I live in constant fear
of the goose bumps on my skin, waiting,
expecting the hair on my arms to stand on end.
Pinprick needles
pushing up through my skin.

2. My mother can’t sleep through the night,
constantly checking for some visual sign
of telepathy, her cheek permanently frozen
to the screen of her cell phone as she lies in the lightless room.

3. My sister’s habits habituate
into those of a lightning bug in the daytime.
Unusual and unexpected, five toe touches
on this carpet’s edge, seventy-two
fingertips on her own eyelids.
Idly fidgeting until it is time
to zip around in blinding light.

4. Day after day I am weighed
down by mountains beneath the ocean’s surface,
chained, hovering just above the break,
gasping for dear life and
screaming for salvation.

5. I can’t control my thoughts
(my thoughts control me).

6. Thought bubbles in my head
only float for a little while, clouding
my vision and crying for their lightning,
as thunderbolt after thunderbolt stikes—
anxiety sounds like the color black.

7. I lie on cheap sofas spasming and sweaty,
skyscrapers of disappointment
looming over my miniscule banged up
Toyota of a body. There’s a dent on my side door.

8. When I sit, still as a smudge of black ink
left over on my thumb, I pray that the vending machine
won’t steal my money—I only have two seventy-five in my pocket.

9. I call my dad. He is the messenger.

10. Any two words can spearhead a revolution; my eyelids always lose and the floodgates break down, the people in the streets scatter for safety.

11. If I think about the future, the sky becomes one gigantic storm cloud, the world becomes a tornado, and everyone survives but me. The heavens turn dark and I am thrown
into a world made up of a computerized font. Courier New.

12. Courier New is very monochromatic. An angular typeface. My face is pretty round.

13. When the storm ends, I am black and white with exhaustion, a pressure washed pane of glass, waiting
to again need a thorough cleaning. The pressure washer comes every few days.

When I was 8
I would draw
stick figures of black and white
standing alone next to a forest
green trees, dandelions, and carnations pink,
swaying in the wind amongst a sunset
orange and bittersweet.

When I was 10
I would draw
twinkling outer space purple mountains
majesty still as midnight
blue bell rings, encompassing all things atomic
tangerine planets and occasionally a piercing laser
lemon electric lime stars streaking through the sky.

When I was 17
I would draw
scribbly doodles run wild
strawberry heart screaming tickle me
pink blush on its face, waiting
for its cadet blush crush
to save it from dreaming in history of jazz
berry jam scents lingering on its lips.

His eyes seem to be
almost as if he is sleeping,
dreaming of New York City and
bright lights and other girls
dancing among flashing strobes,
their trendy halters halting his breathing
and startling him back into awareness.

He realizes he’s been resting
his cheek on his knuckle, though
all he can really feel is numbness and
a slight tingle as his nerves begin to increase
to match the angle of the plane.

The jolt of landing reawakens his arm
and the buzzing bee inside his brain
as he envisions with an almost painful smile
a perfect dive into the great water before him.

He is there and I am here, but
my hair is dripping wet.

You wake up in the middle of the night
and you hear an unfamiliar sound—
a gasp, it sounds like,
or a choking, a struggle.
You are disturbed, yet unafraid,
you are curious, but too lazy to leave your bed.
Three deep breaths, and the sound stops,
and you realize that you were just
choking on your own words,
your own thoughts trapped between your
throat and your lips, the thoughts you
always want to scream but only whisper
quietly to yourself, the thoughts that are
thunderstorms inside your head,
clouding your vision and pushing you
down to the floor, the thoughts that
time after time break down the dams
behind your eyelids
but only in controlled isolation.
You hear yourself gasping for breath,
your breathing remnants of thoughts,
your thoughts tough hands
around your own neck,
squeezing firmly until you fall
back to sleep.

Last night's storm woke me up in the middle of the night, and I don't know how but I think the lightning struck through my entire body. I felt my every muscle spasming with pulses from high-energy electric waves and I heard the omniscient thunder echoing between the cliffs inside my head. I can still feel the reverberations but all I can hear is emptiness; I don't know how the thunder found a way out but I'm going to keep scaling the walls until I find a door. I don't want to be enclosed in this box anymore.

