I guess the leaves are on the lawn now,

like Fall always comes and thank God for October

but too many grandparents have died this month, and

on the first day, the rain keeps

coming.

And I have been

obliterated by simple things,

like October or

the coming and going of people.

I have been

shocked silent into this room,

I am still never

sure of what left there is to say;

there are too many people that I have left with semicolons

and no following independent clauses

or independent thought.

Shake me the most awake,

or I will blanch and putter and

scream in the morning.

How nightmares upon nightmares

upon daymares

have thrown me for something—

a loop maybe? A figure-eight?

———

I have always

wondered why we collect shells on the beach.

(I know I do it too, but)

they once held life

and I am wondering why we celebrate

the shell of things.

———

I am not sure how to end this,

but in the ever so common way of ending

without really an ending at all.

Today feels like fire,

smells like iron,

wears its pants low, hanging, slipping off the hips,

is blood edged arount my fingernails,

is bright primary and black, each sliding up next to the other,

companion guides, wordless.

—-

The seeping of oil on paper

the jam jar quietly containing black coffee

a bag of lavender

water through a straw.

—-

Today is a drug-minded sober body,

mine,

is as-usual clawing into the skin around my fingers, by now so scarred, so thick-skinned, my fingers are so red, so often asked of, “why are your fingertips purple?" such a faint violet, such a small count of millimeters raised, such beautiful fingers I would have, they say, if only I would stop bleeding them out.

I’m getting bad at what I do

I’m getting words stuck behind my teeth like pills in peanut butter,

words stuck between my teeth like apple pulp.

I’m getting backlashes of food poisoning,

how my whole body became a devil entity and I swooned  in and of desperate consciousness,

how walking was the hardest.

Like how acid trips give you acid slips

Like how you never wanted me,

like how I’ll stop caring eventually.

But now I’m choking on my words and there’s no excuse

And I used to write poems about self abuse

that I never gave myself.

But for now, words fumble

like I did for you.

Said the world, “Sorry, I’ve got too much feel."

So she gave me twice as much, told me to deal.

Said I, “I’m sorry, it’s just too much."

And said the world, “Well, that’s too bad, and you can blame the world," and such.

So I waited it out a little bit longer.

Said the world, as I advanced in a rage, “It’ll make you stronger."

So I waited and waited, learned to want to live still, learned to want to die.

"Oh goodness, you can do it, please, please" said the world with a sigh.

And so that’s what it’s like, being an empath of the earth.

Having in my heart, all foreign emotions pure and swirled.

And I sift them like flour,

Keep the sweet and some of the sour,

But underneath I am bitter,

Not the first in a long line of “deal with it" emotion sitters.

So it’s been years, and what I’ve learned is never desired or simply yearned,

Don’t let yourself get burned.

Peel the world, let aching fingers soothe,

find the truth,

Don’t let your thoughts and words babble out uncouth.

So you harden and you crack,

Cave your stomach, arch your back.

Find its easier to hate than love.

But world, its worth it if you try.

a week has passed
and I am so sure of the
  uncertainty.
A boy    desperate   and me
hopeless,    Plan B.
In more than one way,
I have lost myself
so many times.
She tells me I am not the same
person, that I am withering,
disappearing.
I do not disagree, only tell her
that I am   trying.

Stinkbug, caught in a shriveled
spider's web.
Stinkbug falls, saves itself.

Only it knows how this could have
ended.
Only I know how this shouldn't
end, how it shouldn't
even be the way it is, in the
first place.
The habit of sleeping five hours past my alarm,
the dull roar of my dreams.

You have not tried to save me;
I am not asking you to.

I say it is up to me.
How everything is up to me,
my willingness to stay entrapped,
     engrossed in the web of something
within me, beyond me.

If I am the stinkbug, it is time. If I am the
stinkbug,
it is time.

Courage lands on nimble feet,
cries for all it's caused.
Brevity winks before it sinks,
and shows you what you've lost.

Showing the way can only help the seeing,
and for the blind I ask,
How do we jump, and where, and why,
so as this to not be the last.

And if I so as question myself,
I beg to shelter the defeat,
and if I so as blink to myself,
a teardrop falls to your knee.

And I wonder when and I wonder how
a blessing such as mine
could itself in the dark or day
be just a blessing and only so kind.

For fortune's found and spun in thread,
and should you so much as ask,
a moth hits the bulb and a silence shrieks,
and the moth and one is dead.

For God forbid you question your fate
or the others of those you love,
for the devil or something close,
swings the cursed wing of a dove.

As the blanket chills and the spool unwinds
and the machine left to its tide,
a scissor cuts and a blush rusts
upon the clasp upon the line.

And courage sits upon the sill,
and begs when it can speak,
and brevity breaks for only a second,
and the words can finally creak.

Used to
romanticize the ill;
used to see myself in their shadows,
head down, walking in asylums,
the only place that would take them anymore.
I am not alone here,
and we do not call them asylums anymore.
I do know that for a while I could not get up to take my dog out
so I let her **** on the living room floor for
days.
My therapists say if I wasn't feeling worse during recovery
then it wouldn't be working.
I feel worse.
I felt happy this morning
then realized it was
again because I had not eaten.
Lunch is at 3, takes 2 hours to eat, and breakfast was
skipped.
I do not romanticize the life of the ill, anymore.
I am in that mind now.
I am in that sound now.
Forgive me, I have filled up half a journal with two weeks of being here but
I still have not found the words to describe it.
I beg for destruction,
but can't climb out.
This is the
borderline.

