I’m not going to write a song
About my deep dark feelings
‘Cause I can’t sing
And I’m not going to write a poem
About the sun in summer
Or flowers in the spring
In fact, I hate the word “flower”
It is candy hearts for sheep
I like the word “fervor”
Like, I fervently wish to dig my fingernails into the flesh of your back while you **** me into a fever with a fervor like a rabid dog.
That’s a pretty good word
Not too ugly or sweet
I like to write about hurt
All sorts of things hurt
Like the glass that digs into the soles of my feet
Making me so angry when I walk the ten steps that lead me back to me
From the five that lead to who I want to be
It is a sedated state of suffering
All at the hands of anyone but me
And contrary to contemporary belief
This kind of broken really isn’t pretty
So I want to write a song about all the lovely things I’ve seen
How beautiful some of my days have been
If you were here I’d pay someone pretty to sing this song and
If we still talked I’d get up on stage and read this poem
I’d make you blush in the audience
While I told the whole bar about
The way you taste in the middle of summer
How I’ve always liked salty better than sweet
And how every night you looked me in my eyes the whole time you moved inside
I’d steal the clichés from all the love stories you’ve come to hate
Just to watch you cringe in your seat
But I’ve always liked ****** better than trite
And all I can ever seem make this god ****** pen write
Are words about fear and ******* and flesh
And how much they all hurt me

Flowers bloomed where you traced your fingers.
They grew as if fed by your caress.

And slowly, I became a garden.

My bleeding red Dicentras fluttered, as your hands lingered.
Tuberose & orchids twisted together, covering my dress.

Your words sprung up fresh new buds.

But Lavender began to spring up from the words you planted.
And from my eyes began to sprout begonias, purple and dark.*

I realized that you were not willing to accept that I couldn't grow orange blossoms.

You & I knew my soil wasn’t able to be enchanted.
So I clipped all of my flowers, and shot the lovely larks.

You said I wasn't worth tending. Was I not?

*You kicked the dirt and ripped up the last of the lilacs

Sitting in class, looking around,
I feel a little man climbing up my face by hair.
He has on tiny sharp shoes
And they dig into my skin
I wince as he clambers up my cheek
He rests only for a moment
Thinking.
He gets fistfuls of my eyelashes
Tugs & tugs & tugs
I feel the weight of him &
My eye closes gratefully
He moves to the other
Making a mirror action
And it's all gone from there
Now he dances in my dream
He might have climbed
Into my ear while I wasn’t looking

Between the headaches & heartbreaks
lives a man unaltered by mistakes

pulsing, teeming,
breathing meaning

into



me

Warm air from the summer night blasts through the open windows.
I don’t know where we’re going.
I don’t think he knows either.
"Just drive," he says.

So I do.

Del sat on the steps in front of a brick building, smoking a cigarette. She looked more like a thick, young teenage boy that a woman in her mid-twenties. With her track jacket collar pulled up tight around her, she recoiled into herself, slinking back into the steps. She siphoned a long deep inhale of smoke.

Andie blew the cigarette smoke through her tightened lips and whistled the smoke at the mirror in front of her. She reviewed her reflection critically with squinting eyes. It was cold and dark in the room except for the hot glow of cigarette and the glare of a bare light bulb without a lampshade. Her skin stood up with goosebumps and her ******* were small and hard.