I am a silent monstrosity in the heavy and deep belly of the earth
I sit, carving my teeth out with
Nail clippers, chiseling bone like soap
I melt through my tongue with acetone
Like wax
Like wax, I am, like wax
Still and dripping, falling faces and hiding places in the darkest parts of museum floorboards

I. I rest my ear to your chest and hear the thudding of foot steps down the stairs, Christmas morning. God is telling me to stop listening. He wants you to wait until 5 am to open the gift that is your rib cage. 5 am is when we bring out the box cutter.

II. I wipe the tears off your face. You clean up good, you look like sunshine, kid. You may be shaking but your bones are as steady and as sturdy as they've ever been. You don't tie something up and tug the strings without a little muscle.

III. I'm looking back, just through the telescope of a few months, and ****, do you ever stop shaking? It's not even winter anymore, maybe the reason your bones are so sturdy is because they're so ******* frozen. Wake that body up boy, it's 75 degrees out. You're not ******* cold anymore.

IV. This isolation you're feeling, it's just a feeling. You've never felt more alone, but here you are, sitting in a room full of people. Maybe you can't see them all, yeah, a lot of them are ghosts, but didn't they teach you something? Anything?

V. Can you offer me any hope at all? None? None?

I wait for peace to find its way into my bones and hair ******* with bows
by the train tracks.

I throw stones
that skip over a river like
r-r-records;
Sublime,
Bradley Nowell, slurring out
the same line
over and over and over,
something about a corner store,
a collection of words that when I sing them,
taste like July.
1, 2, 3,
the rock disappears.

A train passes by,
engine huffing,
wheels churning out a steady rhythm of
"Please don't leave me, please don't leave me."
Dead reggae and dead love,
tangled in its underbelly,
rusted metal guts.

I look into the river to try to find the stone I skipped again.
I think I almost see it,
dead weight,
a speck under the surface.

(Do you believe in ghost trains? I hear something howl every night.)

She is beautiful.
Her dress is soft over her body like prom queen thigh silk,
her hair running down her back like God  never gave up his gold.
I could see her smile across a room,
and even if it wasn't real,
(I don't know)
it was beautiful:
her hairpin curved lips and blue eyes that don't read
"Drink me",
they will not make you smaller
or bigger.
They will, however, leave you sitting under the hot sun,
1:43 pm,
simmering at the thoughts of speaking to someone with fingers so much more dainty than yours,
And a voice so much more like the dew on leaves.
You don't even know her.

Sunkissed freckles like creek pebbles
Resting on my shoulder, sunlight filtering onto my skin from your cheeks.
I am envious of every ghost that gets to tuck you in and knows what makes you tick tick tick tick tick
12:30
Quit knocking on every fold of my brain, they're not much different, they're all graffitied with your name, if I can feel your hand anywhere close to me.
Every creak of this old door has my head turning to find you,
Find you in the soft dumb center of this earth and my mind and my fingernails.
My hands, my hands, my hands, what are they holding?
Empty, are you so empty that you're going to fill your life with dead rock n rollers?
(Let me be the something that lifts the dirt from your teeth and the spoiled milk from your boiling blood.)

Let's teach something that's empty, to be broken. Let's teach a ghost to bleed. Let's teach a kid to be dead.

Get closer to your dad's gun, than your dad. Inch the barrel to your teeth, saw off the end and the limbs you don't need to hold it. Burst your blood vessels like fireworks, New Year's Eve. This is the dawn of your abandonment of everything you love. Become attached? Find a flaw. **** them anyway. They make you feel alive? Make sure they know that they are the reason you wanted to die in the first place. You love them? **** yourself. Cut yourself. Find a way to make yourself bleed. You cannot win, you cannot let yourself win anything. No, not a single thread of anyone's heart, especially after you pull the strings taut and snap them until they foam from the mouth. You can see their eyes flip up back into their head, staring at their brain to see why they're still putting up with you. This, this is how you know you won in the only way you want to.

Let people know just how to break you. You go into the bathroom and flick on the light, look into the mirror as it illuminates your ugly sunken face. The smokes didn't take a couple years off your life, you'd say it added around 10 judging by the dark plum circles under your eyes and brittle nails. Your reflection blinks laboriously as say your name, 3 times, slowly, and she does not love you. You are still not enough for her. She is still not here. You are still scarred and addicted and hideous. You are alone and afraid and still just as ****** up. Even your own reflection turns its back to you.

