we smoke hand-rolled cigarettes just to be awash in the splendor of it all, but i don’t tell you i like to feel the disintegration of my organs in a thick cloud of menthol & formaldehyde.  i don’t tell you i still press fingers to the back of my raw-skinned throat, just to know i haven’t lost the courage.  without new scars healing on my delicate wrists & sweet-sour pills dancing in my blood, i am nothing worth remembering.  every night, i fall asleep with my cat snuggled warm against my clattering bones & measure my stomach with trembling palms, afraid that i have suddenly erupted from my wispy shape into something breathing.  a girl of no substance, dark matter where flesh once lived, hollowed perfection in the stiff arrangement of limbs on a crooked frame.  you kiss my knees goodnight; we don’t mention you are sad again or that i am becoming a skeleton.  your teeth are serrated, sweet against my neck.  your hips are songbirds, dipping into my belly, begging with a lust i can’t feel anymore.  your body is heavy & all i want is sleep, the sweetness of a pillow beneath my icy cheek, the passage of time without the constant obsession over infinite sins.  i never promised you a rose garden, so welcome in the monster.

we waited for nightfall before making love to the moon,
smoking hand-rolled cigarettes in the breathless aftermath, a
poetry of flesh on flesh & your bright eyes on mine.  i didn’t apologize for the asymmetry of my ******* or the silver scars laddering my wrists,
the cartography of a suicide left incomplete.  you look at me  like i am something worth loving
& all i need are your grasping palms, your shameless love, your
beautiful heart beating against my chattering bones.  we erupt into a star-stained sky,
explosions of everything trapped within us spinning into the stoic dark.  you infinities of beautiful & i give you my all.

When a heart breaks,
It is heard all over the world.
Like a crack in the moon
In broad daylight.
No, not quite a sight,
Not visible to the naked eye.
Only a sound, sharp and loud,
To be heard at that moment.
And then the scream of the victim,
Told they are loved no more.
It is a scream of pure agony,
Filled with pain and remorse,
And the leftover love and lust, of course.
No longer returned, it has no where to go.
So the love comes back home to the heart
And sits in silence and sadness,
Until it dies away completely,
As the heart breaks apart,
Chips falling off and littering the soul with debris.
This broken-hearted lover lost of love
Cries so the whole world can hear.
And they do.
They listen and they understand.
They've felt as she feels,
Been where she is,
Screamed as she screams.
Even though it really seems
Like she is all alone,
Left to fight on her own,
Without her heart and without her true love.
To her, she's lost everything.
But she hasn't.
We know she hasn't.
Her heart will heal,
The pieces will come back together
With the glue of hope and faith
And eventually, of new love.
Because as the saying goes,
There are more fish in the sea,
And soon enough she will see,
That she'll find love again
When she least expects to find it.
True love is out there,
Around every corner
If you really stop to take a look.
So while now the world hears her cries and her sorrow,
Soon we will all hear her sigh
And see her smile, through lips and eyes,
As she stands in love and hypnotized,
And happy once again, finally, finally,
At last, at last,
Once enough time has passed,
Her heart will heal, though not too fast,
In due time, all will fall into place.
All will be fine.
She will find love again.
After all, a heart cannot stay broken forever.

Here is a glass of water from my well.
It tastes of rock and root and earth and rain;
It is the best I have, my only spell,
And it is cold, and better than champagne.
Perhaps someone will pass this house one day
To drink, and be restored, and go his way,
Someone in dark confusion as I was
When I drank down cold water in a glass,
Drank a transparent health to keep me sane,
After the bitter mood had gone again.

you are quiet sometimes,
the stillness lingering in the
pauses between words, the breaths
of reflection.  i like
the way your heart is sweet.  i like
the residue of pain residing in your
forehead, a permanent flesh memory
of the suffering we were both
ignited with,
engulfed in,
lost to.

you too have thrown yourself
down the rabbit hole, begging for
an ending, but
i will not be another
sad story.  we are not
tragedies today & i will breathe
with reason & for
you.

i am sinking to the seabed
with the weight of the world; tell me
i am not alone, wallowing down in
these depths.  tell me
one thing i’ll believe is
true.

i can swear a million promises & wish on
dandelion seeds that this is forever,

but then again,
someday, the earth will fall in love
with my body & you will forget
my name.

