i learned that love bites
don’t always mean
‘i love you.’

loverboy.

“please kiss me until i can’t breathe!”
i beg
“show me the afterlife
show me the forbidden fruits that eve tasted
show me the eagerness and the aching pain that you feel in your chest
hold me for eternity throughout this lifetime
we can forget about heartbeats
because they’re so painful to feel
we’re just taking breaths to stay
we can count stars instead
you can taste the stardust on my tongue if you’d like
we can go to mars and slow dance until our feet are nothing but ash
can we be in love until there’s nothing left?
let’s lose everything there is to have!”
i roared
“please kiss me until there’s only an us.”

for a writer to be lovesick
is my only required ethic
in creating a work of heart

so when i skimmed your
saint kissed mouth
and moonlight eyes
indeed my first thoughts were— ah! art!

there it was
cupid’s finely-poised dart!
draw, aim, fire!
o, so sweet, a sinful desire

lovesick! lovesick! lovesick!
i wish to write you a work of art, angelus dulce!

you smiled
you whispered with ferocity
“love is an illusion, chèri.
but illusion is the first of all pleasures”

and at that moment
i dipped my body in your delusional paradise
and praised the saints for giving me the ****** wine to drink

illusion is the first of all pleasures.

she pulls out her marlboro pack cigarettes and takes the slender cancer stick out and puts it between her lips

sparking the lighter, she throws her head back and wonders what all went wrong with her and her hades.

the bitter nicotine was filling up the emptiness he left inside of her hollow chest when he ripped out her heart and crushed it into a liquid crimson mess

she couldn’t pinpoint where things went wrong, but she knew things went downhill a long time ago. if she focuses, she can still
hear the rolling of his suitcase when he left her in that **** motel at 4am.

4am. it’s always 4am. and now she’s trying to **** some air into her heaving lungs when the clock hits 4’o’clock because all she sees is his silhouette.

mayhem is born when
you speak in phrases of the
seven deadly sins

oh my killer hades, let me fill you up with the wine from the holy grail!

maybe then you'll finally find religion in my arms
like i do when i'm in bed with you

your serpentine tongue
licks the sun from my ivory skin
singing songs of destruction as
you make my guts spill and dance for you

you play with the strings of my flimsy veins
and throw me around like marionette.
i cannot breathe, you've ****** the air out
of my sweet lungs because you're such a thief

burn me down to the ground, mi amor
play with my ashes and sprinkle them on every
single one of your celestial beings' graves.

you spend every friday and saturday night
with white dust attached and sprinkled on your nose. sometimes you’ll tell me it’s a quarter of the moon, and all of the gods have to taste the galaxy too.

you sometimes scream that i’m the worst addiction you have ever endured and sometimes you whisper that you don’t want to quit me. you tell me without me you can’t live
that my hands send you to the highest heavens and my lips make you taste it

you claim that the universe is that spot between my thighs, you also claim you know the route to the underworld and to get there is by pulling my spine

you ask me if i can save such a ******* soul
because you are drowning in my love
and i tell you it’s gonna be okay
while i tie the anchor around your feet.

i’m screaming ruination as your plump pink lips press against my stomach and down to my bare hips

you’re telling me the only thing i need to scream is your name, as i bite down on your shoulder to gain some friction

my eyes roll back as i arch my back
getting my body ruined by a dying god was never on my bucket list.

he stood in front of me with his dead eyes, arms wide and a smile so big that it reached ear to ear. holding me into a tight embrace, he whispered how beautiful i was.


but darling has a serpent tongue that i couldn't see before.
his fool's paradise is dripping from his fingers while he plays the harp on my ribcage


parasite boy promised me his soul
and begged me to make him golden.

i met the love of my life in a dream.
we ate fresh baked bread on a floral bridge
that was over a running azure lake that had all kinds of water creatures below the surface, and i told him he was the one for me. “aime-moi” i said before we were in front of the eiffel tower. he kissed me with his pineapple juice lips and i got drunk off the feeling. his words were almost as enchanting as the scenery and the moment, i told him “estoy enamorado de ti!” and that’s when he disappeared in a cloud of peach hue smoke.

so please, loverboy
if you’re reading
let’s go back

my heart is thumping against my ribcage
i feel the pulsing in my veins and the flickering between my eyes has me buzzing like a bee

my hands are cold
if they touch you
you’ll just freeze
and don’t even think about getting near my soul
you’ll just get frostbite

even though i’m warm flesh and blood
i don’t agree with the whole idea of love
and how we need it to survive
love has always been a kick to the gut
and i’m coughing up metallic

i’m begging you not to go
but shoving you out the door as i do so
you don’t know whether you should stay or leave
so you decide to take the easier route in the decision making
and you just leave

because you don’t want to deal with the anger i have towards myself and the resentment
so you leave
and i’m left with a hole in my heart

it’s faintly beating
but it’s still there

so i’ll let my therapist take a seat and get her notepad and i’ll lie about how i’m fine and you’ll lie about how you didn’t see the warning signs.

