I've been wasting fall, preparing for the winter.
and it ***** to miss out on the best season,
but I just know that winter
will be so **** cold.

happiness starts with some weird chemical reactions
in the brain and is carried by electrons
where it ends with some weird tension
of the muscles around the mouth but I
learned in electronics that electrons
will only travel in a complete circuit
   so logically:
if I smile, I should feel happy but
        it doesn't work

and I've spent too long thinking
that I'm too privileged for my
depression to be real.

at least when you leave,
my (previously our) room
won't look too different, because
you never bothered to move in the things
that make a place home.
I'll fill the empty drawers somehow.

I know that I need to be stronger and I try but
          it doesn't work

and trying gets hard when my eyes are so dry
and trying gets hard when the crickets are so loud
and trying gets hard when my body
   is in so much ******* pain all the time

I wish you had gotten me
  an anniversary present.

I wish you would call me
so I could know for sure you didn't
die in a tragic car accident.

   I'd give you everything I've got,
for a little piece of pie.

every time I wake up without you
is another tiny heartbreak
  but how many tiny heartbreaks
   does it take to add up to one more
noticeable? how many lonely mornings can I...

unpacking my stuff/moving in
I'm leaving 3 drawers and part of the closet empty
so you have room for your stuff and I wonder
if I'll fill them after you leave
or if the space between my clothes
will be a reminder of your ghost


being busy is good.  being busy
means less time to think about ...

I'm going to learn how to ride a bike.
I'm going to learn how to ride a bike.
I'm going to learn how to ride a bike.

I really like the way you look sitting in this bed
with the sunlight creeping through the window shades
and giving you tiger stripes
but you like couches better

"I can't wait-"
but you will.
You don't have a choice.

I've wanted you ever since I learned how to want.

With a box full
of toys in your closet
and a mouthful
of love on your lips,
  you are just a boy

and there's something about your hometown
that makes me want to fill my lungs with poison,
its all awfully familiar.

Things are different now, but still the same.
     I still get random urges to kiss the top of your head.
     I still **** in my stomach when we have ***.
  but I'm more scared of losing you now

When my dad tried to teach
me how to ride a bike he said,
look at where you want to go,
look ahead,
and I still can't ride a bike, too busy
  staring at the ground.


"a lot of what floats in head comes from you, it always has been because you are me"

I've always hated PDA

but when I see you I can't help but to
reach out and scratch
your beard because its a
really basic human pleasure,

  to touch something and know
that it is yours-

especially when that something
is a someone
and that someone
thinks and feels and tells stupid jokes
and laughs at his own stupid jokes
and is better than me at the
    crossword puzzles we can only finish
  on mondays and tuesdays

I measure the passing of time
in crossword puzzles and the number of nights
until I can fall asleep with at least
65% of my body touching yours because
    I miss you
       any other time

and
all of the sudden
I'm really scared of you dying

I don't
remember exactly what I was thinking
in the moment when our car
spun into the middle of the
interstate, or if I was thinking anything
at all

When it settled into a pile of snow
on the shoulder, you told me
to pray because we were okay
but I was too busy loving you
and being sorry with every inch of me
that had somehow survived

You told me late that night
that you would be around for as long
as I wanted you to be.

and I hope you were right,
    but I don't want to ever find out.

1.  I've known for a while now,
    but putting words to feelings
    is one thing, whereas saying
    those words is quite another.

2. You said it one of the first
    times I made you come.  You
    didn't mean it, and I laughed.

3. I looked at you while
    we watched *****
    Wonka in your dad's favorite
    chair, and I knew.

4. I tried to tell you after Thanksgiving,
    but it just made me want to cry.  I
    turned away; I don't think you saw.

5. When I said goodbye to
    my mom on the phone and
    said it habitually, I thought
    I saw you smiling.

6. You left a poem in one of my
    notebooks, and wrote it in morse
    code for me to figure out.  A little
    piece of my heart flew away; I haven't
    seen it since.

7. Your drunk best friend casually
    said you did, assuming you'd
    already told me.  You gave him
    a look, and I laughed.

