take this
barter my soul
throw it in the trash
plunge it into your next victim
get it away from me
It's all ****** up
I don't want it back

I wish i knew you earlier.
I wish I could have been the one to save you, not her

You cannot talk about her and pull me close
You cannot bring me coffee with promises in the sugar
and the taste of your lips

To me you will no longer be a metaphor
you will no longer be my DNA
nor the wind
nor the feeling of hot fingers on my skin

you will be the man that i wish I had known earlier
you will be the person in the past

and I will finally be free.

Do Not Touch, she will shatter.

It’s like nothing in this world ever sleeps. I creep through the dark house he had inhabited till so recently. Still the coffee *** is stained with dark, rich, brown streaks, it looks as if it had just been used this morning. I can picture his gaping lips slightly closing around the chipped rim of his favorite mug, thick steam rising up the sides of the cup continuing up into his nose, his eyes, his ears, slowly dissipating as it collides with the solid jaw bone of his face. God, the dripping from the sink is enough to make anyone crazy, the rhythmic plop, plop, plop as the liquid collides with the cold, dark, steel basin. The house is alive, his energy engulfs me just as his perfect cigarette stem fingers used to, but the sensation becomes over powering and I gasp for breath. I gasp for the oxygen that has somehow forced its way up, out of my lungs. Stumbling to the door I spill out in a heap on the front lawn. I look up and across the street, not more than one hundred feet from me is the spot we first met. The pavement now scarred with the ethereal ghosts of what once was, what is, and what is to come. This was the place it all began and it all ended.

-K

This is what I have learned so far.
1. Home is a burning frying pan with what was supposed to be your breakfast charred and long forgotten because he tastes better than anything you could ever dream of cooking.
2. Love doesn’t live here, love doesn’t live anywhere, she lurks around corners and tucks herself up in the filter of your coffee maker at 5 in the morning.
3. It is okay to be broken, in fact, it is beautiful, never settle for someone who doesn’t see that.
4. If he is kissing other girls, let him go.
5. let him go
6. I still have so much more to learn, but if I have learned to free myself of you, for now, that is enough

A.
Plates.
When colliding with wooden walls thrown from hand that have had enough
even in this weakness you show strength.
B.
Bones.
You have broken 27 bones, had six surgeries, and tasted deaths lips twice
Each bone grew back strong and imperfect after splitting from its whole.
I manage to find beauty in this recklessness you made of your life.
C.
Pencils.
I kept losing my pencils, so you always carried an extra
when I left school for the second time you
took that stash and made a production of snapping each one like you claimed I snapped your heart
D.
But hearts don’t break,
they become misshapen with every trauma named you
and still manage to pump the blood that I draw from behind its curtain with shards of that plate you shattered
This canvas I want to tear myself from is what you once loved
cushioning your bones from life’s recklessness,
and I now realize those extra pencils you gave to me
were what you considered a consolation for always taking pieces of me

You encompass me
you are up
you are down
you are the streetlight on the empty street
you are that stranger
you are that doorknob
you are that tree
you are that outlet
you are everywhere
you feed me

When I was 10 my mother told me that men are from mars and women are from venus.

The next year in science I told my teacher he was wrong when he told us where we all came from,

defending the words I had grown up hearing.

So when my first boyfriend asked to kiss me I simply said we were too far away,

that it would take him light years to reach me.

He turned the other cheek and found that men from his planet were more his type..

It’s been nine years and the only men who have entered me have already traveled here for someone else,

leaving me waiting for the next spaceship to land.

I have screamed her name from the top of this mountain so many times that the echo starts calling back before the one syllable love song leaves my lips


and the shale knows the tangy stick of my blood and sweat as they drip from the tip of my tongue colliding after a five foot free fall, and this is how I make a statement

There is a species of Jellyfish that is immortal

deceased people can still get goosebumps

blind people do not see the color black, they see nothing.

these are the facts that I read as I try to distract myself from thinking about

how you called me three times last night

begging me to answer

hearing my phone cry into the silence my hazy margarita mind has created

facts, facts, facts

immortal Jellyfish

goosebumps

blind

I didn’t answer, I pressed decline and rushed to the bathroom

to gag your memory from my stomach into the porcelain bowl

I fell asleep on the bathroom floor

i awoke in my *****

wishing I would die

with goosebumps

and blind to what was happening to me.

Running towards a freight train headed at full speed towards nowhere is the equivalent of loving a girl with bipolar

It seemed like an adrenaline rush until the impact

My manias go like this;

I love you more than that couch cushion loves your ***

more than that fist loved his face,

more than sense.

because manias don’t make sense.

