I am unsatisfied in a way that feels violent, that rips through flesh and punctures lungs and coughs up blood. I am unhappy in a way that makes my hands shake and i create new letters out of the pencil marks i draw. I cannot breathe in a way that makes my lungs black with tar and my mouth hurt, i choke on spit and take four deep breaths where girls need one. I want something in a way that makes me want to occupy my time, I write needless poetry just to get it out of my skin and into someplace more permanent, it falls out of me and when I move it trails behind me. It repeats itself in my head like a mantra, I torture myself in the knowing way that things can never be as good as they are when I close my eyes and I am touching you and every rule we have is broken or did not exist in the first place, there is no good or bad space there is no mess ups or fumbling hands there is no regretting it I am absolutely desperate because I am out of options and I know you warned me not to get attached not to get conflicted not to mess it up but I am out of my mind in a way that is so over my head that I cannot even hear you I am absolutely drowning in my bad decisions I am so crazy about you I don't care how many deep breaths I take just to keep going I am not even counting anymore

you feel like bursting through hospital doors.
repeating names, rushed hands all over my body looking for signs of distress.
you feel like dialated pupils,
like throwing tequila back and standing gutter-in-the-street still until you feel every drop of poison fall down your throat and into your stomach.

you feel like waking up the neighbors,
like throwing wedding shower vases,
like turning on neighborhood streetlights and calling for backup.
you feel like the anguish that sticks onto places you cant reach in the shower;
how im not sure i will ever get your smell off of me.
you feel like chaos, like burden, like a level of wretchedness that takes two hands to control.
you feel like showing up unannounced,
heart racing so hard i feel it bounce along to a chorus of ringing in my ears.

and maybe that's why i can't get rid of you.
because you have replaced impulsivity with spontaneity,
you have taken the fear out of failure and you have made the way danger sounds so easy off of your lips
you feel like the "speak now" instead of the "forever hold your peace."
you feel like the selfish "wait," the last desperate pleading case;
you feel like the passion infecting my lungs in breaths of smoke and dancing dandelion seeds in my ridbcage like a magic show.

like an age-old story, some different form of you all strong women must endure,

you feel like the irresistible situational irony they whisper about when they say "it is not love if it is not torture."

i will write every time i miss you
i will choke out words and mix this feeling into permanence
i will listen to the blackness of the sky when it speaks to me
like it always has
before you,
after you,
this time, do not forget what he has done to you.
it is not your fault that you mistake pain for love
but untangle the wires
do not forget how this feels.

i will write every time i miss you
i will tell the world how i am feeling
i will tell them which i fear is worse-
the emptiness you have carved out of me,
feeling every bone in my ribcage expand and contract with my breathsounds,
versus the way i let you
the way i laid in place and pretended it did not hurt

i will write every time i miss you
i will exist openly and let the world understand how much i am feeling
because if i don't have a course of action every time
a wave of you washes over me
i will fall into the comfort it reminds me of
i will manipulate the skies until the stars spell out i forgive you

i will write every time i miss you
so you can read the damage you have done
and understand that with every word i write
with every second i do not come back
i almost do

i fall asleep under brilliant greens and buzzing bees
and wake under a dying tree.
red tears fall around me and land next to fingertips
ladybugs crawl over my knees and find a home in the straw.

what once was filled with life has become quiet,
the sky sends apathy in place of the sun,
i wish that the wind would
speak softly and say you are safe in the pace the earth has set up;
push away my pieces gently
in the way it taught the sea so many years ago.

while we were trying to see who could hurt worse,
the world spun in circles like a child on a playground.
the seasons changed without us,
and the wind pushes and pulls you away like the tide,
it gathers your pieces and tells you you are safe without me.

the equinox spins backwards and
i am cultivated to the place where we decided that enough was enough.
my roots spread and break through the painful words we
planted in each others ribcages

i fell asleep under brilliant greens and buzzing bees
the flashlight flickers of tiny bugs
long, dazed evenings where the sun falls in slow motion;
and woke permanent to the comatose forests.
you left,
you took the vitality of the cosmos with you,
the wind pushes past me,
scatters me,
tells me,
*look around you
it is slow; it is rusting, flushed
it is flaming.
he set the world on fire when he left you,
do what he has taught you.
create from the ashes he has left you,
and you will make yourself safe.

