I got this job because I was seventeen
Available everyday at three
In debt with a man after I went clean
My boss at the time was thirty six with a goatee
Five dollars an hour plus tip, you see
It was fine for me.

I met the others standing by the kitchen line
All of them with the same look in their eye
Lying to family and friends saying, financially, their fine
Getting nothing on a tip and never knowing why
Yet they return the next day to serve white wine

Looking around I see all of us wanted more
But I’m in debt and you have to pay the rent
Do it all in one day and go home to a son that’s four
Under the thumb of an old vice president

The roof over the kitchen is about to cave in
And we watch with silent eyes
Because our uniforms are being held with safety pins
Promised new ones but Corporate lies

And when the bubble in the ceiling pops
We’ll be by the dumpsters flicking cigarettes on the road
While the greedy pigs come in drawing lots
Waiting for the gas stove to explode

Paid vacation sounds lovely
Been here every week for the past year
Sometimes I’m called to  come in early
Pick up the broken glass from lunch rush beer

The people come in
Angry as they usually are
Now the glares don’t even touch my skin
It makes me laugh how many nasty people sit at the bar
The high-class families who come in for din

It’s been eight hours and six years
Since we started our shift
Staying here for three more is the biggest fear
But we’re already ******
We’ve been here for long we know this career

What else am I supposed to know
Other than how to make dough

It’s been a long night
You can see it in the height
Of cigarette buts by the dumpster
Where we can freely talk about the customer

It’s a busy life
Feels like we’re running out of time
To get out and ignore the strife
But there are times when the tips make us feel sublime

And we can buy a warm meal
Cause maybe it will heal
These aching muscles
That come from a constant hustle

Don’t you see why they say
At the end of the day
We need an ashtray.

It was easier to surrender to the pain
than take the steps to where I needed to be.

It was easier to forget how sad I was,
angry,
disgusted,
so I swallowed my feelings with lemon juice and salt
and the bitterness burned them away.

A year has passed and now I feel nothing.
There is no positive side,
there is no negative side,  
because I can't put labels on things I can't feel.

Is this healing?
If it is, when do I get to laugh again?
And if it isn't
how do I start?

My stomach hurts with this conformity
as I'm not really me but a shadow of everyone else.
Playing piano the same way as the pianist;
professionalism guides me to imitation.

I've reached the point where these veins are thick
with someone else's warm blood and now I am sick.
There is an indentation of a wedding band on my finger
though I have never been married
my skin is anticipating the weight it will leave on me.

My womb is ready for five caucasian boys
that all play sports and **** women
a large dog we play fetch with to ignore
the rising temperatures and death in the poles.
Backyard barbeque smoke blends with the pollution
and we laugh and get drunk with the neighbors.
When they leave, my husband and I fight and
he hits me in a drunken rage.

Though in the morning we will wake to a foggy suburb
and drive to the chapel to hold hands in our Sunday best
and thank God for the life we have and beg forgiveness
for the sins that make us Human

Part II
In the sunlight coming through stained glass windows,
I see the reflection of a girl I once knew,
surrounded by untimely, immortal gold,
happiness in places where my wrinkles and tear tracks are.

She is me on another timeline
conformity unable to break her gold aura.
Miine was broken decades prior to this heartbreaking moment.
I let go of my husband's hand and I feel ill.

I won’t see you
for a long time
but I know you everyday
what you were to me
I will never forget.

Cosmic projections underlying in spaces
as warm sunburnt bodies move together across the floor
purple lights in neon glow attached to the ceiling,
mind spinning with the fluorescence.
And youth- your mind is spinning with how young you are
only seventeen
you carry the burden in your stomach the sadness on your shoulder.
You are much too young to have abundant regrets
to be living yet dead in a bitter grave.
Wrong choices overlap each other as the grave gets deeper- I know that sometimes it feels hopeless.
Banter with old friends about the aliens and rehab centers, the girl who taught you four square teaching you how to torch the end of a crack pipe.
Cycles of the same tornadoes, dreams of constant death,you’ve seen your best friends dead body more times than you will admit. Yet they’ve never imagined yours, or imagined you, or cared.
The rose colored glasses are ripped from your face given to the other unsuspecting girl who will walk the same journey I did with him.
One-sided friendships get lonely
lovers are no longer loving
and the pino has run out.
The purple lights manifest into messages coming across the lifeline simulation- Give up those who have fallen silent, your mission is not with them.
The mission is uncertain
get a man to prison
to watch a wild orca
have a family
but the process is daily.
My mission right now is to live freely let my hair grow and stick my head out the window singing Janis Joplin tunes on the 105.5
The aliens come through once again to extend long hands and acid tabs offering insight into treasures unknown.
Time capsules I have yet to bury.