My depressions went like this;

black was the brightest color I could see yet

I still needed sunglasses to make eye contact with the reaper

It went like this;

last night I tried eating spiders to give myself an excuse to feel afraid of myself

you held me up until my legs atrophied and there was no point anymore

loving a girl with bipolar a game ending in

manic darkness

If this life is ended too soon by my own hand there are some things that I want to make sure you know;

I loved you so painfully fields of flowers became nails that I picked in order to two by four you and I together forever

I hated you so lovingly that I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be comfortable in my own skin when I was always under yours.

I will never forget the summer the sky fell on us, how the purple and black storm clouds thundered through the valley and all you did was stand drenched in the rain looking at me like I was the only one capable of keeping you dry, while I was crying ****** mary for a break in the tears from the sky.

I hope you never forget these things either, the way you sniffed me and called me vanilla, or the way you pleaded me to love you in a sarcastic tone, knowing that that was the only thing I ever wanted to do.

Falling in love at 15 is a silly thing to do

Every woman I have ever spoken to of love describes it as a masterpiece,

a finished project,

something that if you work hard enough you can achieve alone.

I never understood this, doesn’t it take two?



When I was young the bed time tales my mother would read described the women as soft, something to be

touched gently

The men, always so brave, fighting against dragons and demons, but could touch porcelain skin without leaving a mark

I never understood this, doesn’t love leave a bruise?



When my mother fell in love with another man

she said he touched her like she was stamped “fragile” in red letters

he talked to her in a way so as never to belittle or blacken her

I never understood this, this was not how my father loved her



So, maybe this is why when I dream of love

I dream of being thrown against the wall, shattered into pieces so small I could lodge in his skin without him knowing

when he tries to touch me like something that may break,

I have already broken,

of words that leave marks so strangers can see that I am taken



Love isn’t a masterpiece, it is a work in progress and my canvas has been repainted 9 times, with only a few lasting more than a night

It is never a finished project, nor a porcelain doll, it is

a work in progress, a barbie missing an arm

It isn’t something perfect,

It is something that if you are lucky, in the end will leave you glued back together

I have mistaken love for 12 nights of forced entries

I should have called the cops on this burglary because I can't find my innocence

the last time I saw it it was driving away in a gray F-150 spewing dirt from the tires

I think he lost it in the dust as I ran after him

but he doesn't want me with out it

No one ever taught you how to grow up
the simplest things like which fork to use when you are dining with her parents for the first time
or how to change the fire alarms

So when you sit down for dinner you use the desert fork for the salad and wonder why you got yourself into this mess in the first place

and when your house goes up in flames you scream to the sky, you burn down with it.

Maybe begging you to stay was the reason

it was 5:30 a.m. and you told me I wasn't the one

and all of these poems are ******* and have nothing to do with anything that is going on in my head

but three months ago I tried to **** myself and you wouldn't answer your phone.

when you saw me the next night you told me everyone has bad days.

With beer in hand and stagger to your walk I believed you

Cause you were right,

everyone has bad days, I would never deny anyone of that

even my bad days are better than others

I have never had my stomach pumped,

I have never drank till I have passed out

I have never been in a car accident

but I have tasted the cold bitter remnants of what love was supposed to be after swallowing one too many pills

I have opened my skin in the attempt rid my blood of you

I have stained sheet after sheet with what I thought beautiful was,

still all I can hear is you preaching that it's just another bad day

I am a bomb

timed to detonate at the slightest movement

I have spent an innumerable amount of time listening to you about him and you and you and you

So tell me one more time that I am selfish when I ask you to listen to the diagnosis

I will not ask again

I will not listen again either

I will walk to the tropic of cancer to relieve the pressure of your ego upon my shoulders

I will walk this path alone, on no schedule but my own

I will walk this path alone

The last time I saw her she was playing tic-tac-toe across the cement with her own blood
her spine curled over herself in an attempt to contradict all that she felt.
Her blood was still blue from the lack of oxygen she felt trying to be acceptable
She fills her body with substances to abuse
Filling the void of a long forgotten memory that still trickled down her spine in a subconscious dance
I was four years old when she took ahold of the ghosts living inside her tearing at her tendons and shot them to the stars.
but only to come back and fill her with darkness
The next time I saw her she had taken the form of a beggar on the street, my mother told me to not make eye contact
yet there was something about her that made me pull a quarter from my back pocket when she wasn't looking.
Sometimes I saw her in myself,
the ghost I predictably would become
The last time I saw her she was playing tic-tac-toe across the cement with her own blood
her spine curled over herself in an attempt to contradict all that she felt.

