how dare you take that word
and change the meaning of it for me
forever.
who gave you the right to make my heart feel like
spoiled lamb's milk
bloodied grass baking in the sun.
keep my legs crossed, *** down
eyes on the floor

it wasn't even that bad
people have gone through so much worse
terrors unimaginable from this girl
in maine

but ******* if i could rip this iron rod feeling out of my bones
i would

god, i am so ******* stupid
can't even manage to take my glasses off before my cry
that sounds like a wounded dog.
i hate that anyone has the ******* power to make me feel this way
especially you with your dumb ******* face
that I'm supposed to love,
i'd just as soon mold it into a bruised plum of ****** juice.
why am i this way
who can i blame it on
why is my head full of vaseline and milk-white fluid
that clogs my brain?
keep telling myself that it's not you that made me this way
but i know
i'm almost wrong
i'm the closest thing to blame
the nearest blunt object
to flatten the pain.
i wish you could feel it too.

I'm going to braid my leg hair
and spit strands
into a rope that will take me away from here,
be it through neck or nail.
The pale air claws at the top of my head,
it buzzes in classrooms and snatches at my waist.
We are olives fit to bursting,
cracking the glass and spilling out on the floor.
We are knives too sharp to be held in a bread drawer.
My brain was replaced while I wasn't looking,
with what, I don't know,
but it's something
light, foolish, tired,
and
one year older.

i am sixteen years old
lightheaded, underslept, sleepy.
chinaspice blocks in the corners of yellowed stairwells,
easter eggs hidden under my feet
and grass squeaking beneath my curled toes.
My chest
feels like an alarm clock silenced one too many times,
a grenade left buried underground for too long,
a dog chained up to a running motor.
My heart is being squeezed by the hands of god,
who can't decide what to do with me quite yet.
so he lets me sit in the oven a while longer,
and while it's nice to be warm around the edges,
I'm not partial to getting
red-hot.

the math teacher yells, and my shoulders shake
i draw smiley faces on the holes my dad kicks in the wall
you won't get enough of me
until it's too late.
we are the girls with their boyfriend's sweatshirts on their pillow
gloss, legs swish by each other,
everything your mom won't let you buy in the lit-up, pink aisles of walmart.
fish swimming in our heels, and poppy petals fall with our tears,
the fields and forests part for us,
and we don't fear anything but those closest to us.
I'll sit in my room, in flames,
or at my desk in class, soft as beagle ears,
slim,
I think of
you.

This dream head of mine
is bursting at the seams.
why is it that
I cannot like love songs
or love songs about liking
....
because they only remind me that
the happiness I feel now, is temporary,
like radio waves.
No song sounds the same twice.
If love decides to stick under my nails
and drip through the spaces between my fingers
(where yours fit perfectly)
my brain will malfunction, short-circuit
my hardwiring will misconfigure
and I might mess it up.