It’s the gutted smile
You threw down on the table
The day the love of your life found
The love of their life.

It’s the anxiety
snaking through you in public spaces.
Strangers’ eyes carving you clean.

It’s the leather jacket
You bought when you were 15
And refuse to take off even in the summer.

It’s his calloused and grease stained hands
Exploring the winding hills
Of your new body.
Scenes from ****** play in your head
As he tells you
You taste like strawberries.

It’s the scorpion sting you iced with snow.

It’s a deep churning in your stomach.
They kind that only appears
When you forget to take your medicine
And you didn’t notice until about 5 minutes ago.

It’s the Atlantic City skyline
Blazing a depressing neon
Over the rest of South Jersey.

It’s trying to write poems out of license plates
And getting into an accident
When you can’t find a rhyme scheme.

It’s scabbed knuckles and
Bodies outlined in scars
Colliding in a ****** big bang.
An entire world unraveling like a red carpet.
We are silver studded starlets
Sinking our heels into the softness.
We are gods.
We were made for this.

Don't date geek boys
They will compare you to movie characters
You can never live up to
Try to kiss you
With a tongue made of dust
And pick apart your poetry
Pointing out every spelling mistake

Don't date sad boys
They will call you up
Drunk at 3am on school nights
They'll tell you about other girls
And blame it on you

Don't date rich boys
They'll crawl inside your bones
Make you heavy with regret
You won't be able to forget about them
Until it is a year later
And you see him drive past you
While you walk home from school
And you realize
He hadn't made an appearance
Since the night
They buried you

Don't date boys who smoke cigarettes
Every time your father
Bites down on the filter and
Strikes a match
You will see him
And run for the hills

Don't date boys who can sing
They'll whisper your favorite songs
To you in a voice
As smooth as ice
As warm as summer
A voice made for seraphs
When you try to listen to those songs without him
There will be a snow storm
In your heart

Don't date boys with razor blades for teeth
Boys who breathe fire
Who feed on flesh
And gorge themselves on girls' bleeding hearts

Or better yet
Don't date anyone at all

My fingers weren’t made for fixing things.
I am an object of destruction.
Don’t get me wrong,
I am not deadly.
I’m a vegetarian, I recycle.
I just break everything I touch.
I am a backwards Midas.
These mausoleum museum hands
Are what destroyed Pompeii.
The Roman colosseum crumbled under my feet.
I rip every heart I hold
And bite every mouth I kiss.
I am a benign hurricane.
I cause enough damage to inconvenience you
But not enough to **** you.
I am messy and dangerous,
A giant desperately trying to be gentle.
Proceed with caution
Because i cant fix what I break
No matter how much I would like to.

His hair curled around my fingers
Soft brown hooks
Catching me off guard
And reeling me in

I can’t remember the color of his eyes
Were they blue
Like the sky just before sunset bleeds?
Were they green
Like the stretches of pastures on the countryside?
Were they brown
Like the heels of my boot?

His smile is permanently
Stuck in my brain
I’ve always adored other people’s smiles
But his shined brighter
Than Orion’s Belt

His laugh still sounds
In my ears
Its like the music that erupts from
His fingertips
He was laughing at his own joke

He was only a dream
An image coughed up by my
Unforgiving subconscious
I dreamt he loved me
But it was only a false alarm

This pregnant moment,
This long stretch of heavy silence
You and I created
With sweat soaked skin and
Serrated smiles
Is the only thing i have left.
This bundle of forget-me-not,
Lavender sunrise,
Wake me up when the storm hits
Ballroom dance of a relationship
Is what keeps the
Monsters under my bed at bay.

You kissed violets into my hips
And lifted all the
Ugly out of my heart.
You wrote prophecies with your tongue
And let them soak
Into my bones.
Because of you
I am holy.

Because of you
I don’t remember December.
Because of you
Memories of April and May
Play behind my eyes
Like a never ending showreel
And you’re the star.

I don’t want to write poems about other boys.
I want to be pure,
I want to be rung out of the past.
I want your lips on my stomach,
Your hands on my waist,
Feeling the dip of softness,
Feeling the jagged edges of my ribs
Beg to be touched.

