My mother used to believe in things like
fairies and
angels and
good spirits and
me

and she uses every available context to remind me of just that

and the whole world is making a huge deal about how
Pope Francis dropped the “F-bomb”
like it least it wasn’t an A-bomb
dropped in a country we can’t pronounce

or maybe even our own
because who would alert the media then
if we were all dead

I’m feeling a bit cynical tonight
and maybe it’s the result of reading too much
Poe and Shakespeare for homework

and if I’m honest I’ve really never felt much in the way of
inspiration from either of them
after being forced down my throat since the third grade

and we had a small play once
and ever since then I’ve thought of you as Romeo
and I’ve always felt a bit more connected to Edgar’s “Annabel Lee”
in that ****** sepulcher by the ever moving and sounding sea

I just wish I had someone pining over me

She stopped breaking laws when she
started breaking hearts

Bottled tears in the vial around her neck
She lays in bed like a spider in their web

They say curiosity killed the cat but in this story
Curiosity killed you

And you love kissing her because she is not like the others
She does not pull away out of shame

She kisses hard like brick on brick on window pane
no face aflame

And you love ******* her because she does not hide away
Begs you more more more

She stopped breaking laws when she
Started breaking hearts

I learned more about you in a Tattoo shop than I should have

I was talking to an artist named Adam
when he mentioned a goblin shark
and how even in 2014
we have only researched 1% of the bottom of the ocean

and until then I would have never compared you to a sea floor
but it seems that is just what you are : undiscoverable

deep
dark
dangerous

I copy ****** expressions I see in the movies

I fancy myself a very good liar but who isn’t these days

you make promises from the bottom of your heart
but it makes me wonder just how deep that is

I try to dig
but all I hear is the echoing of sweet words off this tunnel

You tell me to cut people out of my life and I do
I peel them off like a second skin and leave them bruised

I tell you please don't talk to her
On paper it appears you don't
But you jump to defense every time I quietly say her name

I saw you liked her pictures on my news feed
Even though you unfriended her a week ago

You say you let her go

It appears you are letting her in

I touched you in your dreams darling

I felt the cold steady beat of your heart
thawing out like flowers in spring

I touched you in your dreams my dear

like a coiled snake ready to strike
I tasted the venom in your teeth when I kissed you

I touched you in your dreams love

and I felt the slow shifting of my spine
as the vertebrae started their tender ache

I touched you in your dreams darling
and it felt like a mistake

I never planned to drop out of high school
but I never planned on wanting to **** myself either
so that’s just how it goes

And now I’m in college a year early
and I’m watching everyone around me getting into
serious relationships and having babies
and actually graduating with full scholarships to real universities
and moving in together like real grown people starting real lives

and here I am still missing you
still going to counseling every week
and failing my second semester worse than the first

here I am having to consider if going to a
mental hospital for 6 months is really the only thing ive got left

my mother says when I get out I could really start my life
you know, have real relationships
and not do drugs or have promiscuous ***
but what does she really even know about that

am I about to find out why the caged bird sings?

I turn eighteen in a little over 7 months
and I really don’t want to spend the time leading up to that
having a prescribed time to eat
and take my medication
and when to go to sleep

this isn’t how life is supposed to be

people say it isn’t easy
but killing yourself is seen as cowardly

well, we didn’t even have a choice of whether we wanted life or not
we were just put here because we won the race

so don’t talk to me about cowardice

I have this creeping ache on the edges of my bones
like the way crystal forms,
slowly.

Like the way prehistoric bugs that live in caves die every day.

I think I forgot to close my eyes and woke up blind.

I live my days hoping to grow inwards until my bones
start the delicate tearing of my skin and
water fills my lungs.

I have longed for this to happen ever since i was 7 and
I heard drowning was the closest you can get to

euphoria.

