His bed was one of my favorite things; it had no box spring to hold it up, just a mattress on the floor with a giant, lumpy comforter covering our almost-naked bodies. I slept on the left side of the bed where his heater sat on the wall, loudly pumping out warm air. When lying still we could hear the quiet scratching and tapping of little mice scurrying through the walls around us. A part of me hated thinking of waking up to a mouse sitting on my chest, but another part liked the thought that mice lived around his bed, like a little mouse mansion.

How smooth his skin was… the nicest I’ve ever felt, like a baby’s, untouched and unharmed. I liked biting his perfect skin; I liked being able to look at the purple and red marks and the feelings they gave me—the feelings that he was mine; I had damaged him that way. When I ran my hands through his chin-length hair it would feel sticky with remnants of the gel that held it in place the night before.

He’d lie on top of me with his smoothness and his stickiness, and the silver necklace he always wore would hang down, cold on my bare chest. He’d wake me up like that and hand me a cup of tea with lemon, which I hated, and then a plate of breakfast, which I loved. We’d put on a movie, keeping the white blinds closed over the window, even though the Saturday winter sun beamed through, telling us it was time to start the day.

for some reason
small pieces of hope
continue to float
in my direction

you give me a reason
to hang by the throat
when you say "i won't
come back in your direction"

You can't act weak.

You can't show that your life
feels
utterly
unfamiliar.

Because then
they'll be the ones

lying awake at night


biting their nails


quietly crying


into the down

trying
to not look weak.

A black truck parked backwards with its cocky ******* wheels makes me *****.
Makes me scared, takes me there.
Brick,
rough on hands,
the violent shaking,
sounds of a plastic grocery bag ripped away.

Who knew,
years later,
I'd be spending my free time in this place?

Memories I try to forget
but know deeply
I'll always need to hold.

In love with these visions, like, "Thank you wet nurse,
I still cry for you!"

Just when, exactly, and why,
did my eyes begin to see the past? When did life
start spinning down the *******?

I'll tell you when
and exactly
why.

It was hail. And because I wore sweat pants. On April 14th. And because of those cigarettes, stupid god ****** cigarettes. And definitely plastic bags, ones that end up killing unsuspecting innocent sea creatures while they're swimming through the waves.

She set him on his mark

the bottle in his hand

Lips were wide apart

he heard her secret plan

She gave over the knife

a little kitchen thing

white skin turned red and brown

that's her beloved sting

She said let's go again

There was worry on his face

She counted to 10

He got right back in place

Yes, yes, I can hear what you're saying. You keep talking, even when I burrow under my covers like an animal. Even when I close into myself like a bloodroot plant.

I'm sick of ******* smiling when all I want to do is rip up this carpet and dig a hole through the wood and the brick and the dirt and climb in and hide.

Would you let me be, let me rest where my deepest degrading voices are hushed? Your words would finally be gone and I'd be buried with dirt in my lungs, but it would feel better than being back there.

Five minutes would come and you'd snap from the loneliness and its awful cry. You'd shovel until your knuckles bled. You'd pull me out of my ***** nirvana and sit me up, and your eyes would look soft but I know your lips would not be. You'd do all this just to wake me up and shake me and tell me it was All My Fault. You'd hold my mouth open while you spat down my throat. You'd scream new songs for me to sing.

The skin near my eyes would burn from the salt and I would swallow your sounds. There'd be a kiss or we'd ****, or maybe you'd play with my hair while saying you loved me. But the whole time I'd be wishing my soul had stayed in the ground, covered in dirt, defeated and in the dark.

I trace films and films, ***** straight
loose change on the nightstand
Friends smoking on the cold back deck,
some sticks to pass the time
When the music played so loud
at all those torn up parties
You were a new-found curse
We were a good song until we stuck

Still from this far side
I try to breathe,
and let go of that love
Reaching for feeling
I buried deep
way back and greeting death
Well we’ve come this far,
why can’t we rest

We saw butterflies and real evil
and the bareness of bodies
But once you jump off of that daunting cliff,
you just never come back up
I’m sure that there was more
to our overstayed goodbye
It was just too much
We hoped to drown, still swimming up

And from that far end
you try to leave,
to pick up this whole mess
And all those good ways you looked at me,
they’ve rightly been reset
And I’m still trapped here
So you go ahead




*Imitating "Gold Mine Gutted," Bright Eyes

1.
Did you
ever
think of
me
as
a happy girl?
Or
was I
continuously
such a
sad
and desperate
thing?

2.**
Is it
still true?
What
you
wrote that day
about
me
being brave?

He pointed at trees
telling me their names
so I looked at him
like I saw
the future.



