all I can do is keep roaring on.
all I can do is keep shaking floors when I dance.
all I can do is watch my friends dance from the waist up in the car,
all I can do is hold you like I can melt into your chest and hug your heart itself.
all I can do is listen to mad music, music that makes me cry tears tinted red with rage at the injustice of a just god.
all I can do is write alone in my bed, in my room in the right half of Maine,
all I can do is keep living.

do I start wearing black?
Should I care?
should I stop doing things, because nothing feels right to do?

bury me with things people don't think about.
car seat headrests,
factory machines,
closet shelves.

my heart hurts so much. all I can do is write.

all I do is shower.
not so nobody can see me cry,
I don't mind that, when people see that,
the tears fall gracefully and sometimes I even look beautiful.
it's the sound.
so much has happened.
it's like my mind is on a leash,
no matter how far it travels it'll always come back to
that.
I'll sleep with gum in my mouth
I'll put on sad songs,
my heart will hurt,
my eyes will burn,
but it won't change anything, and that feels like
my cardinal sin.

I don't know
I guess what i'm trying to say is--
no, missing you
my eyes dancing around the fact that they want to spill,
writing this
goes against who i'm trying to be.
i lost you. it feels like you died
it hurts to know i cried over you because i can't compete
with your own problems
instead of being able to help them.
and i know i said i was fine
but all day i was pretending
and i know i'm going to keep having to pretend and i think that's a close second to why i feel like my stomach is on it's way out my throat.
you don't love me anymore. you say you do and i know you do
but it's never the way i want to be loved. with anyone
and it makes me even more angry that you know this
and that i'm tearing up in the library right now
and why do i care
so much
that's the other thing, that this will all blow over like a tidal wave
and eventually i won't feel like i swallowed a cruel saltwater  joke
i keep hoping you're joking
but the truth is the truth-- that the colors will never be as bright as yours were before this and we'll never be the same again,
even if you let me hold your hand again, hold my heart in your hand because i already gave you mine and need something to fill this
gaping hole --
well, now it's filled.

holding your hand is the only high i need
holding you is better than
the buttery french toast i missed out on last night
the smell of maple and almost thirty voices of teenagers born from Hollywood,
our skin sleek with after prom,
i carved our initials in the table at dennys
my heart heavy and pink with the feeling of being 17 and
hurtling towards the end of everything,
sitting in the backseat and glowing,
holding you
is the only drug i need,
unicorn hooves and clenched teeth,
fog machines and sweetness immeasurable,
emily dickinson sitting in a diner at midnight,
wishing she was in bed
or somehow closer
to you

arteries laced together through a daisy chain
and brushing fingertips
throughout an assembly room
of shuffling feet
and sniffling,
ventricles, atriums,
tears running down her face at prime muzzle velocity,
veins spell out what none of us can say,
in this silence that feels like it should never be broken--
how are we ever gonna be okay?

dark ultraviolet smoke, haze
the way your own finger pads
graze on the skin of your waist and then lead down to the forty degree angle curve
soft and goosebumped.
The sweet floor,
we're sisters in eye contact when I hug my legs and try to press
the pressure building behind my chest muscles
eyes burning like blue coals and tears fighting,
I re-learn the meaning of bittersweet
as the world crashes down around me
and rose-colored circles are rubbed into my back,
legs and chairs softly shaping me into
a saner form,
whisperings ground me,
and take me back to
the haze,
young and unafraid.

words cannot describe
the surrealness
of discussing the future, holding the future, like a ball of ice
that will pinken your fingertips,
and in the moment you feel incredibly small.
when your heart ******* aches in the most melancholy way,
not sad, just
quietly startled,
seeing love around you, pressing at your temples
white hospital walls,
sore throats,
*** in cars,
passing through the front door at midnight,
cold blankets.
being the definition of a word.
hating the fact that I'm looking back at myself currently, through memories, and that this moment isn't even that good but i'll think it is later.
knowing,
just knowing
everything and nothing all at once,
and the pain of thought.

catsong
sunlight can flood in and move out
as much as it wants
but it has nothing on the metaphorical campfire in the clearing of the crowd
dust motes are highlighted through
the prevalent smell of beers and wines
constant conversations
and they eventually settle into a voice
that hugs the space behind your ears
and travels down to your heart, which wiggles it's toes in blood sand
and time is only measured by
an expansion of the ribcage.
i am yours,
you are mine,
you are what you are
and i realize that not every song is a love song,
but there still should be more songs about this.

dogsong
there are certain people that hold your heart in place
without realizing it.
1:02 am
and we are on the playground across the street,
blue eyes in the grey dark and the sky is orange from the city.
snow is falling in cliques of flakes holding each other,
and we catch them on our tongue under the street lamps,
that take them and mold them into fairy dust.
My knees are red and wet, we fall,
we spin on red plastic that i can't name and god takes our heads
and holds them in place for the time being.
we go home singing silently.
3:10 am
and i am convinced i know what true love is,
even though I know at the same time i have no idea,
besides what was held in that room.

