After miles of coasting,
trailing a stretch of steel remembered
more as an artery than a scar,

(back when the sun-stained arms
and scratchy palms
that laid each track across
an endless America
felt ageless and exhausted;

gripping great-grandbabies,
bibles and whittled pipes,
fingers coiled and knotted with stories,
ready to spring forth and croon
if only they were asked.)

They didn’t talk much during the in-between:
that window of time when their bodies
were no longer cracking and howling,
rooting rungs into dry grass
from ocean to ocean;
fitting the landscape
with a skeleton of its own-

but before the true rest,
when they'd let their bones shake
out the tight grip of untold tales,
and sink into the dirt they helped carve.

You think of them now as dust,
a rosary planted under pine,
a Sunday grace,
a shared plot,
a middle name.
You do, don’t you?
You’re not really looking.

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.

(finaldraftREALtrashversion.txt)

openletterdraft13: i wasn’t supposed to feel this much
// open file: confession.txt
// modified: too many times

i loved you [ ]
  and by loved i mean studied.
  and by studied i mean starved.
  and by starved i mean
  i said “i’m not hungry” with your name in my throat.

INSERT IMAGE:
  a girl in a bookstore touching the spines
  like maybe one of them will understand.

INSERT IMAGE:
  a girl standing in the moonlight,
  asking the low-flying planes if she’s forgivable.

EXPORT FEELING:
  named it something soft
  so no one would notice it burned.

he said “i don’t want to hurt you”
  which is what men say
  right before they hurt you
  with clean hands.

CTRL + ALT + DELETE
  but nothing closes—
  especially not the part
  that keeps writing poems in his grammar.

[SYSTEM ERROR: too many metaphors. Simplify?]

i called it love.  
he called it bad timing.

INSERT PASSWORD:
  seeme

ACCESS GRANTED.

NEW NOTE:
  i forgive you in lowercase.
  you don’t deserve the shift key.

open file: ruinmefinaldraft.txt  
last saved: 2:41am  
user: girlwhoknowsbetter  
status: still writing about him / (pathetic)  
attachment: none (maybe that’s the point)

INPUT: I’m fine  
OUTPUT: [you don't sound like it]

cpu temp: 100.4°F  
(she's burning again)

I bit my nails and tasted April.

biometrics: unstable  
heartbeat: typing...  
eyes: exit-wound wide, still scanning  
mouth: unsent, but spelling it with teeth  
spine: error 504  

/ BIOS update failed  
// scroll depth: dangerous  
// dopamine loop: infinite

poetry drafts: full  
dignity: low  
engagement: medium

attachments:
- crying.wav  
- voice04833.m4a (unsent)  
- screenshotwhiplash02.png  
- idontbelieveyoudraftfinalFINAL.txt

NEW GOOGLE DOC:  
  title: every version of me you didn’t love  
  sharing permissions: view only  
  editing access: revoked

collaborators:
- me (12am), me (3am), me pretending I don’t care  
- girlboss, gaslight, ghost  
- nobody asked, everyone noticed, Taylor Swift  

[CORRUPTED TEXT]  
  she said she was over it [DATA INCOMPLETE]  

attachment: none (unless you count the damage)

[404: identity not found]

everyone says i look good  
no one asks if i’m still here  
the scale goes down  
the poems get louder  
the body forgets how to stay

[repetition detected: again, again, again, again]

click to translate: desperation

plaintext:
  you’re not even that important  
  but i keep talking like you’re holy  
  what do you do with love  
  when no one wants to hold it?

click here to reveal what she meant (no one ever did)

>>> meanwhile: her stomach hurts for no reason again.

reminder: no one asked.

crash log: 3:14am, again

system flag:
  are you sure you want to feel this much?  
  [no] [too late]

[user breakdown detected]  
  INSERT MESSAGE: “i’m sorry for my part.”  
  STATUS: unacknowledged  
  TIMESTAMP: one year ago  
  attachment: olive_branch.png  

recovery mode engaged (no progress)

autosave: corrupted  
exported: only the parts that hurt

I googled "am I spiraling"  
and then took the quiz twice.

cloud access: denied  
  her incision itched—  
  but not as much as the silence.  
  the body healed.  
  the meaning didn’t.

when she stands up too fast and sees stars,  
she names them after him.

draft saved: yes  
sent: no  
read: no  
felt: yes  
ruined: absolutely

I’ve written forty-seven poems that almost said it right.

trash folder: full  
memory: still running  
love: running in background (not responding)

[DATA COLLISION]  
  she realized she never even asked for this  
  she just tried to make it mean something

CTRL + ALT + ME  
(force quit)  

> everything backed up  
> nothing backed down  
> terminal still open

I crack soldiers inside crocodile batteries. I roll my shoulders. Everything squeaks.

I never meant to drop your hand like that. I'm a lot. it's time to claim the mute emergencies I've tucked into your days When you weren't looking. I'm the strain on your hip, I'm the hair in your sink. I'm always simmering, always smoky, always a little slow to  blink and I'm not enough salt.
I think God stuttered my name the first time he said it- I can never remember how the vowels go. If you think my tongue is too big in your mouth you should try it in mine.

have you ever written a letter and sent it to heaven? I used to do that every time it rained. crayon on paper, paper on asphalt, then you left it alone and it disappeared.

on the school bus in 2nd grade a girl was slouched down in her seat, crying. the driver stopped the bus and went to her. he was stiff denim, leather skin, cigarette fingers. 'what's wrong?' she didn't feel good. 'I don't know what to do about that.' the helplessness in his face made my ears ring. I never feel good. that's when I started thinking my bus driver was God. I kind of haven't stopped.