I want you to swallow me whole.
Let me be your Jonah,
You can be my whale.
I want my veins to run red
With 4 letters.
I want to wear them around my neck.

This pregnant moment,
This lilac infused euphoria
Keeping me from jumping
Is the reason
Your arms are my safe haven,
Your bed is my home.

I read a lot of poems about other people's mothers
And wish they were about mine.
But you see,
My mother hates poetry.
She doesn't understand it.
She doesn't understand how the words
Bend around my lips,
How pen plucks the cello strings of my throat
And plays truth like a song.
She doesn't understand the papery wings
That erupt from my shoulders
When metaphors are all I have.

But you see,
My mother loves words.
My mother taught me
To always carry a book with me.
Because of her
My handbag is a mess of
highlighted verses and underlines chapters.
Because of her
I know how to watch my tongue.

My mother never went into detail about her childhood.
At least not around me.
But every once in awhile
I'll catch her recounting a story of her mother.
Her mother who smoked cigarettes
And set a place for Jesus at Christmas dinner.

My mother knows when to fight
And when to keep silent.
That is one trait I didn't inherit.
I am stubborn like my father,
fiery and temperamental like my father.
But I will always have a heart like my mother.
Always be wrapped in an empathy
So tight that its easy to forget
Sometimes we can't breathe for everyone
And sometimes we need to breathe for ourselves.

Every Christmas Eve and Easter
I go to church with my mother.
Now, I am not a religious person.
I stopped believing in this god the day I learned
Abraham almost killed Issac,
Moses was never pure from the beginning,
And Eve did nothing but share,
But my mother loves Jesus.
When I was 15 my mother read the bible.
When I was 15 I needed her psalms most.

Whenever we're in the car together
She leans over and pokes my thigh.
When I roll my eyes she says
"Some day you will miss this"
And I can't help thinking she's right.

My father fancies himself  comedian.
So every night at dinner
When he launches into his act
My mother and I speak through our eyes.
Our eyes that are not unlike matching puzzle pieces.
My mother and I have our own language.

I'm writing this poem for my mother
Even though she hates poetry.
Hates the way I strip bear,
The way I open my ribcage for people I've never met.
Hates the way my similes only make sense
If you squint your eyes
And tilt your head to the right.
But you see my mother loves words
And my mother loves me.

Placing holy water on our wrists like perfume.
Locking ourselves in chapels,
Forgetting the reason for churches.
Do you remember the day
You carved a crucifix into my forehead?
Used the ashes of Christ as a band aid?
The Holy Spirit guided your numb limbs like
An ungodly puppeteer.

The almighty father smiles sadly.
He takes me in his arms,
Says, “My child, I am not sorry.”

i want your sunday mornings.
your “comeback to beds”.
your burnt tongue tip.
coffee breath warming cheeks.
i want your arms around my waist,
a special kind of straight jacket.

i want your sunday afternoons.
a midday trip to the record store.
a woman passes through the aisles
and tells me how she loves our love.
how young people love
with a special kind of fire.

i want your sunday evenings.
i want to soak up your anxiety in my bones,
hold both our traumas.
go to bed before the sun goes down
and make love.
a special kind of *****.

i want foggy mornings on delilah road.
i want your volvo swerving into the marshland.
i want your special kind of goodbye kiss.
i want your goodbye kiss.

They pulled me out of the wreckage
My tattered frame
Indistinguishable amongst the
Broken car parts
My mangled body bruised
Bones bent in half
The scent of blood mixed with
The scent of fire mixed with
The scent of rubber
I wore it like perfume
They pulled me out of the wreckage
Like they pulled me out of the womb

I never give him a name in my poems.
He is always “Him”,
Always a personification of a
Smothering darkness closing in.
On a bad day
I see nothing but black.
On a good day
He is a dim border
Making it only a little harder to see.

On a dim day
I can wake up and take a shower.
I can present my naked body to myself.
I am not a Renaissance painting.
I am not pink and soft,
I do not have flowing blonde hair
Tumbling down my back,
But he still picked me to play his
Mona Lisa smile.

