When wisps of dandelions lay still in the blanket of your hair,
and your eyes can no longer say I love you,
without your lips moving.
I know my world has ended.
We stood on the porch
with the wind chimes blowing songs through my ears.

There's still something there through this Armageddon. I recollect the curve of your smile or the shape of your face
in every single pool of water I come across.
Your eyes had a haunting quality about them,
as they look through my hollowed out frame,
and see what wars I've fought.

It was your time darling,
your time I bought.

I know,
my world is ending.

The skin of strangers bone's looks dimmer,
and your heart looks darker.
When it's revealed in the quiet of our room.
That distorted haziness your voice gets when you're tired, is there all the time.
I can never help but wonder what I did wrong.

Asteroids come hurling towards me
at a thousand miles an hour,
The world is ending.
Just as predicted.

Where are you now?
Clairvoyant and always knew just what to do.
What happens now that I've been left behind.
What happens now that I can't pick up the pieces?

Your promises never looked more beautiful,
than when you couldn't keep them.
Lies never seemed more eloquent
than when you couldn't stop telling them.



Your face it haunts me.
Your words they weaken me.
Your hours we devoted to one another- cut through me.

I'm not afraid anymore,
to do this alone.
Let the flames engulf me,
let my skin hang loosely from the bone.
Let me drown.
Let me fade.
Let me waste away.
Let me be reborn.
Let me live again.
Let me find a way back to earth.
Let my soul go on.

There was a time I thought of adoration
when mention of you,
but it's now replaced with bitter resentment.

In the miscalculated performance,
you couldn't be faithful.

And now I see-
dandelions are just weeds.

And now I see-
I see everything.
The honesty your spirit lacked,
the lies you spoke from cracked lips.

And the venemous kisses you placed upon my skin,
I was poisoned- to think I saw everything from your perception
and ignored my own crumbling world.

Now, we are nothing.

Grey wash of the sky, sleeping softly.
As I try to fall in love with the world in front of my eyes.
Drain plug of the Earth polluting bright hues,
That once lived;
There's a parasite underneath my skin, that floods me.
There's a marionette, bowing gracefully over my head,
In the cloudless space- it dawdles on empty intent,
My brain matter falls in puddle,
The acidic strain,
Reflecting a rainbow of thought
I can't obtain.

Addictive Personalities Are Genetic.


There is never a plausible excuse to skin the knees of those you love,
by taking their training wheels off too soon as they collapse into thorny bushes,
nor allow them to burn from their once fiery child-like wonder
to picking up a cigarette,
old habits don’t die hard,
that’s why second, third, and fourth generation smokers still exist
Home is not where the heart is,
Home is the name given to places that keeps you warm without being burned;
making you feel whole again,
after years of being hollow

Do not mistake people as a shelter-
find comfort in your own soul
and these hands that open life's doors

You don’t have to be shadowed by your supposed love ones, 
you do not have to lose your voice,
or grasp upon the rotting wooden front porch door, 
leaving splinters in your fingertips

Your lungs, like deflated balloons 
exasperated to walk into the war, 
the foundation you dwell in

Clawing your way from the disapproval of cruel words, 
you don’t have to lose your heart in that messy place

Someone who claims to believe in you,

shreds you: to sculpt something better
is not worthy of being marveled-

There are some things even the devil knows he was never fit for, 
and some companions are demons in disguise

Let the tar scald those lungs,
forget the reasons you no longer wish to breathe
even after you die anguish rests in my marrow
--
and the guilt just sits between my teeth
 as she uses the flames from the hell she is in
to became a fifth generation smoker

Dear Death,

She was not ready. Though, born with overcast under her eyes and frosted lips. Once, lotus petals in early spring. They have now cracked and begin to wilt. There was much more to speak of; rigor mortis sets in as they begin trying to find me. As this body was a vessel- I inch away from the scalpel.
We are unrequited lovers. I weaken them while, you sweep them off their feet. They're always infatuated with the scent of your cloak. But grow resentful towards the sterile scent of hospitals. She is your mistress now. You will take her, leave me with the ashes.

And I'll hold nothing, but they blame me for what you've done. You're the thief, I'm the devil's advocate for disease. I loathe yet, love you for all your ruthlessness. Teach me how to be that powerful. They've come so close to finding me and I must fade, but we'll meet again.

Cancer

I was your little girl,
Who swells in hives at the thought of bees.
And I wonder-
If my skin grew blue upon entering the world,
with that umbilical cord noose
Around my throat.

Would you have differentiated
fear
from
love?

Each sting,
a red handprint
Serving as a childhood memory
on our grand search for the big dipper
not through imprints covering my skin
like speckled constellations.