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?

(Because you never did know how to say goodbye right.)

I set a place for you anyway.
A ghost seat at my table,
a shadow in the doorway,
a wine glass smudged
with the shape of an absence.

You were always late
to your own consequences,
drifting in just in time
to miss me leaving,
staring at my taillights
like you thought
they were stars to wish on.

I should have stopped
writing you into the story,
should have let you fade
to a footnote,
a forgotten guest
on a list I never mailed—

but instead,
I keep setting the table
like love is a dinner party
and you just got lost
on the way.

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.

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.

{For solo performer (mask optional). Lighting: warm, then cruel. Microphone optional. Heartbreak required.}

[Lights up. One step too close to the mic. She smiles like she’s survived something.]

POET:
I said I was shattered.

[Pause—look down, then up. Like you’re remembering it too vividly.]

And the crowd snapped.
I said I couldn’t sleep.

[Soften your voice here. Sell it. They love insomnia.]

And they nodded.
I smiled at the right moments.
Let my voice break on the word left.

[Yes. That word. Linger on it.]

Called it a poem.
Called it truth.

[Invisible margin note: Remove “pathetic.” You already said “poem.” Same effect.]

POET:
And it was—
mostly.

[Look away. Smile like a secret.]

I didn’t mention
how long I waited
for him to text back.

[In script: add something about refreshing Instagram. Delete it later.]

I said he left,
not I begged.
I said I healed,
not I still Google him sometimes
just to feel something specific.

[Optional: laugh. See who laughs back.]

[Stage note: Adjust mic stand like it’s his hand on your jaw. Let them feel it.]

POET:
I sharpened the metaphors.
Cut the clumsy parts.
Dressed the grief in short skirts and darling dresses,
and made her look like a woman
you’d want to cry over.

[Look devastating here. Not sad. Iconic.]

I didn’t lie.
I edited.

[Beat.]

Like any good writer.
Like any sad girl
with an audience.

[Margin scribble: Underline “audience.” Question whether you meant “witness.” Leave both.]

POET:
I know which line they’ll post.
I know where to pause
so it sounds like I might
still be heartbroken.

[Optional: blink back a tear. If it’s real, even better.]

So it sounds like maybe
I’m brave.

[Cut alternate ending: “So it sounds like I won.” Too desperate.]

POET:
But the truth is—
I want to be loved
perfectly.
Understood
accurately.

[Harsher here. Like it’s a confession you didn’t rehearse.]

And if I have to script my suffering
to get that—

[Pause. Look right at them.]

Fine.
Cut to black.
Cue applause.

[Lights dim. She stands still. Hands at her sides. Someone coughs. Someone claps. Someone regrets texting their ex.]

[End scene.]

We're sleeping with sunburns,
chasing the moon-
need some maps to believe in
and for this curse to end soon.

Modern day gypsies;
leaping to fall-
cameras and mirrors
aint no forsight at all.

Galloping pirates,
stealing for the rush-
our sea is cobblestone
our spirits are crushed.

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.

(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.

Twelve years old and I knew I was too much.

A body too much- a stomach that stretched and stuck
and a waist left red, dented, stinging after a day in jeans.

A brain too much- a thought process that took flight
without permission and dropped rogue missiles of ideas
in phone calls with great aunts, deep in essays
during state funded tests and leaked from brown paper bags
in middle school lunchrooms, leaving me silent and sticky and
only just fitting in.

Any conversation was secondary to
the fuzzy way I could feel
my mouth tripping hard to keep up with a dizzy brain
and even before a sentence finished
Feeling regret like warm honey coat my throat and
seep down hot and solid to my roaring gut.

I was a heart too much.
Tears ran forceful and free for
so long. There was the heavy,
lonely feeling that grabbed root at my pelvis
and lounged, languid for days- ******* any hope I could muster
out of tan hide until only leather shell remained.

Dawn would find me ushering in chilling spells of misery
triggered by the whole wide world-
a boy with a gun on the news,
a teacher’s tight forehead while mean kids flexed their puberty,
Or finding a picture of my parents before they were my parents,
and wondering if they ever actually knew love.

At twelve years old my soul was stretched out and sagging.
At twelve years old I held tight to being less
At twelve years old I knew only one way dull the aches sprouting
as fast and fresh as ivy inside my bones.

At twelve every birthday candle and eyelash,
every wishbone and 11:11
was devoted to smallness and simplicity
So certain that the less of me there was
the less I would have to bear from the world.

More than half my life I’ve spent in pursuit of sharp
bones to shield and a lithe tread to conceal.
I have itched to be a sole shrinking girl among
the growing and gaining of peers-
to finally find quiet in a body that
was beginning to ripen in a shrill,
panicky way that would just not do.


More than decade I’ve spent with bile on my breath
and scrappy knuckles desperately begging
the arrangement of meat and bone I live in
to contract; to fold back in on itself and strengthen
into a place where I could catch my breath and
learn to tend.

Now, too many seasons and too many
mistakes later- I do wake up in
a smaller body. Twelve year old me is
beaming as she sneaks glances the XSs
stitched in labels and the chorus of likes that
coo and comment how darling I look in dresses.

Twelve year old me is quietly,
solemnly psyched about the bruises that bloom across
my paling curves after a good stretch on ground.
She even nods her head gleefully
to my swaying pulse as it dances to its own, faraway music.

