how do you expect me
to believe i deserve better
when you’re the one proving
that i’m not worth fighting for

and don’t you even dare say
“it’s not you, it’s me”
because i know one day
you will meet a girl
and her eyes will shine like diamonds
and your heart will always
ache to be next to her
and you will do whatever it takes
to have her, no matter what
you will overcome every obstacle
to ensure that she is forever yours

so don’t even try to feed me lies like
“you are good enough”
when you’re completely contradicting that
by leaving me here broken and alone

his heart was full of depth,
but he chose to let it hide
and masked his pain with pills
and smokes and jokes and lies

this is
your open field
this is
where you lie on your back
on a fluffy, plaid duvet
eating strawberries
forgetting the sound of honking cars
and car alarms
this is your studio
replace the clay with bars of soap
paintbrushes with shampoo bottles
write your thoughts on fogged glass
lists of run-on sentences, scribbled
without inhibition
this is where the water runs off
your shoulders
this is where you reflect
it is not poetic
it is quiet, it is ordinary
knots of hair from gushing wind
smoothed over with aloe conditioner
everything is spinning, but here it slows
this is where you pause
this is where you breathe
this is where you begin again

sometimes,
i get this weird sensation
where it feels like
i've known you forever

i miss you
even though
i've never had you
by my side

and i have these
pretend memories
of us together

they all seem so real,
even though
i know they're not

but hopefully
they will be,
one day

even with my heart
broken into
seven hundred
sixty-four thousand pieces,
somehow i still manage
to love you

i have a crush on a boy
but i’m afraid of hurting his feelings
because ever since late january
i feel like i don’t really have any myself
just logic to judge
no emotions to indicate
he says he needs to be careful with his heart
and being cautious may pay off in the end
you may end up with less
fingerprints and teeth marks on your ribs
but right now i have no interest
in anyone who doesn’t
want to let feeling consume them
to chase their impulses
into the dark, by the pond behind my house
maybe you should have kissed me

i’m not sure how artists have the patience
to sculpt marble slabs into gods
or why they feel it’s worth their time

but i do know that
the nights i stay up until 3 a.m. are usually the worst
and the mornings i wake up at 8 a.m. are usually the
best

and that it’s worth the money to buy a decent mattress
instead of losing sleep on fiscal responsibility
and i feel grown-up having wrapping paper in my closet
and extra birthday cards in my desk

and i might always be crazy
always holding on to pieces of the past
tacking them to my bedroom walls
and pretending it’s okay that i still think about it all

but i won’t forget that some people are brave enough
to put on big white suits and fishbowl helmets and leave
their families to go walk on the moon
or that i flew on a plane by myself even though i was
absolutely petrified of being alone in the sky
or that spring exists,
and that winter cannot, and will not, last forever

have you ever held the sun in your hands
sometimes i carry it around in my pockets and forget it’s there
sometimes i feel so full of it that i believe in god again
what else is there besides
the streams of light peeking through magnolia leaves
who am i to the baseball shirt
to the blazer or the black fishnets or the crooked bottom teeth
it doesn’t matter
i smell lemon verbena laundry detergent and it’s like time travel
i’m in our west hollywood apartment again falling asleep on my right hip
sometimes i am forty-two but i am always fourteen
do you see me on the page or in the sidewalk cracks
i wish i didn’t care but i always do
where does it come from
the longing
the need to be loved by the things that we love
i hear a song or read a poem and i’m on my knees
i hate being looked at but
i’d do anything for you to see me

i shouldn’t expect
to stand still
while the untethered
and unbothered
wind demonstrates
the power of the universe
as it sends the rain sideways
twisting dead and
soon to be dead leaves
in its playful vortices

because my roots
are brand new
my limbs are still
thin and delicate like
soft green saplings

for awhile
i will bend
and shake
and fear
the thunder
until i dig down
far enough
in the dirt

the bending
and the shaking
is part of
the beauty

if stay here long enough
if i let the storm soak into me
instead of letting myself
run for cover
i will become
strong and steady
like an old oak tree

i will wear my growth rings
like gold metals
proudly parading
the proof of
what i have weathered
—there will be
too many to count

and i will find myself
smiling at the sky
when the dark clouds roll in
because i am
still here
still standing
after all this time.