He puts his fingers
between
gum
and
lip
all the way down the throat.



His hands rubbed
my dead heart
pulsed
the sides and now
it sings
like it's in the
******* opera.

My cousin's eyes
Your loud truck
The leaves falling in Marquette

My mother's hair
"4 Missed Calls"
The end of your cigarette

My new scars
Old Coke cans
The soak on your blanket

My love for you
Our Scottish blood
The songs in the basement

These red things
They haunt me
But I'm getting used to it

I waited
for what felt like a day
in a glass room with skin-colored curtains
things going in, things coming out

He came in, panting hard
and kneeled beside the cold table where I sat
Face reddening in the cheeks
on the nose,
just like mine

When I told him,
two tears fell out of each his eyes
and I thought
I was made
of stone

He carried me through the wet April snow,
put us in a cab
and took me home

There was a bath running
and steam on the mirror

I got undressed for the third time that day
and sank
into the hot
white bubbles

He held my right knee
with his left hand
and told me
we weren’t going to school tomorrow

If I could visit us
on repeat, I would:

In the shower
and you’d tell me I look cute with wet hair

On your leather couch
and you’d bring me breakfast

Spreading out our arms
in the middle of the floor

Tied in your bedsheets
in the corner of the room

That same joke over
and over and over and over

For the past seven months I’ve been crawling around on my hands and knees, blindfolded, with cotton in my ears. My movements have had no real direction, I have gone where I felt pleased to go, where the ground that touched the bare skin of my knees and palms felt somehow softer or more interesting. And yes I was blind, and no I could not hear; it was all done by heart.
Some choices I made were complete mistakes, and these wrong choices of direction led me to sharp floors which happily left my body bleeding, without bandages to stop the draining, and it weakened me.
But some places I wound up were surprisingly wonderful. They brought me laughter, ***, adventure, trust, new companions.
I’m in one of those places now where the ground is soft and it is calm, which I am thankful for, but it is dull.
I go to sleep almost every night unconvinced, unhelped, wrapped in sheets of ice and misinterpretation. I want more emotion-- the sting of rejection or the dizzying effects of nervous stimulation when taking a chance on a half-stranger at a party. I don’t want the same dry kiss placed perfectly on my bottom lip day after day. I want the kiss of someone who is dying to touch me, to make me smile, to see something new.
I want to know I have the freedom to swing one way or the other, even if I might end up bleeding. No sight, no sound, no sureness, just me and whichever way I choose to crawl in that moment.

This means we don’t wear clothes
This means $13.99 priced ***** until 5a.m.
It means blankets and music and dancing freely
in the most messy littered living room
This means maybe knocking a candle over
or two
and lighting a fire
This means leaping hard
to drown out our sadness
It means kindness and caring and support
and love

I once dated a man,
no—a boy
who took a bath with me.
While we soaked
he said,
“Vaginas are gross,”
and I never stood up again.

It was just that one day and every day following that I wished more than ever that he was real. Where the **** was he? Sure, I didn’t expect him to crawl down from the building next to us the second I saw the knife, but it was definitely within the “This isn’t happening” part in my head, as I was dragged into the garage and pushed up against the brick wall, that I think he could have managed to creep up and punch that guy in the face. And the stomach, or throw him into the black truck that I was next to. Why wasn’t he showing up? Everybody gets one, right? Why wasn’t this mine? Why did he always show up for Mary Jane? Everybody got one I thought. Even after it was over and the fear was gone and the shock flared through my body, charging me almost to the point of vomiting, I still wanted him there. I've never been so ******* disappointed.

you are a full moon
and I am the sea
I thrash and I burst
when you're close to me

inside the house
right on the couch.
lips apart
and a stone-cold heart.
replaying the kiss
from a face
i can't miss.

White line, bare bridge, small talk, smoke.
Two nights, bloodshot, park bench,
toast. Dead girls, dead rose, swing set, laugh.
Our clothes, this day, street kids, trash.
Bed time, still strung, sit still,
move. Your arm, my mouth, my goal,
proved.  

Inhale, late bar, clear ****, down. Breathe out,
too much, cut’s blood, brown.
Thigh highs, hide thighs, bad mood, ***.
Taught tongues, dark room, light sleep,
none. No sound, turned down,
sharp teeth, moan.
Long lies, said truth, ropes tied,
known.



