I am constantly growing. I am constantly changing. I am reaching inward and holding on tight to anything that feels right. I am tearing out from inside anything too sharp, anything that cuts for all the wrong reasons. I am scraping together all the love I can find into small orbs of light I can hold in my hands. I am raising my voice. I am lifting my hands up toward the sky and asking for more and more and all. I am vibrating with such intention and I will direct it at anything that makes the blood boil under my skin. I am here and I am awake and I am alive and I have never been so ready and so excited and so terrified.

I am at the party I did not want to attend

I am at the party although I would rather be at home in bed

I am at the party and I cannot find the girl who invited me

I am at the party and oh my god where should I stand

I am at the party and I am feeling grateful for the pack of cigarettes I bought before I came, now I have something to do with my hands

I am at the party and everyone seems to be speaking a foreign language I can't understand

I am at the party and no thank you I don't want a drink

I am at the party and I already said no, please leave me alone

I am at the party and I'm sorry I'm not trying to be rude

I am at the party and why am I sorry I haven't done anything wrong

I am at the party and I am trying hard to blend in with the patterns on the wallpaper

I am at the party and I am focusing on seeping into the furniture and into the floor and into the soil

I am at the party and it's been 30 minutes is it okay for me to leave yet

I am at the party and why don't these people have any pets

I am at the party and the line for the bathroom is way too long where am I going to hide now

I am at the party and I am texting myself would-be poems that will gather dust as drafts

I am at the party and I should really learn how to dance

I am at the party and I look across the room and I see you

I am at the party and she is biting your lip, her fingers in your hair

I am at the party and you look happier with her than you ever did with me

I am leaving the party as quickly and calmly as my legs will carry me

I am leaving the party and it's okay I'm okay everything is going to be okay

People sometimes speak just to fill the void,

but I long for golden silence,

a darkness in which stars may shine.

Don't look at me like that.

Empathy is like:

I see the light pouring out of your eyes and into mine

and I know how the whole world

is tugging invisible threads under your skin

and I want to help you unravel them

until you feel free

until you feel safe

until you feel loved

until we both grow apart

until we die

until we’re dust

You fall in love with everyone when they are talking about their favorite things
You fall in love with voices that rumble like the earth whispering all its darkest secrets
You fall in love with people who carry the moon in their chests
You fall in love with people’s scars, you dive into their stories, you memorize the maps of memories on their skin
You fall in love with the sorrow people cater to in their hearts, you wait to see how much of it spills out and where it goes afterward
You fall in love with a song you’ve heard since you were born but you never remember, you hear it humming in the blood of everyone around you
You fall in love with anyone who quotes Vonnegut and makes eye contact for so long it makes you feel uncomfortable
You fall in love with the way another person’s presence can begin to feel so much like home
You fall in love with the bits of cosmic dust connecting your veins to those of every living thing
You fall in love with the night sky and all its musings
You fall in love with absolutely everything
You surrender yourself
You shed your skin
You fall into love and let it swallow you whole

I'm afraid of how much I like having you around.

I lie awake some nights
I try to achieve some form of stillness
I listen so hard I swear I can hear the earth breathing
I wait for any answers
I wait for any sign of hope
I wait for some distant echo from a past or future self

What I hear is the wind at my window
What I hear is a great big nothing
What I hear is my own voice whispering something like a prayer

It’s okay
You’re okay
You can sleep.

When you speak to me
I briefly consider the pleasant
possibility of reincarnation
and imagine having known you
in a previous life,
and knowing
you again
in the next.
Will we be human?
Will we be on earth at all?
How many times has this happened?
Or will we become once again
as particles of the purest,
brightest light?
Unencumbered by the weight
of physical form,
to place your being into a body
seems almost like a crime.
How can I love you?
How can I even
look at you
speak to you
or oh,
my god,
touch you
when none of this makes any sense
and feels so cruel,
unfair?

How?

I am tearing every flower out from inside of myself

and replacing them with thorns.

I am feeling this fully, painfully, everything is heavy.

