Picking up where we left off. Picking up a body from the floor.
Arms stretched.
Teeth falling like seeds to the ground.
To the dirt underneath it.
What to do with something cold:
Stare at it,
Cover it with your palms,
Die with it.
Picking up from that moment, from the place I died for the hundredth time.
I cover up my puffy cheeks,
my rotting lips cracked and
caked in chapstick.
I smoke a blunt and wipe makeup onto a sweater.
It doesn’t feel like coming
Back to life, but it reminds me of a waning moon
and looking for the brightest stars from your driveway. My hair falls out in clumps in your hands,
If you notice it is only for a second. It doesn’t hurt because
You look through me, you can see someone else in my face.
Someone without maggots crawling out of her eyes.
I die again, when you look through me. When I follow your gaze
To the gravestones behind my back.
When you tell me
“I can’t do this with you anymore” and you break my fingers kissing them goodbye;
I die then, too.
Picking up where we left off, I am a ghost hotel for your lazy mistakes.
I am surrounding myself and hiding from myself.
I carry old versions of me in a funeral precession; I drag them on the
Floor behind me as I walk. I am still more gentle with myself than
You were.
I died last week when you called, when you tell me,
“I just want to hear your voice,”
I die before I can reply.
The body knows blunt force trauma but can’t
Recognize poison until it’s too late. It bubbles out of my broken jaw
And seeps into the mud.
I pick my teeth up and put them in a pile.
I would call back but I am choking on the grief.

i let the dark in.
                    i keep the window open and i stare into the trees.
i think about holding onto the edge of anything, i think about
my fingers and if they desire anything enough to
   keep their grip.
when i was younger i always thought that when
bad things happened
there would be witnesses.

who is watching my ache?
                   where are all of the eyes when i need them?
bad things happen quietly.
i keep looking for a beginning,
looking for an end,
                i can't find either. it's over.
in silence, i let all of the dark in.
                  i don't think i'll ever know how to let go.
                  i don't think i'll ever know what i'm holding onto.
bad things happen softly,
there is violence in
everything gentle and
poison in everything kind.

when i was younger i thought that everyone
died in a comfortable bed, surrounded by
their families.
i thought that when bad things happened,
there would be witnesses.

                    so where is everyone?
is it just me staring into this dark?
                       i witness my own tragedy.
      i do nothing but look at flesh and bone.
every animal is greedy, every
           body wants to get away with something.
ive spent too much time on my hands and knees.
if there is blood i don't know where it begins and
            where it ends.
i don't know if i can keep watching this grief.
    i just can't find a place to put it down.

my whole life, i have ascribed my identity to feelings
rather than concrete items and ideas.
i have been made up on abstract whim-thoughts
this presents, as you may believe, unstable ground
i would like, more than anything else, to have an idea as to the person i am.
i pick people apart like a vulture and steal their personality traits
to badly pass them off as my own.
i have no confidence that the person i am in this moment
typing this anything-but poem,
will be the person i am next year, when i forget about writing down my words and letting the world in on my secrets.
i have assigned my many fleeting names to colors, videos, a collection of short stories
but never a permanent solution
and now, i sit at a crossroad
and beg to be hit by a passing vehicle
i am a student who tries, i am an artist and a writer, i am a best friend, a girlfriend, a human being who is present in every day life.
i am not the color yellow, or the myth of the angel, i am a small girl with very tired eyes and even more tired ideas
its typical to lose sight of who you are
but i have never once had a clue as to who this soul is
i have spent most of my life pretending to be other things
feeling "real" is just as foreign as any other emotion
when theres no "real" to fall back on.
i, unfortunately, am trapped in a mind of someone who has woken from a long nap
i wander disillusioned, answering to the description of hopelessness like a nickname.
this adapted persona,
if it is, indeed, a persona,
is different in a dissociated sense.
my fear and inability to take action and base my personality off of someone else
gives me implications that,
halfway through high school,
i may finally be on a path to understanding who it is i am.
i was told that you start developing a concrete personality
at the age when you're old enough to understand words and make coherent sentences.
who would have guessed that,
at sixteen,
i am just opening my eyes and understanding words i would have previously thought so common?
if this person is who i am stuck with,
and it has taken me so long to figure it out
based on a time slowing personality disorder
i will continue to learn that i am not made up of feelings and thoughts
but up of the art of continually creating myself
and isn't a life of not knowing,
of guessing,
of trial-and-error and discovering unheard of mysteries
better than a dinner-plate life planned out in front of you?
i guess i will never know
or, maybe i will.

