the bruises on my legs mark the lies of you from a past when all I did was bleed on your bed sheets and whine about the aesthetics of any place that didn't feel like home, that didn't feel like you. but I digress. but I digress.

Sometimes I wish I never knew you,
sometimes you're all I know.

I catch myself staring at photos of you in hopes of never forgetting you, lord knows my mind skips out on a lot of things. But if I ever forget you, take back your shirts, hats, give me back my scarves, my lips, heart, soul, and mind. I'll never remember a thing you've ever said to me. I'd want your voice out of my head. It'd be the second thing that'd go.

"It is such a lovely, lovely day.
Why don't we go
be lovely with it?"

my heart bleeds muddy water.

Being
drunk
feels a lot
like
falling
down.

i watch green turn to ash as spit bubbles pop images in my mind, the green buds beneath my bare feet and as i walk in memory of you, my trail turns each step i hover between to ash.

*i don't write about much these days. all i have are foggied visions and memories of you. color me foolish and pin and tail on my-

don't choose parts of me to love

I understand.
I am an island.
You come to me
to escape.

i like to think that I'm
a little bit more than
nothing
and a lottabit less than
everything.

I read his sentence as
a string of his breath,
the commas,
his pauses,
and at the period
is where
he ends.

this is my
love letter
to me:

i am my
reason
for being.

Always. There is always something to get mad at       -      to          get          mad     -      at -             to get            -     *mad.

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?

My left ear lobe is having an
allergic reaction to the chemicals
of my bullet-studded earring while
my right ear lobe is just fine with the
bow and arrow that's speared through.

My lungs are anaphylactic response to
the silence of your words and the nasal
voice that whinnies out of your throat.

I am not unaware of your sudden decision
to grow out the raven-colored hair out of its
buzzed stage much like how I understand
your need to refuse my query of,
"What are you?"

I admire your commitment to further your
thinkings, the reach of your leaves.

I'd kiss the state flag you have tattooed
on your forearm if it meant getting closer to you.

Autumn leaves are butterflies falling from nature's grace:
This morning, I watched a butterfly disappear into a pile
of auburn leaves. As I stopped to watch, it frightened its black
speckled wings into the clouds and I smiled because
even something as beautiful as a butterfly has a will to disappear.

he cut the tongue from between my lips as I tried to gasp, veins pulsing from the noose of your grip tied tight around my throat, I travel with my ability to lack, I tie knots 'round my new lovers' finger and I light them up from the string of my bow, I holler and jump 'round them, chest separating from my shoulders as my feet dangle above the crimson earth, my knees hobble and bobble as my elbows ash from the haggard wind rapping against my sand-made skin, I blow away like dunes, shaped and reshaped by the Sahara, I scream violet threats as you press me further into cellophane walls, you say, "destruction is sin." and then you remolded me into your paper girl, locked me up in a room for years and wrote me ****** until my mind filled with **** and then you found my eyes and started darkening them, they've slowly started to mirror your night's sky, a reflection of your skin, my sin.

when i was younger, all i wanted was for the world to fold me but the older i get,
the more i understand that the world
isn't at the mercy of any art form.
it doesn't fold. the world has a million
and one pockets, each one holding a
different secret and waiting restless souls.

on a long road stands a calm-eyed gypsy woman that has learned to tiptoe down a road that never ends, and at night she dreams of hazel eyes and sea legs that
float above water-the only way to travel

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."

What does happy look like?

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.

