A little girl holds her marbles in the bottom of her shirt
The boys play for keeps, and they cheat
She grasps the cool glass to her warm chest through the fabric
As if her integrity is fragile,
Like she was ashamed that she wanted to cheat when her marbles were taken away
The teacher asks why she holds herself like this
Tells her that the boys can see her stomach
As if something will be stolen before her body is full grown
Her belly button has never seen so much sunlight- or so many eyes
The glass breaks on the pavement as she covers herself
And if dignity were a porcelain doll, she’d be broken, too.

I call my mother after dance class so she can tell me not to waste my time on frivolous motion
I tell her I am reinventing a body
That boys stole parts before they were full grown
That if I learn to bend in new ways, I won’t break when they play for keeps and the eyes are on the outside
The broken marbles at recess make new people.

I see a little girl in a garden crying over her dead roses
She asks me how the garden can live after watching a beautiful thing die
I don’t know, I tell her
I tell her they are still beautiful somewhere in her past
That she’ll look at photographs one day and not remember when they died
But I know that she will
She tells me she doesn’t want to live when beautiful things have to die
I tell her that she is a beautiful thing
In her soft victorian dressing gown,
She is so young
I saw her framed in a museum once.
I wake up to two am in a college dorm room and start the day because I know that girl is dying somewhere
Sometime too long ago for me to be mourning
I look at her painting and don’t remember the day she died
If she’s lucky, she grew up and bloomed.

I’m falling in love with the campfire ashes floating up and kissing his cheek
My dad warns us that some are still hot, so we watch carefully just in case
We make up songs about hot tea to his guitar because he dare not sing about cold beer in front of my father
I’ve never felt warmth like cool nights and skin I never thought I would orbit
I’m caught in the grace of his feet swinging back and forth under the lawn chair
He’s a speaker for rhythms I don’t recognize but need to know
He calls me a manic pixie dream girl with her own plot line
Imagines me ruining a ball gown in a river
He is not the violinist my mom always said I would marry
On a good day, he’s a catastrophe rolling on the railroad tracks I’m tied to
Mother, we are late nights and bad decisions
No, I never got that tattoo but yes we’re going out again
Because he makes me want to hit the ground running
Convinced me that the sun orbits us, because
“it’s all about perspective.”
Ashes and smoked clothing like glitter and perfume
Like he promised mom we’d be home by midnight, and dad that we were running away already
I’m dancing on my tiptoes in the moment he makes a little girl’s dreams come true, not a woman
I can’t imagine a world in which I am grown up
Because he has chosen to grow up with me
I’m gonna kiss him, mom.

I was lying when I forgot about her dad's pickup truck

It's been over a year since I last got her lost behind the wheel. I can't believe she kept letting me navigate.
Loss of a memory isn't a lie unless it was everything.
My whole world was empty slushie cups on the floor of the passenger seat, a broken speedometer,
A river that is still carving its way up onto the trail with the new floods
A transformation is supposed to be a complete overhaul
A girl walks in, but a woman walks out
I'm lying to myself because I can't remember the sounds or the way her couch cushions felt
Her home smells different now
Her body is something I don't recognize
I can't tell if she has changed or I recorded over the tapes

When I am no longer a teenager, and she was just young love, and my old poems were just country songs on the radio that I sometimes recognize and sometimes don't,
When I am afraid to go outside here in fall because it's not the same
It's been over a year since I asked for familiar. My parents' house does not smell the same. My dog sings to different songs on the radio. I do not own a radio. I do not own a car, or hold a girl, or sing country music anymore. I don't get lost driving to rivers. I don't ride roller coasters or lay on rooftops to interrogate stars. I barely walk myself home at night.
It doesn't smell the same.

Glucogenesis makes the process sound holy
If we look closely enough, I'm sure that we would find plants are praying
Sunflowers are facing Him sitting on some golden throne of fire that's burning my skin
They do all of this work, and then we eat them. The sweet ones are the worst. Their prayers were answered over and over until they were saturated with sugars I am stealing
I cannot regret being alive. I cannot feel remorse as my fluid gives way to a vibrancy unheld by the entire person
The body is made up of millions of parts that decided they were better off constructed. Some parts have decided they were better off as parts and they invade our castles so we **** them.
Some of them make glucose. Most of them don't.
It's sad to only understand life through the pages of a textbook. To read about the life I took to read about. Cellulose is just glucose the body doesn't recognize. My papers were a body but my skin cannot be read.
I cannot feel remorse for being alive. I call my dog to me and wonder how his mind was put together. His fluid is all stitched up with body in between. He does not think about the little grass prayers. I do. I sit and join them but I do not pray because I cannot complete glucogenesis. I am not created. I will someday be soil and maybe parts of me will be used to make glucose and then I will pray because this is all I know of afterlife.
I am grateful that plants are religious.