8. I spit it out in the middle
    of the night, after weeks of choking
    on it, and you squeezed my hand
    and mumbled.  The next morning, you
    brought it up and I said "well, just
    so you know!" and we laughed.

9. It's 4am and I can't get it out of my head.

10. "I love you,
       I love you,
       I love you,
       but I'm so ******* scared."

and I'm always amazed by how much I can feel you
and know that you are flooded,
   just like me,
with those stupid words we're both too scared to say.

but thinking about how
happy you make me makes me
so sad, and full of self-pity
  for ever having lived without you

sometimes my fingers find spots
on your skin that they like to
gently scratch and I wonder,
if I gently, sweetly stroked one spot
for an infinite amount of time,
would I eventually wear into a
vital ***** and bleed you out?
   because a gentle wave, over
   time, turns mountains
   into fractions

and I guess I'd probably lose my finger first
but still, I wonder.

I do know one thing though, I know
that one day we will miss this twin bed
  and we complain
but I have found that it is
my favorite way to sleep
and the only way to keep
at bay the flood of aloneness
that presses against my chest every day

     I should try to give myself some credit.

I am trying to give myself some credit,
but then there's you.

I was homesick until I remembered
how toxic this place was.

I am a decaying organism,
and I am dying in your arms.
      every time you touch me
     another couple skin cells fall,
     and every time we kiss,
      I lose a bit of DNA

    so **** any way of living that isn't dying.

I was homesick until I realized
I had found a better one,
and now
I'm only sick for you.

Recently, I've started to wash
my sheets less often
   and maybe its because the nights
   have gotten cooler
   and less sweaty
but also,
I think I'm getting attached
to the way my bed smells like you

I have the blues again and you asked
if you could **** them out
through my mouth
but I like you too much to let you taste them

and I'm ******* tired of being tired all the time
but I've never been
more motivated to keep breathing
   than with you sleeping beside me,
   just close enough that your fingers
   brush my stomach
     when it expands with air
        and your breath
in mine, weaving simple harmonies

and I don't need you,
because I would never let myself
depend on a garden I can't water alone
but the flowers you planted
in my eyelids
are so ******* beautiful
and I'd really like to see the world the way you do.

I can't quite describe the scent
but
it makes this little
  concrete room
feel almost like a place
  I could call home

sometimes I think that if I
pry open your ribcage
and look inside,
I'll find silver and flower petals and things
that glitter and dance in the rain

but I always (usually) remember
that you are human and you are
filled with blood
and guts
and bones
and bacteria
and all the gritty bits that
  fill me too and we are the same

except
that we're so not the same at all
because when you look up on a cloudy night,
you can see all the stars you know to be hidden
while I can see only darkness

  the worst part
  about happiness
is knowing what comes next.

   he walked
in on me crying and he told me
that he didn't want to leave me like this
    "but you will," I said,
          and I was right.

I walk with the weight of the world
cascading from my shoulder blades and leaving
bruises up and down my spine

I walk with the ghost of you
dangling from my knees and kissing
purple into all the places no one sees

  I told you today
the things it has taken me eight months to formulate
       and it's probably just wishful thinking,
       but I am feeling the spaces between my
       vertebrae getting a little less heavy
(or as some would say, a little lighter

)I miss you,
but only in parts.
   I miss the part of you that loved me.
      I don't miss the part of you that spent our last two months together pushing me away.
      I don't miss the part of you that doesn't miss me.
  
I miss the part of you that glows.

I've always been jealous of leaves

because they have the luxury of dying
with the promise of being reborn
in a few months' time
even brighter and more
beautiful than before

    sometimes I want to die
but death is such a big commitment and
I've never been a fan
of permanence

I miss you
but
not in the a-piece-of-me-is-missing-when-you're-gone
kind of way
I miss you in the
I'm-okay-with-being-alone-but-I-like-it-better-when-you're-ar­ound
kind of way and I think that
that is a pretty healthy way to feel

