Sept. 29th, 2014
Is combing and brushing your eyebrows in the morning.
It's leaning on the cold car window with earbuds
and as the last notes play, thinking
"Please don't make this a happy song
I don't deserve a happy song."
It's seeing ads for a clearance sale
plastered on a store that almost never is occupied
and seeming to just know that it's
it's subtle way of going out of business.
It's knowing and not believing.
It's breaking out in a cold sweat when you finish a book.
It's wishing I could go home
and lie on my carpet
and peel all my skin off
then crawl back inside
and maybe feel comfortable this time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

-Sleeping with the lights on
-strawberry-flavored milk (because it tastes bad, but is so cute)
-naps
-being on the brink of sleep and having to pull yourself back
-you
-the smell of something smoky
-smoke getting in my eyes
-drooping eyelids
-hair in my eyes
-bad quality lipgloss
-sleeping with the lights off
-other people
---but mostly you

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.

This is no summer of love, life, or living
no stargazing, butterbeer-soaked movie nights at the library,
or calls from my private school friends
yet
just hours spent on the computer and worrying, simultaneously.
Putting on makeup blindly,
my glasses clipped onto my tank top
that's too tight to wear outside the house,
while songs play that take me back to the previous year,
when all I had was math corrections on the breakfast table at 7:00
while it snowed,
and the days we would just reel around, looking forward to class trips
and lock-ins
that consisted of running around
first on sunlit streets, and then
around the pitch-black halls of the empty school,
wary shrieks and giggles chasing each other in the air.
But now
I'm just leaning here on my bed, eyes tired and feet covered in blisters,
thinking that the next three sweat-and-sunscreen-filled months
are going to be anything but a vacation.

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."

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!"

Now all I have left is
water in my ears, heavy chlorine in my hair,
a hangover from lack of sleep, and
"Mama" playing along to the demented viewmaster in my head:
K snorting fun dip from a paper plate and
rolling on the floor with her blue-black tongue.
us running across the train tracks,
nettles scritching my poorly-shaven legs.
And us trying to perform a satanic ritual
in a hotel pool.
Surprisingly, thirteen doesn’t feel any different,
does it?

Do you remember:
Watching Harry Potter and pretending the characters were our classmates,
while sitting on your couch eating Dominos,
the spices stinging my split lip.
Naming our sleepovers,
E-mailing "Jennifer is tomorrow".
Slurping mint Klondike bars in your hot tub,
Autumn rain pittering from the trees,
and playing truth-or-dare sitting in front of the jets.
Throwing your old toys in the road
and waiting for them to get run over
until my dad arrived.
Videotaping our feet
in the golden light
and the deleting them to save space
Walking to your house after watching "The video" at school
and giggling past the rivers of rust.

Honestly, I thought
we were going to be friends forever.

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 have siblings.
Many siblings
who all understand me.
Are we related?
More so than normally.
We are connected in brain rather than blood.
We can read each others' minds
and feel each others' emotions
every tear and sound and smell.
Who are these brothers and sisters?
My...friends.
My "friends" who walk along with me and we swear and laugh and gossip.
My "friends" who know all of my stinging secrets and I theirs.
My "friends" that I eat ice cream mixed with hot sauce and lemon juice with
My "friends that I throw up and cry and sing and dance and write songs and watch movies with.
No,
they're not my friends.
They're family.

watching a movie in class
and having boys crowded around your desk playing with your hair
and acting like it annoys you
but it doesn’t

window shopping
with a friend
pointing out wishes
making inside jokes

going to Mcdonalds with your grandmother
eating fries like British delicacies
chatting

those days on the bus
listening to music
the sun and bus
yellow
zooming along the streets

lying awake at night
sleeping over
hands being held over the abyss between two beds
swapping secrets
like fisherman trading fish

drawing
and liking it
creating something

and

tasting
something sweet

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.

"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.

These days it's all greasy bangs, candy chapstick leaking onto my skin, and my deodorant sliding out from under the bathroom stall, no more
lorde songs playing from the radio, girl scouts singing in the backseat,
or

"In only a week, it is."* you think as you ride the school bus home
you picture yourself in that generic black dress,
school-sanctioned, and worn by other girls
who felt the same as you do now,once.
You remember the lights, the praying, the singing,
the dancing to "silent night" and
getting chased in the dark and snow and in a dress.
You worry about getting lost in your music
messing up
as you scoop nutella out of a mug.
You dream about
sleigh bells and bass drums and timpanis
and the awkward looks you'll get from highschoolers.
You hope and wish and blink,
the average girl with her sweater-wrapped heart.