I am diving into the needles of this memory

and I am not coming up for air

until I have poured every drop of your name

out of my mouth.

There is so much bad out here. But there is also such beauty.
Do you feel safe? Hold on to that feeling. There are times out here when it seems impossible to find safety anywhere.
It’s nice and warm where you are. Out here it gets cold and it seeps into your blood and your bones and makes you feel like a plant withering beneath the frost.
Do you feel loved? You have no idea of all the ways in which your heart will be torn apart out here. There are disadvantages to loving too fully. There are disadvantages to feeling too deeply.
Do you have the strength to make yourself numb when the world is too jagged and sharp?
You will have to learn to find love from within before you search for it without.
It will take you a very long time, and you will put it down and walk away and misplace it sometimes.
But one day you will open your eyes and you will see light everywhere. Things were dark for so long but now there is light and there is love,
oh, my god, there is love
and there is so much to be grateful for.
I love you.
Do you love me?
Rest easy.
Sweet dreams.

I have this fantasy where I am driving on the interstate and I am not daydreaming about crashing my car and being killed on impact

I have this fantasy where I have never spent a whole summer covering up my scars

I have this fantasy where I know my body and I am at peace with it

I have this fantasy where I never stopped making art because of what a teacher said to me when I was seventeen

I have this fantasy where I know how to write good poetry

I have this fantasy where I have never fallen in love with too many drug addicts

I have this fantasy where I am sleeping with a stranger for fun and not because I hurt

I have this fantasy where someone knows all the best parts of me

I have this fantasy where someone knows all the worst parts of me

I have this fantasy where I can say “I love you” out loud instead of just writing it down

I have this fantasy where I am giving my whole self to somebody else and they are not asking me for more

Remember how the night was deceptively warm, and how you carried all the frost in your chest like you hadn’t spoken a word in a whole year
Remember how you drove to their house with a hurricane in your blood thinking of everything that could go wrong
Remember how you felt your knees crumble and your lungs lock up that summer night in the park behind the school
Remember how badly this ended before
Remember all the cruel hands you let touch your skin when you were grasping at anything that made you feel less alone
Remember the vulnerability
Remember the panic
Remember the feeling of an anvil on your chest
Remember the jubilance
Remember the nights when your bodies entwined on a bed made too small for two people to share
Remember the way their eyes lit up when they told you about all their favorite things
Remember how they cracked open their ribs and poured out everything collected inside
Remember how you wanted to drink their light like it was wine
Remember how you wanted to open their skull and swim inside
Remember how you would bottle sunlight for this person if you could
Remember how you you would swallow all their pain and carry all their fear if you were strong enough
Remember how you were too excited by their existence to fall asleep some nights
Remember how you fell in love like having the wind knocked out of you in the very best way
Remember all of this, every bit

I never want to go anywhere without pressed flowers in my notebooks and I always want to have turquoise in my pockets and I never want to stop writing poetry and I will let it bleed me dry if that’s what it wants and I never want to stop staying up at night contemplating the stars and I never want to stop feeling every little thing like an anvil on my chest and I never want to stop agonizing over every little detail of absolutely everything and I never want to treat love like it is some big secret and I never want to stop filling up everyone I know with the same light they have poured into me and I want to keep growing stronger until I can swallow the sky and the sun and open my arms up and wrap myself around the Void until we become one with one another, until we can finally sleep.
Rest easy, sweet dreams.

We do not so much fall in love as we do into desperation.
While I am collapsing in on myself on the bathroom floor
trying to keep my own hands

from tearing me apart

you are tapping on the other side of the door,
whispering “It’s okay, please come out now.”

I am thinking about the way
you licked the lust off of my tongue

and it makes me sick.
I am thinking about the way
your fingers tightened around my throat
when I told you “I’ve never done anything like this before”
and I would give anything
to have the ability to rewind time,

go back to the moment before
I read your message, 

before I hit REPLY, 

before you drowned me 

in the delicious prose of your own sorrow,
before you unraveled my apathy 

with your bare hands 

and forced me to swallow it whole.
I am staring at my face in this ***** mirror
and I am drawing exes over my eyes
in the dust and the toothpaste splatter.
I am waiting for you to just give up.