I think
I'm doing
okay.
I'm still bullying myself
over the sugar
in fruit juice
at breakfast.
I'm still convinced
that I deserve the pain
from running.
It's penance.
It heals the sugar wounds.
I haven't thought
about skipping classes
or entire days
I haven't forgiven
the man,
But I forgive myself
For not forgiving
I'm out of breath
because this run
is your replacement.

I’m procrastinating on death
My mother tells me that grandma can barely breathe
I don’t believe her
I still call her on Sundays and just do all the talking

I’m grieving for someone who is still alive
When my mother tells me I can’t see her,
I nearly hang up the phone
She can tell I’m crying before I make a sound
In the moment I’m choking on my own vocal chords,
She knows I cannot hear her anymore

Death cannot make me a better person
I tell my mom that I wish I had been a more loving child
I’ve wasted time
I’ll waste the whole night washing the stages of grief off my bedroom floor
I will not find her in the bubbles

Death is not here
He is laughing at me with a timer I cannot see
He is waltzing around my grandmother’s home,
Some days he has a weapon,
Some days he is unarmed
Grandma tells mom that time is up
She tells me she is fine
I tell her about my day

I think about going to church
Then, I remember that asking for forgiveness is the most spiteful thing I could possibly grapple with
Forgiveness would be grieving for my own soul
And that is not why I am throwing away dead flowers
I save one, maybe it has some color left
Maybe I’m just seeing things
I press it in a book on a shelf packed too tightly
So I can forgive life for leaving its petals
And her skin

Maybe this is a prayer
Maybe it’s an epitaph
Maybe it’s my whole body trembling in little keystrokes and maybe they can hold onto her for me because I am not with her. I am alone in my bedroom wishing for a ghost to tell me instead of my mother.
When she’s gone-

My mother asks if I will want anything from her house. I tell her I want the sailboat pillow I held to my chest while throwing temper tantrums as a child. I’m stomping my feet alone in my apartment and Death says that he’ll wait for me to stop. I text her after we hang up to say that I just want my grandmother.

Dad,
Remember the episode of Doctor Who where Clara is running around between him and her boyfriend? She sits in front of her mirror

I can’t do this anymore

He takes her on one last trip. He can’t save everyone. There’s a mummy on a space train.

You fell asleep. I fell in love with the bandages but I left that part out.

I wondered if the mummy would take me. It didn’t. The characters surrendered and the mummy dissolved. The oxygen was stolen.

Clara woke up on a beach. You were still pretending to be asleep. I fell in love with her body but I left that part out.

To get to the point, he saved everyone. She didn’t leave.

Father, I am sitting in front of my computer because I can’t say it in front of the mirror
I wonder if I will dissolve when you surrender
Maybe you don’t see the bandages so you don’t say the words
You can’t picture me as a mummy
But Dad,
I am dust.

My laptop has longer days than I do
When I was a nursing assistant, I let my heart break for the woman crying over her late husband
Her husband died three years ago, but she only found out while I got her dressed
She’ll find out again tomorrow when someone else gets her up and she asks where he is
I did my clinical practice on the Alzheimer’s unit
At 3:17, Ingrid will stop asking me who I am, and where she is
She will thank me by name for getting her dressed
She’ll apologize for refusing to eat her breakfast
She doesn’t know what got into her

My computer is watching me cry in my college bedroom
It is telling me to stop asking for permission
It is giving me advice I will continue to ignore
I have to make a decision
I can pull up my homework or an Ed Sheeran song
My computer recommends a playlist based on my location
It’s music from home. My computer’s heart broke for the woman crying in an office chair over something she can’t remember.

Thank you for getting angry when I didn’t have enough pans to make your eggs
The one thing I didn’t offer for breakfast
I told you over and over again I wouldn’t eat
Still you scowled at my lack of ingredients or kitchen tools
Refused to cook dinner with me
It gave me a reason to leave
Girls stay on bad dates because we’re convinced you’re the good guy
Just misguided
Love will change you, you’ll be better
But you stood in my kitchen and tried to take my roommate’s things and I thought
“I have the right to leave you.”

If independence is my cardinal sin,
I’ll walk right up to Satan and tell him to please leave his shoes by the door
I go to bed early and I shower at night
With time, we can pull him from the bargaining stage of grief
The only hell I could ever be left in is a weekend with man who expects my body as a welcome gift
Into my apartment
Wants me to buy new plates because a table setting for one isn’t good enough for two
As if you live at my kitchen table
Both nights I didn’t eat, was sick to my stomach
Afraid that you might see me settle down and construct an opportunity
I’m not sorry for my lack of dinnerware
You ate off the plate that holds my toast each morning near my diet coke
You participated in the ritualism that constructs me an independent woman
The body you will not lay hands on today, owner of the bed you will not sleep in
I did not let you remove that from me
If I had bought plates for you, you may have come back.

