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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.