I want to take 2am walks through towns so small,
that cops are sleeping instead of keeping watch,
and street lights glow only dimly because  no
respectable person would need their guidance at this hour.

I want to tell teachers that their textbooks make me tired,
challenge them to teach me every subject with the trunk of a stately oak tree.
One that has seen more than we could ever craft into notes or test questions,
and breathes out a life source healthier for us than the toxic tangents
lingering in this academic air space.

I want to take my romantic notions of life
and press them into the pages of a non-fiction book,
so that when you tell me I'm naive,
I can present you with the research
that keeps your cubicle heart pumping.

I want to cleanse your body of its lead paint logic,
and use my lips to tattoo all the natural beauty
you've missed behind classroom doors.

I want to show you the beauty of broken glass in small town alley ways.

When I close my eyes I can still feel the swaying.
Side to side, back and forth,
constantly tilting one way or the other.
My mind is still standing on sea legs.

It's funny how much faster we adapt on the outside.

When I first stepped on that boat,
I didn't know where my point B was exactly.
Only that my point A was a place I couldn't handle anymore.
So I took on the sun and salt.
Before long my skin was a cocoa bean.
My hair waved with the water.
My fingers and toes grew calloused but quick.
I'd traded in "street rat" for "sea urchin".

You could see for miles on that floating piece of heaven.

Something happened out there, though I'm not sure what.
I didn't get off at the first dock. Or the second, or the third.
I'd lost count after awhile. The sea was my home.
I could fill a night with talks of trade winds.
I thought I'd made a home out of misfits and maps.

My mind hasn't quite caught up yet.

It doesn't understand why I left.
One day we stopped, and I just started walking.
Sand, grass, and dirt replacing soft worn wood.
The forest draped down around me in an eerie green embrace.

I knew there was no turning back.

I still have skin like cocoa beans, though it very rarely burns.
My hair still waves like the beautiful pacific,
but it's become decorated with flowers and leaves.
My hands and feet remain calloused,
but now they are stained with berry juice, and tree sap.

Digging my toes into the earth, I wait for my mind to meet up with me.

Your lips are a permanent marker.
Inscribing your love for me over every inch of my body.
They have written your name on my collar bones.
Covered my hands in your fantasies.
Left adjectives of affection on my stomach and thighs,
and turned my back into a portrait of your lungs.
Promising to spend every breath you have left with me.
You laid out our someday's, and sealed them with a kiss.

She was, I guess, contagious.

      An epidemic to people's hearts.
      It seemed her face was everywhere,
      just as scattered as her thoughts.

She was addicted to the thrill of it.
Watching people fall.

      She would fill her syringe with their longing
      and send the needle between her toes.

It was clear she was a ******
and she knew her veins would surely burst.

      How much can you take from someone else,
      before you realize you lost your self worth?

Faint and shaking,
yawns turned to retching.
Ready to lie,
but nobody asks.

My stomach is screaming,
but my mouth barely breathes.
I say that I'm trying,
we all know I'm not.

I'd rather be sick.
****** up.
Dying.

I'd rather wilt,
and that's the saddest part.

I spend Mondays pulling pieces
of glass from the bottom of my feet.

Every shard reminding me of you.
Every line of blood bringing out your face.
And I smile with a bitterness,
as I throw the pieces away.

On Tuesdays I try to make
everything symbolic.  

I sit at my window in utter bareness,
and whisper to the cold panes that if everyone
stopped lying, we'd all be left naked.

Wednesdays are the days I drink
only water, and eat only celery.

Hoping to purge my body of poison.
Hoping to drop another pant size.
Wanting to get high off double zero skinny jeans.

Thursdays I always attempt to draw,
but never get past the art of words.

It's so much easier to stay in
my comfort zone.  Hang out with
punctuation, margins, and lines.

Fridays have a way of
being rather nostalgic.

It's never a happy trip down memory lane.
Too many wrong turns to be made.
Too many *** holes to get lost in.

Saturdays I binge on pizza,
realizing how much I love to eat.

The strangest feeling I'll ever know,
is that of feeling full.  I'm so used
to feeling completely hollow.

Sundays are horribly predictable,
that I can always count on.

