You didn't know me in the days when I was unstoppable,
back in the days when frenetic energy propelled me
forward and forward and forward and
the weight of everyone else's anger hadn't yet
yoked me. I had enough momentum to keep pulling
for a while. My sorry bones have since been crushed.
An endless parade of people who insisted they
knew better has climbed on my back to reach
new heights. Without fanfare, I got used to sitting
on the floor. These days, you'll find me mourning at
the altar of my wasted youth, picking myself apart
again and again and again, wondering where I lost
the thread. These days, you'll find me flat on my back
in the dirt, reaching lamely for the sky, trying to
remember who I used to be.

I have been trying to extract
Revenge
From my own flesh
Greeting every midnight with the frenzy
Of an immortal who has seen
Too many sunrises
This is mania that
Burns down my throat and
Breathes in my ear and
Bleeds out dizzy secrets in the back of a cab

When you swept through and left me hollow
I was already primed to starve
And you, consumed by the same mania,
Had us hurtling through the night like this moment could
Never end
You extracted the brilliant stardust I offered in the dull city
And left sweet whispers all over my kitchen floor

I watched each one dissolve
Like spun sugar
Until I could have sworn I'd imagined it all

My ancestors would have burned you for less
Sent your ashes scattering to whatever
Vengeful god
Would take them
And I feel a thrumming in my veins
Calling for a sacrifice
So I hope the spectre of this moment never leaves you
Trails its icy fingers down your neck at every midnight
And coats your skin with sickly stickiness
Leaves you feverish and frantic
When you remember
All the shining things that could have been
If your words had had substance

You were the wall I planned to keep
Breaking myself against
A breathless distraction to chase the
Thoughts right out of my head
Glassy-eyed
I wanted to run wild with you all night
I wanted all your pretty nonsense to be real
And if I had to bet
On every bone in my body
I'd say the same was true of you

It's a shame you left me to my own devices
For we sketched such a beautiful
Delusion

Tell me,
What are the chances of a lightning strike?
I found myself staying out all night,
Chasing the forked streaks
Until I collided with you
—I always did want to believe in Fate—
So maybe I had glitter in my eyes
Or maybe we out-dazzled the stars.

Tell me,
How do you think this ends?
I've felt the sparks biting my skin,
Delirious like a fever dream.
Words are such flimsy anchors at the break of dawn
And I wonder
If we'll stay to set the sky on fire
Or blow away like ash.

This wild heart
Will be too much for tame mortals
For those who never taught themselves
To howl out all their pain
Passion is a terror
Because it claws you open
Yet I have been facing my fears
I have stood here
Offering all that I am
Knowing that too many
Will shrink back into themselves
This glimpse of something real sends them running
Back to cold, familiar artifice
It reminds them
That denial is a comfort

Someday
When you try to convince me
That I never exposed my fiery heart
I'll look to my cleaved ribs
And recognize the soothing lie you've woven

It was never the searing heat that got me
Nor the heights
I have always known I could fly
Even if mud-caked mules tried to convince me
That I was doomed to be earthbound
No
The atmosphere was choking me
Down here with my demons and dilemmas and denials
So despite desperate braying
I unfurled fragile wings and
Soared
Caught an updraft
Until I had outrun it all
Until all I could hear was my own thundering heart
Hammering my problems to pixie dust

It was the shimmering
That was my first undoing
Enamored
I crowned myself queen in the clouds
Swirled in gilded revelry
And smiled lazily at this sweat-slicked kingdom
Even knowing that someday
Someday
Gravity would have its way
But up here
Force and the laws of physics
Seemed too far to ever catch me
Here
Where everything was lined with silver
I thought I could trick Fate
Into handing someday to someone else

In the end
The shock of the fall
Was because it wasn't on my to-do list
I was still reveling
Reckless in the radiance
Basking in the sun
And running from all the things
That had kept me up at night
Holding court in my cloud castle
Imagine my surprise
When I realized I hadn't outpaced them all
That feeling of the floor falling out from under me
When one caught me by the wings
And yanked
Fate, it seemed, would not be denied
Had to be paid Her somedays
In full
As I tumbled into gravity's clutches
I wondered if this time
This time
Would be when I'd stop learning the hard way
If someday my lessons could be coaxed from me gently
Rather than ripped from me screaming
If a different kind of someday could find me
As I lay
Bruised and bewildered
In the mud

