the truth is

i cannot be contained like that

i cannot be taught to like water 
more than cranberry juice

i cannot pretend for decades upon decades

(years like soft footprints and malnourished
buzzards circling who i really am;
the whimsical part of me
decaying like neglected cavities)

that i enjoy self-discipline and growing muscle

i cannot cook healthy dinners 
and go to sleep at reasonable hours

i will not wake up one morning
and be everything that you hoped for me to be

i tried holding myself very still for a while
i tried to like doing what i’m supposed to

and maybe i will someday

but it won’t be because i loved you

sometimes
i bump into the thought
that i don’t really care
about anything

not school
not being pretty
or healthy, or better.

when you wipe off
the good girl cosplay
the soft peach blush
and the freckles
and the lip gloss

the straight a’s
and the sweet potatoes
and the self-discipline

you will find a wild thing
dancing around
in her underwear
drinking iced coffee
for lunch and
doing nothing but
writing and reading
and abandoning any
semblance of sanity

completely consumed
by all the things
i shouldn’t be.

and when i have
destroyed everything
around me
with my negligence
and delusion

when the decent ones
have seen themselves out

when there is nothing
left inside of me

there will always be poetry.

i am waiting for my coffee
i am the old couple eating pastries
with their chairs turned towards the window
i am the wafting scent of musk and amber
i am the bright magenta trees lining route 240
blooming in april while it rains
i am the veiny hands i know nothing about
except that i wish they would touch me
i am gulping down the foam
tasting the bittersweet memories on my tongue
the ones that have yet to happen
i am remembering what it means to have teeth
to feel so different, so distant
but entirely the same

the daydreams aren’t just daydreams anymore
i can get on the train whenever i’d like
the doors are wide open and waiting
for me to lie naked in the shifting light
of a four-story brooklyn walk-up
to fall asleep on a freckled chest
to run my fingers through fields of white sage
i am the opening iris
the floating dust that glimmers like crushed diamonds
the feathery eyelashes caught on eager fingers
i am the sunlight and the wind
intersecting across the gleaming reservoir
where the bluegills breathe underwater
where you and i dance gloriously on the surface
where we become carelessly entangled
before slipping underneath

tighten your tanned arm around my waist
put your thumb inside my bottom lip
tell me how pretty i look in a dress
even more with it on the floor
and with a sun-dripping smile
i will bloom beneath the ripened lust
that seeps from your secret gaze
like a blazing hillside of orange poppies
shifting towards you in the soft wind
waiting to be crushed

if i were to press my palms on the jagged edge of my fear
with the soles of my bare feet parallel to the sky
and sun-bleached hair spreading out over the grass
like a picnic blanket for little bugs in the dirt
to sit upon and eat finger sandwich crumbs
i could focus my gaze on the upside-down sea
and watch all the things i carry float around
in the blue-black waves wiggling like half-hardened jello
where the small fish nor the white sharks give a ****
whether i am beautiful or witty or doing okay
and when the sky fades as it always does
and the tide continues to pirouette in her borrowed
pink ballet shoes with moon dust in the binding
i will forever decide to run down dirt roads
until my lungs burn
and keep going

sitting across from you
at the white kitchen table
or cross-legged on my side of the bed
is someone hollow.
not as sweet as a fig. not as dead
as the inside of a black rotting trunk
but close. i do not hold beautiful things
like a terracotta vase. inside my head
is a seam ripper that splits everything
down the middle. sometimes
you are standing in front of the bright window,
glowing like a saint. sometimes
i let you fall into an algae-lined pool
that i will not pay to have cleaned.
everything is floating within me.
i haven’t figured out
how to anchor this stuff down.

no one ever taught me how