IN THE PEW YOU FEEL GODS EYES BURNING HOLES IN YOUR SKULL ALL HEADS BENT! ALL HEADS BENT! THE CHOIR HUMS THE FREQUENCY TO UNDO THE ATOMIC BONDS OF YOUR LOATHSOME FORM
[GOD IS WATCHING] [GOD IS WATCHING] an endless love, eternal, unconditional, unforgiving, [GOD IS WATCHING] all his children, all his loathsome children, /you know god loves you, right? even when you look away, right? even in the dark?/ [GOD IS WATCHING] YOUR LOATHSOME CORNERS, THE GRIME IN THE CRACKS OF YOUR FLOOR, THERE ARE NO SECRETS IN THE HOUSE OF GOD NO SECRETS IN THE PEERING GAZE OF GOD: god sees. god sees. if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, a good, god-fearing girl, a god-fearing girl, a god-eating girl, subsuming god, DO YOU WISH TO BECOME GOD, /we
know
how good you are. we know you could be pure/ I CAN PROVE:
THAT GOD LOVED YOU:
IF GOD MADE YOU THIS WAY
OR DID YOU MANGLE YOURSELF:

did you let the devil in?

your NIGHT SWEATS: you wake soaked in your salt, shivering, an ocean; you address the doctor directly but she will not meet your eyes, she says your NIGHT SWEATS: psychosomatic, fever dream; your NIGHT SWEATS: you wake on the examination table, the sanitary paper soaked in your salt, disintegrated into thin fibers clinging to your clammy back; you sleep in the bathroom, in the bathtub, your NIGHT SWEATS: you wake drowning in your salt, head violently breaching the water before you are fully conscious, a survival reflex, you suppose; your NIGHT SWEATS: you sleep in your garden, in the grass, you wake in a brackish marsh; your NIGHT SWEATS: salt crusts your skin, rough pale scabs; your NIGHT SWEATS: you wake; your NIGHT SWEATS: you wake; your NIGHT SWEATS: you wake

YOU PREACH
AND I, LISTEN,
MOUTH OPEN
MOUTH OPEN
MOUTH OPEN

eyes WIDE eyes WIDE eyes wide wied e WIDE AND STARING eyes wide eyes WIDE

keep the window open i cant stand to smell your skin, you are shivering. youre cold
(you tell me so (you want a response (i nod,)))
(but you are still cold)
do you have any
fantasies?
this halting voice heaves in my stomach pressing against the walls, making
me sick, the snap of your blinking lids a pickaxe to my temple. i think about
fire
a lot. i think about forest fires. filling the tank in a dead town, dark night quiet town,
the gas tank overflows (your nervous eyes in your sweating sticky face {your twitching gaze stroking the lighter in the glove compartment} dry dry lips {your wet tongue only makes them dryer})
breathing in her ear you say tie me to the stake tight tight so rope burn sears my wrist,
burn me with the dry kindling,
condensation drips down her neck, sliding down the arm. on the sidewalk in the pit of her shadow a puddle forms, wetting the wings of the unhappy wasps, joints twisted, the gaps in the exoskeleton show something bright, something bulbous, with forceps and needles it could be reached? its delicate skin pierced, oozing thick light (do you have any
fantasies?)
[so there are two of me, right,
clones, equivalent beings but
individuals. some sort of sick
government secret. human ex
periments. its not important.
i grab my clone by the neck or
it grabs me, its not important,
the dust billows when my feet
skid, im choking, vision blurr
ing, i claw at my hands, we f
all, dust bursts into the air, m
y fist makes sick thudding sou
nds when it hits, bruising my
knuckles on the structural bon
es of my face, possibly breaki
ng the more delicate ones. im
straddling my chest and im s
pitting out the teeth that i di
dnt swallow. then the clones
****? im not really sure.]

a pink spit shine in your suprasternal notch,
split lip stamping your skin with red,
lipstick kissmarks or ****** scabs. this is how it goes,
this is how you learn to spell your name,
letters to fill your mouth. rituals leave stains on your sheets.
you washed them in the river and the fish all rose to meet you, belly-up.
you eating porcelain, ignoring your bleeding gums, stronger than a doll. id rather be scared than lonely you said
as if they were mutually exclusive,
as if it was a choice. pressing your fingers in the saviors wounds cause you dont believe in holy
but you believe in gore. scales like stars littered in the grass.
you in the streets screaming HIT ME at indifferent cars,
begging dead wolves to eat you too, one last meal, one last **** before you go,
one more sin cant **** you too much, right? right?
death like a bloodletting, draining a wound.
at the riverside you sort the viscera from the flesh,
leave the eyes for birds. fill your hollows with something warm,
something liquid and soft,
for a moment you feel whole - until it leaks in rivulets,
soaking your skin, you felt whole.
bring me the head of god,
big enough to build a home inside, bring me the heart of god,
big enough to feed a kingdom.
your head is full of meat, raw and red, juices dripping from the ears,
your head is so, so, full, so full, bring me the liver of god,
clogged with human sin, bring me a poison that could **** the stars.
he brought them down, dragged them from the sky to bless the world, bright like angels,
purity burns. bleach in your fresh-pierced hands.  you were warding off lockjaw,
killing the flesh.my limbs are not mine,
corpse parts,
scars as seams at the joining-place. you say my hands hurt,
you say i feel like my knuckles are splitting, you say can we stop?
you do this every time. keep digging. i feel deathly. i feel deadly.
your feet in soft dirt as the shovel hits wood. i know what you know. i know what you know. i know your name and i know the soft spots on your skull. i know the breakline on your rib, the place where it's almost healed. knowledge of your ****** parts,
the soft parts where the teeth go in. im ready to die,
im waiting to die, put your tongue in my mouth and ill bite it off. put your hand in mine and ill break your wrist.

my fingernails short when i scratch them through the dirt, carving furrows in the ground. my dry mouth stinging with hot air. you say that we're unlucky but we're lucky to have each other. you say we're birds of a feather but i suspect you are a wolf. you found the open parts of me and thought to fill them with your name. REPENT!!REPENT!!REPENT!! REPENT!!DEATH DRAWS NEAR AS YOU LICK THE FILTH FROM YOUR FINGERS, SINNER!!SINNER!!GOD HATES UGLY GOD HATES ***** GOD HATES DESPERATE HANDS TWITCHING LIKE DYING FLIES YOUR YELLOW TEETH ARE PROOF OF THE SULFUR IN YOUR BLOOD!!YOUR STICKY LIPS ON THE WHITE CLIFFS OF MY TEETH, YOU CANT KISS AWAY A SNARL!!REGRET THE WAY YOU PRESSED YOUR PALMS TOGETHER WHITE KNUCKLED AND STIFF!!REGRET YOUR SELFISH PRAYERS!!GOD HATES ANGRY GOD HATES SAD THE FIFTH CIRCLE OF HELL HAS A SPOT SAVED FOR THE BOTH OF US, SINNERS SCARLET LETTERS LIKE RASHES!!!REPENT!!your favorite dress, hem brushing your ankles, dust in the stitches. your soft hands with fingers in my arteries. your eyes squeezed shut when you cry. i am living out of spite. im living for revenge. im living to prove im better than you. look me in the eyes when you pull your fingers from my heart. SINNER!!WIND CHAPS YOUR FACE RED AND YOU PEEL DEAD SKIN BETWEEN YOUR FINGERS, I PRAY MYSELF IMMORTAL THE BACKGROUND RADIATION SCREAMS ILL ******* **** YOU I AM SPEAKING!!I SPEAK THROUGH COSMIC NOISE ILL ******* **** YOU!! IM SPEAKING TO YOU!!SINNER!!SINNER! REPENT!I AM DIVINE I AM SAINTED I AM HOLY I AM GOING TO HELL

1.  a curbstomp/a caress/a question of faith.
youre laughing but everyone can tell
youre looking for the door.you in a glass tomb and them watching you rot.
2. youve had the same dream five nights in a row.
you dont tell anyone. they dont care.
3. youre young. you feel empty. you dont know how youre supposed to be
but
you think that this is wrong.
4. 7am wake 8am school 9am 10am 11am 12pm read 1pm school 2pm 3pm 4pm leave 5pm 6pm 7pm home 8pm 9pm run 10pm 11pm 12am 1am 2am 3am sleep repeat
5. a funeral. you are at home,
trying not to get ***** on your nice black dress.
6. your friends are all unnerved by you. you are trying to fix it. you watch how life is supposed to go
and try to do the same.
everyone is unnerved by you.
7. a funeral. you are trying very hard to care.
its not working very well.
everyone is uncomfortable. no one is crying. you get dirt on your nice black dress.
8. you are very smart. you are a very smart young woman. youre just unmotivated /
youre angry /
youre hateful /
youre selfish/solipsistic/spiteful/youre
bored youre so bored you feel so empty it
hurts.
you feel so numb it hurts.
you feel nothing and it hurts.
9. you are so scared
10. you are so scared
11. you are so scared
12. you are so scared
13. ██████████

i have no patience for you your feet sunk in the mud im leaving even if you stay behind.
nosebleed in a public restroom irrational shame,
dark stains on the carpet and we strain with the task of memory.
if your feet hold you back cut them off at the joint.
self-dissections in the lab,
case studies of the effects of
obsolete diseases. black plague typhoid smallpox
specimen pins/surgical staples, an efficient kind of suicide.
ill try not to smudge your lipstick when i kick in your teeth,
your white-knuckled hands digging grooves in your thighs.
efficiency as poetry.
brutality as poetry.
█████ as poetry.
i am trying to make a perfect vacuum of myself, purer than space. purer than black holes.
this is for the dirt ground into my jeans for the rusted nails in my walls , this is for you,
your delusions, your lover impaled on a sundial and you weep to complete the scene,
admire your artistry.
this is how to make feathers look like armor,
this is how to renounce your body,
how to be a living parody how to give up on yourself,
from a vulture to a prince. wren to a gryphon.
the water i drink is infested.
with eggs hatching in my throat i become more than myself,
mother to a thousand maggots.i name them all.i divide my love evenly among them.
here i staple my grievances to the doors of the church,
here i scream of plagues in the streets, filth in shining skyscrapers,
here i imagine myself cassandra here i prophesy misery
here i staple my grievances to your chest where you cannot brush them off this time.
you licking the doors, trying to taste what's gone, finding splinters in your tongue,
stuck in the braces you had
when you were twelve.
{i curse all metal grow more crooked by the day,
crooked man in a crooked house crooked cat on a crooked fence i can still rip your throat out with crooked teeth} you glisten you glisten you shine
like oil in the pan,
oil dripping from the car,
oil on top of the lake. lover where are the matches the pilot lights gone out again,
burn off the blockage till the heat shines blue.
domestic arson.in the forest you gather tinder,
too damp to burn clean.you smoke us out of our home.
leave it for someone better, stinking like a forest fire.the soundtrack is so loud i cant hear what you say,
im shouting with the strings it all sounds the same when you close your eyes,
smoke-blind you whisper from across the room and ive never hated you more than i do now.
i read your lips i write your words i staple them to the bedroom door i kick in your teeth too fast too fast a reminder that this isn’t pretty, eggs in the throat an exoskeleton too brittle to block the blows.
[me fetal on the kitchen floor me standing with ****** boots]
i count the teeth,
mark them as a symptom.
shedding the physical/shedding teeth.
shedding children from an open mouth.

