We were a storm wrapped in silk,
a wildfire in a library,
a circus of one juggling two.

Whispering
with hollow eyes,
screaming
with sticky mouths,
teeth bared like warnings.

We didn’t love quietly.
We made noise;
we made chaos,

burning so bright
we went blind
and called it fate.

We dipped toes in flames,
called each other liars,
made a scene,
and painted it as art.

We yelled like
the walls had ears,
and maybe they did—

neighbors leaning into the heat
of us, drawn to the firelight
they didn’t know they missed.

Their quiet love folded its hands
on the porch, waiting
for something
loud enough
to break them open.

Maybe they envied
the way we burned,
but I wonder if they stayed
on their porch
because they knew fire
always turns to ash.

Your voice struck the match,
mine poured the gasoline.
We burned to see
who’d scream first.

I yelled because
quiet
would have killed me.

You kissed me like a dare
wrapped in an apology
you’d never say.
I kissed back like I chose
the wrong truth.

You moved like you
were trying
to drown out the sound
of breaking glass,

and I shrieked back
because silence
was a language I refused
to learn.

We roared
like the neighbors would call the cops,
but they never did—
perched on their mezzanine,
our 11 o’clock number
bringing down
the house,
while bringing out our worst.

You tasted like unfinished business,
something sharp enough
to draw blood.
My laugh—
a broken bottle,
teetering on the edge.
And you kept pushing—

a kiss like a scream,
caught in the throat,
a yell that landed soft,
like love was always
meant to bruise.

Isn’t that the way of us?

If I could go back,
I’d kiss you softer, yell louder—

maybe then we’d learn
that loving is different than
screaming,
that flirting with death
isn’t the same as living,
and silk wasn’t meant
to hold storms.

I do miss the noise—
the way it filled the cracks
in the silence,
the mess that made our love
feel alive in all
the wrong ways.

I miss the heat of you
in the middle of it all,
kissing me
hard enough
to steal the breath
I was about to waste
on saying your name.

The stars blinked out one by one,
and for a second, I thought I had won.
You always said I needed too much,
that the world owed me nothing.

But I wanted the debt anyway—
wanted it piled high enough
to scrape the edge of the moon.
I wanted the universe to notice
how I stayed up nights,
bartering my breath for forgiveness
and my spine for love.

I thought the quiet was mine to keep.
I thought I had tamed it—
a wild joy, caged
in the ruins of what we built.

I bartered with silence,
traded my dreams for detours,
hoping to bend the night into something
I could swallow whole—
but it swallowed me first.

The dark wasn’t empty.
It was you—sharp as every breath
I tried to hold, under a sky
too proud to care if I fell beneath it.

And the stars?
They just didn’t want to watch anymore.

This bone-tired body is a battlefield
where I keep returning
to bury the same soldier,
over and over.

His face shifts like seasons—
familiar and foreign,
the line between my lines,
fading into fable,
floating into folklore.

He’s died here a hundred times,
and I survived every one.
But I keep coming back,
thinking I might unearth
something softer.

My hands tremble from holding too much—
soliloquies, symptoms, scapegoats,
saltshakers, semicolons, starry-eyed sighs.
My knees buckle under the weight
of a history I can’t rewrite.

No matter how many poems erupt
from my shell-shock,
how many mornings I crawl from trenches,
listening to the sound of birdsong—
I always return, ***** in hand.

He stares up from the dirt,
his mouth unmoving but full of accusations.
"You never let me go,"
he whispers without sound,
"and I’ll keep rising until you do.
Don’t you get it?
You buried yourself here too."

How many deaths does it take
to make a ghost let go?
I’m running out of shovels,
but never out of wishes.

Some wounds are wars,
and some wars never surrender.
If I stop digging, will the war finally end—
or will it bloom
in the silence I leave behind?

We tangled in tropes,
two archetypes in love with the idea of change,
but never the act itself.

You thought I was the manic pixie dream girl,
a glittering deus ex machina sent to save you
with whimsy and wild eyes,
but I was just tired—
carrying too many rewrites in my pockets,
each one heavier than the last,
all of them missing their endings.

I thought you were the brooding antihero,
mystery wrapped in shadow,
a walking epilogue with smoldering regret,
but you were just scared—
your silence a monologue
no audience could bear to sit through,
your pauses dragging like curtain calls
for plays that never finished.

We wrote each other into scenes
with props we didn’t know how to use,
a wine glass left unbroken,
a door no one ever slammed.
The spotlight flickered between us,
a dim bulb refusing to hold
all the things we wouldn’t say.

When the script fell apart,
we blamed the writer,
the lighting, the set—
anything but the truth:
we were always the ones
tearing pages from the book,
ripping them before the ink had time to dry,
our story left trailing ellipses,
a script still curled on the floor,
waiting for hands that never returned.

I’ve seen your kind of mercy,
and it’s got teeth.
You said you’ve broken stronger women than me.
What a line to throw at someone still standing-
someone still holding your words like a knife
they haven’t decided to drop.

What a way to remind me
that you’ve already decided how this ends—
with me on my knees,
and you walking away,
your hands clean but your mouth ******
from everything you’ve said,
apologized for,
then said again.

I hate that you asked me to tell you
two opposing views I hold.
Did you realize you are one of them?

We laugh like it’s nothing,
like we haven’t spent years
cutting each other open
and calling it something softer.

You still picture it—
me, maybe, or just us in the abstract—
and I still think about how it feels
to be reduced to skin and nothing more.
Like flesh is the only thing between us,
like there isn’t a whole world
I’m dragging behind me
every time I open my mouth
and you close yours.

You ask questions like a knife,
not to open me up
but to see if I’ll flinch.
You talk like the past
is some far-off country
you never visited,
like the scars on me
are postcards from someone else’s story.

But I still feel the weight of it—
your mercy,
your silence,
the words you said twice
just to be sure they cut.

Do you?

For when I’m pretending to be widow at the opera.
For when I’m following a pigeon down the street like it owes me money.
For when I spray perfume on my wrists before bed, like the dreams deserve better versions of me.

For when I go through Korean Customs just to eat Lotteria on the Incheon sidewalk, then redo check-in and security for my connecting flight.
For when I receive a message I’ll overanalyze for the rest of my life.
For when I write a text, delete it seven times, then send “lol” as if I didn’t bleed for it.

For when I apologize to a vending machine for using a credit card.
For when I press my ear to a seashell and hear an argument I lost ten years ago.
For when the chandelier is on fire, and I jump up to light a cigarette.

For when I catch a fly in my hand and let it go, like I’m proving something to God.
For when I lose an earring in the street and think, “This is how pieces of me disappear.”
For when I find a hairpin on the sidewalk and carry it like a talisman.

For when the theater goes dark, and I sit there wondering if the show is about me.
For when I open a fortune cookie and write a rebuttal in the margin of the slip.
For when I break my own heart at 2 a.m. on purpose.

For when I sit at a piano I don’t know how to play, pressing keys like I’m calling out names.
For when I’m smiling at a stranger, just to prove I’m still kind.
For when I feel like a disco ball in a dive bar where nobody dances.

For when I dress up for an event I don’t want to go to prove I’m still trying.
For when I page through books I carried around in high school, hoping they’ll whisper a version of me I’ve forgotten.
For when I fold a map along the wrong lines and feel like I’ve ruined the entire world.

For when I bite a grape off the vine and pretend it’s the first fruit I’ve ever tasted.
For when I wake up with dirt under my fingernails and no memory of where I’ve been.
For when I dream of him and wake up keening.

For when I gasp and say, “This is just like Wuthering Heights!” in the dumbest moments.
For when we build a pillow fort, declare it a sovereign nation, ban all taxes, and call it “Pillowvania.”
For when we develop a shorthand where “Let me know when you’re done being weird” means “I miss you,” and “I miss you” means “I’m sorry.”

For when I flip a coin, and it lands on its edge, daring me to choose.
For when I don't.

The platform smells like skunked beer and rain,
a combination that feels almost romantic
if you tilt your head the right way.

I’m here because I missed the earlier one,
but maybe that’s the point.
Maybe everything worth waiting for
comes late, sticky, and half-empty.

I lean against the pillar,
fingers tracing someone’s graffiti confession—
MARIA, COME BACK.

I wonder if Maria stood here once,
tracing her own name in the dark,
wondering if it was enough to stay.

I hope she didn’t.
I hope Maria found something better
than this station,
this boy with a Sharpie
and a bad sense of timing.

I decide Maria is smarter than me,
that she’s already figured out
how to leave for good.

The train squeals like someone giving up
mid-argument, its voice cracking
just before the silence. I step inside
like a swallowed comeback.

The train jerks forward, pulling me with it,
an accomplice to leaving,
taut between the tension of wanting to stay
and disappearing into every local stop we make.

I press my forehead to the window
and watch the city unravel backwards—
neon signs blinking like eyelids,
lights flickering like answers
to questions I’ve stopped asking.

For a moment, I’m so full of joy
it feels reckless—
like daring a wave to pull me under,
knowing it probably will,
like I’ve stolen something precious
and can’t bear to give it back.

For a moment, I’m so full of hope
it feels wild—
like I’ve caught a glimpse of something
I’ve spent my whole life trying not to lose,
like maybe this train is taking me somewhere
I’ve been running from my whole life.

