I was that girl
a girl no one wanted
no one ever asked on a date
or was invited ever invited to the party

But I never minded
I kept to myself
never trying to fit in
because I knew I never would

I lived in my own little world
I didn't care what others thought
I was who I was and that was it
Until one day

Suddenly everything changed,
when he walked in.

a month ago, i got in a car accident that totaled my car.
i was making a left turn at a stoplight
and the driver of an suv was paying no attention to her red light.
she barreled into the front end of my car at full speed before i even saw her coming,
and then everything was shattered glass and metal colliding and screeching tires
and suddenly my airbags were puffed out like sinister clouds and my engine sounded like a death rattle.
when i opened the door to get out, the hinges grated like a scream.

but i wasn’t hurt.
i cried for six hours that day but i went to school the next one.
everything was fine.

it's just that since then, everything in my life resembles a car crash.

i smelled burning for weeks.
i still blink and see spiderweb patterns of broken glass.
i cried for two hours when i realized i lost the cd i made
just so i could listen to my favorite songs in the car.
when i hear the song that was playing, i have to turn it off.

my father picked up the shrapnel still on the street a week later
and gave me my charred, crumpled, unreadable gravestone of a front license plate.
he straightened it out and put it on my new car when we got it.

i broke up with my boyfriend three weeks ago
and as i left i heard sirens from inside his house.
the day after that, i was talking to another boy
and his promises sounded like ambulances with no paramedics on board.

last week there was a fatal car accident half a mile from my house
and i couldn't breathe for the rest of the day after i heard.

i have to turn left at the stoplight where my own accident happened every day
and when i turn i clench my fists around the steering wheel
like it wants to tear itself out of my hands and maybe it does.

i still check left and right and left and right during turns
even when someone else is driving.

call all of this a reaction to trauma,
but honestly i don't know what's wrong with me.

all i know is i cried with frustration, immature, pathetic,
when my mother and my father couldn't find a new car.
all i know is i grieved for my ford focus
like it was my only friend in the world.
all i know is i keep talking about this accident
even though i’m even getting annoyed by myself
and my fingers on the keyboard sound just like the policeman's as he wrote up the report
as i perched on a plastic backseat, shaking, face covered with tear tracks,
waiting, alone, for my father to arrive so i didn't have to be an adult,
waiting, alone, for an explanation of why this happened to me.

all i know is everything in my life resembles a car crash,
and there are sirens in the distance,
and i'm still waiting for the smoke to clear.

I used to know a girl with eyes like sunbeams.
Bright, but intense, hard to look at.

Maybe that's why her gaze was always cast down,
   her eyes like headlights just brightening things
   directly in front of her.

She was Greek fire. I thought she would never burn out.
   When she looked at people she lit them up
   like they had always had a brightness like hers inside them.

After a while, I noticed her eyes were dimming.
   She looked like a dying star, and I was just waiting
   for her to finally fall to Earth.

One time, I told her I was Hercules.
Said I'd do whatever it took to lift her chin.

She looked up at me and her eyes were just a pinprick.
It was like she was in a dark room with a candle
   and a syringe full of liquid sun.
She said there was only one way
   to light up that whole big dark room.

I said Honey, why are you looking for a needle
   when you've got the whole haystack
   right there to set fire to?
And my voice echoed off the wooden floor.

But just then the candle went out.
And then all there was, was a pinprick of light
   and a lost girl standing in the shadows.

I guess she's still looking.

When I fall asleep my eyes meet yours.

Your trembling hands
are steady for me

In seventh grade I watched my friend bleed out
Holding what was left of his leg, he whispered, "This isn't good."
They say that the human body contains eight pints of blood
I counted nine.

When you were born, no one knew.
No one knew how intense the galaxy inside of you was.
How each star would illuminate your eyes,
and how you would illuminate mine.

In tenth grade,
my dad didn't talk to me for three months.
I didn't know who I was for three months.
My light became darkness as his love became emptiness.
Father, love me the way I love you. I pretend not to,
please be the same way as me.

Your heart grew faster than my hands, brother.
I hope someone loves you more than I.
For I am what you are, everything without and within,
forever and without the night.

Mother,
do you feel what I feel? Do you see what I see?
Am I what you imagined, more or less?
Do my words matter? Does my heartbeat pound alone?
Do you love me?