Does it count when she changed her mind at the last moment
that she whimpered no over and over, but you couldn't here over the slapping of skin on skin.

He says "Don't tell anyone,
he says, people don't want to hear poems about things like **** and death and the ugly."

But why, it is the wrenching truth?

No one wants to hear about another woman's body being violated
they say, "It happens all the time, you were asking for it."

Does it count that he had a girlfriend?
When he pinned her on her stomach with arms over her head
forcing the innocent from her body, slapping used on her forehead so she felt like a piece of trash

Does it count when she took months to tell her mom why the lights had shut off in her eyes?
When she couldn't look her dad in the eye because she was so ashamed,
when she retracted from the slightest touch.

Does it still count?

You're running and running and running
the last time you felt like this the world inevitably came to a smothering halt at a deadened full of darkness

You're running and running and running
the abyss is getting closer and closer and closer
close your eyes and leap

You're running and running and running
and nowhere feels like home.

You left a hickey on my neck- claiming that it was your way of telling every other glancing boy that I was yours
But you never wanted to get ash on your clothes from my fallout and it just kept coming
you said you loved me like a friend but ****** me like the enemy and now I find myself hating Thursdays because watching you drive away from me in the lightening storm made me hate myself even more
In an instant I had become everything I told myself I would not

You plucked the banjo strings of my heart in a tune that sounded like home
And as hard as I try
I cannot find the sheet music
A minor, but you are the master
And I am tone deaf to any key but you

Problem is, I forgot the words part way through so
I stopped singing along

Write it down

Tear it up and

Teach me to feel again

I can’t hear you any longer

But
Don’t stop, I need the vibrations ricocheting off my eardrums to continue on the way I have been

Help me out here
Lets take lessons
Start over and rewrite our song

This is my theory of emotion.
It ruins you
Extracting bone marrow pain
Rubbing my every inch raw with your calloused and greedy fingers
This should be considered an emergency cause this **** don’t heal the pain
Popping pills of what ifs on an empty stomach
With the full knowledge of the inevitable bile rising into my throat
Acid gnawing holes in my stomach lining and revolting the truth
Spreading through my body like a parasite
Feeding off of my flesh and bone
Your consumption will be the end of me

There are some things you can't refute
like how all babies are born with blue eyes
proving, even before they are born
they are trained in the beauty of taking their time
or how jam and jelly aren't the same thing
even though they are made of the same parts
or how someone will always be the second choice

There are some things that you cannot refute
like how your father left you
so you picked up the ax and taught yourself to be a man
swinging at trees and taking life into your own hands

It's not that these aren't simple truths
these are facts
things you cannot refute
like the way I feel when I look at you

The fact that he only made you more lonely should have been a clue,
sweetheart.

Stop trying to configure yourself with someone else's body parts,
they won't fit right

leaving you with a phantom limb here
a vestigial ***** there.

You thought it was love because he paid for your meal
and called back when you slammed the phone down,
but this was just because he was even lonelier than you.

He has only ever loved one girl
the last time he saw her she was holding a gun to herself
appointing herself the victim.

She was a tragedy of the most catastrophic kind
and he wasn't ready to be a refugee just yet,
but he let you shelter him.

You became the glaring neon sign, flashing "loneliness"

You took the bait, and he kept reeling in the line,
but was disappointed with what he found at the end.

Let me in
I have been standing in the lonely for far
too long. My shoes have wasted away and
my skin has wither, flower petal to my bone
rooted tree trunk to this spot outside of your world unfolding in the shadows
a tree branch on your window tracing
silhouette shapes beneath your covers
burn me up to be soot in your lungs
what a beautiful resting place for all of the terrors
that are to come

I saw you last night
I tightened my jaw and averted my eyes
But not before I sympathized with the plaid shirt hanging from your hunched shoulders
Those buttons that have been replaced with my teeth, chipping away against your sternum
leaving me with a skyline smile
I saw you last night
I smiled
You acted like you had seen the sun set on this city a thousand times

This one isn't about you or
about us
about how you filled me to the brim
letting me overflow and drown in myself
This one isn't about you or
about us
about how you could only *** when I had my back to you
spilling out of yourself and into me
like I was an addict, you my ******
This one isn't about you or
about us
maybe if repeated enough it will become the truth
This one isn't about you or
about us
about claiming my body as your own
casting aside my heart and my mind
It isn't about you
It is about me though

