There’s something about late September
that makes me want to text people
I only miss when I’m too tired to lie.

There’s a moth in my mouth again.
I try to sing and it *****.

Some nights I rehearse conversations
with people I haven’t forgiven.
Some of them are alive.
Some of them are me.

I keep a list of people
I swore I’d stop dreaming about.
I keep dreaming anyway.

I talk to no one
like they’ll answer differently this time.
I wake up with a wingbeat
pressed into the backs of my teeth.

I think I’m leaking
something no one taught me how to name.
It leaves stains on my straws
It fogs the mirror before I do.
It answers to my voice
but only when I’m not using it.

There’s something about late September
that makes everything feel returned,
but not forgiven.
I don’t text them.
I let the silence say maybe I meant to.

The morning cracked wrong again.
Light spilling like something nobody cleaned up.

It was the kind of sky
you could mistake for mercy
if you weren’t paying attention.

The sky did that thing—
couldn’t decide between rain or nothing—
so you walk around all day
half-braced for the wrong kind of touch.

You told me once
you only believed in second chances
if you didn’t have to ask for them.

I wonder if you still say **** like that—
out loud,
like it's not a kind of begging too.

The trees are pretending it’s spring already.
It’s not.
They just want it to be.

I keep forgetting what month it is
and calling it muscle memory.

I’m fine.
I’m fine.
It’s just the weather bending wrong again.
It’s just the air folding at the corners.
It’s just a version of me
still practicing hello
in case you forgot
how to say my name.

Maybe I bent wrong too.
Maybe the sky just learned it from me.

It’s admirable, really,
how you’ve turned heartbreak
into performance art.

Did I just say that?
Oops—slip of the tongue,

like when you called me a mistake
and dressed it up as self-awareness.

“I’m walking away
because it’s the right thing,”
you said,
as if morality were fear
in a designer suit,
polished for the press.

No, really, I envy you.
It must take a kind of brilliance
to gaslight yourself so thoroughly,
your airtight lies
barely letting air in.

I’d ask if you believe your own stories,
but I’m scared of the answer—
being that committed to the act.

Oops, there I go again.
Was that too much?

It’s just—
you make it so easy to write about you,
like I’m bleeding out for you,
staining the sheets,
while you dream of clean hands.

You’re a character that refuses to develop.
All first act, no resolution,
the kind of person who leaves a wound
and then calls it poetry.

You’re inspiring, honestly.
So inspiring I can’t stop writing you down,
line after line after line.
You’ll live forever in these verses,
like overripe fruit
festering in a golden bowl.

Oops—
did I just compare you to a metaphor
you’ll never understand?
My bad.

I guess I’m still trying to
turn the volume down
on how you left.

It’s impressive, really,
how you can ghost yourself in real time,
leaving echoes where you should stand,
how you speak in circles so tight
you vanish into them and bow.

But don’t worry,
I’m not mad.
I just hope, someday,
someone whispers “forever”
warm enough that you finally hear
what you threw away.

You’d rather wade in puddles
and call them oceans.
It’s cute, really,
how you mistook self-sabotage for bravery.

My bad—was that mean?
I didn’t mean it.

I just think it’s sweet,
the way you told me I deserved better,
like it wasn’t your job
to be that for me.

I’m not bitter, though.
(That’s what people say, right?
When they’re lying?)

I just wonder if you ever think
about the space you left behind—
a perfectly carved absence,
still shaped like you.

You’d probably call that poetic.
You’d find a way to make my grief
a compliment to your charm.
You always did like a good metaphor,
even if it wasn’t yours to claim.

And me?
I’ll keep apologizing for what you did.
My bad-
for trying too hard to make you stay.
My bad-
for thinking love was a language
you could learn to speak.
I should’ve known
you only ever mouthed the words.

But no hard feelings.
I hope you find someone
who doesn’t mind
standing in your shadow.

I hear the view from there
is stunning—
just like watching someone leave,
and realizing you built the door.

Part I


It’s admirable, really,
how you’ve turned heartbreak
into performance art.

Did I just say that?
Oops—slip of the tongue,

like when you called me a mistake
and dressed it up as self-awareness.

“I’m walking away
because it’s the right thing,”
you said,
as if morality were fear
in a designer suit,
polished for the press.

