I'm sitting in a cafe
Grinding myself to the bone
My marrow still carries
Your essence, your DNA
I sit back to watch the sunlight
Bounce off the tables
and remember what you smelled like.

The pangs of dissolution
unraveled in my nerves
and my brain tells me
to keep myself small
So that I can return to
The exclusive club I belonged to.

You said it like a joke
But your voice had edges
Something so small
Became my lightning rod
I should have know when
You gently advised against it
That your eyes would harden
As if it was another betrayal.

As if,
You hated that I chose her.
As if,
You hated that I chose something for me.
As if….
You hated me.

I guess it was the
Unspoken proof that
I knew how to decide for myself.

She sleeps on my pillow now
And doesn’t ask for permission, either.

I find pieces of you in others
Your love of music in a coworker
The coded language we shared
In a new friend
Some people say that
Ghosts of the dead are what
Stories are made of
But I say
The ghost of regret is
The chapter I never expected.

Maybe love is not meant for those
With tangled minds
Unable to decipher what’s happening
In your head and in mine  
But I know that every soul
This earth presents to me
Is someone that can teach me
Lessons I’ll cling onto
With every breath
With knuckles bruised.

In the quiet moments at 1pm
The world moves with my thoughts
Melodies pass through me like whispers,
The echoes of your laughter
Twist into questions that I still can’t answer.

I walk familiar roads alone
Wondering if I’m searching for you or
The person I lost along the way.
Some nights I search for memories
Like constellations in the stars
Faint, flickering lights.

I want to know what I want
To hold certainty like a flame in my hands
But desire shifts like a plague in my mind
Like the shadows that I grew to love
I hear your name from a great distance
And something else that I don’t understand.

I will stand in this space
Missing you, missing me
Waiting for the soft silence
To answer me.

I traced the shadows beneath my eyes
New hollows carved by nights spent
Waiting for a fire that never came
I drenched myself in gasoline just to
Beg you to take my light.

Once, my face was smooth and warm
Free of this scar tissue made up of
fear and loneliness
Love unravels in the weight of your gaze
Which I carry in my chest, like a
Silent cough that worsens at night.

How unfair that the world goes on
While I hold the fragile shape of
Your bleeding heart in my aging hands
And the nights press heavy against
My skin, marking me like its own
In soft, sleepless bruises.

Sink your teeth into my flesh
And let my arteries explode into your throat
It once had the tune of drums played
For the day of the dead
Where we first met in the ghosts of people
Long forgotten.
I would so much rather you
Chew the muscles of my soul and
Trap me inside of your growing black hole
So that I may see the stars shining brightly
For me in the end.

The strongest force in nature will erode
That seemingly unbreakable
Stone, marble, mountains firm and tall.
The river shapes, carves, molds
Creating the future, tracing the past.
The ocean surges, waves alive with breath
And whispers, “This was a battle I’d always win”.
The pull is deep and everlasting
And drowning might be worth a handful
Of pebbles and skipping stones.

Is there anywhere that I belong
Besides the empty pink room
Of my twelve year old memories?
I keep searching for the key
To unbolt the little rotted door
And let wholeness flood once more.
Maybe it was never meant for me
To know long lasting security
Without fleeing from what could be
Something to be ripped from me
again and again.

Days move like smoke
Shifting, Slipping, Intangible
Dreams that I have clutched so tightly
Have unraveled in my hands
And I wonder if they were ever mine
Or just borrowed stories
I was too afraid to rewrite
Change comes quietly
Like a tide rising in the dark
Washing away all that once was.

Some endings are not always loud
Some you don’t notice until they’re already gone
This strange middle ground
Is not the version that I imagined

I am bruised but still standing
I am lost but still walking
And when I arrive , it will be a shedding
Layer by layer
Until I am bare
And afraid
And free.

You are the silence after the rain
The scent of the wet aftermath
The earth holds its breath in renewal
I see you in the stillness between moments
When time feels less sharp
A rhythm that asks nothing
But gives everything.
The aches of the days dissolve
Like frost melting under the morning winter light
In your eyes, there is no urgency
Only infinite tenderness, a horizon of calm
You are not just a place to return to
But the quiet I carry deep within me.

I ran from the woman I couldn’t yet see
Her heart too wild, her soul too free
Lost in the ache of everyone else's touch
Fearing the depth of feeling too much.