i wanted to write you poetry but my hands haven't stopped shaking since you told me you didn't believe in love but you believed someone would one day put up with me and i can't tell whats ending and whats beginning im sure i'd like to say our relationship began last night but it would taste sour in my mouth to lie like that and i like how you say youll never grow up and you want to throw away what you have and kiss people and taste like alcohol all the time youre not realistic and your head is under water i can't even try to make myself write about you because every adjective is risky and i am on thin ice between hating you and caring too much what you think

It's a funny thing to lay next to someone, to sleep with them in a bed.
I can start off close and drift away in the summer heat, morning  brandishing my dreams until it rattles me awake, gasping for sunlight. I can account for the missing space between our bodies, getting drunk on the warmth of his skin and waking tangled up in his curly hair. I can count the stars and talk to the moon while I trace my name into his palm with a finger, listening to the sound of his even breathing and the steady drum of his heartbeat. The world is quiet when my lover is asleep, my heart takes a deep breath and the soul pauses. I exhale all of the days worries in the middle of the night when he takes my hand and pulls me closer to him. In the spring time, we wake up further apart than we are used to, and my sleepy head turns to face him, and it's like waking up all over again. That moment where we are remembering the bed, the person in it, coming back to life, and he runs his hand down my back and kisses my forehead. "I've missed you," every morning, like a daily prayer for our survival, for another day of bliss.

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.

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."

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

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

Maybe it's because
No one helped me up
When I scraped my knees
On pavement
And every
"not good enough"
I receive feels like
An avalanche
And I ponder
Moving words
From present
To past tense
Maybe it's because
My hands shake too much
And my mouth moves faster
Than my brain allows it to
Maybe it's because
I'm too focused on myself
And write ****** poetry
That doesn't compare
To car crash love stories
Maybe it's because
I dream about change
But hide in
Blankets and
Behind baggy clothing
Trying to find a source
of this
Unhappiness
Maybe it's because
I was dealt a ****** hand
I was treated unfairly
Or maybe it's because
I allowed myself
To take these things
And scream
About how miserable I am
Without trying
To change them

there was a time
where i would've tied rope around each star
and handpicked every comet
and gift-wrapped them
if you asked me to

where i woke up in a hospital bed
with your apology still laced in my IV
begging for contact
like i was addicted
to the way every goodnight
sounded like a suicide note

i remember the first time
you told me you wanted to kiss me
like you were sharing a secret
with a part of me i can't get to anymore

the moment it exited your lips
and echoed inside of my ribcage
i could feel you reach for it through my lungs
sacrificing me to the burden you carried

there was a time
where i would have jumped off of trains
and written you poetry
about how everything you do is lethal

and my death wish is no longer imminent
and i could tell you that you were the sun and I was Icarus
and i got too close and everything i remember went up in flames
and my arm hurts from trying to capture the stars
and trying to leave the world in darkness
that i didn't care if the plants would die and the oceans would still
if it meant you told me you missed me

but ive attached new memories
to the ones you burned for me
ive made up moments for the time ive lost

and i don't listen to your favorite songs every day
like you're trying to tell me something you couldn't reach through me and take back
because you weren't
you never were

and if i could go back in time
id tell the girl stacking ladders to the sky
rearranging your name in constellations
that you're not even worth
a nightlight