They found you in the night

dressed in bloodstain

swathed in gauze, cotton, taffeta

a white shelter

doused with brown, pink

the hues of our veins.

I never forgave him.

Red birds flew into my window every day for years, especially during Spring

and I asked my mother

what they were called.

“Cardinals,” she said,

“but I think they’re called to you,

I think—

I think they are for you.”

“Mom, I’ll give that one a name.”

And I did.

——-

I still see cardinals.

The red shocks me,

like a bloodstain in a new house.

——-

When my father almost died,

I was not worried and I did not ask many questions,

only saw his body in the bed, a green-blue-yellow-black mess,

a broken-bone nest,

with sticky pads stuck to his skin, sending electricity to his nerves, lest

they forget themselves.

——-

He had the car turned into a cube, and it is somewhere now,

the cage collapsed,

the rust blooming inside of itself.

The day my father chose to drive into a wall,

going somewhere from 100 to 200 miles an hour (I never asked him), they dubbed him Rocketman.

He flew.

The car toppled and twisted and regurgitated what it could;

it was an illness,

and it could have killed us.

My father is okay.

——-

My father went to an air show months ago to see how those streak clouds are made by planes,

and there was an accident

and he saw peoples’ bodies lying and dying.

He told my mother how he saw hands separate from their owners.

He has not told me these things.

——-

The cardinals have started to scare my father.

He sees them too

like bloodstains in a new house.

I. You are an angel,
a beautiful crystal-clear wet tongued straight-spined haloed human,
bringing that peace,
bring that piece of you that everybody needs. You hand it out like sin at a confessional, like blue jeans in Texas. They all need you. They all want to be saved.
You have something that everybody wants. They want that silver aura, that mist that hangs off your hips, a cloud that only God could have sent down with you. It is a stench.

II. You did not shiver when he touched you. You did not bark, did not swing your fists, did not pray, did not scalp him. You only asked to go in a different room, so your sister wouldn't have to witness
your ******* and the hollow of your collarbones not holding tears you held in. This one is not a lie. When he poked you in the morning, toe hanging out of his sock, you stared at him, weak smile. Smile keep smiling keep smiling walk out the door. Never feel shame, never wash your hands seventy-three times, never wake up four years later that same month and unconsciously decide to have *** with one person who looks like him and another who shares his name.

III. You wanted help. You
wanted attention, wanted somebody to pick up the phone, the line dead, you screaming you blaring you walking mindfully stepping over cracks you spitting out condolences and quotes like a book on grief. You want help.

IV. When you called the girl's father to tell him she had five new razor blades baptizing her back pocket, you did not lie to her when she asked if it was you.

V. If she had died, you would have lost more.

VI. You have an addiction to being ****** up. Not on anything, not on the pills you stole from your father, not on the mushrooms you gave to your mother, not on the bottles that sit in your kitchen like gravestones, scattered, weeping. No, this is on being
****** up.
Ask me how long I've been in therapy. Ask me if I can get enough.

VII. I can't. There will never be enough time for me to fill up "process group" with a voice that tells everyone that I am more damaged than them, that I've got more past, that I binge and starve and take pills that make me suicidal, that I've cut and have blurred the lines between ***, love, and intimacy, that my father was absent. That my father could hold a place in my life and still be
absent. That my father is a functioning alcoholic, that at least he didn't beat me, as far as I remember. That my mother carries her sorrow in boxes, carries her untold stories in the back of her throat, in the pit of her stomach, in her sweat. She compartmentalizes, you were a room she filled up with ****. That I am borderline, that I am bipolar, that I am **** spun into a web and called a patient, called smart and shy but I've got a need that will never run dry and it's for ears, it's for noses that can't smell out the lies, though I don't know if I have any.

VIII. I just have a need. My mother says that you can get addicted to therapy. My mother has never been a ******, doesn't know addiction. Doesn't know anorexia, only knows dinner with her daughter. Doesn't know depression, only knows a daughter who gets sad. Doesn't know borderline, says it's too severe. Says I could never be crazy enough for that.

IX. The woman I had *** with that shared his name called me crazy. I'm sure she went to sleep soft and angelic that night. I'm sure she has no baggage. She asked if she can visit me at the hospital. I asked her if she planned on bringing her suitcase too.

X. They want me and I let them. I want friend, I want family, I want a dinner that isn't me eating slivers and then shaking it off, I want -

XI. I wonder if it's an act. I feel myself talking. I am digging myself a hole. I am digging myself whole but at the risk of raw soul and flashing teeth and bleeding makeup, tissues in the middle of the circle I have too much pride to walk up to. This is my confessional. I pick a problem and never let it go, turn it into hospitalization, turn it into inhumanity, turn it into I Could Have Been More Than What's Happened To Me. Never take responsibility, never ask yourself why you are so happy to be on meds when the meds make you want to die. Never learn faith. Never learn patience. Learn mental tantrums. Learn how to take it like a woman. Learn how it feels when your therapist calls you seductive, calls you intentional. Learn how it feels to have your psychiatrist call you hot.

