we can't speak now without arguing
because we are both too stubborn,
too self-righteous,
and too smart to back down from each other.
together we are a trainwreck.
we don't work,
we are polar and dangerous.
we **** each other off
and it isn't even malicious.
it's just our wiring, our too-similar similarities
and our too-wide differences.
it hurts
and it's certainly worse than the alternative.

there are parts of me that force the pain,
that let it roil in my bones until i am breathless.
it builds until i exhale it in an herbal smoke,
or until i write it in a fervent and blood-rushed poem.

there are parts of me that don't feel the pain.
these parts are healed, and most days they win out.
they pervade the unhealed parts of of my heart,
and they fill me with an ecstatic joy.

there are parts of me that remember
and there are parts of me that forget.
there are parts of me that take in what i feel and use it
and there are parts of me that gladly let it drift away.

there are parts of me that are strong
and parts of me that are not,
and mostly i only show one part or the other.
i have no in-betweens,
and that's why i am me and why you are you.
i believe that's why someone fell out of love with me
and i believe that's why i am so changeable, so wild, so full of doubt.

i am pieces and parts,
broken and lovely,
tessellated and electric and free.

the second you tried to break into my frozen heart -
was that when you knew?
that loving me would be
the most difficult thing, the bravest endeavor.
the second you shut me out with your frozen heart,
neither of us knew
that that was the moment mine would thaw
and break
and all the fire i'd been holding back from you would manifest
as the bitterest anger
and the most acute pain.
and i wish, my darling, that i had been able to let it out to you in love,
that my frozen heart had thawed for you while it still belonged to you
and that we had been less stupid, less young, and less cold.

it's a lesson in love,
a stinging and bittersweet thing.
we lost our tenuous hold on what we had.
we did not treasure, cherish, or try,
and our similar and fickle hearts won out on us.

i won't regret loving you,
because people like us, we take what we can get.
frozen hearts are grateful
for whatever broken glimpses of love they can cheat from each other.

i have sunk into a slow numbness,
perhaps because something broke over me
the second i saw you again.
i realized,
it's better to be in full-blown sorrow
than in a fragile happiness,
forever staving off the blackness.

but instead, i have sunk into a slow numbness.
perhaps because you look away from me now
the exact same way that i look away from you.
your aversion gives me numbness.
don't you see it?
that's all this ever was. a fear of the numbness. a fear of the pain.
your indifference gives me numbness
because who wants to feel it
when the ripping apart begins.

i have smoked to numbness.
i have cried to numbness.
i have raged to numbness.
i have laughed to numbness.
i have embraced the numbness.
i have dug myself into numbness
but you gave me the shovel.

you gave me the numbness.
and i feel absolutely fine. i feel nothing at all.

last night i was filled with poetry -
filled to the brim, and now i'm not.
last night i was filled with pain and life
and with the joy of knowing things,
and now i am ordinary.
last night i wrote,
"he taught me how to bruise
before i bleed,"
on a slip of paper.
i knew what to do with the words then but
now i don't.
i have no poem to slip them into and
no storyline to follow them and
i can't even turn them into a painting.
they sit and they stay
and they stare at me and remind me
that i am not a writer, because i don't write when i most need to.

the electrical current
started in the top of my skull,
   and poured itself down the back of my ears and the nape of my neck
         and curled into beaded sand that tumbles through my vertebrae
             down to the small of my back and under the soles of my feet. it's a friendly current,

and it makes me think of
   a boy with freckled shoulders, whose eyes i used to love.
it makes me think of how
both our noses wrinkle when we laugh
  and we like the same songs by the same band for different reasons.
it makes me remember why we're always laughing in the first place,
       and it makes me want him in a way that i'd forgotten how to want a person.

it's making me brave, this muscle-deep current.
it's making me remember different shoulders and different eyes than usual -
which is good, healthy, you know.

it's making me brave and it's making me love again. it's making me want to stand up to you. say all the things i haven't.
blame the herb, my skinny love, it was the herb, not me.

my fears are as follows.
i am afraid of water,
of pain,
of high-up places.
i am afraid of getting stuck in one place.
i am afraid of dying in a terrible way.
i am afraid of the medical irregularities of my heart,
the condition that gives me too many beats at one time
and that will, someday, cause the beats to stop altogether.
and i am afraid that my life will be nothing like i want it to be.
i am afraid that my art is mediocre
and my poems unoriginal.
i am afraid that i will never love anyone again,
and that i will be bound, forever, by his ghost.
i am afraid that my fear will choke out my hope,
and that i will ******* myself,
and cheat myself,
and extinguish my ambition with all my doubts.
i am afraid of myself,
but i am so endlessly inspired by everything else.

I wish I felt original
I wish that I was brave.

My life is belly-laughs and hiccuppy tears
and I don't know what to do with it.
I feel things too much
or not at all
And I wish I could write about something other than myself

for once.

spit
across the heads of your friends


right into my shocked face.