To diffuse my energy I break wine bottles.
You'd never believe how it feels to walk
over something you've completely destroyed.

When it comes to food
I don't have to say no.
Ana says that for me.
Through her eyes I read
calorie labels like death threats.
Together we write love songs
to my collar bones.
We beg my thighs never to meet.
Her touch soothes my hunger.
Ana tells me that pain
is just my stomach applauding.

Others come and go,
but Ana never leaves me.
Her name is stitched into my skin.
Tattooed on  my body
Till death do us part.

I plucked words from your mouth like petals from a flower and let them settle in between my bones. So that when you stumble home with fire in your fists, your once-soft " I love you"s would soothe my aching skeleton from the inside out. But petals often wither, and their silk touch turns to dust, and these days you don't say "I love you" to replace the ones I've lost.

I never got to hold you,
and I never saw your face.
I didn't even know you were
inside me, until it was much
too late. But darling never fear,
for I once heard it said, that
a love like what I have
for you, is never truly dead.

Sleep soundly my dear child,
wherever you may be. If there
is a heaven high above us, or
a nonexistent sea. I live my life quite
differently, ever since you left. I
like to think I'd make you proud my
love, if you followed in my steps.
For you see I'm training, so that
someday I'll be strong. Strong, and ready,
and proud, to hold someone, much
like you, in my arms.

At night I place my hand over my heart.
Feeling for the beat that means I'm still alive.
Still here. Still breathing. Still worth it.

I can remember the day you brought me flowers.
You showed up, shirt pressed, with that same sad smile.
I didn't want to tell you the truth.
That my lips had already known another man,
that my finger tips burned at the thought of his skin.
So instead I told you that I only saw you as a friend,
despite the weeks of rough *** and stolen time together.
After everything, how could I admit that you were so much more?
I'd already proven that you were clearly not enough.

Tonight I'll place my hand over my heart with tears in my eyes.
Praying that for once I'll be able to believe it's beat means I'm still alive.

It is often in the most mundane moments that I am caught by sense of perspective altering awareness.  Awareness of the ache in my toes from straining to see through the window of what might one day be.  Awareness of the truly humbling way that life can take everything away, leave you sweating against the rock floor, only to show you the beauty in having enough strength to pull yourself back into the light. Awareness of the gratitude that pulses in my veins for the people I have landed amongst.  It is here, in these moments, with pressure reminiscent of hope, disbelief, and wary elation expanding against my rib cage, declarations of affection catching in my throat, that the floors drop.  Endless free fall is the only capacity within which I understand what it means to adore another.  With feet firmly on the ground, I'm guaranteed to lose my way.

Hurt.
It hurts that you could leave me.
Over and over, again and again.
The same old scratched record,
being wound to play in a
room long forgotten

Pain.
I imagine that when my
heart broke for the first time,
fragile and innocent and young,
it dropped pieces into my hollow body.
So that every time it skipped a beat,
every time it ached in pain,
every time it swelled to burst,
I would feel it in between my toes,
wedged behind my knee caps,
stuck against my groin,
and resting in my fingertips.

Love.
It's supposed to be the glue.
Meant to stitch us together,
different patches of the same quilt.
But when left for us to define,
love has become acid.
Burning holes through our skin,
leaving us marked, marred, and scared to trust.
It is the venom coursing through the veins
of those bitter and dead to the world.
The air that fills the lungs of people
too afflicted by life's tragedies to carry on.

Thought.
You tried to hide behind it. You tried
to build walls out of your impressive vocabulary.
You fed yourself textbooks
and decided to learn the meaning of life.
Inside you pushed away your pain
and you replaced it with logic, but instead of feeling full,
you simply found yourself a new kind of emptiness.

Alone.
So tonight we lay in separate beds,
staring up at the stars and wondering
how they could possibly stay the same,
when everything else in our worlds
has become so very different.

Love is fragile.
It spins, a plane of glass,
on the pin point of a sowing needle.
Tilting, and twirling, and wobbling.
Unsure of where it will crash,
or if it will crash at all.

My love for you is ever-turning.
It shimmers with a beauty free of cracks.
My love for you is constantly skipping.
A pieced-together, scarred shard.

Love has many faces.
Like masks in a grand theatre show.
Waiting behind the closed curtain,
ready to break free for life's ******.