No, really, I envy you.
It must take a kind of brilliance
to gaslight yourself so thoroughly,
your airtight lies
barely letting air in.

I’d ask if you believe your own stories,
but I’m scared of the answer—
being that committed to the act.

Oops, there I go again.
Was that too much?

It’s just—
you make it so easy to write about you,
like I’m bleeding out for you,
staining the sheets,
while you dream of clean hands.

You’re a character that refuses to develop.
All first act, no resolution,
the kind of person who leaves a wound
and then calls it poetry.

You’re inspiring, honestly.
So inspiring I can’t stop writing you down,
line after line after line.
You’ll live forever in these verses,
like overripe fruit
festering in a golden bowl.

Oops—
did I just compare you to a metaphor
you’ll never understand?
My bad.

I guess I’m still trying to
turn the volume down
on how you left.


Part II


It’s impressive, really,
how you can ghost yourself in real time,
leaving echoes where you should stand,
how you speak in circles so tight
you vanish into them and bow.

But don’t worry,
I’m not mad.
I just hope, someday,
someone whispers “forever”
warm enough that you finally hear
what you threw away.

You’d rather wade in puddles
and call them oceans.
It’s cute, really,
how you mistook self-sabotage for bravery.

My bad—was that mean?
I didn’t mean it.

I just think it’s sweet,
the way you told me I deserved better,
like it wasn’t your job
to be that for me.

I’m not bitter, though.
(That’s what people say, right?
When they’re lying?)

I just wonder if you ever think
about the space you left behind—
a perfectly carved absence,
still shaped like you.

You’d probably call that poetic.
You’d find a way to make my grief
a compliment to your charm.
You always did like a good metaphor,
even if it wasn’t yours to claim.

And me?
I’ll keep apologizing for what you did.
My bad-
for trying too hard to make you stay.
My bad-
for thinking love was a language
you could learn to speak.
I should’ve known
you only ever mouthed the words.

But no hard feelings.
I hope you find someone
who doesn’t mind
standing in your shadow.

I hear the view from there
is stunning—

just like watching someone leave,
and realizing you built the door
and I locked it behind you,
my bad- I guess.

I woke up with glass in my throat—
slivers of something I swallowed last night
when the sky was peeling itself open,
like skin stretched too thin.

I remember standing on the curb,
watching the streetlights flicker like eyelids,
thinking about how no one ever
means to slam the door that hard.

My breath was smoke in my mouth,
hollowed out like a bitten plum pit,
and I was talking to no one—
just mouthing things I couldn’t finish saying.

Maybe if I kept my lips moving,
he’d appear
like a coin behind my ear.

The wind dragged its nails down my arms,
and I swore I could feel the sky
swallowing me whole—
clouds closing in
like a body bag zipper.

I said your name into my own collarbone
just to hear how it sounded breaking—
sharp, jagged,
splintering against my ribs.

Like I was still wired
to the sound of you.

I wanted to scream
until my throat blistered,
but all I could do was spit out the glass—
small diamonds catching the streetlight,
like I’d somehow turned the hurt
into something that glittered.

I stood there,
staring down at it,
thinking how beautiful it was
to lose something sharp enough
to know exactly where it hurt.

And maybe that’s what we were—
a wound dressed in glitter,
a myth I kept retelling
until it sounded like truth.

Maybe you never loved me.
Maybe you did.
Maybe I was always going to bleed
either way.

The government declared me a national treasure,
which makes sense, considering how often I’ve been looted.

They only protect what they’ve already taken.
They don’t call it a treasure until it’s out of reach.

Still, I’ll accept the honor,
stand solemnly in the museum of myself,
polished plaque, velvet ropes,
tour guides whispering about the brilliance,
the tragedy,
the fact that I never returned
my library books on time.

Let them gawk.
Let them write essays on my impact.
Let them carve my likeness in stone
and forget to dust it.

I can see the exhibits already—

Here lies her bad decisions.
Here’s the time she thought forever meant forever.
Behind the glass, her old texts on display.
A plaque reading: God, look at the way she begged.

The government has declared me a national treasure.

They say I belong to the people now,
but the people didn’t see me at 3 AM,
barefoot in the kitchen,
chewing on the past like gristle.

I imagine my face on a postage stamp,
licked and sent to places I’ll never go.

I imagine my face carved into a coin,
slipped into vending machines, spat back out.