Booting up,
Blue screen
Press enter to accept default settings
Body; female, almost adult
The background is a picture of you holding my puppy
And the table is cluttered in the way it always was before we cleaned it so mom would have somewhere to put her feet up
I put the camera down because photos are just pixels and I can never have this moment back
My dad is singing about Caroline and the miners and the puppy sings along
He tries to chase the cat and gets a scratch on his nose
I walk through the glass door onto the porch and the shocking reality of the wood on my bare feet reminds me that I’m staring at a computer screen

Restart
Enter password, incorrect
Reset, password too weak, can’t hold onto memories for you
Every once in awhile, the white noise of the public pools plays in my head
And the smell of sunscreen sunburns and I’m not listening to my parents
It sounds like the successful login jingle
I think I know that girl over there, but I’m not sure
I mostly play alone
How has nobody noticed how cold this water is?

Error, Corrupt file
My dad sits with his computer out at the campground looking at google earth
I can’t remember anything he ever said about it but I feel the mosquito bites
I think my body is a dot to dot that someone did when they were bored at the diner
And I’m sorry if they skipped a few and I ended up piecemeal
Maybe my dad has something for it in the medical kit

Error, out of storage space
The essay needs to be saved so the pictures get deleted
I’m almost through when I see you holding my puppy
See your eyes meet mine
See my own feet on the hard ground
I’m more aware of my chipped nail polish and the space in between my toes
It think these floor stains are ours
I think this will never be my room again
I think my bed is imaginary
I think my mind is a photograph

Error, event already occurred
Cannot reconstruct file
Cannot help you fill in all the gaps
Cannot tell you what is missing
Cannot let you hold your puppy

Dear Grandfather,
This is my response to your second response to my Thanksgiving card
I put your letter in my drawer
Didn't realize it was the last time I would be able to read all of your handwriting
I'm glad you're enjoying the baseball games
Sorry my college doesn't have a football team
If we did, I'd be in the front row so you could see me on the cameras

Dear Grandfather,
Merry Christmas
I got your letter right before my father picked me up to take me home for break
Crying, it found a home in my backpack
I would ask my mom to make out the words I couldn't understand
I didn't
Realized you were just talking about bingo
Congratulations, sorry about the snowstorms

Dear Grandfather,
Happy Easter,
Please forgive the smeared ink on all of my cards
My eyes are trying not to see what's happening, so they tear up
I could only make out a few words of your letter
I'm glad you remembered my science classes
They gave me a position researching diabetes
The one diagnoses you don't have
I think that if I studied Alzheimer's, I'd forget you are more than a patient
A failed trial
I can't do that to myself

Dear Grandfather
This is my response to your radio silence
If I were there, I would hold your hand
Knowing that touch and smell can jog memories
I envy your ability to read my letters every time as if it were the first
Hope that you can feel me through them
Hope that some days, you remember the first time, the first letter
The sweatshirt you gave me when I was little
I can't find any other way to hold on to you
So I'll make cards for the fourth of July weeks early
I'll write in the cursive that reminds me of you
I'll read your old letters like it's the first time

I've been sitting on the edge of my bed for a couple of days now
See, it's been raining outside and I feel bad for the garden it drowned
But there's nothing I can do
When I saw the roots floating above the soil, I realized I should just stay inside and breathe
When I say, "the sound of rain on a metal roof," you can hear it
But when I say,
"The sound of rain muddled with concrete and grass two floors down half drowned out by the sound of my roommate getting in too late,"
You're wondering why I feel as though it's seeping through two stories of apartments and hitting my skin
Full speed, still freezing, still drowning the garden

I've been fixated on the idea of decomposing
See, I've always said that reincarnation must be real
Because when my body isn't mine anymore, it will feed some plant
Maybe I am already buried out in the garden and that's why it feels like I'm drowning
I've been swinging my feet over the edge of my bed so that I know where the air is
Just in case I come back to life and need to breath it again

I'm sorry, to the last man who died before the war ended
Please stop pulling up my flowers,
Please stop flooding their roots
My toes are cold ankle deep in their soil
I would never have pulled the trigger
You would have planted a beautiful garden

I have nightmares about girls in busted-up porcelain ball gowns
Their teacups overturned but the party isn’t over
Their clockwork fingertips uncurl
Clicking like gears into the hands of the flesh-and-bone boys who will lead them onto the dance floor
The question is met with the sound of high heels hitting the ground all at once
The violin belts out of some boy's phone left on speaker
He steps on their toes.

If this is my last resort, why are you opening so many doors?
Why are you still reaching out to me?

Lost doesn’t even begin to describe it
We’re stuck in a glass maze
Everywhere I look, I can see you,
But all I can touch is cold, and I leave fingerprints behind

You told me to be the storm, forthcoming
Just a warning, I’m coming for you
Because you left without me and you’re so ******* far
Please

You crashed into me in ways I did not give you permission to
Oh, sweet combustion
I am not a mechanic and you did not try to save me

Girl is a catastrophe, but my God is she still kicking
I’ve lost my footing, I still can’t reach your hand

You’ve taught me that I need to love someone enough to forgive them
I need to walk away with a broken heart and not apologize
But I can’t find common ground

Please rope me into the stars you promised
Show me the angels that fell and left you in their wake
Patch my spacesuit before I bleed infinity and really mean it this time

I’m sorry I’m apologizing again, but you deserve it
I wasn’t listening when you told me not to let go of the tether
I was reaching for the atmosphere
I forgot what fresh air tastes like
Please take me home, now.

