I love the way you talk out of the side of your mouth, like you could somehow reel the words you say back in,
throw out a line, before it's too late.
I wrap my arms around you before you can react and it's just my way of saying that
I love the syllables, the speech that softens your expression,
the fox-light in your eyes
and your curved lips on mine.

It's Libra season
and I forgot who my friends were
                           I think they forgot me too

I said no to a pity party this year

so instead I drank a bottle of champagne

plus some
plus some

It hurts so much when you call, it hurts so much when
                  you say you miss me
it hurts all over when I throw up the next day
and no one rubs my back

no one kisses me anymore
no tenderness is afforded on my body

and my weakness is seen as weakness

I get no
relief for hours, the day after

I wish underneath my sobriety I wasn't scared
     I wish I understood love the way I understand drunk speech
and mixed drinks and lonely afternoons and trashcans

We can compare hearts-

pomegranate juice.

We can each lay on goose down comforters
and trace the landscape, the light and shadow

We can drive through the Delta
with Spanish moss hanging like shower hair down my back

The rain will come to wash it all away,
it's a promise I can keep because it's not mine

Is it not so sweet
to spread across a bed and
fall asleep before you have time to imagine a lover crawling in after you.

Is it not wonderful
to walk down the street with your hands in your pockets
without wondering what it would feel like to have those
fingers laced through another's.

The alone time, oh
how precious and coveted.
How loneliness can sometimes void your mind
of ache and desire
for a breath.
For a moment before your heart strings clench again.

i took root. settled into birthdays without
fathers,
men attempting to reckon with me. saying they'd
like to hold me like the crescent moon against the black
(i am the night light that ran out of life)
texting me, texting me, texting me,
coaxing me out of my cave
and then shooting me in the back,
blowing out the candles, snuffing my breath.
the hunt, the chase, the game.
i'm stuck in this trap for another year

under the pretense of sleep
i lay down to be kissed and constricted

your fingers, the rolling docked boats
my mouth, the harbor

it's too easy, us,

and i want to keep it that way

what do we
do, when
apathy
lures us into its arm-caves.
we push back,
we continue to do the
things we should do,
we tell apathy that its arms
are too cold and carry
on.

Every day that we don't speak
brings me closer to knife-shiny clarity...
the kind of voice in my head
that motivational speakers
tell you not to listen to!
i've messaged you (x 4)
and you've left me fuckall.
You've left me, *******.
I need money, I need money, I need love. I
need something more than
Euros transferred into dollars, I need
compassion and some sense of stability
and a trust that only comes from a
voicemail waiting for me as I wake up.
i know the time difference is ... a difference,
and there's been a whole lot of time
I've had for my thoughts to fill me up
like a black water bathtub.

It's 1 in the morning and I'm thinking about
all the possibilities of someday,
and what you would say to me right now
if you were lying next to me.
Confidently unsure, probably high,
listening to crickets outside,
tangleing your legs with mine,
You. Philosophy major. Addicted to coffee. Studying film,
but you can't even sit still
for ten to fifteen minutes
and that's too bad because
I want to talk to you for much,
much longer than that.

Little bones,
covered by the tissue paper white skin,
is going to hospice,
is going home.

He is thirteen, with the body of an old man
and a frail voice that is beginning to
float away,
and no one can stop it from happening.

do you think of me as much as I think of you,
running circles in my mind like a rolling penny
and diving into my skin like a rash.
a beautiful raspberry
bruising my lips, staining my mouth bright pink.
flushed cheeks are flowers,
are carnations, are cheap and fast and loving,
blooming (and can be picked up at the grocery store for 5 dollars)

Black bed sheets, Big blush brush, back and forth.
Pouting, popping, posing. "Can't believe he's single!"
Oh my god. I know right.
I say with the expression of a taxidermied doe. Texting
until I want to pull my fingers off, First Class Ticket in a
bottle of Sky. I'm a ****** who can't drive and it's ironic
because I feel like I'm in high school again and I want to die.
Please ask me one more time if I think you look good,
as I reach to lift up the window, It's April and I'm cold,
I stare at the asphalt ground down from 6 floors up.
Contemplating how I managed to make it when I fell from heaven all those years ago.