XII. Never trust yourself, not ever. Not your opinions, not your ink blots, not your journal entries. Question everything, all the time, in therapy. See a personality disorder online and decide you have it. See an addiction, have it verified. See your vulnerability on display, call it therapy. You beg for this. They call you strong and you question that too. You think you haven't been through that much, but you sure act like you have.

Further we drop

fruitless I whisper

The leaves hang in the balance, and drop

sure as the snow that might never come,

sure as the electricity which might never run

and blizzards are fun if you’ve never been in one;

I guess.

      —

So I am waiting for the grey area to dissipate and (separate)

because feeling one way or the other half the time doesn’t

help,

about anything.

Does that make

sense?

    —

Shelter my ****,

forgive my own self-loathing,

love like there’s nothing we’d rather do

(it’s true)

please only

be

and i will try

to be

as well,

(do you understand?)

    —

This mismatched magnet love words

tongue-strung-together

and with glue and

string,

and piece me back together like that puzzle

I told everyone I was when I was

12.

—

All those missing pieces, how

they

bite and blister,

glisten and glitter,

slither through cracks where I don’t expect to find them,

I am hoping for the black-and-white-life.

(It won’t, doesn’t exist.)

(There are

too many shadows,

and the time does tick

I guess.)

I guess I am waiting for an answer that I cannot find,

I question I don’t even know how to ask.

    —

Remember, remember,

in the stupor, in the wondrous

days of wasting away,

remember those were not the good days.

People live to find themselves whole,

and you tried to

disappear,

and how lovely and lonely

that never should have been,

and still never was.

****** up your dissonance,

(your discontent, your dissent,)

hold it to your breast like a child,

hold your truth to be

(self-evident)

though they will ignore it.

Your passivity is here, some

days and they will mock you.

Let it be,

let yourself stand for that ultimate,

for that good

that you know is riddled with

the newsworthy “bad intentions” or

“ungodliness.”

Shelter your cooing,

let the body see, let the people see

humanity

as it is

will care for what it can.

Some have hearts as vast as oceans.

Some hold all of space.

Others carry with them a tiny ceramic vessel,

or the eye of a needle,

or a small brass bowl.

They can only love

so much.

Carry the weight, if it matters.

Carry that ****, that ****, that bristling anger.

Snake it where it matters.

Show them.

You don’t have to forgive them,

(maybe you should)

but

show them.

Crashing

into something,

always

Mania like a ******* *****

I am biting my knees

and my head is racing

like a shooting star that nobody wishes on,

and I think I’m going to throw up

and I’ve had a head ache all day

so I got dolled up and reek of smoke, smoke, smoke

and I’ve got this tic where I pick pick pick

at my skin like clockwork

like you hear about **** users doing,

and my grandmother’s neighbor’s **** lab got busted

but that has nothing to do with this.

Can’t tell if I’m sick

or sick of this

felt myself writing my eulogy in my head when I got home,

felt myself running running running

and talking too weird and falling over

and I’m not even drunk

and I’m not even close.

I need to calm down but this mania has me ******* petrified, sick sick sick.

And I know I’m not eating enough and I’m smoking too much and

what I want is my mother, in that summer camp kinda way

where you need somebody to rub your back and coo

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay”

over and over again, letting your sobbing puddle into her lap,

like that time I tried to come out to her

for hours.

In 3rd grade my best friend asked me why my fingers were all sorts of cut up

and I told her, “Oh, you know, farm life” and changed the subject because the sound of the word “picking” makes my body curl up

and two years another girl asked me why my fingertips were purple

and I didn’t tell her it was because I didn’t know how to stop.

I need to run

not away or from something, just run

to catch up with my head

to catch up with my body, shaking shaking on this seat.

This is the one of the worst poems I’ve ever written but I think it’s

probably the most honest

because I am sometimes so scared to be alive,

and so scared to be human.

On an unrelated note, if I tell you I am queer,

I’m not looking for your opinion.

On an unrelated note, last night a girl prayed on her knees for me,

years ago I went to a church where they spoke in tongues over my head as I felt my knees buckle and I cried then, too.

When your only lived experiences are biased with depression, are haunted,

are counting your calories and

praying that something can save you,

and thinking that only you can save yourself, I’m thinking maybe I need something more.

I teach preschoolers almost every week about what it means to be a Christian, what the foundation of the Bible is but

I’m definitely not a Christian, because somewhere along the line, I lost that too.

Maybe I am as arrogant as my first job fired me for being,

maybe I am as ******* human as I’ve always tried to avoid

or something.

I think it is gone now, that stretching thin

that mania

of too much thought racing

train blaring

I’m sick, sick, sick.

There was a girl and she knew when I was upset because I spoke in threes,

in triples,

like I’m begging for that holy trinity,

like I’m shining a flash light at the stars,

calling in Morse code for the night to lift

for the gods to call me up,

like I’m begging for You.

If God knows everything,

does he read this too?

After a while,
I stopped writing love poems.
I'm sorry we broke.

Johnny speaks moon.

Johnny sells newspapers,

Johnny eats stars for late-midnight snacks,

fills his stomach

     with something dead, or about to be.

You’ve heard about the light,

you’ve heard, right?

It is dead by the time it reaches us.

Johnny speaks moon,

Johnny lives in his arms,

creates constellations out of freckles,

takes pictures of arms next to arms next to arms

where he makes the universe.

Ours.

Connects the moles, bruises, birthmarks, stars

stars.