it's january and we're at the lake.
i wonder how long a person can survive under the ice you say.
you look at me expectantly.
last-night.jpg: bathroom stall/shaky hands/stinging eyes;
last-year.jpg: crowded room/mangled words/tight lips;
untitled.jpg: laughter heard through the wall/you feel sick.
the water runs cold while i peel bandaids from my fingers,
sodden gauze and skin.the wind blows my hair down your throat.
you squint like youre staring at the sun, you say all you want is sleep,
you rub dust from your eyes you say
this was a mistake.
youre soft and spent im
wrapping hair round my fingers like straightjackets,
im pretending im not scared.shaky hands/stinging eyes.
i tried to make this a comedy but blood is still blood
no matter how loud you laugh.
I TRIED TO KISS YOU BUT I JUST BROKE YOUR ******* JAW I CARRY A ******* PLAGUE I ***** AND THE GRASS DIES I AM BURNING IM BURNING I BURN scraping through my skin psychosomatic gore, ego and id
a ****** mess on the floor.im not right for me.
i was never meant to be here, superego screaming my sins in my ear LOVE IN ARMORED BOOTS, LOVE IN SURGICAL MASKS AND SCALPELS, love in shed bandaids
clogging the shower drain.my mother told me i was cursed and now i know she was right.
my heart as the sound of an opening blade. my heart as a child too stupid to know
bravery is a trap.fever dreams and you told me they were visions,
me tied to the stake and you tossing the match, im not dead yet but im SURE ******* TRYING, FIVE FINGER FILLET WITH MY GRANDFATHERS HUNTING KNIFE SCARING OFF THE GHOSTS WHO LAY THEIR HANDS ON TOP OF MINE DONT ******* TOUCH ME WITH YOUR GREEDY PALMS WHO SAID YOU DESERVED MY BODY HEAT WHO SAID YOU DESERVE ME, A COMMUNICABLE DISEASE DONT KISS ME IM SICK IM A PLAGUERAT, LIPS OR BLOOD BLISTERS WAS THERE EVER A ******* DIFFERENCE DONT BITE SO HARD ILL ******* BURST **** THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD THAT SAYS YOU ARE WEAK **** THE THING IN THE MIRROR THAT IS NOT YOU

take it back.i take my words back.i push you down, tear them from your ears like piercings
in a ***** fight.im crying and youre bleeding. see what youve done you say,
see what a mess youve made of me, its not so easy to untell secrets you say.
i think youre smiling but its hard to tell.
to all mammals but us, teeth are a threat.mangled words/tight lips. the doctor says i have three years at best. i wake, sweating in a cold office. the doctor says i have three years at best. i wake, sweating in a cold office. the stiff gown scratches my *******. the  doctor says i have three years at best. i wake, blood on the pillow.my lip hurts.
i try not to touch the ice when i lower myself in the lake.

god i think i could die happy now if i could just stop thinking, but i am rage,
sleepless nights, fake premonitions,
i know its not real stop telling me its okay cause even if the ceiling stays steady i still cant sleep,
i know it will fall. i know i will dissolve.ill be fine after i write,
writing my name on a monument of trash,  
scratching out epitaphs on gravestones, dead but still twitching,
still electric, still choking on my own hands,
three am with gravesoil pressing on my lips and sleeping pills dont work anymore.
six am with the water so hot i can almost feel it,
red skin/black lungs, anode/cathode, electrical circuit and a broken bulb.  
current like signal fires drowned in desert light; please notice me im here please help me i know its bright but
my nightmares havent been banished by daylight in years.
december 11, 2014, thursday 10:41 pm: the people in my sketchbook are realer than i am.
there is gum in my mouth and it tastes like blood.
across the room i see an omen and welcome it home.i imagine my hair fades to murky gray.
i imagine myself at thirteen, i imagine learning to spit out poison
before it trickles down my throat,
i imagine i learned im not broken before i accepted it as something
i could never change.  
i think im sweet.i think im insufferable.i think i think about myself far more than anyone else ever will,
a placebo, a replacement for god knows what.medicine for an unknown illness,
downing whole pharmacies to **** a malaise, i cracked when i realized
i was not a work of art.
nothing beautiful, nothing to be admired. unnoticed at best,
smoke signals in a foggy sky, i am angry.im unclean.ive never had a dream about you,
my mind is polluted every waking hour but asleep im
unaware.in my nightmares strangers loathe me,
loved ones hurt me,
and those i hate are absent.im scared to have no outlet for my anger.
im scared to have no scapegoat for my hate, i don't hate myself.i dont.i dont. im so
talented,
im so gifted, im ******* blessed, why do i hate myself so much -
youre so happy i want to die.i want you to die.i want us to die,
i want the link between us to die, how do i cut you off when youve burrowed yourself into everything i love,
you tainted everything when you came,
you sunk your claws in the flesh of my arms and called it an embrace,
decided
this is a good way to live,
and i shake, spite and spit and staring down,
try to pretend you dont exist.
youre rotting meat.youre flies and falsehoods am i the only one who knows
you're a ******* fraud.you lied to me.
you said i want you to care and i heard i want to eat you,  
i want you soft and easy to swallow,
[even soft i would rip you apart. im vast. im endless and youre just a girl]  
you said say something and i heard appease me
before i tell them all how sick you are.
[they know!!!!they know, everyone knows, ive never been an actress and ive stopped trying]
in fantasies youre on the floor, youre crying and im laughing,
shouting every lie you told so you hurt
just as much as i did.just as much as i do.do you feel guilt?anger?envy?
do you write poems like this about me,
do you hate me too?ive never been good at assigning blame.was it my fault?
you were a burning coal and i was a stupid kid/you were a cobra and i believed you when you said
bites dont hurt.i want to be hurt.i want a reason to feel this sick.please, please,
directionless anger, unplaceable implacable pain,
hyperventilating in a quiet room[please, im safe, im safe, please dont, dont touch me, please dont **** me]
who are you talking to? i shrugged, laughed,
you know, i can feel my bones under my skin when i sit too still.
i can feel them shake.
im trying to drown myself from the inside out, im trying to become a shark
and not a girl.im trying to eat my illness alive but i feel so
soft.my teeth cut nothing.  
december 12, 2014, friday 1:11 am: the air feels like velvet in my throat and i think im choking,
winter always made me sick. summer makes me slick, slime,
a melting statue, tears and sweat and god knows what else.
its winter and im frozen over, fevers every night. your neck is so slender she said,
a swan's neck she said,
all the better for wringing, i know, i know.an unwilling martyr,
im not here to be killed.im not delicate and meek i am huge, towering,
thick-necked like a bull. try to strangle me now, i have no feathers to pluck,
only sharp horns strong legs and
unapologetic rage.i will trample you. ill gore you through dont come near.dont touch me.
you think i cant hear you breathing but i know youre there.  
i remember my dream and clutch the rails. plot gone, words gone,
but a face and soundless mouth and a smile like i know what youve done.
these words are too cold for my mouth.i freeze when i speak.
a void trapped within thin stretching skin.
black hole waiting for my chance to implode.
i can feel it between my lungs, pulling.dense mass.collapsed star walking the crust of a
blue planet.when i die im taking this with me.when i die im taking you with me.
you thought you could just  watch me wither?you thought i would burn out,
i am cold as empty space and i am wearing myself raw and
when i burst
i will not be the only casualty.
i am so scared of  my own body. i am so scared of my own mind.
sleep doesnt come easy. december 16, 2014, friday 12:04 am: i am trying to tear down my own thoughts.
trying to fell redwoods with bare hands,
ending with ****** fingertips,
splinters beneath the nails.a childish fear of churchbells,
metal at the back of the throat body of christ in the hands, when i blink i see stars.
when i ***** i see coffee grounds.
the valley is flooded with fog and i think im dreaming,
fantasies drying like mud on my boots - gauze and gods,
surgical tape like a prayer.
caribou hearts
rotting in your cellar. do you understand? im trying to explain. wringing my hands to squeeze out the sin,
they can smell the blood i disgraced.see how easy it is?i can play along.
they play a dirge when i walk down the aisle.funereal,
an ossuary body fit only to hold my bones.
january 1st, 35°F,
i am a forest fire.im washing my face in magma, hot and hurting and numb.
burning off the skin. searing off the gauze.