On a dim day
I can read on the bus.
I can ignore the *** holes,
The bumps in the road that remind me of my skin.
The skin that was touched and burned,
That scraped against the ridges of his fingerprints.

On a dark day
I take more than the recommended amount of pain killers.
On a dark day
My spine curves into the golden ratio,
The perfect submissive pose.
On a dark day
His hands are my hands,
Slippery with butter and calloused from his car.
On a dark day
I am a gutted museum of trauma.
I am cigarette ashes.
I am a tongue tied convulsing mess.

On a dark day
I am fifteen again with cracked collarbones.
On a dim day
I can’t even muster up enough thanks
That he left me alive.

I’m a creature of habit
I’m a chameleon that only blends
Into one scene
A horse with blinders on either
Side of my face
Throw me off my orbit
And we’re all ******

I do this thing
Where I shut everyone out
And then wonder why I’m alone
I do this thing
Where I take my heart strings
And use them to
Sew my mouth shut
I do this thing
Where I write poems on my wrists
Because I can’t bear to cut
I do this thing
Where I force headaches
To crush my skull
Into oblivion
I do this thing
Where I don’t do
Anything

My heart has deflated.
My heart has turned to a black and limp
Pebble in the belly of my palm.
My heart leaks juices
That remind me of meat.
I'm a vegetarian now.

The valves on my heart don't work anymore.
This much I am certain.
My heart sits in the makeshift oven
My ribs act as.
No longer a cage, no longer bone.
Just an oven chalk full of gas.
Will you brave the heat?

My heart was once a peach.
My heart is now a rotting plum.
Mold colonies take refuge.
I have named each spore.
Narcissus is my favorite.
He is green while the others are gray.
Its almost ironic.

They want to pickle my heart in a jar.
They want to inject me
Full of formaldehyde.
They want chemicals trickling out
Of my ears and open mouth.
My jaw slacked just for this.

I am lying on a surgery table.
My heart is about to be taken out.
I say goodbye to
My dearest, oldest friend.
I hope I can see it fossilized
And put in a great display case in a great history museum.
Everyone can marvel
At the heart so black, so flat, so burnt, so dead
It nearly exploded in a girl's chest.

I do not remember the steady pulsing.
The steady pumps.
The punctuations to each second.
I do not remember the flutter.
The skips.
But most importantly
I do not remember
The rotting.

And if i still hate myself
I will stop talking.
I don’t mean my usual silence.
My tight lipped, teeth glued silence.
I mean no hummingbird song
Or political speech.
No proclamation of apathy.
No growls of hunger.
I will clip my vocal cords
And learn the words to a mute poem.

And if you still hate yourself
We’ll forget how to sleep.
We’ll let it collect in the corners of our eyes
And lie awake
And lie through our teeth.

And if I still hate myself
I’ll swallow broken glass.
You’ll think its candy
And I won’t correct you.
You won’t know until you are
Called into the hospital at 3 am
And I’m called into the red sea.

And if you still hate yourself
We’ll sit in your backyard in July.
We’ll catch frogs and butterflies.
We’ll drown in our sweat.
I know how much you hate salt.
You know how much I hate heat.
We’ll call it masochism.

And if I still hate myself
I’ll tell myself I love myself
And the little lie
Will wrap around me like
A security blanket.

And if you still hate yourself
We’ll go to a lot of parties.
We’ll drink our own weight.
I like soda,
You like *****.
Either way we’ll both need
Our stomachs pumped eventually.

And if I still hate myself
And if you still hate yourself
We’ll join hands in church,
We’ll pray to Baal.
We’ll open ourselves completely.

My mother gave birth to a carcass
A corpse who
Ages and grows
But does not breathe
Because the dead can't breathe

I am rotting from the inside out
First my heart will go
It will blacken and crust over
Become the stone that sits in my belly
And pulls me under
Then my tongue and teeth
They will fall out
And fill bathtubs
Blood will come trickling after
Then finally
My lungs will collapse
Like a crystal chandelier
In an abandoned opera house

I will cradle the broken pieces of myself
And I will cry
Because only my eyes seem to work
I will open my mouth
And try to breathe
And only dust will escape me

The opening and closing
Of the would’ve been casket door
Reminds me of the window screen
Holding on by hope.
The cold skin just underneath my fingertips
Reminds me of the cold breath
Of wind that swirled in behind me.
It was only October.

