Do you know what it’s like
To be caged by your brain
A place supposed to be free
To be who you are
Graced with heaven or hell
To be changed by so little
Torment yourself wholly
To be what is right
It doesn't stop at your mind
To be in rambling circles
        Losing your breath
        To be at the mercy of fear
        Shaking ever so carefully
To be seen merely as cold
Digging into Earth you call skin
To be laced with liquid iron

Aching to sink further into the dirt
Into the grave, you built while pacing back and forth
Manifesting the prophecies you work so hard to avoid
Wrapped up in soiled stories of what could be,

You linger on the branches of a willow’s weep
Swinging from each somber lullaby into feathers that soar
Into the minds covered in clouds resting on the top of the world
Clarity is misguided when there’s more fun to be had amid the fog

Picking at the scab you know will bleed
You crave to reopen the wounds you know not to be ready
Eager for a dance against Time,
He laughs at your foolish attempts to hurry

Electricity buzzes through my mind
Surging in my stomach and onto
Every cell of my body ignites by the thought
Of you and your lips on mine
As each and every word you muttered
Lingers on my racing mind

A dangerous feeling to remember
Your hand holding mine
Something so comforting yet
Juxtaposed by the nervousness of
Butterflies; their wings batting against my focus
As I cling onto your arms

Memory of each engagement leaves me
Engulfed thinking of your skin on mine
Your voice in my ear; my thoughts are
Covered with your residual trace
Yearning for a mutual exchange of
Thought unburdened by niceties

Pure enchantment of novelty and security
Mingling with the clashing of reality and fantasy
Aching for your presence, just biding my time
Until our paths finally intertwine
Interlocking puzzle pieces creating
Familiarity by your side as our ideas mingle and collide

The lonely moth sits perched on the shower wall
Raindrops fog up the mirror quite unconcerned
Shampoo drips and stings my watchful eyes

The lonely moth moves between my lashes onto the faucet
Scruffy loofahs exfoliating my ***** limbs fall to the side
Water pools outside the hair-clogged drain

The lonely moth flutters– gone in a trick of the mind
Hair cream coats dripping, bouncy locks of curls
A fresh towel becomes soaked and softened

Killing me harshly is the pleasure of a thousand lullabies
And am I the one that pleases thee
Till I am standing not on my feet but on all of my limbs
Little ****** of sensation filter their way into your soul
Yawning at a time like this doesn't bode well for your aspirations
Never mind the things that seep out of your mind.

Fragile glass fingertips grace the pillows of nothing
Racing to feel again and touch something
Any excuses to sensationalize your memories
Negating the reality of past experiences
Clinging to the thought of a paradise
Expunging the ruby tears that rain down from your eyelids
Smothering the lipid-laced treats that linger on the tongue

More than ever shall we dance again
Over the river bending into the graveyard
Rolling down the grassy hills
Across the metamorphosis of a Tiger Lilly
Let me bloom into the unknown
Escape the neglect of myself.
Sooth the soul and let it keep fluttering

Depression is like breaking your arm.
Once you know it’s happened,
So many skills are set back to zero
Reaching into the sky and wanting
Are both hindered skills once maintained

You know what it is like you’ve done it before
But now you can’t make the mussels remember
Because you forgot how to want
Your limbs don’t remember how to stretch
And neither does your mind

One step up
Reach to the left
One hand after the other
Grip. Slip. Crunch.
On the ground,

Stretch and pull
Out of a right angle
Heat and ice
Hang in distortion
Pressing into a straight line

Bones rearranged
Cracked and torn
Bent out of form
Numbing pain zings
Restriction in movement

Melt into blank stares
Therapy, therapy, repeat!
Doctor calls and late-night sprawls
Shape a new reality.
Bending into strength

A racing heart beating into wine
But not of her usual consumption
Though eyes, nose, and mouth do collide
If you could picture the sky melting
From a polluted pumpkin patch
To the ocher yellow drawl of a sunny day
You would meet me in the autumn rhythm,
Sinking into the scent of raspberry-poisoned honey.
Eat me in the form of pomegranate-shaped pearls
The tool of Winter’s maker seeks contrast
Of a thorn’s peck on fragile snow.
Marmalade, you are my mauve-colored sheep
Sing your song through the fangs of a monster's breath
I sink into your embrace wild and vivid with jeweled-toned eyes

You are to me as I am to myself
Reflected distortions
I look to you
When unraveling complications
I wonder into
A comforting soundboard

The taste of your touch lingers
On the contours of my body
Ripples of a dream swirl through
My vision's like raindrops entering puddles
Only if they knew how your presence intoxicates me
Looking sober to the spectators in the distances
Never let the honeymoon feelings fade
Only playing the fool for you

Down the river, I sink

Bleeding my tears

Mingling with the stream

Seeking a fountain

Of another world

I scream

I cry

I am deflated

I am exhausted


Curled up in fibers

Soft carpet, lining

Edges of a hallway

You come closer and beckon

Solidary merged

Into cement walls

We linger

We dream in a sense

Comforted by one another

A periwinkle sunset ran across the room
only to devolve into the slippery realization
that the heaviness of wanderlust can be no more

Drunken illusions peck at me once again
sober lullabies dance merrily in rainbow bubbles
drifting through a nebula, Zinging with glee

the couch proclaims another victim
****** into the vacuum of many coats
all fuzzy or woolen cuffed

Punching through the withered vindrals
blinded with foggy concrete
a fluttering vision of gems

makes the garden cornucopia come to life
A creeping smile spiders up the face
with blank stares into empty jars

radiating a glittery photocopied jaw
Now becoming closer to thee
crawling through the messy webs of despair

