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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

it’s always odd being the off-color, the too-shaded one.
what exactly are we, anyway? not what we once were,
not what we shall be. there’s something odd about being
the in-between. silence is the only thing that can truly
stretch for an eternity, even if it is just within seconds.
their lifetimes are mere moments, and we continue to keep
our quiet. there are many things that they cannot understand.
there are many things that we only understand because
we were given them. a stream bubbles and runs through
the back of our brain, soothing. the cavern of our skull is
a safe haven of calm from the calamity of the mortal world.
leaves rustle and music plays. this universe will not last
for much longer, anyway. the stars are all falling into shade.
it’s okay. we will remain.

Icarus washes up on Miami Beach over the spring break of 2k16 and finds a world where the gods roam the streets,
where his wax wings burned themselves into trenches of scars down his back,
where we warn our children of the dangers of flying too high,
but forget the part about the riptides waiting if you fly too low.

He asks Siri how far away the sun is,
finds Apollo in the red rocks of New Mexico
off I-40 just outside of Albuquerque,
alone and basking in the heat.
The ice caps are melting.

The sun still hurts to touch,
burning Icarus's hands and leaving fingerprints in the feathers of his melted wings,
but Apollo is much kinder now,
soothing the skin cancer with freckles and soft touches.
It no longer feels like a damning.

This is what happens to the children of tragedies:
they flinch too much,
they fall too hard,
they're fragile as glass but immune to everything the world can throw at them.
Icarus flinches at the sound of the oceans.
He knows the wrath of Poseidon.

Icarus rises from the dead with his irises washed white
and his rips etched with Hades's name:
he should have been a child of Persephone,
spring in his hands and flowers in his hair.
He should have spent his days sprawled in the sun's caress.
He should have been infinite.

Icarus flinches too much.
That's what everyone keeps telling him.
He flinches too much at every lifted voice and crashing wave and
he flinches too much when he feels sunshine on his face.
Icarus is sorry for flinching too much.
Icarus is trying not to flinch too much.
Icarus is sorry that it's taking so long to just get over his trauma and stop flinching so much--
sorry.

He doesn't know what to do now that he's touched the sun
and this time it didn't burn.
He wanted it to burn.
He wants to burn.
He wants to feel his bones breaking all over again because
that's the only time he doesn't feel like he needs to be in control.
Why is he chasing things that hurt?
Why does he feel
like he deserves to hurt?
He deserves to crash.

He finally touched the sun.
Icarus feels empty, and
he's still flinching.

i am a universe of bleeding ink
there are galaxies inside of me
i am the death of the unimaginary
i am the ashes of a phoenix rising

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.

lightning strikes when your stormy eyes meet mine like it’s for the first time and suddenly everything is charged, magnetic, pulling my blood from my heart to the tip of my nose, exploding embarrassment and twitching hands, the jolt of feeling like falling just before you finally fall asleep. i’m seeing your mouth move but all i can look at is your lips, the peek your tongue, and pride swells like tsunami high tides 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 full of 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.

what’s the good institution
when evil is institutionalized
what’s the good teacher
when the student is criminalized

instill in us some morals, sure
but what are morals in a
“more or less” world?

bite the hand that feeds
it’s only poison you’re eating
bite the hand that feeds
these aren’t the toxins you need

cats out of their bags
lions in their cages
eat it raw eat it raw eat it
red and soaked in blood

bite the hand that feeds
it’s only poison you’re eating
bite the hand that feeds
these aren’t the toxins you need

bite the hand that feeds
bite the hand that feeds
eat it raw eat it raw eat it red
bite the hand that feeds
it’s poison it’s poison it’s
toxic waste toxic time toxic
valentines with pretty lies

bite the hand that feeds
it’s only poison you’re eating
bite the hand that feeds
these aren’t the toxins you need

these aren’t the toxins you need
not the toxins
not the toxins
not the toxins you need

"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--

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.

