i want to string all the pieces of you into
something that fits
but
your edges are jagged and wrong
and
the spaces in my chest are not the way you left them
and
my mouth is too sharp for kissing

i am tired of wet wings and
wax burns

i don't believe in much,
but you said maybe we met for a reason and that
maybe the reason was to keep each other alive,
and it seemed as true as anything else i'd ever heard
and approximately twice as beautiful.

i don't believe in fate,
but i have ****** the wild hope into my lungs
that some cosmic force could trust me
with something this important,
that some great mysterious power
sending ripples through the stars
could have loved me enough to lead me here.

we are not the beautiful and broken.
we are the wild and the wanting and
the howl that rattles hollow bones.
we are the wounded and the wicked
and unbound.
we are the things that learned to live in the dark;
from our bones crawl the faintly-glowing bodies
that will out-survive the sun.

your lungs cough out prayers like my lungs cough out tar,
like my hands clasp bottles like your hands clasp blades,
like our hands clasp hands,
like i had never in my life heard someone's stories louder than the stars
until you told me yours on the roof of the abandoned hotel,
until i saw the universe bend tight around your words
and for once the height didn't **** the air from my lungs and
for once i thought about something other than jumping.

nothing really feels like home these days,
but there's moments with you i feel human and
i'll take all the reasons i can find
not to step out in front of a train.
i want to watch you breathe
without some great shadow-hand holding onto your lungs,
and i don't ever want you to forget how sunlight feels.

you and i, we were born survivors,
and life has a way of reclaiming scorched land,
of stretching its great green tendrils
up through sidewalk cracks.
i don't believe in much,
but god,
do i believe in us.

and it's quite possible that she's absolutely mad
but she sparkles and fizzes and pops
and loves truly
and gives freely
and takes the business of loyalty
quite seriously,
and those who can see past the madness
are rewarded with her all-consuming love
                                     (forever)
                                           (i mean it)
                                                (no take-backs)

Imperfect expanse,
Rolling landscape,
Sacred and ordinary.
Scars faded almost invisible.
Stretch marks slashed red on lily white,
Reminiscent of the wounds
From the straight blade I kept in a drawer.

Canvas thick with paint,
Layers of love and hate
Painted on by lovers, strangers,
Self, and others.
Cigarette butts and crushed beer cans
And masterpieces on the walls.
Cherished and reviled,
Wrong for society's standards of beauty,
Exactly right
For me.

i want to live in your world,
but i don't know how to be.
and art
is just you
letting other people
experience
you.
and i just want the music to be in me,
but i live in it,
and everything matters.
and you only think i'm beautiful
in this moment,
but i want to write a house.
and if you ever need more willpower,
just touch my hand.
everyone creates the world.
you help.

your hand in mine is sometimes
the only thing keeping
my head above water,
but if my grief is ever heavier
than you can hold,
i forgive you in advance
for letting go.

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 wish things had not turned out this way,
But here we are,
And there is absolutely nothing
I can do about it.
You will never again be perfect to me,
Or even beautiful,
Or kind.
You will never again
Be a person I admire,
And never again
Will I want you back.
I do not miss you,
And I do not love you,
But I do care,
And I always will.

you loved me
the way i love dirt.
like a promise,
a glimmering spark,
a catch on the inhale.
a soft and malleable thing
glowing faintly from its core.

you loved me like i love
dusty records and animal bones.
you loved me ephemera,
your glittering oddity,
your very best party trick.
i loved you all the magic
i could muster.

i loved you
every star i'd ever counted and
the memory of falling and
the shapes of all my favorite words.
you loved me
pheromones and
midmorning drunk dials.

you prayed and you promised and
you slipped your shaky fingers
five fathoms deep beneath my skin
and tenderly uprooted my veins.
you sweetly cracked
my ribcage wide and
picked all the seeds from my guts.
you lit up my new hollows
and found you hated
clean white walls.
you never quite forgave
the way i let you ****
the parts of me that you
knew how to love.
i loved you flooded lungs and
atheist's prayers
and never enough.

you loved me
the way i love dirt,
and sometimes in my dreams,
i cover you in daisies
and weeds
and trees with tough roots.
i watch the wild things
climb high and nest in the branches
stretching out from your ribcage,
wildflowers tangling their roots
through your bones,
your body a home
at last.

