i guess what i'm learning is that you have to have your tragedies if you're ever going to learn anything and i guess i never realized that you were just a lesson the whole time. i didn't want to let go of hope and trust and i have never been able to burn bridges very well after all. i keep matches in my pockets but i've never really liked the smell of gasoline for long enough to keep it with me. after all, i never needed it. i like to keep all my paths open. it was up to you to destroy us and wow you did it so well that i can barely feel it, the decimation of nerve endings like beating a dead horse that can't feel anymore. i don't need you anymore. i can't feel you anymore. do you know what it's like to lose a limb, feel the phantom pains of old heartache that was never really broken but never quite something other than love? maybe for you it was just something to pass the time and maybe for you it was just another smile in a hallway of a maze of old faces that you just don't recognize anymore. maybe i'll be a face you just don't recognize anymore. after all i don't think that i could recognize you anymore from a line up of old haunts and ghosts and skeletons from my closet and memories and the past. i tend to avoid burning bridges but i do tend to build cement walls right beside them. i don't know if you've set that way ablaze because i can't see it anymore, it's behind the thick brick cement that keeps me safe from everyone that might try to hurt me and hiding is what i do best after all. hiding and falling because i can't stop looking at the stars maybe that's why i call myself icarus maybe that's why i feel like a tragedy. maybe i was your lesson or maybe i was just a story, a piece of poetry to read once and then put back on the shelf in its collection, nothing impressive or important, just another part of ovid's collection. you were helios to me and that was my mistake from the start. how dare you make me ever believe you were a god? as if you could ever be close to heavenly after all

I can’t really say whether or not you have stars in your eyes, but I would like to formally inform you that galaxies reside in your smiles. Yeah, I know, pupils create parallels to black holes and irises of all hues can, when looked deeply upon, create constellations and similarities to stars long since dead, but
I don’t really think much about your eyes, their shade or their size, because I’m too busy basking in the sunshine that is your ever-present smile. You’re happy. You’re a child of light, and the sun can only ever be swallowed by eyes so you must stare-- how else could you ingest enough electromagnetic waves to radiate more than our residential system star? You’re a flower, synthesizing and using outer space to create the kind of sugar that must somehow be contagious, ‘cause here I am, feeling sickeningly, disgustingly sweet.
I find myself a kindred spirit of the ocean, because we are both called by the motion of the moon, but you are called by the stars. I’m a moonbeam to your sunshine, just a reflection of your spectrum but at least you’re helping me shine.
I didn’t intend to write poetry about you, but you’re so set on resetting my negative mindsetting sun that I can’t find the energy to get angry about the twelve million tangible social issues that currently control this century life. I’m a creature of night yet somehow I’ve started to look forward to long days of sunshine, and it might have something to do with the nickname I’ve given you, Sunshine.
So, yeah, you have galaxies in your smiles-- but those galaxies have stars that flood up to your eyes, because there are universes in your lungs and black holes in your brain swallowing up the negative space, which is a paradox to say but you’re full of those, aren’t you? Your veins are made of stardust that came from wishes prayed up to ***** of gases and energy that are actually too many light years away for the words to ever reach. We watch the stars silently because it’s just a funeral procession, a speck in space that once had possession over life and creation but is now dead. The stars are all dead. We’re looking into the past, the real tangible past, because that star right there, 42 light years away, is a reflection not of today but rather 1973. That star right there, 42 light years away, has since changed and is living in a future that we will never quite see.
I’m never going to read this to you, okay? Because for all I know, in 42 days I will be writing poetry while picturing a different face and people are less like the sun and more like the phases of the moon, just a circle of change. We will never see what all those stars look like currently, because we will never be able to see more than a few seconds into what is seconds away from being history. I mean, the sun that we see when we leave this building is already 8.3 light minutes behind its appearance presently. We will never see it die because we will always be 8.3 minutes behind, and that terrifies me.
It’s the fear that you’re trying to shine out of me, though, so just promise me that you’ll keep smiling.

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.

I'm an extrovert.
We aren't really romanticized in pop culture. Chances are,
your protagonist is a cute introverted girl who has
everyone secretly swooning over her,
but her best friend sidekick is outgoing and talkative.
We autorelate "extrovert" to red solo cups and heavy synthesized bass lines and...
well,
frat boys.
The unpleasant, obnoxious kind. (The ninety-nine percent.)
I guess it's understandable sometimes to see where you're coming from with this assumption, but
let's learn to revise.
Introverts recharge by being alone, but if I'm in a group and suddenly find myself faced with an empty home,
it's like all the oxygen has been ****** from my lungs and shattered my soul.
Being alone means thinking too much and we all know what thinking too much does (--so maybe extroverts need loud music and red solo cups--)
I don't get how someone finds it refreshing, silence and being stuck in your own head, but that's probably because I'm not an introvert and you're not an extrovert and I'd rather have a body than a body pillow next to me in my unmade bed. I like people.
When kids are wearing t-shirts proclaiming the opposite, I get it.
It's pop culture,
it's in to be out but being by myself is when I'm most out of it.
It's hard for me to consistently text you back but believe me when I feel like my brain is about to collapse I'd like to lessen the collateral damage.
After that, I'll start up ten different conversations with three different friends but all of them are introverts whose sleep schedules are inverted from mine, triple check the time, see it with your own eyes, life keeps tick
tick
ticking by and I feel stuck on the sidelines.
I forget to feed myself sometimes (most nights.)
I'm a people person dragged into my own mind that
I forget how to take care of myself.
I'm a people person who can't make friends last to save my life,
forget it if they're already acquainted.
All my friends think they're hated by all my other friends--
You two don't know each other, totally polar social circles, but I know each of you like pieces of my soul,
and I make Horcruxes not from ****** but from memories of late nights and falling asleep on the phone,
out of control
we need something to hold,
so we falsify lasting lovers to have some control over,
like empty stomachs that can't leave us until we say so,
like long showers that can't end until we decide it's us, not them, we should take a break from each other for a while,
like bed sheets that act as open arms holding us until we toss and turn into sleep and asking us to stay a little bit longer in the mornings.
I'm an extrovert.
I can't really explain exactly what that means to me specifically or simply,
it's just that being alone makes me feel lonely,
and nothing on the Internet will ever help me with that.

