the aftershock
the ringing in my ears
the ache of skin
bone
fingertip

all the nerve endings
deep-fried and severed.

the T.V. static in my head
the running water, the heat
the cold, the fury
the blade

the skin
becomes metal becomes
iron, the bones
paper thin.

I want to dissolve.
I am too heavy.

sometimes
I wonder
how much easier
my life would be
if you'd never
touched it.
sometimes
I wonder
if I'd still choose you
if I knew where we'd go.
sometimes
I wonder
who I'd be
without you.
but I know
always I know
I'd choose you
again and again
every time
because even
at our worst
you are still
my best.

I used to know how to be alone.
Before you, I knew how to sit quietly
I knew how to handle the dark on my own
I knew how to be alone.
In the aftermath of falling in love with you,
The night holds an emptiness when you’re
Not here with me. My bed is no longer a
Safe place because there is a two foot
Void you’re supposed to occupy.
Even my skin doesn’t know how to be
Without you, so accustomed it became
To your lips and your fingertips
And the feel of you wrapped around me.
You ruined my solitude. With your voice
And your heart and your love,
You ruined my alone.

fits and
starts
where I end
where you
begin
the lines
are intangible
my fingers
grasp
desperate
for something
to hold
on to
for fear
that we
will start
to slip
before
we even
begin to
solidify
because
because
because
this kind
of bliss
is foreign
to me
it is
new and
terrifying
and it
feels so
so impermanent

because these good things are almost always preface to my ruin and my heart slows in anticipation, in dread, because I'm waiting for that culmination.

because
nothing
good ever
stays.

say nothing.
write nothing.
hold it all in.
because, it seems,
to breathe life into though
is to lead it
straight to its death.
so just hold it in,
let it incubate in absolute silence.
let it grow, and fester,
until maybe you’re about to burst
with the time bomb ticking in your chest.
my god
how hope kills.

There are a million reasons why, why not.
You could write novels about
Every single one of them.
Paint canvases, vandalize empty walls.
And it’d be a shame to waste that paint,
Waste the words inside you, but don’t
Take too long. Or if you do,
If you’re going to run fools’ errands,
If you’re going to run towards what has already been,
Make sure your shoelaces are tied tight.
Don’t trip over your excuses,
Because maybe, just maybe, running in
The wrong direction for so long will find
You running towards something right
And maybe when you get there you’ll realize
How silly you were and how grateful you
Are for it because your bones don’t
Scrape your skin the way they used to
And the dissonant melody of your blood
Suddenly sounds more like a pleasant thrum in your chest.
When you get there, untie your shoes,
Take them off. Let yourself become one with the ground
You stand on. Close your eyes, think of home,
How home never smelled this good, how home
Never kept your toes this warm. Home is so far away
And it’s okay to be scared, but keep going.
Living in the realm of your fear will keep you
Ten feet from where you’ve always been
And what beautiful things will you find there?
The same roses that bloomed last spring and wilted
Last fall, the same trees that become skeletons
Against the empty white of wintertime.
Keep going because your last dress will be
A body bag and it’d be a shame to find yourself
In the same dress your mother wanted you to wear
To church every Sunday instead of that dress
You bought against your (her) better judgment
Because it was too short or too expensive
But you feel like a goddess every time you wear it
And it seems only fitting your exit from this
Life as a wild child is that of a goddess.

i feel it happening.
i feel myself
falling down that
veritable rabbit hole of
feelings and
vulnerability and
you
and that's
a ******* terrifying
thing, just a dangerous
******* place to be
because god knows
if you'll catch me
or you'll just let
me hit the ground.
not even the ground,
it's like tipping
backwards off this
cliff ledge,
not knowing
whether there's
merciful water down
there to catch me
or jagged angry rocks
waiting to rip me
to pieces.

it's okay to
hate me now
as long as
you promise to
try to
love me again
later.