Twelve year old me could care less about the bone-buried knots
entombed along my spine and the putty-snap cracking
bones I show off like party tricks.
She sees the yolky shimmer of eyeballs and trail of hairs I shed
like bread crumbs marking my path and she doesn’t bat an eyelash.
She’s glad she managed it-
and anyway the price is worth the discomfort,
health in youth is mostly over-rated.

But I do wonder what greedy, vicious
twelve year old me would think if she knew
I am still, secretly, too much.

Could she muster any pride as she feels
my heavy, fatigued heart expand to fill the bits
and dark corner secrets I starved away?
Or any pity as she watches empty-word fog crawl
between ribs and bellow out like a pirate’s flag under raised hipbones.
She meets the murky mass that fills my frame- heavy and suspended
like a dark towering cumulous
waiting for the bow to break and the storm to fall.

Maybe she’d find my brain chemistry unnerving.
Seeing desperate fists pawing at ideas as they are born and implode
and holding numbly to loose bits, reeling them in stunted fervor like kite strings.
Thunder cracks and I’m not nearly electric.

So I grip tight;  sinking decalcified teeth
into the catch of the day, rowing a rusty canoe out of the
whirling, mirrored lake of my mind and back to shore.
I will attempt to fit my
hard won ideas into any and all variables.
I will drive myself crazy with inspiration
but never create a **** thing.

The thoughts coursing through my almost-there body are
flexed horses. They gallop around
the same dirt track for days on end and I have bet
what’s left of my youth on photo-finish losses.
I’ve got nothing to show for who I am these days.
Except for the dresses.
I look good in the dresses.

I posted a pretty picture to Facebook and received sixty-three likes in twenty-nine hours.

Somewhere else entirely I wander through an overgrown orchard and gather in my basket quick fragments of those who mean well but don’t see it. I let a wide, straw hat meet my eyebrows and obscure my vision because there isn't much I care to see.
While picking sickly-soft, moldy fruit from trees in a bored way, I feel my crinkling, summer-skin quietly open to the thorn bushes I ***** through. Beads of new ruby bloom across shins but I’m not bothered enough to change paths.
While certainly a vagrant, I am not aimless.
I look like I’m thriving; hair longer and smile brighter with each passing month, (I feel intensely transient. My label reads sparkler but I am closer to a moonshine firework. If you hold on too long you're bound to lose partial hearing and at least one finger.)
I am clawing dry dirt, watering small graves with sweat while digging for any roots that I can double knot myself into with hope they'll keep me tethered to this earth.
(a giddy lab who conquered a loose, Sunday-walk grip on the boardwalk and ran, ran, ran just only just realizing I wasn't chased. The leash trailing from my neck feels more like an anchor than a whisper, panting in time to my wonder.)

I need more souls around.
Look-
the knife I chewed up sharp
sways and dangles a glaring charm,
(and a charming glare)
double knotted on a piece of rope and
tucked under my shirt.
It bruises my breastbone when I jump.
I’m always jumping.

I don’t cut paradise into pieces anymore.
I take it all in with one quick bite.
I’m hardly chewing;
I never learned to savor
and it hasn’t rotted me out yet.

Late last week I had an idea.
I told the room:
(thirty eyes squinting,
a dozen minds listening,)
‘Let's get together and refuse
to acquire a taste for civility.’
So what do you think?
I was only speaking to you.

I've been playing a private game
all summer and I keep scoring.
I wear long skirts and eyeliner
and keep my mouth shut.
I trapeze across centuries and well traveled
roads with my long hair
and track the pontential and power
assigned to my quiet smile
and gentle pout.

The world can be mine with a
flick of my wrist, a lick of my lips-
But I don't want it:
i'm here to expel, not to endure,
the point is to leave as light
as possible.
I won’t win until I have nothing left to carry.

Tonight I'll just seer sailors;
soldiers call to me
like I’m their sole daughter, their soul daughter,
dripping green jewels and deep, brown
curls onto tan toes and
dancing in the road-
(eyes decidedly closed,
rush hour.)

I gulp in smoke from their pipes
while spinning circles in the dirt.
My voice trails over tree branches,
my lungs smolder and ashe.
I smile sweetly-slow.

When I do meet their gaze-
(measuredly striking; a tender,
lingered look which veers me from gypsy to divinity,)
they tense.
They call out
You are my Odyssey.
You are my Wild Waves.
you are my Purple Heart.

Skipping stones over oceans and puddles,
I keep nodding and careening.
I keep coursing and coiling,
keep slurring my words,
refusing my name
and pocketing your promises.
I gave up on air-drying my skirt,
(You are not what I’m thinking of.)

I’m only a little bit of what’s left--
everything we tried to know,
everything we only read once-
everything we left in footnotes of
essays, under passenger seats
and tangled in the bed sheets
of that swollen-heart name
no longer spoken.
I'm only the woven wires
and reins braiding bold
acrylic cities across knuckles
and palms, flashlight
illuminated and glowing.
It's new skin shimmering in the
daylight, pearling over
and throbbing awake
in places only I can see.

Some thoughts quake landscapes;
shattering cities and ripping through mountain trails.
Some sentences crack coastlines;
leaving miles of scarred up sand and no electricity.
Some regrets sting my sternum and leave my mouth dusty;
a silent decade of drought.
Some feelings catch us quick, lapping hot and angry up our throats;
flooding our garages and ruining our bikes.

Some poems
need to be
small;

so small that
they barely
whisper.

Punctuation becomes a commandment
to memorize,
to moralize,
to misuse.