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.

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.

Are you happy that you've made me unhappy
talking about your bad days
and scars from them?
About how you could have
but you didn't and wish you did.
And I'm one of the reasons
I don't listen I just carry
the burden of being the only one who knows you're lost.
Your life is not bad through this orange looking glass
and you're just a sad and lonely kid
who refuses to be called emo.
Do you need words, or a hug, or what?
Because no matter how much you want to think
you can't be helped or fixed,
I was.

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.

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.

Sitting on the oddly sweet-smelling seat
anxiously ******* my oily bangs
song lyrics playing in and out of my mind.
Out the window I see soft brown grasses
and signs for auto shops
and leaves blowing around.
Around me is the hum of younger kids talking about ipods and soccer games
humming half-songs by overrated boy bands and forgotten summer camps.
Drawing is no use, even if you find a pencil it will surely break
wobbling off the page as cracks and portholes pass underfoot.
And I never have any books to read.
So I observe inside and out of the bus,
The only one to see a lonesome deer by the side of the road
or stolen looks by kindergartners.
As graffiti and weeds zoom by outside the smeared glass
we creak and grumble to a stop.
I dig around for the non-existent bus card
and get off my imagination vessel, the school bus.

This time I leave with you
through the door you ran in yelling my name hardly nine minutes ago.
We walk on the slush infused sidewalks
alarming those around us by
scream-laughing, swearing, falling in the snow red-faced and wheezing.
We get to your house and you guys
plug in your ipod
blasting songs that talk about
grown up things.
Hairography, wrinkled rugs,
and a seven-month-old chocolate peep later
you're on the phone with my best friend
and I apologize to her while I watch
you drop a pet rabbit and scream.
The men building the church next door
look at us strangely as I spit outside and then get dragged back into
the pulsating mess that is our friendship.

I regret
That I ignored the golden sound of peepers across the street
I regret
That I sometimes stay on the computer too much
a zombie with blue light on her face
I regret
that I don't make those entries in my journal
or draw that idea I got at 2 am
or turn in that essay
But most of all
I regret hating and loving you.
So when I say
"saya, saya tidak menyesal."
know that I am lying.

I wake up slowly, memories of last night swimming in my head. Am I still there?
No. I'm in my weird-smelling room
not the orange-lit streets
pocked with puddles I dragged my dress through.
On the breakfast table there is
my hat, with the fluff hanging off
a fedora with a makeshift veil and long silver strings.
On the way to school
songs yell in my head
the way we yelled them down the dark road.
It is still raining outside.
In math, reading, or any other
nobody utters a word about the past holiday.
"It's the devils holiday, after all."
In band, waiting for those seven silent measures to be up
I wipe my face and find silver glitter on my hands.
I smile secretly.
At home, I eat candy, in spite of myself.
They're wrong. Halloween isn't over yet.

The smashed cookies on the ground
bring back a snow-flaked flurry of memories.
banging the tambourine on my palm,
lying on the hallway floor
watching the elementary students in the orange light,
in their feathered, polka-dotted dresses
and crisp red-black-gold suits,
miniature versions of the worlds nationalities.
I stuff stacks of programs in my dry hands
trying not to look like I'm caring.
But inside I'm still that youngish girl lightly tapping the bass drum
and hoping that nobody's looking.

Listening to music is so weird.
sometimes It'll feel like someone is reaching down your throat and scratching at your heart
and you feel the urge to sing so bad.
Other times it feels like someone poured a big vat of honey on you
and the only thing you can see, or taste, or smell or feel is that song.
And still other times
it feels like someone replaced your soul with a handful of peach fuzz
and your eyes with two cold river rocks
and your brain goes into memory mode
like a kaleidoscope of bittersweet and frisson.
and
there's that one song
and then you can't feel anything
at all.

Running.
Run across your street and mind
Take your memories cause I don't need 'em
but think of me

Scars to prove it, tears to fake it
Can you read my mind? No.
The time that towns forgot
Running through the street and running quickly through your mind

It's unfair

It's not love, it's just love.
One of many problems, many problems in one
Snipping out the bad parts,
pasting in the worser ones
Running from your problems back into
circle one
waiting for the ax to fall
and cut off my split ends.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.