When she opened the door and saw him standing there
Her first thought was
Holy crap he's so obsessed that he swam the Atlantic!
Well, his hair was dry
So she realized this thought was not reasonable,
But she couldn't formulate a second thought
Because that's when the shock started to set in
And all she could say was
"You exist!"
Awestruck,
Reaching out to make sure he was solid.
It was just like she'd imagined.
His lithe, ******-trained body stood less than an inch
Above her own over-worked and over-fed frame,
And his brogue-heavy voice tumbled out
Without a type-face to give it cadence:
"You exist, too…"
Palm to palm they stood there,
Staring wonderingly at the other,
Unconsciously twining their fingers as though,
If they didn't hold on,
They'd flicker out like a computer shutting down.

On her fifteenth birthday she'd told him
"I'll be eighteen in three years. Then I'll come see you."
And in those days
The Atlantic Ocean didn't seem like such a big thing.
It seemed that its breadth was just a story moms told to keep their kids from wandering off,
From sneaking out and stone-skipping across its waves
Until they splashed up on some foreign beach.
Dimly, she thought she could flatten herself out
And fling her body so that she'd bounce her way across the ocean
Right to his door.
In those days
She was leashed by a modem,
Bound by the words typed out in real-time;
"I can't wait until I'm eighteen. We'll finally see each other."

On her eighteenth birthday,
She no longer wore her computer collar,
And she wasn't thinking about him
Or the Atlantic.
But looking at him standing in her foyer,
She couldn't quite remember
When two screens and a modem
Became too fragile to bridge two continents.
Virtual hugs crumbled under real life kisses;
LOL couldn't replace actual laughter;
Emoticons couldn't replace ****** expressions.
For all that she loved him,
Something was missing,
Lost in IP addresses and chat rooms,
Only to be found again
Dropping its luggage on her bedroom floor.

I have sat too long with stars in my eyes
With hopes of staving off the darkness
And yet I found myself one day
Surrounded
Pressed on all sides by a void
That was heavy with emptiness

I wondered how nothing could have such weight
How silence could pound on my eardrums with frantic insistence
Like a two-year-old in a temper tantrum
Out of control and impossible to ignore
As I sat blinking the spots from my vision

I had wanted calm
And instead I found more anxieties
Monsters lurking in my peripherals and the quiet of the night
Worries that stood waiting to ****** me the moment I was alone
I am easy prey
And I was soon caught and bound
Tethered to my bedpost when all I wanted was to run

I never bothered resisting my capture
I never bothered trying to escape
I sat staring out my window
Wondering what normal people do and how they seem to smile
How they find the stamina to survive rainy days
While I droop like a neglected daisy
Unable to stand up and face the morning
When my brightness has been forgotten and allowed to fade

I have been bending
And bending
And bending
And my spine has begun to protest
My vertebrae have grown to resent this inflexible pushing
Starry-eyed, I prayed for compromise
And thought I heard it whisper in the darkness
Only to be let down when I realized it was my own voice
Whispering
Supplying the sounds I wanted
Trying to fill the emptiness with something lighter weight

There was once a time
When I had my every moment
Pinpointed
Down to the very last millisecond
And I organized every
Scene
Memory
Idea
Emotion
Each neatly labeled, color-coded
Stored away in its shrink-wrap
So that I’d hear it
When I tried to look back
And I tried
I looked back over my shoulder
And saw you talking, laughing
And when they mentioned my name
You said, “I know her,”
So surely
Plainly
Confidently
And I laughed to myself as I watched you
For I knew you were wrong
True, you’ve met me
But
You don’t know me
You only know my soft spots
Where you poke and **** and jab
Watching me wince
As I try to tell you a story
My story
But you only half-listen
You haven’t the slightest inkling
That I am the strangest person
You’ll ever meet
And that I’ll never be anything you expected

You’ve found me predictable
And extend your hand
Knowing that I’ll stand here with my halo
And refuse it
So you keep your hand extended
Confident that I’ll never take it
Remembering that I told you
I can’t climb
And that I’m always scared
But you keep laughing
Thinking you’ve beaten me
Put me in my place
Forgetting that I have no place
I defy categorization
And the realization hits me as I look back at
All my neat categories
Where I tried desperately to fit my bits and pieces

I keep thinking I’ve found it
My spot in the puzzle
But I never quite fit
Not for long
Because you come around and reshape me
And I fit no where