And we are mummified in shrouds of love.
After eternity, dawn like a dove,
A merry archaeologist – he has the light.
-from "Here We Loved" by  Yehuda Amichai*

It is so heavy now, it is so juicy,
this fat peach sun sinking down.
I want to slip between your fingers
and plunge through,
Can I weigh on your chest and your
legs and your arms
and your breath?
Wrap up all the hurt and burn the ends,
like a two-way candle
when it's done and all my
excess has melted off. I am feather
I am ghost, I am heaven

Est-ce que tu aimes les mots?
The words which
drip-drop, pitter patter,
tonguing like teens in
a Durham movie theater. Sticky summer
sweetness,
Doucement* My Desire, my tender
needing, who nods along,
rocks away,
hands gripping thighs and clinging thoughts.

I know I require something deeper because I don't have *** dreams,
but my fantasies involve being held by someone who makes me feel small, yet important. Precious and desired, wanted (coveted) but secure in a trust that only can be described in my subconscious as warm. he's warm. fact: he loves me so much that he waits for me to get off my shift, kisses my neck and cradles me to him like i'm glass.
I wake up missing something I never had a grasp on. I lazily pull that feeling out, examine it like an antique scarf. Thinking, *what a life. what a life to know that i could make someone feel whole, and they could convince me that my presence is necessary for the world to continue turning. that all Life needs is tenderness in a person, in a human connection that could go on for Ever.

you were sitting on a chair, in a shallow pool. your feet were submerged. everything was grey and blue. she approached you and started kissing you, like really kissing you. but it wasn't her. it was her memory-ghost.
i don't know.
i was next to you. i kissed your neck. slowly, and surely. like your skin was going to provide a better future for me.
i kissed your shoulder. then, your collarbone, your throat. i wanted you to know i was going to win you over with these kisses,
and then
it was just us. our two mouths, submerged in our pool of water, our own world. it was slow, careful, heavy.
then i pushed you backwards in your chair, to see
if you would get up. to see how badly you wanted me again.

sprints on the university track,
January chill causes steam to
rise from my head and arms.
my leggings feel too small now and
the Gatorade tastes like chaser,
I'm getting the hang of it
finally.
you push me, telling me "Durham's got the hills"
you've got the calves, you get the girls,
and I'm the one who runs with you
I'm the one who tries keeping up.

She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.
-Anaïs Nin*

I had a good day because the woman at Starbucks spelled my name right,
because the boy at work recognized that I doubt myself before I even finish an answer to a question,
which struck me because
who notices?
I had a good day because I carried myself to the gym, where I watched myself in other's metal eyes and cringed, where I saw my reflection in the windows and wished,
oh. You know.
That I didn't take up so much room and that my appetite would decrease,
and I sit here now thinking about food and wondering
when will it end? The constant whining of my vanity
and needy innards screaming "shrink me"!
The sullen desires build up and well over, and I become a vessel again. I become
something less.

i bring you to Tru, it's a wine bar
(and they have sandwiches during the day, in which i over-order avocado and eat sloppily over my homework sometimes)
close to my home.
raw wood tables, low lighting, black leather couches.
i order red wine, cotes de rhone.
you order...the same thing

i ask if you like red wine, because
that's something i know a little about

we go to sit outside with our 6 oz blood cups
and my teeth go white in the dark

its a 78 and humid september night
but i just came from work so i'm sweaty anyway

you're from Mumbai, or New York (long island actually)
or Raleigh. I grew up around here,
so you just bring up my hair and my legs,
i instinctively feel the need to run

Me: a tiger pacing back
and forth in a cage,
but the bars to the cage are made of bull
**** called "your twenties"

Not pictured: Me, waiting for the bus,
checking my watch,
caught between being on time and being
too late.

I stutter-stop, I choke back some choice words
through my small, off white teeth. It's 808s as
my heart beats, it's anxiety as a normal thing.
This is only half of the power of the Big City Atmosphere
and I'm already feeling tired of it.

blonde rays of sun over

popcorn teeth, baseball lover

who sits on the outfield and waits for the game

to come to them. slow, easy, drunk, and nonplussed.

the Man who smells like tobacco and Indiana

tells you that the earth never started warming up

until you were born.