and now i dont even ******* know how to care for myself because i was never told this could happen to me,
i wasnt supposed to get sick. i wasnt supposed to get sick.
all my clipped nails, my chipped teeth piling up like letters at an empty house,
spilling from the mailbox, a papercut waterfall.
the car sputters & stops. the pen scratches without ink and i try to read what a different version of me wrote,
what a younger self thought was poetry.
my mouth is empty but my pockets are full -
pepper spray/my tía's ring/a lighter i never use.
a lighter kept for strangers, for burning dry leaves, old letters,
my own tongue because blisters make it feel fuller, less hollow.
skinny lips, strong teeth, black tongue sharp and sleeping.
never had a cavity.never broke a bone.bandaging my feet before the blisters form, what do i do now?
you took my hand.
you took my hand.
you took my ******* hands. in a california summer,
dry golden grass like a wildfire dare, you said please don't leave me,
it's drought season and i'm choking on my spit,
you're taking all the rings off my fingers. you're swallowing my tía's ring.
does it taste like her cigarettes?does it taste like my sweat?
ive been thinking about you, you've been on my mind:
how do you burn a sunken bridge?
its broken but the the pieces lie heavy below the water,
twisting the current.
how do you open a letter five years unread?
avoided/ignored/forgotten as it slides onto the floor.i'm so afraid that ill never respond,
lay here till i petrify, a living thing turned stone.macerated in my own ******* self-pity,
dripping blame from gaping pores. you did this to me, you broke me,
you poured lead in my ears you left me deaf and afraid, i just want to feel absolved,
it's not my fault im sick. its not my fault i cant fix myself, its not my fault i dont try -
to try and fail is worse than to surrender before it starts.
excise the shame, cauterize the wound.call it a battle scar,
a mark of bravery and survival,
not a coward's brand, not the mark of cain.
killed your brother. slaughtered your counterpart, your mirror image,
an alternate you where you made different choices,
the ones that made you a good person and not a tumor,
bloated scourge in what could have been a healthy life.
empty fortress decayed behind the walls, i didnt build these to keep you out, i swear,
i just wanted to flesh myself out.
boundaries building up an empty breath,
making me appear more than i am, feel greater than i could ever be, but when you get inside there's nothing.
that's not my fault.thats not my fault. some people are born forests,
vast expanse of redwoods, moss softening the air;
some people are born exhales.
breathed out and dissipated.  
less than a lack.taking nothing; making only a still room,
stuffy air encased like innards; its funny how just a sigh can make me feel like im faking it
even though im the only one there,
even though i can still feel the ache in my skull,
eyelashes stuck to the palms of my hands.how does it feel not doubting life?
how does it feel to know in five seconds, air will swell your chest again?im on unsure footing,
a crumbling ***** (i know its just me.i know im being paranoid,
chill out you said i held my breath while you climbed dont fall dont fall oh god)
when did this happen?who poured fear into me like
swampwater in a wineskin,
never feared falling when i was young.
i just want to not hate myself but i guess thats a pipe dream,
******* stupid, ******* useless ******* incorporeal ******* fake laugh when theres no one to hear,
fighting spiders for the right to sleep. (do your friends know youre a liar?
******* traitor, dropping love from burning hands: your silver tongue is tarnished,
youve been vomiting again,
stomach acid eating your throat from within. can you stop?)i just want to stop.
theres a ******* burning sun in my chest and god i know i should feel lucky but i dont wanna ******* live i just want to SURVIVE,
what ******* good is living if i just burn myself out by the time i reach 25?
im scared to die but im ******* killing myself and i cant ******* stop,
i just want to sleep but theres still a bite mark on  my wrist from my own ******* teeth there are so many people i feel sick,
they talk so loud,
i feel like i could ******* disintegrate
******* degrade into dust please i just want to leave but i dont want to be alone, let me stay dont let me burst,
i want to be so skinny my bones bruise my skin,
i want to be so strong i could ******* rip myself apart, dont lie to me.
dont love me just sit next to me touch me tell me im alive.
im alive, right?im real im here im not a dusty phantom,
gasping ghost ripping oxygen into incorporeal lungs,
god i want to SCREAM just so i know im not ******* DEAD past the skin is there any sensation past the surface
i want to wear my ******* throat raw tear my muscles to shreds to know i can feel something that isnt shallow surface nerves, PLEASE!GOD!
make my lungs burn make my bones crack i want to feel something that i know is REAL prove im real prove im not an empty shell please im still alive but bites dont go past the skin,
i want to see my ******* heart pulse like the realest part of me,
proof i need proof i want faith i want to believe in unproven things, how can i ******* believe im real?
im ******* faking it just like everything else,
bluff till its true but i never ******* learned how to be TRUE I NEVER LEARNED TO LIVE PAST THE SKIN and if you peel it back all you'll ******* find is
rot,
gangrene, necrotic flesh and electric fear, dont ******* touch me i feel like i could ******* explode,
i feel crushed compressed into a space too small for my body and itll crack any second.
please ******* punch me in the gut. please ******* crack me open i dont ******* trust myself to keep my heart beating,
please rip it out im ******* faking it!!
faking laughs for an empty space faking fear for phantom spiders and thoughts of death, im ******* faking it but how do i ******* STOP
I DONT WANNA LIVE LIKE THIS BUT IM SCARED TO ******* DIE

god,
ive never seen a girl that empty.
pathetic,
hollow skin in unwashed jeans.a blown egg,
empty casket
cracking sidewalk.im lonely but i can play the part,
bravado biting the sky like lightning but
you can hear your own breath echoing in me when
you sit too close.
im a mine shaft, im stale air and stone. i dug myself empty when i tried to believe
i need no one but myself.i don't need anyone else.blisters on my heels,
thoughts on self-defeat, self-pity,
self-immolation compared to arson.
when you pulled out all my teeth you told me it was so i could kiss you fuller,
deeper; you said *now you dont have to be afraid.
now you cant hurt me.
it rained last night but i thought this was a drought year, should i feel something?
i slept through the thunder.GOD, i hate thinking about this,
i hate these harness ribs hate air pockets in my chest i cant take this pressure.
when youre leaning down to kiss his lighter i'm sending you 50 texts that all say the same thing,
accoutrements of disorientation,
swollen fingers. i dont think i'm doing this right.i think i'm a different person
every time i get dressed in the morning,
every time i sleep.all the words ive misheard  stack up like unfinished manuscripts,
like letters from neglected friends.
this was wrong when it started and now it's just confused.
hoarding matches, hoarding lighters like that'll save me from the rain.
think about the bones beneath your flesh.think about the sturdy rock within your soft thighs.
think about your liver.think about your bloodyourskinyourmeat.
think about the last time you spoke with feeling.
think about the last time you dreamt. remember when you said you wanted all of me? said you felt afraid,
you said sometimes you feel like
i could eat you alive,
reaching over my event horizon,
leaning towards antimatter lips.
why did you call yourself a storm you're only hurting yourself?
why did you call me an earthquake when i'm the only one
im ripping apart.
you keep sticking your tongue down the throats of people who just want to bite it off.

i havent washed my hair in a week. ive been wearing these braids for the last four days but today a girl said my hair looked like the sea, thick water green with life, my heels fall too heavily when i walk and i know i seem angry but i promise im just tired, i'm drinking pond **** and pretending it's sweet  im falling off the roof again

ATLAS HOLD ME UP ATLAS HOLD ME UP I KNOW IM NOT THE WORLD TO YOU IM JUST A GIRL THAT MADE YOU CRY BUT GOD IM SO ******* SCARED IM AFRAID OF DROWNING BUT I HOLD MY HEAD UNDER SALTY WAVES ANYWAY

this is like a brick to the gut this is like a skipping record screaming the same words with the same intonation but prefaced by a thousand of itself it somehow takes on new meaning a new sort of color, a repetition rash, a spot you cant stop scratching

BUT REALLY WHAT MATTERS MOST ISNT THE LAST WORDS YOU SAY BUT THE LAST WORDS YOU HEAR BECAUSE THE WORLD IS STILL MOVING THE WORLD IS ERASING ITSELF BUT YOU ARE ENDING I AM ENDING AND I DONT WANT YOUR VOICE AS THE LAST ******* NOTCH ON MY BEDPOST

and you said you could still feel me, you said you could taste me like pennies in your mouth but it meant nothing and we were petty we were hollow we went as far as grazing lips and faking smiles i know you werent what i wanted did you know i wasnt what you wanted?did you know im not what you need?did you wait for me to touch you and wither when i turned away?im sorry im so callous. im sorry im so detached.

THIS IS A HAMMER TO THE KNEES THIS IS YOU WAKING AT TWO AM CHOKING ON MY HAIR THIS IS YOU FLINCHING WHEN YOU SEE ME SMILE THIS IS BLISTERED LIPS AND CALLOUSED KISSES AND BITING MY TONGUE FOR THE FIFTH TIME TODAY MY EYES HAVE BEEN BLOODSHOT SINCE BEFORE WE MET IM SORRY I DIDNT LET YOU AFFECT ME BUT WHEN I CRY IT IS NOT FOR YOU I AM OVERWHELMED BY MYSELF AND YOUR APOLOGIES ARE ONLY KINDLING IN A BONFIRE A WITCH BURNING MY GRANDMOTHER TOLD ME ID GO TO HELL AND I GUESS ITS COMING TRUE

im just a ******* storm chaser, running after anything that could be a hurricane and leaving when its just another ******* sigh i stand in the shadows of broken people and get bored when they hold me instead of ripping me apart, what the **** is wrong with me?ive been listening to your voicemail for the past ******* hour, you want to know why i havent called you back, it took five months to realize you were no hurricane, it took five months for my interest to fade and its my fault, i gave you time to get attached then tore you away like a bandage soaked through and useless im sorry, i thought you were stronger than this at least strong enough to bruise but instead you hold my hand and cry.i cant take this.i don't want your love i want you to destroy me i want you at least to try and im sorry i let you think i was whole enough to balance you but im just a different kind of broken

I WANT INTERLOCKED FINGERS AND SUPPRESSED LAUGHTER IN A CHURCH BUT I GUESS THATS ASKING TO MUCH THATS SELFISH ITS MIDNIGHT AND IM SCRIBBLING UGLY FACES IN A NOTEPAD, IM THINKING ABOUT YOU, I WANT SOMETHING DIFFERENT I DONT WANT TO BE THE ONE ALWAYS LEADING THE ONE ALWAYS HAPPY I WANT TO BE SWEPT ALONG IN SOMEONE ELSES GALEFORCE FOR ONCE AND I WANT SOMEONE TO WANT ME NOT SOME IDEAL THEYVE GLUED ONTO MY SKIN IM NOT DEEP IM NOT SEDUCTIVE IM NOT CLEVER IM JUST IMMATURE AND INSECURE WITH STANDARDS HIGHER THAN I DESERVE

i dreamt of you last week. you cut off my hair while i stared at the floor, wove tapestries to hang on your walls, left me comatose in the kitchen. hasn't it been a while since we spoke? how've you been?

ITS ALWAYS GONNA HOLD A SPECIAL MEANING FOR ME THE WAY YOU LET ME PHOTOGRAPH YOUR BRUISES AND I HID MY CIGARETTES WITH THE NECKLACES MY GRANDMOTHER GAVE ME I HAVENT TOUCHED THEM IN WEEKS BUT ****, IM WRITING ABOUT YOU AGAIN AND I NEED SOMETHING IN MY MOUTH THAT ISNT YOUR NAME

i wanted us to live forever in a whirlwind spinoff universe, falling too fast and laughing too hard to think, your fingernails scratching me enough to bleed, but you called me annabel lee and i wonder why the ******* wanted me to die, but i know i cant blame you because poetry is hard to understand, you can only have one or the other i understand poetry but not people emotion only makes sense in theory, wild chaos and discord, and ive been in love with eris since i was a child, but with your hand in mine i cannot reach  through your ears to pull out your thoughts in verses and try to understand you, and im sorry that i hide my verses from you instead of telling you *i feel trapped

the basement is full of smoke.
i'm hiding from my mother,
clutching a half-full pack a girl gave me before i left.
you are here like vapor.
like displaced sound, a crash from behind while i watch fireworks,
unnoticed sensation,
a spider on the neck while i brush my hair.you are always here,
the smell of nail polish after the red has dried.i can hardly remember how you
really were, how i really felt - you're a strange reaction,
waking up crying and feeling calm.you were not true to me;
true to yourself but never me {or maybe i never noticed,
angry that you changed.}
your memory lives in the nape of my neck,
pained and sore,
stiff after sleeping with my head bent in shame.you are perfume,
thirty bottles, thirty people you wanted to be,
thirty scents mixing and souring in my room.my own blood before i met you,
dry rust on paper, a spell i stopped believing in
before i could finish.
the stars undid themselves when i struck a match.
the moon embraced me when i prayed, and now
i burn my fingers on lighters
and try not to cry over
cold moons.
rituals were comfort.incense smoke,
quartz in the mouth.maybe i never truly believed but
meaning is appealing, solid,
warm weight to fill uncertainty's pit.maybe you were the same.you filled me,
made me feel meaningful, needed me.
sobbed as you tried to eat me alive, i cant blame you.
we all need something -
you need to be coddled.you need a thousand mothers
taking every blow for you.
i need to be idolized, worshiped, constantly assured that i am wanted
but not needed.
we're both selfish, we're both jealous.
monsters in human skins,
using each other and killing ourselves.
green-eyed and growling.

