IT IS A TESTAMENT TO THE OBEDIENCE OF YOUR HISTORY.
YOU ARE BORN. YOU WILL LOVE SOMETHING NATURAL
UNTIL IT ROTS
AND YOU WILL DIE WHEN IT WITHERS
LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER KNOWN THE SPRINGTIME.
IT IS WHAT YOU DO.
A TRIBUTE TO YOUR ****** HEART,
YOU TAKE WHAT IS BEAUTIFUL
YOU WILL EAT IT UNTIL IT IS JUST THE BONES OF
SOMETHING RAW–
YOU WILL ACHE WITH SOLITUDE
AND SHATTER EMPTY DINNER PLATES.
A EULOGY TO ALL
THE GIRLS THAT BLOOMED FOR YOU
IN THE WINTER,
IT IS NOTHING MORE THAN AN ECHO OF THE BITTERNESS YOU KNOW TOO WELL.
TEACH A MAN TO FEED AND HE WILL
DEVOUR WHAT IS IN SIGHT.
TEACH A MAN TO LOVE AND HE WILL
BREAK HIS KNUCKLES
DIGGING GRAVES INTO THE DIRT.

take a girl. take
all of her hurt, all of the nails piercing her hands, all
of the dead flowers taped to her skin. take her hair,
tree branches woven through and choppy bangs,
take her chest, how you can practically see her
heartbeat move the rest of her body. take her rib cage,
cracked open and tacked together, held up with fishing line
and guarded with rose bushes. take a girl who has never
been touched tenderly, who prepared for the storm so
vigorously she erased the calm that anticipates the rain.
take a girl with bugs in her brain, who can't help but
look like she's walked through hell barefoot, who
can't help but retrace her steps, who lusts after the heat
and overlooks the blackened char that coats her figure.
take a girl who runs, bolts at the first manifestation of desertion,
who obliterates the promises that lie in front of her just to
watch how easily they erupt. take a girl and call her "chaos"
because it is what she was birthed into and assembled from,
dark dirt packed into the crevices of her smile. take this girl and
give her to a boy. watch
him touch her gently, so gently it feels like he does not touch her
at all. so gently she wants him to ravage her.
give her to a boy that covers her face with his hands, clean hands
that he has scrubbed raw, clean hands that have learned gentle
through trial and error. give her to a boy that has always
done the leaving, he packs his things in the middle of the night
and only takes what he needs. the rest can stay. he is made
up of "look, don't touch," he is stone like marble with cracks running like stitches up his side. he has scars that cover his
clean hands, his arms, his chest, his back. take a girl and give
her to a boy, and watch her trace her fingers over his flesh gently,
so gently it makes him shiver,
so gently she wants to devastate him.
watch them interact like animals in the wild, people who have
grown with their fists up, people who have started from empty
and have learned what it takes to present entirety. watch them
tear each other apart without moving, eyes fixed on their
reserve, begging to know more without flinching.
watch them pull each other apart and fold the pieces around
in their palms, they stick every moment back into it's place,
gently, so gently that they want to rip what each other has
been wrongly taught into shreds, so gently that they want to
scrub what has stained them until it is clean. take a girl and
give her to a boy, let her kiss him so gently that they
want to do something stupid. so gently that they want to make
a mess of each other, so gently that they want to fall in love.

he can't write sober.  the mind of a man who
drinks too much whiskey and touches girls without
blinking. whos body is cold no matter how large the fire in
front of him is. he just can't write sober. i feel like the girls he touches,
rough coarse hands on peach fuzz skin. tongues battling in
and out of holes in my cheeks. angry apathetic grunts and dissatisfied sighs. im afraid this is where my life is headed. i am afraid i am the girls he touches and bitterly touches and fiercely touches and
he can't write sober, but he doesn't always drink. sometimes
his hands shake too much to drink. sometimes he smokes,
sometimes he crushes up pills and snorts them. sometimes
he doesn't bother crushing them up at all, he downs a
stiff drink with three pink or white circles and he sits in a
chair in the living room until he can see his hands move
in front of him, until he can pick up a pencil without wanting
to snap it. he can't write sober, so he doesn't. so he waits
for his mind to come to a tachycardic rhythm and he writes.
and when he does, he writes and writes for days. he can't write
sober but when he's not sober he will write for miles, he will
tell you about why he touches girls like me with soft pink skin
that is fresh, that is easy to bite into, that is full of life and not
stained rough and harsh. he can't write sober, so when
hes not sober he will tell you her name. he will not be able to do anything but tell you her name, her name her name her name-
he gets stuck, when hes not sober. when hes nodding in and out
of consciousness. he gets stuck on her name. he gets stuck on how
she felt under his hands, they weren't rough and calloused when
she touched him. he gets stuck on how she smells, he tries to
speak it onto the page but he can't, not sober anyway. like lavender.
stuck on her name and the lavender, the pretty girls with short
hair that sort of look like her, her name, her name and the
lavender on her neck and her wrists. her pretty wrists. how she
left and she looked like a ballerina in a performance, grabbing her
coat and her hat to cover her ears. that short hair never covered her ears. she looked like a dancer. the lavender, her name and her name and her name like a dancer. holding out her hand for him,
her small pink hand, her fresh hand, and
he can't catch her sober. can't keep up with her movements sober.
can't smell her sober, can't say her name sober. but when hes not
sober, he can write it all down. nod in and out, the lavender, her
name, what was her name again? what did she smell like?
until he passes out in that chair, by that fire, i feel like the girls
he discards and the whiskey he drinks. he can't do any of it sober.
so he doesn't, he doesn't have to.
her name, drink.
lavender, drink.
like a ballerina, drink.
her name, drink. her name, drink. her name, drink.
her hands, drink. her ears, drink.