The great thing about cycles is you can stop them.

God bless the children-
As they step off the school bus
To a soccer ball, summer camp, popsicle joke stick.
Bless those who return home to empty refrigerators-
Static television and *****.
Bless the airplane rides, holding onto the edge of a seat
landing into a world where their body-
is no longer their own.
Daytime heat rising off the road
walking barefoot from the community pool,
still an aching between legs.
Bless this sky, the grass, God Bless America
And the fireworks that set fires in our bellies
Unforgiving.
Bless lightning bugs making stars in a starless black sky
Waiting for the moon to move from behind the sheet
Guide the blessed children
home
summer camp
soccer ball
heaven.

Move into the morning light
let me see you in the way god designed.
All of this time you’ve spent trying to
make yourself perfect
but you were perfect all along
here in this light
bare
& beautiful.

I sit down with a pen in my hand
after months of wordlessness
to tell you where I’ve been.

I have not written about you in awhile
or had any dreams where you’re there
you haven’t vanished from my life,
I still think about you everyday.
but I’ve found other things to occupy my mind.

The last letter you received was after you
were confronted.
Since then I have been a mess of emotions and
confusion.
I am back on medications for my episodes
but i have not experienced one in 4 days.
It’s funny… i used to believe i was unloved-
because that’s how you made me feel
but last month i looked up and found myself
surrounded by people that love me.

I was crippled with fear last summer
where everything was difficult to do-
I couldn’t live with it.
Now, it’s like there's every opportunity, choice,
decision in front of me.
it’s a lot to handle sometimes.

I’ve told you how I wanted to end my life
that i’ve been planning for years.
I couldn’t see a few months ahead of me,
I knew I would be dead before Christmas.
I don’t know what’s going to come next,
or what will happen to me.
but I’m planning to be there for it.

You sent a lawyer after me.
Which i expected, but it still surprised me that you would.
I hope your lawyer shares pictures of me living
and being happy. Free.
How does it make you feel?

I write letters about the hard times,
not many about the good.
I’m trying to change that.

And with the pinch of my thumb the light inside of me extinguishes
we fall back into the only place that we know where we stay up all night to
drink alcohol and cry because it’s so dark now.
This way of life is easy, because when it’s like this- nobody cares about me.
and if nobody cares about me, then there's nobody to disappoint besides myself.
Nobody will open my bedroom door to see me sleeping with ***** dry on the corner of my mouth.
Nobody looking at me with sad eyes asking me what’s wrong.
And the silence is peaceful, it gives me time to think.
Time to sit in the dark.

It won't hurt like this forever.

I blink and the way I perceive life changes each breath and I have a new dream
but with each revelation or milestone achieved, nothing changes.
I was in a car crash 4 days ago but when the airbags hit my face and I screamed as my car filled with smoke, things were still the same when I went home that night.
I’m wondering if i’m as invisible as I feel. I’ve been stuck for a long time
And no matter what I do
good or bad
I still breathe the same way in the morning and cry the same way in the evening

She stands in front of me holding her microphone at my lips, cameras flash around us.
                                                           “Congratulations on your book.”
I wrote a book. I’ve done something with my life and that makes me GOOD. smile for the camera, million dollar grins taste like bile. Thank you, thank you all!
                                                          “What inspired you to write this”
I don’t remember what book she’s talking about, incarnadine, middle of mars, buoyant, the harry potter fanfiction in my google docs.
                                                                       “What are you afraid of?”
Snakes.
                                    “Why won’t you tell us what you’re afraid of?”
SNAKES
                                                                     “What scares you the most?”
The gun shoots into the back of her head, her mouth drips blood onto my dress. The girls are gone, everyone is gone, I hold the dead reporter and scream for help.
I turn her over to see her face, my friend stares back at me and the weight of the gun is heavy in my right hand.