I am waiting for you to leave me alone.

I am waiting for myself to gather the courage

to wash the tear-streaked makeup off of my face
and open the door,
walk away,

don’t say anything,
escape.

My mania tells me things and I accept them as truths
Like:
If you stay awake long enough,
everything will make sense
Like:
If you starve your body,
your mind will expand
Like:
If you drink another *** of coffee you will be calm
Like:
If you smoke another cigarette your hands will stop shaking
Like:
If you feel like you are going in the right direction,
turn around and run the other way
Like:
If you feel like you are alone,
stay where you are and never leave
Like:
If you stop speaking to everyone
for long enough
they will forget you exist
Like:
If you stop writing things down
it's like they never even happened
Like:
If you let another person stay near you for too long,
their aura will eventually leak out
and seep into you
and it will make your insides melt
Like:
If you try to figure out what someone else is thinking,
you will either only pick up static
or you will hear awful noise
Like:
If you love someone,
you will make them wish
you'd never met
Like:
If you try to forget,
the memory will only get stronger,
it will plant roots in your chest
while you sleep

My mania tells me things and I obey
Like:
You should dye your hair three different colors in one week
Like:
You should stay up all night finger painting and call it art
Like:
You should organize your bookshelves
based on sensations instead of genre
Like:
You should give away everything you own,
you don’t need it anyway
Like:
You should text all of your exes,
ask them when the feeling faded
or if it was ever even there
Like:
You should ignore all of your phone calls
and alarm clocks
and all other sounds
that make your skin crawl
Like:
You should cover your windows with black sheets
and pretend that life is one long night
you never have to sleep through
Like:
You should distance yourself
from everyone you love
tell them you’re okay
you just have to go away
for awhile
Like:
You should tear off your layers
expose the wounds beneath
wait for the sting to turn numb again
Like:
You should shatter yourself to pieces
pretend they can be lost
and found again
Like:
You should hide anything that hurts
in the space between your ribs
forget they’re growing
forget they’re spreading
forget they’re waiting
all winter long
to bloom like flowers in the spring

When I am seventeen I go a bit insane and I discover that the whole world is connected to me by strings and I don’t know if I control them or if they control me but I do know that I feel very enlightened and aware when I have not eaten for five days and I drink two pots of coffee a day to stay awake because the nights are still whispering all their darkest secrets and I know that there is a grid of cosmic light keeping everything in tact but why? I see God in the golden dust that exists within each and every one of us and it makes me want to tear out my hair and scream at the top of my lungs when you tell me you can’t find salvation, just look at yourself, look inward, look back, look ahead, look anywhere

This is ok I guess

but I want something more.

I always knew that there was a fire inside of you but I was unprepared for the way that comfortable warmth could burn me, I never expected it to one day leave me with scars.

Please don’t leave me alone.
Please leave me alone.
Please just touch me, I need to be touched.
Please don’t touch me, I don’t want to be touched right now.

I am a vault of secrets, and you are the healing light
that will flush them all out. I have known since
I was very young that most things should be kept
up inside my head where they belong.

Even your name tastes like sugar on my tongue, but I am not used to anything that does not hurt; familiar are the things that sting and bite.

I’ve spent years building up a thick skin so I won’t be ripped to shreds by everyone I touch, but you tear off layers with your lips, you cut me open with your fingertips.

You’re the meteor shower I stay awake all night for.

tear out from inside all things sharp

tear out from inside all things that cut

tear out from inside all things that bruise

tear out from inside all things that hurt

tear out from inside all things cold

tear out from inside all things cruel

tear out from inside all things heavy

tear out from inside all things empty

tear out from inside all things buried

crumple it up

throw it down on the floor

walk away

don’t look back

escape

When I fell in love with you the first time I was still a fragile flower child with too much glass under my skin for anyone to touch me without hurting themselves, but you showed me that there was also sunlight in my veins and it was warm and golden and it lasted all summer long.