I left a trail of bread crumbs
Hoping my past self would come find me
As I rocket blindly forward
Clutching my halo as I dodge
All my chances to live
While the Fates look on
Grinning with morbid satisfaction as they
Weave my sordid tapestry
Giddy with their knowledge of what is to come
As I stumble
Afraid of tomorrow
And never quite getting past today
Every day I’m tempted
To ****** the scissors from the hand of Atropos
And cut my thread before I can plummet
But you pry the scissors from my unsteady fingers
Knowing that I’m frozen in fear
Because I like the option of turning back
I hate you for it
Because I know tomorrow you’ll laugh at me
Thinking you know me
While I ponder your intentions
Driving myself crazy
Watching as everything I’ve ever done
Rears its ugly head
And all the words that have ever crossed the space between
You and me
Come up to haunt me
Driving me further and faster
Swirling
Twirling
Whirling
Spinning, spinning, spinning
Winding me up in this vortex
And I’ll never be able to stop
Because no one will try to help me
And you’ll watch on
As I blur ‘round and ‘round
My features blending with color-coded memories
While you brush off the stories I try tossing you
My regrets pull me by the hair
Sending me faster still
And you’ve forgotten me altogether
And it matters not whether you knew me
Because I’m going down, down, down
Pulling no one with me
Falling alone, with only my halo
And my fears
Still color-coded and shrink-wrapped
Wondering if I’ll ever get it right

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?

I have been craving that which I know will make me sick.

Already,
The mere thought has my stomach roiling,
Insides twisting in displeasure,
Heart pounding out its discomfort,
Head aching in protest;
My fever keeps climbing
But I can't take a hint,
For it seems there's no proper immune response
For desire,
No thorough little antibodies to drive the thought away,
Just a full body reaction,
A rebellion of the senses,
Near anaphylaxis;

It would seem that I'm allergic to you.

But Benadryl and epinephrine are of no use to me
Since it's this wanting that's the problem,
Stumbling over myself just to see you smile,
All the while tying my intestines into impossible knots.
I know that you're no good for me,
But like a dizzy, desperate ******,
I can't cut myself off,
Can't force myself to stop chasing you
Though you cause my airways to constrict.

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"

I have wearied of grand romances
Of deep sighs and swooning trances
Of doting gentlemen’s advances
And all manner of courtship play
I am tired of love confessions
And of dizzied, dazed professions
And of unrestrained obsessions
I grow sicker day by day

I once dreamed of adoration
Went quite mad for veneration
Laughing, flirting with temptation
The queen in Camelot
The lonely, lovely Guinevere
Dainty-masked with girlish fear
But when King Arthur wasn’t near
Dreaming of Sir Lancelot

These days I want no noble knight
Despite my seeming helpless plight
I wish to set myself aright
And tread upon the ground
Yet here I am, pedestal-high
Too close to the dazzling sky
As my life keeps passing by
And boys keep running round

I’ve let myself grow much too proud
Drew up arrogance from the crowd
Heard the cheering, bright and loud
The queen in Camelot
And though I had my faithful Sir
Still my heart was all astir
With flying fancies, all a blur
For Guinevere and Lancelot

These fantasies have grown too old
I’d rather let my bed grow cold
For I have wearied of being told
“You are mine to keep”
Men have tired me to the core
Left me sad and sick and sore
And have turned into such a chore
And I’d much rather sleep

What blasphemy for a maiden fair
To toss such doting to the air
To turn away without much care
Though queen in Camelot
But I have withered, I have tired
Felt as if my brain’s been mired
And find not Arthur much desired
Nor dashing Lancelot

Is it so bad to want respite
From endless longing, day and night?
This constant charm becomes too trite
With ever staler tone
I only wish to rest a while
Recover from incessant guile
Forget the weight of lovers’ trial
And simply be alone

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

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.

