she's been different since the flame in her eyes got snuffed out;
they say it's heartbreak but i think a better word is hibernation.

she lights up and ***** smoke into her deepest, darkest corners
but it's not quite the same as a fire in her own hearth.
and maybe the whiskey burns her throat the same way
the words she spit to defend her ideas did
but sparks haven't flown from her voicebox in a long time.

*******, she gave a whole new meaning to carrying a torch for that boy
but now her life is going up in flames.

and wouldn't you think, after that, those substance burns
would be a hell of a lot less dangerous than going supernova.

eventually, every wildfire burns itself out.

step number one: read the book wintergirls.
tuck away every detail like you're cramming for a test.
dog-ear the pages and carry it with you like a travel guide.
decide that with your fingers and toes always icy cold for as long as you can remember,
you were destined to be a wintergirl.
reread it periodically, for inspirational purposes.

step two: download the myfitnesspal app.
use it to track every calorie you put into your body.
memorize that an oreo has seventy calories, an apple has one hundred, a cup of hot chocolate has eighty,
a bagel has two hundred seventy (a number that terrifies you),
and on and on and on.
let numbers float behind your eyes just before you go to bed,
and let them stay there as you throw off the covers to do guilty pushups and situps in your room
for twenty minutes (burning one hundred and twenty calories).
ignore the warnings shouted at you in red text
when you eat less than twelve hundred calories per day.
look at the projections it gives you for five weeks from now
with weights that seem both too small and too large at the same time.
when your net for the day hits the negatives after weeks of trying,
feel the slightest pang of satisfaction.

step three: find your "thinspiration".
make a tumblr just to look at pictures of jutting-out spines and thigh gaps and ribs.
hold your phone up next to your reflection in the mirror
and pick out everywhere your body differs from hers.
when the girls on the fitness blogs start looking too heavy for your goal,
find the eating-disorder blogs.
obsess over their bodies almost as much as you obsess over yours,
but not quite as much.

step four: begin losing weight.
imagine yourself floating away, feather-light.
imagine yourself becoming skin and bones.
imagine this as you drag your heavy body from class to class,
as your muscles waste from malnutrition.
imagine this as you have to clean your hairbrush out
three times while you work tangles from your hair.
imagine this as you snap at anyone and everyone,
as you spend hours locked in your room.

step five: become a poet and write about yourself.
romanticize your own demons, just by calling them demons.
use as many metaphors as you can,
to avoid the harsh language of the truth.
and especially avoid writing about the crippling guilt
that hits you when you eat too much,
you're fat you're worthless you'll never be anything,
and hits you when you don't eat enough,
what's wrong with you how did you let it get to this point
voices in your head never abating.
avoid writing about your lack of motivation and constant exhaustion and always,
always, use words that imply mystery.
describe your mind as foggy, call your body diminishing.
never say it how it is, because you could convince yourself to quit.
never say that it's torture and you're in pain
and you just wish you were eight again, never considering this path.
never say that you need help but you don't want help.

if you have the urge to say these things,
say only that this disorder is not one you would willingly give up,
because you finally have something to control.
because it is the truth,
but it is also the romanticized truth.

step into the surf.
waves surge over your ankles,
unexpected speed, threatening push.

wade thigh-deep on sea legs,
digging your toes into the sand,
timing your steps with the waves
as earth and moon play tug-of-war.
the drop-off slingshots your heart into your throat.

making slow progress to the ******* --
you're unfamiliar with this marine rhythm.
the ocean knows you don't belong on this dance floor.

stand up, fighting riptide, undertow.
side-tackle weakened waves
hitting the ******* like brick walls,
each an oceanic supernova with whitecaps imploding.

surrender to one,
let it ****** your feet from under you,
immerse you in its raging swansong.
it traveled a thousand miles to die
on this insignificant strip of coastline.

When I was nine, I promised myself
I would get rich from a card-making business.
I made three sets of cards,
then forgot about it.

When I was ten, I promised my camp friend
that I would write all the time.
I wrote her three letters,
but then one month I forgot to write a new one.
I never remembered.

When I was twelve, a girl from church
pulled up her shirt sleeves to show me where
she had drawn three red lines on her skin.
I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone,
then called her grandmother as soon as I got home.

When I was fourteen, I looked at myself in the mirror
and saw too much of everything.
I promised myself I would become skin and bone
and light as a feather.
I lost everything in three months, but even after that
I was never small enough to fly away.

When I was fifteen, I gave away my glass-box heart
to a boy who promised he'd stick around this time.
We went out three times, but now all I have left
are the smudges from his fingerprints.

Now I'm sixteen, and you're wading through the dustiest parts of me,
promising it'll be okay.