You would tell me you loved me only when I was on you
We had *** in the street once at 2 am
Warm asphalt under our skin

You would moan that you loved me as you came inside me
I wonder if you noticed I never told you I loved you
unless we were fully clothed

The first time I told you I loved you
we were eating homemade peach ice cream
and you were wearing your favorite red jacket
and we were talking about the planets at 8 pm by a hidden pond

The first time you told me you loved me
you were wearing crumpled plaid boxers around your feet
and we were writhing in the back seat of your tinted jeep at the park

The last time you told me you loved me
we were in my bed at 3 am running from the police
and you were in my mouth trying to create a victory that involved
me swallowing

And its funny that way

I was always swallowing bits and pieces of you
and even now I seem to be constantly on the verge of regurgitating memories and moments I thought had long since been forgotten

They say if you love someone, let them go

I let you fly like a paper airplane across a classroom
and you haven’t returned yet

Grandmother veins wrapped like seatbelts around necks
Head first through windshields
Arms reaching around their tombstones

Worms playing hide and seek in kidneys
Gutted pigs in slaughter

Faded wreaths
Fake flowers
Streetlights

Disappearing children
We are fading with each step
Dust in the wind
Dissipating

Happy birthday whispered
Baby wings on *******
India ink burned

Who do you belong to
Who gave you the key to unlock your shackles
Fly from the car

Yellow caution tape
Siren anthems
Resounding death rings

I’m sorry I drank your bottles of tequila
but you left me by myself the whole summer
with a broken heart and a ****** job and an empty house

you left me rattling in the wind
you left me like bones in a ditch

you left me with a drawer full of drugs
and smoke coming out of my pores

you left me trying to bleach my bones with the sunlight

and when you came home after 4 months of me destroying myself
and you found me in a drugged slumber with a cigarette in my hand

you threw the now empty bottles at the wall
and the shards are still there
cutting themselves in the glare through the window

but what did you expect
I'd been hearing things from people that i don't wanna talk to
like it matters who you're sleeping with now

Yes
The shards of glass are still embedded in the wall
You are still embedded in my heart

And here's me
Smoking a cigarette in your sweatshirt

And there's you
Anywhere but here

Why don’t you ask your hairline where I’ve been
My fingers have been on your scalp in all of my dreams
You’ve been nowhere to be seen
I’m not sure what I expected but it wasn’t this
I thought I saw you today
I saw you in the lanky legs of the boy next to me
I saw you in the freckles across the bridge of someone’s nose
It’s strange to think that you’re not here
Your memory never left
It still swallows me at night
You are in the back of my eyes
All black and white

I was 7 when I learned the art of touch
but that doesn’t make me ******’s sister

I was 14 when I thought I figured out *** and love
were one in the same

so tell me why everywhere you touched me
I began to turn black like a the band of a fake ring on a child’s finger

I began to turn a colour I could not wash off
with soap and water

the darker I became the more you began to
smell of rotting meat left out in the sun

you were festering and the holes in your heart
burned through to your skin

sometimes in my sleep
I still smell you waiting in the darkness

and sometimes in the shower
I still find deep marks I cannot ever seem to get rid of

Everyone in this life might mistake the look in your eyes as love
But I will never be so easily fooled again

There should be three crosses on the side of the highway
three bite size graves all in a row
three rotting skeletons collecting dust

When I was young I made a suicide pact
with my two best friends

I woke up on my bedroom floor
stars crossing in front of my eyes
empty bottle of pills still in my hand

At their funerals I kept my mouth closed
Because there are things their mothers needn't know

That should have been a sign
I was meant to forever walk this world alone

You are a soft quiet pulsing
a slow sip of lukewarm coffee in the morning
the gentle caress of bathwater over skin

you are the rain in summer
the steady hum of an overhead fan

you are the melting liquid in a lava lamp
a candle in a windowsill

you are 5 am sunlight
the gentle wind that blows through hair
the first inhale of a just lit cigarette

you are a day of rest

you put your hand on my chest while you kissed me
and said you felt my heartbeat in your palm
like a gentle orb

and here I always thought I was
a gunshot in a back alley outside of a bar
just another unsolved ******

