It's 2 am and I want to know why my hands are still twisting knots in my hair, trying to busy themselves from writing out "I love you, sometimes." I don't know when I don't, but I'm hoping it's in me somewhere because if not, I have no hope to ever say that with any conviction. I mean, maybe if I was a little drunk I could pretend to laugh at you. But, really, you fill up my whole heart. I hate it in the way people hate beautiful things that they can't have, like a kid in a candy store. It is child-like, how I cry over you. And you don't notice, not really. I can see it in the way children pick leaves off trees and let them fall to the ground without second thought after the initial satisfying snap. Every time I see a sunflower, head bowed with the heaviness of its petals, I'll think of you. Snow reminds me of you too. In fact, most things remind me of you. I would say only sometimes, but that's a lie I can't even tell myself.

I watch myself fade and wilt in your eyes like valentines flower petals from their vase, falling onto the white desk dirtied with graphite and candy wrappers below. There's thirty one letters from colleges and three love notes left there to peel up at the corners and get stuck with bubblegum but nothing leaves the taste of metal in my mouth more than "Michigan". I'm terrified every day of you leaving. I'm more terrified of your hair being out of place and your smile not being the way I remember it. Do you ever think of the way it would be if you loved me back? Sometimes I wish you'd force yourself into things the way I always do when I'm fitting into prom dresses or looking into my own eyes in the mirror, trying to decide if they're green or hazel like my mom insists every time I fill out a passport application. Think of how my hands would look in yours, the way my chipped nail polish would match your veins, thinly creeping up your arms like you haven't tried to carve them out with office supplies and hours of crying in circles. Sometimes I think I ought to just kiss you, remind you that it's easy to fake things. You should know. Sometimes I dream of holding the side of your face in the bold and silently rotting static of my room and saying "let's run away" and we don't really go anywhere, it's just us, the very edge of the half moon of our shoulders touching, warm like sunshine on pebbles. Most of the time, I don't wish for much. I just wish I could stare into your eyes for even a second without feeling the blood run into my face. Or just that I could look at you. You feel like forever and a universe away and I don't know if that's because you're so perfect or because I only ever see you after your hockey games, which ended exactly five days ago, by the way. Not that I'm counting or anything. And not to say that I miss the way that when I hugged you, I could feel your shoulder blades and the gentleness of your hand on my back, but I'd give anything to feel that again. I never knew if it was as awkward for you as it was life saving for me. You still have no idea how much I looked forward to seeing you even for those painful few minutes where, despite us not making eye contact once, you'd smile at least three times, every time. Again, not that I've been counting. Maybe it was just because you were anxious, but that's okay. They say it helps. I don't know who "they" are, but at this point, I trust anything that holds hope to make you happy. To be honest, I'm not really even sure what your voice sounds like, but I know your laugh like I know the crooked tip of my nose or the smell of vanilla incense. It's all I can think about when I go to sketch anymore, but I can't get the lines right. Amen to that, because I never want to be so in love with a single moment again and because really, I never want it to be over. I just want to make you laugh forever. I just want to see the way your eyes crinkle like that until the sun swallows itself whole and then we all can't see anything ever again. I'd want it just like that, the last light flickering as you come as close to happy as you can be. I'll make you laugh until you're dumb and dizzy and maybe then you'll love me. And maybe you would have to be dumb to love me. But I'll still kiss your nose every night in my dreams and pretend I mean anything to you like you do me.

Dreaming of you keeps me awake.
And I find myself here in the same place everyday,
trying to write out the way my heart skips a beat every time you even look at me but
I know it's never gonna be anything other than what it is right now,
me drinking ***** until I can't see your face burned into the back of my eyelids and pass out every other weekend.
And maybe I'm fine with it.
Maybe the way your smile makes me forget everything I've ever known about myself, and love, and breathing is enough.
But it's in the way my hands shake when I even think of you looking at someone else the way I do you that I know I can't do this forever.
And maybe I'll drink that away too.