One day
I'll break open a bottle of champagne
And look back on all this
Like a crazy story
Something that happened to
Someone else
A stranger
A different life I left in a pile of
Ash
But today
I'm hurling myself off a cliff
Not knowing if I'll sprout wings
Or crash

I will keep crossing out
The tender lines
And the soft words
And all the evidence of how badly
I just want to be seen
So that I can keep lying to myself
I am playacting a version of me
Whose heart doesn't jump for anyone
And doesn't ache to be gathered close
And if I can just keep on pretending
Maybe one day
It will be true

I have always told my troubles to the moon
Offered up saltwater sacrifice
That I might learn how to face the light of day
Unafraid
Each sunrise would find me fitful
Restless with an ache I didn't know how to soothe
Stumbling and shrinking and
Cowed by the weight of expectation

When I was ready to open my very veins to the night
The moon insisted
I stop making sacrifices alone in the dark
Under her watch
I suddenly heard the relentless ticking of every clock
Felt it rattling my bones
Like a warning
I had let fear throttle me
Until days dragged by like a prison sentence
And some hidden, untamed part of me
Finally lashed out at the leash leading me to the gallows

Throat raw
Nails ragged
Heart racing towards the wildness that had not abandoned me
I stood defiant in the sunlight
And dared anyone to try to break me
Again

My body has forgotten what it is to be calm
I wake at 2 AM
3 AM
4 AM
Heart racing, racing, racing
Hurtling out of my
Cleaved ribs
Dizzy from trembling like an
Overwound spring
The potential energy buzzing through my skull
Every nerve ready to strike
Ready to fire
Ready to set me ablaze
I howl into my pillow
Until my lungs fracture
Until I'm coughing up soot
From the scorching frenzy coiling beneath my skin
The primal need to hold someone's hand through the dark
Has me twitching like an addict
Has me sweating like withdrawal
Has me wondering why I never had the sense
To shield my fragile ribcage
The terrible thing about having
A heart full of flowers
Is most people aren't gentle
And human instinct is to cut daisies
Rather than tend the garden
And I
Foolish and tender-hearted
Will keep licking affection off knives
Because I've never seen a silver spoon

I fear the stillness
In the quiet
My thoughts are carrion birds
Circling
Ripping apart the flimsy skin
Of all the lies I've told myself
The denial I've tried to put on
Like armor
Like sequins
Like ill-fitting
Distraction

At 3 am
I'll wake with my heart racing
Laid bare by nightmares
And the daydreams that led to them
Sick with the realization that
No matter how badly
I wanted things
To turn out
Better
Sheer force of will would have never been
Enough

When the loneliness
Starts to suffocate you
Starts to squeeze your lungs
To claw your throat
To smother you with the weight
Of all the lives you're
Not living
Remember
Those could-have-beens are
Poison
You will never breathe again
Until you bleed them out
Cough them up
Shriek them into the abyss

Scream, darling
Scream for yourself
Howl until
Your sobs no longer feel like a
Feral creature
Tearing your limbs from a body
That has forgotten how to hold itself

Remember
You are choosing yourself
Even if you have to
Rebuild each of your bones
The growing pains won't last forever
The loneliness won't **** you
You are limping towards a life
That won't keep choking you
A life where you can finally
Fly
Throw your head back under the sun
And know what it is to be
Free

The moment you walked through my door
I understood I'd been a woman
Starved
A creature of wildflowers and sunshine
Browbeaten into icy darkness
Until you reminded me of the
Hunger
That had been roaring beneath the surface

The aching emptiness of it
Tore right through me
And as we fell into step
Could you see it on my face?
As we spoke into the freezing wind
Unleashing the wild
Thrumming
In my veins
Could you hear it in my voice?
Could you hear the unspoken wishes
Or just the raw
Ache
Of the years that stretched taut between us?

