I packed you perfectly
like one packs organs in ice
to preserve them--
to keep the memory breathing
in a box of souvenirs from our six years
fragmentally put together,
until I'd need to relive them again.

I scanned our pictures like x-rays,
the bones glowing silver linings,
blurred and blue.
You always light up.
In any recollection,
you will always be the clarity
I connect to.

I have my moments-- Don't you too?
Nothing is what I thought it was.
I feel you pulsate like blood
under a bad bruise
I packed you perfectly.
You didn't move.

I like him for his smile
and the way it has a way of traveling throughout his whole body.
And his eyes
like two hypnotic mood rings
that glisten with unspoken promises.

Maybe it's the way
he laughs
and I feel as though my heart is pinched
between his thumb and forefinger.

Maybe I love all the bits of you.
*Even the ones you didn't think I knew.

i fall asleep at six in the morning on weekends,
but through the weeks i collapse as as soon as
ten.

i think ***** has become my new lover,
he leaves hickeys, caked like dried
paint.
he doesn’t disappoint, slurring in words
heavy and foamy.

you are mad.
(because i no longer need you)
but i will crave you until my insides
**** the earth.

maybe that is why being sober for too long
scares me.
we always preach about never becoming our
parents, yet before we realize it we are talking, eating like them.
my mothers boots are too tight.
i think your fathers fight just right.

you miss me now, because all you have is my ghost.
and i hope she haunts you every step of the way,
because for three years you
haunted
me.
and i still can’t fall asleep without
drowning within
you.
i hate sleeping alone.
i hope you do too.

I know you hear my zipper tab click against the teeth
of my boots when I walked down the hall,
and my ring clinking against my glazed coffee mug
with the Hello Kitty sticker on the side.
I know you see my shadow pass in the space
of the door you left cracked open.
I know you hear me hum Springsteen,
the Eric Church kind,
while I let the filter water fountain fill up my cup.
I walk past your door ten times a day,
and you have to know I don't actually drink that much tea.
I just want you to notice me.

Sometimes I think of how my body must be so coiled up inside, emotions hugging the stretch of my bones, sadness wrapping itself in the in-between of muscle and ligaments. A maze...

I'll never make it out of myself.

I don't want to cry.
But sometimes I do.

I'm not a prayerful person.
But sometimes I pray.
Not that any of my prayers deserves to be answered.

I've been driven to beg.
Bartering.
Ultimatums.

I want
I need
Give me

Do you ever feel so hopeless
that it paralyzes you?
All you can do is watch
as fate demolishes your plans for the future.
******* all over your dreams.
Tearing up your innocence,
not even bothering to recycle the debris.

Put childish things aside.
Grow up and get a real job.
Get married and start a family.
You owe it to yourself.
To everyone.

Another birthday passes.
Another debt to pay.
Another year spent.

I hope you talk about me when you're slammed,
laying in the hall playing soccer at 2am.
I hope you see my reflection in the smashed mirror
from an aggressive kick you missed blocking.
I hope my shattered complexion reflects
in the broken glass
like a soft reminder that beckons you back
to your bed. A memory from a week ago rises,
when you were singing me a song
through your lips and cradling my expectations.

I played keeper and you were just trying to score.
Our roles reversed.
You dribbled me for a good while,
spinning on the ground you drug me on
just trying to catch hold.
I already had stains; I didn't need new ones.

I hope you talk about me when you're sipping
on something that will numb you seven different ways to Sunday.
I hope people have to stop you from calling me,
"It's all ****** up," you whine
with your eyes closed
about how you messed with me--
what happened there?
Take another shot.

I hope you talk about me.

walking with wedges always seems like the best, until
you’re walking home at seven in the morning.
i still taste cold pizza and the pina colada hookah.
i waited for you to breathe me in like the vapors,
youth has never tasted so beautiful, love.
i used to think i was the period in every sentence,
but you’re the comma and i’m the semi colon,
we’re never ending, sticking between awkward
phrases and short cut
sentences.
he never sunk his teeth so deep, and i am so bruised
i think my bones are bleeding.
youth has never tasted so beautiful, love.
i did not feel alive until five in the morning, when all i could feel
were his fingers digging in my cells, searching for everything
i thought i could never become.
i never felt this alive in his arms, and now i see all he did
was pull the blindfold until i saw inky blackness,
pushed the pillow in my mouth as i continue to cough up chunks.
let me run through the soggy leaves, breathing in the crisp air until
i collapse.
youth has never tasted so ******* beautiful,
love