Our love is deep and wide.
A fire that fills my soul and strokes my womb.
Our love is steady and gentle.
A calming wind that comforts my back.

You can't understand,
why our love is so different.
You can't understand,
why my heart lies romantically with another.

He will always be my one.
Our futures are entangled with one another.
I wish you would see that.
Understand my love for you will never fail,
Just because we're not together,
doesn't mean you're not my friend.

I will light your way.
When the world tries to
shut you out,
I'll  be there each day.

For you see I've traveled,
the road you're on before.
It will get worse before it gets
better, but that's what I'm here for.

You're a special person,
don't you ever give in
to the people that will shoot
your hope. You must never
let them win.

When the winds blow too hard,
and the rain feels like hail.
When your knees are scraped with cruelty,
it is then you must prevail.

Because no matter how hard they try to press,
the air from your precious lungs. Remember
that I am here, and I will make you strong.

They told me to write about the family dynamic,
and even though they were careful to say

"The" family dynamic,

I was quite sure they wanted to say

"My" family dynamic.

The way I'm quite sure that when my mother asks if I'm gay,
and if that is the reason I'm sporting a gay pride belly ring,
that she is actually saying,

"I swear to God if you're a **** that's the last straw."

Catholic upbringings seem to only account for politely covering up
hidden agendas, not actually purging them in place of acceptance.

My family dynamic is the blank stare I gave my mother that day.
It is the uncertainty I feel on a daily basis. A constant debate on
whether or not I should send her fragile ideals about me spinning
off their axis, admit to being bisexual. In my mind I always look
her in the eyes and say something along the lines of,

"Don't worry mother, I could never be gay. I enjoy a good hetero ******* too much."

In reality I smile and shake my head.  Leaving her to go on living in a world
where daughters don't have premarital ***, or lose babies, or try to **** themselves.
In a world where her good catholic daughter could never be gay.

Word gets around about
a girl who never speaks.
She sits in the diner for lunch
every tuesday, and just stares.
Kids make it into a novelty.
Trying to taunt her into speaking.
Into telling everyone why she lives
in that broken down store up the
dirt road, but she never tries to
explain.  Instead she looks in your
eyes like she can see every bad
thing you've ever done, then takes
her coffee, and leaves. It's no wonder
that she isn't the most popular
in town. Eventually she'd stop coming to
the diner, and if anyone ever cared to
check on her, they'd climb through
the broken panes of a door that no
longer opened, and it wouldn't take long
to notice the ratty couch, the leaky sink,
or the empty and hanging open cupboards.
It would be easy to spot the holes in the
floor and ceiling, and the table filled
with ***** plates. These are all things that should
should jump out at them right away,
but instead they'd see the floor covered
with envelopes and paper.
And before they discovered her broken body
in the back room, they'd realize that every
piece of paper was a written letter, and every
envelope was over stuffed with them as well.
Letters filled with all the words she never
bothered to say, answering all the questions
that she'd ever been asked, and some, just
a select few, crying out for help.
In the back room her body rested, broken
at the neck and cold to the touch. Next to her
a final letter, about how she felt jealous of
those who never lived at all.

Judge me,
strip me raw.
Let's see if I
survive the fall.

Push to the limit,
bend me till I break.
Cut till you reach
bone. I need to know
what I can take.

Tell me what you
really think. Tell
me what you see.
Let's piece together
the person you consider
me to be.

Judge me.

Slapped hard by
hands of anger.
Your so-called care
sent me spiraling.

Vision blurry from
shock. Arms bruised
from impacting walls.
You shake your head
at me with disgust.

Is this my fault?
Do I truly deserve this?
Am I the tease you say,
or am I the victim?

Yelled obscenities by
steep stairs, I grab for
anything steady. Fear of true
injury courses through my body.
My heart whispers depserately
he wouldn't. My brain screams
he would.

Clothes hide the evidence
of his wrath. Shame seals my
lips like super glue. Brain now
quieted, my heart whispers
sweet nothings to me. Repeating
every time he's forgiven my
supposed faults.

Is this my fault?
Am I so deserving
of pain, that you must
inflict it?