you have winter in your veins
and i know at point i lived for the glacial temperatures.

i lived for the ice covering my bones
and you filling my body up to the brim with your filthy mistakes and careless words. how much do i have to pay you to hear you say those three little words again?

i keep replaying the vhs tape to our movie even though i always know how it ends.
i know how it ends, yet i watch it like a deer watches the headlights because i long for the familiarity that was once us, even though it makes me want to purge my guts out until my throat is strained and scratched.

i got drunk off your finger-crossed promises that the light at the end of the tunnel was right ahead and we needed to keep our head up. i sipped from your cup of honeyed words as if your delusional paradise could quench my thirst.

i’m slowly breaking down and distinguishing the pronunciations of safety and comfort, and they no longer sound like your name. they don’t sound like your name at all.

all you ever did was visit. you never stayed. my heart and ribcage was a home to you inconsistently inhabited whenever you feel alone and weak. but when the time came to renew the lease, you left me to sit fully furnished with your bad intentions; all the weight of your baggage that you were tired of carrying on your back was unloaded onto me. i reached my full capacity a long time ago, but you were blind to see that i was overflowing.

i would rip my lungs out if it meant it would quiet my screams that cry for you

i bite my tongue because i know my words never meant anything to you.

when i walked away from you, i left behind a universe filled ecstasy and unwanted come downs.

and i always tried to make you sure you were safe and had something to hold onto so you wouldn’t go flying away

but i guess you loved being high more than the firm grounding i put you on time and time again.

we found comfort in the chaos
but i’m no longer your lovebird
i’m ready to be set free from my cage for good.

i really am struggling with my writing and inspiration. please give me ideas of what to write about. it can be anything.

he said her name as if it were a prayer but i don’t think he’s religious. if he believes in anything, he believes in himself. she found salvation in his eyes, and swore he was her savior.

she spoke in tongues when his hand was tucked between her thighs, she tried to not his verses out of context. but ****, it was weighing on her conscience.

unanswered phone calls at 3 am / shattered broken beer bottles on the wooden floor and broken cigarettes in half filled water glasses  / blackish black mascara running down my foundation stained cheeks / your hand wrapped in ace bandages while your brother fixes the hole in the wall for the third time / inner thigh touching and eager red stained lips / another night of me wishing things were different.

i can’t pretend to not be utterly destroyed and enchanted at the same time by you. my chest physically aches and is sore whenever i get the urge to hold you close and you’re not here. it’s humorous. because i can’t imagine myself with anyone else, and i don’t want to be with anyone else, but you can make a list of the girls you’d give your heart to. none of them are me.

i always told you that if you fell
i would catch you
i swore to myself over and over again
that i would catch you before you hit the ground
but i realize now
you never once said you’d catch me.

i licked my lips and sat there while the pastor preached the word of god, but i was too busy staring at the boy sitting next to me with his arms crossed. he was five years older than me, but i was a lifetime better than him. at least that’s what i think.

he had a pearly white smile and his heart on his sleeve, his irises didn’t look away as i caught him staring. he always liked to observe, and i happened to be the one who his eyes loved to prey upon.

his name was like toxins, decaying on my tongue, but i loved saying it anyway. he listened to dubstep and said that was his favorite kind of music while i loved the head banging rock music. we were so different but that meant our love was one of a kind.

but he felt like splinters in my fingers; the ones you ripped off harshly and watched the blood prickle up while you felt the sting. call me a *******, but i loved every second of it.

eyes are windows to the soul, and if i ever saw his eyes again

i would rip them out of their sockets and keep them as my own.

you called me persephone for the first time when your tongue made a home between my lips and thighs

you told me i’d stay; chained to the hell you called your feelings until my legs snapped in half and my arms wrapped around you for support. but you never mentioned if you’d catch me.

you told me i was meant to love you
and i was never supposed to walk away
you told me the ruins we called our bed, were to never be escaped.

you called me persephone for the last time
when i grabbed my phone and walked out the door and into my mama’s car

you said persephone and hades would be forever
but oh, my hades, i no longer want to live life in darkness
i don’t want to taste the charcoal in my throat and choke
you no longer have control over me, my hades.
i’m ready to be set free.