Darkness. Pitch- black- darkness-
The phone rings on my bedside table, i scramble through the empty bags of goldfish and glasses of wine. The crack shoots through the middle of the phone, when i slide to answer the pressure of my finger makes the screen turn blue.
“Hello?”
                                                                                         “What are you-”
I throw the phone against the dresser and when I open my eyes I’m standing on top of the bank of america tower, rain pelts my back stinging me through my clothes. I step off the ledge and plummet-
Underwater in the pool resurfacing for air, my dead friend laughs with her boyfriend, throwing her head back for the last sip of beer. The bullet hole is gone, she’s alive. I didn’t **** her.

Or maybe you did and now you’re dead too.

The gravestone rests in the corner of the brandon graveyard, surrounded by mossy trees and mud there are no flowers here, not a valuable life lost.
                                              Madison Ballou
                                                    AFRAID
I cry on the bench, holding onto the frays of my black cardigan to steady myself between the sorrow. How old was I? How old AM I? Seventeen, I was only seventeen when I died. God sits next to me, spinning tarot cards in his hands.
                                                                                  “What have I done?”
He doesn’t say anything and flips over the card. The tower.
                                                                           “Tell me it’s not too late.”
The train pulls into the station, the station being the graveyard, over my grave. They let a train run over my ******* grave. It’s smoke billows into the atmosphere and the whistle is loud.
I look back to God and he holds nothing. “What am I doing?” I ask, talk to me.
“You were seventeen years old when you died. You were seventeen when you were born, too.”
“What does that mean?”
“Get on the train.”
“Where will it take me?”
“On.”

I’m so ******* hungry right now.
I haven’t eaten since Monday, look at me, look at me. Ravenous, hunger, belly aches of nothingness. I am beautiful! God almighty, BEAUTIFUL! But these ribcages aren’t letting me breathe anymore, size 0 isn’t as glamorous as it seems.
I drink wine to fill the void of food, I eat food to fill the other voids, but i filled those with LSD and now there’s nothing left.

Standing in front of the refrigerator, the reporter comes and stands next to me. “What are you afraid of?”

“Eating.”

                                                           -x-

The phone rings again, vibrating across the room. I crawl on carpet and reach for it, the ringing stops once it’s in my hand. 3 Missed Calls from Brandon. Standing up my room my head spins and the ceiling is still out of reach. The closer I get, the further away it runs. Am I alive? I check my neck for a pulse and it beats with a rapid rhythm. Water, I need water.


The lake is beautiful, clear water, drinking water. Pandora! Heaven! I drink the water and it cools my insides, my heart slows to a regular beat. Then the water turns thick in my throat, the taste of metal making me gag. Blood fills the lake, bodies of the dead floating.
NoNo!
The cameras catch me in front of the lake, I turn towards them with blood still running down my chin. “I-”
“These are all the people who cared, all the people who cried.”
I turn back to the lake and I see the funeral, everyone I love dressed in black, expressionless faces. My mom hides her face in her hands and a part of me is thankful I can’t see it.
“What are you afraid of?”
The choir sings but it sounds like blood.
“Mars!” She yells. “What happened to you?”

Idon’tknowanymore. I don’t know.
I don’t know what happened to me and I’m scared.
I open my eyes to my uncle, molesting me once again.
I remember this vividly.
I open my eyes to being punched
they close again.


My stomach drops, I’m falling. I cannot see where I am falling, everything around me is dark- only a blinding light from above? Have I died again? I jolt on the couch, waking up to my friends house. I cannot recall how I have gotten here, or why it is midnight of the next day.
Friday-sunday. Saturday forgotten.
The computer is bright in the dark room, I can hear girls whispering in the other room, one jumping in the pool. My name comes up on the screen as a user ID, waiting for me to type in my password.
My phone lays beside me in a mess of blankets and pillow sheets, 30 new notifications. Nobody is wondering where I am, so I guess i’m not lost.

My snapchat memories are filled with videos and pictures of my friends, we went to the beach today, we threw a party. Where was I this whole time?
In the pictures but absent.

A text comes through, one from an unknown number
What are you afraid of?
I type back, what do you want from me?
Nobody answers.

