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

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.

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.

i miss you and this is as much poetry as there is in me

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

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

I was raised in a strictly religious household and I privately thought that being gay was okay but I knew that most people in my religious community disagree. I admitted to myself when I was about 17 (I'm 18 now) that I was attracted to girls (I'm also Gray-A, meaning I experience limited ****** attraction) and this year I came out to a few close friends. My parents views on LGBT rights (that is, that "being gay is a choice" and "gays are destroying the sanctity of marriage", etc) influence me heavily, but in a negative way- they make me feel unsafe and I know I can't come out to them now or they might kick me out (my mom told my sister once that if any of us were gay we wouldn't be welcome. she also referenced my trans friend as being 'confused' and things like that).
The 8 or so friends I've told have been accepting but I know they see me differently and I feel uncomfortable telling boys because there's an expectation that lesbians are more inclined to ****** activity (think lesbian ****) and are often fetishized, things like that.
I still go to church but it makes me miserable because people hate gays there and make insensitive comments, not realizing that they make me feel pretty terrible for being who I am. I've also suffered from major depression for about 6 years and part of what made it worse throughout junior high and high school was having to suppress my identity and the constant fear I face in my home and community. You never know who's going to hate you, reject you, or even attack you for being gay. The internet (tumblr, mainly) provides a more welcoming community than I find elsewhere so at least I have that forum to express myself.

i awake i awake i awake i am awake and i see you first thing and you are beautiful to me and i see you all the time and you always look so fresh so young so glowing so terrifying you burn my eyes and i love you all the same i love you i love you this runs like a thread through every lobe of my brain i am so in love with you and the way you cry makes my heart beat extra strong today you are crying and i do not know why i do not care why this is how i love you and your face is grey pigeon grey pearl grey storm grey and your eyes are darker than ever before and from the way your hands twist in your lap i see that you are leaving me but there are no words in my throat just this never ending loop of i love you i love you i love you in my head i can’t get it out and i don’t want to either i see it in front of my eyes i see it all around me it’s so tangible it’s as touchable as your hair looks just now let me reach out and stroke it one last time your flesh is so soft and yielding and i can see my hands in front of me too but they do not make any sense because i have not commanded them to move but they reach for you reach reach reach for something i am afraid i might lose i reach like a child for their mother i reach for you and my hands are much stronger than your delicate neck and your neck so soft and brown is no match for me no not at all and your eyes your lovely tan eyes look so afraid and i want to tell you not to be afraid you are not going anywhere and your face looks so swollen so bruised and i begin to cry too but you are leaving me anyway and this is no punishment this is just me begging for you not to go but your eyes are fluttering shut and my face is bleeding from your sharp little nails scratching at me like a bird you are my little bird and you are broken on the ground

YOU WILL NOT FALL IN LOVE IN A HOSPITAL, YOUR SKIN WILL SMELL LIKE THE DYING AND YOUR LIPS WILL CRACK AND YOU WILL NOT FIND BEAUTY

I USED TO THINK I WOULD FIND SOLACE IN THOSE SANITIZED WHITE HALLS BUT ALL I EVER FOUND WAS MY OWN EMPTY EYES STARING BACK AT ME FROM THE UNBREAKABLE SUICIDE-PROOF MIRROR AND THERE WAS NO COMFORT IN MY BRUISED TENDER FACE

HOSPITALS ARE NO PLACE FOR YOUNG GIRLS WHO HAVE NOT YET TURNED AWAY FROM LIFE AND THEY ARE NO PLACE FOR KISSING YET YOU READ ABOUT MOUTHS FINDING EACHOTHER IN THE DARKEST HOUR AND YOU THINK OF CEMENT HOSPITAL WALLS; THERE IS NO DARKNESS IN HOSPITALS, JUST PURPLE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS THAT MAKE YOU LOOK SO PALE YOU MIGHT JUST REALIZE THE IMMINENCE OF YOUR OWN DEATH.

YOU WILL NOT FALL IN LOVE IN A HOSPITAL.