On my left, the full moon cuts through the morning lavender sky
like a white razor on blue veins,
like a pale fingernail on cold lips,
like a perfect circle rubbed onto a fogged-over, wet window with a thumb.
On my right the sun is rising with angry shyness,
peach, magenta, ruby, pink atop the light teal horizon.
Like a red-haired girl blushing,
like the color I dyed my hair a couple days ago,
like maybe whatever god is giving me a smile or a wink
because I didn't want to get up this morning.

like
ribbed-knit fabric,
when we put the old ribbed La-Z-Boy out front, "FREE",
and whoever picked it up
has no idea my grandfather died in that chair.
like holding my knees in the hot tub,
quiet, wet, baking tiles,
a certain safety in a room with only women,
and crouching in the water like a boiling dumpling.
shortbread cookies in bed.
mac DeMarco on the way to the doctor's office,
my love for you is so real,
separating from my body in a goodwill,
curly-haired boys and impossibly beautiful girls in the movie theater bathroom,
whipped cream on her nose,
the golden lights of applebee's, and then
like it's all over again.

music heard through walls,
the smell of sweet grass in the dual air
clicking, snapping, laughing.
it gets worse at night.
i break things
just to prove that i have the strength to;
you should not let me hold you so closely.
colossal,
my teeth are bare
i
don't drink the water, paint this enamel gold,
don't think about the weight of particles on your scalp
the bathroom floor smells like cherries.
i color my scabs with purple pen
and pull on pink, warm skin.
I was already a mess,
i was just a different breed of mess after him.
but control over my own gods
may be the best kind of therapy.

how do you forget
and forgive
someone who your own body reminds you of?

tea biscuit madness
running around my yard while sitting in bed
pushing on my teeth hard with my fingertips until they hurt
i hate to say the word "ache"
but my body is a voodoo doll left uncontrolled for too long,
and my seams are unraveling.
my chest is a glass
too small for the rose it contains
and although it's wilting
there's still a crack here and there

and tell me why I can't say "i love you"
without a hot, sick feeling rising through me every time?

tell me why i'm still here
tell me why i still think i'm needed

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.

you've given my heart both freckles and stretch marks
and make it feel like a 2010 justin bieber song.
warm fingertips that make me feel like
i stuck my head out of the car window
as we drive down the highway
and the world could be crashing down around us
we probably wouldn't notice

run your fingers over the thin skin of my insides
pull away your hand, see the blood, and wonder what you got yourself into.
Help me out? Cold as ice,
carve a notch in your bedpost as i cut your name into my thigh
Don't you know
you're just another stomach ache in the morning
another ten minutes of my chin on porcelain
another string of lost messages nobody will read until I've already forgotten why i felt rotten in the first place.
I'll blast music loud enough that my ears give up,
and i can rub myself two black eyes,
maybe if I cut my nerve endings into a bouquet
to give you
this magnetic pull I feel will take the rest of me with it.

i'm this close to never talking to him again, but we all know
that will never happen,
he's like the three shots of ***** i knocked back on a thursday,
hot and stinging down my throat,
wishing there was someone else there to keep the warmth going.
i ******* hate the fact
that
he's the first one who made me blush,
before then i never had
but all you have to do is mention him next to me in the car
and my face is a bed of roses.
i'm ******* sick of waiting for a message
any sign that i wasn't just a distraction
a mirage,
any sign that this attraction i'm feeling
is worth it
at all.
i hate the fact, even more,
that he is the closest i've had
to romantic attraction that i can hold in my hands.
that my friends can talk about the boys they've gone through
when i've had this rotten apple core sitting in my stomach
for three years.
and the thing i most hate
is the tingling feeling
of having no one beside me at night
even though i'm fifteen
it's so tangible i can bite it.
i know it's cliche, but
i'm stuck in this hole
this garbage dispenser of no good,
and i've never felt so alone.
i need a new addiction,
so maybe it'll be easier
to quit him.

