sometimes her face is like coming home
and sometimes it's like returning to a burnt down place.
sometimes her face, looking down, looking away,
makes me hurt in old places. places that shouldn't.

and i wish i was ready. god i wish i was ready.

but it's dark and im drunk and im crying because that's the only time it's safe.

where do i begin.

how do i tell her that im nothing. a person made of smoke. and how do i wake up one day and decide im free. nearly two years down the gutter and im still there.

and he put a heaviness in me that pains me still. like old battle scars that all have stories i can only tell after the sixth beer.

and she's looking down away from me with her hair tucked behind her ear. i remember the moment exactly, as her eyes relaxed and swept across the page. she didn't see me watching her but i did and i wanted to cry again but it was too bright for that; she tilted her head to the side and i saw her neck and the collar peeking up through her sweater. her face was so clean and bare. i wanted mine to look like that. i think it did once.

god. where do i begin.

did you forget
holding me.
did you forget
the storm inside and the leaking windows;
i wasn't waterproof anymore.

did you forget the burn of fire in our throats
and the smoke we breathed.
did you forget the earthquake sending tremors through me.

did you forget how much it hurts
to have each nerve snipped
so you can hollow out some space for someone else
in your already packed-full chest.

did you forget
the hot summer sun and first love
and *****-stained dresses smeared with dirt.

did you forget the hard floor and the cricks
in our necks.
mine still hurts

it still hurts

im shaking a snow globe and all flakes are stuck to the bottom.
i can't make it snow inside.
the smiling statuettes are broken and there's a hairline crack that slashes across the glass.

it used to wind and play the lightest tinkling music
like a jewelry box my mom bought for me when she wanted me to be her girl.
that's all over now.
i think it got thrown in the trash years ago with my pink baby blanket and the arching ballerina doll.

i used to be someone's daughter.
i used to be a girl shook up in snow with music ringing in the background.
it's dead quiet now.

my thoughts are stuck to the bottom of my skull
and can't be shaken up and the music crank is jammed and my heart is a silent overture.

i don't want to be a girl
or a boy or a thing
with limbs.
and i don't want a girl or a boy
or a thing as fragile as those statuettes with fractured arms.

they're still smiling even though they aren't whole.
how do they hold their pose so completely?

ive never been much good at that so i just watch with admiration at the
art of the inanimate,

cracking a hairline smile that can't stir my eyes.

i don't think i can shake you any harder and i don't think i can unglue those tiny flakes. after all, that's the whole ******* point, isn't it?

what good is a snow globe that doesn't snow or a person that can't love or a daughter that isn't?

what good am i to anyone if i can't be whole or good or correct?
ive been playing at the art of the inanimate and
those eternal smiles and pointed ballerina toes.

i thought if i was quiet as a figurine--
i thought.
i thought.
i thought.

and I'm shaking
shaking
shaking

and nothing is coming unhinged.
there's no music.
the hairline crack has become
formidable.

I can't tell anyone still
because of the complications of
this grotesque girlhood and the *** that hangs suspended between us
so artificial and illuminated.
do you see it hanging there? or is it another thing
that can only be
and never act?

im getting better at this
art of the inanimate.
and this veneer of wholeness
and manufactured joy.

smooth down my body in poreless plastic and close all entryways to trespassers

and the womanhood that fast approaches can't find me and the selfish needs of limbs will be void
and the human desire to destroy everything it touches will be curbed
if just for a moment.

i want to destroy you with how much I want.
how much i want the snow to fall. how much I want to be baptized in the cold and kissed in a vacuum separate from the world.

our own dimension of mistakes and quiet
where both of us can practice the art of the inanimate
in peace.

i see you performing it too,
and your own hairline smile that cracks.

did you think i wouldn't notice?

i think the snow is coming loose.
i can feel it running down my cheeks.
and im smiling even though it feels wrong.

the thoughts are dusting over me and resting in my eyelashes.
i see them every time i blink.
she's gone and so is he and
there's more than i can count on all my fingers and toes
that have left.

my knuckles turn white.
my fingers tighten.
the world is glittering glass
that falls like the first snow.

i hope your happiness grows sweeter and sweeter
and each layer of dulcet pleasure wraps around
your heart like some great red lozenge.

i hope your happiness grows hard in your chest
like a too-sweet lump
with a liquidy sour center

i hope your happiness tastes like my mouth
and my bile
and my love for you powdering your lips.

i hope your happiness grows like a tumor
and your skin shrivels around it
while you wither in late summer heat.

i hope you cant sleep at night
and your heart slathered in happiness
draws every hungry bug.

i hope you have it removed,
that jawbreaker you call an *****
and i hope you choke on it

if i write a paragraph of
'*******'s
does that count as poetry
because i can't articulate much else
it's not an angry
'*******'
but said with a hitch in my throat
and red rimmed eyes and shaking hands.
*******.
i don't feel better.
i feel like im watching memories made into silent film:
the years and years that flicker mutely behind my eyes
astound me.
*******.
i feel like nothing.
I think that's the worst. im tired of getting chewed up and spit out and feeling like
nothing.
like i nod and smile and settle. im the cameo appearance in everyone else's sitcom.
im so tired of trying to be happy for other people
*******.
i want to scream it at you but that's not the person i want to be.
i don't know what kind of person i want to be.
i think
i want to be the kind of person that isn't so easy to hurt.
that isn't so easy to disregard.
that won't smile and try to make it right.
*******.
this is all i have after everything: a few piecemeal memories already rotten wth roaches and maggots. all the bad and the good going the same sour.
i spent so long trying untangle the wiring, trying to disarm the nuclear core.
i just want to be a safe distance away
now.

*******.
disappointment is a fond friend of mine and you are just another one in the long line of succession,
just like him.

*******.
im a person and im not going to smile when you hurt me anymore.
im not going to smile and try to be better than that.
im done im done im done.
*******

im angry enough to type this
but not sure if im angry enough to make this specific

im angry and i hate that i want to make it small and quiet
so that it might go unnoticed

im so angry because im disappointed in the people ive given trust:
already caked with glue and long abused

im angry cause i can't be ******* sure if this pattern of being wrung dry is more about them
or me

i hate them but i hate me too
and i war with being alone or otherwise a planet in their orbits of conceit
  what is my life worth? (i don't think the value is much)

i used to write such pretty poetry
but now it's plain and matter of fact.
i just want to ******* scream exactly what i mean and burn metaphors to the ground

i came to say im angry without particular cause
so here i am and im angry and
poetry doesn't do a ******* thing anymore

i sleep on top
of my sheets.
i don't need another layer
when i'm already burning.
i have so many:
glued to tendons, muscle, bone.
i wonder where i begin.
i wonder when the wafer-thin
barriers began to stack up
and when i became laden with them
i wonder when i got so fat with
fear
insecurity.
i sleep on top of my sheets
because i'm already blanketed
by safety.