Find sanctuaries under other people’s rib cages.
Count all their heartbeats, each exhale,
Wipe down dusty lungs and old notebook pages.
Bite down on bones and fingernails.
Whisper to yourself, “I will prevail.”
Peek out from behind the diaphragm and skin.
The world is foggy through this veil;
This is how familiarity begins.

Old highways only lead you to stages,
ravine edges and steep drops with no rail,
where wanderers have pilgrimed for ages.
You hesitate to fly; you fear you will fail,
unable to follow wanderlust’s trail.
You’re weighed down by all your past sins
and the mountains you turn to scale.
This is how familiarity begins.

In someone else’s heart, a hurricane rages,
sleet and thunder and head-sized hail.
Memory lane’s speed limit has no gauges.
The mountain drops angry avalanches of shale,
So close your eyes and determine to prevail.
There’s no way to count your wins;
The sun is rising and the sky turns pale.
This is how familiarity begins.

Curious, how feelings are so frail
under mountains and ribs, the outs and ins.
Veins and dirt roads trace the trail:
You’ll start to see how familiarity begins.

down
   the
steps
  to the
underworld,

across
   the
river styx,

even hades
cannot hide
from

HELIOS;

when persephone
brings spring,
the SUN
touches even

pluto

(small,
at the
edge
of our solar system).

it’s easier writing poetry in second person because then you don’t have to face your own experiences and emotions, but this forest has been getting so thick lately that i can’t see the sky between the trees. (i can’t see the forest for the trees.) i’ve been having trouble trying to sleep because the wind keeps whispering through the leaves, the pine trees keep dropping needles, and the redwoods are suffocating, and the oak trees are dripping with sticky syrup trying to trap me, trying to encase me, trying to enrapture me. spring is so suffocating - everything won’t stop growing - but at the same time winter is so scary - i’m scared of everything dying - i don’t want everything to die - i don’t like looking at the leaves as they’re falling - i don’t want to see them change but i’m horrified of them staying the same - why are the trees moving closer to me? why is there nothing but trees surrounding me i don’t like facing the fact that all these trees are growing in my own soil in my own brain and taking up all of the space I WAS TRYING TO MAKE SPACE FOR STARS AND PLANETS BUT I CAN’T SEE THE SKY ANYMORE

i can’t see the moon anymore.

and in the shadows bigfoot has been creeping through my trees like they’re his own like maybe i’m the cryptid despite the fact that this is my brain this is my forest THESE ARE MY TREES but i’m the thing that nobody sees i’m the blurry photographs and disappearing acts and the curiosity, the mystery. how do you know that you exist how do you know that other people exist how do you know that the universe really exists how do i know that these trees are trying to **** me WHY ARE THE TREES ALWAYS TRYING TO **** ME i’d like to climb them without falling and skinning my knees i’d like to run through them but i get tripped up by the poison ivy tumbling into the soft dirt until it’s trying to swallow me (nothing exists in the ground past six feet) and there’s no way out no way out NO WAY OUT but i can hear the creek rushing and tumbling over rocks and through roots and i know if i can find the creek then i can get away from the trees and the clouds overhead threaten rain but the drops can’t touch me until i leave the trees and the trees keep moving and changing until i can’t see the forest anymore, just the pieces and leaves and i want to leave i want to leave i want to leave because everything is green and i love the color green so why is this so nauseating why am i hyperventilating why can’t i get out of my own head please let me out of my own head i don’t want to live in the forest anymore i don’t want to be trapped in the forest anymore i don’t want a treehouse anymore i don’t want to write poetry in first person anymore i’d like to leave please I’D LIKE TO LEAVE

so as of next week i will be starting my first year of college in a town too far away to come home for an evening and people keep telling me about the “freshman fifteen,” its inevitability, like i dont know how to live alone and the response to that is somehow gluttony. i dont think people realize how good i am at not eating. my digestive system still hasnt forgiven me for when i was sixteen and liked the taste of anorexia. no one ever talks about the fact that apparently part of recovery is running to the bathroom twenty minutes after every meal and having to stay there for twenty minutes after every meal because once you stop eating, your stomach stops holding anything. your intestines start making up for lost time. and it’s gross to say it but it’s something i live with and in reality the symptoms make me want to just stop eating again. there’s a reason i didn’t get the biggest meal plan. maybe i’ll start working out again, because that always helps make me forget that im missing dinner again, because thats what i did last time. i dont like the way people talk about the “freshman fifteen” because they dont know what i was like when i was sixteen. they dont know how good i am at not eating.

falling is feeling alive again on open roads and dusty lungs filled with old bones my closet feels so full of skeletons I got an adrenaline rush from killing a spider today royal flush full house of cobwebs and dead flies and wishing you and I were whole again
the smell of nail polish is ingrained in everything in my bedsheets bottles bleed black and red and gold and glitter
glitter always sticks to hardwood floors and skin I’m sick of things sticking to my skin I am not a spider web stop sticking to my skin
dusty decay painting my nails the color of old scrapbooks I take photos because I need memories to exist outside of me I can’t remember anything except how it feels to dry-swallow pain pills I’ve forgotten to brush my teeth for the 3rd day in a row old habits die when
count fireflies caught in your claws and claw the mouths from any man who catcalls or calls harassment a compliment fight fire with freefalls oxygen masks and steamboats I want to die on the peak of Mount Everest maybe then I can finally rest my hand hurts from my grip on the pen I stopped paying attention again
my hands won’t stop bleeding my cuticles are ripped again I want it to stop again I want my hands clean again I want to take care of myself again I want to be whole again I want to cover myself in nail polish and then fly
fall down the Grand Canyon

the sun doesn’t wake me up anymore i’m so tired all the time from the ache in my bones and the pull of muscle dry clay cracking and flaking like sunburn peeling feeling red and raw underneath it all i want to be clean it takes 7 years to have brand new skin taste and take and on trial again for old crimes i forgot to commit but commitment is hard these days finding bodies in the empty space like the gaps between your fingertips and the narrow swell of your knuckles
my bedroom is dark usually and it’s hard to let any light in and my skin itches and itches as it flakes off into something new again