ARIES: stay away from cats claws and hours past midnight. good day for purple lips and kissing your mothers cheek

TAURUS: your leg hair will grow and it will feel like beauty. you are lost and will not be found and this will feel like being a child again

GEMINI: clocks will move backwards for you today. when his hand catches in your hair, go home with your shoes clutched to your chest.

CANCER: spiders beckon new hope and your feet will crush the crocuses in your front yard. don’t be late.

LEO: today is a day to listen. listen to silence, listen to noise, listen to sobs, listen to laughter, listen to your heartbeat. hush

VIRGO: itchy scars are a sign of past romance bubbling to the surface. avoid broken windows and crying

LIBRA: you will love your freckles in the mirror and when he says he does not, leave him. good day for hauntings

SCORPIO: you will feel it. bad day for fresh-cut flowers

SAGITTARIUS: two chimes means a secret is about to be revealed. watch for smudged mascara and track marks

CAPRICORN: destruction comes with a price. squeeze her hand extra tight when you leave; she’ll be back eventually.

AQUARIUS: you can not be silenced today; this is not always good. bad day for second hand books

PISCES: read your mail and stay out of the rain. avoid gray eyes and sleeping late

i am far too flammable to be playing with matches like this but i like the way your hands burn and i like the singes on my dress, my hair, my skin and i know i shouldn’t but burning feels more alive than freezing and my body has been shaking from the cold for months now and even if this hurts just as much it’s so nice to just feel something, something different, something at all. cold eats you from the inside out, the ice spreading from your stomach to your throat before it appears on your lips and cold feels like nothing. you lose the sensation of touch and you lose your breath and it happens so slowly you don’t realize it at first. this is what my life has been like: slowly freezing me solid, deep freeze through to my heart, until my flesh can’t remember what it’s like to be flushed and warm and alive. fire is different; the flames dance on your skin and scorch you before your nerves register the feeling, before you realize the danger, and this is what you feel like. i want to commit small acts of arson with you and i want us to burn down the house i grew up in and we can kiss with the flames reflected in our eyes. you are my original sin, you are my Morningstar turned lucifer, you are mine.

i hope it seared you,
this moment
your lips on mine
every crease of my mouth
imprinted in your memory
formaldehyde kisses so perfectly preserved

The first thing I noticed about you was how sad your eyes looked but I could never admit this to anyone because it sounds so Teen Cliche, doesn’t it, and you were sad but you were a million other things -- and my God do I hate it when people become their sadness -- but the honest truth is that your eyes drew me in from across the room and you looked like your heart had been broken and i am like Saint Jude in that when I see a lost cause I want to nurse it back to health. I thought this was one of my better points but looking back, it’s a stupid thing to do. let people be broken, let boys with sad eyes be sad, I tell myself now. It’s better for you. You were an *******, that’s for sure. You made me insane. You made my blood boil. You ******* killed me all the time and I thought I loved you. I was crazy back then, of course I still am and I have a note from a psychiatrist to Prove It, but I was crazy in a different way then and my jealousy was like a fever that ran through me all the ******* time. I had a dream about killing you, did you know? It was the second- or was it third? or fourth? time you cheated on me and flaunted it and I couldn’t sleep for hours but when the sobs finally left my chest I dreamt about ripping the muscles from your bones and plucking your eyes from your sockets and maybe you’d be proud of me because you always were a bit of a sadist. I think everyone has heard this story a thousand times before and I think most people can sympathize but that doesn’t make it one bit easier but I wish it did. When it’s a song everyone knows and can sing along to I actually get kind of mad because hey, no, it’s my story and I want it to myself. I want to feel different and special because i am an entitled teenage girl and that’s all I really want, im a baby and a child and i like being infantalized and i have ******* daddy issues but i don’t like to admit it because i want to be protected but i don’t want to be seen as weak. I know im childish and selfish but I’m allowed to be as long as I keep it to myself and it’s my own little secret because most people just see me with my smiles and empty eyes and there doesn’t seem to be a lot back there. You knew I was insecure and selfish and more like a little kid than a well-adjusted teenager but you said you loved me anyway. I remember now that you also told me a thousand times how much you loved my body and if I count the days since we met that’s like 3 times a day so you’d think i would believe you by now but i don’t because it was all a lie a lie a lie you lied to me about everything you lied to me about ******* megan but you did, you ****** her in a dressing room two days after you said you loved me again and when you told me it felt like having my heart ripped out because i was either in love with you or just ******* obsessed with you and i still can’t tell the difference.