[theres something wrong with her]* , i told him,
[she's beautiful.] *
/cause or symptom?/ he asked, and i shrugged.she was wearing green nail polish
and cheap sandals, drinking bottled water,
i was on the corner like a vagrant,
sundress and sunglasses,
reading far too much into
every movement.
she looked like she tipped taxi drivers far too much,
like she could break every bone
and laugh about it the next day,
and i wanted to **** her.
like that would give me part of her, like an exchange
and not just an act.
{she was looking at her phone and she laughed at god knows what,
a text or a picture or anything but i
wanted to cook for her,
i wanted to sleep with her and still be friends
the next day}
he nudged me and i shrugged,
traced patterns on the sidewalk till she left.
/there's something wrong with you/ he told me. i shrugged.

1.i took a breath, punched the door. he asked if it helped at all,
rubbed his temples when i did it again,
told me to call him when i felt like talking,
we havent spoken since. he isnt important to this story.
what matters is how unsafe i feel just saying your name, how unreal
you make me feel. imaginary and implausible. wish fulfillment so blatant
im amazed i ever thought i was something more
than a myth.  

2. i can't give you what you want/couldn't give you what you want. something like a romance film,
candles on the shore,
not blown out by ocean winds.
something where i cry your name or
kiss you when you shout
instead of screaming back,
perfect plaster queen crumbling
for no one but you.
where i sing and you sigh.
where at least one of us cares.

3. im still not sure who's to blame
my heart is swollen my hands are bloated there is motor oil
pooling in the hollow of my palms, did you do this to me?
did i unravel you? im still not sure what happened. i stopped asking for help a long time ago

4.  i do not feel safe.
you are behind me always.
i am sweating bullets and you are loading your gun.
you are a breakdown waiting to happen.
you are my genes planning treason.

5. you're a fake.you're a fake.you're a fake.
buying me coffee and spitting down my throat like
it evens out in the end.you're so kind.you say youd never hurt me as if
i couldnt see my ******* intestines in your fist. you're a fake.
you're pyrite, fool's gold,
costume jewelry cutting off circulation to my hand.

6. i know everything sounds the same.
i know i give the same speech every time.
i know repetition is getting old and
six breakdowns in the same month is
overdoing it. i was trained from birth to **** up my life
and im exceeding expectations.

7. [image: memorial day card,
'we had nothing worth remembering' inside,
hallmark logo on the back]

8. i didnt really want to be real anyway

this is worse than i thought it would be.this is harder than i thought.
i ******* know i should accept myself but its hard not to believe im broken
when the only model for happiness includes no room for me,
i don't want to be selfish.
sorry for forcing myself into a life never made for me.
i understand you don't care when i find it hard to breathe.
im choking to death and you just want me to hold your hand
while you breathe into a paper bag.
i'm not your friend, im your comfort object.
i want you to care that im in pain.you told me you love me.
you told me im too good to be true.
you like me the same way you like your coffee: sugared;
drowned in milk so you dont taste the bitter.
:it all feels so one-sided: you said,
:i tell you everything.why dont you ever tell me anything:
:i want to help you:
:like you help me, i feel so useless:
i cried and you pretended you didnt see.
you are a sorry excuse for a friend.you are selfish.if i told you i feel like im dissolving
youd ask if this means i love you.
youre corrosive.youre sulfuric acid and i never should have let you inside of me.
god ******* ******.im tired of writing about you.you make me feel unlovable and broken.
there are bones in the backyard of my childhood home.
there are eight rosebushes to choose from and i grew up
scratching myself ****** on the branches.
you like to disembowel anyone who makes me feel loved and when i try to fix myself you ask
why im abandoning you.
its always the same ******* thing.
its always the same thing.you're always crying and im always biting my cheek.
im always lonely and youre always kissing my neck.
its always the same.

they took my hand, held it,
told me how soft it was. {you've never worked a day in your life.}
maybe ive lost track of myself,
forgotten the present for
a glorified past;
i had callouses there.rough armor-skin scraping my arms, or
i thought i did, but
you can never trust the body and how it undoes its own defenses.
i wore away my purpose and
i am waiting to believe i am real.
there are gaps in my mouth and when i breathe i hiss; you told me dont worry,
i still love you,
i made a necklace from your teeth.
her shirt rides up and i think of kissing the small of her back.
somehow i have grown soft,
my thighs give to any hand that presses.my arms have lost their harshness.
i feel unsafe.my clavicle is too thin to be a shield, you told me
you like the way
my skin yields to you, you asked me why
i grow my fingernails so long.
have i always been this vulnerable?i dont like how fragile i feel,
delicate and weak, this is not me.this is not me.
i remember being sharp edges to dig into ribs.
crude bone,
body strong enough at least to hold the door shut.  
identity strong enough at least to sketch a line between me
and you.
stark boundaries of light and dark make me so afraid
that i blur it all to gray.
the back of my hand is streaked red
from all the lipstick ive rubbed off, strangers ask
how i hurt myself so much.when you left your lipstick on my mouth,
i wore it like a bruise
and lost it on the mouth of a nameless boy.
i never meant to grow up like this.i do not feel like myself and
i do not feel anything for you
though i want to.do you remember the first word you realized meant more
than its definition,
the sum of its parts?
my mother told me my twin died in the womb and when i found the word 'implosion,' i knew
nothing would fit better.
i am a slow implosion.
pragmatic destruction, dissociating others,
shrapnel within, never without.
the roof back home is sloped, i think of slipping
while it rains.the trails here are gnarled.
the trees are too tall to climb.
look at this:
im pressing rabbit's feet into your hands, im weaving 4-leaf clovers
into your hair.im filling your pockets with coins. im just unlucky in life, you said.
unlucky in who i give pieces of myself to.
im always betting on the wrong horse, falling for bluffs and parlor tricks,
misdirection, legerdemain,
sleight-of-hand.
take them, i dont want them, you need them more than me.
i dont want luck and complacency, i want to grow rough again, i want to feel safe.
you love me and it hurts, i want my teeth back.you knocked them out but that does not make them yours.
maybe this is how its supposed to be, maybe this is how it works,
maybe love is a ****** brick and soft bruised arms but all i want is my edges back,
caution tape, this girl is
a demolition zone.
you are not in this room and this is what matters.
you have never been in this room and
this is what matters.

how are you?i hope youre well.im damp and sore, but
living.
ive been walking through the rain all day.i know i'm foolish.
i know it rains all the time here and water just makes the blue bleed from my hair.
my shoes are soaked. my knees are muddy,
all my sentences keep breaking before
i can complete them.
sorry for not being pretty while i cry.
he led me through the woods while i slipped in the mud behind him.i dont want to be here.i want to go home
but i don't know how to leave, i need you to lead me back.
sorry.i know its not your job to
clean up after my mistakes,
i keep killing myself for unworthy causes.
tell me how much you need me.tell me you don't love me.
i am not grinning, i'm baring my teeth at my reflection.
he keeps speaking to me.im just trying to watch the rain,
would you do the same?
you're uncomfortable with silence, i know.
your shoulders, sloped, broad but weak.
my lips,  wet from rain, sticky from smoke.
hot-headed and cold-handed, i burned my tongue
on the inside of my own mouth.
when i held your hand, your fingers froze
and broke off one by one.
{frostbite never tasted so sweet.}
did you say that or did i think it?i thought we understood each other.
im biting my cheek and wondering why nothing feels right.
this is the fiftythird glass of water
i've drunk today.i can drink things other than guinness.i know
you dont like me when im drunk.
you dont like me when im high.you dont like me when ive been awake for 72 hours,
biting my knuckles and bleeding on my best shirt,
but thats ok.
ive been fracturing bones in dark rooms all my life.
i broke my shoulder on a closet door,
hiding from a celebration,
no crying so no one hears.
my mouth tastes so bitter, no wonder
you never wanted to kiss me.
don't slam the door so hard.i feel it in my skull like it hit me
and not the doorjamb.
don't ask me if im hungry.in my mind,
ive been vomiting for the past two weeks.
i am piercing my tongue with steel.
i could say it started two years ago
that i fired a shotgun in my mouth and
the wounds said they loved me enough to stay and
ive been spitting buckshot ever since.i could say
two years ago,
i kissed someone who didnt care and now,
just the taste of strawberries makes me want to tear out my tongue, but
you know already know
my mythomania is less a disorder and more
a habit i cultivated
to convince myself i was worthwhile.
i like to pretend something made me this way, something made me
see myself as a broken lock
and not a person.
it hurts to admit i've been like this from birth.
im deconstructing clocks in my head.
im extracting your loose fingernails like
garden spikes from soil.
ive had this dream before.
im descending distorted stairs in the dark,
im walking on sheet ice.
im sleeping until the sun sets and waking up in a cold sweat.i dreamt that i couldnt stop dreaming about you.i dreamt of
gently pressing needles through my tongue
while you read my diary.
i am a house half-constructed.a candle half-lit, and you are a forest half-grown
or half-burned,
sometimes it's hard to tell.
i am waking with knots in my hair for the first time in years.im combing them out.
im drying my hair and thinking of you.
im throwing out my umbrella.