I don't even want to bleed
I just need to know I'm alive
I'm freezing but there's no AC
The air is so ******* still
My stomach hurts so bad
Acid is burning down my cheeks
I couldn't dance around in my pjs if I wanted to.

I’m riding waves of unhappiness
With peaks of glimmering hope
And troughs of utter disappointment--
I think I’m in love.

How could
shiny silver studs
forced through my skin
make me feel so good?
“The power of rebellion,”
I’ve read,
can overthrow a government,
but more importantly
can overthrow one’s mind.
Am I going crazy
over the need to rebel?
I have nothing to rebel against
but I feel like I’m
breaking boundaries
guarding nothing
but my own insecurity.
So maybe
shiny silver studs
forced through my skin
pierce my heart as well
letting free all the demons
I’m keeping locked
inside.

No matter where I run,
It seems to find me once again
As if I have targets on my hips
And lasers streaming from my cheeks,
With satellites detecting my bones
Drawing them out from beneath my skin,
Convulsing my body as I leave the stratosphere,
Leaving me stranded out in space, where I long to be.
Weightless, a particle of nothing,
Floating in zero-gravity,
Free-falling above and beyond the cosmos.

Who do you think you are?

You can’t just inject yourself
straight into my heart,
then rip out the iv,
and act like you didn’t
cause any of my pain.

You can’t blame me
for feeling attached
when you locked
my heart to yours
and threw away the key.

I can’t think of a time
when you
weren’t there
but now
you’re gone
and i don’t know how to
get you
out of
my mind.

I don’t understand the phrase
moving on

Because how do I forget
the sincerity of my smile,
when you look at me
with the same one?

And how do I fill in
the nooks and crannies
on my body, where yours
fits perfectly?

And how come the sky
hasn’t changed colors?
As long as the sky is blue,
I’ll never not be in love with you.

Lately I’ve been finding it hard to write
You’re in my brain
You’re in my heart
You’re in my hands

Please get out
Please get out
Please get out
I don’t want you here anymore.

Two winters ago, all I wanted to do was run:
run away from myself,
run away from my skin,
run away from my world,
leaving my body and my troubles
behind,
losing every last pound to the wind,
and fortifying my fight to the golden finish line,
my ultimate goal.

One winter ago, all I wanted to do was sleep:
forget about myself,
forget about my skin,
forget about my world,
escaping reality in a self-inflicted
coma,
writing suicide notes on the hour,
and planning my route to a white bed of clouds,
my ultimate goal.

Now it’s winter again,
and I don’t know what I want,
and I’m
scared.

If I had a magic wand,
I would make you understand
That overdosing won’t **** you,
And I would make you understand
That your screams rattle my bones
And your cries tear my heart to shreds.

If I had a magic wand,
I would make the feel of my embrace a sweater
So that you could wear it anytime you like
And I would turn my laughter into a bandaid
That absorbs your pain and sends it to me,
Because I care so much
I’m going to bleed to death of it anyway.

But most of all,
If I had a magic wand,
I would make you believe that
You are enough.
You are so enough,
It is unbelievable how enough you are.

Each picture of you two together
Is an off-switch for my smile
But I’m learning to reconfigure the wires
So that you no longer control me.

Though it’s hard to forget you
When everyone told me you were the one--
You told me you were the one--
Even though you never kissed me
Beneath the moonlight.

I’ll never know if our sincerity
Meant anything to you,
But no, we can’t still be friends.
She won’t ever love you like I did
And I won’t come running back to you
When her love is not enough.

Dirt and Soil are two very different entities:

Dirt ruins sidewalks with villainous hieroglyphs
Tainting mounDs of snow betwIxt blackenEd dishonor,
Staining calloused hands with failed attempts at beauty.
Soil energizes budding stems of life
Beautifying chiLd-rIdden parks along suburban aVenuEs,
Painting hard work and dedication on weathered fingertips.

