I hate myself
for wanting to be pretty
but even more, I hate the world I live in for
   making me feel like I need to be
pretty
in order to amount to anything
   but it's been etched into my brain
      like the alphabet or "I'm fine, thanks, how are you?"

I guess I ran
out of words
when I stopped believing
   that I needed you to love me back

sometimes I still think of you but only
in the moment between tracks on a CD
or at stoplights
or in the the spaces of light between my fingers
  when I shield my eyes from the sun

but there are a lot of things I
sometimes think about
so maybe
   you're not so special after all
just a speck of static
I clung to
  when I had nothing else to hold
  or when there was no one else
to fill the space around me

I loved you once.
but now you are a ghost
clutching in your
               tobacco hands
a violent whisper of the boy I once knew and I
  wish
  that you could see you
  the way I do
but I also wish
  that I could see you
  the way you do
so maybe
together we wouldn't
notice the distance between you
and solid ground

you say
that people change
but I think that maybe it's just
the spaces between people that change
       and I'm left alone
       counting the miles
   between your hands and mine
   [which you once held so severely]

I wonder
if the lobster chested
  orange women
regret the youth they spent in the sun

My momma always warns me
to wear sunscreen so I won't look
like one of them and sometimes
   I do but sometimes
I have trouble
finding fear in the lobster chested
   orange version of me
              because the sun
              makes me happy
and if being orange skinned and
lobster chested means
I was happy once
would I really be ugly at all?

and when I see the
bruises on your throat
    soft and
          orange, it
makes me jealous
because your version of love is so easy
to come by but I
just can't swallow it.

I've heard some girls boast
about swallowing because I guess
it's supposed to make boys like you
   well
I can swallow too
I can swallow
   my fear and
I can swallow
   my insecurities and
I can hide them deep within me
    where
I don't have to show anybody
    and
I don't have to tell anybody

because the summer rays of sun
run circles round my eyes
and all I'll ever need is
to know that I survived

my body is still warm in the
places where you pressed
  against me as you
****** out from my bones
any ounce of apathy
I might have had left
  and my guts flutter
violently like a moth trapped in a glass box
  and I can't wait
to never have to see you again
because I could love someone who is
seven times better than you
        but right now
    my waist can't stop remembering
    the places your fingers sometimes liked to rest

I suspended my disbelief for you
but you forgot me somewhere
   like a flea
   behind the cigarettes and ******
   behind the pretty girls who tease
   behind the marrow in your knees
but some mornings, you wake up panicked
swollen with the sweat of something you might have once dreamed

I have these dreams that haunt me when I wake
and I'm not sure
if I believe in god but
I don't think I'm strong enough
to believe in nothing
  and survive it

I guess I should be
grateful that the pollen
doesn't make my throat itch
   like it does Naomi's
and it doesn't make my eyes itch
   like it does Naomi's
        but it does make me itch
to get out of this godforsaken place
            once-and-for-all

In my dreams I walk through
fields with needles where the grass
should be but when I wake the
crickets, birds, gossipy girls
whisper when I pass
and its so hard to stop listening
  (the streets swell yellow with the ***** of spring)

your favorite season was winter
[except when it wasn't]
because you liked the way
   the cold
made your body feel alive
[except when you didn't]
and you liked the way
    the trees
could die and be reborn again
because sometimes you wanted to die
but not have to be dead forever
and you liked the
   stillness and the calm and the quiet
[I miss you]
and I'm not quite sure how the
tilt of the world works but
I'd bet whatever's in my
  pocket that its
      spring wherever you are

A friend the other
day
told me a story
  of a cousin-neighbor-friend
some kid
who saw a kid get bullied on the
      TV
and he told his
grandmother the story
  as if the memory was his own
           and she
                      freaked
out and called the school
   raving/yelling until
she found out that the story
wasn't her grandson's at all
          just a fabrication
in a blank space
his mind thought a
   memory
            should be and
a friend the other
day
told me that last week she cut
lines into her
   self
because she needed to feel anything
         and I didn't
                       freak
out because I understand
that we need to feel
pain
and we need to remember
pain                          
   and you can try to ****
   the feeling out the feeling
       that too much is easy and
you   are    weak
    because of it
or
you can
             fabricate
pain
   in a way that let's you
tell yourself you deserve all of the
love you crave so severely