I wish we could
unwrite stories.
I wish I could
undo these
paragraphs
and uncurve
these arcs. I
wish things
were different.
I wish we
were better.

at the end,
i burned the village
to the ground,
every bridge in,
every road out.

i made sure there was
nothing left, still found myself
weeping in the wreckage

wondering why you didn't
try to save us
why you didn't
stop me -

and the guilt
and the anger
and the love
and the longing

a brutal cocktail
when i was already drunk.

in the years since,
i cleaned up the wreckage,
built a nice little memorial.

i don't visit much anymore.

he'll wipe the blood from your
chin, tell you you're beautiful
even when your smile splits
from ear to ear. he'll sew your
cheeks back together, tell you
it's okay that your lungs
occasionally collapse and it's
okay that sometimes you
can't breathe, because he'll
fill you with life when you
can't do it yourself and when
you apologize for smearing
your existence all over him,
when you apologize for what
a mess you are, when you
apologize for not being
better, he'll gently take
your face in his palms,
he'll tell you what a beautiful
thing you are, that you're his
mess, and god, baby girl,
you're so worth it.

i took a deep breath
once a upon a time
and held it
until my lungs
crumbled
and my heart
mummified
and my bones
fossilized in
the aftermath
buried somewhere
beneath the sidewalk
my blood had seeped into
visceral and fleeting
a single moment
washed away
in the rain

you carved a cavern in my chest,
a hollowed out tomb for
every ghost you ever loved.

sometimes the broken pieces don’t fit,
they don’t go back together
like perfect puzzles made of glass.

sometimes you try to put the
pieces back together, and you come
away with ****** fingers

and jars full of jagged edges
and missing shards,
nothing like the pieces of art they once were.

I am not perfect,
nor do I wish to be.
I want to fall in love
with every single flaw
and I want to fight
relentlessly to shape
this tiny moment of
existence I've been
given into something
meaningful and emerge
from this bottomless pit
an unstoppable force,
fearless and beautiful.

how lovely it would be to say
hello

without the heavy weight of impending
goodbye.

when you finally let go of me,
let me go with grace.
remember that I loved you.
remember how much.
remember the exact
cadence of my voice
each and every time I said it,
the feel of my palm
against your cheek.
the taste of my lips
on yours. don't forget
how I held you,
and how I held you up.
remember my courage,
remember my strength.

understand this:
letting you go was so
unbelievably hard -
so distressingly painful
that I almost couldn't.

but remember all those nights
you weren't there.
remember the words of those
girls you chose over me,
again and again.
remember the taste of
every lie you ever told me.
keep in mind the company
you kept, and how rarely
you went to me first.
think of my loneliest nights
where all I wanted so
desperately was you -
and how you always wanted
for something else.

and when you sit in anger,
thinking that I gave us up on a
whim. please, hold in your hands
the weight of me and the weight
of my hopes.
because my god, I wanted it to be
you. but everything you ever did
unraveled that boulder of me
until all that was
left was the barest grain of sand.

love like crime scene,
***** sheets,
blood smeared walls.
swallowed promises
like broken glass but
you're just an exit
wound that refuses
to heal.

between the lines of us,
affection dissolved –
I love you I love you,
I do.

but what happens when
love blends with anger?
what happens when loyal eyes
wander?

what happens when lonely
ships drift into distant shores
because the other islands
have long since emptied?

the wandering kind
adrift and heartless
looking for a place
that's something like
home.

sometimes it's four
walls, sometimes
it's a mouth and a
heartbeat.

you always want me
to find home in you
and i am a tireless sea;
always drifting away.

always leaving
some of myself
behind.

always leaving you
wishing I'd
stay.

thank you
for everything.
thank you for all of
our greatest moments,
thank you for our triumphs,
for our growths, for our victories.
and even for our losses, thank you for
the injuries. thank you for loving me, and for
destroying me. because in the wake of you, I have
learned more than I ever could have imagined. I am more
myself than I have been my whole life. you showed me what love
can be, and what love should be, and definitely what love isn't. you
showed me that I could break away from the things that
wreck me. that I can still grow and change and
become a more perfect version of a flawed
and broken girl. thank you for giving
me that strength. thank you for
loving me. thank you for
being the first, and
but the most for
not being my
last.

your shirtless anti-christ
the cigarette hanging from
the corner of his mouth

while he tells you sandpaper
sweet nothings he leaves the black
smears of his tobacco fingertips
left along the curve of your hip

and you breathe him in like
divine, let the smell of him
settle in your lungs like cancer
he is love he is life he is
here only to destroy you

wash me out of
your sheets;
I never
belonged in
them
in the first place.

every quaking breath,
every flash of memory,
every little puzzle piece
I could never make fit -

absence, too, is a gift.

Check your pockets –
No, not those.
Not now.

Someday,
When you’re cold
Or nervous, or bored
And your fingers find their familiar way
Into the pockets of your jeans or your jacket,
You’ll find I’ve left something for you
Little notes I wrote
Over the years
Thousands of them

Every time I thought of you.