Or etched into history books next to the words—
Fell but never quite landed.
Loved, but only in hindsight.

Do I get a holiday? A moment of silence?

Or a biopic where they cast someone prettier,
softer, easier to root for?

Or will you just name your daughter after me
and pretend it’s a coincidence?

Rise when I enter the room.
You owe me that much.

I told the doctor
my heart felt like a flip phone
set to vibrate
in the back pocket of my jeans—
buzzing between spine
and tenth-grade desk,
shaking my bones
like a train no one saw coming—
except me.

I could feel my pulse
gathering its coat, like it had somewhere to be.
He said I was within diagnostic range.
He said I was presenting as stable.

I said I felt like a girl
screaming
inside a library.

They said:
What a beautiful metaphor.
I said:
It’s not a metaphor.
It’s a girl.
She’s in there.
She’s still screaming.

And they nodded,
said I seemed self-aware—
like that settles that.

They wrote “no cause for concern”
in my file.
The room was quiet.
The library was loud.

My heart is still vibrating.
I feel it—
right there, between spine and desk.

No one picks up.

Words stick to skin like bad dreams. Awake,
cold sweat, twisted in sheets with a half-remembered phrase.
Every story has a part of it that's true.
That’s why I lie.

I’m sorry about your bedding.
I’m sorry about my teeth,
about the edge that tells me to laugh when I know I shouldn’t,
and I’m sorry about the way I pull your hair when you’re above me-
I forget that it’s not mine.

I used to collect ideas like friendship bracelets on the last day of camp,
I used to listen to your breath catch in sleep and wish that I had pitched it.
I used to think in stanzas, and sigh into verses,
like a poem about a poem about a poem.

Now I barely think.
I miss thoughts like trains.
I sweat your bed.
I hold your attention like a bouquet,
then knot it like a tourniquet.
I keep patience like a promise.
Now I collect only what I can taste,
only what I can swallow whole.

I knew you were there —
knuckles resting like they didn’t know what to do.
I heard your breath through the wood.

You almost knocked. I felt it —
the air pulling back,
the hush flexing its muscles.

I almost opened the door. I felt that too —
the lock daring me to turn it,
the weight of the air leaning hard against my chest.

But neither of us moved.

We just stood there —
two statues pretending not to be waiting —
except I heard you breathing.
And I know you heard me too.

I smiled so wide my molars got jealous.
Everyone said I looked stunning.
I said thank you in the voice I reserve for customer service and playing dumb.
That’s the closest I’ve come to a scream
this week.

I wore the dress that says: I’m over it.
(It lies.)
I walked like a question mark
straightened out with rage.

There was a man in the corner
making balloon animals.
He asked what I wanted.
I said surprise me.
He handed me a noose
shaped like a swan.

No one noticed.
Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself
to feel interesting.

Later, someone told a joke
I didn’t get.
I laughed like I was being watched.

The punchline wasn’t funny.
It just echoed
like something I would’ve said
before I got careful.

I stood in the kitchen
with a paper plate of olives and nothing,
holding it like proof
I was doing fine.

Someone spilled wine on the couch.
I said I’ve ruined better things.
Everyone laughed
like I meant it to be charming.
(I didn’t.)

A girl in white heels asked me
how I knew the host.
I said same way I know most people—
by accident,
and with the kind of premonition that wears perfume.

The bathroom mirror was cracked.
I counted the breaks like confessions
and chose not to atone.
The soap smelled like fruit
that only exists in dreams
you wake up crying from.

I reapplied my lip stain
like armor,
like alibi,
like an exit strategy.

Then I left without saying goodbye
because I couldn’t figure out
how to do it quietly
and still be missed.

Dressed for the opera,
abreast in a fight.
Pressed, mixing my mouth
with your gore,
unsure who I’m lighting torches for.

We held a crass kind of funeral
then washed our gloves in separate loads.
I’ve vacuumed meaner shadows from your rug
and ironed colder syllables into pleats
down dress pants, through ribbons for my hair.

You've tried to unknot the longing-
that low ache of a feeling never quite named.
It’s there, somewhere behind your sternum,
stringy, sticky, and bright.
I’ve learned to corrode that carnage
in impolite ways, then wreak havoc all by myself
near the wrought-iron gate where the singing stopped.