So I stop running, though fear grips my hand
And face the mirror I can’t yet understand
Endless reparations made a mosaic of fire
A masterpiece born of struggle and desire.

But love waits softly, in shadows I chase
A quiet whisper, a tender embrace
In broken shards I start to believe
The woman I’m running from wants me to breathe.

Your hot breath still
Tortures me in my sleep.
At the most vulnerable moments,
You are a plague to my name.
How much more can you break me?
Please, God, let me give up
and let your blood seep into my bones.
You are the parts of me
I hate the most.
I wonder how much longer
Your grey skin and ***** fingernails
Will keep me up at night.

Some days I mourn my childhood
Washed away into the sea, on a brittle wooden raft
The world was so far out of reach
But my heart was dying to be crushed by it
I was a jester, making everyone else's bleeding heads fill with laughter
The sweat leaked from our palms
Hard labor for unappreciative guests
And I ache for the pain we shared
It was ours to grow together, over watered and drowned by the old shed out back
Now the distance in our lives grows larger
And I am proud of what we made
But I miss you terribly.

We made plans some days ago to see the food truck on Saturday. It wasnt just any food truck; it was the Hello Kitty truck. You knew I had been wanting to see it in california but we never got a chance to go. We loved going to california. The calm beauty of our vacations made everything else so forgettable. My boss gave me a paper showing me how to get to the truck. I couldnt believe it was coming to us. There was no hesitation in your agreement to join me.
We drove Saturday morning in the early sunshine. I hated mornings, but they can be bearable for the right reasons. Driving with you is one of them. We were so laughably broke all the time but it didnt matter. Money comes and goes, but time stays and turns into memories. We would find gas somewhere. The journey was 1/3 the fun. The music was the other 1/3, and the destination was the last.
Arriving, we saw displays of expensive plastic. Cookies I could make at home with love. It was a sad sight. We couldnt afford anything that was on the menu, and the line was so long. The day was warm. I looked at you and shrugged. You flashed your warm smile. I loved you. The days couldnt be that bad with you. I asked if you wanted to go to a coffee shop. You were relieved to leave. We discussed consumerism and hated the hand life dealt us. But it was okay. You taught me how to play chess in the corner of the coffee shop. They had a lavendar drink that made me think of you. You loved lavendar. We talked and played chess for hours. Everything would be okay, I always knew.

I never used to have trouble sleeping
Until the beat of my ear drums caught up with me
And I started to recognize the song playing out my windows
Every line was a piece of fruit growing in my heart
And harvesting the blood can wear me out
The night peeks through half open blinds, sheepishly
As if it were to ask me if it can come in and haunt
Reminding me of secrets I never told myself.

I slept through a fire alarm once, my father said
And now they always appear in my dreams
Running to catch the wind, grappling onto symbols and
meaning , as if there were anything to say.
The silence keeps tossing me awake, prodding
Like an electric shock, forcing the experience of
Trembling honesty and regurgitation.

I walk the hot midnight sidewalk
Alone with faces who only know my smile
The same song repeats in my head and
It drives you crazy to see me happy
I forgot who you were because you can't hurt me anymore
A hallucination of uneasiness erased by
Foggy chatter and experimental absinthe
I’ll race you to the end of the line, where I’ll still be
Laughing at your remorse.

Coffee stains on white sheets
Only spots and insignificant
When I inhale your bare face
Into my womb, hide safe in me.

During the most uncomfortable instances
I think back on the piña coladas and sweet cream
Still fresh in the fruit, still whole
The salty air left sand on
The creases of my eyes
We found medallion shells together
But I held my own hand then
And let the blue wet my shorts
Unexpectedly, there was nothing to be afraid of.

A man sits outside to watch the dusk. Scents of rosebuds and freshly cut grass arise. The blades all uniform, standardized. His chair feels cool, like the bottle in his hands. She, inside, creates his favorite dish like muscle memory, the glass door in between them. The children are safe in the shelter he has provided. There is nothing out here.
Only the mind and all of it's heavy storage. The key is always accessible, but he never wants it. Nothing has changed, but nothing is the same anymore. Inside closed eyelids are ghosts of his friends' torn up soccer ball and his father's ***** hands. They smell like earth.
The garden was bare towards the end, but once, a long time ago, he had oranges. There was everything out there.