curse my name with your serpent tongue. step back in disgust and purge all the memories of me like bad liquor—as if my name gave you a bitter taste in your mouth. act like the tastebuds on your tongue never craved any of it.

i’m clinging onto the little sanity i have left because the rest of it is decomposing like a dead corpse in the grave.

you told me i had no backbone, but last time i checked, all my limbs were a phantom.

your lips touch my ear / breath on my skin / making mine hitch /
goosebumps on my body / you whisper love prose / paint me in golden strokes / i will come undone for you / your name is stuck and clogged in my throat / i’m not choking  on you / i’m choking on us / we’re fiery beacons of light / i will come undone for you / i feel fireworks exploding in the pit of my stomach / i wish i could stay here / stay with you forever /
isn’t that part of our purpose? / stay with me / stay with me in the morning light.

my tongue was red from the jolly ranchers
and my lips were glossed with tangerine *****

we stripped down bare
and i could see your smile
when you saw me exposed

polaroid camera
flashes and lipstick stains on
porcelain skin

i cared for you
until i stopped caring for myself

the pictures are buried deep somewhere
in my room but your image is imprinted in my brain

remember when i said if the bottle landed on you, i was yours?

i’m still yours.

burning sensations on ****** tongues
( come on baby, light my fire! )
silky fingers slide into my throat and make me
purge a sweet haven for you.
( jesus christ, you’re a mess. )
your mother always said not to mess with fire
but here you are playing with my matches.

you have moon dust in your veins
and i want to taste the cosmos!

take my body away
toss it onto the pile
of all your rag dolls
and mistakes.
i'm just a vhs tape waiting
to finally be used and wanted.

you are a human blood bath
filled with destruction and wars
you taste like redemption
and i'm wondering if all the dying gods
taste the way you do.

OH MY KILLER HADES
KISS ME UNTIL MY LIPS ARE BLUE
AND I START SEEING THE GALAXY NOT ONLY IN YOUR EYES BUT AROUND OUR BODIES!

grip my hips and shove our chests together as your ******* runs up and down my spine
my eyes are shimmering with jupiter's kiss, and you can see the planets and stars within them.

there's euphoria running through my crimson veins as you kiss my ivory skin, and i swore i felt my entire soul gravitate towards you as you harshly ripped it out with just one kiss

i'm calling you a melancholic enigma
as you're prying the truth from the gaping
wound in my chest that you ripped my soul out of

my heaving lungs are begging for fresh air
that isn't stolen, but you're such a **** thief,
you gave me your last angel's air and told me to work with it.

you're slitting my wrists and bathing in the crimson blood
as you then push my head after telling me how pretty i look. you're suffocating me with your sins.

OH BABY, TOUCH ME AND MAKE ME FEEL YOUR PAIN! RIP ME APART LIKE IM SOME KIND OF ****** ART AND THROW ME AWAY!

my nails are digging deep into your skin
and i'm arching my back as i'm seeing
nothing but black
you're bathing me in our sins
and i'm drowning in the ocean
that used to be love

then, i heard your voice.
your harsh voice.
you demand
not ask
not whisper
you demand.

"SCREAM MY NAME, MY LOVE."

OH HONEY,
IM SCREAMING RUINATION.

you will not go on like this into the night!
i will rip the fascination and souls out of the moonlight; romanticize the way you reach your hand into the dark like the way you philosophize putting your hands onto a lover who cannot fathom between a tragedy and a fairytale.

i’m slow dancing in a burning room
and my faults are on full display
as the smoke fills my tar black lungs
the song is getting louder and it feels
as if i’m entangled with the ghost of who i used to be

these may nights are lonelier
than they once were
it’s as if they’re telling me
“here’s the knife!”
before jabbing it in my insides
where they know it hurts the most

i look for my soul
but i don’t know where it’s gone
where did i bury it?
can somebody tell me?

i could write a thousand poems about how your eyes look like galaxies and i’m simply born a stargazer or how your smile makes my tongue taste stardust

but instead

i’ll paint a picture of how you turn a hurricane mess like myself into something so sweet. a beautiful rainbow. and i’ll paint a picture of how you make my hands tremble and how you make a lump in my throat every time you speak.

the purple lights fall perfectly on your ****** features as your eyes are closed, you're living in the moment whilst capturing my heart in a jar without even getting close to me, but i definitely feel your hands gripping at my chest and ripping it out.

and starboy, i promise i'm sober. but i could easily get drunk on those liquor lips, let me have a taste.

you're shuffling through girls like songs on your playlist, and i'm hoping i'm the song you stay listening to and don't get tired of. i'm shuffling through emotions like a deck of cards, and i have my poker face on.