it’s the first day of a fresh new school year when
one of your teachers looks you dead in the eye and says,
“introduce yourself.”
your classmates,
familiar to you yet all somehow strangers,
scramble for some short snippet of a way to encompass everything they
have spent the past sixteen to eighteen years accumulating.
when it’s your turn and every eye turns upon you in anticipation for you to “introduce yourself,”
you taste iron in your gums and say,
“i’m not sure yet.”
and every last one of your peers agrees.
see, for the past three years every time someone asks me how old i am,
i start to tell them “fifteen”
and i don’t think that i’m the only one when it comes to this whole crisis of identity.
see, for the past three years i look back on who i used to be
and sneer at past versions of myself,
a babushka doll of self-loathing as i once saw it so eloquently put.
how am i supposed to introduce myself
if i’m going to hate what i see looking back in probably three months?

it’s some kind of family event or holiday when
one of your relatives, or friend of a parent, friend of a friend of a friend of a coworker,
looks you dead in the eye and asks,
“what are you doing with your life?”
your cousins are all too much older, family and yet strangers,
staring wide-eyed because they remember the horror of
getting asked this by every other adult in sight.
you take two short breaths and taste iron in your gums and you say,
“i’m not sure yet.”
and everyone rushes to assure you that it’s fine not to have decided yet,
as though anyone ever actually sticks to the career path they choose when they are just
eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.
when i was thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten,
took every single interaction as an attack upon my person.
i was selfish and self-absorbed and, quite frankly,
one of the most problematic kids that i know.
not in the “scene kid who won’t stop talking about anime” kind of jokingly problematic
but the kind of problematic where i thought it was okay to
repeatedly ignore a gay friend’s request to stop throwing around the word “******.”
how am i supposed to tell you what i’m doing with my life
when less than a decade ago i was everything that i have now come to completely
and utterly hate?

it’s a social event full of friend-of-a-friends,
people who are complete and utter strangers,
meeting you for the first time so of course
they’ll look you dead in the eye and ask you,
“what’s your name?”
suddenly your heart is in your throat because there is power in names,
power that you will never shake,
and to be quite honest you have too many names to pick just one.
in a split second decision you have to assign this new person as a peer, an acquaintance,
figure out who you are mutually in contact with.
when the silence stretches a beat too long,
you taste iron in your gums and say,
“i’m not sure yet.”
maybe this time it’s not as appropriate of an answer,
and all your friends are looking at you strangely.
see, everyone i know has a different name to call me.
my best friend calls me ‘jack’ and my mother calls me ‘claire.’
my teachers struggle to figure out which one i prefer.
see, once upon a time i read an essay about how names have power.
you summon spirits by their names.
you control demons by knowing their names.
an angel’s song is its name.
i tried to divide myself into tiny pieces so that no one could ever have full control over me.
i have accepted a handful of aliases and nicknames that i respond to
sooner than the one on my birth certificate
so that no one may ever own me.

i write a lot of poetry about not knowing where i’m going.
the problem with dwelling on these things is that i am still going,
going,
going with still no destination determined.
how long can a train go in a straight line before it derails itself?
how far can a train go before it runs out of fuel?

hi, my name is jack. i like
outer space and poetry,
physics and creative writing.
hi, my name is jack. i am
not an earthling-- my home is in the stars,
somewhere far away for which i am still searching.
the marrow of my bones whispers for me to just go go go go go--
but i can’t drive on the highway without inducing anxiety,
and i don’t think i’m quite smart enough to become a rocket scientist.
i’ve just got to cross my fingers and pray
that somehow they’ll pick me to revisit the moon someday.

maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is that the only person who never saw this coming
was me.
maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is because my mother shook and cried as she
strapped wax wings on me and said,
“do not look at the stars”
because she knew childish wonder
would only **** me.
maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is that i wish i had been that light, i wish i had
been able to see those stars and really
touch them.
maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is because i’m a ******* tragedy but nobody
seems to realize it except me.
no one ever felt the fall quite like
me.
maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is because the only person i’ve ever disappointed
is myself, my own ambition, my own dreams.
maybe the reason i always call myself icarus
is because i always feel like i’m
falling.

