I'm sorry
you had
to leave.

I'm sorry
I have
to stay.

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.

if I am to let it be what you will be-then you must be what it surely will become.

I can’t hear
anything
because sound
doesn’t live
in my ears,
it lives out of
everyone
and
everything
else
and it
slinks
into me.

i had a dream the other day that
a flashlight shone bright,
cutting between the ribs of night
and using my free hands,
i cupped it's ***** within my palm and watched in silent fixation as slight
particles breeched between my bleached out fingers, to aliken the feeling of exposure heating the sole of my hand to skinning rays of a full moon is a woeful plight. i'm not sure how i got here,
but i know it feels desperate to try to stay

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

(if i parentheses you)
this
(and)
that
(separate of the pillars that bowl past heavy tonsils
maybe it'd seem as though heaven was closer
and the nuzzle that triggers tiny slips and
flicks against the pulse of my fingers would come alive
behind large bulbs and very tiny eyes,
much too small to fully engulf mild realities wild
on the bottoms of tough poison, mulct philomaths'
raffishly spatting at loose tongues,
how dare they tell me)
this
(and)
that
(and never)
the other.
(if i parentheses you)
this
(and)
that
(would it count to you, dear scholar,
as a structured poem properly scrolling
down the braces of my spine?)

i must remind myself:

you don't disappear
simply because you
close your eyes
and see nothing but
black.

you disappear when
you hold your breath
and everything shifts
into black.

death is in
the illusion of choice
and i am severed
within its guilt:

i must remind myself.
i won't disappear simply
because i close my eyes
and see nothing but black.

my tongue curls as i light my ciggie boy and pull in, fire to a furnace, i wait for ash to spill as i tick near its tip, and of you, much like the wind, my mind wanders and shifts and settles, steady mania spirals through me, grabs me and drags me by the spine. if it wasn't for the hood of my sweater, my head would've blown away with the dead leaves of my backyard's oak tree.

you're used to people falling for the charm of you.

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

I cannot stand the silence of my mind and so I lay down and I let its swells **** me.

is your heart still breaking

why is everyone better at everything

I start sensitive conversations with
passionate people so that they can
I can have a reason to release my
anger. They forget that I am well
studied on only topics that I've
interest in and they use emotion
to try to suade me. I am horrible
and stiill. I smile as they begin
to get worked up. I think I need help.

"I believe I believe. I should write a little less and live a little more," each day, I say, but then again, I find myself back to old habits, again and again, the world sure does look nice, from my vantage point, although I've yet to see it.

leave me be
       with the toxicity of my thoughts
breathe me humble into the blades of the night
dream me pure through the comforts of my words,
on this night i feel deep within the roughs of his voice,
southern charmed beneath my lobes, on this night,
i heard his noise in my thoughts and indeed, he did
                 sing to me,
great poems of comfort

and now nina smokes vapes
on the quad with a new group
of friends that say things like,
do you have a dealer to every
dreaded black guy that passes by
and she talks really loud about
how fingers feel far far on the
inside and she laughs really
quiet at jokes that make sense,
and she never writes anymore
about how life makes no sense.

i demand
a certain
amount of
warmth
from every
body I lay
next to.

I saltened my lips of you, wore brown for days and tried to blend to the earth of my skin. I wore blue lips and combed my hair pencil thin. I painted my lungs red and lathered in the Puritan flow that warmed between my legs to the bitten taint of your neck. I killed your soul with my ashing hands. You said she ruined your life, you say I ended yours by hanging you from the hem of my skirt without ever saying a word.

I've begun to spot patterns
more clearly,
the brick homes that
set around this suburbia
have begun to resemble
the lovely spots of a
giraffe perhaps
because I have
become so used to ogling
their grace, I couldn't be sure,
but I've begun to spot patterns on me,
bold, odd, rectangular blocks
honey-ed to my thin skin:
People. They are all around me.
Yet all I see are those blocks
thatching to me,
I think they're in search of a
shorter neck.

his voice
is night
hungover
from long binges
and hearty upchucks
large lump-sums
of bright pinks and soft reds
- i think i might just love him-
what could be so wrong,
with so very little     *fun.

the image of Erin walking
by me surprised by the
alertness of my voice as she
jitters along terrifies me.
I wish I could hold her and
tell her that its okay to break.
I wish I could tell her that she
doesn't need some to piece her
back together every t i m e she
slides apart. I wish could tell
her that all she needs is someone
to hold all of her pieces and not
just some of them.

