but the world doesn't like to see broken veins, I guess, or broken hearts so clearly portrayed,
but this is simply what you've done to me.
You've laid me out on a table,
you've stripped me down, you've said, "Now what makes a growing girl tick,"
and I rolled my eyes back into my head - I'm trying to make sense, I'm trying to make sense-
the world is so small when I run into you again in another life, after I've moved on,
but your eyes and fingers almost pull me back to right now,
drowning.

I am always writing down a bunch of stupid drafts and blueprints
just to write **** down.
I don't want this as a reminder,
I don't want to talk about it,
I don't want to look at it too many times,
but I'll let you read it and you can think what you want of all of these things you'll grow tired of
(me, soon you'll get tired of me, and you'll be especially tired of me saying you'll get tired of me.)

It's so dark,
the only light spinning,
and your eyes don't look through me.
You see me clear.
Your lips make their way down my body and back up again, and I wish you could
stay longer,
stay the night,
stay with me.
"I don't want you to go," I say,
and the light keeps spinning,
your face green then blue then red,
and I'm tangled up in you beneath my gray covers,
the most comfortable I've ever been.
"I don't want to leave," you reply to me,
quiet words because our volume shrinks as we dig deeper into truth.
I never know if I always say the right things,
and I know I don't always do the right things,
but sometimes you make the world feel right
and I feel like I am included.
Like everything shifts and falls into place
and I no longer need to want,
because there is nothing out of my reach.

Then you kissed me goodbye at my front door
and went home, a little late.
I bit my lip
walked up the stairs
fell into my chair,
and my brother walked in, saying,
"Do you know how fragile this world is?"

i think i could make it a habit,
black clove cigars
and puffing in and out poison to pass the time
(at least make me a little bonier)
and one day i'll strap a flask to my thigh
and practice taking sips without scrunching up my nose at the taste.
For some reason, self-destructive tendencies are appealing
which makes me a ******* *******
and an idiot
but as long as i'm entertained

**** it
bad decisions might become my middle name
and there's not a thing in my mind
stopping me from an inevitable
disappointing life
because
the **** I taste with every breath
and the **** I hold from the bottom of my heart
might as well
*******
**** me

pluck out my ribs,
sprinkle them with salt
I hope they taste bitter-
make me someone I'm afraid to become
wash me in a tub full of blood
(maybe it's just full of red feathers)
(or hearts that pump nothing but *******)

what is it with people like us
we wake up one day and decide to burn our notebooks
and invite the dark we used to be afraid of
to come in and play

There's no point in trying to understand the mechanics of thought right now
I'm choosing to sit this one out.
I'll wait at the end of the bed,
Come when you call
Stick my hand out in the dark,
Trace your shoulder and whisper,
"I'm not sure we'll make it out of this okay"
(and maybe we'll both shrug..because we don't care)

I am assured that I am not the best influence,
but I have great plans
that will become great failures,
and you will stop being proud of me
long before time calls me old.
With cuffs around my wrists that chain me to my own shadow
I walk down the only road that helps me stop staggering
drunk and blind
holding the hand of the devil
because I sold my soul to rock and roll
and the chances of what could have been.
What might be.
My worst fear is being bored,
and that's it.

I am corrupting myself
letting my flesh hang from my face in long pieces
that dangle all the way to my feet
so I can step on my cheeks
and
I
will
never
be more than
trash.

every time my eyes close, i am in a dream
sometimes i feel needles
sometimes your eyelashes brushing against my cheek

My first love was so pure
We are all so toxic and broken now
Nothing will ever be so innocent and selfless again
15 and best friends, figuring out how to kiss

I met you by accident
as you walked to my car and got in the trunk
and I kept my headphones in so I didn't have to listen to anything you said.
I met you by accident
when you asked me what music I liked
and a week later I discovered it was yours that I liked
because of that, every song reminds me of you.
I met you by accident
in your backseat when I put my head to your chest
and you put your nose in my hair and kissed the top of my head
I met you by accident

it is 3:49 am
and i am awake
because i slept all day
because i was awake all night
because you were there,
your lips on mine

my problems are so minuscule and i'm so fortunate
but hey, i'm still complaining
everyone's sad and angry and ******* up for no reason
and finally,
no one gives a **** if you smoke cigarettes,
just don't pretend you're impressing anyone by doing it.
i've been saving cool cig holders on my online wishlists since i was 14
it's never been a new idea.
i'm sorry but i've been sad lately,
-one day maybe i'll get a therapist-
but for tonight i just whispered to myself,
"you have to stop."
because i've always wanted to want nothing
and i need to thicken my skin and stop caring.
it doesn't matter what happens
no one will remember you for as long as you want them to, anyway

you constantly quote
"it's alright
to tell me
what you think
about me"
but you also say
"take notes"
when our friend talks of how bad it is for the woman to say "i love you" first
and i am constantly torn between saying,
"I'm in love with you"
or asking
"do you still like it when I'm around?"