I've been walking in the sunshine
And I'm burning with it now
All the things
I wouldn't let myself feel
The gnawing that threatened me
Every time I closed my eyes
The demanding hunger that will no longer
Be caged
The skittering of my foolish
Heart
Always so eager
Always brimming and leaping and crying out for
More
Because I have never once been able to do something halfway
No matter how many times
I nearly lose myself

I'll offer you this frenzied fire
And hope you meet me where I am
Hope you hear the desperate roaring
And roar right back
Hope you see the starving creature beneath the bravado
And offer
Fire
Of your own

This time of night
Is an old trap
Familiar
And dog-eared
And well-worn
And haunted

Nothing good happens after two
—it's a funny little adage—
And I'm a funny little insomniac
Begrudgingly listening to my racing
Heart
In the silence
The restlessness gathering
Storms beneath my skin
Lightning sparking wildly across my mind

This is the hour of madness
This
This is when
E v e r y t h i n g
Unravels
And all I can do
Is hope my muscles stay stuck to my bones
Hope my veins stay caged in my skin
Hope my lungs stay expanding against the weight
Of the darkness

They always say
It's like boiling a frog

It was more like
Damnation
Eternal and unflinching
An ouroboros
Whose fangs always held
Venom

Inside an unhinged jaw
It's easy to be
Blind
To lose your bearings
And mistake a predator's steaming breath
For the heat of the sun

In scarcity
It's easy to think
Scraps
Are the best you'll ever get
But even Hades grew sick of darkness
And ventured into the wildflowers

At two am
You'll dissect the snake for answers
You'll wonder
What would you have done differently
If your senses hadn't been so
Warped

You should never forget the sharp lash of his temper
The way he wraps himself with words to
Tower
Over you
The calculated battering at the edges of your mind
"You are fragile. You are pathetic. You are broken."

Whether you have the strength to wait out the siege
Or whether you strike back
Or whether you finally crumble
You will catch scorn for it all
The only thing the world wants to see
Is an obedient woman
Silently taking blows

You should never forget
That they only want the bruises blooming across your flesh
And the smile that says that all is well

What you wanted was war
Thundering and merciless
Wanted Armageddon to roll in
So you could follow every avenging angel
Brash with bloodlust
And feel righteous in the end

I felt the shift in the atmosphere
Heard the horsemen, saw the lightning
But I had long ago grown weary
Of desperate, clashing swords

You built trebuchets
So I built walls
Studying the stillness of stones
Observing the physics of load bearing and
Force balancing and
Standing unshaken as the sky itself shatters

The onslaught was calculated
Unyielding and arrogant
But of all the accusations lobbed over the ramparts
The only ones that drew blood
Were those fashioned after my own devices
Those festering things that grew out of my nightmares
Seeded with the secrets I'd once let fall in peacetime

You've called out endlessly for my head
But I won't bleed out for you here
I've been studying the patience of water
The salty tracks quietly working their way
Through all the hard places
Out to the sea

I won't bleed out for you here
I faced the red maw that would unmake me
I spun my own stitches out of ether
And lived

The city had been as frenetic as my circling thoughts
Everyone shoving by in a hurry
While my heart careened around
Untethered and chaotic and
Terrified
Fumbling for the right beat while you fumbled your keys

A wildfire of opportunity among the grim apartments
We flared to life
Surprised and laughing and
Breathlessly tangled
And for a wild moment
I felt I could stay suspended there in the dizzying heat

We both know I ran instead
Felt the unfamiliar flames licking up my back
And panicked

In my most chilling nightmares
I retrace my steps
Scream soundlessly to rewrite the story
To linger on the sidewalk with you
To stay, just a little longer
Only to watch our phantom selves
Shatter the fragile magic that could have been

In my wildest dreams
I’m still gasping against your chest
My name is still raggedly on your lips
Like a spell
Like a prayer
Like a promise

Perhaps we thought we could move in with Schrödinger's cat
And be everything
And nothing
At once
(as long as no one asked)
We could be simultaneously aflame
And just waiting for a match to strike
As long as no one opened the ****
Box

In retrospect
It's a lot to ask
For people not to go prying open lids

There are brief, shining moments
When I exist only for
Myself
When my words aren’t rearranged for anyone’s comfort
And my face isn’t composed for anyone’s enjoyment
And my body is just
My own