It took me a very long time
to realize that I was whole

    and I'm not so scared of winter anymore

don't ask me what I'm doing
because I have no idea
  but its like
  
I could sit with you forever and
never have to say anything
   because just knowing
   that there are words
buzzing around your head at a million miles per second
   and there is blood
pumping through your veins, soft and sweet as sugar
   and there are all
the things you are glowing
       beneath the weight of all
           the things you want to be and
just knowing that you exist

is enough to make the world stop-

so don't ask me because
I don't know what I'm doing
   all I know
is that I really, really like
being around you

and I think that's kind of wonderful

It's been 19 hours
  and I think I've finally ****** away
  the ***** I drank while giving you shots of water
  so you wouldn't get sick
I thought maybe you were too drunk to notice
but I guess you weren't because you smiled
at me with a sincerity I can't come close to describing

It's been 19 hours
  but the wrenching pain in my stomach
still hasn't gone away.

       and in the airport today
I bought a bottle of water and some pepto bismol
and as I handed her my debit card,
   the cashier asked me
             if I was heading home
                   and I just
*******
choked
  and I'm talking about the really ******* ugly kind of crying here
   and the poor thing didn't know what she had done wrong but
she told me about her grandfather
         who used to say that crying
         is just your body's way
         of getting rid of the toxins
         and making itself stronger

Its been 17 hours since I last saw you
and I don't know how long it will be
before I see you again
but I really,
            really hope that it isn't too long.

You'd think I would have learned by now
   not to take the things
   you say too seriously
because to you,
a promise is little more than
a few flimsy syllables and spit

and if words were a currency,
your's would cause inflation
of the highest degree
         but I live
in a place where words are precious
and dripping with sincerity

and that's why its sometimes
so hard to come up with
the right way of saying
  the things that I mean
and that's why I sometimes
say nothing at all
because words that fill space
  just feel so unclean

so you'd think I would
have learned by now but

    they say that gambling
    is an addiction
[and you know I've always loved good fiction]

I thought that by
   spreading out my obsession
I could make it easier to bear but
it only made me more
                   certain
that nothing could ever
live up to the way  you make my chest
bubble with electricity
                            and unease

and wrapped
  in the sour scents of someone
  else's childhood
it becomes easy to forget
where I came from

     but at least I
can be sure
I'll never forget
where I'm trying to be

you told me the
  other day
that the heel of the foot
is the least sensitive part
of the body
because your brain tends to remember
trivial things like that

well I feel
   from the bottom
      of my feet
that someday soon
                         I might be free

you have kind of a cool brain
and today
I told you I was sorry

but it didn't make me feel much better
      at all
because I didn't really get to say
what I needed to like
how ******* brave I think you are
and how I hope you'll never
let anyone walk all over you
    the way I did because you
deserve
so much better

I guess maybe
there are some things I'm going to miss
but never enough to make me stay

Something strange happens
when you find yourself in a room
with all the boys you ever
thought you might have loved

each with their own poison
their own pressure points
                          inside you
               one in my knees
              one in my lungs
             one underneath my eyelids
            yet all of them together
nestled some place inside my skull
in some tiny electric current I'd like
to pretend doesn't exist

        But something strange happens
because when you see them all
                  side-by-side
it suddenly becomes so much clearer

        that really,
they never mattered too much after all

   and it was always just me

you'll be able to tell if
he touched my tongue
by the pressure with which it presses
  against yours

and you'll be able to tell if
if he held my hand
by the placement of my fingers
  between yours

and you'll be able to tell if
he broke my heart
by the length of time it takes for me
  to break yours

and its funny to think of certain things
like that elevator painting  with colors
flying off the canvas that you
wouldn't touch
because you wanted to believe
that it was real
but I had to touch
because I would rather know the truth

and I couldn't tell at the time
but I can think about it now and know
by the way I remember you feeling
beside me
that you had a kind of
fleeting realness about you
that I wanted so badly to be permanent

and it took me a long time to realize
that I was better off
knowing the truth

The last time you trusted
me with yourself,
I knew it would never happen again
so I

ran away with a mouthful of you
and burrowed into the ground
and added you to my nest
  of people I never wanted to forget
  the taste of

cheeks puffed out
and scurrying feet
  I was gone before you had time to notice
  that I had
  taken a piece of you with me

They hardly ever notice

   because I only steal mouthfuls of
   things I know they won't miss
like distrust- which I'll bet you didn't know
      tastes like cinnamon
or fear- which tastes like milk
      that's just a little bit too old
      but when you add a squirt of chocolate syrup
      you can hardly taste the sour-ness
or anger- which has that charcoal taste
      of anything that's been cooking for too long
      
and it all makes me wonder
  if I had stuck around
         long enough
to steal a mouthful of your love

what would it have tasted like?