Every time I'm with you, I can see your eyes dull. Which shade of blue were you last time I saw you? Maybe you're just tired from work, maybe you're just tired of your mom telling you to get a job. Maybe you're just avoiding my question because you don't know how to answer. Maybe you're avoiding it because you're scared. Maybe you're somewhere far away from here.

I can see the way you look out the window. What are you looking for? Maybe an escape, maybe the trees are just in bloom. Maybe you're just quiet because you're reading a book, playing some stupid game or something. Maybe you're just sitting and thinking, maybe you're just as scared as usual.

I haven't seen you in months. What medication are you on? In what ways is it making you more depressed this time? What happened to your therapist? Has your mom noticed yet?

I sit in silent worry every night. Maybe it's just jealousy of the pillow you cry into. Maybe I just want to talk to you. Maybe I'm tired of losing everyone I dream about.

I chase after you as I drift off,
waking up with my hand reaching towards empty space.
The only heaven worth wanting is your smile and
I see your face in my dreams every night like it's all a beautiful broken record.
It's skipping on the part where you say
you love me back.
And if fate means being asleep forever,
I'll close my eyes and stay right where I am,
waiting for you.

Playing my cards wrong like
Jim Morrison prom night bath,
lavender and drug fixings,
we all just hope I went
missing.

Sorry I only love you
until I wake up in the
morning.
I'm on and off like
sunrise sunset.

My mind is stuffed
in a box
in the attic.
I'm a heartbreak
addict.
Don't ever let me heal.

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.

Oh son of beginners mistake
Son of pure unclean intention
Son of mothers midnight run to bar
Son of broken swan wing
Son of brokenness
Son of lack of sunlight
Son of ***** laundry

Boy of unknowing
Boy of drinking antifreeze
Boy of missing eyed crows
Boy of missing childhood
Boy of sorrow
Boy of stitches
Boy of afraid of manhood
Boy of afraid

Young God of suicide attempts
God of lying to himself that he ever wanted to die
God of lying to himself
God of lying
God of unholiness
God of shotgun misfire
God of unkempt basements
God of homeless dogs
God of death and life all at the same time
You ain't no God. You are a poser with wings and a capital letter to begin your wretched name.  

You won't be happy when you die, you are split between so many titles and you do not know which to choose. You are no one. No one. You are absolutely no one.

(Say, do you know the route to the nearest bar? I'm going to drink myself open, flesh off bone, apathetic skeleton, closest thing to happy. I'm going to drink myself away from you, this world, myself.)

As my lungs crinkle and deflate into themselves,
I'm reminded that breathing is easy
I just **** at it.

I hear Lou Dog bark- good dog- and hope he's still out there, biting pornstars because for sure, not all Rastafarian dogs go to heaven. The music's down here.

But you're just the most boring cliche with a pretty face.
And I'm still surprised you're on this side of the dirt.
What a conscience you have.

(Huh?)

I repaint the Sistine Chapel with only my tongue
just to see your face again.
Oh, your holy chocolate covered soul,
holy bird bone finger tips.
How you snap like a star and then burn again.

The sunset strings its rosary in beads of strawberry and mother's love as the day comes to an end. The light lays and prays.  

When you miss something, you think of the small, fleeting moments that you gave no attention to before. You start to think of the way she pronounced things, tongue smooth over teeth and so unlike you. You think of the way her eyes moved when she laughed, the way she touched your shoulder gently when she looked at you, blue eyes and butterfly pink lips.

I wonder what it will take to pry me away from you. I wonder how much will ever be too much. What weight will stop my heart from giving anymore?

I saw the way you moved over the kitchen floor, your small feet gliding on the tile, dancing to your own humming. The sun was stinging my eyes, trying to count her days and count her blessings.

It felt like God almost cared about me again.

But God doesn't care about me.
He doesn't care what you like.
He doesn't even care.

And if all good things must come to an end, then let me just say amen to everything that makes you you. Amen to the smallest of moments and the tiniest of hints that someday, the sun would burn out.

Talking to yourself in the mirror is more of a religious experience than getting on your knees and whimpering to the sky.

