once upon a time,
you asked me to tell you stories.
they never made sense but they made you laugh
but when it was your turn you'd shrug and look at the floor.
you can't weave fiction, you're too
cerebral,
ive always been the creative one.
now im stuffing your essays in the space between my ribs
and pretending thats enough.
youve always been more politics than poetry -
you hate poetry.
but you always came when i performed
(said my poems were the only ones you could stand.
said the others were static noise)
youre miles away, youre chasing cemeteries and im chasing you.
ive always been more
successful,
youve always been kinder.
when i cry you speak softly and i scream.
when you cry i laugh and you
go quiet
and i feel sick.
you still believe in duty and honor and
honest politicians
though i tried to convince you that everyone lies,
just like you.
i took you outside at night and taught you the only constellation i know,
told you about
desperate boys and girls like mountains,
and redwood forests at three a.m.
and blew smoke in your face.
now its your turn.
tell me a story.
tell me how they broke you to bits and built you up again.
tell me how youre afraid to die.
tell me how ive hurt you and youll never trust me quite the same again.
tell me about your favorite book
again,
describe the dragon so vivid my own monsters seem like broken dolls.
i'll offer you a drink and you'll refuse.
(i'm so sorry that you're gentle
and i'm cruel.
i'm sorry for treating you sweet then snapping your wrist.
come back.
this time i'll be kind.
this time i'll listen.)

you only invited me because you hate parties.
you've been in the corner for an hour with some bitter biting drink
and you're pretending you're not crying,
and i'm pretending i'm not trying
to comfort you.
happy nineteenth.
happy birthday to a girl born just to know
how it feels
to be ripped in three.
happy birthday to a girl born to be the confessional
for every sinner on the street.
junkies catch your arm just  to be sick on your skirt.
you tried to fell a forest with a silver axe and ended
with bent metal and blisters on your hands
you ******* fool,
you never read the fairy tales
that i drank until i could spit them on command.
you never read the myths that made better friends
than anyone i've ever met.
you opened the bottle
when the demon inside promised you love.
you didn't run when it jumped down your throat
because the movies taught you romance
is taking a sick man inside your belly
and letting him push the lining till it bursts,
you let rats gnaw your achilles tendon to shreds for fear of letting them starve,
sometimes
you can't tell if your soul is gallant or gaunt.
you can't tell if you're the crusader
or the ***** the savior forgot to heal.
the only ocean you've seen is the one the hero is thrown into
from his storm-caught ship
sometimes it's hard for you to imagine water any deeper
than a foot above your head.
let me tell you a story -
once i fell in waters ten fathoms deep
once i tried to breathe underwater
and panicked when i could.
sometimes the most frightening thing is knowing you might survive.
don't be afraid of your weakness,
be afraid of your own monstrous strength:
the bruises you find when you wake are caused by your own fists.
throw your silver axe back to the fae.
you could rip these redwoods up from the roots
and fell the whole forest in a night.
stop painting salt mazes on the walls for the slugs to follow,
this room is only a prison because you won't try the door
you're afraid of how you'll carry yourself when the muzzle of a gun
is not pressed in the small of your back.
be afraid.
be so afraid you run without thinking. be so afraid that you care about nothing
but self-preservation,
and abandon the hero who needs your blood to fill
some empty part of him.
if he needs your pain to learn, he can stay ignorant.
i found two baseball bats beneath my bed
only one belongs to me,
the other must be yours.
bludgeon the demon in the bottle.
leave the body to the wolves.
you don't have to be the protagonist
to be the hero.
one more year and you'll have conquered two decades.
we can make it that far.

