Because when I drain my coffee and see my face reflecting in the dark glossy bottom of the mug, my eyes are holding something that I can't blink away.

No matter how hard I try, it sits along my lashline, glazed over my pupil, reddening the corners and doubling my vision.

I set my mug down. I've dripped coffee on my t-shirt. My eyes are gripping tight to a sensation that is so painfully familiar that it almost feels welcome. Like I wouldn’t know what to do if it ever left.

It’s a scary comfort, curling up in that feeling. I know it so well. Sometimes I want to reach out and cradle it against my chest where it purrs like a childhood cat. It’s beautiful and black, sleek, with paws so big they weigh down on my chest. Makes it hard to breathe but I don't dare move.

My hands find reprised solace along the ridges of its back, petting patterns down its silky fur. When I look down all I see is its big yellow eyes, drowning my sight and filling every corner with that numbing company.

It's a dangerous cat, whose dark slivered pupils I see in my own. In the bottom of a mug, a storefront reflection, a dark screen. It's so comfortable that I sometimes forget to miss the feeling of being alone.

My legs are pins and needles where it sits in my lap. Makes it hard to believe I'll ever stand again. It's a blessing to have a quiet mind.

The cat purrs and purrs and purrs.

there’s a deep, visceral anger that I seem to feel everyday
that no one ever talks about.
i wake up and my stomach roils with fury, wild and burning.
i eat breakfast and watch as my hand grips the mug, wishing I could shatter it against the floor.
conversation hurts with the acid I want to spit at my mother.
i watch action movies and ride roller coasters and go to haunted mazes and every scream I’m allowed feels like the briefest, most beautiful respite.
i look out at crowds of people and it feels like I’m breathing concrete.
i sit in my car and scream and cry and scream because it’s the only place I’m really alone and the guy in front of me stares through his rearview mirror.
i say that I’m tired but I really mean angry but I don’t know how to say angry so I just say tired and everyone is getting really tired of me being tired.
i remember when the anger was so big and I was so small and I only knew how to close the hatch of my mouth to keep it all inside because one time I let it out and then everyone knew about the anger and I came to the sudden terrifying realization that the anger wasn’t supposed to be evoked.
i am so angry and I thought everyone else was too and we were all in on some joke where we’re constantly hiding fury behind our eyes.
but I think, recently, I’ve realized that this deep, hot, painful, crippling, paralyzing anger isn’t entirely normal.
that not everyone wants to scream at their loved ones one moment and then stick a knife in their head the next.
instead the joke is on me, like I missed orientation and everyone seems to run like clockwork and I’m an angry little gear that’s rusted and out of place.
everything is so practiced and planned and poised and perfect and I just want to sink my teeth into it and rip it all to shreds, screaming and baring my throat to the sky, daring god to face me and bear witness to my unholy wrath as the blood of his creation runs down my neck.
anger grips me like a vice and lives in my stomach and I just want to have a conversation where I’m not trying to not throw the bottle in my hand.

rain is running down your window.
its drops, akin to constellations, decorate the glass in clusters, running down the pane when too many join the group.
you watch the chase like a child, tracing each competitor’s path with your eyes until they hit the bottom of the windowsill.

each drop is dyed yellow with the light of the street lamps behind them.

the smell of damp earth is lingering in the air, present even through the walls you hide behind.

the storm outside wears a dark coat of rain clouds, heavy and full.
she touches down on the earth with every raindrop.
your neighbor’s lawn is overflowing with her gifts.

she is insistently loud; demanding that you acknowledge her, comment on her power, complain about her generosity that is flooding your garden, and take shelter in the wake of her downpour.

but beneath it all, the rustling of her heavy grey coat and the thundering of her many feet...


a siren sounds.


a song, sweet and promising, chimes through the night air, its melody akin to a lover’s embrace.
the ozone-heavy wind carries it gracefully and you can almost picture the creature it came from, honey bubbling up at its lips.


you know this sound. you hear it ring under every rainfall.


an urge grows, twitching your feet where they are planted to the floor.
your wrists, as if puppeteered, long to reach for the door.
a deep pull, hooked around your rib cage like a fish doomed, is threatening to uproot you from your chair.


and you wonder, if the rain were to touch your skin, would you be given the sweet salvation you were promised?

would it wash away the ache of existence, the permanent stone settled at the bottom of your stomach that anchors you to the earth?

you swear, if you could just feel the lines of rainwater drip down your skin that you would give yourself away for the promise of a new beginning.


a siren song, the temptation of the sea.

a distant fantasy in the streets of suburbia.

it’s singing to you tonight.


it’s the pull to go outside in the rain in the hopes of washing away all that you are and starting anew.
to watch who you were run into the gutter and feel your soul ebb and wave with the waning of the moon behind the storm.
to feel water running down your arm and soaking your shirt, prickling your skin with cold just to remind you that you are alive.
to surrender to the power of the torrent, to tilt your head to the sky and feel the drops hit the thin veil of your eyelids and run past your ears and trail back into your hair.

the chill of the air is weighted with rainfall, and you feel the urge to cry. you might already have.  

it would be hard to tell in the storm.


the sweet siren whispers in your ear, and her voice is made of rain-slicked tires and damp earth.