I had woken up to a text from the boy that morning, something that rarely happened. We decided when this started, months ago, that it wasn’t a relationship, just...well, I didn’t know anymore. I knew that when I looked at him the back of my throat felt swollen and when his eyelashes brushed my cheek it hurt deep inside my chest but I also knew that his eyes wandered to half the girls he knew and that he had a reputation of being a boy you couldn’t get to stay but did any of that matter? I hadn’t read the text yet and I didn’t know if I should.

His name was Josh and his hands were calloused and he liked bitter wines and reading, which makes him sound soft, but he wasn’t or at least that’s not how I saw him. We had met in the basement of a party two years ago, when I was sixteen and afraid of boys when they had too much to drink and he was seventeen and had promised to be a designated driver. Being the only two sober people at a party felt like being in our own little bubble, our own world, and I liked it. I liked him right away, not in a romantic way, just in a friend way and if that sounds childish then it’s because I am. We went for a walk that night because I like being outside more than anything and I liked the way he agreed to it and I liked the way his arms looked in his faded blue t-shirt and I liked that he laughed easily and openly and I liked that he made me want to smile too.

I guess I should admit that part of the reason I wasn’t drinking was that I knew the calorie count of every single bottle of alcohol and I knew that some drugs would make me hungry and food wasn’t something that I wanted to be part of my life at that time and smiling was a rare thing then. But he made my cheeks perk up and things felt a little better than okay for the first time in months, maybe years, and that night was the first time we kissed even though it didn’t really mean anything because despite my attraction to him and despite the way his hands wandered almost immediately, we were still strangers to one another and we were just teenagers. After the kiss, which was only a few seconds and didn’t actually elicit a huge amount of excitement for either of us, he leaned his forehead against mine and squeezed my shoulders in a way that felt strangely intimate and encouraging. I didn’t know how to react to this so I laughed awkwardly and we walked back to the party with folded arms so that our hands couldn’t brush.

Within a few weeks I met his soft-cheeked little brother who had chubby hands that gripped my fingers with the tight urgency of a kid who can’t talk yet and I met his mother who had the same dark eyes and olive skin as Josh and I could see the resemblance right away and she hugged me right he introduced us. His house became my second home; mine was always cold and empty and I was never really happy being there-- and my skin began to smell like his. We never went to his room and the three times he came to my house, he never saw mine. There were no rules for this, it just didn’t feel like the thing to do. There was no real romance between us, even though we did have a connection that was almost palpable and he had a few girlfriends and I had a few boyfriends and two girlfriends and we cried on eachother more nights than either of us would like to admit.  In May, he graduated and I watched quietly as a swarm of girls hugged him and kissed his cheek and posed for photos with him and I realized that it was jealousy that I felt, growing inside of me and wrapping itself around my windpipe and I was surprised. He smiled sheepishly at me from across the gym and I gave a little wave and when he looked away I ran to the bathroom and vomited  up the clementine and toast I had eaten for breakfast. Josh was waiting for me when I got back and I was embarrassed but he smiled just like he always had and we went home together. That night, when everyone else had left, we sat in his basement where we spent so much time together and his hand found mine and I felt all the blood rush out my body and every single nerve of my body was tense and within a few minutes we were kissing, for the second time, and I straddled him on the couch and we made out until my body felt like it was melting into nothing and when we finally stopped I leaned against him and when I looked into his face his eyes were shining more than usual. I realized he was crying and just like a year ago, I was deeply uncomfortable and I picked up my shirt from the floor and pulled it on and went upstairs and left him with tears streaking down his cheeks.