The addictive pain keeps you [in]sane. Your friends are all nonexistent, those who know you, don't know you. You quit the pills for the girl next door but you're just spilling cleaner, safer blood now. Your wrist never thanked you for leaving it alone, but everyone else soon will. ******* is your other name. ******* is your philosophy. Love you or hate you, you still hate you so what does it matter?

But hey, I've stopped believing in God but I keep seeing him everywhere. I've seen him in every ******'s poor eyes and their rough, calloused, sliced open hands. I've seen Him in the footprints left by kids in the grass. He's in every word I write and breath I take. You think I haven't wanted to kiss the forehead of someone just like you? You think I haven't imagined myself telling you it's gonna be okay a thousand times? If you want your love confession you got it right here. Kid, you can call yourself a pacifist when you stop beating the **** out of yourself. You're gonna meet someone who makes you regret trying to **** yourself slowly. Just put down the knife/broken glass/razor/ lost lover/pills/cigarettes/absent seatbelt/self hatred/lighter/memory and look up to the sky, the sun is shining fool. I love you and every dumb thing you do.

Quit quitting.

Mr. Brick Through Window
Mr. Holes Through Stomach
Mr. Foot Through Windshield
Mr. Knife Through Arm
Mr. Gun Through Jawbone
Mr. Teeth Through Heart

You are running away to a hell
That does not want you.

Go home.

I feel myself falling asleep on the staircase we sat on when you told me for the first time, out loud, that you wanted to die. I can feel the dead breath of winter. I can feel the slow drifting of snow onto my trembling hands and the unforgiving stillness of the concrete beneath me. I can feel your shaking and nonexistent forgiveness towards your own knotting fingers.

I can feel myself dozing off on the carpet you opened your veins and popped the seams of your skin on. I can feel the warm wetness of iron that once flowed through your arteries envelop my eyelids. I can feel your knife saw through my untouched hair. I can feel the soft edge of your cheek turn salty with tears. I can feel the cloth you gag yourself fill my mouth with cotton and the grooves of my teeth with formaldehyde.

I can feel myself awakening in the pill bottle that used to be full. I can feel the milligrams come in doctors note waves. I can feel the ***** climb from the back of my throat. I can feel the dizzy relief of holding back poison. I can feel your sinking regret and all 25 pills of its predecessors wringing your brain out.

I can feel myself opening my eyes in your casket. It is not empty. I can feel the burden of your body beneath me. I can feel the tough leather of your rope burned neck and the dull heat of my skin desperately trying to awaken yours.

Gone is sometimes not an adjective. He is a noun. And he is haunting my dreams.

I held you
As you cried
About losing me
That night

You loved campfires
Because your grandfather taught you
How to build them

And while I never learned
How to burn
I picked up a stack of paper
To throw into the flames

And I thought
That in a few moments
What I'm holding in my hands  
Would be just ash and dust

And I felt the very same way
That night

You are afraid
That you won't know
Until he takes you into his room
And shows you the lines
He carved into his thighs
With a kitchen knife and
He says he didn't want to die
The night he unzipped his veins
And cracked 12 pills wide open

You still are hoping he stops
But you know
He will not
So you go home and throw up
On your clothes
Just to take them off
Pretend its okay
And worry for another day

This is a poem about honesty. I cannot lie to you about how pretty this all isn't. I'm gonna do what I'm good at, loving people so indirectly it breaks me in two.

If there is any testament to my big and dumb heart, it's the true sentiment of anything I can say about the people I have met. Here's a few-

Dearest girl who flayed open her arm like salmon that I wish I could heal/dearest girl who I cannot describe her beauty in something as ugly as a poem/dearest girl who I love to love and love to want to give bandaids and butterfly stitches, I hope you're happy. I hope this day is shining brightly upon you. Otherwise I swear, I will speak to the sun Herself. I will tell her that her light is in the wrong corner of Eden. This place should not be a prison. You will make it out alive, and I will live to see the day that it happens too. I'll be there for you.

Dearest best friend with hair that faded to oil slick rainbow, I only got/get sad because I feel like I'm speaking right through you. I've felt the way you do. I wish I could raise your head from the clouds it rests in. I will just say, my beautiful best friend, your size isn't a negative imprint upon this world. The fit of those jeans isn't the confines of your worth. Think about all the time I've drawn you just how you are, your body is a masterpiece. Cheesy might describe me, but **** right definitely does.

Dear boy with tattoos and a **** good taste in music that I love to pretend to insult but can't even imagine hating, everyone loves you and I hope you know it. Sorry I don't Have Mercy (hehe get it) on you when it comes to the horrible jokes, but just know I can't find a single bad thing about you, believe it or not. Ask anyone who's ever asked me. And your dog, he's a plus. ****, I love your dog. Tell him I say hello.