You are what illuminates my eyes, Queen Anne's Lace.
With or without, from your eyes to mine,
silence with noise, electricity moves throughout
yet I am calm. You are what I know,
and all that should be known is that
you deserve to be happy.

In twelfth grade my father tried to stab me.
If he was successful, it wouldn't have been the first time
one of his actions got past the surface level.

It's not your fault, burning rainbow on the water.
Adaptation without reclamation I find you in my translation
as hurt yet elation. Mother.

My kaleidoscope,
so soon,
mirroring colors and shape.
Am I looking at myself?

I don't care if you don't comprehend, the words I say or how I end.
And if you don't understand the words that pass,
your eyes, like your heart, are transparent glass.
Taste throughout, with blood mixed in, the way I beat has always been
to know, to show, to allow what I see now to be seen,
may I know what I let go is what I'll always mean.
Thunderbolts from your mouth, good luck to me because I am shocked.
There is no lock. There is no lock. There is no lock.

I live throughout different years, with evolving eyes without resolving fears.
I've been afraid. I've been lost.
Kaleidoscope.
No longer, no more.  
My heart is an open door.

Blood stained pants.
Hands without.
With every word,
every shout.

There is a line I cross across myself and beside myself I lay broken
With every sigh there is goodbye and I reside by words I've never spoken
I need help
Staying strong has never felt so wrong. Staying strong has never felt so wrong.
           Staying strong has never felt so wrong.
Staying strong has never felt so ******* wrong.
                                                                ­Staying strong has never felt so

**** me.
******* **** me.
Give me your lips and thrill me.
Perk up your shoulders as I lay there and smolder
thrill me.

Whoops, there I said it and if I feel it then I must really mean it
and if I mean it, then I must really want it
and if I want it then I'll eat fire.
And duh-duh-duh he's going to eat fire, ladies and gentleman.
Boys and girls,
there are seven wonders of the world
and you'll never see them, let alone be them.

You ******* *******
I trusted you
I was just a child

"I'm scared."

You touched me in ways that you thought would bring satisfaction
but all you created was destruction

"You do it or you go to hell. It's in the bible."

Just because you corrupted my body
doesn't mean that you corrupted my being.
And you will never know who I am
just because of my body.
I have heaven inside of me
and oceans so deep in my heart
that I can drown others with my love.

I am not what the TV says I am
I am not what a textbook says I am
I am not my grades
I am not the flames that have burnt me

I am love
I am hope
I am the fingers brushing her face
I am courage
I am ambition
I am fighting to fix everything
while you lay dead and broken under dirt that is above you.
Above you.
Above you.
Above you. Above you. Above you. Above you. Above you.

This is the one time I will not be weak.

If I can overcome this then I can overcome anything at all
and if I can't
then forever I'll fall.

Up until my insomnia meets me
I lied when I said I forgot
I was scared what you'd think
If I said that  I love you a lot

People have only cared for minutes
Leaving me to care for days
When I look at you all I can think
Is please don't go away

I can see me in your eyes
I dream of dreaming with you
I can trace your scars with mine
My thoughts are bleeding through:

My Talia, I know what it's like to not be seen;
what it's like to be alone in a crowded room.
For you, my star, I want you to know:
that no one shines as bright as you.

I can taste you moving on my skin.
My gasp is air you sustain.
hand in hand, under an umbrella
with you, I am safe.

i want to cut myself
open, and pour out every
word i thought about
telling you but never did

and stitch myself
up without anyone's help,
and clean away everything
i have depended on to fill
empty spaces, and replace it
with something new

i want to paint over my
wounds so that i don't have
to be reminded of what
i went through to get here

i want to be beautiful without
you, i want to be courageous

I could write entire novels
slowly down your body
my lips pretend to be a pencil
and your spine, my only hobby
gripping tightly to your chest
as if your bones are now my desk space
carving letters of my longing
down your arms
my lungs are desperate
for the right to be your air
while my breath endures this chest ache
forgetting what a life outside
is like
your ribs become my breakfast
your body is a mountain
I continually climb
and your neck becomes a bite of hope
that haunts me all the time
your skin is like an ocean
your salt becomes my wine
you build with your two legs
a space for me to live inside
and I study what you're made of
I compare you to the sky
like the moon you glow on top of me
like the stars you blow my mind