stop talking about god.
you told me you dont believe,* he said.
whats the point of mourning something that was never there?
[its not that i don’t believe,] i said or apologized.
[it’s more that i can’t.]
i wanted to believe in a god that would sell my bones to an artist
to make something more beautiful.i volunteered myself
to every altar i could find,
laid at the feet of the sky till i learned that i am a ******* holocaust.
im a burnt offering  no god would claim.
im covering up my body and pretending it doesnt exist.
strangers grab my waist and i want to be sick.i want to spit acid
like a snake.my friends say im too kind for my own good.
i knew what he wanted but i talked to him anyway
cause he said please.
i always expect to be saved.
suffering doesnt feel real.
i know how you think of me but i talk to you anyway, and
i know who loves me and who
doesnt care,
but id like to know that someone hates me the way i do,
(maybe we could bond over
mutual enemies.)
last night i was sick. last night i puked in my father's garden.
you say you can tell when my smiles are fake so then
why do you just laugh along?
it is two am,
i am at a park by my home,
im waiting for a text from you but it doesnt come
i am a geode.split me open. all you'll find inside is salt.
im sleeping on hardwood floors because the word 'bed'
is still a synonym for 'crime scene,'
'earthquake zone,'
'tsunami warning'.
the world shook last week and i ran to the coast
watching for tidal waves.
i needed god.i screamed to the sky.i committed all the sins i could, but,
stubbornly,
god continued to not exist.
i needed god but god did not need me.i am using past tense to forget that today,
i stole a rosary and nailed it to my wall.
my voice cracks when i shout that i,
i am strong,
i am invulnerable.
there are fences i do not want to scale and doors i do not want to open.
did you break me?did you unmake me?
or did you just taxidermy me,
freeze me in that time,
and all i am now is the organs you threw out,
the heart and guts you didnt need.
i have not suffered; i do not suffer,
i am nerveless and numb.i am a scarecrow,
i do not care when you pick out my button eyes.
you're a papercut and i test knives for a living.
a bruise on the knuckles of a girl who keeps
punching the walls.
a splinter in my palm and i just broke my jaw.
you were just the starting gun and ive been running alone,
slow like through sand,
like a nightmare.
i dont dream anymore, i just
replay jumbled memories, i cant tell
if im asleep or awake.
im at a funeral and im
sketching your face on the back of a napkin;
a ****** composite.
all my family has to say is she'll be a heartbreaker, that one.
they're gonna be crying over her.
my mother tells me its a compliment.
its three a.m. and she asks me why im awake and i
mumble something into the blankets about impossibility.
we're interpreting the bible and he's on the other side of the room,
he's staring at his desk or his hands or nothing at all.
i'm on the roof of some building and im writing a poem and
every time i talk about you you're someone new.  
there was an earthquake while i slept but i pretended it was my heart, i
didnt clean up the broken glass
on the floor.  
i compare myself to natural disasters to absolve myself when really
im a pyromaniac in my own burning home,
i keep digging graves in my backyard and ive finally fallen in.
it’s a matter of fate, an act of god, i wont fix myself but
at least i have an excuse.
its like there are nettles in my arms caressing the nerves.
its like all the false confidence in the world cant change the way
every muscle in my body is clenched so hard
they’ve compressed to stone.
its like i am medusa and ive been alone with only mirrors
for far too long.
ive given up on being eloquent.
ive given up on making sense,
i am not articulate or intelligent or sensible and i was never meant to be an actress.
this poem is an emetic
and the bezoar you left in me will not remain.

your eyes are red like youve been crying but i know youve just been
trying to pour the ocean into your blown pupils.
you told me they were so dark because they were
burned from all the salt you rubbed into them.
you told me they were wide to find the
untouched valleys inside me,
virginal land, unsullied by
the eyes of man.
ha.
ha.
honestly,
i wish i could say theres so much more to me left undiscovered,
unknown by all those who  claimed to love me but, no, they
always discover the same
******* things
that arent even ******* there.
you discover that i'm broken,
a delicate flower of a poet,
whose feelings are gentle eggshells crushed by the hand of life.
discover depths of emotion safeguarded by an iron shell,
"discover" that i just want to be loved, 
is this some sort of sick ******* joke.
im not a ******* eggshell, im not ******* broken,
life hasnt shattered me. life will not shatter me. life has given me calluses hard as stone.
i will live to be old and crooked and sagging,
wearing a full suit of armor,
i will die old and withered.
when emotion catches in my throat,
i rip it out like multicolored scarves,
like a magic trick.
just because i dont choke you with the fabric
doesnt make it any less real.
i dont just want to be loved. i dont need
your love. youre not saving me when you look at me like
your favorite broken doll.
i don't just want to be loved.
i am already loved. i am overflowing with the love i have received,
i am full to the brim, my cup runneth over, i dont need you.
i don't just want to be loved. do you know what i want?
i want you to look at me and not see
the living embodiment of a metaphor,
a walking love poem, a verse in a poem you memorized and mimicked
instead of writing your own,
i could rip your lungs out through your mouth, i dont think you realize
what my body is capable of,
even if my mind is weak.
if i could stop thinking youd be dead on the floor
before i took a ******* breath.
i am not for you.
i am not writing for you,
i am writing to remember how to fall asleep without dreaming about soulmates-turned-strangers
and friends pulling out my teeth.
i am not dreaming for you.
i am not bleeding for you.
i am not for you.
i am not yours.

it is february, and outside it is twelve degrees.
in winters past,
you dragged me to the shore every day to see if this time,
the ocean froze, and we could
walk away from here together.
sometimes you stood in the water for hours.
[but that was long ago.
thats in the past, waiting to be forgotten.]
it is february, and this morning you asked when it would end.
it's been seven thousand days,
you told me it gets better in time. how much time do i have to give?
you threw out every lock in your home.
you bent to kiss the bonfire goodbye and your hair caught the flame like
a hand catching a moth, and now
every room is full of candles pressed wick-to-wick,
melted wax hardening on the floor like cooling lava,
or congealing blood.
aren’t you sick of being somewhere between a natural disaster
and an emergency room tragedy?
aren't you tired of being sad all the time?
arent you sick of wearing the scent of burnt hair like perfume?
aren't you tired of crushed wings in your fist and careless,
accidental strength?
[or perhaps this is your dream, god knows
i've had stranger.]
maybe you always wanted to be a terribly sad monster,
a giant with the blood of a thousand bulls,
a titan preparing to birth
the gods.
picking at the skin 'round your nails till you bleed. broken teeth
embedded in the wood of the stairs.
you wanted to be zeus,
wisdom bursting from your skull like a bullet,
daughters like grey matter,
but you're just a labyrinth.
you're nothing but a prison,
a maze with a monster in the middle,
swallowing children and thread.
were you made for the minotaur or was it born for you?
you've been gathering sickness like moss on cave walls.
you've been pulling up the tiles from the bathroom floor.
last night's dew froze and clothed the stairs in ice.
there's a body floating in the bathtub and you promise it isnt mine
[i don’t know if i believe you].
you are undoing every knot i tied to keep myself together,
you are looking for anything in me to prove that i care. i do, i love you,
i love you like an ox, i love you like a child,
i am bursting with the lymph of every mother in my bloodline and i care for you like my own, but
in your mouth,
"loving" and "mother" don't fit together right.
a mother is someone who has too many monsters in her bed to fight the ones under yours,
"motherhood" is a synonym for "natural disaster,"
and all you can do is try to survive.
at this point i'm inclined to agree.
you make me feel like my womb is full of crude oil
and the distal phalanges of both your hands.
ive been sleeping with statues and dreaming about metal bones.
the only love you know is the kind where your clothes crumple on the floor.
you're always finding someone new to be the minotaur in your heart.
you don’t want theseus to find his way,
trailing thread as he traces mossy walls,
kicking bones aside.
when the minotaur dies,
you'll be nothing but a cave.
you already feel hollow when it sleeps, you say i don’t know if if you’re my minotaur
or another sacrifice.
i say [i don’t know if i’m your friend or
the closest thing to a mother
you’ve ever had.]
you have broken every tile.
you have cleaned the mirror countless times but your reflection still shows.
drink some water. wash your passageways with floods,
you don't need the bones of every failed theseus
littering your veins.
i can teach you to live with a minotaur like
a bezoar in your stomach.

i think i always knew that eventually,
i'd write about you.
i dont like to admit that i remember anyone who's gone
or was never here to begin with but
i've dragged five skeletons from my bed so far and
a wound half-clean is a wound infected.
i dont want to admit that your effect on me lasted longer than i'd hoped
despite my stubborn patience,
waiting for the stains to fade on their own.
i like to pretend that if you saw me as i am now
you might
see me the way i pretended you did
and the way i always felt on the verge of swallowing my tongue
would be mutual.
when i think about love i see you laughing, even though i know
that's not what i felt
but it's the closest i've ever been,
and i think that's good enough.
it's been eight months since we've spoken but i still imagine you reading these
alone and quiet,
or maybe in the midst of sound and laughter with my words
as a welcome cage.
but we're strangers now if we weren't already
and even when i saw you every day and
my poems were the only thing anyone
could respect,
i dont think you ever read them. i never asked you to,
it'd be too personal. and besides,
i knew this feeling wouldn't last.
i know this feeling won't last.
i can still see the way you looked at the ground when you smiled.
can you still see the way i tried too hard?
can you still see the way i felt like my bones were ground to dust
with the effort of not drawing your hands on every blank page
of my sketchbook.
this isn't my poem to write, and
yours isn't my name to say, i know.
i don't know if you were perfect or if i just
didn't know you at all.
don't think of me as weak. don't see me as sad.
just see me as a girl who mixed up all her emotions, a girl who
mistook loneliness for love,
and it stuck.
i don't think of you every day anymore,
but when it hits it hurts.
i don't know if i want to run home and rip apart every street to find you
and be honest for the first time
in my sorry life,
or hide in soggy peat until roots grow from my skin.
i know i don't love you but knowledge changes nothing except maybe
adding shame for feeling sick
anyway.
i'd like to see your sketchbook now.
i'd like to see what you draw now, i'd like to know
if you love your art now
the way you didnt when i knew you.
i'd like to know if you're loved where you are,
like you should be,
and if my name is any more
than an unused entry
in a dictionary youve never used.
ive been wearing clothes you'd probably like.
ive been drinking things you'd probably like.
i think i'm becoming more like you
every day
without wanting to, and i don't know if thats something you'd love
or hate.
this is the twentythird condolence letter i've written to you
but never sent,
but now at least its somewhere other than grafted to the roof of my mouth.
i don't know.
the only places i saw you were heat and concrete and dust
and sometimes
rain so heavy it pinned you to the earth, but here
the soil is so rich i feel like i could burst into leaves if i touch it and
like there are death caps beneath my skin,
growing in the damp air, i dont know.
i dont know .
sometimes this place is so pretty it makes me sick.
reminds me of how far-removed i am from anyone who makes me feel
real.
is there another version of me in your mind?
one more similar to the body i left behind,
more similar to the one i pretended to be for you,
do you think of me and panic? do you think of me to feel real?
my fingers have been hooked through your clavicle for the past two hours and i still
can't look your skeleton in the face
without feeling ashamed
for feeling.
you know a language i don't.
tell me the truth in a way i dont understand
so it's not another thing i have to know.
was my act convincing or were you looking at the ground
so the pity didn't show on your face?
was the reason you stopped watching me draw because you were afraid
one day
you'd see yourself on the page?
it hasn't happened yet.
i hope it never does, but sometimes
i can't help picturing you laughing,
looking down like my eyes are too bright
to look directly at.
sometimes i can't help picturing us in the heat back home,
sitting in the grass and
neither of us is crying, but i think
the stains you left on my skin are probably
art enough.
i have polished your bones bright white.
i have stuffed the eye sockets with paper so i can look you in the face.
shame fractures my sternum just from
the line of your jaw,
but the roof of my mouth is clear, and my sketchbook is still someplace where
i havent burned your image.
maybe tonight you won't be in the background of all my dreams. maybe tonight
i'll dream of saying goodbye.