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

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

I once said I wanted to waltz across the sun
To swirl among the solar flares
And burst like a supernova

They’d call me bits of space glitter
And I’d be brilliant

Today they call me human
And I find I am fleshy
Neither molten
Nor shining
But volatile all the same

It’s a shame
The heat would have suited me

I am fiery, flighty feelings
Quick to love and fury and sorrow
Quicker still to bubbling crazy
But I am stuck on this ground
With thoughts exploding through the atmosphere
Punching holes in the ozone
And leaving us all to burn

I inflict myself on everyone—
The sun would have suited me

I just want brilliance
But lately
Bright lights give me headaches
So I’ve been condemned to duller shades
Tearing at my skin
In the hopes of a shiny new layer
Restless like a *** about to boil over
Inadequate and dangerous
Like a rocket about to crash

He is intangible
Of that you are certain
Intangible and far away
And realistically
There's nothing you can do about it
No wand to vanish the distance
No command to solidify his existence
No chance to verify the feelings drifting across modems

It seems a cruel trick of the Cosmos
That you should be obsessing
Over a binary being
A body who takes the form of a chat window
For all you know, he isn't even real
You could have dreamed him up
Imagined yourself a lover
And placed him across an ocean
Conveniently out of reach when you need him most

Yes, it's a cruel trick
To be questioning the universe at every turn
Wondering if it's his intangibility that captures you
Rather than the sweet words he lets play across the screen
Wondering how he could ever disappoint you
If he's only made of instant messages

Sometimes
You hold your own hands
Wishing you could trace the lines of his palm
Imagining having something solid to hold
Instead of slippery dreams and fluffy half-images
That get dislodged by catchy songs

Sometimes
You talk to yourself as though he could hear you
Wishing the sound could reverberate around his room
Envisioning the faces he would make
And hallucinating his responses

Sometimes
You want to slap him
Wishing you could hear the satisfying smack
Of your palm against his cheek
Rather than the clattering of your typing fingers
When you're jealous over a piece of cyberspace

Nonexistence is disappointing
When you've worked out all the details in your head
All you want to do is reach out
And not be stuck catching at empty air

In the end
His intangibility will let you down
So why are you so enchanted?

Why are you feeling like Eponine
Pretending he's beside you
Knowing you're living in your head?
And yet these days
You find it far too easy to let the city fall away
Only to have it shock you with its solidity
When you realize you've been imagining things again

Most people look like they wouldn’t survive a storm.
They are flimsy,
Full of half-truths and half-meanings,
Half-substance that will surely wash away in a good downpour.

I am always spilling raindrops,
Thus I am dangerous to the masses.

It was snowing the night I felt myself
Slipping
And looking at you truly for the first time—
Not a blizzard,
Just a gentle dusting,
Flakes drifting lazily in the excitable wind—
And I assumed that you,
Like everyone else,
Were just dazzled by dreamlike sparkle,
But would flee when the real storm came.
Your presence was a comfort,
So for weeks I played weatherman,
Tried to hold back inclement weather
Lest I wake to find you gone.

But Nature is inevitable,
So I found hurricanes for days.

I’d been painting
Love
On my lips since pre-school,
But you were the first to press it there
And make it stick.
You were the first to see the storm gathering
And stay until the clouds cleared,
Though my ears were mad with thunder
And my limbs were sparking lightning
And all my world was dark and cloud and sheets of pouring rain.

Slick with raindrops,
You pushed the bangs out of my eyes
And said that all was well.

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

There is fire in my stride
Wild, leaping, roaring flames
That melt the road before me
And leave smoldering ash behind

The war path, as it were
My screaming line of fury
Bending light waves and sound waves and distorting the world
With smoke and tremors and pure, searing heat

I run at a steady 6500 Fahrenheit
Past boiling
Past scorching
Past melting all your atoms ‘til you’re elemental sludge
There’s no surviving this
So don’t touch me
For I swear I’ll tie you to my side and burn you with me

There are explosions in my trembling hands
Volatile, unstoppable chemical reactions
Fuel to the fire, as it were
To shake the floor where you stand
Until you’re trembling on your knees

I am a lighting strike
Swift and bright and too much for your stuttering heart
Ruthless and ravaging
And merciless as a starving predator

Run fast, or you’re done for
I won’t leave anything behind
No embers
No coals
Not even soot to mark where you’d stood
Before you brought this blaze to life

There is fire in my stride
And you, sir, are flammable

It’s like when you’re little
And you notice yourself breathing
And wonder if you’ve been breathing this whole time
Or if it only happens when you think about it
Well, I’ve been thinking much too hard for a long time
So hard that I didn’t notice
The world forming a routine around me
And my unconscious willingness to fall in line

The girl who shunned the lemmings
Followed the crowd all the same

I considered myself a product of anxiety
Not a victim
Not a survivor
But the result of
Someone who thrived on frenetic energy
As worries danced out a stuttering tachycardia

