O child of golden thread, sunshine, mothers mistake, I cannot imagine what you felt that night. I might just throw up on your behalf, half of me is feeling just golden and the other is cigarette sick, warm *** breath on my neck, exhale out and inhale in, let this nightmare begin, so help me God pull me out from under the bed or I'll hit my head on every board until I'm nothing but a bruised and limp body, I won't have a name.

Let's play the waiting game. We are waiting until one of you says it, "You win. Can I leave now?" I play this a lot too, were not so different you know? You and her and me and him.

**** him and his warm forearms, I'm watching us on screen like a movie, it's a tragedy, the way he flays those forearms open on screen, just shut up! All your good lines have been cut, cut, cut. But I love you, oh god I love you like the moon kisses waves and the sun leaves it's imprint so permanent it goes into some people's blood and they die. Do you have the sun in your blood? Do you have too much sun in your blood? Is that why you let it out? I can feel hot cancer bubbling in the trenches of  your arteries when I feel your pulse and I hope you can bear radiation because I'm not letting go without saving your wavering life.

But I digress. This mess doesn't belong to me. I forget who's blood I'm wearing. This tearing of flesh comes in puffs and in dull knives. I don't recognize the pain until it is dripping on your floor, half past four I am freezing, you are wheezing out cannabis, and he, he is alone in a basement, rope burn pending. God is sending me his best wishes and Mother Nature is sending me her doves' kisses but I am only speaking in a foreign tongue, "Let me go home," I scream, "Let me go- home."

But O child of discomfort and discontent, I don't know which of you I am speaking to. I can't ignore your eyes. I can smell it on your breath, that lonely sadness. That tongue in cheek, 10 cents sadness. Don't quit breathing, just quit breathing in the wrong things.

I can swear, when morning comes, you'll wash off all your skin and grow something a little softer.

I'm watching my life be spit back to me, through God's mouth, God threw me away into the swamps of the ugliest parts of Louisiana, where mosquitoes don't dare lay their eggs. This is where the bodies of eagles rot and pedophiles and racists scrape up road **** for what it's worth and I am left searing on the road in the shimmering heat, waves from tar, crows circle in black masses, mass proceeds as the church burns, burn me with it, gracious God. I'm begging you to make my ashes worth something.

God sings out "Dastardly bastardly catastrophe girl, downing whole pill bottle model girl, where are you?" You called? I'm sitting in a parking lot, thinking how the man in front of ocean state job lot drinks a lot, I'm waiting for my mom and nothing in the world's more scary than waiting for what you call protection. The man drinks a lot. He thinks he should quit a lot for his wife and kids who he loves a lot. I knew a guy who smoked ***, quit because he used to do it a lot. That man from the parking lot, he bought himself another bottle of liquor with his wife's credit card. Life spins around me and I don't have time to keep up. I think of that a lot.

Beast of skipping stones, slip over me like the snake you are, wait for that Saint to catch you, hit the nail on the head and let it crucify you.

December gray makes its way into your old house, the one which you know which walls you were slammed against. Your mom sits sipping coffee in a chair.

She whispers, "I could **** you with kindness but let's see what's laying around first."  She wants to make blood soup out of you, she'll make it so you have a chipped spine, tell you to quit whining. She wants all survivor, no guilt.

Hey, I heard if you get high enough you can forgive yourself. I heard if you drink a lot you stop thinking. A mob's a mob all the same even if they're with you so let's make it like this, an army of drug addicts that sympathize with you. Holding needles and spoons and blunts and razor blades with you.

We sit under the stars and look at the sky a lot. Does the night sky ever look like it does in photographs?

Dear God,

I don't know if you know this but we're counting on you. I don't believe in you, none of your healing touch is true. There are no pearly gates, no wise men, no father, son, and no holy ghost. There's just *******'s trophy little girl swaddled swamp bottoms and dumb men, just a ******, a suicidal-wanderer-mothers-help-squanderer, and teething-on-baby's-flesh demon.

