like a nosebleed
i usually show up at the worst time.

my guts are spilling on the floor
and i’m wiping the walls with the back of my shirt.

i’ve got prescription paper on the brain
and my back slumped against the wall of an alleyway downtown.

addiction has never been more ****
than a freshly 19-year-old girl with her finger down her throat.

if you could understand how this feels you’d take them too.
you would take them, too.

the bus is coming
and it’s raining outside.
i’m cold,
and my shaking fingers are
shooting missiles toward you from
fifteen miles away.
texting is the worst form of communication.

the bus is coming
and it’s raining outside.
can’t you ever answer the
******* phone when i call you?
do you even love me? do you
care that i’m in pain?
do you care that i’m waiting here,
alone, cold,
while you have your car and
some other ***** snuggled up under your arm?

the bus is coming
and it’s raining outside.
what am i supposed to do,
leave you when you say you don’t care about me?
others have told me that i’m resilient
and i don’t want to make liars out of my friends.
i can take this. i can take this.
i’m not afraid of pain.
keep hurting me. tell me to **** myself
and i’ll kiss your calloused fingers
and worship you like nothing else.
i am on my knees
and the lentils you had me kneel on
are beginning to cut through my skin.
baby? do we still call each other,
baby?

the bus is coming
and it’s raining outside.
do you remember that morning
when you called me a fat ******* *****
because i spilled coffee all over the kitchen floor?
do you? because i do.
and i would crawl through the coffee and the
scattered glass like a dead man does through hell,
trying to get to something better
but knowing they never will.

the bus is coming
and it’s raining outside.
i am not crazy.
well, i am crazy.
but i’m not crazy here.
here, i need you to hear me.
don’t just say you do-
actually do it.
pull my heart out and look how it
pulsates with love.
every beat was made for you
and you just won’t look.
you won’t listen.

the bus is coming
and it’s raining outside.
i have put my hands
through blazing fire to
soothe your enormous ego
and you can’t pick me up
from the ******* bus stop.
****! what’s a girl got to do
to find a man that will
lick her wounds and devour
her fears? am i not worthy of love?
should i just **** myself?

the bus is coming
and it’s raining outside.
i’m a mistake. i am unlovable.
i am a ruined being left alone by God to
suffer in this hell we call life.
everything he says about me is right.
i’m difficult. i cry too much. i’m too depressed.
i’m crazy. i’m crazy. i’m crazy.

the bus is coming
and it’s raining outside.
what was i thinking?
i don’t need a man. i don’t need anyone!
i am more godly than anything up in the sky
or beneath the earth!
i am the vacuum of space
and i’ll suffocate those who think
i’m anything less than perfect.
why won’t he pick up
the ******* phone?

the bus is coming
and it’s raining outside.
i check my phone.
it’s 7:11pm.
the bus isn’t coming.
i don’t think it ever was.

when beads of sweat roll down my forehead
and down my chin,
Christ will turn the salt into blood and back again.
this is what it’s like to love you.

i will fall for you like a dog.
with teeth snarling, mouth agape,
animalistic prowess, bleeding red.
this love is so close to God
it can’t be seen as anything but holy.

i will make my mark through prayer and kindness.
i will burn down the city of *****,
claw through freshly-dug graves,
cry to my savior,
and scream so loudly my lungs turn to ash.

i will love in a terrifying,
i will love in a startling,
i will love in a magnifying,
i will love, i will love, i will love.

i’ve never been so delirious in my entire life.
i feel like throwing my guts up,
wrapping my small intestine around my neck like Burberry,
forging rings around my fingers with the iron in my body.

i have crawled out of this grave a thousand times.
i’ve stacked dirt in the tubes of my throat while
searching for a lover the way Orpheus searched for Eurydice.
do cpr on me just a little longer,
i don’t want to die without your breath in my lungs.

i’ll stare into those hazel eyes like
dante stared into the depths of the inferno.
with awe, terror, and envy of the dead,
each sideways glance tugging at the strings of my heart like a symphony.

plan out my pardon,
i’ll need forgiveness to continue on.
i’ve become such a sinner for the sake of you
that i’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel worthy,
to feel holy.