This is the life I was given
Though I prayed for days of calm
Prayed for the safety of routine and predictability
And the comfort they would hold
For I am afraid of nearly everything
So I have been wishing for days without fear
Bowed my head under the Heavens and cried in all the languages I have
Peace, paix, ειρηνη

It was in the pursuit of peace
That I blindly accepted all offers of security
Built myself up with grades and responsibilities and qualifications
With the assurance it would be worth it in the long run
Suddenly I saw the boredom I had asked for
And felt no relief
No comfort
Just the paralyzing fear that I’d settled for a life I did not want

My trembling limbs were made for anxiety
But I’ve been bingeing it
So the lack thereof is just
Empty
It would seem I am addicted to frenzy
Though I always want out
A pendulum between the extremes
Never resting on moderation
Never resting
Period

There was something heartbreaking in his gaze.
Looking into his eyes
Was like watching every good and perfect thing in this world
Shatter.
It was as though
All the stars had fallen out of the sky
And splintered into glittering fragments all over the ground.
It was as though
The sun and the moon had collided,
Raining shining pieces all over the earth.
Looking into his eyes,
I felt my very being
Shattering,
Being pulled asunder by his loneliness.

And it was exciting.

I felt my heart quicken,
Pounding fast with the prospect
Of watching the world end over
And over again.
I knew this was the kind of loneliness
That gnawed at the world from its foundations,
Prowling like an un-mourned soul
And, in its brooding solitude,
Whipped up the howling winds that keep children up at night.
In all my sun-drenched life,
I had never seen a darker being.
I had never been this intoxicated by a mere gaze.

I had never known a bitterness so strong.

My world was all sweet harvests and smiling flowers,
But when he touched me,
It felt as though I'd stuffed my mouth with dandelion greens.
My taste buds protested but my body thrilled,
Reveling in his Armageddon eyes.
His fingertips were ice,
Trailing down my goose-pimpled skin,
And I knew I was the first hot-blooded woman he'd held.
I wanted to add fire to his shattered soul.
I wanted to watch the fragments of the world
Smoldering when he looked at me.
I wanted to feel his fierce loneliness grab me by the hair
And set my heart aflame.

And he did.

As I watched the heavens colliding,
I offered all the heat of my veins,
And he drank it in like the gods guzzle nectar.
He slipped his arm around my waist
And ferried me across the River Styx.
So I watched the world end,
One soul after the other,
Cooling slowly from revelry
To bitterness
As he burned with borrowed flames.
I dreamed about supernovas,
Stars exploding out of the sky.
I'd been so quick to trade sunshine for his eternal night,
Never considering that I'd be getting nothing in return.

I wondered if my gaze had begun to shatter.

“Studying at ------- University
Would afford me so many opportunities
That I could not find elsewhere…”

Personal statements are always BS
Filled with flowery phrases that
No one
In her right mind would ever actually use
My sentences had started to look like
A thesaurus had come along
And vomited up last night's party all over them
Who even talks this way?
Who can take himself so seriously as to think
That his pompous-assery would go unnoticed?
Moreover,
Who seriously wants to read all of this
Pretentiousness
Splattered all over the page
As though some English major's senior thesis
Had been brutally murdered?

“I am ready to bring my own
Determination and
Motivation
Into the equation to improve the
Lives of patients.”

I am disgusted with myself
For trying so hard
To impress a committee of nameless, faceless
Academics
To convince them
With fancy words and pretty sentences
That I am the best person ever
The more I write
The more I wonder if it even matters
If it's really so important for me to become a
Well Connected PhD
Doctor of Philosophy
Engineer Extraordinaire
Patients are going to keep dying
And there's no guarantee I can do a **** thing about it

“The Institute of Biomedical Engineering teaches engineers
To work side by side with clinicians to deliver
Meaningful healthcare results.”