“Is this the rebirth you were looking for?
Have you escaped what you were running from?
Will you give yourself to the sea if she asks it of you?”



you ponder. silent.



a deep empty is beginning to settle where the stone was in your stomach.

how far are you willing to unmake yourself?




you already know the answer.


you can’t.




when you open your eyes, you have to blink the tears out of your eyelashes.
your ears ring with the absence of song, as if they’re aching to remember the echoes of a melody just out of earshot.

water beats on the metal cars and slanted roofs outside and you ache silently with the loss of something you knew you could never have.
the absence of it sits heavy, gnawing at the inside of your stomach and making its way up your throat in cut-off mourning.

the storm whips the trees around, as if berating you for ignoring her, for ignoring her gift of thinning the veil so you could escape to where you would always be unknown.

if you decide to go out, perhaps the siren would come back to sing her sound to you, delivering you to the ocean where you swear you belong.

maybe she'd sing you to sleep away from it all.


but the rain continues to fall and the urge comes and goes and you remain, glued to your window, tracing the constellations of what could be if you only step out the door.

i am not a lost glove, destined to a life
without my other half.
i am the muddied coat of a child,
abandoned on the playground,
lonely but created to be alone.

you may find me in the lost and found;
clean me up, take me home.
no other boot to be discovered,
no sock left behind.

i was whole then, i am whole now.

the celestial bodies may crash

and burn the sight from my eyes.

but I see you in my mind:

dancing through the galaxy.

and that gives me the right to eternity.

the black holes may swallow

and leave my chest hollow and dusted.

but I hear you in my head.

your voice carries across the empty nothing

and that gives me the right to eternity.

the universe may protest.

implode on itself.

disintegrate.

but I can feel you, despite it all:

you’re made of thousands of years behind you.

you run on rocket fuel and pure moonlight.

you live among fragments of time past;

stardust, spaceships, and singularities.

you chose me to hold your solar systems and make sure they orbit.

so I’ll ignore the meteor showers and the wormholes

and cherish our interstellar dust.

because I hold the right to eternity

and I am a space to be reckoned with.

you stitch me together with moon cotton,

stardust stuck between the threads.

you bandage my raw wounds

with your favorite constellations.

when I’m hurting,

you kiss my head,

and intertwine the planets with my hair;

a daisy chain of celestial bodies.

you lay me down among the ghost town of rocket ships

and dead stars

and you whisper.

“darling,” you say,

“andromeda’s got nothing on you.”

and you’ll see the moon,

reflecting off the light of the sun.

you’ll see the blushing sunset,

dancing around the skirt of the night canvas.

you’ll see the pinpricks of stars,

dead for years yet shining just for us.

you’ll see the one spot in the sky,

where the artist never finished painting

the galaxy around the planets.

the milky way runs patterns across your eyes,

and dyes your shadow a silvery glow.

we’re all looking up at the sky,

searching.

for what, we don’t know.

don’t worry,

I’m looking too.

the brain and mind are not the same thing.

a brain floats, suspended,
down to the tips of my toes
and the blue rivers underneath my skin.

it is a box; simple tasks and quiet construction.

the mind has no such manuals.

it sees baboons in filtered skylights,
eyes as red as the blushing dawn,
gushing about over the hilltops of my shoulders.

it sees stop signs in the glass cracks
of my wooden closet door,
where the dark seeps around the green-light-go.

it sees fingertip to lip,
raccoons at rusty roadways,
Remus and Romulus locked in eternal combat;
preserved in the grains in the cherry tree trunk.

the brain is in the head,
but the mind is somewhere a little above;

hiding away in a doomsday bunker,
loud warnings burning the air,
bathed in cobwebs and blue lights.

away from people who haven’t quite learned,

that the brain and mind are not the same thing.

I am paradoxical;
an oxymoronic anomaly.

all my nightmares are made
of daylight,
but I’ll still sleep to escape
the darkness.

I am paradoxical;
an absurd abnormality.

it’s a chaotic peace,
loud with it’s bated breath
and bittersweet ring.

I am paradoxical;
an irregular oddity.

my counterparts are contradictory,
and I change to chance
the possibility
that opposites attract.

and we’re all just paradoxed;
argumentative attractions.

there’s no stopping at the end,
when the sun is low
in the soft red sky.

where my nightmares are made
of daylight,
but I’ll still sleep to escape
the darkness.

the air is cold.

an endless slate-grey
chilling frost-ridged trees.

the wind tunnels, whisking away
bird song,
running cars,
and leaves scraping down bare streets;

the kind of bare you only see in winter,
all picked away by the frozen weather.

the world is a drained snow globe,
so still you forget to breathe.

all you can hear
is the static in your ears
and the workings of your own
organs.

the water filled our lungs
and bled through the cracks in our skin.

bubbling, brimming

the sea touched my eyes and you were white
with seafoam, curdling between lashes,
silvers pooling over stark blues
on fingertips.

sinuous, submissive.

the piercing cold mixed with the rough salt
over tide-smoothed shells.

we breathed out our mist to cry over crashes of thunder.

enigmatic, flowing.

you are an acrobat, my prideful tide.  

your steel waters wash the sand from my legs
and glassy waves cleanse, twisting and curling,
releasing through our ocean breeze.

you opened your eyes and all i saw was sea glass.

the lights are buzzing
and my ears are stuffed with pollen
yet i can still hear the hive of bees in the ceiling.

the lights are buzzing
strobing against walls of alabaster and tiles of ***** white
neon and drunk off of the ticking of the clock.

the lights are buzzing
they carve out slivers of eyelashes
and slide flickering fingers to rest along the chin of despondency.

the lights are buzzing
their uneven beat is perfect melody
to the crying in the hall, outside waiting room 23.