Today, 6:36 am, I got up and said "Good morning, Green Eyes, let's forget."

Getting home, 2:36, I wiped the blood from my front teeth and said "Good going *****, crying in class? What are you made of?" Sticks and stones, I thought. Sticks and stones.

A droning sound.

A year ago, you swallowed pills and opened your thighs, air crawling into places that air should never have the privilege (read: incredible misfortune) of touching, holding. I laid in bed, shined a laser pointer at my door for hours with "Goodbye Cruel World" on rickety repeat.

Goodbye cruel world, I'm leaving you today. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

A year ago, you took pictures of your snapped veins, wishbone fingers still gripping a razor, you smiling. I threw up.

Goodbye all you people.

My friend is going through what I did, caring. Caring a lot. Caring into the school guidance department and caring into crying the whole day. Caring until she can't sleep. Caring until the morning to repeat the cycle. Caring, slowly bleeding out/dying/wishing you were God, same thing.

There's nothing you can say.

I feel bad, I feel bad that your wrist split open. I want to butterfly stitch it for you, hold you, brush your hair back, and back, and back.

To make me change my mind.

What's the point in killing yourself anyway? Right. So I'll do it for you.

*Goodbye.

Hey great-grandma,
You haven't written in 7 years. My heart is hissing, what does that mean? Why won't it stop going so fast? It's beating the **** out of me, grandma. I can't keep up with it.

Dearest great-aunt,
Hey, where've you been? I've been stuck throwing up my lungs the last few weeks. Coffin shopping is a lot harder than it looks aunty.

Dear uncle,
You haven't even asked about my hospital trip. Nerve pain. Yeah, I'm okay, but I don't want to say "I love you" to my boyfriend tomorrow. No, he didn't do anything wrong. He just forces me to swallow antacids until my eyes roll back and I die. How long? A year and a half, we started dating February tenth. It snowed.

Hello me,
You haven't shown up in a while. Please call.

Love,
No Body

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'm watching my life be spit back to me, through gods mouth, God threw me away into the swamps of the ugliest parts of Louisiana, where mosquitos 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 me lot drinks a lot. He thinks he should quit a lot for his wife and kids who he loves 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 see you in front of me. 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 tell you to quit whining as she wrings your crooked spine. 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 mobs 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?

Hey kid, you've been dead a few weeks and I'd just like to say hello. The ground has its first December coat of fragile snow over your dead body and I know you can't feel the cold but I'll tell you right now, I can see my frozen toes, just barely move them, breathe up into the sky, Id be lying if I said I still cry every day. But, I'm lying to myself if I said that I'm not trying to take back your pain every day in a way that won't make your heart start beating again.

I wonder if those butterflies ever drank up the nectar from your blood, probed their soft tongues into the velvet of your cuts, those razor blade ribbons, oh holy romantic, how you bleed like Mozart and bleed like ballads of classic rock stars, how they whip your face with sour sweat and drugs and drugs and drugs until you find yourself half asleep, brain swept under the rug.

Did you know only 1.5% of drug overdose related suicide attempts are successful? Beautiful blonde martyr for an ugly catholic high school in an ugly state in the ugliest of its hearts, how does it feel to be 1 in 100? How does it feel to be a rarity, carbon pressed into diamond? How does it feel to be cry for a week, left in the grass to roll like waves, buried without a name and a face and a grave?

In the latest of solemn sleep deprived nights I press my ear to the chest of the 100th depressed boy I come across and don't feel Vicodin climbing up his arteries, don't feel Klonopin, OxyContin, Ibuprofen. I can't seem to find the one, who knows, maybe you were it and all my efforts really were wasted. All those nights I've stayed up late did nothing. All those knives I stole, all that blood I wiped away with t-shirt sleeves, all the blankets I've put around stupid shaking shoulders, all the bittersweet will this be the last time your skin is this warm hugs, God did they mean nothing at all?

I lock my jaw into a permanent silence, buy back time by putting my money where your knife is. I take bets on when someone will die next. I read the label on every bottle of Xanax. I roll over in my bed again and again, and try to put you to rest again.

