shes got me coughing up flowers
again and again
and though i love them
and i keep every petal
i can not breathe

(read forward, then backward, line by line)

I ran.
Not knowing what else to do
There was so much blood on my hands
It was mine
The kitchen knife
Caught in my chest
Guilt
Consumed by
Fear
I was heightened by
Adrenaline
But running on
Wasn’t enough
While trying to stay calm,
Losing control
It was me that would end up
Dead. Because
He was
In front of me
The whole time
It was too late
Trapped
I found myself
Locked in chains
My fate was
Death.

I'm so sick of the crashing cars and the ambulance sirens
God, the traffic light was on fire
God, my heart stopped when the brakes didn't
My body is decaying
With all of who I was on display for somebody else to clean up
God, put me back into time
I don't want to wander back to the intersection
I've sat on the curb for what must have been hours, but only stared at that one second
I'm still dying

God, I regret every day I spent on my couch
I wasted so much time licking my scars and praying for sleep
Wanting to rest because the world was so heavy and I carried my part
I've learned patience since the then, but here we are
You and I
And the stop light, halfway between yellow and red
I didn't understand while my foot was on the acceleration
I didn't understand speeding until I stopped

God, I was running away from everything
I was looking for something beautiful and I found a fuse
It could've been fireworks or a forest fire and I didn't know until I lit the match
Either way, that car is burning
I can feel the heat from the still flames
Smell the hexane leaking out, seeking ignition
But I can't pull the woman from her car
I can't continue her life for her
That's her decision, or God, maybe it's yours
It was my decision to get into the car this morning

God, I didn't choose death
I chose to ride my bike without a helmet
And to swim all alone at night
But I didn't choose to die
I should have paid more attention in driving school,
Or even just the road that day
It has my complete focus now, my unceasing fascination with this one moment
God, please put me back into time
Let me go with her to the hospital
Let me die there, knowing that she lived

I'll bet she was responsible,
Turned in her homework on time and went to bed at ten
I'll bet she looked both ways and couldn't see me coming on too fast
I'll bet she has a little brother waving her off to college in the fall
And her parents are very proud
God, she has a story
As many hours as I do, an entire life I may have just ended in seconds
She built herself, she wants to be something
She is so beautiful right before the airbag goes off
I died before the airbag could go off
God, I will not give up
I won't leave her,
I'll stay right here in case this second finally bleeds into the next one

your body is a temple,
they tell me,
but still I do not eat.
it is a temple which I do not pray to,
it is a temple where my insides pray for food,
where my mind prays to feel something,
anything.
so I feed it anything that will plant hedges in my mind,
to shadow the burning house that it has become,
so no one notices and calls for help,
even if only for a few minutes,
but I do not feed it anything which will allow my body to grow,
I have cut down all the trees,
even though oxygen is scarce,
there are factories pumping smoke throughout me,
pollution is heavy,
as heavy as my body feels most nights,
weighing down the earth,
and I am only noticing now,
how hard it has become to breathe.

I was always more of an autumn girl, there was something so poetic about watching the leaves fall, maybe that's why I always hated spring. But then you appeared, on that hot april night. So full of leaves. You told me I was an unbloomed flower. So you water me with laughs and sweet words, in a couple of days I started blooming. And then I understood how wonderful spring was.
I now see flowers so differently and with so much respect, because it is so hard to bloom in the time we live in, we are so full of toxic people and words that stick to us like poison ivy, yet you made it look so easy for me.
you told me that I should bloom like a wildflower, no matter the place, no matter the season, no matter the circumstances, you have the ability to brighten up someone's path.

(b.c.)

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.

I'm over stuffed;
my bones press with protest
against my skin,
as my ribs bend with worry
and my lungs fill in.

*I'm drowning.

melt away my skin and bones
you'll find my burning heart
blackened coal and ash dreams
strucken with a poisoned dart
tear apart my pale blue chest
you'll find my heaving lungs
strung close by deadly ivy
my broken ribs are rungs