-I've learned to take the sheets off of the bed and wash them and if my hands were big enough I would curl them into fists and call you to tell you that your ghost no longer resides in here but I don't have your phone number anymore and I don't miss you quite as often.

-You're white flag, your war-rage reverb inside a rib-cage and there's no microphone to mutter into. Slam poetry isn't your thing but ******* sometimes there's an itch, a scream half-muffled that wants to talk about your hair raining down on their cold pillows just before the lights go out.

-I've never owned an ashtray despite the chimney that mimics my mouth sometimes. It's telling your mama you made it for her birthday because you don't want to see her face every-time you check in once again for the last time into a hospital. Even if making it is keeping a plant alive.

-The scattered light rays that travel into your room in the afternoon when you're getting drunk alone again and don't you dare call me bad because baby, I was raised that way. You can't put a band-aid over a broken bone. There's a fire in my palms no psalm can actually pronounce.

-your writing career has plummeted so now you sit in a bus stop as people tell you their life story and you feel like a priest but there's never any relief and the confessions get more heavy so you write about it but there's never anyone to hear, and even if there was would it heal the bruises?

full circle
I'm laying here with the window open listening to the rain for secrets or something or waiting for you to tell me what you haven't been telling me
like maybe there really is a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair and her eyes are the kind of blue that is never mistaken for grey
she touches your chin before she kisses you, real softly or maybe she traces the spot above your lip where we all know angels rested their fingers before we were sent down here to rot or thrive
maybe you talk about gardens with her, how you'd never ever own an orchid cause that ***** ex of yours demanded one every hospital visit
how flowers aren't for boys but you'll pretend to watch football while you're really watching her bend down to touch the dirt like she used to smooth her baby brothers hair out of his little eyes
before their parents decided that it was more convenient to buy them a little apartment and keep money in the safe while they spent their pensions in Florida watching alligators and Dolphins and toucan ******* Sam but never at the same time
you see, I don't drink earl grey cause it tastes like fruit loops
and I don't eat fruit loops cause it tastes like the childhood I erased from my memory by forcing myself to dissociate
maybe this, is something else altogether
maybe this... is not true, another delusion, maybe your hands are busy counting change out for cardboard signs
maybe your feet move a little bit faster, not because you're in a rush to see someone who isn't me but because you're so scared of ending up back where you started

I have voices in my head.
sometimes they are mine and sometimes they are that girl walking down the street without a hat or a home address and I know this because I know things without knowing them.
there is hurt here, in this car full of silver and new and no smoking or I'll rip your fingers off.
my mother knows how to say amen like she's still dedicated to the Catholic Church I tell her, you should have given that up the day they refused to baptize me.
everyone sees dark in me where there is none.
I was a baby and I was a baby and I'm still a baby, or I wish I was.
I'm a baby who cries and says good morning every day even if it's not.
I say good morning when I wake up after missing dinner
I refuse to touch China now
my hands don't listen to the voices in my head all they think is break break break and the break break break sounds itself like cracking open and I need to lobotomize the dishes in here before she gets sentimental about handing them down to me when I finally find someone who isn't scared of waking up beside me to find my throat slashed
here it is. truth, because there is no right or wrong there is truth.
and truth sets you free.
it sets you free and it has you without a hat or a home address and you still wonder why nobody sends you letters back.
you say they forget your name. Or your middle name but it doesn't matter.
I only answer to "baby girl, do you want me to call the doctor for you?"

they're saying "all you do is drink and cry", "I think you're bad for everyone" and you're not saying anything and I'm saying I love you,
I ******* love you
And maybe I needed something to bring me back to reality maybe these bathtubs are always a little too deep for me but I fit so perfectly in small spaces because I learned when I was 14 that i was never gonna grow into a butterfly
but my aunt still calls me hers and I'd still flutter my eyelashes on yours while the earth turned to ash because I like things ending so softly
and you are a ******* miracle if I've ever seen one I want to sleep with you so badly, on a trampoline in the summer and I want to watch you do bad things and smile so sweetly at you and you'll know that I don't give a **** what you do as long as you're still loving me while you're doing it because baby we've got this one life and I've been loving you as long as I have known what love is and I know it's in the way you whisper and I know it's in the way you say you're my world and if the world stopped turning tomorrow we'd be the only things still moving with excitement you make me so nervous and calm and nervous and calm and deep breath you make me nervous I bet you'll make me nervous when we're older and I'm making you pancakes and I feel your eyes on me and I burn my fingers but you always kiss them better baby
you're an alleyway and the kitten that sleeps there
you're the rain on the windowpane and the water breaking the levee
I'm drowning in everything I have ever said to you so if I say one last thing one last thing,
while you're not saying anything,
I love you,
I ******* love you