Can you see emptiness?
Not of a glass or an abyss
Emptiness inside a soul
The echoing through something once whole
I just need to know,
Should I hide these holes?
Should I disguise these bruises?
Cover up these scars?
Should we suppress our pain,
To hide who we really are?
I'm 17 years old
And I hurt
And I bleed
Most days I feel lower than dirt
And some days I can't breathe
Who are you to judge me for it?
I just want to know,
Can you see it or do I have to tell you so?
I want to die.
I want to be alone.
But did you already know?

hello, your baby-brown-eyes flutter rad vibes into my shivery heart a mess with unsung feeling, we will stargaze a thousand nights together, this i know, my beautiful.  your beautiful is torturous & seductive as hell, i long, i yearn, i spin, perpetuate circles my head bowed to your toes, tell me your gory & everything.  i will keep you secret, i will keep you safe.  summer's kiss bestowed upon our rosy cheeks, we will walk through winterland with hands clasped tight, it is salvation.  hallelujah your unabashed love, your brimming heat, your humanity.  connection to connection, we become live wires every time our minds marry themselves in electric emotion, light the night, so ******* beautiful.  feel the love i send to you even when i am gone.  together in entangled wavelengths, in constant thought.  together in conscious attachment ascending rhyme or reason, in knowledge & understanding, in open wounds.

Dear heart. I am the one in charge here. Neuroscience has long taken the responsibility of handling emotions from you. I am in charge of everything in this body, dear heart, I tell you what to do, and you do it. I think we both know I'm the better thinker here.

So why must you ache, why must you suffer for what I do? For every scalding thought you recoil in your cage and pound on the bars of your prison, wishing to be worn on someone's sleeve, dear heart, you've been hidden for too long. You don't know how this world works, and I do, so you must obey me when I tell you what to do. I know it hurts to keep beating despite of how the chemical reactions in my mind may affect you. For every feeling I take as a thought, every thought you mistake as a feeling, we both protest. For a long, long time we refuse to communicate with each other and I know you are tempted to rest, to stop beating because you're the one aching. It's not me, dear heart, that clenches like a fist, crumples inward like a useless scrap of paper, collapses on itself like a star on the brink of a supernova, it is not me, dear heart, that gets hurt.

Why do I only ache when I'm facing a mathematical problem, a complex theory, a questionable logic, a memory-loss crisis, why do I only suffer when I think really hard, even though I am the one in charge of emotions and feelings? Why is it you, not me, that a knife buries itself in when there is emotional pain? Why is it you that has be shredded into blood strings and crimson feathers of sinew, as if you were plucked from an angel's bleeding wings while heaven screeched its protest? Why are you the only one that is punished?

Dear heart, I am sorry. I didn't know why the body is made this way, that you have to be the one on the edge of a cliff while I sit somewhere safely plucking your strings. You are the one facing the endless plummet into a chasm of fangs and jagged rock, and it is up to me to make sure you stay alive, why, dearest, dearest heart do you have to be shackled to me with a silken collar? I can control you, but you have the freedom to fall, and if you do, I will be the one to grab at a protruding edge somewhere on the face of the cliff, and I will pull hard to get us back up.
Because if I don't, we will both die, and I'm the thinker here, I'm the one responsible for both of us, dear heart, I am the one in charge here!

You won't survive on your own. That's why I'm here to take care of us, because neither of us would exist without the other, without me you will be dead, without you, I will be worse than dead, so dear heart. Dearest heart, let me take the reins, let me hold the strings, let me tell you what to do, I'm sorry you can't be free. I'm sorry I hurt you with the thoughts and the memories inside me.

Let me control you. Let them call me abusive, let them call me terrible, let them call me cold and cunning, let them tell the world I am foul and violent, I don’t care!
I am here for you. I will take care of you. And when all you wish is to cease the wearying repetition of living, I will give you reason to keep breathing.