“i shake when i talk to you,” i say, my gaze fixated on the off-white kitchen tiles in front of his feet, my feet planted on those same tiles, my hands winding around each other and my nails digging in my palms. i see him stepping closer, closing the distance in 3, 2, 1---

“i shake when i’m not talking to you,” he whispers.

he kisses me. we don't shake.

been on this earth a whole 18 years and truthfully it feels longer. i'm set in my ways, set in the rhythm of rigid days, set believing morality is an endless maze and people are never who they say.

break! monotony is a dream! monotony is only real on the days you don't scream

you know two months ago i was still trying to make these rhyme and now i'm using a scalpel just to extract the words from my lungs, fumbling and failing to fit them together on the page, wondering if writing is killing me or keeping me sane, fitting thoughts into so-called poetry almost as easily as the rings i fit on each finger before i leave for the party i'm not wanted at. i could keep drafting these and waiting a day to publish each or i could accept the fact that my habits and realities will never coincide with the apathy they hope to see in me (even though really they hope i'm never wanted because then i'm a threat, or a tease) and while i may never be self-aware enough to cease i see enough of me in your eyes to know i shouldn't care anymore what you think of me.

i've spent a lot of time in social scenes, and between laughs and looks and the way people look down when they want to cry i've yet to grasp whether i'm meant to shrink or stretch in a group conversation. eye contact seems dangerous sometimes. is a smile safe? how long can i listen without talking? how loud do i have to laugh to seem carefree? before you look at me and think of all the people you'd rather me be?

if i am supposed to love myself before you do why don't you care either way?

i guess i'll keep stretching myself to wrap around all the people i want to be, want to love, want to love me, and between my thinning hair and the way my skin looks after a whole day i'm less and less sure i'll ever be someone worth being.

i stopped thinking about big things a long time ago. i can't tell if i'm any healthier or cooler or if the apathy has improved my complexion. i feel lost, though. lost like a minnow in the wrong body of water, lost like i should be asking "why" instead of "where," like maybe the world is spinning like a top and i'm the fleck of dust it's spinning on. i feel like maybe the security is getting to me, like it's a trap, like maybe everything they told me i was looking for was a lie, a gold-painted idol placed in my hands when i reached for the sky. the sky doesn't show itself to me anymore and i can't figure out why, can't decipher the patches in my ceiling---why are there patches? if this was supposed to be picturesque where are the cameras?

why do i feel just as incomplete as i did before?

i spend a lot of time changing, changing clothes and changing earrings and glasses and world views. my opinions leave me quicker than my eyelashes do, and i don't know how to stick them back on because false eyelashes aren't cheap but they don't sell fake opinions at the dollar store. i don't even know what currency i'd use to buy them---my energy? morals? creativity? all spent and gone months before now. i spend most of my energy trying to become the kind of person people like, or at least admire, or are at least intimidated by. if i can't care about you at least i can make you want me to. is that fair? does my loneliness justify the pedestal i put myself on? pride is my only currency left and i don't know how to diversify. at this point all i know how to say is i'm sorry, i'm sorry i'm constantly a changed person, constantly ridding myself of the baggage tugging on my skin, baggage that sits quietly until i am finally comfortable in my seat, quietly until it screams and i have to start over again. unclipping luggage was never so difficult as a child but then again i didn't have this much.

my hands are trembling with infuriating intensity and she just stands there, eyes shining and hands fumbling like they always do. looking at me like she always does—like i am someone, or worth something, but she’s always been wrong.

esi moves her hands towards the candle again, and i hold my breath as the flame flickers, turning from a warm glow to a bright light to almost nothing, a mere spark dancing and flickering on the black wick. incredible. i look around, from eliza to dessa to desmond, and all i see is fear in their eyes---the deep, vacuous fear you see in the eyes of someone staring a tsunami in its face.

i feel so trapped by everyone else's thoughts about me i can't stop caring and changing myself to fit the their best preferred version of me and i can feel myself dying and twisting trying to be the person they all separately think i should be. mutually exclusive realities living in the heads of people better than me who try to force their opinions and truths upon me ruthless and regardless of how far i have to bend to be satisfying. i feel shriveled and scared and unsure of how to proceed if at all. is it feasible to leave? is it possible to abandon the only things i see guiding me? i have always hated control and now i can see it lives inside of me. even now, thinking about how you will respond, how everyone will see me. you, talking to you thinking 'there is a easy solution to this' THERE IS NEVER AN EASY WAY OUT for me. i easily identify my own character flaws please refrain from pointing them out for me.

esi tilted her head, smiling this strange, did-you-actually-just-ask-me-that smile. she leaned forward across the table and whispered, “why would i ever want to fall in love?”