i guess maybe the problem lies in the fact that memories are so falibile,
dizzying. i guess maybe the problem is that i’ve beaten this bush a million
times already. i guess maybe the problem stems from the fact that you are always sunny
to me. i can taste grape and feel like i’m choking, six pieces of gum and nothing but overwhelming
laughing laughing laughing.
i can feel the texture of letter tiles as we spell out nonsense inside jokes inside our own bubble
of comfort. i can feel the stitches in my sides: you have always been my favorite, you know?
“every day feels like summer with you,” stitches
stitches in my sides, falling apart at the seams
in the best way i’ve ever known. everything good is with you; every sunshine, warmth upon my skin, cloudless
skies, they’re all you, laughing. laughing. laughing.
i can hear the buzzing in my skin, the beehive sound of a tattoo gun inking your laughter into my
skin. it’s sunny, red, a desert landscape that feels like feels like home.
i can taste apple soda, out of a glass bottle, and it brings me to cemeteries across the street from
price chopper, feeling edgy in our private-school uniforms sitting on tombstones. other people,
other friends. they’re there too, but right now all i can see is you: laughing, sunny, haloed. maybe
i can see sometimes the pedestal you get put up on, and then i open the door to your black kia soul
and i can hear myself complaining about all the trash i have to move. you’re no helios, not apollo.
just
home.

i guess maybe the problem lies in the fact that my
memories are so falibile,
dizzying. i guess maybe the problem is that i’ve
beaten this dead horse a million
times already. i guess maybe the problem of finding an individual memory
stems from the fact that you
have always been sunshine
to me. i can taste grape and feel like i’m choking, six pieces of gum and
nothing but
overwhelming
laughing
laughing
laughing.

i can feel the texture of letter tiles as we
spell out nonsense,
inside jokes inside our own bubble
of comfort. there are stitches in my sides: you have always
been my favorite, you know?
“every day feels like summer with you,” stitches
stitches in my sides, falling apart at the seams
in the best way i’ve ever known. everything good is with you; every sunshine, warmth
upon my skin, cloudless skies, they’re all
you,
laughing
laughing
laughing.

i can hear the buzzing in my skin, the beehive sound of a tattoo gun inking
your laughter into my
collarbone. it’s sunny, red, a desert landscape that feels like
home.
i can taste apple soda out of a glass bottle, and it brings me to the cemetery
across the street from the grocery store, feeling
edgy in our private-school uniforms
sitting on tombstones.
other people, other friends. they’re there too, but right now
all i can see is you:
laughing,
sunny,
haloed.

i can see the pedestal that you
get put upon-- by me by me by me--
and then i open the door
to your black kia soul
and i can hear myself complaining about
all the trash i have to move.
you’re no helios,
you’re not
apollo.
you’re just
the memory
of home,
breathlessly grinning.

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.)

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'm sad and alone and everything I touch turns to gold,
but that's the life,
amirite?
Money's the only matter that matters and some kids three worlds away are getting kidnapped and killed for quotas while these kids are worried about their quote of the day. And,
by kids,
I mean little girls at age three being sold on the streets and in between sheets in countries that aren't all that far away, and little boys whose coloring pages are filled with explosions and guns cause it's literal
war
they're waging. But down the way, parents are posting posters in their children's rooms prompting inspiration: it's something about peace and love-- I mean, that's what they all say.
Well, I've made my peace with the pieces of this prayer, a priest standing golden over me as I throw my diamond-encrusted hands to the air and scream, "Someone
save me."
But these people don't care.
I am a man of gold with a heart of stone and no one cares because, frankly,
Neither do I.
Statistically speaking, everyone in the States clings to the belief that if they just earned an extra fifteen percent wage annually,
then they could live happily.
But,
darling,
when everything you touch turns to gold, statistics don't
quite
fit
the diagnostics.
I
am the outlier, the outright liar, the purveyor of pride that cost me my life but
who cares? I mean,
I've got my money.
I've got my money in a capitalist country that feeds off circulation and circumstance that leads brains to short-circuit short-cut economic politics and slaughter chances, rather than enhancing the value of a life that money can't add up to.
Welcome to the slaughterhouse.
Welcome to the tolerance of intolerance of humanity. Welcome
to the closing scene, where we can be seen on the Globe, on William Shakespeare's pun-fully named stage cause that's what all the world is,
and so's
this gold.
It's a play,
cause some day the curtains will close and all my props will remain on the stage and I am sad and alone with my heart still fo stone but without any gold. I've
lost
my
touch, and
without this cash I'll be nothing but a ten second news flash announcing to the rest of these underpaid actors that I've been knocked off my throne.
I don't think I was ever a king to begin with,
just a man who could forge
fool's gold.