And then the lights flicker,
and I laugh—
because of course they do.
Because nothing this weird and beautiful
could ever come without a catch.

The train jerks,
a man drops a tallboy,
its amber spray spreading like a secret—
a casualty of motion,
spraying my boots,
reaching me before I can move,
because some things always do.

The rain streaks the windows,
the world pressing its palms
against the glass,
trying to remind me it’s still there.

And me? I’m here—
alive, for better or worse,
in this strange, messy moment,
with a Sharpie in my bag
and an urge to go back and write my name
like a flare next to Maria’s,
just in case she’s still out there
and she’d like to know I’m out here too.

This is what we do:
leave traces in places
we’ve long since abandoned,
hoping someone sees them
before they’re painted over.

This poem eats its own tail,
a serpent made of sentences,
its scales glinting like verbs
you haven’t conjugated yet.

It starts where it ends,
or it never starts at all—
just hovers,
a balloon tied to the wrist
of a stranger you dreamt.

Its metaphors bloom like sideways petals,
teeth glinting beneath their velvet edges,
biting the air until it tastes electric.

It clings to ozone,
that split-second before lightning remembers
it’s a blade meant to cut.

Each metaphor is a double-jointed bone,
bending past reason, snapping backward
into a shape that means nothing—
or everything, I mean everything.

It keeps its secrets folded
into origami shapes that collapse
when you try to unfold them.
A crane? A dagger? A heart?
All of them, none of them—
it depends on the angle of your longing.

This poem is yours only in the pause
between breaths,
mine only in the breath itself.
It ends when you stop reading.
It resurrects the moment I exhale my last.

Each line is a trapdoor,
a loaded chamber spinning,
blanks carved from silence.
You keep reading like the next word
might hold the trigger—
it’s always the one after.

It scratches itself raw
just to prove it can bleed,
then paints over the scars
in words you’ve heard before,
but never in this order.

This poem wants nothing from you,
except everything—
your eyes, your breath,
the parts of you
you didn’t know could rot so stunningly.

It will devour itself,
edges sharp with longing.
While you starve,
your breath will catch—
a witness to the teeth
that hollowed you.

Start with something casual:
“I miss you” is a good opener,
but don’t forget the twist—
throw in a parenthetical like
“(but not enough to beg)”
just to keep him guessing.

Follow up with a double text,
something vaguely existential.
Maybe:
“Do you ever think about
the weight of your own cowardice?”
And when he doesn’t respond,
add:
“Haha jk, how’s your sciatica?”

Text three should be a song lyric—
not one he knows,
but something obscure and devastating,
like:
“And the skeletons in both our closets
plotted hard to **** this up.”
Don’t explain it.
Let him Google it at 2 a.m.
and spiral in silence.

For text four,
go for the jugular:
“Do you think you’ll ever stop
mistaking fear for wisdom?”
Pause.
Then send:
“Nvm, that was mean.
What’s your comfort show again?
Mine’s Parks and Rec.”

By text five, he’ll start to crack.
He might reply with something cautious,
like:
“Are you okay?”
This is your chance.
Answer with:
“Define okay.”
Then immediately change the subject—
“Wait, what’s your zodiac rising?”

Text six is where you plant the seed of doubt:
“Sometimes I think we’d have worked out
if I didn’t know you so well.”
Wait exactly four minutes,
then follow up with:
“Or maybe if you knew yourself better.”

For text seven, go full cryptic:
“You remind me of that one painting—
you know, the one they had to repaint
because it was falling apart.”
Let him sit with that one.

By text eight,
he’ll either call or give up.
If he calls, ignore it.
If he doesn’t,
send:
“Anyway, good talk.
Hope life’s treating you
as kindly as you deserve.
Interpret that how you will.”

Text nine is optional,
but it’s my favorite:
“Do you even notice the silence
when it’s not yours?”

Text ten is the finale.
Simple, clean, devastating:
“I hope you finally stop running,
and when you do,
I hope it’s too late
for anyone to catch you.”

The train didn’t leave the station—
it just waited for me to give up chasing it,
its engine a wolf panting in the dark,
smoke curling into the air
like the echo of a laugh,
a smirk I couldn’t outrun.

I ran because stopping felt like failure.
I ran like if I reached it, I’d finally be enough.
I ran until my lungs screamed,
until the soles of my shoes
wore whispers into the gravel.
I swore I heard it call my name,
but maybe it was just the wind,
mocking the way I mistook movement
for meaning.

For a moment, it slowed—
just enough to make me believe
I could catch it,
just enough to make me think
it wanted me there.

The train didn’t leave.
It sat there,
watching me unspool myself,
mile by mile,
breaking like an old clock
that refused to tick.

I thought if I ran fast enough,
I could earn its departure—
prove I was worthy of being left behind.
But it was never about speed.
It was about surrender,
about learning that some things
stay still just to watch you fall apart.

The train never moved.
It stayed quiet,
its shadow stretching long,
swallowing me whole,
burying me in forgetting.

I stopped running.
And that’s when I realized—
the train was never waiting for me.
It was waiting to remind me
that some things linger like shadows,
stretching long enough
to teach you how to let go.

I renamed him "Were You Sent by Someone Who Wanted Me Dead?"
because the damage didn’t feel accidental.
Now his name sits like a warning—
a lighthouse in reverse,
pulling me toward the rocks instead of away.

The boy who made me feel alive but ruined me
is "Can’t Go Back, I’m Haunted,"
because that’s what he was—
a shadow teaching me how to crave the dark.
Even now, I catch myself looking for him
in rooms I swear I’ve locked.

The one who left quietly got
"Stood on the Cliffside Screaming ‘Give Me a Reason,’"
because that’s what I told myself:
he wasn’t cruel, just lost,
just a plane circling the runway,
never meant to land.
I scroll past his name
and wonder if he’s still searching.

The fling that burned too fast
became "She’s Gone Too Far This Time,"
because I warned him—
I’m no one’s redemption arc.
He wanted fire to keep him warm,
but I only know how to burn.

The boy who was almost enough is
"I’ll Tell You the Truth but Never Goodbye."
His kindness felt like sunlight on bare skin,
but I couldn’t stop chasing shadows.
His name glows softly—
a reminder of the light I couldn’t hold.

Another became "Back When We Were Still Changing for the Better,"
because that’s all we were—potential,
the kind of almost that stays caught in your throat,
a song you never finish writing.
I left him there in my phone,
a name too soft for the edges we’ve grown into,
but sharp enough to remind me
how hope always dies in the details.

There’s comfort in cataloging heartbreaks this way—
turning them into lyrics instead of people,
letting songs hold what I can’t.
I swipe past "Forever is the Sweetest Con,"
"If a Man Talks ****, Then I Owe Him Nothing,"
and "Old Habits Die Screaming."
I laugh at my own theatrics
and wonder if they deserve immortality.

If one of them calls,
I’ll watch the name flicker on the screen,
smile at the poetry of it all,
and let it go unanswered.

Because some names
only deserve to live
in someone else’s song.

The sunset smeared itself across the sky,
a crime scene of color—
red bleeding into orange,
violets bruising the edges.
I stood there, guilty of wanting to call you,
to say,
"Do you see this too? Do you feel it?
Or has the world stopped being beautiful for you
since I became the ghost you refuse to name?"

For a moment,
the colors burned so bright
I almost forgot the sound of your silence—
the way you folded your love into sharp corners,
how you rewrote me as the villain in a story
we never agreed to tell.

Almost.

But then the shadows stretched long,
like they always do,
and I remembered how you used to say
the sky looked like an apology before it turned black.
I laughed, because tonight it did—
looked like you.
A burst of brightness trying to outrun the dark,
fading before it ever stood a chance.

I almost forgot you hate me.
Almost forgave you for it, too.
But sunsets only linger for a breath,
and some things—
like your name in my mouth—
are harder to let go of
than light.

I wonder if Taylor Swift
reads poems like mine,
filled with guys who are
forever running away,
or standing still
in the shadow of the last word.

I wonder if Taylor Swift has ever been
the last person at the party,
waiting for someone to notice the empty room,
wondering when she stepped out of her heels,
and who stuffed them in their bag,
as she left the night behind like an art thief,
taking all the pieces no one thought they'd miss
until they’re staring at a wall of empty frames.

I wonder if Taylor Swift has ever looked at a stranger and thought,
‘You are the version of me that never had to sing
about all the things I can’t say aloud—
the version that’s free of the weight
of every note I write.’

Somewhere, in a parallel universe,
I hand her my heart—
heavy with everything we never spoke,
but she doesn’t need to read it,
because in this universe,
we’ve already lived the words.

Somewhere, she writes me back,
telling me that love
is just a song
we forgot to finish,
and maybe, in the silence,
we’ll finally hear it echo between us,
looping in a way that sounds
like both a beginning and an ending.

I saged the room,
but the ghosts keep vaping,
blowing rings of blame
with burnt-out coils
and Irish Goodbyes.
They keep telling me to calm down
while rearranging my furniture.

I dream of strangers' hands,
too much of a stranger to know
what to leave behind,
pressing my grief
into neat little boxes.

