“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.

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.

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.

i am going to student counseling and so far it is a dream! by that i mean i haven't signed up yet.

you ask too many questions
as if i know my mind
i don't know anything but the way
your name rests
on my tongue.

carve yourself a niche, a vegetable garden of new
beginnings and secret
spearmints. celebrate your choices, your regrets. your
teary-eyed nostalgias


                                              lost pets

i can't write these things to you like i used to. you are ... less desperate than you used to be and i am
increasingly inconsistent and brimming
with the desperation i used to see
in you and
i love that, i swear to god i love to see you happy
content, at peace, at least, but
i think you were a crutch
or something
too much
but now that it's gone it's not enough.
all of this
to say
i miss you
and i miss you missing me.

only romantic when i’m alone in bed

i love you like the polar bear loves the beach
wistfully, between a sigh
and early morning dreams,
scattered between autumn snowflakes
and flowered halloweens
with all the adoration of
a dying bride-to-be,
sowing kisses into letters,
tucking love into the seams.
darling, i love you
but it's not meant to be.

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.

depression is back like a prison sentence i forgot i was serving.
freedom felt like a vacation instead of a destination and
summer ended months ago.
there is so much more weight than there used to be but
there is also nothing there and i don't know
how to explain how much slower i'm walking.
i lie more, cry more, sit alone inside more and
i'm left wishing i could go home but
a little voice inside me says
you are.

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

and the Stars. looking down at this
boiling pit
smile softly,
wickedly,
murmuring to each other
do they know we see them? do they see us?

and the Earth, groaning
as she turns,
mutters
*do they see each other?

the sky flings rain on grass and window screens
flowers grow
but glass just blurs like tears

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.

his knuckles are bruised and swollen and his hands shudder slightly as i brush my fingers across them. i feel the pain radiating off of him as intensely as the sun on my neck, and it leaves me with a weight in my chest i can’t seem to shake. i can’t look at his eyes when i whisper

“why do you do this to yourself?” i know, i know, i know,

“every time i am harsh with myself,” he says, turning his hands over to grasp mine, “i remember to touch you more gently.”

my fists are beating themselves again and i dont feel .

poem
i speak in butterflies
a chrysalis wrapped around my tongue
caterpillars make their homes in
the caverns of my lungs.

poem
two snakes intertwined in my intestines
the hiss of hunger curls out of my ears
yellow eyes behind a yellow smile
i sleep beside the fire for the year.

poem
my blood runs thin through
burrowed veins, the ants crawl slowly,
my arteries cave, the ants crawl slowly,
i know their names.

an iron bar in my chest, pinching my lungs,
my stomach. tears and taunts erupt--recoiling from your
touch, pleading
    crush me
                         set me free .

i turn over in bed
again, feeling flames
lick my stomach,
digging fingernails
in my palms
against the pain
on nights like these
i forget my name,
forget why
the sparks in my eyes
leave me dry
and burning.

vulnerability isn't openness,
it's generosity.
you aren't showing yourself to others
you're giving parts away to them.

i dont like the dark i dont like the dark i dont like the dark i dont like the i dont like i dont i dont i

dont know how to not lie or
how to always do my work on time or
how to laugh like i'm trying to not die,
how to stop saying half the time i can't breathe
but sunday nights taste like stale anxiety and
i dont know how many more i have in me.

do words float beneath your fingers like they for me, do you
hover above them, in awe of the rawness of freedom,

do you see freedom when you look at me?

do feelings and butterflies mix, rewind, do you feel
color-blind looking at anxiety and butterfly wings?

don't look at me--
between the fluttering in my lungs and my mind
there are ten thousand colors you couldn't see
if you looked at me.

if you hold his hand and he doesn't love you,

i mean,
if you hold your own hand
in his
             if you love him and he doesn't love you
are you holding your heart together? is this
hard for you
yet

      i said never hold the hand of the boy who
cares
in all the wrong ways

i said these things
i said

be loved

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
.

i guess my whole life runs on these feedback loops, constantly dependent on the words i receive from you. everything good you've ever said to me rings softly in my head like my grandmother's wind chimes. your insults are alarms beside my bed.

i wish i was deaf. deaf to your loves and dislikes, the way your eyes look before i change myself to fit your type. maybe this one i'll get right. another half second and we're there, i am everything you want me to be; nothing more and nothing deep, the words that spill from my teeth fall right off me. i claim my memory has always been this bad and it's not a lie, but the truth is i can't remember what's real because i'm lying all the time.

but you know this already, you see me, you recognize the flaws in other people so clearly that even the reflection of personified perfection gave you displeasure.

i'm sorry i made myself into someone you dislike.
i don't know how to unmake myself.

i'm forgiveness alone in the booth. Ten cards from the deck of promises, two glasses mirroring my own. French. fingers shaky but on the inside, she holds her own hand. old. wood and wooden tables People talk. they hold their eyes and legs and wish they were not talking as they do. The talk is more, the talk is less. Words forget and for the Window Booth sit. alone. forgiveness.