Johnny speaks moon.

Johnny shells out pennies for old pens, talks to gas station clerks about

    string theory

then buys string

as a joke.

Johnny speaks moon,

seeks God in empty white mugs,

sells newspapers.

Because

                                this is what we’ve become,

but Johnny speaks moon

and laughs.

Death lands on my fingertips,
asks if I want
to coddle it, if I want
to cup it and hold it close,
raise it, share a bed with it.

I am not sure what I've asked for,
if this was planned, if I was
a spiderweb to entrap
a sea to let you swim in.

A yellow jacket sings on the table
floats toward the color.

Do I, too, float towards the color?
Am I the spider, the web, the
     bug, stuck?

Shrapnel stings like the yellow jackets
like the wasp in my thigh.
Shrapnel that might never let go.

The oatmeal spills
steaming
spills like *****
spills like ***** from the mouth
spills like snow off a roof, too
heavy
too heavy for you or me or them and especially,
my mother.

Licking mayonnaise off the fingers,
biting into raw onions,
savoring the tears,
sopping up (fake) hamburger juice and cheese off plates
with faces bought from the stars,
with forks bought from discount stores,
off plates from discount stores.

Half off for your children's clothing
something, they too, have heaved on and dirtied.
Relentless-
the way children drown in dust and swing sets and in their tears
and not for nothing
not for nothing
do they cry.
They-
the most connected, the most concentrated cells, the most complete beings,
all questions no answers all wonder no pandering lying sneaking stealing
hollerin at women out the window of a car
drinkin beer to keep away memories of a childhood not dealt with.
If it was hell, deal with it. Sit in it. Sit in it.
Hell is not for those who will sit in the flames,
it is for those who would run, run, run,
hot coals everywhere coals flames licking the body licking the sweat
how ****** how steamy how ****** the flames, how they lick, swallow, spit.
Hell isn't for those who will sit in their problems, in their broken childhoods.
Sit in it. Feel it. Take it in, breathe it out. Don't forget. Get better, don't rise up to the occasion, don't let it hurt anyone else. Take your pain and trust it.

Dress me in lace,

color me porcelain,

drench me in white cloud and blue sky and dandelions.

Touch me yellow,

Tell me you’re swallowing sunshine, tell me again

how I am the floating door and you are the ocean.

Even if we do let go,

our love doesn’t need dressing up.

It doesn’t even need poems.

It doesn’t need glitter and flash and spark pop sizzle

but we still like those things, regardless.

Our love is the crooks of elbows.

Our love is 250 miles apart, is so close to the sea, is

a word that doesn’t feel big enough.

Our love is floral, is ******* boots, is seashells and lime-green goggles.

Swallow me whole,

shower me love,

our bodies may be brittle but we can still breathe,

can still sing,

can still dance in the kitchen,

can still have chocolate-chip-pancakes-lots-of-smiles-kinda mornings.

I am forever regretful that our brains have been unforgiving,

but I’ll try to never let go

and I’ll always know, your collarbone dip and soft hip and laughter laughter laughter

are the best things I’ve found in a while.

So dress me in lace,

color me porcelain,

cover me doily and southern sky and make me breakable.

I will be breakable for you.

I will be antique-shop yellowing whale bone corsets, I will be glass on the floor, I will be the floating door.  

And I’ll try

to never let go.

The day I let you in,

I explained to you how I am a mountain.

I did not say it like this,

but it is nonetheless true how my secrets are buried in the caves within me,

and it is true that many have ridden down the roads of my skin,

and it is true that I have been mined and I have been torn apart in search of something,

and it is true that I am still a mountain, unchanging and relentless.

The day I let you in, you told me you were the sea.

And see

how the love-like wind picks up your water,

takes it to me,

shakes and rattles down my tree-bones

and rock face.

See how the mud clears;

sea, how you have washed me.

See how the rain you’ve brought has forced me to weep,

a muddy colored wet that runs clear in days,

see how your hands have run, soft and dewy

over gravel rock and tree.

See how you have found the caves,

see how things are built within me.

See how I am a mountain,

sea, how you are love to me.

Mother

you didn’t warn me about the boys who would take my body and claim it as theirs.

Mother, did I not hear you when you told me about boys who would put their bones on my bones and tell me that they owned me?

Mother,

I must have missed it, must have turned my ear away

the day you told me about the darkness.

Mother,

I have found it.

Mother, years ago I found it. Found that gaping hole in the air that ***** you right in, takes all your light away, takes all your good away.

I found that still sea air, the doldrums,

found that place where nothing moves,

but only shifts endlessly,

rocking back and forth, reminding you of

your wet solitude.

Mother, I know you try to shut the world out. I have seen the way your eyes glaze over

lukewarm

the stacks of magazines in the hallway,

my entire childhood in your bedroom.

I have found my dollhouses in the garage, the animal cages,

the rust.

I found the bell to my bicycle, I found the streamers.

Mother, I have watched you watch me and see something other than yourself. Mother, I know that you see me. How I watch the waves of possession overtake this house.

How money has given us too much,

how we shook our pockets to fill the void,

how we filled the barn with boxes.

Mother, I have watched you buy more boxes.

You have shut away

so much, you have heard me beg you to cut your hair,

to get rid of the dead,

to stop burying things that aren’t.

Mother, stop buying.

Mother, start seeing.

