king of stars and star-crossed hearts
constellations like freckles across shoulders with eyes like dawn,
like whispers of cloudless skies and summer days,
all of humanity's finest qualities:
curiosity and vulnerability and loyalty.
captain has been in your blood like gold,
like lullabies sung to already-fulfilled dreams.
how does starfleet regulate smiles so addicting?
a soul too big for a solar system,
too much for a galaxy:
your soul is simply cosmic, darling,
mesmerising in your daring.
don't stop running until you reach the edge
of the diving board into the great unknown.
one end is the beginning to another.
don't stop running until you're satisfied,
until the universe stops expanding and starts to collapse.
you don't know home until you've left it,
but home isn't on terra:
it's a crew of family and friends,
a ship that will take you everywhere and through everything.
cross your fingers and hope not to die,
for you must live a thousand more lives
before your adventure ends.

Down on your knees for Donald, honey.
Locker room talk for a warm-up, honey.
Are you using the right email to talk about your war crimes, honey?
Hey, baby boy, don’t forget
that you have the right to pressure any girl that you’ve ever met into non consensual ***.
Hey, baby girl, don’t you forget
that no amount of experience or intellect
will get you farther than nineteen percent of a combined House and Senate.
Then again, over fifty percent of white women voted in the Red.
I wonder if any of them have voters’ regret.
Looking down the line of faces that have held office since 1776,
I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just the first one we’ve called out as a ******.
Serial killers put on the nicest faces.
The nicer the “nice guy,” then the scarier he is.
Fold your hands and press together the tips of your fingers:
this is the church and here is the steeple.
Look inside: here are the people,
hiding from a teenage white boy terrorist
that the media claims has a mental illness.
How many more lone wolves can there be
until we realize that they are part of a hunting party?
So cross your fingers and cross your heart
and cross your eyes to blur the start.
Cross your fingers and cross your heart
and pray that these bullets miss the mark.
Load your words into your hands and steady the point of your finger gun to my head.
Freedom of speech is being attacked now, honey.
The “alt-right” doesn’t like it when you say Neo-****, honey.
Are you taking notes for your next rerun, honey?

YOU NEVER INITIATE CONVERSATION UNLESS YOU NEED ME FOR SOMETHING AND OUR FRIENDSHIP IS BUILT ON YOUR MENTAL HEALTH ALONE. ONCE YOU RECOVER I WILL BE NOTHING TO YOU UNTIL YOU RELAPSE
BECAUSE ALL I AM TO YOU IS SOMEONE WHO CAN TELL YOU HOW TO BREATHE. MAYBE
IT'S GOOD THAT YOU LIKE TO TELL ME ABOUT HOW I'VE BEEN KEEPING YOU ALIVE
BUT I'VE JUST BEEN PUTTING
YOUR OXYGEN MASK ON YOU BEFORE PUTTING ON  MY OWN YET YOU NEVER ASKED ME IF I COULD HOLD MY BREATH THAT LONG.
YOU NEVER ASKED IF I CAN BREATHE LIKE I TELL YOU TO. YOU NEVER ASK HOW I'M DOING UNLESS IT'S LEADING UP TO ME SAVING YOU.
I'M SO SICK OF IT BUT I CAN'T JUST DROP YOU OR ELSE YOU MIGHT DIE AND I'M SO ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED OF BEING
CITED AS THE CAUSE OF ANOTHER DOWNWARD SPIRAL THAT I'LL JUST KEEP SUFFOCATING MYSELF FOR YOU.
IT'S FINE.

How dare I living among the dead?
How dare I stand where death has tread?
How dare I take a stranger’s tomorrow?
How dare I steal joy from their sorrow?
How dare I smile in the tears?
How dare I brave through your worst fears?
How dare I want what you cannot?
How dare I take for what you fought?
How dare I run when you just crawl?
How dare I have silvertongue instead of your drawl?
How dare I own your dreams and needs?
How dare I bite your hand that feeds?

i'm sick of having to initiate conversations
i'm sick of sending a 'hi' only to get a 'yeah im fine.'
i mean, i don't really mind that you don't care to reply
even a short little "and you?" or "how's your life?"
but, for god's sake, stop killing conversations
i'm the patron saint
of small talk and copper coins
biting lips and stretching for questions
that you won't bother to return the favor for.

i'm sick of initiating conversations,
of second-guessing and wondering
just exactly how annoying i must be,
constantly
sending you updates on what i'm thinking
but when you haven't been replying
it gets me hesitating.
i'm predictable at best
and i'm starting to think that you're discovering
how jaded being with me makes you feel.
i'm the same old story
the same old small talk
the patron saint of lying and faking
it.

i'm sick of losing friends
because my insecurities stop me from speaking
and they have too many other people to be seeing
to even worry about checking in on li'l ol' me.
i'm sick of stuttering my way through
conversations with people who don't give me
anything to say
how am i supposed to answer you
when you refuse to give me more than 3 words about your day?

thanks for the update,
three years late when
i'm finding out all the great things you've been doing
but i'm still the same
the patron saint of small talk again
stuck watching life happening
from behind my screen
maybe that's the real problem i've been having

everyone else is living
and i'm decomposing
i don't have the courage to step outside my home
but god, oh god, i'm sick of being stuck alone

she
makes me
feel like a
summer storm when I
most believe im a hurricane
she is my special
little fix of
perfectly blonde
nicotine.

