i want to let my hair grow long and tangled
and weave flowers and moss between the strands
so i can feel like i'm a part of something living.
i want to learn to love my broken vessel
the way i love the wild.

i want to sink my hands in rocky riverbeds
and feel every kind of earth between my toes.
i want to learn the constellations
so i can point at pictures in the night sky
and not feel so alone.

i want to paint myself
in mud and freedom
and scream in my own voice,
triumph ringing through the trees.

i want to bask in the sunshine and radiate
light and strength and wholeness,
absorbing beauty and reflecting it back into the world
in new arrangements.

i will climb high and
sing loud and
march on and
fly,
until at last i can sink back
in well-earned exhaustion,
hallelujah seeping from my skin.

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.

the ice cream truck makes me very sad
because it reminds me of all the things i've lost--
childhood,
innocence,
endless summer,
and you,
my once-upon-a-darling.
and that rainbow snow cone with gum at the bottom
sits heavy in my chest.
not because i want you back,
but because i do not,
and i miss the girl
that would have.

when i found out you were going to be a father,
everything inside me went flat and grey and
i spent the next five minutes remembering how to breathe.
it shouldn't have surprised me,
but i guess something in me just hoped
that no one would ever choose to procreate with you.
lord knows i wouldn't even trust you with a cat.

when i found out you were going to be a father,
some dark heavy seed plunked into my chest
and sank straight to the bottom.
i saw the announcement and immediately
i could taste in the back of my throat
the way you called me baby,
acidic and cloying and sticky.
it burned hot and sharp through my lungs
like every word of every promise i remember you forgetting.
the news hit me with a power you yourself have not had in years.

you are going to be a father,
and since the moment i found out,
i have been whispering desperate prayers to the universe
that you never have a little girl.
i think about your greedy hands brushing curls
from some soft little angel face,
and i feel sick.
i think about you picking up her pretty little-girl things,
little socks and bows and shoes and toys,
and it takes everything in me just to sit here and breathe.
will you sing her the songs i used to sing you
in my own pretty little-girl voice?
will you hear me in her cheeky turns of phrase
or when she cries into her pillow
late at night when she thinks you're asleep?
what if she's precocious,
like me?
what if her prepubescent body starts to carve itself
into the shape of a woman's?
will it be easier to remember that a child is still a child
when you watched her grow yourself?
if she picks out tight shirts and short skirts
and paints her eyes dark and her lips red,
and she walks and talks and moves like a woman,
will you remember that she is not?
maybe if she is your daughter,
it will be different,
but then again i think being your anything
can never be anything but trouble for a little girl.
i should know.

i hope more than anything that you never have a daughter,
because i know if you do,
i will never stop wondering.
i know that the questions will keep me awake at night
for the rest of my life.
i will will never stop worrying that it is
at least a little bit
my fault.

when i found out you were going to be a father,
i remembered
everything.

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

my desire to build a world
where every little girl knows she is good enough
is enough to overpower
my desire to be liked.
i am done making pleasant
my priority.

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.

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)

i had this dream
where i was locked in a glass room,
gasping for air with
thick fingers wrapped tight
around my throat.
the streets outside were crowded,
people stared and screamed,
but no one ever tried
to break the glass.

that's how monday mornings feel,
walking down halls filled with
well-meaning people who would
help if they knew how.
i am a butterfly pinned,
broken and bright and iridescent,
and you cannot look away but
what can you do?
i cannot ask anyone to stick
shattered shards into their skin
just to step between me
and an oncoming train.
i want no one else's knuckles
broken for my safety.
sometimes the wolves
outsmart the shepherds,
and i am softer than i seem
and not built to fight forever.

in my dream,
i kicked my boot bottom-first
through the glass
and sprinted a path through the crowd,
****** and breathless and bruised
and alive because
i know when to stop waiting for
things to make sense.
sometimes the monsters are
stronger than you'd hoped
and some things are not worth
holding onto.

i stopped seeing the shame in
running for my life
the day i ran out of other options.

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.

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.

And it's strange,
This not knowing my own mind.
This "was is the drugs
Or the meds
Or life?
Or was it
Just me?"

A sea of contradictions,
Full of fear,
But empty.
Dying to feel anything at all,
But living
To escape.

Regret tastes like salt,
But they wouldn't know.
He doesn't worry,
And she doesn't eat.
He holds her face in his hands,
And she looks right through him,
Wishing to be anywhere
But where she is.
He recites poetry over the phone,
And she has to mute the speaker
So he can't hear her laugh.
Only from his sadness does she gain any satisfaction,
And so she toys with his head,
For sick pleasure
Is better than none.

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."