I keep forgetting which ones
hold his name
and which ones hold mine.
The world spins without me,
the shadow I left behind
frozen in place.

I thought closure was a door,
but it’s a hallway with no exit,
the same door I keep slamming
in my own face.
Empty rooms painted
in the bluest regret.

Does it count as love
if it only exists in parallel universes?
In one, I keep the keys under the mat,
but no one ever comes home.
In another, I rewrite endings
that no one ever reads.

The moon nods at me like it understands,
like it knows how it feels to orbit
what will never be yours.
I keep praying to stars
that burned out years ago,
their light still threading the night sky
like stitches on old wounds.

Somewhere, he holds my hand.
Somewhere, I hold my own.
Somewhere, they are the same thing.

I’m dreaming of boats again—
white dresses, cruel lines,
the way your laughter sounds
when I can’t see your face.

I surrender my subtext and sigh
in rooms small enough to swallow
everything unsaid.

And you—
half-light, half-shadow,
saying my name like it’s yours.

The air is salted and stifling.
A girl I don’t know laughs—
her hands in your pockets,
her voice a blade, stitched neat,
and when I see her face,
I’m afraid it’s mine.

“This is not an answer,” I say,
as if boats know how to be honest,
as if white dresses don’t drown.

Outside, the water churns.
Inside, I am heaving—
lungs full of salt,
mouth full
of you.

This is how you haunt me:
small, quiet,
always below deck.

And when I wake,
the dream asks me:
‘What did you bury there?’
I open my mouth to answer,
but only salt comes out.

LOST:
A dream about a staircase with no top step.
Last seen circling my brain at 3:14 a.m.,
with no place to land.
Reward: One uninterrupted night of sleep.
Contact: riddlesnotlullabies@askytoclimb.com

FREE TO GOOD HOME:
A laugh that doesn’t fit anymore—
sharp, too loud,
like it belongs to someone braver.
Please take it before it cuts me deeper.
Contact: clankingtin@softsolace.com

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—on the other side of the street,
waving like it was still 2015.
Me—too slow to cross,
too afraid to shout.
If spotted, please circle back.
Contact: my number’s the same, but maybe you deleted it.

FOUND:
A treasure map to nowhere, folded into my coat lining.
No roads, just dotted lines,
and an X I’m scared to dig up.
No need to claim; it’s already mine.
Contact: (don’t.)

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—wearing a yellow raincoat,
laughing like the storm was yours to own.
Me—stuck in a doorway,
too afraid to step into puddles.
If you see this, let me borrow your courage.
Contact: meetme@bridgeofmysong.com

FOR SALE OR TRADE:
A reflection that doesn’t belong to me.
It moves slower, smiles at things
I haven’t thought of yet.
Will trade for a mug that doesn’t drip.
Contact: smokingmirrors@unstablefaces.org

LOST:
The way my name sounded when you said it,
soft and certain,
like it was the only taste there was.
Reward: The strength to stop listening for it.
Contact: sacredsyllables@windwhispered.com

FOR SALE:
One fractured moment in time.
It split clean down the middle—
half yours, half mine—
and hums like static when held.
Warning: Reassembly not guaranteed.
Contact: timesabitch@xrayfractures.com

LOST:
The ability to distinguish between a memory and a dream.
Last felt in a room full of books and musty yellow light.
Reward: A map with all dead ends marked in gold.
Contact: dreamfugue@unreliable.org

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—crossing the street as if it didn’t exist,
leaving footprints in the air.
Me—watching from behind a pane of glass that wasn’t real,
wishing I could step through.
If you see this, tell me if the other side is softer.
Contact: glasswalker@phantoms.com

FREE TO GOOD HOME:
A mirror that only reflects your mistakes.
It’s cracked but still works.
Perfect for someone braver than me.
Contact: onthewall@mercilessmirror.com

FREE TO GOOD HOME:
A scream swallowed too quickly,
leaving the weight of what it couldn’t say.
It hums at night, sharp enough to cut silence,
soft enough to still feel human.
Contact: wailingweight@humsandhaunts.com

FOUND:
A version of me I didn’t know still existed.
She’s smaller, softer,
but hums with the ache of wanting something bigger.
No one’s claimed her,
but she feels too familiar to let go.
Contact: echolalia@layersdeep.com

FOR SALE:
A jar of lightning,
trapped mid-flash, flickering faintly.
Warning: It won’t light your way, but it might set you on fire.
Contact: sparksfly@volatilenight.org

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—standing in a crowd of people who looked like you.
Me—shouting a name I wasn’t sure was yours.
If you see this, tell me which one of us got it wrong.
Contact: facelessblameless@nowronganswers.com

FREE TO GOOD HOME:
A shadow that moves faster than I do.
It drags me to places I swore I wouldn’t revisit.
It’s loyal,
but it doesn’t listen.
Contact: runawaytwin@goingnowhere.org

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—just out of reach,
your voice fading like a star going nova.
Me—chasing echoes through rooms I don’t recognize.
If you see this, tell me how it ends.
Contact: graspinglight@foreverandnever.com

WANTED:
A gas station map that folds wrong.
Not one that shows the way,
but one that erases it completely,
leaving only the thrill of getting lost.
Payment: Breadcrumbs I don’t plan to follow.
Contact: wanderorlust@uncharted.com

MISSING CONNECTION:
You—at a bus stop,
Me—watching you disappear before I could prove myself.
If you’re still waiting,
I swear I’ll catch the next bus.
Reward: a Metrocard, but refilling it costs more than it’s worth.
Contact: NYMTAhopeful@thatlakeinQueens.org

FOUND:
A photograph that doesn’t make sense—
faces blurred, the room stitched from dreams:
a log cabin leaning into splinters,
a Vietnamese superstore where shampoo and morning glory
share aisles with áo dài and gnocchi,
my first-grade classroom—pine-needle air,
metal chairs sparking against old carpet.
The photo shifts,
but the context stays the same.
Contact: dreamsindanangand1996@framegames.org

FREE TO GOOD HOME:
A moment of clarity that burns too bright to keep.
It sees everything,
even what you wish it wouldn’t.
Take it before it blinds me.
Contact: keepithidden@callouscandor.com

FOR SALE OR TRADE:
A clock with teeth.
It eats seconds like they’re starving it,
but spits them out just wrong enough to notice.
Will trade for a moment that doesn’t bite back.
Contact: devouredtime@bitingsands.com

WANTED:
Someone to tell me if it’s too late.
If the road I’ve walked is the only one I get,
or if there’s still time to take a left,
a right,
or turn around entirely.
No qualifications necessary—just say something.
Reward: My charge to pay attention; ***** coins and all.
Find Me: I'll be wearing a yellow rain coat.
Contact: universeswap@prophecy.org

May of last year, I became a girl again—
not one I’d been before,
but one I met for the first time,
bejeweled in a New Jersey parking lot,
singing with lungs
too used to holding apologies.

When the stadium lights dimmed,
we stood at the blockade,
a constellation of strangers orbiting
the same star.

It was the closest we’d ever come
to being fully ourselves—
sparkling, loud, unabashed,
together.

We were women relearning how to be girls,
unfolding ourselves in a carpark,
peeling back layers of too-muchness
we’d been taught to hide.

The years had pressed us quiet,
shrinking us to fit spaces
meant for us to be seen,
but never felt.

But here, under the floodlights,
we found permission in the shimmer—
sharing shorthand glances
and whispered secrets that sparkled.

Someone spilled a White Claw;
someone else sipped their heartbreak.
We nodded solemnly at both,
because ravishment and sorrow
need no explanation here.

The music reached us on delay—
her voice traveling not from the stadium,
but from the sky,
echoing just far enough
to feel like it already belonged to the past.
We sang anyway,
daring it to catch us.

There was glitter on the asphalt,
scuffed into galaxies
by the soles of cowboy boots and Converse.
We spun and swayed like children unlearning shame,
our bodies moving freely,
finally forgetting how they’re supposed to look.

A security guard, middle-aged, glowing white bob
mouthed All Too Well like a prayer
she’d carried for years,
her female gaze—
not surveillance, but sanctuary—
the kind women save for each other
when the world isn’t watching.

She nodded as we screamed the bridge,
her eyes sparking,
as if unearthing something long-buried.
In that moment,
we were all the same age.

On the upper balcony,
a silhouette waved—
a shadow carved by backlit glow,
as if the universe greeted us by name.
We waved back,
because what else do you do
when kindness feels that big?

The glint and glimmer turned
strangers into sisters.
We clapped for the ones who ran to the gates,
even two hours in,
hands clutching miracle QR codes.

We whooped for them
like it was our own triumph,
because it was.
Together we're storming the barricades
of a revolution made of rhinestones.

Someone spun with their arms wide,
spilling bliss into the night.
Someone else stood still,
eyes closed,
holding the weight of a lyric
they didn’t know they needed.

It wasn’t just a concert.
It was a reclamation—
a bead-strewn riot of tenderness,
a reminder that we’re allowed to take up space,
to hold everything,
to feel it all at once—
even if it's messy,
even if it's ugly,
even if it spills like light too wild to gather back.

A woman with long braids
and Bluetooth speaker in her Hi-Vis vest
blasted Fearless at the station,
while directing us to our trains.