as a person in my position, i have very little right to write about prejudice. being a christian, i am taught about persecution but i don't really face it considering it's one of the world's most popular religions. the biggest so-called aggression might be a coffee cup that adjusts its design to include all people and all celebrations held in the winter time, or maybe a national pledge removing mention of my deity in order to apply more to everybody, especially considering this country was founded by those who wanted to practice their respective religions freely. i have no right to speak for my muslim sisters and brothers who are forced to apologize for the islamic equivalent of the ku klux ****. what happened to 'all lives matter' when the matter of syrian refugees drifts up, carried by the streets paved in blood, carried by boats across oceans and for some reason these lives don't matter?
to add to the injury i am a middle class white kid, and i hate to break it to you but reverse racism doesn't exist. institutions are not arranged in a way to put me down and keep me quiet. i am rewarded for my successes, called 'bright,' and when my sports team loses i am allowed to cause more damage than those who start a riot over injustices worth having a voice for. i can join the marches and use my position to raise others' voices but i must be careful not to drown them out, because i do not have authority to place my voice above those who have lived the experience
but i do have a different set of experiences my own:
biologically speaking, i am female. according to consumerism, i want a thigh gap wider than the wage gap-- oh, wait, statistically speaking that can't exist, not when we are discouraged by ongoing systems not to discuss salary, conversations that might shed light on evasion of what i deserve. bring up feminism and the first thing you'll hear is "oh, so if everyone is equal, i can hit a girl, right?" no, because i don't want you to hit me. because you shouldn't want to hit anybody, regardless of gender identity. how scary, how scary, that the first thing that comes to a cisgendered male's mind when he thinks 'equality' is abuse. another thing you're bound to hear is "well then i shouldn't have to hold doors open for women" as if politeness is taken away when you stop seeing me as something weak. hopefully you've been taught manners at some point in your despairing life.
i can't even begin to approach the topic of the persecution of trans women, but i can give you the horror stories of my sexuality:
lesbians hate me because how dare i also like guys, straight guys disgust me because they only think 'three-way' when they see 'bi,' gay kids just tell me to pick a side, and my mother will say how it's one or the other as she rolls her eyes. if i date a dude, they tell me it's hetero. if i date a chick, they call me a *****. it's like my identity is only valid when i'm all alone: otherwise i'm either not welcome at pride parties or not welcome in my own home. don't get me started on the poor pan kids who are told that they're just being pretentious bisexuals, or the ace kids told that they just need to be fixed, or the kids confused about the difference between a sexuality and 'political correctness' (news flash: you just have to respect someone's humanity)
here, i'll repeat it: respect someone's humanity.
if someone tells you that you hurt them,
you have no right to decide that you didn't.
when a marginalized group makes fun of you, it is not a reverse anything because all they are doing is hurting your individual feelings, whereas they are put down by the normativity engrained in us from cradle to grave. you tell us to stop being so sensitive but then get angry when all the fed-up trans kids shout "down with cis!" or all the black voices rise to rally "black lives matter!" or women saying that they "hate all men!"
after all,
if i told you i had a plate of cookies, ten in total,
two with laxatives and one with cyanide,
would you take the risk?
or would you just assume that all the cookies are potentially poisoned?

i spent the back half of freshman year as a ghost, drifting through these halls without ever touching anything, haunting my own bones with nothing more under my skin than an echo, watery lungs and glassy eyes that couldn’t see past my own transparency. floating. i don’t like to talk about it.

i spent the start of sophomore year as a zombie, revived but not quite alive again, less like glass and more like porcelain, trailing my hands along the murals and trying to feel again. i existed, but i was still searching for existence. in january i found pieces of myself in a meteor, and in amethyst geodes and lunar eclipses i found that i was less undead and more E.T.
either way i didn’t feel quite human, like i was off by two shades, so i doodled UFOs into the corners of all my notes and wrote poems about people who smiled like stars in the halls, whose laughs made me feel like i was finally home.

i’ve spent all of junior year driving. nothing feels okay in the same way that leaving does. highways sing lullabyes with road signs, other late-night cruisers sending Morse code messages to the helicopters overhead. i don’t have to think.
i’ve spent all of junior year side-stepping every single pestering question about what i’m doing with the next ten years of my life, signing away my soul to banks for student loans, all for a degree that statistically i won’t even need down the road for anything past sharpening my job resumes, like “hey, look, i’ve got all this debt in the pursuit of a higher education, please hire me.”

i’ve spent my junior year catching up on breathing.
i’ve spent my junior year catching up on sleeping.
i spent the first two years of high school half-dead and fully awake, chugging along like a train destined for nowhere, nothing.

i want to spend my senior year moving.
i want to spend my senior year running.
i want to spend my senior year finding life through expelling the ghosts in my bones and burning the skeletons that always left dust on my conscious whenever i reached past them to get t-shirts out of my closet.
i want to spend my senior year shouting.
i want to spend my senior year knowing that i am already everything i ever will be combined with everything i already was.
i want to spend my senior year forming galaxies with my fingertips.
i want to end my high school career knowing that there is a universe of possibilities inside of me.

i spent freshman year as a ghost, but ghosts are best used as metaphors for memories,
and something i’m best at is forgetting.
there are days where i still feel like a zombie, but who doesn’t feel like that at least every single monday morning?