I’m making vain jokes,
tongue-trilling venom smoke rings above your head.
You're draining dank drinks,
tongue-twisting for the mouth you had before mine.

Two seats empty in the mezzanine,
two bracelets spoiling in separate drawers,
a too-long gown; hacked and hemmed,
silk gloves anointed by a
carnal evening prayer.
You wear a suit most days,
I want to *****
and gripe in formal wear.

For a moment it’s the feeling of forever,
the inside-taste closing in on never.
Crisp, autumn night,
brisk, dusk fight,
The fall falls, the trees tease,
branches strip their civility-
and so do we.

October- I limber-lithe and lilt,
not even a trace of you in my mouth.
November- I double-knot laces,
bare my shoulders, and start to shiver.
December- I’m back at the gate
singing hymns to an ivy-laced lion face.
I'm searching the dusk for torchlights, groping
for another temper to press my thirst into.

By solstice I’m back on my knees,
ironing pleats atop the hardwood.
I petition ***** litanies to the congregation,
(us; your unmade bed, bare chest,
my inside-taste, our matching bracelets.)
Your heavy gaze and fervid eyes
narrow with each call and response;
ready to pounce.
Amen.

Dressed for the opera,
abreast in supplications made holy
as we learn our echoes and braid
our mayhem once more.
The only mouth you long for is at your feet,
velvet-warm, and full of prayers you can taste
but not translate, sigh but not speak.

My mouth makes your mouth tease like trees,
match our screams,
cross our hearts, drink, and dream.
We’ll tangle in everything,
empty our cupboards and start again.

We put on our evening gloves.
This afterglow is formal.

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 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.

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.

I picture them in a balmy hallway,
far-corner huddled; quietly, urgently
comparing their notes on ways I have loved.

They'll laugh at lame jokes and avoid eye contact,
each surprised by their own awkwardness.
One of them will quip the term
'eskimo brother'
and immediately wish he hadn't.
The rest will kindly ignore it.
The moment will pass.

They will slowly shed their discomfort.
They will remove their coats.
Sweat will bloom at collars
and trace knotty bumps of spine before
pooling into the space between
boxers and belt.

They won't openly discuss the
strange comradery
that accompanies the lazy river evenings spent drifting down the same mind-
but the tension pulling across
each of their jaws
will announce loud and clear
how frustrating it has
been to be cropped,
tucked in, paper fortune teller folded
and wrapped up into someone else’s idea of poetry.


Casually
then all at once,
they will get started.
Printed pages will uncoil from backpacks,
phones will emerge from pockets
and fingers slightly shaking
will chase the letters
of my name through search engines.

My sticky poems will fan out across floorboards.
They will lower their bodies carefully, not quite kneeling,
(and without mention of the bad knees they happen to share.)
They'll hover above each piece of evidence
and their eyes will crash along titles and memories-
they'll read with raised
eyebrows and pretend as if
they don't already know
each poem, each quick dig, by heart.

When they start claiming
and denying pieces
they will do so lightly
and without judgment.
'This piece is about you and the dry, delicate
tissue-shell of skin
she held out for you after you told
her to shed.
But this piece- this piece is about me
and the messy ointment
that ruined her clothes and
stained her blankets.
A doctor instructed she
apply the ointment to her hands
twice a day to treat
the burns my silence left
across her arms and throat.'

They will share a bit of rage,
A bit of regret.
A bit of shame, perhaps.
They will either miss me intensely
or not at all.
They will either own up
to the poems they begat
or begin refuting.
They don’t want any of
this chilly weight on their soul.
I understand.

They didn’t sign up for this, I know that.
They didn’t set out to rock me,
nor to dig down deep and get to my China.
I was happy to share, to whisper and recite blurry
morning confessions and epiphanies.
I was right behind them running toward the sand dunes,
waving a shovel and pail.
But I can’t feel bad either.
You all must have known:

If you happen to fall for a girl
who writes you must realize
that every smile you put on her face,
every stray hair you’ve pushed back from her eyes,
and quick habit she starts to crave
is fair game.

If a girl who writes happens to fall for you too--
forget it.
You will find echoes of the way your souls fit and fought
together until she has nothing left to feel on the subject;
(and you must be well aware
she's tidal, her feelings are icecaps,
they are melting but will trickle fresh
and renewed for centuries to come.)

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.

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.