Amen.

White lines on the kitchen table.
Your head, C10H15N,
Altoids box under the keyboard.
Your heart, C21H23NO5,
Syringes up your sleeve. ***** on your chest.
Your veins, C18H21NO3,
Dropping acid like the Aztecs.
Your tongue, C20H25N3O,
What will it take to strip your blood down
to the salt and the rust?
5 more Klonopin, 5 more Xanax,
you're on the floor,
a boring story,
I've heard it before.
Keep it far from me.
(You're not close enough. Please.)

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.

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

Have you ever met someone
that makes you want to grab their
hand, turn it over, and
gently press your lips
into the soft part
of their wrist,
tenderly scarred and
rich in its
flowing deltas of blue veins,
beautifully alive.
Someone who you want
to hold, hold
their shaking existence,  
through the rain,
clicking on the windows
of their ribcage,
through the silent
light of spring,
hard dark
of winter.
You would give
your head and your heart,
to see the sun shine on
the easy curve of their cheeks,
lips parted in a smile
like the dissolution
of ice.

Wash the soap from between
the folds of my brain

Lose my mind in the living room
T.V is all static

Panic in the dark
for what seems like hours

*Control is an illusion

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?

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.

I want to write about the debilitating soulfulness with which I love you and your broken heart and gentle hugs.

I can't seem to find the words to describe how soft the blue of your eyes is.

I can't find the right bat of my eyelashes to show you what my mind is wrapped around.

I cannot laugh in the right way to express bubbling joy, swelling memories.

My heart aches itself to the size of a quasar, begging to find a word greater than love.

Moon child dances over water
Long hair covering eyes, color not seen by man before, unimaginable
Fresh bruises of rose, lemon, lavender
Appear on her soles

I feel the heat of your shoulder bleeding into mine. We are laying in the grass. No- we are laying in my bed. No- your bed. The TV is on. You fell asleep in my lap playing video games. I'm wearing red lipstick. Moments earlier, I arched my back like a kitten and took a picture of us sprawled over one another. You weren't looking. My lipstick is red. My shirt is red. My skirt has flowers. Your hair is bleached on the top. I peel the blankets from us and now it's grown out, curving over your forehead in a w. You're wearing all these pukka shell and wooden necklaces. I don't know what gave you the idea. It doesn't match. I love you. I love you so much I giggle just tracing the curve of your nose. We watch YouTube videos slowed down and laugh until we fall asleep, your hip bones pressed into the small of my back. I open my eyes and we're back in 2015. We're eating pizza, but not too much, because your stomach problems are just beginning. You accidentally say you love me back when we part at sunset. The gazebo is in the background. It's always in the background. I walk away and find myself back at your door. You struggle with the key for a moment. We just got off the bus. You couldn't drive yet. I saw your dog, pet her on the top of her head, nose turned away from her rotting teeth. Your bird sings when we walk away and we laugh at how he hates us. I stop laughing and he's dead. Your mom threw him away. You were more heartbroken than you told your friends while you laughed in the library. I shut the door behind me and you're shaking your head no a year later, me asking if we can talk, last weeks tears prickling my mind.  You say you'll think about it. You don't. I do.

Two dead girls, flayed into leaves on the forest floor. Butterfly knife not so flitting, more like flying through the air, cutting whatever it dares come across. Mostly pearls, but then again you see a lot of baby opossums drifting up from the side of the road these days.

Cotton, cotton filling the mouths of anger hungry boys, not so sharp jaws and those dull blue eyes you see on every magazine cover. Who knew death looked so fresh dressed in tattoos and bruises that are the same color as your moms wedding night wine?

Tell me, boy, where did you get your emotions? Is that mania an heirloom? Or did you buy it from whoever first sold you that Xanax? Did you rip them from the heart of the first girl you told looked beautiful in blood?

You ***** ******* liar. You filthy thief of virgins' teeth, swaddling your broken skin knuckles in baby bonnets.