parties on fridays are the best kinds
because of the knowledge that sits in the back of your brain,
a used lunch tray,
that you were at school hours before,
and now you're here, warm bodies and hot ***** down your throat
making you feel at home.
parties on saturday are the best kind
because in the morning,
you can sit in church and relive every moment
in between psalms.
hymns will come out of your mouth, but really you're thinking
how
did
i
survive
that?
sunday parties are the best parties,
because everyone has this mutual feeling,
of living before the apocalypse, knowing
that tomorrow you will see them in the hall
and have a bruise named after them.

My definition of safe
is
next to you in the van,
my head is resting on your hip and i'm drifting off
tired enough that my vision is blurring
and my words are running together
and you can't tell what i'm saying,
so you just pet my hair until i fall asleep.
It's sitting in a theater flooded with purple light
i've got goosebumps
and i'm rubbing my thumb in the palm of your hand.
It's watching kids on the swingset going through the cold air
wearin' your sweatshirt and sitting in the grass.
It's sharing ben n jerry's at the gazebo,
the sun brushing its hair on my arms and neck
and listening to drake, with you
it's lying on a bed with navy sheets
in a pile of warm bodies, with you
it's hearing skype beep and feeling like cupid had maybe just shot me, that *******.
It's sitting in a black movie theatre and annoying everyone else with jokes only we understand, with you.
I don't know who my next you is,
but get here soon.

They call it phantom pain.
When a limb misses it's owner,
when it stays even though it doesn't.
So is that why
I can barely feel
pads of fingers on my skin,
ghostly palms cupping my face,
nails tracing my lines,
and a leg curling over me?
Do I want to know
who these spirit touches belong to?
Phantom pain,
when something is gone,
but also isn't.

It feels like I swallowed a bolt of lighting,
like someone reached down my throat,
and pulled out my vital guts,
replacing them with fire and gold.
Guitar chords stick in my throat like the barrel of a gun,
but no hands to contain me.

I think I ought to focus more on
the ones who love me back.

Fill my life with
more striped shirts,
buzzing bass between my ears,
the cold wind hitting my hips.
Vending- machine love and
golden eyeshadow.
Lying sideways on the seat, with my legs against the wall.

My heart lives permanently in my throat,drained of blood and white, veins growing up my neck and drawing out in the shape of words.

why did no one tell me how good lips feel on my wrists
until i cut them?
i
don't have anyone to kiss my scars
for now i just have to settle
for this sinking feeling in my stomach
this creature
scratching inside my chest
and throat
but even then
you can't hold that close to you
at night
it won't stay still
or warm enough

My heart is an empty grass field
except for a pole
whose flag is always at half-mast.

I'm smiling wider than I can in photos,
probably because of the music playing,
like watered-down honey being poured
into where my brain used to be,
but my stomach still sits
like I just swallowed my own heart.

My heart is buttered cake
with brown sugar frosting.
It can't take much.
It melts at the edges sometimes,
and there's mold on the corners.
My eyes are made of green-apple jolly ranchers
that are sticky in your hands.
My lips are two halves of a strawberry,
sometimes purple and bruised
like the words that come out of them.
My hands
are made of milk and honey
but sometimes
not
as warm and comforting.
There's apple juice
blue slushies
and hot sauce
running through my veins
and cookie crumbs
behind my brain.
I am a feast
and
not
prepared
for
you.

Perhaps I'm most beautiful
asleep in class,
the blue light of the overhead projector
kissing my face.
When I make my friends shake with
stupid, unbridled, blind laughing,
leaning against the vending machine.
When I tilt my head back
at the good part of a song,
sitting in the sweet-smelling bus seat,
my knees propped up.
When I stay up 'til eleven,
and talk about fourteen-year-old thoughts.
When I get joyfully lost in my own weird, growing-up thoughts,
sitting in church,
and I get startled by the Lord's prayer.

I like my ****** expressions, my bright eyes, my delicate eyelashes, my pale hands, lace veins lining them, and my aching heart.
The pain in my chest
in the middle of a song.
My heavy eyelids.
My light, weighed-down feet.
And my hipbones
that carry the weight of the world.

