a week ago wednesday
and here we are, here i am,
begging and bruised and
bursting at every touch;
the gentle threat of promises
that are not uttered
but seep in, somehow,
through the sensitive skin of my thighs
and into my bloodstream,
begging to be realized
and i dream of giants and gems on your pillow;
my mouth is consistently
failing me, and the promises hide behind
my teeth as you pry them open
with your tongue--
i melt the confessions into your
bed sheets and close my eyes
to dream

my passion is broken;
i spend my days and nights
knitting, organizing,
drinking, waiting

writing poetry hasn't ever felt hard
so maybe it's the zoloft, maybe
it's the dull repetition of days
the humdrum chaos of getting older

i want to be kissed, hard
and deep and long,
by someone with strong hands
and unwavering concentration

i am happy and quite sad
and quietly fulfilling my duties.
i'm typing this at my desk
and it feels wrong and bad

my therapist told me the antidote to burnout
is variety rather than rest--
so let the various archbishops of my life be told
that i am so ******* tired

there is a man here, he is broken,
but in his eyes there is passion,
and in between my thighs there is fear,
and i'm absolutely frozen

so tonight i'll drink,
and knit, and write e-mails,
cross my fingers and pray,
that something magical happens

the fan on the lowest setting
still disturbs the decade of dust
enveloping the books that formed
my adolescence;
the disorganized organisms and
******* that have dissolved
in these sheets and these short days
haunt my dreams;

how do i sleep,
knowing that the past future present
perpetuate the block universe of
betrayal and boredom and
baby cries, my mother's eyes,
the abdication of adulthood
and absolution in the absence
of harrowing hope.

i broke my own heart
three states over and now
working and waiting for the
answer to be revealed;
my teenage self says that
sadness is my truest form,
but my soul knows there is more

it’s sticky on the porch tonight,
crickets, cries, clouds of nothing;
the hum of ac units and boredom
and the ache of my thighs,
shallow drags of tar as I wait
for the man who loves me
to really love me.

sometimes our home feels hollow,
but maybe it’s just my heart
wishing for more than the repetition,
the waiting, the dull pulse of waking
moments in the heat of the end
of everything;
but maybe I just need
for the man who loves me
to really love me

pencil shavings and falling snow,
records on the phonograph
playing songs from a lifetime ago

my body, my heart, is sore
and the melancholy mutations
of my future force me to burrow

deep, deep into the familiarity of
razors and a phone that no longer
rings, because there's no one to call

the promise of heaven;
a notion I have ignored
until right now--
I'd give my entire life over
to an unknown god
in the hope of a sisterly reunion
eternally in the sky--

the first forces my hand
to these keys, to these cadences,
to the heartbreaking repetition
of melancholy moments--
the comfort I find in you is
intoxicating, illuminating,
my heartstrings are at your will as
the scenes of my life,
carved into old wood from the junction
by the grace of your hands;
precious in execution, precarious in practice,
persecuting my every thought and action;
yet my intention is pure in form:

october, my love, your comfort and
courage--your absolute devastation--
my soul lives forever in you--
all the years, the tears, the natural
ebb and flow of hope and heartache--
the bittersweet autumnal hymn of death
of warmth in the sun and cold everywhere else--
infinite dreams, romantic projections of the
necessities of a human heart--
incongruency of aesthetics so beautiful
they have to be true-- dancing through
recalcitrant golden sunbeams
of somewhere, somehow--

the better part of last-minute
and i spend it staring at your lips;
the poems spill out of your mouth
and stain my hand-me-down rug;
as if our brokenness is compatible,
my masochism needs company
and you are eager to disappoint.
the tongues and whispers of secrets
in a cyclical nature; i have been here before.
the familiarity the fear the focus:
the fallacy of finding love in an empty heart.

i think that most of motherhood is the aching for that feeling;
the feeling of putting every single thing you are too small to fear
into a being that is nearly too small to love;
everything that is terrifying, everything that is menacing,
brought to light, literal light,
in your actual arms.

i am young and fertile and stupid I know.
but there's an ache, a breaking
inside of me, that is terrified
repulsed and jealous, at the thought of gaining
the inexplicable peace of the splitting of my soul
into myself and hope.

a city that sleeps,
that coos, that cries,
that holds me with no rain;
the tiptoe treasures
and my trying-too-hard-to-smile-eyes-
there is always time, always
reflection, always melancholy,
but I'm reminded that nothing
is always. because always always
ends. and everything always
always begins.