And it's like
The reason I start so many poems with those three words,
"And it's like",
Because every poem is just part of a constant flow of thought,
A window opened into a world that moves on.
And the world is moving on,
Has moved on,
Will move on,
Would move on without me.
And that's okay,
Because my world
Moves on without him,
Without her,
Without them,
Without every last one of them.
Whatever it's taken,
I have survived.
And even though I've been hurt so bad I thought I'd never recover,
I keep on loving,
Because thinking
Isn't
The same thing
As life.

my hands are not
soft things that you can hold onto and
even at my sweetest i'm less like honey and
more like old kool-aid and i'll
stain your lips and fingers blue
like the inky thing that slithers up my spine.

i don't remember what it's like to breathe easy.

i like the way your hands shake
and that's a weird thing to like
but i am much more cactus than flower
and i am not afraid of edges and shards.

you swallow smoke the way
i swallow metal and
wanting you makes me feel
sick again.

And always the façade.
The constant lie,
The forced smile,
The empty laugh.
You deserve so much more
Than I can ever be.
I want to be happy for you,
Sane, normal,
Whole.
I want to make you smile;
I want you to look at me
With that unbridled adoration in your eyes
Forever.

But then forever seems like much too long a time
When I’m only seventeen
And I’m already done.

you are a thunderstorm.  an earthquake.  a volcano.  you could rip a ******’s throat out with your teeth.

you are the hot and heaving forest
sliced with sticky shimmery things,
(like bat-heads and beetlewings),
the slushing gushing river with its
tripping tumbling foam,
teeming with salmon headed
upstream to spawn.

i was over you on thursday,
but then i saw you again
and i felt this jolt right through my chest that
reminded me of the time i accidentally touched an electric fence
(and it was awful and you're the worst) and i hate how
i can make myself forget to want you ten times before breakfast
and be over you on thursday
right up until i
see your ******* face
and i
remember
hard.

i watched two entire movies last weekend,
which was a feat because
the chunk of time a movie demands
is numbered in the massive list
of commitments i am hesitant to make.

i watched two movies about
the fight to find a place
in a culture constructed to benefit the few
at the cost of the many,
and as always it astonished me
when the people around me seemed surprised.
"it's a good thing we have come so far,"
they will say,
as if inequality is a thing of the past.
as if we don't still live in a world
where people are killed based on
the color of their skin
or their expression of gender
or sexuality or
love.
like little girls don't still grow up
bombarded with the message that they are objects
designed to be pretty and pleasing.
like our cops aren't killing black kids.
as if my government does not deny
my ****** autonomy.

it is exceedingly difficult to fix a problem
that you pretend does not exist.

nothing compares to that feeling
that catches my breath
and tightens my chest
and makes me wonder
why anyone ever does anything
but this

Footsteps and shadows
And shots in the dark.
Days in sunny fields
And nights in dark alleys.
Art and dreams and songs,
Drugs and illusions and lies.
Beauty, divinity, truth
In the eyes of drunken strangers.
A shot at salvation
Among the ranks of the condemned.

and i don't understand how
anyone can be happy when they are alone,
when voices crawl from hidden places,
shadows lick hurrying heels,
the distinctive scent of self-loathing creeps up unbidden,
cloying and sharp.

i don't understand happiness
without someone to build it upon.
i can't grasp the concept
of contentment in solitude.
i don't know how to be okay
in the time between late to bed
and early to rise,
when i pace endlessly
and hope against hope
that someone is awake.

