so i know you remember the first time you kissed me
how you kissed me
despite how drunk we were

this was a moment i would've loved to remember a lot more clearly
and i know you would too
because you told me

i am too beautiful to kiss drunk
when my two eyes could be four
and my lips aren’t really moving

i think i should not be so naive
to suspect that someone that coherent when they are intoxicated
could have anything within them
other than dark caves and voids that can not be filled

the next day
you taught me how to put pen to paper
and i felt so heartbroken that nothing came out

you drew beautiful portraits in red blood
that moved something in my heart
and made it click right

i do not think i quite understood any of your poems,
but they were so undeniably elegant
i fell in love with them almost as much as you

and i told you so,
so you kissed me

softer than before,
because this time you had the balance
and i had the anxiety boiling under my throat

your kisses
spilt blood over my paper
because you bit my lip so harshly
but then smoothed over your bites
and made them feel like the softest caresses

you were hurting me, though
with every touch
you chipped away at my armour
until i was naked
and i loved the feeling of your eyes dancing over my skin

but you didn't stop there
because underneath your pretty eyes
was a calculating look i ignored

how could you best break me?

and you would shake me until my parts couldn't hold up
throw me until there were individual pieces you could hold between your fingers

i don't know what you did with them
where you kept them
but i didn't miss them when your hands were on my waist
and when you stole my mouth
i couldn't exactly protest
but i wouldn't have if i could

my notebooks saw blood, though
more blood than they'd ever seen
spilling relentlessly like it was held captive in my vessels

this is probably a feeling i will never understand
because as much as i hated my body
and all that it held within
you made it feel right
in hindsight
you probably only ever touched me
because you wanted to make a home out of my body

still, that made me beautiful in your eyes
but you were draining me
just how long could i keep my skin youthful
and glowing when i was losing blood every waking minute?

i think i became a little deaf
to anything that wasn’t your voice
until one day you stopped telling me how beautiful i was
when you stopped writing poems about me
and started writing about another girl

this is how you cut me the deepest
and made me your very own poem
an artwork bleeding pain
and left me empty

and i used to think i had a bottomless pit within me
filled with blood and pain
but i’m running out
and i’m starting to see a little too much of you in my poems
i am starting to look at other girls
with the same calculating look you once cast my way

and i am realising
you never forgot me
perhaps you never intended to hurt me
if you were so empty you sought shelter in me
and killed me when you were trying to survive
i don’t think i could really blame you

besides
you still read my poems
so i know you still think about the first time you kissed me
just like i do

The poet lives two lives.
One on the outside,
And one in their mind.

When you look in their eyes
You could see an abyss.

If you looked long enough
You could sink into it.

But most people don’t see it.

Take the time to read the words, though,
And you would know for sure.

The poet lives in two different worlds.

She bites her fingernails in math class
The numbers have always been a dancing cacophony of
confusion.
She was dyslexic
and the vignette of her vision were all the things
she couldn’t understand—
even when she wanted to.

Her lips weren’t the kind poets would write about either.
They weren’t soft, and red like cherry,
they weren’t velvety—
they were always chapped.
They were never inviting.
She’s grown so fond of peeling
the skin off until they bled
out the silhouette of anxiety
washing her insides
causing external decay.

But there was no external decay in coloring
outside the lines.
In 1st grade her teacher had told her
that maybe something was wrong with her—
but maybe its the unfolding of protest
in the early days.
Where little me believed that
things do not have to be perfect to be beautiful—
to deserve to be seen as art.
There’s poems you could write about
at the sight of coffee stained sheets
or faulty flickering streetlights
or collected dust that had found home in book shelves in bedrooms.
The little things that counted
were the little things that kept the flame alive.
Maybe the sun doesn’t shine for us,
but the world in its vastness conforms to the reality
that there are beautiful things in life
we are still yet to discover—
nestled in between the cracks we don’t step on.

In church she cracks her knuckles.
She found god more in navigating through life
and survival from mishaps
as opposed to sitting on a pew and
being told about how she could go to hell.
And in the lightest of days
she hums.
She hums along the rhythm of the abstract and imperfect structure of life.
Which brings us back to the hero's shoulders
and the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence and misery in the world,
but despite the abundance of it.

- mgv

there is a boy i've mentioned in my poems
only a few times,
not enough to elicit the thought that i love him

but i do;
in actuality, i probably don't
since i have a tendency to label things love
from corpses to blooming gardens;
i wouldn't recognise love if it knocked me out
but i like to imagine my poems are about love

so i love him,
and the songs he sings to me
and the words he sews especially for me
but after thousands of love poems,
the word becomes a little bit redundant

even when he says it for the first time
and it tastes new and foreign on my skin
it becomes stale so fast
and i anticipate it

maybe he also misunderstands love
and only likes my corpse
but to me
they are the same

kiss me
even though i choke on your name
and burn when you look away
i promise you i am fragile
in a beautiful way

you are not like any other boy who's touched me
but i won't get mad if you break me;