We sang it back to her,
off-key but perfectly in sync.
Joy spreads like stardust,
and what else can you do
when you’ve carried something
so vast,
so bright?

For once,
the world paused—
not as an audience,
but as something softer,
a witness to the sound we made.

We were there.
It was rare.
I'll remember it.

I turned longing into an art form
even poets couldn’t envy.
You said I loved the pain,
like I twisted every wound into a crown,
like I begged to be ruined.

You told me you’d **** me around,
said it like a warning,
but I heard it like a promise
I wanted you to break.

I had a picture of us in my head—
me, softer, more hopeful,
you, more beautiful than you knew,
with wild hair and laughter
that felt like home.

I still think of your hands,
hands that never held me,
but left marks all the same.
I wonder where they are now,
whose skin they’ve mapped,
what laughter they’ve tangled with—
and if they still carry the echoes of me,
whispering between the spaces they touch.

Now, every poem I write
is a bridge I burned,
trying to reach you—
but the ashes are all I have left.

I’ve gotten prettier, you know—
in the way scars fade but never really leave,
short skirts, boots up to my knees,
hair spilling like rebellion.
But still, the ache follows.

I want you to see it—
to scroll past my pictures and feel
the smallest sting,
to wonder if I’d still let you kiss me
if you came back—
but would I want you to?

(Verse)
I spit out shards of last night's dream,
chasing threads and fractured schemes.
I wear my bruises like hand-stitched lace,
daring the dawn to match my pace.

Two summers dissolved, one in the wings,
winter-break and blooming, all gray, tangled strings.
I'm stranded between lost-cause and unfound,
with roots in the sky and feet on the ground.

(Pre-Chorus)
And isn't it tragic, the way ghosts take form?
You're a pattern, a habit, a half-hearted storm.
If you looked at me once like you meant to stay,
would it settle the dust or just ******* away?

(Chorus)
It's almost poetic, the way I play my part—
one foot in daylight, the other in the dark.
Fighting-fit and fighting-mad, memories that churn,
clinging to the sighing bridge I watched you cross then burn.

And if I said I could love you, would it land?
Or hang in the air, a threat, all hollow and ******?
And if I said I love you, would it even land?

(Verse)
Said you resented how I used you to ache,
like I cast you as fire while I burned at the stake.
Said I wore my wounds like jewels dripping down
a cocotte smile, a  martyr's crown.

Called me blameless, a darling saint,
a canonized victim in delicate paint.
But I've learned to love the heft of scars,
wearing ashes you left like fallen stars.

(Pre-Chorus)
And isn't it just twisted, the way you choose to haunt?
A vivid grace, a clever chase, a truth you did not want.
You planted roots in a garden you'd leave,
an empty grave I still water and grieve.

(Chorus)
It's almost poetic, the way I play my part—
one foot in daylight, the other in the dark.
Fighting-fit and fighting-mad, memories that churn,
clinging to the sighing bridge I watched you cross then burn.

And if I said I could love you, would it land?
Or hang in the air, a threat, all hollow and ******?
And if I said I love you, would it even land?

(never-ending Bridge)
When we talked about kids, with laughter on lips,
madness like heirlooms, sweet apocalypse.
“It’s not right to ******* around,”
you dropped your bombs as I star-gazed from the ground.

You loved me in riddles, in half-truths and smoke,
left me craving the punchlines to every cruel joke.
Appointed me Queen of an empire gone
a plot-line twisted, a catastrophic denouement.

Asked you to visit, heart laid bare,
big house, empty rooms, “Come, love me there.”
What do you think of when your hands get bored?
Do they crave the inches you never explored?

Kissed me in theory, ****** me in words,
left me aching in metaphors, splintered in thirds.
Does my short-skirt-restless stir you, ten years gone by?
Do you see I’m getting cuter? A five-foot fine-wine.

Think of me late, when you can't get clean,
when desire drips slow, my name gasoline.
I dream of you younger, long hair, frayed seams,
like a well-timed kiss could rewrite dropped lines, silent screams.

Now I wonder where you are, in what state, what bed,
if you ever read my poems or regret what you said?
Maybe you think of me, brilliant, unbridled-
or maybe I'm nothing—worthless, exiled.

(Chorus)
It's almost poetic, the way I play my part—
one foot in daylight, the other in the dark.
Fighting-fit and fighting-mad,
on my knees but singing
verses from scars still stinging.

And if I said I could love you, would it land?
Or hang like a ghost, hollow and ******?
And if I said I love you, would it even land?

(Outro)
It's been a long time coming, this curse, this lust,
I've woven us into poems, stitched from rust.
If I said I loved you, could you let it stand,
without closing your fist around my trembling hand?

Think of me fondly, then punch out a wall—
echoes from bridges you’re compelled to let fall.
I don't think it'd land.
I know it wouldn't land.
wouldn’t land.

You said, “If I loved you, I’d make you my wife,”
I smiled with my eyes while that cut like a knife.
I shrugged, “Playing house in the forest just isn’t my thing,”
You grinned, “I know, but someday you’ll look good in my ring.”

Then, “We’d make beautiful kids, no doubt,”
Pan to me spinning out—
the ****’s that about?
You cast palmy lines out in lakes of blue,
Reel them back just to watch me bruise.

Every glance is a bait, every word a disguise,
Painting me futures with half-open eyes.
You string me along with a touch and a tease,
Like these promises don’t steal my breath and my sleep.

You talk in circles, keep me halfway there,
Trap me in snares, gasping for air.
I’m the half-written story you stash on a shelf,
The pretty idea you save for yourself.

But I’m done waiting for a life you won’t start,
Done being a muse in your second-rate art.

Hypotheticals shuffled in black and red,
A game where I’m playing, but I’m underfed.
You bluff with a tell that’s more tale than truth,
A plot spun from lips that lie more than soothe.

You tuck the truth into creased, hidden folds,
Like secrets are currency you get to withhold.
Bits of confession slip through your jest,
Building a house of cards in my chest.

I’m done with your “someday” that drips with delay,
You paint futures in grayscale but I’m done with the gray.
I won’t be the punchline in your past-tense tense,
No longer the girl caught up on the fence.

I won’t be the footnote you write in small print,
Or the flash in your memory that’s starting to tint.
I won’t be the whisper you keep on the side,
Or the “could’ve been” girl that haunts your pride.

I write in fragments, splinters of bone and honey,
syllables cracked open, spilling
the sweet rot of almosts, an ache left raw.

Each word wears two faces—shadow and shimmer,
tiptoeing like smoke across split lips,
dressed in disquiet, cloaked and crooked,
and, and, and—

each line drips slow, a fever-burn with sharp teeth.
Commas scrape their knees, a bleeding scab
I can’t help but pick clean.

I leave bruises on pages, backwards and barefoot—
not wounds, not quite, but something
that lingers like woodsmoke in the morning.

My lines stumble like drunk apologies,
guttural and gripping.
You don’t read my work;
you trespass, you crawl.

What I say and what I don’t—
they hold hands in the spaces between,
like shadows slipping past each other.

Sentences flex limp and knotted,
stones in my throat waiting to choke.

This isn’t a poem—it’s a map of missed exits,
each word an ache left half-sewn,
stitched by hands too tired to be careful,
fingers too numb to be precise.

I write in whispers and warnings,
half-lives and half-lies, spurting soft and sideways,
graffiti on walls in rooms no one stays in.

This is language as ruin,
syntax frayed, stretched to ache
till it tears, a glimmer of tendon beneath.
Not a story, not even a sentence—
just pieces scattered like dry leaves,

prose unmade, too jagged to hold,
but clinging like sap,
sweet and hard to forget,

leaving you haunted,
a little lost, a little found,
with edges sharp enough to cut.

There's a subtle violence to the way we interact
your eyes linger, half a dare, half a dismissal—
waiting for me to say something that will make it easier,
like my mouth will invite you to betray me before you even start.

You say my name like it's a sigh you can't quite swallow,
and I answer with a laugh that tastes like a talking doll,
plastic and metallic, sticking to the back of my throat.
We sit in the silence that pulses between us,
thick as the secrets we keep beneath our tongues.

A smarter girl would have seen the strings,
a dumber girl would have played along,
a bolder girl would have set fire to the toy shop,
and a braver girl would have never
let herself be a toy in the first place.

There's a subtle violence to the way we pretend;
clinging to skin with fingers made of willow and ash,
clinging to diving boards with the same desperate grip.
I wonder if this is love or just inertia—
a habit that clings like the scent of smoke,
***** and aching, lingering long after the flame is gone.

But you hold me at arm's length,
just vague enough to haunt,
just close enough to hurt,
and I know better
but I still reach, I still grasp—

I still fall like a dream dissolving at dawn,
a fall that feels like freedom,
weightless for a fleeting second:
no strings, no metal, no violent subtleties, no smoke at all.

And when the ground rises up to greet me,
a cruel embrace that whispers
what's been in my mouth all along,
what the doll tried to say before she burned:

that letting go is never the hardest part,
it's surviving the landing that shatters you,
and knowing you were the one that jumped.

Why do the stars seem brighter when you’re far from home?
How is it possible to feel so much and still be empty?
Was my love too heavy, or were you just afraid?
What if I’m always too much and never enough, like the way the sky bleeds at sunset?
Do you picture my tears like confetti?
Were the vibes sublime?