A comma means a breath,
it means looking up at the sky and feeling very small,
no comma means you run through the cornfield like you’re being chased like your fingers are full of cramps like you forgot your shoes like the tornado siren is wailing and your not welcome anywhere with a door

Summer sharpens its teeth, whittles light down to
bedroom shadows, narrow eyes, and last August’s howl.
I’m counting hours, yearning gentle,
dreaming blue and nothing new; heart-heavy on a blank page.

I’ve been working my way back into the world,
licking the dead off of my fingers,
scraping back the hair on my legs,
reacquainting myself with dirt-days and sun-skin.

I’ve searched the streets for a midnight-blooming,
but found I was the one who was missing,
I was the one who forgot how to breathe.
Now I meet the sky on my own terms and glow.

There’s a lot of green out there.
There are lots of little suns and stars,
glistening, waiting to be drawn into frame,
ready to make a wish or watch it burn.

There are so many ways to tell a story.
There are so many ways to say “I am.”
I could find the world in the slow stretch of July,
in the way light fights back when held up to heat,
but I can’t find a way to say “I’m not.” and mean it.

Sharp summer cuts a furious lesson,
a swollen sketch, a yearning hand, and a bruised map.
I am still learning to tuck in my tongue and to taste softly,
I am still learning that my thoughts are mine for taking and breaking.

Something is clicking and it’s not my bones or my pining;
it's the sound of my own name in my mouth and my own hope in my hands.
It sounds like a horse galloping and like water boiling.
It sounds like a question. It sounds like an answer.

Sinless summer: sharp but I’m sharper, beckons
me from springtime’s sleep. It waited so long to hold
my face and sing me forward with a shimmering song
that sounds like a promise, that sounds like a way to say “Yes.”

Verse 1
Took the wrong bus on a Wednesday
Wore the skirt I swore I hated
Had a blister and a sunburn
And the sky was drained and jaded

Sat by a woman with a bag of peaches
One rolled out and hit my shoe
She laughed like my aunt who died in April
And I almost said, “I miss you too”

Pre-Chorus 1
Joy didn’t knock, just drifted through—
Like a memory dressed in something new.

Chorus 1
I got sunburned in my silence
Skirt too short and pride too loud
Joy just slipped into the backseat
While I cursed at every cloud

I’m not healed, just unbothered
By the mess I’ve started to miss
I flinch at kindness lately
Like it’s something I can’t resist

Verse 2
The driver missed my stop completely
But I didn’t say a word
There’s a silence that feels sacred
When you’re scared of being heard

My phone lit up with nothing
And it still made me smile
I’m the patron saint of letdowns
But I stayed soft for a while

Pre-Chorus 2
Joy didn’t ask if I’d moved on
Just slipped back in like nothing was wrong

Chorus 2
I got sunburned in my silence
Skirt still short and ego bruised
Joy slid in like she owned the place
Like she knew I’d already lost the ruse

I’m not healed, just out of stories
So I smile and call it wise
Now I host my hauntings sweetly
Like the ghosts were always mine

Bridge
I practiced detachment like a prayer
Burned sage, lit candles, grew out my hair
But it still smelled like him in July—
Like sweat, and shame, and cherry pie

I told the moon, “I get it. You only show half,”
Then cried so hard I think I made God laugh

Mascara on my birth certificate
From rewriting who I was
Tried on forgiveness like a costume
But forgot what size I was

I kept rewriting the ending
’Til the story started biting back
Guess healing is just hiding
In a dress you thought you packed

Final Chorus
I got sunburned in my silence
Skirt still short, but now it fits
Joy returns like clockwork chaos
Pulls up laughing, never quits

I wasn’t healed, just hungry
For something I didn’t have to chase
And for once, I didn’t flinch
When the world looked me in the face

Outro
I told the moon, “I get it.”
But I was really talking to myself.

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:

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.

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.

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?

I
There is a 3% chance I'll find you here. But if in each pair of eyes I dip, I find 1/8 of you; I'll be there soon.

II
I didn't crawl here; I took a plane. I spent six hours tracing the Atlantic from my window and you rose from the sea, dry and unsalted, twice each nautical mile. I would say it was my imagination, or the California wine, but I wear glasses now and never lie about what I see. It was you. And you and you and you.


III
Stealing is easier here. Maybe it's the crowds or the way the men smile at me like I'm harmless, but my hands move without question. They don't fumble or miss pockets, my heartbeat doesn't even protest. In prayer beads, silkworm cocoons, oils and sea rings, I am in debt to a city who doesn't know it.


IV
I have no ethnicity. Deep in bone coils the apathy and flight of someone's non-heritage. But I am forgiven; in a world of paranoia, brown eyes are always trusted and the way my hair falls reminds them that I'm on their side. Even my name curls within itself, folded flat and dead before it's over. It's better this way; no allegiance, no responsibility.

V
From a curb in district nine, I see your star. It's hanging where you said it would be but I can't see god in it the way you promised.

VI
On the other side of the world you told me about a quad of green. You waxed flowers of every color, the sky I've only ever painted and the people, beautiful and dark, who will save me. I found it. In broken French and broken sandals I found it and the sun was setting and you had just left. So now we both know you won't be the one to save me.

VII
With one foot in the slanting gutter I walk until the city circles and I'm back where I started. In a daydream I found you. I smiled and quoted your book, the part that said 'When we heard the guidance, we believed in it' and you looked at me in a way that scared me. A way that translated your face into thousands of alphabets, ancient and invented. And I knew none of them. Suddenly I'm illiterate to you. Suddenly I'm gone.