I hope God finds His way under your greasy fingernails, your greedy skin and stained teeth. I hope the waves that toss your thoughts only curl towards the bottom and your heart only strains it's sides to reach your father's ghost.

There are so many messy, sloppy secrets behind every self hating fool with a pension for roadside crying and cheap liquor shopping. A desire for so many I'm-only-trying-to-pay-off-my-loans ladies, covered in last weeks work and warm old men cigarette breath and guilt. I hope for all eternity that you find something worth panhandling for, whether it be disease or love. I hope God finds you in the sewers, whimpering your sister's name and your brother's license plate.

(The devil went to find what's his, down in Los Angeles where you last hid.)

Hey, Mr. Rager! Mr. Rager!
Tell me where you're going!
Tell us where you're headed!

This is an ode to all the lungs you've burnt, all the times you knew how hurt I was and am and how my heart bruises the inside of my chest, beating the **** out of me, trying to burst from my body, frantic, afraid. Oh- credit card fingers, syringe tongue, bloodiest of Sunday's, show me how to roll it, show me how to make origami of my bones.

I'm off on a adventure.*

To the fickle space between the folds of your brain, to the indecision, to the gentle curve of your shoulders that I trace with my palm, to the gaps in your happiness.

Mr. Rager!
Tell me some of your stories
Tell us of your travels
Hey, Mr. Rager! Mr. Rager!
Tell me where you're going!
Tell us where you're headed!

To the untouched spots on your cheeks, to all the noises that frighten you, to all the things that go bump in the night, to starving, to all the stucco paint, to acid flashbacks, to paranoia, to my knuckles, ****** from beating myself up.

I'm on my way to Heaven.

To the rolling back of your eyes, to ******* nosebleeds, to drunk driving, to the ***** all across your chest, to your mother's mother, to the way your eyes soften when you look at me.

Mr. Rager!
Can we tag along? Can we take a journey?

You're asleep in my arms, my hand in your hair. The world is turning a little slower.  

*When will the fantasy end? When will the heaven begin?

Bow Tie Noose

I saw you die in mid-January. Your caramel eyes rolled back white like ****** hard candies when you hanged yourself with the bow and bell I tied around your neck. I want to lay you down in a coffin made for kittens, old shoebox turned grave. I'll wrap your wrists in silk, cover your eyes with your hands, let guilt leap out of your mouth with a quiet gaseous slipping pop, death swelling your stomach just above your jutting ribs. This is the fullest you've looked since eighth grade, you've been starving and your blood is all drained. I'll put you under the only living thing to weep for you, a sad old willow tree. She's on her last leg and I guess, so are we. It will be summer, fresh lemonade. Shooting rabbits from the back of a pick up truck, ******* the blood from a pin hole in the neck. Dad likes them dry by July.

I'll watch flowers grow in place of cardboard. I'll remember your tiny birdy bones in your hands and see them melting to the flesh of your eyelids, nature taking you back to melted wax figure. Your teeth are more recognizable than your face.

When winter comes again, you'll wash up in the spring and the police will wonder who did this. I'll pluck a bone from inside your eye socket where it fell to rest. I'll look at your clothes, the new skin over your bones, it's all the same. Your cheeks aren't so smiley now that you're not in there to scare yourself into happiness. At least you won't be lying while lying in a grave, I'll keep your bones in the drawer with your letters and the police dogs won't smell a thing.

Its 11:30 at night. You, lovely you, talking about killing yourself while all I picture are your loose fitting shirts and dimples.

If dying was simple, everybody would have done it.

Nobody talks about the truth of overdosing. You'll be on the floor, puddle of ***** underneath your cheek, the last meal you ever ate stuck to your face, you'll never have felt so weak in your life, even when downing a bottle of downers. Hallucinate until you suffocate on bile. Or your heart stops beating. Or your lungs breathe themselves backwards, inside out. Your brain will be alive for 3 minutes, just enough time to regret it, 100 times, outside your own cold, twitching body. Mom will find you, fall to her knees, call dad from downstairs, and black out in grief.