I have never felt as close to you as when home died holding my hand
Amidst flannel sheets and goose down comforters
Your memory waded through the Pacific to me
Finally finding the truth in absence

It ******* hurts

Murky skied nights write poems in dark water
Leaving the stars to fend for themselves
Like orphaned children waiting for death to spin the wheel backwards
Trick time to get one more day

Teach me in the art of letting go
Your blue eyes only just met mine
in a collision of ice
frostbitten and screaming
behind long lashes
but they said you knew of abandonment
of being left behind
so, teach me in the art of letting go
of moving forward
of standing alone
teach me in the art of letting go

And was it worth it
to watch her writhing in pain as you extracted yourself from her veins
you had become all of her red blood cells
so she withered away to white

Was it worth it
to ripped the flowers from her throat as she sang your love song
you had become the words she breathed
so she became speechless

Was it worth it
to feel her claws against your skin
shredding her fingers just trying to hold on

Just tell me
was it worth it?

It takes 3 minutes for you to lose consciousness by lack of oxygen
This is suffocating
Your brain begins to fire neurons off into the maze of your body
telling it secrets that will forever be held on its tongue

Brain death occurs after 6 minutes
This is the cessation of all brain function
This is death by the deprivation of the air you need to go on
However
In any other circumstance where the heart is not deprived of oxygen
it will keep beating for a period of time.

this was me when you left
I went brain dead
My heart continues to beat of its' own accord
the pacemaker is set to pump my blood
but my lungs crept up and out of my throat
this was my suffocation
not by hanging, not by smothering

It takes 5 minutes for brain cells to start dying at a slow dance of a pace
This is asphyxiation
Consciousness will be lost within 2 minutes
like falling into a deep sleep, peaceful and then all at once

Asphyxiation is the build up of a substance such as carbon dioxide in the body that interferes with the oxygenation of your organs
This death is timely
The car running in the garage or the bag slipped over a head
This death takes 20 minutes

our love was a metaphor of this,
a slow dance into despair
the outcome was the same either way
but it seemed like you picked the method with the flip of a coin
it was lengthy,
it was beautiful,
but it was also devastating.

A. This year I will no longer be tangled top sheets,
soiled comforters, or stained mattresses.
My blood runs clear and the extra year made me a little harder to ****. I started kissing boys on corners who had girlfriends, being someone we would never imagine of me and I bet you never expected ***** to run through these sober veins, couldn't handle me after four shots and you are inebriated by the alcohol seeping from my pores.
B. I started the year off kissing a bottle, not you
and
you ruined it, left me behind, a newborn still unsure how to walk unstable and unbalanced on tender feet.
you ruined it, left me to fend for myself among the wolves of the world,
C. It took me 907 days to learn how to love you in the way you needed it, this gestation was the slow decline of everything that defined me.
No one ever told me that each person needs love molded to them
so on the 909th day when you left, i had just perfected the sculpture, didn't have time to show you before you rushed in, knocked it on the floor and were gone
D. that is how we ended, shattered splinters of clay, scattering mosaic beautiful on the floor.
tied tongues and upset stomachs from too much alcohol and too little sleep
E. this is how we ended, strangers lips and foreign bed sheets
we went out like a poem if only I could find the right words

It is said that the soul weighs 41 grams
this means that of my 68,038 grams my central existence only makes up .06% of my whole being
leaving 99.94% of me bone and flesh
I am made up of strangers
of dust and dirt
of the leftovers…

Human beings have five vital organs
but the most interesting of these is the heart
even the heart tries to keep us from looking back
blood flows through on a one way street, teaching us the importance of moving forward