******* baby-voice-fake,
carrying around that ego of yours
(where'd you even get it?)
stringing your hair into
strands and
straggles,
painting your lips attention-***** red,
parading around those
scars on your arms -
******* try-too-hard-fake,
making noise to make noise,
words that aren't words and
thoughts that aren't yours,
i'm not hearing it.
smiling and then secretly
hateful and spreading
lies
(you were *****, you were molested,
you were exploited, you were robbed)
tip-toed on poser-high heels,
chopping your hair into stunted shortness
(a rat-nest red-chemical version
of mine)
you can *******.

it's one of the great sadnesses of my angsty teenaged existence,
                                                                                        that a man who saw all the good in the world


                                          was killed
                                          by all the bad in it.

there's a pimple on my left cheekbone
and one of my brows is plucked
a little thinner than the other.
the only makeup on my face
is the black on my eyelashes
my eyes
burst
green.
my mouth (my rosebud mouth, my mother
smiles) like a slightly opened
slightly troubled
bow.
my brow is furrowed
my eyes are searching
one of my ring-and-bracelet hands
holds back my hair  (short)
and my elbow
rests.
i look at myself,
head-tilting, quick-sketching
the curves of my features
in a single line of ultra-fine Sharpie.

what you see is what you get.

my eyes frown into themselves
through the mirror.
i am long
i am lanky
i am lovely.
i am a little lost
and very found
i am angsty
i am achey
i am laughing
i am me -
if you only look at yourself for a second
you tend to miss
how beautiful you are.
it isn't my vanity.
it's the universal, and most unbelieved
truth.

i brush back my hair
and i puff my cheeks out.
i sigh, and i look at myself
in the cheap mirrors set out
on the art-room tables.
"not bad," i say to the single line of ultra-fine Sharpie-version of my face.
and it isn't.
even though
i left out the pimple.

girls and red roses
in grotesque poses
within the covers of him

flashing red lips and baby blue eyes
wolfishly at his whim

and there's nothing to them, i'm afraid,
but the blood-white dresses they're in.

guess what?
you can't lie to my best friend
you can't tell her
that so-and-so sent you that
( frickin ****'s )
picture
(funny how you saved it)
you can't rope her back in with your
manipulation
,your
modification
of the truth,
and you can't buy me with your
half-assed excuses and you can't tell me that it's
none of my business
because you've exploited her
and you've lied to her
don't mean
that you've earned her.
she deserves better and you deserve
to be alone forever
with your self-pity
and your short-sighted
under-the-table
pathetic
selfish
actions.

guess what?
you can't tell me she has a choice
when you've given her none
telling her
she's the best things in your life
(how 'bout you treat her like it?)
and by the way
can i have a picture of you
( insert thing she's not going to do for you
here )
and there's a reason
you filthy
lying
cop-out of a human being
i won't hear you
tell me that
she's
chosen you
that she's
happy with you
because
if she's happy with you
how come
you still have to
spend so much time trying
to
convince her?

guess what?
i don't buy you.
i hate you.
i resent you.
you make me
sick.
and even if she doesn't see it
even if she holds onto your pathetic
whining
excuses
i see through you
you bile-throated liar
and you don't ******* deserve
one single tear
you've pulled from her,
you don't ******* deserve
the dirt on her Converse,
you don't ******* deserve
this poem.

because it makes you seem
almost like
you're worth something.

i'm becoming cynical, jaded, and edgy
my words
rap-tap out of my mouth
sharper
and harsher than i mean them.
i worry that i'm becoming
the people i despise.
i worry that i'm a poser
and a fraud
and i worry that i've forgotten my own kindness.

hearts are strange things,
and they do tell lies
but this is the truth of mine:
it pulses, it breaks, and it heals;
crookedly,
but it does heal.
it is susceptible to almost anything
and hardened against nothing.

isn't there hope, after all?
my quick angry words betray
a deep tenderness that i fight for,
that i protect,
and i believe.
i believe in the instrinsic power of human beings.
i believe in magic,
that music is the most powerful thing in the world,
and that words can change
minds
can color
hearts.

i believe in the power of dreams,
and i believe that things are temporary,
that they are fragile,
that we must become oblivious to nothing.
i believe that people are becoming ignorant
and i believe that we are coming back from ignorance.
i believe that i am a remarkable
and i believe that i am painfully
insignificant.
i believe that at least 50% of poems
(maybe even this one)
say nothing at all,
and i believe that the other 50%
say the things we need most
to say.