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.

the red moon makes me miss you

lemonade mouth taste, sugarless lemonade
thought we were past this phase but i guess
i was wrong again this time. my heartbeat is
breaking my rib cage, diaphragm disappearing
leaving me breathless and bleeding. you smiled
again today so i started digging my own grave:
six feet deep, shovel clanging like your laughter,
making me torn between slowing down and
working faster, eager to hear it over and over
but hesitant to let it be over. it’s a bittersweet
symphony, and you’ve reduced me back down
to cliches again. i wish that i knew how to just
be your friend, neptune and jupiter and nothing
more, but your eyes are just so warm. how can
we not be venus and the sun? i’m spinning,
reeling backwards with you at my center,
the planet of the goddess of love-- i’m mercury,
one day with you feels like two years (would
two years with you feel like one day? probably)
and my mood swings so drastically around you
because i’m too close to have any kind of
atmosphere, always running too hot or too cold,
no middle ground-- but who am i to talk, with
you and your solar flares, your cold spots. how
do i get into the goldilocks zone with you? just
right for life, just right for evolving into something.

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?

soft whimpers and shaking pains
slow descent into paralysis
struggling movement
silent moments broken by cries

(he's only five)
(i don't want him to die)
(i feel like i didn't
love him enough while i could)
(i should have taken him
to the dog park more,
or taken him on more walks.)
(i should have been kinder,
and softer,
and a more loving master.)
(i should have wanted him more.)

i collect snapstreaks like monopoly properties, hoarding them to their fullest, raking in the numbers like they are the thing keeping me floating. a drop in number means a decrease in value, as if my friendships have numerical value. it’s all about putting myself on other people’s VIP lists and keeping them off my own. i never realized how great a desire i have for control until i got a sick sort of happy seeing that emoji telling me, “you’re on their top eight best friends list, and they’re not on yours.” what is this, myspace? i play it like it’s a public social media page but in reality what makes it so sweet is the fact that only i get to see it.
or maybe i just like knowing i’m important, at least to somebody. maybe if they see my contact name at the top of the list every time, then they’ll want to talk to me. maybe it’s less like chess pieces, piling up pawns, and more like sitting on the corner singing old sad love songs with a hat out to catch pennies. these interactions add up to pennies. we’re still playing monopoly, i think, but why is all this property not adding up for me? why am i still losing money when i should be, by all accounts, winning? maybe i just need to start another streak.

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?

you are more than the second child
you are more than your mother's eyes
you are more than your self-prophesied
self-inflicted demise
you are more than your downfalls and your doubts
wind in your wings under the sun's collapse
can you feel the scorch on your back?
the burns don't scar but leave phantom marks
from where the wax has melted.
apollo always smiled too bright,
so warm that it burned out your retinas
and washed the color from your irises.
the ocean will sooth the memories,
aloe vera for old haunts and past loves,
broken families and falling, falling,
falling

in 2028 we will have a space station circling mars
i have never felt something rattle me so deeply through my heart
my bones will not stop trembling when i look to the stars
i can not stop the twitching in my toes telling me to go
i always threw out “astronaut” as a dream of a dream
something there but always out of reach
but now i know that i can touch down before i’m in my mid-thirties
i see the full moon and i can’t stop the shaking
send me home
send me home
send me home
a teacher asked me if, given the opportunity
would i take a one-way ticket off-planet,
and never look back?
and i laughed
and i told him
mars is not far enough away from earth
send me to saturn and pluto and tie me to halley
i am ready to touch other stars
i love the sun but she is not my Sun
i love the moon but she is not my Moon
i have been sick of earth since i knew that i could be
send me on missions to put it all behind me
“what about your family”
what about anybody?
what about anybody?
i don’t want to be alone in the cold of space
i want to find something out there that might be companionable to the human race
i want to go home
i want to go home
i’m not sure how far that will take me
and i’m not sure how far past it will be from mars
but i know that getting up there will be the hardest part
lift-off
houston, we’ve got a problem
i don’t have enough rocket fuel to get out of this solar system
let’s use a gravitational slingshot to throw me out of orbit
i’ll love earth when she is the little blue dot on a map of the stars
andromeda holds my heart
send me to mars
send me to mars
let me return to the red of my heart

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

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.