Everything around me is glimmering with the remnants of a luxurious Soil bath at a ritzy hotel,
While I am clutching my shaking body, sitting in a puddle of mud amidst a ***** tsunami.

I look at you
The way I looked at my first snowfall:

At the first mention of “snow!”
I jumped to my feet, sprung to my toes
To an overcrowded window brightened by
The fluorescent lighting of the hallway outside my door.
And what I saw through the glass
Brought sparkling tears to my overjoyed eyes
As I realized I lived in a place
Where God creates masterpieces with his fingertips
Showering the earth with drops of happiness and love.
For what I saw through the glass
Broke down the dams behind my eyelids
And let flow waterfalls of possibility
To find the lost and hide the found
Washing away the key to the levy of evil.

But
I am passionate as Icarus
And you are perilous as the sun
And I am the snow
And you are the sun
You are my sun
And
Oh God, when will it stop hurting?

Yet still,

I look at you
The way I looked at my first snowfall.

See over my right shoulder, the dead, dreary, dead branches of the wintery trees, barely moving in the ever-powerful gust of wind driving this dead, dreary, dead wintery season. Not even a fervent burst of energy can move the slim slivers of silver gray metal fibers springing out from the ever-overlooked sabers of the smothered icy flatland.

See over my left shoulder, my pale, ghostly, pale face staring back at me forcing my lucrative thoughts to my shaking hands. Not even the strongest helicase enzyme could unzip, untwist, unzip the simple, dangerous, simple deoxyribonucleic acid strung down my body, running down my veins like my steaming morning mocha, caffeinating my blood, my blood, my blood and pushing me to push farther, deeper, farther into the heavens of my thoughts, the meadows of my eyes, the hell atop my fingertips – one, two, three, four, five.

Thank heavens, your heavens, my heavens they’re all there; the unsolved mystery beneath my fingernails is still lost, lost, lost like my last fourteen chapsticks. Help, anybody. Does anyone see a lonesome chapstick tube? Forget it. It’s right beneath my toes – one, two, three, four, five. I am standing on top of a gold mine—inhale the chemicals, feel the potency of the potential inside of my body, do you realize how stupid you were? I gave you my attention and you took it like fame, I gave you my love and you took it like medication. Darling, I gave you my everything—I gave you myself but I can’t say you took it because you never did, and instead you stole my muscles and my bones, and the gravity holding up my chest from crashing back down on me after every single breath.

But most importantly, you stole my magic potion—one sip of that ever-so-clear concoction has the ability to provide me with a splinter of the sun, just enough to shine illuminating light on my mind, giving me the realization that I am still drunk off of you—and you and you apparently. But you grabbed it, took it, grabbed it, you thief, and you left me here to bear the freezing, cold, freezing winter on my own. My body is numb, my brain is numb, my heart is numb, and not even the symphony of my screams is enough to shatter, shatter, shatter the icicles surrounding my soul.

Instead, all I have is a noxious, lethal, deadly, cup of noxious, lethal, deadly poison, and I can already feel a single sip of its opacity slowly trickling down my throat like molasses. And it burns it burns it burns. Look into my eyes. See the raging heat rising, dilating my pupils to their limits, vanishing the blue from my irises, and understand that the words coming out of your mouth burn me like lava, and the volcanic essence of your intentions burns holes in my veins, leaving a forsaken cavity in my chest. So the next time you have the opportunity to articulate an opinion, make sure you don’t create a copy of the key to the cage of my own personal dragon, waiting to breathe fire on your words and wrangle, mangle, wrangle your next ones.

Nineteen.
Clueless and unprepared, I am diving headfirst
Into a world for non-nineteen-year-olds,
A system so precise and so imprecise that I cannot win
A universe so unpredictable that I was better off eighteen.
But now it’s time to reach out to destiny,
Blow out twenty candles (one for good luck)
And live life like everyone is watching.
Ideas and goals have been ingrained into my mind
Whether I like them or not does not matter,
As they’ve made homes in my skin but don’t pay the rent
And I cannot kick them out because we are symbioses
******* the poisonous vitals from each other’s bloodstreams.
Suddenly, it isn’t so insane to think that my success
Is not successful enough and that my wedding gown
Could be my clothes on someone’s floor late at night
And the future fades into never, not as a beautiful ripple
But as a vicious surge, and I realize that
Once upon a time is once upon a dream and
My dreams are nightmares and I scream
Through the night and I’m modestly nineteen
So no one else is responsible to wake me up.