“you’ve changed.”

digs itself between your ribs
gripped by the hands of someone
who had already painted their portrait of you
but then you came along and sprinkled
rose-colored glitter across your cheeks
dragged sky-blue painted fingertips
down the sides of your face
exhale deeply
dust off your hands
different looks like ghosts to some;
they don’t see people as perennial flowers, ones that
bloom in the summer, but wither by winter
only to bud again as something new in the spring
they assume autumn’s mess of orange and brown is the
end—
that things cannot be reborn
so clenched fists punch holes through canvas
leaving red-glittered knuckles and
spit that looks like teardrops
without considering that maybe blue
has always been your color

i’m the kind of girl
who leaves dying flowers on my desk
because i can still find beauty
in the withering petals

i hope you’re the type of boy
who will remind me
to put water
in the vase

80 degrees in the shade
with a breeze
by a pond with a fountain
sprinkling
overalls over calvin klein
underwear
on a thursday afternoon
in the summer
far away from an old home
closer to a new home
free,
        free,
                free

someday i’ll be too busy to notice the vampires
the sun wakes me up and i know who i am
maybe the chaos will always be there but
i’ll find a way to break it down into mulch and grow
pears and herbs and gardenias from what’s left of me
it takes a while to accept that the shadows matter
and i can’t pretend to know the watermelon lollipop
without the tongue that exists only to melt it away
to turn it into nothing until all that’s left is a paper stick
it might feel like freedom now but it can’t forever
i’ll pull down the curtains and never snooze an alarm again
the worst thing i can think of is writing the same poem
each day for the rest of my life and everyone knowing it
but me

at night, i dream of sun-drenched eggshell walls
baking in the morning like yukon gold potatoes
where we wake unbothered by the encroaching light
i’ll meet you in the kitchen to switch on the toaster oven
the coffee ***, pulling our ceramic mugs from the drying rack
carrying our books with bent covers to the balcony
where you set down thick slices of french bread slathered in butter
and a bowl of fresh, cold strawberries on a small round table
that we found at a sunday yard sale two summers ago
we take turns taking crisp bites in between sips of steaming coffee
mine with raw honey and cream, yours black
our oily thumbs staining the corners of thin ivory pages
i listen to the sound of you reading; of the world waking up
birds singing their sunrise songs; and my heart
slow, and buoyant, and irrevocably yours

sun squares on the hardwood
the morning robins
and you.

i don’t think my mother
ever brushed my hair.
and if she did,
i can’t remember it.
i could lie and say
that i wonder why,
but i know why.
it was because
she was busy with
my sister’s brand-new curls,
busy tending to her own
dark roots and dry ends.

when i am a mother,
i will balance my sons
and daughters on my lap
and one by one
comb through
their soft mops
with patient hands.

they will never wonder
why i left them
to sort out
the knots
on their own.

they will know
i am there
to help untangle
the predestined messes
caused by the wind,
and caused by me.

you make so much sense
amidst the tangled vines of
learning and unlearning
please don’t go before i get better

i am envious
of what you have,
but not
of who you are

regardless,
it withers me

instead of watching
your garden grow, even if
i find it
utterly dull;

perhaps,
i should start digging up
the earth in my own,
neglected plot

and observe
what becomes

i will wait up for you
i will kiss you at the front door
i will rub your back until you fall asleep
we will walk down tree-lined streets
in cities that are new to me and old to you
we will hold hands on trains, in museums
for years, until there are permanent tan lines
on our fragile, well-lived knuckles
we will find rest in one another
on long days, on slow days
together, you and i

maybe i leave it all till the last minute because some gritty part of me loves the rapid pulse of pulling back right before the truck turns the corner and blows through the stretch of hot asphalt i was just lying down and burning my skin on. it tears down the road, out of sight, and i’ve still got all my limbs intact. maybe almost failing feels a bit like cheating death, like how breathing feels after a contest of who can hold it longer in the motel pool, or how good a glass of ice-cold water tastes after downing a bag of potato chips. there are plenty of hours in the day. i could wake up at six or sleep in till noon and it wouldn’t make much of a difference. i’m just a girl who loves the taste of scraping by.

the panic begins at night
and it follows me through
the day,
anchors me to my bedroom
floor when everyone begins to
shut their doors and turn out their
lights

my ceiling doesn’t look like
a galaxy, or even just a
ceiling, it feels like a hand
lowering
itself, slowly,
until i’m stuck beneath fingernails

i change my sheets, bathe my dog,
it lingers inside my throat
my twin mattress feels like i’m
drowning in a bathtub

there are tan lines on my
shoulders where your arms should be

in my house, i’m not alone,
but when the moon is in the sky,
and my friends are in their beds,
and these incessant thoughts
are in my head,

i might as well be

you are not a hospital room
you don’t have to keep everything
pure-white and sterile

