a younger me would have swallowed,
but these days my lungs are so full of fear and smoke
that inhalation makes me dizzy.

my brain is epitaphs and popsicle stick jokes,
and i worry about trains.
you worry about nothing.

you worry loud.

i sit shredding a napkin,
head bowed so that you don't see my lips move
when i murmur to myself
things i wish i'd told you when
you were real and when
i still knew what freedom meant.
i don't regret anything,
except maybe missing that assembly.

i would rather do drugs
than do you.

i thought your name would be seared into my heart
like a brand
or written across my chest forever
like a tattoo

turns out, it was just scribbled on my forehead in sharpie
like a ****

whenever i think about how lucky i am
that i rode my addiction to rehab
instead of to the morgue,
something swimming up the channel in my spine whispers,
    *"there's still time."

you don't get permission to spiral out of control
just because it's october.
you don't have time to wax poetic about your soul falling out through your fingertips
or whatever words fit the you you're wearing this week.
**** it up.
drink some coffee.

this will be over by christmas.

last night, i realized
that i had become emotionally unavailable
and also that
my fingernails had gotten too long.

i clipped my nails and went back to bed.

i want to liberate your heart
from the birdcage of your ribs
and squeeze it into cool red stillness in my hand,
juice it and drink it down
straight, since you always mocked me when i asked for cream and sugar.

i want to **** the marrow from your bones
and drink the breath from your lungs like
helium from last week's balloons,
cheap party trick.
i want to leave you aching and empty,
with bruised spaces too expansive and raw
for small hands to fill.

i want to lock you up and leave you with your shrieking demons,
the ones i tried to coax from you with ****** lips and gentle hands
the night you told me you fantasized about
my lifeless body draped across your shoulders
like the nemean lion.

i will chew you up and
spit you out and
send your bones to hades.

i'm infatuated
with mysteries and contradictions.
i am drawn
to dreamy eyes and optimism,
to fire and revolution.

sometimes i think i love ideas
more than people,
and that is a lonely way to be.