i’m looking around and realizing slowly that i am boring. for all my pride and perfectionistic tendencies, my life became everything except the things i truly wanted. i have the safety, the reputation, the social circle—but where is my art? i've spent so long becoming someone, i forgot everything i wanted to create. after all, it's only the things outside of ourselves that outlive us.

these days feel like the crumbs you get at the bottom of the cereal box. not half as good but i’m still reaching my hand in and scraping them from the folds at the bottom of the bag. dust in my fingernails and the gross feeling that comes with too much sugar and wishing i had another day, another bowl of cereal to end on, wishing i hadn’t taken so much already. i’m going to have to buy another box soon. too soon.

i like the old days.

my mental health is a balance beam i keep forgetting i'm standing on.
sometimes it feels like it's standing on me.
i balance perfectly for a moment and suddenly i lose the discipline that got me there. i wish i could spend a few moments enjoying the peace i fight for. uphill battles are always difficult;
why does mine have to be invisible too?

do you drink the blood like i do? do you feel the venom the veins
do you feel demonic birthing pains
is there madness to her? is she the motive? the moral?
insanity in the mind, (the mind) not oral because
morals aren't found in red lakes, only found where girlish girls and cheesy cheese are called fake
only found where love rides the sheep costume for hate
searching for shepherds and morals, but of late
the motive ran away when you looked in its face
asking why the boy drank madness on trains
asking why people let venom run through their veins.

our last wish died and we didn't even mourn her

i have found a hole of hurting
but my heart is whole besides
it seems the rivers still keep turning
and no love controls the tides

i have seen a little moonlight
i have loved a little less
i have watched my sisters fistfight
i have seen my mother kiss

i have held a hand in mourning
i have seen a girl in love
the differences aren't striking
when you're looking from above

i have told the truth at some times
and at others told a lie
i have felt a beam of sunshine
i have seen my father cry

i have found my hollow heaven
and it isn't far from home
i have lived a life of living
i will die at last alone

i have seen a thousand endings
i have felt a life begin
i have far preferred beginnings
but this is at an end.

can't go back. talking to you at this point feels like trying to unshed a skin. uncomfortable and discontent, i think i am better off without the feeling of you looking at me like this. as if i planned it, as if i knew the taste of you would bend and snap, like an unwrapped ******* that sat too long. i knew people sometimes got stale like food but who was to say it wouldn't be different with you. unfortunately nothing is different; you are only you and i am only me, a girl with a thousand shed skins
at a loss for how to proceed.

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

let blessings stain the skin beneath your scars

“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.

hello love, hello
itchy feeling
i miss the way i feel
when i know
what i'm feeling
i get drunk on you
and don't know why
anyone needs a drink
to lose their inhibitions.
freedom is a thread away
and this needle shakes,
the person i enter when
i'm like this
feels like someone who
can't break

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.

toss your lackluster realities,
and the river will find you—
lost, wet and windswept
like autumn leaves
after rain,
like butterfly wings in
chlorine
like a hundred gossamer strings
on the sea.

this ,,hurricane in my chest cavity, it is TOO LARGE for me, i cannot cry this one away, i cannot choke down this cataclysm i was not built for devastation
     i only bruise my knuckles 'cause i cant contuse my mind,

                                                  lover mine.

“i have wanted many terrible, beautiful things,” he says. “the purest thing my hands have touched by far,” he tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “is you.”

“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?”

small protests,
a child's fist
in the air,
a comma
out of, place
a quiet and
simple
rebellion--
easy to
trace,

do these refusals fall into the void?
                                                                ­                               (does it mind?)

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

why do these men dance
as if they own themselves?
as if these dances make them gods--as if
they are not fleas, deliriously
basking in the flames
of mortality;
mayflies.

if your thoughts, like flies, do not flit across your mind
before bouncing from your
salivating tongue

(with rage)
                     please mix bug spray with your mouth wash.

looking at the ocean,
                the stars,
     feeling the vastness and
futility
         of all the universe--
         do you feel the
         rumbling of the sea
         like a heartbeat?
         can you taste the
         stars?

i can't live in my head
anymore, the clutter, the
cataclysmic canvas of my mind
all around me, pasting
red letters on my retinas,
leaving pomegranate ulcers
on my tongue,
                           demanding i put it
                                               to rest.

manic!depressionmanicdepression manic.
shhhhh her mind sleeps slowly and breathes
she doesn't think her fingers need time to bleed her breath
bleeds she
takes a breath and beats time back into his box.
he rattles.
no no that's me , that is me again. rattling.
ribs are useless. maybe i have three lungs and no heart. i feel only breaths and no beating,
only the beating of time in his box and
he screams. no
no that is me.

am i sick of this or am i just sick of myself?

my perpetual discontent has eaten me alive for the last time. the hours i spend alone and wondering leave a burning sensation in my eyes and my throat and i wish there was another way to feel desirable and stop feeling the need to compete.  i wish i felt complete.

it is one thing to be seen and wanted and entirely another to be known and loved.