the last time i saw you, you told me that there is a string connecting us. that you tug on it and hope it is still holding onto my end. that some days you feel like you have to stretch it far, so far you can pluck a eulogy out of the thread.
you wonder where i go, when you spend all day with your arms stretched out to me because you just can't quite feel me there.
the truth is, there are days where my love feels like lace around my wrists. i carry the weight evenly in both of my hands, secure by my side when i walk.
there are days where my love is tethered to the end of a kite. it circles the sky under the breath of something magical. it puts on a show, soaring and floating carelessly through empty space. these are the days we go up and down, i can't predict how the breeze will shift us, how far we will go, where we will get stuck.
there are days where my love is a spiderweb, and it curls up in dusty places and covers what is rotting in the dark. it is a trap, it is like glue, it encases all of the bad memories we've gotten stuck on until it is a grave site for what i haven't been able to forgive.
there are days where my love is a strand on your sweater that i can't stop pulling. i unravel the sleeve until i'm too embarrassed to give it back to you when you ask. these are the days where i take it too far, i want to fix things but i keep making them worse. these days, we are a pile of fiber on the floor, and i don't know where it started and where it ends. i don't know how to put us back together.
i imagine us connected by our fingers now. pulling at each other when we feel sick, or when we're far away. i realize that all of these days, i am using your string to fulfill my creative fantasies. there is only so much space between us, and i am sorry for making you
give so much line just to watch me tangle myself up in it. i am full
of knots, of nonsensical anxieties and depressive fits.
when i need it, you tie kisses in a necklace around me to make me feel safe.
some days, we give more than we take and this poem is a way of saying that
when you tug on that string, i will always be there.
whether it is up in the clouds, or in the corner of my past, or drowning in myself, i am entwined in all of this endless love.

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.

it’s all very quiet,
very human,
very desperate.
each kiss a promise.
each sentence calculated.
each look lingers.
what are you trying to tell me?
what are we doing to each other?
my mother says i like to destroy everything i touch
like the composure is a foreign language,
tranquility isn’t as good a muse as all of this tragedy.
but you touch me and it isn’t destruction.
in fact, it feels like you’re holding me together
with your finger tips.
i know it must get exhausting,
i’m sorry for all the times i wake you up in a panic.
but i won’t apologize, i won’t hold onto this guilt that
i don’t belong to. i will try to do that for you.
i think i’m writing this poem to tell you
i’d do anything for you.
and you say be careful with big words like that.
promises of forever are currency that can’t be exchanged.
so take my words until i’m flat broke.
until i’m begging on the street.
always, forever, anything, everything.
i’ll sell those words to you for cheap,
if you can find a place to hide them like silver
in an old box. just keep them safe.
i cement these feelings into existence by talking about them.
by writing them down.
i’ll write you a poem every day.
good morning. here’s your coffee and your desperate love poem about leaving and staying and waking up just to kiss each other before we drift back into sleep.
good morning. another morning. i’m glad you’re here. here’s a love poem.
i love you.

1.) I never liked how I always felt like I was suffocating under the conviction that you were counting down the days to leaving an equation of your life that included me in the numbers and I never liked how I brushed it off under the false pretense that you were terrible at math.

2.) Every word you said was so lucid and real it felt like putting out a cigarette on my skin after asking for an ashtray a hundred times you're the one who pulled me out of my poetic dream-state so hard that I choked on condensation ice crystals from the clouds below me and now I am tied to the ground like a dog and I miss flying like that.

3.) I tasted her in the way you kissed me since the moment we met and I wanted to lock down every word I told you and erase everything that's been written for you but I didn't say anything because I was scared that I would float away without you.

4.) You came back and expected me to be fourteen and looking for someone to love me so hard that they fix me. Since your absence I had learned the hard way I don't need to be fixed. And even if I did, you would have never made a merciful god.

5.) I could sense the way you wanted control over me like a lion to its prey and feeling like I was being stalked by someone I tried to convince myself I loved was almost as exhausting as pretending I didn't notice.

6.) I was only beautiful on days you were drunk and wanted to outline the shape of my hips and I tried so hard to leave my consciousness in the other room while you never showed the decency to stay after you were finished with me because being used is better than being replaced.

7.) I shared the small things that brightened my heavy rain days with you. You made me feel like I was trying to plug in a nightlight in the middle of the dark.