Dearest least PC person I know and favorite infidel, by God I love you *****. Our terrible honesty is horribly inspiring and I don't know how I'd get by without your awful existence. You're a queen, and I hope in your kingdom the words "trigger warning" are never paired together for your own sake. Agree to never disagree, you're the cutest most ****** up person I've ever met and I wouldn't change a thing. Thanks for listening to me whine all the time and not calling the cops.

Dearest girl with beautiful hair, dearest girl who cares into crying in bathrooms and offices and in classes and in bedrooms, I know. I know how it feels to worry the bottom of your heart straight to the bottom of your stomach. I have felt the nausea of the impact of the word "hospital". I used to frantically pick up the phone on the first ring because I was afraid I'd miss the call again, telling me he's gone again and now we can't talk again and I'm sitting up all night again, crying myself into every dark corner of the school again. It ends. They come home, it ends. Love the way you love, because not many people can do what you do. There will be few times you feel this helpless, trust me, I've seen **** and then some. I'll be right here if you need me.

Dearest best friend with the unkept dyed blonde hair, scoliosis, and an unwavering love for me that I cannot even begin to fathom, I'm sorry I forgot that you were at your mother's house two weeks ago. I hope you were okay. I hope nothing like her ever happens to you again and I hope Cali treats you well and I hope the drugs don't **** you (I still cry every time I think about it) and I am still losing sleep over you and your stupid decisions and wonderful brain and perfectly imperfect heart. You brown eyed crooked back fool, I love you and all your dumb antics, cheers to you never growing up, just don't smoke or trip yourself out of the beautiful life you deserve.

Dear future star who I secretly call Wolverine who is not so secretly very gay and lights up every room he's ever been in, let's go to chilis.

Dearest two best friends that are only my recent buddies with the best eyeliner that can both drive (poorly sometimes, but nonetheless) and both make me laugh to the ends of the Earth, God bless your taste in memes and music.

To everyone and everything I have ever had the incredible pleasure or misfortune of meeting: When I say I hate you, every time I mean I love you. I care about you more than I care about finding out why I'm alive. I care about you more than living. I care about you more than I care about not losing you. I will care about you until you leave and then I will wonder how you are. I will say you ****** me up and I will mean it but I'm choking back that I still can't stop loving you. I still can't stop fighting the urge to stitch your wounds. I still want to play your favorite records. I still want to smooth back your hair with the palm of my hand. I still want to be there every time you cry. I still want to fall asleep with you.  I will pretend to be anything but in love with every human being on this planet, but I will be lying to myself and everything that matters to me. It will slip through my veins in endless hand written letters signed with my name. I'm shouting I love you to everyone, silently in the corner of class, smiling when you look at me.

You melted the Sistine chapel with your hydrochloric hands, and then turned to tears and rained only in the way that deflated balloons do.

I saw the tightrope wire of your tongue slip across your lips, the wings of cardinals. You whispered what I meant to you, feathers plucked and falling like dust in sunlight.

(Dirt. Dirt. Dirt.)

God left you in the undone, unrefined rough draft of his holy deliverance speech, his untold story of imperfection and righteousness that is not defined in angels or mistakes or choirs or deformed children.

I felt something snap, looked down, and saw my legs gone. I knew who found them, I only hoped you wouldn't trample the garden of Eden.

I. The prettiest thing I've ever done was hold someone while they cried. This was the most beautiful I've ever looked. She shook like a rabbit, watching cars whir by on the roadside.

II. I've fallen in love with strangers. I've fallen in love with familiar faces, and then fell out of love when I realized they were still strangers.

III. I had a dream my father hated me. I woke up, and I couldn't look at him in the eyes during dinner.

IV. I watched a deer cross the road today, her head hung low in the thick morning mist. I called her Daisy, and Daisy ran into the graph paper patterned trees of the forest. She disappeared as the fog closed in, dashing into the blank scene in front of me, the painted canvas of her back running across the page like a blur of everything I love about living.

Today, the Earth fell in reverse.

I watched a Western backwards, the blood seeping into the Vaquero's chest, his eyes roll forward, his challenger gripping his bleeding arm, the red spot on his jacket shrinking, putting his gun back into the holster. He climbed onto his anxious horse and rode backwards into the sunset, his intact body being washed over with shades of pink and orange.

I watched you trip in reverse, staring at nothing until you popped the shrooms out of your mouth, counted them and then shoved them back into your sweatshirt pocket. I listened to our phone call in reverse. I cried at first, you said something, shameful, then I reeled back, asked you what's the worst you've done, and you said you were okay. Ringing. Silence.

