it's 4 a.m. and i didn't study
those latin conjugations
no, i studied
the last few weeks.

i don't care if i've ****** a thousand men;
i don't care if i've ****** one.
none of you have the right to
make me seem like i'm unclean.
because if i remember correctly
it takes two bodies,
two sets of limbs moving in the dark unseen,
and two resolves to explore
the sensations of their ***.
and i'm expected to sit here quiet and placid
while you throw my sexuality in my face
and make this an unwelcome place
for ****** like me.
*******.
*******.
*******.

i'm a person; a human being
and stop playing nice,
stop playing dumb.
i'm not going to pity *******
because you were kind to me
a time or two
you pathetic *******.

you came at the wrong time,
when i was already seething so silently,
and you asked again and again
like a kid asking his mom for a new toy in the store.
it's hardly even you i'm mad at:
it's this systemic poison in the great pool of people,
and there are plenty of fish in the sea
but how many are free from this toxicity?
i thought *** was an exploration, a harmless invitation
to enjoy what felt so organic and good
but you're the ones who've made it *****,
who've made me feel like a ****.
who've made it your personal business to erase me,
and displace me
because i liked the touch, taste, feel.
this is unreal to me; and i'm sick in my heart.
because everyone wants to try and isolate
this one part of me
and simplify who i am into
the whims of my skin.

no. the answer is no.

so *******.

There's a somebody for everybody,
but I think my somebody
fell into a well and lives there
like folklore.
I think my somebody is somewhere
far away, not missing me
like I am missing them.
I think my somebody
might already be married
with two kids and a mortgage,
or entrapped in the idea of someone else.
I think my somebody lives somewhere
with dirt floors and no telephone,
and can't write to me
or even keep warm.
I think my somebody is lonely like me,
sitting and thinking
and shrinking away from a world half-empty,
while I'm here
and you're there.

We walked on fields of hellish amber,
our bare toes scraping barbed wire.
we held our naked palms out flat
so that they might feel the air thick with dust.
We walked in the black rain, dying our hair a sooty grey
and leaving vertical wrinkles on our cheeks.
We walked towards the end.

We watched the phoenix plumes rise up
then crescendo in an extinguishing fire.
we saw the mountains crumble, as if tired,
and lay in purplish rest.
We saw the shining sea stir against the coasts
and eat back the Earth.
We touched hands,
and we walked towards the end.

We saw a billion mouths demanding, reprimanding,
consuming and presuming, quiet to a hum.
We saw them crumple on driveways and in shopping malls,
murmuring so many names to the same effect.
They were still then,
but we,
we walked towards the end.

We trudged in our clothes,
shreds of some past life
we left there in the ashes.
We walked under the studded sky pierced by skyscrapers,
peeling back as easily as skin.
There, the torn fabric waltzed in a hissing breeze,
burning orange at the bulging seams.
Lopsided stars hung askew as decorations
and cartwheeled to the steady rythmn of gunfire.
Swaying, we danced along,
as we walked towards the end.

Scorched prairie grass crumbled beneath our feet.
Ringing filled us, and we broke cleanly in two.
Asphalt melted and mingled with the crust
and buildings knelt to pray.
We laid down side by side,
brushing our fingertips.
The sky bled lukewarm tears above us.
We knitted our hands together
and unfolded ourselves upon packed dirt,
black and singed,
as angels stitched the lacerated heavens.

We rested, tiny scars on Earth's craggy face.
We nicknamed every star and every worm,
orange with nuclear light.
Laughing, we closed our eyes,
flowing with the fire and the night.
Our hands were sure and firm,
as we drifted out of sight,
fading towards the end.

All at once
this pain of being
bore down on me,
like a tidal of feeling
and sat curled upon my chest
like a knowing,
smug
cat.

I think I am transformed,
changed,
estranged from the cold humor
that kept me still.
But I'm filled with fear
for everyone I've ever known.
I see them sinking, drowning
and alone.
And here I am on the shore,
wishing there was more
I could do to drag them
from the crushing
depths of their demons.

Sometimes I'm so lost in people
I forget I can hurt
and  
this pain of being
comes from seeing
the world as it is.
From seeing people as they are
and loving them,
reaching,
even if they're too far out to sea,
too lost to pain,
too twisted to ever change.