8.) You devastated me and told me that's what love feels like; I still have moments of panic at sincerity and kind words seem foreign against the misery soaked syllables you broke me down and replaced me with.

9.) You did all of it because you were bored of watching the clock tick and you figured passing the time by ruining me was easier than repenting on the ways you've ruined other sad girls with cold hands.

10.) I was so used to throwing coins in the air hoping they would give me a heads or tail answer if dying would be easier than missing you forever that I didn't even notice when I ran out of money.

i make up rules for myself and then i break them.
i have spent so much time picking out seeds from my brain.
i am trying to remove the rot i planted.
i promise i will smoke less,
and drink less, and
write more.
i promise i will spend less time living inside of my brain.
i can't explain this method of self-destruction.
it is not detonating.
it is perpetual loneliness, like sand through an hourglass.
i dissolve.
a steady rain
for days.
and maybe its stylistic,
as every writer enters a page the same way,
to pour.
to let the flood cleanse your skin, to feel
relief, reborn.
i make up these rules for myself as terms for falling apart.
i am only human, i have been buried with these words
and have the grief to prove it.
i smoke too much,
i drink too much,
i haven't been able to make it out of a poem alive
in months.

i do not deserve what you did to me
what youve done to me
i have no poetry to write
i have no words to waste
i hope you remember that
there is absolutely nothing here for you anymore
i hope you never forget how that sounds
when you wake up
i hope you remember that
i could've given you every star if you asked
there is absolutely nothing here for you

If I had a better memory
I would let those conversations lull me to sleep
And play that vocabulary in my mind like
A handwritten song
And there are a lot of things that make up a human mind
Components that reach all the way down into your ribcage
Through trembling hands and empty stomaches
But I intend to feel them all
One time,
A long time ago,
Someone used the word "frightening"
To describe the uncertainty
And burden
That comes with having complex emotions
That word is used as a scapegoat
To expunge yourself of the shadow of vulnerability
It takes hours to reach the tips of my fingers
With everything I feel
And maybe I write so much
Because I never remember exactly what people say
Or maybe it's because
I would like to remember it through rose tinted glasses
Either way
It stretches across miles
And I would use that scapegoat word
To describe what it feels like to be vulnerable
When you realize all of these pretend walls you've put in place
Can be destroyed with the right knock
And I think poetry
Isn't about that frightening feeling
It is about
Feeling it
Being frightened
Having emotion
And continuing
Where others would not

i have wasted so much paper for you
i have told strangers things i haven't thought about telling you
i have written poetry like
its a cheap substitute for therapy
and i've held the pencil so hard the lead breaks
when my hands shake too much to keep going
i have gone to all of these great lengths
i have written epics about the way you left me
i have written sonnets about how you came back
ive never shown you any of this in fear you will see how my handwriting slowly deteriorates into shaky lines and abstract complaints
in fear that you will make the connection that i havent spent one day free of you since we met
i feel like i have so much to say
and maybe im an expert on beating around the bush
or maybe you're just too self absorbed to hear me
i have tried every way to encrypt my words and say them without letting their meaning sink into your skin
ive got enough for a novel but i havent made my point
i love you
stop hurting me

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.

my therapist says, it's time you write about your psychosis
I show her a journal full of names, and some dreams
That I may or may not have had.
Inside my journal, there are pieces of my body and flowers,
There is a to-do list with nothing crossed off,
There is a hidden script for a medication I never got filled;
There are pictures over every word, disguised in a metaphor
I can't remember the language to describe.
Expression makes the most sense when you are
Expressing the bad.
This is eruption, compulsion that is combusting from my pencil and into black ink.
I point to the bugs that crawl over the page and say,
I don't have to. My psychosis is in every line.
It is in my eyes darting back and forth.
I write so much the page turns black and I have to erase it.
My psychosis is the shadow trail behind every letter.
It is the blood coming out of my mouth when I say I'll Do Better,
The scratches on my hands and feet are from holding on too tight
To demons that know how to fight back.
It is my teeth, and the holes inside of them, spit onto the page.
Spit onto the floor of my therapists wooden office.
I wince. I turn the page.
I try to say it so many times it becomes meaningless.
You wouldn't believe me if I told you.
I spit again.
My mind looks like a ******* minefield and these words are just the smoke.