I have never belonged to myself

I grew up passed from
Judgment to judgment
Eyes raking me at every turn
So I would sit
Every day
In front of the mirror
And pick myself apart for the world’s consumption

Everyone has always taken what they wanted

I have driven myself insane
Trying to keep fragments of my own
To just hold on to the feeling of being mine
But I have never known how to be that way
And I will give everything I have
Until I have nothing

I don’t know how to start this story
Because I don’t know how I got here

One day
I woke up to find myself surrounded by ruins
And
Cracked ribs
Wondering if there were
Cracks in the foundation
I should have seen from the get-go

It feels empty to scream at
Tumbled bricks
But that’s all I have these days
So their weary edges have heard all my woes now
All the things I’ve lost
The life I thought I would have
Before it turned to dust in my hands

It is such a funny thing
Waking up each day now
And walking around as though my existence isn’t
Straddling a fault line
My bones feel ready to shatter from the
Strain
Of holding myself together
Little crackling noises following me
As I wonder if this is the day
My skeleton finally submits to the dust

I should have seen this coming
Should have known better than to throw my life
Wide open
On a wager
And a schoolboy’s whim
But it all seemed so shiny
So breathtaking
And I never stopped to think about the day
I’d grow sick of gasping for air
Nor the realization that I’d been clutching
Pyrite
All along

So I guess this is a story
Of what a glittering fool I’ve been
Always offering the best of myself
To those who would **** it dry
Never seeing the warning signs
Convinced
This
Time
Will
Be
Different
Even as the bricks around me come crashing down

I have sat hiding a shattered heart too many times
Biting back words
I wish I'd been brave enough
To shout
To scream out selfish truths
**** the consequences
Instead of worrying about everyone else's feelings
But my own

I let the tide sweep me along

You set me on fire once
And I got so scared
I nearly drowned myself
Preferring the waves that threatened to swallow me
As long as they kept dragging me away

Despite miles and miles of ocean, I can still smell smoke

We've left too many things unsaid
And said too many things too late
And I've screamed and heaved a thousand sobs
Across leagues of empty space
Berating myself in turns for being a coward
And a naive fool
And yet
I still can't help but wonder
When you say, "Nothing will have changed,"
Are you referring to the flames?

This is the loose thread I can't help but pull
Even as I watch the unraveling
I can't stop
Can't convince my fingers to still their fidgeting

This is my self-destructive nature
The urge to poke and poke at bruises
To endlessly stick my tongue in the bleeding chasm of a missing tooth
To pick and scratch and needle at everything that
Hurts

This hour
And the next
And the next and the next and the next
I will stare at my phone, crestfallen
Wishing against all hope for your name
Sending desperate messages into the ether
Opening old wounds that I'll never let heal
Praying for the sense to finally let you go

She's lost in wilds unexplored
     Far from dreamers' shining lands
In misty moors where even Sleep
     Lets fall his useless magic sands
There is no rest for mortals here
     For fools who play where Faeries tread
On Faerie roads, in Faerie lands
     The world is turned upon its head
Her stride is sure, yet she is not
     Perception is the Faeries' game
Sending visions, glamours, ghosts
     Illusions wailing out her name
A fearful girl along the roads
     Will bargain for most anything
And here, the threshold of Lost Hope
     Is purview of the Raven King
The Raven King! The Raven King!
     She fell in wonder at the sight
As castles grew before her eyes
     And wild dark turned blinding bright
He led her to the winding halls
     She rushed down cobbles Faeries tread
She gulped the dizzying Faerie wine
     And took the proffered Faerie bread
They swept her up in swirling dance
     For frenzied days, she whirled along
In drunken time, she stumbled to
     The beat of Faerie's wild song
And, wilder still, her heart would drum
     Excited in the glittered haze
As Fae lay stardust in her eyes
     And drew her with their feral gaze
But wait--why did her weary bones
     Resist the Fae's beguiling thrall?
Even as her mind was pulled to
     Pirouette the Endless Ball
Dissonance--a spell had snapped
     She scrabbled at the gilded walls
"Is this to be my cage?" she called
     Across the King's ethereal halls
She couldn't sleep; she couldn't rest
     Paced and fretted, cried aloud
But she had bargained, drunk the wine
     And for the Raven King now bowed
"You made the bargain, mortal girl
     You said the words and you were bound
You called out for the Raven King
     When you were lost on Faerie ground."
She'd never known the ancient laws
     The tricky ways of binding rites
The way the Fae could draw you in
     With silvered tongue and phantom sights
The Faeries laughed; the Faeries danced
     They brought her back under their spell
She didn't fight--their dazzling daze
     Was better than a living hell
So there she stays, a wayward girl
     Heartsick, lost, and trapped in Fae
A fearful girl along the roads
     Who bargained her whole life away