I wish I could warn my past,

                      I wish I could send a smoke signal
                                         or a telegram.
                      or a letter.
                                                         ­      Just to say,
                                                            ­  BE CAREFUL
you may become,

                                 so accidentally,

                                                  ­                                                                 ­  an ugly person
                                                                ­                                                     one day.
                                                            ­                                                                 ­            Love,
                                                           ­                                                                 ­             K

there are two
selves
fighting within me.
one wants
nothing but the
gratification
of anger, destruction
and on and on and on.
the other is so desperate to be liked,
needed, desired
and on and on and on.

i'm a run on sentence dwindling down
into a person
so small and petty
i mean nothing
despite all i have to say.
and what do i have to say anyway
aside from bitterness,
pity, anger
and on and on and on.

i'm trying to learn how to
breathe again
and how to exorcise the
chemicals.
i'm trying to bite back
all the things
that i do wrong.
i'm trying to fit in and to not be
an angry soul
with nothing but a shoulder cracked clean in two.
i'm trying,
breathing, exhaling, slowly disappearing
and on and on and on.

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.

sleep that is not really sleep but half-lidded existence
and again, indifference that tightens
like summer clothes on a winter body.

pillowed flesh that never cares and
a greasy face who stares dully at
its twin who is a stranger.

angry, angry for a moment and
tears, rips, sobs
then desolate, desolate for a moment and

sleeps, sleeps, sleeps.

sliding into a hollow place where it is dry
and the rain is outside and it trickles to that
solitary holding cell where pliant curves are a thousand miles away.

desperate, desperate for a moment and
whisper, utter, scream
then lonely for a moment

nothing, nothing, nothing

i do not only grow
up

i grow out and around and
over myself like a ****.
i grow in ways that contort
and confuse and construe.

i do not only grow
up.

i grow in ways that begged to be pruned
and i grow downwards into the below.
i grow set and seated and still.

i do not only grow
up.

i grow and grow and grow
and i can't tell if ive grown any taller
but i think that is ok.

they have trimmed me and stemmed me
and tried to pull me from my place.
but that is ok.

i do not only grow
up.

i always thought poetry
happened as life
chaffed you over
and over
until it rubbed holes in
the fiber of you
and almost without even knowing it
you leaked your soul in lines.
i thought experience was beautiful
but its only disenchanting.

i think a cynic is such an ugly thing
and i think myself the ugliest of all.
i'm always wanting
always falling into a trope of misery;
i thought i was better than that,
i thought i was wise.
i can't hide my sensitivity or shiny pinpricks of hurt
catching the light.
i thought poetry dripped like faucet water
like a garden hose.
i suppose i've learned that poetry
is like pulling your worst fears
from your stomach where they thrive in acid dark,
and pushing them out through your mouth.

it's word-poisoning.
it's the ugliest parts,
it's vestigial tenderness
and i'm bruised
yellow black blue
purple red.
i've been living in the
tortured safety of my own head
and poetry is my writing on the wall
scratched into the sides of my skull.
it doesn't matter what i say
because i'll probably
live there till i die
but at least i'll have this graffiti,
this watery poetry sloshing like
brine in a jar.
what an ugly cynic i've become.

and then i cry! oh do i cry! and it is written like this! oh it is written!

i am scripted and i follow it with solemn diligence. the lines of tears are angling down my face so precisely. yes! i am crying! and no one is coming to calm me down!

this freedom. this blissful terror of the waking and unsleeping, the unseeing, the unknowing. there is no kind hand to touch me, wipe me clean.
just the back of my hand, smearing and swiping.
no elegance, no beauty. i don't need beauty because i am alone.

and i am crying! choking sobs that are ugly and uneven! yes!

and then i am done. and i clear the thickness from my throat and i turn off the television and it is silent. silent and silent and silent. and i am basking in the perfection of my performance.

perhaps ill award myself with pills. maybe a drink. maybe both.

a actor needs his beauty sleep

tonight is the first night i have truly felt crazy

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.
*******

**** college
you can't even smoke a cigarette in peace.

my life is a push and pull
between disappearing and
screaming to be seen.