VIII
I'm with a man who's made of smoke and each strawberry ring that escapes my lips is dedicated to someone that I’ve laughed with.

IX
With the intensity of archives on fire, I withdraw. You are still a body; a few hundred bones calcified and aging, a mind of words streaming like spider webs, blood you never shed, and  muscles that cross in blinding precision, but you are not who you used to be. You bound to me in a way that's irreversible and now we're both stitching. Awkward and broken we pull at flesh to remove each other. We have scars now, like stickers ripped from wallpaper. The outline of a palm stains my shoulder, a thumb the size of yours in the crook of my elbow. Small, white fingerprints tattoo your neck.


X
I might be free. Over cobble stones with broken sandals I don't trip until I realize that a city where I loved is now part of me. I can get as far away from her as the modern map allows but the red and gold bangles that crowd my wrists are not to be taken off. They're a part of me too. Like blood spilled on a cobble stone, you will walk over us every day of your life.

I
There is a 3% chance I'll find you here. But if in each pair of eyes I dip, I find 1/8 of you; I'll be there soon.

II
I didn't crawl here; I took a plane. I spent six hours tracing the Atlantic from my window and you rose from the sea, dry and unsalted, twice each nautical mile. I would say it was my imagination, or the California wine, but I wear glasses now and never lie about what I see. It was you. And you and you and you.


III
Stealing is easier here. Maybe it's the crowds or the way the men smile at me like I'm harmless, but my hands move without question. They don't fumble or miss pockets, my heartbeat doesn't even protest. In prayer beads, silkworm cocoons, oils and sea rings, I am in debt to a city who doesn't know it.


IV
I have no ethnicity. Deep in bone coils the apathy and flight of someone's non-heritage. But I am forgiven; in a world of paranoia, brown eyes are always trusted and the way my hair falls reminds them that I'm on their side. Even my name curls within itself, folded flat and dead before it's over. It's better this way; no allegiance, no responsibility.

V
From a curb in district nine, I see your star. It's hanging where you said it would be but I can't see god in it the way you promised.

VI
On the other side of the world you told me about patch of green. You waxed flowers of every color, the sky I've only ever painted and the people, beautiful and dark, who will save me. I found it. In broken French and broken sandals I found it and the sun was setting and you had just left. So now we both know you won't be the one to save me.

VII
With one foot in the slanting gutter I walk until the city circles and I'm back where I started. In a daydream I found you. I smiled and quoted your book, the part that said 'When we heard the guidance, we believed in it' and you looked at me in a way that scared me. A way that translated your face into thousands of alphabets, ancient and invented. And I knew none of them. Suddenly I'm illiterate to you. Suddenly I'm gone.

VIII
I'm with a man who's made of smoke and each strawberry ring that escapes my lips is dedicated to someone that I’ve laughed with.

IX
With the intensity of archives on fire, I withdraw. You are still a body; a few hundred bones calcified and aging, a mind of words streaming like spider webs, blood you never shed, and  muscles that cross in blinding precision, but you are not who you used to be. You bound to me in a way that's irreversible and now we're both stitching. Awkward and broken we pull at flesh to remove each other. We have scars now, like stickers ripped from wallpaper. The outline of a palm stains my shoulder, a thumb the size of yours in the crook of my elbow. Small, white fingerprints tattoo your neck.


X**
I might be free. Over cobble stones with broken sandals I don't trip until I realize that a city where I loved is now part of me. I can get as far away from her as the modern map allows but the red and gold bangles that crowd my wrists are not to be taken off. They're a part of me too. Like blood spilled on a cobble stone, you will walk over us every day of your life.

I’m fine.
I don’t think about you.
I’m over it.
Say them three times fast,
watch them turn to ash in your mouth.

I’m fine.
That’s the easiest one—
it babbles from the curve of your lips,
but drowns you just the same.

‘Fine’ is what you say
when you’re still holding the knife
and pretending the blood isn’t yours.

I don’t think about you.
Not at 2am,
cross-legged on my bedroom floor,
a Sharpie in one hand,
a grudge in the other,
crossing out filler words,
preparing for the silence that comes
when the ghosts get louder.

Not when I drop a joke in a stranger’s lap,
and it lands like a stone,
and I remember how you laughed—
not just at the joke,
but like you believed in the person who told it.

Or when headlights slice through my blinds,
speeding down my street,
and I know the driver is singing
louder than you ever did.

I’m over it. It’s over.
Over it—
as if heartbreak has an expiration date,
as if time knows how to cauterize.

I’m fine.
I don’t think about you.
I’m over it.

The holy trinity of lies,
lit like candles on an altar
I built from all the wreckage you left.
But don’t worry—
it’s just for show.

I’m fine.
I don’t think about you.
I’m over it.

And I wonder—
what will I do
when the wax runs out,
and the shadows disappear,
leaving me alone with the wreckage,
no place left to hide?

The next time you tell a woman she’s beautiful,
you will mean it less —
because you have already meant it most.

She looks like a safe bet.
How boring for you.

She will never make your hands shake
when you try to button your shirt —
the buttons slipping like stones from your fingers,
like your body forgot how to be steady
because someone like me was looking at you.

It was never that serious.
Except, maybe, it was.

She will never make you reroute your whole life
just to cross her path.
She won’t know what it’s like
to catch you looking at her mouth
like it’s a dare you want to take —
but we know you’re all talk.

She wasn’t a hard person to love.
She was just a girl
who knew how to sit still.

And you —
you were just a man
who had only ever loved things
that were easy to set down.