Straight-across-bangs-girl,
licking sour sugar from the inside of the gummy worm bag.
I want to be her
(sometimes)
Angel Olsen slight small type with a 40's voice,
top choice for an indie movie heroine.
but I-

Eating brownies to feel inspired, then look at the **** I write the next day
stone cold, naked in bed, dining hall food resting neatly in an ordered manner.
I wish he would go down on me the same way he probably thinks about me,
and this isn't high school but I feel like every one knows something I don't. This is hell.
this image is enlarged to show texture, this swisher is full of a mixture,
big yawns and hot skin. I wish I was his. i wish the idea would cross itself off my list.

My mother thinks I'm not myself with her anymore (because I'm not, and how could I be?). I don't miss the child who danced in department stores, caught caramels from July 4th floats. I am not her, and she is not me. Her sparkling smile has lapsed away, eroded into the sexiness I attempt to allude now. As if being fuckable was something more enriching. At twenty, I'm smaller than I ever was before. Weaker, even, because of my smallness. I've been gripping onto the edge of the daily routine, and felt my palms ache at the attempt. My hands burn, rope cuts skin. I'm forgetting what's within now. A certain strength I could muster at one time has all but left me with a wet kiss on the cheek. Life sneers Try again later, sweet heart. Test your luck one more time...

the vice that sets into my blood stream,
the sin that allows me to sin some more and
comfortably sits just below my skin

to let me know i can do this,
and i can say anything, be
anyone. the bottle knows my body the way
fingers do, the way lovers know their
person's ugly marks and

softens their cruel words. it is my lips that rest
on a gentle edge, a glass edge,
and tips my chin to meet the encouraging kiss.

smelling like dryer sheets, i stepped out
to a crisp fall morning.

a Southern fall doesn't start until October,
but something was rushing the chill on to us
saying "bundle up now, and cover
those goosebumps"

i haven't heard from you in a week
and i wonder if the Jewish New Year will be good
to me. i
clamber through my day, like
a child's first time at a rock wall.

at the top, i scream to come down
but they told me i had to jump,
so i didn't move

you act like a
martyr. a Catholic girl who can't fix me, who finds my cracks so appealing,
collecting friends to repair like
misfit toys on "i'm so ****** up" island
and you want me to hate you anyway,
the way you say "my jaw hurts" after ******* **** the night before (no one's **** is that big)
and the way you blame me for your failed classes
and the way i don't try enough to be the girl you used to be friends with.
your hypocrisy, your hypocrisy is the cross you bear

He offered, "isn't that just as valid?" with
tired circles under his eyes
and his dark vinyl-shiny curly hair
and the silly smirks, and those coffee hands.
What a disappointment, I think to myself,
that I could have ever wanted to fit that body
into mine. Jig-jag-saw-like, scraping,
punitive, masochistic, I understand rejection like
lyrics, like the depth of black, like a password.

I'm enlightened, illuminated by a
man on a red couch

Pelvicly: describing a connection. An encounter that left me

changed, curious, crazed
as if I had just discovered the amazing health benefits of aloe vera after years of suffering

My burns have cooled

I fell into a fear, into honey brown eyes
into a stomach full of breaths
into a pool of whispers
into him

I’m sorry, can we go back?
I think I’ve left my head at the door
I think I let myself get lost
I let myself forget myself
I meant to let myself out earlier
I met you to meet myself
I’ve left myself to meet you
I think
I’m sorry, can we go back?

My Life had stood - a Loaded Gun -
In Corners - till a Day
The Owner passed - identified -
And carried Me away -

And now We roam in Sovreign Woods -
And now We hunt the Doe -
And every time I speak for Him
The Mountains straight reply -

And do I smile, such cordial light
Opon the Valley glow -
It is as a Vesuvian face
Had let it’s pleasure through...
-Emily Dickinson*

And I do smile, the white bright Colgate chiclets
stretch under my lips. The crooked thing, the
clever turn of my mouth,
we all pass a point in life when this is a means to an end.
Stop. Do not collect 200.
Again. Again, I thought "Send me straight to hell"
because it's not fair for me to feel this way any more.
I want to shoulder the brunt of it and throw it up and down,
white linens to the wind.
A dramatization of who I have come to be,
fueled and fired by alcohol and lack of sleep.