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).

this is a reminder of your right to riot
of your right to assemble and not be quiet
this is a reminder of your right to remain violent
and that the only real enemy is your silence
this
is a reminder.

they say a picture is worth a thousand words
but i think i'd rather have my voice be heard
i'd rather write essays formatted perfectly in MLA
fifteen pages due in two days

i know you'll hear me
might not be listening but when someone's shouting
like this, it's hard to ignore
upright uptight baby don't be a bore
(too short, too tight, baby don't be a *****)

live life loud,
that's why you've got a mouth
if the pen is mightier than the sword
why do actions speak louder than words?
why is it that by faith i have been saved
but faith without good works is dead

according to the voices in my head
everything i want to say has already been said
i'm a mimicker not a poet
i spit back words fed to me on the internet
i spit back facts from media
i spit back spit that hit my face
regurgitation of information is all part of the game

no one can hear you in space
i could press my face to airtight windows
cross my heart and my fingers
spit my screams into dark matter
what really matters

what even matters
evening out the odds of lasting that long
i thought about writing a list of things that make me happy
but then i decided i'd rather write spoken-word poetry
and i think that probably says something about me
spit it back at me, now
spit it back at me
spit it back at me

i know you can hear me
you're probably not listening but now i'm shouting
so loud you can't ignore
upright uptight baby don't be a bore
(too short too tight baby don't be a *****)
upright uptight baby don't be a bore
don't be a bore
don't be a bore
baby baby baby don't let them call you a *****

honestly, baby, who are you?
you can walk all tall all you want to
but honestly, who are you?
nobody cares what comes out of your mouth
and nobody even listens.
nobody knows your name or the stars in your eyes or how they
glitter and shine like the constellations at night
honestly, baby, who are you?

because let's get real here:
no one really has stars in their eyes because no one has ever gotten close enough to anyone's face to determine the constellations
we romanticize eyes like skies and fields and oceans
we claim that the first thing we notice about a person
is their eyes and the stars that reside in them
but let's get real: that's not how it works.
we notice smiles and laughter first
we notice the bands on someone's t-shirt
we notice the way their hair cascades
the way they stand or loud things that they say
we notice their mannerisms and their pose
their scraped-up knees and the brand of clothes that they drape themselves in
eyes are beautiful
no one has ever fully had the same, that I've seen
but no one ever notices them first, because eyes are like secrets
eyes are like windows
you can admire a house from afar
but you have to get close to peek inside
that's the part that we romanticize
it's the ability to approach and appreciate
but if you're just driving by, you aren't going to note a house's windows but rather its architecture and unique colors
whether it's wood panels or brick or stones
you notice the cars in the driveway before you think about the people inside
that's how it is when we think of eyes
because people are like houses
full of secrets and
when you're from the same neighborhood, the floorplans are all similar
but the insides and the paints and the pictures and the residents
are never the same.

one time I read something that said to fall in love with a person's eyes,
because they never change or get old
but I don't think the author of that quote ever thought of cataracts or clouding or colored contacts or blood vessels popping
everyone changes
we're like phases of the moon or the path of the planets around the sun
every single year we shift and grow close or apart
eyes are like stars, some nights they shine but they also fade away for bursts of time
what zodiac were you born under?
does it determine the secrets hidden in your pupils?
the stars that change their place in the night
are just as distant as a stranger's eyes
I hope that's not what people notice about me first

because I might not know who I am
but I know that I'd rather be recognized
as the girl with the band you like on her shirt
or the smile that is somehow contagious
or the laugh that fills a room
I don't want people to notice first
that I'm just another one of the millions of girls with green eyes.
if you're searching for stars, look somewhere else
because the universe makes me feel small
and if I'm gonna go to space then I'm more interested in the black holes
if you're curious, I'm an aquarius
it's a fixed sign but I've never really felt fixed in this world or in time
I'm a traveler of spectrums
I don't really know what that means
but I do know that it's not found within my eyes but rather the fluidity and gracelessness of my motions
it's in my fumbling tongue and off-white teeth
it's in my clothes and the skin underneath
it's in my favorite foods and the things that I drink

I'll walk as tall as I want to
I'll speak so loud that you have no choice but to focus on the things coming out of my mouth
I will continue to search for stars within my own eyes
because if I can't map them myself then I know that no stranger meeting me for the first time ever could.

my eyes are not stars
because I am a supernova
my eyes are not stars
because I am an explosion
my eyes are not stars
because I am made of a collection of chemicals in a state of reaction
and I can barely handle this one combustion
how am I supposed to be a congregation of them?

your eyes are not stars.
remember that.

