I crawled into your back pocket quietly and folded myself up small, like the smoke from the cigarettes you always lit but never smoked.
I bumped into your last name everywhere because I may have managed to escape the slum but we all crawl back to where our hearts first beat.
You escaped with a lens in your fist and roads I will never drive down, buried deep in your feet.
I sat on your shoulders and kept quiet. I watched every girl you fell in love with and I felt burns on my hands every time one pushed your hair back out from your eyes.
The girl from Missouri with the long brown hair counted 49 freckles but I knew about the 2 that were kept hidden under your knees and I scolded every girl who thought they loved you like I did.
I sleep with bones who cry out for my touch but sometimes they whisper for a girl whose name is different from my own. Her name tastes like sewage in the back of my throat.
I know love because I curled his hair around my finger. And I know that someday my children with have a head full of it.
But when you taught me love it was filled with new beginnings. But you went too far and I waved you off and sat back in the dust I had come from and told myself I was better off and you were crazy.
You traveled through towns I may never know and shook hands with people I will never see. Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if we kept holding hands. Mine got sweaty and your long legs moved too fast. My heart became heavy and held me down. You
Sometimes I sleep across your room on the old blue chair with my back towards you. Sometimes I hear you whisper my name and I know you still feel my hands slipping up your shirt and drawing constellations of how our future should have mapped out between freckles and old acne scars.

Ex boyfriends are good for nothing more
than a pounding between the eyes and
a chomp down on the inside of a cheek,
resulting in a warm metallic taste, similar
to the one of your last shared kiss.

I am excited..
There are at least two billion different snowflakes
kissing the ground outside of my porch door. And
I know that there are at least three billion hearts
beating all over the earth. But like many intricate
and individual snowflakes that blanket the ground,
each of those hearts are different from one another
and at this very moment; 4:18 pm, I am only interested
in the one beating under my hungry ear and trembling fingertips.

Stuck in a room built by terrifying numbers – big numbers. The front door marked 130, 125, 120, 115… Mom’s hand reaches and pulls the door open. Twenty seven bones shut it tight.

2. Blueish glow from a sticker encrusted Dell. 500 sit ups documented on screen. Twenty four ribs transferred into megapixels. Hundreds, thousands, millions of skeleton sisters silently screaming. Intertwined by sharp edges.

3. One pile of 206 bones fast asleep under a magenta comforter. Three sets of arms pulling the bones back to Earth. Too many tears to keep track of.

4. Zero smiles at the breakfast table. There is a 92% chance of precipitation by the looks of moms quivering lip.

5. One fiery ball of hot gas. 206 bones soaking in the ultraviolet rays. Nineteen ribs poke through a white Hanes t-shirt. One wrist full of red shadows. Only one scar remains and I can’t even remember it.

6. 52 bones- three steps forward, two steps back. Forward, forward, keep moving forward.

7. 1 New York style cheesecake. 707 calories. 117 per slice.

I keep asking the girl with the crystal ball eyes about my
past but she only has questions about my future.
Every single line chiseled into my hands is a dried up river
from cobalt blue dreams and mango colored land. The air is
thick with heavy accents that drift in and out of sleepy ears.
The end of my hand trails off in stitches like war wounds.
The sky is heavy and oil slicked, encrusted with paper lanterns
that lift my heavy head from thick poppy fields to a million
light bulbs in the sky. My right pointer finger maps out 3
children all with heads of thick curls and coffee bean eyes,
but my left ring finger is light and free of any bands of diamonds
or gold. My palms show thick life lines but short and burrowing
deep into layers of muscle and tissue that wipe away any tears
from this life or the last.

I wonder what my father saw as his
heart decided to attack. Did betrayal
flash through his mind? Family gave
up first. His body followed in suit.
Whose face came first?
Mine or my brothers? Gods or the devils?
Or just his own in the mirror hanging
on the empty white washed room he
lay in. Which was a sharper slap?
The spasms of his hearts last pulse
or his daughter’s indifference?
Was his heart black and shriveled
like a raisin? Or blue and bruised
like the bump from a clumsy fall?
Did his eyes bulge in surprise?
Or did he know that this would be
the last strum of his hearts chord.
I hope he wasn’t alone. I hope
Christ was tacked on that empty
wall and shed a tear. Or at least
muttered a few words of forgiveness.
Because God  knows he needed it,
God knows I need it.

I used to find myself rolling around in grass until my sweaty legs were sprinkled with green strings.
Now all I want to do is lie in the plush blankets scattered on my bed and sleep for an eternity.
I’m much more interested in watching other people live their lives, then exuding the time and energy needed to live my own.
It makes me excited to see people scurrying and talking and making plans for tomorrow.
I’m still too busy trying to sleep through tomorrow to wash away all my yesterdays.
I wish I was driven and pulsing with energy. The way New York City is. Like a heart constantly pumping a never ending drive into the black coats and manolo blahniks that constantly run around the city.
I’m more interested in watching and listening than I am in participating and shouting.
My sharp tongue now saves savory words to punish the mirror with.
I’m no longer concerned with using it on others.
That too takes energy.

I finally learned how to use a lighter.
I’m 21 years old and no longer afraid of fire.
I have you to thank for that. You and I were rotted logs thrown
together in a desperate attempt to create something beautiful.
Because part of the beauty in fire is how dangerous it is.
We burned each other out and could not say no to pouring just
a little more lighter fluid over each other. Our problem was that
our embers danced in different directions. I had to burn brighter-
you had to carry a more powerful flame. I finally reached out for a
glass of cold water because I had been charred beyond recognition.
The embers that once danced off of your tongue no longer leave
blisters on my hands and heart. I put us out for good reasoning.
I am no longer afraid of fire. I am learning to control it.

It's nice to miss someone, not because they are gone
and not coming back and have left for good. but
because they are on their way back, but you need
them there faster.

I hope that one day when I say that I miss you
that I am just saying I miss being young or stupid
or i miss all the silly thing we did when we were young.
Because I hope you are always in arms length.
I never want you too far out of sight.