Upon prayer, I dreamt a dream -
The lots were cast on you,
And you were thrown into the sea, and
You were gone.
And I shattered the atmosphere with my screams
Flooded the universe with my tears
Whirlwinds and thunderstorms terrorized the world
And alas, I was the only one left to love you, and
You were gone.
And I could no longer see the sunshine
Threatened by the engulfing waters of the deep Mediterranean Sea
Seaweed wrapped around my head, in the pit of a whale
And alas, I was the only one left to love you, and
You were gone.
Don’t leave, for without you my life will ebb away
I can’t go on without you
I can’t imagine life without you
I can’t achieve salvation without you

     I love you

              I   l ove  yo u

                        I        lo  v e       y  o    u

It was all without
For what of us
Do ***** on the hour
She drunk as liquor
He like toast

Roses are red
Violets are blue
They both die in the end.

I gave you my attention
and you took it
like fame

I gave you my love
and you took it
like medication

I gave you my everything
and you took it
like nothing

I gave you myself
but I can’t say you took it
because you never did

Darling, you don’t love me
like I love you
and I blame it on the past

I’m never taking history again.

When you left, you took with you my ability to move,
My ability to breathe, my ability to speak.
You stole my muscles and my bones,
My senses and my desires.
I can no longer taste your lips on mine,
Or smell your shampoo on my pillow.
I can no longer hear your voice calling my name,
See your smile, nor feel your hands wrapped around my waist.
All that is left for me to feel is the crushing blanket of loneliness,
A knit wool too warm to cuddle with under the covers,
Too heavy to hold to my chest to give it freedom to rise and fall.
My body is numb, my brain is numb, my heart is numb.
I can feel the darkness of the vast and empty night sky above me,
Slowly lowering down to Earth, directly to my empty bed,
And for a single moment, I want to feel like the universe is safe,
Like it isn’t about to crush me and my heart isn’t about to explode.
For I am left without shield, you, my warrior, my one-man army,
And I am immobilized and unprotected,
And there is no way in hell I can win the next World War against myself.
Escape is my only option to divert the attention from my hiding place,
To prevent the enemy of me from further destroying my soul and consuming my body.
So if I’m lost, please don’t find me, and if I jump, please let me sink,
For darkness has fallen on this sunlit winter day,
And the sweet crescent moon no longer casts a light on my pillow,
Leaving only shadows of Heaven in the darkness.

I could say I’m happy now
And you’ll believe me
Because you’ll see my smile,
The thin, red line on my face.

But you won’t see the one on my skin.

Your words hit me like a catastrophe of nature
Swallowing me in like a deadly tidal wave
Washing up every ******* feeling in my body
And breaking every source of support within me.
They come at me like a raging fire
Destroying my lungs as they turn to flames
Making me forget how to breathe
Any time I think of your name.
Your words are a black hole
******* me in until there is nothing left
Leaving no evidence of our existence
And burning out every light in my eyes.
They shake me like a magnitude ten earthquake
Ripping my heart to shards
The ultimate source of destruction
For anything thought to be sure.

When I ran into your arms,
After four months of being apart,
I felt something new.
There was a new electricity,
Some sort of eccentricity,
Drawing me forth to your scent
And ******* my soul to your being.
I saw you again the next day,
But only a mutual glimpse in passing
Deepened our connection,
Tightened the puppeteer string between our hands.
I saw you again the next night,
At our first lone dinner,
Full of awkward laughter and true smiles,
Ending with ****** tension thick enough to slice
With the blades I keep in a little purple box in my sock drawer.
You told me you wanted to cut that tension,
Tear our preventative electrical wire to shreds
So you could reach my lips.
But then you left.
Five days of me without you,
Me determining ways I could destroy our barrier,
Thinking up the different speeds I could run into your arms,
You mingling the crowds in a far away place,
Feeling the lips of another girl.
And you had the audacity to tell me,
To be proud of your endeavors in lust,
Not thinking twice about your words to me.
I don’t forget words.
Especially yours.