Mother, how many books can you read before you realize that you should just

write your own?

Mother, I have asked you to let me live and you have kept me close. I have asked you the questions that I already know the answers to. Mother I have watched you waste this house, cut holes in the walls and move from bed to bed like a withering animal,

I have watched you stack your clothes and still buy more,

I have watched you carve paths in the mountains of this home.

I have let you let the kitchen mold. I have watched you let the sink fill with a musk and a stench, I have let you fall in your own dust.

Mother, I am sorry.

Mother, we didn’t ask each other the questions that needed answering, we didn’t sail this wind at all. We only ever shifted, rocked and swayed in this house, let the gutters collect the trees, let the wasps inhabit the rafters. Mother, watch me build a new house. I will not let anyone in, I will not let them see how bare it gets when you have to keep moving. When you let your sails go and need to make yourself lighter and you

throw yourself out of that black hole.

Mother, watch me watch you as I try to do more than I can.

Mother, sell your books. You’ve already read them. Mother, eat the food in the kitchen. Your body is wasting away and your hair grows long. Mother,

do you see the way I have let my hair collect itself? How I have stopped cutting it? Did you hear me when I said I will comb it out and slice it off?

Mother, feel this rain. Feel how it is filling this dry earth, how it buries itself in the cracks of the dead silt, how it breathes, easy and weightless.

Feel this rain. It will swallow the ground, it will raise the sea and your sails will soak and I want to push you away. Mother,

find yourself an anchor, but don’t use it so often.

Mother, we need to start asking each other questions.

Mother, sail.

There once lived a family of rats, caught up in wires and tubes and they probably thought they had it good until

the car started.

That car’s air conditioning smelled like death stench for weeks, until we

got it looked at.

Who knew we killed a family, who knew they ate their way under the hood,

who knew we killed a family and they reminded us of it for weeks.

——

My mother and father killed my dog, barely big enough to not be called a puppy anymore,

they ran over her,

as she slumbered in the tall weeds and grasses of a field.

——

We had a chicken named Thumper, his body grew big but his head never did,

and he teetered and tottered on ballerina pointed feet, and

the other roosters wanted to

eat him alive.

When we sacrificied him,

my parents plucked his back,

and they saw that his skin was a green-purple secret,

hidden by a humpback and so

many feathers.

——

Our third horse got caught in the river.

Big Mama got caught in Little River.

I guess it’s not surprising when big things die when they get caught in little things.

——

The coyotes got the rest of the chickens.

——

The rattlesnakes almost got the rest of the horses.

——

Most people don’t know that farm-fresh eggs are covered in blood.

——

We had two of the largest, ugliest geese.

They flew away.

——

The cat died under the hot tub,

we couldn’t find her for days.

——

The forest is always a graveyard,

is always hallowed ground,

is where we buried the animals.

Then they built a subdivision.

The first time I died, it wasn’t intentional and it was only in my head.

I keep dying, I keep staying alive, nothing is intentional.

They told me to put glitter on my scars,

to cut off my fingers and toes and feed them to the earth,

they told me to live in ways that forced people to look at me.

So I

cut my hair,

dyed it any color, made people look.

What happened was, they stared more at my knuckles, skin that spoke “STAY HERE”

and I knew that scared them.

Put glitter on your scars, they said. Put paint on your body, push ink up under your fingernails, tell the world you are alive in all the ways you can.

So I sang my life on city streetcorners, I screamed my life in fast-moving cars on the highway, I closed my eyes while I was driving straight and I am alive, alive, alive.

I keep dying though. Everyday I keep dying and it still feels fresh now, like a new bruise just barely bloomin’ under your skin or your coat. I keep screamin’ to keep the demons at bay, I keep writing to keep the mania movin’ and groovin’ to what life is now.

I keep killin’ in my head, I keep killin’ the demons, but sometimes they touch the back of my eyeballs so gentle, I cry so deep, I leak I leak I leak.

Put glitter on your scars, they said. I will keep trying. My home is a place in my heart that I haven’t found yet, my home is watercolors and ink and blood.

To the ones who have wondered, I am still alive. Some days I barely speak, but don’t worry because I am still so alive, I am still screaming to myself, I am still putting glitter on my scars, I am still writing life into my skin, I am still putting water and sun on my face. I am still curling my toes when I hear good songs. I am still wanting to run when the boys look at me. I know they want. I know I want something else, something you.

I have turned my bruises into landscapes, my fingers into dancing sprawling actions, my fists are still here, I swear. They still say “STAY HERE.”

My grandmother sends me a birthday card, all glitter

and for the child in me.

The cover shouts,

“Happy Birthday to a granddaughter who has a sparkling personality, good looks, and a great sense of humor!”

and my sister asks if she has seen me lately.

We laugh.

The only handwritten inscription within declares

“Carson fell again—had to go to hospital this time.”

Happy Birthday to me, with love and

the unintentional reminder that I’ve not yet reached an age where a simple slip could result in

broken hips

or worse.

I’ll send her a thank you card, detailing my ambition,

what I will do with the money,

and a big thank you.

I suppose the most secrets I keep from anybody,

I keep from her.

I figure grandmothers don’t need more stress, don’t need to worry about

the somewhat-problems of life from a girl who will always seem too young,

who will always be glitter and

a child within.