i'd do everyone around us a big favor
and apologize
i'd do them an even bigger favor
and forget you
but baby you knew
my stubborn masochism was my best quality
when you told me you didn't love me
so tell me
does it feel good
when i make you feel wanted
when i pull you close to me
and hold my tongue
when i regurgitate your fantasies and choke on your scripts
is it everything you wanted it to be
am i lifeless enough
am i suffocating enough
tell me
did you keep me within drunk arms reach
because you knew
i could learn to take your blows
like a ******* champ
is it everything you wanted it to be
do you see the way you hurt me
in the way i left you
you cornered me and expected me not to show my teeth
you shouldn't have been
surprised when i fought back
there's nothing wrong with being a monster
can't you see who you made me be in your reflection?
look closer

To tell the truth about myself,
A confession to my untidy spirit.
Blood dries under nails,
I'm not sure which me it belongs to.
Once, I had a man tell me,
"Forgiveness looks beautiful on you."
I unhook my ribs
And hang my lungs on a coatrack,
I do it for love,
For love I abandon my self.
A soul stretching like one uninterrupted wound,
Climbing up the length of my spine.
Forgiveness looks like an accident,
Spilled on the pavement,
Reflecting the light.
I have never learned how to decay gracefully.
An affinity for crisis,
An empathy that runs deeper than dreams
And thicker than blood,
You couldn't wash me from your memories if you tried.
All the ways one heart can bruise,
Love in itself is a sort of solitude, you said.
The timid ghost of myself
Casted here at my feet,
I am looking at myself only to be seen.
How cruel a forgiveness which
Doesn't know when to trust itself.
To tell the truth about myself,
To be the sun instead of light emitting from a dead star,
Would be an admittance that even God isn't ready to hear.

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.

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.

and if we happen to
explode like a star that has
held it's breath for just a bit
too long, an exhale of
the memories we press into each other,
i will acknowledge it as less of a cheap shot to
my stomach and more like a tender tide
between the skin and the bed.
i have come this far on the back of
every single mistake,
i had caved into your mouth the second
it collided against mine and
i have let all of this love leak from the
cracks in my skin.
if our feverish and hungry hands
soften into gentle fingertips and
quiet, distracted touches, i will
lull into the way it still feels like you are
coming home every time. when we
get old and we collapse into the safety
of our own walls after one of the long days that
never end, i will take the silence as less of a bitter
absolution and more like a shift into the refuge of
each evening. i have spent my time
wanting, i have spent my time craving and
devouring all of the you that i could get my hands
on. if we kiss each other until our deprived shoulders
slump into acceptance, i will kiss you again and
we can carry each
other through phases like the moon. if we happen to
love each other so much that we do little else, i will
cherish every second that we spend doing nothing.

to bring back what you love the most. to reach your
hands into the dirt and take it from its resting place, all
the dust you would brush off of its skin.  
i bury my losses in my stomach. i swallow every
grievance and eat loss whole. its not enough
just to lose you. i want to devour you.
to hold everything in your teeth for so long that
it turns into nothing, wet and falling apart against
your tongue. you cant repay what you owe just by
looking at it, just by being there. you have to do more
than just hold it to fix it.
nothing you bring back to life will ever be the same, cracks
form in new places and life grows in the space where your
skull meets the grass. if you lay still for too long, you will
hear the bugs whisper and feel the ground move.
to be reborn in
all of the places you're used to, like a mountain range
changing with every rock that falls.
to be able to look at the same person twice without flinching.
i just want all the things i can't have, my stomach twists when
i think about where you're lying under the pavement. to bring
back what you deserved to have taken away, to get on your
knees and beg for rain to wash this taste out of your mouth.
all the words you would spit up, all the stories you would
tell and bile you would choke on,
to bring back what you love the most.
to look at yourself.
to look at anything in the eyes.

