How holy the night looks, dressed in its crushed velvet gown, folding in all the delicate and beautiful places.

I tuck my grief into bed beside me and as I feel it's cold heat, its head careening onto my shoulder, I wish I could have your thin fingers lapping over my wrist, your delicate and blue beauty settling into the space next to me, left by my own two careless eyes. I want to feel your body curled up beside mine, safe and righteous in its temple of quilts and comforters, safely lullabied by a 10 episode Netflix binge, popcorn strewn on the carpet like exploded snowflakes from when I tried to throw it in your mouth, missing because I shook with butterfly laughter.

I want to take your sadness and whisper it to a memory. I want to kiss the fading and cooling parts of the sun back to life. I want to taste what every word you've ever spoken sounds like, feels like, lips on biography on lips on pearl's surface. I want to hold your heart like the wildly beating wings of a tiny bird. I want to love you so much, so beautifully, so genuinely, so big and wide and lovely as the ocean, so that love is spoken back into existence.

You open your jaws, wide as bone allows.
From the spaces between your teeth
people fall like blood-heavy snowflakes.
Grandmother, brother, mother, daughter,
all made up of paper-mache.
Everyone in front of you sways,
backs arched, lips curled,
curdled like milk in the summer’s heat.
They protect the fragility flying over them.
Wishing cracked and broken things whole.
They fold and tear like origami. Your
brain illuminates itself, paper lantern.
Brightening the thin walls before you.
The weightless, the worldly and the writhing.
They breathe easy.
They peer into our lungs, divulging our restlessness,
our dreaming. Only their synapses
remain, blood slick;
they bind and unbind to yours.
Consciousness ends and consciousness begins.
Consciousness ends and blood begins.
We are unholy Goddesses.
We are unholy goodness.
We are unholy and unbroken and good and God.
This is the only form of song, the pitch from our neurons,
the blood beneath our fingernails, the swaying, the swaying,
these minds and minds
and the never-ending
mindfulness. These crawling, floating,
grieving, forgiving minds.

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?

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

Stay in bed
Sometimes turning to my right
Until I close my eyes

I feel my face turn moonlight silvering with tears, midnight. You're off to Boston, he's off to sleep, I'm off to the last time I remember seeing my dead old friend's face, his veiny arms, my unknowing.

I can feel my heart settle into a place in my chest, not occupied for the better part of a week. I've been distracted, making choices that will probably **** me in a month's time.

Cause when I came home
I’d lost thirty something pounds

I think of your little nose, scarred legs, tiny laughter shaking your tiny body on this tiny Earth in this tiny space we exist in.

The space we exist in. I think of how small of a box I am contained to. My fingertips will never reach further than I can see.

And I won’t be nice to anyone
Because I don’t see why I should
I don’t see the point

No amount of tears will bring him back, that blood was stilled a long time ago. No amount of my effort matters anything because you're too many months ahead of me, too many heartbeats away, too many lives into it.

I just pick up and drop people like peaches- bruised, unholy sweetness, ripe. I bite my own tongue until it is bubble gum. I want to be a better person.

I've been working on it. I think you're getting me there, somehow, someway.

I won’t, I won't get clean
For the rest of my life
I won’t be nice

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.

You're gonna do this like,
Johnny Cash.
Pills, pills, and public drunkenness until
I love you.
More.
"June Carter, will you marry me?"
Well, I'll tell you Johnny, let's see you walk the line first,
Sober,
Say your A B ******* C's, darling.
Say them once and say them twice,
And say it when we're not being watched,
*******.

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?