and my fingers bled the moment you left--
I sliced them on a broken mirror
when throwing out the trash;
the cuts were
deep, the blood flowed heavy;
my first instinct was to **** the
wound and it helped briefly,
for a moment,
before the sting of glass surged

you speak in lullabies made of
tamborines, crashing, harmoniously
into the rocky shore of
that one night;
my sand paper scenes and silhouettes,
you painstakingly disintegrate and love.

the layers of this are complex
to the point where we don’t know
where things end and begin.
but your lion heart and hands feel solid
when most things only burn.

am I even surprised to say it?
the unconcerned let my calls go to voiceless,
any effort gone unnoticed until, of course,
I transform into that perfect little paper doll,
that chill bonafide debutante, to mirror your
cracks and crevices and nightmares;
hope and harm are imminent and strange
and all I’d like to do is tell you things,
but instead we dance around the lies
and every time I miss you it burns

facilitated intimacy using
words as fingers and tongues,
fading bruises from sunday as
anger watches in the mirror.

my window covered with
droplets, green earth and
pink bodies devour alone these
stale replacements of life.

my bedroom begs for absence;
wine drowns doubts but
overflows to stain my fingertips
like a lover, like a curse.

cursed to romanticize
the temperature it was
when we had our first kiss,
to meditate on your
cadences,
to memorialize the seconds it took
for you to call me beautiful.

my rhetorical self, the
one i've designed for you to
admire, has had a broken heart
for years. i'm getting closer
to discovering the boundary
between her and i. my
body, her heart, your mouth,
synchronized affirmations
to the unreal.

disappointment in the doubts
of dreary days,
my fingers and toes
are chilled but
sorrow burns my throat;
there's never been a time
my expectations for love
have been met, i
pick open old wounds
for strangers to lick
but they always leave,
things always get too
complicated;
my disappointment makes me
bitter sweet on the tongue
of lovers and heavy in the hands
of friends—

intimacy is
intricate, the
closer I get the
more complex
the maze
becomes;
we are standing
still in a pool of
memories and
piranhas staring
and touching
and ignoring the
danger;
I want my heart
to be soft and
malleable in your
hands but your
callouses are rough
and my patience is
wearing thin;
will you let me be yours
will you let the pain
be mine?

Purple radiant heat
Reverberations of
Exclamations
Horrific holograms
Reality has received;

Testing teapots and
Tourmaline jewelry
Shattered on the wood floors
Fluorescent firecrackers
For days upon hours;

The nape of the neck
Where yours should be
Sheds blood
Pulsating the prophetic
Paralyzing truths;

Home is a verb, the
Truly inspirational
Deception of defeat
And the drip drip drip
Of disillusioned ichor

we went to that place, that
vulnerable oasis, where
lovers are nursed  
and destroyed;
that march evening
coolness mesmerized by
the silence, by the pure plant,
by the bass in that song
echoed between my thighs

the poems are conceived
in my mouth, on my tongue,
my taste buds
prance around your skin
like honeybees,
your eyes seek perennial
poignancy
and dumfounded i open
myself like a rose

maybe this was supposed to happen
maybe you were supposed to let me go
and I don't blame you--
my darkest deepest parts leaked out
into your broken hands and like
wine they stained--
some days I still feel like needing you
some days I feel at home--
written in the stars our heartbreaks
led us to each other
then led us both away--

again it has happened,
that radio silence, that
perfect broken brilliance;
so familiar, so threatening,
that hum of anxious breaths
and tongues and chests,
my glass has shattered
again and the blood has
filled the floor and i
step towards you too eager
to kiss the wounds
on your feet and ankles
and pray to god you
kiss me back and you do;
there is a nineteen-year-old
inside whose heart begins
to burst but there is a grown
woman out here pretending to
be into this tragedy
this destruction of naivety
this stranger who continues
to call himself my friend;  
maybe one day he'll mean it

I’m just so angry
That you kissed me and
Walked away
And that you missed me
And that all these men line
Up for a chance to taste
This body but never this
Soul and I’m so angry
That everything I’ve prepared for
Is never going to happen,
That my grandchildren
May never see snow,
That I may never feel peace
Again, that my heart aches
Constantly. Just constantly.
My home feels like a trap and I’m
Walking through molasses towards
My death and I’m angry
That nobody is here to hold my hand