I am ripped plastic
an open landfill
I am blood dripping on tile

but I find I like your insistent denial

When I was in second grade a boy punched me
and I punched him back
until his nose bled on mulch

and ever since then I don’t chase boys
and I do not care for blonde hair anymore

when I was in second grade I would make
homes for fairies in the dirt using
moss and leaves and dandelion stems

when I was in second grade I had a house I could rattle around in
I could sulk like an angry ghost in a house built in 1867

I would wander around in the forest with two boys
I convinced them we should break into old houses
and our neighbors sheds

We created a world of green and vine and stumps
For Christmas one year we decorated a tree

We were the little ones who never wanted to go home
We called ourselves Peter Pan
Because we were never growing up

That was all before I moved
And the last day with them they crowned me Queen

I would climb on the roof at night
and feel the warmth of the sun still lingering there
and that was back when I was scared of what was in my closet

but since then I’ve befriended it

In fall I met a boy who had blue eyes and dark hair
and he towered over me thin and strong

and he had wheels for feet but wasn’t a rolling stone
no, that was always me

he told me he loved me with the lights on

and we became helplessly entangled in each other’s limbs
like we were turning into the jungle itself
until it got colder and we were ripped apart
-
in winter I met a girl who knocked the wind out of me
and my lungs have never quite been the same

she would read me poetry as we laid in her silk sheets naked
drinking coffee and she would light my cigarettes

and she taught me how to jump in head first
and how to be charm boys
and how to love *****
and more importantly,
her
-
in spring everything so tightly wound began to come undone
and love became more complicated

and in the end I had to choose whom I loved more
and even now I still question the faulty loyalties I had

and I catch myself driving by both of their houses
feeling unable to control my lungs
or my razor sharp memories
-
in summer the boy with the blue eyes who was my moon
started loving a little girl and we haven’t talked since

and while I waned he waxed
and I hope to never see him again

and the girl who was my rising and setting sun
kissed me for the last time in a smoke filled room

and I lent her my shoes and shirt
and I still think about her every day
-
It's been over a year
and I am still unable to allow these two people out of my head

like a guilty conscience that will never let you rest
and all I can think is

imissyouimissyouimissyou

like it is engraved in my heartbeat

I am not pink lace and bony knees
I am not please and thank you
I am now and because I said so

I am ripped jeans and skinned knees
I am not a thin wafer
I am a loud tongue

my body has never once been a temple
I am a volcano erupting at random intervals
I burn everything I touch

some are born with a silver spoon in their mouth
I was born with a hunger
for something I have yet to taste

I have never been meek
A proper lady
A lamb

I am harsh worded
I speak like a grater
I leave bruises and burns

I am a sinkhole
And if you're not careful
I will swallow you up

I’m trying to tell you something
but there are no suitable words to explain how I feel

like I need you on top of me

and I need you in the ocean next to me

I need you holding my hand
and listening to me sing along to the radio

I need you drinking tea with me
and playing cards
and crunching leaves under our feet in fall

I need you on a blanket

and at the mall I need you by my side

I need you to snowboard down the ***** of my back

I need you to spank me over your lap
I need to get drunk with you

I need to smoke cigarettes with you

I need to taste wine on your lips
and drink ***** out of your collarbones

I need you like a quick striking match

I’ve spent all my wishes on you

I need to sleep next to you every night of my life
and watch you brush your teeth in the morning
and straighten the collar of your shirt

I need to open the door and find you there

I need to read thick books with you

I need to see you eating cereal for dinner
I need my head on your chest

I need to watch you shower
and shampoo your black hair

I need to love you
I need to LOVE you
I love you

They say home is where the heart is
Well, I don't care where I am

I need to call you home

Aaron Evans - Magic  
I love you, I really do
    
Alex Forte - ****
*******

Alex S - *****
I hate what you made me become

Andrew T -Beer
Do good in Rehab, dear

Austin Kearns - Lake Water
really?

