He was warm like a summer stone
Earthy like a boy should be
And girls are more like water
But I only managed mercury

She’s manicured like the neighbor’s yard
a blonde and blue composite
and the holes in the soles of my combat boots
drip rain water like faucets

She’s staring over her clipboard
He peered over his coffee
She asks what’s wrong—clinically, past ice water.
He folded my hand up in his—lovingly, past menus

I focus(ed) on *diner checkerboard tilescream pile carpeting

I tap my foot on a chair leg, and give nondescript answers
*I tapped my spoon on a tea cup, and gave no answer at all

So I said to him
"I've got my demons"
Two bit termites that eat me away
'Cause I was never a real girl
--would you look at her nose--
Lying *****

And then he points back
Says look at them skeletons
Hanging from the closet
Among button down shirts and sanctioned blazers
But they're made of plastic
Some cheap bio lab representation of what's meant to be human

NO I scream
And my voice bubbles out like tar
Paving over his cracked ideals
Sealing up the sink hole where I buried my heart
--saving it for a rainy day--
And I slam the door in his face
Hoping it hits the ******* nose he stuck in my business

Hounds are scratching at my door
Whining for a chance
To rip apart the rabbit
That's hiding in my head

I stand up and let them

Don’t stand so close to me
God knows I hate you for it
standing miles high and reaching down
arms stretched out in the 2am
screaming pull yourself up god ******

but my flailing hand passes through yours
like some sort of hologram
leave a message after the beep—you're not there
my nails are filled with dirt from the grave I’m digging

because hello my name is Atlas
and I got this world on my shoulders
it weighs four years
and they call it high school
they colored me Goliath
—some intellectual behemoth
and potential equals mgh, variable being height
but David felled me in an empty forest
and I didn’t make a sound

they rushed me toward a hospital
morphine (or was it lexapro?)
running through leaking veins
sir, her GPA is flat lining
please just let her go

but I keep thinking of that song
Pale Green Things
and--what happened to my baby?!--
my grandmother getting the call

so I’ll let my spine tear through my rice paper back
as I curl up to hold it in
and hope to God
that some other kid  
will bring in his daddy’s paranoia
(hidden in a cardboard box beneath the bed)
to show and tell

and he’d let me take a little lead home
please not in the head
I never liked a mess

They're huddled 'round their periodic lunch tables,
square and socially pyramidal,
and I'm at the bottom.

But they're just fluorine factions,
bullies at heart trying to steal my e-lectricity
with their negativity.

Because I'm light,
Ultra-violet violence to the eyes,
Magnesium burning.
Anti-matter meets matter.

And that catalytic, cataclysmic energy is attractive.
And they see me. They see, see, see,
But I've got too many Cs on this side of my false, metallic personality.
I'd better balance myself
Or I'm not getting a good reaction.

Classic ionic, ironic idiocy.
I've bonded with you,
just compounding the issues.
'Cause you're a complete acetate without a solution:
now all I've got are problems.

Dot Diagrams are dotted lines separating you from me,
because over the years what was a bond
became a partially negative charge
against me.

I was your oxygen, and you were carbon
-ated, bubbly and explosive.
We would Combust.

But now all's left but to see, oh, two
of your new girlfriends flanking your sides,
'cause we've decomposed, split, gone off to better things.

Monatomic monotones lace my speech,
and I'm pining for something to complete this emp-d shell
that is myself.

'Cause I miss what we had.
We had chemistry.

When asked about my Temperament
I’d often tell a Lie—
For I was Stable through and through
It’s not as if I’d Die:

A Light was on inside my head
So Bright as Tungsten burned
But glass had shattered long ago—
As heartless season turned

The Winter was a weathered friend
Until it showed its back
The Light flicked off inside my head—
The Candlestick burned Jack

For weeks I’d drift along the Pitch
Still like a Deadened pond
A Wasted Lead* insomniac
They Begged me to Respond

The Lake it stretches down a Mile
The fish all Glassy-Eyed
My Filament sinks to the sand
I pray to God for Tide