but ****, i was never good at placing bets.

i'll curl my eyelashes and put a coat of mascara, gloss my lips with cherry wine, and blush my cheeks with fresh raspberries.

i bet you'd like that, starboy. i heard the sun is a star, and you're the sun of my life. you're the sun, starboy! my bright beaming sun. and i'll risk anything to get burned.

your hands on my hips, your fingernails
sinking into my skin making it draw blood
and now the blood runs down my leg and drips onto the cold tile floor

no matter how delicate you are with my body
you always find a way to hurt me.

he is the scrape of knees and knives
the clawing of fingernails on marble columned spines with the bones breaking down into dust

he is the scaring of a fresh wound that i inflict on myself so i can feel something and he is the stinging tears i cry, holding cyanide underneath a serpentine tongue.

he is the rawness in my chest and throat
from screaming for him to leave me be

but he brings me love
and dilutes my blood
with salt water

i used to wonder where i would
put all the overwhelming love that
filled me up to the brim since it was beginning to overflow. i tried shoving my heart into the palms of everyone i met and begged them to take it, but their anatomy was so full that they couldn’t bare to squeeze in mine even if they wanted to.

i wondered why my love was not strong enough to make people stay. giving up my bones so people can wear them as a necklace to show they will always have a part of me even when i didn’t want them to.

my blood is staining the clothes that they burned to get rid of the evidence of me ever being there, and i learned to keep my mouth shut.

i also learned that putting a light
in the house that your soul died in
will not keep it from haunting you.

you spoke often of the
horrible headaches and hunches
of your childhood

singing lessons, fever.
tattoo ink, stuffy nose.
loud voices, blurry vision.

(perhaps because you were
too much for your own body to
handle!)

they called you many things
beauty, devil, and a poet.
but you only wanted thing—
to be a musician of fine arts
to leave your handprint on the world
the ***** and the girls!
oh my! what a world!

angelus dulce! hear my call!
sole lover of my house and heart!
i do regret to inform you all
‘‘twas more than the song of angels
and saints that tore us apart.

(i dare to say
that some days
i still hear him sing)

looking back at my past
i can’t help but feel pure disgust and shame
i choke on the lump in my throat if anyone mentions any slight detail about who i used to be and what i used to do

the men i’ve been with
the pills i took carelessly
the aching sore pain of my self hatred

craving love, i looked for it in all of the wrong places.
i let men touch my body and have their way with me while mama cried at home about how she wanted her little girl back

i’ve been tossed around and broken so many times that i simply have no more pieces left to spare

they always ask me who was i before the world turned me so cold
and i can’t help but reply
‘i don’t know.’

my love, how long have you made me
taste the bittersweet darkness that i can no longer
fathom the light?

my heart pumps red wine
and you're getting intoxicated and drunk off my love
with that white dust sprinkled on your nose

"all of the gods have to taste the
galaxy too, my sweet persephone.
have a taste."

i ask myself how many times
i've whispered and moaned your name
in the past hour, and how many times
i've begged you not to leave me empty
and hollow again.

give me something to hold on to
stuff me with the bittersweet tragedies of your
sins and leave me to fend for myself while i
deal with your broken baggage

you're painting constellations
between my ******* with acrylic paints
as if it's your canvas and something to please
your ****** fantasies.

shoving cherries into your mouth
so you can taste me without touching my anatomy
with your devilish hands

you're overdosing on the galaxy
and night terrors from the girls
you've ripped the soul out of

and i'm afraid
i'm next.

i can only imagine what it would be like to be in the hands of a god.
maybe the closest i'll ever get to heaven is when i'm standing next to you in front of a coffee shop and we're about to have an hour long conversation about the meanings of the world and what we plan to do with our lives. and if i'm being honest with you, (i'm never honest) i'm scared of the future. i'm scared of what happens next.

you said let the rest come easy, but easy for you to say, you have something going for you. you're the human embodiment of success, the embodiment of euphoric nature that i crave to feel.

i wonder what it's like to be touched by a god
can your finger tips graze my shoulders until they run down to my hips? can you touch me all over because i want to feel holy.
i've been feeling sick ever since i found out you exist.

you told me you had it under control as we’re in the car driving down a dark road, my body tenses and i nod my head.

you always have things under control, don’t you? at least, you always claim to.

but do you remember the times where you almost bust your head on the kitchen’s counter every time you get drunk because you needed to feel something else running in your veins instead of the pain of your trauma?

or how about the times where you flicked the ashes on my skin and put out the cigarette on my hand because you wanted someone else to feel your pain.