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)

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.

i know how to jump start a car and
i know thirteen different ways to light a fire and
i know that i sleep better when you're here.

i know how to make a pipe with an apple
and i know how to roll poplar bark into twine and
i know what you're afraid of.

i know that sometimes turkeys drown because they stand
with their heads thrown back in the rain.

i know all the state capitals and
i know all the books of the old testament in order and
i know how far you'd have to jump to be sure you didn't survive.
i know that my biggest fear was always the time stretched out between
today and the end and i know that
lately i am not so afraid.
i know it's at least a little bit
because of you.

i know that my lungs crave mountains
like my fingers crave dirt
like my hands crave yours.

i know how the world looks on your seventy second hour awake
and i know how thirteen tabs of acid feels and
i know how to steal things without getting caught.
i know how thirty-year-old hands squeeze
sixteen-year-old hips.
i know that "*******" isn't a compliment.

i know deep breathing techniques,
calming rituals,
and numbers for help lines i'll never call.
i know that frogs breathe through their skin
and that sometimes
they die when you touch them.

i know that i do not breathe through my skin,
no matter how often i forget.

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.

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.

there is some great glowing thing buried
somewhere in my skin and
nothing in the world scares me half as much.
when you ask about fear, i'll mention
heights and strange men and
shadow-things,
but never the wildness in my bones
or the poison in my veins or
the slow oozing dark that's running
down the rivets in my brain.
some things are too sharp and slippery
to name.

i never meant to hurt you, but my love was
beastly and burning and
maybe you were scorched beyond repair.
i tangled my fingers in the
fibrous network of your nerves
and carved secrets into your spine.
i did not know how to love gently.
i ****** your breath into my lungs,
briny and saline and
wild like the ocean,
and now i can't breathe but
i can still taste you there.

the inky, fractured spirit in my skull
is stronger than my best intentions and
stronger than the love with which
you tried so desperately to drown it.
all the broken things in me
were more than we could fix.

i'm sorry i stopped calling.
you deserved better.

It's funny, the things you remember
And the things you forget.
I can't remember the way
It sounded when you laughed,
But I remember the way
Your whole car shook with bass,
And I could feel it in my stomach.

I don't remember those nights we shared
After too many shots of god-knows-what,
But I remember the shapes and colors of every bruise,
Beautiful and blue.
I could never make them so beautiful,
You know.

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.

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.

monday morning
and my skin still looks like
something you could touch,
but we both know from experience
it would burn you if you tried.
my mouth in the mirror
is soft and still alive
and hides the ghostly grinning skull
we remember from our nightmares.

wednesday every pore is oozing poison,
and when you tell me
i look pretty in my dress,
i can feel the sharp edges of scales
pressing up through thin flowered fabric.
wednesday i slash my lips red,
and as in nature it's a warning.
i am only an animal and
i have been consumed enough times
that my body has
made itself dangerous.

friday is a heavy knit sweater
even though it is warm,
because friday my chest
is caving in
and i cannot stand
even the accidental brush
of someone else's skin on mine.
friday no one tells me
i look pretty
and i fill my lungs a little fuller.

sunday is disembodied echoes,
a bathroom floor,
and a body that has never been mine.
sunday is gorgeous,
because i am not real,
and i am not here,
and all the things that have
happened to this body
have nothing at all to do with me.
sunday i am nowhere, which is
as close as i have ever been
to free.

the moon is a lesbian,
which i know because she has
kissed every inch of my body
more often than any lover
i've ever known.

i have watched the way
she kisses the ocean
and guides her gently home,
have seen her face reflected with love
in the ever-changing sparkling surface of the sea,
and i don't know any other word
to describe a love like that.