Garrett A - Pretzels
Burn in Hell

Garrett F - Soy Sauce
I'm so sorry

Hunter G - Cigarettes
You still turn me on

Jason H - Bubblegum
I kissed you out of pity

Jeff C - Water
I'd still Hate *******

JJ S - Ciroc
What a regret

John Bradshaw - Football
How is Pennsylvania?

Johnny Bozeman II - Marlboro Reds
I just really ******* miss you

John Butler - Coffee
Don't ever touch me again

John G - Sugar
I'm sorry I ruined it

Julian R - Cherry Popsicles
Thank you for freeing me

Justin B - Cheap Wine
*******

Justin Haupt - Mint
I really enjoyed all the free *******

Katie Moorman - Red Lipstick
IloveyouImissyouI'msorry

Kyrstin Bruce - Grey Goose
I don't like kissing you

Mario Luppachino - Pool Water
I would've ****** you in my car that night

Michael H - Hash Brownies
Stay Away

Ryan T - Want
Kissing you made me *** in a school hallway

Rusty H - Need
I still wonder what became of you

Sam R - Mistakes
Heard you're a father now, congrats

Sean Ellis - Berry Hookah      
sigh
                  
Steven Spence - Gasoline
I'm a **** person and so are you

Taylor Vaughn - Sunset
Go back to your baby mama

Tim Hoback - Hangover at 7 am
You made me breakfast and gave me your pants

Trevor W - Candy
Time is a funny thing, huh?

Tyler Farris - Missed Connections
If I was a little prettier could I have been your baby?

1- Alex S
You were a rough hit to the stomach
a cold and ***** baptizing
I ****** you twice and never again
because of you I stopped eating
I haven’t seen you since I was 14
and that’s okay with both of us

2- Alex F
Your name still gives me chills
you remind me of a fox in winter
I really did love you like the waves love the ocean shore
I really would have drowned myself for you
im sorry I took your virginity

3- JJ S
It was a drunken hookup on a ***** couch
in a smoke filled basement that I had to sneak out of later
and you were 27 and should have known better
and it was really just too awful to talk about

4- Garrett F
In a Chinese restaurant parking lot at 9 pm
we used your backseat like it had
rose petals and candles
and you were my best friend
and it’s still one of my biggest regrets
and we stopped speaking after that

5- Michael H
Really I just wanted the free ****
and a place to spend the night
so, did you enjoy the taste of my tall black soul
that tends to smell of tar
and the dredges of a coffee ***?

6- Julian R
I don’t know the first thing about you
besides the fact you are from New York
and 25
and play basketball for a college
and you pushed me down on the bed
and swallowed me whole

7- Sean E
It was Halloween
and we were drunk
and we undressed in the back of someone’s jeep
and laid under the stars at 4 am on a blanket in a backyard
the first time you were ever inside me

8- Johnny B
24 and never someone I’d normally ****
but I stayed at your house for 2 weeks
and we became connected on every piece of furniture
and I still never got enough of you
and god I miss you

9- Aaron E
You are the end of it all
and with you I am butter melting
I am grinding my teeth down in lust
I’ve never seen anyone look so perfect naked
and I’m wishing you were the only one in this list

What happens if you love so much
you give them everything

right down to the skin off of your back and
your organs and bones

If you ever leave me the plan will be to
drink until the pain is over

But I'm not sure even a never ending hangover
can rid my thoughts of you

Already I feel pieces and memories of you
becoming imprinted into my brain like Braille

I think I would be scared if it didn't feel like
the world is right when I am with you

I was born in blood
and I have a tendency to like the darker things in life

I ate my twin in the womb
and I broke free into life with that victory

and ever since I have felt like a caged animal
all gleaming teeth
all bite
all bone