God, you haven't cured me, or my boyfriend, he's still bleeding on the occasion, and not over candle lit dinners either. God, can't you see we're seething? God are you even listening? God are your ears sewn shut? Did some shotgun blow them off? That reminds me, God, that's your job. Please take away the shotguns. I don't want them anywhere near anyone, especially certain someone's. I'm talking about cops and angry fathers and kids taking steps towards the edge. Our freeways are ***** enough God.

God, you've let me down. I'm screaming everything unholy your way God. You're pathetic. Where is the miracle I've been asking for? I'm not praying God, I'm on my knees and begging, like you told me to. Where's the saving? Where's the grace and goodness? All I'm seeing is terror God, all I'm seeing is your face, laughing and crying at the same time.

You're a disgrace.

Hi my names Lauren and I love things that can't speak.

Hi my names Lauren and I love things that break their own bones and choke on their teeth.

Hi my names Lauren and I see kids with bruises, kids with no excuses, kids with cuts, kids howling at the moon like mutts. They're begging to get out of their skin and into a more feral suit, they want their bite to be worse than their bark, hang themselves in the park, finally be noticed, glowing smiles like that of an alley cat, spat out blood last week, "must've been the pills, that **** kills."

Hi my names Lauren and I forget my name a lot. I write it in the hearts of heartfelt hoodlums, not so brave victims, mothers' worst nightmares, mothers who don't care, boys who dare set themselves on fire, light it up ******, you aren't getting any brighter.

Hi my names God and I ****** up.

Hi my names Lauren and I talk to the dead. They tell me about the papers they keep under the bed, poems no one reads and suicide notes with things unsaid.

Hi I'm Lauren and the dead can't dance when they speak. They're not too steady on their feet, dangling from rafters with chairs beneath.

Hi I'm Lauren and I ****** up, you ****** me up. You won't talk to me, and he won't look at me, and dad can't stand me and mom tries her best to understand me and I once hit my head so ******* the wall I fainted. Yes mom, it was on purpose. I thought we painted that pretty picture in my blood months ago.

Hi I'm Lauren and I write poems that don't lie about the truth, I write poems about depressives, lost boys, starving boys, ****** boys, and my boys. Those all go hand in hand. I write poems about heartache, bone break, undertake, and personality fake. These are all the same. I write poems about things I've seen, things I've done, things I've ******, and threads that were spun into ropes tied into nooses and put behind the pile of ***** laundry on the floor. I write about pills in dressers and knives in scabby skin and how much I hate god but love his children and how my brain is broken and I'm still stuck hoping I'll be left with something to write about next time I forget my name but can remember yours.

Why is it that I can never write about myself? Why am I a hollowed, wilted wallflower? Why is it that I tell the stories from the viewpoint of someone I love? Your mother, she was a cruel and twisted woman, your mother she force fed medicine down your fragile swollen throat, tired of screaming. He ran in circles, she picked apart her wrists, fingers tripping over scabs like a minefield. She wrote a song and faded away, chopped vegetables for skinny soup then held the knife to her belly, swaddled in lost lover grief, cookie crumb hangover, swallowing sadness like dessert until she throws up and dies. Boy tells her she is ugly. She is suddenly on two diets, one where she sheds tears and one where she sheds pounds. Your hair is long. Your grandfather says over my shoulder, ghost that doesn't like the confines of a grave, he tells me "Wiffle. He needs a wiffle." Your hair covers your eyes, acne, you love to watch it fly. You watched yourself fly, maybe a foot down, from a noose. You hung and then the rope cracked and the air had to let you go, concrete caught you. You told this story and I thought maybe God is concrete and he just takes us back. She has no mother, no lady to clap on her wedding day, well maybe a step mother, but who loves her anyway. She had long hair but it died and her dreams flew away in October as she cried, she didn't **** herself, she was **** sure. And him, he who touched me and then kept his hands to himself, smiling to the memory of me crying, looking up, afraid of what I have to touch. I am still afraid. I have been torn up dozens of times, my insides spill out, but of all the things I spat I cannot spit out abuse. Forgive me, mom. I can feel bile crawl up my throat like sour milk, forgive me God.