Let the girl I once was see a photograph
Of the girl I have become.
Tell her what led to the darkened eyes
Shredded lips, ****** nails.
But tell her the good things too
Tell her about every kiss and every
I love you, the gifts, the hope.
Show her the ugly, the awful, the beautiful.
All of it, every last moment.
And then ask her,
You want to do this to yourself?
You want to become this girl?
And she told me to tell you
It's easy to swear you won't regret
What you once wanted.
But she also said if
I knew then what I do now,
I don't know if I would have wanted it
In the first place.

the rhythm something
like drunk dancing
on the edge of a cliff
lit up by moonlight -
afraid maybe you'll fall;
afraid maybe you won't.

I spent the better part of our
four years wishing for a miracle
so we could have our happy
ending

how funny to find my miracle
was waking up to realize
I deserve better

and to find that my happy
ending should be much
more than an ending

and that I need no one's
company for that
but my own

the roses
died. little
shriveled
petals made a
path out of
our garden
and into a
graveyard.
our names on
the stones,
love me,
love me not.
an undoing,
of sorts. a
****** in
another.
said goodbye
too early,
buried the
bodies too
late.

1.
Turn off the bedroom lights,
Because it's easier to be brave in the dark.
But remember to breathe;
Night won't change who you've become.
2.
He'll tell you he loves you. Over and over again.
Breathe it, whisper it, carve it into your skin with bleeding fingertips.
Do you hear him?
He loves you the best he knows how.
It's still not enough.
3.
It takes time to erase the scars that have glued your soul to the concrete.
4.
When they push you to the ground
Rub the dirt into your wounds
Fill your pockets with stones
So that the next time they try
You can tell them I've already been to bottom
I've made it home.
You can't be hurt by something you've already learned to love.
5.
He'll tell you he loves you  and you'll turn off the lights
You'll pretend the scars don't exist, that you are air and he is fire
And that neither of you have a home
Dirt, stone, or otherwise.
He'll tell you he loves you, and you'll let his breath rebuild your synapses
You'll let his skin rebuild your nervous system.
You'll love him back.

6.
You don't want to be alone tonight
But there you sit, tracing the veins of your hands, your wrists, your thighs.
You're learning to be alone, you're learning to love yourself again.
Find home, turn the lights on
You can make peace now with who you've become.

all the time I loved you
I was digging my own grave -
and you were kind enough
to lend me your shovel.

I was on fire, burning alive -
you emptied your glass
and asked if I needed another match,
or maybe a lighter.

the inevitability the inevitability the inevitability
the pushback
the loss
the grieving the anger
the inevitability
the distance
the wounds
the healing
the wounds
the hands the harm
the scream
the whispers
the whisper
                                                                how are you still like this?

she lay down her bones,
she tells him,
"these are all I have,
they are all for you."

he inhales.
he exhales.
drops his cigarette on
the asphalt.

"I don't want them."

i write about you all the time,
but i almost never keep it,
torn up or deleted,
or saved in some file to be
lost to the abyss of fracture
and finality, where i keep
all my other thoughts
of you.

darling little dolls,
suspended above the stage,
the scuffed toes of their dance shoes
just barely reaching the floor
and I watch you make
them dance, watch their
painted smiles and sad eyes
and their undying loyalty
to the grace of your fingers,
the turn of your wrist.
they dare not ask if you truly
love them, or if you love the
applause at the end
of every performance.

I could tell them, could tell
them about the night I
snuck into the empty
theater, long after the
crowd had emptied and
the lights had gone
out. I saw them lying there,
lifeless without your
careful direction,
left in a heap - unloved,
useless now,
and I'm sure you were off
somewhere, those fingers
bringing some other girls
with painted smiles and
sad eyes
to life.

Denial
     things were never supposed to end
     like this.
     my body remembers you,
     like surgery, like scar.
     the imprint of loss doesn't fit
     when I was never supposed to lose you
     in the first place.

2. Anger
     the hands.
     the fists.
     screaming to skies that don't listen.
     apologies are nothing when you've
     shoved me into the villain role
     knowing all along you broke me in the first place.
  
3. Bargaining
     i'd give anything to have you back.
     i'd given anything to never
     want you back.
     and it's always right there in the middle.
     knowing you're no good for me,
     knowing that you could have been.

4. Depression
     the whole body ache. the
     imsorryitsamess I am doingmybest.
     the way they hold your hands and tell you
     it gets better, you get over it, you stop wanting
     you stop wanting. one day it just stops.
     it's the way they can't see the bruises, the battering
     because the outsides look fine. the outsides smile.
     the outsides are a good employee, a good friend.
     the outsides are a much better actor
     than i give them credit for.