Our mother yelled.
She scolded you at your one moment.
A pure moment.
A moment to be completely and utterly
Yourself
Shattered by a concerned chorus
Masked with annoyance.
I picked up the shards and
Dragged them across my hips,
Sharpened them on my bones,
As they dragged you to the car.

There was no time
To break it to me gently.
No warm hugs awaiting at the door
Or tear stains taking pity on a 12 year old.
They took you away.
Your eyes as big and bright
As snow globes.
I watched the glitter pour down your face.

They sat like vultures in their plastic chairs.
We still have no idea
What they were waiting for.
Maybe they were waiting for you to break the silence
Like how you broke their hearts.
You look at me
Like you’re not sure why I’m there.
You hold my hand
And I feel the sadness
Leaking out of you in black rivers.
This is the curse we share.
They patched you up well.
You can almost not make out the stitches
The pills forced into the pit
You call a stomach.
You whisper a song so soft
No one but me can hear it,
"Never die, never die."

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.

My head is heavy with all the verses
I’ve made for you,
All the carefully crafted stanzas
That I want to write on your back
With my fingernails
While you whisper prayers of ‘yes’.

I want you to paint the Renaissance
With your teeth on my neck.
There is no room for impressionism here.

You turn my
Starry nights into starry days.
You keep me in a starry haze.
I never want to eat yellow paint again.

You are a poem.
I am the pen that slashes the page.
I am the blade biting into skin.
You are the scar.
You are 8am phone calls.
I am 3pm slumbers.
You are a stake.
I am the flames,
The witch burning beneath them.
I am an unfinished story.
You are an encyclopedia.
I highlight every word.
Together we are a dictionary.
No one touches us.
I am a garden of only weeds.
You are the thorns on a rose.
I am crushed daisy petals
Laying at your feet.
I love you.
I love you not.
You are the stray wire
In my favorite bra
Stabbing my breast.
You are the sun warming my cheeks
With a careful caress.
You are a poem.
I am the pen.

Blood sloshes around
In blue veins
Pressed up against my skin
Open me
Unbutton my wrists
Let the winter air in

Am I walking on eggshells
Or am I walking on coals?
Are these shards of glass
Wedged into the belly of my foot
Or are these pebbles
That snuck into my shoes
On that one day we
Went to the lake?
The soles of my soul
Have worn away
Leaving black skid marks
On my heels
And blisters on my toes
All because you walk in a run
And I run in a walk
And i just can’t keep up

I had a dream my teeth fell out
And I woke up talking.
My tongue was thick cotton
And my throat was clogged with ghosts.
I’m always choking on
Bad dreams and lies
Woven like forgotten scripture.
I wish I could repeat the prophecy.

I am teeth,
He is fist.
I am the scabs on his knuckles,
The salt dripping from his lip.
He is strong, humble.
The type of boy your mother
Wants for herself.

My eyes are gray-blue,
Almost like fog.
He asked me if I could see through them.
I said “no.”
He asked again.
I said “no.”
He asked again.
I said “I can see you.”

His eyes are brown,
Or at least that’s what I imagined.
Maybe they’re blue too.
Maybe we have that in common.
I’ve never looked at him long enough to tell.

He is action,
I am script.
He is the character,
I am just the traits.

He is fist,
I am teeth.
He keeps his hands at his side.
He knows when to put them up.
He outlines my edges.
He needs someone who can open their arms.
I can only open my jaw.
He needs another fist.
I need myself.
A body needs two fists
But only one set of teeth.
We just don’t fit together.

My eyes are gray-blue.
My eyes are fog.
I can’t see through them.
I can’t see him
And I’m beginning to think thats a good thing.