Hey, grandpa. Well, technically, great grandpa but who has time for that many words? My hearts runnin' on empty, you see, and you know a thing or two about hearts. Do you know what time it is? If Marguerite heard me on the phone, she'd have my head. Well, let me just tell you, I haven't heard from my best friend in a month. I'm starting to think ill never be able to feel my fingers again. I'm really starting to think that I'll never be able to tell pink from gray again. I'm starting to see ghosts, grandpa. They're these big, melting wax figure, mummified soldier, lighthouse-eyed things. They smack the air with the scent of carrion and roll in the smashed jaws of a mother opossum, snaggle-toothed roadkill no one mourns. Their eyes drip puddles on the floor. You'd know something about this, right? 1943, does it ring a bell? Hey, no. You can't hang up. You're the only one who's seen this type of ghoul. If you heard the way their voices overlap and churn like the great belly of the ocean, you'd see where the twang of my heartstrings echoes. You need light, candelabras, great fire places, the first four light bulbs Edison ever spoke into existence. The sun will rise and set again, but UV light only can reach so deep under our apostate skin. Watch as the universe burns itself into place, and keeps you in the eye of all of it. I felt the subtle ghost of my hands plunge deep into my chest, and find my heart a new home.

Gonna get a dog
Name him Adderral
Hope he doesn't run away
That mangy mutt
Stay, boy, stay

I was born to love people too much
I resist telling them what I want
This is not how people should exist  

Come back here boy,
I haven't finished crying to you
Just yet

4 weeks and this is not at an end.
You're not yourself, haven't been in months.
You might never be again.
Plaster over the scar on your forehead.
Staple shut your eyelids, tear off your eyelashes.
You might never wanna see me again.
The curve of your knuckles, the part of your hair,
I watch myself burn and turn to gold again.
Stay in bed, dreaming of fresh rose and lemon.
Play Russian Roulette with the pills in mom's cabinet.
You're not clean, haven't been in months.
You might never be again.

The phantom ghosts of all your ex-lovers
Line up behind you in the mirror
Shrunk to your size;
You cannot see them
They are staring right through you

(Mouthwash, shaken up in the kitchen cabinet and lunch for two.)

I bottled every bit of sorry you gave me, even if the sentiment wasn't there and nothing you ever told me about the knives I took from you was true.
How could you take my sense of safety? How could you rob me of my intuition? How could you choke the life out of me?
You didn't have hands, not even claws, you had jaws the size of Arizona and a tongue so arid the flies didn't think to find the leftover bits of corpses in between your teeth.
Give me the truth.
What's wrong with you?

I just want you to once imagine, without ink on your skin, without the superficial cuts on your wrists, every lie you ever told to be more like everyone else, different, I want you to imagine the color of my eyes.

(You stripped me of my happiness, turpentine. Jail breaker. Head nodder. You erased my chances. Hope is the sunset. Hope is the sunset.)

Maybe I should be breaking
Finer, thinner angel wings
But your bones will do
And I won't set down my teeth
Until I've chewed through my tongue
At 4 am
********

I dig up the contents of your soul:
Scissor Sisters songs sung out of tune
3 stray hairs at a crime scene
An urn gathering dust on a sidewalk
Elvis Presley's shoes, worn down soles
An unflattering camouflage hat
The cries of the elderly, alone and alone again
Your mother, trying to define love
The oldest oak in Boston
The carcass of a deer, shot to the left of her heart

It's the kinda love where you're being swallowed whole.
You want to melt into their bones.
You walk them to the door,
tip-toe across the floor,
12:04.
You don't think you've ever felt like this before,
center of the sun, molten core, honey drizzled on toast.
Wash them from your hair,
check under your nails,
go to bed,
their face imprinted on your eyelids.

Noxious air breathing, cry baby, softly weeping.
Why you babysittin only 2 or 3 shots?
I'mma show you how to turn it up a notch
God, I thought I loved you so. I should be less creepy, less easy, less up in your face, less pretty kitty in a push-up bra, less victim, less driving off an overpass, less humming in the shower, less falling apart, less in love.
Faded, drank.
I pass out counting the flecks of gold in your eyes.

You looked me in the eye today for the first time in three weeks. The silent conversation went like this:

"Hey, it's me. Haven't heard from you in a while. Call me back."

Hello, promise breaker. I bet you never thought you'd see the scar on my forehead again. Here it is, my mother's voice paired along with it, "αντίο". You don't speak the language I hate myself in. You don't see what I see, two tabs a day does this to me.

