the days you couldn't get out of bed
were the days he was full of birds
in his stomach; fluttering wings and
sharp beaks pulling for validation.

and the hummingbird in your heart never stops going off
when you've trained it this well, because even a bird
can fall in love with its cage
if it's beautiful enough;
stockholm syndrome in its raw disgust.

impulsivity never came naturally
for him, perfection was
his answer to thoughts smelling
like recycled air and suffocation.

but you,
you would rip all the sheets off
and you could always tell when there was something off
when there was something i've lost,
and never knew that it was you
growing around my bones like moss.

or maybe more like poison ivy
by the way you expected so much from me
and i couldn't stop the both of us
from falling off the rollercoaster you
refused to get off of.

so now that i know,
i won't let you become my demise
because a ******* once told me;
"Anticipation is always stronger
than surprise."

The Dry Boy and the Lying Boy
Tell me about the dry boy
The boy with no color
Whose voice doesn't sound brown at all

Tell me about his dreams
Tell me, does he dream?
You ask him and he says No

That's a lie
The boy says nothing
Does nothing
The boy is not there

Tell me about the boy whose bones were not on fire
They sparked but were not on fire
Tell me about his dreams

Does he dream?
You ask and he says No
And that’s a lie
That’s his lie

Tell me about the boy who says lies
Tell me about the time
Words poured from his mouth like water
No, *****

You ask them if the dry boy is alive
They say No
That’s a lie
There is no dry boy

You ask them if the lying boy is alive
They say Yes
But he probably won’t be for long
You don’t know if that’s a lie

Tell me about the time his voice
Curled around you like smoke
In brown and red and gold
Tell me if it burned your eyes

It didn’t, it was beautiful
You tell him that, you say you’re beautiful
And he laughs and you think that’s a lie, too

Tell me about the time the dry boy made you small
How he knelt down and held your
Tiny baby hands

Tell me about how you did things too big for you
To make him reverse it
It didn’t work

Tell me about the lying boy
He doesn’t lie all the time
And not really to you

You ask him who he lies to
And he says myself
And you trust him, you do
Because his bones are not on fire and neither is his mouth

You want to paint the boy
With the voice like smoke
You want to paint a new face over his

No, you want to paint the face under his
No, you want to carve the face under his
No, you want to crack him open with a chisel
And look at what’s inside

You throw a match on the dry boy
And watch his mouth catch fire
And watch his bones catch fire

You lie with him and he burns you
You douse him with gasoline and he burns you again
The dry boy takes you home with him and ruins you
You leave him burning and visit the lying boy

You drop a match on the lying boy by accident
He doesn’t catch
You watch him toss it away

You lie with him and he laughs at you
No, with you
You lie with him and he kisses you
That’s all

You lie between the lying boy and the dry boy
And the dry boy lies and the lying boy doesn’t
The lying boy takes you home and tells you a truth
And then he leaves, that’s all

The lying boy is there the next day
You visit with him and he takes you home
He leaves you there until the next day

The lying boy shows you himself
Instead of ruining you
The dry boy lies to you
The lying boy takes you home

Some things I cannot resist; I blame my own self worth.
I got shot in a dream once...it didn't hurt.
The apple is never as sweet
as the whispered words that slither out of your mouth.

Still moonstruck, still insane,
You throw me straight into the flame.,
and I like the burn
enough to go back for seconds.

Because even though I don't owe you anything,
I feel an obligation, like muscle memory
it falls out my open mouth, gasping
to remember the last few fragments
of the nightmare you woke me from.

So here's to biting off more than you can chew,
and having no regrets about finding yourself
cracked beneath the covers, and disarrayed
among the reflections of mistakes already made.

Maybe I needed this
reality check. I'm on my own, I know.
The temporal frustrates me, the birds
fly south for the winter, I fly...nowhere.
Permanence is a dream as fleeting as
its own contradiction.
It makes no sense, but what did I
expect from you?

Do you remember the nights
we laid across each others ankles
to see if either would break under
the weight of the other?

These fractured bones
don't mean a thing. (promise)

1
i carry with me at all times a single fond memory of you ******* out venom from under my skin, right where you forgot you put it a very long time ago, —and beneath my eyes, as the vitreous shrinks and contracts, every sweep of your tongue becomes another dilution of the pigment of my iris, and every stem or stalk taken from the roof of your mouth, here is where hell begins—and i carry in me at all times your own discarded cells, and the stalactites of your bones beneath. here is where

2
you let me drown, which i will not blame you for, but i will blame you for the tears of my lovers all shed over not having a body to bury, or to dig back up, or to hold, simply because you couldn’t swim—but i couldn’t either and did i let that stop me? at least we know now which one of us is more so the coward, or i guess was

3
(…which was my worst fear if i am being honest, if i had ever told you: they say there are two deaths but i know there are three. the first is when you are buried; the second is when your name is said for the last time; and the third is when the worms give up because there is not enough left of you to bother their mouths with)

4
nothing i say makes any sense today
you took my tongue; give it back, give it back

5
it all comes back to an oral fixation, i know that, just wish i could tell you why

6
—no, i remember why now, it’s because
you kissed the soil of my grave when you thought i wasn’t looking but the joke is finally on you because decomposition had begun early—sickness is the only bedfellow we’ll ever have—and after that comes

7
return to start?

