i own a collection of masks
so that, if necessary,
i could hide within my own
disappointment with myself
and laugh because i am
not the same as i was before.

she bites the flashlight
in her mouth in an attempt
to see a glimmer
of light in break dark-
ness.

there's really no point in being sad about
what life gives you because you're not
life and you can't control it so when life
gives you lemons and no receipt, don't cry
about it because a market's not going to
take it back after it's been announced that
making bombs out of lemons is now possible
so take you life and your lemons and be
blown away with them.

i am done looking through magazines
for beauty since i can't find it in
the easiest place to look:

a mirror.

the truth of the matter is
     people die.
     people lie.
     people cry.
     people don't understand.
     people laugh.
     people die.

people die.

the nightmares that she got glowed
through the darkness, deceiving her
into loving her paradisal dreams.

ghosts are imprints of ourselves.
we are afraid of ghosts.
thus, we are afraid of our

future (footsteps).

you run through my veins,
my darling, like the stardust
we are all made of, even though
we are not the best, i'll believe
you are the winner of my cross-country race.

we are all human beings,
but we are not all humans.

if you are a human,
you are
     basically normal
          with just a dash of strange
     generally nice
          with some splashes of anger
     regular
     spectacular.

you are all human beings,
but you are not all humans.

my favorite thing about my
boring awful photo class
is being in the dark.

there's a boy.

i know, i know. a boy.

but i'm just the awkward girl
with a crooked back and the
huge notebook and ugly style.

and he's just the quarterback's
best friend with the cool hoodies
and those adidas shoes that everyone has.

and i know it's stereotypical and
could potentially work

but how does a girl who can't breathe
let go and take a gulp?

if you believe in me,
then you'll understand me
when i say that it's a
secret
and i can't tell you.

if you believe in me,
then you'll know what
i mean when i say that it's
dangerous.

follow me, if you believe.

there never really was a way to describe
you. were you a good person? i never
truly could decide. either you were dancing
with me or hitting a man and forcing him to
kneel and shooting him. that man could have
grown up to be a serial killer, but you took away
the chance that her would pick another option.
definitely, you were violent, but i can't very well
tell that to my mother and my family and friends.

i suppose you were my protector, right up to
the day you died. taking a bullet. for me.

there are scratches on my
knuckles and bruises on my
face from when i challenged
another for your
heart.

i'm sorry he's stronger than me.

if tears are just salt water,
then why do our eyes burn
when we submerge in the ocean
and not when we cry?

because crying is mandated
by nature and is acceptable.

rule one: everyone lies
rule two: you're not supposed to care
rule three: trust no one

it doesn't matter how loudly
you scream to be let out,
that you're all
     better,
if you're locked behind soundproof
walls of
     disappointment.

arousal is
the noun of
to arise.

i would like to
arise my arousal but
i love sleeping with
    you
like this.

there ought to be a law about love
but so many people would be sent to jail
for vandalizing heart, and you're quite

the troublemaker.

you said you'd always be there for me.
i realized you lied too late.

give me back my virtue and my passion.
give me back my youth and my love.
give me back my friends i used to love.

you can take the children and the car,
but give me back my mind.

the worst crimes are committed for love.
if this is where love leads us,
why were we born with
hearts?

she took a great fall down
a staircase and she saw
the photos of her sisters in
ballet classes and colleges and
none of her because they forgot
her existence.

the ingénue stood on the sand of the lagoon.
diaphanous ripples waved her goodbye
and she waved back.
the murmurous offing swallowed the plethora
of scintillas.

she turned around and wandered into the
labyrinthine jungle, ignoring the
susurrous whispers of the eavesdropping
leaves.

the penumbra of her life faded into
a scintilla of nothing and she was swallowed
up by the offing.

it found her a dulcet morsel.

avalon of jasper lived off of jasper's love.
she belonged to him and thrived under the
love of the wizard. she was awoken by the
dawning sun every morning as its light
slowly filtered through the glass roof.
inch by inch, she grew up and stretched her
arms to the sky. avalon of jasper bloomed
when he found a new beau and shone in delight
when they met again. she wilted when they
ended. jasper would visit her and pluck her
gently. "hello there, my lovely avalon
flower."

her back is curved
under the work she does
with the growth of her
spine and the growth
of her body.

surgery has to fix
the bit of herself
she has left.

i laid down across the desks
     like always
and started writing
     like always.

i felt her hands on the back of
my upper thigh
she wasn't trying to arouse me
but i could feel her little fingers
bumping up my thigh in
a rhythm, thumping while she texted on her phone
and i felt a light touch on my ****
a packet of papers
and another pair of hands doing work
on their work
on my ****
and i felt the light massages of her fingers on my thigh
and i wondered if other girls felt this way
when they were touched
and i wondered what made me different
and if i was different.