Why does the thought of you getting engaged on Facebook
make me want to throw up pretty bushes?
Why did I feel I was asking too much, when all I ever
wanted was for you to mean what you said?
Is longing always this loud, or am I the only one screaming?

How do we keep going when hope is just a rumor we tell ourselves at 3 a.m.?
When did we decide that falling apart had to be done quietly?
What if love is less like falling and more like standing
outside a door I’m too afraid to open?

What does your therapist think about me?
How long have you been saying my name in that room,
throwing it against the walls like something you can’t figure out?
Did you lie to me, or was it yourself you couldn’t face?
What if the map we’ve been following was drawn by hands that never touched?
What if we never touch?

Remember ten years ago, before this got so knotted,
we were learning lines in basements and smoking cloves behind the theater?
Did you think you’d be the one I shatter for?
Why does happiness feel like something I’m never allowed to keep?
What if time doesn’t soften the edges but teaches us how to carry the sharpness?

Why do the faces in old photographs seem to know something we don’t?
Is there a difference between being brave and being reckless,
or does it all depend on how the story ends?
What was the tipping point, the moment you shut down the parade?
What was the endgame? Why was it a game at all?
How many times have you pressed your ear to the silence,
hoping it might tell you something new?

Why does the idea of forever sound like both a promise and a threat?
How do I stop feeling like you’re the only poem I write?
Have you read the poems about you?
Are they easy to decode? Are they eating you alive?
Do you want to be eaten?

Do you ever wonder if the fire was always just fire?
What if the love I gave wasn’t meant for you,
but for the version of me that needed something to believe in?
Was I crossing a line, or was I drawing one?
What if I never stop mourning something I made up?

How do you carry an atlas under your tongue?
Does my voice still sound like a howl? Does it pierce your night?
Did you really have to detonate us two weeks before the release of The Tortured Poets Department?
Will the story of us linger like smoke in those songs forever?
What do you think about when you think of me—my voice echoing off the walls,
my *** in leggings, or my ceaseless need to be seen?
Will I ever stop dreaming about you?
Why do I know it’s been exactly 200 days since it happened?
Who’s counting?

How do we reconcile the person we thought we’d be with the one we see in the mirror at 3 a.m., wide-eyed and wondering?
What did you get out of keeping me in your orbit, spinning in circles while you stood still?
Why does your name still taste like blood when I say it out loud?
Will I ever stop wondering why I wasn’t enough?
What if the real betrayal was how easily you let me believe it was my fault?

Pretend it’s just another party—
an apartment filled with ghosts in rented shoes,
the air so balmy-slick and regret-thick
you chew it between clenched teeth and canapés.

Laughter echoes like it's hollow—
like it's searching for a way out.
Smile anyway, teeth shining shields,
polished by all the swill you've swallowed.

Conversations carry and carry on,
half-truths wrapped in nicer clothes, familiar faces
wrapped with softer shadows, words slurring to silk, then blurring to tilt.
Wave at someone you used to know;
pretend like you have any say in how you’re remembered.

Pretend the warm hands on your shoulders aren’t anchors
dragging you back to conversations you’ve outgrown,
then pretend your feelings were never knives
dressed as whispers,
and strangers in your skin.
Pretend you've never been the best thing at the party.
Pretend you've never been the worst.

The ghosts taught you some tricks;
pour drinks and flatter, don’t spill souls and blather—
the art of being just enough, but never too much,
your heart near the door, the gravity of leaving,
a muscle that’s learned to scheme and stay still
in ways your body can't, your mind never will.

Pretend just another party—
just another night to swallow or score.
You’re so much younger than you ever were, and braver;
one eye on the exit and one foot out the door.

Exits beckon another entrance:
but that wouldn't be pretending,
would it?

The best thing at this party
only pretends to leave-
the worst thing at this party
is smiling anyway.

We learn to smile with our lips peeled back,
half-feral, half-forgotten,
daughters of flesh and teeth,
tasting the world as it tears through us—

The earth calls us by name,
whispering whorls and wants like lullabies,
beckoning hearts that never knew mercy,
braiding hair with thorns and boughs.

We answer in hunger,
all iron and salt, thirst and thistle,
skin pulling tight over gnarled roots and longing,
nerves quivering like a candle burning at both ends.

We sharpen ourselves on what remains—
cracked knuckles, raw knees,
holding the ache like a birthright,
swallowing each bruise,
never begging, only bleeding.

Remember when you heard my name for the first time?

You thought it was a play on words;

I said it was just a play,

and you laughed like you knew the difference.

Remember the glittering forever you saw in my eyes?

I told you it was a trick of the light.

You said it was just a trick, but
we could make it real by wanting it—so I started wanting it.

You asked about my favorite lie, and I said, “I don’t know.”

You laughed, either because you got it,

or because you didn’t—and that was just as funny.


You didn't lift the weight of my words,

how they sank like stones in my stomach, obscuring my glitter,

waiting to see if you'd notice when they lost their shimmer.

Remember why we didn’t drive to the coast?

You thought I was scared of the ocean,

but I knew it had swallowed too many endings already.

The waves couldn’t wash away your ambiguity;

they would only drown my swell no salt could soften.

Remember that postcard I never sent?

You shouldn’t, but I feel like you would.

I wrote it one night in a knot of longing and spite:

“Wish you were here, but it might be better that you’re not.”

How many Dear John's sit sealed, unsent,

lost in transit between what was promised and what was kept?

Between what was enchanted, and what’s now dead?

Remember the night I asked what you'd save in a fire?

You said, “Everything.”

Like you could shove hearts and histories into pockets

without splitting seams. You can’t escape unscathed,

lock the door, and not stink of the charred bits you abandoned.

Meaning things and speaking things are not the same,

and if I wasn’t choking on smoke, I might try to tell you:

some things are meant to burn—

Some things are both the light and the trick
and the play goes on regardless.

If you wait too long,
I'll be wearing a ring
you didn’t buy,
promising my forever
to a man who didn’t hesitate.

If you wait too long,
I'll be walking down an aisle
where your shadow doesn’t follow,
I’ll be holding orchids you can't name
and sighs that aren’t for you.

If you wait too long,
I'll speak the words you ran from,
sing the prayers in your throat,
and bestow to him
the parts of me you never got to touch.

If you wait too long,
I’ll be someone else’s treasure,
laughter filling rooms
you’ll never enter,
a life stitched from moments
you’ll never hold.

If you wait too long,
I'll become the light that rattles in your mind,
the haunt you can’t hunt,
the hope you brushed away like pencil shavings,
and the love you lost to your silence.

If you wait too long,
I’ll be a memory dressed in white,
walking away with a last name
that I was sure would be yours,
and you were sure I’d wait.

What would happen if you let yourself be hungry?
Would you reach for the bread or the knife?
Under the table and dreaming;
feral for kindness,
ragged in revile.

Swallow olive pits to allay your stomach,
varnish your voice with vinegar and honey,
twirl your tongue like a teaspoon around
new wild-blue words, hijacked hands,
and a bellyful of burdens clawing up your throat.

The hunger will keep you honest,
the bread will keep you alive,
the knife will keep you from being too kind.
Kind is another word hungry;
and hunger is how you got the knife.

What would happen if you stopped pretending you
were the center of the universe?
You are; but not because you are special–
because you are the only one who’s learned to bite down,
the lonely one who’s learned to look up.

Now that you know this, how would you like to behave?
It’s not up to you, but you should still think about it.
Chew on the questions but don’t swallow any answers;
the center of the universe has a weak stomach, and puking
proverbs only drags out the meal and ruins your boots.

What would happen if you were a little less precious?
Would your fingers still write ******? Would your knife still cut?
Would your appetite ache while your heart howled, ulcerated and untamed?
Your wayward words only tell half of the story;
the other half belongs to the hunger who ate the bread.

A word isn’t a thing to behold, but a thing to be held.
A poem isn’t a thing to reckon, but a thing to wreck.
A heart howls when forsaken; the banished **** and bite down,
There is a kindness in the story, but only when it’s told.

A vile sort of silence drapes my summer
with white-silk cheeks and gauzy sighs,

it's been ages since I've killed my darlings;
drenching them in light, hoping to be surprised.

Each poem is steeped in saline,
each line laced with sparks and sour,

but the syllables still sing, sing, sing
for their own satellite-sake,

the stanzas still dance, dance, dance
like drunken angels in heels and tulle,

the metaphors still spin, spin, spin
with bits of gold through my mind and muck.

Each night I feed myself tales of my own glint,
each morning I warn myself to get a grip.

If you can keep a secret,
you can keep your distance.
If you can keep your word,
you can keep your head down.
If you can keep score,
you can keep your eyes on the road.

Night crawls toward hot-morning on its belly,
dawn breaks like a thousand tightrope hearts,

hot-pink pain seasons the sky with oozing, vivid blush,
blue-blood bats flutter from my hair like disgraced prayer they rushed.

The last larkspur dies,
the first swallow flies,

each hairpin I lose in my mouth is a line,
and each hairpin I find in the field is a sign.