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

It was the monday-est
of mornings and
I left empty
but for five hours of sleep
and a bit of
momentum

and when I watched you
pick up a handful of
white-hot coals from the fire
  and hold them like
  soft wet
     petals
in your hands
I screamed and
begged for you to drop them
because I didn't
  couldn't under
     stand
that you were only trying
     to burn
  the sickness out
from the gravel in your   gut

and I didn't
  couldn't under
     stand
how when you woke
your hands were white and clean
  as if straight from the
  womb
because when I
coaxed
the fire to grow
my finger brushed
a white-hot coal
and (where they kissed) was
raw and red for weeks

but now I do
  can under
     stand
that the gravel in your   gut
made you immune

while the
  soft wet
  petals
in mine made me fragile
as if straight from the
  womb

and something tells me
I won't be building a fire
  with you again
anytime soon

I liked the way it felt
inside you,
curled like a cat
  
it was hot so
I was sweating
   which may sound gross but
  it was hot so
you were sweating too
and my sweat
    mingled
with your sweat
and became us-sweat
and we both knew that it was hot
and sweaty and gross
   but
inside each other we were comfortable
so the
    us-sweat was okay

until the morning came and with it
fear and silence and the us-sweat
became
        me-sweat on you
and  you-sweat on me
and I just wanted to jump
into the ocean
  because the
ocean,

when you think about it,
is really just a giant ditch
filled with salt water which
  is pretty much the same
  as sweat except
  people don't think it's gross
so in the ocean no one
cares whose sweat is whose

and maybe if it
had been just a
little bit cooler

  I could have stayed
forever inside you,
        my breath
trapped within the mercy of your body

I didn't ask much of you.

On the wings
  of summer winds,
I tried to breathe you out of me
         and
seal my lips tight round their own solitude

  but (and I learned this one the
hard way) you
can only hold your breath
              so long
   before the body takes control.

                            No-
I didn't ask much of you at all.
     I only wanted you
     to let me believe-
     even for just a moment-

that you liked me best.

I said your name aloud too many times
  it started to sound
  alien
and feel like old chewed up bubblegum
stuck to the bottom of a shoe
   spread thick
   between the cleats
disgusting
and irredeemable

how many times
can I tell myself something
   before it becomes
a[lie]n thick
and sticky like gum
     and so disgusting
-ly untrue

there are so many
things
I don't know how
  to do yet
but I know how
  to truly love the sunlight
and I know how
  to build a fire
and I know how
  to care about people
just enough for them
to never really hurt me
              so maybe
being scared to talk to strangers on the phone
isn't so important after all


they say
that hair follicle drug tests are more accurate
than anything you can **** into a cup
   because your hair
   follicles
   store the history of
   everything you've ever done
so I want to rip out
a lock of your hair
but a small one, so it only hurts
a little bit
and I want
to put the hair in a metal jar
and bury it in the ground
   just in case one day
   they come up with a
   way to see everything you've ever felt
   by looking at your hair follicles
so I can dig it back up
                   and prove
that you felt
       something
for me.

you're alive too
and sometimes
that can be easy to forget
but there's one thing I know
I know that when I touched your skin
you got goosebumps
because all living things need to be touched

     and I often wonder
if you ever remember
how very alive I am

it knows the taste of human flesh
and it eats me, raw
from the inside out
sitting in my stomach
   and tying me in knots
   and prying me open
   and leaving me to rot, hoping
for some sort of cure
a divorce
between this wretched body and restless mind
         now
my innocence hangs by a flammable thread
and the moon is burning the faintest of reds

Oh, queen of ice
your sacrifice
was the skirt your mother threw out of her window
because she didn't want to think about
   the boys
   with their cigarettes
their hormones and sweaty fingers
pawing at your bare thighs

and the idea
of us being together
is like a bad joke
all the buildup
   and none of the satisfaction

