there's a bed-frame with names carved into them
slightly-askew and frail
a heart at the top of every 'i'
all my underwear has blood stains on it
it's a lovesick reminder of everything I can't control
I yearned for my mother to put my hair in braids instead of a ponytail
so I got a friend that could
my hands would sweat as I wrote about her in my diary
the one without a lock
the one that was covered in DIY glue glitter
there was a summer that I wore all pink
my strawberry ice cream melted all over my polo dress and no one could tell the difference
it was my secret, sugar sweet on the lapel
beating heart for all the Lisa Frank I didn't own
a boring folder with all the scary stories I had memorized
until I myself became the ghost girl
sucker punch me in the last bathroom stall
for neither liking leather or lace

I got braces when I was 16
that year I never kissed anyone
but I made boys steal things from pricy bookstores
I measure time by my teeth
every year they get more crooked
the older I get they seem to shift back to old territory
old habits
old

now even smoking cigarettes feels boring
when I walk into bookstores
I leave sticky notes with advice I wish someone would have told me then

they did
but maybe if I had found it somewhere I was looking
I might have paid more attention
my retainer sits in a shelf collecting grime

I drink pink grapefruit flavored drinks
my face smells like the citrus
when I lose things and people
I change my hair
it helps me cope with the idea that I can never finish a stick of lip balm and most of the people I've known only yield disappointment
no one is at fault here
but the blame is usually pushed into my intestines
and I spend five days throwing up
I used to be afraid that I would never see the entire world
now I'm afraid I'll never spend enough time in a place I can call home
every morning the smell of grapefruit grows stronger

the champagne tastes bitter
my head swims and I think
maybe I need a bathing suit

maybe i'll never see god but the
breeze keeps touching my face
and the insects **** my blood
disease my legs and that's okay
because there's a part in me that has difficulty taking my watch off and there's a part in him that has difficulty taking his shoes off
despite the harmony I feel there's a head in the back of my own
that tells me that solitude would not suffice for such a shy creature that only wants warmth from another
there, there
there

Do you remember the first time you realized that there was such a thing as death?
It wasn't in the sad dog your best friend had hanging around in her backyard but it could have been.
Maybe it was in the ****** gums of the homeless you frequently passed on the way to the bus stop.
Avert your eyes, your mother would tell you but they were glued to the fleshy drops of fluids on shirts that used to be clean.
I started looking at the wrinkles on my hands as fun entertainment while waiting for my father to finish his physical therapy.
I also read the Secret Garden on down times.

It always starts with the  looking of  bouquets of dying flowers in the grocery store
they're always by the entrance and they're always wrapped in cellophane
Moody lilies, doe-eyed star daffodils, ******* lace-leaves
My grandfather's name was Hyacinth
It's symbolic somewhere, somehow
My family's name is buried neck deep in floral epithets
not that you would notice or care
There's an attraction to be named after beautiful things
From the side of my shoulder I hear
count your hands, they might be missing fingers
I look abrasively counting in rotund continuity
one two three four five
one two three four five
when I look behind me the speaker blasts John Mayer and I go home feeling nauseous
manic begonias, sultry sweet-tooth hydrangeas
you pick a rose and it stabs your finger so you set it on fire and take a picture of it, you call it art and the leaves wither
when I sit at my dinner table eating salmon
I cannot stop thinking about mercury poisoning
I lick the table salt off my hands
I wait for cardiac arrest but while that happens
there is that friend of a foe, that voice tickling the back of my ear with it's summer tongue
telling me, beckoning that the tap water I'm drinking is laced with LSD by the government and that I'm going to have a bad trip that I won't be able to get out of. I'll be stuck in that endless loop like a record player that keeps getting scratched by the needle and won't play anything but static noise now.
I go to bed biting my nails until they're raw and touching skin making sure that my hands are still my own
Moonflowers bloom at night and marigolds remind me of the sun
In the morning I dream of driving out to sea in a car that doesn't belong to me and wait for the coral to overtake my brain
When I wake up I do 20 laps around my house instead

It’s the telemarketer’s day off
he often calls customer service on the weekends as a hobby
he feels like a loaded rifle when they ask
“what can I help you with today?”
a jitterbug with a contemplative stutter
the jilted staleness of his apartment is suddenly
a garden of words
images of violence appear while he rips a hangnail
loneliness is a grown man’s burden, he thinks
“I don’t want you to listen but I do need to be heard”
he waits for silence and he’s spoon fed this attention
“I work with people and yet I do not know people
my mind waters for intimacy not in the sensual term of the word but in the
way hands accidentally touch on a crowded train”
2,000 miles away there is a woman with a headset
a chronic consoler at the tender age of 19
her hand trembles as she hears this man speak
she’s reminded of her grandmother dying in her tiny home
back in Kansas City, desolate like her location