you are ugly red clay on the walls
covering up your bruises with
pink cotton-candy fluff and
bright yellow smiley-face stickers
that you saved from first grade
living out of your car
and calling it a slumber party; sleep-away camp
far away from the monsters beneath your bed

you don’t have to paint your cheeks
with roses, leaving out parts of you like
a mad libs story we played to pass the time
on long car rides to the coast

we can sit in silence
while the world around us buzzes
with all its uncertain chaos and
my soul will find yours
in the space that rests above
this mess of existing

it's a race with the blade
of who can sink faster
but my heart doesn't
know what's good for it
so i take the stairs
and search for
my grave at the top

tell me that i don't
have to carve my name
into the granite
that i could leave
the bottom of
this page blank and
you would
fill in the rest

When I’m older, I’ll give more of myself to the yellow morning. By then, I’ll have a front porch where the honeybees join me for breakfast, and I won’t worry about the sting any longer than I should, and the day will be enough. But for now, I am still waiting for a flood, still waist-deep in the rain. I am taking communion with the things that hurt, letting them melt on my tongue like hot wax. The broken clock, and the hollow haunting, and the songs that say what I can’t. I think the winter knows me better than I’d like to admit. But sometimes, the heaviness feels a lot like being held, and so I let it crush me.

in another life
i wear clay beneath my fingernails
and linen pants around my hips
fastened with a braided leather belt
rescued from my mother’s closet
one she wore in the eighties
when she met my father on the seaside of france
i carry flowers from the corner
down a gum-stained sidewalk
past the park i fell asleep in during one
slow sunday afternoon
there are cherry red stains on my pillow
some from my lips, some not
i’ve never been in love
but i’ve never felt alone
my nose is slender
and my collarbones flaunt themselves
beneath tanned skin
i am someone who drinks ***** and
orange juice while watering my plants
a longhaired cat licks its paws
in the windowsill
as i lie naked in the sunlight
reading tolstoy and kerouac
and obscure poetry introduced
by the neighbor in 4F
none of it matters
i am just like a cloud
like a creaking step
i share myself only through
spearmint breath and coffee dates
here are my sweaty palms
here are my uneven bangs
you will never know me

i am overwhelmingly in love and it is the most peaceful yet
exhilarating feeling in the entire world. i feel like rain, a tornado, and
the sun peeking out from behind the clouds after a violent storm,
all at the same time. i am a mess of contentment and wonder.
he is all i’ve ever wanted.

does your skin ever melt into the mirror
do your palms ever reach the other side
will these reflections ever make sense
ever feel familiar
ever seem right
whole
on purpose

do you find yourself, one day
staring back, unsurprised
thinking, i know her well
able to plaster her on billboards and
not shiver with questioned identity

because i am terrified
i’ll never look like the person
i hope to see when i squeeze my eyes shut

will they ever open

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

your parents
have wounds
they kept hidden
while pushing you
on the swing

now you’re seventeen
squeezing your eyes
shut and daydreaming
about all the ways
you will be better

you can create an ocean
between
once you’ve collected
enough freedom
to dig the pit
(it is reminiscent
of the one in your stomach)

the bridges
are yours to build
you don’t have to be
an island
but you don’t have to be
a punching bag

their wounds are
not an excuse
they do not get
to point to theirs
while brandishing
***** fingernails to
draw blood

but while their teeth
are sharp and their
eyes are dark
their broken skin shows
there’s still a beating
heart
in there
somewhere

maybe when i’m older
i’ll be brave enough
to reach out
and try
to feel it beat

i have forgotten
to linger 
in love 
with you
in a past life
wanting only 
to be found worthy 
of your affection
revere your touch as holy
like goosebumps 
in the italian sun
to write melodies
and ballads
and captions
not of purity, not of beauty
but of how you make me feel
forget all the rest
all the fighting
all the ugly
all the words
we didn’t mean
for i am ill 
when you are not around
and it is poetic enough
that you are broken 
yet you are
what makes me whole

I want you to know me by my handwriting
Let’s start licking envelopes again just to say hello
I’ll sit at my desk drinking coffee in the morning
A stack of letters in the drawer ******* with a string
You know I would keep every one of yours
Even if you lived next door or wrote me every day
I don’t know how to throw anything away

there is a modest
one-story home
with white stucco walls
and a red tiled roof
waiting for me somewhere
near a floridian beach.

the yard is flat and dry.
some days, i’ll lie there
on top of a patterned quilt
in a two-piece
hand over brow
reading a thick memoir
on loan from the library
that sits on the other side
of the brush, beyond
the wooden fence.