Children's laughter carries you closer
till suddenly vimbers rattle past
subtlety crunching leaves you looking up
at the bottom floor

I just can't be anything can I
A particle and a wave
Everything and nothing
That's a fact
Lingering in the cusp of a twilit doorway
I am nothing as I sit on the verge of everything
Can I be if I am not here nor there
Or anywhere but here
Straddling the identity of not one another, but two
For everything I find that is Whole
I begin to see only fractures of myself
Fracturing Into pieces that’s what I am
Pieces of different puzzles
Smashed together into something new
Never quite fitting together quite right

Lemon-flavored poppy-seeded pearls crunch
Between the iridescent glint of my smile
As river beds are littered with glittering
Scales of a tumbling rich white sneeth.
Snollywaggs petter through the trempint forest
Hanging off of each piece of foliage
Are glossy globs of translucent orange marmalade
Going mitter mitter by the Trillow tree
Is the hollow ringing of an intrinsic song

Produced by the withering of an Old God
Laughter trickles into the billowing air as humble giants
Hunt for peace about the cherry orchard grove as
Woven mittens craft themselves onto wriggling fingers, poking in and out
Of unintentional holes found among its wearer’s
***** memories that seep out of the cracks
Flowing with a sticky flag stripped with dreams
Lingering in the shadows and meshing through

The confetti-covered walls. Hushing the clorgals
Raining down through the forest’s tangles
Is a weary process’s manifestation into a string of lights.
Black holes **** in another wonder
Towards the Nymph’s saddened stories
Whispered as a second century passes
Across the timpited marks along their skin
And into their mind that flies
Only to start the journey home again for the first time.

Adding blocks to the walls all around me
Standing in a growing tower
Continuing to fear as the drop grows more severe

You made a ladder to help me down
Each step was thought uncertain
Until you gave me your hand too

An ocean of tears turns into a river
Still turbulent but with direction
An emotional title wave takes me over

Carefully placed and covered with love
Patience emerged in hydration
Stretching into the dancing air
Golden warmth radiates across my face
Sinking my roots further into the foundations
Of past experience
Inching further toward the sky
Waiting to blossom into potential
An open story to share again
May the withering be slow to come
Nourishing those surrounding the performance
I can become,

                                                        ­           once again

Thinspo isn’t supposed to enter real life
A girl in my classes made my appetite drop
Every time I saw her, though I never said
Those were my problems, not hers
But maybe they were hers, but I never knew
How to talk to someone like that
Unless it was necessary, but it never was

What if I miss
A list
Flurries in the wind
Jumping out of hand

Lucky-opportunist
Grating against the limits
Beyond the town
Falling out of pace

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Goes the bell flashing in the skittering crowd.
Surrounded by a ghost town, abandoned and forgetful.
Lined paper flutters through the hallway.

Empty cinder-block walls tower over the laminate,
Windowless cubbies cling onto their half-working outlets.
Irritation pulses in a scurry from jaw to wrist and ankle.

Aimlessly meandering through the tallied ceiling tiles,
Tired eyes weigh heavily on a ***** blackboard.
As empty seats are filled.
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Tip Tap Tip Tap Tip Tap Buzz Buzz Ring
Dancing light filters through the balcony
Drifting through the choppy air twirling
Another leaf drops onto the concrete
Brought by the feather of a small bird
Chirp Chirp Chirp follows a telegram’s
Stringing words racing to the finish line
To grow beside you nurturing the mind
Then your stomach by a thousand leaves
Eat the love you poured into the ground
Watching it blossom into a giver of life
Now returned is your efforts multi-fold

I said convince me you love me, and you say keep this only in the mind
But you forgot that I wanted something concrete, written, and left for all to find

I said convince me you love me, and you say here is a page I filled out
But I thought you would prove more devout

I said convince me you love me, and you say here are the words you requested it’s finished
But you let typos into your letter and fill it

I said convince me you love me, and you say clichés are to be condemned
But cliches are only cliches if you care to say them

I said convince me you love me, and you say words restated depreciate
But words never said leave me with nothing to appreciate

I said convince me you love me, and you say here is an idiom I don’t think you’ll get
But you weren’t supposed to make me upset

I said convince me you love me, and you say thanks
But you should have said I love you, you shouldn't have left any blanks

I said convince me you love me, and you tell me your words have been chosen carefully, casually, and with the intention of being a fleeting moment of the present
But I did not feel that

I said convince me you love me,
But I am unconvinced

Gone your embrace–
Temporary; come again.
Grace me. Embrace me.
Linger in your thoughts and fade
Into each other. We are.

Why is it that a peek into the past
Gleans direction and goals so fast?

But the memories scatter and fizzle out
As they wilt into the present full of doubt

You have to eat to lose weight you know
It all seems so illogical, feels so illogical
I just want to go to my stomach and pull
Away every morsel until there’s nothing left

Until my body is forced to feed on itself
Gnawing at the fat reserves I know are there
The ones I see staring back at me in the mirror
The ones I know are lurking in between

Hidden crevices I can feel with each fiber
Of muscles intent on movement
And that is where the problem lies, the muscles
My body will be unsatisfied with just the taste of fat

Whatever it can get its grimy taste buds on
Is what it wants– is what it shall have
Until the mirror says I am satisfying enough
Until I open it back up for one more measly molecule

That's when it tricks you and plasters you with fat
A shiny new coat to thicken you back up
Just in case I might starve again
Just in case it needs to lick its insides again

Smiles are a peculiar thing
I find yours infectious
Crawling on my mouth
So when you look at me
I look at you too

If only your smile found its way onto mine
So that they can intertwine
Delicately and passionately
So when your hand is on my body
Mine is on yours too