I don’t want to be an astronaut.
The thought makes me feel small.
I want to be an alien,
something to marvel at;
I want to be new and exciting and out of this galaxy.
The problem with believing in Vulcan
is the fact that we can’t even get humans to Mars.
How will we find somewhere else
when we’re confined to our own solar system?
We barely know anything about the depths of our own ocean.
The universe is still expanding but Andromeda is crashing
into the Milky Way at the most excruciating rate.
Why do we let ourselves think so small?
Where do you see yourself
in fifteen years?
Fifteen years away from here.
How do you major in dreaming?
How do you achieve
financial stability
with daydreamer words?
The problem with believing in Mars
is the fact that it has been thirty-seven
years since we touched the moon,
thirty-seven years since we let ourselves believe in touching the stars.
I don’t want to go to the International Space Station.
I don’t want to go to Mars.
I don’t want to stay in this solar system.
I want to take the distance of thirty-seven rotations
of Earth around the Sun,
and stretch the miles, square them,
multiply the kilometers by tens until
the astronomical units start adding up.
Only then will I know that I have gone far.
But how do you get SpaceX or the government,
to fund a mission
to explore new worlds,
to seek out new life and civilizations--
How do you boldly go
where no one has gone before,
when every penny is going
towards building a wall?
The problem with believing in democracy
is that we haven’t seen its true form since Ancient Greece.
How can we strive for unity
when we
amplify the voices of genocide
and silence any movement forward?
The problem with believing in progress
is that history repeats itself,
and we can’t see it until it is too late.
The problem with destroying our own planet
is that we don’t want to push out into space.
The problem with being human
is that I can’t seem to ever learn my place.
The problem with being a dreamer,
the problem with being a poet,
the problem with being an artist,
the problem with being a writer,
the problem with breathing:
eventually,
we are going to have to pay for air,
because oxygen and nitrogen
will be precious commodities with an overflow of carbon;
because argon and helium will be all gone without medium;
because while green energy watches from the sidelines,
we use fossil fuels to cloud our atmosphere
like we are trying to choke ourselves out.
Somewhere deep inside of each of us,
we don’t want to be here.
We dream of intelligent life because we are lonely,
reaching into space with one hand
and crushing each other with the other.
We would like to believe that we would be accepting
of alien life and cultures,
but we cannot seem to accept the life and cultures
of our own fellow Earthlings.
The problem with believing in Vulcan,
is that we are under the impression that
they would want to go anywhere near us,
that they would accept our offered hand,
with all of its scars and nuclear bomb marks.
We cross our fingers that there is other intelligent life,
but if they are anything like us
then why would either party want to get involved?
Why, when we sit at the brink of destroying
our own home,
would someone else open their doors to us?
The problem with believing in Earth
is that every single time we get so far,
we trip and fall and have to start all over.
How many more scraped knees can
humanity put Band-Aids on and heal over
until the scrapes start to scar?
I don’t want to be an astronaut.
The thought makes me feel small.
But I don’t want to be an alien,
a refugee of somewhere war-torn,
where the strangers of better places
lock their doors
and turn their backs on us,
because it’s our problem, not theirs.
I don’t want to be everything that we already are.

racist man with orange skin as if tanning beds are not just an excuse for us to pretend like we've got more melanin

loneliness is easy.

*being alone is the worst thing.

writing poetry in second person is easier
because then you don't have to face your own fears.
writing poetry in second person is easier
because then you don't have to face your own feelings.

your basement is haunted with more than just your own soul
the lights flicker every time you forget
to remind the monsters under your bed
that you get a 10 second head-start after the lights are turned off.

you keep track of the moon's phases because you know
that somewhere out there, she's staring up at the same sky
and you want to close your eyes and picture how moonlight
reflects off of her moonlight hair, stars in her midday eyes.

you haven't looked yourself in the eye for a very long time now,
unable to bring yourself to take in more than
the fleeting moment of a mirror reflection. nothing is worse
than a dark phone screen. unintentional observation of what you want to forget.

you want to forget.
you're so terrified of the thought of spending eighty- to
one hundred-K for four years of college that you can't even begin to
imagine what exactly you would dedicate a degree to.
is anything worth that much? you change your mind so easily.

you want to tuck her hair behind her ears,
but she always wears it tied back. the same shade of brown as her eyes.
she's so unattainable that you've settled for just being friends with her,
being in the same space as her, listening to her talk about her home
and wishing that you had the same kind of place for your heart to go.

you're scared of the dark.
you're scared of commitment.
you're scared of the future.
you're scared of the past.
you're scared of your own reflection.
you're scared of your own eyes.
you're scared of never feeling comfortable in your own skin.
it has never felt like your own.
you have never known comfort in your own bones.
they've been the construction crew of too many
of the skeletons in your closet, tucked between stuffed animals and long sleeves.

it's easier to write poetry in second person,
because sometimes i like to pretend like i'm not the one feeling things.
it's easier to write poetry in second person,
because sometimes i'm not sure if i'm ever actually feeling anything.

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.

why do i always feel
like my chest is caving in
i stopped breathing a long time ago
every exhale leaves me empty
every inhale collects dust
the base of my spine cracks
like the spines of old books
and like old books i too am heavy
i too am quite a burden upon your bones
but please please i swear
my chapter titles are written
in gold calligraphy

As they purged the house
She stood and watched
They took the pencils
They took the sharpeners
She's not allowed to shave
They took the razors away
She cannot sharpen the pencils left
They took the razors away
The artwork gets dull
Her mind goes null
Idea box is full
But she cannot draw
They took the razors away
Her writing is forced
They speak of divorce
She can't express because
They took the razors
They took the razors away
They took her art
They took her love
They took her words
She took her life
Not all the razors had been thrown away.

it was you and me until it wasn’t anymore--
i’m realizing that state borders are bigger than i thought they were,
that four seven ten hours is a longer drive than it used to be.
it was you and me until it started getting darker earlier.
i’m realizing how dark the sky is when light pollution blots out the stars,
when all i can see is the moon blindingly bright.
it’s the kind of condition that daedalus would’ve wished for,
because if icarus couldn’t see the stars then he wouldn’t have fallen.
i’m realizing how dark dorm rooms are
when there’s no one else there except the solid weight
of loneliness.
i either forget to fall asleep or nod off too early;
it’s not like i have anyone keeping track for me anymore.
i’m realizing how free i used to be, a car and a highway and time,
and i’m realizing how stranded i am now: i’m feeling the freefall
of finding that i’ve lost my feathered wax wings.
it was you and me until i stopped listening, and then it was
just you.
i’m still waiting to hit the water, with bated breath to feel the shatter.
it was you and me--
until it wasn’t anymore.
until there wasn’t any more.