I thought I had wandered into a dream.
Like someone said, ”Action!" right before you came into the shot.
These are the things people write about, you know.
This is what they make those movies about.
Cut to, a moment.
Theres that moment you were looking for,
Where we stop becoming separate lives and
We cross paths like striking a match.
Take a boy,
take a sad boy and give him a small bird.
Something to hold without crushing it
He knows how to be careful.
Take a girl,
Take a sad girl and give her to the softness,
Watch how her body tenses around something kind.
Please cover my hurt with both hands.
Please make room for what is about to happen to your heart.
Take a boy and a girl and put them in a room.
Wild animals.
Two people searching for something to give away.
Please don't let this be too big a burden to carry but,
I need you like air and I love you like poetry.
If the orchestra was playing, the music would swell and we would kiss each other like it was the ****** of the story, and everything that follows is a mere afterthought.
No more questions,
The main characters never play it safe and the camera
Pans to us sharing a blanket that is too small.
I'd toss and turn all night if every direction I turned in was
Traced with your touch. If every memory that
Wakes me up with a gasp is quickly followed by your hands.
You cover the sadness with both hands.
My armor is cracking, and I forgot the key to let us into
Something soft, something secure, something vulnerable and big and
Fatal,
So lets break down this door.
I'm ready when you are
And someone is yelling ”Action!”
Take two people,
Put them in a room,
And ask them to trust each other.
Watch them touch,
Kiss,
Explore,
Think,
Love.
I'm knocking on your heart instead of
Forcing myself in, I'm reminding you that I'd stay through every piece of doubt, every time you say you're sorry,
Every time you fumble over a line, I see you at the end
Of each day and it's coming home, finally coming home. finally coming home.
I sleep with the lights on. I am scared to be in the dark.
And you let me sleep in the shifting moonlight
With your hand on my chest and your words in my head.
We are creating better memories,
We are creating a better universe.

you asked if you could touch me.
if you could cover me with your hands,
warm like you just buzzed back to life
under my skin.
and I said, "you can do whatever you want
as long as you don't leave."
I guess I should've been more specific.
What I meant was,
I have no respect for this body.
It holds me like a
creaky old home, dripping pipes and wind that
moves the ceiling tiles out of place until they crash
Into the floorboards.
It has never felt like me, it feels like a midnight bus stop
on the long journey to something softer.
something calmer.
What I meant was,
you can hit me if you want to.
Over and over you can leave bruises on my
hips and
my neck.
But don't tell me you love me in that voice I've almost forgotten.
It bubbles inside of me and suddenly
I am sitting on that bus,
going who knows where.
running to your home,
running away from mine.
Looking for where I found this body.
I feel like a guest in this body.
So it doesn't matter if you paint my walls black.
It doesn't matter if you grab my throat too tight or you
destroy me completely,
I die each night and then live again in the sunshine
of the morning.
Because I have never even been there to begin with.
Does that make sense?

it is about you.
no lovesickness to rock your empty body.
no guilt to beat like a drum in your chest.
no anger, no hurt,
it is about your skin.
about the light that you drink with morning coffee.
how it reflects off of your curves.
about the corners of your mouth.
about your cold feet,
your gentle hands.
it is about the grass in your toes.
the air around you, above you, below you.
the water that you drink from.
the earth will take care of your wild roots,
your wild hair,
your wild smile. the earth will take
care of your lovesickness,
all of your pain.
all of your guilt.
you touch the world with your gentle hands and
it always touches you back.
you are composed of what touches you back,
what you can sit still and listen to.
what buzzes inside of you,
what you contain and
what you allow to escape.
it is about you,
it has always been about you. not
your hurt, not what callouses your palms or
haunts your clasped prayers.
it is just about your body,
every part of your body,
from the bottoms of your feet
to your fingertips, your
nose, the ends of your hair,
it is about listening when the
earth tells you, this body is
okay. this body is enough. it is
about how everything you touch
always touches back.

come to the river of your longing,
put your grief down next to mine.
i will show you how i can bleed,
let time play on your chest like
the hands of a lover.
i will pull back the covers of the sky,
i will pull my heart back from the Dark,
i will pick up your pieces and bring them home.