the day we smoked a joint in the woods
and then walked eight miles in the rain
to gas station coffee,
we passed two other gas stations on the way,
but you were holding my hand and
i didn't want it to stop.
you said
"you're beautiful"
and i said
~~~~
because you were the most remarkable
person i had ever seen,
leaned up against the hood of a stranger's car,
smoking a cigarette like a lesbian james dean.

you'd call yourself
"lesbian" sixteen times before breakfast
until it stopped sounding like venom
and started to sound like a prayer,
because how could i ever look at
love like this and feel anything
but holy?
my new church was the woods
by the river,
and i learned to worship
at the altar of your body.
you took me in your arms and you said,
"baby,
you're beautiful,"
and i told you i loved you
because beautiful had never
meant anything to me
except that i had something
people could take.
i heard "beautiful" from your lips and it sounded
like a blessing.

the moon is a lesbian because
she knows how to love without taking,
i have scarcely loved a man
who has learned how to love without taking,
that is not to say that no man
can love without taking,
but it is a skill that is learned
through a grief
that i have shared with every
queer woman i have ever met.

when you kissed me in the attic,
it was not the first time
i had been kissed,
but it was the first time that a touch
felt like a gift and not a punishment,
and it was the first time i understood
why people write love songs.
i wanted to write you a love song,
but after a lifetime afraid of my own voice,
all i could sing you were hymns.
not because i had made you an idol,
but because your hands on my body
made me feel clean for the first time.

the moon is a lesbian because
the night i stumbled out of
the apartment of the man
who only loved me when
he thought he could keep me,
blood on my lips and nowhere to go,
the moon kissed my fingertips
and she said,
"baby,
what took you so long?
welcome home."

she's one of those girls with
painted eyes and
long sleeves in summer,
a vacant stare
and nowhere left to turn,
long red lines
slashed over years of cross hatched moon white scars.
she'll tell you dying is an art.

cigarette filter ringed with red lipstick,
she pursues her death in slow steps,
still hoping in some hidden secret place
for someone to kiss her wrists and tell her she did okay,
to fall in love with her beautiful tragedy.

and she is beautiful,
but not for the reasons she's assembled in her head.
there is nothing lovely or romantic
in her quest for self-destruction,
but there is beauty in her strength.
the glory is not in her pursuit of death,
but her ability to live.
she does not need you to save her,
and you cannot,
as much as she'll beg you to try.

kiss her lips instead of her scars.
love the breath in her lungs and the life in her veins.
treat her body like something too precious to destroy.
give her love to hold onto
while she learns to create her own.

it is up to you to love her,
should you choose.
it is up to her to decide
that death can wait.

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 did that thing I do,
Where I push people away
Without even trying.
And I can't ever translate
The breathless and overwhelming love I feel for people
Into actions and words
Or anything all
That is visible to others.
So I constantly seem
Like I don't care,
Or I don't love,
Or I'm only being nice
Because
I'm high.

fairy whispers and inky half-formed memories beat shattered-glass moth wings against the brittle crystal cavern of your skull.

wait.

it's been a long time since you
remembered how to breathe,
and maybe that's why sometimes you sit in the surf and **** the ocean into your lungs,
and maybe that's why you smoke,
so that for thirty seconds it's okay
to look like you are choking.

inhale spun sugar and dreaming dust.
exhale chalk and emptiness.

wait.

maybe someday you will cough all the shards out of your lungs.
today you take shots so you have permission
to let the burn flicker across your face
and you jump into freezing water so you don't have to explain
why you always look like you are drowning.

it's not rest, but it's the closest thing you can remember.

maybe one day you'll stop feeling so
raw.

And today,
I am me with no pretending,
Spread bare,
Torn open raw and bleeding.
Today, I am not a perfect mess for you to fix,
A riddle begging to be solved,
A player of games.
Today, I am not the hero,
The villain,
Or the martyr.
Today, I will not throw myself at your feet
Or lie and say I do not love you.
Today, I will be me,
Even if that isn't what you want.

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.

the reason your joke isn't funny
has nothing to do with "politically correct,"
a phrase you throw out in vitriolic attacks
so mismatched with my gentle
"can we not?"

you think that you're edgy
and subversive
and i am just
sensitive.
you think that you're some comedic rogue
sticking it to censorship and "the man,"
which is ironic because
every joke you make sits
right within the lines
drawn for you by a society that's been telling you
w  h a t
t o
t h i n k
since day one,
and actually by perpetuating the stereotypes and ideas
already ingrained in our culture,
you become the man,
man.

you are not an artist,
you do not create,
you are not the revolution,
and you can't fight the system
when the system is you.

now sit the **** down.

counting breaths and blinks
makes it easier to detach
from hands where hands aren't wanted,
and lips and teeth and tongue and ****
and heat and sweat and rhythm.
heartbeats and seconds in packets of four
are better for the brain
than fists and blood and fear,
and ticks of the clock and fingertips tapping in time
beat uncertainty and helplessness
and not knowing if he's going to live
any day of the week.

i can wash my hands until they're red
(beet red, beat, beet red, beat)
and raw
(and dry and cracked and bleeding and bleeding).
i can write and re-write
and control and perfect,
perfect the verb because
perfect as an adjective is
impossible
(but nothing less will do).
i can line everything up and count it out even,
in fours or
in thirty-sixes,
(six times six, six six times, perfect square, perfect square),
and i can hope
that my neat tall stacks of the things i need to control
will finally outweigh
the scattered mountains
of the things i never could.

i can tell you how and when and where and what,
just please don't ask me why.

and i don't understand
         (but i want to)
where you go when your eyes get far away
or the shadows in your head when you say
you're not okay,
but i do understand
the way your fingers lace with mine,
the warmth of your skin,
the hungry way you kiss.
i'll never get your jealousy,
but i know love,
and i know loss,
and i want to know you.
and i hope this isn't a pattern
or my insecurity
or my boundary issues manifested,
but then you smile,
and i feel good,
and that's enough
to make me forget
(for now)

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