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.

let’s haunt houses together, never letting anyone forget who we are when we’re together.
let’s become urban legends together, cryptids whose blurry photos are taken slipping through urban streets with the stars overhead. no one has seen us anywhere but in their own hometown. everyone believes in us without being superstitious.
let’s be the hearts of hurricanes and thunderheads, crackling with potential and mounting the danger.
your worst mistake was befriending a poet, because we hold tightly to everything. your smile will be memorialized in ink that is five tones darker than your summer-sky eyes, june before humidity hits.
let’s get lost together, a tangle of highways that have lost their exits, never-ending in a way that makes people confused about whose voice is whose.
let’s make history together, a documented case of a perfect pair of platonic soulmates, stretched across solar systems and flung to the farthest corners of infinity:
let’s find each other in the empty.
let’s never be truly alone, never knowing lonely.
let’s find home together.

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.

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

i found out the meaning of home somewhere along the broken highways of new mexico, red sands chock full of iron and cars carrying tumbleweeds on the underside of their exhaust pipes. i found life out in the desert, spinning off road and out of control until the crash, totalled, broken bones and putting the pieces together again. sometimes it’s hard to love someone when you’re always with them, like how looking at the same side of the moon never gets old because it hides in the daylight, like how eleven-hour car rides can turn into tense late hotel nights.

i found out the meaning of home in a kaleidoscope, neon street signs in a language i’ve never been able to speak, looking for eyes looking for me. there’s something unnerving about the dead of night in kansas city, like a piece of me that no one else has ever been supposed to see, old marks and places where bones were forced to regrow, old sunburns that just live under the skin instead of on display again. i keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but i’m not sure when the first one fell in the first place, like i’ve been waiting to figure out if i’ve ever belonged in a single solitary place, like how every single star that i’ve ever seen sounds like it could hold a home in its heart for me.

i found out the meaning of home in the decay, the falling apart at the seams, plucked out by a compulsive need, snapping loose strings from the sleeves of hoodies until there’s nothing left of me except for the unravelling. the southwest is scattered with the rubble of long-abandoned twice-owned properties, old lots where children never played because the tar has always been melting, liquidating, capitalizing on the collapse of what used to be.

i found the meaning of home but i lost the memory. every word i’ve ever spoken is rotten poetry because i can’t remember what i’ve said or who i’ve claimed to be. i feel most at home when i’m lost, when i’m wandering, and now i’ve been far enough to know that the twisting highways of the midwest will never be confusing again for me. i need to go further, farther away from the mess of puzzle pieces that i’ve been handing out to anyone who wants a part of me. i’ve always been disjointed, like since july i’ve been popping my jaw into place every time i have something to say because it doesn’t want to stay the way that it should be, like i don’t want to stay the way that i am but i have to because it’s expected of me.

i lose myself every time someone asks me who i want to be: lost until i know everything, then pushing and going and moving and never ever staying, making a home in the bones of the sun before she ejects me, evicting me from the ghost town of what her heart used to be. why has everything become arizona to me? like the edge of the grand canyon promising something better than a downfall, a mile down of feeling like flying, like standing on the edge gets my heart racing. maybe the only reason i ever wanted to be dead was because everyone stopped listening, and i’ve always been a performer before anything.

i wish i could find answers from highway signs, in the songs my friends sing in my car as we speed, five ten fifteen eighty, integrity. i wish i had more words after eighteen years of spewing things that don’t have meanings. i wish things were easy, like the rocky mountain breeze coming down from the north and infecting the humidity in a way that makes the sky feel more free. i wish that i could find something that made me feel that free, something besides the seconds before the fall, the anticipation of the drop, the sensation of weightlessness that only comes with being bound or released from gravity. maybe someday i’ll grow wings, fly faster than this toyota ever drove me. maybe home is in the shapes of the clouds, a castle in the sky blinded by the sunrise. maybe home is in the memories, and maybe that’s why i always feel like i’m chasing things.

step one she

pulls at your puppet strings

wraps your heart valves around

her fingertips. you fall for it every time.

step two she

breaks your heart like a glass

of milk getting tipped from the counter

top, messy and sharp. she does not cry

over spilled milk.

step three i

do cry over spilled milk, cut my hands

on the shards while trying to pick them up

and piece them together again. things that get

broken like that aren’t easily fixed. i’m not here

to fix you.

i am here to love you

and to cry over spilled milk.

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.

God bless America,
Land of irony
Because nothing is ever actually free—
Not when our economy is fueled by tragedy,
Not when we keep armies in the East just to keep gas prices cheap.
If you take the top eight military
budgets of the world,
over 50% of that sum is the United States, so
God bless America.
As rivers of blood flood the streets in Syria,
God bless America.
Land of the religiously free,
Land where "God bless America" could refer to any one of the gods acknowledged
by its inhabitants.

God bless America,
Where Muslims of all races have to apologize for ISIS but white Christians don’t have to apologize for the KKK.
When the **** party tried to destroy an entire race in Germany, it became illegal to ever speak favorably of them,
But, hey, here you can execute your right to ‘freedom of speech.’
The First Amendment protects you from being silenced by the government,
But it doesn’t protect you from backlash of the people you’ve offended, the people you’ve appropriated, the people who are sick of having to put up with this.

