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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

-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

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.

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 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.

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

"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 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.

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.

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.

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.