The kitchen smells like a secret I forgot to bury.
A peach gone soft, skin splitting like a bad promise.
The fruit flies know something I don’t;
they’re the last priests of a dying faith,
and they’re waiting for me to leak.

I tell myself I’m healing,
but last night I dreamt I had to eat your heart to survive.
It tasted like burnt sugar and nail polish remover.
I woke up gasping,
your name soldered to the roof of my mouth
like a curse I didn’t mean to cast.

I call it the trick of wanting:
how I keep looking for your fingerprints in places you never touched,
how I flinch when someone says my name in the dark,
how I let the mirror watch me shatter
and pretend I’m a stained glass window.

Here’s the part I shouldn’t post:
I liked it when you lied to me.
I liked it when you said this isn’t about love
and I let you mean it’s about power.

The fruit flies keep coming.
I pretend they’re a sign from God.
I pretend they’re angels. Or demons.
Never both.
I pretend they’re a reminder that sweetness
is just another word for rot.
I pretend the buzzing is the sound of my name-
fermenting in your guts,
putrefying in your chest,
decomposing in your memory like abandoned fruit.

I know I shouldn’t write this.
But I do.
Because I want you to see it.
Because I want you to flinch.

Because I want you to know:
I am the girl who would eat your heart if I could.
I would peel it open with my teeth,
lick the blood off my lips,
smile like a god in a red dress,
and call it love.

And you’d believe me.

I was born mid-eye-roll,
c-sectioned from a punchline.
First words were don’t start with me,
second were fine, stay.

My spine’s in italics.
I bend for no one
but poetry
and panic.

I talk in skip-steps.
I cry in parentheses.
I kiss like a loophole.
He said you’re hard to read,
so I wrote myself louder.

Time doesn’t pass here,
it tantrums.
I clock in and out of myself hourly.

My skin’s on backward.
My hunger has subtitles.
My ghost writes sonnets in the steam on the mirror
and signs them:
Almost.

I invented a verb that means
to leave someone before they prove they would’ve.
I use it daily.
It conjugates into silence.
It rhymes with obviously.

The doctors say it’s chronic.
Pre-traumatic glow disorder.
I blush before the pain hits.
I glitter out of spite.

Don’t ask if I’m okay.
Ask which version of me is answering.
Ask if I remembered to name my wounds
before dressing them up like confetti.

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?

She was three-legged
and fourteen,
which meant
brave by default.

We slept
spine to spine
every night that last year.
My body curved to match
the curve of hers—
like if I molded myself
into her shape,
she’d stay
a little longer.

Some nights
I’d cry
facing the wall.
I didn't want to disrupt her dreams,
her twitching and yowling
like she was running very fast
and free.

Even with three legs.
Even with the shaking.
Even with whatever was happening
inside her chest
that I couldn’t see
but felt
like a countdown—
each wheeze like the tick
of something winding down.

I made her a collar-like friendship bracelet.
It was that first Eras summer,
where I’d stay up late
with grainy livestreams,
and she’d sleep on my pillows
with her eyes open.

I tied it on her
before I knew
what I was preparing for—
red and magenta seed beads,
silver letters:
Roxy’s Version,
around her neck.

I wanted her
to have something
from me,
in case she got asked
who loved her
at the gate.

I wanted the answer
to be
obvious.

We brought her outside
so she could lie
in the dry, scratchy grass.
I laid leopard-print foam pillows
under her head.

I couldn’t stop the dying,
but I could
soften
the ground.
She rested like it was vacation.
Like we weren’t
practicing goodbye.

There’s a battered, rose-gold statue
of a Labrador, ten inches tall,
on our front step.
I spray-painted it years ago—
not knowing
I was making a witness.
The vet looked at it,
then followed us in.

We didn’t speak.
Just walked inside
like it was church,
like someone had already died.

And we sat on the couch—
her head in my lap.
Their voices:
soft, reverent.

I held her ear
between *******,
like it still led somewhere.

I told her
she was a good girl.
I wish I’d told her
she didn’t have to be.

I said,
“I love you.”
But what I meant was,
“Please stay.”
And what I thought was—
what if she wanted
just one more
terrible Tuesday?

What if the birds
were doing something today
that she needed to see?
What if the pain
wasn’t worse
than leaving?

I forgave her body
for failing.
But I still haven’t
forgiven the clock.

