i only smoke when
someone's died.*
he said.

and when I asked him
who's died most recently,
he said, *everyone.

Fifteen years old Corinne says that
alcohol is like confidence in a bottle
And she just ******* loves that ****
and I say, you know it's not something
you have to buy, at least that's what I've heard.
But I get her. To me, alcohol tastes
real real good until I'm drunk and then
it just feels like falling. And I get tired
of falling. Into things and out of things
so much so that I abstain from drinking
unless I'm in private and then
I sit in my closet with all of my hims'
and we get drunk together
and we **** to get her and
we fall together
like we get her. And we kind of do.

I'm trying to get
something together.
I don't know whether its
myself that I'm trying to
piece together and neaten
into a whole or a whole
bunch of everybody's selves
and affix it into what I'm told
is a little less unstable.

I write three times a day
so that my mind stays
leveled.

I squat a hundred times
every morning so that my
thighs stay taut.

I base my face every night
with Jojoba oil to help
maintain the oiliness
of my skin and every morning
with organic honey
to help bring balance
and newness to my face.

I dance every night
just to feel my heart
beat beating.

And still, they ask
what do I do for my
soul?

half of the people that love me
don't like me enough to leave me
and I don't know what that says
about them or me other than that
they don't understand the way the
world should work, only how it does work and I hate them everyday
for not trying.

the parantheses
on either side of your lips
do not say that you've spent
your life crying.
I'm guessing
you've smiled some
and laughed some
and if my presence is
what brings those lines
a great chance to deeper
set upon you, I'd like to
give you all of the chance
this world could lend you
to be a little bit happier.

sometimes it's easier to pretend

be careful who you lay with
everyone's so sure of themselves
morally nowadays
they remember to forget that
they are human.

how they'd handle this situation is
different when they aren't in
this situation.

be careful who you lay with.
And who you go back to.

and I often wonder
why I come back
to you like I do
when all you do
is get up
and leave
me like an
old wet towel
that's gotten
too many
stains and
rips and not
enough
fibers
for you to
use.

I could
probably
fit you
into more
places than
one*.

I tried to not take us
so seriously because
in the wake of a long
stream of non-commital
commitments, I've
begun to understand
how intense I become
when someone matters
to me on a personal level,
that's why I left you alone
when I found out about Marla
and Darla and Carla and all
of the Lala's that you ******
and then you decided to be
different for a day (let's be honest.
more like five minutes tops)
and you found yourself
with the proud and loud
feminist, Mandie with an
i-e in your bed and I keep
telling myself, it's not the
feminists fault that she likes
men. This man. My man.
And so I decided un-invite you
to the party I'll be throwing
for you in honor of you
being accepted into so and so
acting program in the city.
I'll drink everything they
bring for you, **** everyone
that only loves you. I'll
leave your car beneath
some distant bridge,
**** your boss and
and take me a little more.
It's not your fault I didn't
take us seriously.
It's not your fault
the feminist liked
you more than me.

they do what they say
and they pick at all two
hundred and six plus bones
until I am left with no poles
to stand firm upon.
No limbs. No cartlidge.
they do what they say and
they alienate me into
a spineless coward.

I think it's easier to say
'if I had known' because
then it makes me feel
less responsible for
what you did.
If I had known
that you felt
so alone in this
world that you'd go
to that extent

I'd have.

And that's just it.
What would I
have done.
I know I did
nothing
and now
where are you

you were the person I'd call
when the panic of tears
honied my lashes together
and sprung hot like rashes
down my luke cheeks. you'd
listen to my voice thick and
jarred filming through your
phone, slow like molasses
and think like honey. you'd
listen and when I fell as
calm as a clam, you'd
tell me, "baby baby,  it's alright."

We don't speak.

We look into each other's eyes.

We don't nod.

We acknowledge each other's presence with silence and calm swarms along with it.

He fixes his tie and walks away.

We don't speak.

We don't speak.

We don't speak.

was it not the camel that
broke the straw's back
had it feeling like
it's straw was made of
unmendable water
had it feeling like
it's back was the only
piece he could sit upon
nevermind the ground
and all the pressure it
could handle.

He is confused by
both dusk and dawn.

He considers both to be
another variation of night.

I liked Liam
because he
never smiled.

And if there was
ever one thing
that I wanted to
be it was the reason for
why he felt
so much of one thing
that it'd make him
change from such a
stoic disposition.

we drove into a flushed pink sunset
our eyes brimming with lighter shades
of red and smiles, uninterested in the
promise that fate brought and carried
by the ideas of each other. He seemed
keen to me both surprised by my
existence and willingness to bridge
into his cove of a life and pleased
by the way i fit so neat to the rhythms
of his beats. He splayed
khaki shoulders and thin legs
against netted lawn chairs,
happy to watch me laugh and
bounce with his lilac-haired ex
whose voice took on the comical
pitch of Minnie Mouse when she
was high or drunk or trying too hard
as she told me about Fidelity,
the tattoo parlor that she traveled an
hour to just to meet up with some
artist whose name she couldn't
remember but trusted so so much
and teared up when I told her about
my nose hoop that I had to get rid
of because some sketchy artist used
an earing that wasn't Nickel free
on me but swore that he did.
We had fun that day. He ambled
over when Glass Animal's
Gooey revved up and we
screamed the words into
each other's lungs, certain that our
breaths would swell each other up
and help us float away.