The image of frail little Erin alarms
me e v e r y time I close my eyes.

I believe that love is beyond us and not ahead of us, and if good sense was something that your mother passed onto you before she up and left you, you'd understand what I mean when I say, we don't look at us the same anymore and as hard as it is to come to terms with, love is beyond us and our grips are made up of acrylic hands, always ready to chip and shatter away, not able to hold onto anything the minute that that anything becomes, 'complicated' like we were becoming complicated. It's just not as complicated as you think. Love is is beyond us, not behind or ahead.

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.

on a night like tonight
when everything feels
just a little more dismal
than any other, i find myself
missing the way the moon
embraced the slant of my
cresting back. some days,
i sit back and i think about
how sorry i am for hurting you
or if my decisions hurt me
more than they did you

some days i can't help but wonder,
how in heaven's name i was dumb
enough to walk away from all that i had with you. i wait not for your demise
but my very own against your
desires and pleas, if i could symphony you a tale of my dire dissatisfaction of my
daily life, i'd stand upright against
this shallow wall they've built
to help me stay upright and ready

some days, i waft, face drowning
in an ocean of dissatisfaction
waiting for something new or old
to shrug my slumped shoulders awake.

I kept on telling him
that my lips were made
of pillows as if he
couldn't feel them
with his charcoal tips
as his lips broke across
my shea skin. We are
globs of jojoba oil
set above a fire.
We melt. Together.

My hands are as calm as my clam chest,
my throat, as shrill as metallic nails.
I am as hard as cotton candy, I beg him.
As if getting to know me better
would help him fall, I let
his words soak through me
as his doe eyes sponge through me.
I am not made of Jolly Ranchers.
I am made of the air that fluffs pink cottons.
I am not ready to count on his daisy dimples,
I was not made to.
I am ready to fall through him.

he left me resting
crooked
on the pith of his
lemon-split lips
and I just keep
sleeping
through its rind
like the sleep
won't leave me.

your hands
rush down
my legs.

'let's be
lonely
together,'
I said.

and you
kissed my
neck.

'let's be
lonely
together.'
I said.

and you
kissed
my neck.

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.

he sounded as soft as
my lips felt and I told him
the fire felt good exploding
across my chest as I balled my body
into his slouched frame. I pressed his
palm against my chest to see if his
wooden fingers would catch on fire.

he told me that my blue hat
reminded him of the sky
and in that moment,
I felt limitless-
but only for that moment.

You made me feel lonely,
hollow enough to sink into a
tub of suds,
humming songs of loves and
those lost within it,
you made me feel lonely enough
to want you to stay

lonely just wants to fall in love tonight
lonely just wants to fall in love tonight.

youth is on your side
until you are dead;
only then has it
escaped you.

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.

Courtney Love's in my lungs
screaming, was she,
"Asking for it"
was she asking for it
was she asking for it
what did she ******* say
whatdidshefuckingsay

I hate him and his mouth
and the speed in which it moves.

I, of a slower tongue can not keep up
and so I imagine my door slamming shut on his lips and me jumping and shouting everything that I could not say.

midnight shiverings of semi-neurotic portions, strike my ******* as I lay on a bed of eggshells, Malibu-Barbie-d to the head of your knees, baby said he'd paint me pink like the insides of my vaginal regions because it was his favorite, favorite, favorite place to read about, think about, taste about and feel about, baby, baby, he said he'd shake me salty like the Dead Sea and then he'd leave me comfy like the title repeats, my baby, baby is wilder than I could ever be but I swear there's one thing we have in common: he don't like me and I don't like he but we sure did like 'we'. We sure did love something funny and silly, never too serious, just like true, blue young'uns do.