I know this feeling lonliness like the back of my hand.
We spent a lot of time together last year..
Collapsing back into bed and watching as the roof sets on fire the smoke enters through my nose and I breathe in foggy air. Inside, I ignite.


She comes to me once again, holding her microphone on the side of a hill looking down at the beach. I do not scream.
                                                                          “What are you afraid of?”
The moon hovers over the sea
“Things getting worse.”

I woke up screaming with no sound, his greasy hands that touched me in my dreams still linger on sensitive skin.
The School parking lot is full of children as clueless as me, the call comes in and my dog is dying. The phone falls into the passenger seat, I pull out to the highway.
As the children of the sun begin to wake, the speed limit increases and the windows stay down. Neil Young yells his poems and I yell my curses, roll punches at whoever’s listening because I don’t know who to blame besides myself.

It’s not just about the dog, mom.
My life only looks good depending on what angle you look at it.
Through the grained mist that makes up this Monday morning the sun shines through and heats up the sand. I let the waves meet my ankles, soaking the ends of my jeans.
Dropping my head, tears slap the shells. Nothing seems to be working and I miss my dog.
But I can’t watch him die.

And just like all things that die around me, I turn away and head to a beach somewhere. To sit in my underwear and bra beneath the shade of a palm tree and shake with sobs.

My nightmare started the second it happened.
It’s been nearly 10 years.
I’ve woken up many times,
but it has never ended.

The back end of daylight shines through the bathroom windows
casting orange shadows over warm water.
Drawing a breath between my lips and the smoke forms in my mouth, tickling my taste buds before it escapes through parted lips out into the the orange where it spins in circles in the light rays.
I’ve been here before, the odd vibration of the same old universe
but this time-
it’s a different feeling. Exhaling into the new day, things are better.
The cigarette carton lays in the trash, razors folden in between paper towels tucked into the corners of the same garbage bag.
I watch them be tossed into the truck and wave to the addiction.
My fingers haven’t touched the back of my throat in weeks,
I’m eating again.

It’s a new day and I live it through the night.

I keep returning to the same place in my life where things remain dull and unmoving.
Sitting on the leather couch and a freebird singing on the radio the roll continues to
burn and I continue to fall into the room where it is quiet.

The sky is the color of fire tonight a flame caught in a mirror the width of a coffin.
He lay beside me and placed a word on the nape of my neck where it melted into
a bead of gas station alcohol.

I place my face against the cool glass of the window the size of your hand so I
can feel once again how it was for you to cradle my cheeks. Beyond the fire sky a
grey dawn lifts the smoke and I ignite.

The world spins slower
and I want
to die more
everyday.

Salty undertones of emotions that rot within me, ignored love triangles discarded into the depths of my mind to be saved when I am reminded of them on my lovers wedding day, although it is not me he is vowing his life too.
I miss the moments between us the loud, soft, noiseless moments of our love written by my quill pen the tips of it bleeding onto the parchment paper. I could write our love story in a hundred poems, but in my voice I can only tell you emotionless how I loved you one day and then did not the next.
I am one for words on paper but the words from my mouth are incomprehensible covered by years of lying and abuse, cocooned by my own psychological reins.
It doesn't make sense but that is how we left one another.
Without notice and unpredictable like the hurricanes that roll in from the warm oceans and obliterate thousands.

If they don’t believe you
they don’t deserve to
be apart of your story.

You shouldn’t have to explain
yourself.

The flowered bed sheets of the motel where we lay
he showed no mercy on the Atlantic coast
used me again and kissed me.

I only remembered the oceans roll
and the visions of a unshaved beard,
the feeling of dread when he locked the door and unzipped his jeans.

Sandcastle fell over
and the sharks swam away
watching the walkway from the motel bedroom,
waiting for him to come back an let me out.

This is a ****** of a child's innocence and he held it over the seas the shadow of my life changes into bone
until my ****** becomes a whole other being,
so powerful it gave me an STD at the age of 11.
Thoughts are doubled in my head and the dark air has no name.

I call out for who may be there but nobody answers, only the step-step-stepping of my uncle coming in the motel for more.

You will never
ever
EVER
be in trouble for saying something.

Purple aftershave on the corners of his lips, hairs trimmed and a gloss over the skin, peeking through the surface. Mirror ***** streaked with water a damp towel hanging over the basin.