Welcome to the end of the earth
dripping honey til' we die.
Welcome to an alleyway as big as a building,
welcome to a spaceship, floating past personal galaxies,
welcome to a small pond with big fish.
Welcome to where you find out
who you are, and who everybody else is.
Welcome to the rest of your life,
or where you wanna end it.
Welcome to pixelated faces,
melting faces,
****** knuckles
and television screens for heads.
Welcome to pop-rocks crushes,
pink-haired goddesses,
and art of our own.
Welcome to sunlight through your hair on the bus.
Welcome to hell, or high school, you pick,
it doesn't really matter anyway.

"What's your current mood?"
"Well, I'm anxious. But I'm literally anxious all the time. And sleepy. Basically I'm just chill today."*


What makes us girls
might be
when we're silhouetted
as we walk home with a pizza in our arms.
When I stole your band shirt and washed my hair in your sink and then cut it over a pink towel in my lap.
Us sitting under a bridge,
graffiti,
telling us nothing is real,
as birthmarks,
next to the railroad tracks as a train flies by
and tousles our hair.
Your eyes hurting because of the sleep hanging on them
with dark, stained fingers.
Passing a wedding
and being tempted to crash it.
An empty, blue bottle of whipped-cream flavored *****
lying in the dry grass.
Waking up to the sounds of a block party outside.
Knowing that if 11-year-old you saw you now,
she wouldn't believe her eyes.
Laughing until you're positively sure you're bruised inside.
Screaming with joy
because I finally finished my math homework.
Swearing I'm going to grow up and write a sitcom
based on our adventures when I grow up.
Wearing shirts with angel wings on the back.
And
being both terrified
and back-of-your-head-hurts-excited
for the future.

This summer was missing school, feeling it ache in your chest,
and feeling like a nerd
but also sad.
It was staying up late, your face lit by your phone screen, blue.
It was skype calls at 11, hearing things you know you would never hear in daylight.
It was a bolt of lightning curling down your spine at the notification noise
hoping it's
someone
in
particular.
It's not getting texted back.
It was your mom's friend yelling at you,
when you ran from the playground,
bare feet on the dusty road,
after a cop car pulled in.
It was bubble tea and fuzzy navels at the local fair,
pulling hair and carving our names into the ferris wheel seat
with the broken end of my glasses.
It's sleeping on the floor for a few minutes, but then
crawling into bed with your friend and giving up there.
It's long showers when I sing the way I wish I could
out from under the water.
It was walking down my road, so paranoid
I think a car is a giant man,
to the starbucks, and then the movie theatre,
and then the curb, where I wait in the warm dark.
It was jumping into brown water, screaming.
It's the hum of my computer.
It was feeling the bass of a song ricochet through your feet,
vibrating the floor,
and traveling down the street.
It's downing a cup of hot sauce.
It was Portland, Maine,
walking to record stores in your lunch break,
a bagel sandwich cooling in your backpack.
Seeing a girl hold another girl's head to the ground, and screaming at a man with dreadlocks,
"That's the father of my ******* baby,"
while a woman with a cat on her shoulder
films it.
It's sitting in the library in ripped pantyhose reading comics for an hour
while your dad's at work.
It was Ben and Jerry's, and Chinese food,
walking in between dumpsters to get there.
It was waking up at noon and missing church.
It was eating cereal at 12 am,
6 pm,
11 pm.
It was blinding, white-hot sadness,
blinking and confused,
wondering why I felt so rainy inside,
while outside was sunshine filtering through green leaves.
This summer was
long, and lonely, and sometimes rainy,
and dark,
and sunny, and loud, and hazy.
This summer
is almost
over
and I think I'm okay with that.

Would the police look
at my dead hands
and say "she never worked a day in her life."
or not?
Or would they just sigh
and wonder
why
I died so young.

I grew up
with people taking pictures
of my face
with or without asking.
I didn't mind then,
and honestly,
I don't think I would mind now.
And I'm unsure
if that's a good thing
or a bad thing.

I tried to scrub your name
out of my head,
but all I got was skin and soap
under my nails.

10/4/14
Those minutes
those mornings when I wake up and it feels I'm back at day one
and I'm still made of clay, and God himself
took his thumbs
and hollowed out my eye sockets
and never filled them.

(what do I write now?)

My ponytail is brushing the small of my back.
I'm staring at my reflection on the computer screen
and I'm not liking what I'm seeing.

(Stop talking about yourself.)

They say "write what you know", and yet
I can only write about myself.

(shut up.)

