your soft voice
        trickles over me
        like rain, like alive
        life curtsied before me
                a beauty in ****
                soft dark skin
over the wires leaping--
dizzies me
        I long for you to come to me
        in heels, swift, as poppie
        petals in the wind--
you are my rain, impertinently covering me
        and I don't mind, chirp over vibrations
        whirl me in your soft voice
and it's late at night but I like it, you know
                how sweet,
                        your voice is

Nervous and shaky, a newborn,
barely stood up. My wobbling voice
must give way to my anxiety.
The words are like *****,
thick and rancid —
When I hear what I've said I just cringe.

There's a man in my chest
stamping on the inside of my breastplate,
squeezing my heart at the wrong time
every
time
I hear your
name.

Your face is so little and beautiful.
I love to look at the little earrings
in your upper ear.
I love your expensive car
and leaning over the handbrake
to kiss you.

I've never done this.
I've never dated. I've never felt
butterflies and obsessed about a boy.
It's all drama,
it's all push-my-hair-behind-my-ear
and lay your lips on mine.

**** me dry boy,
take my soul because it's all yours anyways.

methyl (1R,2R,3S,5S)-3- (benzoyloxy)-8-methyl-8-azabicyclo[3.2.1] octane-2-carboxylate

Cahn Ingold Prelog

Whose rules are these? Press
on my lips boy, fill my face
and my hands with love.
Fill it up with confetti
little pink hearts that flutter
like Eskimo kisses or snowflakes.

Chop it doll. Link my elbow.

I'm so in love with a boy
that doesn't even drink -
I wonder if he loves me too.
He doesn't.
I wonder if he knows
that without him I'll get in with the ******* crew.

I know the chemistry of it. I can read the IUPAC.
I can breathe the molecules
I can taste the bad decisions I'm making.

I eat junk food and drink too much
€3.99 Revero
so I can stomach bad things.
Your saliva swims in with the bile.

How many times have I puked
behind cars
or old convents? Too many.

How many boys have I loved? Too many.

Anyway,
uni is finished soon.
I'm going home. Home again.

She’s the type to eat a bowl of ice cream,
shoot a gun, and be fine. I’ve never seen so many pieces
under someone’s rug before, but she keeps
herself in cookie jars, in ink cartridges, in book binds,
anything she can find. I’m surprised she even looks
in the mirror anymore. It’s not possible that she’s herself whole.
But she braids her hair back when she rides her horse,
she channels old Miranda Lambert
and pumps that kerosene melody through her veins
like it wont’ catch fire. I’ve seen her
poke her head through old sweaters like she thinks
it’ll be something new this time. I’ve seen her paint
her skin in expensive body washes, the washcloth
like sandpaper as she tries and tries to smooth
all of the uneven edges she’s collected.

I bet you could watch her memories in a wishing pool,
like in a mini mall, with all the pennies heads down.
They would spin themselves around the surface,
suffocating one another so that only the good ones would shine,
but she dare not pour herself into something that reflective.
It would only reveal what she ties into the waistband
of her old American Eagle jeans every morning,
and that would just be too **** hard. It’s easier
to venture ******* with a crummy perspective
and a realistic approach than it would be to even consider
that maybe this time it wasn’t her fault
for expecting to much, and that maybe people just ***** up.
That maybe, for once she wouldn't blame it on it getting her hopes up
that made her fall, but that no one was there to catch her.
I’d rather watch her cry herself to sleep for months

than to pretend I admire the harsh falsetto she bites back
in all of her lullabies. But she’s the type
to burn old pictures for fun, to delete contact names,
to swallow all her sadness and paint her bedroom a new color
than watch herself come undone.

Straight on a plain, miles with the blowing wind.
Miles on a plane, nowhere near the mountain ranges,
nowhere near the Atlantic shore, no lapping sounds -
Just your gentle breathing
I’m just happy you’re alive.

This bulldozed land is barren,
dry like my eyes like a dirt road.
I’m stung on the arm by an imaginary bee,
flung out the open window.
This reminds me of the pleasantries we exchanged.

How polite we used to be.
And now your tired arm is slung over the wheel
angry with me. “Can you just
shut the **** up.” I’m not saying anything.
Let’s pull over at the next petrol station
get some Red Bull and make out like we’re American.

Lick the sting. Does it taste like Pepsi?
Can I be your blonde baby or your Barbie?
These dust clouds are haloing the sun,
as we sing out loud and off tune harmony.
It’s just you and me and nowhere baby.
So use me up until I’m gone. Drag on me
like a cigarette and extinguish me on the lawn.

---------------------------------------------------------
­
Nowhereland.
Head ready to burst
like elastic bands around a watermelon.
I’ve been getting angry.
Snappy again.
The long drive has left me whacked,
our conversation gone putrid,
the air swimming with expletives.
Hay bales.
Green fields.
Lost track of how many.
Wasn’t counting anyway.
Into sixth gear then.
South Dakotan sun
stretches into the car,
over your body;
I knew it well. I know it well.
The milometer slides
to fifty-seven thousand
and the silence stings my skin
like a small fresh burn
so I raise my voice - your mouth is closed.
I toss an empty Coke can out the window,
hear it scuttle over hot grey road.
Then you begin to sing, so I sing. Why?
Awful. Wrong key. Don’t care.
You look across,
destroy me so well,
the tumbling heart in a tower of cards.
I know. Stop the car.
Find a bar.
Let’s numb ourselves together
so we feel something,
gorge on US TV
till our eyes go red white and blue.
Look what we’ve become.
Just your gentle breathing.
This is what alive feels like.
Now give me a drag
of whatever it is you’re having.