**** college

i am smoking a lucky strike clamped with old tweezers.
i am sitting on the back porch of my friends house
he is asleep. it is 2 pm. i am alone with the rooms of accumulated years.
i feel like an intruder. or maybe a burgler.

there are children next door screaming as i tap out the lucky strike into a dish full of his siblings.
i wonder if he knew them. there were 20 packed in tight.

i am wondering why i instantly personified a cigarette as male. i am worried for the implications of this.

i am hungry and still somewhat thirsty. the cigarette is drying my mouth even more but i don't have the will to rise.

a lawnmower has started up two backyards away.
i am worried for my strange superiority complex regarding suburban life.
i wonder if i am better than the mundane despite this observation.

my friends dad put his arm around me and patted me on the back. it is the most physical contact I've had with a male figure in about a year.
i hope he didn't see the discomfort.

i am writing a poem in this style because the matter of fact is all that comes to me. i am realizing i will probably never write anything worthwhile and spend my young years in the halls of retail: customer service. fast food. i will not travel the world. i will not take Polaroids of incredible things. i will only have my body to sell and the tasks that it can perform. my mind will be placed elsewhere for safekeeping. i am writing a poem in this style because i do not need to write something good. i am not a young genius. i am not a prodigy. i am smoking a lucky strike with tweezers, if that gives you any idea. i just want to write. i don't need to be beautiful. i can be an important ugly, a clunky tongued verse. a bad poem. this does not ruin me. this releases me.

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

no seriously im a fake deep drunk *******

thanks for the likes though

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

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.

life is like a song
cause sometimes there are
parts where the chorus hits
and it *******
erases all the doubt of life
before that swell of chords
and voices scratching against throats.
i've been alive with doubt and now the guitars are humming and the drums are steady and i'm screaming the words so loud
and everyone can hear me but i don't care
cause i'm singing the chorus so loud it hurts
because i believe it and it's real
and the laughter outside my door
is overwhelmed and alone is a
beautiful thing to be screaming
along with.

i like power lines
theyre comforting
like a mcdonalds or a holiday inn
you know wherever you are the same power
is pulsing over your head. the same that lights up your home somewhere else
so gaudy and bright.

i like the way they ****** up into the sky,
their many-pronged arms reaching and holding,
connecting.

i like the Orange lights that illuminate them at night
and the way they look against early morning sky.
they are a reminder of this connection. wherever i am i am not alone. i am lit up
so gaudy and bright

this isnt art im just drunk

flecks in my ***** that look like pine needles
ever mean ever green ever
pouring out of me

w h y am i
c r y ing

i thought i liked to ****
rough, *****, ******.
but i'm only ever
sad
after.
i'm only ever
wishing that they didn't
leave me
laying there
like a used vessel
that has merely
served its purpose.

i thought i liked to be
empty
but i'm only ever
wanting for someone to come
pour their heart out to me
so that i might
carry a little
something of them.

i thought a lot of things
and now i
can only think of
how incredibly
quiet it is inside my ribcage

i think a lot about my ribs
and about my stomach
and my organs
and how they would look if
someone pulled them out
i think a lot about my skin
and the way it's whittled
over me.
i think a lot about my mind
and
how the next smoke will calm it
to a dull hum.
i think a lot about my weight
and my mind is heavy with
the thought.

i think about my bed and my sheets
and how they might've once
been occupied by
more than just me.
but now it's so lonely,
lonely, lonely,
like my mind, my ribcage, my weight,
my organs persisting through the poisons
i put in them.

i think too much
and i want,
want, want
too much to say.
i don't know how i got the
privilege of this prolonged
purposeless
sadness.

if i just got out
out, out
of bed and fought for once.

but it's hard when you wake up
drunk, drunk, drunk.

this is the only way I know to absolve myself
and it's not working

there is no relief.

nothing is must be are is when nothing
but nothing is felt and seen and touched
and felt and tasted and by ******* god
touched
with things that cling
and bear down on skin like teeth
and gum and jaw and little things
that **** through skin and let you know
they're listening and
touched and felt and
******* seen

the flow of information
so vast
it might swallow us up
a great flood of
pictures, pictures, pictures
and
people, people, people.
i don't know
how it's possible
for a grain of sand
to be alone on a beach
or a water molecule in a sea.
but sometimes it seems
like
the middle of
the torrent
is the
quietest place to be.

