There will come a day
When you think of me
And think about what was us
And you'll think,
"I sure dodged a bullet"
The day you think that,
Is the day I put one
Through my brain

there is
something

about holding
hands

two palms whispering
secrets

held as

one

singing,

I f e e l.
I f e e l.

I feel for
you.

I don't miss you

I miss the smell of your skin
I miss your cold hands brushing against my back
I miss the way you stared at me in wonder

I miss the ***-grabbing, lip-biting, back-scratching in all it's glory
I miss the late night phone calls and early morning texts
I miss the hours spent aimlessly daydreaming about you

But no, I don't miss *you

nobody warns you about the first boy who tells you he wants to marry you.

nobody warns you about the tangible shift in the universe when he parts his lips to smile.

nobody warns you about the poetry he'll write you or how your knees will weaken or the melancholy hidden between the layers of his laughter.

nobody warns you that miles will morph into lightyears and you will curse the ocean for being the only thing that keeps his fingers from resting between yours.

nobody warns you about the day his sweater doesn't smell like him anymore.

nobody warns you that human hands are incapable of holding a person together.

nobody warns you that sometimes love is not enough, no matter how much you wish it was.

nobody warns you about the crippling nostalgia that renders you breathless.

nobody warns you about the nights when silence screams for your blood.

nobody warns you about the crater that forms in your chest in the middle of the night when he doesn't answer.

nobody warns you about how it's going to feel when he tells you he's in love with someone else.

nobody warns you that forever is a lie.

- m.f.

1.  Sit down and cry. Cry until you have no more tears and don’t even remember the reason for your sadness. Realize that nothing, not even misery, is permanent.

2. Close your eyes and imagine your dream home. Don’t skimp on anything, not even the tiniest details like the doorknob or the lampshade pattern. Keep it always so that whenever you are somewhere heartless and cruel, you have a retreat.

3. Discover a song you love. Listen to it as loud as possible, listen to it as softly as possible. Listen to it backwards, forewords, sideways, and upside down. Extract from it all the truth and magic you can until you’re sick of it. Repeat.

4. Try and realize who your real friends are. Not the ones who will smile at your jokes and laugh at their own, but the ones who will walk with you even in the darkest of nights and never have to reassure you that they’re there.

5. Cut your hair. Cut it as short as you can without making your mother cry. Recognize that when someone says they don’t like it, what they’re really saying is that your appearance is for their pleasure. Know that it is not.

6. Choose a day just to watch. Watch the wind whispering to the trees, the grass reaching for the sky, the clouds hanging on by a thread. Make eye-contact with the moon and see that everything is watching you back. They’re rooting for you.

7. Learn how to make your favorite food. Learn how to make it exactly like your mother does. And every time you taste those familiar flavors, know that home is wherever you are.

8. Draw yourself. Don’t look in a mirror while you do this, draw yourself as you truly think you are. When you’re finished, take a photo of yourself. Compare the two. Realize that how you perceive you and how the world sees you will always be different.

I’m tired I’m tired of being so tired and so lazy and so dull and such a large mess of drip drip insomnia. No chance no chance I’ll get up? My body works for no one my mind frames itself day after day as the villain but will I ever be caught? Hit em right between the eyes hurt me crush me I need to feel it’s all so dull it’s all so boring help help help Christ almighty I’ve been thirsty I’m forever fat and ugly dull and smoggy fighting back and forth with the lies I’ve been wearing, disguise I’ve been blurring. Lightning bolt shoot me down out of the sky the sky I’m polluting nothing more to say my eyes are choked.

Jobs are useless. We are useless. Life is useless. Art is hard. Art is pointless. I feel I feel I feeel I feel nothing I try I try I try there’s nothing I blur I blur I blur I see nothing I fight I fight I fight for nothing. Bright future brute natures cracked backs make good snacks try too hard try so hard not enough not enough where’s the childhood? I’m a child still I’m a child still why the *** why the drugs why the painful throbbing in my head it’s constant consistent never misses a beat no no I try to make it far away with lace and *** and haleyhaleyhaleybaby cmoooon reality is a dream a lie told to you by the A team the ones who know who can make you last with drip drip drip into your pores your veins your poor veins your mind alright? mind your mind and mind your soul for nothing is real when chances are fleeting and time is a flat circle where you relive you relive over and over would you want to relive today? because you’re going to.

Fight the urge to resist to persist to exist to resist I need to find the new people the blue people the better people to lift me up out of my self pity sleep in my overdose chair made of silver and bones. Low self esteem low self esteem worthy of anything besides their life dream. Play with me so I know you aren’t asleep play with me so I know you aren’t asleep why do you want to hurt me why do you want to love me is this abuse or am I just happy we go out and you reject me I’m so low but so high high as the sky can’t touch the sky my fingerprints will leave a mark that’s too much, chocolate covered hands in my saccharine shell pulse pulse pulse little embryo crack your little sugar skull on this plaster world you’ve created berated manifested in this concrete overdrive over overdrawn and overdose stop telling me your story stop trying to change my life my door is not open close it close it keep it closed I’d lock it but then I can’t get out I’m a sucker and self esteem is a lie no one has it no one has it except for you and everyone like you we’re all alike, aren’t we? Same hair same eyes same heart same lies sleep with me sleep with me I’m really not a sad person but won’t you sleep on me and step on me where is my spine oh in a jar.

when they say that they're
no good for you
b e l i e v e  t h e m.

All roads lead to the hospital…
To the room of your own conception,


Where you were pulled into the world by
unknown hands.

You claim it is your artistic style that makes us.
That positions the words on this page,
You say mine is too broken



Up.


All roads meet in your bedroom,
With abandoned bottles and shoes, the smell of old coffee filters,


You claim you are at odds with your creator,
With your creation.

And I am the muse who later came to **** you.

I am the voice you sought for reason

But silenced like a sedative.


All roads split at the old school building with memories
And hung up black and white photos with no pattern or placement with the false claim of being an instillation.


You are forever in those photos, in my mind, finger printed by your existence.

I  was sleeping on the floor, where you consummated your first relationship, and I wondered how these moments all get intertwined.

Me, your first real love, laying on top of your first time, with someone you used for a warm body to fill the void
That you created
For yourself.
All roads end with an unclean floor.

I'll write and say same words I've said
     ten thousand times before
Until I don't believe
     that I believe them anymore
Because riding on this carousel
means spinning one's wheels
into moist ground
     thought I had some traction
     but it seems I thought too soon--

So I am off of the rails
Off the wagon. Off to nowhere.
'Cuz it's, "Onward, lads,
to one more night spent
covering ground's familiar footsteps
and sheeting snowy sidewalks
in the dollars we don't have."

And we'll lay 'em kinda thick
     press our prints in Presidents
pro bono comes advice
from the corners we can't heed,
but por argento comes the cure
we choose to **** our heads with

I'll pick a place, polish my boots
     get far as my front steps
where I'll sit until the summer rolls around
     and sweat rolls down in sheets

Short sheeted best hopes,
shortened thank-you notes
and lists of ****** quotes
lay around and resonate
on floors and facebooks,
tabletops
in summertime,
          when it rolls around

But, now, it's winter
and we're all 364 1/4 resolutions older
     --at 33 revolutions per minute,
     and 16 ounces at a time,
     we can almost cope.

Now, it's winter and the sheets are
          still too warm

Now, it's winter and we sheet the
          snowy sidewalks
in Presidential faces
in the dollars we don't have
and the cure we **** our heads with
keeps us safely insane
'Cuz in a world built by psychopaths,
the sane don't always last.
And, if I'm the last one out?

I'll sing a song and **** the lights before I go.