I know a girl who tries to read people the way she reads books.
But people aren't two dimensional, and they can't be pressed into
page after page of dialogue and action. Black and white stand as a
testimony to truth, but reality comes in a variety of shades and
when her blood comes out red and sings a tune sweeter than any book
or bible written by man, she is left somewhere between fiction and non-fiction.
The badlands of indecision, where her beliefs search for a home built on rock
instead on the sand.

So much is lost in language, something I remember every time I fail to describe your eyes.  Maybe words are just the reality of life, truth without all the romanticism, but I can't help thinking that everything looks worse in black and white.  The newspaper tells me about the **** that happened down the street, but the printed words can't describe the woman's screams as she was pierced in a way that will forever leave a scar.  It doesn't give us the vindictive sense of power that the monster walked away with, still uncharged and roaming the streets.  Words can't breathe life onto paper, but that doesn't stop us from trying to make a body out of ink.  Something to hold close at night when sobs are held in and rib cages are sore.

Look at yourself
Lauren.
Look what you have done.
Look how far you've
fallen.
Look how far you've
come.

Look at yourself
Lauren.
Tell them what you see.
A woman so strong now
broken.
A girl so independent now
weak.

LOOK AT YOURSELF
Lauren.
Don't act like you're fine.
With the way you are
slipping,
you can't afford to
lie.

Look at Dean
Lauren.
Look at Lillian too.
They never got a
chance,
but that's not because
of you.

Look inside you
Lauren.
Look at your heart.
You would of loved
them.
But you weren't ready
to start.

Look at yourself
Lauren.
You are so strong.
He said what he
said,
but you know that he's
wrong.

You love him
Lauren.
That won't go away.
And if he comes
back.
Can you face what you'd
say?

Tell the truth
Lauren.
Yes, you were crushed.
And to forgive him might
be weak.
But I guesss that's just
love.

Look at yourself.

Mint green nails, trailing across your faded black tattoos.

The ability of bandanas to cover up out grown roots that I'm
too broke to touch up.

Long showers when no one is home to yell at me for wasting water.

The way your lips feel against mine, so safe and familiar,
and how your mouth tastes like a bad habit.

The white of battle scars against my summer tan.

Dirt, the dust on your
shoes, your pointed boots
that pierce the skin as you
trample over everyone you
meet, this is what I'm
worth to you?

It's certainly how you
treat me. Like a scratch
on your peripheral, just
waiting to be buffed out.
Wiped away without
a second thought. Not
even a hint of regret harbored
in your unforgiving eyes.

What did I do this
time? To upset the almighty king.
How did I breach your
throne? Yesterday we shared
the feast, today I'm left
without a drop of water.
Nothing to quench
my thirst for answers,
for answers to your
endless puzzles.

What do I need to do,
to make myself exist to you?

I like the way you smoke your cigarettes.
And how your forehead tenses when you think.
I like the way you hold my hand.
How you tell me stories.

I can never get enough of you.

I wish I could draw back the curtains,
peer just behind your eyeballs, to the brain.
Sit for awhile in your beating heart.
Kiss your lungs and beg them to breathe forever.

Tell me a story, just one more story.

I'd miss the way you smile at me,
just after you know you've made me laugh.
I'd miss the way we sleep together, the
way we lay intertwined.

I'll close my eyes, and pray I never lose you.

Life doesn't stop,
even if you don't know
how to keep going.

Everyday I still have to
wake up without you.

Snowflakes fall,
icy crystals, blanketing
my yard like thousands
of little fairies laid
to rest.

The wind wraps around
the trees, and swoops through
the hills, only to batter
against the houses
standing in defiance to
the winter air.

Inside, our hands and hearts
are warm. Steam curls in
ribbons off mugs of hot tea and
cocoa. Our feet hover next
to dancing flames, as little
lights twinkle between
pine needles.

This, is my winter.

Life is funny.
There is such
a thin line,
between good
and bad. Right
and wrong. Pain
and healing.

Today I hurt myself.
I watch my blood run
and I smiled. I smoked
a black and mild nice
and slow, thinking
about the benefits of
cancer. Dying.

Today I could have
stopped myself.  A few
breathes, a hot shower.
I could have left
my sharp edged friend
untouched. I could have
called someone to
enjoy feeling loved.