His eyes aren’t brown.
They aren’t mud.
They’re diamonds encrusted in red sockets.
I should feel honored
He tore them out and
Offered them to me on a ring.
I only feel sick.

He is a text message at 3am.
He is “I hope she’s not asleep, its only 3am.”
I am still awake at 3am.
I am “why is he texting me at 3am.”

I am teeth,
He is fist.
I am gnash and snarl and bark.
I am a last resort.
He is broken nose and black eye,
He is bruise and scar.
I am machine,
He is tool.
I am teeth and he is fist
And we were never meant to intersect.

It’s been a year
And I still don’t know how to feel.
Sometimes I feel elated.
Out of all the girls,
All the plums,
I was the ripest, the juiciest.
I spread across his tongue
As a smile spread across his lips.

Sometimes I feel empty.
Like he had
Taken away a part of me.
A certain innocence
So rare, so valuable, so hidden
Not even the best criminals
Could steal it back.

Sometimes I feel fragile.
My bones replaced by porcelain.
They forgot to wrap me
In bubblewrap.
They forgot the
Handle with care sign.
I shattered at his feet.
I crunched under his boots.

Sometimes I feel depressed.
Any light I had
Has darkened.
Any fire has
Been snuffed out.
I am nothing more than smoke.

Sometimes I feel tired.
Like it takes too much energy to live.
I’m not strong enough
To live.
To push through.
My organs are too heavy.
I am too heavy.

Sometimes I feel happy.
When I forget about that night.
When I forget about the bedroom floor.
The popcorn bowl.
The army of whispers
Assaulting my ears.
When I’m alone with a book
Full of poems.
When I shed this skin,
The one with burn marks and
Moth holes,
I’m happy.

There’s a dominance in his hands.
He has more power in one knuckle than I do in my whole body.
I hang on his bones like stretched out clothing,
He has lost a lot of weight.
I pray at the altar
Laid out at his feet.
I wash away the blood and drink
From the bowl.
He presses his lips to the back of my neck,
Sings me a lullaby.
I don’t understand this power,
This black magic.
My heart is now kindling.
He warms his dominant hands over my smoke.

Hold me to the river’s floor.
Let the mud tangle into my hair.
The brown hues match.

Strike a match and set me aflame.
My bones are firewood.
My blood gasoline.

You hold the keys to Heaven’s gates
And I am dying to get in.
Please let me in.

There’s cuts on my knuckles that I don’t remember getting
And a hole in the wall hiding love letters inside.
I lay in the middle of a sea
Of broken records.
Tears shed off my cheeks like chips of paint.
I am manic,
I am antidepressants.
I am dry heaving into the fist sized hole in the wall.
I am falling asleep
And I am never waking up.

She is making love to the music,
She is making love to the stage.
She is blue and purple and red.
She is a lipstick stain,
A songstress,
She has aged a hundred years.

Her voice rings out,
Clear and soulful,
Over the static of the others.
The microphone is her battle axe
And I’ve never seen
Such a beautiful fight.

I’ve always been
A sensitive person
Say one word and
I shatter
I’m made of porcelain
And glass
There are cracks
In my armor
That match
The cracks in my nails
Please don’t break me

I found him rummaging through
My ribcage at three in the morning.
When I asked him
What he was doing
His hands melted into red.

Later,
I found him again.
This time I watched like a vulture
Perched on the cliffside.
His fingers tickled
As he combed through the carnage.
The strings of gore
That protected this vessel.
His fingers curled over the piece of coal
Holding the place of my heart
And he pressed it into a diamond.

He left with a whisper
Pressed to his lips
Like a sweet summer kiss.

Only hours passed before he came back.
This time my heart was a bomb.
Colored wires tangled with my heartstrings.
It was hard to tell which
Belonged to me.

It took only 14 hours
For me to explode.
The steady ticking should’ve warned me
But I was too wrapped up in him,
Too focused on the red warning light of his eyes,
Too busy humming funeral songs
Over the noise
Vibrating through my chest.

It was like fireworks going off during daylight,
Like stuffing confetti into a taxidermy lamb,
Like pressing the detonate button
Before the building has been evacuated.