And so I turned my poems
Into a hot air balloon
And held on until the clouds
Were suffocating,
Until like ants you disappeared
Into the earth.
The oxygen eventually depleted
And while choking for air
I grasped still to these words,
These fleeting moments of
Clarity,
Until darkness consumed me
At last

the wind knocked out of me
it was time to say goodbye
and my world was crumbling,
your hands on my waist to stabilize
my hands on your chest to beg
i haven't stopped crying
since you walked out the door
and it hurts, all the time, the wind
has not come back, your birthday
is coming up and all i want is
to pack myself into
a perfect little box for you
and be sent to your doorstep
would you want that?
would you cry with happiness?
do you remember the way
my hair smelled, the way
that twin sized bed became a
sanctuary and we worshiped
and prayed and were
reborn?
**** on my neck and thighs and chest,
till my blood is emptied, till the wind returns,
till these memories are reality again

and this aching in my stomach is
stretching me wide open
and its beginning to hurt
and the future seems so elusive
yet it is here, and on its way.
every person i've ever kissed
has left a bruise on my soul
and i'm leaking, overflowing with
an indescribable empathy for
dancers with broken feet,
for lovers with mismatched tongues
for poets with thesaurus thieves;
the butterflies abandoned me long ago
and this echoing inside my hollow chest
those pretty sounds that
had me head over heels are
memories, only;
i am a memory, only,
hoping and praying i'll forget

there was a time in my life
when hope and heartache
overflowed from my eyes
the moment a man would touch me.
my skin, bruised and caressed
opened up like a flower
for the chance to be plucked,
paraded, pinch my cheeks
pierce my eyes, my heart
feels pain every time
i'm kissed, it is so hard
to keep trying to keep loving
to ask myself what is respect?
what is intimacy? why do you
need it so ******* badly?
why do you choose
to pawn yourself away to
thieves and criminals
and hide from princes?
the teeth marks on my neck,
it's almost as if my ******
is contingent on materializing
the constant crucifixions
of my heart, mary,
blow the boys away with those lips
mary, sing your soul out on
the ride home, mary,
be a good girl, be yourself, be
anything you want to be
(but not anything you need)

melting minutes
into memories,
in to mayday parades of
everything i should have done,
everything i couldn't,
everyone who said i had to.
the days are starting
to feel like distant places
where my past self lives;
it is a miracle that i made
it here, it is a miracle
that i'm leaving,
it is a miracle
that my muscle memory
hasn't made me ruin it.
i've been thinking about
those first days,
the majestic trauma of
eighteen now the
monstrosity of twenty-two.
ahead of me lies a path of
i don't even know what
but i made it here,
i can make it anywhere.

burrowed in lies and tears
i've decided i still need you.
wine drunk on a monday
i beat the record for
most blinded in love.
you, with your laughs and honey
tinted eyes and pink pink lips
and your absolute destruction of my heart.

i don't even want the remains, please
bury them beneath the overground station
or scatter them in the river Thames.
or keep them, broken and all,
within the depths of your sock drawer.

expectations of epiphanies brought
a sword through my stomach,
replaced butterflies with blood;
and yet, somehow (without a heart)
i still love you.

maybe one day i'll understand
why things have to be this way
but for now my drunken mondays
will continue to leak the poison from
my eyes in an endless desire
to be yours.

manicured nails tip tap
along my head, slowly
but surely,
removing every hair from its follacle
until my brain is exposed.

these same fingers used to clutch
weapons of destruction against
my arms and thighs and stomach.
pain is familiar and frequent.

though i've found joy in these fingertips, too,
they know me better than anything else.
pleasure like waterfalls have flown
from their touch.
they've created magic, art, love.

but they turn on me. glistening in the sun
those nails will build me a home
and tear it down, ruining that manicure,
trembling, gently wiping away those tears.

stagnant air hovering
in between the mouths,
table set for a party
and you ask about my knees,
about how many bruises they have,
about my neck and the tongues
it has felt and I sit silent,
shrinking myself into a
perfect mold of womanhood
(untouched, unburdened, unknown),
nodding and smirking, coyly,
when you ask if you could
walk me home
(my hand in yours burns raw))
hurricane humidity,
like walking through water
like drowning
like ******, like love

comfort; a sin and a saint,
false hopes and warmth
between the sheets of cotton.
weaving my hands into the threads,
my hair binding feathers and freckles
to this tiny piece of satisfaction
amongst the twisted doubts of December.

episodes of expectations;
hollow danger diseases threaten my
humor, humanity, humility;
i am frightened that my future
will implode, that the earth is dying,
that my words are not good enough,
that i am not good enough.

so this comfort i am clinging to,
sinking my nails into, resting
my head upon,
is keeping me from moving forward,
but saving me from giving up;
my stagnant sanctuary of twenty-two.

dynamics of heartbreak
your distance, his proximity,
the repetition of releasing
hormones and horrors,
and honey-colored eyes,
and hope.