But I didn't.

Today I almost died.
Yesterday I did.
I wonder what tomorrow
Will bring me.

Iridescent bubbles pop,
an explosion of shimmer in
sunlit soap drops.

Magic wands in blinding
colors give life to miracle
sphere-shaped fairies. Meant
only to exist for brief
moments, disappearing at
the fingers of
earth-bound angels.

Tiny imprints dot the
shoots of green, that carpet
my angel’s feet from harm.
Leaving in return medals of valor,
earthy marks of bravery
from her romp through
tiny forest worlds.

Golden rays say goodbye
as they sink softly down to rest.
She lets her weighted eyelids close,
Whispering a melody so divine
it could only come from her mouth.

My lips touch her porcelain cheek,
Fingers dancing on her moonlit hair.
To kiss an angel, my angel,
this is what I live for.

The light fell through the window shades,
one sliver right between those amber eyes,
and it struck me how little I know of you.

How little I know of anyone.

Every day it feels like there is a new way to hide
from the world.  What are we all so scared of?
Intimate touches are minimized by the fear of
being left alone, and with no one taking leaps of faith
we've ended up with our feet weighted to the ground.
Cemented by our inability to push past indecision,
solidified by our lack of communication.

Your eyes may be bottomless, but that shouldn't
stop me from diving in. If I should drown in your
subconscious, I would revel in my lungs collapsing.

From stars we are born.
Atoms burning within us.
Traceable back to before
time began. It connects us
to those we never will meet,
stretching across galaxies
and piercing back through our skin.
As we are part of this universe
so it is part of us, making us larger
than most can accept or truly feel.
Breathe in your importance, and
contemplate the universe. As it
is nothing more than the atoms
inside of you.

Every minute without a word from you, was a reminder that you were thinking of someone else.

And every hour was another reason why I understood.

And every day caused another piece of me to go numb without your touch.

And every week reopened the wounds I had stitched up with your smiles.

And as the months have broken me down, I realize soon there will be nothing left to break.

Deep, dark and numb inside
My broken thoughts fall like pieces of shattered glass
Crashing at my feet with the rest of my world
Scarring up my skin as they drop
Forever marking me as something obscene

                                                                              Locked away pain,
                                                                            Makes the best smile.
                                                                         I’ll smile for you always.
                                                                           Leave you untouched.


While shaky fingers stitch me together
Pills make pain fade like magic potions
A wonderful shade of grey settles in my brain
The best I can hope for, all things considered.

                                                                           You’re really trying,
                                                                              I guess I will too.
                                                                       I’ll smile for you always.
                                                                         Leave you untouched.

Tempting old habits make my skin itch
Pleading the best kind of medicine
The pain that will send me high out of grey
But under watchful eyes it’s pointless to dream

                                                                     You’re sounding so happy,
                                                                        How can I not be too?
                                                                       I’ll smile for you always.
                                                                        Leave you untouched.

My rolling stomach won’t stop yelling
My racing thoughts won’t slow down
I could use a dose of you more than ever
But instead I’ll swallow hard and try to sleep

                                                                       I’ll smile for you always.
                                                                       I’ll leave you untouched.
                                                                       Safe from my madness.
                                                                       Safe from my hang ups.

Sometimes it feels as if I am tattooed
with all the roads I refused to walk.

Whether they made me who I am, or shed
me of who I'm not, it's rather hard to tell.

I suppose it's all the same,
since I kept on walking anyway.

You can't fall in love during the summer. There are no shivering hands or burnt tongues or worn out coats. Sandy beaches are a poor substitute for autumn leaves, especially in the Midwest, and the heat will burn out new passion much too quickly. Love requires coughing on bonfire smoke and learning the difference between grey skies and rain.

You can't fall in love during the summer, but that's when I met you, and I think I'm starting to realize that not every rule is made to be broken, but every broken rule is made with consequences.

You can't fall in love during the summer, I know because we tried, and look where that choice has landed us.

I've been so focused on trying to survive without you,
that I forgot the years I lived before I heard your name.

I tried for so long to make peace with who I thought you were,
that I didn't realize who you were actually becoming.

I've spent so many hours wondering why I wasn't enough,
that I failed to see how much I truly deserve.