I used to make little whirlpools with my finger,
In the dark
When I was a bubble, you couldn't hear my pop
I landed back in the cold water
Bleach to sanitize, never enough
My eyes were bloodshot underwater
And I dove to the safest place
The bottom of the sea
The sea shells were never real
And neither was your face
The pressure in the trench would take my breath away
Float to me, I always screamed
But I was too busy chasing the light.

You're still a child
fighting the dark asphalt
to find your mommy again
she's lost you to the cold
wanted posters cloud the telephone poles
where have you been?
She asks.
You've spent your whole life trying to answer her.

The perfect woman
looks like me and you
breath down her neck
hairs standing tall
unholy mistakes rewritten
on the bathroom wall
The sharp heel stabs to ****
her own heart with.

Mistakes, I'm guilty
of faking a smile with you.

A sea of sweet, bitter gulps
the truth is so far away from me
it sweeps me here like dust, I am
back to the soil
where the flowers slow dance in the place
they've always been
tough and sturdy
reliant, time and time again
with branches and leaves
and books and time
and grapes melted in my throat
help me be here, stay here
with me.

One of my favorite things you do
Is mumble in your sleep
A wispy whisper, secrets only we know
Underneath heavy sedation,
The comfort of avoidance
Life wanders off, forgetting us
Cotton fresh and messy hair
The sun doesn't dare bother us
Anything matters only in these short breaths, enclosed.

She's alive! I gasp
Waking in the saturated falseness of my dream
I drive for hours every time
Just to see you proud of me again
Are you proud of me again?
Your tired eyes pierce my rest
And I always fall for it over and over
Knowing well I'm stuck in a bubble of lies
I'll still look for you, frantically
To tell you what I never said.

When the world knows who to look for
And how to spend their seconds
What will you say when
Your palms are empty with choices?
When the clicks are in tune without you and
Their sounds know where to go
When you run to find the oceans
Have all but dried up
And you've been looking in all the wrong places
What will you have left, to call yourself?

How far are you willing to go?
Would you let the sharp shard of satisfaction
Cut you where it matters?
Would you let yourself bleed colors on the floor?
How far would you let your glass heart
Crack again?

Today, I was going to call you
I thought about it all day
I practiced what I would say to you
"hey, hows it going?"
"hi, how are you?"
"you doing okay?"
but none of these questions were about me
I didn't rehearse lines such as
"oh yeah I went to a concert yesterday" or
"been working a lot" or
"I hate you".

Today, I was going to call you
because even though I wouldn't admit it,
I was scared of your anger for not having
jumped as your lap dog after 2 days
1 day
a few hours
I know how you feel about me
I know what you say about me
So today, I was going to call you
but no matter how many times I say
"how high?"
when you ask me to jump
you'll always tell everyone
I'm a terrible kid.

so I'm not ******* calling you today.

I could draw the shape of your eyes over and over inside my head
The smooth curves of your lips
There's a softness that welcomes my long days.
I am willingly chained to your unblemished heart
My song, my sun, my God.

Blue fish, please help my heart
Its drowning in my stomach
Broken down by acid and disease
Churning to force the rose petals that come out of my mouth
There's not enough for us but
For him, seep out of his pristine white box
In excess.

Blue fish, your colors are soft to my aching eyes
Swim and take me with you
I'm restless,
The water will be warmer
Where you go, there's nothing to lose
But the scales from your thin fins.

Blue fish, I hope to become you
When it's time to swim away.

Relinquish and release their heart beats from my back.

Some days I feel as if I don't know myself, not one bit,
Because I don't know you.
I don't know what you were like when you were weak.
I don't know what you were like when you were wrong.
I'm trying to grasp onto a fragrance of you,
of me.
I cant find you anymore, or hear your faint voice
or feel the prickliness of your unshaved thighs on my cheek.
All I have now are cut strings that traced back to you before your eyes went blank.

A strange man answered your phone and told me to go home.

I really hate that everyone looks like pieces of you.  
Skinny hands, ***** fingernails, thinning hair and yellow skin.
Stomach acid bubbles up and the bitter taste of your lying words surfaces on my tongue.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand tall when the stench of your black stain, lingers, unwashable, even when I bleach myself to death to rid myself of your impurities, you goblin.
You have given me no satisfaction, let me live loosely,
I would crawl a mile to you, knees bleeding, pleading you to release me,
Remove the destructive fear of looking any man in the eye anymore.
You don't exist but in a stale memory of a time I wanted to go back to someday.