i would take the softness from your lips,
the grace from your sway,
the last name you call your own,
if it meant i could keep you in my life for eternity.

i know that, at some point, i’m going to be inside a house by the sea. the waves will crash and engulf my ankles as i stare out into the endlessness of the water with a notebook and pen in my hand. i’ll write poetry in the sand and wash the past out of my hair with sea foam shampoo. i’ll toss my phone into the water and never drunk-dial a past lover again. my friends will never hear my voice again, but they’ll get dozens of handwritten letters.
or i’ll be thirty-three and dancing around a clean kitchen with messy hands and bare feet. i’ll be covered in flour and chocolate and when i glance at the clock, it’ll be one p.m. for ten hours. too early to pick the kids up from school, too late to take a nap. perfect time to bake some cookies, or some brownies, or some muffins. i’ll have the windows open and i won’t care if the neighbors see me with my tangled hair and bare face.
or maybe i’ll be tucked away in a cabin in the Rockies. i’ll keep my hands uncovered just to feel the bite of the cold, but i’ll wrap up my warmth in every other way. i’ll dig thoroughly through the snow and hide my prized treasures under frozen mounds, never to be seen again. i’ll watch the playful foxes from my window and giggle like a child when they jump face-first into the wintery blanket surrounding them. i’ll pretend i’m a clever mouse- too smart for foxes- and i’ll hide in my burrow with my cup of hot tea and my obnoxiously fuzzy socks.
i’ll be blameless, confident in my happiness, and ready for each day. i’ll be the hanging painting in the back of the museum- my beauty only beheld by those who are eager to look for it. and i’ll be so lovely.
God has made me prophetic in very small ways

i find myself getting drunk off thick poison
and dancing with giddy devils
just to replicate what it feels like to crave you.
and with all the beatings of your heart,
with all the rising and falling of your chest,
with the rushing of the blood in your veins,
i, prisoner, you, sentinel.

i will pull air into my body
like a gambler pulls on a slot machine-
erratic, hopeful, desperate,
i can’t accept the oxygen into my lungs
until i know it’s passed through you.
cigarettes to lips,
bones on hips,
bursting blood on necks
and claws on backs.

king to queen,
master to mistress,
i am with you and without you
in every sense.
i am the sun when it rises,
the night as it sets.
i am the push and pull of the waves
and the heat under bodies
under rest, under rest.

i want to make a home with you.
i will make tools for you from my ribcage,
and i will trust your gentle hands not to break them.

i will dig my brown hands
into the deep dark earth.
i will place fingerprints along the foundation’s walls,
lining it up with kisses and touch
so that our house never forgets how
gentle and raw my love is for you.

i will sob like a lost doe,
and i will let the droplets of water
race down my cheeks and chin
like a waterfall onto the glass
of our windows.
i will wash them with my tears
and dry them with bandages,
as a reminder that the storm will come
but it will not be forever.

i will take pieces of you
and pieces of me
and plant them under elderberry bushes.

i will sweep the floor
with eyelashes i find on your cheeks
and the locks that swirl in your hairbrush.
no dust dare cross the boundary
of lover and lover.

i will look for you in every corner
and pray in tongues around the house,
blessing our space with more God
than anyone ever thought we could handle.
i will lay scripture on our bedsheets
and love God with the fervor that i love you.

we will dunk our teabags in
hot cups of universe and stars,
we will dance in the living room in our socks
and laugh so loudly that the paint on the walls can’t help
but crinkle with a grin.

in every universe, i will be yours.
in every universe, you will be mine.
in every universe, we will be home.

the truth can be found in the backs of old library books,
slipped in between browning pages and buried
deep within the creases of bent paperbacks
and under loose sleeves of text about love and loss

the truth can be found in the
crinkles of empty bed sheets, between folds of
duvets and in between pillow slips,
crushed beneath hard springs and soft feathers,
whispered "i love you"s, "good morning"s,
"good night"s

the truth can be found gasping for air
at the bottom of a blackened sea, chained to the ocean floor
like a sunken ship and rising bubbles,
shifted under sand and deep breaths before a dive

and the truth can be found in the eyes of someone
you once loved, aching and bold,
covered with black flies but still somehow beautiful,
the truth can set you free,
but first it'll **** you off.