curse like a ******* sailor,
wear a bikini,
move to Europe,
get at least 2 tattoos,
pierce myself a few more times,
learn three new languages (just so i can curse three more ways)
buy a bird,
live in NYC,
kiss someone i don't love,
kiss someone who doesn't love me,
love myself & my mistakes,
have empathy for my past self,
and hope for the future
(where i hopefully own a snake)

i am worn books and french vocabulary, ice cold chai and steaming earl grey. i am stone stares and eyes watering, uncertainty in silence and sharp decisive conversation. i am shaking hands and reciting poetry during anxiety attacks and i am indie rock showers and top-of-your-lungs pop radio in the car. i am empathy without sympathy, crying in the bathroom stall and i am childhood cartoons and your favorite stuffed animal and the beach in the summer. i am desperate to be alone and desperate to scream and desperate to find someone who knows what i mean and still likes me. i am comfort zone constellations, Orion's belt on every nighttime stroll, i am the hollow tree in the backyard of the house we don't own and i am my handwriting and the words in my poems. i am everything you have made me out to be and i hate that; hate that you see all my flaws so clearly but that isn't all of me and i know that now.

i am the trinkets my grandmother left me and her eyes when she looked at me and the way she cried when she read my poetry. i am a thousand ways i have loved those dear to me and the children who fall asleep on me and the way my cat runs to me and i don't need your or anyone's approval but God's and my own. thanks anyway.

Ne verse aucune larme—Verse aucune larme !
La fleur fleurira une autre année.
Ne pleure pas—O ne pleure pas !
Les jeunes fleurs dorment dans la terre.
Sèches tes yeux—O sèches tes yeux
Parce que j'ai appris au Paradis
Guéris mon coeur de mélodies—
Ne pleure pas.

he steps closer now, and i can feel his breath on my neck. maddening. “what are you trying to do,” i whirl on him, fingernails digging into my palms and my heartbeat pounding in my head. “drive me insane?”

the dark-eyed girl, audessa, laughs. her laugh sounds like red velvet or crystal champagne glasses and it’s magnetic. even nikolai seems enraptured by her, and he is never impressed with anyone. envy rises in my throat.

but Are we scared of dying or of Being alone?

“look, i’m not saying this to sound cool, or edgy, or to put you off, but i guess i’ve just always been a bit of...” she trails off and looks down, then shrugs. “a loner. and not like a ‘lone wolf’ kind of thing, i just feel like i have a hard time connecting with people, or that maybe people have a hard time connecting with me.” esmeralda half-smiles and looks up into his eyes. “but i’m sure you don't have the slightest idea what that’s like, do you?”

i'd like to kiss you once just to see

pierre laughs softly--so softly it sounds more like a sigh, or as if he is beginning to cry. she looks at him from the corner of her eye. there is something in him she cannot exactly place, something strange, or sad. maybe it’s his eyes? his eyes are dark blue, darker and bluer than any ocean knows how to be, and while they aren’t necessarily sad, there is an unmistakable solemnity to them.

old. they’re old eyes.                                                                              .

the blond boy throws his head back laughing, and for a few seconds, i can’t breathe. sheer happiness radiates from his entire body as he laughs--he doesn’t just smile, or chuckle, or scoff, like the other boys do. this was a full-on belly-laugh, the kind that either says i am warm and my joy is rich or my life cannot contain this energy in my veins. i do not know him, but i feel his energy. i hear his laugh.

woooooo all the girls and boys goin crazy trying to make the boys and girls go crazy
we're all a LIttle crazy but not
generally crazy for another except in
the ways we have
deluded ourselves again and again
That is why we want
to drive another crazy because of the comfort
in a fellow insanity plunge
of scattered ingenuous kisses
i love you i love you i love ......................... the .. way you make me feel?
                              is this real?
life, love is self-circled
and fairy lights aren't half as romance as his hands
bloodied; hers trembling; was it the other way around?

collarboned and cheeky and it's ALL about the bones, right?  ***** ur reliability unless u have the eyes to back it up sweetie

trash talk is mainly between me and the mirror
recently
so here you go

it was a grey wednesday morning, and i was sitting at my desk, too tired to stand but too rattled to fall back asleep.
the wavering morning light slips through the blinds and thin stripes of sunshine run along the carpet. how strange, i remember thinking, that this is beautiful to me.
looking back, i know why it was beautiful. sunlight, even through blinds, is bright. and it’s warm.
then, i didn’t know warmth was a commodity, or that i should have been savoring the light; holding onto its rays; devouring its heat.

back then, i didn’t know a lot of things.