It's not pretty. Your funeral will be messy. People you barely remember (a girl who had a crush on you in kindergarten, the person you told you were depressed that couldn't bring themselves to listen, didn't want to believe it, the girl who taught you to cut your wrists like that) will cry over your body like it was their own. They'll feel tears soak shirt, after shirt, after skin, after shirt. They'll feel your voice on the back of their neck in cold spells and hot flashes for years. Mom will wake up from nightmares, call dad, he's drinking.

And here you are, thinking it wouldn't matter.

I picture your loose shirts and dimples and how simple it would have been to say nothing, never let you brand my heart with anything but a weeks worth of deep regret in a month or two, maybe three, however much longer you can stand heartbreak. But it's not like that, I'm stronger than that. And you are too, you are too.

I want to undress the sorrow that bites the wings off doves, make it bear, make it holy, make it scream.

I want to sing to the anger that shakes your hands, beads the sweat upon your palms. I want to soothe it to sadness, soothe it to scared, soothe it to self-loathing, and then soothe it again. I want to rub its shaking shoulders and kiss its forehead until it is serene, sleeping in the backseat.

I want to whisper the stories from all my birthdays and what age means to the God that chokes the air from your blood and puts fear into the stomach of mothers. I want to calm the waves of your heart, be the lighthouse to the way you felt at age five, wrapped in the forgiving and fragile skinned arms of your grandfather.

I want to be the lung unchanged by smoker's death wish. I want to be the alcohol that slips passed your lips and makes you tell your mom that you love her, tell your sister it wasn't her fault, tell your dad that you're healing. I want to be the ****** that moves under your marked skin, the blood that can't pass the tourniquet.

I want to feel myself inside your throat, climbing to taste your teeth and thread string through the spaces between your words, make a tapestry of every missing apology.

I want to be the wind shaking the curtains of every girl who has starved herself, cold and realizing that a woman is not a body, a woman is the bearer of life and bearer of tenderness. A girl eating an apple, telling the grass that the moon is everyone's mother and will never let the tides rise or fall without a gentle tug on the sleeve of the oceans, "breathe".

I want to be the life that moves through the earth, the snapshots in motion that we call time, the peace that the bottom of our lungs must feel.

I turn my heart back to a time
when my silver nail polish
hadn't flaked off like
dandruff into the
rolling sea of my carpet.
My hand hangs over
the edge of my bed
as tears fall
down my cheeks.
I picture your face,
the gentle blue of your
gentle eyes and the gentle
curve of your nose, perfect
in my own mind.
I wonder how I ever
deserved to meet you.  
I think of your nervousness
and how I want to hold it,
arms thrown around its neck,
face buried selfishly in
it's shoulder.
How I want to press the anxiety
that fills your chest
into origami
cranes.
I cry and cry and think
maybe,
just maybe,
if I have cried
enough for the both of us,
that you will finally
smile for no reason at all.

A locked box has the bodies of three different birds, all blue, all lyricists, all beautiful and stuffed with Xanax and newspaper. I paid my childhood best friend's brother to taxidermy them, stitch up their stomachs once and for all.

My closet only has memories. A bracelet with a feather on it that smells like fear, looks like betrayal, **** dealer, track pants, self-proclaimed whiny *****. A painting I made when I was six. All the pills I stole from my boyfriend, thirty-seven. All the pills that would've knocked my world out cold, skin cold, heart still, pulse still, veins finally at rest. A knife a psychopath gave me. Yes, he was a romantic, and yes, he did ruin my life, so in essence, still just a romantic. A fox hat I bought standing next to one of my under appreciated best friends, recovered anorexic. He's at college right now, falling in something close to love, probably another early grave. A too big teddy bear from someone I thought was the formula for the speed of light once. He's trying to force feed pills and slip **** into all my friend turned surrogate son's sentences. I am wishing I could lay a curse on his name. His mother already did it for me.