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.

You're in a bar thousands of miles from home in a city that
your tongue struggles to properly pronounce
watching a seventeen year old chain smoking nicotine he bought from
a ******* the corner
when you first feel like you're beginning to settle,
a familiar weight settling in your stomach,
an old acquaintance a stone's throw from a stomachache,
so you slip off of your stool to stagger to the bathroom
where you clutch the porcelain and kneel with fingers poised
like a prayer to your gag reflex,
but you don't do it,
you just sit and feel cold tiles seeping a chill into your knees
and you're trembling.
You don't get up for a long time
but you know you have to settle and sit eventually.
When you go back to the bar,
a boy with a galaxy smile will take you outside
and buy you candy from a sketchy vending machine,
and you can let yourself believe that sweets solve everything:
sweet words and signs and cards tucked into your jewelry box,
tongues tucked between teeth in smiles and screenshots as receipts
of ten second Snapchat dreams.
But other people can't fix you.
Learn that.
Don't you dare let yourself believe,
don't you dare let yourself put something as fragile as
your happiness in someone else's heart
because it probably won't beat as hard as your own,
and it won't pump life into your joys for long,
and before you know it,
that happiness that you tethered to someone else is gone.
That's okay. You'll be okay.
You just need to learn that memories will only ever be memories,
that things only shine when you
remember that you have to keep them clean,
that the chemicals of development take white pages and make them
dark,
that photos come from negatives,
and that you've never had a predisposition
for rose-tinted lenses.

"the longest i have ever gone without showering,"
i tell the group of pre-teen boys
who are staring up at me,
"is two and a half weeks."
they're old enough to be disgusted
because they're old enough to know how often one should shower
but they're still young enough that it
inspires some awe among them.
i don't tell them anything else,
just let them believe that it was simply
me being good at avoiding a persistent mother's reminding.
and im going to let you
pretend that it has nothing to do with the nights that i
spent staring up and my ceiling
wondering how difficult it would be
to just--

see, i've never been good at letting things die.
my heart has been fractured into all the fragments needed
to carry every single person that has ever laid it to waste,
ever made a home there.
if i just keep holding out hope, everyone will come back around,
right? i don't know how to guard my heart.
not when i never ask for the broken pieces back.
i don't know how to take people out of my life,
not without letting them take a piece of me
with them. what if they come home
one day? what if they don't?

--and the grand canyon is
getting smaller behind you
while your heart is getting
bigger, ready to burst,
craving a return to the journey:
when red dust reflected on
your sunglasses instead of
your side mirrors, the rearview,
when the car mileage hadn't hit
halfway. something
about the southwest settles
under your skin like an itch.
it's almost like-- it feels like--
you're finally finding out that
this must be what it is to be
homesick.

see you’ve been the sun for so long that i was finally getting rid of this chill in my bones but now i’m in the arctic and i never learned how to stay warm on my own and i’m scared and alone and i don’t know where i’m going all i know is that i want to get back home to where i can bask under your light on sandy beaches and we can look at the constellations once you set and i can tell you their stories, the myths, tucking these notes between your knuckles like these are the only words that will ever exist. i’m trying to remember that you’re more than a metaphor but it’s hard when i’ve spent so much time sitting in my own mind that i’m not sure if i’m anything but pretty words and old scars. you– you have always been everything that could only be encompassed by something else, like something billions of times bigger than either of us could ever be, that’s why you’re the sun in everything. it just sounds like ‘soulmate’ to me.

Words flow from
electric sparks
emitting ink thoughts from a
metaphorical heart.
Silence
reigns but for the
melody of an earbud anthem and the
tap of a pencil,
a nonexistent word for a nonexistent standstill.
Footsteps
echo on loop
and voices resume
empty conversations for
another
empty
day.
Earbuds tangle,
a metaphor bigger than these
words can convey:
fold
into a loop, one end
twisting around thrice,
tucking under to
pull.
The cold,
the monotony,
the burden of walking a world that
recently became
so dull,
so black and white.
Count the stars as they
count the cars that
count the red lights on
subzero nights,
a flip of a single silver dime
as
thoughts become optical illusions displaying desire for
less-troubled times.
Voices ring out in a
false symphony
as a
street-corner Jesus has an epiphany
of
color
and sound to
entice the audience
with its ambience.
A phone rings and
the operator claims that
help is on the way,
but
the victim is all alone because,
no,
nobody came
as the water rose higher and
the flames became
guilt and blame
for a long-ago sin
that
no one remembers being involved in,
The tide keeps
coming until the sparks are
silenced
and the brain is tamed by elegance lost
after the first verse.

