Spy Kids (the original)
A 5 dollar matinee with your mom
A box of Bunch A Crunch
Or a plastic sack of
Dip N Dots

Ninja Turtle walkie talkies
Flare denim cargo pants
Bobby Jack zip up hoodies
With blue Fla-Vor-Ice stains
And hide and seek

Now That’s What I Call Music
Volume 17
Playing from a 10in x 10in
Silver box TV
And high frequency noise
To accompany
Akon’s latest bass line

A razor scooter
The foot powered kind
When the Preacher’s Daughter
Has a shiny blue one with a motor

Weeping to Secondhand Serenade
Because your mom won’t let you have
A Wii
And your crush checked “no” on the
Note you gave them last week

Detention after pre algebra
From shooting a girl two seats over
At “close range”
With a hornet
And she was unfamiliar with the school wide
NO SNITCHIN’
policy

The words
Beastly
And epic
Used to describe what your
8th grade field trip is gonna be like

A phone call from your best friend
About finally finding Ben Franklin
In Tony Hawk’s Underground 2

Now
The OK symbol is your most used emoji
There are too many guys with long hair
And beards
White girls all have a weird obsession
With house plants
We’re all at least 50 thousand dollars  in debt
And I think we all
Just really hope Donald Trump
Isn’t our next president

I was born with a spine curved
into punctuation to end all of the questions
I have so much trouble answering

I was given my father’s
rough hands and big knuckles
I use to them hold myself together

I’ve got my mother’s wit
sarcastic, take no ****, I’ll
use it to protect myself from
really feeling anything

I have my grandmother’s heart
bare feet, a strong laugh, and the eternal
desire to make sure that everything
turns out ok, but
I can never quite find my voice like she can.

See I’m always talking
but I’m never Speaking.

My tongue is ****** Doo
when the rug’s pulled away
can’t get anywhere, scared shitless, but
****** if he isn’t trying.

My knees are stained lavender
From falling for people
far too easily

My eyelids are heavy
from sleepless nights spent
counting the reasons I don’t deserve
to get up in the morning
But

My bones are strong
sturdy under my skin
re-grown to stone
from all of the falls

My stomach is full of
candy and grape soda
that’s not a metaphor
that’s just true right now

If there is one thing
I have grown myself
independently
it’s that I am honest.

I am honest
and I am tired
This is the end of my poem.

I drive past a sign every day that reads
DRUG FREE SCHOOL ZONE
And every day I think about how that sign
Is dumb
Because what drug user would stop
Just because that sign told them to
Drugs are illegal anyway isn’t
Every zone supposed to be
DRUG FREE
What a stupid sign

Every day I pull into your driveway
And I look at that telephone pole that
Everyone backs into and I think about
How you are not dumb
But how so many people treat you like you are
Your brain works like a
Beautiful ball of thought yarn that
spins super cool knitted thought scarves
and you never lost your
child mind

Please remember that they
Are not better than you
That your mind weighs no
Less than anyone else’s
That your nicotine fingers are just
As worthy of a handshake
Please know that you are good enough
Know that you are not a stupid sign and
DRUG FREE SCHOOL ZONE
To be frank,
Sounds like a really bad time.

I stole a traffic cone last summer
it sits in my bedroom next to
a mason jar with 25 dollars
worth of change in it
more or less
and a hundred dollar bottle
of perfume

I own 8 vintage cameras
and only 3 of them work

I woke up yesterday at
12:45pm
and I ate 6 girl scout cookies
for breakfast

the windowsill next to my bed
holds a candle that I will probably
never burn
a book that I haven’t finished
a half empty box of condoms
and a roll of electrical tape
because all of my chargers are
broken

today I fried chicken in a pan
and I ate it with noodles
and canned alfredo sauce
and I felt accomplished

today my sister called me
to ask what she should wear
on a date where a man
cooks her dinner at his apartment
I told her to wear jeans a blouse
but I don’t know what
one wears in that situation
because I’ve never been
in that situation
and then I hung up and
watched 2 more hours of netflix
alone

tomorrow I will call my mother
while I walk back to my car
from poetry class
even though I don’t have any
news to tell her
and when I hang up I will wonder
if she notices that I call her
every Monday and Wednesday
around 10:30am

tomorrow at 3 o clock
my phone will remind me to
take my medicine
and I will take 75mg
of Effexor and I will
drink a full glass of water
because I am afraid of getting a pill
stuck in my esophagus

tomorrow night I will lay in bed
and I will have a brief anxiety attack
about getting older
and then I will fall asleep
and have scary dreams about more insignificant things

I.

on december thirty first
two thousand and fifteen
at nine thirty two in the morning
I stopped breathing

the devil dug his cold claws
through the tender skin
of my abdomen and he wrenched

he looked me in the eyes
and he smiled
and I died
at least I wished I had

so many nights
your name floated through my mind
and I couldn’t find why

but on new years eve
two thousand fifteen
everything suddenly
made sense to me

call connor
if only to say goodbye
tell the boy you’re thankful for his time

II.

we talked about you
for all of january
about your smile and your pictures
and I was fifteen again

fifteen and sitting across
a big green table
drinking a yoohoo
and looking at you

and wondering if your lips
were as soft as your hands
and if I’d ever get to know
yours like the back of mine

i’m nineteen again

nineteen and standing across
a room full of people
holding myself together
and looking at you

and wondering if
after all of this
your hands were still
as soft as I remembered

i don't really know how to say this.
but i really want to sleep with you.
sleep with you like wait until you least expect it
and kiss you like a gunshot
quick but everlasting
i want to wrap my legs around you
and learn every inch of you in that way that i've wanted to
for so log
i want to tangle my fingers in your hair
and breathe kisses down your neck
i want to watch you come undone
and feel your heart beat return to normal

and i don't really know how to say this
but i really want to sleep with you.
sleep with you like run up the stairs
and flop down on your bed
i want to lay my head on your chest
and let a wave of sleep crash over us
until i wake up with your arms around me
and your raspy voice in my ear

so i don't really know how to say this,
but i really want to sleep with you.
i don't love you or anything
but i really want to sleep with you.

my most recent bad decision
was to let even a day go by without telling you
that you're my everything
that i hang on every word you say and
i resent every second that you make my heart
beat faster than it should
because your laughter rings in my ears like the
morning after a rock concert
and every time i hear it i can't help the flutter in my chest

my most recent bad decision
is placing sunsets in your smile and
the ocean in your eyes when
i have no right to have put them there
when you have no right to have coaxed me to
even if you didn't mean to

and my most recent bad decision
was writing you into poems that make you out
to be a golden hearted glory
when the true story is a bit more gory
see the sunsets in your smile
are burning holes in my chest with a magnifying glass
and the oceans in your eyes
have been known to drown girls like me

so i'll rip up these words and i'll swallow them down
and pretend that you never happened
that i never saw the sunsets and i never saw the ocean
and i never
dreamt of lying next to you
and watching your chest rise and fall with the tide but
my most recent bad decision
is getting lost between love and hate
between friend and more
when you're sat across from me
talking about something
for at least ten minutes now
and instead of listening,
i've been writing all this down.