I woke up and slipped back
(into your arms with your cold hands
pressing flat against my torso.
You put your nose in my hair and I shook;
you told me I smelled clean.
Your hands were under my shirt and resting
there. Cold hands that burned like dry ice,
like the filmy haze of your eyes.
I could hear the catch in your voice
choking out while I trembled there
weakly as those cold hands
sapped me dry, dry, dry.
You said you were sorry
as tears rolled sideways down the bridge of my nose.
And you loved me then with your cool hands on curves.)
into a dream,
shivering with the window left open.

i can take pictures of the sunset again
i can ****** up a moment and hoard it as a memory
i can die
i want to
i want to

when will the sunset end
moments are forever when your eyes have gone
to glass in your head

my head hurts and the pills didn't make me sleep
i can't wait for this sunset to ******* end

im sorry i lived
and continue on living
with screws to hold me

i miss the butterflies and all that other
lovey dovey ****.
they must've run out of air in my stomach.

i miss the feeling of someone taking your breath away
like a punch to the gut.
i miss my thoughts being consumed and filled and bursting.

i miss love
and wanting it.
the butterflies are dead in the pit on my stomach and i dont know if that's all i get.

i watch romance movies and wonder about
That Great Love
and if i've used mine up already.

i turned it off because that easier and now the switch is stuck
and for a while i didn't care but now
my fingers aren't strong enough. the fluttering inside me is gone.

it's gone.

i was born blue & you were born yellow
& you colored me with yourself.

only that made me green
& you didn't seem to like that very much.

you asked me why i was such a noxious shade
& i couldn't answer.

i couldn't answer

you told
me
i was handsome and i said
thank you
for lying.

you were so kind
and so bright

intimacy & *** are two different things and i know this
because i have always had one without the other

you cried behind the steering wheel and said you didn't understand
why i hated myself
my body
my being
so much.
you cried as if i could divine the answer in those wet trails.

i didnt have a word then.
i didnt have an answer.
feelings are so much bigger than words sometimes
and that was the only truth i had to offer you.

i cried too
but my tears didnt shine like yours.

i think i understand now.
i think i have an answer.

but i think that would just make you cry even more.

wanted: someone to **** me

i want a written proposal on how you'll do it.
slow or quick, brutal or neat, personal or impersonal.

will you touch my organs? be the last man inside me? will you play around with my gut full of moving parts? will you take ******* and dip them into the ****** glaze and press them to your lips to taste?
i might like to die like that. it might be easier to see someone possessing your physical heart. at least then it doesn't have to live inside you.

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 hope you keep hurting
but that hope
means I have to
too

eat your words like a last meal that makes you sick

fill yourself up with haphazard and call it finished

tell her you want and then watch it shrivel like wet paper.

make promises that die like bugs kept in a jar.

watch the hands that once held yours draw away, slick with your sweat

realize you don't know how to ask for help.

smoke because it hurts and you know you deserve it.

ache because you're so good and getting it wrong.

hide because your limbs so fragile and boneless

rejected poems and ***** clothes on the floor

this is what i have to give. this is all i am.

melted ice cream. cartons swimming with fudge swirl and a loose hair that's found a home there.

the other person on a couch that seats three.

this is what i have to give. this is all i am.

forgotten nail polish thick with chunks. pasta grown dry in its Tupperware.

surviving to the next year. wanting to make it. when that ambition seems Big.

this what i have to give. this is all i am.

There is a time
between the appropriate hour for sleeping
and complete abandon
an hour or two between respectability
and three cups of coffee.

I'm watching the minutes
flicker in the bottom right corner of my screen
there is a hazy sort of
beauty in this in-between,
where my eyelids
heavy and dark
pull taut and wide
my house is so quiet I'm afraid
to breathe or even
type,
hunched over the keys
in translucent
artificial light.

The hour
or two,
is passing from me and winking like a star on its path
to nowhere.
It occurs to me
that I should sleep,
that I'll be tired for work,
that my head aches from
the electronic glow.
But still I sit and wait for some revelation
in the half reality
of this in-between.

But it's late,
it's past,
and now I have to go.

I want to be as light as vaporous smoke
     Maybe then
        I could surround you,
              float wordlessly to you,
                  and fill you.
         You couldn't catch me, sliding
            between the lines of your hand.
                 But I think that
                  you would only grasp more.
I will be as light as mist,
   as fog,
   as blissful nothingness.
       Try and catch me with jars,
           but I will be everywhere
           and I will be everything.