i enter the car and
he looks at me. kisses me
before we walk in, opens
the door, brushes my leg
under the table, butterflies
warm and sooth and scare.

my heart breaks when
it's supposed to be solid,
when i'm supposed to be
happy and whole and ******
and orgasming and screaming
and strong

my heart breaks when i am kissed,
when i tell my sister i love her,
when my dreams come true;
the edges are sharp in my chest;
i don't think it will ever not hurt
i don't think i will ever not be broken

i've been having a difficult time
deciphering fact from fiction and fiction from
dreams i had when i was a child,
the percolation of the cells
in my chest grow heavy, enormous,
even,
pushing into my throat these
cries for anything
but drowning, anything but
tornadoes all alone,
but awkward kisses and tear-stained
celestial sheets of cotton.
where is my passion? have they taken it all?
was all that blood i've shed a lie?
do i want to end up dead?
i thought intellectual stimulants
and forced photographs in front
of that fountain, again,
could be enough to elevate my senses
back to reality, but i have only
learned how to decorate the darkness,
to numb the throbbing thoughts,
to stuff full the leaking veins of
love and lust and lost breaths,
enough to get out of bed
and into his or his or his
because i remember this place
from a dream i had as a child
and it hurts, i hurt, you hurt,
i smile and ask for more

my lower extremities
are coated lightly with
minute shards of glass,
my upper body loose from
chardonnay and sun beams

the water between is only angry because distance is disdain is
disbelief; a family finds solace
in the crashes of sad summer skies
and squinty eyes

i am not happy i am not sad
i am only breathing in the ocean’s
cries for calm, for quiet,
for familiar drunken fights
for love

my sunburn buried deep
solemn claims of reality;
direction is only a force
the stars have put in motion
moons pull me in opposites
but i remain

the overground, the
boom-boom, boom-boom,
the repetitive rhythm
of youth, of you, of
your hands between my thighs,
of yellow-golden-brown
sun stains on the wall,
of yawns interrupted by kisses.
that train lulled me to sleep,
it opened my heart and
it broke me, silently,
into a saltwater version of truth;
where am i? what am i
supposed to be doing here?
why can't i see you?
i scream into my pillow
these rhetorical tortures
until my throat is numb and
my head feels like
that train;
boom-boom. boom-boom. boom-boom.

caramel kisses, sugar sweet
and dropped lullabies
humming in my ear
the promises of tomorrow,
the pain of today,
the perfection of the past.

i fell in love with you
and it felt like falling asleep,
fast, comfortable, warm,
gentle hands and cotton
candy hearts and
home, my home, in the crook of your neck.

my lemon drop love,
splattered across the walk
in front of new cross gate station,
dark chocolate dipped distance;
my body aches for more
of your honey eyes and gumdrop soul

rage simmers deep
in my stomach,
i swallow whole,
choking, tortured,
the words which
whisper violence
whisper courage
whisper shame

i'm floating through the halls,
my eyes glassed over, my heart
bleeding onto the floor
i don't have the energy
to mop up the red rage
resist repair
resist healing
resist righteousness

there is poison
sprouting from the ground
chemicals have turned
unhuman, unharmonious,
my fingers knives of solitude
breathing life
breathing death
breathing glass

consistent contradictions
gambling away my
happiness to the gods,
or the devils,
i can never tell which
i can never tell which
witches are good
and which ones are bad
and i'm on the edge of
glory and humiliation.
consistent contradictions
of a woman whose heart
is not in her body but
within another's, whose
home is june and whose
jail is the present
presently prosecuting
my own **** fingers
for falling and failing
and fumbling for the
light switch
for faltering and
sweltering in the heat
of heaven or hell
i can never tell which.
i can never
tell
which.

warmth in cotton
bedsheets, comfort
in rough hands
the rain fell hard
and so did i
on those cold december nights
filled with electric humming
of something
or everything
content in
knowing
my heart is yours

there are treasures in your laugh, there are daisies in your soul, there are angels in your eyes, there are oceans in your heart,
there is me, in your memories,
there is you, in my dreams

i can't wait to come home to you

February chills,
High kills,
Soft touches of skin
On skin. Breathing
Deep in the dim
Light of streetlamps
Borrowing needles
And comfort and stamps
To pretend
To end
To exist
With cysts and blood
And tears and floods
Of masochistic love
Of lonely tugs
Heartstrings and
Missings and kissings
And darkness
Always, always,
Darkness

so the love of my life is the sky,
so my secrets are at the bottom of wine bottles.
so my heart, my pure heart,
is resting under muscle and bone.
i keep praying to the cigarette smokers on the corner
and the girls covered in glitter and tequila salt.
the warmth found under my king sized comforter
on my twin sized bed
miles from truth and minutes from trouble
is stifling my lungs with falsities.