I'd like to weigh a ton ton ton
just so that I am sure that I am
pushing down on something
like gravity. This Earth really
knows how to *******.

he moons his pale flesh against the hologram of my liquored tongue as my right ankle shed's red wine from my bones to my flesh, my marrow is hush-puppy-tan to the pulse, and as to the likes of you, blue satin-ed and confused, your love's blonde blunted curls crowd your cellophane lungs and you breathe in the smoke of her, pale toned and honest, just the way you fry them, quick and in hot oil. I wonder of she teases you with her soft lips like I could, but I suppose we'll never really know.

last night,
i had a comforting dream
of a young she
standing so close to her mirror
that she became lost within it,
her eyes heavy to the
unfamiliar world that she
was transitioning into-
her body began to grow
thin like plastic as
she stood on her thickening legs,
marble set below her feet
and she raised her hands
to either sides of her head and
twisted her neck
until it popped off her body
before placing it onto her sink,
she then reached into medicine cabinet
that leaned off the wall, towards her,
grabbed a different head
and ******* it in place
before walk out of her
bathroom door
stepping into the already
ready world.

Kissing the canvas of my body,
his lips turned blue as he said,
"I can make you warm everywhere
but here." and he traced a shape
above my left breast.

Pooling beneath his hands,
I told him, "You can warm anything
up with a heart like yours."

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 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 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'm doing
better
than I
did.

I did do
better
then I
am.

never let me leave this bed again
tie me steady to the palm of your breath and sift me quietly into a blue dream, leave me candied between the yams of your thighs as my eyes rolls sallow down the slot of your tongue, I am your-count it- 1 2 3- option on this languid roster, number E L E V E N on the back of your ******* mind and number  O NE for the title of 'most sought after and forgotten' tell me, how do you see me. how do you see me. how do you view me. can you even see me? Or is it only during your odd dips and lows when you need new energy to help you feel again. I have to say from level nine to ten, that's how much I hate you and I swear to this dude, I'll never ******' show it.

If there's one thing no one gets to see me at it's at my utmost misery. I revel in that and in that alone, I heave long chains of smoke that bubble gum, snap and pop, I have to say I can't believe we've made it this far, you and I. But on the crook of this spinning night I sit simply with a stranger to the right of me at my dinner table. I can't say I feel much towards this situation besides lonely indifference, like the tingle my nose gets if I rip for too long, I can't say it's been much of an amusement, his voice hums dumb like a drone.

i am not who i present myself to be
i am who i am who i am is not me.

I watched him read
my little blurbs
no doubt seeing
whispers of his fingers
tracing its lines.

'it's not the
best thing
I've ever
written,'
I said.

He is confused by
both dusk and dawn.

He considers both to be
another variation of night.

and I breathe in his smoke because it is the only air that he will give me

I feel as though we are
always on the verge of
something.
Brilliant or assholish.

I feel as though the
only things that keep us
contained are
sanity and insanity,
mere reflections of
each of themselves.

And I feel as though
the safeguard of
insanity-
sanity would be
unknown

Brown-Eyed Girl-
they say she is the weakest link
gone and sprung amuck
through clouded fields of poppy seeds
and cottony ******. they say she is a sprain
of chortling pain in the dumpling
maker's yeasting wrist.

brown-eyed girl seeing powdered
blues of glass-stained eyes,
he wore a plaid shirt, nip-and-tucked,
rat-a-tat-tat, and a silly looking bow-tie
slopped slightly off-kilter and to the right,
a frenchie little pear of a man. he said he liked her-
tie-dye thighs. she said, he said, she liked his
dumpling hands - and flakey chest.

they say she is that button-down clad-
sunflowers-printed kind-of, sad.
memories tainted, she said, he said,
she's the kind of girl you've got to love every night,
my kind of a woman. my salted oils, fried
and phat-  
                brown-eyed girl.

my skin can bare the bruises of you,
but my mind and soul are the ones I worry for.

Happy people
make me sad.

he said I opened up like a flower in his mouth and only budded when he planted his seeds upon me, he said I shined like a golden waxed sun, and blindedly, he gazed upon me until his eyes became glossy and brimmed with melted butter. he said I bled cranberry juice on his white sheets and refused to apologize for my sins and I laughed at his silly truths and said, "A likely story." he said I rhymed like the chorus his left and right legs created, balanced. he missed the chaos of me from behind his tear-tinted glasses. he missed all of the ways my body shuddered simply because the lack of rhythmic noise and conversation and action wound me up in the binds of his tight knots and refused to release me.