i saw you last night in my dream.
we held tattoo guns.
we wrote the definition of friendship on each others' back.
when i finished,
your back read 'a refuge from the world.
somewhere you don't have to think about painful things.'
when i looked in the mirror, my back read
'a version of intimacy with less lying.
a way to share bruises.
a shared blood bank.'
sometimes the way you speak
makes me think you're composing letters to someone else in your head.
sometimes i think you only approached me because
you like small birds -
robins and sparrows
and wrens.
i like attack dogs.
i try not to project that onto people.
you said your name was the product of shame.
you said every syllable was a lie.
when time changes every letter of your name to different variations of
"bare legs and
brick pyramids and
ball and socket joints"
you will tell me to pronounce each syllable anew -
someone should have told you
not to build your body from bricks
when you're standing on a fault line.
don't you know california's known for its earthquakes.
don't you know subduction zones aren't just metaphors for you
and your latest lover.
stand up.
get off the floor,
stop crying.
it's not my fault you chose to love somebody.
your knees are raw and the bruises sink deep.
you laid persian rugs over all your linoleum floors
and the rugburn on your lips pays testament to your dedication.
while i am with you
you fall to the floor and whisper.
you replay every word you said to them
and fashion better lines, -here,-
-i'll show you that i love you, my tongue's between your teeth, i trust you not to bite-
you say -listen to me, listen:-
-there's a hell. i know it.-
-let's go find it.-
i keep replying but you just kiss the carpet.
when i started smoking you said you were worried about my health.
funny how you only notice something's wrong when something starts to burn.
funny how you didn't notice my white knuckles when you spoke.
funny how you didn't notice when i stopped replying.
i stripped all the color from my hair last night
i meant to dye it the color of your eyes
to remind myself of your
good points,
remind myself why i once wanted to speak to you,
but you know,
i think achromatism suits me.
hair the color of mist and smog.
i never learned the difference between smoke and fog,
i keep trying to smother clouds.
on cold mornings i close my mouth,
cover my nose,
try to starve whatever it is burning inside of me .
i suppose you'd appreciate that,
in your mind,
fire is a synonym for death.
you ***** all the candles that i light.
when i put an ember in my mouth you say -what's wrong.-
-tell me,-
-it's not healthy-
-to keep all that smoke in your mouth.-
-you can tell me about anything.-
i wonder,
who told you that spreading a forest fire
helped it to die?
i wonder who told you sharing sadness was the only way to be intimate.
well here, let's share misery. let's spread it like an infection, like an std.
1. when i am alone in crowds,
i find myself searching for faces of people i despise
that i haven't seen in years.
somehow i want them there more than the people i love.
2. i am a background character.
my only line is, 'let's get out of here.'
3.  i wonder a lot how happy i could be
if i wasn't here to drag me down.
i wonder a lot how i would have grown up in a cleaner town.
would i still be terrified of safety?
4. the only constellation i recognize is orion.
the only constellation i recognize is a hunter,
a human killed by gods,
a man slaughtered for the jealousy of the brightest god.
i tried to learn others,
but they never stuck.
never seemed quite real.
5. in a catholic classroom they taught me that G. O. D.
loved the smell of burnt flesh.
on interstate 580 my father told me never trust
a smiling god.
6. epinephrine and endorphins. epinephrine and endorphins. epinephrine. epinephrine. epinephri
7. my mother told me i was sugar and stardust and i
bled for five years
to prove her wrong:
copper and hemoglobin
and chloride.
8.  every boy looks like family i've never met.
every girl looks like a better version of myself.
9. i collect memories of girls
waiting at bus stops at night,
alone.
heads between their knees,
hollow but not empty,
trying to stay steady.
bleach sloshing in excavated ribs.  
10. sometime in the last half-year,
i have learned to despise you.
i am an american firearm and you give me another bullet every time you make your presence known.
i am a hammerhead  shark.
you poured wax into my gills
and tried to leave your seal on me.
congratulations! congratulations. you left a mark on me. you made yourself more than a friend,
you made me hate you.
do you feel significant now? do you feel special.
you can see the ugly parts now, when i spit in your face i won't make it pretty.