in a different world i am waking up from a nap when you walk down the stairs with your work clothes on. you pull your shirt over your head and lean in to kiss me on the cheek. i am curled up in your blankets and you lay down next to me. you whisper something against my skin and i fall back asleep.
in a different world i don't savor every second i have with you, i let them pass by lazily. there will be more and more and more. more you walking down the stairs and pulling your shirt over your head. more leaning in to kiss me on the cheek. more blankets and more your skin on mine.
in a different world we eat dinner together, we split one meal like we always do. we eat off the same plate like we always do. we fight over the best bits of the dish like we always do. i win, like you always let me, because you like seeing me eat. we do dishes, we take turns. sometimes you cook and sometimes we walk to the store and sometimes we go out and sit in the same booth. your hand is on my leg the entire time. we make fun of the conversations around us, you mess with the waiter and i drop my silverware. when we get outside you wrap your arms around me and kiss my cheek for no reason.
in a different world you wake up from a nightmare, you rarely have them anymore but every once in a while i can feel your chest rise and fall in a mismatched syncopation. you **** up and mumble something, sometimes its my name and sometimes its not. in a different world i sit up with you and put my hand right by your collarbone. we sit in the darkness for a while. we fall back asleep and your grip is tighter on the space between my hips and my ribcage.
in a different world you read your book and i sit next to you and draw. you start speaking aloud, a passage i've heard a hundred times before. i listen anyway. in a different world i underline excerpts of poetry and read them to you while you fall asleep. i read you what i write. i show you what i draw. in a different world you watch my eyes fill with passion and you nod along to my nonsensical fits of expression. when i'm done, you smile.
in a different world there is a house. there is a ring. there is a dog, a cat, a garden. there is a garden. we give each other everything we promised. there is a garden that we can sit in, there is a mess in the kitchen from a girl trying to make strawberry jam. there is a house, a ring, a dog, a cat, a garden, a girl, a boy, a life.
in a different world there is a life waiting to be built. in a different world it works, we sleep and wake up and think of each other all day and we love each other so much that it almost kills us. in a different world that love is enough.

i fell in love and it curled its hand into a fist and hit me right in the mouth.
i got up and it hit me right in the mouth again.
and i got up again.
i got knocked down into kind words, i threw love into the empty
space between them thinking that it was a drawer to store my belongings in and not just
a black hole with no edges for containment.
i fell in love and it was a dragon that breathed fire all over my clothes
and in my hair, the smoke swirling up into my mouth and nose and eyes.
when you are young, you forget that what is warm can also burn.
i get my head bitten off and lay still on the glass floor until it grows back,
and then i go back to the dragon with my sword bent
and i yell that i am strong enough to keep fighting.
keep knocking me out. keep breathing fire. i will spit my teeth
onto the floor until i am nothing but blood and gums and black eyes and
charred skin.
i fell in love and it was a dragon that i was too small and clumsy
to keep up with. whats the big deal? i'm not comparing myself
to a knight in this analogy. just one of the naive girls who fight
against forces out of her control because they don't know when
to give in. but in every analogy you are a dragon, or a monster, or a big animal with
claws and teeth that sinks into soft pink skin and can't mumble
out an apology with a full mouth. in every analogy you are
something i can't beat, something i let grab me by the throat and
shake me around like a dead rabbit. in every analogy you
are the predator and i am the prey.
i used to fight it, i used to hang dream-catchers in my room and
hold crystals in my hand and talk to the moon. i used to
tell her all about you, tell her to make you more gentle and
keep my heart safe. i was relying on the world to take care of me.
you are the dragon, the monster, the big angry animal
with no remorse and hurt eyes.
and i am not the hero or the knight or the champion. i fell in
love and let it beat me down and knock me out. i win by giving in. i win by caging
you up and putting my sword down. i win by taking my
belongings back and finding safety. i fell in love and it destroyed me. but i win by losing, by never letting it happen again.
i win because im staying down for the count.
i win because  it will never happen again.

i am young. i am in the habit of saying things i think i mean because
i have no one to tell me right from wrong. i am in the habit
of giving everything i have to every one i pass because i have
no one to tell me what is enough and what is too much. it is
all just enough, i give every piece of me to every stranger with
warm hands and it is all just enough, i fall into myself in an
endless spiral of every stranger with a gentle first touch and it
is all just enough. part of how to stop being young is learning
to choose your words carefully, learning what i mean and what
i want to speak into meaning are very different things. part
of how to stop being so young is to learn that i should not have
to empty myself into a gentle touch or a warm hand because
there is no place for me to go besides inside of myself. no one has
the capacity to contain me, no one has the ability to hold all of
what i involve in their cupped hands. i fall through the cracks
in their fingers and onto the floor like sand, how to stop being
young is learning that i am concrete, i cannot push myself into
anyone and expect them to carry me on their shoulders. how to
stop being young is learning that i don't need anyone to fill me
up, to fix me, to calm my brain, to keep me kind or save me.
but i am young. i am in the habit of wanting what i can't have,
i am in the habit of wanting to love so hard it kills me, and that
being said i miss you so much it hurts my skin.