"mummy, mummy, can i have a
piece of chocolate?" asked the
little boy.
"of course," she said and
the little boy took a  slice
and let the sweetness
melt on his tongue.

if the little boy ate so much
sweet chocolate,
how did he grow up to be so bitter?

we read books
to find a world,
and to others,
it's unknown.

but there's no danger,
except falling in love.

but that's what our books
tell us.

there is a pit in my stomach
just like everyone else's
but mine has no bottom
and it just keeps going.

every so often a rock slips
and falls down the precipice
forever echoing off the walls.

sometimes i hear a splash when it hits
the water and then i feel it sinking,
dragging me down to infinite anti-heights
and i can't swim.

and you could say that there are
butterflies within my stomach,
and i would tell you that you were wrong,
the butterflies fell and drowned years ago.

it isn't that i feel sad
or numb, like some days,
but i don't feel like existing.

there's so much for me to do,
so many books to read,
so many shows to watch,
so many albums to listen to,
and there's so much that i cannot.

and i would give the world
to anyone
who could erase me for a few days.

i would be the shavings
off of a pencil that decorate a classroom floor.

and i wouldn't even mind.

she liked to fast.

and sometimes she fasted for
days.

isn't she golden,
shining in the light?

she fits comfortably into
the golden ration,
reducing the apples of her cheeks
and the width of her hips
and the length of her fingers
to meaningless numbers,
crunched into a calculator, checking
if she still looked golden.

i am less than human.
i am a creature that breathes just as they do,
but i am less than them.

i love to believe that i'd fit in
and be a real human some day,
but the little scars on my wrists and legs
move up and become more visible,
screaming
     "here i am"
     "come see"
     "look at how well i can hate"

i am less than human,
where i am a museum of
lazy little razors.

it hurts because it matters
it hurts because you know that it wasn't a mistake
it hurts because you understand that it's kind of your fault anyways
it hurts because they mattered

if someone tells me that jealousy does not exist
on this earth
i will tell them to look deep
inside my heart
and see the jealousy that courses through my veins

i yearn for someone to talk to
     even if it's just a random person anonymously on a random site
and i yearn for a cutesy little skype conversation
     with a complete stranger
and i yearn for people to ask me to go places
     instead of me asking them

and i yearn for them to remember me,
and i yearn for them to remember my name
and that it's leeza, not lyza
and that i have feelings, too
and i hate this back brace

and that i just want to laugh with them
and i don't want them to laugh at me
and i just worry so much

and i am jealous because they are concerned with
grades and boys, grades and girls
and i just try to fit in
because i am jealous.

they called themselves the monsters
because they wanted to strike
     fear into the
          hearts of men.

and legend has it,
they turned into their dreams.

he called her and she said, "i love you."
he said, "yes."

he called her and she said, "i love you."
he said, "yes."

he called her and she said, "i love you."
he said, "yes."

he called her and she said, "i love you."
he said, "no."

I am a completely different person than I was seven years ago.
Physically, yes, because my cells have been dying
and renewing so much that
everything is gone and I am new.

Mitosis took care of that in the way that
everyone is a new collection of cells
every seven years.

But we're still the same collection of memories.

I am also different mentally.

I am not a simple eight year old anymore,
but what is a simple eight year old?

I want to be a stem cell,
blank and waiting for instructions.

Either I want to make my own decisions
and take control of my own life
or I can recognize that I don't know what I'm doing
and any control given to me will be lost.

I want to stay blank, ready to be programmed
and have a job
and a purpose.

But maybe I don't want to be a cell
and I want to be the collection.
Maybe I'll find my purpose.
Maybe I'll find my job.

I want these seven years to pass so I can be this
new human.
Maybe they will know what to do.

Am I the stem cell, hidden in the nasal cavity, or am I the human?
Am I really that different from my simple eight year old self?
Am I really different at all?

her hair was like coper,
brown and normal until the
light caught it.

her hair sparked and
burned away her ginger
soul.

she wanted to be skinny.

     she wanted to ignore the skin on her body
     until it hung loosely off her skeleton
     like a wrinkled shirt on a hanger
     that needed ironing.

she wanted to be a stick
so that she could fit through the
spaces in the dark of trees
and understand how they fed off of
themselves.

     she wanted to know what it was like
     to have knives instead of collarbones,
     carving off the little chunks of fat,
     and throwing them to the side, letting the
     festering rats devour the residue of
     fourteen years of life.

she wanted to have hips that served as
mountains, looking like the alps,
with climbers covered in furs throwing hooks
over the niches in her body.

     she wanted a ribcage that would hold
     even the mightiest bird, without letting
     a single feather breach her defenses,
     never letting a ferocious caw escape her,

because she wanted to be thin.

my head is a canyon,
deep, intricate, and tall.
a river runs through the bottom,
tumbling, whirling, destroying.
i hear those voices
laughing, cackling, bellowing.
**echoing