our souls we're much too big for our bodies,
it was bursting out the seams of our small limbs.

maybe everything started that one day
in seventh grade when we lied about what movie we were
going to see,
and we put up our hair in brown piles on top of our heads
and squeezed into pants so small we could feel our bones pressing against
the fabric.

when we walked into town,
miles from your house in the dusty summer,
with me dragging my skateboard along,
with the skull on the bottom
and you walking with you long legs slightly in front of me;
drunkards with
swiveling eyes whistled at us from
a green jeep and tried to cajole us into the car,
my small ******* was ****** high into
the sweltering air
"******* YOU MISOGYNISTIC *******,"

we couldn't get into the movie we wanted to,
so we snuck into a different one
filled with snow and dark
and twirling tendrils that reached toward us and
made our stomach crawl.

sometimes i miss the times desperately
when we would pack things into a small cloth
sack
food, knives
we'd trek in the forest for hours and
this one time we broke into somebodies pool, dipped our feet in
then got chased away by their livid dog.

we had left the gun we brought there,
you had two and we liked feeling it cold against our
empty fingers,
so i had to run back and get it.

sometimes i think about how if i had never met you,
my life would be so different.
i would have never smoked my first joint
with you on your trampoline
encased in large, fluffy blankets
under millions of stars that couldn't quite fit in our
eyes all at the same time.

we would have never pranced in
yellow drying grass,
and almost fell into your creek, with
your brother laughing behind.

i'm glad we wrote songs
together even if they were about
blood dripping slowly from our open carcasses;
we weren't the most optimistic kinds of
girls.

we had wills as hard as
hitting iron,
metallic in spurting bloodshed.

we were rebellious,
like other girls we're pretty,

and we fought like warriors should
in small, bland classrooms
with teachers who knew nothing of being hurt.

our voices were strong,
unwavering like something found in the depths of a morning sky.

we raised ourselves well, darling.

it's sort of funny how i can bang you like
a frying pan to the head
and *** all your cigarettes
until your pockets are empty
and so is the bed
because

i'll want to know what kissing the
boy who lives next door
with the green eyes
feels like too

****
i wish we could drop acid
on a rolling hill like earthly ocean
waves,
summer breeze swiftly rocking
us back and forth in the
twisting realities, and
folding, condensing, expanding
visions, exploding in our
open, wide eyes.

i wish i could kiss you
and feel flowers grow from
your lips,
my ******* turning into
opening roses
soft and voluptuous under your
persistent hands.

get grass in my hair,
and count each and every one of the
angrily pulsating stars above us
as we lay naked somewhere
where reality can't breach.

let me comfortably say after
that i have lost my virginity;

because it'll be the first time i've ever
made love to a god.

I had a dream that you were larger than life.
I slipped in through your mouth
to learn the secret of your insides.
You spat me out.
I fell.
You caught me with hands the size of clouds,
then stuck me in a cage with a yellow canary.
I had to eat the bird to stay alive.
You're a neglectful pet owner.
Now I'm  trapped here
with no company.
I long to be free.
I cannot fly;
I never sing,
but it would be alright
if you'd just look at me.

i wrote my first poem
when i was somewhere around the age of two or three,
singing out the words,
and having my mother write them down.

something about a rose,
and its devotion to the light.
i have it scribbled down somewhere.

then, the words took form in shaky
childs writing,
small words and sentences describing fantastical worlds
swirling vividly in my mind,
and then in elementary school drawl,
across colored construction paper,
then on my arms and legs in middle school,
in black ink scrawling across
golden skin,
sinking in.

then, books full
of endless pages filled with
flowing and burning inspiration piled on my desk
and by my bed
the most ferocious of inspiration finding me in all my
highschool classes.
a sketchbook,
or at least a pen always held close at hand,
i even had inspiration in the shower,
and sometimes ran out naked
if i forgot a pad and pencil.

my love of words started when my mother
used to read me poetry in the womb,
and play tapes of Native American
flute music as she fell asleep
to the small, but constant feeling of
my unborn lips inside her growing stomach
forming the outline of
words to be written and said.

i started writing,
and it became my addiction;
and i've never felt the urge to stop.