there are ghosts that sing our story.
not inside of me, they surround and encompass
me and stick to me. i peel them off of me like
a wet blanket, like clothes that haven't dried all
the way through, like glue on the sticky hands
of a child. they write better than i ever could,
they wrote you this poem after i promised my
hands i would never compose another lyric about
how you left. you just left. you just keep leaving.
there are no words that can rhyme with your
descending footsteps, there are no
metaphors that can complement
the pen stain of your lips on mine. there are ghosts
that hum our story, they write about how we used
to puff cigarettes that we hated and drink ***** from the bottle
and walk around barefoot in the damp grass. they
scribble out all of our memories, like smoke tapping the
ceiling of the room with all of our remnants shelved
away. they have nowhere to go but up to the floorboards
of a chamber i can't get to. there are ghosts that keep
me awake, they whisper what you gave me and what
you took, they write you poems about how you can keep
what you have, about how i don't want it back. i would
never write you this poem. i would sit here and let the
hurt hit my face like rain, but i would keep the deluge
to myself. i would keep my stubborn arms folded across
my chest to keep my heart in its place. there are ghosts
that are not inside of me, they besiege me and they
say your name over and over. these ghosts still love you.
these ghosts know the things that i do not. they wrote you
this poem, they will write you poems like this until i forget
that your name sounds like sharpening a knife.
until i uncross my arms, until i let my
heart steady itself. there are ghosts that will love you until
the day i die. until the day i learn to love you until the day
i die, until the day i learn to exist in consensus with them,
until i become pliant, until i dry myself off, until i step out
of the rain and open doors to new places and let the
smoke of what we were never able to be find somewhere
else to go. go upwards, go out the window, go through the floorboards
of a room i am learning to unlock. there are ghosts that stand next
to me and catenate me just like shadows, they know the things
that i do not. they wrote you this poem.

longing
1. noun; a yearning desire
- i never used to be uncomfortable in my own bed. i knew your name before my rib cage started to sing it in my sleep. every night that has passed crosses itself off of a pocket-calendar that is stuck in the drawers of my chest. you move your favorite things into the empty spaces, you hang your worst fears up like clothes that are waiting to dry, you scratch how you love into the bedpost and put your handprints all over the walls. i can't take a deep breath without
hearing your voice in the refrain of my lungs.

yearnining
2. noun; a feeling of strong want or need
- the first time i heard your voice, it sounded exactly like what
your voice should sound like. soft, barely above a whisper, low
and confident and eager. when you spoke, i wanted
to cancel the outside noise of my breathing to listen to you. i wanted
to close my eyes and imagine that voice next to my ear, barely
above a whisper, low and confident and eager and right there
with both of our breathing suspended by its echo.

desire
3. noun; a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.
- every day it is something different. your eyes and how they
almost close when you smile. how your whole family has brown
eyes but you have bright blue ones that turn to gray as the
seasons wear on. your hands and how they look like you
should play an instrument, im saying put those hands to
good use and find something to strum. and we laugh because
you know what i mean. your laugh. it sounds like an answer
to a question i've been asking the silence.
give me someone to love like that. give me someone to love like that. give me-
like a call back from the
darkness. like, here he is in all of his glory and you
still can't have him.

girl rages war on the world after it breaks her heart* the
headlines read on a lazy sunday morning and it is used as
a coffee coaster or padding for packaging old antiques
that came from a shop that smells like the sheets your mom
uses (but only for the guests that don't come anymore.) girl
rages war on the world after it tears her to pieces, after
she walks around with glue in her hair and dirt under
her fingernails, collecting fragments of the people that used
to love her and the places she used to go to. girl rages war
on the cracks in the sidewalk, on the cracks against her mouth
by her fathers hand, every wall has cracks in it to signify how
all grows crooked. all grows upwards, forwards, east, west,
never downwards but never quite all the way straight.
girl rages war
on the world and screams to the sky, she shoots holes into the
blackness and creates constellations in the exit wounds and
melodies out of the echoes. girl makes her own thunder and
her own sequence for the midnight. she tells people who touch
her that they are in the crossfire for bloodshed, that every crack in
the sidewalk they step on is a battlefield, that every diplomatic
exchange between the moon and the tides is a reprise of her
strife.
girl rages war on the world after it breaks her heart and the
newspaper is flipped over to the home improvement ads, the
tv schedule for this week, there is a gunshot but no one flinches
or looks out their window.
after all, what does it matter what she destroys
in the crooked tantrum that all must grow towards?
she and her bullets are no match for the dirt and the
sky and the buildings that waver over her, she is no
match for the people that tower her and the places she will
never go back to.
no need to be alarmed, no need to collect the children and look for safety in empty
basements.
after all, she is just one girl.

the way you told me you didn't love me anymore sounded
like my father raising his voice.
i have always recoiled into loud noises, slamming
doors and heavy words have caused me to
flinch in record-reaction time. i fall in and in and
into myself and you say it quietly, but it
is louder than any breaking glass or screeching
tire noises in the driveway of my childhood home. i
have always chosen my words very carefully in a
world full of carelessness, i choose gentle and i choose
compassion and i choose kind. the way you told me
you didn't love me anymore sounded like the fight
where my mother said she was collecting her things.
the way you told me you didn't love me anymore sounded
like packing a suitcase and putting a for sale sign on the
glossy green suburban lawn. the way you told me you
didn't love me anymore sounded like the music my
sister would turn up to drown out the voices of adults
downstairs, or the creaking footsteps of a man coming
home late, wafting in someone else's perfume. the way you
told me you didn't love me anymore sounded like the wail
of a child after a blow to the face, after another blow to the
face, after another blow to the-
the way you told me you didn't love me anymore sounded
like something i had been waiting to hear since you told me
you loved me. the other shoe drops. the other shoe drops.
a swift, clean, repetitive blow to the face.

