there is a bed that you haven't slept in twice. i should have asked you who taught you to
lace up your shoes in an instinct
that feels just like a memory,
your luggage is always packed.
you love out of a suitcase, always
ready to pick up and move. your hands are stained with their last
names you have boarding flights tattooed
on your palms because you're so used to
leaving, there is never a good-bye it is
always departure gates and terminals, and i'm writing this in on connecting flight over the ocean because close to nowhere is
the closest we've been in months
just to tell your passport that i understand
how you cannot love me. i could
taste it in your gas-station coffee breath i could
feel it in the hesitance of your fingertips
you are always close to the highway you are always waiting to hitch a ride with a new girl who will write poetry about how badly you feel like permanence and i
am always trying to unpack you, begging
you to stay one more night.
i understand how you cannot love me, i stay on the ground and you buy plane tickets with spare cash, with a turbulence that makes me
want to fasten my seatbelt.
there is a bed that you haven't slept in twice and i whisper to the sheets
"i thought i could've made you stay."
your face is always towards the
humming of the window and
i like to imagine you can hear
me if you can hear me, you can leave all you
want. you can travel across the world and exchange your
heart for currency, you can walk through
security and stuff your belongings into the closets of cheap
hotels. i understand how you cannot stay because you're always too busy leaving,
but there will always be a place for you to
unpack in my chest.
there is a home that remains unoccupied.
there is a bed that
you haven't slept in twice, i keep it unmade in case you
ever feel like coming back.

in the forefront of the cataclysm that is
begged to be overcome you have
scratched yourself raw and abandoned the blueprints
of your body. deformed
into a vision of someone that is easy to touch,
simpler of mind,
yes please, no thank you,
it's okay, i forgive you, no really,
i forgive you.
and they are foreign words that are spit out
in your own tongue regardless of how they taste
with the intent of contorting yourself into a
girl that is easy to love,
every hand is a shock to the system even
comfort finds a dishonest undertone.
in a last-minute effort to convince him to stay,
you have sewn tragedy into your skin and hidden it
with magic tricks, with makeup, with
yes please, no thank you, i forgive you.
bite the hand that feeds the girl who
puts her entity into edges who
makes herself small and ready to touch who
is glass-eyed, hung like a hunted deer and shelved
like a trophy bite the hand that feeds the girl who is a
bird, circling all day from
one end of a metal trap to another and
the brief delusion of freedom in flight is
just enough to knock the wind
from your lungs, from under your wings, the second
your eyes open and you remember
that no matter which direction you take of from
you are still banging on the bars of a cage

it repeats in my head like a
mantra or a desperate prayer,
hands clasped tight over a
crucifix necklace. but i cant envision
myself praying just to god, i am so
desperate at this point i am yelling
my invocations to any force that will
listen and my eyes are shut tight like
a little girl wishing for time to
slow down, reciting
"please dont get sick of me please
dont get sick of me
please dont get sick of me" and i
am never sure of what happens when
i open my eyes and i am terrified to
unfold my palms as if someone will
catch me by my wrists and hit my hands
with a ruler and assume i have ever wanted
anything this bad before in my whole life

I. I am so angry it burns my lips to speak, lava drips from my tongue and chars my skin and fries my hair and melts my clothes. I am so angry it consumes me it hurts me and it burns me and i do not get to feel any of it.

II. I wish I was a tape recorder. I wish I could remember things better, I wish I could spin myself around the words and play them back in my head later and never forget them. The only thing I can't press pause, or rewind, or erase, is exactly how you sounded when you left.

III. Sometimes I miss you so much I feel like I am running a race dead last and I have anchor weights on my ankles, I never think I'm going to make it.

IV. I think this is for the best but oh god I’m sorry my heart feels like it’s going to fall out of my mouth and onto the pavement

V. Last night someone took advantage of me and today I woke up feeling like it was my fault, it is nostalgic in the most terrifying way. I don't know how I'm doing this without you anymore.

VI. If this is love I want nothing to do with it.

VII. I am forced to become exactly what I need. I have spent too much time nailed to the floorboards right where you left me. I am right where you left me.

VIII. I think about how you have touched me and I feel sick, I think about your hands on me and I want to take showers and scrub my skin and I can’t breathe. I wish no one would ever touch me or kiss me or put their hands on me ever again.

IX. I don’t want to feel anything anymore. I told you I was going to be close to you in two months and you waited until four AM to tell me that seeing me would make you remember what you have done to me. I was awake. I told you to never forget it.

X. Get out of my head, I will not let you turn me hard. I felt soft, I still fall asleep wondering if your hands are cold. I do not want to let you convince me that love is bad.

XI. Yesterday, you told me you missed me. Yesterday, I couldn't force myself to look at you. Yesterday, I said, "I miss you too, but there is empty space where you told me you did not love me. There is nothing here for you anymore." Yesterday, I lied but I will repeat that mantra into my head until I undo whatever damage you have done to me. I will not let you convince me that love is bad.

GIRLS LIKE ME
are made up of pieces,
shaky legs and furrowed
eyebrows constant questions and
cutting off sentences we are existing
in every direction we are never quite
exactly one thing we are
everything all at once and we buzz
like a hive of nervous tics and anxious stutters
this energy cannot be created or destroyed
it is transferred from soft songs
to reminding GIRLS LIKE ME that you still
love us when our mouths cannot form words when
we are not entirely existing in the same place as you when
we get scared and write poetry about how GIRLS LIKE ME
fall in love with boys like you and we never really
tell them we wrap our hands around our own throats we
were never taught to be cruel, we were never taught to
be kind we are exactly everything and always nothing and we
never know what to say so we fall in love with boys like you and
we wait and wait and wait and cannot be created or destroyed

he said i was all blurred lines and
soft edges he said baby
you are sweet like honey you
are soft like the quiet summer
and i couldn't open my mouth
i cough up blood i couldn't say
i am the snapping jaws of a wild animal i
have poison in my veins and i break
things on purpose i break hearts
on purpose i am angry hash marks
and biting words i am choking back
bile he said baby you
are innocent and lyrical and sunlight and i said
i am still cold in the
middle of july

so maybe i fell, and fell and
fell apart
and yeah maybe i was never quite
enough and you were always
looking for pieces of someone else in
me and i tried to pretend i didn't notice when
you choked her name out into my palms
all sticky and red with blood and i used
the time your hands cramped from missing her
fingertips to glue myself together before you
started to pull me apart again
so maybe i was made entirely of she misses me, she misses me not
flowers with thorn-filled stems you could
pluck for your
own entertainment to distract
yourself with the blood blooming on your thumb
so maybe i was a temporary home while she
screened your calls and i wrote poetry about
sinking ships and how i felt every butterfly wing you picked like you were cracking the
bones in my ribcage like
you kept your hands on my thighs like a trademark
so maybe i knew you were just using me to make yourself
feel like you were not all alone and i was
quiet and simple and good and i let you ruin
the good things around you because
if the darkness and emptiness was all
encompassing and i was never quite enough then
at least you would not be
all alone