chrysanthemums grow underneath your skin and when you cut it, they bloom.

this is why initially, it feels good.

but after constant exposure to sunlight and air pollution and noise, the scars fade and the flowers begin to die.

so do yourself a favor and protect the hidden   treasure that is a garden -

put down the razor.

certain things are best kept unseen.

I want to
sleep with you in the most innocent possible way.

I want to lay my head in your lap or perhaps yours in mine and I want to nod off until you tell me let's go, it's time for bed. I want to walk to your room half asleep and plop down on your king sized bed and fall asleep immediately. I want you to rearrange me so that I am underneath the white linen comforter and I eventually hog all of the blankets. I want you to finally settle down and move in close to me, closer than should be humanly possible. I want you to bury yourself in my hair and wrap your arms around my waist as you feel me breathe ocean currents.  I want to wake up in the middle of the night and wake you up and tell you that I love you and you'll reply I love you too groggily. I'm going to kiss your cheek and lay close to you.

I wish I could write about you but there is no you.

I wish I could sink into your ribcage and infiltrate your lungs so you can't breathe in anything but me. I wish I could trace the lines in your palms where the earth separated millions of years ago. I wish I could feel your heartbeat as sporadic as lightning. I wish I could hear your laugh as rhythmic as the chirping of birds. I wish I could love your irregularities but there is no you.

you were the one that taught me that people never change

no matter how many years you give them and how often the setting changes and how many new people they've met

people never change.

you broke my heart and you kept on doing it and I realized

I will never change

I'll keep loving you.

I will never change.

I want to be hugged and I want to fit inside your arms the way a letter fits inside an envelope and I want you to close me and keep me away for yourself and never mail me bc I'm for your eyes only.

I wish your mouth could meet mine once more so I could feel those fireworks I feel whenever I kiss someone. you must walk around w sparklers under your tongue bc I almost dynamited when we kissed. I swear I felt my eyebrows singe. you're something like a spectacular phenomenon that doesn't occur enough to be ignored-you demand recognition and im proud to give it to you.

you've found a home inside of my head and no matter how hard I try, I can't get you to move out.

perhaps i fall in love so often
is because the days i felt incapable of such emotion
were always the most frightening.

SEARCH** for her eyes in every room. you'll find them and forget why you stopped looking at them in the first place.
LISTEN for her giggle everywhere you go. you'll hear it and forget why you didn't spend all of your time making her laugh.
TOUCH HER and you'll soon forget why you didn't spend all of your time intertwined with her body.

i would write about you all the time if only i was competent enough to form complete thoughts after looking into your eyes
to try to describe you would be like trying to describe how water tastes-nearly impossible-yet i try anyways.

i would find solace in your hugs if you'd let me in long enough
and i'd inject your venom kisses straight into my heart.

I WAS INTOXICATED LOOKING INTO HER EYES

I HAD TO BE

ID NEVER BEEN ABLE TO MATCH SOMEONES GAZE BEFORE HER

IDK IF I LIKE HER EYES BC THEY RESEMBLE HONEY
OR IF I LIKE HONEY BC IT RESEMBLES HER EYES

EITHER WAY HER EYES WERE TWICE AS SWEET AND 4X HARDER TO ESCAPE

she moved in at around 2 in the morning. I had a new roommate. I woke up groggily after hearing voices and tried to shape her with my eyes but I couldn't make out much. I went back to sleep.

next morning I woke up and saw her. cream soda colored eyes....to die for. we spoke maybe a sentence and then I left the room. I'd always contemplated what it would be like having a girlfriend in a mental hospital.

all day we went through counseling groups along w other girls but I kept searching for her hazel eyes.

we spoke to each other and pretended as if we annoyed each other (flirting) and I was having fun w this girl.

it was nighttime and we were in the room, still flirting. she was given medicine and was acting particularly goofy. we were both being obnoxious and messing w each other. I said something like 'shutup' and she came close to me, talking trash. our faces were inches apart. I made it a point to stare at her lips...cotton candy. we sat there for a minute just staring in silence until I moved closer to her. I expected her to then move the rest of the way so our lips would touch but she just stayed there staring so I went in for the kiss. her lips.... we kissed again and then moved on as if nothing had happened. I had to have her.

she kept coming over to my bed, climbing over me and getting in my face, and I kept grabbing her neck and kissing her. I had to. I'd be a fool if I didn't. she was beautiful.

at one point things were getting heavy and she warned me that once she was revved up she could not stop. that made me even hungrier. not before she gave me the most vibrant hickie of my life, she said she had to stop or she'd have me right then and there.

the night went on.