he says “we end nicely. with a hug and a kiss. we end before it gets bad so we can never hate each other.
and in five years i’m going to call you
and ask you to marry me. please
say yes.” and i’m laying in the bed of a boy
that broke my heart and i’m
crying and saying “in five years
i will be just like every other girl
you’ve loved. i will know better by then.”
and he doesnt reply so
eventually i say “i could have
loved you forever if you had
let me. you win. you win, you win,
you win.” and instead of
saying anything he pulls
me close for a second and it feels like normal,
like maybe everything is going to be okay, but every
inch between us is cold we
can both feel it on our skin. “this doesn’t feel like
winning. i will love you for the rest
of my life. this doesn’t feel like winning.”

there is a night
with the moon hung so low
it courses itself over my outstretched palms
and i lay in the middle of the street
with the gravel digging into my skin and
im repeating to a boy whos not listening to me
this doesn't make any sense and i try
my hardest to keep my fists clenched around
the surface of the moon but it falls through
my finger tips like sand he lies next to me
and tells me that maybe i am just hard to
love.

there is a morning
where i stumble down steps and into a bed
i pull blankets over my shoulders and i don't
cringe when you touch my stomach i used
to map out all of the bad parts on me like
a highway but all of my lines are blurred and
i feel less like roadwork and more like wandering
hands there is a version of you that i like most
it is right after we kiss and i pull away and
look right at you and i used to think that being
loved at all was the right thing to waste my time on
with car crash endings and angry words at least
it was love at least it was something now

there is the middle of the day
and all i am is that moment after i pull away
that split second where i feel so naive
for thinking i had any idea what love was before
i met you. that i could have ever let anyone convince me
the way they hurt me was a product of what my
heart could handle. that any love
besides this love was worth any of my time.
there is before and after,
night behind us and morning ahead of us and we
always just move forward.

it is a vision. an image. a clear view from the reflection of a surface of water.
you reach your hand out and it passes through, you pull
your hand back and your memories drip into the
pool and disperse. it makes sense. it is like clockwork. in and out.
it is a vision, image, reflection that has
no shape or form, but it falls off of your fingertips and formulates
rings around your mind.
we are standing in an empty room. i tell you that you
can do whatever you want with this space and all you
do is pull me close. it makes sense. it is like clockwork. it is
less like falling in love and more like opening your eyes,
letting your fists unclench when you didn't realize how
tightly you were holding onto what hurts. that's the
problem with letting go where you are used to holding on,
like muscle memory. like clockwork. it is less like
falling in love and more like i have been here this whole time
with my hands over my chest, always just a second-and-a-half
away, just missing you, on the other side of the pool just
waiting for your hands to grab hold of me. we are standing
in an empty room and i tell you that this is all i have and
i am waiting for you to reach through me. it is less like falling in
love and more like catching up. like, of course, there you are. finally.  
i've been looking all over for you.
and it makes sense.

it's
something out of a movie scene it's
something in its own language like
art or maybe something just a little
bit better, a bit more tangible than
words on paper or paint on canvas.
i want to keep you all to myself. i
would write a hundred letters and
mail them out to sea if it meant that
i could let your heartbeat hum me to
sleep every night. if it meant i could
tell you i love you without choking,
it if meant i could sing your name into
every bad place and let it coil around
my head and stick to me like glue.
one time, someone told me that even
when people leave, art remains and it
will never break your heart as hard as
mean boys with switchblades for mouths
and claws instead of hands. and i repeat
into the silence of your bedroom,
id do it all over again, id do it all
over again, every heart break and hurt
on my tongue, every evil hand on my
body and every single tragedy that sent
me packing and running outside barefoot
into the storm, id do it all over again
if it meant that the wind would send me to you at the end of each tornado. i used to
think that i loved art more than anything
in the whole world until i saw the
smile you kept for me after i kiss you
in the dark. i used
to write about the things i saw, museum
walls and blown glass that holds
heat and traps light under fingernails. i
used to love a world that didn't love
me back and i would write about
man-made beauty that sent artists
running for the hills and off of buildings
just for some inspiration.
now i
can't help but write sonnets about how
i am proud to love someone who is
more beautiful than any
god made, god ******
masterpiece i've ever seen.

i have these dreams, smelling
the three-AM summer night
through the screen of my window.

my hands are pressed against my
stomach. i am in bed and i keep my
eyes shut the entire time. i am
trying to hold everything inside.
my hands trail up and down my
arms, im begging
myself not to forget your lips,
i am holding every place you touched me
permanent. i am tattooing the way you
look at me to the spaces of my ******* ribcage.

in these dreams, you have always just
left. i can still smell you on my skin and
in my hair, on the clothes that need to
be washed, on the sheets.

my fingers are gripping the bedframe
and im begging it not to change. the Sun falls
in and the dust falls over and over the blankets
in a rhythm that makes it look like your
side of the bed has life in it again. my hands are
around my throat and on the back of my head,
looking for places that have a trace of you on
them, looking for pieces of you that you might have
forgotten to take with you.

in these dreams, i am hollowing out the
walls of my body, trying to find every memory
so i can feel it vein-deep and to the bone, you have
always just left. i am always just looking around for things
to replace the space you used to occupy.

