i take my first bite,
smile because
i am about to
mar something whole.
it sits against my tongue,
hard palate freezing,
ice cream melting,
strawberry crushed to pulp.
cream goes down my throat.

i take a second bite,
wait like the first time,
get impatient, chew—
seeds get stuck in my teeth.
a third bite, a fourth,
fifth, pause—
hover and hesitate.
the air is cold
against my lips.

i bite—strawberry,
cream, seeds, ice, oh—
i hit wood.

i wonder if it’d be cold against my neck
or if it’d be hot, or if i’d have to heat it just to be sure.
i wonder if it’d be as comfortable as sleeping,
but nothing’s as comfortable as sleeping:
as dreaming, as breathing, as thinking of being—
as being nonliving and no longer breathing.
so i doubt i’ll ever hang myself because to be fair,
the dead can breathe no air.

once bitten twice shy,
and now i hold no illusions why
the planet comes to love
as much as is taken by;
and the dawn surmises
but burns and rots,
and the tree begets
unthinking thought—
yet here i stand,
again that ***
that called the kettle
black.

you gave me a bite of your lips
and it tasted orange, metal, tin
tingling and downy soft, like toes
against a backdrop of jagged snow
on a plain. you tasted like sweet
e flat on my skin, like smoking
all those marshmallows by the
corner of the roof, bright and burnt.
you tasted like ah, sighing,
you tasted of love.

i can be alone;
i have been alone
for quite some time;
it’s fine, i will be
alone, but
don’t worry.
you don’t have to
pretend,
you don’t have to
stay up,
you don’t have to
console me
when i want to cry—
but thank you anyway.

i think a part of me will
always love being six years old—
love being tiny, unassuming, cold
in my reactions, bowled
over by my peers, told
to be bigger, brighter, better.

i am largely the same now—
but i am no longer six.

no one tells me to
become any bigger
or brighter or better,
being small means being
crushed, and if i am
overlooked, no one cares.

if i were six, this
would sadden me.
but i am no longer six,
i no longer care,
and i am alone in my
acquired apathy.

in my sweaty palm, melting
is medical-pink candy coating.
the pieces click, clack, roll around,
and the generic sugar tastes sweeter
than ever, sweet like a fever, sweet
like smiles under the concrete bridge.

tastes like sweet'n'low piled high in one-
dollar coffee drained in two seconds,
like buttercream frosting smeared
across your arm. tastes of the indoors,
of doors shut, of stale snicker-doodles.
it is sugar that tastes like promises gone far.

when i swallow (that is three, four, twenty more)
i can taste it in the pit of my stomach:
sweet, sweet candy coating masking
the poison, the anodyne, the analgesic—
candy coating to cover all the little scars.

it is dripping
into syrup again,
a bird with
no wings and
no voice
with which to cry

it has only talons
to bend bone
but there are none
so syrup sticks to feathers
and syrup drowns
and a bird is drunken

it bears only a coat
of fledgeling's down
and wants to be nothing

it wants to be nothing

come along with me;
say “love,”
breathe “hello,”
train your ears
on the echoes
of my breathing;
there is no such thing
as running away,
because wherever we go
we are running forward.

hello, i am a
writer, i am happy.
look at me smile.
look at me,
look at me—

no it’s not, you
dumb **** shut up,
you’re worthless,
you’re worthless,
you think you can be happy—

i am sad sometimes.
all the time—
half the time—
my lifetime—
where is the lie?

i am.
i am.
okay, i’ll be fine,
it’s fine,
okay, okay?
okay. yes, yes,
yesyesyes

look at me, i am
worthless stupid
******* amazing
shut up and look,
look at me don’t,

i don’t care i
don’t care i don’t
love you yes i do
i don’t care of course
it’s all i think about

stop stop stop,
don’t look at me,
i am too great,
too great, look,
look, i am on top,
the world is mine—

only in my head
only in my head
only in my head
shut up, shut up,
be quiet, i am tired!

leave me alone.
i don’t want to be alone.
help me be alone,
go away,
please.

please.
please.
please.

[…I don’t know what you mean.]

“I’m sorry, it’s nothing.”