Could your arms have choked love into me?
As a form of protection from the world,
Or the terrifying thoughts in my brain.

Should have been my mother bird.
A broken wing no cause for concern,
you take your feathers,
mending me.

I was your little girl,
Rolling in the grass,
barefoot and happy.
Dad talks about me like I’m a pastime-
He can’t escape.
How does a father speak about their child,
in the same way,
people express distaste for smoking?


Hope he doesn't
think of me,
Like a painful itch.
When he chain smokes
His time left in clouds.

But I feel the resentment
And his suggestion that I bring decay into his life.

My dreams are often hidden truths,
Nobody, in reality,
dares to speak.
Admitting what he’s too afraid to say.
Last night his words stinging like a bee,

Spoke with an angel in a nightmare,
her voice out of tune with the weather,
she weeps so pretty,
but when she sings.
Time stops & the bones,
of the waking world shatter.
Forlorn,
eerie,
soprano soundescapes
the windpipes,
an eclipse forms from her wallowed pout.

The pouring of light emphasizes on
sorrowful words spoken,
the world places a sympathetic ear to
the chest of the sky.
The pounding doesn't stop.

Sky is slate,
a skulking cat,
with slit eyes.
The introduction of a silver tressed girl
and her delight
for crimson,
red and sheets of whiteForeign
fables pour from
the wrists,
dripping down the elbow.
A pirouetting figure,
with dandelion wisp limbs,
struts past to sing of her disease.

Legs swing in the urge to
jut off a 1,000ft building,
the chilly breeze used to be endearing,
but once you're screaming-
"You are my sunshine,"
in a desolate parking lot.
Wearing happiness
under the eyelids,and a powdered capsule between the lips.

Telephone wires no better than a noose,
choke back everything you want to say.
Weep into the static sound,
nobody's listening.
nobody wants to know-
what's on your mind.

Grabbing at thin air,
mistaking it for potential
or meaning.
Angle the reflection of the mirror properly--
there's a hollowed out torso with;
protruding bones,
that absently cut the days into,
hours, minutes and seconds.
I wanted to break my jaw this week,
I'm not using it for anything.
But chewing my words to never be regurgitated
into anything but rejected suicide notes.
Those letters never fit well,
and the phrases are cliché.
Atleast all those wadded ***** of paper
are weightless in the winds,
like the wings she wore upon her back.
That I desperately wanted
and the red inked margins—
wounds I haven't the courage to make.
So I've cut myself to pieces,
rearranged them more than once,
And just break
and break
and break
and break
and break

To love you,
meant seeing your reflection in pools.
Who does love have?
A sunset doesn't even remain,
and stars die nightly.
North of here,
love has nothing.
Autumn is on it's own,
winter sits upon a cold lonely throne.

Only love is left to plant seeds,
in the hearts of spring.
Metaphors burrowed in chest,
it's a relief to smell long- distance.

It's a similar burning sensation,
just like that familiar place hell-
that you put me through.
Prisoners with their chains are always breathing like
they're living
but they're only surviving;
inhaling smoke into their lungs.

We've all come to find,
peace on Earth,
is only in our mind's.
And I've come to realize-
I'm chained to you,
forever in binds.

Autumn Of A Broken Heart



You spoke like a true gentlemen:
“Hate me for breaking your heart”
Anger held itself stable in my clenched fists.

I've a heart,
I keep on display,
the one with many sutures in it.
I've begun to aclimate to this idea of survival-
woodldand creatures tear into my ribs.
Taking what they must to survive
those trees have more of a right to live than I.
They've been here before, hearing a young girl weep
and a man of his word promise to never come back.

I've eyes,
displayed in a case.
The shade of reality is so bleak,
that I've sewn on my own eyelashes
to fan away any realism.

Imagination is my friend, yet a forlorn enemy
all at once,
the calls end along with the saturation of happiness worn
as a ring around my mouth-
but I taste passion fruit upon my lips.

It began to rot
and so does the flesh of every good man I’d known,
he lays in my arms,
a pile of bones.

At sixteen, I was easily impressed with conversations of tattoos, septum rings, and pipedreams that internal biases created a tendency to wonder if you’d smoke those too in the art room.
When you spoke of the desire for a “creation of Adam painting to be inked across the canvas of your arm.”
I was enchanted though, unaware my embrace and unorthodox philosophy of loving the dead back to life would never work; I mourned in consumption of you and remained in a ramshackle shelter where we had class together.

An oxymoron, truly.