I saw him in town today, standing on the street corner with his hands in his pockets waiting for the cross guard to let him walk. I ran so fast that the temporary glue I used to piece together major organs so that I could live, but live without emotion, grew loose. I put myself together again with washi tape from my kindergarten backpack. Placing them over the cuts his razor left between my legs.

I told myself that I would always be me before I remember that for 3 years I was yours. But right now the skies are grey and the scent your aftershave stings my nostrils. You made me kiss you on the cheek on the sickly smooth skin, you made me grow up too fast.

I set the closet where he kept me on fire with myself inside of it, deciding to burn with the ******* house instead of watching it from afar.

Knock on the old wood he opens the door to a room filled with smoke.

With our heads over the starboard of the boat trip we took taunting tropical storm Fay on the port and our dresses in the wind.
He watched from the captain's chair, pistol in his hand. Salty seas hinder our vision of the man in the watchtower turning him into a blur on the vast expanse of grey skies and rotting wet wood.  

Angry crew-children with their bodies touched, banging on the stained glass door to his room where the little girl looks through the marbled blue with tears on her cheeks. Laughing at the confrontation, sent back to work.

Gathering lobster and lost time, both of them scream in the boiling ***. Escaped breath from incestuious embraces return to lungs and we find out that we can scream too, the boiling *** is overturned dripping off the starboard where we stand.

Lightning bolt touches the flag above his head causing chemical reactions to develop into a spark. Flames at the back engulf the wheel the children blister their hands grasping onto the lines as Fay rolls through, lightning after thunder rain never ending. Chaos perspiring on the ship he calls the battalion to secuestrar the children.

The battalion is overturned at the punch, bruise left on grey skin. Captain blubbering with lies the fire heat on his back. Rotting wood is burning, we cover our noses with bandanas and letters marked for Groton. The tide rises waves overtake the port, splashing onto the starboard where the victims jump into the black water uncertainty chilling them.

Swimming to Key West with the dolphins on our back the fiery ship burns in the distance the captain tied to a chair of ******* and lines untouched, denying allegations until his heart is charcoal and all that's left is a charred body smelling of ****** and aftershave. The starboard side is empty causing imbalance to the ship.

Dripping tears and sea water, walking through the streets, we lower our bandanas and hold the letters close to our hearts. Searching for the sun that will lead us home.

My uncle used to ask often
if I had any boyfriends.
I realize now after
reporting him for
molesting me,
that he asked me that
question because he
didn’t want me
to be
anybody elses.

Grow sunflower, grow!
Grow outside my window and stretch your leaves like wings!
So I can see them when I sleep!
Break this weak glass
and the cheap screen holding the house together
walk through the threshold into my room
and rest your petals on my windowsill
wait with me as the cold passes
although sometimes we feel like it never will.

I keep having dreams
of when we were kids,
but we were never kids.

Golden on the tip of my tongue.
Still summer.
We are golden in the slow of time- rolling of the hip.
I love you too much. You and your slow moments.
Hot windows croaking birds 74 degrees and no wind.
**** on our pants, on our breath, in your hair.

Sweat on eyebrows, slick on our skin burning the car as smoke fills our lungs. Earthy tastes and red eyes.

I miss you, I miss you so much

A shadow holds me in his grip and seeks the bones that he must find. The grazes of ghostly fingers on myself remind me of my ending youth and the ticking time that is left.

I’ve disappeared into the morning fog as the people I love have begun to stare straight through me They strain to look at me although I vanish upon them catching a small glimpse- I am acid to the cornea causing burning blindness and hatred.

These bones are brittle and the wind has picked up, the sky is darkening as if to rain and the rainbow day is done. However, the rainbow days were spent as a child whisked to the side to be plucked like a fruit all of the brightness and sweets taken, leaving me dull, laughter drops from me like a stone.

I attempt to concentrate on the slivers of light peering through the bars of my own psychological prison cell, but such magnification did not set my heart on afire.

Rain droplets ******* skin, unraveling at the ripples as 3 lightning bolts fork through the houses, 7 claps of thunder, 12 bursts of laughter in the house next door and a thousand tears rolling down my cheeks. I suddenly realize that my head was severed from my body days ago while lying sleepless on the worn couch.

Each season the garden dies, i die with each, until i die no more- although his death and mine were not the same, we still rot underneath the dirt in worms and earth as the city streets blacken and decompose.