One day, when you had made up your mind
When you had given up on your grandfather's graveyard of broken down cars
When you decided I had been alone long enough to burn myself out
You vanished.

Mother was the voice in your head promising that nothing would be easy
Our sister is the one telling you to get a running start
And I was whispering, "Be careful," but I've watched you
I can promise that you never heard me

My coat was still in my hand as I walked out of school
My hand meant to throw it around my shoulders and zip it up
It was freezing
My hand forgot

I keep telling myself that she killed you
But I know that isn't true.
I know your soul got all mixed around, made some wrong turns
It isn't fair to believe that she loved you.
Believing that she understood all of the cracks in your skin just like I did hurts worse than the spot on my couch you don't take up anymore

The last time I saw you, you were buried in some sort of library
Some sort of maze you built around yourself so you wouldn't have to escape
I left you
But I can't help imagining someone dropped a cigarette,
Your mind ignited and fell to ashes

I hate you, because this was not a love story.

Let’s **** God

We made a game out of it
Who can make it to heaven hiding a pistol in their sock
What can you hide from God? What silver bullet?
What radiation?
What rage slowly leaking out of our veins and into the soil

I am that one night stand that God wants to dissolve in ethanol
So here I am running out of his apartment while he is still asleep
I’m late for work,
I’ve lost a shoe

My friend took medication
He said it helped but he went to bed crying

Dear Mom,
Please send Ibuprofen
I promise I’m listening to the doctors,
I love you

We just wanted to ask God what test was worth this
We felt worthless
My body gave up in the hospital bed
I left my arm tangled up in the sheets
I left part of myself on the waiting room floor
The first time it snowed in Atlanta
The one time we said grace before dinner

God made miracles and God made mountains and God made mistakes
Let him rip the steroids out of my veins and make me human again
Not this half cyborg, half dead, half human
Mostly bad at math...
Let me be holy again
This is a ****** prayer

This is poison
He wanted to **** God with poison,
Slowly, like when he was afraid my liver would rot
I had dreams about my feet growing necrotic
He held my hand
It wasn’t enough

The first time I went to the hospital without my dad
My doctor told me how composed I was in the waiting room
Are you kidding me?
You can’t cry while you rattle off the pain killers you’ve taken
You can’t cry while you try to make peace with anything that might make this stop
Stop

Stop listening!
This silence is sickening
He isn’t there
If he ever was, he left us like socks hanging on a clothesline
God forgot and moved away
Nobody bought the house
You stepped in quick sand and we’re stuck here because I will not leave you
But we have been left alone

God is a force I cannot believe in
But I keep getting told that he’s watching me anyways
So I still pray
Dear God, let my father get home safely
Dear God, guide my little sister
Dear God,
Good luck getting my hair out of your shower

Let me make this very clear
This is not your pain
You cannot take this from me and ball it up into something you can wish away
God is not going to fix this
I am the sock that God forgot on the clothes line
God forgot and moved away

It takes seven pills for my brain to work like it’s supposed to
That was my Christmas wish from the hospital in fifth grade
I didn’t want to be called to the nurse every day
I didn’t want the hours of intake papers and waiting rooms
I didn’t want my dresser to be covered in pill bottles
Everyone thinks my room is a mess
It probably is

Dear Mom,
Please send ibuprofen
The off brand gel caps that don’t make me sick
I promise I am still listening to the doctors
I love you

God made miracles and God made mountains and God made mistakes
Let him rip the steroids out of my veins and make me human again
Not this half cyborg, half dead, half human
Mostly bad at math...
Let me be whole again
This is a ****** prayer

The first time I went to the hospital without my dad
My doctor told me how composed I was in the waiting room
Are you kidding me?
You can’t cry while you rattle off the pain killers you’ve taken
But you can miss your therapy dog like you miss the leg you left tangled up in your bed sheets this morning
The last time you remember your foot on the ground was last night
The last time you were an entire person, all of your nerves were working

When I moved out, I did not just leave home
I left a healthcare network
I left a system where I didn’t have to repeat myself like a list of diagnoses

Remission for me was funny where it meant almost nothing
It was a noncommittal guarantee that I was O.K right then
And the day after I finally heard it from my doctor,
I wasn’t

So as a little bit of a letter to the people who think I take too much medication
Because I don’t look sick enough
If you could give me back any of he days I spent in hospital beds or urgent care or waiting rooms
If you could repay my mother for all of the days she spent worrying about me living on my own
If you could take back all of the time my father took off work to take me to doctor’s appointments, I would let you
I have wasted so much time believing that I am tissue paper melting in the hailstorm of a mistake my body can’t stop making
You have no say.

