where do you go
when you know
you'll be blind forever?
how do you know
you are home?
is there a painting
with the confidence
to call beauty
its own?
when your eyes fog like glass,
when they become the mask;
is there a sunset that calls
the sun to rest at last?
when no color remains,
light and darkness conflate,
do your dreams become
shadows or drugs?
are they ever enough?

fling words into the keyboard and try not to cry

shallow breaths feel like punches
who is in this room
who is here who is
am i about to die?

blinking like the stars blink
frozen, burning,
here, lost between
the dark and what's sane

croaking, a deathbed whisper
whispers slip into the sheets
whispers feel like raindrops
in desert heat

crumpled t-shirts pile up
like regrets
every empty cup
an inner mess
do your notebooks
feel like failures?
do you leave lost dreams
on broken hangers?

i stand at the doorway and know where it goes.
i keep knocking and i wait for anyone but this ******* self.

who is my self? different people held together by a string? a shelf? a suitcase of forgotten touches and bad health?

i forget myself over and over again.
where are you?

we wait. together on the doorway, opposite sides.
no plant hangs from me.

freedom lays where you left her. bring her with you next time.
i wait at the doorway and stop.

knock.
hello me.

eliza. truly the most harmless girl i’ve ever met, yet for some reason i’m scared of her. i think it’s her innocence. it isn’t crafted, like félise with her silk and flowers. it’s real, realer than any character or trait i’ve ever worn and somehow that gives her power. i’m afraid of her because i know that my most authentic self never emanated that power, i know i was hopeless and helpless until i put on feelings and faces that were foreign to me. i found my confidence in the dream i became, the illusion that replaced my name.

but eliza, she wore her own skin with a vibrancy i could never compete with, a subtlety i’ve never known. her words fall heavy on my ears, and when she speaks i'm transported to a church pew back home, shame crawling up the back of my neck as a red-faced pastor tells me i’m decrepit, derelict, and condemned. hers was a beauty that outshone all others. i felt insecure even in her presence.

do not romanticize the weapons with which
this world has mauled you.

bat me across the room and act
surprised when i don't know
what to do when i get there.
girls like girls because
we tell each other the words
we wish no one had ever
told us, and each time we
internalize them they
taste sweeter. sugary soft
rejection colored blue
like her eyeshadow,
glossy lips and glitter eyelids
masking volcanic rage,
girls like girls because we all
see the cage,
we paint our bodies and its bars
with the same pomegranate
chapstick, we love glitter,
chafing bones and the sawdust
of two girls alone in a
cage, applying chapstick.

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?”

i am learning how to
make myself real
i put myself together
over and over and
each time the pieces
stay longer. is this
what it means to heal?

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.

rarely am i so torn as when i think of all the ways i have failed to love those dear to me

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.                                                                              .

she asks the keyboard tenderly, each key
a little closer to the person
she wants to be
but farther every time she
asks for them.
how to be someone without
trying to become them first,
how to exist with someone
but not for them, how to know
when you have crossed the
line between being and
wannabeing
yeah i guess
that's
part of me
now.

“i am very, very alone,” she said. there was an air of desperation in the words--despair. when i looked in her eyes i saw hopelessness. “art is not a companion, or a friend. at best, it is a feeling. more often, it’s a drug.” she began to turn away.

i knew if she left now, with that, it would stay with her forever. “which part? making it, or feeling it?” she didn’t stop, and i started to walk after her.

“does it matter? you can be an addict or a dealer, but either way you’re a slave.” she let the door close behind her. I stopped walking. enslaved by art. it was romantic, really. in the fatalistic, melodramatic way all artists were.

maybe we are slaves to our art. but aren’t we all enslaved by something?

her eyes! sometimes they compare eyes to pools and oceans but her eyes were warm, calm, the serenity of a house cat sprawled in the sun and a sparkle so joyful i felt sure one minute in her life would rival the most powerful day in mine. she shone like selenite and left warmth behind where others left shadows.
spring and summer defined her equally well.

there is something
cowardly
and lonely
about becoming
brand new.

roundy boundy two piercings in skin
blood's constipated and
metal tastes like it
already so
hey why can't i find where that went in?
i don't find where i am
i don't hide myself or anything but i think
myself hides when i need her. i stick knives into
tower walls to keep myself
in conversations
everyone tells me that i shouldn't have to
work so hard in conversations and
i don't i don't i
want to bleed
i like the way pain pierces itself over
and over and
over.
pain pills collect in dust and seasons
waver over the dried blood on my
ear lobes.

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?”

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)

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.

i'd like to kiss you once just to see