Don't let them drown you

I used to call Tim Ben
until I heard his
ex call him as such
with a light trill in her
voice, he never told me
it was serious. He said
that it was this thing
and I figured that it was
just like this thing
that we're having now.
This whole, non-commital  
I'll call you when I call
you if I call you thing.
But then I heard her
voice singing his
real real very real
name and I'm
looking at him and wishing
that I could rip out his
lip ring and call him Ben.

i brushed up the shards of a
glass bottle with the broom
of my fingers, surprised when
its skin broke, giving way to
crystalline splinters, and you-
you took your mother's
tweezers and pulled out it's
bits. Band-Aid-ed my wounds,
holding my hand as it quivered
and my lips pulsed. I hated you
in that moment.

For being so tender.

There are stars
in your eyes
where pupils
should be.

There were
stars in your
eyes where
pupils
should be.

he said to me,
he said to she.

he doesn't question my proclivity to absence, he accepts it as he does the width and length
of my mind and
I.

he rears away from the bone
of my hips, fearful of its
ability to puncture
and camouflages his skin
against the bulbs of my
******* and thighs.

he gazes upon me as he would
at a navy sealed sky
not searching for any stars,
not curious of whether an ability
to glow is apparent,
he understands that I am
unapologetically,
seamlessly, an unlit sky
he appreciates my stillness,
my inability to spark.

he accepts my absence
as I accept
my unaligned, navy
complexion.

Being
drunk
feels a lot
like
falling
down.

never
trust
the wind
to be
straight
forward
with you.

it is as
fickle
as a
premature
heart.

I always
wonder
if she's
actually
doing
okay or
if
she's
just
saying
it like
people say
*i'm fine. i'm good.
i'm alright. and
i'm okay.

I like it when he
rests his head
on my shoulder
as if to let me know
that he is really
here with me
and not just another
sick memory
from what we were.

I like the way
his hair strands
tickle through
the sheers of my
shirt, breeze
sifting through
the vents of his lips,
cooling my warm skin.

He is *here.

Reggie just gets a little
too excited for my taste
and so on most days
when he sees that I've
responded cordially
to his invites to
come on over at
two a.m. because
no, no he's not
just a little bit wasted
he just wants to,
idk watch a movie
at two a.m. probably
in his bed so that we can
be chill. and to all this
when I say no, he just
keeps on asking
night after night after
night, I finally grow a pair
and tell him that I admire
his persistence but not
at two a.m. because all
he sounds like at this hour is
sloppy and I like to know
that whoever I choose to ****
will remember me and how I
got there by morning come.
But I do admire his persistence.

we didn't mind our mistakes
like everyone else did.
he spelled his name wrong,
always and I sometimes.
He forgot key letters
slung his slang between
my tongue, pierced his
bottom lip, tatted
Breaking Babylon
across his chest, buzzed
his black hair low so that
his olive colored scalp
shone through,
scissored his black jeans into
shorts, lectured me on
his truths and my truths
and how our privilege
is self-evident, whispered
to me on cold cold nights
about the coming of the
Zion train and that either
Lauryn Hill or Nneka
would be it's conductor,
grew his hair down to his
shoulder when I
buzzed mine low revealing
my tight curls
and cursed his blossom
pink lips and prodded his
piercing with my thick
bottom lip and waited
and waited and waited.
He liked my mistakes
and my curiosity and I
liked his confidence
in his abilities. He didn't
cover his mistakes, he
was sure of them.
He told me the Zion
train would come the
day that I decided
to ask and still I
couldn't resist asking,
is your heart breaking?
and now he's telling me
he's missed me and that
it's good to hear from me
and that he's missed my
blue velvet voice, and I
have to bite my tongue
and nibble my fingers
to stop myself from
asking him,
is your heart still breaking?
but I know that I've
missed him more than I
enjoyed breaking his heart.
He likes my curiosity
and the mistakes that
come along with them.

I'm sorry
you had
to leave.

I'm sorry
I have
to stay.

Your door cannot stop this flood.

One day,
it's gonna get so
hard that you
won't want to fight it
anymore.
And I hope
on that day,
you'll come
and find
me.

I think I may have loved him.
And from the way my throat
aches and burns with the acidic
thrashes of tears, I think I may
have loved him a little more than
I let on, a little more than I could
say. I think I love him and he,
no longer me.

We are not okay ok.
We are breaking and you are stitching
and I am mending and trying
and we. We are not okay ok.
We are never okay.
We are always confused
and never okay ok.

If the moon had a pocket
he would not slide me in it.

I love the sight of him
the slight of him.

His consistencies
and insecurities,
only ever coming out
in the dead of the night,
is he anxious to see his lover
for fear that she may not be as
beautiful as the sun that replaces him
but rather as ugly as the
beaked birds that
pester and nag him.

Is that why he only sees her
in the wake of a hazy and lazy
dusk in newness of a short evening nap?

elevators make me dizzy
and nervous to the
point that I lock my knees
and hold the silver walls
and hope they can't
hear me heaving. I hate
these walls. I hate these walls
and the way they move up,
so silent and unsure,
causing my chest to quake,
elevators make my nervous and dizzy.

It's a game we play
he offers me food
saucy ribs and a
mountainous heap of
of mashed potatoes
and a morsel of string
beans, he calls it a full
course meal. Dinner.
Meat. Starch. And veggies
but there's more meat
and starch than veggies,
actually. His serving size
is quiet hope and I don't
wish to break the silence.
I stare at the meat on my
plate until he finishes his
and begins picking at mine.
I leave the mountain and the
river of oil drenched beans.
I drink the water, pick the
yellow slice of lemon with the
curve of my spoon and
suppress my tongue.
He eats for him but mainly
for me. We have dinner and we
skip the desert.

we don't use
punctuations
over messages
because we fear that
we'll expose any feelings
that we'll stop any
questions with our periods
raise unwanted questions
with any marks,
we don't use any punctuation
because we're afraid that our
feelings will show through how
many words we use and how we
end our sentences.

I told him he has a beautiful voice
and he just kept on singing,
louder and louder and louder