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.

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.

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.

"Full license to my heart."
I am dramatically trying to give myself away,
To burden this body less,
This body has so much to carry.
Skin looks different in the glowing light of abuse,
Shoulders heavier,
Mind fuller with worry and sick thoughts,
Sometimes I am crushed and barely breathing beneath it.
It is too much for any one person to carry,
So I am looking to give myself wholly away.
Desperately tearing myself into pieces and gift-wrapping them for you in poetry. In spoken words against your chest. In unspoken words that write themselves down in silence.
Things I won't say: I am so fragile that sometime you hug me and I think you will take the life out of my lungs. Sometimes you sneak up on me and I flinch.
Just barely, just for a second. But it happens. and it hurts.
Sometimes I ask questions in a language you don't understand,
I worry that you're going to shift into him and stop being the you that
Is so understanding and compassionate.
Things I wont say: if you want it, you can take it. You can take what you can balance, what you can hoist up behind you and
Drag against the asphalt as you walk.
You press your forehead against mine,
We let the silence sit in the air-
you are speaking to my heart again.
We will endure this together.
together.

What a rotten time to fall in love.
When I'm on the brink of tragedy,
On the edge of something so insurmountable that
I can't even contain it in both outstretched, weak, aching arms.
When I'm so close to the capstone of calamity that I can taste
The wreck on my tongue as it rains down my face.
I'm a goner.
The cataclysm that all good poetry is known for-
I am drowning on the words before they reach you-
I asphyxiate on the dark after you fall asleep.
Steady, lulled into a composition of notes and gasps.
I wonder if you know what I'm thinking about
When you wrap your hand around my throat.
I want to be the kind of person that your love deserves.
I just want to be the kind of person who isn't dripping with
Grief.
I'll find a sermon in every word you speak,
I'll chant it like prayer,
With my hands clasped to my chest in some
Frenzied, violent attempt to swear to God.
There is no reply.
Just your hand on my skin-
Less like touch and more like collision.
Please, stay. I'm begging now. I'm on my knees.
How do I look?
Do I look as pathetic as I feel?
I sink into the sadness but you're still holding my hand.
I don't speak, I overflow.
I don't love, I anesthetize.
I am destroying myself and you won't turn your head away.
Like a car crash. Like a collision. Like your hand around my throat.
I am paralyzed with a fear that God can't hear me.
"I love you" and I suffocate on the silence.
"I love you" and I choke on the apology that follows.
"I love you" and I am so sorry.
“I love you, too.” and I take my first breath.

sometimes, it feels like the bath filling up with water,
you lie there and try to relax as it
slowly inches up your thighs and past your slumped shoulders.
or like watching the clock move, watching the day turn on and off-
incoherent, stunned, you try to drown your incapability in apathy
like being strapped to a bed
like being force fed, out of your control in a way that forces you to feel it.

sometimes, it feels like breaking your bones,
a sharp snap you can hear for years when you fall asleep
shooting pain up your spine and straight to your fight-or-flight response
it feels like choking,
it is not slipping in and out, it is violent crashing waves
the tide came in while your eyes were closed
and you're being thrown headfirst against the rocks

sometimes, it feels like keeping a secret,
like holding your tongue, like shy muffled smiles
and pulling misguided threads on your years-old sweaters.
it tastes just like guilt but also a little bit like copper,
almost familiar but with a difference that keeps you up drenched in sweat
it feels like "you did this to yourself" and all you can hear is "it is your fault"

it feels like nothing, sometimes, too.
it feels like emptiness, it feels like 'scared-to-be-touched'
it feels like absolutely hollow,
like knee-**** reactions when people put their hands on you
like your fight-or-flight lever is broken and you're trapped inside of a burning building with flight on your mind against painted-shut windows
it feels a whole lot
like they took the exact definition away from you that day
like you have a bunch of "almost"s
like a puzzle that has been worn through generations, sticky fingers and gluing together corner and middle pieces

it feels like something is missing,
it feels like you do a manual reset of every feeling to try and sew yourself back together,
it feels like someone bent your needle and frayed your thread and you are trying but they took all of your chances away from you

a little bit vague, inexplicable, 'you-had-to-be-there', like everything, like nothing,

like helpless, if you had to give it a title.