I see myself in you all, but I can't bring myself above boring. I toss pills between hands but they never land in my mouth, it's too full of stumbling apologizes and sacrifice. Of course, I'll take care of you. I am happy, so happy until I am sad and then I am as good as dead.

I love my boyfriend. I love him and his spotty skin. I love my best friend, all 5 of them. I love my mother, father, my young, impressionable and thoughtless sister. I love myself at her age, so tender and sore, broken and cracked open in places young girls shouldn't be. I had my heart broken at 13 when the boy I liked said I was ugly. I had it broken again when the boy I was in love with touched me. I had it broken at 14 when the boy I loved dumped me, even though I wanted to leave him, let's just be friends, I said. And we did but then I was 15, and I had my heart broken when my boyfriend tried to silence the ringings of my I love you's with pills. The story doesn't end, sunshine does not go through scar tissue it rests on top and burns, my heart is bleeding red. I bang my head on the wall to spill it on the ground, I stand tall when I say that I am alright, I do not need to stay overnight at the hospital I am not going to **** myself I just like the idea of my nose bleeding and mind receding and then my heart stops beating, I'm good. And I am happy, I am just sunshine, but when will this love that keeps me going become a burden? When will I grow tired and crumble beneath the weight, the crown of a queen weighting too heavy on my bruised mind. Love thy neighbor, and I do. We are all one in the same, and I do know it'll all be alright.

I miss your absence like curdled milk misses it's white. I miss the sourness of your hair running through my fingers.

I miss your absence like an anorexic misses their bones. They go searching for them, ripping up flesh and drinking water in place of anything, filling the hole in their mind that can't be filled with cake. The sweetest of chocolate cake, frosting topped grave marker. It can't be filled. Cannot be filled.

I miss your absence like winter misses her green. She covers it up, buries it beneath such a heaviness. It sits upon her chest like white elephants.

You hold yourself like a hairpin turn. You are sore, aching from sleeping on your stomach too long. You are swaddling your hunger in loneliness. You are the weight of every divorce paper filed in Massachusetts. You are Greece's longing for her peace. You are finding yours in the light, dark suffocates your water balloon lungs. Your wiry, 6 foot frame is suffocated by 120 pounds. You are suffocated by me. I am filling my lungs with water, holding my head under what is blue and the waves crash over my spine like clockwork. I count to 3, I pass out and see your face in front of me, pale and gasping. I am hungover on Windex. I make bleach cocktails like mother makes her with anything she can find before she kisses her knuckles.

I don't wait for winter to come, I dig into the earth and find her, beg her to cover me in what will not melt. I beg for a grave as infinite as the fear that shakes me. I wish I could be alone, dear nature, why does responsibility choke me? Why does terror and trauma push its teeth into me like a wolf into sheep? Why can't I sleep without awaking? Why?

I. Look how far I've gotten living like this, kiss my angelic attitude goodbye when mania arrives because I won't be able to control where I stick the knife. You can't find me in a cell no, this isn't no Hannibal Lector story.

II. There are a lot a lot a lot of things people don't understand about depression, like I wanna **** myself a lot but I can't tie knots. But tying the knot isn't as important to me as tying the one 10 years from now with a man with brunette hair and eyes just like yours. He will have skin as soft as your mothers old rug.

III. I can feel the world turning around me and how my poems can't define me. I write a lot of poems about sad ****, bad ****, and more sad ****, but all that sad **** amounts to one happy girl. You forget I spit sunshine right into the face of tragedy. And sometimes I find good luck charms in the form of bottle caps. And those brought me a boy with an Irish name.

IV. This is the silence of the lambs, I have learned to live with it. And you're gonna be taking butterflies out of my throat because you bet it, I'm screaming color into this gray world.

V. It puts the ******* lotion in the basket or else it gets the pills again, and temptation is far worse than death, isn't it?

VI. We covet, Clarice. My brave starling, what you haven't seen is what I have, flight. Bodies flattening on the concrete of Boston is a familiar memory, I haven't lived it but I have seen it.

VII. We all have our lambs don't we?