Meaningful
Healthcare
Results
What a wonderfully vague phrase
It means nothing, really
Not without context
But it's Impressive and Dynamic
A phrase a committee would salivate over
(Because "drool" is too simple a word for them)
It's not enough for me to just come out and say how
For my entire life
I've dreamed of myself as Superwoman
Armed with engineering skills and a well-stocked lab
Ready to take down human suffering
I just want to heal people
And blood makes me faint
So I can't be a doctor
But I know my way around a lab now
And I can make medicines
In fact, that's all I want to do
Is to make new, better medicines
To grow cells and tissues and cures in my bioreactors
To make someone, anyone's life a little less painful
And these things cannot be told in florid prose
Because these are the messy parts of life
These are the parts that ache and ooze and itch
Keeping us up all night
Until words blur together
And all that's left are limbs and bodies and faces
So you can throw your thesaurus out the window
Because it's of no use here
None of the BS is helping anyone
Pretty words aren't going to make
A failing heart grow back
And this personal statement isn't going to
Purge anyone's cancer from their veins
But this person
Untroubled by higher diction
Might just do something useful

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

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 is homework strewn about,
Stray pencils and rampant equations,
And he is next to me with a guitar,
Hair wild,
Fluid mechanics tossed aside for
Metal strings and quivering notes.
Neither makes much sense to me.
I played violin for seven years,
But I never learned to command
Music;
Keys and sharps and flats
Just told me where to put my fingers,
But to him
They tell stories.
They leap and prance and laugh from his hands—
Eyes closed,
He holds them.
This is home for him,
Away from stubborn assignments
And looming futures,
And just when I suspect that he is someplace I can’t follow,
He turns and smiles.

Sometimes I play the strangest games with my head
And get sick with memories
And wish for a vacuum-existence in only present tense,
Because my present tense is so much prettier
Than clingy yesterdays and chancy tomorrows.
My present tense is full of music,
Soaring, brilliant, beautiful music,
And the musician who strums away my relentless anxiety.
It makes no sense to me,
But that doesn’t matter
Because for now,
I’m in a place where moments pass in a time signature,
Strung together by his careful hands
And brought to life by his enamored gaze.

It is in this way that I have come to believe
That everything will be ok after all.

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

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

I always suspected electricity
Ran rampant through my veins
To make me dazed and dizzy
But unable to sit still
It made me prone to flights of fancy
So I left giddy trails of sparks
Blazing proof of my restlessness
That once brightly caught your eye

Once your gaze had found my own
My moods came in swooning flares
And you crackled alongside me
Filling my aching, empty silence
With shiny, blessed noise
We burned so beautifully
With my electric fire
And your trilling declamations
Light and sound intertwining
Like thunder that had finally caught up with its lightning

It seemed like Nature's order
A completion of the whole
Two halves that followed each other
Unthinkingly and automatically

So one day when I found silence
It felt like Earth itself was splitting

Panicked, I burned more brightly
Stoked the fire just in case
I feared that I had dimmed
And been the cause of this new quietness
So when I still heard nothing
I thought my efforts insufficient
And I ran my highest currents
Until my wires nearly melted
Thinking the sun and I were comparable
And anticipating a response

And still I heard no trilling
No crackling at my side
So I wondered if perhaps
I had shined beyond your limits
Swiftly, I contracted
Reined in my flares and doused the fire
Thinking sudden darkness
Might just shock you into sound

I finally heard the faintest popping
Not quite the rending that I wanted
But a break from quiet all the same
Afraid of spoiling the moment
I leashed my electricity
Kept myself dim so I could hear you
Though I felt the writhing beneath my skin

It finally became unbearable
So I flashed like wild lightning
Lashed out and struck the ground
Hoping for your thunder
A dark and roiling storm
Swirling raindrops and clouds colliding
And deep, ugly noise

All I wanted was your thunder
But in the end
It was only me yelling
Screaming out for downpours
Alone
Listening to my own echoes
Waiting for you to harmonize

In the end
I was always waiting
Wondering when you'd chosen silence
Wondering why I'd let you dim me
Wondering how it was we'd ever *burned

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.

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

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

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

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

No poems care to comfort me
No words are willing to clear my head
No thoughts come flowing from my pen
No dreams will deign to share my bed

I used to sleep with company
To doze with dainty desires
But now it seems my mind rejects
Those floating, smiling sires
Instead my head’s been filled with fluff
With engineered tomfoolery
No longer can I find my thoughts
Amidst this heavy schoolery

My florid fancies and swooning sighs
Have decomposed under scrutiny
And inspiration has been so choked
That is has no will for mutiny

I’ve calculated, demonstrated
Extrapolated and oxidized
So now I’ve found that feelings too
Have fallen overanalyzed
It feels surreal, to sit with you
While my mind sits far away
The distance slows my synapses
And causes heart delay