I watched myself in reverse. Laughing, looking at people I love, and all their wonderful dark circle shadowed eyes, messy hair, and dried tears. I watched myself stare at them from a distance, then I felt myself forget their names. I liked your tattoos and I liked your long blonde hair. I forgot about both of those things. I sat alone in my room, I cried, I took back everything I said. I shook off the sadness. I laughed again, fell into your [sober] arms, ran my fingers through your uncut hair. I forgot what your mothers name was, I forgot your favorite color, I forgot your bedtime. I forgot your name. I forgot I loved you.

I wanted to **** myself in reverse. I wanted to watch the bullet whip out of my skull, the bone fit together like puzzle pieces. The worm hole in my brain fills, my blood flows backwards.

My innocence is unfucked to me. My lips curl up. I am happy, I am smiling. My boyfriend takes his unscarred arms and wraps them around my waist. I watch his eyes frown upside down, he tells me he loves me.

I hit fast forward.

I notice your absence like an open wound,
found stuck to my sheets after a rough
night's sleep.
I don't know how it got there,
and I'm wondering what you smoked that you didn't notice half your heart missing this morning.

In the instant it takes a shutter to click and close, you will be gone.

We collected pictures of our perfect pretty smiles, your pearl teeth bear in front, while my lipstick lips, curled into butterfly wings, charmingly drift through the summer air. You are there, you are still there, where I left that you. Before the future became the present and you were no longer here, still there. You are where I cannot reach you.

I held that memory on the tips of my fingers, flicking a lighter close to its edge.

Your hair fell so perfectly over your forehead, but somehow, I still wanted to push it to the side when I looked at the photographs. I guess habit doesn't cease in an instant like the snap of a Polaroid or beat of a heart. When I looked at our pictures, I still wanted to whisper into your ear how much I loved you, chin nuzzled into your neck, fingers draped across your chest, your heart, your warmth. Nothing is permanent. Not even promises. Not even the visions of the kids, the house, the daytime dish washing, and night time monster watching, kids curled up in bed and us, checking on the floor, searching for what is not there and it's funny how even now, even though you're gone, I still find myself doing the same thing. Just alone.

As it caught fire, I watched our perfect lives fall to ashes in the shoe box at my feet, I saw the flash of your eyes and reach of my hand, choking me as it went. They didn't burn as easily as I thought they would.

Im hanging new ones in their place, but the dark spots behind the frames still remain, and your name is written in them.

I have been a lot of things to a lot of people. I have been the friend. The crush. The savior.  The enemy. The surrogate mother to hope. I have been the makeshift medic, twice I have been the future wife. I have lived through experiences that make me broken and cracking, beautiful and shining all at the same ******* time and it is so hard to put it in perspective.

The fragile, the broken, the beautiful, the incomprehensible, the incredible: It is all mine and I am in love with all of it.

I. Talking like we haven't before, me on your bed you on the floor, I tell you I love you and you tell me how you took a dozen pills.

II. We kiss like its our last, rolling around in the grass, every inch of you aching in some way or another.

III. I know this isn't the end, but I also don't know when the end is. Its crawling in my spine like spiders spinning webs, they want to catch the life out of me.

IV. Your brother screams "He wants to **** himself!" As I walk up the stairs, going home, don't tell mum, she already knows and she's ******.

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?

The night wraps it's dripping rime hands around my neck, catching sweat on Python fingers, their tongues flicking the flyaway hairs. It's nails creep up the soft cape of flesh of my throat, dragging their way up to my eyes. They peel my lids open again and again, jagged cliff edge knife pulling at thinly veiled corners. I can feel the vessels pop within my eyes, a New York New Years firework show of running red.

Dead silence is swept away by the whirring waves of a fan. I am awake and rolling in routine malaise. Guilt tugs at my heart and disappears in the instant I try to pin it down. It is frightful and flightful and with its fleeting nature, leaves and then emanates a trace of soreness in its place. There are no alarms and no time taking place. Everything is frozen under the fingernails of a great beast.

A dull tapping at my windows tells me dear fear wants to braid my hair and whisper gently in my ear. I toss and turn a few times more, trying to shake the animal off of me. It's nails rap again at my eyelids and they blister, hot tears spilling and I look up, staring death in the face and seething from something that I can't quite see, nor feel.

I'm chewed up and spit out, gum in the mouth of you.

I am riddled with the soft impressions left by molars on my back and stomach, I am gnawed and shaken like a bone in the jaws of everyone I love.

