I smile when my profile picture gets 50 likes
but would it mean more
if I liked my face without the assurance of others?

Maybe not,
I'm a millennial, after all.
1994, born and raised
a "90's kid."

I tweeted that...it got 12 favorites.

Too bad I can't favorite my internal thoughts
in order to validate them without sharing them.

I sent that as an iMessage
to my friend who responded
"#deep."

I'm posting this poem on the internet
so that people I don't know can read it.
Maybe they'll even leave a comment.

I say what I feel,
via text message,
followed by an emoji and a hashtag
as a sort of millennial footnote,
minus the APA style.
I'll use LOL style
or FML style
or the style of ironically using texting lingo
to prove that I'm not #basic.

I, Lex the Millennial,
wrote this poem on my iPhone 6.

The rattling
of an empty plastic water bottle
on a trash-ridden street
at 3 a.m.
is so exceedingly hopeless
that it makes me want to
jump.

Seeing the two drops of water
lingering in the bottom
causes me to untie
my beat-up shoes,
take off
my plain grey socks,
and place them in a neat
and hopeless
pile
next to the overpass.

The label
peeling away from the bottle
forces me to climb over the railing
onto the little ledge,
high above the busy street
below.

Glancing at the forlorn
plastic water bottle,
I prepare to jump.

A ****** homeless man
shuffles down the ***** street
picks up the bottle
and puts it in his bag.
“'scuse me miss,
do ya have any spare change?”

I stare at him with dead eyes
and begrudgingly climb down
from the railing.

I take a deep breath and my nose and mouth are filled with water.
My body is immobile.
I find myself sinking deeper and deeper.
I can see the sun scattering particles of light through the water.

I never should have gone in the water.
What was supposed to be
a nice swim
turned into water too deep for me to handle.

I find myself struggling to get back to the top
but something keeps dragging me down.
I think I should give up,
be done.

But instead I try one last time
to kick my feet.
The water chills me inside and out.
My clothes weigh heavy on my body.

Wishing I was anywhere but here,
I see the blazing sun
one last time.

I can feel each individual drop of water on my body.
Each drop a heavy burden,
causing me to sink deeper and deeper until all is dark.

The last of my air leaves my chest.

I see others
but they sit on the shore facing the other way.

Finally, I realize that I am done for-
that my fate is to drown in the water
that I chose to swim in.

Looking up one last time,
I inhale another breath of water
and sink to the very bottom of it all.

I paint myself with yellow paint.
Very bright,
very nice.

I run around in the daylight sun,
all bright and happy and cheerful,
all covered in yellow paint.

I see people looking.
I smile,
I wave.

The paint begins to chip.
The dark navy blue paint that is underneath begins to show.
People are looking.

I apply another coat of yellow paint,
along with a smile.
Bright, happy, cheerful.

I keep painting on the yellow paint,
coat upon coat.
The only thing I have to hide is the blue underneath.

At night the people stop looking.
I wash off the yellow.
Dark, sad, forlorn.

I am covered,
head to toe,
in the dark blue paint.

I am always covered by a shield of blue paint.
The yellow paint is washable,
but the blue is permanent.

The sun rises,
the people are looking.
Once again, I cover myself with yellow paint.

I hate poetry
about flowers
and springtime
or love
or the feeling of your darling's hand
or her ******* lips.

Poetry should make you really
burn
but some burn
more like sitting at a baseball game
in the sun
and you forgot to put on sunscreen
and you hate baseball.

I like poems
written late at night
with your brain blasted
on adderall
or coffee
or cheap *****.

Write
when your veins are filled with acid
when you're eating mac n cheese
made in the splattered microwave
with a broken plastic fork
and maybe even some broken dreams.

I like poems
when you're miserable
sitting in the sun
when all you want
is some ******* rain
to complement your melancholy mood
but the sun still ******* shines.

Untied shoelaces
and empty plastic water bottles
rolling down trash-filled streets
should take the pen out of your hand
and write some poetry for you.
Poetry about desperation
and drugs
and commonplace things
that drive you to the edge of a cliff.

I like poems
about that stupid pen
that won't work
so you scribble in the margin
but it still
won't
*******
work.

Maybe I don't like poems at all.
Maybe I just like
sounding pretentious
like some Bukowski wannabe
or maybe
I just like poems about
pretentious
Bukowski
wannabes.