Darlings,
we both know you should be dead by now;
all shiny and benign:

Darlings,
I’m all summer-soft and quiet-taut-
no ****** on my mind.

Cut to me: tempting his anger with my white-knuckled grip and words so honest they could make a saint scream.

Cut to him: choking on his own twisted tongue and front-door fear.

Cut to me: still holding the reins of the wreckage, still not letting go-

Cut to him: saying sort yourself out, saying he’s broken women far stronger, saying anything he can to turn me against him, saying he’d pay for my own heart to be sealed.

Cut to me: a daisy in my mouth, a blackbird in my hand, a shattered window in my chest. I have this feeling that I'm not supposed to be here, I have this feeling that I’m only half-way through this story.

Cut to him: six feet tall, and each one a cellblock of quiet anguish.

Cut to me: cutting my feet on breaking branches, scraping my fingers on the rough bark of a tree. The poems don’t say anything, the tears never come. The rain falls in the wrong places, the daffodils die for the wrong reasons.

Cut to him: new job, new state, new life. Starting from scratch but still scratching at the itch that looks like me, still licking wounds from the daggers aimed at my hope that ricocheted back to his own. What does he do with his hands when he thinks of me? How does he deal with his guilt when it claws up his throat and he’s afraid to spit it out?

Cut to me: dreaming him with long hair. I don’t know where to imagine him when I imagine him; a topographic map of unknowing in my mind- an uncured landscape and rough terrain. I see him as a question mark in the wilderness; forging his own labyrinth of twisted truths and hop-scotching the minefield he planted.

Cut to him: Not really in the wilderness, probably in a condo in a mid-sized city. I think if he meets a nice girl who tags him in her Facebook posts, I’d have to **** myself.

Cut to me: demolishing the both of us, casting his secrets like seeds in the dirt, watching scandal bloom, and his character rot in the high noon sun.

Cut to me: imagining annihilation, holding his hand while leading us to slaughter, destroying us both, and having a marvelous time doing it. I’d make sure they slit my throat first; he’d have to hold me while I bleed out, stroke my face as it loses color, and tell me it’s going to be okay as I fade away.

Cut to me: doing none of these things. I don’t have it in me; when I told him I’d never hate him, I meant it. Wading through summer defanging the snakes in my belly, hoping he’s declawing the tigers in his mind. I won’t admit that I’m waiting, but the story's just half-told. Our plot is paused, and I’m sitting alone, but what if it’s merely intermission, and he’s just at the bar, getting us drinks?

Brilliant and breathless, bending
language like a gardenia wreath
hanging from the rafters
of a sun-drenched mouth
that could only be mine.

Bullish and breathless, tangling
ellipses, clinging to a simile’s hem until it
trips and rips the thread of thought.
I don’t mean this as a manner of speech–
I speak without manners.

Billowed and breathless, humming
out of its skin and into mine.
Meaning is a feathery, fallible thing,
twisting, writhing, vanishing;
tough to trust, prone to rust,
words swirling and spun,
sea-tossed and salt-stuck
on a foreign tongue.

Beaming and breathless, flirting
with the edge of a rockwall,
a siren call,
more lullaby than warning shot,
more hymn than howl, a voice
that could only be mine.

Belated and breathless, underlining
the good lines, never shaking the bad,
plucking at the precipice, never leaping,
clamoring to be heard but never speaking.
A lot of words, but no poem.
A lot of pinch, but no push.
Graceless and glitching,
mine alone.

I open my window and toss my hair to the trees.
Someone told me birds use hair to insulate their nests.
Google says it’s harmful, but the birds and I have an understanding:
they won’t be strangled, and I won’t be stranded.

All I do is shed;
flesh hangs off bones like someone else’s dress,
I put on jewelry then take it off, hoping the fool’s gold won’t crumble
in my wallet. I’m sure I’ll self-immolate
if earring-backs and claw-clasps
keep licking my skin.
I shed hair and thighs,
guilt and fingernails, doubt and light,
until the world is full of me and I am full of nothing.

I gather my hair from brushes and shower drains,
pluck it from elastics and carpets, slice it out of vacuum rollers
with a box cutter, roll it into a tumbleweed in my palms.
Then to the window, where I drop it onto crabapple branches below.
I want the robins and starlings and sparrows,
the heaven-sent cardinals,
the crows I tell my secrets to,
to build a nest with my dead parts,
to make a home from the parts of me that couldn’t hold on.

Midsummer,
the worn-out end of June brushes against the beginning
of July and I’m wearing shorts to work for the first time in years.
I’m reading fiction in the sun, writing down my horoscope,
pretending I’m not a hostage to that first week in April
where he hurt my feelings, and I just hurt.

All I do is patter;
my hair drips to the floor in long, black rivers,
my aura drips down my back like a gas leak,
I think about how many trees I cut down to make myself,
and I think about birds falling asleep
in a haunt that’s made of me.

Losing my hair, losing my patience—
legs thinning, heartbeat skipping,
eyes squinting like commas, mouth tensing like a fist,
fingers like pitchforks reaching up from the grave,
skin like an avocado rotting on the counter.
All this losing, at least I’m helping the birds.

Words come and go with no consequence,
I buy dumb **** online and write poems without any soul,
I imagine a life where love is a faucet that drips through the night,
and I dream of him with long hair and daisies in his teeth.
My writing doesn’t pinch, my feet don’t tingle,
I just knot phrases around each other like tangled string lights
with half the bulbs burnt out, and it’s fine to say things like that.

I’m on a losing streak, but the birds don’t know it,
they tend to their babies, they sing to the dawn.
I can shed my way across summer like that was always the plan,
like I wasn’t born to ache, to be left gutted and graceless and wondering.
I wasn’t made to be love-bombed or pulled into trench warfare
after being invited to a picnic. I didn’t want to hold the gun,
but he was screaming to pull the trigger, and then my skirt was ruined.

I can leave my body in the grass and my hair in the trees,
I can write dry poems and feed them to the wind,
I can leave a trail of me through the trees like I was never there,
and when I find my way back, only the birds will know the difference.

A secret in my palm
and a secret in my mouth,
and the two are not the same.

God says He’s sorry,
and I say I’m sorry too.
The truth is not the same as the lie,
but they have the same taste,
the same weight,
so I swallow them both.

I ask God if He remembers
the day He knit me together,
with fear and wonder,
all thoughts and thorns.

He nods His head, and I nod mine,
and we both agree
that He should have been more careful.
I say I'm sorry again,
and this time I mean it more.

A plea in my fist and a plea in my throat,
and the two are not the same.
God says He knows my heart like
I know His mercy, and I feel bad,
I think He might be as lonely as I am.

God tells me a new song is coming,
and I tell Him hurry, I want to sing.
We both know that wilderness
is a state of mind, a state of grace,
and I let my mind wander.

You can play
with the tension
and not get caught,
but you can never
break it;

not when nerves
are taut telephone lines
purring with electricity;
thick enough to chew.
The cracks are deep
enough to bury a secret,
swallow each perforated promise,
and each broken beacon.

I can feel your pulse
racing against mine.
I can't tell whose heart is beating
and whose is beat.
We are two sticks of dynamite
in the same trophy tin:
sparks of breath singeing skin,
we hold each other up
until we hold
each other down.

The rules of war change
with your mood,
the laws of physics
are putty in your hands,
and the tides of time
are your own
collapsing conspiracy-
a house of cards you reshuffle
and repossess as the candle burns
a circle of wax on the table.

I can’t decide if you want to devour me
or decimate me—
adore my halo
or annihilate my hope,
love me with your whole heart
or wreck mine with your whole weight.
And you can’t decide either,
can you?

The light is unkind,
the land unforgiving,
and you are all
my favorite lies;
the canvas of my
incomplete portrait,
the crossed out pages
of my abandoned poems.

You can play with your edge
or throw me off it.
Either way, I'll be yours to keep
or yours to conquer.
I won’t tell you how to ruin me,
or beg you to spare me
from your rabid reign—
I’m not that kind of country.
I’m an open border;
a shattered compass,
spinning wildly.

But I will say:
the ruins
are all that’s left when
the empire falls,
all that’s real when the
games are done,
all that’s preserved
when the tension eases
and the maps are redrawn,
again and again.

I'll send a postcard
to your grave.

It’s hard to untangle a supernova
from the hope
that it might explode…

We’re all a little bit in love with it;
our demure undoing and unmade sense,
our limp-wristed magic,
our dour dashes.

We all know some things need to be left unsaid,
but what if the last word is yours and you say it?
What if it becomes the last true thing,
even if it’s not?

When the sky stretches open like a yawn,
and the ground cracks like a grin,
we’re all a little bit thrilled.
Constellations burn like cognac,
satellites swirl like smoke.

The senseless will sharpen the shimmer
of sad-star-ellipsis, then spin them into a wreckage
of exclamation points and full stops, falling
from their own weight and into ours.

We’ll put our spines to the ground like fossils,
tremble with wide eyes and open hands,
and then listen for your last word:

Sanctified and starry-eyed,
I thought I could have bad thoughts
and still sit dauntless
and debrided
on my mighty throne of miseries.

