Be the barcode on my bra strap so maybe
I can finally be sellable skinny. Be my relationship goal,
the text to check outside my door, the 5k, 140 character post
about a teenage dream ****** through low brightness screens.
Be the slam poet screaming whiny, new written love songs
on the shareable Facebook post. And maybe I’m just as bad,
but at least I recognize when my eyes fall numb from staring
at self-expression turned self-obsession. Maybe it’s Jack talking back
through my shot glass or maybe it’s the blacklight absorbed
into my skin. Or maybe it’s a girl in a “vintage” dress just sizing out
bigger than the edges already cut out for her. Maybe it’s me
bending backwards over chivalry and **** coming back from the 90’s.
Don’t blame me for biting into the media sandwich that is magazines
and the indecision of being too clingy if I just freakin’ called you.
Cause picking up the phone is a lot more risky than the kissy-face emoji
at the end of a message. Don’t blame me for consuming
tissue paper lies designed to target my own vulnerability, or my lack
of understanding the truth because all everyone
has ever told me is just a step in the manipulation blueprint
to get what they want, or just get me to bed. I only trust old photographs,
things I wrote down when I couldn’t sleep, my mom, and the dirt
I used to bury my own reflection. Be the 50% off on my receipt
just so I know I got something off. Be the nicotine in my cigarette,
the Blink 182 voice inside my head, the joints that hold me up
where I stand, and maybe I’ll finally know who I am.

Head start on a frozen night
we'll trickle slow down blighted
                                  street ways
and mix our crunching footsteps
with our ever-rougher laughs.

Grab a drink
too tired for sleeping.
Work weeks pile up, getting deep and
I don't think apartment walls
can contain us one more night.

So save a drink for me,
and meet me out on Longstaff Street

I've got all night and an axe to grind
You've got a case of cold friends
                                 and a troubled mind
so let's pace
                    this neighborhood.
Pull up my roots, we'll untangle yours
from Knowles Street, right on Marshall
                            walk and drink for hours
'til we sink
                  that slant street moon

Transplants grafted to this town
we'll spread roots in these downer
                                      regrets
and spill our gravel laughter
on the sidewalks with these beers.

South, back home,
a handful got it:
rotten nights pave paths to coffins
I don't know how many steps
it'll take to cool our heels.

So grab a drink for me
and we'll go walking Longstaff Street

We've got these drinks, we can disappear
into a slant street night
                      where no one'll hear
how ****** up
                       these days become.
I still think back on Emerson Park
that Summer night we fled from
                   the cops through the dark
when the Russell
                     Street traffic hums...

I wish you and I would intertwine
like a silver-blue thread through the darkness,
and unravel ourselves,
float like dust, illuminated by the sunlight,
so I can't tell me from you.
I wish we'd be the small, overlooked tones,
making up a melody,
that faintly linger on subconsciously.
Me and you should be the wind
and the willow,
and kaleidoscopic convolutions of the sky,
of the mind;
a bouquet of flowers,
shared,
with a once-empty park bench,
for some lonely souls.
Their unseen smiles blossom in return.
There's plenty of life, even in a graveyard,
There is simply,
lots of love
between
all things.

Back in 2003 I found a piece of me
buried, like a shard of pottery, in the sandbox.
A Hot Wheel’s car, little rusted with one tire missing
that I used to shove in the little zippered flap
of my Powerpuff Girls backpack. Older, fifteen,
I carved another piece of me out and pasted it
to a vanilla letter, sliding the envelope through the slits
in his locker door, and I lost it. I’m not even sure he read it.
Nineteen, faded and little stolen, I threw another piece of me
into my mother’s grave. Plush petals, rosary beads, crystal
liquid drops infused with microscopic memories. I cut
myself in slivers and jammed uneven edges together
just to gusto the void, compact the space, walk solid.
And now, twenty-three, I press my face against a mirror
and slide my arms into a flannel, grandpa, hammy-down.
You took the last piece. You crawled into my guard, tore the lining
and spit your black blood on the blank memoirs I had hanging
next to the split.

Take me, now, if that’s how it’s gunna be. You wanna live
with the dust bunnies in my baggage? Feed off my insecurities,
my staggered breath, or my mercury dreams? I don’t want to be saved.
I’ve made my own maze with only one way out, so you’re trapped
in the Miss Havisham model I’ve made, rotten cake. Build yourself
a new girl from my discards, suckle the marrow from my bones,
and blow, like a glass ornament, a pretty replica of who I am.
Isn’t that what you wanted? Wasn’t that part of the chase?
The sweet idea that you could pull some perfect women out of the rubble?
I bet that’d be nice to show off, you *******. But here’s the catch,

I know I’m broken. You don’t need to remind me. So take
the smiles I’ve learned to draw on my lips for two cents,
and give up the **** fight I know you won’t win.