“truthfully, i'm not sure I ever loved him,” she says. i can see the glint of tears in her eyes, but it isn’t sadness as much as it is shame. she looks away. “but god, i loved the way he looked at me.”

are you ever scared of the people you won't become

when my body bends
and breaks--
a flower stem
plucked from her
pretty face
i feel your fingers
pulling petals,
stealing smiles,
scattering pieces
of me on the asphalt.
is it my fault?

.

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.

“people used to describe me as innocent,” she said, gazing unaffectedly at her reflection. “i always thought that was bad. i tried to convince them otherwise.” she paused, twisting a lock of hair around her finger. “these days i’d do anything for people to look at me like that.”

sugar
here, there
addiction is rare and
everywhere
holding your hand is
as much a need
as desire,
caffeine stings my
veins like
fire

cliche. here,
take two sips of
chamomile and be
at ease, sense the wariness
and illusion of pleasure
you force yourself to drink.
an un-addiction. is this
conviction?
someone told me beliefs are
things you hold and
convictions hold you. is
that true?

my anxiety holds me.
am i a convict
behind the bars
in my mind? i talk so
frequently
of the sentence i'm serving
i forgot jail was a place
inside me.
my reflection is my only visitor.
will you be visiting?

I AM SO TIRED OF BEING TERRIFIED

sleeping on the sun
and dreaming about raindrops

you say it is a "noble thing" to "be the same person to everyone" as if that is a choice i know how to make. you criticize my defense mechanisms unaware you activate them in doing so. don't you understand your wise and less than well-intentioned words perpetuate the behavior you claim to hate? i don't know how to stop changing without changing to do so.

i guess i am doomed to displease you. my mistake.

i feel too angular for the round world we live in. i still can't figure out the difference between an inferiority and superiority complex, to me they look the same, and every step i take in my broken shoes feels like misspelling my own name. my fingers feel the wrong size but they're purple now so i guess that makes them better. i'm not better but i'm better at being worse. the words i write have lost their mystery. fitting myself between the lines on a page means paper-thin has become my identity. is this happiness? am i at ease, lying flat beneath a sheet of emptiness with pencil pressing into me?

i feel TERRIFIED all the time i want to beat my head against my bedpost will i die will i will you cry? will the bedpost feel like he did when he used to try?
will the flowers bring me back or will i die?
SCARED SCARED SCARED
everyone sees me running out of air they see me breaking nails and pulling at my hair
nobody CARES
care care care

my heart is the plate untouched and the last kitten picked from the litter. the wilted wildflower and brown bird. you judge my painted feathers and detest my naked petals. leave me to find solace in the ditch when you spit me from your window as you drive.

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.

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) .

tip tip tip toe
down the way to hell hole
stepping in the prints
left behind by the bell boy
waiting for a hint
that- ****
guess we all go
down.

when you write and the words slip off your fingers like gloves
my hands are cold
and you're writing and fingertips fly like doves
feathers fall and lay with the gloves
do fallen flames grow old?
do growing icicles always do as they're told?

he said i make people feel special.
i said i'd heard that before.

your lover,
does he lie? does he
tell you that you're fine,
that you're wrong, that
you're losing your mind
does it all feel
like a sickly sweet song
written by someone
who doesn't know at all
what it is
to not want to go on?

your lover,
is he fine?
is he losing his mind
between your calls
and your wrongs
does he feel like a sickly sweet
song when you cry
and he dies
a little more inside
when he doesn't have anything more to do but lie.

i have never been
scared
of the dark before but
this dark is different
this dark is the dark
of a man, the dark of
fallen footsteps
groping hands
as i lay
in the dark
breathing words that stay
trapped between what i fear
and what i want to say

do you feel darkness like a man? is darkness
a groping hand?

“i’m sorry,” she screams, tears running down her face black and glitter-gold, mixing and sticking in her lipstick. “i didn’t know! you didn’t warn me, didn’t tell me how this was going to go down. this is on you, i swear to god, all of this is you.”

used to hate penning letters
to relieve my emotions
cliché,
like i'm walking around in
the same motions
as the rest
of the earth
spinning the same turns,
touching the same everlasting
burns
of love,
death,
and the oceans

but
if my letters spell
words only i
like breathing
there's no point in
writing,
as nobody's reading.

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.