The first time I ride the subway by myself
I am 14 and expecting ghosts: I wait for them
to appear in the train windows like strong clusters

of wind but instead everything is still and crowded
with nothing but ripples of people. The first time I

ride the subway by myself I am 14 and expecting
some sort of suicide. Once I read about a woman

who hung herself from the metal bars that line
the ceilings of the trains, hung herself

like a constellation dragging down from
a lit-up sky. I drew a picture of the woman

and then a picture of her family but then
realized she probably didn’t have a family

and quickly threw the picture away.
My mother found it, saved it, it hangs
on the fridge now. The first time I ride the subway

by myself I am 14 and I want to kiss someone. (I come close
to touching a stranger’s hand, then his waist, then I recoil.)

This boy lying in between my sheets
has a body like a ****** nose. If it
were up to me his teeth would be bruised,
but instead his shins are covered in broken
thunder. Last night lying next to him was dark
as damp childhood hair (from getting out
of the pool, from just learning how to swim, from just
learning how to feel ashamed of my body, all
wet like fresh lips). Last night was so dark I had
to hold my breath: held it for 7 seconds before
I yelped for air.

This boy is not mine. This boy
is like somebody else’s death: he is hardly with me.
This boy sits still and cross-legged in between
my sheets like a black crab. He looks all skewed
and crooked, all out of place. When he touches me
I kick him, my legs flustering out and then recoiling
back in like dying ancestors.

Lately it’s felt like I’m dying over and over again,
like I am dying with him. This morning I wait
for him to leave, and then to die, and then to wake up
again, spring up like small new gravestones.

Every boy I have ever loved has killed himself.
Murmur the word “suicide” to me before I sleep
and I will dream about the days when I used to feel
dizzy, always, when I used to faint, always, when
I used to peck at my mosquito bites, always.

neighborhood boy spends all night in the diner over by Main Street or in the stone library across the street. He can’t tell the difference. I am convinced that he is just like me: because of the way our eyes darken so easily, like a pile of dying moths. He likes places with booths where he can sip his coffee all slow and seductive. He doesn’t know how he’s like with his hair dark and falling over his eyes the way a mother drapes around her new child. He is surprising in that he has never touched me. Once we sat next to each other on a train with the windows foggy as steep mountain and he never touched me. We only spoke to each other once (he asked me if there was a bathroom somewhere). He was reading about a small town and his eyes were red like he’d just gotten back from war. He is the kind of boy who looks like he is always just getting back from war, who looks like he could only love his mother if she were dead. neighborhood boy has a chipped left tooth and ankles that look like they should be covered in blood. neighborhood boy is not my boy. neighborhood boy is not my boy. neighborhood boy will never be my boy but I will still watch him drink his coffee. That time when he talked to me he sounded like a lost wolf, like somebody who loves to live in car crashes.

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.