There was something sinister that washed down the room's rusted sink than your murky paint water. Every day, as if on schedule I lamented the opening of my veins in preparation for the inevitable.
You re-arranged yours with the help of a syringe and my mind questioned how best to save your life.
The focus of my grief was full of wonder in who would die first, but at least loved.
I began to know, the meaning of fixation so well, my lips tasted different even a shared laugh felt pathetic, but not as much as knowing neither of us could drive.
I became your girlfriend Suicide, experienced and immersed in toxicity.
I hated myself so passionately in undoing myself so vigorously all in act of loving you.
Breaths were not allowed unless you said so.
My world became the word "sorry"- your prevalent command, love should not make you guilty in having a heart that beats.
But it was like a ******* thunderstorm when you opened your mouth,
"Are there are any tats you want?"
  I remember you asked.

Today, I am aware of just how little I knew what I wanted.
I had sworn it was my mother's birthdate in Roman numerals, you disapproved and all in the spirit of mourning... I compensated and titled every poem about you in a similar fashion with the day we met,
but these journals had become a grave and shared spaces a graveyard.
Until sixteen, I was incapable of understanding this kind of ache.
I lied to myself,
that the mourning ceased in this season of my life, worse- I was your Adam.

An everlong ache.
I wish it had put me in my place because I did practically the same, instead of just blades that dug in
like your dulled needles, the pain felt in awareness never was. Always so obedient.
You held that deflated balloon filled with ****** over my head every moonless night in your mother's apartment.
I had to have known to beg was not love.
This was worship, utterly painful,
I recognize the role I have long feared as a martyr.
Your claim that I had made you so sad you couldn't feel anything became an incapacity for me though,
the sacrifices made in justifying broken things
function with the belief of no reparations are needed
and rather everyone should be as broken as you are.

You taught me the bruises from your crooked teeth landscaping my throat were entitlement.
Ownership.
These colors upon my flesh never meant you needed me.
You never wanted me, adamant you deserved me.
I was of convenience. This pain gave me something.
You were responsible for my rebirth, shut the door.
Another door opened that revealed who you are, rather another scar canvassing my body that I live with the intent of tattooing over.

Love will set us free.
Heartstrings strumming songs for you,
angel. Hum with me.

The child mournful,
A single salted tear slides down a cheek,
Holds the secrets of a woman,
Locked within a room,with a door that creaks.
She creates such sadness,
mother to the artwork,
Man who claims to be a father,
Overshadows the button of the girl’s dripping nose.

Etched within walls, a desire to say the truth:
“He’s not the artist”
Look within those big eyes,
the elegance of youth,
Deep inside her true love’s lies-
the choppy strands that show
the instability of growth
within the painter’s eyes.

There's something honest in hurting enough to display your brokenness like an archive.
There's a wooden fence in the backyard that leads to a small pond; frogs croak, the southern sun pulverizes our skin. I used to imagine sneaking down to that pond late at night, slitting my wrists. I was suicidal, I'm not sure if I am anymore. It played out so beautiful in my mind- almost how Ophelia drowned.
      Water lilies cover my dying face, metaphorical really. Water is dyed a maroon color and my skin has the life drawn from it. This was the summer my family welcomed a new child and all I could do was devote time to my demise.

Hallunicuated hearing my mother's dissapointed words scold me.
She's a ghost and I still  wanted to trade places. My father got re-married, I lost even more of my mind. Hysterical tears and maniacal nights with the same songs on repeat. I tore through my skin like a dying garden, hoped for death like someone with nothing. I have so much; my father, my home, my sisters. I felt I didn't have anyone.

Found solace on my skin-
writing novels, not stories.
Brick surface, room on the right where I built walls with no desire to fight. Large window with the vast world outside, but I never participated. I'd weep until, the sun awoke. I'd swear the moon warned me to quiet down.

Bled so much,
I could have saved several lives
instead, of trying to take my own.

Life has the tendency to feel like a prozac commercial,
the reality that everything either pops or goes up in the air.
I see my little sister's gapped smile, in the soapy reflection-
her joy should be infectious, but it spreads guilt like a plague
to my already tortured mind.
I feel so guilty,
for wanting to take my life.

It should be the most desired sight of all
the person whom you hope to live and die
so, this fire feels like love against our skin
we ramble on, in stasis,
caught ablaze and smoke
fills our lungs. There are sirens too loud
and too few to do any rescuing.

Kiss me you, fool.

Before the sky envelops us,
there's a mammoth of an alien
peaking through the sky's cracks,
tentacles grabbing.

No mercy.

There are no words,
for stars littering the sky
at daylight, and there's no use
in semantics for what unravels
in front of us.

But mathematics and optics,
equations letting sight pierce
through time. We are gorgeous as
we gasp for air, our life forces divided,
and allotted to some place distant.

What would our ancestors say?
Too proud to hike up death's skirt
and steal a look. Isn't this what we are?