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.

there is no such thing as an antihero,
only a villain
who has found an exuse,
an antagonist who can speak more prettily than
all the others
who can lie holes straight through
the hero's
heart,
find their place in the universe
and blot it out on the map because
the universe
does not tend towards anything
but solitude.

you will find yourself all alone.

you will find yourself all
alone
and you can snap the neck of every doll you own but
despair will never be anything more than
an unrequited love, an
attachment that you never grew out of, a
high school crush that you stapled to your heart so as you grew it was like
a gastric bypass
you cannot hold as much love in your heart
as your mother
said you could
but you can kiss and sigh and with every moue you'll wonder just
why
your chest feels fit to burst when you get any deeper than
touch
heart fit to rupture you are the main villain
of every book
i've read
the antagonist in every story you are
the angry girl whose doll parts
lay in pieces
at her feet
whose bomb will detonate if you get too close
{the character i could relate to the most the character i hated the most the character
i talked to whenever i could and
memorized every line to replay, god
i hate
the way you speak
and i want
to hear
it more}
i ripped out your staples and added my own.
{despair will never reciprocate but
i understand you i
do
because we are the same and i hate you because
you hate yourself
and i could give you nightmares every night and
listen to your motives
every
morning
'people are disgusting'
you said
as if it was
a revelation}
you're not ****** up, just out of luck
because four-leaf clovers can't survive droughts.
you are seventyeight percent water
and every drop you spent on
drowning
the background characters
and every doll on your bedroom floor
{i love the way you cry when you laugh because every time
i hope
that one, that one tear
is the final drop wrung from the shroud
of a sailor a burial at sea
and you will crumble
into
dust}
you angry girl your eyes
are a yellowing bruise on the storyline
your backstory is a rash
on the protagonist's hands
and all your inner demons told you you were not alone but
you explained them away and
appeals to pity left you empty.
i will rip out all your staples i
will make you
seventyeight percent
saltwater
my heart is a mirror you can find yourself there and
reassemble yourself
from all your broken parts
i will be the blueprint from which
you rebuild
yourself

{a story is nothing
without
a villain}

you're a cns depressant i
knew from the moment i met you cause
i remember tasting you before:
the bottle of white
***
i stole from my mother like
fire and bitterness and
damp cloth across my mouth
drank you dry and
felt a little less volatile
fire fighting fire no room for hurt when i can just
lie here
and count every eye as it closes i
am argus:
all-seeing, hundred-eye
and everything i try to protect
is stolen when my eyes
close
{scatter my eyes on feathers
and never let them shut again}
deep draughts of you i
remember
your taste
and the way my skin buzzes and mind numbs
when you burn my throat.
you're a cns depressant and i,
the loneliest child on the west coast you thought
the california scene
was supposed to be
brighter than this
but i've lived here all my life and let me tell you:
every morning is
chill grey skies
and fog
that tastes tonic
without the gin, or
to put it differently:
everything i don't need not
fire just
damp chill
{i'm starting to think that
every california love story
is set in death valley because here
the ocean is cold in the height of summer
and the streets are empty at 5 am when i decide maybe
i should stop
writing
and make sure the world is still there}
and for me,
a child
with an empty bottle
and an empty room,
you were a monster
that i prayed i would find beneath my bed
you are a fugue state i dropped into willingly you
let me forget
that the water is cold
let me forget that this life
is the least compelling plot I’ve ever read
and i’m tempted to skip to the end
golden state fugue state in death valley sunburn girls
shed their skins like snakes and i
lust after empty husks
but i grew gills when i tried to drown in the bay i could
never be as hollow as that i
bite my lip and hope i'll bleed this time
instead of just aching
{no more aches just fire and fog if
i bleed
catch it in an inkwell you know
black ink
is worth more than my blood
send my letters to the red cross and spill red across the pages}
no more aches just fire and fog i
always liked myself more when i was on a stage
hope this story will skip to the end
cause i don’t think I can take another apathetic word i wish
this narrator
had drowned before her gills could form
but i feel a little less alone with my hand around your neck
you’re a cns depressant you  
held my hand as i burned
you made me a chain of four leaf clovers and i swallowed every one i think
you made a bad decision
when you chose to help me survive

only dead boys hold insects like they're something
special
only a dead boy would let a mantis in his heart and
preying was always a better descriptor
because hymns burned in my throat and
i scratched a cross into my palm but i was never lucky enough to scar
but
oh, dead boy
bug lover
enduring a thousand lashes to save the soul of a beetle  -
i'll help you peel off all your scabs to make sure they scar
thick tissue skin memory sometimes you think scars are the closest you'll get
to a wedding ring
you're a suicide king i think a kingdom of hearts was never the safest place for you i
don't think you understand the way your subjects' hearts are strung because
entomology entomos everything you love is cut to bits
and on the fourteenth of february you told me
the only purpose of a flower
was to hold
a spider
inside
and i guess that was why you painted all your walls with roses i
hope your garden  smells as sweet
covered in your misfortunes
only a dead boy would let
a praying mantis so close
to his neck
oh, you freak. disgusting.
i ate the last one that let me this close.
you told me {if i die
leave my body
in the forest
by
an anthill}
maybe you don't realize we were doomed from the start or maybe you're just naïve but
honey you're a dead boy and
corpses don't fall in love.
[you're so genuine it hurts and i think
i could teach you how to be a fake -
nobody likes an honest man
i could teach you how to hate the world but you said

{the only one
i hate here
is me}]

freakish child.
all you see in every rorschach is mantes and
decapitations and
wedding rings you are an aberration,
suicide king entomologist your throne room
was full of termites.
with hallowed cheeks and hollowed churches,
i will assure that you scar
dead boy, if you die
i will put maggots
in your chest

he only wants you in the way that means
he can wrap himself around you like a cocoon to help you
change you'll be
a butterfly
something different from what you are which is
flawed so flawed i don't want to touch you don't want
to talk to you just
write poems about the way your hands fist in the pockets of your jacket
i hope you'll go with him because
no matter how many poems i write about the way you
hurt and hate and hope in helpless hollows i know
it'll still burn
like a rope you tried to catch when you fell but
it just caught the skin of your palms
[please don't ever open my notebook you
look at it sometimes when i'm writing i
don't ever want you to see the way
i romanticize
your pain it's not
beautiful or poetic it's just sad
i wish you were happy but i just keep
writing poems about
your misery
and when you surface when you emerge from your cocoon i will
write odes dedicated to the selfishness
that would keep you hurting so i could
feel something when i look at you]
he only wants you in the way that
stitches want an open wound and
i know you want to be mended but no,
no,
nobody can fix you but you and they,
they will try but just
stitch embroidery
into your back
you are the seamstress and the shredded quilt:
you can stitch yourself together you just need to find the thread
and love is no substitute
for a sharp needle.
don't unclench your fists for
any lover who promises to
fix you
don't shotgun old wounds like thick smoke
if they promise anything more
than to hold them
in their
lungs
until the pain eases
just a little.
he will cocoon you
and let you out confused
and hurt
and hating yourself because you didn't change
you are
not
a butterfly
you will not wake up beautiful:
just learn to be full because the end of the word
is all that matters
and the last words of a relationship
are the most honest.

when you stitch yourself together
i will wear the rope that caught your palms like
a silk collar
pour your perfume like lighter fluid
and burn my notebook
and hope that no one writes ballads
to your clenching fists
again

if you were comatose i wouldn't worry so much**

everything i write i write for you so when you read this please stop and
close your eyes and
notice me leaning against your back and reading over your shoulder sometimes i
reread my words and try to imagine how you feel when you
read them
but i read them and i feel so empty i hope you don't feel the same because
people have told me i made them cry but
i find that hard to believe when i just make myself
bored
just know i'm curling around your feet i'm hoping my words will help you when you want to hurt
i'm hoping you know i wrote this for you because
i know you read this in the dark in your room in solitude with
the light of your screen turning you
pallid and blue but
you know
blue is better than red
black words on a white screen i read once that monotony is ataractic but it
just makes me itch and
i hope i'm an anomaly and you're part of the norm because i don't know how to make you feel
something i don't know but
i'm trying everything i can
i want you calm i hope my words can be
a soporific for you they say
that you're not alive unless you hurt unless you never stop moving but
in that case maybe i want you in a coma because
i saw what
being alive
did to you
please sleep they say it isn't art if it doesn't make you
uncomfortable if it doesn't make you itch but
artistry was never in my future anyway i just want you to have my words when
you want to test your nerves to see if they're
picking up any signal at all because
your emotions are flatlining but maybe the physical sensation's still there and
you are so ragged and i hope i smooth your edges at night when you can't sleep and you seek out
the light that makes you pallid and words
written just for you and
maybe that night you won't
itch so bad
i wrote this for you because i know when you're alone with pallid light and music you
want to hurt but please
close your eyes i'm right behind you i'm
leaning over your shoulder and trying not to cry because
you don't need another burden cause
all your thoughts are
the heaviest material on earth but i can make it better
i can make my words meaningless enough that they can lift you up just
a little more you
don't have to stand on your own my words can hold some of the weight because
maybe you grew up too fast or maybe not at all cause
i can tell your body is far too heavy for your heart to support and
sometimes your hands are too far away for blood to reach them
cause a pulse can only do so much and
sometimes it feels like simply living is another type of malaise but
maybe i can ease that just for the minute it takes for you  to read this and
close your eyes and
feel me against your back i
just make myself bored but maybe i can help you
i hope my words are so monochrome they help you sleep
i hope my words are so empty they're like
air sacs to help you stay upright  i
hope nothing i say resonates with you because
the world gives you enough to swallow you don't need one thing more
my words can be your sleeping pills
i wrote this for you so you could sleep easy tonight
and i'll hold your hand and hope you don't dream

roll with the punches baby try not to shatter while you wait to
feel it
it might take a while for every synapse to come alive but
i promise you'll feel it in the end
light up like a christmas tree with every nerve impulse 100 watts your body
will light up the room.
you cast shadows on the moon and i wonder why
is it so cold?
(this wasn't what i wanted when i picked up a pen,
but it seems
like every poem becomes part of you
your blood runs in these pens and i can't help writing about you and your
talus -
that word means both
jagged rocks when you look down from a cliff and oh is this what you want
and the bone of your heel
that you grind into my chest and ****,
i think
that sums you up
pretty well.)
because your sparks were always the best thing about you,
when you short-circuit and sputter and all your lights flicker your synapses
have more life than they know what to do with
roll with the punches and cradle your cheek and be grateful that
at least you didn't crack
because electricity and water don't mix and you've killed enough sharks
in your lifetime.
you don't need another funeral on the mind
when you're still watching the procession
of your own -
(or maybe it's just a fantasy
which is
more likely than not,
you were never able to face that talus
at the bottom
or your christmas lights sputtering and
stopping) -
you watch your own funeral and breathe and i
pray
to god for a miracle
because your measured breaths are the saddest thing i've ever seen because i know
you're just breathing by eights