so the life i am living is not my own
so i've learned the beauty of the unknown
is nothing compared to the comfort
of my sister's eyes, my mother's laugh,
my back porch at sunset in the summer
where bare feet and cigarette smoke
prance around in the grass.

so the strong hands of strangers
pull me apart.
so i let them.
because i'm not here, i'm not anywhere,
except in the house at the end of the road
with hydrangeas lining the walkway
and familiar voices calling me home.

the cars outside your window
you think of them like waves,
the ebb and flow
of tides. the light flooded
the bed sheets and i stared
in the mirror at myself.
wine-stained shirt covered
my heart from yours. my eyes
begged for anything more.
more of you, perhaps. more of me.
more of the night designed
to mask the reality.
the cars sounded like waves,
your voice sounded like honey.
my fears sounded like snow.

'you're such a good girl'
beep beep beep

unfamiliar breathing, followed by
silence. my naked body is
alone on my bed sheets.
loneliness breaks my own hand and
morals for a way to get
off but i don't. i sit there and
conjure up sweet whisperings
of how i want you. *******,
deep and hard and cold.

if i'm such a good girl, then
tell me. why do i wish my flesh
will melt away like the leaves?
masochistic idiosyncrasies
wrap my vanilla heart up in
a pretty little bow. your fingers
beg to scratch off my humanity;
they have to wait their turn.

my eyelashes have turned to stone. my lips are soft, my breathing is even.
my ears have been pierced
with the drumming of time.

acceptance is the sheets,
and my windows have no shades.
attempts to escape; the future will come,
if you wish it so or not.

and so I lay, 3pm on a tuesday in July,
under covers, awaiting my fate
as a lover with no shelter and a killer with no shame.

at age 10,
my mother pointed
At the small birth mark
On my left knee and said,
"Someone's going to love
You for that one day."

At age 16,
I told her that a boy,
One far away,
Told me I was unloveable.
"He couldn't be more wrong,"
She promised.

At age 19,
She picked up my prescription,
And cried,
"I don't want you
To get your heart broken,
Mary." She sobbed.

The empty encouragements mean nothing,
When a daughter has decided
That the need to be tragically beautiful,
Is more important than the need
To be exceptionally loved.

when will i learn
that love is not
late night phone calls,
perfectly designed
to hide your face.

when will i learn
that love is not
glances through tinted windows,
and secrets only told
through fingertips.

when will i learn
that love is not
a game to see who can
last the longest under
hot water.

when will i learn that love is not a game of truth or dare while god giggles in the corner, love is not the exit strategy to existence, love is not a band aid or a blanket and love is not a cure. love is not anything that i have ever seen or felt or touched or known.

but i think it might exist within that two second silence we shared after you told me how you wish you could come home to me every day. i think it might be buried underneath the miles. i think it might be found underneath your front porch.

you tiptoe through the darkness
towards me, kissing my palm,
my forearm, my shoulder
my neck, my lips.

we lay here, yes, here,
and you caress me until,
like butter, or a sno-cone,
i have melted in your hands.

my bed is a sanctuary
and we've come to pray.
two strangers, comfortable,
knowing everything, and nothing.

the distance between us felt further the moment i was in your arms. your words were as empty as the wine bottles on your mantle, your kisses were needles filled with lidocaine.
laying in your bed felt like laying in a coffin. i wasn't really there. you weren't really there, either. the streetlights illuminated these lies we told ourselves in a soft, yellow wash.
i remembered as your breathing slowed that you didn't know my last name. the exposed brick walls taunted me with the whispers of pasts until dawn. the sun rose patiently. you didn't say a word when you walked me to the door.
i've realized love does not exist within the confines of your bedroom. it might not even exist within the confines of your heart.
you told me you were afraid you could never love anyone again. i took that as a challenge like a bird to a glass door. smash, blood, regret.

i wish i had the skill
the artistry, the patience
to fully describe the ache,
the constant crucifixions
of my heart.

it's scary, daunting,
how three words,
(and not the three words
you're thinking of)
can disintegrate something
faster than nailing a coffin
shut.

there is something inside
my head that tells me
to crush the cocoon
every time i see it
because my hands forge
butterflies faster, better

have you ever woken up
in the morning, and
immediately start
crying? have you ever
kissed a stranger? have
you ever killed an animal?
have you ever broken your
own heart? your own leg?
your own home?