Is this what the beginning of a
Psychotic break
Feels like?
More enamored with fiction than reality
Walking up at 5 am with
Tachycardia
And the weight of an elephant squeezing your chest so
It's impossible to
Breathe
The past seems more real than the present and the
Present
Seems muted except for the
Anxiety
And
Despair

I am falling endlessly

I don't know where the bottom is

I don't know how to bring myself back

Meandering in broken fantasies
Listless
Aching for every intangible hypothetical
Heartbroken over fictions
And more heartbroken still
That even the glittering shards of dashed dreams
Will outshine my weary reality

The physical therapist said
To imagine I was tearing the floor
Apart
With my feet

It wasn't hard to imagine

Every day feels like an exercise in
Self-control
In order to keep myself from shredding everything around me
To keep myself from
Jumping out of my skin
To keep myself
Tame
Despite the unending roaring pressing on my skull

If you demand from my weary atoms
That which I would have otherwise freely given
You'll find it's not offered willingly again
Call it repulsion
Revulsion
Outright rebellion
But I've lived all my life in fear
And I will fall underfoot
No more

After you'd wielded all your spite like a cudgel
After I'd choked on my pleas
After your torrent of venom doused the last spark I had
The concept of future was moot

Today
And tomorrow
And the day after
You will scorn me for having banked fires
Ignoring the trail of ruined umbrellas
Rewriting the narrative to say you were there
Holding a match

I have always said I have little time for
Thought experiments
The tedium of philosophy
Is of no use for me
Because here on Earth
We know that Sisyphus was miserable

I have always been shoving boulders up mountains
Seeing no other way than the hardest one
A task that requires exacting attention
Precision
Perfection
But mortal bodies can only take so much
Sudden collapse should not have seemed so
Sudden

I have always been foolish and deluded
Plagued by dangerous thinking thinking thinking
A dissonant orchestra that never tires
Ever conjuring phantasms
Fears and fantasies at war
A sparkling utopia in the clouds
And then the reminder that I am
Earthbound

I have spent the better part of my life
Feeling like feelings are going to tear me
To pieces
The programming of my brain has
The gain set
Way too high so
Everything
Is an assault on the neurons that
Can't fire fast enough
Too bright
Too loud
Too sad
Too angry
Too tired

Too much

I collapsed inward

Soldiering on for the sake of
Appearances
I can feel the restlessness rending
My ribcage in half
So I'm pleading with whoever will
Listen
To make it stop
Please
Make
It
Stop
The anxious pacing of my neurons
The fervor of my frantic mind
The scrambling
Scrabbling
Scared
Lizard brain
Stuck in a loop
Fight, flight, freeze
Fight, flight, freeze
Fight
Flight
Freeze

Fight

When a lifetime of living by others' rules
Saw me not choose myself
While my head was screaming and railing against it
I just...fell out of my life
The riptide of pleasing everyone
Dragged me along
And I smiled even as I was drowning.