LATELY I'VE FOUND THAT TYPING IN ALL CAPS MAKES ME FEEL AS THOUGH I'M RELEASING SOME OF THE HORRIBLY REPRESSED EMOTIONS OF MY CHILDHOOD
LATELY I FEEL LIKE NO MATTER HOW HARD I TRY I WILL NOT SUCCEED
LATELY
LATELY I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT HOW THE FUTURE IS UNCERTAIN YET I'M CERTAIN THAT IT DOESN'T REALLY HOLD MUCH FOR ME
LATELY
I've been withering.
It's getting
harder and harder to just keep smiling,
it's getting harder and harder to force myself to start trying,
it's getting
difficult
to get out of bed every morning.
Lately, things haven't been looking so great, it seems. The clouds in my head are creating
thunder around my vision
and lightning in my veins, begging
to strike.
Lately, I can't find motivation for anything.
Lately, I've spent more time quiet and alone than anything and that scares me.
Lately, I've been looking into dark things only to find certain things that should be terrifying are only exhilarating.
Lately I've been dreaming of nothing
because I've never been a dreamer
and I've never had any drive
and I've never had desire
and lately
I've been thinking about how I'm not actually passionate about anything.
Nothing is exciting.
Everything has been hazy lately.
I've been sleeping ten plus hours,
and lately that hasn't been enough for me.
Lately I've been...
struggling
to finish anything.
Lately
everything is exhausting.

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.

I was driving home late at night
after I crashed on my friend's couch in the middle of a movie
hands less on 10&2 and more on 7&5
mind less on the road and more on my speed
how easy it would be to stop steering, to just
crash into something.
When the light turns green I hallucinate headlights in my rearview,
but when I look back there's nothing but black asphalt following me.
Look, Mom, no hands.
Look, Mom:
No hands.

suicidal thoughts are kind of like
having a really deep cough.
they’re the tingling sensation on
the bottom of your lungs each time you
start to inhale and if you try to breathe too deeply
they take over, they double you over,
filling up your lungs like water, sloshing,
and suddenly you’re drowning
as you fix your red lipstick.
you’re dressed for the **** and your
hit list stares you down through the mirror every day.
waste of space waste of time waste of money waste of good lines,
a ‘wanted’ ad that specifies ‘rather dead than alive’
because it’s less personal for it to be ****** than to call it suicide.
how sad is it that you peaked in middle school?
that the height of your social and emotional career was
the seventh grade, before all your friends
skipped town in eighth and then
freshman year you weren’t even an ex-friend but
manipulative and they labelled you
‘abusive.’ you find yourself having a
coughing fit every time you remember it,
watery lungs patted dry with paper towels
because yeah maybe you’re all friends again and
maybe they’ve apologized but do they really mean it,
or are you being a victim blamer,
you emotional abuser?
when you wake up at three in the morning
because the creatures in your nightmares are just barely
scarier than the skeletons in your closet,
think about everything you’ve ever done
in the past three years and manipulate it.
give yourself panic attacks over conversations
that have never happened,
riddle yourself with anxiety over what never was,
overexpose the photographs of your darkest memories
until they’re nothing but another lead weight in your stomach.
make yourself sick.
wake up with a throat sore from your
swallowed down screams
wake up with a tingle underneath your lungs
because you know that you’ll never be able to properly breathe,
that you’ll never get a full breath of air without that cough
swelling up and leaving you gasping

She talks like ‘finally got up to 103’ and
I’m like, c’mon, girl, keep eating, you aren’t as healthy as you should be, and
He talks like ‘back 60
pounds ago’ and
I’m like, dude, rad, just keep eating healthy.
But like,
There’s this sick sort of jealousy.
I mean, she’s guilty when she’s too small for her jeans while
I’m guilty when I wish it was me
See, sometimes I try starving,
Just to see…

I don’t have an eating disorder:
Ask my mother,
I just have a small appetite.
And I don’t need therapy,
Because it’s scratches not scars that cover me.
I’m not a cutter but pass me a lighter—
I don’t like razors but I do play with fire,
And I’d like to burn these thoughts and watch the smoke drift
Higher
Higher
Higher,
Until the sky opens up and swallows me,
Like I swallow more pills than necessary.
The painkillers keep my nerves numb and dead,
But do nothing for the bundles of nerves in my head.
I want to be empty.
I want to be emptier physically
Than the emptiness of my mentality.
I’m starving
In my head,
Because physically I’m doing just fine.
I’m walking the line
Between average
And a little less
And a little less
And a little less.
I’m misery at its best because
Its best is nothing, and I
Am nothing.
(Or at least,
I wish to be.)

your eyes are riptides,
undertows,
the current sweeping me off my feet:
pulling me under until i cannot breathe,
drowning me.
in a sea of people, i always search for you,
hiding across the crowded room.
sharp relief of your jaw line
--sculpted,
a statue of david--
your soul smothers me when you smile,
lights up those eyes
like the moonlight reflecting the choppy
ocean water at night.
in a sea of people, i always find you,
gentle touches like stingrays and eels,
sugar-coated shark teeth
sinking into me,
windswept across the beach with
cawing seagulls hunting clams.
your words are too sweet
--candied,
falsified for personal achievement--
smothering me in my sleep when you
trill your fingers to say hello.
in a sea of people, i always miss you,
shadowed,
a ghost of what once was and what will be,
things that i saw and things i will see.
the tide tickles at my ankles
as i stand on the edge of the horizon,
searching for your silhouette
in the darkness.
the sun has set and the tides will rise
--moonlight,
moonlight in your eyes--
but i am accompanied only by silence.
the ritual
of a faded dream that
crossbreeds with vague metaphors
and bad similes.
sweet dreams, great barrier reef.
goodnight, my darling.

nephil of ancient age,
your flaming sword lights my way,
keeping the dark at bay and the path straight.
watch your footsteps, guardian,
lest you forget your own importance,
wilting feathers from once shiny blades.
let air fill your lungs, the scent of old but strong loves.
let light fill your eyes, glimpses of golden gates.
fill the gaps between your fingers with someone else’s flesh--
gently, with care, the way callouses always are.
you are amazing, worth the weight of a thousand stars,
the way laughter lights up your face,
how smiles find their proper place.
you are the cadence of waterfalls,
hopelessly romantic in your strength and fighting calls.
misty and shrouded and all to yourself,
carefully tucked like a secret into half a dozen hearts.