**This piece is a mimic exercise based on Saeed Jones' poem, Thralldom II, from his book, "Prelude to Bruise."

Is it the red crescendoing of trees lining the icy lake?
Or the pebbles popping under the rubber wheels of my old car?
Is it the warmth of picking up wool scarves from their summer cocoons? Being shaken out and wrapped around cold necks?
Is it this lower state's familiar weather, blending brisk wind with bright sun? The way it heats the second-floor windows in the frigid mornings?
Is it the scents of sage and roasting meat floating through the door, welcoming me home?
Or the mismatched pairs of shoes kicked under the hallway bench?

It might be this last bit of Cabernet slowly tumbling to top my cup, or the ceaseless squeak of my childhood bed.
But yes, something calls me here, back to the beginning.
Back to the autumns of our home.

Someone once close to me
will whisper something significant

And my eyes will wander

Over hills
and small lakes
Through the houses of the young

But no sights of the known
will be seen

Because I will have forgotten

The one that has pulled me
out of the sea
has pulled me to see
that others are still capable
of loving me

Not that he is there
or that I am here
just that it can be done

I remember
day by day with him
how to open my mouth
and taste fun

Pleasure, sorrow, truth
the teeth through a real smile

Oh, god
how it's been a while


*For the guy whose bed I ****** in

she has pages on the floor and stains on her hands
she's forever with tears on her cheeks

she has knives in the drawer and holes in her walls
she's the girl that no one will keep

Sometimes, some days, like on a train from New York to Waterbury with a crying baby, or on your lap in a taxi driving to the apartment, I can see you staring at me in a way that feels like adoration, and it’s something I now have that I’ve always waited for.

My chest is a hollow drum with skin
pulled over the top
trying to pass as alive.
It’s so loud
it makes the bugs
crawl back into the floor.

My nails are excerpts
that recall short spans of calm.
Breaking so often
that the only stuff left to bite
is bone.

My mouth is an independent
inborn system.
Swallowing
and ******* up the clues
to my own life.

My cup is the real Holy Grail
filled high with *****.
And for now
it’s enough.

Such a serious bird you are

with the premeditated patterns of a hawk

decisions made using wide eyes and fixed pupils

But I think underneath, you’re a pelican

the kind I’ve seen on cereal commercials

You’ve just taken a roll in the dirt

and it’s covered your color

So soon I’m going to bite your straight-lined wings

and show you what it’s like

to free fall

I’ve been chasing this for almost one whole year
with little breaks of lust
tucked in between

The corners of those dates
have dogfolded ears
which stick out to me like a quenched oak tree
in a wide, dry desert

The short pieces
that once formed our long lull
feel nothing close to my feet
coming to a stop,
turning around,
feeling kept—purposefully

My calves are knotted
and my eyelids become cracked
from chasing the Black Hole in the sky:
the hole that used to be the Brightest Sun,
My Sun, the one that I once spoke of
so sweetly:

*“It’s different from theirs
on another planet, it never sets.
There is a light with the nights-- always.

The need to search or ask for love is lost, because so much is given.

And even when I move to a new planet,
where the sun sets and rises
as the moon ascends; loneliness climbing onto its back,
its dark qualities, bordering me,
it will not receive me.

because My Sun is still bright in my mind.”

I am sweating in drops and he must be sticking to the couch. I bite his chest and his fingers feel like a dance on the back of my neck. Our mouths touch one another-- like soft, like protection; like sharp, like *******. We're still for minutes but my eyes are sprinting through his whole life eighty times over. This is a very big feeling. I think this is what it means to make love.

It's the way I have to write when I drink
I can't deny myself the pleasure
Funny thing is
It's not pleasure
it's torture
It's the way I'd shower
and you'd have to get in with me
The way I still have to listen to your voice
humming out of my phone
keeping me sad, keeping me thoughtful
The way you'd kiss me
I'd have to kiss you back
twenty times over
I've held my breath for three months
and either have to keep holding it
not breathing
Or I have to take a big breath
and let go

tomorrow is when all the things i write come true.

we'll wake up

smiling, and you'll say       it's happening

and i'll say yes,
quickly.

tomorrow there will be stains and spills

in the bed,
in our bed,     because we won't care
because we never ever have

tomorrow

i will touch your skin
and it won't feel so dangerous. tomorrow

the sun will come and

we'll know it's

just

for us

tomorrow

hasn't come yet        but sometimes        it feels like it's already

here.

tomorrow

hasn't come    yet

and we can't   say   that it certainly
will.

I'm bright circles inside rotted wood, cut open on the edges of your mind

Endlessly talking about rebirth, waiting for spoken word

Cold days, dark nights, I'll stay in place

Footprints in dirt forever will be mine

Did you know to settle me before leaving me to die?

