In Colorado my mother did lots of *******.
On clouded days, she'd take some pills and try to feel the rain.
The snow felt warm,
the air was dry.
She watched the people passing by.
Her bones grew sharp,
her tongue grew dull.
Her mind melted away.
She started to wonder if she'd wake up another day.

They made her leave,
they tapped her brain.
My mother never was the same.

January 2015
i am freshly nineteen.
a boy with black lipstick comes down unfamiliar stairs
from a mysterious Above.
i wonder if i'll ever see this place.
March 2015
same boy, no lipstick.
i kiss him at a bar
but do not yet get to see the mysterious Above.
i hope to see it soon.
April-June 2015
i wake up most mornings
in the Above place.
i sometimes wear lipstick, but usually not.
it is bright and
cold and
nowhere near the bathroom.
July-December 2015
i reluctantly walk up now
all too familiar stairs
to an Above place where
i am not wanted
or welcome
but i still need a place to put my bag, so i ignore the signs both
literal and figurative.
January 2016-**
i am welcomed with
open arms to
the Above place and
do not want to leave
but
home is a subjective term and time doe not stop for nostalgia;
i am glad no one else will get to see the Above the way i do.

when i get ****** my hair feels greasy because i broke my sobriety when you broke my heart
not that i was really sober
or somber
or helpful, even
but at least you liked to hold me.

i accidentally re-read conversations about The One Before The One Before You
and felt sick to my stomach because of the disgust in my voice
and his lack of awareness
and the fact that i didn't even know you then but i already can feel myself
saying your name though those words.

this feels so millennial, talking about you/me/him/us through a keyboard
into the internet (if the wifi ever works) where you'll probably never see
but strangers will but i just want to tell you in person that
i want you back.

they're gonna play spin the bottle tomorrow and i hope you sit next to me
or don't play
so i don't have to feel weird if it lands on you and you don't wanna kiss me even if i wanna kiss you.

He said his favorite curve
on my body looked just
like a closed-mouth
smile; the kind I refused to
show because I believed
in                                        teeth.

you like a girl with teeth too big to fit into her mouth
(i'm glad i grew out of my buckteeth)

5 days of bruises are built up and browning
on my notably translucent skin; i wear low-cut shirts to show them off.
there's no sorrow in my voice when i talk about your
astral body running astray across my rotting bones; i finally feel small.
601 days lost to bicycle handles and bloating bellies full of fear and sometimes cake; i don't remember before.
before, i'd get picked up and ****** up, an ultimatum in an altima; i thought it wouldn't end.
at 8 am i talked about the boy whose knowledge was so vast it overwhelmed him and took him across highways, barefoot, and out of my life; i forgive but only in abstract.

i feel like a sunburn waiting to happen
and my teeth have looked so white lately.

i let you see my body last week;
every part (or as much as i could fit in a 4 inch screen)
and my teeth have looked so white lately.

our friendship was built on
broadripple and chicken wire
            stained clothing and bruised legs,
and i'm so sorry for that girl
who ruined your innocence
and for how i stood by because mine was already gone
and for how sometimes i raised my voice
and couldn't contain my sighs.

i'm sorry that things weren't always good or great or even okay
and that sometimes getting out of bed was hard
and that 
sometimes
                   nothing felt right.

and i'm so glad whenever you smile

Black water ran from my rapidly aging hands.
The cobwebs of hair surrounding my head tangled around my brain and pushed me to remember the rest of the night.

All of the trees  twisted and began to breath with me.

I will never know if I gained a new piece of my soul, or lost a piece I never knew I had.

I haven’t broken your heart (yet)
not like

her.

I haven’t twisted your words (much)
not like

her.

I haven’t hidden the truth (often)
not like

her.

you say that you love me (but)
not like

her.

I hate thinking about your face,
and all my pretty ******* lace.

don't forget the way you felt.

streams of emotional ribbon coming out your ears,
maybe that's why you never listen.

there are boys with hair that makes me nuts
lusting to touch
and i don't know what it is about
copper or
orange or
tangerine,
clemintine, even
rust
that makes me cringe because my body is empty
and lifeless unless
it's covered with soft patches of old skin cells and
must.

im so tired of the forgotten
and the dead
and the way your shoulders turn away
like mountains,
     falling boulders

distorted face, discolored and slim.
haunt me through eternity.

im always around
always down
yellow teeth and brown eyes
(surprise)

i like to
press my hand against my chest and feel the ever-fading sound of my heart
for my mortality is undeniable and
yours is too.

i drove to your old house today
and even though i KNEW your family
had moved out and that
you were still in Europe i looked to see if the front light was on
(it wasn't).
there were white christmas lights framing the door i used to wait at
while you ran 30 minutes late for everything and i chain smoked and
hoped i'd get to see your mom soon.
i couldn't tell if those horrible neighbors who wanted to put your dog down
still lived next door but i hope they do
and that the people who moved in to your old house
are horrible and those people have to suffer at their expense.

he went in a man and came out a boy
his eyes crystals
hands tingling
short hair grown long and
     unkempt.
he went in real and came out new
his legs felt still
hands in my hair
face against my chest until we
      wept.

i am half priced but
full quality.

