Bruised and battered,
blood droplets gather over marks of old scars
and bone fractures poorly healed.
My body is a broken home
and hurting’s how I heal.

Curled, a cradle, cusping
silky supple soft,
aloft rustling skin
prickling static afterthought.
Nose in, mouth out,
internal furnace burning hot,
bitter winter giving way
to flame that’d dim for naught.

Now I lay me down to sleep, mind naught but unwound thread,
the nearly risen sun prepared to rear its ugly head.
No mowing, honks, or rooster’s crow, but sounding in their stead:
my racing thoughts, your steady breath, all time suspended here in bed.

Thread counted in linen robes,
his thatch of hair an areole.
Armored tight against the world,
with metered calm and stoicism.
Freckles, scars, lashed eyelids.
Both hard and soft,
all that he is.

Hazy street lamp light,
illuminating nocturnal spirits or otherwise
the ghost of a fire burning low,
all green tinder and ember,
its tender lain down
for the night.

Self-effacing, holy,
a graven image flourishing
in pleasure, or pain.
The hierarchy of mind
oscillating wildly behind
smoke screen, or curtain.
Uncertain mirth blanketing
kinetic barren earth
like ash, or rain.

Like a monster
wearing my own skin,
I question yet again
whether the cries I upend
are signs of intelligence or
the incoherent utterances
of an imposter begging
to be let in.

My diadem, a sovereign crown,
does on your gentle fist lie down
Amidst your fingered palm, affixed,
the beating of a holy sound.

Though betwixt a dormant grip
my heart fears not a fatal slip:
the pacifism of our tenderness
a guard against that wilderness.

Midnight train barreling past
what once was oak and magnolia,
now a smattering of stumps, resigned,
drumming the regular (fog)horn
into the haze of passing time:

"I am coming.

I am going.

I will not stop."

I watch and wonder how I too
was so quick to yell "Timber!"
and fall onto the tracks.

The sirens
are screaming.
The dogs are singing too.
While worlds outside are fleeing reality,
totality of being reduced to our five rooms and me and you,
we re-honeymoon.

I'm handling an unprecedented change
– in modern times, anyways –
with much more elegance
(or at least competence)
than I would have guessed.
I'm much too stressed to properly introspect,
but I'm occasionally caught questioning if this is the greatest story of my time –
if I should really be hiding out
(crying and nursing a Modelo and lime)
or out finding what our story is
and documenting it for those who come after this – if anything comes after this.


We're all just a bunch of kids
standing on the beach
with the waves crashing on us,
all ******* undertow:
sea salt and ocean spray.
Child's play drowned
under the realization
that nature is so ******* big
and that we are so miniscule
in retrospect:
how can humanity,
practiced at circumventing empathy,
come together to weather this calamity?
Is this just an illness
or a symptom of a sickness
that's been waiting to arrest our
brutish tresspassing
since we stole our first trembling breaths
and didn't give them back?

The softness of your belly under my wandering fingertips,
humble slumbering sounds bubbling up like prosseco –
a thundering giant reduced to a mess of blankets
and breath warm over bristling hairs.
It's time to join you there,
in sleep.

I forgot to not give my mistakes a name
and I left a bowl of food out for them
so now I'm ****** because I'm attached
to the idea of what I could have been.

Is it a sin to crave redemption or, at best, a reset button
if I can't recall a recent time I liked who I've grown into?
I'm digging, fingers bloodied, in the dirt to find something alive or otherwise worth reviving,
but these old bones are just about ready to give up the ghost this time.
On my tombstone, please inscribe "they tried."

I am not a goddess.
Sometimes I'm not as modest
as I would like to be.
The tallest buildings
have the farthest to fall.

I remedy holistically,
take vegan vitamin d3,
liberally diffuse tea tree.

Seasonal depression ***** when you have the regular kind too.
I'm scared of all the classes I'll sleep through,
or instead lie in agony,
agonists halted temporarily,
as the darkness takes my day
from me.

Electric spark seething, gas stove leaking, dial emergency hotline, radio silence, hang up, I'm fine.
We have take-off.
Confined at the exhaustive edge of a panic attack,
I trail the menstrually-stained duvet I bought for us at Ikea behind my trembling heels
as I arrive to stand over you in the living room
and watch you sleep on the International Orange love seat
your mother gave us when we moved in together.
It hurts to think you loved and lusted before our universe came to be,
the flame lit under my lungs reigning supreme
over the way you look at me every day, if only for a moment.
I turn off the harsh florescents
casting unfriendly shadows
from the back of my head
and revolve innumerable times
as I lie helpless in your pull,
a gravitational force luring me
to softly run my fingertips
across the nape of your neck,
where the hair I helped shave off last week is beginning to sprout up again, bristling.
I drop to my knees, dumbfounded by the duality of this moment, our togetherness permeated
by an occasional snore indicating that you still sleep in peace
while I agonize that you would ever stop loving me,
the NASA documentary we watched before you dozed off
overriding our perfect display of domestic tranquility with

CHALLENGER,
COLUMBIA,
APOLLO ONE.