A drawer beside my bed, packed full of ****. Candy wrappers, gum, crumbs, marks of my self-proclaimed obesity, all 120 pounds of me feeling like the weight of the world and everyone's eyes. My inhaler, because these lungs don't want me to run. Pictures and letters from the ones I love, because I'm a romantic. Plastic dinosaurs, dried flowers, pennies, dimes, lotion, Neosporin, a deck of Tarot cards.

I'm just a vessel for all the things I can't fit inside my mouth. I can't tell into you what I've seen, I can only pull out the receipts. I can give you the ****** tissues my boyfriend handed me. Tell me how your stomach retches. I can give you the poem a crazy person wrote me. Tell me how you feel his void. I can give you my heart. Tell me how heavy it all is.

A day in the life of an alley cat, struck dead on the least busy street in the smallest town in Nebraska.
1 am: Druggy, *** you money, ******, don't deserve love, not easy to tell mom. I think of you. Your lungs are begging for my scold. Control is the word you use when no other fits the sentence. You occupy my mind when I am restless, testing the limits of kindness and low voices.
4 am: Your smile, the warmest hot chocolate of your eyes, your knuckles, the baby fat that melted from you, it haunts me. It's like I caught of a glimpse of the wrong angel, the half rotten, beyond gone, but still glowing angel. I killed you with a .45 and a gallon of mouthwash. You dripped into the Earth as a puddle beneath my toes. Gracious Lord, do not forgive me. I know I don't.
8 am: Insomnia without poetry. Tired without body. Maggots without mouths. Catholic priest, without sympathy. God without mercy. Drug abuse, without the realization of undignified addiction. Suicide without the comfort of killing, certainty.
3 pm: Sentiment, true and real, above annoyance and protectiveness. I am now a ghost above a body, finally weightless, finally free of His hands.
6 pm: Joy breaks open like a candy, soft center.
10 pm: Life tears my fingers open, unwraps the flesh from bone like Christmas. I feel my tongue fall out. Dusty antique radios are cleaned, losing authenticity. Their songs scream, sounding a lot like Billy Joel, after the catgut snaps. I feel my mind crawl out of the china cabinet.
11 pm: Nothing. There's really nothing to say at all.

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 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.)

Nothing's gonna hurt you baby
As long as you're with me you'll be just fine

I think of how I held onto
your arm so tightly
as we crossed the street.
I said I was afraid
just so I could feel the way
your veins protrude and
your bones shake.
I just wanted to be
close enough
to feel your heartbeat.
I can feel it through the concrete now,
laying on the pavement,
watching the cars whir by
over me.  

Nothing's gonna hurt you baby
Nothing's gonna take you from my side

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.)

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.

(The day I met you, I relented: “Friend, do what you are here to do.”)

I flicked the gas card between my fingers. We had $50 to do whatever we wanted, maybe even take that aquarium trip up to Boston we had talked about so much. Your birthday was a month ago, you were then 17. This was the second birthday of yours we shared together and before you left- not before I told you to drive carefully, my love, and before you forgot all the leftover cake at my house- you kissed my cheek. I laughed into the naked air over my bed- Judas. You are my Judas. The Bible never taught me anything.

I don't think you know what anger can do to a person. You see, I haven't cried about you once. Not once, in one year. I have laid in the same spot where we first kissed, and I have not imagined your clumsy lips over mine.  I realized then you could love something more than yourself- as yourself. The heat from your shoulder never bled out of my body. But, I do not imagine much more.

And maybe I'll be here, standing in the spot where we looked to the stars, a spot whose coordinates will never be written in history books, a spot with numbers I have no reason to remember but I will, and I will be screaming, where are you? Where did you go? Where did I go?

But I know exactly where you are. I will know you are lying asleep in your too-neat bedroom, the one blanket you had before me pressed over you like origami. I will know you are not thinking of me, and definitely not dreaming of me because you do not dream.

And I will know that when we were 15, we dreamed about 18. You could finally drive to who knows where, the window of your car down, music as loud as the law allows, the soft Cali sunlight sainting you. But now, my Judas, you are a birthday and a lifetime away, and where you are now and forever is wherever I left you when we last held hands.