God bless America,
Where segregation apparently ended in the 60s,
Where women apparently achieved equality in the 20s,
Where the LGBTQ community is seen as trendy simply because you can no longer be arrested for being out and proud.
God bless America,
Where the majority of kids on the streets are queer teens and where
It’s still seen as acceptable to wave the flag of the Confederacy.

God bless America,
But God forsake everyone else.

God bless America, for every single unwarranted and unjustified arrest.
God bless America for false information and standardized tests.
God bless America
For every flaw we refuse to fix.

And as we destroy our planet without thought
of the fact that it’s currently the only feasible place for us to live,
I make one last request:
May the future generations be blessed,
Because God knows they'll need it.

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.

trust me dear
voice of silk
pressing for your
darkest secrets

get back here
voice of flame
pressing for your
complete obedience

i'm sorry dear
voice of virtue
pressing for your
permanent trust

what are your fears
voice of immortality
pressing for your
complete being

love me dear*
voice of purity
pressing for your
total compliance

i am your demon, my love
voice of true horrors
pressing for your
understanding of your situation
pressing for your
realization that you are in hell

i’ve been photoshopping old memories in attempts to bring back color to over-faded, twice-forgotten black-and-whites
tried dodge and burn but that’s too close to what happened
you dodged so i burned like a stack of photographs and albums in a house fire started by christmas lights
maybe if i crop myself out you’ll turn bright again
until your whole face washes out and i can feel like you’re a stranger again
replace all your blues with harsh reds and sharpen all of my blurred edges
for a while things felt like polaroids,
instant results
but then i realized that i was just wasting film by taking one photo per roll at a time
i was ruining prints of thirty five other potential moments
we were never digital
but we were only ever digitalized,
conversations only spent on snapchat and half-second smiles in hallways
i’ll layer all of our photographs
because we sure as hell never had layers then
your smile is the same in every single one of them, but my expression is always off and my eyes are never quite the same level of jaded
somewhere along the line i’ve realized that no photographic evidence was ever taken of our life
i’m just looking at bad sketches with too many filters
i don’t even remember the sound of your voice
i’m writing poetry about strangers again,
people who have never existed outside of my head
maybe that’s just a bad coping mechanism, pretending that you’re just pretend
but i’ve been struggling with hallucinations lately
because photographs and light and sound is so **** easy to bend into whatever shapes you want memories to take
i haven’t trusted myself for three years now and i’m not about to start
overconfidence leads to the edges of cliffs
and i’m all too familiar with the steep drop of the ravine
when did photographs of you become a foreign language to me?
when did i stop recognizing either of us? why can’t i look myself in the eye anymore?
photoshop steals the life from my laptop battery
and reminiscing on things that may or may not have actually happened steals energy from me
so i’ll try to see if we can forcefully power down this crooked old machine
unplug me
i don’t want these memories saved anymore
delete everything
delete everything
unplug me
delete me
delete me

i kind of hate poetry, like,
i'm sick of flowery words to avoid straight-up honesty
i'm sick of the deception and the depression
and the predictable rhyme schemes.
i mean, there's that kind of poetry
and that's the kind that i kind of hate.
a lot.
i'm a poet, okay? i'm a poet who likes
flower words with flowery lines
used only to cover up lies about
how much dinner i ate last night
and sometimes i have to admit
that i do kinda dig talking in rhymes.

but i'm really sick of that kind of poetry.
i kind of hate it.

give me poems that speak past their words,
give me poems that fill the air,
give me poems that breath and decompose.
give me girls with dark marbled skin whose voices break out of the cages they're trapped in.
give me boys in high heels.
give me revolution and remaking.
give me poetry.
give me songs.
i'm sick of the romantic stuff.
give me poems pieced together with discontent,
give me poems picked apart by nervous hands,
give me poems that will shatter all former concepts of reality,
give me poems that declare platonic love to an old best friend.
give me poems that have meaning.
real, tangible meaning.
i'm sick of looking at perfectly-formatted pages
that have to use set-up and textual ranges in order to be considered proper poetry.
i'm sick of verses with well-measured lines,
because those are the ones that i can't whisper to myself at night because
i ramble the poems.
i ramble the words.
give me poems that i can fill a room with.

i kind of forgot my first line, but that's alright
see, i don't know where exactly i'm going with this but
that's just how it is.

so give me poems that aren't pre-conceived,
give me poems that aren't thought out for the sake of their beauty.
give me poems that will hurt me.
give me poems that will hit me.
give me poems that will **** me.

i kind of hate poetry,
but not all kinds of it.
just the kinds of poems
that don't seem to notice
their true ability,
cause i like the kind of poems
that have the power
to change a society

(or at least someone's mind about something).

when you click your heels and wish for home, where exactly is it that you go? i packed away all my ambition in manilla envelopes of faded dreams and sent them away to coral reefs so schools of fish a generation after me could learn from my mistakes. start saving for college when you’re six, a year for every digit, because if you want a higher education then you can’t afford the things that make you happy. (maybe that’s why nemo’s dad didn’t want him to go to school.) sew your stories into the patchwork quilt of your backpack slung across your shoulders and never trust someone that you can’t touch with the tips of your eyelashes.