I thought I could pocket poison
and still polish my poems
with punch-drunk hands,
still bleed revere into the wide-open
unbearable,
still beg for big words to break
the uncanny uncertain,
still dance with a demon in a moth-eaten skirt,
still giggle like a new tango for your ballroom
brainwaves and barricades.

I thought my gaze could pin
your fancy and fury to my wrist,
let the rapture steal through the window,
burn down your pretense,
your pathological provocations,
and find us intertwined and divine.

Lovelorn and luridly-lit,
I thought I could spin you
to a dizzying depth of sirens and stars,
diffuse the bomb in your mouth
and be the ballast
for your throbbing, cracking heart,
your writhing wilderness,
your wretched wreckage.

I thought I could buck up-
brush my hair,
and rose-blush my way through
your strange dark and
your winding labyrinth;
the coiling curse
of your unquiet heart.

Jilted and jagged-pricked to the quick:
I thought I could be the saint of your history,
the angel of your archives,
the verses you could not flee,
the name you could not outrun.

I thought the city I built could outlast
your spite, I let you burn bridges
while I slept under them,
collect your sharpest flares,
your longest shadows,
and postmarked daggers,
then drown them in my last-resort lullaby.

The flames I stoked could do the dying for you,
and the sky I swore to keep
would not fall for you like I have.
I thought I could find the key to your riddle
and wear it like a necklace,
we lose our thread,
then find it as matching knots on our wrists.
It’s really not that hard to be
the answer to your own question,
you just have to know what to ask.

This is my first-ever life. I’ve never been anybody's,
I’ve only ever been any body.
I’m not brave because I’ve never had to be;
I’ve never had to call my own bluff, or learn
the rules; I’ve been coasting by bad beats
and dumb-luck, and the boys always
fall until I flush, tilt until they fold,
love me until they don’t.
I pocket the chips anyway.
My clumsy hands get antsy;
always dropping hints and pennies,
never dropping hands that drop pilots,
barely dropping hands that drop bombs,
and my fermented dreams;
my sweet turns so acidic, I can't see
the color of an aura over the bacteria and bubbles.
I go to sleep with yeast on my fingers
and get drunk on my dreams.
I’m a bad poet and an okay bird;
I spend my midnights pecking on the keyboard
like a sparrow at its reflection, tapping out
a list of things that might be.
I have this thing where I try to write my way
into myself, but the vocabulary makes me lie;
the syntax makes me slink,
I use semicolons wrong,
and always too many commas,
but if you’ve ever seen the inside of my mouth,
you know that I’m doing the best I can.
My first-ever life is shaping up to be
an entire sentence so run-on
and run-down that it
almost doesn't matter if I get to the end;
inmates don’t get to choose where
they serve, even if it is my first-ever life.

I’ve thought about what absolution will feel like in the dark,
how forgiveness will sound in my hands,
the smell of clemency in the morning,
and where the sun sits in the palm of a man
who hasn’t let himself get used to anything.

I’ve thought about the resound of effusive, earnest prayers
when I finally mean them,
what the poem will look like when it escapes its cage,
and how the night will unfurl its sparks then
shatter stars along the promenade.

I’ve thought about what would happen if I stepped on his face
and kept going– if I’d hear any bone-snap.
I’ve imagined how fun it’d be to drown his gaze in its own
reflection, to be the echo he chokes on.
In my night-struck existence, I’d giggle while he stumbled around,
a charred-orange wreck, a muted-barb affect.

I’d plug his mouth with a sharp-edged, holy silence so
that the next girl stands a chance; so she won’t be
gouged into a ghost, all violent and vanquished,
a lacerated light who still has a soul to save.

If I cut his lungs with a poem, would it be a mercy killing?
Like a priest praying for his own death,
would I be breaking the sacrament?
I’m still consuming a body; a different kind of lamb.

Could I slice into his side and crawl back into his rib,
hold the pulpit, perform my own liturgy, and seize
the forgiveness that wasn’t offered?
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned-
Deliver me, Father, my light has dimmed.

‘I just started feeling like I was hurting you.’
Your narrative, not fine but okay.
If you want it then ask for it, don’t show off for me.
Cringe and grin, loaded questions, uneven answers:
Your ******* between my ears,
my rot at the center of your chest.

Your mind’s a weapon of my destruction,
my heart’s an insurgent on your tongue,
war crimes and an urge to confess sins
I’ve yet to commit but pray to.

Your conquest, my damnation,
my crown, your thorns.
The best laid plans of mice and wrens,
and all the flesh that must be shed-
******* it up again.

Diametric wonder like impenetrable alchemy,
'I just wanted to use the word penetrate.'
like I didn't know that; like I'm not flushed,
tripping and dripping at 'alchemy.'

A single shadow for two ghouls,
born from a short play and two ****** fools.
One grave, two lives,
one coin, two sides-
‘my head, your tail,’
poetic every second of every day.
Ease into this, okay? Sometimes it works out.

You’re not that horrible, you know what I mean.
The taste of something like a target ****** upon me.
You told me you love damaged girls,
and I’m unparalleled, all broken and brilliant,
all twirling, starting fires,
all strange and wonderful, relentless and ravishing;
already here, all ready here.

You told me I’ve never really played along,
but I played merry hell with our ransoms and struck more nerves than we thought I could reach.
I have plenty of your secrets,
and you’re the milk-silk viscera
weaving through so many of my poems.

Whiplash, so it comes to nothing.
Whiplash, and hardly a tool for self-harm.
How dare I turn your hollow eyes into a lens that looks back to me?
How many lives do I owe your blue and burning?
Whiplash, a quick, heart-drop minute, a long, wretched second.

‘I did not see that coming,’
listing tautologies, I have so many reasons
to believe you but I don’t.
‘The right thing is to walk away.
Not string you along, try to use you, ******* around,
all the things I want to do.’
and what are you actually looking for?
You imagine you’ll die before you find out.
It doesn’t have to be so hard.

I still think there’s hope under all the blood and terror,
the unholy mess and the violent red,
your commitment to torment and a stubborn that’s just stubborn.
I still think there’s a place where we can lay our weapons
in the grass, sign a treaty in the dirt, and call it a covenant.
I know there’s a place where our hands are clean
and the poetry isn’t tangled in throats and fists,
where the light is warm, the sparks are softer than you think,
and whiplash is just another way of seeing stars.

Less a flirtation than a duel,
you take the hit and then you hit back.
You know I won’t die of you.

More a free-fall than a slow burn,
I clear my throat and you reach for yours.
I know you’re keeping score.

You are not the last word,
but you are the only one I’d speak aloud.
You know you won’t live forever.

You are not the worst thing I’ve done,
but you are the only thing I can’t confess.
We will never be strangers.

Less a revelation than a metallic plea,
I come undone and you just come.
When I choose my words carefully, I choose you.

Betrayal is a heavy word I won’t hold against you,
and you won’t hold me.
More a truce than a treaty, we do this until we don't.

We blur out the edges then circle back around.
You are not the endgame,
but you are the only one I want to play.

the dream where we made a truce of our bodies
in the belly of a boat,
ignoring our stutters and stings for one small
and sublime
passing note.

a nest of warm-wood walls and soft,
faded sheets,
something like mercy in our quiet-
redemptive, or at least,
semisweet.

your hair caught
in the buttons of my
sweater,
my white dress flitting
behind me like
surrender.

then white knuckling the bow,
bruising my knees,
slain and sickly,
retching in the sea.

your roommate braided her hair as she
watched me and laughed,
your eyes blinked heavy with the weight
of ache, fore-and-aft.

at sea we can see what we really are:
the kind of love that eats you alive,
a tangled affair you may not survive.
the kind of slow motion implosion
that cracks the sky,
the blind devotion explosion;
a shattered lullaby.

you ask a question, I answer with the dream.
this was months and miles ago;
the dream and my hands were wet with salt,
your mouth and fingers cold, your eyes aglow.

your brain is really protecting you,
that was your response.
from what? from the yearn of man
who can
only haunt.

a piece of penance smuggled in your
trademark nonchalance,
and all the grace that the dark can give,
all the
rust and want.

The first few lines of a poem always sound like they should be the last,
the last few sound unnecessary,
I'm not sure if the next line is a metaphor or just
a way to keep my hand in the fire;
I think it might be both.
I think this might be it.
We’re all just a few lines away from being forgotten,
but we have to keep writing like we’re not.
We have to be careful not to die before we die.
We have to say goodbye before we say hello.

You know what I mean, don't you?
Like the poem should be written in ashes, but
the lines are too long to fit in the hearth.
You try to keep a notebook and end up writing on the wall,
you try to fit the words into your mouth before they're swallowed,
you try to taste them before you choke.

Brevity’s a virtue, I’m a vice.
I have yet to see a chasm that I couldn't swan-dive into-
I have yet to wreck a heart that wasn’t mine.
I still can’t describe what I really mean.
I take up lines like a layer of locusts, like I’ve got a plague in my pen.
I’ve never finished a poem in my life, but I’m still careful not to die.

I know what I mean, but I don't mean it.
My sentences sometimes look like the death
of a small animal, blood and fur, feathers and bone,
twisted muscles all tangled together,
rotting in the sun with no one to bury it.

Decay in blunt, angular letters and a mottled pink sky,
a rusted machine, the worst of me.
The pulpy feeling of sentences clawing their way through my skin
just to get out and get away, to gnash their teeth,
chase a phrase, or find new mouths to fit into.

