does your skin ever melt into the mirror
do your palms ever reach the other side
will these reflections ever make sense
ever feel familiar
ever seem right
whole
on purpose

do you find yourself, one day
staring back, unsurprised
thinking, i know her well
able to plaster her on billboards and
not shiver with questioned identity

because i am terrified
i’ll never look like the person
i hope to see when i squeeze my eyes shut

will they ever open

there are ladybugs crawling all over my mother’s house
or maybe it’s my stepfather’s house
or my brother and sister’s house
it’s someone’s house, it’s not mine
there are ladybugs scaling the window panes
and upside down, polka-dotted carcasses
lining the kitchen floor
the faucet is dripping
it has been for years
you dream of growing up in a house with a
fireplace in the living room
you forget that you might live there with people who
won’t fix it
they grow cold instead
they throw cardboard boxes over the side of the front porch
and pungent trash bags into a rusting and dented trunk
the basement is unfinished, filled with dead mice
and god knows what else
the washer trembles when it’s off balance
it won’t stop till you rearrange the soaking threads
there’s a yard full of untrodden grass

it looks so large and whole from the outside

but there are holes in the walls
the size of doorknobs and fists

i would really like to go home

a small, fading hickey on my left
breast
reminds me that
you’re
the
best
even when i’m picking my face
in front of a ***** bathroom mirror
shirtless and un-showered and smelling of
cat ****
you’re the best
even when you’re the worst
even when you scream and criticize and
bleed
you are trying and you’re human and
you
see
me
you’re the best
because you care enough to grab my hand and
hold it
when you see that i’m digging my fingernail
into the side of my thumb
you’re the best
you leave marks on my chest
because i told you that i liked it once,
forever ago

i was going to write you a poem listing
all of the things i wasn't for you; things
that i know you'll find in some other girl.
but i couldn't find the words.

i hope the next girl you love is someone
you can't begin to describe because she is
everything you never knew you wanted.

i hope she's everything and more.

I haven’t written you a love song,
not from any lack of romance
for you color my skies with your eyes
and your lips flood my mind with irrational thoughts.
I often write of made up lullabies shared over nights we haven’t had,
or some imaginary girl falling for this made up guy,
that doesn’t sound anything like you or me.
I don’t know what stills my lips
when trying to write of the night skies we’ve shared,
for they are the most beautiful ones I’ve seen.
I think it may be because,
even if I wrote with the most complex and beautiful language
it would never do you, or the days we spent
watching movies in the back of my truck, any justice.
Our love is messy and incomprehensible
mainly because I still can’t translate what I feel
when your hands brush against mine, gently yet with excitement,
as if there were magnets in them that just had to connect with mine.
It’s not poetic, it’s cheesy, and messy,
but it’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.
So please take this convoluted attempt to work out my feelings,
as your love song, my confusing, jumbled, and truthful ode to you,
the muse to all the fantasies I write.

i grew up in a house full on constant noise
9 am conversations over breakfast
noon games in the living room
the kids playing in the afternoon
loud dinners with more talking than eating
movie nights with added commentary
bed time giggles
sisters talking through their sleep
there was never a quiet moment growing up, no alone time, but there was so much peace
maybe now i can't spend afternoons alone in my apartment because those days don't feel like anywhere is home
i'd rather be with anyone, hearing any noise possible at any time of the day
than to spend moments in pure silence