I don't know what I want with my life,
but ****, i know it might be bad to say,
but right now in life, day to day
today, tomorrow
I want you in it.

Tonight I promised myself I'd take a picture of him.
(I don't have enough.)
I told myself to wait until it was dark and my chili pepper lights had to come on,
to wait until he was shirtless
his hair was messy
and to wait until the perfect moment-
right after he's seen all of me,
and he's smiling
because there is no outside world,
there is no outside,
the entire universe exists only on my mattress,
and we are laughing because nothing could possibly be wrong-
the perfect moment to pick up my camera and take a snapshot of
the most beautiful guy I have ever met
that is finally shedding his thick skin and letting me see how he has hurt, too.

The perfect moment came and went,
and I was too busy listening and laughing
and lightly tracing his bones with my fingertips and lips
to even think about my camera or remember cameras existed in the first place.

Don't pretend that you know me
because I bet you didn't know I could count to 3000 in less than 3 seconds,
want to hear me? It's the same sound as a girl pulling a trigger. Bang.
-
"Bang me right here," I'll say, a smirk on my face, daring you to dare me to say it louder.
You would blush and we wouldn't.
(we'd have to be crazy)
-
that's crazy you're crazy
the purple beneath your eyes - it's crazy
you need a crazy amount of rest
you're acting like a crazy person
what is crazy and who ever decided it wasn't normal?
-
If I called you and said, "Be there in 10,"
what would you prepare yourself for?

I wish I was drinking.
Sometimes I wish I was drunk all the time
But I hardly drink at all and besides,
I'd never have the company and drinking alone is just sad at my age.
When I'm drunk I usually drunk text you and right now I'm exhausted from loving you so much and not having as many reasons to love myself.
I think I want to cry but I'm not sure why. And when I think I'm making friends the next day they take my seat and push me out of the row and I sat by myself today in a room with more than 100 people in it and no one even eats with me and thank god i like eating alone. I think I'm pitied and I don't know why
I think I must be the problem,
Because I feel like there's something wrong with me
But I don't know what it is.

I give too much of myself away and
I don't think I'll ever learn how to stop.

Anyway, I'm going to walk in the dark by myself to go buy something I can ******* smoke
If you have a drink, I need one

I am a messed up version of a girl,
clinging to tree stumps and swinging off dead stars
and you know what is the worst part?
you never saw the beauty in that section of myself,
scraping off flesh with shaky hands
and purple eyes

My life will be one of those magic tricks
where I ask you to
"pick a card, any card,"
and you do and you memorize it and put it back in the pile
and I shuffle the deck and try to give you the right card
but I don't know how to do this trick,
and even though there's a tiny chance I could hold up your card,
I never get it right.
That's what my life will be like
and I don't know how I feel about that
or even how I should feel about that
and I don't know what to do about it.

just decided a problem of mine is wanting to create in every form
I want to draw and paint
and take pictures and videos
and create dances and do ******* pottery and embroider into shirts and build a garden and screen-print designs and and and
I don't have time for it all
and I'm afraid life forces people to choose one
or to narrow it down
and I will strive to create excellent things
without cutting any of it out

would anyone like to volunteer to stuff me with leaves until fall colors pour out of my eyes?
stuff me until you suffocate all of my insides,
put me in a room filled with tree bark and suicide,
pop pills in my mouth and watch me turn into a maple,
i'll open up my legs if you promise not to bloom
because i am already rooted around you.
lights dance around your collar bone
you are looking through me
i see nothing
i see everything
i see a sad goodbye
i ask you to water me so my roots can grow stronger
but you fill me with whiskey, get me more than tipsy
i know it's cliche, but i'm love drunk on you, baby
stumbling and stuttering and hoping that even after this tree dies
after every vein in every leaf has been bled out...
you'll still remember me fondly

DO YOU GET IT???
I fall hard
and I fell for you
so for the next whoever-knows-how-long
I will be wishing to be a plant on your windowsill
or your favorite pillow
or the mug you drink out of every morning.
I wish I was the hat on your head
or your bass guitar
(I want you to pluck me, strum me, touch me)
I want to be your computer chair
maybe the pencil you use to take tests with.