Oftentimes I find my self entranced
in how you'll catch me at a glance
when you first walk through our front door.
Will my leg dangle to the floor
with mischevious intent, my breast
concave inside itself and dressed
translucent in skin, glowing radiant
in what I reflect, a moon grey slate,
from your light source?
A celestial body on its course,
will I eclipse myself in the blinding dark
of an unconscious development
that lends me trembles delicate,
a slumbering lunar element circumvented
by a halo of blonde curls, suspended?
I spend centuries predicting
the me's I have and will depict,
yet it never is as I intend it.
You gravitate to me, unrestricted,
because we find ourselves addicted
to each other's whole, unscripted.

I am tired of looking at my body
as confinement, like a last ditch effort.
the impermanence of being
is the beauty of it.
I displace, upon my skin,
subconscious aggressions creating critical space
in between the me that is now me
and who I used to be:
a bruise placed as a confession
upon the unforgiving curve of my hip
or the marring of my expressions
through abuse over time.
This big event, my singular revival,
is not a realistic thing.
My survival depends upon small changes,
Regular and routine,
that will bring me up to speed again.
to escape the weight of grievances past,
I have to recall what it is I've done right.

Empty breastbone beating,
a cardiovascular cadaver
under siege by ravenous scavengers
feeding off the lack of meaning
in further consuming me,
still rasping weakly,
pleading for a reason
to keep repeating:
fleeting, fleeting, fleeting,
reaching for the feeling I last felt
when my lungs were breathing.

It is as if I have forgotten how to pronounce the words that once defined the curve of my mouth.
I renounce the person I was one second ago, and in a moment I will do so again.
To begin in captivity only breeds a certain wilderness growing restless in the tips of my toes.
I'm not cultivating new evils within a clenched fist or the feeling of his legs tangled in mine.
I'm just breaking in the skin that I once stood hollow in; coming into myself.

Aphrodite always said,
"Love is weak and fleeting."
Persephone always said,
"Don't you dare eat."

Your name
in my mouth
is absinthe
and ambrosia,
twofold.

My stomach revolts at
the rumble of breath
in your chest yet again.
A sweet death,
bitter nonetheless.

I cannot fathom falling
for another mortal man.

i. Destruction

Her iris is ablaze with a subtle kind of anger, but she's still dangerous. Do not wrong someone for too long and expect a softness. You brought this.

ii. Resist

An odd fascination keeps you enraptured by her every movement, no matter how deadly. She strikes the candles flickering overhead to the ground in a moment of rage. The glass shatters and you find this sudden fervency attractive. You want nothing more than to kiss her. Do not kiss her. While you are distracted by those flytrap lips she is willing the bed to catch in a flame and put both of you out of your poorly masked misery.

iii. Ignorance

When something is so white hot it feels cold, the nerve endings under your skin are too shocked to react for a moment. Time flickers by very slowly if you spend it taking and inflicting pain with the people that used to love you and pretending you enjoy it. Take your hand out of the fire, you ******* idiot. You may have lit the wick but what follows has a mind of its own and you should not have started something you never intended to finish. You do not sit around in a burning house because it is the place you grew up in.

this is wobbly steps
in your direction:
learning to walk again.
it is hard to put your trust in men
when the people who raised you
left a mark across your cerebrum
like scar tissue,
murmuring "do not lower
your defenses, darling,
everything is a lie."
my lithe limbs dangle
off the overhang
and i do not jump simply
because i have learned
i am only supposed to fall
if pushed.
the oncoming vehicle
is another issue.
you are gentle in a way
i have not felt before,
and it makes me weak.
give me some time.
i can learn to be sweet.

hot summer raindrops boil
like memories on my skin,
and i remember when
the wind helped destroy
the power surge within me.
i am pure electricity
and i hope i am strong enough
to cause a blackout
in the place
we stole small caresses:
the eye of the storm.
thunder booms and
i am consumed
more and more
with my loud tongue
and vapid thoughts;
not instinct,
but rather, taught.
i seemed to have forgotten
or lost the notion
that someone else could want me
in your sultry words,
sparked with lies.
i will keep the narcissism,
but you can close your eyes
against the onslaught
and get the **** out;
and no, i do not care
if you get soaked.
i have had enough
to know i do not
need you anymore
and that this
is only a joke to you.
i am a thunderstorm
and you will only drown
in the downpour.