Either way,
**** those *******
flowers.

It was a rainy November night-
it always seemed to be.
There was nothing to do
but drink through our cheap red wine
until our words sloshed together.

Sure, it was slowly killing us,
slowly drowning our livers.
But there was something about the drinking
that made us feel more alive than
anything.

We worked until we had a few bucks,
the few bucks turned into a bottle.
There was never more money,
but there was never not enough.
It wasn't paycheck to paycheck
but bottle to bottle.

Eventually we'd sing Billy Joel
or the Beatles,
happy to have each other,
but even happier to have the wine.

The rain continued on,
the wine continued on,
and our lives-
well, they continued on, too.

The sky is dark,
my room is dark,
and, hell, my thoughts are dark.

It's 3:09 a.m.
My pillow is hard,
my blankets are too warm.
The wristwatch on my nightstand
is ticking too loudly.

The sky is dark,
like I said before.
No stars tonight,
no stars any night.

She would inhale,
filling her lungs
with potent smoke
and her head
with potent thoughts.

She would exhale
and her face
would do this thing
as if deep down
it knew that the world
was inherently good.

As she exhaled,
her face showed innocence.
Through the cloud of smoke,
her face shone through
looking like the face
of a harmless child.

When she inhaled again,
her aged face would show
worry, pain-
and hopelessness.

But only for a moment
until it was exhaled
into a puff of smoke.

She hated the world.
She hated the sunshine, she hated the moon.
She hated that flickering lamp in her dingy bedroom.
And most of all she hated the way that she hated herself.

At night she would try to run,
but her fears would take over.
She would climb out of her window
into the darkness.

She wandered the streets with her hands in her pockets
and her mind outside her head.
She stayed away from the beam of the streetlights,
afraid the world would see her.

She let her beat up black high tops lead the way
as she roamed the desolate streets.
The cool night air would ruffle her midnight black hair,
and the only thing heard was the shuffling of her feet on the pavement.

Her black high tops would turn on different streets every night,
but always end up at the same place-
the bridge overlooking the train tracks,
a place where it's noisy and peaceful all at once.

She would pull out a cheap plastic cigarette lighter
and burn her carefully written poems,
written on carefully folded paper.
She would watch as the glowing paper drifted down towards the tracks.

She would turn away,
once again following her high top sneakers.
She would look up at the sky, disgusted by the bright stars
but even more disgusted by herself- the midnight girl.

The yellow pools of light from the street lamps
are more beautiful than the moon,
the trickle of water in the gutter,
more beautiful than the ocean.

Cigarette butts blanket the sidewalk like moss
and the sound of police sirens call to the night like wolves.
Neon signs flash above me like stars,
forming constellations of consumerism.
Skyscrapers loom above me like trees in a forest,
protecting me with their shadows.

I roam the sidewalk, a lone hiker,
observing the animals of the streets,
envying their freedom.

At the end of the night, I hike home to my warm bedroom,
reluctant to return to civilization.

There was a man
sitting at the end of the bar
so I bought him a drink.

“Thank you, miss,”
he said.
I smiled
and left the bar
being carried by gusts of warm wind.

I went to my apartment
and cleaned the entire place
blasting music
loud enough for the neighbors
to hear.

I drew large,
colorful
pictures
and taped them to the wall
by my bed
to look at from time to time.

I drank an entire bottle of wine,
white wine,
and went to sleep
wrapped in warm blankets
and warm thoughts.

The next morning
I woke up with a smile
taking up residence on my face.

Then I opened the door
and almost stepped out into the hall
before the cold, gray
ghosts
pushed me into the pool
of cold, ***** water.

I sat on the floor
wrapped in blankets
but unable to ward off the cold.

I banged my head on a table,
repeatedly
but didn't feel a thing.

I looked at all of the bottles
of pills
that I had collected.
And I contemplated taking a few
or the whole bottle.

But I didn't.

I downed half a bottle
of *****
and hated myself.

I looked at myself,
scowling in the mirror.
“Go **** yourself,”
I told the reflection.

All of the sudden
the warmth came back
and I put flowers in a vase
and gazed at them lovingly.