You said my name today
And it brought me back to life.
It snapped me out of panic,
A state of complete and utter disorientation.
Your voice among a sea of screams
Scattered all my insecurities among the shadows.
I never realized how six simple letters
Could sound so much like a symphony,
With the beautiful hum of the bass
And the quaint flutter of the winds.
You woke me from my thoughts of sleep,
Though I can’t tell if they’re dreams or nightmares
When you’re in them.

Do you see my gate?
It’s closed –
With metal rods blocking any entrance, any break in.
Oh, but the gaps –
With places where you could reach in and grab my hand,
Saving me from the loneliness of forever.
You could open my gate, but you’re choosing not to.
Why?

Dreary raindrops drip
Racing down the window
Blurring my sight of the world.
We’re moving now –
Unless that’s just the world
Spinning around me,
Trapping me in its tornado of uncertainty.
Or maybe I’m the one spinning,
Going out of control
With no sight of what is right or real,
Hair flying like a madman’s
Whipping through the cold air
And the bright white gusts,
As I attempt to keep up my defenses
Against everything else caving in.

I am a white, Jewish girl from Florida.
Hit me.
Hit me with your white girl jokes,
Your Jewish American Princess stereotypes.
I will giggle and squeal right along with you.
Because yeah,
I do order white chocolate mocha frappuchinos from Starbucks,
I Instagram pictures of my nails,
I take selfies, whiten my teeth, straighten my hair,
Shop at Forever21 and drink Naked Juice like it is my job.
Yeah, my daddy buys me things,
I don’t pay for my data plan,
There’s no way in hell I would drive a sedan,
I wear Nike shorts and avoid any nearby cameraman,
And let me tell you, I love jamming out to old school Britney Spears.
Hit me one more time, because none of that means I am any less intelligent,
Any less diligent,
Any less likely to face judgment
Than any other slice of diversity around me –
I am a white, Jewish girl
My nose is not its own cartoon,
I eat bagels (but I absolutely hate lox),
I’m not tan or even the least bit tinted,
And god knows I don’t wear Uggs.
Tell me I need to get married young,
Major in business,
Wear clothes that leave me airless,
Get some of that European gracefulness,
But don’t tell me I’m dumb.
Don’t tell me I’m not thoughtful.
I’m a white girl.
Take a glance at my resourcefulness,
Understand my goals of being ambitious,
Get rid of your own stereotype-inducing cockiness,
And notice me in all of my flawlessness.
Because I am a white girl,
And I am unique, strong, inventive,
Empowered, passionate, adventurous,
Indomitable, unbeatable.
I am an individual –
Not part of some whole that you put me in to stabilize your mold,
Not the example of a societally scatterbrained ***** meant to be your centerfold,  
Not a previously worn-out piece of clothing thrown to the gutter unsold,
Rather a human being of my own rules and my own morals
A human being with ideas and intelligence and power,
A white, Jewish girl,
A person.

