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 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.

I look up into the beaming sun
With bright, shining blue eyes
And I can see through the arising grey curtain
That more thunder is forthcoming.

I stare at the movement around me
Yet I don’t see anything at all
And the smell of the taunting dew haunts me
With the knowledge of newness and cleansing for others.

I feel the water dripping down my face
But I do not know where I am
And the pebbles piercing tires in the street
Fail to drain through the specially placed holes in the curb.

I taste the mud and the drops of desire on the tip of my tongue
As I gasp with relief, the sky clears
And I am blinded by the sun
Yet almost immediately, drought and desire return again.

I tried to write a poem today
but then I realized
I don’t feel anything.

I am numb.

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.

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.

One step onto the sidewalk is a burst of fresh air inside my lungs
As I feel the explosion of feeling provoking expression
The possibilities just around the corner are waiting
Like a passerby anxiously waiting to cross the street
Hectic intersections before the destination
The objective? A trace of importance, matter

Eyes dart around like gnats, testing the waters
Frightened thoughts **** and pearly white teeth flash
Nervousness pervading through the crowds
A performer’s opening act
Creating a new era
An unknown journey’s dawn

The first breath on Earth
Expectations
Happiness
Future
Hope

A scared, sad little girl arose from her seat
At the dinner table, where thoughts went off beat.
Her plate empty, her stomach full,
And a brain filled with plans
To become a perfect little girl.

So she slowly sunk back to her room
Laid down on her bed, dark thoughts abloom.
Surrounded by the evil voices in her head,
And despite the howls and the screeching sounds,
Those terrible thoughts, she could not shred.

When she later arose with a tear-stained face,
She stalked to the sink, and gripped onto its base.
A glance in the mirror, a monster she saw,
With tiny seeds of self-love and self-hate
And out came that dinner, once and for all.

Eventually invisibility was all anyone could see
As she withered away, she was happy as could be.
Our beauty now lives with a broken mind, body, and soul,
But because of her secret no one shall know,
She forever has a heart full of sadness and holes.

secrets
the tiny little monsters
living in between joints and those spaces under your fingernails
toxic
demolishing everything in their paths
tearing down buildings
digging up roads
destroying living souls

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I know that this is wrong, our bodies intertwined so;
But when my leg touches your leg,
And your leg touches my leg,
Even the sharpest strike of lightning could in no way
Ignite the fire that the friction of our skin creates.
Why must there be only twelve numbers on the clock?
For our time of now has been cut short, snipped by
The scissors of Fate, and only one thread remains to determine
If we shall ever meet again.

The tousled blanket and the pillow falling off the bed
Are the only remaining evidence of our existence;
Yet when I make the bed at dawn,
I will flatten the sheets,
I will straighten the pillows,
and I will bid you goodbye.
And as I sit here alone, the door locked until time persists,
I remember the volcanic essence of our nights together -
The way your touch sends shivers down my spine -
And the whiteness of your eyes coming at me from the darkness of your face.

Now that we have parted and the holy aura from our bodies gone,
My brain can only feel the chemicals left by your aroma.
Nothing remains but the memory of scorching breaths and sticky arms
As well as the feeling of your smooth bicep lying across my bare chest -
The story of two star-crossed lovers with a finale seemingly as tragic.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My nails get shorter
My eyes get wider
My smile gets duller
My skirt gets tighter
Leaves fall
Flowers wilt
Children call
Pictures tilt
Questions arise
Seats empty
The wedded despise
No one’s free
It has the ultimate power
To ruin lives and love
It increases every ******* hour
And burns our skin from above
Guns are built
Trees are uprooted
Blood is spilt
Cries come from the new kid
No one can win
It all ends in a tie
It’ll crack our heads in
So get ready to die.

you are the smoke flowing out of my lungs,
the cigarette burns on my heart.

heart racing, blood rushing -
burning holes in my veins.

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

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.

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.

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.