i suppose sometimes you just have to start writing. even if the words fall in fragments, leaving letters and half-thoughts strewn across the page, the important part is that you write.
right?
when writing about themselves, many writers deem it appropriate to start from the beginning--with “the beginning” meaning many different things. for me, i don’t know when it really started, but i do know when it began to end.

heavy fog seeps in my eyes
i cant cry
thudding and whimpering all at
the same time
feeling less and numb and
sitting stone faced,
dumb,
wondering how much of me
is left, and less, and gone
depressed,
and done
nowhere to run
or hide
as the fog thickens
in my mind.

sicky sick raw edges of my tongue from the empty
wrinkled bag on
the floor where i tossed it earlier like a hour
or something ago and i
haven't let the words go
recently they haven't
wanted to leave i keep scraping at them to leave me the ****
alone
but here i am instead (again) with raw edges and
a poem like an empty
wrinkled bag full of regret

alone

it's not that i love you but i really think i could

New York City is all existential lust and anxiety
personally,
all the words and phrases catching on
each other's faux fur coats and
the way your lips frame love is different than
mine,
and it's like dreaming
or a drug, dancing and dazzling from a thousand feet above
the skyline isn't as cool as they said,
it's hazy and gray (like your eyes), and
i love it

i am sitting and pressing green paint in misshapen swollen dots on my nail beds and thinking what if i mess this up? i am notoriously bad at fingernail painting and i ruin it and i am also afraid i will ruin myself by loving you.

yes, yes i hear you like a train. my head is all railroads and oceans, but i hear you puffing and whistling he does not love you, he would not love you, he loves her. long hair hazel eye i am not her i cannot be that girl i do not want to be his girl

but i want him to want me
oceans
trains

there is nothing to fear
           the words in my head,
                      the way my fingers shake, the darkness
        of a night without stars, the
 loneliness of a night

                                               without

                                                               ­           you.