Whenever I taste your sweet menthol on my lips,
I inhale the desirable into my lungs,
And I exhale the tragic out of my soul.
But in reality, I breathe in death disastrously,
Filling myself with chances of possibility,
Artful ideas of being successful and extraordinary,
Forgetting any remnants of how I feel honestly,
With wishes to destroy every lightweight dandelion seed
I planted within myself, easily whisked away by a breathless wind,
Pushing my inner horizon farther and farther down the skyline.
Every minty swirl of hazy exhaustion I release
Finds me additional pieces to my jigsaw masterpiece
Countless shapes and sizes available for me to lease
But only one is correct and allows me to cease
My everlasting journey to find what I need.
A finger flick on a flame lights up my brain,
Igniting passionate affection for creativity,
For building up my future full of sovereign devotion
To assurance and indisputable positivity undarkened,
A clear-cut, twinkling vision of self-affirmative action,
Establishing a reality only seen in my dreams, me, chosen.
I always view the future haphazardly,
If I’m not a scientist what the hell will I be?
I just want to do is create and inspire and explain me
Looking through scopes and writing down numbers is not enticing
And I need some sort of stimulus to keep my body sane and happy.
My whole life I’ve wanted to make an impact, a change
Just now I know how that’s going to make way,
I want to write, express, let others know they’re not alone,
And if that is unsettling, I’ll just let your mind be blown.
My ever-expansive appetite craves for adventure,
I yearn for travel, for maps, for experience, new cultures
The globe is my home and I want to unlock every door
So my thirst will be unsatisfied until you give me the key for more.
Now I’m not trying to move mountains, stop war,
I just ask for a peaceful border, for safe travel and legal cigars.
Our society is mesmerized with beauty and love
But we lack the propensity to settle down and be content with ourselves
And if we can’t covet ourselves, who are we to judge?
She’s a little sad, he doesn’t curse,
Who is anyone to say that they aren’t worth a poetic verse?
Without a simple change to the way we perceive, we’re held back –
We, ourselves, block the borders to love and to peace,
Gunning down possibility,
Wearing away the concept of wholeheartedly,
Only accepting work done effortlessly,
Forgetting the importance of personality,
Living systematically,
Mathematically,
Temporarily.
We need change.
Escape the man-made Inferno of what we call society,
Climbing up the ladder of knowledge and inquiry and creation
Until we reach the omniscient sun and the moon,
To the stars and beyond.

I never thought I would be that girl,
That girl who hikes so high up a mountain
And forgets to bring water, or any vitality,
That gets so lost among the trees,
Loses footing on the off-beaten path that
She attempts to break forewarnings to travel.

That never thought she would go this crazy,
Insane enough to pick all the petals
Off every flower in the field lining the street,
Knowing in her heart and in her logical mind,
That she was just killing flowers
Because she knew he loved her

Not.

Don’t you dare take pity on me.
I am what I am,
And I am because of myself.
My choices, my actions, my feelings, me.
I am not your responsibility
I don’t need you to fix me
I don’t want you to repair all of my tendons,
Replace all of my broken bones,
Stitch up all of my scars.
The joke’s on you, boy,
Because you can’t anyway,
And you’ll never be able to.
I don’t need you to protect me
I don’t want you to comfort me
All I want is for you to tell me the truth –
Is that really so much to ask?
Give me one simple answer,
Make yourself transparent for one ******* second.
Explain one feeling, recite one moment –
Anything with me that wasn’t a lie.
I opened up to you, told you things from the depths of my fears,
And you destroyed me.
So go take your dismal pity,
And save it for your own poems.
I don’t even think I want you to love me anymore.

But I need you to.

I want you to want me
And you say you really do
But I know your words are lies
Just told to make me feel beautiful.
You feel for me not what I feel for you
So I understand your reasoning -
Why would you choose me,
A daisy in a field of roses?

Do you ever hug your pillowcase,
Face down, eyes searing through the light colored cotton
Like you’re trying to see through the fabric,
Looking for a reflection into your own head,
Searching for some peace of mind within you?
Peace of mind.
The one thing we all need the most, crave the most
All everyone says is keep looking, keep trying
It will come eventually -
*******.
So the search for serenity continues
It’s gotta be somewhere out there, right?
All that results is overthinking
Thoughts spinning out of control,
And consuming your entire mind.
And now it’s 4am and it stings in the shower
And I’m sorry if you understand that
Because it means you know exactly what I’m talking about.
I’m wondering about you
Wondering why this isn’t working,
Like when we’re sitting together,
You and me at dinner, and you won’t look up.
Is your phone prettier than my face?
I’ll never really ask because, yes,
I am that shy girl I sometimes refer to.
So I’ll keep on searching for answers to my questions
But the problem is that the answers are not inside my wrist
So I’m just going to hug my pillowcase some more,
Thinking about you, thinking about us
Letting the pain seep deeper into my heart.
It hurts because it matters.
And yes, I might wonder too much,
But I’m so obsessed with finding someone to love me
Because I can’t love myself.

