There's comfort in bleeding ink.
There's home in an empty page.

Every word is a heart beat
Punctuated by the steady pump of truth.
I feel the knot in my stomach
Come undone by the poem's end.
The conclusion.
The final thought.

Sometimes the words
Don't taste right in my mouth.
Words like "ethereal" and "champagne"
Sometimes taste like burnt toast.
Sometimes they shrivel up my taste buds.
Words like "juxtaposition" and "moist"
Sometimes taste like sweet, sweet strawberries.
Though I am uncertain,
I still place them on my waiting tongue.

The curve of a stanza
Always reminded me of
The curve of a lover's back.
A soft bend.
Purposeful and precise.
This is the only love I have ever known.

Sometimes I can't differentiate
Between ***** and closure.
Both sneak up on me
When I finally put the pencil down.

When things become too much
For my broken wings to handle,
I am reminded
There is an "I" in "suicide".
When things become too much
I gargle saltwater
To replenish my eyes.
I reapply the mascara.
I take an aspirin.
And I find comfort in bleeding ink.

1
The other day I saw a picture of you.
Shirt buttoned up to your throat,
Pants cutting off the blood circulation in your pelvis,
Shoes shining brighter than the north star,
And a smile being pulled across your cheeks
Like an archer pulling a bow string.
I smiled back at my computer screen.

2
I’ve listened to this album at least 30 times.
I own three versions of it.
UK deluxe, US deluxe, Target Deluxe.
Everything about you is deluxe.
Your eyes, your voice, your breath
As it passes through the microphone and into my ears.

3
I believe in fate
But not so much in destiny.
I don’t scream at my reflection anymore
And I’m described as independent.
For the most part.
I’m a pretty trustworthy person
And I promise I’m not that desperate.

4
The music ripples through my veins
As I whip my curls at the mirror.
The hairbrush pressed against my mouth
And I repeat the lyrics that roll past your lips so smoothly.

5
I can almost feel your arms
Wrap around my waist before I go to sleep.
I had a dream
You and I were together
And you were happy
And I was happy
And everyone was happy.
But I know if my dream became reality
No one would be happy.
Jealousy would taint the spit on other girls’ tongues
And the distance between
New Jersey and Australia is too much.
Even for me.

5
I can almost feel your arms
Wrap around my waist before I got to sleep.

5
I can almost feel you.

5
We have the same eye color.

6
We have the same hair color.

7
I am just an insecure girl.
You are taking over the world.
You are stepping in the soil of every state.
And you won’t look at me
Longer for three seconds in the New York City heat.

8
I never thought I would be one of those girls.
One of those girls
Who latch onto a boy’s identity,
Not knowing his soul
But knowing his spirit.
I’ve seen you three times.
You don’t even realize.
I try too hard and I’m convinced you notice this.

9
You are nine months older than me.
In your eyes I am just a baby.
My cocoon of pictures of you is the womb
I am being baked in.
You won’t follow me back on twitter.

10
You are just my celebrity crush
But you have such an impact on me.
Go back home.
Let me rest.
Go back to bed.
I’ll have that dream again
And I won’t speak of it
And no one has to know of this
Pathetic excuse for love I carry in me like a dead fetus.

10
You are just my celebrity crush.
It was never supposed to go this far.

10
You are just my celebrity crush.

10
You can never love me
The same way I love you.

Step One: Dress for Success
Dawn yourself in armor each morning
Spikes and studs
Headbands and helmets
Strike fear into every man’s heart
And look good while doing it

Step Two: Be a Lotus Flower
A rose, a lily
Be a venus fly trap
Deadly nightshade
Lady Macbeth said it best
“Look like the innocent flower
But be the serpent under it.”

Step Three: Always Have a Perfect Manicure
Sharpen your nails into knives
Slit your attackers throat
With just one swift movement
Of the wrist
Walk away with the blood working as polish
They won’t be able to tell the difference

Step Four: Smile
Never let them see you crumble
Never let them see you for what you are
Human.
Put up the walls
Man the cannons
You’re no longer a girl
You are a castle
And they want to storm you

Step Five: Be Polite
Swallow the bad words that want so badly
To sting that *******
Who cut in line at 7 Eleven
Suppress the rage that makes the blood
Under your pretty skin
Rise to your cheeks.
Instead, when he’s not looking,
Slash his tires in the parking lot.

Step Six: Stay In Shape
How else are you going to be able to survive
When the apocalypse comes
And its only you left

Step Seven: Focus on Your Education
So when the boys at school
Groan because they have to work with you on the English project
You can spit out verses of Shakespeare
And Frost
And Plath
And make them shake in their
Khaki shorts

Step Eight: Don’t Forget Where You Cme From
Don’t forget the hours
Your mother spent in labor
Pushing you through heaven’s doors
Don’t forget the women who came before you
The women who have tried so hard
To be the perfect girl
To collapse themselves into paper
To roll themselves like dough
Don’t forget those women,
Those girls.
Don’t forget to kiss your wrists each night
And say thank you to the stars.