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 know what this is,
this is madness,
this is craving for a touch, for the
self-destructive nature
of his clutch, these are
soulmates who only
want it rough,
these are kisses
and we never get enough:
these are chances
and we only get them once.

the little boy with hands like wrecking *****
laughed when he should've cried,
eating emotions like the words
he didn't understand,
turning instead to building blocks
and mixing sands
elementary anger is flicking rubber bands
when you're a little boy with wrecking ball hands.

i churn my stomach to bile again and watch *****-up teens choke on each other's leftovers. why do flare up tragedies taste like strawberries?

why do we still go berry-picking?

i can see you hurting but i see myself
melting and i can't look
away. the fire
mesmerizes me and also the
pain. i know i don't speak like i used to. i see you
hurting. you reach out to touch me and i
recoil
not because i don't see you hurting but because
i am on
fire. can't you see me
burning?

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.

how strange, how unfathomably empty and grand
is life. death.

people are not small, they are terrifically gigantic, brilliant---
and when they die
they create black holes,
                                               like stars

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? .

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.

when fear finds new homes to hide
fingertips, fire and cyanide
blazing trembles, roaring tide
quiet voices quietly abuse,
and silence blazes a fiery bruise
when you're left drinking
cyanide and month-old *****
no more tremblings left to choose
screaming like quiet voices do
when licking fire finds them
roaring too,
and ashes feel more like ice cubes
than his words do.

“she sees the world in shades of red,” he muses. i’m not sure what he means, but i see the fascination in his eyes when he looks at her. or was it desire?

i open my mouth impulsively. “do you love her?”

he laughs softly and turns to look at me. “do you always ask questions to which you already know the answer?” there is a curiosity in his eyes when he looks at me, not in a she’s mysterious and lovely type of way, but rather in a she is nothing if not strange and unpredictable. i could wish it were the former, but i am more than content to simply keep him on his toes.

i look back at audessa, in all her bewildering beauty and rose tones, and for the first time feel no envy. “i wonder how intimate one must be with pain,” i murmur, “to wear it so beautifully.”

his smile falters ever so slightly as he glances back at audessa. “very intimate indeed.”

i fell in love with the version of me you created.
when you left it was two heartbreaks in one.

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

                                              and cry

is this rage my sword?
are those eyes her arrows?

                                                  is humanity an armory or an army?

when blood rains from the heavens
is it our reward
or our reckoning?

above all,

                                               is this sword for me? should i fall on it?

nick grabs my waist and pulls me closer to him, and there’s a light in his eyes i haven’t seen before, a manic spark brighter than the neon spotlights above. bodies and sounds rage around us, the temperature and beat rising as one, my own heartbeat echoing in my head. i’m not a dancer and if it weren’t for his hands in mine i’m sure i would have been lost, tossed and trapped in the gyrating mass of limbs and smoke and screaming.

but he isn’t lost, the lights blinking rapidly and reflected in his smile, he’s smiling, and i can’t hear him but he’s laughing too.

magnetic.

i have never been more full
or more empty
all at once
like this.
do
tears
swing like
pendulums in
your throat? do you
hide tears in empty boats?

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

i keep telling people
i'm bettering myself for myself,
to be the type of person
i would like,
someone i can be happy being.
really i'm just lost
and looking for anything
that could make me
worth loving.
i'm not enough on my own.

“i kissed you because i wanted to kiss you,” she says. “isn’t that enough?”

no! i can’t bring myself to honesty. looking her in the eyes is like dancing with fire. dangerous. “i kissed you because i want to be with you,” i offer, looking away.

she tenses. it’s the most affected i have ever seen her.

the fear is still here. i feel it, rising
when you look at me.
when you love me.
each of your words string together like
rope
entangling and
erasing me. i wish
i could crave affection even
when i have it.
the things i cannot reach for
drive me away.

the last thing i want to be is away from you.

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.

loving burns,
but we can't get off it
lighting cigarettes and hearts
with the same matches
kissing, gasping
between the flames,
choking on smoke, ash
and asking each other's names
pretending they're not the next
candle, saying they're not the same;
everybody wants to feel loved,
everyone wants to feel sane
so between the kissing, the asking, and
lighting the same dead flames
we paint wildfires and suns
and pretend we're not mortal
we're not insane.