*and i hope that i don't believe
for nothing.

the first time i felt afraid of death
was when i thought there wasn't anything
that i would be gone, without eyes, without breath, without heart.
i thought of seeing nothing
feeling nothing
being nothing
and i felt afraid.
now i'm not saying i believe in heaven
and i am not saying i don't
but i do believe
in the vivacity
tenacity
audacity of souls
and i believe that mine
will fight
to the finish.

they'll build boxes for my bones,
and i won't stop them.
they'll seal it
(doubly)
and i'll break through, calm and easy.

they'll curse.
"****!" they'll say.
"we sealed it
double this time!"

i'll not be held in your boxes.
i'll do nothing but laugh when you curse.

fingers like stardust and lips like moonlight,
she smiles.
shapes traced across the hollows of hips and his whispered words,
and the rocking of the ship will surely make me sick.
the light spilling from your smiles and the stars that spark from your eyes
catch stories
like sunlight
on the walls.

dear noah,
you beautiful boy. you were the youngest,
and you were so bright.
you're a star now, sweet boy, above everything and
so bright.
your sisters and your mother will remember you,
your smile,
and your left-behind half, she'll have parts of you with her her whole life.
you're not forgotten, you beautiful boy,
gone as you are.
you're a star now, sweet boy, and we wish for you to be back.
your blood and your body are
still
and stopped
but your spirit?
eternal
and your forever-smile
is what they'll all see when they close their eyes.
your mother and your sisters will love you,
like we do -
all we strangers
who feel like we know you
just from looking into your shining photograph-eyes.
dear noah,
you beautiful boy,
you've left the world so soon after you came into it.
you beautiful boy,
how it will remember you.

dear sarah.

i heard
today
that it was in your blood,
your bones,
your body
(the cancer, sneaking and slipping its way
into your sixteen-year-young heart,
that beats the same as mine).
i heard
today
your sister,
weeping,
and asking us if we could please,
just sign this card.
you're scared
and it would help.
i heard
today
the boy who loves you,
sniffling into your sister's shoulder
(no one had the heart to tell him
that the blackness is inside you),
and i heard, today, my heart
stop
and my throat
clog
and my eyes
fill.
dear sarah, i don't know you
well
but i wish you
well
and i heard today
so many hearts
break.

drop me a line and i'll follow you
down
to the depths
of my soul

lead me away and i'll go with you
if you promise
we won't talk
anymore.

If I'm swallowed by the sea and my heart
ceases to beat,
I'd have you know a thing or two about me.
Tell my mother and my brothers that
they colored up my life,
and be sure that my poor father knows the same.
Be sure my father knows the way
I tried for him most every day,
and when my mother starts to cry won't you won't you
comfort her?

Tell the boy I love all the times I almost told him
And hold my best friend's hand when they pull me from the ocean.
Read the notebooks in my room
Laugh at what I thought of you
Give the gods and all the angels my regard.
Smile when you see a bird
wheeling in the rain,
and think of me when you think that spring won't ever come again.
My father's only daughter who is so scared of the water
will dance with you when you're asleep and dreaming.
I'll see you when you wash your face to rid yourself of my ingrace
And I'll hold you when you bend, begin to scream.

not very long ago i thought i was going to say to you,
"i love you."
i thought i would say,
"i want you,
and i hope you want me too,"
and i thought that maybe it was what i wanted.
but where has the innocence gone,
and where is the love?
and when did i stop needing you,
and more importantly when did i start again?
and then not very long ago
i was filled with the kind of anger and disgust
i'd forgotten i could feel for you.
it took the words and the breath right out of me.
i'd forgotten that part of loving you,
and all at once i remembered again.
it took the want and the respect right out of me
and it filled me with the deepest sadness.
a moment of short-sighted drunkenness,
it's not what i should remember about you.
it shouldn't consume the thousands of goodnesses i see in you
but it does.
a few hours ago i was in a place we shared once
and i ached for you so badly
and now, again, i am hollow.
you fill me up and you hollow me out
and i forgot that wanting you is exhausting,
but i remember now
and now, again, i am lost.
and i hope you ******* read this and i hope it ****** you off
and i hope it makes you think i'm immature or reactionary or naive
and i hope it makes you indignant or dismissive
and i hope you don't give a ****.
jesus, i hope it makes you think all sorts of terrible things about me,
i really do.
i hope it makes you think i'm pathetic,
i hope you think it's unfair
because you're **** right, i hold you accountable,
because you're better than all of them put together
and you act like it one and a half times out of ten.
you disappoint me as often as not, now.
isn't that terrible?
i used to think the sun rose on you,
i used to think it set on you,
i used to think you were everything in between.
not very long ago i was going to tell you.
i was going to sit you down and say it all to you
i was going to speak until i'd done everything i could do,
but now
i'd really rather not even look at you.
maybe i'll love you again
and i will again allow myself to be filled by you,
to feel all the things in the world for you,
to burst with love and with pain,
but tonight you hollowed me.
you left me shocked and sick and numb tonight,
angry and disgusted.
tonight you exhausted all the light i put to you,
you burned all the love,
burned it and scattered the ashes,
and you saved me from putting it back together again.
it's over now.

alison, sweet and strong,
if ever there was a person built for such a thing, it's you.
it's the goodness of your heart
and the constancy of your smile -
it is your kindness, your cleverness,
and your mother's love?
it will stretch past this life and into her next.
it will find you and it will hold you.
mothers and daughters, they are never gone from each other -
it is a bond ages and ages old,
lifetimes upon lifetimes and centuries upon centuries
and it doesn't end with someone's life.
she will find you, her mother's-light,
because surely you are what she loved the most -
it's your goodness,
your boldness, your beauty.
you strong and beautiful girl,
don't you know it?
not one step of this will be taken alone.