(start wearing mascara so that you can pretend that everyone you love is close enough.)

when you look up at the stars at night, tuck them into your lint-lined backpack pockets and keep the stardust there like secrets. (no one ever keeps secrets.) sprinkle those stars onto your shoes and hope that pixie dust flies you faster than Southwest or Spirit airlines. mailboxes don’t go in reverse, so everything that you’ve sent away doesn’t tend to come right back without being stamped in red. NO ONE LIVES THERE. ADDRESS NOT REAL. SANTA DIED IN THE SECOND GRADE. nemo, go home. nemo, go home.

(cross my heart and hope to die for i have lived a thousand lives each covered by a constellation that dot-dot-dots me right back to the deepest shades of blue. how different are astronomers from oceanographers anyway? we’re all searching for things that everyone else is scared of finding. we’re all searching for things that don’t exist but have to.)

destination: still figuring it out. destination: a desert built from a river that ran out a long time ago, from everyone that ran out a long time ago, a delta of broken dreams peppered with sandcastles of stories that never saw completion. destination: roswell, because i’ve always loved road trips and maybe UFOs will be more comfortable than the backseat of my carolla.

destination: home. maybe these heels will figure out what that means by the time i’ve finished counting: one (home), two (home), three--

(home).

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?

I’m a Barbie girl
in a Barbie world.
Life’s fantastic! I
feel like plastic,
aiming for an 18-inch waist
because I can afford to throw my internal organs away.
I feel like plastic,
a neck so slender I have to choose
between eating and breathing;
there’s not enough space for two tubes.
I feel like plastic,
a 38-inch bust and
3-times the average amount of forehead.
I feel like plastic,
a size nine shoe squeezed to a three,
spending three to nine avoiding meal time
because my weight-loss book says,
“Don’t eat.”

I’m a Barbie girl,
in a Barbie world.
Life’s fantastic, but I’m
not plastic.
Bile tastes all too organic,
its taste chasing after me
if I exceed my daily nutritional limit of
2,000 calories.
I’m skinny enough that people think I’m healthy.
I’m not skinny enough for people to think I’m unhealthy.
Anorexia is as familiar as the back of my hand,
poised like a gun to the back of my throat,
waiting and ready to blow.
I’m a sixteen-year-old suicide case,
product of the war of production,
wearing battle wounds in the form of uniform lines
across the tops of my thighs.
I’ve been rewriting this poem since its conception.
I feel like the rough draft: concision is key.
(Be smaller.)
I’m trying rewriting,
trying to leave out things that aren’t
important enough, like:
four of my ribs
and my esophagus
and my stomach
and my small intestine.
I’m testing the limits of realism.
But here’s the thing:
I’m a real girl
in a real world.
Life’s not always fantastic,
but I am not plastic.

I am not plastic.

I refuse to be plastic,
aiming for generic weight range
based on content, not scale number.
I refuse to be plastic,
eating and breathing
like both are vital aspects to living.
I refuse to be plastic,
an actual hip-to-bust ratio
for not a thirty-year-old but a teenager.
I refuse to be plastic,
shoe size nine in size nine shoes,
trying to start enjoying mealtimes
because my “weight-loss book”
has been chucked down the chute.
I’m a living girl
in a terrifying world,
trying to remind myself that “Life in Plastic!”
is not fantastic.

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.

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?

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.

over two thousand people have jumped off the Golden Gate bridge
and I don’t think a single one of them thought about how weak
hydrogen bonds are.
I don’t think a single one of those two thousand plus people
thought about the fact that it was water at the bottom of their drop.
to me, it seems common knowledge
that hydrogen bonds are the weakest link that elements can make.
people overestimate the strength of surface tension,
even from such a high place.
hydrogen bonds will always break,
just like me and you.
just like mentality
just like sentimentality
just like reality
just like knowing that i’ve only got a year left with you,
cause god knows we aren’t gonna stick it out after high school.
we’re a hydrogen bond in which
i am the hydrogen
because in every situation i find myself to be the weak link,
like everyone else is better off without me.
the problem is, i don’t know what other people are thinking
when they think of me,
because i’m no mind-reader and i’ve never been a good guesser,
so maybe some of those two thousand plus people who
jumped off the Golden Gate bridge actually did think about the weak link,
the lack of strength in hydrogen bonds, the possibility of water
giving out under their weight and their survival rate.
i read somewhere that no matter how you try, your body will do everything
it can to keep you alive. maybe it’s not just your body,
but also your mind manipulating situations to best advance your
survival probability.
because maybe, just maybe, no one really wants to die.
maybe, but it’s a big maybe, because i can’t read minds.