Nothing was the same after that and sometimes I thought this was good but some of the time, most of the time, it felt bad. That summer we avoided eachother and when I saw his mom she tucked my hair behind my ear and said she missed me and I would smile and tell her how busy I was and I could tell from the crinkling of her eyes that she didn’t believe me. She had Josh when she was only 15 and I felt close to her because of this; she was very young and very beautiful and she was a good mother. Maria, that was her name, which I thought felt nice in my mouth and she was the first to notice that I always finished dinner with plate more full than empty and she would sometimes slip a piece of gum into my hand when I ate too much and had to slip away to the bathroom with the water running and stick my head in the toilet like I taught myself to when I was far too young.

Anyway, in late September I was walking to the park a few miles from my house and there was Josh, perched on the fence, smiling at me and with no explanation we fell back into things all over again and he took me in his arms and pulled me in close. I realized that the other half of my heart was back and I had felt empty for the past few months and that’s when our relationship limbo started. We slept together for the first time later that week, and walking into his room for the first time was like breaking a spell. I felt a little chill pass through me and I realized that nothing could ever go back to the way it was before because I had a ****** in my hand and seeing his room was like seeing a little bit into him and as he tugged at my hand I was suddenly unsure of what we were about to do but I silenced those thoughts and allowed him to push me back onto his bed. Unlike the night of his graduation he was on top this time, and it was different from the other times I had been with other boys because it was like he was a part of me, and maybe this isn’t something you share but he was the first boy to make me *** and it felt fitting that he made me feel alive in so many ways, this being the most physically apparent. I lay on his chest afterwards and stroked the chest that I had cried on too many times and everything felt utterly right and I hoped that he felt it too. He fell asleep quickly like boys always do and his eyelids were delicately purple in a way that reminded me of eggshells and bruises and he was attractive in a way that made me a little sad. I kissed his silky eyelids right then, impulsively. He woke up for a moment and he smiled at me but he drifted off again and I was excruciatingly happy and that’s when Maria opened the door.

I. I say I love you but you remind me of the 5am sky like a bruise across the horizon and holding back sobs in the back seat of your best friends car with my knees pulled up to my chest

II. I say I love you but the nonfiction section of the library feels too much like your hands that afternoon we kissed hidden between shelves of books, worried the librarian might find us

III. I say that I love you but girls like me can't be held down and love is an umbilical cord and I want to be free and I need to own myself. You can't.

IV. I say that I love you but how could I when you and I have changed so much I don't even remember how it feels to be in love?

V. I say that I love you and I am sorry for lying.

The sheets were soft and crumpled underneath my back and my mind was wandering even though this wasn’t the time for that, and I thought about how much I always loved the feeling of bare skin against sheets, year round, even when it was far too cold for it to be a reasonable thing to do. There’s something **** about just being naked, as simplistic as it sounds. With only his skin, my hair, and the sheets touching my body, I felt exposed but I also felt strong, which was an interesting mix of emotions. I knew I should have been more fixated on what was going on (he certainly was) but I always feel somewhat disconnected from my body and having someone else touch it made it feel even more foreign. It wasn’t unpleasant to have his hands all over me, maybe just a little disappointing and I suddenly wanted to push him off me and go for a walk outside where the air could fill my lungs. Stuffy. It was stuffy in his room, I thought. The distinctly boyish smell of deodorant and sweat mingled with the fake perfume of the candle I remembered to bring and it was was suffocating me. Outside, I could hear his little brother playing loudly in the yard and I wanted to be a little kid again but instead I was inside in a darkened room doing things that seemed too adult for my body and things I used to tell myself I would never do. I liked his brother; he was a sweet kid and last spring I took him to the park a few times when the older boy on top of me had work at the bodega down the street. It felt ***** to hear his childish yells and I wanted more than ever to leave, but the strange more-than-friends relationship with this boy meant that he wanted this once in a while and I liked him more than I had admitted to anyone yet. The cracks in his ceiling were familiar to me by now and once, after we--******? made love? I still didn’t know what to call it-- he told me that the first night I came over, drunk and crying, he had to run to peel off the glow in the dark stars that had still been up, a remnant from his childhood, and I found this endearing and I had kissed him again for that. One of his hands was running through my hair now and I stroked his chest, which was leaner and tanner than my bluish-white hands. In the back of my mind I thought I might love him but it could have been his body between my thighs. I could never be sure.

