i never understood how people could
fall in love and stay that way:
once i’m in, i’m banging down the doors
for someone to let me out.

just last week i was writing pretty words
about you, all for you,
how i wish you were by my side and
what i would give to make that wish true.

you’re mine now, and at first
i thought all the loose ends in my life
had finally been *******,
that all my problems would be resolved.

but now i know that those problems
lie in the chambers of my heart,
and nobody, not even you, not even me,
has the power to fix them.

some of my friends have this habit
of waking up with letters on their foreheads
and falling asleep with numbers
on their lips

what happened to
when you grow up,
you can be anything

now people are essentially saying
you lost the right to a future
with your grade on that math test

do you see an L
on my face?

i won't starve just because
i'm not a human
calculator.

there is too much space
on the sides of my face
and sometimes i imagine
slicking it off
someone once told me
that's called "self-hate"
but i traded their terminology in for
"self-improvement"
everytime.

maybe that's why
i think of "hate"
everytime someone asks
about a synonym
for "beauty."

Her heart is an
empty concave space
with nothing beating or
pumping
it's not red with blood and
vessels
instead it's in the palm of
her hand
pale and shrunken
and as much as she
wants it to pump
there's no energy to even
be herself
let alone
save her heart

© Sia Jane

eating breakfast
on a beaten girl's face
she ignites when you take it
she glows in her faith
with gold and blue phalange atop sleekest new marrow
she is clear raincoats and black body polish
she is siamese cats asleep on a windowsill
she is the rusted remains where the ices draw narrow
she is reading rimbaud and drowning brian jones

the swan's neck upper reach
is steady with guilt
engraved with your initials
a monogrammed friese
on white marble quilt

i got in a fight with her daughter
the other day and now it's like
i'm a kid again
and she's the woman
who thinks children should be seen
and not heard

but i should be seen; i need to be heard

i'm going to scream until my throat bleeds.