I’ve let whole seasons
happen
without telling her
how sorry
I still am.

From the upstairs window,
I watched them
carry her to their van
on a blue stretcher—
small,
almost toy-like.

I laughed when I saw it.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was all
too real,
too stupid,
too soft—
and I didn’t know
where to put the pain.

I watched my mom
and stepdad
hug in the driveway
like they were trying
to keep each other standing.

I hope she knows
I didn’t want
the last thing she saw
to be my tears,
so I gave her the sun.

I don’t know
if I said “I love you” out loud
while her breath
slowed.

She’s at peace.
But I’m still here—
crying in rooms
she used to follow me into.

I hope she knows
I keep her beads
near my bed.
I still wear it
some nights,
when I’m spine to spine
with nothing—
and it’s unbearable.

I hope she knows
she’s the reason
I ever believed
in unconditional anything.

I hope she knows
I made her a bracelet
before I made her a grave.

From a dog
who never asked me
to be perfect,
I still wait
for forgiveness.

I try to be good
for someone who always
believed I was.

She’d say,
“You did your best.”
And I’d say,
“I tried.”
I just wish
love didn’t hurt this much
when it ends
gently.

(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.

He said I always make things worse.

I traced our last conversation
inside my lip with my tongue,
until it burned like citrus.

My teeth still taste like that night—
miso soup, metallic coffee, a dare—
and the word “almost” said until it split.

I don’t start the fires—
I just know how to fan them
so the smoke spells mine,
so the ashes spell proof.

“You’re welcome for the mirror,” I said,
then, “You flinched first,”
like scripture I was tired of reciting.

He called me a problem
and then prayed for something exciting.
Well, God listens.
And she’s been on my side lately.
(And sometimes inside me.
And sometimes wearing red.)

You say I write like it’s a weapon.
But you brought a sword to my poem.
You heard me speak—and called it war.

I’m not the plot twist.
I’m the motif.
I’m the whisper that keeps showing up
even when you don’t name it.
Especially when you don’t name it.

You wanted a girl who could break
without getting any on your shoes.
Who called it miscommunication
when it was a massacre.
I called it Thursday.

I made you feel.
You made it a crime scene.
Now every sentence tastes like sirens.
But sure—blame me
for the blood in your mouth
when you kissed me wrong.

So yeah—
maybe I do make things worse.
But worse is where the story gets good.
Where you start reading slower.
Where your hands start shaking.

It’s not that I ruin things.
I just ask questions
that don’t look good in daylight.

It’s not that I mean to wreck things.
I just don’t know how to leave a room
without checking every exit
twice.

And labeling each one ‘almost.’

You ever love someone
so hard you forget to be charming?
Me neither.

He thought he was the mystery.
I’m the red string
and the corkboard
and the girl in the basement
with the map of everything that never happened.

You didn’t fall for me.
You fell through me.
That’s not my fault.
It’s gravity.
Or girlhood.
Or God, laughing behind her hand.

Say it again. Slower. This time, with your hands in your pockets.

{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.

I left an earring on your nightstand
like a dare,
like a dog whistle only I could hear,
like a lie I could almost live with,
like a warning you didn’t read.

You wrote me like you were killing time.
I let you.
I was tired—
tired of being the intermission
between things you actually wanted,
tired of holding out my hands
just to catch the sound of you leaving.

It was raining the next day.
Of course it was raining.
The whole city smelled like last chances
wrung out in the gutter,
like a bouquet dropped
when someone realized it wouldn’t change anything,

You said,
"Take care of yourself."
And I did—
by breaking every mirror
that still showed me your mouth,
by smashing every reflection
that looked like hope.

There's a version of me
still waiting at that train station—
wearing the wrong jacket,
gripping the wrong book,
mistaking longing for directions,
carrying promises like ballast.
I'll know it's you
by the way my spine recognizes the disaster
before my eyes do.

I hope she never learns.
I hope she keeps looking up every time the wind shifts.
I hope she believes in arrivals.
Even when no one steps off.

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.

If salvation ever came,
it came teeth-first.
I bit my own tongue last night,
tasted copper and salt like a curse I knew by name.
The blood pooled under my teeth,
hot and mean,
and I swallowed it like a promise I couldn’t keep.