Hungry.

Would they be proud
or would we be considered fools
to think we are untouchable?
Why not let our lips spark like
the bolts igniting the sky,
why not resort ourselves to ghosts
and haunt each other's great relatives

Shouldn't we give in
and behave as if
we're the last of our kind?

Dear Depression,
I see you. We all see you. You're not very avoidable. Those slivers of light you try to enamor us with. How death seems so delicate when we talk of flowers and restful slumber- for all eternity. What the lights do not show; a grotesque, scaled abomination with a gluttonous appetite for happiness and life. I can't let you gnaw on anymore souls to leave nothing, but sunken eyes and bones. They do not belong to you nor were they yours to take. You're not welcome in the mind's of my friend's and family. Life is welcome in their heart's where joy can still be found. Don't find yourself slithering down our throat's anymore, in the empty stomachs or scars we have. The thoughts we think when you entice us are dangerous. You stole her. You stole him. You stole me. I can't recognize the stoic, numbed faces I gaze upon. You undo any progress ever done.

It's been so long since, I've heard them laugh or flashed a smile I meant. Still, your might looms over as you admire the damage you've caused. Next, feeling the audacity to sneer when we weep. Depression, you're a monster who causes nothing, but suffering. Those tears are not your's to season hopelessness with. You make the covers seem like the most comfortable coffin, you make our skin look as if we've fought thousands of wars. The sun an inconvenience with the days in reverse. We've tried to compromise, you are no friend. Just a foe.
Depression, there are so many things I want to do to you. You break my heart when all your captors don't believe they are worthy of love, but they are the ones I love most. I will break you like, you've broken us. My bare hands would reach into your chest, ripping the lungs out; stomp on them to preventing future sufferers. I would crush your heart in the palms of my hand's- praying for the sickness and terror to end. These innocent people you've robbed of life, love, happiness, opportunity and a soul. Will have their revenge. Your blood covers our skin and we bathe in the warmth of redemption as our thought's belong to us once more. We let the pain held inside escape our sutured lips, begging your soul to ascend back into the abyss never to return. Your bones are mine to assemble a castle for the broken to heal. Your skull resembles a crown honoring those who had given into the temptations of surrendering. We honor them.

We have souls that are plunging off this planet,
in hopes they will be swallowed by the cosmos-
fearing the hurt is never ending,
leads to renovations of existence.

To silence the beating
of a heart,
to end a life.

Morality is stuck behind
the gates of purgatory

& society is too scared of
what will happen
if we use our mouths for
meaningful conversation.

Indeed.
A tourniquet can stop the bleeding,
but can’t do justice for spread of infection,
or the scar serving as a reminder.

People are dying from depression-
faulty chemistry in the brain.
As well as suicide.

It is the crying of phantoms,
never to be heard-
wanting change,
a re-birth,
of the contorted humanity
we proudly call ”life”

Ache that’s carried lifelong,
but never resolved.
Truthfully,
those vague questions

don’t save lives.

Death knows this,
of course.
He is an omniscient force
lingering in the scenery.
Possessing the inability
to tolerate the teasing
and the wagers.
Coming to collect early
because, we’ve begun
to shatter
every fragment
of light
life reflected.

Now,
Darkness makes him feel welcome
and entitled.

KRM

The obsession was endless
tears undeserving, a hated addiction.
"let me breathe,
or I might just die"
scrawled on the bathroom wall.

Oh! How excited I'd be,
to meet the ground, six feet underneath.
Unafraid of missing the northern lights,
exhausted with these caustic words
flying like bullets out of my own mind.

Gossipy little words throughout my ears-
spreading heinous lies about my character
but he scrawled threats I know I might take seriously.

Scars lined up like cheerleaders upon a gymnasium floor.
Death shoves to take his spot at the top of the bleachers,
looming over those laughing scars.

An announcement is made;
Bookworms writhe at the thought of a human's words going to waste,
Stoners rush out of the way,
Jocks make haste to find what to say
Death just laughs
while, other kids pray.

See you in the twilight,
every night that my eyes are closed.
Your skin glows,
hands as soft as I recall.
Hair is still the same garnet shade-
you look beautiful.

Please, don't go.

I know, it's selfish-
you give life to greenery,
and flowers grow from the ashes.

Sickness no longer ravages your body,
I want you to come back to me-
the stars don't shine the same way,
every cloud remains looking gray-
they took my sunshine away.

Breaths shouldn't run out so young,
my soul wants to speak with your’s.
Where we divide the vicinities of  Heaven and Hell,
love of mother and child lasts an infinity.

Met with blue skies above our heads,
greenest grass under our feet.
there's no race in the sands of time,
your heart still beats
& you smile.