And now it’s 5am, and I should probably go to sleep
So I can look okay when I see you in the morning.

You made me crave the fall –
One so hard, so unrecoverable,
So permanent, that I could not avoid an end.
I want to jump from a twelve-story tower,
Shattering my head on the hard cement,
Or leap from the highest bridge in this city,
Detonating my body in the freezing river.
I want to take a nap on the railroad tracks,
Finding eternal rest on the slim metal rods,
Or starve my system clean of your toxins,
Carving frailty into my bones so they simply snap.
I want to sleep on the shore in the winter,
Being dragged out to sea to embrace its calm,
Or slice myself open, to let you slowly ebb out,
Draining my being free and erasing me of you.
Most of all, I just want to cry, cry, cry,
Drowning in tears and disappearing forever -
Making it clear that you pushed me down
And forced me into an abominable free fall.

I never thought this would happen again
This feeling, this darkness -
I knew it would come, consume me
Making me crave everything I had given up.
It has once again latched onto my back
Digging its terrorizing claws into my skin
Scratching, bleeding, scarring,
Creating marks that will forever remain.
No matter how much I treat them,
How long I keep them covered,
No one, no matter how hard they try,
Can see the effects you leave -
Because all of these cuts are directly on my heart.

Something has been planted deep within me,
Oh so deep, I can feel it molding to my soul
So powerful it pounds to the beat of my heart.

Something has been forming within me,
Only it bends and folds and twists to your voice
Say something, anything – catalyze its creation.

Something has been growing quickly within me,
Opening my eyes to the power of your smile
Smug yet shy, crippling my awareness of its emergence.

Something has developed within me,
Operating both my mind and my heart
Shoving past my bones and crawling to your being.

Most girls my age
Make a wish at 11:11.
They wish for Prince Charming
Or to travel to romantic places
And they look for good and happiness.
But I, on the other hand,
Used to wish for the bad and scary –
That is, if I thought a wish was worth it at all.
I used to wish for cancer, or a crashed car
Anything that would make those with experience
Hate my very existence
Almost as much as I did.
11:11 meant a time for tears –
Because I was someone who didn’t care,
Someone who didn’t want a future –
What would I wish for?
A slow, painful death at times
A quick, painless one at others.
Everything around me was gone at 11:11 –
Family and friends and love and future –
My surroundings were a fuzzy white screen,
A television without signal,
With no goal, or hope even, for repair.
It is 11:11 once again,
And though I’ve been “fixed,”
I haven’t taken help in days,
Avoided my chemical necessities.
I don’t want any repair, readjustments
Or the liberation of love and romance.
The only thoughts running through my head
Are jumbled and insane,
As I rack my brain for a new wish,
But I realize I am too late;
It is now 11:12, and slowly I remember
I just made the same wish as before.

Nervousness sets in
As I await the news
And doctors disagree
About their medical muse.

Confusion swarms high
As answers are not clear
And possibilities come to my mind
Cancer and tumors, the greatest fear.

Anxiety bubbles up
As the next appointment comes
And I don’t know what I want;
My thoughts are going numb.

Sometimes I think the possibilities of health are shrinking
And then I realize… that’s just wishful thinking.

Uncertainty bubbles within me
Confusion haunts even my deepest thought
Rejection lingers in my heart and soul
And sadness makes my vision distraught.

Sleep no longer comes easy
Dreams are vivid and whatnot
Questions await their partners in crime
While I try to recall a single moment we fought.

Glances slowly shrink away to peeks
Fingertips curl into anxious knots
A head nod or some symbolizes hello
As we realize that mutualism cannot be bought.

Make up your mind, oh, anytime now
For my heart beats, I don’t know much longer how.

I feel a pounding
Strong, like the beat of a bongo drum
It’s in my ears, my heart, my blood
The feeling pulsing through my veins
And it is burning, it’s scorching my insides.
It’s in my fingers, my bones, my toes
Getting closer, closer, almost there
But where, I don’t know.
My eyes close, the pounding fades, it stops.