I want to be
feeble and ethereal,
my presence a silent grace,
like a long forgotten goddess.
I want the prowess
of a ****** hunter
bubbling under my skin
so strongly
that I will burn up
and create a new sun.
Is it so wrong
that I want to drop
everything
and run?
I want to gorge myself
on the fruit of the earth,
like Persephone,
and doom my heart
to a half realized death.
I want to starve my body
of the world
until I am frail and small,
so I can hide my
paper thin fingers
in the pages
of books,
hoping to take root
in imagined heroes
that do not regret like I do
and did not wait
too long.
I want to stay
with what I know
and
I want to vanish into
thin air.
I want to be
everywhere.
I am a living, breathing
paradox.
I do not care,
though my heart flutters
at the idea
of packing a suitcase
and getting on the next flight
or staying here
another night.
All I know for sure
is this:
I want
to feel alive.

I was attempting to lull myself into shaky sleep, bitterly listening to quiet ballads of stories that’ve gone much better than mine.
Soft, sultry voices sang about being in love with your best friend and how it feels divine, and I scoffed because they forgot to include the part where it’s a living hell if they do not return the sentiment.
I was trying to forget about your face for five **** minutes but escaping this purgatory is turning out to be harder than I thought, because I meant to tell you how I felt a million times, but kept it bottled up.
I do not expect you to react positively when the words finally pour out of my lamenting lips like *****; but your response would be easier to stomach if I knew it would be contempt and indifference, instead of a sick, complementary sympathy and a familiar softness around your mouth.
What I’m trying to say is that I cannot spend another day pretending that you’re thinking the same thoughts, when it’s obvious that you are not; I’ve fought with my emotions for far too long and decided it’s time for that to stop.
So, I’ve made a compromise and put it into words: I’ll say it.
I’m in love with you, simply put.
Now, if you even care enough to reply, don’t.
I can’t bear to hear what you have to say, my love.
You’ve torn me apart enough.

My lips
are chapped and brown
with dried blood,
so I crawl on the rug
to the bathroom
and to stare at myself
with self loathing for
the third time this hour,
while echoes of
"you lost him"
resound through
my pounding head.

I slowly climb
into my empty bed and cry
for the first time in months,
because seeing you felt like
a punch in the
******* stomach.
The consistency
of your detachment
was comforting like
mismatched socks;
awry, but slightly less
than this.

The pain is new and fresh
like a ripped off bandaid:
it felt kind of okay,
but then you took it away,
again.

Emotions are not my friend,
and apparently,
neither are you.
This is nothing new,
but it seems I had
convinced myself otherwise;
because like you said
with a bored yawn,
though I am bad at most things,
I am good at lying
and doing everything wrong.

It has been four days
since we talked.
I do not mean to gawk,
but I have been staring
at this empty screen,
tearing at my thinning hair
with nostrils flaring,
looking for a sign
that this is not
the beginning of yet
another falling out.
We are going through
a drought:
things to talk about are
few and far between,
and there is a lot of
"I don't understand
what you mean" and
"You're only fifteen,
you wouldn't get it anyways."
You are my dry land
and I am drowning
without your hand
to pull me up to the surface.
I can't pretend
that I am your best friend,
though you are surely mine.
I'd like to know if
you think it is the end
this time,
but I am so nervous
that I can't
take my shaking fingers
and ask the question;
I am much too desperate
and the suggestion
that I could be the reason
we don't even chat anymore
lingers like a bad tattoo.
I need to draw the line
between when it's
time to move on
and being perfectly fine.
I know I'm lying to myself
and I know I'll try to mend something
that might be irreparably bent
with only my own desire
and a bit of twine;
because I could never say goodbye.
Especially not
if there's a chance
you're still mine.

I discern obsession
like warm blood
in the back of my throat,
rising with the choking bile
of what I can’t be for you.
It’s true:
I will always listen
while you rant
and lick your wounds.
When I said it,
I was not lying.
Still, I feel like crying
when I can tell you’re trying
to give me what I yearn for;
but by now I’ve learned
you can’t make someone
feel something
they don’t.

This morning tastes like
my nervous tongue
running across
the back of my teeth
every night this week, when it's late;
and I think about how
I know that it's fate
and how I'm never right.

Times between us are tight,
and we both feel under
the weather that's
seeping under my skin and rotting
love letters I wrote,
but put back.
Soon, things could be better.
So my stupid idle dreams
will replay
as I whisper "I love you,"
and you walk away.

I am greedy, angry, needy
for the feel of your soft breathing
easing through my freezing lips.
Self destructive thoughts I'm feeling;
for your heart is an intriguing contrast
to the fleeting sense of beating
in this black hole in my chest,
sinking underneath the feeble sense
of overheated thinking for
why you treat me like your dearest,
not a whispered, awkward greeting
or a bleeding, broken weakling.
Though, if you ever came to leaving
I'd be grieving for the teasing thought
of believing that my life
once had a beaming sense of meaning.

With the thought
of us apart,
my chest collapsed
upon my heart.
My brain began
to heave and starve
without the air
that you imbue;
and that, my love,
is when I knew
you had simply
become the air
in my lungs.