you told me we weren't alike
because when i sit in the sun
i feel sick.

but here we are
alike and touching
my hands hold yours but
mostly yours hold mind and
i am very scared.

i woke up with bedhead/left with bedhead/didn't get head
but i guess that's besides the point.
you told me to clean up
and i said okay
because i clean up so
*******
nicely
but still not nicely enough for you to take me out.

i am a *** driven soldier plundering though broken lightbulbs with
polite toes
(and i like that sometimes)
my hair smells like yesterday's memories
(and i like that when you leave me)
i
feel numb
both in my head and through my palms.

i spend a lot of time thinking about setting myself on fire
i used to hold hot irons to my forearms
i am no stranger to feeling cold
i often feel cold
i spend a lot of time thinking about setting myself on fire

The middle of November. That’s how I like to remember you. I think of you as the middle of November: Cold, with red hair like falling leafs and blue eyes like the sky looks when my eyes water from the wind and my small hands would go numb. Something changed. You were no longer the November mornings I’d spend high as a kite contemplating where I’d be three years from then, hopeful and star struck. You were June. Too warm. You were the June afternoons I’d spend going from high to low, my arms burning in the beating sun waiting for a small, black pickup truck that never would come. You were gazebos with peeled back mesh walls, letting bugs crawl across my bare skin until I thought I’d have to peel that back, too. You were cigarette butts put out in old cans of Diet Coke, mason jars full of expired whipped cream, fireplaces with no purpose.

i hate it when you leave me to fall asleep
on my own
but ******* if i don't love
when you crawl into bed and then
inside of me

you are made of lines;
straight, or curved
sometimes
                even
parabolic.

The iron taste of your
mouth.
The iron touch of your
hands.
The iron look in your
eyes.
The iron bars on your
windows.

i never let my dishes soak after i use them because
i hear a voice every time i try to
and it makes me sick

i used to think my paralysis was
lucidity
not hysteria
but now i know the difference

i wish i had big teeth,
so big,
that they'd fill my mouth and i didn't have to talk

i like to feel broken i think
sometimes
  i like the way you broke me.

i keep swallowing my words like they're the last meal i'll ever eat,
and i can't help but notice that i smell like soap and pheromones
that only you would find pleasent.
bitter and blunt.
sweet and sour;
when was the last time you thought about me?

In terms of lovers
you were the       best.

In terms of pain
you were the       relief I craved.

In terms of endings
you were the      sudden
             stop of
                             a beating
             heart.

in june i thought about your hair every day
because your reds were like the sun and felt warm even indoors.
in july i thought about your pulse
because your shirts were thin and i thought i could see your heart beating whenever i walked by.
in august i only thought about you every day
because it hurt too badly not to and thinking hurt less than a sunburn.
in september i stopped thinking about you
because you stopped thinking about me, and i found silence in familiar arms.
october didn't matter.
november was the same.
but
december i thought about your back every day
because your skin is like snow and your reds felt like the sun.

i'm
losing inches from my spine;
losing space inside my mind.

I spent months replacing old scars with new, nearly identical ones
(no longer self inflicted, at least)
and I spent hours looking in the mirror at the slight bulge of my stomach and the two mountains I called my hips
thinking
   "oh, these are such a lovely addition to my skin. oh, I wish they would last."
             and I wanted
nothing more but the constant reminder that I, yes I, was something worth destroying, because
to destroy something means that something was once worth looking at and deciding to
act.

with you again.
but, when i left you,
i felt everything (and nothing) all at once
and now i
can't
       stop
             touching you
whenever i get the chance and kissing you passionately (something i forgot about) and crying at the thought of you touching other girls.
i never thought i'd feel in love with you again
but i do
and i am
and i can't believe it's over.

from the front she was round
  soft and warm
with clavicles that were ten-miles-deep and
  ten-miles-away (please don't stay)

ten cotton briefs
white, big.
they look like shame to me--
they look like something i shed.

I threw that disposable against the wall
disposable as your heart
crushed in my palm
I threw your heart against the wall
full of pictures I can't bare to see

i sometimes feel your eyes on the back of my head like i'm an alien with antennas and green skin and you're a scientist trying to figure out how i'm even alive.
i sometimes want to grab your ears and kiss them like they do in all the magazines i shouldn't
read even if i like the way models stare through me.
i sometimes wish your mind and mine were the same because my fingers are small and you couldn't grasp me with just your hands
even if you
tried.

My body becomes the problem.
I cannot move my arms,
I cannot feel my legs.
My back cracks,
my knees are weak.
Ill, Ill, Ill.

my shoes are disintegrating beneath my feet
but i keep walking towards you.

i crawled on my knees into a
new year
like evolution in
reverse.

I could die in this moment
with this song with this weather with this urge I can’t control
I could die in this moment
with no cares with no worries with no pain
I could die in this moment
with weak joints and heavy breath
I could die in this moment
with nothing left
dead

from the side she looked like a skeleton
   blurry and blue
and her bones were bruised from who-knows-what and
   who-knows-who (tired of you)

i can count the people i kissed on my hands last night
but i can't count on myself to fix this
or you to fix me.

i should've stayed.

i just want to write