I wish I still believed in promises.

I'm sorry for being a natural disaster.

I'm sorry the way my mood changes turns you into a quiet rumble of thunder, always dragging behind the lightning bolt until the full force of nature's fury is pounding down on your head.

I'm sorry for skidding into your world like a golden-tinged summer daydream and leaving it like a levee breaking.

I'm sorry for writing about you so much that your name is carved into my fingertips like water shapes a rock formation -- my journal probably wouldn't weigh so much if all my baggage wasn't crammed inside it.

I'm sorry that I can only write in figurative language lately but the concise truth is like walking barefoot on ice and after a while it's so cold it burns:

I never really loved you.

But admitting it means hailstones of lies battering my already-crumbling storm shelter, all our sunny afternoons grayed out by cloud cover.

And I'm sorry beyond all the weather metaphors in the world, but I can't bear that.

I used to know a girl with eyes like sunbeams.
Bright, but intense, hard to look at.

Maybe that's why her gaze was always cast down,
   her eyes like headlights just brightening things
   directly in front of her.

She was Greek fire. I thought she would never burn out.
   When she looked at people she lit them up
   like they had always had a brightness like hers inside them.

After a while, I noticed her eyes were dimming.
   She looked like a dying star, and I was just waiting
   for her to finally fall to Earth.

One time, I told her I was Hercules.
Said I'd do whatever it took to lift her chin.

She looked up at me and her eyes were just a pinprick.
It was like she was in a dark room with a candle
   and a syringe full of liquid sun.
She said there was only one way
   to light up that whole big dark room.

I said Honey, why are you looking for a needle
   when you've got the whole haystack
   right there to set fire to?
And my voice echoed off the wooden floor.

But just then the candle went out.
And then all there was, was a pinprick of light
   and a lost girl standing in the shadows.

I guess she's still looking.

a month ago, i got in a car accident that totaled my car.
i was making a left turn at a stoplight
and the driver of an suv was paying no attention to her red light.
she barreled into the front end of my car at full speed before i even saw her coming,
and then everything was shattered glass and metal colliding and screeching tires
and suddenly my airbags were puffed out like sinister clouds and my engine sounded like a death rattle.
when i opened the door to get out, the hinges grated like a scream.

but i wasn’t hurt.
i cried for six hours that day but i went to school the next one.
everything was fine.

it's just that since then, everything in my life resembles a car crash.

i smelled burning for weeks.
i still blink and see spiderweb patterns of broken glass.
i cried for two hours when i realized i lost the cd i made
just so i could listen to my favorite songs in the car.
when i hear the song that was playing, i have to turn it off.

my father picked up the shrapnel still on the street a week later
and gave me my charred, crumpled, unreadable gravestone of a front license plate.
he straightened it out and put it on my new car when we got it.

i broke up with my boyfriend three weeks ago
and as i left i heard sirens from inside his house.
the day after that, i was talking to another boy
and his promises sounded like ambulances with no paramedics on board.

last week there was a fatal car accident half a mile from my house
and i couldn't breathe for the rest of the day after i heard.

i have to turn left at the stoplight where my own accident happened every day
and when i turn i clench my fists around the steering wheel
like it wants to tear itself out of my hands and maybe it does.

i still check left and right and left and right during turns
even when someone else is driving.

call all of this a reaction to trauma,
but honestly i don't know what's wrong with me.

all i know is i cried with frustration, immature, pathetic,
when my mother and my father couldn't find a new car.
all i know is i grieved for my ford focus
like it was my only friend in the world.
all i know is i keep talking about this accident
even though i’m even getting annoyed by myself
and my fingers on the keyboard sound just like the policeman's as he wrote up the report
as i perched on a plastic backseat, shaking, face covered with tear tracks,
waiting, alone, for my father to arrive so i didn't have to be an adult,
waiting, alone, for an explanation of why this happened to me.

all i know is everything in my life resembles a car crash,
and there are sirens in the distance,
and i'm still waiting for the smoke to clear.

there's no progress report for this.
no checklist, no itinerary,
no template to restore order
in the aftermath of your tornado path through my heart.
the chaos is powerful and uncontrollable;
i can only watch the person i was with you crumble away
and sweep up the dust.

sometimes i take inventory:
am i eighty-five percent guilt today,
or thirty-nine percent confusion?
or fifty-four percent loss,
or one hundred percent ache,
hot salt water springs bubbling up
from just a brush with the magma burning below the surface?

dust is beginning to settle on the box of our memories that i hid away, where the twister would never touch it.
if only there was some way to give time through an IV,
because i don't know what to do with this heart-shaped stone in my chest.