You wanted something simple —
a woman like a neatly folded sweater:
wrinkle-resistant, polishes you up,
easy to pick up,
easier to put away.

But simple things never ruin your appetite.
They never make you whisper,
"God, what’s wrong with me?"
because you can’t stop thinking about
the car crash in your rib cage
that you wrote off as a particularly bad day.

But some bruises bloom twice,
and some wrecks keep ringing in your ears.

I was never easy to love —
but God, I was worth it.

And when I was yours,
you were someone better.
Isn’t that just vile?

It was never serious.
Except, apparently, it was.

Now I hope you choke on how simple it feels.
I hope you spend the rest of your life
wondering why you never had to catch your breath
when you kissed her.

I hope her laugh sounds too much like mine.
I hope you hear my name in her silence.

I hope she kisses you in a dark bar,
and for one awful second,
you forget whose lips are on yours.

I hope you miss me across midnights
and hate yourself for it.
I hope my scent won’t wash out of sheets I’ve never slept on —
like something you swore you imagined,
until you smell it again.

I hope you never stop searching out my poems,
then deleting your history.
I hope certain lines jangle like change in your pocket
over every street you’ll ever walk.

I hope the sharpest edges of my words
are so embedded in your psyche,
you can’t remember if it's a Vonnegut quote,
your own inner monologue, or me —
your real favorite writer.

I know I’ll never hear from you again —
but when you quote me in your head,
I hope you taste blood.

I hope you keep walking —
but never walk away clean.

It was never that serious.
Except, I guess, it was.

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.

You do not belong to this soil,
not the way they did—
feet sinking into peat,
lungs lined with salt and prayer,
bodies turning to moss before memory.

But still, you stand here,
four generations late,
hands in your Primark pockets,
mouthing names you were never meant to carry,
even as they sit inside you,
your first name stamped with their last,
a borrowed relic you never earned.

Your brother gripped the wheel like a lifeline,
right-side driving out of Dublin,
left shoulder braced against muscle memory,
like he expected the road to turn on him.
Mom rode shotgun,
printed-out censuses fanned across her lap,
highlighted, annotated, dog-eared—
a roadmap made of the dead.

You sat in the backseat,
cheek against the window,
watching Ireland unfold in slow exhales—
stone walls dividing nothing from nothing,
a horizon stitched with ruins,
the color of a postcard left too long in the sun.

Mom recited their names like prayer beads,
rolling them through her fingers,
waiting for recognition
that did not come.

And then you were there—
the grass, damp and grasping,
twined around your ankles,
softened under your weight,
pulling you down like something remembered.

The graveyard was older than the road that brought you there.
Headstones leaned like tired men,
softened by wind, by rain,
by the weight of a hundred years unspoken.
Their names smoothed into murmurs,
the dates washed into dashes.

And at every grave,
a small stone sign,
half-buried in moss,
letters chipped but certain:
KNEEL AND PRAY.
Not a suggestion. A sentence.

You did not kneel.
You touched the name instead,
ran your fingers over the grooves,
over the letters that built you
without ever knowing you would come.

A crow clicked its beak from the low wall,
watching the three of you like it had seen this before,
like it knew how this ended.

You whispered something you could not name.
The wind took it from your mouth,
tucked it into the tall grass,
laid it at their feet.

And then you left,
but the wet earth held its claim,
clinging to your soles,
like it knew you’d be back.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I never really notice the color of people's eyes but
I can tell you that the way you hold a pen makes me think
the words twisting inside of you
are streaming and surging and sharp;
a deafening waterfall I can't chase.
They're throwing themselves into the dips of your eyelashes and demanding to be set on fire-
they're screaming to be loaded into a barrel,
cocked and aimed at the crosshairs of your moleskine-
You're hunting wild words for the thrill of the ****.

I don’t remember your license plate
so each passing pick-up,
(cobalt, clean, too high to just step in) sends me reeling.
As winter fades, the memory of rushing heat
that struck bare shoulders and spider-scurried
in deep, mascara-laced blinks from your passengers seat vent
to the base of my spine replays sweetly-lonely,
it echoes tightly-comforting.

I tread sensory smiles because spring can't get here fast enough.
My boots are always drying.
My thoughts are always climbing.
I'm craving a day that has shriveled up
and blown away; giddy on these too-tough
March ghosts and gales-
being tangled in it feels almost safe to me now.
In a certain moonlight rejection resembles refuge.
No border tries to contain me;
I burned my passport.
I'm growing out my hair.

These light-and-sweet iced coffee, round-tummy, solid-thigh days
find me a galaxy away from the springy, sinewy nights of us-
the nights when I didn't slouch
and I had hands worth holding.
My shoulders aren't the smooth golden brown;
(shea-butter-softened, an amber, wrinkled velvet

that demanded your caress, 
that confused my heritage,)
they were when you were driving me places-

They're thicker now;
thick and full and that yellowy,
greenish kind of pale that pulls drum-tight over dewy purple veins.
Veins that weave and sprout in every direction;
that bottle Mediterranean blood across leaky night lectures
and fevered weekends.
An arrangement of flesh that smiles the picture of pretty health
and tired vigor with a vineyard tan;
but limps sickly sallow when dodging the sun.

I'm flipping through notebooks and turning out
coat pockets. I'm looking for any little bit
of my autumn daydream to slip out
and remind me that it was so much better
inside my head. The receipts have faded
and we didn't take enough pictures-
fingers clutch my memory’s b-roll negatives,
the soundtrack a roughly translated laughter
in a knotted, almost-vocabulary.