We were drunk off of each other for so long neither of us recognized that it was becoming a problem.. Until the day we quit cold-turkey. Sobriety is measured in twelve steps
1. Admitting that we could not control this compulsion. You were the finest whiskey to ever touch these lips. That burning mmm so good down my esophagus. I can still feel your embers glowing in the pit of my stomach. You admitted to this addiction and moved to the next step leagues ahead of me.
2. Believing in a power above to control this addiction. I was never one to believe in god, but you were never one to not believe in the best.
3. Turning our lives over to the hands of a greater power. Neither of us were very good at just letting things happen..
4. Serious inventory of our moral selves. Cutting back the vines, burning down the walls, opening sealed doors, I offered myself up to you. Secrets of ***** bruises arouse leaving you speechless. I never meant to make such a production of ifs, but you would never let me deeper than the first layer of slick rock.
5. Admit our wrongs. According to you, nothing you ever did was wrong. This is where I closed the gap. Admitting it was wrong to read your mind.
6. Willing and ready to let go of the errors of our ways from our lives. You had to teach me how to let go, after my father taught me people leave so you better hold on tight until your knuckles are white and veins full to bursting. Taking cues from the trees you let go any time your roots got cold.
7. Humbling ones self. I will always vouch for the under dog and humble myself to the size of a mouse. But you stand on mountains and claim to where skyscrapers on your feet.
8. Making amends with all those we have harmed. My list would fill the sky with names of the victims of my assaults, slowly dropping stars from the abyss to make room for my wrongdoings, each burning out in a shooting explosion of light as they forgive. There is only one name on your list and I am still waiting..
9. Direct amends without hurting another. Now we are all mixed up because the truth hurts
10. Constantly self inventory and admit to wrong doings. You separate yourself into so many pieces that I am surprised there is any self left.
11. Praying for the will to have power to carry out and continue ten previous steps.
12. Spiritual Awakening. You are still asleep, I left you behind after step 8 and I am still drowsy.

Absence has seven letters
As does your name
I should have seen the glaring neon warning in this
But I was too busy counting the seven scars that you claimed defined you
Giving a heroic story to each
Slowly encoding your biography into my blood
I met you on the seventh of July
A glowering shadow across the bonfire
A smile filled with seven fake teeth
Hands that would become all too familiar in the months preceding

It took me seven days to memorize the seven numbers connecting you to me
One number a day for a whole week
Seven numbers that I cannot will myself to forget
I find my fingers attracted to each in succession
Only to hang up when I hear your raspy hello in the early hours of the morning

There are seven wonders of the world
I claim to have seen each
As I scour over your body
Finding the Taj Mahal carefully constructed of your hip bones
Balancing on the Great Wall of your fifth rib
Touring the marbled landscape of the Coliseum between your shoulder blades
Your smile
Hands
Nose
Voice
But there are also seven deadly sins
Lying tongues and tears shed

I was raised on dissonance
watching the mental conflicts rage war in each of the human beings I am a product of.
they almost named me concordance so that I would never feel like I was the product of two failures
so that I would feel whole in a divided world
but from day one I have been an anomaly
loving pain but living with the fear of being hurt
this is why they named me variance
to teach me that growing up meant filling in the pieces
and that it was okay if each piece was taken from another whole to patch yourself together
I was raised on numbers
my first word was five
this number composes all human beings
five fingers
five toes
five vital organs
but none of them are mine.

-KZ

You asked me if I was okay.
Not really wanting to know the answer. It was more of a
prerequisite to getting me to your bed.
Watch out.
Caring can be a sign of weakness, a sweet spot to the whole **** building collapsing
Boy, can’t you see how weak you are?
You break bones like twigs, sitting awake at 2 a.m. drunk and alone pretending to enjoy yourself
When it takes all of your courage to face the darkness
And I am darkness, no wonder you could never face me sober
I have been here for far too long, looking for an end,
But all I keep coming up with is a map of this maze I can’t find my way out of. Instead, I find my way to you. Join me,
I will try and save you
But my lips never held enough alcohol for intoxication, never enough to get your next fix
Hurling crushed cans out windows, you created birds out of bubbles and hops
And other **** that made you look like the child that jumped out of the tree thinking he would fly and realizing he couldn’t, and
I wanted to make you fly
You found out and tied boulders around your ankles, willing me to try harder. And I did. Everyday. Until I got dizzy eventually and I will never be strong enough pathetic boy, nor you will ever be brave enough to handle a being like me
In the end the sweet spot gave and the whole **** bridge came down
I gave up on boulders and flying and began to swim
I sure had had enough practice breathing underwater
This time I left you to drown

-KZ

I don't want to write about sentimental ****,
not about how your eyes were the color of the ocean at dusk or how you are
made up of stardust and moon beams
Let's be real, you and I were never about that
You and I were about ***
we were about the backseats of cars, broken condoms, and plan B
drunken stutters of affection pushing between colliding hip bones
nauseous mornings filled with clipped recollection of what may or may not have occurred
We were never about those three little words, we survived on two
but even "*******" held little meaning
cuming from you
You and I were about chipped teeth,
separate bills for the meal of the last girls heart
I sustained myself on what you could give me
and you ate me dry
You and I were never about "we"
You and I were never that gullible,
you and I were never about sentimental ****
like flowers and poems.
You and I weren’t,  
But I was.