I’m going to relapse tomorrow.
So I’m going to breathe in this moment where I am not in pain
I am going to touch and feel and understand right now
Because I can,
Right now, for the next few hours, I can be an entire human being

I’m going to relapse tomorrow
You’d think it’d be relieving to get a warning inscribed in your genetics,
Building patterns,
To “prepare”
But I cannot be prepared to open my eyes in the morning and see television static
To get out of bed and leave my arm behind
To fall off the leg that can’t hold my weight anymore

I’m going to relapse tomorrow
All I do is dread the pseudo-pain that creeps in when I can see again
You want to talk about fake?
Talk about nurses blowing veins
Talk about nightmares about hospital gowns
Talk about being afraid to ask for a seat on the subway because your illness isn’t real enough

I’m going to relapse tomorrow because that’s how this goes
This in and out like the ocean got angry again
Like I will never run marathons
You can’t run on a numb ankle
You can’t run on exhaustion and giving up
I can’t run on missed birthday parties

I’m going to relapse tomorrow, and I’m terrified
Because I’ve given up on my body before
Because the rest of the world can touch without pins and needles
The rest of the world runs on people can run constantly
I’ve been rusty since age seven,
I was built like an iphone
Meant to break and be thrown away so you’ll buy a new one

I know that I’m going to relapse tomorrow. I know, I know, I know,
I know.

I didn’t see you after I left that day
I didn’t give you the chance
I thought I had thought about it, but I left you on a blank page
I think of you filling it with questions but no answers

I always thought that it hurt to leave
But I wonder if it hurt to be left
When you came back looking for closure
And I turned you away, looking for ending

I’m startled by curiosity
I regret not knowing if you ever turned a page
If you read on
If you missed me
And I think it’s strange that I wanted to be missed

So I have to look back at you through photographs
There aren’t many, we were kids
I can’t understand your life now because I can’t remember it then
My parents wrote you off as some phase I needed to get over

Your heart beats somewhere now with someone else
And I hate you, because sometimes
I still wish it were me

You used to call me Tinkerbell
Or maybe you called my older sister that,
I don’t remember
I do remember a purple sweater with Tinkerbell on it
I remember the matching blanket folded up in a bin somewhere
I didn’t take it with me
I remember the Tinkerbell windup Christmas ornament that sits in a box for eleven months a year

Memory is funny thing
It hurts, sometimes, to remember
It hurts because we’re growing up and moving on
Ir hurts because we leave blankets folded up in bins
But it hurts so much worse to forget
It hurts to argue over who was Tinkerbell
It hurts to forget her sitting in a box until December

When I wrote you a letter, because you can’t use your computer anymore
When I thought about every single word being as clear as humanly possible
When I thought about every flick of my handwriting and every possible way to make it easier to read
I still almost forgot to write love before my name instead of the dash I haphazardly throw in front of my name

So as you forget all of the insignificant details
As the plaques takeover like plagues and everything fades
As the nuance is lost with the fine motor skills
I hope to God you don’t forget that I love you.

By telling us that “healing is a process,” they seem to say that you will never be whole again
Your hand will fall to your side and you will no longer be reaching out to that person you swear you remember
Some day, it will be good enough just to whisper, “I was her.”

My bones ached when I heard she had died in a car crash
I could feel her skin pressed up against my chest
I had never met her, of course
But somebody had to remind her that it wasn’t her fault

When someone commits suicide, they are not depressed
They are furious and relentless
And they are coming for you

Good God, if it hurt you to see me cry, think about how I felt
And if it didn’t hurt, you weren’t trying hard enough

I think that growing up and being mature are an active defiance of human nature
And ****, I am too good at this
Nobody will date me because I won’t fight back

She ripped open her knees like they were old jeans but she was going to nail that skateboard trick
And she pitied all of the teenage girls who were too impatient to wear them out
She is the worn-out jacket I will take with me to my grave
She is living for all of us
And I’m going to catch up to her someday

Things were supposed to be different and that’s an understatement
At first, it was like you were guiding me across the galaxy
All I had was a backpack but you were gonna keep me safe
You held my chin up
You promised

Now,
Now that my heart hurts
Now that I’m tired
I keep forgetting to look up at you
And suddenly, even with your knees resting on my bed you are so far away
I must have been looking down at my feet
And now, you’ve run off

I promise, after this one thing, you can go back to bed

John Green told us that “it hurt because it mattered.”
By this, I think he meant to alleviate  the pain that comes when nobody licks your scratches
I’m just going to warn you-
It doesn’t

2.
I used to fall asleep to the sound of my father turning on the shower at night
Something about the sound of the water through the plumbing Reminded me that my mother was across the hall watching TV
And my little sister was drawing in the basement
I felt my dog breathe in and out to the sound of the water, curled up behind my legs
And this all added up to family

3.
I told my therapist, “I think that’s when my heart fell through the storm drain,”
He kissed my forehead,
Made everything all better,
And then I woke up