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.

is
      speaking in french, wrapping our tongues around foreign
                                                         ­                                flavors and vowels,
          intertwining with each other,
                                                                ­ whispering
                                                      ­                                  mon amour,
                                                                ­                                my
        love love love love love love
    
what  
                           her hair and his eyes, gold liquidated, pooling
              in glass orbs and strings,

      shards and pools colliding and cascading

love
                          is this truth?
                she takes his hand and mind
       all at the same time and they both cry



what
is
love?

wisps of smoke
                    rising
from my knuckles and
                                       my thighs
                             i cry,
                                and i cry
          

                                              and cry

i am
afraid.



other people with their loves
               losses
              and lives
                                            and i sit here,
                                      filled and falling in fear
                                      grasping strips of veins
                     and drinking from rain
                                                            ­            pretending i
                                                                ­    don't
                                                                ­care.

when i am angry
                     there is no fire,
         no directed flame,
         my anger is acidic, carving its way
     from my fingertips and lips,
                                                        burning everything it touches.



                                           a pool of acid means whatever was there went out screaming .

. what are you so afraid of
                  my inability to feel
                  my heart
               as it pumps blood and beats
                              in my ears, my elbows,
                              the cords in my neck
         the violet pulsing
         the violence

the very freckles on my back, rippling and
writhing, telling me
                                                   be very afraid .

tremors, returning and climbing around in my irises, tackling and entangling my arteries, purple and blue tinges rising in my wrists and fingernails,

, i feel them, all of them,
                           and i am clenched fists and chapped lips,
the fragility of the unbreakable,
a tender undeniability  who scr-
eams

                                        the caterpillars in my bones just wait
                                nestling in the blank caves they still think are
canvases

                                                      ­                   i am alone. afraid afraid afraid
.

can you feel yourself dying?  
do you feel the earth as it burns
as it's turning, twisting
and spiraling so violently
the friction sends sparks
into galaxies? can you taste
the life as it's leaving you?
as it's rippling out of your
fingers and snatching the breath
that's knocked out of you?
do you cringe as your edges
are singed by the fire
surrounding you? as the oceans
subside and the planet decides
that erosion's
just your
point of view.

dark eyes. laughter.
i don't remember a time
without a smile. were you
as funny as i
though you were? no.
perhaps i just hoped
one day you
would fall for the laughter
in my eyes
like i fell
for the laughter
in yours.

minutes falling and counting and
running away as i chase them,
laughing at my face, laughing as i
reach for them, whispering
what does she think she can do?
our lives ended before they began.
does she pluck time's harp strings
so well she believes she
can pull seconds into hours?
can she force heartbeats
from wilted flowers? .

a different sort of nerves
run up and down my spine
this is new, this is taking
breath and spitting out
a lie, chewing on the
tacky bits of life yet
still forgetting you
will die;
because death falls
through the walls
and takes us even
if we cry,
if we lie;
death is deaf to
tacky pleas and
pulls our breath out of
the lungs
beneath our spines.

your voice sinks into my skin
you touch my hand in passing
your name steadies my fingers
but you leave me shaking inside
please never look at my eyes
(kiss me)  .
                    .
                       .  (look me in the eye) .

the ants in my veins dont bite me anymore
was it something i did? are they dead?

or is there just less to feed on?

fling words into the keyboard and try not to cry

my hands dont shake like they used to
and i am hesitantly
content

gives me a stomach ache.
what am i to say? and to whom?
every letter droops with the
dampness of what they call
'love'
but they call it sweetly,
in sultry tones and trembling
caresses, calling it like
a bird, calling it like they know
it does not care
and does not hear them.
their drooping calls and caresses
hang limply in the air
waiting damp and dull
to be found and lulled
back to a sleep
of threadbare dreams
where 'love' is not a bird
or a heartfelt leap
but a sad saggy poem
full of letters
that droop
as you weep.

sitting and wondering and laying flat
on a tile floor so cold
it feels wet
and wondering whether you stare at the ceiling
wondering too, wondering whether
i am staring.
or thinking of you.

do you ever feel like you're falling out of your frame

why is she always crying?
eventually
she will run out of tears.
or maybe
the tears will run out of her.
either way
                                                                ­    there are much better things
to fall for.

i hope my words scrape your throat when you say them to yourself. i hope you read this aloud just to see, reading and feeling them stick in your teeth, reading and wondering whether the pit in your stomach will ever cease, if you will ever kiss someone with ease, wondering if trembling fingers means death or just a life of unease, sitting and trembling and feeling darkness like a weight rolling around in your knees, reading words that scrape and stick in the pits of your favorite tees, rolling around with the grease and the laziness you need to never wash the pits of your favorite tees.