she owns stars  
they are hung in place of humming butterflies in her stomach
she does not get nervous, she gets enkindled;
set aflame within seconds
she is ultraviolet fearless,
feeling her penitence only where it is absolutely due
her name is attributed to shameless like a title
she does not make herself small
or fold neatly into borders and build refuge in corners
not smooth like a statue
she is rough around the fringe;
you can tell by looking at her
she is the definition of wear-and-tear, she is whirlwind
kicked around,
hung-out-to-dry,
her mouth has messy margins;
she possesses no absolutes
she is extraordinary,
boundless,
she embodies intensity and fills every word she speaks with volume
she cannot just touch the ones she loves,
she must wreak havoc in their lives.
the stars beg for forgiveness as
she ignites fury and forces conformity to her accompanying chaos.
the slightest hitch of breathing is suffocating
comfort is mistaken for smothering, extinguished vitality drives
an exit in ballerina form tornado
it is so carefully constructed,
a technique so practiced
it confounds the lines between art and destruction,
bitterness seeps from her tear ducts
acidic, every dance looks like an escape method around her wrists
she whispers;
"you cannot love
the constellations.
i contain multitudes,
i exist past your competence and occupy negative space;
i am made of what people wish they were bold enough to apperceive ."
and the stars translate in echo,
"you cannot love
what is scared to be touched.
oh,
what a lonely, impermanent space
frightened arrogance must occupy."

i think that you are lost
your hands shake and you try to make yourself small
your hands shake and you try to make yourself very big,
like a bird that sticks out all of his feathers at once
you are desperate,
you are, "tell me you see me."
you are, "tell me i exist to you."
i think that you flinch when i touch you because
youre not sure where you stand
or which version of you must take place in my palms
when its dark outside and we sit in a miserable room to be happy together
your eyes wander like a lost kid in a grocery store
untouched terrain surrounds you
and you are terrified to take your first step.
your voice drops when you are honest,
your eyes get cloudy when you mention your parents
there are things i have written in a notebook of you
people i have seen you turn into to hide yourself
and you'll tell me,
"you are crazy,
for writing poetry about a boy who can't speak."
and i will tell you,
"i am crazy,
for falling in love with the words i hear in the silence that belongs to him."

i have survived
storms.
i have survived a father's voice like thunder;
handprint lightning flowers petal over my skin
like i am a garden to sinners-
adam and eve call my grassroots their home and hum lullabies-
i have survived
anger.
pros and cons of
clock-ticking therapy sessions where money is thrown at my gaze,
fixed on the wall,
dollar-a-second drumming fingers
screaming so loud that heaven shuts the blinds and hangs a "closed" sign on the door.
pros and cons of
stumbling home,
under a murky peerless crowd of smoke,
slurring words trail around and behind me like moths to a porchlight.
morning headaches,
angry adults
damaging drywall and breaking family portraits
exhausting search for answers
exhausting search in a silence that lengthens the disconnect from child to mother
where your mind goes red and the honest truth that stays stuck to the roof of your mouth falls out
where you become an overflowing mailbox and your hands shake
the absence of parents who never taught you to hold your tongue
i have survived
hurt.
i have survived the specific type of loss that you feel in the pit of your stomach
the one that lies next to you
when you stare at the ceiling and your face hurts from crying
tears scrub your eyelids raw and you promise,
"if i ever make it through this,
i will never be here again."
i have survived giving up,
taking it all back, throwing it all away,
parallel structures of contemplation and decision
i have survived
lonely.
angry storms of abandonment, melodies of the lonely and the hurt
i reprise to the ones that add injury to insult,
you are not the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
i echo choruses to the people that force me to grow up at sixteen
i have destruction embedded into my neurotransmitters
i have shooting post-traumatic pain in my memories
i have survived
a hell that your hands are not stained enough to touch.
i assure you,
my love,
i will survive
you as well