and i want your attention
the way a wound wants a bandage--
urgently
but fleetingly
         and i know i need stitches to heal,
         but at least you staunch the blood flow,
         and if there isn't a mess,
         it's like it never happened,
         even if it
                                    never
                                               stops
                                                            bleeding.

you left flowers on my counter
in a cup.
wildflowers. like daisies,
but with thicker roots
and heartier stems.
beautiful and built to thrive.

you left flowers on my counter,
told me you loved me,
and left me sleepy and hopeful
and standing in the doorway.
you did not stop to check the lock.
i think you are the bravest person
i have ever met.

all these secrets take me back
to lies and drugs and uncertainty,
to when nothing i said was true
and not even i could trust me.
and i'm so tired of being the girl that ***** your boyfriend
and smiles to your face,
but the attention feels so good,
and i just want your
         (hands, lips, tongue)
eyes on me.
and if that means
i have to lie,
then i guess
i'll always be that girl.

i don't think that i will know you five years from now,
but i will remember you,
and i will hope that
wherever you are
and whatever you're doing,
you are happy,
because that's all i ever wanted for you,
anyways

i was afraid i would do something crazy,
like shoot myself in the head
or call you
(which is sort of the same thing
only slower)

so i drove to the mountains
and climbed barefoot to the top
and watched the sunset
with my feet in the dirt.

And it's like
The less you speak to me,
The harder it is
To get you off my mind.
Since you've made it clear that you don't care,
That I mean nothing,
(Or at least comparatively little),
You consume me.
In denying my attention,
You become an enigma,
And I love nothing more
Than a good mystery.

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.

I am really excellent at ruining things
by saying things I know I shouldn't.
"I'm going to chase her away,"
I say,
"By always telling her how afraid I am of losing her."
You laugh and tell me
I'm probably right.
I think that may have been the first time I really understood
that "tell her how you feel" isn't always
good advice.
So I told you I loved you in code
and kept smiling,
because I am impossibly wrong for you,
and I want you to be happy
even more than I want you.

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."

i want to be the girl you prefer.
and i see what you see in her
(even if no one else does)
but that doesn't mean it doesn't sting
when you pick her,
and i walk back alone.
and i know i'm greedy,
selfish,
demanding,
since you're far from my only,
but you are the one i like best
and
i want to be the girl you prefer
(if only for tonight)

maybe it's the way i was raised
or maybe it's my cancer rising
but i only ever feed myself well when i am feeding someone else.
i mean,
my love language is soup.
which is why my whole house smells like curry, garlic, and ginger,
why over the course of a couple of days i spent twelve of the hours i had meant to spend sleeping
pressing blocks of tofu,
individually sauteing seven different types of vegetables in fresh herbs and aromatics,
and really testing the capacity of my roommate's food processor.

I don't remember when I first started believing that everything that feels good is either dangerous or morally wrong, or, most likely, both, but I imagine it started with the church.

I don't remember when I first started believing that love looked less like a fairytale and more like my best friend falling asleep in my sweater with her head on my shoulder, so close I could smell my shampoo in her hair, but I imagine it started with her.

I once spent six months eating cold unseasoned green beans out of a can for almost every meal because suffering for suffering's sake feels righteous when you believe that you deserve it. I once spent ten years pretending not to be a **** for essentially the same reason.


And lord, am I ever. A ****, I mean. A big, masculine ****,
Like,
I have always been more king Kong than Fay wray.
Like,
I have always been taught to be afraid of what my hands can do.
I remember big fat ***** depicted as monstrous,
Only able to destroy,
And I wonder if that's why there are so many of us who make things.


i keep a knife in my pocket most of the time because i have been backed into enough corners to be cautious,
but mostly,
i use it for fixing things and cutting fruit.
danger is contagious and i do what i can to stop it from making me dangerous,
I do not want to be a frightened and frightening thing.
but one time a woman i really liked tried to wake me from a nightmare,
and with ghosts still circling my head
Before I was awake or aware,
i punched her in the face.
When I opened my eyes, there was fear in hers and blood pouring from her nose and no amount of apologizing could unbreak what I had broken.
she kissed me and told me she still trusted me and it made me remember all the ****** noses that i had once forgiven with similar ease.
So i told her i was thinking of moving to oregon and that work was getting busy and that i would wash and return her tupperware before she left in case it was a while before i could see her again.
i hugged her at her car
and she held me for too long
like she didn't even notice all the sharp things where my skin was meant to be.
i spent the next six months
bleeding venom and avoiding handshakes.