This time,
When he left,
He took his fingerprints with him.

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 wish you bent spoons.
I wish you 3 a.m vibrating headaches.
I wish you salty fish eyes wedged between toes.
I wish you one broken ear bud,
A late bus,
Perpetual goosebumps rolling over skin.

I wish you holes in your favorite shirt.
I wish you bitten tongue.
I wish you panic attack,
Burnt toast,
Hot water scald.

I wish you nothing but bad poems.
I wish you crooked teeth, cracked smile.
I wish you spider legs.
I wish you broken *******.
I wish you scratches in all your records,
Even the ones you don’t like.

I wish you weak coffee
And weak bones.
I wish you lipstick stain on the collar of your work shirt
And her perfume starting a windstorm.
I wish you hell like fury
From a woman scorned.

I wish you mismatched shoes.
I wish you gutted grief.
I wish you clumps of wax when you
Desperately need a candle.
I wish you undercooked meat.

I wish you bedroom floors and popcorn bowls.
I wish you see my face
Every time you run your ***** hands
Down her clean body.
I wish you choke on that feeling at the back of your throat,
The one that reminds you of guilt.
I wish your fingerprints would melt from my memory.

I wish December to finally end.

Rubber** marks on my back and
Salt bleeding through my teeth.
Craters in my skin from your
Tongue scorching my flesh. I
Clench my knees together. I'm
Grasping for your hand in the dark. You are
Angrywith me for spilling
Ink all over the leather seats in your car. You don't think I'm
Sane. My lips are
Blueand my
Smile is a myth. I've never
Felt so
Tired. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm
Done.

I need to learn how to finish projects,
How to breathe without wheezing.
But its so hard
When ideas are shooting around your brain
Like semi colon sized bullets
And the gun powder forms a smoke screen
And its starting to choke me.
I’m coughing up black.
I’m sorry I can’t be better.
I’m sorry I never learned how to be okay.

Sometimes when I write
I feel like I’m speeding through a tunnel.
The air slicks back my hair
And the wind makes my eyes water
And for once these aren’t sad tears.
When I unzip myself
And step out onto the page
I feel eternal.

Sometimes when I write
My mind feels like a ball of yarn all tangled.
I can’t make out the words
But I know the right ones are there.

Suddenly the words are gone.
They’ve dried up on my tongue.
I can still taste the decay.
They jumped off the train before they
Passed through my fingertips.

My best friend is a writer too.
She reads lines of her poems to me
And I feel deflated.
Not even my words want to stay with me.

Open my ribs like French doors.
Play my heartstrings like a cello.
Let the music travel up my throat.
My body is a symphony
And you are the conductor.

My back is a blank canvas.
The lashes from your whip paints
A sickly picture.
Liquid fragments of myself
Melt down to my thighs.

I am a lavender scented candle.
You are the ever burning flame.
You ignite my bones.
Send heat down my spine.
Reduce me to a burnt nothing,
A clump of purple wax.

Blue veins criss cross in pale wrists.
Translucent skin shining
Like diamonds in August skies.
You are a child born from summer.
A peach plucked before harvest.

We don’t know how to love
Without brandishing our swords.
Scarlet drips from the sharpened point.
You are the ruby encrusted in the hilt.
I am the silver blade.

We run through no man’s land
Into each other’s arms.
Leaping over minefields and barbed wires.
If we should have a daughter
We’ll teach her to love like war.

All I know is
Teeth pressed anxiously into bottom lip.
All you know is
Goodbye kisses
Presented as reminders and post it notes.

We are an eclipse.
We are the solar system.