I got discharged from the hospital the next day and I replied to the note that she had written me earlier ('since I'm a bit mad at you right now I guess I'll just write it. I like you a lot.....') and I told her that I liked her too.

our last kiss was the most painful.

his fingers fit in the spaces between her ribs as if they were meant to be and as she buried her head in his lap he traced her elongated spine w a feather-like touch. he grabbed on to her collarbones as if he was about to climb the steepest mountain and he almost felt them shatter underneath his clutch. her wrists were diminutive. sometimes he did nothing but touch her bc even if she suddenly disappeared, he'd be there with her.

I care a lot about what others think
which is why
  I put up with so much ****.

people can say what they want
about me and
I just end up laughing.

in actuality
I take everything to heart
   and I always end up getting hurt

I'm afraid that if
   I defend myself, I'll be labeled as a
     ***** and no one will like me.

I'm used to being pressured
and doing what people tell me to
   despite how I feel

I'm tired of caring and I'm tired of being so spineless.

tired and uninspired.

my poems have become frail and meaningless much like the 'i love yous' you spat at me daily. much like the old love letters you kept in that box. much like a dollar bill after being machine washed too many times. much like the promises we'd never carry out on.


some things get worse over time.

find something that you are willing to die for and sit back and watch it take years off of your living span.

find someone that youd **** yourself for and sit back and watch them hand you the noose that youll hang yourself with.

the things that youd **** for and the things that youd die for are perhaps the most important.

when words cannot fill the empty void of your notepad. sentence fragments and run-on sentences. being at a loss for words not bc of shock or depression, but bc your brain seems to shut down when you need it the most. you just wanted to write a poem but you realize that even you let yourself down when it comes to something as simple, as second nature you thought stringing some words together was.

for once in my life I am not the needy, but the needed.

the panic attacks are more frequent and the tears seem to flow continuously. I could probably produce enough salt water to house some sea creatures.

I'd never been this low before. I guess the pressure of my thoughts pressed hard enough to drop me to my knees.

I. I've heard that attaining happiness is as easy as waking up and saying 'I want to be happy.' I can't even bring myself close to accomplishing this and I'm starting to think that I don't want to get better.

II. for as long as I can remember my mind and my heart have always stood in opposition with each other and every decision I made would be followed by regret. I won't be able to succeed if both exist at once so maybe I'll be even more successful if I hit a vein and neither of them exist anymore.

III. I've always felt reluctant towards change which is probably why i can't just decide to be happy. I've found comfort in the depression and now I can't look elsewhere.

IV. if it was up to my heart I would have been happy years ago. if it were up to my brain I'd "know too much" to be happy.

I should probably be mine before I am anyone else's.
but I cannot help but be undoubtedly yours.

extremely volatile and bright. I rule the nighttime and am full of craters and empty holes. people try to but will never understand me so they just sit and admire my luminescence. I am forever changing form. I'm easy to admire from a distance
but coming too close could be potentially dangerous to your wellbeing.

i want to go back to eating 500 calories a day

and i want to go back to bloodied rags and jagged scars

and i want to go even further back to heart palpitations and that acidic aftertaste you get when you're done

i know for a fact that i am my own oppressor.

a writer puts a sentence into the world.

*a poet puts the world into a sentence.

I won't be done with you until you realize that YOU, baby, you inhale dark matter and exhale constellations of tremendous proportion and people look forward to trying to understand you and people look for you every night. although they may try to name you, they will never possess you and they'll never fully comprehend your massive impact but they will try to and i am simply here to help them figure you out.

relapse

she got used to writing about his eyes, the color of bath water and how she wanted to bathe in them, the poet's cliché.

until he left her and she realized they weren't pale purple or pale blue or translucent: they were stormy gray like a volcano with a flaring red rim similar to lava. each blink brought upon an eruption of mass proportions and he cried dark ashes.

you kissed my neck and I began to seep into a pile of hot candle wax; melting and hardening all the while. you cleaned me up and tried to mold me into what I once was but I knew that I would never be the same candle that warmed you up. when I am with you my fire seems to flicker with a certain nervousness and then you kiss my neck and I begin to fall apart once again.

i wish he could read all the poems I've written about him and i wish he could drown in all the tears I've cried due to him and i wish he could feel all the emotions I've felt because of him. i wish he was conscious of all of the things he has done for me but he won't ever be, so for now I'll just hug him tighter and kiss him longer.