I was always a really ***** kid. Not in a slimy way but I always just liked playing out in the trees even though I’d come home with my knees caked with ****** ***** and my hair tangled with sap that would take days to wash out and I’d have to quietly wash off with the garden hose because there would be Hell To Pay if I tracked mud in the house. It was my solace, mostly, running away into the whispering pines that surrounded my house until I was 13 and our neighbors sold it out to contractors and a family with a boy who liked to torture bugs moved in and that was the end of my hiding place. But until then I knew the fastest way to the river that hardly anyone else ever visited and I knew the best place to hide and I could climb this one fir in three seconds flat and it was wide enough that it would shelter my 9 year old shoulders. I always wore these little blue leather sandals which were a luxury because the rest of the time I had to wear orthopedic shoes because I was born with club feet that still hurt when I run too much. Even though my hands liked to dig in the dirt and I liked to feel the ground under my bare skin I was never really a tomboy. I wore this purple velvet skirt all the time and I wore my blonde hair long enough that I could sit on it. My hair has always been a security blanket for me and it’s still a defining feature now that it curls around my ears in a way that people seem to like. But at the time, pre-puberty it was always long and slightly tangled and my mom would take it in her fist and pull my head back and threaten to cut it off whenever she was angry, which was often, or when I didn’t brush it, which was almost as often. My house felt bigger then, when my chin was doorknob-level and the swings my dad built made you feel like you were flying. Our house was yellow and green and from the gardens and forests around it you could almost picture it being in some movie, some sun-drenched movie from the 70s and with my long wood-colored hair and outdated sandals I would have fit in. I’ve never looked like the rest of my family, who are all thinner, more angular somehow, and their skin was always freckled and rough. My skin has always been so clear you can see the veins running under the surface and my limbs have always been longer, softer, and I was fat for a few years until I stopped eating altogether and suffered over the calorie count of celery versus carrots and would lie in bed with my head spinning and every bone in my body aching. But that was a different time, and as a child I preferred to lie on the warm sidewalk and watch the cars pass and tell myself that if six cars passed before my mom got home I would be safe and today would be a good day. Sometimes five would pass and it would still be a good day, and sometimes ten would pass and it would be one of the worst yet, but it was a childlike game and it comforted me to think I had control over her actions. That was back when hearing the front door open at 7 made ***** rise in my throat and hearing her 160 pound footsteps on the nubbly carpet outside of my room made my body shut down before her hands even touched the door. There was a technique to turning off your mind. I learned this before I could ride a bike and it all came down to two very simple things: close your eyes, and it will be over soon. You just had to wait things out and afterwards you could run to the bathroom and watch the blood pool in the white porcelain tub and it would slide down, slightly foamy, with hot water that burned over the fresh scars that mingled with faded ones in places my own hands could never reach.

it was wednesday
was the first time i told you i loved you
my eyelashes fluttered against your cheekbones

it was wednesday
the first time i fell in love
your hands against mine
and you called me your queen
i laughed because i knew
we were 17 and love is an illusion
but it felt good anyway

it was sunday, actually
when my heart cracked and i told you
to never speak to me again
and i ******* meant it
your knuckles were white and your fists were red
but i was more afraid
of your heart than your hands

loving you felt like a fire that thawed me
but it was all i could do
to keep from screaming
when the ceilings began to collapse
and smoke poured from my mouth
pain feels good
but only for a second

it’s been months
almost a year now
i don’t know why i can’t get you out of me
you’re still in there somewhere
smoldering away and for me
it’s still a wednesday
and im telling you i love you

a prayer for every broken heart
a prayer for every sob that threatens to fill your throat as your eyes betray the flood rising in your chest
a prayer for every stranger with track marks in their wasted forearms and eyes hollower than their stomachs
a prayer for the weak, a prayer for the helpless, a prayer for the strong
a prayer for every time he hit her and a prayer for every time she didn’t move an inch
a prayer for the blood on the thighs of a girl who was torn by a drunken frat boy who never learned to hear “no"
a prayer for every sin of the heart
amen