4.
Someone went around lighting tiny fires
And suddenly, our college campus turned into California
She tried to put it out with ethanol
Nobody went to the funeral
I heard some people asking if anybody knew her, and
Nobody did

5.
Last night, it mattered.

6.
You are never supposed to reach your last resort
You are supposed to leave it on the top shelf of the top floor of a building on Mars
And I am telling you, you haven’t
You don’t even have the key to get in

7.
Your life was never supposed to fall apart
As though all of the little bits and pieces were never meant to fit together in the first place

8.
If you wanted this to be a love story,
I’m sorry, but you’ve started at the end

9.
I’m gonna save you...
God, I am so sorry!

10.
I couldn’t live with the idea that growing up took longer than move-in day
But it wasn’t just Neil Armstrong who walked on the moon
There were engineers and politicians and mothers and chemists
There were miners that dug metal out of the ground and handed us a space ship and I really do mean US
Because there were children watching that day, and it took them longer to grow up
It hurt some of the time but it mattered and some of them became astronauts
Most of them didn’t, but they did become humans

11.
If this is my last resort, why are you still opening so many doors?
Your body is a promise that I can’t keep
I can’t let go
I can’t-

12.
There were days when he crawled into bed like it was a coffin he would never escape from
I remember his voice shaking when he called me
But he was still something out of a fairytale, so his story couldn’t end here
Unfortunately, people decided to scribble all over the book
And the resale value fell through the floor

13.
When we kissed, I went home and cried
I just wanted to be part of the atmosphere
But he was a lead balloon and I couldn’t take off

14.
I have learned the very hard way that I will never take my own advice

Let's keep this short
This is my body
My legs and arms, and my hair
That one is yours
This is not some Neapolitan ice cream, where you may not like strawberry, but you’re going to get a little strawberry
We are different candies made in different factories
And it is our choice to take off the wrappers

I haven’t given up much
They kept telling me that my job was to be a student
I turned 16 and I worked in the local daycare
I brought my homework with me
I got 8 hours a week, if I was lucky

I am this old road that needs to be rebuilt
So I’m leaving behind the walls that I painted
I’m getting replaced with mechanical and systematic
They kept telling me to move to the city where I could get a real job

We were kissing each other’s memories as if they were scars
This is brutal
Just one big tangle of broken down cars and late nights and hating your guts

You’re holding my hands
This was all some strange dance of muscles that I’ve never seen before but could somehow execute flawlessly
You were staring straight into my eyes and I still missed you
Not like you were running too fast,
But I ached like you fell into ashes without even a fire for me to grieve

When we kissed, I went home and cried

So this hurts
This hurts like loving a child you can’t have
Or watching your garden die
Or ripping out an IV when you’re having a nightmare
I needed that IV

This time, when your heart aches
When you’re kissing me but you’re not in love
When you leave for work in the morning without saying good bye...
I’m sorry, I can’t do this

You were not something broken for me to piece back together
And I was not something fragile for you to break

When I was in love, it killed me
And now that I’m not, all I do is sit here,
Tearing my ribcage open
When I was dying, I saw angels

I was bleeding
I can barely remember, but it usually goes something like this
You were a little too late,
And just not sorry enough
So I let go of the arm of the sofa
I woke up in your bed
The only scars on my arm were lipstick stains

We’ve been living in the right lane of the highway
Going way too fast way too carefully
I think we missed our exit but I know that we missed everything in between
But honestly,
I think the whole world is right here, in the cab of your beat up pickup truck

If this is love, then I think writers got a little confused
This is confined, and nuanced, and breakable
There is no indestructible rope tying us together
Our love is trapped inside a glass prism
All you have ever needed to do was knock it off the shelf
But that doesn’t mean it was any less beautiful in one piece

You need to learn a lesson
Girls in short skirts and tall heels will not dance with you
They will fix their lipstick and take pictures for the internet
But they will not move any further into the party
The dance floor is lava and you are children
Your love is an ocean and she is a hot air balloon
You will never reach her
And she will never fall into that

But it got your imagination going
Some rusty old gears that you thought had fallen apart
And that makes it worthwhile, right?
Or maybe it doesn’t
Maybe it rots your insides until your soul melts out your eyeballs and you fall apart for real this time
Maybe it makes a pin ***** scar that you’ll have to explain to somebody someday

But honestly, if we left hand prints on beaches or carvings in trees,
I think we’d be wasting our lives
I have never regretted taking out my camera
Because nothing is permanent, but you can last for as long as I carefully back-up my memory card

If this is what she considers "feeling alive," I think she's got it a little mixed up
See, I understand skydiving, once or twice
But she's driving too fast just to get to work in the morning

She would have done anything to get high and not lose her job
And that is the exact reason they drug test dead-end cooperate desk jobs
So instead, she stays up late watching cooking shows
She tried painting her nails and cutting her hair but she's still exactly where she started