And the cigarettes paint our teeth yellow
Like the coffee and tea
We bathe our bones in.

Poems scrawled out in chicken scratch
On snow white wrists
While the spiders under my skin dance
A forbidden 8-legged tango.

Scars paler than my pigment stand out on my thighs
That are not unlike thunder.
My ribs press up against my torso,
A jail cell.

Once again the panic sets in
And I am taken hostage.
It feels as if my lungs took a voyage on the Titanic.
I named the left one Jack,
The right one Rose.
The right one always lives.
The cold creeps in
Followed by shouts from the audience
“Theres room for two on that door!”
But its too late.
Good ol’ lefty is already gone.
Sunk to the bottom of the ocean
Along with all my journals.

The teenaged feminists bare their fangs
And I smile.
So happy to see solidarity.
Blood drips from their teeth.
**** the pig.
Slit his throat.
A female Lord of the Flies.

He smiled at me from across the room.
Or maybe he smiled to the girl next to me.
She is prettier than me
And probably smarter
And easier to deal with.
I am stubborn and
She looks like the type of girl to lay down her guns.
I have got to stop thinking this way.

Metaphors and similes unravel on my tongue.
I mumble into the microphone something about
Not knowing what I should be feeling.
Should I feel happy
Because I survived while others,
Who have gone through way worse,
Are stuck under miles of dirt?
Should I feel empty
Because he took the very last of me
And he doesn’t even care?
Should I let the apathy set in again
Like rigor mortis?
Should I
Should I
Should I

I have got to stop using repetition to fill in the empty spaces
Between my words.
And I have got to stop staying up until 3 am
And complaining about how no one will love me
Because I am so difficult
And stubborn
And indecisive
And anxious
And ******.
And I have got to stop tearing myself down
Like a once beautiful, now broken building.
I write about self love a lot.
I should practice what I preach.

Where was I?
I don’t even know.
All I know is
The spiders have broken out in a full on dance battle
And the cigarette smoke is curling
In my one lung,
The one named Rose.
And my feminist friends eye my hairy legs
And whisper about ******.
And the solidarity breaks apart.
And my scars start to tear open again
And oh no,
There goes a spider.
And the boys make fun of my thighs
And I shatter like the glass I am

And I open a new journal.
And I write another poem.

I wrote a poem about you.

I compared your smile to the stars.
Your voice to music.
I spat out every cliche I could think of.

You were a knight.
Tall, broad shouldered.
You wore silver and defended my honor.
I dreamt we rode off into the sunset
On your white steed.

I was a princess.
My legs stretched for miles
But still you made the journey.
You ran your fingers through my hair
And by some miracle
The knots didn’t claim you as theirs.

We kissed in the rain.
In the backseat.
Under water.
On my doorstep.

We ran through a field into each others arms.
On a beach into each others arms.
Through an airport into each others arms.

We carved our names into the old oak tree in my backyard.
We shared a milkshake at the 50s themed diner.
We dined on red roses and red wine,
We dined on steak so rare the juices dripped from our chins.

We were in love…
Or so I thought.
Because when we tried to turn my poem
Into reality
Reality spat me in my face.

The rain water tasted bitter on our tongues.
The backseat was too cramped.
I just couldn’t hold my breath,
And my dad saw us on my doorstep.
He saw everything,

I tripped over my own feet.
The waves took you before I could meet your arms.
And we delayed people’s flights.

The oak tree in my backyard had to be cut down.
The milkshakes were sour.
I got drunk on the wine and you were allergic to the roses.
The steak was raw and rotting.

You weren’t a knight.
You were a boy.
I wasn’t a princess.
I was a girl.
We should’ve kept it at that.

The air conditioning is on and
It makes the hair on my legs stand up.
Old women wrapped in tradition sneer at my
New age, new wave
Style of living.
Boys like girls who keep their mouths shut.
Who sew their lips together with choruses of
"Yes dear"
"Anything for you dear"
"Whatever you say dear".
Boys like girls who know when to put the pen down.
Who don’t play with words
The way babies play with rattles.

In the winter
I’m told I have the perfect body.
In the summer
I’m told to cover up.
My thighs roll with thunder
And wave like the ocean.
I spit blood onto the hot pavement
Next to the cigarette butts and newspapers.
Girls don’t do that.

Girls shave
And cook
And clean
And purse their lips when someones mean
And keep their curls under control
And don’t bite their nails
Or eat too much cake
Or say no.

And when the air conditioning is on
They don’t shiver.
They don’t feel their natural armor
Stand up to fight.
When the air conditioning is on
They smile
And say “thank you” to the sun.

When your finger twitched on the trigger
Were your eyes glued to the
Rose blooming in her chest?

When she pulled her golden hair
Back into a ponytail
Did you wrap it around your fist?

When she refused to pull her lips back
And stretch her mouth into a smile
Did you feel the windshield of your heart break?

Do shards of glass
Ever float up your throat?
Do they every mix with the bile?

The day your name first passed
Through my lips
Was the day the fear became real.