A stuck Lipton in the vending machine,
"I want to start a social movement of direct experience"
Sure. We'll do that. Let me get back. . .
let me get back to this blue screen for a bit. I want a change.
I want to see some change! Let's throw our
phones away and start over. Depression falicitates our  
efforts, but I had my pleasure. I had my kicks though.

you know i'm in trouble
everyone does

but i'm not going to stop now,
i weave you into my mind's tapestries

i make up stories about us, i choose
you to star as the lead

i miss you when i'm with you, the parts
you choose to hide
you remind me to be calm and
accept what i can't see

but i want you to be mine
in all capacities

"and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in—
all in comes the fury of love.”
-Anne Sexton*

strong jaw, tight lipped,
strawberry candy wrappers
littered all over,
i sit and wait for you to come home.
the creak, and the pace of your
feet as they cross the floor.
I'm tempted to reach out and grab your ankles
where they peak from
the tops of your socks.
shoes off, jeans to the floor,
i want you to know you're safe from me,
because while the closet has skeletons
and there are monsters under the bed,
i am the anger-love child, i am the
passion-hate child, i am the child of
a recycled metaphor, a scribbled tired song
who wouldn't dare let those eyes drop
to the floor

To me, you were like
cinema breath, that black and white
suspense. I hung on the lips, the chin,
the tongue
and craved the line

*"Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"

I can already feel bits of it leaving me,

swirling down the drain. Each sunset,

the garbage collecting in the street, the smells of the

open grills and the handmade bread in the medina,

the last footsteps of the night, the adhan

clearing the noise from my head each time I was awake at 5 am.


my protesting nails, so deep in its skin,

its leaving me!

no words, no pictures, no old and unwashed

laundry or empty suitcases

or twist-tied bags of spices can bring it back to me


the old, the poor, the singers, the blind

the rich, the banks, the embassies

the pool halls, the Parliament

collapsing in on itself,

melding together like

blots of oil paint

a smattering of birds in the sky

well, I'm a foreign dialect,
and musically uninclined, I'm the exoticism
fetishized by old white men who want a Greek-Italian-
Latina-Persian harem.
I am the the voice that doesn't match the body,
the long-limbed and quiet. My insides are not my
outsides, my tenderness with them won't
be afforded to you, not just yet. And I lick
the wrapper on every dark chocolate bar,
my O-mouth on every milkshake straw,
knowing I am being watched

Picking a wound,
knowing you the way I did.
It was like,
I can't get my words right. It was like, knowing I
wouldn't be able to open the doors to the house
I used to live in,
like wine rings on the hardwood never disappearing,
ringing in my ears after standing next to the speaker
bump, bump, bump, bump, bump
I'll dance on you, make it look like I'm doing you a favor.
I'll kiss you at the corner again,
and leave your hand on my face
for one last time.
Pull away, knowing I will think about this fuckery
a month later.

"God, I love you," He turned away. "It's hard to get that close to someone."
Then, he let her go, as one does. Because Life doesn't tell you to simper and sigh in the face of death,
Life is a phone call that you wait to receive.
It curls your bones with anxiety,
it is the breath your body needs as you break the surface. It is sweet windy spring. Cold milk. Firecrackers. Synthesizers. Loving until love becomes pain and turns back to love again.

The muse is a vassal,
she pours herself out with a smile
when all she wants is to take herself back
and pull the words, the inspiration she has procured
with her body back out of those artists' mouths.
the muse is an empty shell ,
rocked and torn, picked up and down,
thrown on the canvas by hasty hands,
sparks painted into her eyes.
The muse desires to be seen and understood
for more than what she has been used for.

Oh God, again? This unrelenting ache
for your hands and your wrongness.

Scraping my heart out with a spoon,

I've felt the under currents.

Looking in the wrong places for you, in strangers
in confiding my secrets, giving away my affection to
an ocean, an ocean, an ocean

What could I do, resist? Stop the tide of a past going on 10 years?