This moment ends
and the time spent together transcends
into the unknown,
when the sun glows through my blinds--
I'm left with just the ghost of you.

Mother, I want this sorrow to leave
if you can't come back, please stay in my dreams,
your spirit gleams among the horizon.

Projector screens play,
movie reels in sermon preach,
how to breathe

Toothpaste residue washes down the drain,
mouthwash follows.
I waste my time cleaning these bones inside my mouth,
to be opalescent with their crooked demeanor.
Wondering what others think of me,
thinking about how today has been endless
and tomorrow will follow suit.

Spending time gazing into the mirror,
trying to change.
& we'd prefer to be found
with alcohol in our blood,
laying somewhere cold in a snowbank.

A bullet inside the glass I'm drinking from,
I bite down as my brain erupts,
splatters the wall.
Ending my ****** writer's block...

the mortician left to inform the world,
of the irony in never including yourself as a character.
Everyone's face is shadowed and misplaced,
like a Picasso painting.
Those faces have haunting features,
an appearance that shouldn't matter,
it's the judgement within those eyes.

Why can't we peel off the skin and lies,
like an age old band aid?
Revealing the shredded bones
beneath the act of aging.
We're all so weak,
with conflicted truths,
signs of emotion are signs of weakness:

Still so many of us fortunate souls are lead to wonder why?


why? why?why?

The desire to be nothing
pertained to me,
trading smeared blue inked letters
written in my woes and goodbyes,
that were premature.

Oh, how the piano with its' keys have broken off,
means the musician lost his will to play,
drowning himself on a west coast beach-
A poet with her repressed memories,
have made themselves a home in her troubled mind.
And we all have;
so many words,
so many truths,
so many secrets,
and these words drown her so.

To shrink my resentment for
how open wounds heal faster
than any other part of me. The heart
is the last to leave the fight; blood, carnage
always willingly bright eyed
and bushy tailed at the idea
of opportunity. These eyes,
wet + tired of having to see,
to blink. My heart to
believe I write
things worth reading. This brain
to avoid the guilt in
taking up space in my skull
where words rented out vacancy.
My tongue, encouraged to
speak something meaningful
enough to save every life,
but mine. These stupid
words, verse like munchausen syndrome.
I cannot breathe or survive
on poetry. Why
would I ever want these words
to draw your blood? They already siphon mine with poison. I am already
guilted with anxiety and creation
remains only as rumination.

Already lost myself. There
is no beauty and
I can't make everyone
else lose me too.

I'll wake up
this afternoon
write something happy,
manifest it as truth.
believe in it like
a scar compensates
enough to prove
pain to be real. Like
this ink
proves I'm insistent
that I bleed.

The need to conceal my inner most demons,
no attention drawn to myself, a paper bag over my head.
Another placed over my head,
a smile scribbled on its surface.

My attempts go unnoticed,
as I'm the only one pointing out my flaws.
The bag has the same tired word scribbled on the inside,
"failure"
and the ink stains my face.
I had never approved of labels,
but there are ones that cannot be removed.
We have these facades,
we orchestrate
at the expense of an existence
we're refusing to live in.

Wish I knew how to write about happy things,
and everyone I knew didn’t have such troubled heads.
So when, very rarely, I say a prayer-
a part of me knew which part of the fire to put out.
We can hold hands, smoldering the smoke
but we all know-- we are the fire starters.
And these insincere prayers leave us empty,
while making me a liar. Because I don’t believe in
the initiative of a higher power.
And though we are the fire starters,
have been the fire bringers there is
power inside of us to end the fire.
If only close contact could ***** out the flame.
I know the smoke will remain surrounding us,
no matter how tightly we hold one another.

Hungry and begging,
Wanting to devour.
The humble skin protecting the collarbone,
Midriff exposed, taste of your lips inspires,
Sparks to ignite and burst.
Busting open my mouth,
Teeth falling out.
Intimacy is such a fear,
Unsure if love can exist in my *****,
or if it is an untouchable force.
Because my fire was stolen,
before it burned.

We’re always having these discussions about
God and
my unorthodox question:
if the stars belonged to the souls of delinquents,
Laughter filled the air, we were breathing in
while carbon dioxide was rolling off your tongue.

What a waste of youth,
I pollute this sky.
Looking at the clouds,
perceiving their shapes is such a bore.

Three minutes, twenty-eight seconds
Without a thought,
you offered friendly affection
, clutching the wheel.
Hands flooded purple in your tight grip

This felt out of character

you saw something that had to be fixed
in me,
I dozed off.
Vague dreams-
Swirled around the car
then
Debris buried me.
When I wake up,
Its fragments are cakes under my nails.