My hands are full of crumpled words
and the small, neon lighters
that I liked to buy and forget about
at midnight October gas stations.
There are words hiding in other places too-
words I've strung up
like Christmas lights and dubbed poetry,
the frozen solid words you held
which I begged for but could never extract,
and the noble, solid words you offered me
like a fireman's blanket while we both sat upright and facing forward
from opposite ends of the same couch.
The words that detailed, in no uncertain terms,
all the ways in which I was not enough.

I think, if I ever fall again,
I will let the dressed-up details
coarse through my veins first.
The descriptions, the elaborations,
the tacky garnishes-
they can bloom in my memory void of language.
I'll let the tiny bits that do nothing for me
perch on my sternum,
then, sweet as a mockingbird,
call out, sing to and mirror back the lives
and centuries and twisted roots
of migration and exploration within me.
My birth certificate is lying-
I've been biting my nails and humming
across six thousand years.

I'm still learning;
now I know the shade of your eyes,
the make of your car,
the cds in your glovebox;
they're fine details I can shoulder
through the winter and won't imitate
bullets the way words seem to
when it's time to hibernate inside my skull.

Maybe by next spring
I'll shake off the novels my thoughts
are dripping with and writhing on the floorboards in reaction to.
Maybe by next spring
I won't wake to find my finger on the trigger
of a loaded paperback gun,
its howling muzzle aimed toward the sky.

I think about purity;
the way I allow things in and out of my mouth in different rhythms-
sometimes gnawing, sometimes cramming,
sometimes clawing back up with bile and belief
until I feel empty enough to try again.

I can’t put any of it into words.
I can’t write short poems.
I over-explain. I overwhelm.
I over-draw and they oversee.
I start to stake but there’ll
always be things I can’t do-
or, I mean, things I won’t do.
That’s a lie.
I try, try, try
to feel alive.

I like the secret,
tipping towards transgression,
tidal, treading.
Nothing in me belongs anyway;
every piece is trespassing-
breaking and entering,
bouncing on chicken wire,
listening for sirens.

Nothing in me is solid enough.
I’m so many stanzas in and out-
each with its own wavering threshold,
each dependent on someones waffling regard.

Water around here isn’t clear,
puddles and streams pulse with
mud and leaves,
trash and scuttley insects.
My reflection exists only,
wholely,
behind a layer of milky film
and unclean things.
Things from nature.
Things alive.
Things also pure.

Purity like looting
when the wires are down,
like a cracked mirror,
a stagnant pond,
perfunctory ***,
and slow-seeping Lyme
thinning your legs and hollowing your eyes.

Trying a new rhythm; things still in,
still out,
but better aimed.
Still trying, still living,
still too many words,
and still not empty.
Never empty.
Never impure.

He was born defeated.
For eight months he sat at the delta to the world,
stargazing in amniotic fluid.
Sharing oxygen with another passing,
it back and forth like a gas mask in a chemical war.
how familiar he would become with the chemical war.
he did not propel into life the way everyone expected,
like the first, iron soldier to  dive
from a helicopter into the bush; all displaced rage
and camo flags waving behind him.
he was made to wait. made to drown just a little bit.
made to appear to the world a little blue.
no gas mask this time. just some weak lungs
and a bald head. not raven-dark and tumultuous like his six-minute predecessor,
but quiet, sullen and sentenced to a week in an incubator;
teaching him how to be alive.
maybe that was the first time he got mad. he more or less stayed mad for 17 years.
Found comfort in Peter Pan, a boy with no future- no past,
and juiced up men performing soap operas for a living;
sweating on their audience and quick to blow
a folding chair in to the enemies face.
The same pit-stomach drop of a terrible math grade,
And of realizing an idea if terrible halfway through completion-
Dazed at on knees at3am, half of the bedroom carpet ripped out
With a carving knife.
He beat up his other, left her trembling behind doors that didn't lock for years.
Full weight pressed against cheap wood, hoping this time it wouldn't open,
and leaving in the wake a girl-child, of 20 years-
terrified of testosterone and emotions.
There was the comfort in war movies; men with purpose, and the quirky
anime of a culture not his own.
Darker pagan books dotted pubescence. They sat like coffee mugs
filled with sludgy water, a place to dip paintbrushes in when it was time to start over.
Drugs come in folds. dealt like cards over the years- grappling for anything.
Their names ring out first like a memoir, then like a psych ward.
He would probably snort dirt if an escape from hardwood floored, leave spun
world in which he lived.
the place where dead batteries rolled around in for years in drawers and
tape never came off of wallpaper.
and the other one- the one who cut him off and turned
him blue at the very beginning; she's frozen too.
she stumbles through cities and ghettos and ancient worlds,
hoping to find something, anything that gives her a purpose.
Back to strong wind on 6th Avenue between classes,
Eyes sting and water against it but comforted by the smell of snow and
Bus exhaust. In that moment doing a good job. Being a trooper.
Swiping IDs that show a real, accounted for person underneath
The Goodwill feather-down coat and expensive Arabic textbook,
But in the quiet hours still grasping at straws,
at braids that don't quite work and flowers tangled
in hair that won't quite stay in place.
Singing with a voice a little too novice,
too rough. Looking dumb in sunglasses and boots.
She starts and quits things a lot.
gets exhausted. predisposed for enormous depression.
greek-tragady like.
****-yourself-to-spare-the-gods-your-being like.
finds glimpses of life in things, mainly when submerged in a daze of not-getting carded and  incense. Hair falls over pages of books, hanging one handed on an R to Queens,
or collecting cigarette butts from the side of the road
in the prairies of Dakota-land, helping kids collect enough tobacco
for their drunk fathers and zombie mothers to roll and smoke for the night.
She’s turning around in circles in grocery stores
Picking up food-stamp broccoli and sliced cheese in Harlem,
Going everywhere with sleep in her eyes and
wondering how others manage to exist.
but who is a killer from the start supposed to be?

