her.. only her.

she pulls at my insides while you whisper i love you
behind the backs of your dearest friends.
she knows that you never hid your affections for her from anyone.
not even me.
and she sits in my skull,
begging for me to break in and release her broken bones
from behind my weary eyes.
because until she feels at peace, until she has been released from
the captivity of my cranium, she will never stop.
not until he stops loving you.
it should be me. you know that miranda. this is all a facade so that he feels
better about you not being 100% most days.

i ask if you still think about her.
you say yes, but not as much as i think of you.

and i know then it is the end.
she takes the swords of her tongue and
shoots them through the ashes of my nervous system.
**** yourself.
he would have never loved you had i not left.

a continuous loop of negativity and hatred slipping its' way
through my veins and arteries. almost as bad as heroine; twice as deadly as heroine.

you tell me it's all in my head;
that if i would just breathe that i could get through this.
in
but you don't understand the pain that runs as hot as lava
down my throat when i take that first breath of oxygen.
out
how when she screams it echoes through my head
while shooting pain sneaks its' slithering poison into my dreams.
the medication will never erase her.
they will never get rid of this swallowing pit of loneliness or
the fact that you will never love me in the same way you did her.

her.. only her.

Transcendentalist conceit. My choice of delivery. Arbitrary? Perhaps, but fun. And it gave me an excuse to stall for quality. But apparently it became a stream of consciousness somewhere along the line. It also seems to be coming along in a sort of  meta(physical) fashion. Metacognition. All (the) techniques I like.
I like you.
Parallel inspiration, a sublime way to, again, stall, also to make it interesting. But the comparison is difficult to find. Hidden in the æther, as it was.
What are you?
A tree?
Nature?
Air,
earth,
water,
fire,
or spirit?
Life?
Death?
All,
or even nothing?
No.
So far into this frozen in time facsimile of my mind, of me, yet still you know not what I think of you as, what I contrast you with. What I
Compare
you to. What I
Expect
you to
Live Up To.
Anxiety?
How many poems will I write before this ones done? ultimately one, yet many. Am I stalling even now? A tease of sorts. I am quite good at that. The conceit. What is it?
Do you want it?
A hundred thousand parallel rush through my mind only to be pushed off the line. A note written by my current and intended audience printed "I love you".
I underline you and return to sender.
Inspiration! flooding my mind!
Are you sharp enough to have discerned the parallel yet? hopefully. But if you think you are, you're wrong. There is no parallel. Moreover, a parallel poorly defines a line. what we really need is a co-linear expression. In truth, the conceit is pretty conceited.
I compare you to you.
My grand conceit.
When you I see,  see I you.
I see the candid truth that you duplicitous lie. I see your beauty alongside your failure to recognize and believe.
I see you.
And I love what I see.

drinking
is bad for you, he says
I told him that my
numbness
was worse than any shot of liquor  
it's getting difficult to wake up
again
and I wish I could be a
better
friend
and I feel so bad for the people
who hurt like I do
your
hurting
and I don't know what to say
because I'm
not
sure that it will be okay
this poem doesn't mean anything
and I hope that means something

let me hold your hand

life isn’t that hard, he says
sometimes you just have to get in the car without putting your seatbelt on
sometimes you have to get in the wreck
you have to lose five huggies of blood to know what you’re made of

I tell him I don’t have the muscle for that type of therapy

he tells me I’m a fixer upper
the good kind that looks beautiful before she curls her hair and puts mascara on
the kind that doesn’t know how to walk in a straight line because there are too many possibilities
that always looks drunk when she’s driving because her heart doesn’t have a gps

I tell him to leave me alone

he says that when he saw me on that fateful sunday morning he knew I would be his only religion
I’m someone he can have faith in
someone he can believe

I haven’t drank in almost four months
he’s proud of me
he says he loves me, and I believe him

girls in high school wear infinity scarves
and expect their love to last as long.
their hearts are hidden under
mounds of dyed wool, and I'm sitting in
U.S. History learning about slavery.

this is what I know.

we are all slaves to our own hearts.
we pick fields of lust
and try to sew it into love.
we wear combat boots because we feel threatened
by our own bodies.
like we are at war in our flesh, and need the extra protection;
the leather safety net with laces.

we walk down those black, salt-licked stairs
with our heads down because we have trust issues,
but when we trip we never forgive our clumsiness.
we swallow bitter tears like sugar after medicine,
and we pump hate through our tumblr blogs like gasoline.

