I don't want to be a writer.
I would like to be a book.
I want to sit on a shelf in a library,
and be plucked by a loving hand,
and held by a window as the rain slips down it, nuzzled in blankets
and dripped on by apple juice that has run down the chin of
some scabby-kneed kid, perched on the arm of a tree
and I want to be dog-eared and remembered
and I want to be the place to turn to, the only one to turn to
where someone whispers, "how did you know? how did you know just how I felt?"
and I want to have been gone through once, passionately quickly,
so quick I gave you a paper cut and you get a little blood on my page, but I don't mind so much, because you love me,
and then
lingered on, and re-read because maybe there was something
that you missed before
and I want to have seen so many things,
probably the best things,
and meet absolutely fascinating people
because it is only the most interesting people
who read
and I want someone to bury their nose in my pages as they morph from shadowed white to afternoon wheat,
and I want to be covered in words, and coffee, and saliva from the finger of the teacher who slobbers on every corner, and grime, and salty tears and jasmine bath soaps and ink that has leaked from your favorite pen in your bag
and I want to be ***** and held and tossed and spilled on and marked up and I want my binding to be loose, but still intact,
and I want the professors to speak about me
and I want the youth to think about me
and I don't even really care what anyone thinks I'm saying,
so long as they listen to me speak
and pluck me off the shelf.

a ghost split open my abdomen
with a pocket knife, not the sharp kind, but the
blade on the multi-tool, corkscrewdriver type
and left me sitting there, open bodied so I can’t
I can’t move, touched my insides until they grew cold and still,
my blood’s congealing like ketchup on a park bench, my fingers growing stiff
my mind pounding pounding pounding but my body is now filled with cotton,
cotton seeds growing through my pores, out of my eye sockets, and they’re not
even flowers, but I suppose it's good I’m growing at least

I am a bottle of champagne.
Pour me out, and let me fizz
and sparkle sweet in your mouth
for a little while
pour and pour me into
crystal glasses,
and hold me gently,
(with the pinky up)
and sip until you’re dizzy
and I’m empty
and when you’re done with me,
you’ll look around the room
hoping for something
quick and easy
to throw back,
like ***** or *** or whiskey,
and you will,
but perhaps, and just perhaps,
I will still tingle on your lips,
a bubbling melody
that you slowly lick away.

letters are spinning in my head
like some ****** up encyclopedia
or terrible alphabet soup
that spills and spills out of the tin can
and onto the ******* tile floor
that’s already covered in shards of glass
so that I can’t fall onto it
if I needed to fall down on my knees,
if I wanted to, anyway

You make me smile at the pale light
that creeps under my eyelids
and whose fingers pry them open
pestering me until I wake

You secret behind my ribcage
that pulses straight through my skin
and climbs like a vine to my lips
and overgrows in my head

‘til  all I can see is flowers
and still, still, it remains you
that lodges inside of me so
but leaves me no words at all

to tell anyone how I feel,
so  I will remain silent
or I will just shrug as I say,
“he’s alright most of the time,”

and no one will know I’m blooming.

Labyrinthine is my heart, a maze dizzying
with  your murmurous (though lovely) lilt my solitary atlas
along with furtive glances and scintillas of hope,
and dulcet kisses stolen not on a veranda,
for the fireflies and willows to witness,
but surreptitiously and sussorously
in the penumbra beneath,
kisses stubbornly efflorescent,
love sempiternal.

Hello, little fish,
swimming through my brain
smooth and simple, playing,
splashing the water,
rainbow of color
I understand you completely.
You aren't what i expected,
but boy, do I like you here.

I'm sorry I forgot to feed you on Sunday.