it's the clutter that gets me
down
i can't stop seeing
it ev
erywhere
its here
there
in the place between
the bed
and the
chair
i want it to be gone gone gone gone
i'm always waiting for th
god i wish i didn't
do a
nything
wrong
i want to be purged of
every
memory hanging
from my head
i never
wanted
this
never thought
they'd still be here
i'd still be here
nothing's as temporary
as we need it to be
and
permanence
scares me.

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?

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.

when you forget what healthy feels like
and blue veins rise up from your skin
do your lungs fight? does the heat bite?
do blue fingernails mirror your bruises
blue like a little lighter's light?

i'm scared of you. are you scared of me? my fear replaces your face in my dreams. does your body ripple up and down like acid is eating your bloodstream? the ribbons in my arteries ache as they're trembling. i wrap my ribbons slowly and sweetly and tightly and they're trembling. are you scared of you? i'm scared of me.

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?

only romantic when i’m alone in bed

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.

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

her eyes pluck him
like harp strings
sing for me, boy.
do you sell your voice
like you sell kisses?

she does not have strings.
he would not pluck them
if she did.

daisy daisy blue berry
when you touch my arm i feel
like i can carry
more than i would ever
allow myself. you're lovely and i'm
two steps too broken up
about a life i've never
broken into. used shoes and
worn shirts comfort me
more than my
choices do. asking for
peace and
happiness feels like
the opposite of what
i want it to.

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

It's another loveless Sunday Afternoon
and between the gray sky and the
responsibilities that pile up
faster than October's drooping leaves,
I'm lost,
wondering if I missed my exit
or if I'm just meant to feel this way.

i draw flowers and spirals
up and down my arm and they
casually
ask if i want
tattoos.
as if permanence
isn't
terrifying.

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?

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.

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.

i am the aftermath of war,
the tidings that you dread.
the heart when very sore
in a lonely unmade bed.

i find you in the darkness,
alone at 4am,
when guilt is but a wilderness
and night is at an end.

you see me in the shadows
of a long-forgotten grave;
in alleys that are narrow
and seldom ever paved.

you hear me in the sobbing
of a child lost from home;
in the cries of a wolf howling
at the pale and distant moon.

you call me something different
in each corner of your earth,
but recognize me even in
foreign looks and words.

sorrow is a pretty way
to give despair a name,
but sometimes you cannot say
so much in words so tame.

friendships are gardens and i make bouquets

but Are we scared of dying or of Being alone?

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.

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?

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

flower petals fall into the sky
with all the righteous anger
they deserve
but they don't cry. they know
there are enough raindrops
in an autumn grey sky.

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?

someday i want to be with someone who doesn’t make me afraid to embarrass myself. i don’t really know how to get to that point in a relationship or why i need it so badly. i guess i’m afraid that no one will ever think i’m worth the work. i don’t know that i am.

no matter how hard i work i just build a bigger wall. in my effort to impress and attract i conceal everything i truly want validation for. i know validation is a bad word sometimes, i know i’m not supposed to need it--much less know i need it--but sometimes i choke on the sawdust of my own apathy and truth might be bitter but at least it has a taste.

i know your truth tastes better than mine, and maybe that makes you better than me. i’ve tried changing truths and i’ve tried pretending i don’t have any but even artificial flavoring has an aftertaste impossible to avoid.

maybe someday i won’t equate embarrassment with shame, and i won’t feel the need to change my name. shedding identities to avoid coming to terms with them is an impermanent lifestyle but it’s the only one that fits. i’m sorry sometimes i can’t see past what i need to fix.

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.

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

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.

yesterday you said i'm the best thing
but if that's true
why do you say i'm bad for you
when the sun goes down

. 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 .

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.

let blessings stain the skin beneath your scars

a single daffodil
burns
in the shadows
of the earth
as it turns
and we
still
can't
speak.

(do the comets sing?
                                             do ten thousand asteroids whisper when        
                                             our kisses sting?)

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.

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.

my love is not my love
and i know somewhere in there
there's a fallacy and
the feelings i feel are in
my head, ricocheting every
which way and i'm
confused,
i'm a little leaf in
the wind
pretending
to fly.
you
are a leaf
too. are we
falling
together?
does the wind intertwine
do we fly?

i think perhaps one day
i will write poetry
the way happy people do.

no inconstancies, the little blips
and commas in places they shouldn't be,
just so.

does this bring hope?
is joy found in predictability?
is contentment in life a reality?

just so. flowers in rows,
the old woman bending over
plucking weeds between her toes.

a period at the end of every
line i wrote. not literally, for lines
and sentence rhymes do not always coincide.

i must break off my thoughts mid-stride
to conform to this three-lined rhyme
forced melody is no poem to me.

yet see how this flows so innocently.
like the little ribboned pigtails of a girl
who has never seen anything bad on t.v.

she isn't me, but neither is this,
coincidentally. but how coincidental
can we be? another few commas and this is over.

not to me. fitting periods where commas
were meant to be is the only skill that comes
naturally.

that, and ****** poetry.
happy people pen happier words that
fit together intuitively. not me.

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.

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
.

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.

i’m realizing freedom is in reach and it always has been. i don’t have to change the things around me or inside me. nurturing gratefulness and peace and love has never been easier or more rewarding. i'm remembering the reasons i gave myself away in the first place and they seem silly now. the loneliness i associated with myself was always a lie—my independence and strength lack nothing but the things i never needed in the first place.

have you seen the way she holds them? she holds them in her eyes.

i'd give up a lot to be neurotypical

it's probably not okay to cry in the stairwell of a building you share with like a thousand other people. right?