*where is the lie?

syllables tracing periphery,
lips cascading, chasing
the lyrics of one’s soundless
voice gone hoarse with
the melody of a name;
might i perchance remember
the flight of your lashes’
flutter against skin and
flush, hearing my echoes
reverberate along your frame?

i made a promise—
a shackle,
a chain,
a weight to bear—
inked it into my skin,
let it hover
behind my throat;
a secret agreement;
so why do i
feel like my chest
is an eternity
and a fortnight
lighter?

thread my heart through a needle
the size of your pretty words and
turn it around and double knot it;
i see it now: my life in an eye,
ah, sew it up, sew it up,
i don’t want to see this anymore.

played an f sharp when i
should have played an f natural,
and i never heard it, i never
knew it—i played that note
over and over again, one
too many times to begin with.
it was half a step out of line:
half a step off design
half a step, it’s half
just half a step.
and still no one heard it.

this is what it feels like
to hold your life in your hands
and feel beneath your skull
a trigger and stand—

you stand because we all stand,
and we stand because we're living;
i stand because i have it all
but it's hard to keep me breathing

and you can feel your heart beat
to the rubatosis of your fears
that shaking, pounding beat
that no one seems to hear—

that shaking, pounding fear
to feed all of your tears,
that numb and hollow smear
on your heart's inner ear:

because there's nothing quite like
nothing to hold you still in place
when you're shivering and quaking and crying
and lost—drowning—in outer space.

you ever get that feeling—
you know that feeling.
it’s that feeling you get
when you’re sitting in your room,
the lights are off
(or on, it doesn’t really matter)
and suddenly the world

stops

for a second.
your eyes refocus,
but everything’s blurry now,
you can’t breathe,
you’re swimming,
drowning,
flailing through smoke,
sludge—
the emotions
that swell up, in,
out of your chest
in the form of tears.

you know that feeling—
do you know that feeling?
it hurts, and it’s suffocating,
it tells you
“you can’t do it,
you’re a mess,
why are you here,
stop trying, stop
lying to yourself,
it won’t get any better,
you’re a waste of space,

just die.”

i know that feeling.
only it’s not a feeling.
sometimes it’s a state of mind,
a frame of perception,
a weeping shudder
where you want to cry
and you can choose to do so.
but you don’t.
it hurts, doesn’t it?
it tears through you,
doesn’t it?

i don’t know what you feel.

i know what i feel, but
i can’t name it.
there has to be a better word
than “depression,”
because depression
sounds like you’re stuck in a
deep rut with no way out,
and there has to be a way out.
other people have a way out.

and what does it mean to be
“suicidal” anyway?
to me, it’s a reminder—
i have a trigger in my hands,
and i can pull it any time—
but i don’t want to remind myself;
because for me, a reminder means
death,
and while i don’t care for death
i care for disappointment,
and—

i made a promise
and i curse it,
but it’s a promise,
so unless i want a
needle in the eye,
i’ll keep it.

so.

do you know this feeling?
i’d rather you didn’t.
i’d rather you move on with life
never having to know this feeling,
never having to struggle
to get out of bed,
having to suffocate
inside yourself,
having to hate what you are.
and if you do know this feeling,
i hope this is the last of it.
i really hope so.

in the mean time, however,
i’ll be here.
if you ever get that feeling,
again or otherwise,
i’ll be here,
drowning and suffocating,
sinking underwater.
but i’ll be alive.
no matter how much it hurts,
i’ll be alive.

and i’d like to be alive with you.

mondays are my off days,
tuesdays are my sad days;
on wednesdays i can laugh.

thursdays, though, i'll cry,
and fridays are very tiring;
still, saturdays are wonderful,

but sundays i want to die

and the pain unfurls on the ink page like a shuddering scream, a flower so small you can see it only on the tip of a finger held to the sky as if to view a drop of dew. and in the end it grows to such proportions that it begins to stab into the side and just a bit under, and pulls from the very depths of one's chest what once may have been living. and it begins to ache there, see; for this pain here now can only be that which suffocates and feeds on need, on greed, on every smallest insecurity. it binds at the slightest touch of the wind, on the faintest of breaths, and feels love for the first time in the beating of another heart. and it is at this point that the pain which had bloomed so sluggishly, so tenderly, can stand on its own and plunge into its own depths.

and so it is like this that one may wish, perhaps, to end a life of such suffering.

i'm walking on asphalt dreams
and ratty sneakers, and
padding by, a cat—

they say stray cats are fake wild.
i say, do you not see
the taunt in its eyes,

fairy lights unstrung singing
under starry lampposts,
the streak of sinew bunching

pulling me forward the way
the urban sky draws clean
wiped of any scars?

