they say however long the relationship was is how long it'll take you to get over it
so even if I break up with my self hatred today
I'll be 35
before I'm okay

she loved nothing more than words
despite how many had hurt her.
her favorite language
brought infinite anguish.
but without her pain's cause
she would be lost.

the guns in our hands both shot me unabashedly
and the continents have long since drifted apart.
what's mine is yours
but what's yours is only mine
when I include it in my art.
I dont always just want what I can't have
because I wanted you when I had you too.
words were my first love but now
I write because you're you.
this isn't fun
I don't understand
I liked it much more with a gun in my hand.

the jungle book didn't have two seats that were together
and that simply would not do
because my new bear necessity
is being with you

I want to be a doll.
a doll doesn't need.
a doll is simply just
whatever it was made to be.

it's nice to see
from your point of view
because I possess
less eyes than two

I've always known I see things differently
for everything looks like it's on a screen to me.
with one eye I have to choose carefully what I view
and there's nowhere id rather focus my limited vision
than on you.
if I can't see much
you have to let me feel your touch
I'll read you like braille
if you give me the chance
and I'm not just talking about
what's in your pants.
everything's more beautiful
when there's only so much you can see
and laying in your bed
I witnessed a profound beauty
that was ever so special to me.
words were my first love
I could read before I could breathe on my own
and in your room decorated with words
a passionate left eye
couldn't leave you alone.
my right eye wasn't lazy when it met yours
maybe it was looking for you the whole time
I wish it told me what it saw behind closed doors
because now the most endearing images I see
are seen only in memory.

the hard part about loving musicians
is that they get stuck in your head
sometimes in a melody
and sometimes in a memory.

it felt like you cared
when we were laying in bed
and you made it your mission to make my hands warm.
then you left to find your sunshine
and forgot you were mine
but I guess that I was warned.
so now I lay alone
with hands that wish they never met yours
because as soon as I had let go,
I realized how cold they always were.
you took away what you had just shown me I needed.
you're a song I can't skip, a craving I can't kick, and a flame I can't put out.
maybe we'll meet again one day, somewhere and sometime,
where we both are radiating warmth.

I wear extensions on my head and get them glued to every last eyelash.
I wear makeup as a mask that i apply with perfectionism and wasted time.
and I wear what you'll like on my body
because there is a lot of me missing that I need to compensate for.

you tell me
you don't want to commit
but on our very first date
I tattooed your wrist.

my hand without yours
feels like my nose
without rings.
but they weren't meant to be there in the first place.

you say you need to go.
you need to find yourself you say.
but those nights you made me feel like
you were gonna be the one that
finds me as we lay.

you are a poem.
but I am a poet.
I can rewrite you or
crumple you up or
place the rhythm at which I write of you
into whoever I choose.
but you cannot rewrite yourself without me.

I've learned to become attached to stories,
not people.
if you fall in love with stories,
they'll lay in bed with you every night.
people are the ones with a tendency to take flight.

I've learned to sort my pain
into stanzas
containing all of the beauty I don't feel.

so I write the poetry I can't live
and live the poetry I can't write.

with each word i attempt
to romanticize
skinny thighs
a mothers lies
or a daughters cries
in hopes that one day I'll watch my memories
the way you read them.

I'm always wrong
you're always right.
why are my emotions
a topic you want to fight?
perhaps is it because
you're why I reached for the knife?
or is it because
you're the only one who can hate your life?

for a moment I thought I was over you
I thought there could be more than you
until I found myself sharing the tales of you
then standing behind a cash desk holding back tears over you.

I always thought guide dogs were selfish.
then your hand guided me through
the city
and now I want it to guide me everywhere.

you know when you go to someone's house and the only conditioner they have is two in one?
running into you felt like the polar opposite of that.
above us and within us was poetry in bloom
and hours later we found ourselves in my best friend's room
with our hair intertwined
because those who know both of us
thought you should be **mine.

you and I,
like communism,
have only been an idea
never a practice
because the ideas of both communism and us
are too perfect to exist.