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

there’s electricity spiking the air when your stormy eyes meet mine for the first time and it’s like suddenly everything is charged, magnetic, pulling my blood from my heart to the tip of my nose, an explosion of embarrassment and twitching hands, the jolt of feeling like falling just before you finally fall asleep. i’m seeing your mouth moving but all i can look at is your lips, the dart of your tongue, and pride swells like a tsunami high tide as i think about you, my nike, my victory, mentally running racetracks and hopping hurdles even though you never agreed to compete for anything. little eyes and big stars, stretching the space between us until we’re solar systems apart, our hearts destined for different galaxies. i always knew you weren’t meant for me but that doesn’t change the way it feels when you reach for me: we’re the calm before the storm, the way we always have been but we never should be.

you're like the moon:
stay 238,900 miles away from me.
you're like the sun:
if you get any closer, you'll set me on fire
you're like pluto,
who i wish orbited the sun more frequently than you.
(at least it has a heart, even if it's an icefield.)
you're like jupiter,
surrounded by moons vying for your eyes,
smaller than me and not 365,000,000 miles away.
you're like the earth:
i don't want to be around you any longer than i have to.
you're like the earth:
someday i'll get away from you.
you're like the earth:
bad habits might be destroying you,
but there are beautiful details that keep me looking at you.
you're like gravity:
i don't really understand you,
but i'm stuck with you.
you're like a black hole,
and i'm a stupid planet stuck in the galaxy that surrounds you.
you're like a bad space metaphor,
in that we always find ourselves back here.

sharpen your eyeliner like kitten’s claws:
dark and dangerous and too easily dismissed,
blue eyes for passing venom through cherry lips,
red hair and pale hands and narrowed hips.
sharpen your nails like songbird’s talons:
small and fierce and brightly colored,
the song of the century coursing through your veins.
sing to me, darling, like the sunrise,
like mixtape CDs and shakespeare
through blown-out car speakers and headphones and window cleaner.
twist pretty words into double helixes--
rearrange the DNA of everyone who dare attempt to slow your pace.
you are not a force that they should reckon with.

purse your lips for sour stinging kisses like lemons left too long in the sun,
homemade lemonade without enough sugar,
just the coating of gummy worms burning your tongue with redhot sweetness.
surround yourself not just with gold but yellow,
like the sun
like the lemon peel
like star trek command uniforms (original series, captain kirk loyalty)
like daffodils and sunflowers faces turned up on the prairie
like bright, obnoxious, bumbling, highlighter yellow,
satiate your sweet tooth with speckles of summers past, bright spots in the memory bank.
purse your lips for sour stinging kisses like honeybees in chapstick.

i can't get this image out of my head
and here's your warning,
if you're queasy, there's body horror ahead:
i can't stop picturing
pencil lead
puncturing perfect circles in skin
******
injecting into vessels
*******
on my lips like making snow angels
if i drank a whole bottle of ***** i could smash it when i'm finished
and press damage to my alcohol-infested veins
my curiosity is piqued at the
sight of grey brains
that's a somebody, there, on that sterilized tray.
sometimes i'd like to try my hardest to just quit,
give everything up and just give in,
popping pills and pressing bruises in rock-star skin.
no one will care, just another guitar player with childhood trauma.

quit my job and blow my bank
trade in my grades to be burned at the stake
call myself a witch but i'm only a fake
taking names of all the future saints
shut up already, kid, for god's sake,
quit it with the words, you're making a mistake
but how do you remove the soul of a yesterday?

“the right side of the periodic table is a list of noble gases,
of elements that cannot be combined because they are perfectly complete all on their own,
elements that are bright like neon and light like helium,
floating into the atmosphere with their own lack of density.
you’re just so easy to be around.
you make me feel weightless, like i am basking in sunshine.
name yourself Helios, for you create all the good things that fill up my insides
and send me flying,
reaching for the atmosphere on wax wings.
i am icarus and you are a safety net to catch me.
you are too-fast driving down twisting highways and old jeans that are too loose at the knees.
you are straight teeth and milkshakes and midnight lord of the rings.
eternal summers stretch between your fingertips,
half-empty gas tanks and sugar-coated movie tickets,
helium and neon and icarus.
the ocean strives to be like you, strong and cold and warm and gentle all at once,
endless and alive and full of life.”

i woke up with daisies in my hair,
sunflowers sprouting from my closet,
someone telling me that i do not fit
with the color yellow. i have never
felt lighter, though, like i'm finally turning
back into apollo after a winter in the waves,
icarus out at sea. honeysuckle lipgloss,
cherry nails, coke can. i cannot wait for
summer, but for now, spring is more
than enough. the sun is setting on an
equinox, a changing. i can feel the roots
settling and sprouting and blossoms
unfurling.