I am in a bad state, physically and emotionally (mostly emotionally) and this is mostly a self healing type of thing. Bear with me. A lot of swearing and some mild crying were involved.

1. For starters, I'd like to say that I am sorry for the current state that we're in. Our friendship has slipped through my fingers faster than any liquid could and left me numb and confused and sort of hung over. I never meant to cause you anger towards me in any way but I guess sometimes these things are meant to happen and there isn't anything we can do about it.
2. I kind of miss your small hands and the way they were always outstretched, ready to catch every drop of disappointment and wonder the world had to give. They were always cold too; maybe from all the icy truths they held. I liked the way you moved them when you couldn't figure out the exact words to say, as if they were your cue cards you couldn't quite read.
3. I don't know if we'll ever speak again or if you will look me in the eye when you walk past me, if you even think of me when you see me. I don't know if you still consider me a mistake or the nights we spent together a mistake the way chopping off my hair with Crayola scissors when I was four was a mistake.
5. When this is over, remember that you are not any less loved: you are still the girl who has looked fear in the face every day and fated, “I do not belong to you.”
6. You taught me that everyone leaves. This is no longer something I can romanticize, I’m not capable of turning this pain into poetry anymore. It’s just sadness. It’s just hurt. It’s just hard.
7. In fifty years when I sit down to write a poem about us, (and I will), I will word the way this situation
panned out, pinpoint perfectly why you are letting go, I will have just enough knowledge to write a funny sarcastic quip about how sorry you should be for losing me, but today I am desperate for some explanations, and the present does not seem comical or ironic— it is Cinderella’s lost slipper sad, a future slipping away because you are scared of the clock chiming midnight, and although in hindsight I will laugh at myself, at you, at this, I will tell my children things like, “Wasn’t I silly?” and they will nod, and tuck my cautionary tales under their skin as little life reminders. Although in 50 years I will call you 5 decades too late, say I'm sorry that I never seemed to say “I love you” at the right time, ask how the years have been, and wonder of all the things that could have been if I'd had the right words. I cannot see the future, and all I am is filled with uncertainty rusting my heart and tainting my hope the way rain rusts metal in the spring, wishing that if nothing else, at least someday I will be able to understand.
8. The past three days have been a rollercoaster of emotions, from the highest elation, to the lowest depression. I hope you're happy, I really do. If nothing else, I hope you think of me and the times we shared and smile a little bit. I hope your wildest dreams come true and I hope you realize you are full of bountiful potential spilling out from every bit of you, even your aura. I hope I'm on your *List of Things That Keep Me Up at Night but in a good way. I hope you actually read Things Fall Apart and make literary connections between the characters in that book and our friendship. I don't even know what I'm saying. I hope you find the words I never could. I hope you wake up one morning and say "I'm going to change the world," because you can. I hope you dance in the rain and not care if your hair gets wet. I hope you get yourself figured out.

There's a man with cuts on his arms, probably accidental, perhaps I'm wrong
There's that girl and I think she's pretty
Over there is a dog, unleashed and he's barking at ghosts
In here is my heart and it stopped for a moment
That is a field and the grass grows blue, we don't know why
(On the park is where I first got high
In the bush is where love goes to die
At the shops I told a lie)
In his house we did more ******
Through the window I see her again, so pretty
You can see my eyes, they're watering
On the blue-grass sedentary, lays her body
Regretful hands are mine
Heroine life lost
- I'm sorry.

she                                                                           watched curlicues of sweeping clouds, and
        loved                                                            ­    how they painted the sky like van Gogh
                   the                                                         Line of smudged charcoal smoke severed the
                         (sky)                               ­                 blue bodies apart.
                                   when                   ­                  The wind stroked her face.  
                                               it        ­                        was cold and woke her up.
                                                     spilled                  Synapse after synapse
                                                         ­        onto         Dream after dream.
                                                                ­        the surface of the sun,
                                                                ­                                 when it was almost, but not quite,
                                                                ­         drowned by the sea
                                                                ­                  = the most visible feeling she had seen.

"You don't wanna have stiff fingers, you want to feel the flow of
Him in them!
So stretch your fingers."
They said to Oscar.
"You'll be able to feel how vast the blue sky is and how beautiful He is if you do it enough"
And Oscar obeyed. He stretched them, and measured.
He was getting better at it and could feel a sphere of warmth in his hands as they clasped together. The flow was real, it was! His hands
glowed and eyes turned up to the Sky of Promises.
Spring bloomed on the petals of his fingers and at last
Oscar knew what it was like to hold peace in your hands.
Summer drowned him in light and Oscar
spent more time stretching than ever.
The warmth licked his legs as he ran past the world, grazing the bitter asphalt.
The tranquil ball bounced with him and snowballed with heat. Decay sank into plants
and Oscar watched as Cold fed on the soil.
Frosty grass glittered like the asphalt used to in the summer, but
Oscar's sphere got lost on the cold terrain
after he dropped it,
when he saw that the blue sky he had been promised
was not in fact blue at all and that
it would never be infinite.