when i wake up, and its still dark out, the dust stays where
it always has. the Sun won't even help me pretend that you're
still here. when i wake up, its like you have just
left all over again.

sometimes i know i need to
write about you because my
body will start to buzz like
there is electricity inside of
my veins and i will itch
to get rid of your eyes in
the back of my head, and even
if i don't exactly know what to
do with my hands they will
trace themselves over your
memories and they will whisper;
do you remember when you
were in love? do you remember
when you had it all? and i keep
writing to erase, i write and drink
and try not to remember how it
feels to lose you, every time i open
my eyes i lose you again. i write
to keep my hands busy so my chest
doesn't ache and no parts of me
whisper your name to the dark but
i could write for-ever and
i would still break pencils in half
and keep my hands clasped to
avoid any painful wandering;
*of course i remember.
how could i forget?

its one of those moments where i want
to crawl into your skin, underneath your
eyelids and trace my fingers on your neck
the moon has nothing to say to you anymore,
the ocean is defiant, She won't look you in the eyes.
the stars keep falling in and
out of place How did you let it get this far? and
your head is between your knees and you're chanting
I dont know, I dont know, I dont know, and
i want to wrap my arms around every part of
you that hurts, twist my limbs over the pieces
of you that ache for the sunlight, How did
you let it get this far? There is no force in the
Universe that respects me enough to respond. All
eyes of the world on my fingers burning marks
into your flesh, How did you let it get this far?
There are black holes, it
is all empty, planets are hanging on your answer and
its one of those moments where i want to expand
into the palms of your hands and tell you that you are your own God. and I would let
you tear me apart with your teeth.

and you've changed your bed sheets twice because you
can smell him on your pillowcase. and you've showered
eighteen times in thirty one hours, scrubbing your skin raw and
digging your fingers into your scalp, trying to reach all
the parts that he touched, or may have touched, or breathed on,
and you have bruises on your
hips and maybe a hickey on your
neck, by your collarbone, or on your stomach, and
the most you can remember is shaking legs and
trying not to kick and scream like a child, feeling
helpless and defenseless like a child, so you keep
changing your bed sheets and you try not to remember how
you could practically see your fear in the
reflection of his eyes, you can hear your own voice
as an echo, "look at my face.
please listen to me." and you change your bed sheets and
you can't remember how it looked but you could hear his laugh
and you
take a shower and throw away the t shirt you were wearing,
the bra with the broken clasp, the jean shorts that dug into
your waistline.
and when he leaves you fall onto the floor and you cry and
you spend the day trying not to spit out what he just did to you
and then he stops calling, like he threw you against a wall and
didn't even bother to check and see if you were
still breathing, if any of your pieces were out of
place or broken completely, like he knew exactly what he
had done and somehow, somehow
this manages to make
you feel worse. disposable, like it was never an accident,
like he was looking at your face and he still didn't stop
so you change your sheets and wash your hair
and brush your teeth and take a cold shower and then a hot
shower and then you just sit in the tub and pretend that
he is falling off of you like water when you know that
all he will ever do is stick to you like blood

it is called she, hers, her and it was named after a poem i wrote on april 15th of 2017 after i had gotten my heart broken and i decided to turn it into art because i didn't know what else to do with it. im not great with speaking words, my mother always tells me that prose is not my forte, and i believe her. anyway, i wrote a book of poems, because its the only thing i know how to do. actually, i've written two. you can find the other one on my twitter (@altyrlog) because i feel like im breaking rules by linking things here. sorry, hellopoetry. they are both free to read in PDF form.

she hers her: http://docdro.id/s4EJay8

thank you for sticking by me and giving me the encouragement i need when i throw up words and put them into stanzas and then plaster them all over the place. you make me want to not give up.

its not a love poem.
its a poem about your mouth,
your hands on my thighs
and around my throat and,
its not a love poem.
its a poem about your eyes,
all the way across a room or
an inch away from mine, like theres a difference,
like you've
already gotten a taste and you're asking
for just a little, baby just give me a little bit more.
its not a love poem.
its a poem about your words, all of your
unkind, your hands around my throat, your
eyes that have twisted my gasps into mockery,
all empty like you've tasted just a little bit of blood
on my lips, on my wrists, my thighs,
and its an inch away, just a little bit,
baby just let me give you a little bit more

I. watching a lot of sit-com television. i notice when the audience forces their track-laughter at all the bad jokes.
II. listening to music from the seventies. i had to get new music taste. all of my old favorite songs have your name written in the lyrics, i turn them off as soon as they come on.
III. reading a lot of poetry books. sometimes, people write things and i feel like they are coming directly from my fingertips, like they know exactly what you've said to me and how hard it knocked the air out of my lungs.
IV. writing. sort of. every time i try, i feel like it is more diary-entry and less poetry. i am scared that i made myself a new person and this one doesn't want to feel anything.
V. kissing people. i keep my eyes closed. this new persona i've adopted doesn't want to tell you what i think about when he puts his hand on my thigh.
VI. not calling. sometimes, i write out long messages and i do everything but press send. i feel like i have to record how many times i almost do, oh my god, i almost do, but i don't.
VII. talking about everything. i never stop talking, it is something you used to hate about me, something about a bird in my chest always trying to free itself. sometimes, i don't always say the right words. another thing you used to hate about me.
VIII. wearing everything but the clothes you gave me, everything but the sweatshirt i slept in while you were away, everything but the dress i wore when you kissed me first, everything but the t shirt i wore when you kissed me last.
IX. writing. sort of. writing about how if i had known that was our last kiss i would have dressed nicer, or held on longer, or not walked away, or kept myself from crying.
X. doing everything, absolutely everything, so i have no time to slow down and miss you. i haven't slowed down enough to tell if it is working. i can't tell if i am a new person without you or not a person at all.