Thoughts, I’ve found, have been rewired
Connected where they shouldn’t be
So silly things cause tears to spring
And trivial words to bother me

I wish my poems would return
To put my mind where it belongs
To weave my dreams so I might sleep
To erase for you my careless wrongs
I wish my words would scamper back
And put my tangled thoughts to rights
My feelings, too, so I might breathe
And finally make peace with restless nights

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’m in the business of invention
In the art of new intention
Making something out of nothing
And falling back on no convention

I’m a spontaneous generator
A clumsy, crude, and crazed creator
Deftly dodging laws of physics
And without a moderator

Unchecked I grow my thoughts too fast
Too big, too bold, but built to last
Fed on dregs and trivial words
And made of insecurities vast

I’m in the business of spinning tales
Of conjuring roaring mental gales
Convinced my happiness can’t stick
And swallowed up in false travails

I’m the master of complication
The reigning queen of brute frustration
The duchess of dismantled plans
And dreams that fell to degradation

See, my mind invents its own dismay
And cannot think a simpler way
Assuming all must fall apart
Thus keeping hopefulness at bay

I’m in the business of delusion
Hooked on sinking in confusion
Stuck with a mis-wired brain
That treats all joy like an intrusion

I’m a wild contradiction
Anxious over bits of fiction
Wishing for the chance to breathe
When this rush is my addiction

Worrying is what I know best
Accustomed to distraught unrest
Small wonder that a happy thought
Is treated like a passing guest

Small wonder that my frenzied mind
Assumes that Fate must be unkind
So even when the tides have turned
I cannot leave Distress behind

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

I am a planet knocked out of orbit
Officially space-junk
And a hazard to the universe
Left with no gravity anchor
Just frightening velocity and the panic of empty space

I was not held tightly enough

There is a seizing terror in the hollows of existence
A nightmare in the dark holes where wayward satellites disappear
There is only solitude here
With space-time stretching away, away, away
And nothing trying to bring me back

Stupid girl
What were you thinking?

When the cosmos were rearranging
I thought to find myself a warm body to revolve around
A hopeful path to comfort and stability
A chance to escape the darkness of infinity

I thought to find myself a Sun

As I was inspecting every glittering piece of space rock
One caught me unawares
He pulled me straight into orbit
And I could have fought
But he seemed the brightest body in the sky
So there I was
Happy to be trapped by gravity
Doting on my captor as he shined back at me
This was the exchange
My unwavering attentions
For some heat and some light

I should have known these things can’t be sustained

There is so much energy in a burning sun
But the funny thing about fire
Is that it kills its fuel source
So despite my efforts to keep it going
The Sun found it tiresome to shine
The Sun found it tiresome to entertain a doting planet
And suddenly I found myself rocketing around the galaxy

Stupid girl!
Did you never realize that you are too much?

I have a nasty habit
Of allowing my life to revolve around someone else
Call it obsessive
Call it needy
Call it whatever you want
I should probably just call it delusional
Because it still shocks me every time I get pushed away
For trying to come closer
It’s hard
When something that brilliant means so much to you
You feel very small
And smaller still when it wrenches itself away

The universe is vast
And I am tiny
And I am lost

I wish I could have learned how to navigate alone
Or at least how to care less

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

These are all the things I can never tell you
Because I have the worst timing
And I’m way too late
And honestly you’re better off without me
Life with me is not easy
Life with me is like being trapped on a tiny boat in the middle of the ocean
In a thunderstorm
All crashing and thrashing and tidal waves
I exist at the extremes
Skipping all grey area
And dragging everyone under with me
You are better off on dry land

I will never tell you any of this
Because I don’t want you to be tempted to jump in after me
I don’t want you to drown
But I am self-indulgent
So I will tell it to strangers
I will shout to a room of unfamiliar faces
That I can’t stop thinking about you
…******* it
I cannot stop thinking about you
And how I made so many stupid decisions
And how it’s my own **** fault that you drifted away
Because I wanted you to move on
And the moment you did
I became a shipwrecked idiot
With nothing to show for my efforts but a sunburn and a head full of delusions

How did I even get here?

