Distress shows on my face
like atheism in a priest
yet is welcome in my head
like a baby in its crib.
I'm always where I don't belong
always finding myself singing songs with cicadas
I'm always losing my head
And finding myself stuck, still a slave to time
it's time I find so pressing
not some boy's dejection or rejection of my kind words
(in that sense, I can make 101 comparisons
of myself to a rubber ball, always bouncing back)
no, it's time I'm so scared of
it's time that's constantly breaking my heart
when I fall in love at least 32 times in a day

I fall in love with contentment,
with the sunrays that filter through the leaves
of early autumn trees
with the slight lisp
situated between my favorite singer's lips
I fall in love with the milliseconds when
life seems sublime
when I snake my way out of glass,
when the wind dances on the
ski-***** of my nose,
the moon lifting me up
putting pretty words in my head.
Time will always be sure to come and
rob me of these lovers of mine
and so
naturally,
in their passing I am left hollow,
confused,
longing and heartsick for something that no longer exists
but is still very real

Today I'm happy.
Today I am Super Woman.
Today I scaled Mount Everest
and nothing could touch me,
nothing could shake my impermeable bliss,
today nothing could bring me down
from being so high.
And then you came along
and you
you stole away my breath,
made me aware of my elevation.
So, terrified, I jumped.
Now I'm tumbling down
the tallest mountain in the world
and the closer I get
to the
ground
the less I care
that I am
falling.

Women like me do not fall gracefully,
we stumble over our spines, trip over
our vowels, and collapse into your arms.

Our hearts are open books,
Russian novels containing fifty pages
on the way your voice drifts across
the telephone wires each night.
Our hearts are first drafts,
unedited verses about each and every
person we have ever loved: the stranger
on the subway, the girl who gave us a balloon,
the boy who stole our virginity
but not our heart.

Women like me will love you from a distance
of a thousand syllables while laying in your bed,
we will destroy you in the most beautiful way possible,
and when we leave you will finally understand
why storms are named after people.

- Katrina M.K

I am the human embodiment of
self-contempt and
malice,
a fleshy, smelly manifestation of
nostalgia and
desolation
devoid of any remnants of
love or
security,
containing a soul which
spits,
snarls,
screams
for something more than this-
this abyss
this blackness
and I am standing here
screaming
"No!"
to what I have been given
I do not want it, I give it back
because there has to be something more
somewhere

It’s morning and there’s an incoming,
your receptors sense a spark of sadness
so they take it
and mash it
and all of a sudden It’s here:
nothingness.
Staring into the perpetual vastness
of a mind that you have
and there are no signs of life
no remnants of emotion that could indicate
something once lived and breathed and laughed
in this abyss
in this blackness
so until Doc bumps up the milligram
for the fifth time around
I can distract myself
with people, places and plants
and listen to his South African accent
while imagining a planet rational to my mind
devoid of even the most microscopic of organisms.
Not a patio brick
or a single tumble bug of my childhood remains,
only these deep lacerations
veiling the beauty of the land which it scars.

Now it’s noon
and the scuffs on my shoes remind me of you
My mind is racing
while Zoloft takes my sadness
and transmutes it into emptiness;
I’m currently still trying to ascertain
which of them is worse.

We’re harmonizing
in a bed without sheets,
I don’t know what I’m singing
but it doesn't seem to matter,
because we’re making up words
so that the music will write itself
and now I’m struggling with keeping a beat.

They’re always cold
and they don’t want warming
because the wind will be
even more bitter after.
They can hold their own;
I can hold my own hands.

I seem more appealing
when there are pillows in the room
and that's okay
as long as I can still touch you,
taste you,
hear you,
smell you,
see you,
you can be as irate as you will.
I need these 5 senses
to ensure that you are here,
that you are real,
that I'm not in love with
someone's shadow.
This is when the week days seem to last forever
even though it’s only been that long,
you’re already literaturely beautiful
making me seem poetically challenged
while I’m watching you draw
wishing I had the skill to just trace
the outline of your face
and your fast hands

Give me your head,
give me myself back.

It’s rare that you're here
and when you are, you still aren't
sometimes you speak to me with words
usually you leave without saying goodbye
I have drawn so many conclusions
but I haven’t proved any hypothesis;
you don’t need a method for everything

I’m starving,
but I won’t eat
because I don’t want to swallow any more of your words
that are so hard to digest,
that confine me to my bed,
that don’t escape my system for months
so I won’t come clean
and I don’t want washing.

I want to feel a day away
I want you to say big words
and talk of other worlds
and think of all the little minds at night
who want nothing more than to
turn off the lights
and lay down next to
what pandora never saw

But I can wake up in the morning
and think maybe today holds
everything I've been wanting
and I can look to the sky
and there her hope is, sitting there
shining onto my face

It happened on a night when
the moon was most likely bright and
she with Eros were looking down upon me,
thought they were blessing my tummy.

You loved me at the worst possible time
you loved me at the best possible time
you loved me, so now I'm never alone
no matter where I go

Weeks pass me without blessing
I am shaken, unbalanced
I am off and I know it.
Mother lifted my curse
and mother gave me a curse
I carry it with me all of the time
and after it has left me,
I will carry it in my heart until the end of time.

You went to your uncle's funeral two weeks ago
and we will attend mine in a few more
We'll say goodbye to a part of me
I'll say goodbye to the best part of me
We'll say goodbye to a piece of us

Now water still flows through
water and blood still connect me and you but
do you know soon you will rust?

Some would call it parasitic,
but I believe it slightly more mutualistic;
I give up everything for your tiny tummy
I'd give up anything for your tiny heart
that seems to beat 1,000 times per few seconds
1,000 miles deep within me,
so I will never be able to reach you
let alone help you
So this is my sincerest apology
to the love of my life
who never could come to be
and I will be carrying
all your 1,000 heart beats
and on me they crush down upon
the only home you have ever known
a thousand pounds heavy
but not nearly as heavy as
that pill in my hand
and my heart
as we said goodbye
to the best part of me.