5. Acceptance
     it's like marking a page in a book,
     setting it down, never picking it back up
     again. tragic. the movement of life. it sits
     on a shelf, months, years. you forget the plot
     the characters, the motion. your fingers run
     over its spine every so often, thinking you'll
     come back to it. it's how you never think the end
     is the end, how it burns, how you forget the last
     kiss, the last I love you, the last everything. how
     eventually, the sting of those lost memories stops
     stinging. how you forget you ever started the book
     in the first place


and it's how someday you do pick up the book
again, you do, and it all comes rushing back to you.
the circle of the stages, how each one becomes
a familiar visitor you welcome in with warm coffee
and ask how they've been. they don't ever really
ask you. for awhile, it's like getting hit in the stomach,
lost for air. eventually the visitors go elsewhere for
coffee, and you never realize when you've finally
put down that book for the last time.

her hand is on your chest,
small and wanting. your
heart beats beneath it -
slow and steady. you can't
feel hers, but it's running
like a wild animal. right now,
right here, it beats for you
and only you. but yours
is steady. the heart of a man
in a moment of certainty,
or the heart of the man
whose heart beats for
no one at all. she doesn't
know which, and neither
do you. you feel her small
hand on your chest, you
feel her desperation but
the question hangs in
the air between the both
of you -


                         he loves me
                                                                       he loves me not

I am need
thirsty want
caverns of
desperation
finite light
and infinite
dark and
thousands
of moments
of undefined
shape I am
something
else I am
a heart made
for taking
exhausted
from giving
or being given
because what
am I but a
buffet line of
substance
for hungry
mouths that
are not mine
to feed

wish i would've just said
i miss you
instead

palm
to skin
mouth a
wandering
expedition
hollow of
my throat
valley
of thighs
fingers
plucking
the rhythmic
verse of
my hips
taking the
breath
from my
lips
undone
unwound
untethered
skin to
naked skin

I rose from dark water,
untethered from the collapsing
kingdom hidden deep down
at the bottom of the ocean.
my fingers like brittle branches
from grasping onto you for
so long, but my lungs fill
with this fresh air and the
toxicity of your prison
seems to drip from me like
ink. my insides are putting
themselves back together and
I hold the hand that finally
rescued me, and he will wait
until I am clean again.

every day
***** the air out of my lungs
a little more

and I wonder how
much longer
they expect me to keep going
like this

suffocating with a smile

i hope
when you kiss her
all you taste is
me.

while I sink into this
empty bath
the air is at a dead silence
and I wonder why you left me
here and
the water slowly
fills all the empty spaces
and I wonder
I wonder
how long before
it swallows me whole

the way I love you-
kerosene to flame,
poison for disease.

swallow the metal of my bones
because the taste of their weight
is a recipe from your own hands.
severed the paper thinness of my
skin because you wanted to taste
the nerves, learn the taste of my
undoing.

I am nothing now.
I am the spare parts
you didn't care for.

the last time
I felt you slipping-
I felt you slip like
ocean through my
fingertips.
I felt the shift,
and I knew
I'd lose us somewhere
along the line.
I knew the last time
I kissed you,
standing in the rush
of cars and departures
and arrivals,
I knew as I held on
to you with fevered desperation
I knew it was the last time.
I couldn't say it then,
I couldn't say it for awhile,
but somewhere in there
I always knew.

and I'm sorry.
I'm sorry you're
not what I want.
I'm sorry
I can't be what
you need.

I had to let you go,
and it was the hardest
and most freeing thing
I've ever done.

trace lines of poetry
into your skin
with my lips
and the barest touch
of my fingertips

when we collide
it will be something
like irate ocean pulverizing
the rocky cliffs, pulling
the earth to its knees.
it will be the silence
when it snows for the
first time around midnight,
the muted air and the
peaceful silence.
it'll be our hands
and it'll be our mouths
and it will destroy entire
universes, and quietly,
afterwards, it will
build them up stronger
than they could have
possibly imagined.

I used to make wishes at 11:11,
I used to pick up pennies,
holding them tight for luck.
I used to believe in fate.
I used to believe that good things
happened to good people.

there's a word for people like that: naive.
because, "the truth is,
baby, the world is a cruel place."
he told me he was saving me,
sort of like saving a suicide
victim from a moving train.

because he told me he loved me,
because he told me the world was mine.
because he told me he'd do anything for me.
and I believed him.