See, we were wrong about how many of us would grow up to be doctors
Some of us were relieved and some got bored
But almost none of us could afford med school
She goes for runs, eats too much ice cream, takes vacations
But she's never coming back

1.
Let's install some fail-safes
You have to convince yourself that this is really what you want
If you aren't gay, pretend you are
If you are gay, pretend you're not
I guarantee you will not fall in love

2.
Pick the sweetest person
Someone your parents will approve of
Someone who is so perfect for you that you just don't understand why you're sitting alone right now
If you're not voted cutest couple for the yearbook, you can't possibly be in love, right?
Too many people are watching

3.
Try to love them
Try to give yourself a textbook relationship
Go on dinner dates
And watch scary movies so you can cuddle up together
Argue about why you should definitely pay "because it's romantic"
Blow out the candle when she's not looking

4.
Stop taking off work on Friday nights
It was never going to work, anyway, so why bother getting attached?
When you realize that they love you,
And you are still sitting there alone, that's when your heart breaks
When you realize you can walk away and be unchanged
Because how could you possibly walk away from two entire years with another human being and not feel something
Your heart's going to break anyway, just because it didn't.

"But what if we're wrong?"
It was silent
But her thoughts echoed around in my head as we laid on top of her pickup truck
I swatted at the eighteenth mosquito chewing on my leg
I don't want this to be love

We were tangled up in the acoustic music they play on the radio on Sunday mornings
She was trying to dream up something clever to write about
And I was pretending I could learn to play guitar through osmosis,
As if blending myself in with the harmonies, finding her in every lyric, and sheer willpower would give me wings or at least magic guitar hands

She set the alarm, checked it over and over
She was not going to be late for her first day
I told her I'd be asleep when she got home, she told me she knew
I told her to wake me up

I wasn't looking for perfect
Perfect really only applies in first year physics courses
After that, we learn to fall in love with "rough around the edges" or "unique" or "unfinished"
As if their life is a puzzle that we need to complete
Just so you know, it isn't

She bought me breakfast and dropped me off
She used to tell me she loved me, but I know she didn't
She does now, so she doesn't have to say it anymore
When I said, "love," before, I didn't really mean it
Not like I mean loving the garden on the balcony of her apartment or thunderstorms in May
Even if I was a puzzle that she completed (and I'm not saying that I am), we didn't need any glue to fit perfectly

The graffiti on the bathroom stalls has been blotted out by butterflies
The world is taking back it's body
Bringing back old fashioned Roman  concrete to fill in all the cracks

She's taken apart the locks just in case something beautiful got trapped inside
Every safe is a time capsule
Curiosity isn't dangerous anymore

Every time she took a step, the air shuddered
The soles of her shoes grew roots and flew away
She was humming and fixing things as she went with just the soothing sound of her sanity
Her soul leeching out like an ethereal mechanic

There were wishing flower seeds mixed in with the strawberries she was picking
I think when she ate them, she became holy
Her hands stroked the wind as they fell to her sides,
Like running her fingers through horse hair

At first, she made the mistake of falling in love with elevator buttons
Up, or down, one or the other, in constant motion
When they cut her open, she bled ivy
She invaded their circuitry and rotted their robotic
She showed them alive and showed them the door

She didn't understand wildfires
She knew passion only by its name,
Only by the monuments, by the mountains, and trenches
By the continents drifting like ice in lemonade
"You can't ruin this," she said

And if this is what burnt out looks like,
Imagine what will happen when the meteor hits
Or the bombs go off, or the oceans flood
This isn't a project we can procrastinate on
These are our wide open spaces and final frontiers

See, the world is taking her body back
Bandaging the scars we left,
Quietly, behind us, when we aren't looking
She's reinventing herself
Just like a garden,
Just like a caterpillar,
Just like a star we couldn't give up on
And we're all standing here, shouting, "We can change-"
We can change.

We could barely see the road
In between the pouring rain and three in the morning
I didn't feel tired until I woke up a half an hour later and realized I was exhausted
And almost no closer

He drove, the whole way there and the whole way back
The rain (mostly) stopped and every once in awhile we would comment on the state of things
Everything that had happened

Home is now suspended somewhere in between

Please, God, give me some reason to check my phone
I was making excuses to stay awake
The adrenaline ran out and I felt every ounce of pain that had been lurking in the bruises
I screamed in the shower, feeling the water drip off of my skin
I felt it beat and roll off in too much of a rush
I couldn't get it out of my hair

All of the little things I can fall in love with

We just didn't spend enough time in jeans and flannels
She had no idea what she was doing and she wasn't fooling anyone
She wasn't even trying
"This looks good," she said, halfway up the hiking trail
She laid her flannel out over a grassy clearing and promptly fell asleep

And he fell exactly where he stood
One drop of blood was exactly enough to relieve his soul from its duty of living
He was exactly at his breaking point and they knew it behind the trigger
Pointing exactly at the palm of his left hand