March comes in like a lion
and will leave like a lamb
coughing up teeth on the bathroom floor
you didn't give a ****
    I wish to be stern, resolute
    how a panther stalks its prey
    in a jungle weaving winding vines
    until the judgment day
but somewhere
you could see yourself
gums bleeding bright and red
so you spat in the sink
climbed under the sheets
and wished that you were dead

I love you, silently
selfishly
with bones searing white-hot
and skin speckled blue
or sometimes,
when sleep’s so far
and my lips half chewed,
I can even remember you-
steaming and steeping
and oh-so-almost-real

Its been a long time
since I’ve seen you smile
with those teeth that light your face
like cigarettes on a clouded night
and baby-

I don’t even know
what I’m doing here anymore
sickness seeps from bathroom doors
and when I wake up
tangled, gasping for air
I can just about smell the smoke in your hair

and almost savor the cracked lips
you only let me taste
if I’m not sober

fingers crossed
your skin is seeping with
the things you didn't say
its sort of like sweat
but it won't wash away
   engine sputtering
        eyelashes fluttering
as you roll the skin of my wrist
  between your fingers
and somewhere in my brain
        I know
you don't care what I say
you just want me to look pretty while I say it
  but hush little darling,
its better this way.

your face is leaking shadows, baby
you ain't got nothing to lose today
so tie up your white shoelaces
and get on your way

deep inside yourself you'll find
something glistening to remind
you that you've got to get a move on
and never look behind

Of all the things I’ve ever heard
(a song sung sweetly by a bird,
the hollow rumbling of a drum,
the trembling strings of every strum)

there’s nothing
like the way you sing
when you think
no one’s listening

haunted girls
with whiskey smiles
and miles
of hate behind them

they don’t care
what they’ll come to
for you
will never mind them

haunted girls
with whiskey smiles
you ******
them out and kissed them

but they’ll be
gone before you
even know
you’re gonna miss them

I'll call you when I'm needing more
than a house with columns and shiny floors
and a grand piano no one plays

cigarette butts in the yard
buried under bits of tar
halls that twist and bend like in a maze

pretty people neatly fall
into place like bricks in walls
we'll catch fire in a drunken haze

we'll cover all the laundry lines
with hopeless dreams and dandelions
and dance barefoot
until our feet are dry

your sister looks so pretty when she's sad
and I think she knows it

The weight of your skin
is crushing me rushing me
under your eyelids
and kicking me out to the curb
But when will you learn
that whatever you earn
is nothing compared to what you could have been

Your knuckles crackle like paper bags
The streets are all spackled and sparkle with rain
and I should go home before
the words that you throw at me
singing and swaying start to all sound the same

my first-ever valentine
walks on pebbles soaked in limes
****** out rinds and empty shot glasses
street lights sparkle as our taxi passes knoxville’s twisting highways of black
your voice, wailing, raking, sent shivers down my back
a million voices are singing your songs,
but one less than a million are singing them wrong
a million aching empty eyes glaring,
five hundred thousand pairs are staring off into space, all stuck in the past
I’m sitting here wondering how the **** my glass got empty again,
so toss me a lime, and pass me the bottle before I notice the time

There's a ghost in my left mirror
a perfect image
with tan, plastic skin
and hollow, black eyes
showing Itself only for
a moment so fleeting
I begin to doubt myself

Maybe "begin" is too generous a word
And the ghost in my left mirror
knows it
And mocks me

The days have gotten longer
your knees more blistered, scratched, and red
and I cannot remember
even half the things I've said
in these hours which seem to last forever
I might as well be dead

We stayed up all night
yet somehow missed the sunrise
I threw you a ***** shirt
to wipe off your soft, damp eyes

It seems that we could walk forever
and never get away

Outside my window the morning sky is pink
like your blushing skin
flushing down your guilt
somewhere underneath your bravery
it will eat you from within

and I can't stop thinking about
your fingers locked inside my mouth
to lock my voice away
I'm still not sure
if I wanted you to stay
because I wanted you,
or because I liked the way you
filled the space around me