say burning bush, say you don't
forgive me. what do you
mean, just friends? if that's what god intended as 
platonomy I don't think I want to 
meet him. 

I don't know 
why but there's something peculiar in how the minute your sister wasn't 
around we discovered how 
neatly my fingers fit into
yours. as everyone 
knows by now, what happens back 
stage stays back
stage and the walls still whisper of what we 
saw in each other's 
eyes right before we
fell into each other. I'm going to
burn for wishing I'd used my
mouth. 

I fit over his
hips like they were made for
me but maybe things are meant to be
asymmetrical, like the way the strings of your
hoodie are always
askew. maybe god finds
calm in violence, maybe he does this 
stuff so we don't forget how it
hurts. 

touching you means an
explosion and I wish they'd see it as bright
colours instead of just a loud
noise, because you, I think 
I could love
you.

I cry myself to sleep thinking of our last kiss
dear god I hope I've never made someone else feel like this 
I once thought I found god in the bend of your spine
I don't know why but you're the only thing that's ever made me feel alive
there's a pack on the counter and it keeps screaming your name 
my comfort is empty hallways, I know they feel the same
everything I write has your name between the lines
the only days I could breathe right were when you were mine
sometimes I see your ghost laying in my empty bed
for all of this pain, I think there's something to be said
the echo of your voice is a reminder I really hate
when I hear it I know I better call my shrink up before it's too late
depakote, klonopin, ambien, prozac
dear god if you're there, tell me where my head's at 
do her hands feel better in yours than mine 
I'm sorry this is so messy but I have to get it down in time 
I'm sick of people on main street asking me what I'm crying about
I make a fist and tell them a loves a love until it burns itself out.

i.
you are the cruelest person I've ever
met but my heart still beats really
fast whenever I think about 
you. I'm afraid if I touch 
you I'll burst into 
flames again. my 
hands haven't stopped shaking since you
left and I never got to thank you for teaching me the meaning of the word
hurt. I found my 
poems at the bottom of your
garbage can and I still can't 
sleep alone. I 
kissed you a lot, and sometimes, you kissed me
too.  

ii.
your skin rings up memories of moonlight and 
granite, a gaping
desert lying open like
it's as vulnerable as
you when it gets
dark. you have a murderous look in your
eye but you never broke a hair on my
head, you saved every phone log of every time I ever
called you. i heard your last girlfriend got arrested for domestic 
abuse and you never wrote to tell me. did it
hurt you more than 
I could? I hope you found what you were
looking for out there and I hope you never
lose it unless you
want to. 

iii.
something about your
eyes makes me want to know everything about the middle of the
night, I watch you
move and I whimper inside my
head. I haven't touched you in what seems like two whole
lifetimes, if I ever even did at
all. I hope I can again some
day. years later and your music stillI makes my ears
raw. I hope that bullet didn't
hurt too bad, I hope 
it brought you the happy. I'm sorry I never
could. 

iiii.
we are a modern day romeo and juli
et, it took me two 
years to realize how lovely your
lips looked and I'm still wrecking 
barriers, I'm still 
damning christ. my best friend has made it
clear she does not want me as a 
sister. I wish they'd let me
love you because you, you are all I've got
left. I might be the bullet but I will never be the
shooter, I'll take everything on
myself. you are so fragile and i am so 
sorry.

people tell me i’m
lucky because at least i lost
him knowing that he
loved me, at least it wasn’t as painful as a
breakup. if this isn’t
pain then please tell me words for this swallowing
wound in the middle of my
chest, explain how i can’t find my own
hands even in broad
daylight and every time i think i
see him around our
house i know to take it as a
sign that i need to call my shrink back up, tell her
about the ghost at the core of my
life.

i can still feel his
hands in mine, long pianist man
fingers and encompassing
palms, wide open like a
map soaked in
blood.

he was so long
gone by the time that they
found him, his own fragile
mother couldn’t identify the
body, i was the only
one who knew how my hands were supposed to fit his
hips, the only good part of him
left.

my doctor tells me that i’ve passed the threshold for
grief, this isn’t healthy, she
tells me. how am i expected to know the meaning of that
word when the only thing i can
explain is the incessant ringing in my
ear, the sound of the
bullet that went farther than i ever
dared.

we were supposed to get
married, he just didn’t have the
money, but he gave me everything else off his very own
back. at night i stay up repeating the names of the
children we were going to
have, all three of
them. now they seem like more of an
insult to the holy
trinity.

god, how did you feel when satan
fell? i demand you on your
knees, begging me to
believe in you again. do you know how it feels to be in love with a
ghost?