I smiled at myself in the mirror,
proud of who I was
and everything I had ever done.
I thought excitedly
about everything I would do tomorrow,
the next day
and the next day.

Then I purposely knocked the flowers
off the table
with my closed fist
and downed an entire bottle of pills.

She liked to watch the city
from her small bedroom window.
She kept it closed to keep out the draft and the rain,
keeping her from experiencing the elements.

The city was dark, though her bedroom was light.
She had no reason to venture out into the cold.
So she kept to herself, with her small window closed,
only peeking out occasionally to satiate her curiosity.

In her bedroom, nothing made her smile
but nothing made her cry.
It was always warm enough,
though exceedingly empty.

On a night like any other,
a figure appeared outside her window.
He called out to her and even threw pebbles.
She withdrew in terror, closing the curtains against the world.

With curtains drawn and window closed,
the girl knew she was safe.
But she always wondered what could have been,
if she had let that boy come in.

She typed her poems in size 6 font
afraid of someone
reading over her shoulder.

She was a writer
afraid to share what she had written.

She knew
that she had revealed too much of herself
too much of the part of herself
that she keeps hidden,
suppressed.

To have someone read what she wrote
and know about her,
terrified her.

Yet she kept writing
knowing that it was what she wanted to do,
what she had to do.

If she didn't write,
no one would ever know anything
about her.

So she wrote
and proofread
deciding how much of herself
to reveal.

She would delete
and modify
until it seemed as if she was
an anonymous poet.

Yet someone always could tell
that it was her
doing the writing.

So she shared her poem
anyways.

Am I a true writer
if I can't put my love
for the moon
into
words?

It's a 2 am cigarette,
a late night walk,
you, alone with the moonlight.

You feel something romantic
in the self-loathing
that only seems to appear under the
brightest moon.

The ghostly cigarette smoke drifts
as the only filter
between you
and the moon.

It's the feeling of every slight stumble
you make as your foot catches
on the uneven sidewalk
and you don't know whether it's
the alcohol
or the darkness making you stumble.

The remote beauty
found only in your own
deepest version of hell,
the loneliness under the moonlight,
serves as the view in front of your
eyes,
red from tears.

Your heart
is colder than the cloudless night,
the only warmth you can feel
is through your fingertips,
gently holding the burning-down cigarette.

The red cigarette ****
lands near your feet,
the only light
besides the bright, cold moon.

The light shining down from the moon
is as pure
as the loneliness.
It's just you
and the night.

You take another drag,
and keep walking.

I like drinking, I really do.
I know that it worries you.

My grandfather is an alcoholic,
and so is my father.
I'm not one,
but every girl is a little bit like her father.
For me, it's a little more than a bit.

He's a quiet man, absent, tortured.
He likes red wine, Crown on the rocks,
and making people laugh.
He hates his job
and himself.
I would say that these things aren't true for me,
but then I'd be lying.

My father and I
order the same things at restaurants,
laugh at each other's jokes,
and like Hemingway more than most.

I'll drink anything,
just like my father.
Whiskey, *****, beer, schnapps,
well, anything besides tequila...
Christmas break two years ago was a rough time.

I really wish you wouldn't worry about my drinking.
You see, people don't usually worry about me.
I was raised by a single mother
who didn't even have time to make dinner,
much less worry about me,
the middle child.
My father wasn't usually around,
but I guess our similarities are genetic.

I guess I'm kind of scared
that you care so much
because then I actually have someone
to impress,
someone to make proud.

To make my father proud
is to like the same kind of beer as him.

I haven't quite figured out, yet, how to make you proud.

Alone in a public bathroom,
she stared at her reflection,
looking straight into her own
blood-shot eyes.

Her jaw was clenched
as was her shaking hand,
tightly gripping a worn, yellow notebook.

She looked fiercely into her eyes-
bright blue in contrast to her midnight black hair-
and whispered,
in a soft voice,
“You are not going to die tonight.”

Her eyes turned to focus on the yellow notebook,
still clenched in her sickly hand.
She flipped through page after page,
each filled with her
small, messy penmanship.

Turning away from the mirror,
she kicked open a stall door
and proceeded to tear out
page after page,
each filled with her
deliberately placed stanzas,
and crumpled each.