I will wish I was something you'd keep around
something simple you don't think too much about
something you know you've got and you know you want
I will be wishing

Thorns down my throat
so
I spit them at you.

this love still makes my heart race at 90mph
you are still my favorite thing to touch

just let me know when you're ready to hit the brakes
because i don't have my seat-belt on.

i think of your floor and the baseball field under the stars, i want to kiss you there again, i want to climb another fence i want to climb onto the bus
i want to hold your ******* hand, i don't care when,
this is going to be fun.

if i had to list my three favorite movies,
today i might say: Across the Universe, Donnie Darko, and The ****** Suicides
(basic *****)
mainly for the aesthetics
the way the camera or lighting makes the scene
and i have colors stuck in my head from my own life images,
mostly pale blues
all in your room
(the comforter, the hue of the tv screen, your eyes)
it's all about angles, and i get the perfect view while perched on your chest
wish all the colors and lighting from the scenes in my head reflected more in my actions, you'd never get bored of me then.

it's pretty simple, i guess
no crows picking at the thoughts under my skull
no claw marks on my back from everyone who ever tried to stab me there
no knots of hair in the corners of my eye lids built up from years of trying to hide behind a frizzy blonde
life can be simple because it's all only metaphors
most things i think could be so much simpler

so instead of
me being a small cactus missing many ****** and him being the sun that allows me to grow tall anyway
he's just a guy that i love who makes me think a little clearer and feel a little stronger
and instead of
sitting at the bottom of a lake with the whole world still raining on me, seaweed wrapped around my hips so tight it stung
i was just a girl sitting in the tub under shower jets, letting the water wash away the blood

**** metaphors

If my room was clean
candles were lit
If we could forget about
the lives we live
you'd be here right now
I'd trace your spine
the night would be ours
forever.

still shaking from the caffeine
no motivation for much of anything
except a drive to your house.
today i want to practice my own well-being
but also be at peace with whatever you need

my whole life has been inside parentheses
a side note
can't say i mind
i'm comfortable living in the sidelines
less traffic here
still plenty of excitement when it's not in the spotlight
they're the memories we store in boxes in the back of our closets
they're the photos we pin to our wall but don't look at that often
they're the thoughts written down in unkempt journals we'll put in a drawer or pile under our bed when the pages are full
and i can be your parentheses
i can be the memory you store away one day,
occasionally fondly looking back and ruffling through
and touching the corners of photographs
(but not admiring for too long)
(I can be your parentheses)

In some moments, parts of me are dead
the parts that feel love and lust
the parts that drive me, that make me want to succeed,
that make me give a ****.
In some moments,
all of those wonderful parts of me disappear
and I am left with the part of me that wants to stare at a blank wall until my own blood covers it up.

I am sun-kissed and crazy about you

the moon pulls me just like it pulls the waves
(sometimes I am pulled back with the tide)
I am drawn to the skies every starry night
and my mind is drawn to your eyes every time I close mine
because love makes it easy to drown in your blue stare
(how cliche)
my fingers get lost when they run through your hair
and all I ever write anymore is how I love to be tangled in your bed sheets
because that is all my free-roaming mind ever wants to jump to.
You are my favorite place to be
and this wasn't going to be about you, but
the moon pulls me just like it pulls the waves
and I daydream of being pulled into your arms
I won't choke on salt water anymore,
I'll choke on the words I'm learning to understand the meaning of
"I love you"

Since I only write love poems,
This ones about the way he said he could see me for the rest of his life and wouldn't consider it a bad one.
I don't remember what I ever say back, exactly
All I know is that it's 1:30am, I've got an 8am tomorrow and I can't sleep because I'm too busy enjoying my daydreams thinking of all the things I could enjoy with you

I guess yes,
Maybe I'm depressed or something.
That small level of having to do a lot and not wanting to, unable to move or hydrate or bathe,
But I'm convinced I am usually lied to and idk what I want except mostly everything and also nothing at all.
Scared because I've made a best friend with the man I love, who I hardly get to see at all and when he is busy living while I am alone 4 hours away and depressed I feel a bother
the sun is finally out but today I am going to lay in my room in the dark
Enjoying the weather for cigarette breaks but that's about it.
Get someone better bc I am lately a ******

perched above water
thinking maybe the stillness in sound will ease my buzzing mind
if only my ears were filled with the deep blue
classic, cliche,
blue like your eyes or your blankets or home bedroom floor.
blue as in summer sky, hopping into the reservoir
i want to be there again
naked, with you on my 18th birthday at the top of that rock
gearing to jump.
i am so full when i am with you

I smelled you the other day, in a brand of deodorant, (I guess the brand you wore)
I wonder if that's what happens when the wind blows across wrinkly skin at age 73
sitting on a front porch and wondering
"is this where I'm supposed to be?"