But not today.

It’s been awhile since I've had one. I try to push it away when the slightest things seem to light the fire, burning everything down I've worked so hard for. Most days, I come home fine and feed my fish, make dinner and live the life i deserve. I deserve it, i gotta keep telling myself that. It used to be so much worse though, oh god. So much worse. Each time my head explodes, I always hope it’s the very last time. The very last time or i can’t do this anymore. Or so i think, anyway.
By then, I can’t bear to nurse this succubus any longer, and cannot handle the leech ******* off my stability. My life is constantly dancing on a tight wire; balance and don’t let go.
Don’t fall apart.
She comes for me still, and I have some hope that she will die in some nasty trainwreck or even better, taken hostage by some scaly aliens in a world I can never get to. And when she comes, she takes everything from me. I’m not doing well enough, i didn’t do anything to accomplish the goals i have, to have achieved everything i could ever want in life.

Anxiety has a way of making everyone feel less than, or things that could not have been farther from the truth. Tonight it came to me, in a rush episode followed by bouts of extreme sobbing, trembling, mania, and telling myself to let everyone go because I make their lives miserable. My head will try to poison what good I have here. I believe my significant other can do better, way better, and why isn’t he? Why am i not making him? I will sit there and question him and trap myself to really assume he actually does not want me, only pities me. And for that, I must make him go. Run away, please, get away from me and hide because i’ll look for you. I’ll look for you and scream your name so loud my ancestors will hear it. Don’t come back. You are better off without me, without my low self esteem and my fits of rage. You are better than this, pristine and godly and I am utter trash. Tell me to go f*ck myself, hate me and say you never want to see me again. I will have won and lost at the same time.

She tells me I am a disappointment to my family’s name, weak and small. My energy drains in picking up every phone call from my mother only to tell me she knows I've been busy, but they are still there waiting for my call. She doesn’t really mean that though. What she really means is she’s upset at how busy I am, how I never see them, and how I never turned out to be the daughter they lost. I will never be her but I will live my life and die trying, so hard that my veins will protrude from my neck in frustration. No no, that’s all wrong, it got to be all wrong, I tell myself. Two sides of my mind that battle to the death, coming up with every fake persona to please. All I want is for people to like me. What a ridiculous idea, isn’t it? What matters whether or not someone that I will never meet again cares about what i think? Or even yet, my own blood, as it is my life and absolutely nobody else’s? That’s just it though. It’s everybody else’s. I am everybodys and I am nobody’s. The only thing I belong to is her, the only thing I try to break free from.
Someday I will give up, I say.
I will not.

It’s too bad that I am doomed to share my life with the deceiving entity that is anxiety. Fear, what grasps on tightly around my neck, squeezing slightly tighter after some time. Gradual, like it should be. I have no social outings and have decided to give up on them, seeing as I am too afraid of disappointing. That’s all i ever do, it seems like. Or so i thought. Of course, once it bangs me up and leaves me in bruises, do I then realize it was never really there. I am free, I think, even just for a moment. My lungs release the liquid inside and I gulp a large amount of air. I sob quietly on my bedroom carpet, hoping and praying to whatever nonsense is out there, that my loved ones have not given up on me. I turn to see my SO and he was right next to me the whole time, waiting for it to pass like a seizure that he can do nothing about. Wake up, it’s time for the next episode of your life, you idiot. This is all the moment you get. Be free.

He opened his mouth and out fell,
The answers I had been waiting for all of my life.
They tasted bitter, but fuzzy at the tips,
Tickled my mind.

This time, I believed him.
We all did.

I hate this place.
I hate this feeling,
I hate these people.
I hate *** and
I hate food.
I hate the weather,
I hate this music.
I hate that I'm afraid of death's first kiss,
I hate this air.
But most of all, I hate that no matter what,
I will never hate you.

You used to be so proud of me.

Break my brittle bones
Like you know best,
I can't help but let go
Stuck to the icy floor
My breath is cold and running out
All the electric light flows out from my fingertips
Pour out like crystals and
Leave me hollow, eyes dilated and lifeless
The only way I know how to be.

