My room smells of smoke and cologne.
You seem nice,
your eyes are lovely. My inner thighs
are peppered in bruises,
my legs hurt, my cheeks are flushed still.

It’s sweet to look at the milk skin, the ink blots,
remember I’m real. Remember
the feeling of being wanted,
your weight on me, the sweet nothings,
the drunken kissing, the moaning.

I want to hold on to you, but I’m
sure I’d be fine without you.  My ex
had a baby, I wasn’t angry.
I wished him luck; it’s a girl.
A new main lady.

I drank something crazy, I lost my cigarettes,
brought you home and we went to bed.
I wonder could this ever be anything really;
could I ever look into your eyes
and say I love the bones of you?

You dipped into me like a pool
you hadn't swam in all summer, a hole
in the back of your mind you almost forgot
was still there. It was as if you predicted
the big splash, the droplets like crystals
I could see through to your heart, reading
your feelings like a bestseller on a lounge chair,
basking in the sun on the side. You broke
through my surface with your hands, those hands
that strip me down to just my tan
and hold my ribs like a steering wheel, driving
our bodies together as I kiss the chlorine
from your lips. I'd wrap you up in a towel
just to trace the ***** of it from hip to hip,
use that momentum to tell you
how much I love the way your smile looks
when you think my eyes are closed
as we lay on top of the sheets with a fan
circulating in the limited space we leave between
my baby sundress and your khaki shorts,
our bare feet playing with each others toes.
I like the way your hands feel in my hair,
pulling it down the line drawn on my back
with your knuckles, landing in the dimples
of my back like a raft, floating
on the feeling suspended in this moment
where I bite your lip and you sigh into another kiss.
I like how it doesn't get dark until eight,
how you make little circles around my hipbones,
the sound of your laugh as it bounces off my own,
smiling into another push as you pull
my heart over yours into the shade to cool.

The feeling is viscous. Impermeable.
I’m restless, doomed. I can’t explain
why I love art
but wear a lab coat, just
so I’m forced to remember
what life is worth.
I can’t find that in words.

A white noise, a terrible ringing. I
used to feel nothing. Not anything.
Now I hear my fear and anger competing.
I’m listless. Delusional.
My mind is irrational.
My heart says “don’t listen”
but I can’t always hear it.

I wouldn’t
hurt myself anymore, but sometimes
I can’t sleep on my side.
I’m balding from tearing
my hair out. Sometimes
I dream I’m pulling at wires
and on waking my palms are bleeding, sometimes

I wake up and I’m crying,
fingernails buried alive, and I’m prying them
out from under my skin.
But, these are just days the SSRI’s
aren’t working,
the days when I'm ill
and my whole body's hurting.

My dad is so sad - he says
“when will you stop them”
I say “hopefully never.”
He’s downtrodden. I’m sodden in rain.

I want to lie in bed today.
Is that okay? What if I
never get up? What if I forget
how to feel, and lie here
for weeks and weeks upon end?
I’m so afraid of
losing my mind again.

she smells like
smoke
3 day unwashed hair
sitting still for hours
melting clock ticks
lighter fuel and dry hands
blood shot eyes
stuck to a screen
a scratchy throat that mutters
but can't speak a word
you'd think she tastes sour
but she's actually quite sweet

It's weird but, you said it,
how you had to close all the doors
like I tapped every railing
and blinked three times.

You only ever wrote in black ink.
I'm two hours early for every
single
train.
I have dreams that I miss them
every
single
night.

You're sorry that you're angry
because you can't settle down.
I chose not to plan anything
that I can’t control.

I remember feeling
my bones hurt, because the pencil
lay sideways
on the desk. And my heart break
just because I couldn't get through on the phone.

Do you see yourself in me?
Could you bear to kiss me,
or would you dry heave
and rinse your mouth out
six times a day
repeatedly?

I’m compulsively
dotting i’s in the main library.
Red bullet points, but my wounds
bleed blue ink. “Wouldn’t it be nice?”
you say
“to be sane for a day?”

I look at you, not really feeling anything.
I find it
frustrating
that you don’t want me
and I’m left counting,
obsessively
nitpicking.

Loneliness is a silence,
a kind of tinnitus, a ringing.
I’m not sure if I’m deaf or
it’s really that no one’s speaking.
“You aren’t worth anything”
We both look up, but
neither of our lips are moving.

It’s an anxious tapping. Midnight
cigarettes so you can
taste
your breath. How else
would you know you were living?
Although
there is nothing to fear but fear,
so I couldn’t fear death.

Smeared myself
in a foul smelling home bleach kit.
It's nerve wracking, but now
I'm blonde again. A bombshell.
Ready to hit the town, smoke
cigarettes balanced between
my index and middle fingers,
and blaze spliffs by the beach
as a storm howls around us.
I'm ready to have
the boys eating out of my palm,
texting me, intoxicated,
wanting to hold my hand and
smell me. Wanting me to be
their blonde baby. Kiss me, honey.
Drive me out to no where
I can be everything you dreamed for.
I can be your water in the desert,
your shelter on the mountain.
We can watch the sun go down, and you will wonder if I'll
stay the whole night.
Will I move on tomorrow?

Coffee, modafinil and two cigarettes,
sweating and begging for a few more Ds.
Another pass by the skin of my teeth.

*******, pills and Jameson.
Pints of beer and two more cigarettes
hunched in the cold in the street.

And buses. Hours of buses.
Eating pasta by the lake between classes.
They'd never notice here if I disappeared.

It's snowing, and to keep warm
there's blankets, jumpers and casual ***.
Maybe a brandy if the going gets tough.

Are you ***** calling me? Drunk texting me?
Who knows, I dropped my phone in a nightclub.
I didn't get home until sun up.

my brother born blue
you'll never know exhaustion
but you still sleep-in