you keep leaving,
chained to exit signs and
one foot out every half-open
grocery store door
chalk it up to curiosity,
to wanting new things,
to blooming in nature with no roots,
you keep leaving.
and i keep staying,
growing on the side of the childhood
home you told me you loved me in,
stable and wrapped around a tire swing
where you kissed me for the first time.
chalk it up to memories,
to sentimentality,
to the comfort that surrounds safety,
i keep staying.
and every summer, you leave and you
drag your feet through the dirt from
my porch to yours,
past every cricket-chirping dusty town
and i wait,
letters pinned to a mailbox and
welcome home mats on the floor,
i am taking my keys with me this time.
i will always stay here, i can't
imagine my body living any other way,
but i lock the doors at night.
you keep leaving,
you keep running away and i just
can't force myself to chase you anymore.

it has become less like poetry and
more like a confession,
more like if i dont get these words out
of my palms i will burn up under all
of my anger.
how do i talk about not loving you
in a way that contorts my words into
honesty?
how do i immortalize this pain
into writing to remove it from
my heart?
i come apart, i am
undone, there is nothing i can
say that will erase how you
felt,
starry eyed and drunk in the
drivers seat.
be careful, slow down, don't
stop
there is no pity.
i cannot force myself to forget.
all i do is remember.
all i do is not-forget.

a terrible poem about how i fell in love
when i was a child and i grew with it
like moss on an abandoned building,
and i stopped being a child but
i held onto it with the winsom that only
a fresh-faced little girl knew how to
handle things with care,
how to touch gentle, the only way
you can when your heart
has never been broken.

a terrible poem about how i write about
you every day and i'm not sure if anyone
who reads it knows what you did to me or why
i cry in airports and i don't think i can write
enough terrible poetry to explain it

a terrible poem about how i leave my bed and
i see my friends and i do whatever i think my
ribcage can handle and i'm not sure if its a desperate attempt
to forget or a desperate attempt to revive
that girl who knew how to
feel things without breaking her wrists,
how to love things without suffocating them,
how to touch gentle because her heart
had never been broken.

it has been
five days
since we had that big fight,
since you told me you didn't
love me anymore it has been
five nights of me dialing your
number but not pressing call
listening to songs that i did not share
with you to send me to sleep
it has been
five days
since you told me that i was unrealistic,
a dreamer in the worst way possible,
all hung up and angry at what i cant change
and i have spent
four of those days chasing away my sobriety
once because my friends told me that
i needed you out of my head
once because i sat in the middle of the grass
and closed my eyes and took what was
handed to me because i told myself i
needed you out of my head
once because it was late and i didn't
want to keep dialing your number without
pressing call
once because i wanted to drown you in
the poetry but my hands still shook
too hard to make sense of the words i had
left it has been
five days
since you told me you didn't
love me anymore and i'm not checking up
on you, i'm not asking how you're doing no
matter how much i wonder and if you ever
asked i'm sure the words would come
spilling out of me no
matter how many days have passed
or how many times i reason with my chest
i am not sure
i am really ready to do this the rest of my life

im calling to tell you that this is the last time i will call
you until i call you again and repeat it like an automated voice message.
im calling to tell you that i hope i get your answering machine because
i know its that stupid preset recording and
i want to touch you but i dont think
i could stomach the sound of your voice.
im calling to tell you that i dont know what to do with my hands
and i keep picking up the phone to tell you i hate you but
it dissolves and drips down my throat as i wait for the beep instead and
im calling to tell you *sorry, in advance, about the poems.
i just wanted to stop calling.

the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore
it had been barreling towards me for miles.
falling in and out of holes of communication,
we dont talk anymore but i still love you,
you wont say goodnight but i still love you,
im not even sure you remember im alive but i still love you,
because i didn't know any better.
because i was never taught whats enough and whats too much
the line between compliance and forgiveness is a lack of strength
and im not sure which direction it points to.
the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore
it was seven in the morning, it was dreary bright like
all early summer mornings are. i kept repeating,
i know you dont want to hear this but i still love you,
i know its late but i still love you,
i dont know what im doing but i still love you,
because i never learned how to stop. i never
knew what i could give and what i could take back,
which parts of me were okay to lose and which parts
i would stay awake until seven in the morning wishing i still had
all to myself.
the last time i told a boy i didnt love him anymore it
was to shut myself up. to tell myself enough. to teach myself to stop.
a simple compliance without forgiveness, separating the pieces
of my body i wanted to stack in suitcases and send across the country
with the pieces of my body i wanted to hold in my hands and
apologize to.
the last time i told a boy i didnt love him anymore it rolled off of my lips like honey and it fell onto the floor in scraps, all shaky and rehearsed.
the last time a boy told me he didnt love me anymore he didnt even
have to say it. he leaned in close and he picked up all the pieces that
belonged to him and told me:
*you beautiful, terrible, stupid thing. you couldnt stop; even if you tried.