-you don't have to hide from me.-
-i want to see what you don't show-
merry ******* christmas! time to make good on your claims,
hope you were truthful because here.
i brought you my gangrene. i unwrapped all the bandages just for you.
sorry it's not quite as pretty
as those carpets you laid over your cheap floors.
i'll be standing by your fireplace,
lighting every candle i can find,
illuminating my body from every angle.
hope intimacy is everything you imagined it'd be.

you told me
you knew
we would bring each other down.
you told me the world was cold
and we would drown in frozen lakes together,
when hypothermia turns to terminal burrowing,
we could burrow within each other.
you told me i would **** you.
after that,
i spent 5 hours in the shower boiling off my skin.
you and i
will not sink in tandem, you and i will not
fall apart in unison,
clasping hands.
i am not your personal suicide pill.
i am not your romantic,
selfless partner
in helpless self-destruction,
you're talking like we'll die tomorrow but i have plans to live a while yet,
if you jump from lover's leap
then you will fall alone.
i think you think
i love you.
i think you think i value
your voice
more than the voice of my thoughts.
it is december and the sun is too bright
to look anywhere
but your feet.
it is december and you're waxing poetic
about the boy who broke his neck
falling in the forest at night.
you look me in the eyes like you're trying
to crawl through my cornea.
you make eye contact an act of violence.
[do you
dream about me?]
you ask,
you're trying to be poetic.
i don't tell you about when i dreamed
you snapped your neck
while we walked in the forest,
and i left quickly,
quietly,
lived peaceful and alone.
i don't tell you about when i dreamed you moved on,
or that reoccurring dream where you spread my legs so far,
they snap out of the sockets.
i tell you i don't dream.
i tell you i don't sleep.
i tell you
i wear boxing gloves to church
but jesus never shows, and really,
i shoulda known he'd run from this fight too.
i tell you
i wear boxing gloves to bed but i just end up
chewing on the laces,
boxer's fractures never visited me.
bar room fractures on the nightstand.
[i dream about you,]
you say,
and i take another hit.
you've been in my air for six months.
under my skin for five,
and it's been three months
since you stitched our veins together.
sometimes,
i fall asleep wearing your scarf
and dream of garrotes that smell like you,
dream of strangulation
and bruises on my throat.  
i don't love you like a motive.
you don't love me like a person.
you told me i had a clean heart,
you told me i was an innocent soul,
you told me you would corrupt me, don't
flatter yourself.
your touch doesn't have the power
to make me sick.
only i can do that to myself.
i'm not a virginal sacrificial saint
for you to build altars to.
lets see if we can cut our hearts out with our fingernails.
i bet that they'll look just the same:
****** and red.
the same size as our clenched fists,
guess it's not your fault
you never learned the difference between the two,
you keep trying to fight with aorta and arteries
while my knuckles bruise your gut.
here:
i taped my hands and i'll tape yours too.
this will be a fair fight-
don't break your wrist
when you break my nose.
i'll teach you i'm more solid than a saint.
i'll teach you i am bile and spit and ****.
i'll teach you to love me human
or not at all.

when i bought you a gift,
i didn't really think about it.
wrapped it in your favorite color and
marked it with your name and
realized
i don't know where you live.
its been three years since i last saw you,
a year since we last talked,
and all my new friends just remind me of you.
i almost called her your name the other day.
you acted like i was special, and i
pretended i didn't need you.
christ.
christ.
you promised that nothing would change.
you swore you would visit
(but then every time it seemed you would,
i found myself hoping
you wouldn't. i guess
it's lucky you never did)
sometimes i go a month without thinking of you (forgetting like i should)
and wake from a dream where we're
sitting on the edge of a wall,
three years younger than we are,
throwing rocks down steep slopes,
talking about
reflections on car doors,
melting in california sun.
i straightened you out
when boys left you tangled.