When you're 15
With a spotted face of acne
And a wild mane of curly hair
And boy who is two years older
And can drive
Tells you you are beautiful
You will let him touch you

When you're 15
And his fingers curl up your sides
Like spiders
You'll want to *****
But you will swallow the toxic insides
Of your stomach
And smile
He thinks you're beautiful

When you're 15
And its a week later
And you feel like something
Is dying inside of you
You won't tell anybody
This secret will die
With the thing inside of you
Remember, he thought you were beautiful

When you're 15
Your friends will invite you to a party
Where you'll take up cigarettes
You'll bite down on your tongue
And lock yourself in the bathroom
When they mention
The boy who thought you were beautiful

When you're 16
And you finally forget about
The boy who thought you were beautiful
A new boy will come along
He will think you're special

When you're 16
You will go to your first Homecoming dance
You will feel like you are
Drowning in your dress
Like you are choking on your perfume
And everyone's breath
But he will look at you
Like you are special

When you're 16
And he tells you
He likes you because no one notices
You are there
No one looks twice at you
You will realize
He never really thought you were special

When you're 16
And it's been over a year since
The boy who thought you were beautiful
Talked about you
Like you were meat
And two months
Since the boy who thought you were special
Has spoken to you
You will crush your cigarettes under your boot
Smash Mike's Hard Lemonade bottles
On the edges of the kitchen table
Open your wrists for the first time
In four years
Wake up in the morning
Covered in cat hair and pen marks

When you're 17
You will write a poem
A poem you'll only let strangers read

I am a girl cut out of marble.

He is a boy made of copper.

I am a girl so starved
I gorge on air.

He is a boy with a belly full of
Unlucky pennies.

I am a girl with a mouth full of hornets.
They sting my gums.
I talk around the swelling.

He is a boy with wooden legs.
I wonder how he doesn't splinter.
How he doesn't burn.

I am forged from fire.
My lungs blacken and
My skirt billows like the smoke
Coughing out of a chimney.

He ripples like water.
He is always moving.
He walks like ocean waves
And I am pulled into his tide.

He is the boy on the moon
Throwing his fishing line into the sea of stars.
Somehow he catches me.
A black hole amongst galaxies.
There is no way this can end well.

I am a black hole.
I swallow.
I take.
I never give back.
I hope this won't be a problem for the boy on the moon.

He is a ghost of kiss
Still pressed to my neck.
A reminder of what was.
Of what could be.

I am a phantom
Wallowing in this mortal plane.
I am a black shadow.
The thing you see out of the corner of your eye.

He is a boy with a tongue so sharp
It could be used as a sword.
I'd follow him into battle.

I am a girl with a wild mane
And a tamed heart.
Looks can be deceiving.

He is a boy with teeth made of honey.
How did he get so lucky?

I am a girl whose most prized possession
Is a scuffed pair of boots.

He is a boy who is more metallic than sweet.

I am a girl who was not made to be touched.

He is a boy.
I am a girl.
Sometimes we intersect.

He asked
"Are you afraid to die?"
And I just
Shook my head no
I'm afraid of people
Forgetting me
And of getting my tongue
Chopped off while I'm asleep
But I'm not afraid to die
He asked
"Do you believe in God?"
And I just
Shook my head no
I believe in the
Kindness of strangers
And in the ghosts
That haunt my attic
But I don't believe in God
He said
"You must be crazy."
And I just
Shook my head no
And watched him flounder
In his fear and faith

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.

Take these silver threads
Of memories
And weave them
Into tapestries
Hang them on stone walls
In forgotten castles
So they can rot
In a place
Besides my brain

Life was already hard enough
Without you breathing down my neck.
You’re too close for comfort
And it makes me feel like I’m a bomb,
All wires and flashing lights.
You have hooked up explosives in my ribcage
And I’m ready to blow.

You feel like an anchor
Chained around my ankles.
You’re pulling me under.
No one told you I was hydrophobic.

When you embrace me
Your hands miss my waist and
Lock around my throat.

I can’t breathe with you standing at my door.
I didn’t want it to be this way
But you’ve forced your way in.
Like centipedes in the winter,
Like a butterfly tearing its way out of the cocoon.

You want this to be something beautiful
You want me to be more than a dream.
But I can’t let that happen.
I won’t let that happen.

I am thin wisps of smoke.
I am fog.
You can’t trap me in a jar.

If you ever feel sad,
Look down at the belly of your wrist.

Kiss the veins
That pulse and jump underneath your skin.

Remember that no matter what you do
Your blood will always flow.

Your body loves you,
Love your body.