I will never be as light as gas.
Gravity puts his foot down
and you pass around my
solid form.
And I look so longingly
at the clouds spinning in a storm.
Maybe I could be a cloud,
high overhead and drench you
or even
strike you dead.

You can be my ball of wax.
I'll roll you between my fingertips
until you're warmed and soft
and I can mold you.
Some are impressionists
or modernists
but I wanted to be a
realist.
So I made you in the image
of my reality.
Only I made you
taller,
kinder,
handsomer,
sweeter.
I shaped you
with so much
self-deception
and so much
failed perception.

You can be my boy of wax.
I made you in the winter
and you were strong
and solid
for a time.
But the summer came and you grew
smaller,
shorter,
quieter,
farther,
and you,
my artful manipulation
of
what I so
wanted
to create,
melted.

You can be my pool of wax,
a shapeless
well
of malformed memories
that change
with every touch.
I curl my knees to
my chest and
do my best to stop
prying and prodding you,
my pool of wax.
Because with every touch
it burns
my skin and turns
my fingers
an angry red.

I made you,
and I never
knew
that
a boy of wax
could unmake
me.

whatever you are
is whatever you see.
whatever is your pleasure
your ecstasy
in this whatever generation.

it's equal parts beauty and degradation
driving this sulking generation
to the consummation of image, of physical perfection.
our bodies are up for approval and thorough inspection.

whatever chemicals work the best
whatever gets you drunkest.
whatever gets you hot, hard,
don't forget
to live life to the fullest
but only if you're worthy,
only if you've passed the test.

if only you could rise up from your room
or start a revolution through the phone
plug in, go quiet and
surrounded
you are alone.

this is our whatever generation,
**** your thought and your soul
and your hope:
that is the initiation.
blame society
and forget,
that it is our creation.
so join the fold and strive to reach
that spiritual elevation
of a perfect smile, body, hair
because variation
is god's greatest failure.

this is my whatever generation,
the caste system of beauty
where screens light the path to liberation.
all sins are forgiven,
save ugliness,
that is our only stipulation.
so do whatever, feel whatever,
and whatever can be yours.
aren't you lucky to live
in a generations like ours?

Sense comes at the most senseless times and
wonder comes when the world is dull.
Neurotic, I stumble into the calm
and sunlight unfolds in the throes of depression.

My life is an ill-timed spectacle; my big top is freshly painted and moth-eaten.

Come one, come all to see my brilliant downfall
at my own hands. Can one girl have devised so masterful
an undermining? I think not, patrons young and old.

I am listless when it counts the most
and engrossed in the extraneous.
Trust me, I'm a master of these believings and disbelievings.

I can tame tigers and yet the pests undo me.
Beetle-brained, I guess you could say.
There I go again.

Undoing and redoing, rethinking, unthinking and linking all these meaningless experiences in a chain of being that takes the guise of sense but bends into a pattern without purpose and a gobbledygook message spelling out the things I've already read a thousand times but can't seem to memorize.
My brain is a storm of confession and repression and a sense of self that is in fact the lack of.
Does any of this make sense to you? This absurd gestation between bright and blue?
And all the nonsense in between that braids the random with the fated?
Now you're probably irritated at my own madness; darling, you're not the first that has cursed me.
Nor will you be the last. I've heard this lecture; I've taken this class.
It's the one that tells you everything is sense
and there's a great symbol
and when you die you'll receive recompense for all those little goods you did.
Aesop promised, didn't he?
Well grow up, because there is nothing beyond for me.
And I'll die knowing that at least I could see how ridiculous we humans can be,
searching to name the stars and the rocks beneath our feet.
It doesn't matter; perhaps you're better off naming the worms that will soon eat
both you and me.
Life is does not fit in some neat box of god and good and bad and right.
In fact, the only thing that is sure is the day and the night and ultimately
the loss of our fight for the eternal and the immortal.
No one will read this, the writings of some girl who curls inside herself when the world comes knocking.
There is nothing that will not rot
and we ought not try to fight that.
The pearly gates are the crumbling stones in your backyard;
god is yourself and I know this may be hard for you to realize
but stop clinging to these comforting lies because
I'm not a fated poet, and I'm not meant for words
we just happened to meet one day
and realize we both were a little absurd.

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.

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