"You're so thin, what's your secret?"
It isn't cutting out carbs,
My secret isn't a diet in a magazine,
My secret is hidden under baggy sweaters,
My secret is the scale hidden under clothes in my closet,
My secret is exercising until I pass out,
My secret comes from feeling fat every second even when I'm being begged to gain weight by doctors,
My secret is placing my entire self worth on a number and the belief that others judge me by the same numbers,
My secret is a voice that is always yelling at me, telling me I take up too much space and need to be sick to be acceptable,
My secret is looking in the mirror at all the weight I think I've gained since the last time I looked, an hour before,
My secret is the desire to slice my fat right off,
My secret is the hidden food in my dresser that I told my mom I was taking for lunch,
My secret is hidden at the bottom of toilet bowls,
It's an empty laxative package,
It's fainting every time I stand up too fast,
It's numbers. It's all numbers. Calories. Pounds. Kilograms. Clothing sizes. Calories. Inches. BMI. Calories. It's counting, recounting, then deciding I don't desire it anyway.
It's striving for the lowest number, to have the lowest number, to be the lowest number,
My secret is comparing myself to everyone I see and always thinking I'm worse,
My secret is turned down coffee dates, parties, and sleepovers because there will be food there,
My secret is the word "fat" carved into my inner thigh with a blade from a pencil sharpener,
My secret hides behind every "no thanks I'm allergic" "I'm vegan" "I can't have gluten" and "I already ate",
It's being told curves are beautiful and nobody wants to date a skeleton but still not being able to believe it,
My secret is paranoia that everyone is trying to make me fat,
My secret is having nightmares of eating an almond then waking up with a racing heart and panicking,
You want to know my secret?
My secret is in the tenth grade my bmi was lower than my age,
My secret was tears shed in hospital beds,
My secret is being begged by everyone I love to just have a bite,
My secret is being afraid of eating fruits or drinking water because I think it'll make me fat,
My secret is getting on scales then off of them then on them then back off and still not trusting it,
My secret is a constant demand to be thinner with no point that will ever be enough,
My secret is that the only curves I want are the curves my ribs would make poking through my skin,
My secret is squeezing my fat until my nails pierce my skin,
My secret is feeling like I'm being suffocated by my own body,
My secret is dizzy days and cold skin,
My secret is that even through years of therapy I can't get the same amount of satisfaction from any person or accomplishment as I can from losing weight,
My secret comes from every hit from my mom, from every nasty word spoken by the girls who thought I wasn't good enough, from every guy's touch I didn't ask for,
I didn't get thin due to having willpower,
I got thin from becoming powerless
to a mirror that will never tell me I'm good enough until I'm dead.

bags around my eyes
and hate towards my thighs
trying to bleed out everything I'm feeling
it's too late now for healing

the chocolate in trail mix
doesn't know it's the best
because it's always picked last

I am at the age
I've always craved
and like a dog
chasing a deer
I don't know what to do
now that I'm here.

you didn't kiss me.
tonight I didn't taste your lips
but I felt the longing
as speedball ink dripped.
I planted smiley faces forever on your wrist
the same day I assumed
I'd never be more than
five minutes on your ****.
though a speck or two
of your tattoo
was out of place,
we accepted it with open arms
because we are two that can relate.
we were sewn closer with each dot
and thought
and your ungrinded ***.
shout it out loud that we aren't moving too fast
because stagnancy too has been
proven to crash.
both of us
were trying not to stray
from our own yard
but laying there together
we looked like the continents did
before they drifted apart.

you are to poetry as water is to ice.
the only difference is
you aren't cold when you get hard.
you're rather quite nice.

this weekend with you went by so fast,
each moment suddenly in the past.
perhaps it speeds up
to make up for time you've stopped.
or maybe it's letting us pass
because it knows we'll last.

I aim to produce an element of surprise in others. I like the look of a boy's face when I take my baggy t-shirt off, I like when I tell a joke and surprise a crowd with the punch line, I like when my vocabulary and experience surpasses my age, I like when people are shocked when I speak with the vulgarity and heartlessness with which I do. everything is so predictable and I want to think that things aren't what they seem. conspiracies and religion are intriguing because when we grow out of childhood we feel like there's nothing we will find out that is as shocking as the fact there is no Santa Claus. we are no longer on the level below adults and it feels like game over because we lose our wonder and the feeling of having it all figured out means we can't go back to a time when we didn't. so we look to something greater to alter our meager existences and we pray to the beings in books in hopes that our words will bring something more than decay to our souls.

I find myself telling everyone that
trash is cash
just like you used to.
and darling, your words run true
because I should be throwing you out
but there's too much value to you.

I look at you beside art and I can't spot a difference.
the sight of you redirected my path in an unforeseen instant.
your train can leave but our thoughts have never been known to be distant.
when we speak
it isn't your turn and then my turn.
we continue each other's sentences,
writing a continuous love story
as if we are both suns
producing poetic photosynthesis.
the word "dim"
is now just an antonym
of my colors,
as your shine brings out smiles like they are made of chlorophyll.
and our time together is incapable of standing still.
it can't keep up, we move too fast.
but how can I be blamed
if you brighten everything, no matter how vast?

your hand held my throat like a flower
and my thorns disappeared.
intimacy cradled us in a way i never knew
a gentle touch teaching me
you belong to the earth,
I owe my efflorescence to you.