winter will just be a memory.
every week, my toenails
will sink into the sand
wearing a different shade of pink.
i will not fold away
my sundresses and shove them
under the bed.
they will only leave
their wooden hangers
to be worn and washed.

time simply records the falling
and growing and falling of things.
one of these days,
i will be the budding lily
pushing up dirt
to greet the other side with
all of the beauty
i am ready to be.

i have fallen enough.

where were you when the tree branches
were scraping against my window
when i was staring at the cul-de-sac
clutching the landline to my chest
one time i thought i saw a bear
in the woods across from the bus stop
but it turned out to be a pile of brush
you know i still see things in the dark
the other night i woke up from a bad dream
and saw teeth that weren’t there
i managed to blink them away but
there are some things that i can’t
like the shadow in the doorway that visits
every night and the open hand i am doing
everything not to grab
it pretends that it needs me but really
all i needed was yours

lulls of silence—
wide-open meditative spaces
where everything is washed
and vacant,
stretching on into pale skies
in every direction,
void of anything
it is lonely, maddening,
a desert, my home
where i feel very small,
where there is nothing
to run towards—
they haunt me like shadows looming
on bedroom ceilings
above twin beds,
where i lie below, motionless
with a dream catcher
hanging on the wall above
my messy, braided hair and
chapped lips buried
into a pillow,
empty

i’m in a constant battle with reality and pretend
with who i am, who i want to be,
and who i wish i could be

with picking up the pieces, painting portraits of something
strong, something whole,
something to be proud of
and shattering crystal vases on wooden floors

while smiling, without blinking
with seeing just how far i can run away from myself
without forgetting myself

i lie in my bed, and i sip my tea
and it feels like the rain outside is going to
swallow me whole

and i’m happy
and i’m sad
and i’m panicked
and i’m trapped
and i’m everything
and i’m scared

and the sky is dark
blue and the night is
so dizzy

          and so am i

and i’ve forgotten how to exist

i hope you revel in the normalcy
when you feel the sunrise on your skin
walking down a brick path
i hope you breathe in the morning
hold the ordinary close to you
like a life that almost didn’t happen

because for some of us
it didn’t happen

i have never felt the blissful repetition
in being surrounded by what is expected
standing in seasons and looking at skylines
that your mothers and fathers
have stood in and looked at
mothers and fathers who do your laundry
when you come home to a home
that has smelled the same
for the past twenty years

so i hope that you laugh and drink
a little too much
and kiss people who make you feel seen
i hope you listen to bad music
and hug your friends too tightly
and skip your eight a.m. just because
you need slowness and stillness
and a coffee from the corner
and a breath of fresh air
in the morning
on a brick path
with the midday sun
on your skin

an afternoon accompanied by
rushing water and rustling trees,
the scent of a spruce candle burning,
i recalled that fire is often described as
something unapologetic,
a force that burns through forests
with resilience, and power, and no inclination to look
back; this is something i’ve spent my whole life trying
to be

but i saw myself in the flame of a candle
burning in a different light,
i saw something soft, and warm, and calm
something reborn, consumed
whipping itself back and forth as the wind blows it,
dancing from side to side like an eager child
it makes no effort to keep still
it accepts the movement, the wind, the chaos
and as it lets itself go,
as the wax melts down
slowly
          slowly
                    slowly
it glows.

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.

This time next week, I hope I will be breathing the air that I’ve been gasping for. I didn’t realize that four months could feel like four broken bones, two arms, two legs, all secretly cracked, only felt under the weight of my own invisible dread. It’s okay that I went back to being sixteen for awhile. It’s not what I wanted, what I planned for, but it’s what happened. I woke up with butterflies in my stomach and the rug ripped out from under me. My car sits in the driveway and I don’t drink coffee anymore because it makes me shake and I don’t know how to handle the shaking like I used to. I never used to worry about sharing drinks yet today I’ve washed my hands fifteen times and still don’t trust them. But it’s August and I’m twenty-three again. Or at least I will be when the key slides into the lock and I take that big gulp and pray for it to add a few years back that were taken away this summer. Everything is a circle cut in half, alternating between hollow and whole, snaking through time with hysterical pseudo endings and beginnings that are really just doors leading down a different hallway in the same ******* infinite hotel. Sometimes Wes Anderson’s, sometimes The Shining. I don’t have to listen to the yelling for the rest of my life if I don’t want to. I don’t have to be so unhappy if I don’t want to. Maybe next Saturday I will drive to the coffee shop on the corner and order something decaf and sugary and thank god that it’s over. It’s over. *******. The leaves will be turning orange soon. I almost forgot.