"Uh, hey. It's been a while. Gimme a call. Bye."

My hair is parted to the other side, like it? Of course you don't. You hate change. You hate looking at the empty spot in your heart. I packed my **** up and moved out a month ago. Took all my liquor and all my cologne and boxes of chocolate and handwritten letters too.

"Getting kinda worried. Call me back. I love you."

Speaking of my letters, have you read them lately, Lauren? Have you read all the times I called sunshine? Wanna think of it now? Wanna think of how you've cried yourself to sleep over me every night for the past week? That's what I thought.

"Look, I'm not mad. We can fix this. Please call me."

Okay, yeah. No one knows about us. No one knows I'm hiding. Let's keep it that way? Hey- quit crying. Guys don't go for that. I'm not there to see it either. Waste that on someone else.

"Please pick up."

You're gonna miss me. You're gonna miss loving me. You're gonna miss the silent denial that it's over. You're gonna miss being upset with me because at least I was there. You're gonna miss my eyes when I stared at you like you were my whole **** world. You're gonna miss crying into my t-shirts. You're gonna miss me keeping you up all night. You're gonna miss my sense of style, me always sending you new shoes. You're gonna miss my sense of humor. You're gonna wish I was ruining your life. You're gonna wish I was there at all.

*"... Love you."

I won't be free until my wings are clipped.
The ocean still smells like blood.
I can still remember the color of your eyes.
The most cliché line, the most cliché lie.
There's no future, there's no answer.
The most therapeutic thing is anger.
(Here I am, lost without you.)

The people she adores,
She cuts them all into pieces,
Skewered,
Slid neatly into her open mouth.

She runs out of food,
Chews on you,
Hates your bones,
And how they cut her cheeks.
Your spilling blood slick,
Smudging her face,
Like lipstick.

What's with all these girls living with the consequences of pretty? Picking up jokes with a habit and some smokes. She can't read his blood. She can't see his frayed veins, they bleed inside out. She doesn't know which direction eyes are supposed to roll.

That abrasive touch, one of lying and of lust and I haven't felt the curves of hips in months, it mottled her slender shoulders. He is brusque, unsure and shaking, do you want something to drink? No, she just wants something to hold, something full of leaving and full of feathers and dust. She takes his hand, a comfort object that feels a lot like how her great grandfather described war. The calluses read like mountains.

But can anyone ever really be sure of anything? She can't tell the difference between a boy and an idea. She can't know the way to where owls sleep, sighing out proverbs while they dream. She can't ask him if he really knows how to keep his knuckles clean.

(Which way to the hospital? Yup, it's a .32, right through my left eye socket. Yes, again. Ain't nothin' left there no more.)

Crack, across your cheek
I feel my bones strain and weep
Curdled like milk in the summer's heat
I rot into the earth
And myself again

Let's see how pretty those blue eyes can

(Stop. Wait. Feel for your heartbeat. Press your hands to the warmth of your cheeks, feel them soften with the perfection of your smile. Run your hands through your hair. You're alive.)

be. Be what you see in the sun, warm and shining and all seeing and all loving. Stop lamenting for just a

(She has moved on and on and on to more and more and more and it is still less than you.)

minute. In a minute the blood from your wrist will start to look like her hair, waves tapering into split ends, feathering. Don't panic yet it's

(Sweetheart, please don't cry. I can feel it across the **** carpet surface of my tired heart. I'm aching to soothe whatever shakes you.)

not over.

The moon weeped
the color of your hair,
dripping onto the  
morning (mourning?) dew
stippled grass.
The color of your eyes
seeped
into the cracks
of every sidewalk
you melted
on.

Looking at you
Is hopeless;
Just like you and your
Chemical imbalance:
Pills.
Me and my chemistry
with your ****** up brain.

I want your touch.
I want your rejection.
I don't want a boyfriend,
I want a mess.

(This is all fantasy, your teeth are too straight for someone as crooked as me.)

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.

The truth
Will set you free
But;
Not until it's done with you.

You will wake up with bruises
You made in your sleep.

(Good luck with those ****** sheets)

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."