And I don't mean to say that I am violent,
Because I am not,
I do not yell
Or degrade
Or intimidate,
I never sleep punched anyone else before or since,
I would never hit a friend or a lover while awake. I only wear spikes to make people think before they touch me, I am all flight or freeze. But violence is not the only way to hurt someone you love. Shutting down or running away can break a heart too and blood all looks the same when it's drying on your hands no matter where it comes from. So now I try to protect the people I love from everything dangerous, including getting too close to me.


i keep a knife in my pocket most of the time,
but on days when my body remembers in the present tense,
i take a knife from the kitchen block instead.
i cut up limes and sweet potatoes,
drown out the sirens in my head
with bubbling water and simmering oil.

i'm still learning what love looks like,
and i am so tired of breaking,
and maybe this is why every time i see someone beautiful i fantasize about building them a house,
maybe this is why i make soup.

i am only easy to love
on the days when love is not a life raft.
i have never been afraid of fire
but i am frozen earth
full of ancient seeds,
already there are new green things pushing up through cracks in me
and i worry that if the ground were to thaw,
softer things might take root,
and i am afraid that anything delicate might not survive in me.

It's not that I am wholly unable to love recklessly,
I run whole body into the ocean every time i see her,
emerge breathless and invisible and singing praises to nobody at all but the stars.
The last time I wanted to die, I took an overnight bus to the ocean. I held my breath and dipped my whole body beneath the surface of the sea,
tried to practice drowning but instead,
by mistake,
fell in love all over again with the waves and the moon and the stars,
All the beautiful things too big and too powerful for me to hurt accidentally.
I am a soft foolish thing,
All alive and longing.
I have loved fully
What I always knew I could not hold,
My tiny heart so full of moon and sea
And every mountain
That every place is now both a home
And not.

I am not as afraid as I used to be,
I have done a lot of therapy,
And maybe one day I will sleep next to somebody breakable without feeling guilty.
And I think maybe one day,
I will trust myself enough to love the softest things that love me in the fearless way I love the ocean.
And I don't know when that day will be,
Or whether you will stick around long enough to find out,
but i do know that i want you always to be warm and full of good things,
so in the meantime,
If you want it,
I made you some soup.

Whisper her name,
Let it fly in the breeze
With the echoes of a million unspoken words
And the love letters I'll never send.

Little girl,
be sweet.
Mind your manners.
Don’t forget to say,
“Thank you.”

Little girl,
be good.
Do not leave the path,
and don’t peer into the corners.
A girl should have nothing in her mind
but cake and wine and flowers.

Little Red,
out in the woods,
an hour away from the village.
Little Red saw a wolf,
and she did not know
to be afraid.

Little girl,
Be sweet.
Mind your manners.
The wolf will take,
and you will say,
“Thank you, wolf.”

Little Red just wanted
to do everything right.

it takes approximately two months to fall out of love,
apparently

your mouth in my nightmares is sticky and warm,
but in the morning all i can taste
is stale cigarettes and the bars dissolving under your tongue

This time next year,
Where will I be
In relation to you?

This year,
I want to follow through,
But commitment has never been my style.

It's beautiful the way you make me laugh,
But sometimes I get scared,
And sometimes it's hard to breathe,
And sometimes I can't see what's real through the tricks of my mind,
And sometimes I just wish
That I could lay my head on your shoulder
And cry.