i smile for now;

we hang out for awhile

just on the couch

        no white forests, no cute chocolate boxed romances

        no notes, all smiles and all pearly white teeth

                                with less words and letting hours elongate        

                silent stares, you let me know you've fallen

                        in love with        my        lips

and         for one, i think i        am just fine with        that

        before yesterday becomes the same as tomorrow

                i think i'm okay with you and i

                                        for now;

Thus begins the summer month
But my body still feels cold
I see in shades of ashen grey
Where others see bright and bold
The lemon taste within the breeze
Is acidic in my throat
Refreshing water does nothing for
A girl with little hope
Thus begins the summer month
Where many are at play
And here I lie beneath the sun
Where I shall slowly fall away

waking up to bbc your alarm
clock radio was the soundtrack
to our mornings at your parents
house where they only sometimes
knew i was there but we would tip
toe but the floors creaked anyway

your purple royal platform bed with
an angel floating above it sometimes
i would accidentally kick it and say
“sorry” and you would laugh and flip
me over like a pancake we spent
national pancake day apart but we
spent other days together and we
were in love like when you’d roll a
cigarette and make me some of
your moms soup and we’d climb
the fence in our socks and they
became damp like my eyes on
the train home from the fox

you made me breakfast one day
while your mom was doing yoga
and then she asked me about
paint colours and offered to make
me a smoothie i wish i could have
said goodbye one more time
i imagined what our kids would
look like they would be beautiful
they would be beautiful wild eyed
and dark pupils we thought we almost
had a kid but we replaced her with a pill
and 5 migraines

Prozac could be
a better choice than ******* —
but at least coke
has character. I went
for a walk and it made me feel better,
except for the hayfever.
That just made me blind.

I'm so
******* paranoid. I can hear
them laughing
behind me. What's worse
is that I know they're not,
because they don't give
two ***** about me.

It's just a smaller dose of serotonin,
I can get that in ecstasy.
Just a smaller cut of dopamine.
I can get that from boys for a kiss
and some flirting.

I wish you were here to smell my hair again,
I miss you like sleep and like calcium.

I like the taste of old coffee between my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
Just how I like the blast of the a/c on a hot June afternoon.
And sitting on the porch looking at the city when the sun finally sets on these summer nights,
A tea in one hand and a book in the other,
With a mosquito swarming somewhere near my ear while its friends nibble at my ankles.
I like candles and hot showers and waking up after the sun to find out it's still only six am.
But even if you don't like all of these things too,
I still like you in the summertime.

rejected poems and ***** clothes on the floor

this is what i have to give. this is all i am.

melted ice cream. cartons swimming with fudge swirl and a loose hair that's found a home there.

the other person on a couch that seats three.

this is what i have to give. this is all i am.

forgotten nail polish thick with chunks. pasta grown dry in its Tupperware.

surviving to the next year. wanting to make it. when that ambition seems Big.

this what i have to give. this is all i am.

The summer is static. Over
A drying lawn the slur
Of heat descends. Quiet
The garden flowers. This mind's diet?
Shaded hills and solitude.
Slow recession of the crude
Tracings of my origins,
The silhouettes of sins
And murmurs, blurs into
The sophomoric hue
Of my brain. Can I
Extricate myself? This lie,
Though it elude my thought
Into what action I know not,
Seems to legitimate my being
And foretell the fate of my self-fleeing.

I haven't smoked once today
for the first time in weeks.
Dear God - please,
give me a cigarette. Please
give me a line or a drag
of a joint, or a glass of wine
or a hug or some sunlight.

Work in seven
hours and I've been crying all evening.
But why? For no
**** reason. Paid tomorrow,
and I might
spend it all on drugs or a tattoo,
or tobacco or I wonder
could I pay someone
to love me.

I'm trapped
in an I'm-not-OK-hole—
in a *******.
In a thousand-of-miles-from-the-city hole.

I'm a session moth.
Wake up like a ******, rollie
on the bedside locker.
Not knowing where I am
or how I got there. Jump
into the nearest car and just say
"drive"
and eat nothing but still look fat.

This morning I was suicidal,
I nearly walked out in front of a truck.
But it was alright,
I remembered
I hadn't taken my pill in a day or two,
stopped crying and
went back to work.