[eight protons eight neutrons eight seconds in and out
atomic number eight processes to stay alive]

the periodic table hung on your wall like a map of the world you
breathe by eights and i pray harder and breathe ragged you were always more measured than me like
you're morse code and i'm an earthquake
you're heart rate and i'm arrhythmia
you're chemistry and i'm alchemy and you disprove me with every breath
you the child of bright mathematics i crumble in your gaze
but still you short-circuit and i stroke your hair and breathe ragged while you sputter
your synapses can't hold all your life so i'll conduct the overflow
ground your talus in my chest and i will take all your flickers for my own.
it might take a while
but you'll feel it
i promise
because it's not so cold with your short-circuits in my chest and i bet it's not so numb
with my pens scratching your arms
you light up and i wonder how you can breathe so steady
with all this smoke
in the air
(i was breathing  ragged already but you said asthma suits me and
i guess you're right because
you were always the one with all the elements memorized while i
struggled to remember that air
could be something other than
painful)
you short-circuit and i stroke your hair and pray
for your numbers to add up
this time
and you sigh and disprove me
again
because i only live in your flickers and sputters and my
ragged breath
and i pray you will flare brighter light up stronger because
when you feel that punch
i can't conduct that impulse.
roll with the punches baby you'll feel it i promise it
just takes a while
breathe by eights keep that heart rate steady
you imagine your funeral procession and sputter
i breathe ragged baby i will take all your misfires
and write odes to your sparks
just be ready for that feeling when it hits.

i spent a year as a ghost and when the equinox came i choked on every sunset i had seen and passed out in your attic, i'll just wait here until you realize the chains don't rattle anymore and maybe you'll wonder what happened to that unwanted guest or maybe you'll just be thankful it's gone, maybe my ectoplasm will drip through the attic floor and into your bed and with  a passenger in your dreams they'll be even lonelier than before i'm sorry i keep corroding a hole in your heart but i can't help the way my ghost-self falls and when it's gone altogether you'll be a ghost of your former self, walking in the shell of your life glazed eyes glazed words glazed world a ghost with a body is the worst kind of all cause they never fade away to heaven they just linger and linger and linger until they ROT and you can't forget that a ghost was there not with that body on the floor and could you have helped them it's hard to tell you never were an exorcist but maybe if you tried hard enough you could have put some of your life in that body or just ripped the ghost free and ended the misery, heart corroded through and i in my ectoplasm will wait in your bed wait for your shell-body to give up the charade each night and with my arms holding you you'll be lonelier than before - i spent a year as a ghost and cried over your bright eyes every night, i spent a year as a ghost but now, i the ghost of a ghost and you the living ghost in a breathing corpse, we're a modern romance horror story of the eternal kind, and when your heart's corroded through i'll hold you so tight but for now i will wait in your attic, putrefying ectoplasm and bitter sunsets, i never felt this much when i breathed and now it's caught up with a vengeance out for blood when i have none to spill i'll just lie here and choke and wait for this to pass this will pass this will pass this too shall pass, you move below and gam zeh ya'avor i pray this for you that your bitter life shall too pass, i spent a year as a ghost and watched you moan every night i spent a year as a ghost and watched you curled up on linoleum the only thing i could do was sink inside and try to absorb some of what you felt but i think all i did was corrode you further, i'm sorry i'm so sorry that my body is acid and my arms just eat you through, i tried to be your friend but i just made you lonelier your dreams are so empty when you're held by a ghost, they say you only dream of people you know so it's no wonder you dreamt of nothing everyone disappeared so fast it was hard to believe they'd been there at all, a mirage a puff of smoke you never really knew and that fled when it got ***** and dressed in all the white clothing you owned you laid on the bathroom floor and breathed smoke you laid on the floor and ground your knuckles into your eyelids as my ectoplasm dripped into your open eyes and cupid was a demon that ripped at your chest and laughed cupid was a demon and you brought that demon to your bed again again i cried i cried and you bled from all the scratches in your chest and s i g h e d, cupid hissed snarled bit but you know everybody has their flaws closer so much closer you held and cupid ripped though to the other side i told you i told you so but you just sit on your bed with your back against the wall and your hollow torso bleeds you sit on your bed eyes blank eyes glazed and bleed and i drip in your chest, i tried to warn you i tried but now i'll just lay in your attic and wait because the chains don't clank anymore to give you some kind of company in your empty house empty life, maybe you'll notice and here you can find me - the floor of your attic was always the closest i could get to heaven.

there is black at the end of every miracle
and the base of every rainbow where the colors drip
and mix in the sickest sort of chorus.
color and rain and atmospheric moisture,
you kneeled under a rainbow and prayed;
water in your alveoli paint in your bronchi,
you inhaled all your art
to make yourself prettier on the inside -
{but that doesn't work when everything you paint
is uglier than anything else:
broken ***** girls
and rusted knives and rotten fruit -
how can you expect to be beautiful with a rotting apple
for a heart?
you're an abandoned orchard,
falling to seed when you once fed a nation,
dry earth dead trees rotten rotten fruit
remember your glory days and cry}
you were a blackbird but time plucked all your feathers
you were a blackbird but now, oh,
with all your yellow blood,
canary in a coal mine you knew it was too late.
you were the first to be tragic.
the first to choke on coaldust -
the road to el dorado is paved in coal
and all the gold is smudged in black from the men who sought riches
but brought with them misery.
canary in a coal mine you died in el dorado,
canary in a coal mine you died in a city
of your blood.
there is black at the end of every miracle and the beginning of every tragedy
but if all goes well it'll be all
blues and reds
by the end of the story.
drowned and bled,
primary colors for your finale.
you knew these colors would be your end, blue and red blue and red
and you sought out yellow,
canary in a coal mine, ***** el dorado,
yellow hope yellow fear
primary colors like building blocks,
carbon the base of the universe
blueredyellow the base of the paintings you inhaled,
blueredyellow and carbon coal.
you were a blackbird and blueredyellow in the reflections of your wings,
oily rainbows on your back
primary colors in your lungs,
and all your gaunt thoughts envelop you you never should have tried
to be beautiful -
a tragic hero can only do so much before falling apart
a tragedy can only go so far before it becomes comedy.
you inhaled all your paintings and they live in your lungs
live and rot and cry because you never painted happiness
{it's hard to paint something that doesn't exist,
it's hard to paint something you've never known -
abandoned orchard you rot beside the highway and cry.
tell yourself happiness doesn't exist,
cause that's better than knowing
it's there
but you're just
not
worthy}
blackbird canary-blood apple-heart
do you even know who you are anymore?
all the broken ***** girls in your lungs
and the crying boys in your mind -
you never knew who you were,
fragmented as you are -
all your masks are just
sick echoes of the parts of you that wouldn't burn,
all your paintings are just sick echoes of the parts of you
scattered over el dorado.
gather yourself up,
knit yourself back together -
make your nest in a flak suit and sleep dreaming of you.
the coal burns around you and you don't stop singing
you will not be the only tragedy in this mine.

so like
i know this isn't the classiest way of doing things
and i apologize in advance for posting my proposal
on the bulletin board
of this skeezy coffee shop -
no offense to the owners
please don't throw this letter away -
but last week
you stole my bike

it was a great one
not shiny or fancy or anything, but it worked well for me
worked for the past four years
and the twenty years before that
when it was still my dad's
and he rode it to the post office every day to
help letters get where they belong
(maybe letters like this one, isn't that romantic
maybe he's guiding this
thanks dad, you're the best)
and passed it on when his knees froze up
and i rode it to this skeezy coffee shop every day -
sorry to the owners
(again)
but i buy your ****** lattes every day
least you can do is let me propose -
but then last week
i left it outside
and didn't lock it
(fate, see)
and you stole my bike

i think
you were probably walking by -
maybe about to come get a ****** latte
from this skeezy coffee shop
(sorry)
but then something caught your eye
i think you saw all the emotion invested in my bike.
two decades of getting letters where they belong.
four years of ****** lattes.
and well
who can resist so much meaning
spread out in the open for anyone to take?
and i mean
since you saw it there,
didn't just say 'oh'
'a bike'
like everyone else,
you were probably meant to have it.
it's a piece of my heart
(the bike i mean)
and now you have it

or maybe you just liked the color
and like
i do too
green is a great color

i like green
you like green
you wanna go out sometime

we could go on a bike ride
except
you stole my bike

anyway
i don't think the bulletins are supposed to be this long
but it's an important one
so maybe it's okay this time
so if you see someone with an old green bike
tell them i'm in the skeezy coffee shop
i'm the one drinking the ****** latte
and holding a jewelry box

is it winter where you are?
no snow
or blizzards, just
chill fog
and frost.
the winter of a city
that gave up long ago.
--------------------------------
winter seems to follow you.
damp grey mornings
skulking at your feet like a beaten dog.
whimpering in mist
and growling in
weak thunderstorms
that can't quite wash away the clouds.
kick december in the ribs
because you know it will always come back
to sleep at your feet.
winter seems to follow you
but
i could be wrong.
--------------------------
i know all about stormchasers
but you're so much
sadder
than that
[pathetic like a beaten dog]
not chasing death
or danger
just defeatism.
chasing defeat and hopelessness
and grass-made-glass
by the frost of the night before.
---------------------
is it winter where you are?
is december shivering at your door?
in my room it is fall,
and all the rotting leaves
remind me of you.
------------------------
is it winter where you are?
you've evaded the summer all your life
hot air
and sun
killing the clouds.
the indian summer will catch up with you
and september
will melt you
through.
pathetic puddle of defeatism.
aggregated mist
and fog
like a beaten dog,
sinking into the deepest blues
and grays
but oh
you were always
the patron saint of denial.
------------------------------
rip me apart like the letters you never sent
postmarked 'tomorrow, tomorrow'-
but tomorrow never came.
[it's hard to tell dawn from dusk
when the sky is always
gray.]
runaway notes from a foreign season.
rip me apart and i won't think of you anymore.
rip me apart
and all your apologies,
condolences
and accusations
will be scraps of paper under dry leaves.
-----------------------------------
i'm tired of following my dreams
when they just lead me off the cliffs.
you follow winter into the sea
and drown a whimpering dog.

