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Emily Aug 2014
i am running out of ways to try to get you to kiss me back
your eyelids are very soft and shot with purple veins and they look like the first morning after rain
i am willing to wait
after all this it’s hard to know whether you care about me anymore but
i am waiting for you once again
i am running out of time
the first time i told you that i loved you i wanted to cry a little and maybe i should have but i was already in your arms and it felt like something slipped inside of me
i am learning to listen to what my body is telling me
i am running out
Emily Aug 2014
her grandmother’s hand feels like an overripe peach and there’s not much behind her glossy eyes. the nursing home smells like disinfectant and the powdery smell of old women. jane tucks her feet under her chair as she watches the vacant stare on her grandmother’s face and wonders if her grandmother will notice when she stops coming. the soft buzz of television and the chatter of nurses feels very far away and the room feels too big for the two of them. jane’s grandmother raised her when her own parents were too drunk or coked up to remember they had even had a daughter and her first, second, third stroke had left her soft and empty. jane kisses her forehead, leaving a strawberry-colored mark on her grandmother’s pale skin and she slips a paperweight from the nurse’s desk into the pocket of her dress

the coat is heavy and camel-colored and hangs off jane’s small figure, nearly obscuring her. the collar nestles under her ears and she’s warm, even in the chill of the dusty second-hand shop down the street, with the watery-eyed cashier who watches her suspiciously and waits for his cigarette break. the weight is comforting and she hugs it in closer to her before removing it and stroking the shiny polyester lining. jane waits a few minutes before she pulls out a bundle of carefully stacked bills and quietly buys the overcoat without making eye contact.

at home, jane’s neat handwriting fills the last page of the journal she’s been keeping for the past few months. from her desk drawer she pulls two more of the same. the details of her life coat the pages and it occurs to her how small, how ordered, how utterly unremarkable her days have been. this elicits no real emotion and jane pours herself a half glass of wine and lies on the couch, fully clothed, and breathes so slowly her chest hardly moves. she wonders if it will hurt.

she places the coat on her neatly-made bed and stands in front of her bathroom mirror. her hair is long enough to touch the waistband of her skirt and it tangles over her shoulders and back like a mass of seaweed before she gathers it into a ponytail and snips it off, just beneath her ears. there’s nearly ten inches of her soft hair in her fist and in the mirror jane looks sharper and meaner than before. she takes the same scissors and cuts a slit in the hem of the coat and drops the hair into the space between the lining and the thick wool. next falls the paperweight, the journals, a bottle of pills she will no longer take twice daily. the coat is sewn up with small, neat stitches.

down the road from the home is a wide stretch of anemic sand and silvery water. the breeze off the ocean tugs and twists the coat like the hands of insistent children yet jane walks solidly on, feeling more opaque than she has in years. the rocks along the beach are smooth and slightly warm from the sun and she slips the most beautiful into her pockets as she nears the sleepy waves of the shore. jane never stops walking. her shoes are the first to become soaked but soon the water infiltrates her hemline, her waist, her chest, her neck. the short strands of her once flowing hair float momentarily before the water slips over her head like a sheet. jane’s body does not float, does not struggle, does not resurface.
Emily Apr 2014
I. The first time I found the bag of needles and powder in her backpack I left and said I would never come back but she found me sleeping in the cemetery that night just like I always did when things were bad especially at home. I said a lot of times that I would never come back and I always did. She said a lot of times that she would stop and she never did. I still remember every plane of her face from feeling it in the dark. I wonder if she's okay but I can't care anymore.

II. I liked how she felt in bed and I liked how I felt in bed with her.

III. She called me at 4am a few times and talked to me so quickly I only caught half the words she was speaking and I couldn't stop smiling but when we hung up the room felt much emptier than before.

IV. The gun looks absolutely nothing like a toy in her hand despite what I always read. I wonder where she got it but my mind is more focused on other things like the slick chill of the metal against my face and her carefully painted lips very close to mine. I'm torn between staying perfectly still and trying to kiss her and while I try to decide she takes off the safety. It is at this exact moment that I realize how unstable she is and I know I've never been able to predict her actions, only her lies. I have no idea what she might do next and I love her.
Emily Apr 2014
i miss you and this is as much poetry as there is in me
Emily Apr 2014
i try to look in the mirror before i leave but i barely recognize the face staring back. my skin looks too thin for my face and my eyes are not as bright as they used to be. i like the way my ribs ****** through the skin of my torso.

the party is loud and slightly sweaty and no one seems to mind much that i’ve barely said a word and i don’t mind either but i want to go home, home with my soft bed and the quiet dark of my room and home where i can be alone. a girl i haven’t talked to in months nudges me and yells over the music God youre such a ****** with her wide teasing smile as i eat a tortilla chip and she doesn’t know that all i’ve eaten in the past six days is half of a small apple, in tiny precise bites

she doesn’t know

outside it’s cold and sharp and i wish i’d worn a longer dress or a coat and the only one out there is james who sometimes stares at me a little too long. he’s smoking as usual and he passes it without a word. i’ve had a few too many drinks and soon we’re laying in the damp grass and im crying and i admit how hungry, how ******* hungry i am, and he’s very quiet until he kisses me helplessly and i can’t stop crying

it’s been over a year now and food is not my enemy anymore. we’re not friends but i can eat now and i let myself buy lunch a few weeks ago and i laughed along with everyone and didn’t think much about the calories passing my lips and it felt good

baby steps, baby bites

everything is becoming okay
  Mar 2014 Emily
Asher
You and I drowned in grass while beer cans collected rainwater on a hot night in autumn.
O my redhead girl
O my golden goddess take me far away
Hello hello hello anyone home???
Is anyone-
No thanks, not interested
I don't want what you're selling

The street is wet and the sky is branded
Brand me too
You already have, what's one more?
Just tell me what I owe you and I'll give it to you
Just tell me what I owe you so this'll be over

Hello hello is anyone-
Oh
So that's your game here
Take up your Geiger counter, go on
It won't tell you anything you don't know
So I'm a few screws loose
A few isotopes shy of a real person

My first honest relationship was with a girl with no face
O my springtime gal
You're no rose, you're just all thorns

Say I'm no good then
I'm just no good
Say I'm a washed up summer king
I double dog dare you

You and me walked through a stream filled with dreams blue and green and you took my hand

I called you the night I died

Sometimes I wish I'd gotten the dial tone
Emily Mar 2014
my mouth tastes like pennies and your hand is too warm on my thigh under your parents table and i wish you would move it and i know the way you squeeze softly would be attractive to other girls but i am not other girls

i used to read books out loud to you and when i stumbled over words you would stroke my hair and i don’t think you even heard a word i was saying

you say you love math because there is no uncertainty and i think about how i am never a fixed point and i wonder if this is why you’re not always there when i wake up

you tell me you know me better than myself

my face feels too tight and flushed and i am not a crier but i wish i was now

you like to control me and i like to control me and i feel guilty for this

her lips look very soft on your cheek and it’s been a few months but i remember you never let me kiss you in public. she has bigger eyes than me and i still think about you

there are 2 bottles of sleeping pills and my favorite knife and a pack of cigarettes under my bed and i kissed a boy whose name i don’t know last weekend and it felt good

i haven’t cried myself to sleep in three weeks

your hand is too high up on my leg and i want to go home
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