Taking all my warmth away so you could stay alive

Maybe I was born with something in me and its only goal was to implode. Maybe it's expanded so much it's bigger than my heart or any other ***** in here, and maybe now it's so large it controls my brain or it's causing me to collapse inward with it.
It's like a tumor but one that keeps you alive and speaks of bad ideas, *****, tormented secretive, painful, backward, muddly, inflicting kinds of ideas.

chocolate chip cookies
2% milk
and a pint of smirnoff.
must be good
to be me
right now.


crates full of clothes
blank walls, naked nails
living with a ghost.
must be tough
your life
unwinding this way.

I forget your soft pulling mouth and below
the luring grin it holds

Your all-browned features,
and the way I drown in them

Prickly bubbles, breaking with warmth and steam,
splashing my insipid shins

Icy tree tears cuff below our newly sunburned eyes
onto the lips of my collar bone

I forgot how my underwear detained the chemicals,
took to the pool as blood takes to white
and became soaked
mopping and sticking to my skin

The furthest tips of my silver hair
like a mirror to the stars, curling on my shoulders

Now I get the shivers, I can remember those

But I forgot the senseless talk of the universe
we sat under and looked up

The winter wind scratching our bare summer thighs
and the crisp smell of your mother’s snowy garden  

Feet cold, they turned hot and carelessly running
to the playground illuminating the black, I forget

It was careless because I was with you
your russet body holding me in,
our toes always just gripping the verge

Undisguised

*-MJS

Three nights before
I was the girl with the ***** mouth
You kissed
Sloppy and fumbling
I let your muddy words in to stain my mind
The taste was pure and your backless eyes
Intoxicated me more than my drink

You were just a hollow silhouette of a boy
But I couldn’t see in the dark

*-MJS

Life is better than it used to be. But in a different way. She doesn’t feel lonely, like she used to, but she does feel lost which she never did before. She spends her days with books and tv shows; she likes their constant comfort. She drinks on most nights. It helps with the pain in her chest because she can’t seem to forget how much she still wants him.

She tells herself she’s damaged goods, a throw-away. ***** helps slow that down, too. Unemployment never seemed like it could be so hard, she thinks, but never, ever says out loud. People hate her for her jobless yet decent lifestyle. They call it laziness, but she knows different. It’s called aimlessness… purposelessness. Just trying to trudge on.

She goes on week-long benders with a boy. For five days, all they taste is ******* and being ******, glass bottles of ***** (because he likes that too), and fast food (delivered because they’re bedridden) if one of them remembers hunger. It’s films and television and long, long talks about anything sad and bursts of tears that dried up years ago.

After it’s over—only because he actually is employed—she walks around the house, dizzy from being in bed for days. There’s only trash and rotting food, empty bottles, all on the ground, covering every surface in the house. The air has a stench that she’s used to by now: a colorful mix of un-scooped cat ****, open cans of cat food, spilled drinks, lingering smells of **** or **** or sweat.

Even two days after, she can still smell his come inside her. She smells it with her fingers after taking plan B for the third time that month, though, mostly she doesn’t keep count anymore. She wonders if she’ll still be fertile when she’s ready for kids. She wonders if she’ll ever find someone to have children with now that he’s gone.

There are bruises on her wrists in the same spots, reflecting each other. They’re red then purple then the impression of his teeth fades. This is because she likes that. To be bitten. Hard. And hit, in the head, until her ears ring. Hit on the ***, where she also has four stretched out marks from a hand. She likes to be cut—stomach, arms (old habit), legs—but many lovers are too timid or concerned, so she takes the steak knife or the wine opener and makes them watch, softly saying, “Like this.” Sometimes they’re not afraid after that.

A day comes once a week when she decides it's time to stop drinking. To make herself available to the ache of her insides and outsides. The heartbreak and loneliness and love, still the main components of her soul. And there's also the awareness that she is entirely grateful for the ****** boy and his kindnesses. His honesty. His openness. Kisses. Hugs. Advice. For a week she's sober, trying Whole ******* 30, exercising, dealing with all the thoughts. Watching tv and reading for their comfort, trying to look ahead.

One box of tissues.

Plus half a box for being ugly.

Two bottles of Tito’s
A1) Totally dry
A2) About 1/3 left.

Three is that there’s too much of everything so I’m not gonna count anymore.

I am the deflating doll in the back of the closet. I sit, stuffed under mops and ***** buckets, right next to their secret infidelities.
I belong to the community; my plastic, airy skeleton is marked with many fingerprints; my froze-open mouth knows the shapes to fold to, going along with each individual's perfect kiss.
If I were real I’d leave this life behind. I’d find a mate and we’d sit in sunlight every day. But tonight I’m still a doll, an object made to please, and now another boy is knocking at my door.