A four-year-old was perched in front of
a boxy TV with eyes only open to
sugar-coated Cheerios and 80’s Transformer heroes
on the screen.
Fast forward to age
thirteen where she flipped through
dusty photography with
eyes searching
for substance
to prove reality from almost-forgotten dreams.
Scrapbook memories aren’t
all that she sees
because,
honestly,
she loses things.
Summer Saturdays and
Fall Fridays and
Winter weekdays spent too wrapped up in her
own head to notice, silently, spring rising
from its deathbed.
Honestly, she loses things.
She
loses
things that should be important
and real, but all she can feel is
the guilt of lost
and faded photography.
Scrapbook memories fabricate times of
color and scent and sound,
of spilled milk and Diet Coke,
of words too far gone to seep from
pen to page because
honestly,
she loses things.

i’ve found that i do the most learning during second semester.

for example, second semester of freshman year i learned that losing friends is a lot like losing a life,
that losing friends kind of usually makes you really want to die,
that losing friends is like a comet blasting its way through your heart--
it sets you ablaze for a moment,
but then by the time you notice its absence it’s already circling another planet.
losing friends is always hard.
keep a death toll if you have to, but adding a tally mark for yourself isn’t worth it.
learn the art of letting go.
learn the art of getting by.
it’s hard, and it sometimes feels impossible,
but don’t expect too much from anything.
don’t expect too much from anyone,
but god forbid you let yourself lose all feeling.
yes, feeling hurts, yes, feeling is hard,
but going numb and cold leads to frostbite
and you'll just end up amputating the limbs that you have left.

the second semester of sophomore year,
i learned what it was like to never feel at home in your own bones.
you’re always drifting, interstate international interstellar intergalactic.
it’s all the same thing.
it’s okay to let yourself wander,
and it’s okay if you find yourself kneeling on foreign bathroom floors clutching porcelain like it’s your last lifeline.
learn that home is where your heart is.
don’t invest your heart into anything.
learn that there are teenage boys out there who will spin galaxies into your spine when they hold you close,
but learn that romance is stigmatized.
learn that relationships don’t have to be forever,
that nothing is ever really forever.
learn that friends will last longer than lovers,
and learn to tell the difference between friends and lovers.
make plans to travel the world with your soulmate,
and make sure your soulmate is someone who wants to travel the world with you.
the second semester of sophomore year,
i learned that losing friends is a lot like losing a life,
only this time it was worse because this time i was built out of scar tissue
and scar tissue is tougher to tear through but they did it anyway.
i’m still learning the art of letting go.
i’m learning that it’s okay to write as much angry, heart-broken poetry as you need to in order to get over it
because friendships wrap tighter around your heart than any other kind of relationship.
learn that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
but learn to be kind to your mother, because she is trying.

the second semester of junior year
i learned the names of every single person that i could pour my whole soul into,
and just because i don’t share everything with someone doesn’t mean we aren’t friends.
i’ve learned that i have friends.
just because we aren’t awake together at 3 a.m.
doesn’t mean that they don’t sit next to me in all the classes we’re both in,
it doesn’t mean that they don’t go driving with me at 3 p.m.
a friend doesn’t have to be someone you spend every waking moment with.
a friend can just be someone that you coexist with,
someone who makes you feel like you aren’t really all that alone.

the second semester of junior year i’ve learned that i am still learning.
i’m still figuring things out.
maybe by the second semester of senior year i’ll have learned something closer to, say, what i’m doing for the next four to six years,
or maybe i’ll finally master the art of letting go.

the second half of high school
i’ve learned that, yeah, scar tissue grows.
but scars fade.
and the concave space in your chest doesn’t have to keep on growing into a black hole,
that you can fill up your cracks and crevices with stardust and iron.
losing friends is like losing a life. but, god, when they come back--

it’s okay to feel things.
it’s okay to feel too much and all at once.
it’s okay to vent and rave and scream.
it’s okay to write bad poetry about sins that you’ve already forgiven and people you’ve already forgotten and places you’ve already left behind.
it’s okay.
it’s okay to hold onto your humanity.
make maps with your own freckles and follow your veins to your eyes.
make eye contact with your own reflection.
if you can’t teach yourself something,
then how is anyone else ever going to listen?

friendship tastes like
fizzy apple soda,
straight out of a glass
bottle, washed-out green.
it’s sugary sweet,
smoothly carbonated,
but kicks the edges
of my tongue with sour.
it’s syrupy, tingling as it
bubbles up over
onto my skin, sticky.
lick it off, wipe my hands
onto the hem of my
tank top. the feeling
lingers though, buzzing
on my skin like flies.
the bottle is empty now,
and i’m counting quarters,
scrounging up change
to quench my thirst
for green bittersweet.

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

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.

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.

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 *****

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.

tuck your tongue between these lines like the prayers
we whispered to shooting stars on the nights we spent awake,
afraid that our dreams couldn't be better than the taste
of strawberry chapstick and swallowed sea glass, sharp salt
like the rim of your margarita glass.
good things always pass, but they also tend to find their way back.
-
write poems in your math book for me.
i'll play x, you can be y.
it's always one of us we have to find,
never on the same side of anything.
we're complicated until we realize that there's a trick for everything.

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.

TELL THE MOON SHE’S BEAUTIFUL every time you see her:
in the too-early mornings when the sun is starting to rise,
in the late afternoons when she’s settling in the clear sky.
Tell the moon she’s beautiful, that she’s more than just a reflection of the sun’s light.
Tell the moon she’s beautiful even when she is bathed
in the red bloodstone shine of starry brethren.
Tell her she is beautiful even when she hides herself in phases.
Notice when she’s gone.
Look at the constellations and tell her that you miss her. She’ll hear it anyway.
Pepper her with compliments to lure her back to her full glory.
Howl with the wolves in your adoration.
Has she made you nocturnal?
How late do you stay up staring?
Is she brighter than any star in your sky?
Tell the moon that she is beautiful—
tell her how she lights up your nightlife.
Tell the moon that she is beautiful.