Had the world shifted?
Or is it these thoughts?

Has the world shifted or is it my thoughts?
The person sitting next to you is a shapeshifter.
That chip on my shoulder too big to be diminished
just wreckage, please, climb out
Crash.
Fantasized our vehicle rolling
Off the highway.
Encouraged you to go on
Flourish in the life you thought was impossible.
Old friend, what a delightful time I had.

Please remember a grin
and it’s childlike two.
Fondly recalling the first ride.
You had said,
“I’m glad you’re in my life.”


Sorry, I bummed so many rides,
Nobody trusted me to drive.
Sorry, I asked so many questions about the afterlife.

Old friend.

Call upon the troubadours
who are unaware of the telephone:
to them it was ghosts coming through on wires.
Darkness empowered imagination,
and light caused it to surrender.
Now I ask, "How's the weather?"
And you bring up the past.

The fire that still burns between us
extinguished by time.
Time has this rotting effect--
when a clock can be reconstructed,
but never turned back.

Used to be in lust,
but I just say fine
the only time I meant it was
when you were mine,
living inside my mind.

They sent me away in April
when we stopped talking completely-
I saw you outside my barred windows
looking out upon the horizon
met with kisses from the pavement.

My vertigo didn't plague me anymore,
when all I wanted was to soar.

They reintroduced us inside a paper cup,
you were blue, white, and green.
Tasted of nothing,
there again,
self-immolation seemed like something out of a movie scene.

Saw you in my dreams,
but never awoke with you next to me.
You were never watching over me in the mirror reflection.
You stopped coming, ending the affection.

I'm still wondering where you've gone,
when I was released
they said you'd take your time
but perhaps with the changing chemicals running amuck
in my brain,
you'd show me a sign?

There must be something more;
lillypads and ponds seen in past lives
Heaven once lived inside my home,
but the polluting of lungs that comes with us as we age--
invites purgatory.

Well, each time my father smokes there must be an entire  section of clouds reserved for him.
Desperate for faith,
I've been turning the key points from farewell letters into psalms.

There might not be much left,
when I'm writing my own version of the Bible in blood.

Starvation of love isn’t so unheard of-
you’re the same scrawny boy. A child who
yearns for acknowledgement. That you are more
than just the mistakes our parent’s made.
You find a way to reach your way
back into the crevice of their hearts.
But you’re just a phase,
some children who grew up too fast-
leave behind.

I have also dug into my flesh,
to make sure the veins worked- that I am alive.
But you are no needle, you are a user.

Three long years have passed,
your name no longer inspires
the movement of scars growing
down my thighs. There is no more
wishing it were different.

How could I have known, the type
of person you would be? When you sold me
tragic stories and blown out veins.

Addicted to the addiction of saving
someone from themselves, but who
would dare rescue me? I buried
your memory and in its' place
a garden blooms, every scar fades.

Each day I work toward peace,
forgiving and forgetting your solemn face.

You were in need of a fix,
I had become of your drug of choice,
now-
in learning,
I am the heroine of my own story.

I. Apply foundation in a tone more perfect than the one you're born with,
doubt that there's anything beautiful in the term "natural"
blot your lips with the cherries you deprive yourself of
and wonder, "What good is difference when it's not appreciated?"

stop reading this.

II. Forget how you were born;
every freckle,
every beauty mark,
every uneven line etched into your face are nothing to be celebrated.
Deprecate yourself, you are unwound and beg this world to shape you in its eyes.

skip this line.

Society speaks subjectively of happiness, but fill your head with lies
that we're all pretty if we can keep up our disguise.
The weight of this world upon your shoulders,
alludes to being big as too much to handle.
Curl into everyone's palm as if you're so fragile,
they have to pinch the skin on your bones with the thumb and index finger.

stop.

III. Draw on the perfectly plump pout, filled with nothing but
expectations of everyone else.
Your beauty is not a privilege for anyone,
but judgment that has defined your worth.

skip.
Emprises that market upon your insecurities,
admire that solemn face in the mirror
as the reflection discourages you
at the acknowledgement of any impurities

Start.

How To Be Beautiful Lifelong


Admire the history that lives within the heartlines of your palms,
how strong you've grown, once cradled in your mother's arms.
Disregard where it is you've come from, but how much further you've journeyed forward.
I. Apply the sincerity in your best friend's voice when
                        she calls the time you've spent together, beautiful.
Do not doubt the splendor that comes from wisdom.

II. Every wrinkle you've earned,
as time gives back to you from lessons learned.
Blot your lips during the release of laughter
as saliva mists through the air,
your joy so vigorous
the ghosts residing in the graves
regret no more.