It’s lost, that feeling
But still so **** loud
Deafening my every nerve
To the point where I feel nothing
Where, who, why is this sound apparent?
Boom, boom, boom, gone!
I can feel the vibrations now
I sense a new knowledge,
My awareness has peaked –
That sound, that awful ******* sound,
Bashing my heart and my brain into shards
Is coming from Hell,
Which I now find is right inside me.

Look into my eyes, tell me, tell me
Don’t you know? Don’t pretend
The fire, the fury, the pain
Drunken calls for help, all truth
Drugged pleas for you, all real
Help me, you’re the one
Not the one that I want, but I need
Only your savior can release me
Release me from the pain, the AGONY
The terror, the tears, the trials
Everything unpleasant, anything awful
Death, blood, dreams, lies
Lies to myself, to you, to everyone
Lies about me, you, everything
You know the truth, tell me the truth
Why won’t you tell me the truth?
It can save me, it will save me
Because the lies are sending me away
Deeper and deeper into the dark abyss
Where monsters can grab me, strip me
They’ll infiltrate me, my soul
I will be destroyed externally
Almost as destroyed as I am inside.
A destruction so pure, so thorough
That I’ll never be fixed – no, not ever
I’ll be gone forever, forever
And not even your memories, your pleas
Can bring me back, because I’ll be strong
I’ll finally be strong, I’ll be invincible
And you’ll never be able to find me
Never able to bring me back.
Now is your only chance,
Your last chance, for good.

My fingernails, long and sharp
Hover over my skin, gliding over
The nooks and crannies hidden within.


I press down, hot water burning me
As I scratch and scratch the dirt
And the residue that you left.

The ashes on my skin are permanent,
Fixated forever by your touch,
Glued unto me by the adhesive of your name.

No matter the amount of water poured over,
Or the roughness of the washcloth against my body,
I cannot scrub your name off of my heart.

They tell you that running is good for you
Cleanses the body, detoxifies the soul.
But when you are running around and around in your mind
The thoughts lapping one another yet never reaching the finish line

It's tiring

And no matter how supreme your physical stamina
It is incredibly easy to be drained of all the energy
Stored in your thighs
From a few slices of bread.

My body is a temple
So only I can destroy it
And that I do,
With every imaginable resource.
I want to wither away,
To melt, to break
Into a million little pieces
So that one day, a child on the street
Will find a piece of me
And think it’s his lucky day.
Or maybe I could flow in the wind
Weightless, part of a fluffy cumulus cloud
Above everyone whole on the ground,
Traveling on great adventures.
Pieces of me will go to outer space,
Where I can look down on mankind
And explore the lives unknown;
Yet, pieces will stay right at home,
The rightful place where I fell apart,
So that everyone who tried to help,
Tried to keep me together,
Can have a token of an attempt
To prevent the creation of a memory.

They’re back, these ghosts
That haunt my every move,
These demons that massacre
My every living thought.
First they whisper, sweet little melodies
Into my ear, telling me wrongs.
Second they chatter, annoying voices
Back and forth in my brain,
Then they yell, irresistible orders
Straight to my nervous system,
And last they scream, over and over
Unconquerable and invincible.
The voices are killing me,
Slowly but surely and undeniably.
They don’t want me to experience
All the wonderful moments of the future
Or the unchangeable moments of now.
But most of all, the demons want me;
They want me to become one of them,
Destroying good and creating bad
To ****** soulful beings like myself,
Especially myself,
And hurt everyone around me in the process.

One finger is all it takes
To shoot a gun, loaded
With the tiniest bullet in the world.
The kind of ammunition that kills –
Slowly.
It latches onto your skin,
Seeping in, unseen and invisible
Spreading to your bones, your veins
Diffusing into your bloodstream,
Undetected until the blood pours out.

I’m staring directly into the barrel,
At the point where I see nothing
And though I can’t see inside,
I can see into the future.
Where I can see that a single finger –
Even the smallest one –
Is strong enough to pull the trigger.
The gun is cocked, ready to be shot
And the one thing that is holding it back
Is a mystery.