i hate being ignored
but i do it to other people,
and
sometimes i just don't want to say anything
and when i do
i guess i say too much.

i'm mean and rude
and nobody want's to talk to me
because if they say something i don't like,
then i'll tell them
right away to stop saying it.

i haven't called my mother
in a while,
and people are telling me what to do.
i want to escape
and jump into freezing water

because when i come out i will
be extremely
numb
and i'll be able to feel the sun a little better

if you
call yourself cruel,
just imagine
how horrible it would be
when i tear your
jaws out
with my
teeth

i don't even know my own father's birthdate,
and sometimes i still think about
boys who never touched me
with fingers
instead he caressed me
with dark,
star painted
tall trees.

that life is behind me
and if this one is a temporary one,
then i'm not sure which one i'm really living.
is that why reality seems so
fragile?

i lose everything.
i take naps on winding roads
above mountains
and i even lose my dreams.

sometimes in the shower i pull
violently on
my face,
seeing if i'm real enough,
assuming that it will crumble in my hands
turn into a brown puddle
and drip down the drain.

my mouth feels dry and i
feel aching
where my shoulder meets my arm
and my clavicle is nothing but a stick
covered with a
man of flesh;
my body is making love
and layered upon one another in a
fiery bed of red.

the odd thing,
is i want to smoke
and sleep
and lose some things in my memory.

i wrapped myself in twirling circles
inside a redwood tree,
tall, burned and cascading all around
our shaking bodies,
a bundle of sage drifting through
patterns of golden
rain.

naked bodies swam in dark
water that slept under a drifting fog;
Newport filters made for tired fires,
driftwood instead.

emptied packs and emptied stomachs
threw themselves into
a waiting bed of blackberry brambles
scratched skin burned in
2 a.m. drifting shower steam.

now,
i am tired,
because i fed the fire within me
too much
and something is slightly missing,
left along with the charred remains of my
forgotten shirt,
on a riverbed that was once brutal,
but now held bare golden limbs.
it's probably lying somewhere
carefully disguised in
light and blowing leaves on
a dark forest floor,
but i haven't the energy to take it back.

bruised necks never swallow well.

can't you find any metaphors
that are original?
or do you like the ones
used,
holy and worn so your skin shows
through?

when you lost your virginity,
i remembered you were slightly glowing
a halter neck dress under a fluorescent
light.
i didn't have any clothes on, just a brown blanket,
and your brother's
anger could almost be tasted drifting in the air
like snapping crocodiles.
what we really needed was more alcohol,
but our vaults we're empty,
so we settled with three embers burning brightly in the deepening night
and the boy upstairs struggled to find his pants.

our souls we're much too big for our bodies,
it was bursting out the seams of our small limbs.

maybe everything started that one day
in seventh grade when we lied about what movie we were
going to see,
and we put up our hair in brown piles on top of our heads
and squeezed into pants so small we could feel our bones pressing against
the fabric.

when we walked into town,
miles from your house in the dusty summer,
with me dragging my skateboard along,
with the skull on the bottom
and you walking with you long legs slightly in front of me;
drunkards with
swiveling eyes whistled at us from
a green jeep and tried to cajole us into the car,
my small ******* was ****** high into
the sweltering air
"******* YOU MISOGYNISTIC *******,"

we couldn't get into the movie we wanted to,
so we snuck into a different one
filled with snow and dark
and twirling tendrils that reached toward us and
made our stomach crawl.

sometimes i miss the times desperately
when we would pack things into a small cloth
sack
food, knives
we'd trek in the forest for hours and
this one time we broke into somebodies pool, dipped our feet in
then got chased away by their livid dog.

we had left the gun we brought there,
you had two and we liked feeling it cold against our
empty fingers,
so i had to run back and get it.

sometimes i think about how if i had never met you,
my life would be so different.
i would have never smoked my first joint
with you on your trampoline
encased in large, fluffy blankets
under millions of stars that couldn't quite fit in our
eyes all at the same time.

we would have never pranced in
yellow drying grass,
and almost fell into your creek, with
your brother laughing behind.

i'm glad we wrote songs
together even if they were about
blood dripping slowly from our open carcasses;
we weren't the most optimistic kinds of
girls.

we had wills as hard as
hitting iron,
metallic in spurting bloodshed.

we were rebellious,
like other girls we're pretty,

and we fought like warriors should
in small, bland classrooms
with teachers who knew nothing of being hurt.

our voices were strong,
unwavering like something found in the depths of a morning sky.

we raised ourselves well, darling.