just let that girl be wild, let her
convince herself not to miss you, let
her stay headstrong and fearless,
standing in her own rain soaking wet,
let her dry herself off. let her run through
the woods all muddy and face-first to the
treetops. let her swing into rivers and scrape
her knees, let her break her wrist and cut her
hair, let her erase who she was when you touched
her last. just let that girl watch the deluge and
thunderstorms in the spring, let her wash away
who she was when you last said her name,
let her point to the sky and tell you *that came from
my chest, that came from my fingertips, that came
from everything you left, and it doesn't need you to
be real

i’m so sad that it doesn’t even feel like you anymore. it’s
vein deep and in the pit of my stomach, it’s
all around me and when i lie down it
clings to me like blankets in the summertime. and it
used to be you, you mouth, your hands, your words,
all wrapped up and ticking like a time bomb, but now it
is just me without you, my own mouth that feels like it’s
been scraped raw on the inside, my own hands that
never stop shaking when it rains or when it’s
too quiet or too dark, my own words that i haven’t
been able to collect back, all scattered on the floor
of your bedroom and underneath a mix of your clothes
and mine that neither of us have touched.
this used to be poetry about how it felt when you left me
but now it’s just poetry about how it felt when i
was not enough to make you stay.

and i am sorry, oh
god i am so sorry that
i cannot apologize for the
things that have made my love
hard. i cannot take blame for
the way other fingertips have burned
my skin, i cannot atone for the bite-marks
on my wrists, or the start and
finish lines, the races that have been run
down my thighs and to my ankles.
i cannot pardon the graveyard of past
love that vandalizes my body like an oil portrait,
i have always looked like a museum exhibit
for the art of leaving. i am carved out by
the stained glass of all of my goodbyes
and it has taken my love by the throat,
it has rubbed my mouth raw, it has made
gasps of air between the breaks of kisses
hurt my teeth. i am sorry that i cannot
excuse the people that have
made me flinch, made me distrust, made me
carry myself gentler when it rains. all i can do is
give you a paintbrush and tell you that
i will still be art when you are finished with me.

isnt it sweet?
how much the human heart is able to bare,
the lines between support and manipulations that
past-lovers have drawn for you,
isnt it sweet? how much you will
carry for the people who arent quite yet
past-lovers, how you will draw boundaries
and cross lines just to touch, just to feel, just to
create some sort of tangible memory for when you
sit with only their names left in your mouth, isnt the
line between sweet and naive based on experience?
isnt it naive? how far you will go to love people into
boxes, how you will let yourself fall apart and
you will watch them spit you out onto the floor and still
you have so much faith in every single rushed kiss and
almost-memory that one of these people you let touch you
with the lights off, one of these people you will drink
into your poetry will be more than just a past-lover?

i cant help but replay it
like an old tape, flipped over and
shoved into dusty corners of bedrooms,
labels scratched off, there is a scrapbook
of the first time you touched me and there are
no pictures, this story has written itself and has been
stuck to the refrigerator like surviving it is some
accomplishment that i am patted on the back for and
it repeats, its stuck somewhere and i stare and flip it
over hoping that each time i hear your voice it will say
something different, something softer, something
sweeter there is a notebook somewhere quiet
and it sits by itself with my ink scratched into its pages
it has words you promised me that i haven't touched like
every time i hear this song there is ringing in my ears it
is static, there is torture dripping off the lines where you said
i am yours, i am yours, i am yours and i cant force myself
to let go of it just yet, it has made comfort in my chest it has
made its own home and i keep waiting for this story to
end differently, i keep waiting to write about something else
but its all over, i cant help but replay it, in every part of me and all encompassing like a virus like something i fall asleep
wishing i hadn't heard, i cant help it baby i am
yours, i am yours, i am yours

i want to fix myself with more
than just glue and tape i want
to calm down i don't want
to be so much i want to let the
water wash the broken parts of me
away but i always get caught in the
tides, in the waves, in the stream
they keep saying
"if you do this,
what will be left?
what will be left?"
i keep my feet out of the water.
i don't have an answer.

there are girls who exist just like the
ocean, she is in love with the
moon she lets stars run through the
gaps of her gentle fingers like
sand she will say that she has
been in a love that burns and all she will
tell you is that it keeps her humble
and you look at her, all sad and
made up and empty space and you see
something you need to fix, some tide
you need to find a rhythm to while she
brushes her hair with the sunlight and she
fills her mouth with seashells maybe she
is not entirely beautiful because she
is not entirely here because she
would rather float around tied down to the
world like a balloon on a string and you see
this girl, all tired eyes and pouty mouths,
cheeks like wine and movements that
drip honey from her legs and you think that maybe
if you say the right words, you can keep her
close to the ground you can cover her
mouth as she wishes to be a part of the earth
a part of the trees, a part of the flowers that
grow around her feet when she walks you think
for one second, you can take all of her
not-entirely-beautiful and tame it like a
wild horse like a rose you pick the thorns off of
but you cannot love something that
cannot be restrained i am telling you, there are
girls who are made up of other people's words
and their handprints tattoo her body, she has been
hurt but she remains kind
and warm like no one has
done her wrong, and her hair is always messy and you
cannot have her because you do not know how to
love tender, you do not know how to be humble like
she does you are not soft enough to
keep her in your hands without breaking her.
she is in love with the moon because she knows she is
made up of something else entirely, she does not
need your love to keep her contained.
she does not need to be contained.