It’s the last line again, the one that belongs five stanzas up,
the one that wants to kiss your cheek and leave a stain,
that stokes the flame and knows what you mean.
A last line that clings to your skin,
drips into the next poem, because it wasn’t quite right,
but will be remembered. It will be buried.

December is still lucent,
winter is still scratching its legs in the grass.
Our bruises are yellowing, our swells are endless.
The scorn is still hot in my mouth,
the tense is still past.

I don’t want to lose the taste of red,
or the weight blue brings in its throat,
but I’m ready to peel your scent off my skin,
scrape the sanctified from my sinned-in-bones,
and burn the map to the hidden rooms I built for you.

I know the fire is slow and the years are not.
I know the burning is mine and you are not.
I know the stuttered-tongue is a cliff and the knife-edge is in my hands.
I know that silence is an answer and that you are not.

I wasn’t born alone but I’ve been alone ever since.
I’ve traced lines of fleshy eyelids with stub-fingers
and wondered who I was before
the world was.

I’ve held my breath while holding my tongue, then counted
to ten and went to seek anyone who’d hold my gaze.
I've walked down ***** streets with knives in pockets
and scars on hips,
I’ve stumbled through the night with headlight pupils
and sirens lining my boots.

Brown eyes the color of the river as seen from above,
and hands that can make love but not hold it.
I saw the light through the trees and thought
I was going somewhere-
but I stopped going.

I don’t want to go alone.

No one tells you what to do
when your heart is in your mouth,
when your toes cramp and tangle,
when your body aches to be a better bouy.

No one tells you how to act
when your tongue burrows thick and cold in your throat,
when your knees buckle,
when your chest reels six slow shackles to the ocean floor.

No one tells you where to run
when hope is thin on your lips,
when your feet drag and the sand burns,
when the whole world thinks you're a coward
and they’re right.

You can’t tell if you're singing or screaming,
dancing or decaying,
miserable or marvelous.
a galaxy or a ghoul.
All you can do is stand and sway.
All you can see is the tiniest scrap of light.

No one tells you when it’s time to go;
when to strip the bed and when to sink in deeper.
You can't know if your eyes are the right color while looking through them,
or how your heart could be a burning match when you hold your breath and wait.

No one taught you to gag promises and jagged teeth;
to pluck moss from your hair and rust from your limbs,
but your fingers know what to do in the dark,
your lungs know how to keep a flame alive.

No one taught you when to be brave and when to keep your mouth shut,
but you’re learning, aren't you?
Your mouth stays sealed and your anchor stays secure.
You’re learning.

October wears the wrong shoes, wears out her knee,
wears days passing like ****** rings on each bony finger.
I’m getting quiet again;
tucking my hands in my jacket,
tucking my scraps and starlight in sidewalk cracks.

There are days you can convince yourself of anything,
but they don't come as often as they used to.
I feel like I should be the one singing,
I should be the one watching the moon rise twice in one night;
skimping on sleep and feasting on frisson.
I’m not that old, but I feel like I could be.
I’m not that jaded; I prefer reverie.

September was made of sighs and swords,
August was slow-marching shadows and tiger-tight dreams.
July was nothing but waiting-
nothing but stringing beads on an endless thread,
nothing but erasing the map and starting over.

Months have a way of slipping to the street
as you loosen your grip;
like coins storm drain-clinking,
like jewels gutter-glinting,
like time spilling, time seeping;
time swallowing you whole.

There are days you can still get away with anything,
but it’s getting harder to curtsy to the mirror and feed it a lie.
There are days when it’s fine to forget the name of your city,
But you can’t forget the names of your teeth,
or where you buried them, or when you’ll need them again.
Dirt is always shifting, names are always changing;
I’m still singing, still counting, still naming.

There are nights when I know I’m dreaming, but I also know I’m awake.
How many moonrises can I count in a day before I run out of fingers?
How many streets can I name before I run out of breath?
I’m a little anxious, but I mostly get out of bed.
I’m a little sad, but I still meet each month with hard hands and rings.
I’m a little anxious, but I keep my scraps and starlight.
I’m a little sleepy, but I still sing while counting my moons.

Introduce yourself to the word scour. Break in your boots. Look in the mirror but don’t fall in. Find your way back to the city. Be sad. Pray with your mouth shut. Paint the breeze with your fingers. Scream at the sky. Make someone else a statue and never tell them about it. Run faster. Breathe harder. For the record: you are every scribble from every pen. For the record: profound things happen when you expect them to.

Stitch the word havoc into the sky and watch the clouds tangle themselves around your fingers. Be careful with your tongue. Let it be a secret in your mouth. Let it keep itself, and keep learning. Be careful with your mouth too, there are teeth and spikes and claws in there. There’s a reason for the blood, but there’s no reason to be afraid. Remember: there are no monsters, just open wounds. Suture or salt; you can cut your own hair with the same pair of scissors.

Soak in the word desperate. Drag it to the coast and see if it floats. Spell it out in the sand next to your name. Follow it into the water. Drown in it. Let it sting your stomach, burn your chest, infuse your lungs. Puke it up. Bury it in the earth and watch it bloom. Every word is a little bit of sky and a little bit of grave. Keep in mind that a word is always larger than you, and always more complicated. You are not a word, but you are inside of a word, even when you’re using it wrong.

Become familiar with the word unyielding. Hold it like a torch and see how it catches fire. Read it with your eyes closed and remember how much it looks like a window. Know how it sounds when it creaks, how it smells when it singes. Keep it burning. Hold it to your chest. Keep it near your heart. Remember how it feels to keep a flame inside you, a burning wick, a glow of your own. Glass shatters and panes splinter, but you can still see through it. You can still breathe through it. The only thing that will ever stop your heart is your own hand, and your hand is busy holding the fire.

Be wary of the word indifferent. It’s slippery ivy. It slinks around the garden and climbs the fence. It jets out of the drain and spills into the street. It sways in the wind and the crows seem to avoid it. It finds you as a heap on the lawn; hemorrhaging from another too-soft song, another too-familiar funeral. It hides in the hedgerow and waits to bite. It will show you a dead branch and claim it as its own, it will wrap its arms around you and make you feel dead too. It stains the sun and drowns the rain, then drinks in the fog and swallows the dew. It devours all the light. But you need the light. Rip out roots and demand light. Make yourself a bouquet of light. This is the only weapon you have, so use it. Use the light.

Appreciate the word tender. It is the word that sings the most, that draws the longest breath. It is the closest you can come to an answer and the only word that can stand up to the question. Earnest and pure, always meeting you at the door, always taking you by the hand. There are no innocents in this world, no unscathed souls, or unmarked hands, just a mess of water-stained, dented hearts, of coins greening in the fountain, a hand-drawn map of a sinking city, and an endless tunnel of light. There’s a wide-open mouth that wants to be a door and a door that wants to be a mouth. There’s a window that wants to be a window, and there’s a word for this. There’s always a word for this. You just don’t know it yet.

The ache of August is more static
than buzzing bugs and cracking thunder,
more stubborn than stop-motion memories,
more constant than our stop-and-go days,
more shameful than our pay-to-play nights.

It’s the smell of sunshower-damp pavement;
the heavy breath and sweat of the city,
all the restless, anxious bodies filling up bars.
All the things that keep us up and keep us tired,
the sad swarm of souls on their way home
again.

This ache that slithers around ribs,
presses with cramped fingers, until it finds the bottom
of a spine and squeezes.
It claws and clutches,
grabs and grabs,
hooks and holds.

A grip, a fist, another white lie,
another calloused hand.
Another crook making a mess of my words, stealing
color from my eyes and hope from my voice.
I August-ache. I August-break.

The sky hasn’t been blue since April.
The A train hasn’t run express since the last time we talked.
The universe is an oil stain that will never wash out,
and it’s been a while since I believed in anything,
but I’m still trying. I’m still looking for light.

August sighs, hot and empty,
daring us to flinch or flee, remember to regret.
Springtime-thrills smoldered,
nights by the mouthful,
hands in hair, all burned down.

In August we ache. In August we break.
We hold our hurt like a secret and our fear like a crime-
then with whispered mornings and honeyed winds,
September comes and shakes the ashe out of our sheets.
In September, I’ll be in the light.
In September, the sky will be so, so blue.

All I crave is love-shaped, all I see is light.
I’ve held faces in my palms,
and held my breath for weeks;
the only soul I’ve cradled is my own.
The only sighs I hear are screams.

I make ghosts from epilogues of once-closed books,
and write them into new poems for safekeeping.
I ask for a sign and get a stone,
I search for a home and find a haunting.
Each garden is a cipher for the other and each creek is a clue.

I pray to saints and saints pray to me.
The nicks of my body are staring at the sky, saying:
wait for me, wait for me, and I will wait for you.
I don't recognize the saints, but I see their eyes behind the slits of mine,
and trust they are as soft as I am.

Kneeling across moons and seasons for the hope of it, the poem of it.
I know love because I am love.
I believe saints because I am one.
I am everything-shaped. I write words that crawl out of graves, resurrect nuance,
and whisper, wait for me, wait for me, and I will wait for you.