I sat down with my friend one day,
curious, overcast, away—
and I asked him:
“Why do you not tell your children
before they fall to the ground astray?”

Here he turned to me, wise:
“If you were to have a demise,
would you rather know fear
or sail through the sky,
happy and then surprised?"

i wish i could stop being so afraid that you'd leave me—
that you'd stop steeping those [i love you]'s
or that you'd look me in the eye and tell me to die.
but more than that, i'm afraid we'll dissolve into water,
that you'll no longer love me as you do,
that this will finally be the last straw
and i'll be left alone again to drown
underneath the cloying silence.
because i've never felt so alone
as when i finally realized
i've never loved anyone else as dearly as you.

sometimes i cover my ears
even when there’s no sound.
it blocks out the noise,
it blocks out the crowd.
it blocks out the voices
that are getting too loud.
it blocks out the crying
but my fingers are cold;
i’m drowning inside,
it’s too much, i’m strangled.

not all dreams come true;
don’t we all have moments
where we wish for better?
is that the right way to put it?

“don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
i don’t think so;
you’re thinking to yourself,
“I want to die, if only I—

killed myself"? is that
right? will that make everyone
happy? aren’t you glad that
a world like that doesn’t actually exist?

melancholy of a thousand birds
i trace my skin with bitter words—
a shot of black espresso
the darkest burnt shade
of a ****** gone
cold.

oh quick, please pluck
my feathers, i
am dying, dining,
feasting on my
warm remains,
crying.

is it too much to ask?
is this too much for you?
no, you say—
no, you say?
so you say, but
you mean yes.

do you call this commitment?
do you think me a comet,
(commit)
pretending
(do it)
to fall?

sink, slow
down, no,
i can’t take it,
i don’t want to take it,
help me, sorry;
don’t help me, i’m sorry

let me
   fa
      ll

(but promise to catch me)

I read a story I shouldn't have read.
It appeared before me, and my eyes,
suddenly, drew to the inkwell of his
tragedy with its one line eight words.

"I was four when my father hit me."
Like this I waited for him to appear;
I stood at my post, keeping
my gaze from the following prose,

that next stanza of fear—
that biography told in confidence
to one not meant to know,
who sits here now, silent

as a grave.

I asked if he was okay.

the sky in the morning
(early, early, a bit too late)
is pitch black,
a glistening scene—
obsidian and morose—
like an ink stain
on your best dress shirt;
it glimmers,
coyly breathing,
drifting, pulling,
gravity on the mind,
yanking the words
from your brain
like a crow picking
at its dinner,
like an artist
ready to melt
all over a blank canvas,
like a paradoxical thief
robbing you of your
worries and sleep.

i sleep with the moon, the moment
when the sun enters the sky.
there’s an ethereal beauty
to a blue canvas tinged with gray,
where the clouds
recollect themselves
after a long night of introspection.
there is peace.
there is my ending.
sunrise calls just
about every drop of energy
from my veins,
deposits it in my head
and waits until the setting
for it all to come alive again.
night after
night after
night.
good night.

my depression is made of stitches

—of little tears in the patchwork
where the birds nibble away
at the seeds in my heart,
at the emptiness too ****
—what can love here impart?

oh sweetheart, love,
it is not that you are lacking—
your care is not slacking,
my heart is not cracking,
please don’t go packing—

but your love slips through my holes.

there's a lot to feel looking over this sight.
you're so high up and so far down that
here, the sky is a formality and the concrete
might be invisible to your eyes.
like this, something seems to hover in the air.
what it might be and what it would be—
i wonder perhaps if i should care.
as i peer over the edge of the world's bed sheet,
i can see it, yes, the depth i would fall:
six feet under ground, sublimating like alcohol.

One afternoon he awoke
suddenly from a reverie,
and he sat up, hands
on his knees, cried a plea—
“Please, take me back
to a world without me.”