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.

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.

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.

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.

We kiss on the roof,
disturbing time and space.
We hold tight to each other,
watching the landscape quake.

(I point out fires for him to see-)

Six stories down, this street
mirrors my marrow:
young, velvet, ******-
a little bit further than
he’s willing to go.

(I light my torches and set them free.)

The dark parts flare and
we are alone.
Forget breathing,
now we pant.

(I burn things before they burn me-)

The heavy parts leak and
we are alone.
Forget tasting,
Now we take.

(I burn things before they burn me.)

He once told me
he wanted to die in a place
that looked like a poem.
I told him
I wanted to live
like I was one.

We were doomed by aesthetics—
too many soft glances,
not enough spine.
He held my wrist like a snow globe
but shook me too hard.

He said I was all feeling,
no logic.
As if logic ever begged anyone to stay.

Once,
he told me I reminded him
of a girl in a painting.
I should’ve asked
what happened to her
after the gallery closed.

I used to count his heartbeats
when he slept,
just to know something
inside him still worked.

I wore my prettiest dress
to the argument—
just in case
he needed reminding
that I’m not easy
to walk away from.

He looked at me
like a cliff he might leap from
or photograph.

I stopped saying his name
and started writing
in second person.
It still felt like calling him home.

Even now,
I write you into metaphors
so I can pretend
you were never real—
just a concept,
a cautionary tale,
a ghost that rhymed.

You wanted tragedy.
I wanted truth.
We got
whatever this was.

I went to war with trouble,
daydreams dropping gentle.
I’ve stabbed too many
precious provisions
to wave my flag now.

Every stoop in the Village exhales
in moon-words beaming electric.
I crave a language
as mean and antsy
as your fast, feral fever.

Tinsel secrets slip to the street
from high-rises and fire escapes,
we only stop kissing to check if
the skyline will confess.

My mouth tunnels
to epiphany,
your hands' twist
toward apocalypse.
Together we can core clouds.

Force a laugh,
lead the light like a vow,
paint the night like a song,
teach me to undo
the deep parts
before they undo me.

My hand on your chest- relishing,
your hand on my ***- savoring.
Everything between us pulses
something torrential.

Everything inside me buzzes
wreck, wreck, wreck,
wreck, wreck.

Spin our night with fingers crossed
across charming evening plagues,
past spines I stitched like statues,
to bridges where we stole steel,
then drowned
our senses in the river.

Not touching you
is where it hurts.

‘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.

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’ll send you a postcard when I get over you.
I just hope you know it won’t be soon.

It’ll say something vague, something nonchalant—
The weather’s nice, the men are kind,
none of them look like you.
Paris is overrated.
Hope you’re well. Hope I mean that someday.
Wish you weren’t here.

It’ll be from somewhere ridiculous—
the French Riviera, a ghost town in Nevada,
a cruise ship I’m not on,
a gas station in Ohio at 3 AM,
where even the clerk looks tired of my ghosts.

I will sign it with my full name,
so you remember how it used to sound in your mouth,
but I won’t send it to your real address.
I’ll send it to a random house in a town
I’ve never been to.

Let some stranger in Arkansas
trace my handwriting and wonder
who I loved enough
to haunt like this.

June took root in the same way you learned to scream
but now it's fall and you're trying
to sing.

It slipped away from muddy lids like lifting a veil,
like stepping into a bath,
(toes, sole, calf. toes, sole, calf.)
and crawled unseen behind apartment-light echoes;
crooning sultry half-truths,
weighing down vascular walls.

My heartstrings aren't laundry lines but the conversations
we never finished (last night, last week, last year)
hang from them; pinned to sheets, unbothered.

It's pulling on my sleeves;  heavy and damp.
The wind isn't howling but
I don't want to hear about the dream you had
where I was a Priest,
where I was hitchhiking,
where I cut off my hair in a taxi's front seat,
and gave it to you in ziplock bags.

A hazy sky; slow and sweet,
coats my traipsing moods like honey
and sticks to the bottom of your favorite mug
(yes, that one, with the chipped rim and your rival
high school's logo.)

We're still here, springing forward and listening.
It's growing, humming cold verses in a new language
while we watch his name take shape in the mist accidentally.
You don't mention how fiercely I'm blushing and I'm grateful I don't have to laugh it off. Some days laughing feels worse than puking.

We are still here.
We are still.
We are.

I'm looking for something important and I won't know it until I see it.
It's morning, it's warmer and we lift our chins to coastline.
I blow smoke upwind;
today physics is purely speculation.
Today I feel like secrets are extinct and I'm certain the day is so much clearer through my Atlantic eyes than their protesting embrace.

You can keep June, I'll take the sky.

swim until you can’t see land

until names etched deep in cardiac tissue blur

and fade, scored over with seasalt and creases of a million maps,

a secret stash of maps. absurd and hoarded and crumpled under carseats and

rolled neat

and boastful in umbrella holders or worse, framed and hung

Maps jotted freehand on napkins stained with tea and mustard and left

to be bused with the crusts and pocketful of change.

swim until you can’t read the maps.

the lines to here from there are arteries

on your fresh, clean heart.