we pay for affection with skin.
we accept the words *****, ****, *****, ugly, MAN, as nicknames.
a wave to the opposite gender is now thirst.
we need to grow up; put down the sippy cup.

this is high school.
cut your hair. dye it purple, and then regret it automatically. dye it black,
and then spend five months and $597.00 getting it back to your natural color.
mismatch your socks. eat almonds when you feel like you should starve your insides.
paint your nails, mess them up, and paint them again;
paint your soul the same way.
we are moving at the speed of light.

slow down your mind.
you are in high school.

you are still growing love in fields, you just need to find the right soil.

when I wake up in the morning I want
your sheets to be tangled between our legs.
I want your arm to be swung lazily around my bare back and
I want your warm breath on my skin. when I wake up I
want you to love me. I want
the forests of your chest and the city streets of your
fingertips.

I want your smile to sneak around your lips and pull me in
close
because my fidgeting body of morning awoke the landmines of your pores. I want
that first yawn and
the sound of you
stretching your lungs. I want

to feel your eyes on me as I get dressed, as I brush my hair.
I want to see you t-shirt tug across your arms and
land on your torso. I want to curl up
beside you and drink coffee as I trace the
constellations of freckles on your forearms.

I want you to kiss me.

I am what I am. I am a hormonal ***** who doesn’t really understand why ***** describes girls.
I am drained and have been on autopilot for nine years.
I keep on forgetting I am sixteen, and that makes it ten. I am the Buddhist of a Christian family. Hidden meditation before forced services and watching my grandfather on a stage for three days a week. I’m still trying to get by. I am what I am.
The sweetest and most sour liquid that has ever
met my lips is *****.
I feel pathetic for writing that. I am what I am.
A ****-wrecked liver at age sixteen. I am what I am.
A role model for five children younger than seven, and then there’s me,
drinking Grey Goose from the bottle.
It’s going to make my throat warm and my swarming soul pain teeter-totter to a rest.
The best past time I have found is trying to fix myself.
I am what I am. That’s not good enough.

My grandmother says that because I am depressed there are demons living in the rooms
of my chest.
I want to tell her that if she would peer into my stained-glass window eyes
she would see that no one lives in me; not the devil, or demons, or God.

I just pray that she doesn’t open the basement doors and find a swimming pool of the
clear stuff.
I am sixteen. I have to keep writing this or I feel like it’s not true and I’m not real.
I am an aspiring alcoholic.
I am what I am, and I need change. Bad.
But the habits are even worse, and I’m stuck with these bruising memories.
A curse from my past. Heroine and Marijuana.
Highs that never lasted long enough for a mother of one.
Bore a daughter, but wanted a son, and I’m stuck not being good enough
for the thousandth time in my life.
Getting mixed between the names Matthew and Miranda when she was on the low side.
Fast forward to high tide; she’s on cloud nine and I’m locked in my room.
I can smell the scent of smoke that she tells me is perfume, and I’m wondering
if I should be married to a boy, or a girl?

Same year. My first beer handed to me by the father of my first sibling.
“It’ll put some hair on your chest.” he says. I am what I am.
“Girls are not supposed to have hairy chests.” I say.
My mom sends me to my room. I feel so horrid that I don’t eat for days. Two years later
I find out about shaving my legs, find out that razors are sharper than the butter knife
in the kitchen. I still have the word BOY? carved into my thigh.

I go to therapy weekly. My mind is made of Latin words that I don’t know how to translate.
I’m seeing now that how you raise your heart is crucial.
I’m seeing now that not drinking for five months is a triumph.
I am what I am, not what I was brought up to be.

my fire for you is sweet like
melted sugar and i
love that
and it's like kissing a shooting star that's about to **** you and it's
like holding a blue candle in your hands and realizing
you're so pale that the wax turns the color of the sky the day you
told me you wanted to be friends.
i want you to draw a city sky on my kite string arms and a road
of evergreens on my telephone wire hips.
i've never told you this... i never
wanted you, but i always needed you, and that's why i think i love you.
something whispers in my ear when
your fingers wisp through my hair that tells
me to laugh in your face when you tell me
you love me back.

it's like a smack in the soul saying
WAKE THE **** UP

and then i do, and you still love me...



even then.