there was one hazy Sunday morning where I woke up and called the boy I loved and he asked me to marry him and I didn't know how to say no to men yet. 3 months later he whispered with his body tangled with mine while he thought I was lost in sleep that he was afraid that we'd be married for years and one day he'd wake up and I would be gone without a trace because I can't handle relationships and feelings and love and I grew up alone and I can't stop craving owning my own heart. I wanted to be owned body and soul but I couldn't let myself go without digging my claws in one last attempt at holding on to the only thing that will ever be mine. what you'll never understand is this: girls like me with tiger guts can't be conquered, no matter how much we want to. when the only constant in your life is a deep and abiding addiction to reliance on yourself, relationships become a secret battle of how much of your heart you can hide from your lover and pray they never shine on the darkest parts of you.
this is a letter to you: you, my first love, my empty-hearted lover, no longer my anything. my life has become intertwined with yours and I'm still learning to pick my story apart from yours. a letter of repentance, of forgiveness, of pleading. a letter to tell you that you were right and I never could have stayed in your life and your bed for a lifetime.
(never quite) yours & all the love I don't understand,
girl

two summers ago we sat in dark hallways and you shined a flashlight through my palm and traced the veins that threaded my fingers. we kissed like children, with closed mouths and open eyes and searched for answers in the bottom of an orange bottle of pills. you wept the first time you tried to touch me and i flinched away because in the world i grew up, a hand laid on my skin became punishment. you faded away at the end of a rope after too many years of a heart that bled with the pain of someone much older, a sacrifice for the uncreated child you longed for and i was alone in the same hallways in which we used to brush hands

he fell in love slowly for once
after one month he realized
he had fallen in love with her small brown hands
and another two passed
before he saw
how much her loved her breathing in the middle of the night
and it took five missed calls and too many broken silences before he realized he could love her parts
but never the sum

your bones were breaking and you called it love. the life leaked out of your wide grey eyes and your hands trembled and you said it was safe. her foot held you underwater and your lips formed poems of devotion.

i saw the bruises.

i saw the signs.

every time i saw you i read the screams for help between your silences but nothing could keep you away from her. like moth to flame, your wings were singed as you flew into the one thing that could **** you, the one thing you found so impossible to leave.

your mouth was full of sobs but you couldn’t spit them out.

three months and too many scars later you tore out of her hands, leaving blood and skin behind in her claws. you had to leave behind chunks of yourself but you were free. the flame was extinguished and nothing tethered you to the broken-hearted love you had grown to crave

your soft
brown
eyes
used to keep me up all night
with one palm on your cheek and my lips grazing yours
but those same eyes
are now avoiding mine
and when ours meet they’re full of shame

when she speaks, her voice grates my skin, leaving the pale expanse of my back and shoulders raw and weeping. she’s five foot two and although she’s made of paper, she’s built of titanium and her fingers draw portraits in blood across my neck.

that night we lit up on her roof and watched the smoke dance in the vibrant black sky. her eyes are blending into the pure absence of light and i’m hopelessly lost. there’s an ash resting on her pale hair and i keep thinking i want to blow it away but i can’t move or she might disappear. her small calloused hands are waving a flame too close to my face but i can’t leave those two spots of endless, endlessly infinite, swirling darkness and i feel my cheeks singe. my skin is bubbling and melting and she’s catching the drops in the curve of her left palm. my muscles have still forgotten how to stretch. my limbs are carved from ice but my face, my face is burning and the tongue of her lighter is lapping at my eyelashes. my forgotten cigarette is burned to the filter and i let the glowing tip fall to my thigh. i’ve torn my eyes away but they bleed because in those moments we had fused together. i’m fixed on her mouth now, and it’s the face of my sister, no, it’s the lips of my kindergarten teacher on the day she whispered that her cancer was consuming her and never she never came back, but no, her features are sliding and it’s her again. it was always her. it was her face all along but i’ve flinched and she’s a stain on the ground.