Nothing could have saved me by then
The yoke of expectation was too heavy
I was always going to tire of thrashing
And sink

It seemed like a story
For Schrödinger
Time and distance ensured that
They were
All things and
Nothing
At once
And, in this way, they stayed in perpetual orbit
She wondered if
In another life
     In another place
          Time
               Universe
Their lives would have intersected
Instead of diverging
     Unrequited
To haunt her with all that could have been

It was the bitterest irony
When at last their paths swerved together
That both hearts had already been spoken for
Somewhere
     The Fates were surely cackling
          As the air hung heavy
               With all the possibilities
                    That died on the vine
Because time was never on their side

How could one even cry for something they’d never had?
She found herself heaving uncontrolled sobs
Shaking with unfettered grief
In mourning
     For all the things
          She had wanted to live
All the bright dreams of their teenage years
That had seemed so perfect
Shattered by the bitterness of
Growing up
And that old ******* Father Time

If she were honest with herself
She’d admit it was not him
She actually loved all these years
But all the things he might have been
—or rather—
All the things she might have been with him
What a different life she might have had if
     One day
          She had followed her
               Wild teenage love
Instead of living in this cosmic joke

She’ll never know
But she’ll heave sobs
For all the parallel lives she is not living
And the orbit she will return to
Knowing she’ll never be satisfied
     She’ll always wonder
          Always be gazing off
               Trying to glimpse a galaxy
Where things turned out better

It felt like the day was made for vengeful gods
The same tired face
On every windblown pedestrian with their umbrella flipped
Inside out
Belying the drudgery of existence that morning
And I felt like it was only a matter of time
Before the city drowned me

For the millionth time in my life
I had the realization that I spend my time
Peering into people’s faces
Wondering what they’re feeling
Which wouldn’t be so bad if anyone had spared me a second glance
The feeling of being both too much and never enough
Had pulled at all my loose ends
Until I finally flipped inside out in a downpour
All the tiny hinges holding me together
Snapping in defeat
As I came to terms with the fact that
No one
Was going to try to keep me out of the wind

I was made for vengeful gods
Built for crashing through storms
Because mortals left me with nothing but heartache
None of them has the eyes to see
How I pulled myself to pieces to shield them from hurricanes
I would light myself on fire
Just to take the chill out of their bones
And when I have nothing left
I’ll be the neutron star or the black hole or the spent piece of space junk
That everyone forgot to see while it could still shine

I felt it in my bones that night
The pangs to run away
The chirping birds, at 5 am
They begged me not to stay
So starry-eyed, so heavy-tongued
So trapped within my head
I’d fought and flailed and torn my sheets
Set fire to my bed
My frenzied heart is leaping flames
Too hot to keep inside
I packed my bags alone that night
As cold as if I’d died
How did I even find this place?
My discipline was stern
I lost myself in wild touch
Dumb Girl, you’ll never learn
Frenetic and delirious
Thank God, the road is long
When I am miles away from here
You’ll tell me I was wrong
You’ll tell me to spit out my words
When mouth and throat are dry
Demand I clip my claws and wings
When I was meant to fly
I feel so small here, feel like I
Can hardly fill my lungs
Lassoed by the circles danced out
By our weary tongues
I’d stood like Aphrodite once
Before you, proud and bare
But now I’m mortal once again
I fear my heart will tear
I cried myself so worthless
And I tired of the sound
Exhaustion sapping all my strength
Stuck, muted, on the ground
My feet are itching yet to trace
The highway’s wandering curve
Don’t call me back, don’t yell my name
I swear I’ll lose my nerve
I’m fraying and I’m scattered
And I’m running, sprinting blind
I don’t want to face this darkness
And I don’t care what I find

The city would have certainly swallowed me
To it, I was
Nothing
An insignificant girl pacing among the skyscrapers
Clack clack clack
Just another percussive layer to the cacophony of thousands
So I rushed home
Childlike
Hid among my sheets lest I was lost in the din
I wanted to be no one and
Everyone
At once
And I could feel the fraying of all my edges
As dissonance picked me apart
Went over each bone, one by one
Pulled sinew from skin from bleeding vessel
And asked me why I had done this to myself

I had done this to myself

Each firing neuron mocked me
Reminded me that there was no solace
In big spaces
Just tiny rooms made tinier by clutter
And percussive feelings
Clack clack clack
Through my skull, round and round
An infinite loop that I can’t break
All because I let myself fall
I should have never
I should have never
I should have never

If you’ve ever hydroplaned
You’ve felt the wild slide of wheels leaving pavement
While your heart’s in your throat as you wonder
If you’ll land calmly on the other side
Or go careening into a tree

