i think the beginning is always like the end
a perfect circle meeting a familiar point that draws itself to
completion.
i think i'm always going to meet that same point
despite the illusion of forward motion.
despite the spinning sensation of change.
i think the beginning is always like the end
and that's why i'm here alone.
you can cast a stone on water but it always sinks
you can take a picture of yourself and
think you're beautiful
but it never cures the sickness that comes like clockwork.

i'm a circle but i'm far from perfect

you're a walking universe
and
all your stars have gone out

now it's so unfathomably
       dark.

smoking craters as planetary masses
collide
and
you there: remote, frozen
and held together with the gravity of your own depression
light years from any sun.

i wonder if every someone
is a universe spinning in
their own sphere of energy.

i wonder if universes can ever connect.

i look at you through telescope pupils,
flecks of dust catching light.

i don't know if our universes could ever touch
or if
we're both alone in the stretching constellations of our heads.

the parties and the drinks
and me stumbling and sinking in the slush.

i can't remember when but i danced with a boy:
a friend of a friend whose name escaped me then.

my memory is a dark pit
and i stare down in it trying to make sense of black.

he took me back to his room
i guess.

i woke up crammed into the edge
of a twin size bed with a body next to mine.

i've never dressed so fast in my life
fastening buckles with a speed i didn't know i had.

i cried walking to my room dressed in last night's shame
shaking with dehydration and an emotion i couldn't name.

i laughed about it like it was just another
joke passed around from friend to friend.

they said he was in a dry spell
as if i was a well in some man's desert.

i was a dumb drunk ******* a dumb drunk night
and in spite of my memory painted in swatches of black

no one said stop or no or
let's get her home.

there's a four letter word that sometimes comes to me
and holds me in his *****, ugly claws.

that emotion comes again like ink spilled on a page,
i don't like to think about it, to make it real

i don't want to be touched by a stranger again
i'm afraid of men's hands now

i'm afraid of men's hands now

My heart is pump pump pumping the poison and the pressure is pushing droplets through the spigots of my eyes. The air is draining from me, shrinking me even though I should feel full. I'm trying to fill up the silence with all of my violent noise but I feel like I'm screaming into nowhere.
I'm just howling at acres of nothing and waiting for someone to answer.

In the crosswalk
With a male voice hollering
NICE SHORTS
at me. I looked down at those
Two pale things protruding from my form like ugly, overlarge monsters.
I tasted the fettucini alfredo and pizza I had let myself splurge on after a breakfast of coffee and fruit.
I tasted the tang of sweat forming in beads on my forehead and trickling down to my lips. Little rivers of effort on stationary machinery, my body moving but never really going anywhere. I tasted embarrassment and my own weakness.
Maybe I was better when I was sick
With wanting perfection. When I wanted what my favorite band sang to me through my speakers:
A perfect body; a perfect soul.
Maybe I was better when i was sick and the fettuccini swirling away from me
Down down down that liquid rabbit hole that consumed my secrets
Maybe I was better than these fat legs
Crammed into athletic shorts
Maybe I was better than just
Some joke

i don’t even want this feeling
to pass from the safety of myself.
i would rather just
look at you and let a crush
crush me completely
than have to realize it
like i did before.
i would rather be crushed by possibility than
its death.
i would rather live in limbo than in
definitive
disappointment.
cause if i’ve learned anything in these
eighteen years
it’s that you’re kinder
when you tear yourself apart
softer
than a stranger who desecrates even the parts
you would leave intact.
i would rather look at you and think how
nice it might be to touch you, break the boundaries of social
propriety,
but leave it just an empty, unfulfilled
possibility. because i don’t want to touch, i don’t want
that tender, tender brushing of fingertips,
i want a **** to forget and a friend
to remember
and caring isn’t on the agenda.
so please just let me look at you
let me crush myself
before you
ever get the chance
to.

being broken isn't beautiful
and it took remaking myself
to understand.

sad isn't pretty.
it's just sad.
it's crying over the toilet
and drinking cheap ***** straight.
it's looking down instead of in the mirror
because it hurts too much.

broken isn't beautiful
and don't ever let a poet
tell you otherwise.
broken is just broken
so remake yourself with me
and i'll help hot glue you back with humor
and love.
you are not
destined to be in fragments.
you will be whole.
you will
you will
you will