******* and surrender piggybacked off of each other

If she was the sun, then I was definitely getting my dose of vitamin D
(And a halfway decent tan for once)
Her hair looked like a Pantene commercial and her teeth seemed to be painted white

When I was a child, I thought that flowers died in the winter because they couldn't get water from the frozen earth
I must have ripped up half my mother's garden on the first cool day
I brought them inside, and drowned them in buckets of warm water
23 years later, my mother hasn't stopped laughing

School was out for the week, but I imagined that most of the kids from her class wouldn't go back at all
She asked for help, but we couldn't save her from nightmares or flashbacks
Couldn't even hold her hand through every single one
So her parents and her teachers are in therapy being told it wasn't there faults
But I know it wasn't mine

We made dinner on the stove from a box
She was laughing the whole time-
I told her to wait and watch the pasta while I stepped out for a minute
I set up candles in the living room in front of the TV
We sat on the floor in front of the couch, watching NCIS with candles and cheap ready meals

"This never has to end," I told her
We don't have to have to leave this bedroom
Her Christmas lights reflected off the whites of her eyes as she showed me point ballet in her pajamas
I was not a very effective partner, but this is what she was built for
And I was built to love her, one scene at a time,
One LED bulb
One shaky lift
I spun her like a little girl instead of a dancer

She was late
And I mean too late
Every single time
I wanted to hope for something
I wanted to fall in love
I tried to fall in love but
She was too late

And he had no idea what he was doing
He was lonely and probably looking for her, actually but
He didn't try very hard
He just sort of waited and waited
But he never quite gave up because he wanted all of this time to be worth something

He was exciting, all decked out in neon lights
But he reeked of alcohol
And I actually regret him,
But I can't quite remember so I try not to think about it

She wore a floral dress
Professional but positive
And finally someone was happy

He was a bit of a joke
Spilled his coffee, dropped his papers
But someone was always there to pick up the pieces
We liked having him around

He was quiet-
I didn't know him very well

She was a ballet dancer
Strong and graceful and tired
Full of long practice and habitual action
Calculated.

Wild wasn't quite the right word,
I don't think there really is one
But here she is, dragging me three steps behind her

My heart tried to tug itself out of my body half the time
But my ribcage held fast
Seriously, this was the worst time and place to be kissing a girl
There were police on either side, and her sign in between us
But our picture made the front page

I didn't know that girls could look this good in dresses
But there she was, long leg peeking through a slit
Long hair gently gracing her shoulder blades with its presence
I was suddenly part of her body
I was in the ballroom, I had her spinning around to the entire orchestra,
Just her and I,
And all I had done was touched her hand

Her toes melted seamlessly into the grass
You couldn't tell where the earth ended and she began
I saw all four seasons on her lips
Like she was falling backwards into a pile of leaves in her best floral dress and sunglasses and scarf
I held the side of her face, gently as if she would crumble at my touch but fly away at her release
All I could see in her eyes was freedom

She was humming in the kitchen, making some sort of fruity frozen iced tea
And I remembered every second I had ever spent with her, all at once
All of the high school dances and the years of "keeping in touch,"
(And all of the years that we didn't...)
I had never felt so genuine as standing there, basking in everything I could have ever wanted
Taking her in as if she might melt and water the flowers with her sincerity
This
Is why we invented kissing

We were always in a hurry, and never quite sure why
I think we were excited to go to college and "make our own decisions,"
But I really miss when my mother did the grocery shopping
When she made doctor's appointments and did at least most of the laundry
And I miss my father's pickup truck

I was never quite sure if I liked the teacher or the subject
So I had to take lots and lots of classes
By my third year of chemistry, I had some semblance of an idea that I might be on some sort of right track
(That's how we word things in statistics)
But I still eat breakfast every single day with my tenth grade history teacher

So what if we got it wrong the first time
Or the third time
Or the next time
Maybe we misunderstood the meaning of the term "guessing game," but we had nothing to lose
Or maybe we had everything, and we got that all backwards, too
Maybe we wanted to hear them sing for five more minutes before we broke the news that most of them would not grow up to be singers

The lightbulbs exploded in a groaning twinkling sound
Because of all things, I was not in college to be an electrical engineer and I really didn't understand voltage all that well
But I understood catalytic converters so my roommate gained at least some sort of respect for me
She unpacked her graph paper at the same time I unpacked my sketchbooks and we locked eyes for a minute

Our colors are going to look ridiculous at graduation
And then what?

When I die,
When the skin sinks into the ground
Someone could tell you that I used to bite my nails
There are tiny marks on the tips of the bones

More easily seen,
There are deep bruises on my shin bones,
Where I pressed up onto the wall any way that I could my first year of training
All that means is that I got stronger

Perhaps even more obvious are the healed breaks on the toes
Dance class, failed lifts
Bad turns, ill prepared
Proud of those ones

A little more hidden is the damage to my ankles from sickle feet
Or my knees from running
Maybe they would overlook the slight curve in my spine left over from physical therapy

Someone can tell my story
In all the little bits and pieces