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

i have spent sentences like
cheap trade-offs,
decreasing their worth
in the currency-exchange where your lips meet.
it is not my fault you cannot afford
a single letter.

i have spent time like
hour-hands are suggestions,
as if pride made the minutes move faster
so i pushed it in the drawers of my chest
and threw away the key
pretending my love does not move mountains.
it is not my fault
you cannot stop counting seconds,
it is not my fault you are always waiting,
and i am always watching you get ready to leave.

i have wasted parts of myself,
thrown them entirely into your puzzle
your fix-and-repair
all sad-faced and
taped up with glue and apologies
i have sacrificed my sunlight,
my clouds,
my hurricanes and shifting plates
in an attempt to make you whole.

i have always been ashamed of the destruction,
i know
my love moves mountains,
it is not cruel.
that does not mean it is kind.

i cannot fix you
no matter how much i give,
time, words, sunlight, clouds,
i have given you my breath but
i cannot put air in your lungs.
it is not my fault that
in all of its destructive glory,
my love moves mountains and
you can't even climb
a foothill.

where do you go when you think of me?
do you go to lying on the wood floor with my head in your lap;
do you go to driving with the windows down and the cold air running past us;
do you go to the songs i wrote down and hummed for you through hour-long car rides;
tell me what you think when someone says my name.
tell me where you go when you miss me,
where do you go?
do you try to drown out evenings where we smoke too much and stumble around grocery-store parking lots
with all the streetlights shut off behind us;
do you try to erase the way my thumb moves over your hand, like reflex, like my hand in my hair, like unconditioned and honest;
do you bite your lip when you hear terrible radio songs and your passenger seat is empty;
tell me,
where do you go when you hear my name?
where do you go when you think,
oh my god,
i lost her,
i lost her

we reach the same point in the middle of every night,
cards folded,
lights turned off,
i sit on the edge of the bed and wait for an approving word
like a trained animal,
waiting for your hand to extend to me as an act of peace
in the middle of the war.
in the morning, there are notes where you've messed up the sheets without me.
the shower is on while i'm sleeping, the words are scrawled on the mirror.
the cereal made for one is spilled in the sink, it is spelled out in the bowl.

every night we wait for a slight movement,
some reason to pull our hair out and punch walls
some violent excuse for violence that is aimed towards how
i am too stubborn and you are too hot-headed and
i pretend not to notice when you stay out late,
i crawl into bed without permission and the fan echos the sentences
so i don't have to open my mouth when you stumble in
with someone else's perfume closing the bedroom door.

there is a disconnect, the words i am too terrified to say are
painted on every picture you look at,
on the edge of another woman's fingertips,
in your hand of cards each night.
and i dream that i scream it,
i write it on the brick side of abandoned buildings,
the top of cardboard boxes,
***** doors of train-cars,
every place you pass has my handwriting, marking my territory
making you look at what you've done to me.
it is everywhere,
the soles of your shoes,
the stoplights on the busy streets to work,
i follow you like a ghost,
the back of a notebook you bought me with pages torn out
and edges folded:
*you used to love me, baby, dont you remember?
you used to love me.

love knows things i do not.
love knows your hand on my cheek,
it knows what your lips taste like,
what your sheets smell like in the morning,
your legs tangled with mine.
it knows the light falling in your room,
the dust over your bookcase,
which books you haven't touched in years.
love knows what you say when you're upset,
the insults that you don't mean,
how you cry when you're angry,
how you sit at the end of the bed
with your hands in your lap
and stare at the linen while mumbling an apology you wrote on a napkin before coming home.
love knows that you will come home.
but,
i know things love does not.
i know what it feels like to search for answers
that aren't written for me.
i know the distance between us.
i know every mile.

lovers who are just not quite ready for each other;
we watch the clock on the wall like it is telling us a secret
tick listen, tock please listen, tick keep it together, tock keep listening.
write about me to pass your time
i will catch up later.
when it is you and me, i breathe in smoke
and there are no clocks.
it's too late to keep your hands to yourself
there is space between us designated for the minutes that move
we stare, we watch, we are listening with our ears to the walls
good and bad, yes and no,
i write about you when
i think about you
to pass this time,
to wait
and wait
for our time
tick its okay, tock i will catch up later, tick wait for me, tock wait for me.

there are things that no one has bothered to teach people like you
the ones who change friends with the weather and sit at tables crowded with people who don't know your name as if it can trick your brain into thinking you're less alone than the lack of people surrounding you
and it works almost like magic
pandora's box is presented in front of you
and you have no hands on your shoulder telling you not to peek
the gods above you are silent, no matter how tightly you push your palms together, your requests fall on deaf ears
with no warnings or red ribbons or safety locks
all of your past experiences forgotten
all of your mother's advice shoved deep into the parts of your chest that are closed off to the public
all of the nights that come seven months later hidden under your pillowcase
you forget the taunting "daddy issues" and how you flinch every time someone raises their voice
you exist openly, in a way that you've heard is synonymous with recklessness for the ones who haven't documented the way you stay up for hours each night begging the stars to send someone to love you
begging the gods who have shunned you
to stop losing your pieces when you hit the pavement
there are things that no one has bothered to teach people like you
there are lessons that you've had to learn from experience
your cautiousness clashes with recklessness and your abandonment fears are categorized as something else entirely
and no matter how you paint this picture
it is not poetic
you do not fall in love
you fall and fall and fall apart

there are poems from years ago when i loved you most
shaky hand thoughts
where i couldnt focus on anything but your mouth
where i couldnt sleep because i wasnt sure if you were loving me correctly
i sleep soundly now,
i write about more than your words in my head,
swirling around and making themselves comfortable
you were not loving me correctly.
my hands have stopped shaking.