Today I thought of how

closely my hands resemble my grandmother’s,

and of how hers looked in the coffin.

At the funeral,

I was asked to take pictures for my uncle,

and I’m not going to say that it was my proudest moment

to witness the side-eye glances of black-clad neighbors

and still have to hear the click and see the flash

to forever-remember the floral arrangements

and the way my grandmother’s hands looked.

Why my uncle couldn’t operate

a disposable camera himself

was something I didn’t ask, and so

for hours I perched on ripped heels in a cemetary

clicking and flashing and thinking that

the obituary should have contained the footnote

that cemetaries are grass and pliable earth

so it’s best not to wear heels,

lest you sink in,

and join the best of them.

How strange to say I hardly
remember that month at all.
The diagnosis is
muddled.
It's funny to think I've been out of the hospital for two weeks,
and in it for two months, and that I've got a
bright-squeeky-new-and-shiny
diagnosis to take home with me, or two
or three.
And the psychiatrist says these things run in fours-run in packs-run together forever (maybe)
and ticks them off his fingers
1. Panic disorder
2. Eating disorder
3. Bipolar disorder
4. ADHD
and so, four numbers in, I wonder how many it takes to rack up a final total of
(how the hell are you still alive?)
and the answer being,
(I've tried both)
(I try to live in the middle now, it barely works, I am watching my mouth following my eyes not talking not breathing breathing too slow, meds on time, eat on time eat on time, ******* eat on time)
And I am okay.
I am okay, and that is ******* beautiful.
Every day taken hour by hour, nothing left to chance
(except housing, job, food, rent, contact with the outside world)
but ya know,
baby steps.

Child, the swing set
squeaking in the familiar way.
Father, in the familiar way,
swings me, pushes the chains, my back, my everything,
every time I was back he would whisper or coo,
animal noises, ghost haunting wafts,
the dog barking, the boos.

Swinging so strong the set jumps up from its
Georgia clay grounding,
that fear,
I will topple, or head diagonal in the stopping,
that fear.

When we moved,
the trampoline stayed.
The next house had one.
A new swing set, in front of a pond.
A croaking bullfrog-*******,
fake ducks gurgling under fake fountain.
The fear, falling in the water.

Dog once, now dead,
scampering across the thin layer
ice, the pond in winter,
me screaming me bawling, debating the worth of jumping and saving.
She crossed, me on my knees, both
alive
a prayer.
Saved.

When you wake up in the morning,

you crack all the bones in your body that you can.

You are not sure if this is a reminder of aliveness

in the way that old houses are revived when steps fall on creaky floorboards.

You write poems about yourself,

convinced that they will save you.

They will.

Cigarette, shower, breathe easy.

Deep and slow, like the coming of winter, like the ticking of a grandfather clock.

Remember that you had one,

and you left it behind.

Remember there are so many other things like this.

When you wake up in the morning,

so often you have to remind yourself

that today is a day worth living,

even if it is storming,

even if the clouds haven’t moved for days

or weeks

or years.

Today is a day worth living because there are so many things you have

yet to do,

like walk outside

or dream yourself a kite.

It is pouring rain now.

This, too, is another reason to stay alive.

Watch the drunken beauty of the overflowing earth

wait for you to join it

a long, long time from now.

A superglued mouth

(this isn’t a metaphor)

******* superglue

Today can be a good day
Most people are good
There is ice cream in the freezer
You have your entire life to do everything you want
You can join a folk band later
You can be the person you are and want to be
You can watch all the beautiful movies ever made
You can read all the best books
You can take hot bubble baths and drink tea
You can ferment and can and make jam for the rest of your life
One day, you will have the time and dedication for a successful garden
You will make an impact on the people that let you
You can take moments and choose to be positive
You can grow an herb garden
You can watch funny videos when you’re sad
You can make pottery and jewelry
You can knit and cross stitch and weave
You can remember all the good things and the bad things and remember that these things made you, you
It’s okay to not like the things you have to do. Sometimes you still have to do them, sometimes you don’t
You can go get coffee and dinner with your mother
You can make your entire life beautiful
Even the bad stuff can be beautiful too
You can write for the rest of your life
You can read for the rest of your life
You can learn, learn, learn
You can love and love more and love more and more and more
You can eat new things all the time
You can use nice pens in nice journals
You can be somebody that you’re proud of

Today she told me she made it through every

try out round for

America’s Next Top Model and when

she went home to tell her girlfriend that she made it on the show,

she got her face beat in so bad, Miss Jay didn’t even

recognize her the next day.

She wasn’t on the show.

——

Today is roses,

wilted petals,

flowers from I-don’t-know-where

that have landed in our bathroom,

have sunk themselves in an empty bottle of ***,

two handles on the side,

the better to smell them with.

——

Today I am covered in a museum collection of

bug bites and lumps and

scratches and bruises

and leg rashes

and I don’t know where anything has come from,

not even

me.

——

Today he asked me how the poetry is coming.

I said it is slow.

——

Today I wanted to kiss a boy because it was his birthday,

and I don’t think he’s ever kissed a girl before,

and I think he should

if he wants to

on his birthday.

——

Maybe I will tomorrow.

——

Today has barely begun, is three hours in

was 6 minutes too late to buy

gas station beer

but we bought two cigarillos

and on the drive back,

talked to three kids who had just seen a UFO.

I missed it.