You are as you should be,
a composite of everything that gives you life
and grants you purpose.
Begging for this world to love you,
there is no fault in this desire.

They speak of happiness as if
it's only a potential-oriented concept,
Do not let your heart surround the gossip
or it's golden armor become bronzed.

III. Draw on the canvas of existence
in the brightest of hues, in the purest of love.
Filled with nothing, but expecations for yourself
say farewell to the darkness
open the curtains to light.

Your beauty is magnificent
as your name will be transcendent.
In each day we decide to be ourselves,
the poise presents itself.


—V.H.

He broke his neck thirty years ago
I break mine more with each
promise of keeping you in my life
but Ian Curtis is on my mind a lot,
grieving for souls I will never know.

Some of his songs are so sad,
like hearing the premature
snap of his bones

Cannot help but resent
how clever society is
to glamorize the unglamorous,
even I am aware
the flowers upon graves are not just for
aesthetics, but we are still always trying
to cover terrible tragedies
with beautiful things.

Am I just as guilty?

I cheat on you with him.
His spirit through my headphones,
hoped if I listen intently
the narrative changes.

purple marks on your neck
just that weekend you
taught me what a hickey was
and how they felt good

yours’ declare ownership,
not declarations of love.

You walk into art class,
purple painted across your throat.

If love could save Ian,
had I lived in the mid-seventies
he may very well have lived forever
and his throat painted by love,
rather than the bruises of a noose.

The letters I wrote you were in vain,
my mistake quoting those Smiths’
songs:
Morrissey is an *******
and so are you.

I still
am too scared to
wonder how far I am willing
to go
to reap the benefits of sorrow.

"New Dawn Fades"
tears into my heartstrings
feeling responsible in
the prevention of another
suicide

I grapple onto
what a savior complex was,
your dead father
the tracks on your arms made me cry
but I thought it was stupid.
It made me hate myself more
why could I not learn to undo
my drive to save anyone,
but myself

The phone call
where I broke up with
you and you
pretend to
overdose on the speaker

One of us had to grow up,
had to make it out alive
And I love you again,
every time Ian's ghost
sings Isolation.

And I leave you there,
sure, to end the album
after the final song.

I envisioned walking on water
outside my window, it twinkled
and sparkled- dancing by the aid of the sun.
The sun was something I could be
if I tried hard enough, I could kiss it
and feel holy.

But life cannot be enjoyed
when there is a screen keeping you
from the parting splash.
Of course, there is work to be done.

Sunlight is inside me,
and I am warm.
Though, it burns
I ache to exist purposefully.

The becoming of the reflection
whose face I’ve never taken the time to know.

It shows the repetition of a woman that I fear.
The shadow calls me, it lives here.

The white noise of my thoughts
ran out of ways to make suicide plausible.

Illness, like an imprint on the brain
where serotonin is slow to the nervous system.

I took the cocktail in the paper cup,
when my own maternal attitude
wiped away those tears.
I took the cocktail in the paper cup,
when poetry no longer screamed in my ears.

Oh, Andy-
speak to me in paints:
red, yellow, blue

When I told you I wouldn't be good at this,
an inability to sketch hands that punched at everything leaving me weak.
Keane's sorrow filled eyes upon oil made more sense to me.

I was never angry or mean, just sad and hopeless.
Lichtenstein was more your speed with obscene images of ******* women
and dialogue of broken hearts.

Van Gogh never made sense, but his attention to detail caught my eye.
To not know what goes on in your own head is identifiable so,
my head is art crafted by Picasso.

they hospitalize you once you've lopped your ear off
when giving a part of themselves to a lover.
I'm not cut out for this- the starving artist,
the tragic sketcher,
or the natural- born painter.

I've calloused my hands,
shed tears on pages of sketchbooks
put paint that looks childlike
and nothing worthwhile,
in all the time spent learning,
I've never learned how to be an artist.

I thought it was the mantra to be pained and miserable,
but you accounted for bold choices and vivid primary shades.
I feel betrayed, that my art alone, isn't enough to be good.

They will never frame my name,
or immortalize flaws in which could never be erased.

Like our conversation in my dream:
"I can't be mean." -Me
"Killing yourself isn't much different" -You

So Andy, what is the color I'm feeling? If it isn't blue?

—V.H.

I knew you to be forever young,
mother permanently thirty-nine
calloused skin, brittle haired woman.
You'd certainly scold me for
my lack of bedtimes.
Mountains in Havre
captured youth-
and tea parties in the backyard
there's so much to learn
from your songs unsung-
lung cancer has a contrived way
of expressing its attachment,
it cannot live without you.
I know you to be younger than I,
forever.