(i've never been in love)
you listened when i talked about
black cats and spirographs
and the way that we can never really touch anything
(i don't think you understood
even half of what i said but
you listened like i was spurting secrets of the universe in waves like
pay attention,
this one will be on the final)
you laid with me on hot sidewalks and then,
you left.
christ.
i thought i was always supposed to be the one who went south,
left someone behind,
wondering about me,
but here we are and still, still, even now
everyone i care about is just like you.
i went north but still even now,
i walk barefoot like the ground is hot and dry,
like it was back home,
like it's not wet from last night's rain.
i think you'd like it here, you liked fog better than i did,
you liked rain, you thought it was
poetic,
you thought colors looked better in the cold.
you liked the way your hair looked wet but hated the way your makeup would run.
you tried to grow closer but instead i would talk
about things that don't matter,
and honestly,
you shouldn't have expected any better from me.
didn't realize till you left that codependence
isn't something i
can avoid, i can only prevent you
from becoming as attached
as me.
can red threads work for friendships too?
sometimes i feel like it wrapped around my torso a thousand times over,
pinching the skin,
and only draped over your hand.
sometimes i feel like a dog with her leash tied to a pole.
i thought i was the one who was supposed to leave,
but christ,
i've always been bound by the border, i've
never been as transient as
i seemed.
that never stopped you.
nothing stops you.
(do i ever come to mind?
do you mention me to your new friends, am i
in any of the stories you tell them?
i don't tell my friends about you.
i'd just be ashamed
of still keeping your laugh in my mind.
i'd just be  jealous
that they know how to say your name)
i remember sitting with you on a wall,
watching heat mirages,
listening to the way you talk
and thinking of telling you things like
the way my parents don't kiss anymore,
the time my mom left in the middle of the night,
and i waited on the stairs under stars for three hours
while my dad told me to come inside,
and orion sat above,
and the driveway stayed empty,
and you turned to me and i made a joke about
nihilism.
you were so honest with me.
(i was honest too,
it's not lying
if you make jokes about how you really feel
it's not lying, it's just a comedy routine)
i think i'm a few years older than i'm supposed to be.
i should be able to move on from a  friend
that left me behind,
i think my mind
is a few years behind my body,
maybe when you left
you borrowed a few of my years for the road,
and now i'm a child in body that's been rotting for 18 years,
crying over a friend that has
better things to do.
laughing over injuries to seem strong.
your gift is still on my desk, and it's been
55 days;
almost two months.
i guess i'll leave this one in my closet too.

happy birthday.
thinking of you.

i'm writing this letter for you.
you in the other room, i hear you through the wall,
talking
to yourself,
telling yourself secrets you never believe.
i have some i'd like to spill,
but every time i try,
the walls soak them up like
white cotton and
black ink.
i'd like you to hear something other than your own voice
and maybe you can hear me when
you read.
you brought me here.
took me with you when you left like
a trinket,
a memento of home,
something to hold in the night when regret is like
a knot of snakes
in your gut.
ibd driving you
to tangle limbs with another;
a facsimile of love
driving me.
i think now it was less love and more addiction.
less love and more stockholm syndrome,
a disorder i cultivated
to have a reason to stay with you, with you,
the most beautiful sledgehammer
i've ever seen.
euphonious dynamite.
you are thumbtacks in my eyes and dry clouds above my desert,
you drop through me like lead:
you are a pneumatic drill and i
am a porcelain doll,
a quail's egg
you shatter me and i know
i never had a chance -
who bets on a dead horse?
who spends all their faith on a pantheon
that rots as they watch.
you desiccate me decimate me and i let you.
you are a world war in the body of a girl,
and i am naught but
cannon fodder
and cotton mouth i read you poetry but the walls swallowed my words
and all you heard was breath
(isn't that enough that should be enough,
a gust of wind
a breeze;
and the spirit is nothing but air,
pneumatic:
cavitied and consecrated.