you said love meant feeling each other’s pain and i believed you. i took all your pain and carried it on my back so you didn’t have to.

it was a piggy back ride i never fully consented to, but i still went along with it because i loved you and told you there was nothing i wouldn’t do to see a smile on your face.

but the baggage got harder to carry whenever you were adding on to mine and yours at the same time.

sometimes i can still feel my spine ache when i think about it
and sometimes i can still feel that **** cigarette.

the devil with jet black hair and ink covering his arms and chest, i can still taste his serpent tongue like blood and cigarettes ash on the lips of any lover, and i cry tears of shame and regret.

dear lord, people tell me they want to hold
my body and protect me from him
but i don’t want them to hold me because their touch burns like acid

i heard he’s been on a liquor and pill diet
my lover always liked the pain
that’s why they called him the ******* after all.

you have always burned bright, my darling angel, what is it that you’re hiding in that flesh and bone of yours? what is it that you’re fearing?

you always told me that you were so unloveable, but darling angel, i loved you until my bones began to ache and my beating heart could no longer fathom another person.

my hands playing with the fingers on yours seemed like a perfect masterpiece as we laid there on the trampoline in the middle of the night, talking about the world we never understood

you thanked the universe at night for it being me to you. i thanked the universe for finally being on my side.

but sometimes life can do terrible things
and now i’m crying to the thought of heartbreak while you said i ruined poetry for you

but being with you was euphoria
losing you was the unwanted comedown.

“it was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”

when electric eyes meet dead ones
the whole world pauses as the dead gets
shocked back to life! she has electricity coursing through her veins, and it gave him a shock of clarity! his eyes were fiery, they held souls of the living and the dead. oh my, he looked like death! she saw no life in him, but she swore she could breathe her air into his maggot lungs. she watched him. she watched him close. before big arms wrapped around a small body, a chin resting upon a head. he told her she was beautiful! oh so magnifique! his touch was imprinted on her for days!

the day they both felt their souls intertwine!

i don’t know much about love and heartbreak but—

i. i’m in this god forsaken awful party filled with people i’ve never seen before, and i’m trying to find you in the crowd because our hands are no longer clasped tight. my heart is hitting my ribcage harshly over and over again and my chest is locking up. i find you with your arm around her.

ii. i scrub and scrub until my skin is red and stripped of all your bitter truths and acid kisses. citrus and peach are the only things that don’t remind me of you, but now that i’m writing this, i think they do.

iii. i’m sitting on your bed in your *** pistols shirt and you’re playing with my hands. you tell me you love me and that you see a future with me. my eyes light up and i’m daydreaming of a life with you. but then i remembered, it’s 4am and your lips like to lie.

iv. your mama kisses me on the forehead and tells me i’m the daughter she’s always wanted. she also told me that if we don’t get married, she’s gonna have a stern talk with you. did she ever do that?

v.  my hades, i don’t know much about love and heartbreak— but you are always the first thing that comes to my mind when they ask me how i’m doing.

it feels as if my brain is melting
does that make any sense?
you're standing right in front of me but mama says you're not there
how can it be?
i've seen you since we were toddlers
we took our first steps
lost our first tooth
our first day of school
what does she mean you're not there?
i've seen your friends
you've seen mine
what does she mean you're not ******* there?
i'm going to sleep this off like i always do
i'm in bed with you
but mama says you're not there.

the aeipthy feeling of this devil who devoured my heart last summer grows every morning and night. i can see still the pieces of my flesh in between his teeth when he smiles, and i never felt so empty.

i draw planets on my wrist
outlined with the ink of a sharpie
my fingers are numb when i put my nails to my teeth; i smile anyway.

we tumble onto couches and beds
i sing you a song about ghosts and dancing
staring up at your ceiling and talking about
tomorrow’s destruction

my lips are tinted red from you biting down on them and my lips are glossed with tangerine ***** (your voice is murmured as you tell me you love me while i play with the lighter. i tell you the truth —i’m suffocating— you tell me to go to sleep)

your hands twist my skin
into hearts and stars
(we call it on the bottle, if it lands on you, i’m
yours. on me? i’m out the door.)

self destruction is the new mouth watering fantasy, we make ourselves bleed just to feel something.

(but baby, i’m so bored with all of this.
red wine spills onto my white tee shirt
and i hate the way it stains
but i still drink with you anyway)

your lips and guitar must be lonely tonight
while you drive to the gas station to buy ***** to drown yourself in, the bruises on your knuckles aching while i lay in bed listening to track number five on the mixtape you made me.

( and we still make ourselves bleed
but this time it’s for fun )