fingers not just for luck but also to break promises?
You were crossing your fingers when we first made eye contact,
pressed close to your thigh like you were holding on
to all the secrets I never bothered to hide.
Your hands were webbed with razor blades. We didn’t talk about it.
I hid my face behind mirrors for you to blow smoke against.
We always danced a foot apart. Neither of us wanted
to walk away with scars, but if Pixar has taught us anything,
it’s that we don’t always get what we want.
I don’t remember if I wanted your crossed fingers to be lucky or not,
but you aren’t superstitious unless we’re wishing on stars.
I’ve found that I only write poems when I’m not in love,
so I’m sorry that every word is about you.
I can still feel your hand in mine, digging until you were
in my bloodstream, collecting every atom of oxygen in me
until I couldn’t breathe without you.
That wasn’t cool, dude,
because now I’m drowning and crossing my fingers for you.
I want to break every single promise that I ever swore to keep for you.
Come back soon.
We’ve got unfinished business to attend to, but
you’ve been hovering on the opposite wall of this ballroom,
and I know that you’re scared of inflicting wounds
but my hands are calloused and thickened by scar tissue,
so come dance with me.
I have secrets to tell you.

has anyone else found it ironic that
we cross our fingers for good luck but also to break promises?

I know how hard you’re trying:
caught between what’s good and what’s right,
triangulated by compliance to a routine that leaves you restless.
You’ve spent your childhood dreaming of ‘somewhere else’
but now that you’re here, you dream again:
of ‘somewhere new.’
You can’t pin down a pilot,
and you’re a high flyer
with a heart for danger and full of desire
from the stardust in your veins
and the galaxies mirrored in your eyes.
You’re no Harry Potter--
their attention drives you wild,
craving counteraction to the demons that
followed you from your home planet
and have tainted your every breath.

(he’s got stars in his smiles
that stretch like galaxies.
oh, god, you know what that means.)

Like I said, you can’t pin down a pilot,
and you don’t want to be found.
You’ll push and push until your heart gives out,
compensate and retaliate by breaking the hearts that beat for you.
If you’re going down,
they will too.
You’re a beautiful disaster creating
new paths for strength to rise out of,
a beautiful disaster caught between cliffs and a hard place.
You wanted to touch down on every planet in your system,
but you never planned
on your engines failing.
You can’t pin down a pilot,
not until he’s crashing.