stand by and listen to the jaws of this shark with
a vocabulary like a diamond - sharp and clear.
pity only yourself, you fickle & futile tyrant.
you stand for nothing and fall for anything,
and ride your bike on expressways as if there
is a bike lane especially reserved for you. in
this food chain, you are nothing more than
plankton while i am the great white whale,
casting a large overhead shadow over you
always leaving you on your tiptoes by the
boundary line. in this lane, i'll be the one
to forget my seat belt as i run you over.
somehow, i loved that selfish part of you.
somehow, i don't love that part of you, and
would love nothing more than to obliterate
you from my past and from my memories.

- kra

when the words stuck in my throat mature
slowly like honeydew and childish adults,
that's when a line has to be drawn. when
words are lodged in your throat, not by
accident, that's where the line has to be
formed. when the scars of their words
leave you bottlenecked, trying to find the
words to express the vagueness of that
empty feeling, the line has been crossed.

- kra

no longer will i glaze my eyes over the world in
monotone colors since all the colors were drained
from this memory. no longer will i sit back, watching
someone like you play favorites and pity the scars on
my legs. no longer will these mountains be a prison for
me. no longer will i let a person imprison me who leaves
me uninhabitable in the end and reopens fresh wounds.
i will surpass you one thousand times over, and play god.
for now, i am broadcasting in god's place since i was
tricked into thinking someone like you was my savior.
i will become the omnipresent regret and the everlasting
guilt. i will leave you aching, hungry, wounded, lost, and
alone. no longer will i be the roadkill, i will be the weapon
but no longer will my body be used to hurt another.

- kra

to own the parallel structure of your house, i would
have to peel my own floorboards back, tear them off
like day old bandaids, and install plain oatmeal colored
tiles to lose the meaning of myself. i would restructure
the blueprints of the hallow home of my chest, and leave
no room for any florescent lights. the darkness can’t dim
the fact that i am brimming with regrets and questions
that are quickly turning rotten. the answers are losing their
meaning. coming face to face with the wolf, the dread i
used to get as the sheep, it’s losing its meaning. when
i repainted myself, there were still parts of you lying
around like loose hairpins, but i’m leaving no room
for the loose hairpins. the fear i had turning on the
florescent lights, of seeing my hands painted red
with blood i didn’t know i spilled, was becoming
a learning experience. all this time, i've been seeing
you in my ideal vision: sturdy like steel beams, but
there has always been that marshmallows and tooth
pick-like foundation you've been keeping up around
me. i can't see you as parallel structures anymore. look
at me. did you ever actually look at me without disgust
of the blood i spilled, and tell me things with honesty?

14 days before -

they say one day, you will have to face your
fears otherwise they may become triggers.
there will be places you won't want to visit
because you will end up looking the thing
you fear in the eyes. to get over fears don't
happen overnight, yet placing myself in
positivity is something i fear the most.

13 days before -

perhaps the mountains are getting taller, but this
city is turning into nothing more than a prison.
this city is starting to lose it's vivid orange hues,
and it's evaporating into the sky into a dark gray
cloud of fury and resentment. this wanderlust is
not healthy for me, considering i lose interest in
everything. getting scorched by the heat like this
is becoming something like torture.

12 days before -

regret is remembering something with
the aftertaste feeling of loss and sorrow.
jesus christ, trying to get to know you was
like studying for a test of an entirely
different subject than the material i'm
learning now. even being left with the
aftertaste of something sour, it was the
closest to the truth i've ever discovered.

11 days before -

on my 21st birthday, i found out about your true
wolf-like persona, of those piano-like fingers
being sharp claws that always had me in a choke
hold, and i let you sniff out my vulnerability
without questions or concerns. now why did
i not leave for the paper towns in the first place
when my gut was screaming about bad news?

10 days before -

rain, rain, can you please go away because you
are making me worry about the silliest things
like how i called myself rain on a hydrophobic
world. brain, brain, stop thinking right now
about the silliest things, you have no need
to stoop to this level of sheer anxiety.

9 days before -

i will not be a prisoner-of-war, allowing you to
torture me with sweet lullabies of safe comfort
words, anymore. i would rather you pull the
trigger, since you were a step too late to fix
the fact that you became my trigger. i'm my
own harriet tubman, finding paths to get out
of this slave-like existance you call friendship.


8 days before -

i am determined to make something of myself
because being pliable and rubber-like just made
me deformed to you since your hands weren't
exactly careful with me in the first place. i am
determined to wash myself clean of these sins,
rid myself of the detritus, and make the sun shine
right out of the very *** i wished you kissed.

7 days before -

i will continue to grieve of the afternoon that
we poked fun at mormons because i've realized
you stooped me down to their level unconsciously.
i'll be blunt, this distance between us is only growing
wider and wider and i hope whatever was between
us will end up tearing in half when i'm unreachable.

6 days before -

when everyone sees you explode into a flurry
of fireworks, the way i will see you is as the
father of all bombs, where you will evaporate
everything i've ever been familiar with right
from my very eyes. to think i gave myself
third degree burns to give life to dead things.

5 days before -

The words I couldn't vocalize
The thoughts I couldn't accept
The memories are piercing and heavy
They're becoming stiff, and like lead

4 days before -

i heard the water company nestle is using the
reservoirs of california to make bottled water,
leaving california in it's worst drought in years
and i think of how you used me just to get to
him and how i chased you down state lines
and how i ran for the hills once you left me
in the worst drought i've had in years.

3 days before -

to survive, you must become selfishly inclined.
nobody will warn you of the dog eat dog world
as a child, so you have to run on the course
natural selecton provides you. mother nature
is a real ******* in the way she disguised her
colors as fall, when she is always artic winter.

2 days before -

run from the predators. don't let yourself
be swallowed by the building doubt in your
tummy. although you are small, your existance
is wider than you think it is. you can expand
yourself wide enough so you are not the victim
of mother nature's cruel & unusual punishment.

1 day before -

i have loved and lost, but never once forgot the
places i once fell in love with, with the rolling hills
and valleys and the thunderous roar of billowing
dust storms. the planes are at seven and the trains
at eleven, and i nearly forgot about how i used to
live in the quiet fortress of my forgettable town.


0 days before -**

i want to ask the passengers on this plane
what they're leaving for. maybe vacation,
an adventure i'll never know of, or perhaps
they're running from the truth of the matter.
texas seems like it's going to welcome me with
warmer arms than arizona has done in months.

to watch myself shrink down small enough to enter
into the crack of your doorway made me realize a
lot about how i stretched myself out just to have
memories that were almost phantasmagoric. the
beauty naturally made way for the beast, letting the
claws grip her by the throat. it was almost like wild
flowers shedding their petals for winter. it wasn't
a choice to place myself behind the barrel of the gun.
it was a matter of being a martyr, just to live with
something to believe in. now that i think about it,
the signs were all there. the gut feeling of uncertainty
always sat in my stomach uncomfortably even when
i sat her down, told her how important i saw her, and
she lied straight to my ******* face. it was a matter of
not seeing what was always there behind the scenes.
when i met you, i had that same phantasmagoric
feeling about you. not for one second have i ever
doubted you, nor have i doubted every single time
i got to see you. that was the big difference. i've
been reaching for things that are dead for so long,
i've forgotten how to be alive. thanks for being a
teacher of sorts, to teach me how to live again.

in the ripped  up
r  u  n     o  v  e  r
shards of   who i
had    wanted  to
be  i  found  only
someone   i  d i d
not      recognize.
h o w   do  i    go
back    to feeling
h   u  m   a   n   ?