Her pale hands
threw each page into the toilet
in the ***** public bathroom.
Her blue eyes
watched the ink bleed
and bleed
until her words became
unrecognizable.

Without flushing,
the dark-haired girl vacated the stall.
Her blue eyes turned back to the mirror
and she saw her thin, pallid lips
yell the words,
“YOU ARE NOT GOING TO DIE TONIGHT”

She said “hello”
as brightly as the first rays of sun
in the early morning,
a small smile peeking out
from under her sun hat
like the sun peeking over the horizon.

I felt my body begin to warm
as her words reached out and touched me,
just before her hand brushed my own.

She was intense like the heat of the sun at noon,
her beauty causing me to shield my eyes
yet seducing me
to take another quick look.

She said “goodbye”
as crisply as the cool night air,
the two syllables sobering me up
just the same.

She held her sun hat in her delicate hand,
fading away
like midnight fades into the gray morning.

If I wasn't myself
I would want to be the kid
that people write poems about.

But I am myself.
No one sees me
or hears me
but they read me.

I'm not the kid that they write poems about
because I am the one writing the poem
about you.

You read me
and by 'me' I mean my poems
but they aren't about me
they're about you.

But if you look closely
really really closely
you'll see me,
the writer,
hidden in the poem.

I'm not interesting enough
to have a poem written about me.

But if you want to read about me,
read with your soul
not your eyes or your brain
not even your heart.

No matter what the poem is about,
it's about me
hidden behind the guise
of you.

I am in every poem
that I write
because if I didn't write about myself,
no one would.

There's no difference between the meter of a cab
and the meter of a poem;

both show you the rate at which you're going,
but only you know where.

She is the type of person
that no one will ever write about.

She's quiet
and the color of whatever wall
stands behind her.

There's something in her
downcast
watery eyes
that says quietly, “don't mind me.”

She makes herself small enough
to almost,
just almost,
disappear completely.

Her smile is hidden away,
in fact,
I've only seen it once or twice.

I may be the only one in the world
to ever look at her closely enough
to notice
the quiet light
behind her light blue eyes
but I know that if someone else had seen it
they wouldn't have cared.

No one will ever give a thought
to this puddle of a girl.
I'm not sure anyone even knows her name.

She's the type of girl
no one will ever write about,

but here I am
writing 32 lines
about a girl
who I will never meet.

I always talk about how one day
I'll submit a short story to the New Yorker.

I tell people that I'm “working on a novel”
and that “I'll let you read it when I'm done.”

In reality,
I'll never finish the novel.
I'll never finish any of the ten novels
that I've started.

If I do finish,
I'll never let them read it
because it isn't good enough.

I'll never submit my short story
to the New Yorker
because they wouldn't want it.

Never mind that I've read every issue
of their magazine
dreaming of being a part of it
even a small part.
I wouldn't even need my name in it.
I just want to be in it because
everything they publish
is beautiful.

I'd love to finish a novel
but I lose hope
in my characters before they can even
breathe a single breath.

If only I believed in my characters
as much as my friends and family believed in me.
Then maybe, just maybe
I could finish something.

I guess I finished this ****** poem,
but that doesn't count because
it's more of a stream of consciousness
than a real piece of literature.

You were giving your things to me
and I didn't say “thank you.”
You told me you were leaving for good,
I didn't say a word.

It was dark outside,
you could see my head nodding,
letting you know that I understood
even though my voice stayed silent.

Clouds were covering the moon
casting a shadow on my face.
My emotions were concealed
as were the tears that never left my eyes.

You dropped the subject,
probably thinking I didn't care
while I tried to drop the subject
from my sinking mind.

I couldn't stop thinking about you.
I cried myself to sleep
and I cried in other people's arms,
but I wouldn't let you see my tears.

I couldn't be sad
because I wanted you to be happy.
My anger boiled, but I kept it hidden
because I knew it was selfish.

I always hope you'll move back
but I try not to think too much
because it doesn't matter if I'm sad
as long as you're happy.

I always stared at the sky
like I was looking at something familiar.
The shiny moon
always seemed to be looking back at me,
telling me that the night wasn't so scary
after all.

The moon was my first love.
Its light draped upon me like a worn quilt,
keeping the darkness away from my delicate body.
It knew my secrets
without me telling it.