And me, I looked at him,
didn’t frown, didn't stutter,
held his face, met his eyes,
and replied with a shudder—
“Love, it’s me, it’s your mother."

i'd like to fill a shooting star
with paint drops and stir it all
together with the back of a

teaspoon anti-clockwise, and
watch the fragrant fumes lick
the corners and coalesce here;

and when the colors rendezvous like
coffee grinds at the bottom of
my burdened little cup so bitter

i'll sigh and say, "it's done, love,"
it's done and we can drink now,
this liquor of ours made from the clouds.

i wonder if you know how much i think,
how much i dream about you,
dream about your little words
and that dorky laugh too,
about the way you ramble on and on,
on and on until you're gone, gone,
gone. and what a sight you are,
because look at you capture me,
enrapture me in something
i've never known.

you're the farthest star, love, sweetest by far—
all because of these nothings exchanged on the phone.

we're not quite that far in our relationship just yet
but sometimes i roll over and whisper,
"i kind of really love you—just a bit."

my ears are silent
—i repeat—
my ears are silent.
i choked myself today.

poured my ventricles
dry to fill atriums with acid;
my lungs asphyxiated,
i'm dead, i'm quiet

i did my time screaming
and now i'm numb,
i’m deaf and dumb,
i’m sorry you had to see it.

i’m fine,
are words i say to myself
over and over
again.

i’m just tired,
i stress to my friends,
repeating automatically—
on loop.

i’m okay,
i’m alright,
yeah i’m getting sleep—
just a bit tired is all—*

tell me,
when did i become an
automaton, programmed
to lie every time i speak?

hello. it’s been a while, hasn’t it?
i keep forgetting you exist—
pardon me, then again all offense—
but for some reason you stay
at the back of my head.

stop killing me within my chest.
i’m not a toy; you can’t take me
and break me
and hope for the best—
even though i’m probably better off dead.

and i can’t take you anywhere,
can i? you’re the blank spot,
the kettle (***?)
the pink elephant in the room.
no one likes you, so get out—

soon.

i have my whole story ahead of me.
i have to take the next step, build a life,
watch it fail (sorry, your influence
seems to prevail)
but survive. you can’t **** me.

(yeah, sorry, i know you can)

BUT YOU CANNOT CONSUME

(yeah, okay sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry—please,
don’t take me back to the emergency room)

and i have returned to love,
love with its palpitations and
endless trepidations, to love
and for love and by love,
to love for the dove above,
returned to mine heart
that i so cruelly denied,
that left with the passing stars.

is it wrong to feel sadness
for the only sadness you've
known? misery isn't a

*******

competition.

give me a color to
tell me how i’m feeling.
i’m feeling blue, you?
it’s the blue of a moon
on a white july night
with the ink of the sky
trailing out in zip lines.
give me a color and hey,
why do the streets look
best at four in the morning?
i’d like to climb all the trees
and sing the snow wires
if only i could sing, and
if only i could almost see
because these shades
look like splotches to me.

stab me full of holes to
show how empty i am inside
and pour it all into the ocean—

pour it all there but let it sink
to the bottom of the abyss
and maybe, if you wish,

cut me up into bits
and toss them away to where
i’ll be needed, or loved

(or most probably eaten).

i'd like to stick a needle through my neck:
through cartilage and sinew, and leave a speck—
i'd leave a speck so small you'll have to
look real hard and squint your eyes
and get real close to see just why, just why
i can't talk about it anymore.

i am not a poet.
i do not take thoughts,
spin them on the page,
and give them breath
the way a little man
spins gold from straw.

i am not a dreamer.
i do not ponder the stars,
wonder if they cry
or smile or laugh
or if the sheep dreams
of androids and muzzles.

i am not romantic,
with ideals of flowers—
carnations, forget-me-nots,
daisies—or letters of blood
with the alphabet
blazing a hole in the heart.

i am a person;
just that.
just that.

see there? yes, there—
behind the mirror—
no, a bit to the left,
well, go up a bit;
it's under the cloak
and you'll see it if you
peel up the corner some.
it's tiny and crumpled,
about the size of a fist
and maybe just as round,
and weighs a fraction
perhaps shy of three tons.
and it's not really heavy
but for the emotions weighing
and sagging and pulling
it all the way down.
it's why it sinks in my pocket,
see, because it's so heavy.
it's why i'm so scared
to give it to you because
for all i know, it'll slip
from your fingers and smash
into the smallest of pieces.