(Today: “I will not kiss Thee as did Judas; but as the thief, I will confess Thee: Lord, remember me in Thy kingdom.”)

Dearest Unreal and Unforgiving God,

It's three weeks to the day an old friend killed himself and I'm counting the ways I've changed.

My world is still upside down, even though I've stopped crying now I can't stop reimagining life in ways to make it tender again.

I swear, I've held my hand out to everyone I've ever wanted to and it's not enough. I can still feel myself falling so incredibly short.

How do you explain to someone how softly you felt for them while they shivered in your arms, how all their scars seemed to run through your heart, tugging your sleeve towards the direction of "I want to love you more and more until you love yourself."? How do you tell them you wanted to rewrite every suicide note, resign it with "never mind"? I can't began to find the words for "I want you to be happy so bad it keeps me up at night."

And hey God, would it **** you to make a miracle happen every once in a while?

I have wanted to spread the incredible, bursting compassion I felt when he died, that terrible, uncontainable empathy, but how is it that words fall short on everyone except I'm sorry?

I'm trying to touch lives in a way that November 27 will again just be a date. I'm trying to make it all right. I'm trying to be the light that could've lit up the dark and made the world turn again.

As you were taking your last breath I hope you felt this.

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.

Chloroform rag between my teeth,
just to get me to shut up,
"I miss you."
Feels a lot like cotton mouth, huh?
Feels a lot like scared kid,
like bruised back, shoulder blades,
like walking 10 miles for acid,
just so you can see things like
you're not supposed to.
But that's over.
Sweet like honey dew melon,
like honey drizzled so gently on toast, gold, it's all gold:
gold sunsets, gold hair, gold eyes, gold teeth, shining like the gold ring dad "lost" down the drain. Gold, stay gold, nothing gold can stay, gold.
Nothing gold can stay.
That's what I told myself.
And then the sunset came,
and came again,
and came 30 times
before I saw your face again.
Gold sticks to my hands like cellophane.
I watch my hair melt into a gold puddle,
waiting to freeze underneath your feet.
Hey, nothing gold can stay but
can you try?

The part of my brain that absorbs every person I listen to  
(I stash your body in the microwave)
The hour of the night that I finally breathe
(Birds chirp the tune of your taped double homicide confession)
The perfect silence after a car crash
(Father smashes the last of your family portraits)
A lost dog with more fleas than teeth
(The birch in your grandmother's backyard calls you back to its roots)

Maybe it's better this way
My God, I can't have everything I want
Maybe I can't love you

Maybe it's better this way
My God, maybe you're happier
One less hole in my heart
But you leave behind two

I wake up this morning, it's been thirty days since we last spoke. My heart has aged more than that.

I turn to my right, sighing out slowly, feeling my ligaments creak and my bones moan, put on my glasses, and have to push away the thought of you a hundred times in those few seconds. I get up and wear something you'd hate. I cry in a way you'd hate. I love you in a way you'd hate.

I wonder where you are right now and if you care about where I am.

(In case you're wondering, I'm lost in the sea of you. I'm lost in every memory. I'm lost in laying by the gazebo, I'm lost in counting stars, I'm lost in paying for ice cream, I'm lost in now-burnt-down favorite pizza places. I'm lost in sunglasses. I'm lost in sweatshirts. I'm lost in it all.)

Maybe, we're only pretty in context. Maybe this isn't what love is supposed to be. Maybe we were always all wrong.

But I don't care, I want your homemade haircuts and messed up spine and bony fingers, delicate like bluebird legs, and the way your eyes light up when you see me. I want to be where you are again, feel your arm around my shoulder again, feel your cheek pressed to mine again, feel your laughter shake me like a tiny animal in the jaws of you. I miss your chaos and disaster and starving and boy crying. I can't sleep at night knowing that you're not still wrapped in the letters you wrote me.

I'm trying to get over it, but I'm buried under the weight of it all.

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

Sink into the
softest bits of my
skin

Let me bottle
the scent of
your t-shirt
after you have
held onto me

Let me be the
gentle waves
that rock you to sleep

(A simple love)

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.

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.)