Knives. Earwax. Squeals.
What is my life made of?
In a day, I'll be back
at my temple of jitters.
(School).
(maybe there's something wrong with you, the way you brought those glasses to the kitchen,
that you drank the same liquid from, and your stomach
felt like it was holding water bottles full of blood, instead of organs)

10/13/14

Why do you have to make me feel so **** guilty all the time?
When we stood on the grey carpet in Spirit Halloween
the animated screams pushing against my torso
with your gaslighting, my head/heart/hair caught fire
and nobody won.

I feel like I deserve better than this, but what could be better than
these moments?
At least, later, I will have photos to lighten
in my sweatpants
and my designated sweatshirt for when I feel like ****.

And the inside of my mouth tastes like
those screams, from the wrinkled, blackened plastic
and the oil from our un-fluffable bangs.

I know tomorrow I'll be
busy ******* up christmas songs
and leaning on bus windows
and sleeping in the jumpy skin I've built myself
out of bad breath, smudged makeup,
and curly-haired boys,
So I should be grateful.
But when it feels like you've drained bottles of stage blood into my veins
and I am not real anymore
and instead of eyeshadow, my eyelids are weighed down
with toxic thoughts that, instead of coming from my mental lips,
come from your physical ones,
I will not be happy.
I'm sorry.
(You know you had fun. Stop it. You had a hell of a great time, and a bad aftertaste will never get rid of the taste of the absence of loneliness in those pictures.)
---
Me to myself: why are you like this?

(And also, why is it that
you always have more things to say
even when this program is closed
the typing has stopped
you come back
hungry for the attention you'll never get?)

---

10/24/14
I know people will ask
how my right shin got so scratched up and shredded
and maybe I will tell them
It got that way when I crawled out the window
and not that I sat on the bathroom floor
crying tears that felt pink, the way they darkened my face
and I dug my nails into my flesh
and dragged them.

I wish I could do something poetic with the stinging pain, like
cut off all my hair, or most of it
because It made me look like a wild animal, when
I walked, shoe-less, on the streets.
Or I could have scars on my leg, and be reminded
of the pain I inflicted on myself
(and others)
today
---
11-3-14

Oh ****, I fell in love again.
...
Is it love, Or is it
a childlike infatuation
with the idea of a crush
?
Do I have affections for you, or am I attracted
to the idea of you?
Am I just bored? Do I only like that you like me,
that you make me feel relaxed?
Maybe, or maybe it's
the sugar-high-ish, ache-y feeling
I get when I see you in the corner of my eye
or our legs brush up together
(Thank god it's not lust).
---

_
This is the color of anxiety:
Red, like the blood I wish I could expose with a sharp, small movement, but can't, just can't (you can't even hurt yourself correctly. Worthless.)
Orange, like the pumpkins in the halloween store I tried to have fun in, but the snake of uneasiness squeezed my ribs too tight until I couldn't breathe, orange like the light I saw in the middle of the night.
Yellow, like the sunshine that I wanted to run into, but I didn't let myself, a watery color like what my voice sounds like sometimes.
Green, like the leaves on the rock I sat on
when I ran from myself, my house
and cried, cried, cried (once is enough, *******).
Blue, the color I thought my tears would be, but they were just a salty clear, dripping down my face, and changing nothing.
Purple, like the bruises that I don't remember getting, but press on anyway, relishing the pain in a sort of ******-up way, thinking "Whenever, wherever, however you got this, you probably deserved it."
Pink, like the insides, and outsides, of my eyelids when I can't sleep at night, arguing with myself.
Brown, like the dirt that I imagine
cakes the wormlike workings of my brain, in the area where
self-sympathy and control was.
Black, like the centers of my eyes
that I see when I look in the mirror and think
"****, did I look like this all day?"
And, anxiety is the colors in between, too. Navy and tan and white and gold.
Yes, it's all the colors, because it's everywhere, and most of the time, I can't get away from it.
(God, could you've made that any more melodramatic? Yeah, you have dark moments, but you make it sound like every aspect of your life is drenched in manic-depressive bile, which, my dear, is ridiculous.)
---

I wish you were easier to talk to.
I wish I was easier to talk to.
I wish you weren't in my dreams.
I wish you liked me.
I wish I didn't still like you.
I wish I had more energy.
I wish I didn't miss anything.
I wish you'd get out of my head.
I wish I didn't have to be writing this.
I wish I didn't have so many wishes.