I still dream of him standing in my doorway,
hands full of stones and silence,
eyes bright with the kind of cruelty that doesn't bother aiming,
and I wake up gnashing my teeth,
chewing through the rope of my own patience.

I’ve grown rabid in respite
all claws and bitten-down nails,
a beast pacing the borders of my own skin,
still biting down promises like bones.

Some nights I think if he came back,
I’d tear him apart
just to see if he bleeds the same color as me.
Then I'd leave him open,
let the stars learn his name,
and no one sang him back.

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 saw you in the rearview of my mom’s Santa Fe,
your shirt half-buttoned, a half-burnt cigarette,
the sun catching the gold in your teeth.
I was fifteen, which meant I was fluent in making it worse,
and you were the kind of boy who could skin a rabbit
but never learned to say sorry without spitting.

I told you a lie once-
said I didn’t care if we kissed in the parking lot,
in front of God, or the devil, or the Home Depot sign.
That was the first time you looked at me like
I was glass and you were bored.

I was sixteen, which meant I was fluent in leaving,
and you were the kind of boy who could gut a fish
but couldn’t spell the word bruise if it was on your own skin.

You played me songs you didn’t finish writing,
the kind where the girl always runs,
and the boy always watches her taillights
until the guitar string snaps.
You told me I’d ruin your life if I stayed,
so I stayed.
That was the first time you looked at me like
I was glass you could see through
but wouldn’t bother breaking.

The night you didn’t say goodbye,
I wore the amber oil so heavy it felt like drowning,
stood in the mirror until I blurred into a girl
you might have wanted
if you weren’t so scared of the wanting.

I was seventeen, which meant I was fluent in staying.
I’m the girl who learned that wanting
is just another way of setting yourself on fire
and hoping someone else smells the smoke.

I bought stamps for a letter I’d never mail you,
I saved your voicemails on a phone
I kept at the bottom of my drawer,
next to the earrings I stole from my neighbor’s sister,
the ones that looked like a promise you never made.

You’ll tell your friends it wasn’t that serious.
I’ll tell mine you never learned the chords.
But we’ll both think about it:
when the air smells like wet asphalt,
and the radio plays that one song
we never sang together.

We both know the words.
We just never sang them at the same time.

She only smokes when she’s spiraling or performing.
Usually both.
Says she loves a dramatic flourish—
exhales like a closing line,
laughs like a scratched record.

You’ll meet her at a party that’s already ending.
She'll kiss you like she’s trying to delete her own mouth,
like you’re just the eraser.
She'll leave before sunrise
because she hates how the light arrives slowly,
and can’t stand watching the world wake up
and not call her back.

If you ask what she’s looking for,
she’ll point at the exit sign and say,
“Something with the same glow.”
You’ll think she’s flirting,
but she’s actually just listening hard
for the next excuse to leave.

If you ask for her number,
she’ll give you a poem,
one with no punctuation
and a key taped to the back.
Not to her place.
To your undoing.

She tells stories like she’s double-daring
the past to contradict her.
Someone once told her
she seems like the kind of girl
who disappears mid-sentence.
She said,
“Only when the sentence forgets I started it.”

She collects promises like matchbooks:
already scorched,
still reeking of places
that almost got her to stay.

At dinner parties,
she compliments your cutlery
then slices the conversation open.
Asks what you hate most about your mother
before the bread hits the table.

You’ll want to know her real name.
She’ll say something like,
“It’s carved into a tree somewhere,”
before you realize
you’ve already said it in your sleep.

And when you find the poem she gave you
weeks later,
crumpled in your coat pocket,
you’ll swear you hear her laugh
when you read the last line out loud:
“Don’t follow. I haunt better when I’m alone.”

She’s the reason
someone, somewhere,
is learning the difference
between being worshipped
and being watched.

And when she finally leaves—
because she always does—
you’ll swear you still smell
ozone, orange blossom,
and the beginning of a very pretty ruin.

She leaves you rearranged—
not broken,
just fluent in a dead dialect
that only speaks in warning signs.

You’ll start writing things
you don’t remember feeling
and calling it healing.
But it’s just possession.
The poem wasn’t for you.
It was the door.

She doesn’t burn bridges.
She just convinces them to jump.

She never really leaves.
She just sets the room on fire
and watches who runs toward the smoke.

(And if she ever comes back—
and she will—
don’t blink.
She’s made of edits,
and she notices cuts.)