the walls swallowed its manifestations,
but you
felt my spirit on your skin)
but i am not
enough
you are tire tracks on my abandoned road and you
brought me with you whenever you ran and
never believed me when i told you that
(not every problem can be solved with a map
spread on the dashboard).
you don't care about solutions,  
though,
just avoidance and denial and
distraction,
you treat every vagrant
like god in disguise
you take every hitchhiker into your heart and carry them like tumors,
infirmity is contagious.
a gift the bodies share.
from you i received
an atrial septal defect;
a hole in my heart,
leaking  blood.
from you i received dysthymia and
a martyr complex.
from you i received knowledge:
[one: nobody is strong,
but some have reinforced their bomb shelters
with their own bones.]
[two: a baby doll, baby girl
thick wrists,
sick recurring pain in the form of mirrors,
bathroom stalls and naked form]
[three: a gasmask can't protect you from the poison in your veins.
believe me,
i tried]
[four: the gaps between your bones
will one day be filled
and you will feel whole]
[five: the blue lips of a deep sea diver
should not be idolized.
the only surgeries you perform should be on your own heart
so you wound no one but yourself
when your hands
shake.]
[six: i tried, i promise,
i tried,
i tried]
you are false sermons and i am a believer you are thumbtacks in my eyes and lightning flowers on my back.
when i perform self-surgery,
i will bisect my heart

take it with you when you run
i will stay behind
and speak to the walls.

my first wedding will be a seance because
there is always destruction in my wake
and my words only make sense in your mouth -
i put a ******* hurricane behind your lips
and went silent when you ripped apart
i slit my throat over your coffee and i
think i understand now
why you didn't flinch
(someone is using you and i told you not to be so ******* gullible
and you said -better to be wrung dry,
better to be used to death
that to leave anyone
alone-)
lypophrenia lypemania lyssophobia i find it fitting that lysis means both
recovery
and the destruction of cells
because you said i saved you every day while i watched you
erode
slowly
i gave you love and told you it was armor i'm
so sorry for all the holes in your chest cause i
set you against yourself you tore out your heart you cut off
your left arm
to make more room for me
(you said to me
-i'm not as masochistic
as you think
and i don't pretend to be some sort of *******
martyr
but everyone has a purpose and mine is to be used-)
i've got mouth full of blood and fading anesthetic i need a distraction i hate
thinking about myself because
(i am caught between conflicting states
of lies
and nonexistence)
burn my fingers on a lightbulb and think of you,
trade numb limbs for phantom pain and try to learn to walk slow
to let your ghost catch up to me,
let anxiety pool in my calves so you don't feel so alone
let panic return to my diaphragm so i don't leave you behind
(you asked why i walk like i'm running from
ex friends ex memories ex selves
as long as i move i don't have to think i'll sweat out one more lie and never think of it again
i'll keep my teeth clenched so my diaphragm is a prison)
oh treachery! fraud!
i say so many words and don't know what any mean,
i take an oath for a god whose face i've never seen whose hand i've never held and whose scent
could not compare to
the smell of you in my bed the
smell of your shampoo in the rooms you haunt,
you lie limp on the floor and tell me stories of
jesus,
love and life
who fed himself to the hungry until he was nothing
-my body, my blood- you say
-my body,
my blood,
sustenance for the weak,
nourishment for the starved-
your hipbones through your skin (maybe you should feed yourself) i say
and you laugh
(someone is using you don't make me say it just don't be so naive
someone is using you i am using you you are the vessel for my violence and
emotional death is less apparent than physical and sometimes
you don't
realize
that you've been dead since october)
my first wedding will be a seance.
we will say our vows through an oracle
i dont need anything but proof that this ghost
will haunt me.
this ghost will remain and their scent will fill the room.
this ghost
won't believe when i lie
when i bleed into your coffee,
do not drink.
watch the ph rise like floods.
wait for my apology.
when the haruspex tells you the future is bleak,
believe them.
leave me.
make armor from discarded wedding bands.
do not be used again.