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

her mouth was sandpaper.

her mouth was sandpaper
and she spoke like
a smooth surface,
words scraped into fluidity
like a wooden sphere,
turned over behind teeth ‘til all friction
is lost.
she spoke like the walls of a birdhouse
in the room of a dead carpenter:
pretty unassembled things.

her mouth was sandpaper
and every kiss chafed,
rubbing raw my lips
and tongue
crafting with each touch
drawing blood like
juice from an apple,
like sap
from wood already cut from the tree.

her mouth was sandpaper
and she told me
i bite my lips,
rip at
the inside of my mouth,
cannibalize myself cell
by cell.
bone saws in her mouth.
the only difference between teeth of jaws
and saws
is mercy
(and she swallowed her mercy long ago).

her mouth was sandpaper
and she spoke like a carpenter’s hands:
rough palms,
tough pads,
a utilitarian artist
a crafter of dead flesh.
a mortician for dryads
and kodama.
the art and the artist
in lips
tongue
and teeth.

her mouth was sandpaper
and i brought mine to hers
again and again,
her bitten-rough lips
opening like doors to
purgatory.
less entrapment than addiction -
returning once more to nails and hammers,
hell’s blacksmiths below
heaven’s painters above.
coming back home
to the space between,
to bone saws
and a carpenter’s hands.

her mouth was sandpaper
and her voice was carpentry,
her teeth bone saws
her words
birdhouse walls.
her mouth was purgatory
but her hands
were hands.

her mouth was sandpaper.
i held her hand
and chafed my lips raw.

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 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.

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.