——

Today he threw a tomato at my face,

and it slid off and landed on the floor with a splat as I screamed.

There were customers.

——

Today I had to explain why I keep

leaving people.

I have to be alone, I said.

——

Today I dressed for myself.

Thank God.

——

Today I listened to country music and covered my ears

because they hurt but also it hurt

to not listen to it with my Dad in the truck, driving

anywhere

but today I picked a boy up and taught him how to swing me around

and he picked me up and spun me in his arms and

I think that’s how you do country.

——

Today my cis, male, white, Mormon, wait-till-marriage-to-have-*** English teacher

talked about **** shaming

and the patriarchy

and he gets it

and thank God.

——

She is auditioning to model, again.

There is no one to take her face away.

A man smears his face on the window that I live behind

and I have tried to clean it before

and I have tried to keep it that way.

He oils it up and gropes for entry,

he wants in this house.

A man smears his face on the window that I live behind,

he asks when I started being a *****,

when I stopped letting people in.

I tell him I go out and get the mail every single day

but that doesn’t mean I need a man to force sins upon me

and then ask me why I haven’t washed them away.

My body, a ceramic vessel.
Yours, a bruised one, but not a fixer-upper, never. Already proud. Already
ready.
Your body a cave.
Your body a permafrost-stuck-mammoth,
all things worth exploring,
but I'll admit I am not interested in
having *** with the prehistoric, or those with tusks,
just
you.
My body, weak. Weak to heat, weak to panic, weak to restoration even.
My body a liar.
My body a liar.
My body a liar.
Scared fool, scarred easily, but bruise-lovin', achin for pain and then collapsing in it,
so masochistic, so ready to be weak.
Because the scarred know how easily to scar again.
Because my body a memory, my body a collection of organs, of dark organs, of working organs.
Because our bodies ready to scar again,
because our bodies know what it's like,
because our bodies know
it's worth it to go.

The thing is

I am made up of terrible jokes,

some I make up on my own

others were forced upon me in the cruel kinds of ways

that happen to everybody.

I still feel like I am starting over,

I still feel like every day should be a new life that I could be living,

but I sit with my colors

and I do not use them.

If only fate were so kind as to ring the doorbell,

if only those red threads of what some call destiny or at least something close

weren’t also the kind that you can trip over, bruise your knee over,

find yourself in a collapse over.

——

I am trying.

I say this everyday.

I am trying.

Trying to write,
only feeling past ones filter through,
wondering if anything new sits under my tongue, crawls behind my ears,
shelters.

Shelters.

Yes, I think I shelter the wounded.

I love saving people, figure this is
the only way they could love me,
    as if their love for me was worth their life.

I have saved a lot,
and it flips as well.
    The one, my only for a year,
she sent me to the hospital when I was threatening to burst, to sicken the knife, to split the tongue.
I'll get over it.

Split my chest, sent me reeling, sent me screaming on the floor
as a white-blind result of affairs that are proven, saved in photographic form.

They are forgiven,
and I am free.

To be all the better
for you and me,
and I will try

for this.
Everything we said
to be all the better.

For once, there is no anger here. Hardly resentment, either
but I'll admit it did throw me for a loop.

The bar at 2 in the morning,
the grasping,
the car.

The bed 2 weeks later,
still I am in it.

You leave at the end of the month, but
this isn't a military decision,
it is only for you
to leave
for you.
And I am proud of that,
and of you.

When we threw the pumpkins out,
old rotting
     mold gourds
we let them sink into the ground.
We forgot.

The next year, vines shot out
pumpkins shouted out
and we could never forget again.

They come every year,
along with the burning of leaves
and the blindness of a dog
who sees less
and less.

I wonder about forgetting.
I worry about forgetting.
My memory is being tossed like
seeds to the wind,
I'm hoping the planting and the sowing will birth
what I have forgotten.
The intention was invisible,
the darkness was audible.

I'm sorry to myself.
I've forgotten everything else.

For the day to wake at dawn--
and a million losses, none
Only rise, rise, rise
like grain, like spring, like the cup to the lips
that morning.

And to say you do not love--
don't.
Wake, rise, cup to the lips,
step small.

Rise, rise, rise.

I figure I’ll find out more about myself

the more I break

up myself

into little tiny pieces.

I figure my mother might find herself after she’s cleaned up the house,

but hoarders can only do so much,

and she sought salvation with crystals and books and hiding away our pasts in boxes and boxes that are stacked from floor to ceiling.

I figure my dad has found himself; he used to

eat lunch alone in his car at work,

just so people would stop bothering him and he learned how to fly

but he hasn’t flown away

and I don’t think he ever will.

Annie is simple. Loves to laugh and

wants a white picket fence and all the

easy stuff and I am just

the stubborn kid who still pushes her nose up on car windows and

leaves marks of her face to see later,

the girl who my mother says will make

the worst mother and the girl who mother says

is too driven for her own good.

They know about the every-night

nightmares and the way I make my fingers bleed when I’m bored.

Dad wants me to write and open a restaurant,

I think he knows the most though

he says the least and gets

drunk the most

and loves killin’ those

**** Zombies

or what-have-you.

I figure I’m just some sort of

****** up rich white kid

with too much time on her hands

to let herself feel happy,

because it’s far far easier

to just drift and sink in

something deeper and worse.

One time my teacher told us

to write a poem about anything

but not about our “boring teenage ****.”