I am hollowed out by turpentine stomach acid, stripping me of my insides. I purge what is left of my rag doll body into the sink every morning after looking in the mirror and seeing nothing but bones.

What used to be eyes are just holes.

I am envious of birds and the way they never seem to be seen dead, how their thread thin porcelain bones break in silence and even sprayed and flayed, their wings still taper perfectly. When they are fallen angels with eyes rotten out of their skulls, they are still angels and I am just ash and cracked ribs. I am concrete break, I am gentle bearing of dead life, I am dulled claws, I am mothers weakness, I am fathers burden, I am small afraid, I am just earthly unworthy.

I am jealous of the albatross, her sleek flight and winged eyes. I am envious of the way she can cut through air and tear through broken clam shell seams, find flesh through rock. I am loathing of her pristine white body, her untouched and unbothered brain. I am looking right at her bold and light breast, the blackest parts of her towards the sun. The rime of her feet is nothing compared to that of mine, the mariner, floating face down in frozen waters that she finds delightful. She is simply angelic, simply heavenly, simply God herself.

Hummingbird tells me child, you are not light enough for flight. My dearest angel your wings are just clipped but oh? Who holds the scissors? He takes off in a gust of sweet summer wind, that I so often chase.

I hear the chickadee calling my name and telling me "Young goddess of pain and power and love, seek not the answer but answer fast to the call of difficulty."

I pick apart your bones

just to see if there's any flesh left.

I'm looking for the last of your cologne.

I am looking through your clothes, trying to find one strand of your thread-bare hair.
(Was it ash blonde or ***** blonde? I swear it was more ashy.)

I don't know where I lost you, where I left you, maybe it was in the soft cradle of my bed as you waited for me to turn over the record.

I don't know. I don't know what the curves of the bird bones in your hands look like anymore, and I can say the same about the size of your eyes, watching me always.

But I can tell you I miss you, I miss your head resting on my shoulder. You're so much taller than me, and I can feel myself lowering what I had felt into the ground, and I swear, if you weren't so high, you would have noticed.

(Everyone I love falls asleep.)

Day 1: You're always shaking, you're like the grass under the whirring blades of a lawnmower. I laugh at that. You're so funny when you can't breathe. You're so funny with your scars, hidden beneath sleeves like white soldier grave stones, underneath a blanket of shaking grass, tall grass, dead grass, laughing grass, long forgotten names. Like, like, firing squad death row under sheets of blood- no- fallen brick walls. Civilians, awaiting rescue. You tug at your shirt awkwardly, I am staring.

Day 6: What are you asking me now? What? Them? No, they don't hate you. The stars with molars, canines, and needles out their sides don't at least. You're asking me about the fish? Scales, fins, aquatic? The star fish with self-esteem issues doesn't mind you. He's just selfish. The narcissistic parrot fish loves you as much as her own reflection. The high strung cat fish is kinda infatuated. He's something else. The shark? She thinks you're ****, but don't tell her I said that. You won't? You never do. I like that about you.

Day 23: You been okay? You haven't been asking much about me lately. Me? Funny you should ask. I'm not sick. Not now. Haven't tried to bash my skull in in a week, it's progress. You? Oh ****, that's too bad. I wish you'd stop opening up your forearms. I wish you'd just stop popping pills like after Chinese food dinner mints, bursting them in your stomach to spread like fog, milky white to drown out whatever your drawing from your wrists.

Day 72: You're drunk again? Jesus, what will it take for me to leave you? You've already bitten the hand that feeds too many times you sloppy wolf puppy you. I mean, sure I waved it in front of your face but don't you know your own teeth? *******, quit throwing up and get back to work, paint me a pretty picture pathetic *****. Put down the knife or broken glass or razor or whatever the ****, I don't want to do that anymore it stopped being interesting after like, the fifth time. Yeah I know I said I cared! I know I said I wouldn't stop caring, wouldn't leave you! But have you ******* seen yourself? Go ahead kid, count those scars, make some more, whatever you do in that basement of yours. I can't stand you! I can't stand your stupid brain, you're always crying what's up with that? How old are you now? Right. My point exactly. Jesus Christ, shut up for once.

Day 95: No wait- ****- sorry. I didn't realize. Hey, you know what sweetheart? Let's shake hands. Your end of the deal? I won't be the reason you **** yourself, you stop making your arms look like bulldog wrinkle jowls, or like, sliced bread, cracked sidewalk, blistered vein soup, running like drippy little kid noses, whatever- just make it stop. I won't tell you all the ways you fall short in 3 words or less. Deal? Deal.

Day 103: Just kid- keep breathing. I won't do it for you. See ya', have fun ******* yourself up and over.