It is this feeling that has gripped me since I fell for you
And my life has been a blur of racing heart
Uncertain how to maintain self
While tumbling chaotically through partnership
Terrifyingly exposed
Bewildered and aching
Because loving is so much

I will offer everything I am
And spin out of control
But I don’t know what comes after
Or after
Or after

It's a strange thing to wage war
In the space between consciousness
And eyelids
Fingertips fluttering over light-switch trigger
As the endless tic-tic-ticking of the wall clock
Inches ever closer to dawn

Night time has always been the worst

As the drowsy city slows down
My heart speeds faster still
Dodging anxious shrapnel as I lie
Sleepless
Swallowed by the restless thoughts
Whose assault I can no longer resist

Maybe it’s naïve of me
To be lying here
Humming these catchy riffs,
Ribcage splayed wide open,
The offer obvious for anyone with hands:
Take what you want,
I won’t stop you,
Heat and heart and soul and all
Are fair.
It’s 1 am,
Then 4 am.
Time streams past in ways I can’t catch
Because I was too busy studying you.

I have wondered if you’ll break me,
Unwalled and unexpected
Unfettered delirium.
But it’s no matter;
Even if I crash come daybreak,
It was all worth the rush.

I am champagne bubbles
And fairy wings
And confetti sprinkles
And heart-thudding bass
And dizzy melody
And all the shining city lights that show you the
Way home

I am all these things
And every floating, giddy thought
15 again
For the first time in forever
Painting glitter on every horizon
Because I can't contain the smiles on my lips

I thought I had seen my future
Saw nothing stretched out before me
But a never-ending monotone of lukewarm
Indifference
All passion flung away from me
For fear of feeling the
Mediocrity
I'd accepted

There was no fire there
There was no shine there
There was barely anything I'd want to call
Life
There
And something softly whispered to me
"You'll never be happy
In this unremarkable place."

I'm still reeling from the shock
Of waking up
Of finding myself with heart pounding
Breath catching
Eyes wide open
Giddy with the swooping butterflies of new beginnings

I'm still reeling from the realization
That I started over
Took a brazen leap away from boredom
And landed in all the sensations I was sure had
Abandoned me

They weren't gone, after all
Just waiting for the right wake-up call

Sitting here
Face tingling
Fingertips dancing across brighter days
I've been wondering how I ever entertained the thought
Of an eternity that was anything less than
Thrilling

I never realized the stickiness of apathy
The creeping, oozing film it left
One day I found myself
Trapped
Stuck like fly in honey
Without will to struggle
Lackadaisical and lost
Staring at a sun that would surely fry me

It was only stalking predator
That sent me straining against my bonds
Desperate, suddenly, to be anywhere
Anywhere
Anywhere but here
The threat to my serenity
Made my captivity real

He would swallow everything I was
So I fought to care for freedom
Fought to care for
Myself
Bat my tacky wings
Until I whole-body Band-aid ripped myself
Away

He would swallow everything I was
Do not follow me
I commanded
Do not follow me
Do not follow
*I am my own

There are these moments all the time
Where I think, "This is not the life I signed up for.
This can't be my life.
This
Is
Not
My
Life."
But I am dizzy and hungover,
Stumbling to the kitchen for water
Wondering how I got home last night.
25
and tail-spinning--
How did I get here?

Last night
I had a glimpse of many could-have-beens.
I found myself wistful for a life I never had,
Risks I never took,
Words I let fizzle out on my tongue,
Courage that left me when I should have chased it.
A boy with a brogue nearly brought me to tears
Drunk and disoriented
Inadvertently reminding me of a future that's
No longer mine.

After every margarita
It feels like I'm falling further and further
And I'm scrabbling without footing,
Tired and dizzy,
Losing my way,
Wondering what all I've walked away from
All these years
Because I was always so scared.