The tears cling to the sleeve of my jacket mucus separating with a sticky pull and the dolls and smiles of my life are gone replaced by the headache and the row of cuts on my thighs.

I can feel the light touch of rain on my skin and the dripping of old raindrops into a flower ***
my mind is void of the unpleasantness a smile is permanent on my face
I feel my brain fog up with the fog that used to frighten me but I understand it now and the swaying of the trees the gray of the sky
the birds that fly above me
it’s beautiful breathtaking and saddening all at once.

I realize that this is how the world is to begin with
a mix of all these feelings and pain and joy
when all we want is just to be held
to be loved
to know that were important
but under this endless sky all we feel is small.

Waves taller than I was
cool atlantic ocean
grainy sand between my fingers
burying my toes.

Hot sunburns and salty hair
the beach bars where we used to eat off the kids meal
going back to your condo
sitting on your couch.

Thrown over his shoulders
covered in sand, the warm weight used to be fun but now it just scares me
you scare me.
My shoulders were kissed
sunscreen on my back
the lukewarm pools and marco polo races holding my breath until i thought my lungs would explode.

The water would rush back with the pull of the ocean our sundresses damp around our ankles, bruises over our mouths where you held them shut
The porch light was on to the condo my towel draped over your balcony, bathing suit bottoms in your bedroom.

Forgotten toys and to pairs of arm floaties because i was never good at swimming, you left your watch on the shoreline.
Crying because of the pain and the hatred and love
Never knowing if I would be cuddled or touched
but knowing i would be cuddled after being touched
those sunburnt spots caressed by you.
White caps peak as the sun rises, we’re cold with fevers and abuse, shaking as our feet are wet again with salty water and your watch pulled out to the sea, lost forever.

Old memories and dizzy songs from her childhood dance across the roof of her brain eyelashes dripping tears and hiccuping painful sobs. Hiding in the school bathroom not from bullies but her own fears. Blinking at the reflective yellow tiles she pushes away the yellow bathroom.

Water drips into the rusty ***** porcelain and the mirrors fog from humidity. Gasping for air and resemblance looking down to see that his hands aren’t there.

Fingers trembling and stepping out of the stall, one among over the sink washing the tears from her face and praying for a vacation, vacation from hell, mania, and psychosis infested cranial cavity and fog swirling swarming her.

Worrying about her fate again that a small breeze of nostalgia fluttered in her heart. Thinking a moment past she had someone in her room that she loved. A person of flesh to talk and hug.

She is lonely now. She could not be more different and she has lost the memory-self that come to the state of reality where she is in the high room alone.

Waking up at 2:26am. I am numb and the blankets are heavy against my skin. Twisting, turning, turning the music down, turning the music up. Staring at my window and the clock.

Wake up again, after a nightmare. Loneliness in my heart and how I longed to have somebody to understand next to me surrounded by the same floral sheets. There’s a rip in the sheets and I stick my foot in it, feeling the soft mattress. It’s 5am and the tears in my throat have caused it to run dry.

The world pounds at my eyelids, the sun licking the bottom of the world sky awakening. The pillow is hot, my blankets are heavy, I want to cry but I feel dizzy. I feel like i’m violating someone’s sleep, although i’m not sure who’s i’m violating.

I’m walking with my head down, I look up and i’ve been walking in circles this whole time

-time to reroute

I don't

2. Think I will

3. Ever stop

4. Counting

5. But I can

6. Learn to live

7. Around the numbers

You were letters of a time away and floating on my air as rain pelted our windows and soaked my hair.

Cold with our own ambition and the sky swarmed by grey clouds ridden with my nightmares, dreams, essays that i turned in past the due date and wine you took from the back of your mothers liquor cabinet.

Your car sneezed and coughed cancer cells perpetuating when you turned the key. from the dents on the side and the tobacco scent on the seats i knew you took this from the junkyard on the south side of the boulevard.

You thought you were the problem but I was the one snacking on empty prescription bottles and then chewing glass for dessert blood running down my chin and giggling at the hopelessness that I felt in my soul.

I swallowed broken vases and cut up my esophagus as you spoon fed me unrequited love. i thought we were going to
make it but we only got to the gas station before the car broke down and i went home.