Sixteen
and taking my first sip of alcohol
and ******* DOES THIS TASTE.....
like absolute ****,
how the **** do you guys even drink this stuff?
Shots?
like from the doctors? Yeah I got all mine.
Oh you mean like, (makes shot-taking motion)
.....yep I'll have a few more drinks.
You said I'd feel better in 15 minutes
but it's been an hour and a half
and I guess I'm still waiting.
But I really hate sitting on this couch by myself
because I think I could actually be stuck here forever.

Eighteen
and it's the summer before my first year of college.
I'm sitting on my friend's back porch
killing a bottle of whiskey by myself
because I'm still waiting for those 15 minutes to go by
so I can feel better.
I now need more than one bottle
and my BAC has been at a consistent .15 for last three weeks
don't ask me how I got here.
Better yet,
don't ask me how I drove here.
I convinced myself that drowning my liver
was a lot better than drowning myself
but now I can't tell the difference
because I always feel like choking.
The same way the face made by my ex girlfriend did
when I said I had *** for the first time since her.
It was the same face I made
the first time I took a sip of whiskey without a mixer,
her face twisted together sour lemon
and I can only imagine the burning feeling she got in her throat.
But now I can drink whiskey just fine
and I'm sure she doesn't remember what I taste like either.

Three months into my first semester
I'm still waiting for those fifteen minutes
even though the clock says I've been awake for 34 hours straight.
At this point,
if I don't drink
my skin crawls with the bugs underneath of it
and I've started to wonder if I'll have to **** myself to make this stop.

Two days ago,
i found out how content i would be
if i died,
if my blood poured out broken faucet
and i turned soft clay
in a cocoon of metal,
glass littering the street
so God could see the reflection,
see where to pick me up at.
I imagine it like a taxi,
there's a price to pay
to get all the way to the gates,
it just depends on how much
you're willing to sacrifice.
I never knew salvation required negotiation.
But I guess it was the same way
I bargained my life with
emptying the canister of xanax
and lexapro;
counting them,
wondering how many it would take
to make people miss me.
I already missed me.
I haven't known what i feel like sober
in three years
even though i've stopped drinking.
I told myself i would rather be dead
than medicated,
but here i am,
three years intoxicated,
making love to whiskey bottles
with only the tips of my fingers.
They told me love is now
a fatal thing to put my tongue on,
but i think my lips would die for that.
My mouth waters at the thought.
Love used to be a half-drank box of wine,
the other 2.5 liters already crossed
the threshold of my stomach.
I know you said, "drink this
and you'll feel better in 15 minutes."
But I can't remember
how long it's been
since i've started feeling like this
and i'm not sure
if one more drink
or one more pill
will make this stop.
i'm not sure
if any of this was worth it.

When we were knee high we couldn't wait to be where we are now
high school didn't matter but god did we ever
stress about the little things that weren't so little in our eyes.
School was just a thing we couldn't wait to be rid of
our friends were gonna last forever no matter what our parents said
we had our lives all figured out.

Now we're college drop outs paying bills in apartments
you picked out with that person you thought was the one
left at square one wishing for your youth back
so you can shake your ******* teenage shoulders
and scream to smarten up cause they were right.
They were right.

Slack-jawed, wide-eyed
          tongue-tied
          and terrified
of what went left unsaid,
                I froze,
a feature of the static night.
From Summer's boiling tension
to December's weary ice
                               we'd drive
                        and count the times
             we thought we'd finally got it right.
But then
          the weight of discount decades
wrapped our chests in dynamite--
              criss-crossed trunks,
        and slant-grinned garlands
      blowing up the Christmas Tree.
Apologize later for ******* up the party;
     we were gone already anyway
with frigid wind flaying fingertips and ears.
                   Back to the car.
                  One more drive.
       One more night to half believe
           we'll get it right this time.
But what's so new about a New Year?
Still can't swallow all this scary size.
Guess we'll always be here, shrugging
            Slack-jawed, wide-eyed,
                      tongue-tied
                    ­ and terrified.

Valentines day,
out for my birthday
a few close friends,
a bag of dizz.
A plastic pig,
and a quiet conversation in the bathroom
with Rachael.
"Clara thinks I should see someone"
"I think you should too."

"But why?"
I didn't feel bad,
I swear to god I was happy.

I know now I wasn't,
filling myself with drugs
as fast as my blood stream
could run.

"What's up with you Molly?"
Even Dominic was worried
I was just floating on MDMA.
What's up with you, Molly?

He told me he could love me during rag week
and my god I thought it might cure me.
They found me
crying on the steps of the third floor
of Rachael's block
and no one ever found out why.

Not everyone made it out alive.
Oisin lifted me over walls
and Dominic caught me on the other side
and I suppose you could say that in many ways
they were lifting me through.

But think,
when I was in bed with him, stroking his back in little rings
and kissing him. Falling all over again,
so in love with him, some boy
who I'd never met
before that night
left that hotel room
and wound up dead in the Oranmore lake.

But how could you ever talk about that?