it didn’t take much to get him mad. one wrong word and he’d erupt like a volcano, destroying everything in his path. how could you ever think it was okay to let your children know by heart the sound their mother makes when she’s pushed down the stairs? one night the mirror at the bottom cracked, a shard lodging itself into the centre of her forehead. this is a sign, i would’ve said if i was old enough to understand. take a reflection back on why you still think you need him. i haven’t talked to him in four years but it doesn’t make much of a difference, the seed of our last name still sprouts in my heart like an arsenic root. i wonder what he’s doing now, i’ve spent the time trying to fit into the holes in the walls that the beer bottles left. i don’t know anything about him except the colour of his anger and how he could never open up without the turn of a corkscrew. if his point was to teach his children never to touch alcohol, he got the point across. one night in our house was enough to understand that. he’d throw full bottles at the walls, saying he had a tough day, but the stains on our carpet still say he never loved us. maybe, i told them, the day he drove away for good, if we had the potential to **** him he might’ve loved us just as much.

there were nights when you'd turn
away and you'd refuse to let me
touch you. if you want to know what a broken
bone feels like put your hand right
here.

when I heard of
Katrina I had no one to hold my hair
back, I had no one to tell me that hansel and gretel don't end up
eating each other.

lately I've been cutting up
bibles and bleeding with the
moon, there's things we know how to
fix and things we
don't.

if church was your
bedroom I ****** the sixth
genesis out of you, I pulled adam's second
son from your hair while you moaned the fall of jerusalem into my
mouth.

when we were good god considered shutting down
heaven but when we were bad, when we were
bad satan cried himself to
sleep.

once a boy called me for three hours just to talk about my favourite
movie. i never said i
loved him. like everything
else, winter murdered whatever we
had and the next
summer was very
foreign. once a boy loved
me and never told
me. the last night he walked away from my
porch i pictured him as a cloud of
tears, as a white
flag. once i loved a
boy and when i told him, he said ‘i
know.’ my best friend tells me i’m good at making
fists. i try to find
god in vintage wallpaper and downtown
bars, sitting so
long that my ears flood with the signal
notes of a lonely man’s
saxophone. here, you can smell cemeteries and
playgrounds on the same
street. here,
boys never love you
back. once, i broke a rock in my bare
hand. once, a boy i hardly ever
talked to told me that i was a good
poet in the way i explained
things and asked me please not to become a
dead one. i didn’t know what i
meant when i told him i’d
try. once i loved a boy so full of
anger that his god begged him for
mercy. i think i almost
loved a boy once.

'please don't ever
hurt me,' you whimper into the softer side of his
neck. he knows exactly where to put his
hands on someone who hurts
everywhere. 'the only way I could ever
bruise you is by kissing you too
hard,' he says back.

you collect his moans like cut out passages from the
bible, he's the reason people get in fights about
god. he might not be a real
thing but there's no *******
way the universe created your boy by
itself.

you want to scream that you
love him from every rooftop in every
city that is warless, every Spanish
town that doesn't have a
cross on the front
gate.

yes, you do believe the story about Jesus being draped from a
cross like your great grandmother's
laundry, but like the buckets being passed around at
church, not all of it was
holy.

he is splayed out on his
back in front of you, his shirt on the
floor and his arms out to the
sides. as you push down on his
hips he bites his lip until it
bleeds the colour he knows is your
favourite. 'the only way I could ever
hurt you is by holding your hand too
tightly,' you promise him, leaning into him like a
corner.

you remember his lips on
yours, how they felt like tar and you knew he was something
you did not want to stick to. the aftermath was like climbing out of a
net while covered in honey, he told you, smiling, how sweet you
were but you’re clenching your fists waiting for the
bees. sting me here and here and here and
here, cut off my hands so i never have to know what
losing your child before it’s fourth
birthday feels like.

when you were little, your
mother used to read you bedtime
stories about princes and dragons and lots of happy ever
afters. but where is the ‘after’ when your best friend
hates you? where is the
‘before?’

your therapist is reading you an
eliot poem in hopes it’ll calm you
down, in hopes you’ll replace memories of that
boy with bob
dylan and that couch with thoughts of empty
fields. every time it comes into your
head, bob won’t write songs about
you and the field screams ‘i am not
empty, i am
open.’

call you Vada, accuse you of being in
love with your teacher and killing your
mother; the first thing you ever ruined on
accident. you wish you were thomas
j, you wish you were genetically pre
dispositioned to crumble like a heart made of
sand when a bee sticks himself
into you.

your best friend won’t be your
best friend anymore and you’re ripping pages out of the
calendar and swallowing january
whole, there’s more ways to die than to stay
alive. suicides are their own
language, the suicidal are like
carpenters, they always ask ‘what
tools’ instead of
‘why build’.

you’re begging to the god your best
friend believes in to let you die
young. every minute of the
afterward feels like one more
tally on his list of worst
betrayals. satan is
smiling because you’re playing the game he
invented.

but what if the devil
doesn’t know he’s the devil?

it started out with a crash and a
blast and it ended in a mouthful of
bees.