I am partial to the boys who have a side sweeping gaze that seems to say
“I could shoot you if I really cared enough to”
because there’s a little bit of danger in us all
and sometimes I just like the obvious

my heart isn’t on my sleeve
my heart is a long black drip
a charred line

my heart is an empty fireplace waiting to incinerate
whoever thinks the flames won’t really burn

I was born in high relief
and have spent my life keeping others from whittling me down

I am not a sculpture
I am not yours to mold

and here’s this boy putting the barrel of his loaded gun in my mouth

and here’s me saying take a walk on the wild side
wondering if my eyes can convey how badly I want him to

pull the trigger

There is something in your face that
I am unable to capture in pictures
something in the way your eyes change from green to black

something in the bones of your fingers
and the way that I kiss them
the way I can’t think when I’m with you besides

youarebeautifulyouarebeautiful

so excuse the way I trip over air

because I’ve just been thinking of you
and the way your eyes close when I touch your face
and the way your laugh comes out fast and soft

and there’s something in the way you walk
something nameless in the way you kiss me

something about you makes me hungry for you to the core

sometimes you say you’re bad and mean
(and I’d have to disagree)

but even if you were a disease
I’d still invite you into my bloodstream

Its funny that you should mention me ******* your blood tonight
its funny you should say you would cut your forearms open for me
if it wasn’t going to leave scars

like I didn’t know drinking blood and razors were about sexuality

its funny you should mention any of it
because tonight was the first night since the beginning of October
that ive cut myself open just to watch my carcass BLEED

so I wonder what you'll say when you see me in two days
and you find that ive created slits in my skin
that go from shoulder to wrist on both arms

will you ask me to cut one more just so you can put your mouth to it
AND QUENCH YOUR THIRST

I’m sorry I am all claws and
teeth and
sharp corners

I’m sorry for flaying your stomach open from the inside out
I’m sorry I am secretive and
quick tongued and
careless

I’m sorry I flinch
I’m sorry I run
I’m sorry I hide in plain sight

I’m sorry we ran out of band aids
I’m sorry you had to stitch yourself instead of save me

sorry I’m used and
vile and
dark

I’m sorry I wrote those horrible poems
I’m sorry I feel like a wet blanket
I’m sorry I snuffed your flame out

and never bothered to try and light it again

I’m sorry I’m the one you have to blame everything on

I'm sorry I make you cry in the dead of night

I'm sorry you can't sleep anymore

I'm sorry I can

Like shards of glass in the back of your throat
waiting for that steady drip

don’t breathe in through your nose or you’ll throw up

and it could be compared to a rollercoaster
but you described it as a soft and quiet floating between trees

like the wind is blowing you through the leaves

and then you said you’ve wasted your life on this
and talk to you when you happen to fall asleep

but it’s been seven days

and you haven’t fallen into this bed yet
I made the bed that you can’t sleep in

because life is just all about horrible irony

I want to brush my teeth until my mouth forgets your name
and I know I shouldn’t feel the way I do

and I’m sitting by my phone waiting for it to ring
I’ve been here for three hours and nothing yet

I’m painting my nails purple in hopes of brightening
my ever decreasing levels in spirit

you want to know how I got these scars?

I fought a few demons
and i got locked in my closet with your skeletons as well as mine

you know you make my eyes burn

and I’ll never let anyone break me

I tried to poison your pictures

I stuck pins in a doll I made of you

I don’t want to be my mother and sit in my room on Sundays
with the door shut and blinds drawn
and use a headache as excuse of heartbreak

How To Leave Someone Without Breaking Their Heart

How To Tell Him “I Love You” Without Using Poetry

How To Not Compare Yourself To Broken Glass

How To Not Make Life Another One Of Your Similes

How To Wake Up And Be Okay

How To Deal With Someone Saying You Are Too Much To Handle

How To Let The Light In

How To Tell Your Parents About The Last Six Years

How To Not Want To Jump Off Of A Roof

Past:
I was never warned of the unnecessary evil that
was and is you

I was never told that I needed to heed the red collar
and let you not engulf me
like a house aflame in the country