and i've been tired for so long i can't remember how alertness tastes
because boredom with life is a habit i could break
with a bullet
and a lapse in cowardice.
and when the planets align i know i could
but mars is falling and pluto,
pluto crumbled while i watched the rain.
my roman candles are alight under the clouds
and i let the rain drown the fuse -
i'm afraid to be awake.
stillborn child, i was d.o.a
why change that now?
all these pyrotechnics just
reek of desperation
so i drop mine in the lake where they belong.
with bullets on my breath i watched the rain
while pluto crumbled above
a negligent god let the universe fall,
a negligent god let words of love
be scribbled on the walls of his church.
i'm tired of life and death would be a nice vacation
but i don't speak the language
and the exchange rate is too high
so i sit by the runways
and pretend i'm leaving too.
i watch terminal patients die
and put myself in their place.
dark tattoos below the eyes
like a bad decision
another fight lost.
throw the fireworks in the gutter
and hope the sky stays dark
tonight
roman candle heart sodden with rain,
i wouldn't know what to do with consciousness if i had it.
i fell asleep by the runways and dreamed
that i lived forever
unrequited adoration,
a one-sided love affair
with death.
all my idols were runaways
and i worshiped them like an eclipse
i worshiped everything that devoured itself
and anything that dared approach
they said **** your heroes
and i dropped cyanide in a whirlpool.
the balance between insomnia
and narcolepsy
is fragile
and my inner ears burst when i tried to retrieve my
fireworks
from the bottom of the lake.
too tired to stay asleep,
i watch the rain
and catch fragments of pluto on my tongue.
dead nerves, damp fuse
alexithymia and apathy
lie along my veins like cyanosis
blue lips,
blue lips -
neptune in my mouth like a bitter aftertaste.
pluto below my eyes,
mars drowning at the bottom of the lake.
if the planets were aligned this would fly true,
but the threads are tangled
and it's another casing at my feet.
infinity is not a number, only something you can
reach for
or run from,
cowering in the safety of ze
ro.
the heresy of nonexistence,
the concept of nothing vs the promise of heaven.
in a whirlpool i found my calling.
in a whirlpool i devoured myself
and spat myself back out again,
dissatisfied with the sour taste of
stagnation.
i missed boredom when it was gone,
ached with the hole it left
and the sudden shock of
consciousness.
you know boredom has a smell?
it smells like honeysuckle
and fog
and apples rotting on the ground because
the harvest always passed us by.
i found one of those apples
and filled up the hole boredom left.
rotting autumn in my chest,
apple-heart,
ennui like a second skin
or first language.
i tried to learn another but it remains,
the language i think and smother in.
      you know
in all languages but this
my name means nothing,
just a collection of syllables to spill
out of a foreigner's mouth

in the language of death my name means nothing
but it's all i know how to say

in the fog of a cold summer,
you shivered like a seismograph
tremors assaulting your faultlines
and i took you in my arms,
zipped you into my ribcage to keep you warm -  
you shivered to the rhythm of my pulse,
hot blood exiling
the summer chill.
from the fog of a cold summer,
i took you into my bed,
plucked your feathers
to keep you with me;
made dreamcatchers from your feathers
to keep the nightmares from your mind.
shivering seismograph,
can't fly with bare wings.
through the fog of a cold summer,
i walked with you,
held your hand
anchoring you to my side,
shackles between  us
keeping you safe
[you can't fly in this fog
little seismograph:
the clouds will eat you up
the fog will wrap around you
and dash you against the rocks.
oh, you are beautiful,
but you won't be when you're
bleeding broken on the talus,
your bones escaping your skin.
blood breeds art
but what use is art when you're gone,
when you've found your feathers and flown]
in the fog of a cold summer,
you asked to leave.
i need to fly, you said,
i need to become lost
in arms of mist
and fog.
your ****** arms aren't enough,
your ****** arms are staining me
corporeal.
just keep your arms around me,
just remain in my ribs,
just close your eyes
and let me be your
air currents,
lifting you above the talus.
i can fill all your fault lines,
i can ossify
all your fissures.
i'll fill your hollow bones with my
hot
blood
and exile the summer chill.
in the fog of a cold summer,
in the wake of a muscle spasm,
you fell from the sky
and i caught you,
plucked your feathers
so you could never fall again.
little seismograph,
shivering to the rhythm of my pulse,
i will keep you
so warm.
i'll keep you safe
in my cage.

ah, love,
you're a walking tribute to anarchy
and i love to hear you preach -
boxcutter lips wrapping around
the holiest words of blood and viscera,
rage and fear
that clench in the throat like a diamond called from coal.
in the name of the lord you drink the sun
and the burn is familiar,
an old friend
the father of the righteous fire
that drives you to drag down the sky,
or drag up the earth -
anything to approach
empyrean heights:
in your sermons you scale mountains to break into heaven,
dragging your scars
behind you.
you break glass just to prove that nothing lasts.
every manifesto is another gospel
in your holy book,
your promise
that promises mean nothing.
love me like a miscarriage,
hold me like a cancer -
prescribe diamorphine to the world
and watch it choke on numbness.
those who fear pain
deserve to feel nothing at all,
you say,
those who fear pain
deserve to never die.
bestowing the world with
the worst curse you know.
boxcutter lips
ripping words to shreds.
molotov eyes
and paper lungs.
your paper-lantern lungs
shine through your back
and you smother them with cotton to **** the sickly glow.
the sun you swallowed is still pooled in your lungs,
and it shines like a blasphemous joke -
green light in your sick midnight,
a burn to rival your molotov eyes,
your righteous fire.
you live like steel to forget your paper lungs.
brothers, sisters,
have you heard the good news?
you won't be the first to die.
of course not, love,
we can all see the collision course you're on.
walking tribute to anarchy,
you're crafting your own doom.
{oh, but i'll go down with you, love,
i'll carry all your scars for you
and blow out the sun in your lungs -
let me show you, love,
what i can do.
let me show you how sick i can be -
i've a twisted mind and i'd like to prove it,
like to take all your scars upon myself
and burn down heaven
if they won't hear your sermons.
i am your weapon so wield me well.
i am your weapon
and together
we will bring the heretics
low.}
ah, love,
you're a walking tribute to anarchy
and i want to watch you suffocate
when your fire burns the last of the oxygen.
your footsteps are ashes and broken glass
and i follow
close behind.
you scream
and curse
and cry to heaven
and i smother the sun in your lungs.
in your sick midnight sermons,
heaven pulsates like an open wound
and i stitch you up,
keep the gangrene from your gospels.
ah, love,
in your throat
coal turns to diamond.
rage and fear
behind boxcutter lips.

i heard a girl once say,
if i could
i would drown
in poetry.
i would throw myself
into a sea of verses
and sink in splendor.
oh, no, i thought -

no you wouldn't.

if there was a sea of poetry
the coasts would be ringed with barbed-wire
and electric fences,
and signs that yelled warning
keep out
undertow
and swim on risk of death -
the beach would be littered with broken glass
from all the drunks that took their last drink
on the edge of a stanza.
the water would be turbulent
and *****
and cold,
and you might admire it one twilight,
when the sun is drowning and turning the sea
red,
and you'd say, oh
that's beautiful.
and you'd take a photo of yourself
grinning with the sunset at your back
and leave.

i heard a boy once say,
if i could
i would drown in your poetry.
oh, no, i thought.
no you wouldn't.
why is drowning such a common theme
in the minds
of readers of poetry?
i imagine it seems
romantic,
in some twisted morbid way -
but i think seeing a bloated corpse
pallid with seawater
missing a limb
or two
would put these delusions to rest.
i imagine seeing
the corpse of a poet
missing a heart
or mind
would put these delusions to rest.

you don't want to drown in poetry.

you want to watch me drown.

i heard a boy once say
if i could
i would drown in your poetry.
so says the boy who calls himself an artist
because he can play
'hey soul sister'
on guitar
and will prove it every chance he gets.
you don't want to drown in my poetry,
and even if you did
i doubt you could -
if poetry was bodies of water
you would throw yourself into a hotel swimming pool
miles away from the polluted lake
where i wash in stagnant water.
if poetry was bodies of water
you'd have someone build a koi pond in your backyard
and call yourself a poet.
if i could
i would drown in your poetry,
he said
and i told him to prove it.

if i could
i would drown in poetry,
she said.

the only people who say
they want to drown in poetry
are the people who don't know what it means.

the only people who drown in poetry
are the people who have no choice.

that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or a memoir of a man who remembers nothing but
danger that passed him by,
ruffling his hair as it passed,
ignoring his pleas:
stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something,
he would say
(that could be the subtitle
or the blurb,
something to draw the reader in; if floating bodies aren’t enough)
i just want to mean something,
and near-death experiences are the flavor of the day.
i’m not brave enough to do it myself,
i’m not a hero
or a villain,
just a lonely boy, undefined individual,
and your 350 teeth can help me mean
so much more,
350 individual teeth that float above my head,
falling out one by one as you bloat with seawater
(and here the first chapter would end,
here we would break for intermission,
audience smiling over martinis.
only 32 teeth, did some fall out?
too many maraschino cherries will do that to you.
too much sugar on the rim of that glass)
dead sharks in the current and none glance twice
i keep yelling but they just
deflect my bubbles,
and the surface swallows them like the heartless ***** she is
i keep yelling but they just move farther
i keep yelling but stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something.
i just want some blood on my hands
is that so much to ask?
i just want some of my blood in the water,
to be a survivor
or a victim
(whichever gets more press coverage;
who cares about a memoir that nobody reads?
who cares about a memoir where nobody gets hurt?)
i just want shark teeth in my heart,
he would say,
i don’t want to make a mark on the world,
i want the world to make a mark on me.
that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or the eulogy of a boring man.

paint me the way i used to be
before your vermilion dried in my veins
and clotted in my heart.
paint me the way i was
when my arms were lined with
yellow lace
and my very existence was a symbol.
once upon a time, in a far-away motel,
you painted my chest with green.
it looks like the forest floor, i said,
green moss and leaves,
life and growth.
you laughed soft,
dipping your brush in olive,
and told me it was gangrene.
the good only die young, you said,
tragic brushstrokes blooming on my chest.
i whispered words to you in the night,
and you tried to do the same
but all you managed was to mumble colors and techniques,
waiting until daybreak to show me what you meant
colors and shapes in the cold light of dawn.
february choked you
and you were a study in blue:
“cerulean figure with palette,”
“cerulean figure at window,”
“cerulean figure trying to find words that mean the right thing,
but coming up empty
again.”
you loved to hear me speak
but hated to respond
so you’d draw for me instead.
on a bus running from the city
you drew a picture of me,
face like christ upturned to heaven
halo of refuse ‘round my head.
the savior of abandoned things
the messiah of rot,
who would die for the soul of every landfill -
you drew me bleeding by a dumpster,
holy bruises on my arms.
paint me the way i used to be,
before you taught me of cangiante and notan
before i spent all my words on you,
ripped the pages from the dictionary
to explain your thoughts to you.
paint me the way i used to be
when my heart was yellow lace
and every word was alive.
paint me the way i used to be
and i’ll drown myself in your watercolors.