I woke up and forgot it was October
On the front steps, I shook a little less
Than the last time we decided to rush
A season, shaking branches and wearing
Sweaters with the sun beating down
Tomorrow, it still won’t feel like home
But I am learning that nothing does
Except for autumn and that first cool morning
Where the air smells like it did when I was ten
Before I knew that life would ever feel as unreal
As it does now, standing on one side of a door
Stirring up the courage to pull it shut

keep me awake
i keep falling asleep

i keep forgetting 
that i have
fearfully crawled
into places filled
to the brim with
heartbeats and
suffocating heat
just to find myself
with dry palms
and a soft jaw
minutes later

i hold my tongue
only to cut it off
when i hate
the feeling of it
inside my mouth
and leave it for
him to hold
all pink and slimy
and frantic and cruel
and wonder
why it’s hard for him
to read my poetry

and every night
i lie my head
against the chest
of indifference
and swear that
i can hear the
lazy thump of
his affection
resting shallowly
below thin ribs

i am kept awake
through the
loneliness hours
considering
my own
self-inflicted
wounds
instead of dressing
the deep cut
we both share

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

i always regret the nights i stay awake
for no reason at all
except to trace and retrace every fear
that lies awake on my chest
the evening grows closer to the sun
and more unproductive
c h  o   p     p      e      d
into little bits where the light creeps in
a hazy glow, lost memories that are insignificant
and not much of a loss
down feathers scattered across an orange sunrise
and pillows piled on top of piercing silence
all i wish
is to be asleep
tucked into a dreamland
where nothing can excite me

after you've mix two souls
combine the brightest blues
with the deepest reds
but it becomes all too heavy
and you're ready to go
lace up your shoes and turn off the light
how can you tell which bits are yours
and which are theirs?
is it ever possible to be entirely untangled
or do you leave holding pieces that don't match?
left with gaps that feel hollow
can you get them back?
can you grow anew?
the feat truly feels unfathomable
it seems as though
when you walk away from love
you’ll always be carrying too little
or carrying too much

i kept anticipating
blocked off entrances and
handwritten out-of-order signs
over gas station bathroom doors
that are rusting at the corners

because each time i got in my car
that smells like sweaty dog
and lavender
i found a reason to turn around
i convinced myself that
the green lights were not meant for me
only backroads and passenger seats

the sun was not there
when i kept going
the sky was full of grey
and i could feel the rain in my chest;
i didn’t need it to be a perfect summer day
i just needed to believe
that i had enough light within me
to make it through

something about you. something about october
the dried up leaves and the way everything feels quiet
in the middle of the day
like living inside of a vhs tape that hasn't been rewound
in a decade or two
makes me want to start visiting the cemetery
make friends with the forgotten
when we ended up walking the dogs there on accident
it felt like coming home
i'll bring my books and a bag of dried cherries, peanut butter
bars of dark chocolate wrapped in gold foil, sunflower seeds
the nightstand with the warped wooden drawer
that's always getting stuck
where i keep the half-melted birthday candles
and a box of matches, just in case
prop my pillow up against a headstone
read vonnegut until i fall asleep
grow closer to death until it doesn't scare me anymore
i used to think ghosts lived in mausoleums but now i know
they live inside of a twenty-four-year-old who watches
the same vampire movie every time it rains
just to feel safe inside the familiarity of the past
i'm still the twelve-year-old girl
just waiting for something to happen to her
i burn my skin in the shower just to feel less alone

i was sixteen, you were pretending
young and lonely, someone else
my imaginary friend,
who was never really a friend

deep in the shadows, you lurk,
a memory that won’t repress,
you were a distraction
from my mess of a reality, a place
to freely feel, although it was ugly

a mess
apart from
a mess

one that was okay because
it didn’t really exist,
a black-and-white silent film,
spinning on the screen and then forgotten,
i could turn it off and it would
be gone, you would be gone, you are gone

but you were never really there,
and i lie here motionless
caressing the memories of a ghost

i do not feel compassion
for the man who made me
learn what it means to survive,
to come out the other side
with wounds that hide under
repressed skin, only to reveal themselves
as silence or black ice caught in
a flash of remembering;
i do not wonder what made him this way
think, did his mother hug him enough
when i hear his voice echoing
in nightmares where i cannot scream
and my legs feel like lead
burdened by the weight of all this baggage,
a torn up suitcase
filled with blood red bricks—
it does not meet the carry-on weight limit
and
i cannot unpack it.