This is the boring teenage **** poem I never got to write,

this is

boring teenage ****

but I’m sorry,

it’s all I’ve got on

a Tuesday

or actually it’s Friday and I’m not very good with

days or

even months and the numbers are getting even worse.

And it’s almost 2 AM so

this is what the fourth in a family writes when

there’s something stuck in her throat

that she can’t quite scream out.

Teacher,

here’s your

“boring teenage poem.”

Eat it.

When they ate me alive,

I asked them to go slow.

Asked them to please relish my pain,

**** my marrow as if I was served at at the finest restaurant

where waiters speak in hushed voices and

the lights are dim and

the menu is fixed, is twelve courses long,

is exactly what you want.

I asked them to go slow.

I asked them to read my palms to tell me how long I had to live,

I asked them to forgive me,

to let me forgive others,

to tell the girl from high school who faked a pregnancy in front of the entire school and me,

her best friend,

tell her that she can be safe in her own head,

and it takes time,

and no one is going to eat her alive.

I asked them to renounce my baptism,

to tell my pastor I only wanted to dip in that warm water and feel all the attention on me.

I was seven,

it was the same year as 9/11.

I knew the Bible,

but can you tell them I just wanted to get in the bathtub, to float?

Maybe I wanted to be saved,

but now savor this instead,

this

subverting honesty,

these verses of

plain, plain

muscle vein ligament stretch, skin collagen fat scars freckles bones bones bones,

savor this.

I am as human as I will ever be,

and I’ve got stories that can make you whistle,

can make you curl your toes,

can make your ears practically salivate at the thought.

Can you wait?

Savor me, take small parts of me,

but as you’re eating me alive

please remember that I am a bathtub

and a book

and I’m barely written or read and I need something like

time to write myself finished.

I’m not done yet.

This is a plea.

For years I’ve had marbles tucked in my mouth,

Different colored weights that pulled on my glands, on secret saliva.

For years I’ve had marbles in my mouth and I forgot to spit them out or hide them away so I let them become permanent placements in my always-cavities; soon they even slipped so easy into my bloodstream.

The black ones made me say yes too often.

The reds made me want to bleed.

The blues made me cry, obviously. They stood guard on my tear ducts, deciding when and how to show emotion. They didn’t let me cry that night. They didn’t let me cry for months. Now I am crying almost everyday, and I am shooting those blue marbles straight to the moon; I’ve had it with avoiding emotion every day of my life.

The yellows made me want to forgive you, made me want to **** on sunshine, made me want to clamber into your mother’s arms, let her know that it wasn’t your fault. The yellows are *******.

The cat eyes have me avoiding eyes with every man on the street, so sure they will spit out words that they expect me to lap up like milk with an easy grin, tail twitching for attention. The cat eyes have me distrustful, have me always knowing it could happen again.

The rainbows loosened my tongue, had me admit secret sexualities, let me march in parades and kiss girls, had me falling over myself tripping into love.

I’m not sure who this poem is for anymore, or what it’s even about. The doctors say I have the cleanest bloodwork they’ve seen in a while, I don’t ask them about the marbles. They refer to some of them as disordered.

I’m not sure if they’re marbles anymore, I think they’re just me,

and I’m sorry I’m getting off-track, the marble in my hand right now is glitter and sparkle and confusion and I’m trying so hard to stay put.

Give me the orange ones, the fire, ones that looks like Mars

or Jupiter.

Give me two moons, or maybe sixty-six.

Give me a giant ladder.

This is about running away.

This is about playing with your marbles

and learning everything about them

and staying put.

This morning I was all black daffodils and headless mannequins,

the hours turned into twisted clouds that always look like rain,

this morning I was ripped white duvets, spindle bookcases,

thick laminate book covers stolen from library stacks.

Tonight I am a yawning cat stretch, a heart one beat off,

a tiny jar of salt from leftover tears.

I shoved my face into a towel today, let out one sob and

went about my day.

(I can’t even find the effort to cry.)

Tonight I am a half-deflated balloon, forgotten in the corner of a room,

I am the sun hiding on the other side of the world,

I am a smile just waiting to burst,

I am sore muscle ripped sweatshirt blanket cocoon.

This morning I was an unopened window and tonight I am

blinds hiding the night.

Do not love her.

Love her.

Shake the world with your feet,

cup butterflies in your hands,

let them go.

I was young when my bike went flying without me down a hill and I,

so cleverly, pulled my body to the side and flew off into the grass of a

neighbor’s yard

and fetched the bike soon after.

I think I know how to jump ship.

I think I don’t know how to say “no” too well.

I think you found me,

though I am hiding, deep in a body, in a person.

I am like cancer, riddled and bone wasted and envious and intruding.

I am like the dove.

You capture me to let me go.

Wear the sweater.

Unravel it as you walk, write your secrets on the threads, let them trail behind you

leave your life in a one-line riddle,

the answer only being

“it was you.

it was you.”

Let it go.

Do not follow your way back to the beginning,

to the genesis of that *******,

to the start.

Let it go.

Your nails grow too fast.

You cut yourself with them,

find bruises on your body.

How pleasant,

reminders of how the body lives its own life,

regardless of you,

without.

Without you I am fetal.

Without you I am hunched, old.

Within you I am a haloed angel,

soul carrying soul carrying soul.