I know I should let it go
Abandon all thoughts of rescue and come up with Plan C
But still, I can’t stop thinking about you
And I wish you would jump in after me

I’ve been playing perfect princess
Glittered-up to keep them guessing
Breaking my back and sweating daily
To build a throne to lord it over

I was thinking, on a pedestal
Life would never let me down

They said petulance would be my undoing
Jealousy my unraveling
And unrelenting childishness the block that toppled the tower

I fell hard one day and wondered
If it was really worth the work

I’ve been losing myself in pieces
Bits of fluff that swiftly scattered
Torn away by city wind tunnels
And the terror of disappointment

All I have left are sticky feelings
The worst bits that wouldn’t stray

This city has me restless
Turning circles in my bedroom
Wishing for a different skyline, different season, different shore

If I weren’t averse to running
I’d be miles away by now

Yet the pavement has been calling
Has been tempting me to sprinting
Flying down an empty highway
With the hope of something more

Same old same old has me snapping
Lashing out at all I know

I’ve become uneven compromise
Tried to spare myself the conflict
But ended up too vexed to enjoy things either way

I’ve been dreaming, still, of running
Though I’m scared of what I’d find

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 the frayed end of a string
At wit’s end and unraveling
Afraid of sleeping in an empty bed
With a frenzied heart that beats too red
And an anxious mind that won’t hold still
No rest tonight; my head is ill

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

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

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

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

My first word was “scared”
Not because it was taught to me
But because it was all
I knew
I was taught the word
“Emaciated”
But I wasn’t told what it meant
I just knew
Because it was all
I was
I learned to count
By counting the ribs through
My starved skin
While they were counting guns
Ammunition…

This world is frightening
And I’ve been thrown in
And no one cares
All they can do
Is run headlines of poor Darfur
On TVs of people who don’t watch…

After I finished counting my ribs
I counted each relative who died
I couldn’t count high enough
And I lost track
And then when I finally died
All they did was post my picture
On the internet
While the ones who killed me run free
Counting their ammunition
But never the targets they hit

My words have left me here
I fear
Run off to find a worthy ear
They pranced away, my thoughts in tow
To trill their tunes
But I don’t know
The verses there
The verses here
Ripped out my hair
For you, my dear
I fear
My words escaped, crept lightly off
I was stuck to sigh and scoff
Calculating to derive
How to get out of this alive
I worried there
I worried here
Anxiety shares
The space with fear
Oh dear

I never meant to complicate
From a to b to integrate
Insanity
Profanity
And a **** near loss of humanity
Don’t you see?
There can be no stopping me
I burned right through with enthalpy

My words escaped this melted mess
Saved themselves from sheer distress
Spewed their logos to the masses
Ethos languished still in classes
The pathos far
The pathos near
Can’t hope to spar
With the letters here
I fear
The rhetoric isn’t clear
S, p, d filled up in line
The derivative was two roots of sine
The answer’s A
No, B
No, D
You’re all wrong
The answer’s Z

My words have left, abandoned ship
Now I’m stuck to sway and slip
The rigging’s there
The oars are here
The electrons are shared
The ideas won’t cohere
I fear
My words have left me here

Clumsy words that don’t make sense
Prance from my besotted pen
Empty words, far too dense—
Why did I try to write, again?

I've been waking up with jaw aches
Throbbing pains all through my teeth
And they told me it's a stress reaction
So calming down should bring relief
But how on earth could I be calm
When you're a *****, dogged thief?

Yes, you've stolen my attention
Snatched it tightly in your grasp
Roped your doting all around my neck
Clipped it up with Cupid's clasp
Laid my head on sultry promises
That leak poison like an asp

I've been eating up your venom
****** it down like Diet Coke
It's been pooling in my bloodstream
Since the first time that we spoke
Belaboring my breathing
Like determined, heady smoke

Yes, I'm finding you're quite toxic
But I can't resist this blight
Even though it makes my hands shake
And leaves me tossing through the night
Restless with the thoughts you gave me
And expecting no respite

I've been courting green-eyed monsters
Burning hot with jealous flares
Letting trivial words consume me
With their petty, jeering dares
Making messes with my mind games
And my overwhelming cares

Yes, you're making me quite anxious
And I really must confess
You've enthralled me so completely
With these feelings you profess
And though I try to block you out
I can't help but obsess

I've been hoping you would tell me
All the thoughts trapped in your mind
Because lately I've been guessing
Since your meanings aren't aligned
And I cannot yet determine
If your intentions are unkind

Yes, I'm hoping you're still feeling
How you did those years before
Though part of me can't take it
And another part's still sore
Because another part still craves you
And couldn't love you more