When I fell in love with you the second time, winter was nearly over and my blood was full of glass again but the moment we touched it turned to ice and melted away. I don’t know why you keep getting close enough to touch me and I don’t know what any of this means but I cannot wait to find out, I cannot wait to fall for you again and again and again.

Please just don't untie the threads connecting me to you.

YOU WILL FALL IN LOVE WITH A GIRL
WITH FINGERS LIKE GHOSTS
SHE WILL HAUNT EVERY PLACE SHE'S TOUCHED

YOU LEFT YOUR FINGERPRINTS ALL OVER ME
LITTLE REMINDERS OF EVERYWHERE
I NEVER DARED TO GO WITH ANYONE BUT YOU

There is something dark lurking inside of me.
It has always been there,
waiting
to sink its claws
into anything
and everyone
that gets too close.

There is something dark lurking inside of me.
I have felt it moving in my blood
since I was very young;
even when the world was at its brightest,
I could see the clouds moving in
to cover everything in fog.

There is something dark lurking inside of me.
I tell myself I know its tricks,
I tell myself I’ve carried it long enough by now
to keep it contained,
to keep any of it from spilling out
around me
and the ones I love.

There is something dark lurking inside of me.
Some nights I lose sleep
thinking of when and how
it will resurface,
what will happen
when all of my demons
come up for air.

EVERYONE LEAVES EVENTUALLY
SO I WILL HURT YOU BEFORE YOU HURT ME

BEING THE AIR IN MY LUNGS
IS NOT YOUR BURDEN TO BEAR

I DON'T REMEMBER HOW TO FEEL LOVE
WITHOUT FEAR

YOU WERE THE CHURNING STORM
I WAS LOST AT SEA

In my dreams a publisher sees my work and tells me they think I've got a real shot

In my dreams the ratio of rejection to acceptance letters in my inbox is not quite as depressing as it is in real life

In my dreams I am not editing my suicide notes and calling it poetry

In my dreams I never burned all my best work in my mother's fireplace when I was seventeen

In my dreams I can finish an entire project before the fear consumes me and causes me to walk away halfway through

In my dreams I am not bitter over the success of others

In my dreams I know where the line between courage and cowardice truly is

In my dreams I have never once thought of giving it all up

In my dreams I am brave

In my dreams I am unwilling to compromise

In my dreams I am tearing out my insides and throwing them down on the floor

In my dreams I am offering myself up as a whole and not as broken parts

In my dreams I am shouting I am here look at me

In my dreams I am exposing my open wounds and I am not asking to be healed

In my dreams I am cutting out my heart and I am not asking to be loved

In my dreams I am inadequate and insignificant and small and I wouldn't change that for the world

You and I will devour each other like there is a fire inside burning up every bit of poetry scribbled down on the backs of napkins, every line you have ever spilled into me, pushed past my lips and scraped along my teeth with your tongue. We become wild things with sharp claws that rip and tear and bite, there are monsters in your voice when you moan into me and I am falling quickly in love with each and every one of them. And to be honest touching you touching me has provided me with enough material to last through years of loneliness, there is a quiet storm behind my eyelids when I am alone in bed with my hands between my thighs, there is a tidal wave screaming your name that only escapes in satisfied sighs.

You always compared your head to an unsafe neighborhood, somewhere you shouldn’t go alone, but I want to reach inside and take out whatever I can find because I have seen the light in you and if you let me I will show you where to find it whenever you forget.

Your body is a haunted house
and I want to live inside of it
I want to listen
to the floorboards creak
and to the ghosts
whispering all their darkest secrets

Your body is a haunted house
and I want to live inside of it
I want to seep
into the floorboards
into the foundation
into the soil

Your body is a haunted house
and I want to live inside of it
I want to fill every room
everything
everywhere
with the same light
you have poured into me

Your body is a haunted house
and I want to live inside of it
I want to stay
until we crumble
into dust