Tell the earth that she deserves better—
that she and the moon are beautiful,
too beautiful for your ink-stained fingertips.
Tell the earth that she is stunning,
from her deepest oceans and across every mountain.
When you tell the moon that she’s beautiful, sign each love letter with Mother Nature’s signature.
Seal the envelope with kisses of sun rays,
and send your words up to the sky on the backs of meteors.
Tell the universe
that she
is beautiful.

when was the last time you
looked up at office building skyscrapers
and wondered about all the people inside?

when was the last time you
bumped a stranger on the sidewalk and
said sorry without hearing them or
seeing them or ever knowing their face?

when was the last time a
face appeared in your dreams that you
couldn’t quite place because your brain
automatically keeps a registry of everyone
you’ve ever seen?

when was the last time you
thought about how many three billion is?

when was the last time you
saw a movie that used ‘ringing’ to indicate
silence, because the weight of nothing is
just too heavy to deal with?

when was the last time you
thought about other people having the
same name as you?

that one unfinished bird metaphor
     Wear me like a birdskull necklace.
     Grind my hollow bones into sugar for your coffee.
     Pluck my feathers plume by plume to make pens for your washed-out poetry.


math note lines
     1. I SWALLOWED EVERY PIECE OF GLASS THAT REMAINED FROM YOUR SHATTERED REFLECTION. *******.
     2. WEDGE RAZOR BLADES BETWEEN YOUR TEETH AND SINK THEM INTO ME. TAKE EVERY LAST BREATH FROM ME. COLLAPSE MY LUNGS AND RIP OUT MY TONGUE. LEAVE ME WHERE YOU FOUND ME, VOMITING INTO THE KITCHEN SINK LIKE IT’S NOTHING, SHOULDERS HEAVING. I’VE BEEN PUTTING OFF THIS 3RD PARTY SUICIDE BUT IT ALL COMES CRASHING DOWN TONIGHT. KISS MY HEART GOODBYE.
     3. BREAK YOUR JAW BITING BULLETS LIKE YOU’RE TRIGGER HAPPY. I NEVER ASKED FOR ANY OF THIS BUT HERE WE ARE, STANDING ON THE CLIFF WITH NO COMMON GROUND BETWEEN US. IS THAT WHY YOU JUMPED SHIP? YOU COULDN’T HANDLE IT? I WASN’T BULLETPROOF ENOUGH FOR YOU, AND YOU WERE JUST TOO MUCH.

blinker
     my mom uses her turn signal like an afterthought
     it’s pointless at that point but that’s conditioning
     and her train of thought has always been linear


ugh
     when i was 15 i asked my mom to start taking me to therapy
     she said baby why pay a stranger when you can just talk to me about anything
     and i smiled like i wasn’t dying inside and started writing poetry.
     funerals cost less than student loans
     at this rate when i graduate i won’t be able to afford myself a home
     the american dream has been dead for a century
     a degree is worthless and it’s not likely i’ll make much of a salary
     have you even imagined yourself outside of high school yet?
     i’ve never thought about my life past my graduation date

thinking about someone
     sing serenades through silent car radios like static
     through sleepy stormcloud eyes that could swallow you whole
     he’s got a smile with more stars than yours ever did
     wishbone collarbones and long eyelashes
     stringing together dreams in constellations
     piecing together fractured calculus equations

i’ve been reading pete wentz’s old livejournal posts again*
     you’re apocalyptic chemistry, a candycane of all the things i never was and never could be to keep you stable. i’m a broken spine and you’re fading. love is hard to quantify so i’ll just keep counting and catching fireflies.

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

we are the essence of zero gravity.
you are the weightlessness in the marrow of my bones.
i can fly.
you are car rides with too many CDs and not enough miles.
you are lunar eclipses, ripped up jeans, and too-bright smiles.
pick me apart at my airtight seams to see yourself in the mirrors i set up inside of me.
i am a black hole and you are the answer to string theory,
smudged ink on fingertips while signing away the Earth for worlds our eyes can’t see.
you’re a mutant, baby,
evolved from the best of everything.

“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 am Apollo in the way that I have always been Persephone:
When the sun sets as November gives way, leaves the world dark until the last dredges of February
have swirled down the drain of March,
I crawl into my lover's arms to wait out the chill.
When spring whispers through the incoming blooming trees,
gives kisses that taste like the promise of June,
I don the colors of the sunrise, of noon, of freckles and bare knees, and embrace the warmth of eternal fire.
I am Apollo in the way that I have always been Persephone,
the way the breeze twists my moods with the slightest chill, how love is found in flowers grown in fields sown with blood,
how my darling knows the ways that the seasons change me,
how he waits for the sun to thaw me and bring life back into me,
the way my mother awaits my homecoming, watching the end of winter eagerly for my arrival and spring.