I hate you for drying out my bones, shell shocking me with a wave of nostalgia

I love you for washing me clean

I have made a flight
to the shining lights
subway cars rattling and rolling
shouldering groceries with raw red hands
rooftop champagne sunsets

I have been carried by winds
and currents who
tell me to try in the face of failure
and debt and loneliness and heartache

I have grown and wrapped my
hands around the sizzling iron
held ashes and dust and let it fall through,
crushed the doubt

She is a wet newspaper that you can't just leave on the sidewalk, because the headline caught your attention.
I wish this bottle could talk, too. I wish it could tell your secrets.
It's over and over again, the same dark haired man who loves good music,
straight smiling and gentle expressions,
I dip my hand in, smooth as a bowl of marbles.
I love the feeling of the eyes on me, so I make a disgusted face.

Here I am, dancing,
plastic wine glass full of that purple
dream, that cabaret sleep. By the deejay yelling
requests to be played.
Then there's photos, there's selfies, there's
a hand on my *** because "What? It's funny!"

Alone. Again. So alone, I fear that I might go insane
from want, from jealousy, as they waffle their fingers
together, cleanly. I watch. I dance some more,
moving my hand through my hair because I know how that makes
some men feel. And you? And you. Not here, but as loud as the
wind that wakes me up the next morning.
Not here.

What are you thinking about?
the way your lips might cause my slow death
How are you?
tears don't mean a thing to this generation,
but they keep on flowin' anyway
What's wrong?
*have you ever wondered why fish mistake
their babies for food

89 degrees and humid, sunset at 8:30.
Eastern barbeque smokin out in the backyard
the grass is getting lo-o-o-ong, but
it can wait until next Sunday.
iced tea, sweet, sinful tea
and no cowboys in sight.
just Low Drawled Camouflage Men
and Freedom to Own a Gun,
black n milds, porch swings and
mosquitoes turn up in your ear holes
like politicians touting their pro-life campaigns.

you sitting on the edge of the bed
polishing your shoes with boot black,
and I loved you then, so wise from the shower,
and I loved you many other times
and I have been, for months,
trying to drown it,
to push it under,
to keep its great red tongue
under like a fish
-anne sexton*

the smell of you, my long island ice tea breath, a single exchange
reaching over several feet
of club space.
i haven't seen you in years,
but in front of me is a young man who dove too deep in a concrete pit,
who needed too much,
who drove his mother to depression again,
and now he's smoking with his brothers
because his own isn't there,
because his own flesh ****** up and
has a baby now.  i wait for the red to reach my face,
the embarrassment of the reminder that i loved someone who wasn't ready
for my body out of the shower, or my  2 am binge,
or my breath

calls from dark cars, the fear that grips my stomach when I walk the shortcut, the movements behind me always
throw my heart around rough and sandpapery. I am tired of being

embarrassed, having to explain myself, having to ask for forgiveness from others because my body warrants these men’s shark bites, these fins in the water

circling, making everyone around me feel uncomfortable. If I could take a knife and cut out pieces of me to hand to every menace in the night who slowed down to stare at my moving body,

I would give those pieces to them, blooded, dripping, raw with human soul and expression because I am
not his “girl” and I am not “babe” and I am not “****” and I am not whistles from the alley
and I am not drunken breath on lips,
I am afraid

to bear a girl one day, and have her carry the weight of undoubted beauty, of sparkling eyes, of lips that sing and announce and scream. but I know her shoulders will be strong
and her middle fingers will grow to be made of steel

see,
i don't give myself away any more
in the form of dark kisses or
jumbled conversation or
merlot, or cote de rhone
(let me explain)
my words sweat out, like oils on my nose.


wake up dry mouth wanting,
someone to hold
and i turn to my lines, i turn to my soul
and bare it on a blank screen.
and i forget what he would have meant to me
because i don't need it

I imagine you foal-legged on the first day of the week,
waking to meet the filtered morning
and sipping chai tea. I
watch you cross the persian carpet floor and
pick the person you want to be today.
The summer skin is now dried away, and
your powder face is ready,
the fresh peach cheeks
and the curve of a crooked smile
grow goosebumps on boys' arms,
as you swing yours to class.

I'm itchy-throat,
ripping open packets of tea,
waiting for the sickness to come.
Sweating at night,
shivering through wind to class,
(southern winters are very real)
My body aches the same way,
all through my limbs,
and I regret not kissing you more before
this overtakes me.