will i have to go deaf in order for you to tell me that you love me?

your first love will leave you comparing your other relationships for the rest of your life.

you could pour milk in the space between her collarbones and if you hung on tightly enough you could probably climb down her sternum straight into her heart. her spine felt like a column of marbles and showed through any shirt she'd wear. she was as see-through as glass and her veins were electric blue and grassy green, although you could find violet variations of red and purple bruises upon her arms. she smiled anemic teeth and her eyes were pacific ocean blue with the churning of bleached waves.
she breathed dull and sporadically.

she had pots of blooming sunflowers on her windowsill and she bathed in hot baths of green tea
every night she prayed to the moon that it would stay a little longer past his curfew.
celestial bodies hung from her ears and her dainty wrists and she painted the outline of her veins with watercolor

lightning strikes and leaves behind fulgurites the same way that you imprint scars on my heart similar to the ones on my arms.

you found me in a plight and I found you in a bar.

I don't think this is love
I would never agree to doing any of this with anyone else and even though I kept saying no you kind of went on anyway and your tongue seeped acid as it climbed up my neck and it felt great

I've always experienced 'love' over state lines and divisions of area yet when the distance between us was but 2 inches it seemed that our love shifted shape

what was love? was it your tongue beating against mine or your hands lowering down my body as we hugged? was it me wanting to drown myself in your presence or me trying my hardest to please you while keeping promises to myself?

love is strange in that some days I am completely head over heels for you and others I want nothing to do with you.

I never really felt that anyone loved me but they were great at spewing words of artificiality. after a while you stop believing it but you appreciate the effort.

I used the word love too early in life and I've heard so many forevers that they lost their sparkle and they mean nothing

I change course everyday which is probably why I can't keep up.

my thoughts are moving at the speed of sound,
the speed of light
and they never slow down.
I can't seem to grasp pleasant thoughts, for they escape me too fast. I tend to catch the bad ones and exercise them to death.

I used to believe in catharsis in that the razor running across my thigh was simply an extension of the paintbrush across the canvas.  the blood was just tangible emotions dripping off of my razor, my paintbrush. "art" was painful but it was there for me no matter what.

I long ago disproved any theory of me fitting into a mold. I don't think any mold is deep enough to fit everything that comes with me. the day that they find such a mold will be the day i fully understand myself.

they'll never find it.

light you on fire and inject you into my veins, per diem

I'll never forget you.

I'll end up spending the rest of my life chasing a high slightly comparable to the trips you took me on

I don't think that you could ever fathom the fact that being dope sick was unnervingly pleasant compared to trying to live a day without you

you drove me to rehab and didn't even park.

you weren't supposed to pick up shattered glass, it leaves cuts on your fingers.
and you aren't supposed to get attached to someone that's broken because you'll never know them as a whole.
nobody told me that the devil was once an angel and that to trust someone is to allow them to crush you in the slowest possible way.
nobody told me that you shouldn't chase hurricanes or that humans love to destroy themselves getting caught up in something they can't control.
nobody ever told me what infinity was and that 'forever' usually lasted about a month.
nobody told me that humans can only live a couple days without nourishment but can withstand a lifetime without love.

and as far as fate goes,
they werent supposed to meet.

they were parallel lines going on forever,
paths never to have crossed.

when they say 'dark energy',
one of the most mysterious phenomena in the solar system,
i swear
they are referring to the aura i recieve from you

when you see me thinking, perhaps i am worried about the cosmos
and the eventual explosion of eta carinae
or maybe
black holes defying physics and swallowing light
sometimes im pondering
the destruction of the atmospbere due to
gamma ray bursts
and the radiation left over from the cosmic microwave background
however,
what i spend most of my time thinking about is perhaps the most beautiful form of destruction of all time:
you.

she never understood how earth's gravitational pull got to be exact

yet the stars couldn't align fast enough for you to text her back

perhaps imprinting this razor into my thigh could be considered "grieving"
as you lying down in bed all day weeping
and perhaps my means of adjustment more productive
in that afterwards I could arrange a fake smile upon my face and move along
while you stay in that same place all day
(on those 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets)
listening to that same song
although both our mental states as shattered as broken plates after the plate tectonics broke underneath that chestnut oak
in oakland

all she ever knew was tear stained journals and empty ink pens
so you can only imagine what went through her head
when she found you

my pen
is running out of
ink
and i think
that may
symbolize
more than
my inability
to
write