When every song drags inside your eardrums
And bright colors remind you of nightmares
Paralyzing numbness,
When faces seem distorted
You know she's got your back
When she grips you by the waist
breaks your ribs, you can't breathe
That's when she's got you,
and she loves you, til the very end.

When there's nothing left of you, that's when she's had you.

Quiet uninvited words invade my solitude
Like consuming shadows, they lurk in all
The corners I once knew as safe
And remind me of my imperfections
All the reasons you need to leave.

Slice me open to pull them out
Venomous letters dancing in my head
As if you were always looking for the next best thing.

Pages from a long lost notebook scream
Your every touch, pained ink spilling
From my innocence in the days of knowing you
Rules and lines I can’t erase
You stay, hovering my simple mind when you weren’t even there
And so
Do I burn it?
Cherish it?
Tear it to shreds and feed my hungry soul?

If I stare long enough, I’ll summon your imminent presence.

For the voices to cease,
Fall into slumber
Sweet voices who do not know
My nightly ritual show
Desperate relief from my sorrow
Clutching my last hope.

There’s an old man beside me, sitting untouched in the ripped withered chair. He sits alone, his only company, a crossword puzzle. Coffee complimented with 2 pieces of apple pie, his highlighters neatly placed parallel to the book. Concentration becomes him, screaming children does not impair the streaking.

And for a few seconds, with strong beliefs of being unnoticed, unimportant, he releases a look of pure nostalgia. Memories flood the man’s white hair, pupils left vacant.

To say my morphing characteristics have
Flown out of the window from the
7th floor white-walled room
Can only give me goosebumps at best

I know not who I claimed to be
But only the smooth dirt that slides off of my fingertips
The impending embrace of the insect filled corners
Are all I can promise you, my phantom.

From every comfortable slumber
and sleepless night

You are my favorite dream.

Sometimes I don't wanna let go
Cause this burning wax is all that I know
And if you peel it from my cracked hands
I'll have nothing to breathe for.

At the strike of 1:30pm, she inhales her surroundings
Of static and melting human faces
Every detail of the smiling man send her nerves
To that sharp edges of this ***** desk
And fantasies in her simple mind
Toss and turn, ideas glitching in her iris
Of snapping the necks of poor incompetent strangers
But mostly, achingly, her sweet gushing blood
That surely tastes of her dreaming unclenched fists.

On nights such as this, lovely painted nightlights
My soft petaled sheets become
Course on my brittle ankles
The unorganized pile of miscellaneous god knows what
(Does he?)
Transforms, hallucinogens point and laugh
Becoming bits of deities to serve as an alarm clock on a plate
Ticking my black hairs to grey
The cold air suffocates my toes and
Fills my shell with images of
Once laid here with the changing eyes that kept me quiet.

Sometimes, I wake up and search for your nonexistent space.

Intensify my involuntary ticks
Here is my virginity, not peeled from my skin
But ripped from my flesh
Like a child's band-aid.

Leave behind the bitter taste on my cracked lips
You'll only ever be
A mistress to fall on, seducing me to your weak trap.

I lay, alone in my closet of unused black dresses
Awaiting the dark blue cool sky to greet me
Staring at the ceiling, attempting to cry out for help
Alone is all I know, the wooden doors divide me from
The burning acids of the unknown, the outside scares me
Blood tears roll down my cheeks
Clumping, carrying a timeline of glass shards in the alley.

I lay, alone in my closet of fading yellow splattered ceiling
That pretty crystal raised to my eye to clearly see
Beauty that was on the other side, guarding me
An old friend I’ve missed for so long, dear absolute satisfaction
Assurance and safety of only when I am ready
Hologram glittered tears roll down my chin
I am a raw human,  and my surroundings, animated sketches.

I lay, alone in my closet, when You sat by a wall between us
Somehow, you knew the magic words to my poorly built tree house
And cupped in arms that always knew, me, this surrendered rag doll
Poorly stuffed with ***** cotton and trinkets
You rinsed out my stains and replaced loose buttons
Pink painted tears roll down into my pores, invade my veins
And for an instant, for a short pause in all that ever was, stood a small child with flowered braids.

It’s ridiculous to try
To comprehend whether you tasted
Bitter or sweet in my mouth
All these years.