i'm scared of a lot of things like clowns and spiders which sounds kind of normal but my room used to be infested i felt them crawl across my face with all eight legs while i laid awake in the summer heat i'm scared that my closet will be covered in cobwebs and skeletons;

i'm scared of airplane bathrooms.
my reflection doesn't look quite right in them
after eleven hours in the air
the bruises get so deep under my eyes
like i'm already zombified--
listless and tired and craving for something that
doesn't have a name;
i'm scared of not having a name
because then i won't be a person and it's
already hard pretending to be a person
so what happens if i lose that part of me
and stop being a person
without a name and without a face like how
airplane bathrooms always blur out my face
like how
airplane bathrooms always whisper my name
from the corners of my sleep-deprived brain
i can't keep my eyes focused straight
without a name without a name without a
faceless spiders crawling and
clowns and skeletons looking out from my closet--
i'm scared of a lot of things, normal things, like
clowns and spiders and not having an identity.

spit out sanctuaries in graveyards of skeletons decomposing in summer closets next to ripped denim and tank tops.
let glass crunch under canvas rubber-soled shoes and examine how rubber your soul is, easily bent to fit the mold.
how can you expect to get anywhere if you're scared of what the future tells you?
autumn leaves and candles dripping wax ghosts as flames of dancers reach high for sunrises that they don't remember.
chalkboard chills lift mountains of goosebumps in your skin, textures clashing like swords in a war not worth waging,
indents of pencils pressed too hard to pale tree skins.
make marks wherever seen fit.
hearts of gold are hard and cold,
but hearts of ice can be melted and boiled.

i like to make lists: one thing per month for what i’m looking forward to
(reasons why i shouldn’t die)
i like to start with february (because january is overrated and ******) --anyway:
february: my best friend’s birthday
march: ****--
okay, okay, let’s start over:
february: valentine’s d-- ****. that doesn’t help.
i like to alternate years between being badass and single and laughing with friends over how awful dating is, and buying myself chocolate and watching hallmark movies all day.
pathetic.
let’s try this one more time:
february: my best friend’s birthday
march: spring break spent with friends going anywhere but home
april: rain instead of snow
may: the end of the school year-- finals week ***** but it’s just a week of stress and then i’m done--
june: warm weather
july: so much sunshine that i forget about my depression
august: catching up on sleep that i lost all year (lost all summer staying up with the warm weather)
september: sales on office and school supplies, notebooks and paper
october: halloween
november: half-winter, half-autumn movies, nightmare before christmas, donnie darko
december: christmas and peppermint mocha
january: pretending like everything is a fresh start even though i know that i’ll just be worsening my same old bad habits (it’s okay, my frontal lobe won’t be done forming for another six-to-eight years anyway)
february: my birthday, watching all the scratches and scars from other people and things start to fade.

i screamed into the void until my lungs collapsed,
but she barely gave me a glance when the silence relapsed.
i called out to the stars and they gave me an excuse:
“hey man i’m sorry, it’s me, it’s not you.”

i tried to infuse my veins with rocket fuel,
but the mechanical pieces of my internal organs found the chemicals too cruel.
they rejected everything until i coughed up acid:
“why isn’t this enough? please just be placid.”

so i cracked open my ribs along the seam of my breastbone,
searching for my heart in the empty unknown.
instead i found my lungs, punctured and failing:
“why are you here when there’s stars to be sailing?”

i tried hailing a taxi with the blood on my hands,
but my ribs were too messy for the driver’s backseat to stand.
so i tried walking home but the sidewalks betrayed me:
“why are you stepping on me when you should be saving me?”

i broke out into a sprint through other people’s backyards
but i found myself blacking out and not getting too far.
it was then that i found a fence that caused my stumbling and crashing:
“hey kid can’t you read? that sign says no trespassing.”

i pickpocketed other people’s dreams until i couldn’t hold them anymore,
bursting at the seams with too little to show for.
i picked apart my brain to find the source of my decay,
only to find a note in my own handwriting: “find your own way.”

i dropped to my knees and ignored the bruising,
struggling to find anything i’ve done of my own choosing.
i cried out to the sky and the constellations replied,
“why are you complaining when you haven’t let go of your pride?”

so i swallowed my tongue and cast down my eyes,
rising back to my feet but no longer alive.
i looked up to the moon to give me guidance,
but whatever answers i was looking for, i couldn’t find it.

it was then that i realized that i’ve been complacent too long,
finding new beats but always singing the same old song.
so i stitched up all my pieces and washed myself clean:
“i will be okay. it’s just, i don’t ever dream.”

fidgeting with fickle strings, twisting
pulling and breaking like eye contact
snapping, the sound of teeth cracking
out of the game, out of the ballpark
never hit a home run never had to run home
homeward bound is such a strange term
rooftops sheltering storm clouds
while it downpours outside the windowpanes
pained expressions painted with water
watering down words to find a format
MLA citations of a speeding ticket
slow down there, rockette,
you won’t get anywhere that fast
i’m going nowhere fast now
everything in slow motion now
space cadet, always spaced out
coloring pages with disregard for lines
patterns and patterns and patterns and
ripped out notebook pages covered
pages of equations of how to go
shooting out of this town like a star
burned out down to the core
aging exponentially to fight the decay
termites digging tunnels in the wood now
collapsing haunted houses
housing skeletons and coffins in the closets
closest person turn out the lights
lighting candles like a vigil
candied hearts with a sour aftertaste
tasting pieces of words as they form
syllables, stumbling and tumbling
rolling down grassy hills
bug bites, goosebumps, a chill
just play it cool in the depth of humidity
humility is a lesson to learn in the heat
heating up old left-overs for dinner
left-over bumblebees bumbling bumbling
where is that buzzing coming from now?