July 4th, 2018

Where the land of the free has become obscured by the shadow
of oppression,

Its' silhouettes are the monsters

children are afraid of under their beds.

How, fireworks remind so many gunshots

Self-proclaimed nationalists cannot stay loyal enough,
to know what would be good for this land.

This land of the free,
no longer belongs to the home of the brave,
but the cowardly.

Family & children born unto what we deem unattached,
from the roots of this soil,
they are not welcomed for lady liberty's "borrowed" arms to embrace them.

When each artifact
was sculpted from an immigrant's hands,
but we've warranted their tribulations
are greater than stars on our flag.

If those stars stand for detainment,
tragedy, and fascism.
I do not proudly pledge such ideals,
embracing my heritage of greats-
who journeyed over on ships across seas.



They are the stars of America's history.

—V.H.

We listen to the same murmur of;
the chanting of an honest city skyline,
echoes of a symphony on balcony roofs.

Pearlescent eyes,
yearning for a ripened peck upon
the curving of plum lips
an infectious smile, light reflecting
off the lunar eclipse--
Curve of your back arched into
the half of you, that makes me whole.

Fiery embers,
muted colors,
that spark into pinks and red
in a moment of present energy.

Could the journey be embarked?
To search for the one that loves me,
what realm did you come from,
& how does one begin to find you?


An elixir made from lilac,
can be smelt upon her breath-
dandelion wisps of hair,
tucked behind her ear—
so honest, so fair.

Precious lotus petal,
that lives,
intoxicate me with your lips--
belonging to rose water,
I've heard your stories of selflessness,
with so much to give you-

& admire the heroic ways you've written yourself
out of every fable,
to become the moral.

Adoration has grasped the ability to carve these bones,
into a monument;

I've a ribcage with room for the both of us,
lay upon my chest,
sleep safely,
dream blissfully,
& love unapologetically

You spoke to me in a dream,
voice like honey,
"The angels won't save someone with so much devil in them."

Nights of bumming cigarettes
off men too old, who should know better.
Welcoming the darkest of us with a thin smile,
all opalescent.

Lost yourself in poker chips,
another wager on the poker table.
Some middle aged man's fantasy-
legs spread like Russian roulette,
who would go with you?
Appealing the sin inside of your bones,
you locked your demons in a box.

It's not your fault,
you were murdered.
you were chosen-
this world tends to expire on
a girl with an imbalance of hedonism & an angelic temperament.

Beauty can lead us to truly dangerous places;
those veins belong to you,
but BOB wants to bury himself underneath your skin.

Seashells mixed with bits of sand
clung to your ocean blue skin,
your lips looked apologetic.

"I'm sorry I wasn't myself"
- the town's patron saint

Early morning,
clouds shine down
on your still frame,
like a movie scene-
it's cold,
but you've always been a fan of snow
snowflakes touch your nose
in a light dust of blow.

Did you ever really live?
Or had you already been a ghost?
Of who they all had come to love and adore.

The sun,
the moon
and wind
had been the only elements of nature on my side.

Faniliar smell of autumn that reminded me
just of who you were-
when you were by my side,
your face made the heartache better.

My secrets were once birds that hadn't taken flight,
you caged them.

Photos of you glisten,
Resting in an undiscovered refinery 
months worth of "I love you's"
wasted by lies

How nice,
I'm losing my mind.

I've called you "my love" everywhere in writing.
Nobody knows, nobody hears 
what I was witness to.

A bird had once spread its wings
from my heart to your's.

Nobody sees,
Nobody can stop.

I loved the words you'd sew together just for me,
Turing "hello" into a song 
embroidered by sharp wit and
cutting edge promises.

My friends heard me talk like,
some girl in love-
when we belonged to one another..

Hair fell down my shoulders in light brown streaks, eyes were too bulbuous,
and an obnoxious shade of blue.


I'm aware,
she had pewter locks and silky eyes.
told better jokes rather, she laughed at
all your fruitless attempts to tell punchlines.

For her,
I hope you don't hurt the one you love now,


A bird creates a nest for my heart,
inspires me to take better care of it the next time around.

Nobody sees,
how I try to avoid the heartbreak,
but misfortune snaps off in pieces
and lands in my arms
expecting someone to raise it.

The loneliness when you left
made me ill,
would have done better opening the blinds,
and slipping out of the covers.

But I laid there and wept
as if I was a spoiled child,
with a new toy that was taken away.

I suppose,
this is where I mention I was one of many dolls
upon your shelf,
you'd let gather dust.

Began to develop a sense of paralysis,
just from mention or sight of you.

You said to take care of myself,
but I don't think you meant it.
Because the ones such as;
my brain,
my heart

are always being neglected.