but I will not be asking that question
I will not be 73
I will not be wondering if I made the right decisions
because that's exactly what I'm doing right now-
I am being around the right people
I am doing things for me

I think I want to write something
(I accidentally waited up)
(I wait a lot for a girl with very little free time)
(Should I go to sleep or get up to shower )
(Since when was it 1:30am)
Since last year I've been thinking about you every night before bed
What do you think about?
(Sometimes I'll also think of the sky or of floating or of flowers stuck in my throat, but I like to think of your lips and your shoulder blades)
(I like to think of the leaves stuck in my hair and of all the times we laid down in the grass)
I knew I'd fall in love with you

-I could probably make a lot of new friends right now, friends for the night. high me iss so good at talking
-what was the last thing i texted? I hope i didn't send that to you
-I want to show you these sometime so ewe can laugh at how stupid high i was. but i feel like you'd disapprove of this or something. if you were here i'd like this dream more. is this a dream?
-But my heart is in my throat and everything feels fake or too real, way too real and i bet i'm super annoying to you.
-I looked in the mirror and saw my mouth smile but i thought it was open and blank
-Feels like there are strands of hair covering my eyes and half of my brain is stuck between each rib i think i could reach down my throat and feel it
-Can't tell if we crashed and are riding to find out what exactly happens when you die
-can't remember if bailey actually ever decided to like me or i've just been pretending he does maybe i have been dreaming
-eww if i let him read this i'll regret it and he'll think i'm lame
-Eeven more now because i said that hahah
-Brush my teeth, go ***, wash my face, ibuprofen, don't grab your lighter to your skin, go to bed, fall asleep, wake up without the lag
-God life is weird i don't know what i want out of life "you can choose what you do with your life, but you can't choose what life does with you."
-I bet *** right now would feel amazinggg right now in his room on the floor probably
-My eye sockets look and feel sooo deep/far back and have i ever moved from this spot in front of the mirror
-**** me for sending you messages tonight ahhh it's probably too much ahh i feel annoying
-Wait did i send you those messages did i write tht down what have i been thinking (god what have you been of me)
-I wish you had gone to the party, all those guys would have loved you. there was jamming and everyone was as drunk and friendly as the guy you met camping that oput his cigarette in between the strings of your guitar
-ask bailey to Go to hector's falls and the observatory on wednesdays where you can see Jupiter at
-The puppet can't pull its own strings but **** am i trying to

I know forever doesn't exist and I'm not mad about it,
without change life would get so boring
and maybe I'd be content, but it doesn't matter
Doesn't matter if I believe you
Doesn't matter if you're telling the truth

i've been wanting to write
but i can only picture slime
or stabbing through the wall
or shadows on my ceiling

i like the way you smile after you make me laugh
(maybe it's all in my head, but i've been trying harder lately
to let myself believe you love me)

It is 5 a.m. and I have been awake for days, it feels
It is 5 a.m. and I am almost a year older
but I'm not sure if stripping down to my underwear and ripping out my eyelashes
counts as a celebration.

my layers are unraveling
I am peeling apart my flesh and bones
exposing the good, the bad, the unknowns

piece
by agonizing
piece

but god when you pull me closer,
nuzzle in,
when all i can feel is skin on skin,
when the world falls blank and insignificant to your finger tips
because the world never touched me like this
the world never kissed me like this...
so, sometimes, when you pull me closer,
I forget about the ******* world

bored as ****
so i bite my nails to the rim
and pretend that maybe you like it when you look at me

I've missed bruising my skin and bones from hitting them off of dance floors,
I've missed feeling a connection between my soul
and my body
and my mind.

Let me slam into the ground so I can finally let
all of my frustrations out
through more than crunches and squats and push ups,
let my body tire out so I can finally let
the world spin around
and around and around and around

and I will be turning with it.

i like the needles in my chest
i like it when you wiggle them around
my flesh is so twitchy
itching lately to get you off my mind
but i can't manage. (i like you there)
taking in long slow breaths so my lungs don't bash my heart and ribs
trying hard not to write another love poem

but god, when you say my name...
-
i like it when my arms swim and float around the glares of light
i like it when my arms find their way to a place wrapped with you
-
this is a love poem

Hands brush our skin
in hopes of feeling something again-
all we feel is the wind
and they're left with empty chests.

i wonder if it will take 100 times to get tired of me
200, 400 times of
love-making or
rough *** or
"give me your dirtiest version"
"i want you so badly i wish i could teleport hundreds of miles to you tonight."
i don't know why i think sitting passenger in my car smoking newports will eventually get boring to you but baby stay a while and i'll do it just how you like
let this last and i'll touch my tongue to your sweet spot

**** nights like this
i get so sad over things that haven't happened yet