One day, I found myself falling like Alice
But without a white rabbit
Just me
Alone
Abruptly tumbling down
The floor having been decidedly yanked from beneath me

I found plummeting both terrifying and boring
The same panic over and over
Gets old after a time
Yet the bottom was little better
Devoid of a fluffy tail to follow
I have no guide in this empty place
Walled in with my thoughts
Hoping for a path to Wonderland

"Drink Me"

I'm not sure how I got here
Searching endlessly for answers
To questions that I have not even posed
Gazing helplessly at the chasm
Wondering if I can back out

"Someday you'll be Queen of Wonderland
Drink Me"

I was certain I could play the long game
Persevere to be better off in the end
Yet I lay here ******-knuckled
Having beaten solid rock
Hoping it would turn into
A Door

"You'll never leave if you don't hurry
Drink Me"

I hear tic-tock-ing through the walls
And I'm sure it's just the pressure now
I'm never getting out of here
No amount of wracking my brain
Will produce an escape plan
And it does not seem as though any creature
Will be appearing to assist
I am never getting out of here

"Don't be frustrated
Drink Me"

"Feeling stuck?
Drink Me"

"Drink Me"

"Drink Me"

"Drink Me"

It was raining in the desert,
Fat drops splashing
Against dunes that didn't know how to
Absorb them.
The flooding was quick,
The haze was unbearable,
And I wondered idly
If the clouds had gotten
Lost,
Jumped onto some
Wayward jet stream
And wound up in Abu Dhabi instead of Seattle.

I felt for them.

Muddy sand rivers that couldn't handle the
Downpour
Had me asking myself what jet stream I'd jumped
To end up here,
Never quite where I wanted to be,
Setting my course for brighter days
But landing
In a heap
In the middle of
Nowhere.

These are the days no one warned me about
When my head feels so heavy
It won’t lift from my pillow
When making a cup of coffee
Seems like an insurmountable task
When everything
Everything
Is stupid and useless and worthless
And I can’t remember what it was like to feel fine

I don’t know how I got here
I don’t remember the wrong turn that I took
The wrong exit on the highway
The wrong class
The wrong decision
The wrong something
But it must have happened at some point
Because this can’t be how it’s supposed to be
Spending days drowning in Chinese food and wine
Wishing the sun just won’t rise tomorrow

I've been searching bottle bottoms
And scouring city streets
And scraping plastic plates
And surrounding myself with things
And hoping for a spark
And a miracle
And just a little bit more strength

Sometimes I think we are orbiting each other
Lost in space
Floating in tandem
Locked by gravity in the emptiness
And sometimes
I know that’s nonsense
And that you are the asteroid
Who will knock me into the sun

Still
I must admit
The heat felt good for once

I can’t get the sand out of my shoes
It’s been weeks
And I’ve been hitting them
And shaking them
And knocking them around
But still
I can feel the grit with every step
So I still can’t get the beach
Or you
Off my skin

With you, there was no warning
I went from drifting languidly along in the sunshine
To being tossed against the rocks in a sudden hailstorm
Shocked and battered and lost
Disoriented in the downpour
When I’d had the promise of clear skies

I’m not sure I’ll trust the weatherman again
He’s got your eyes and voice and disarming smile

I’ve been trying to get the salt out of my ponytail
I’ve been trying to get the feel of rock out of my hands
I’ve been trying to get this ****** sand
Out of my shoes
But it’s so sticky
Everything
Is so sticky
And here I am in the biggest mess
With hair and skin and mouth
So full of you
That I don’t know how to escape
My tongue is still recoiling
From the half-truths you spilled
Tinged with sweat and cinnamon
And slime
And here I am still choking on them
Retching
Just to get rid of the taste
Gnawing at my lips
Just to break the skin that knows you
Scrubbing myself raw
Just to keep you from clinging

My ears are buzzing with your nonsense
And I am running from the noise
Bolting with everything that I have
As sand grinds against my feet
And I will be ****** and breathless before I stop
Because I need the distraction
As much as the distance
I can’t keep reliving your kisses
With every stubborn grain
I can’t keep wondering if you’re lying
Every time I turn my back
I can’t keep playing this game
Because we’ve all already lost
So I will not apologize for taking the high road out of here
And leaving you to sulk with your I-didn’t-mean-to’s
And your too-little-too-late revelations
There were a lot of ways this could have ended
But I never once imagined you would have brought storms to my doorstep
I never expected to be trying determinedly to peel my skin off
And I never thought I’d be sitting here wishing to forget your name