Maybe I should worry about
the hole my dad kicked in the wall
and I drew a smiley face on it to make myself feel better
and still it's there after more than five years.
Or that it doesn't bother me
hearing my eighteen-year-old brother cry
anymore.
Or that I don't know how to explain
why I'm so jumpy
and why it's not exactly funny.
But instead I just focus on myself, my mind
sometimes it's easier
to study the storm inside my head
even though
I'm getting
soaked.

Maybe
it is written in the stars
that I will have scars
and bruises
instead of freckles.
But I hope it doesn't have to be this way
because I hate the sound of me crying
and I can't get away from that
when it's coming from my own head.
Maybe
there's a world where I have a better place to curl up and sob
than my bed, or the middle of the floor, or a bathroom stall, or
halfway out of my closet.
Maybe
one day
I will be sure of more than my looks.
And I won't have to hang on to every
bubblegum wrapper
and chipotle menu I ever touch
because I'm not afraid of forgetting anymore.
Maybe
I'll feel like a real person,
and not a cruel animation,
a science project
some higher being got a D on.
Maybe
there's a chance
I'll stop missing myself
someday.

Being the only one awake in the back seat, or the only one thinking loudly,
and in the back of  your mind, sitting there like living weight, you've got
the giant Citgo sign
(you swear you could fit in the T),
listening to passion pit as the golden sun flings itself on the highway,
a construction worker lowering his pants in front of a dumpster,
hearing the sandlot play downstairs as you stare at the dark ceiling,
pizza you ate in the park the evening before now being had for breakfast,
finding out the **** is pro-choice,
getting your shoulder squeezed on a rollercoaster
by a boy who screams like a girl,         
feeling drunk even though you're sober,
running through the dark,
passing trailers with round lanterns lining the tops,
outlining shirtless men and smoking women,
looking in the mirror after swimming with your clothes on
in a hot tub,
and you're not sure if you're
beautiful
or
disgusting.
Yeah, you can sleep now.

I keep this notebook in my
lap, knowing
in a second I will have more words
more poems to write
about my crazy life.
About me, and the numerous
Emotions I have
in my 13-year-old body.
I hear the ice machine rattle,
shaking it's fist, saying
"Why are you so full of
poems tonight?
You are no Marzena Sowa,
I don't care if your blankets
look like strawberry jam,
and you are in love with the idea
of a crush,
and the clattering of your
computer keeps you awake,
go
to
sleep!"

Sometimes I wonder
what would happen if I
went up to you @ school and said
"You know, I write poetry
about you.
Sometimes I stay up late to do it,
or spend a while perfecting
every
word."
Would you laugh? Poke me
in the ribs?
Or just not hear me, and walk
away,
and I would think
"I don't know what I was
expecting."

It's almost 10:30 pm and I am thinking about the woman on the radio
who sang about how she's made of "dirt and stardust"
and, sleepily, I wrote those lyrics on the back of my sketchbook
And about how I wish I had an
accent,
every word drenched with butter
or spices
the flavor of my country
but instead I just have
grease.
As I'm writing this the flashlight's
spot of light
is half-spilling onto my wall,
"Helena Beat" is stuck in my
head, and has to stay there because
I wrote it down.
I know tomorrow I will wake up
with a cramped hand
and remember that I wrote.
look back on it, and think that it is
stupider
than I
thought.

Even the corner of the heating pad is warmer than what I feel for you.
There's no red-hot passion here, on the contrary;
there is only a numb cold in my chest cavity
a gnawing anxiety and pale
annoyance,
bruised,
which for some sickening reason
I
love.

You'd better call her before you ask her out and see if her voice is cute over the phone
Sometimes when I  sleep I tangle my fingers in my hair and pretend they're not mine
But not this morning
today I'm content with my fingers intertwined with my own
I'm not lonely, probably because I need to ***.
If I was brave enough, would this be enough?

11-6-14
I saw my name on your contacts list
and wondered how many times your finger hovered over the "call" button.
---
I hope you, or at least someone
thinks at least some things about me are cute
the way my hair sticks up and then flops over when I try to fix it
and, when pinned up,  the way it becomes gradually messier over the course of the day.
When I mouth the words to a song on the school bus,
scrunching my eyes and headbanging,
or when I spin around on my heels, and try to look graceful.
---
Frick, I shouldn't try to write about love, i'm just a thirteen-year-old girl
who grew up on the internet
and doesn't care about the ****** music she's listening to.