I escaped to the forest like a refugee
and even now my heart is still locked in a tree

Present:
Your name sounds like it melts in my mouth
A freshly cut lawn of green grass

When will you realize I love you
when will you realize I ******* know you
And I still adore you

And how I sit in bed and write poetry
straight through to the morning
but even the sound of birds chirping outside my window
will not deter me

I need you to know I ******* love you
I love you I love you I love you

You said I'm "the one"
But I can't let my mind run away with my heart

I'm not trying to let myself unravel like a ball of string
I still need to be okay when the inevitable comes

Future:
I know you will leave me
eventually

I feel more comfortable in this vessel of mine than I ever have before
and I suppose I have you to thank for that

because now I can walk without seeming like a question mark
and trying to blend into the wall

I can walk without looking down like an apology
so this is me saying thank you

but now I realize that I don’t need you nor do I want you

and I am happy with the sense of freedom that comes with that

you weren’t special until I made you so
and I didn’t realize my worth until we were walking away from each other

and once, back when you were good
and I still believed in you

we climbed the roof of a school and took pictures
and I didn't want to jump off  

and I scraped my leg before we started doing graffiti

and we heard the sirens from two miles away
so we dropped the spray paint and ran

and I guess they were warning us in more ways than one

Hurry now
"Something wicked this way comes"

The truth of it is-

he's not going to fix you

she's not going to make you forget
the way your father would hit you

He is not going to make your collarbones sprout roses
He will not make you forget how to need

The truth of it is-

She is not a savior
She is not able to fight off the demons in your dreams

He will not make you forget the way your mother left
The bloodstains in the bathtub will still be there

The truth of it is-
This is your life
This is not a movie

No one is going to swoop in and save you

You will have to grow your own wings if you want to fly away

I still think of things that got lost under the waves
and how every inch of me was rubbed raw by shells
and shifting sand

and I couldn’t tell which way was up

I was in a world of frothy ocean
and jellyfish
and siren songs

and now I think I know how Alice felt
when she was tumbling into something we call wonderland

I think I found hell in the corners of my organs

I think I was poisoned
and the culprit is the sea

I think a mermaid tried to **** me

I had a dream I was walking on the beach
and the waves receded into a wall
like Moses parting the Red Sea

but it was only me
and it was only a dream

You once told me I was hypnotic
and a few days after that I had a vision
that included us killing each other

and you shot me dead
before I could even pull out my knife
and I think that’s a pretty **** accurate representation

I always said that to shoot someone is pretty non personal
and this is nothing but

so I started to carve little rotten raspberry slits in your skin
and the juice ran out in tiny rivulets on flayed open bone
because that’s true

you flayed me open with
the razor in your tongue and
the cold steel of your shoulder and
you broke my bones with the hammer in your eyes

so I guess I just feel like I deserve more than a
bullet to my chest

I don’t think I was the one who deserved to die

At 14 I was sent to the hospital twice because
I was hallucinating which is a fancy way of saying
hey, you’re batshit crazy so we’re going to pump you full of medication

Turns out all of the walls I had been seeing crashing down
and the fires that were never there
were always just a side effect of my depression medication
because I was on too high of a dose for my weight

And I told my ex-boyfriend this when I was 16
and now, 8 months later he is telling everyone I am schizophrenic

like baby there’s a lot of things I am but that’s not one of them

Like there’s a lot of things you are
but a good person was never something I would use to describe you

you're more of a waste of space
and I really wish you had never left Chicago

I wish I never even met you

I wish I hadn’t been so desperate for the way you moved
your thin body like a train down the rails

I wish I had never agreed to play with your hair in class
or sat in your lap with your arms around me tight

or caught sight of you in my eyes
like a glare through a window there was nothing else