A boy came along,
he was bright like the sun.
He was all I could see.
I told him my secrets and I thought he understood.

When I looked at the moon,
I could see a reflection of the world.
When the boy looked at the moon,
all he saw was a place under which
to kiss me.

The moon was my first love,
the boy was my second.
When his eyes rested upon my first love,
they didn't understand.
He continued to kiss me,
and night never seemed to come.

When the boy was finally gone,
the night was darker than it had ever been.
I couldn't bring myself to look at the moon
and the darkness consumed me.

I finally looked up
and saw the moon gazing down at me,
telling me that everything was alright.
And it was.
Everything was always alright in the moonlight.

She visited a psychiatrist once a week,
and drank wine three times a week,
on Saturday, Sunday, and usually Wednesday.

Once a month, or so, she would cry herself to sleep.
The other 30 days she would stay awake
for most of the night.

Some days she would drink whiskey,
some she would smoke cigarettes.
Everyday she would write poetry.

One time every year,
she would show her poetry to me.
I would read her poetry, every night, for a year.

Twice a week, or three times maybe,
I would coax her out of her apartment
so she could see the world.
Twice a week, or three times maybe,
she would quietly watch the world
as I watched her quiet contemplation.

Once in a lifetime she swallowed a whole bottle of pills.
I will think about her, every day, for the rest of my life,
and wonder what it would be like
to spend a day in her life.

The sky was darkening and the windows were lighting.
She wore clean clothes and she had a key tied to her white shoelace,
yet she wandered the poorly lit streets
while families ate roasted chicken and peas and drank milk.

She wasn't hungry, wasn't thirsty, wasn't tired.
In spite of these facts, she wasn't content, either.
She still had a reason to roam the streets,
a reason to like the dark sky more than the lighted windows.

She wasn't alone, of course.
There were others, probably, wandering the streets,
but she didn't want to find them.
At this hour, the streets were meant to be meandered in solitude.

My sky was dark
and your light was too dull.

Can I write you
a really articulate letter?

Will you write me one back?

Will you look at my word choice
and know that I didn't use a thesaurus,
but just the storage of words
I've collected?

Can you smile a little
when I scribble out
a terrible joke?

Will you fold up the torn-out
notebook paper
and put it in your pocket?

Please?

I could give you my words,
but I know you wouldn't understand them.

So I keep them inside
until
my internal organs
have been digested
by the carnivorous words
written
in Times New Roman
because when you have something to say
the font doesn't matter.

As a shell of pale skin,
I had no choice
but to end everything with you
and write about it
in Times New Roman.

I knew you wouldn't
understand
which is precisely why
I wrote this poem.

I ******* hate how writing means so much to me
when it means nothing to you.

It's my ******* heartbeat,
it's my lungs carefully breathing in and out,
it's that part of my brain telling me to live.

I would die without it,
don't you see that?

The world I inhabited
was speckled with eyes-
malicious eyes, watching my every move-
it was a terrifying place.

I could feel that everything
was alive around me.
Everything had a heartbeat
and everything breathed its hot breath on me.

I wanted to hide
but the eyes were everywhere.
They were on buildings,
ingrained in trees,
peering through every *****, city window.

I ran as far as I could
until there was no where else to run.
I was as close to the sky as possible,
feeling the world's musty breath
rake through my hair.

The sky was dark and gray
and the clouds glared at me angrily,
wondering why I would venture so close to their territory.
I tried to tell them
that it was my last option,
there was no where else to run,
but they wouldn't listen.

Bumps
formed on my pale skin.
Goosebumps.
The dark clouds were pushed away by a cool breeze.
The sky cleared,
showing its bright blue face.
The only clouds left
were white and puffy.
They had faces,
but they were smiling at me.

I inspected the clouds closely.
Within each cloud were multiple faces-
they were the faces of every god, every deity, every spirit-
that ever was.
They smiled at me
and I felt my face forming a small grin.

I could feel the walls around me breathing,
I could see them inhaling and exhaling.
They were surrounding me,
protecting me like a father.
I glanced at the buildings that dotted the sky.
They smiled at me, too.

I could feel everything in the world around me
releasing feelings
and asking for me to do the same.
The eyes looked at me encouragingly,
coaxing me to join the world.

I breathed a deep breath,
in and out,
and felt the world do the same.