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.

Your lips-
The first disaster.
A strange sea of intense blue,
Dangerous and horrifying like love.
Our bodies walk untouched by the light,
Shadows supreme and arrogant.
My love is not cruel-
That does not mean it is kind.
That look is breaking the ground underneath me,
The way an earthquake does when two strangers meet.
The roots spread and break through every goodbye planted
Inside of me.
We are trying to see who can hurt worse.
The tide came in while my eyes were closed,
I am thrown headfirst against the rocks.
All this time,
The world was spinning in circles.
The wind pushes and pulls us away.
All of the places I can't dream of going  
Have my name taped to the mailbox.
You love out of a suitcase, always
Ready to pack up and leave.
Holding faith that one of these people
You let touch you with the lights off
Will be more than just a past-lover.
And the phone rings,
Like a call back from the darkness,
"I love even the parts of you that have to go home."

there is the sunlight pouring through wafting curtains each morning.
i whisper “cover us” to the window.
if to stay here in your arms would mean giving up my life outside of this bed,
i would throw it over my shoulders like laundry and carry it to the return site of my heart breaking.
i would let the sickness air out.
what was it that you said?
“your smile is a panacea.
not a thing in the world it couldn’t cure.”

if to stay here, basked in the flickering brightness would mean slipping my love through my fingers and into yours,
i would tell you to use both hands.
dont be gentle,
but be kind.
remember that you’re holding a broken thing.
it just needs the right touch.

i wish you knew what you were grasping so tightly.
i wish i could press my forehead against yours
and you could hear what i’m trying to say.
what i’m trying to say is i always felt like
a puzzle piece in someone else’s picture but
you make me feel like i fit just right.

if to stay here, in the glow of a new day would mean my head would become vapid of anything but you, i’d let myself go dizzy.
you, you, you.
and who needs them, anyway?
to fall in love again and again as the light drapes itself across your cheeks,
how unchanged this heart is.
even after all of the hurt, the trauma, the pain
it is still a beating thing at its core.

it is late, cut holes in old linen sheets
let light pour through into a space we have designated as our own
"our kingdom," you whisper, "you and me versus the winter."
it is lazy sunday morning, time trails behind us and you count freckles on my face
familiar like old habits, strumming against my stomach like your favorite guitar.
it is tired, staring at glow-in-the-dark stars like a discount planetarium
"a serious question," we know these words are never serious. you dont always have to ask, just kiss me, just kiss me, just kiss me.
it is tuesday afternoons, barefoot dancing in refrigerator lights
like safe habits, like a home to go to when the people you love cannot contain you.
like free space to be completely not contained, like breaking necklaces,
"please dont leave, not yet, a few more minutes."
write poems, i will turn them into songs.
make movements, i will turn them into habits,
running my hand up and down your arm like executive function
hushed whisper, a just-you-and-me whisper;
it is a poem every time you open your mouth.
you are the sunlight coming through the linen,
you are the lazy sunday morning,
you are what i hold onto during winter,
you are my hope for spring.

I type and erase, and go back, and start over
I repeat this until I can write some shaky confession that resembles poetry
About something that is not how your lips taste
And how you pull me on top of you
Grab me by the waist and lace your fingers with mine
Something that is not how I quiet my terrifying fear of intimacy
Just for a moment, just for this second, just to type and erase,
and go back, and start over
And they tell me, "write what you know"
So my pages are empty and I scream back, "I've forgotten everything else but you."

I want to write about what hurts because I think it will
Stop me from hurting. If I put these words on
A page then they will be easier to digest.
Poetry isn't curative by creation, it is
Just confession. Still, these remedial
Lines are what I turn to when I am holding
Too much in my hands. Right now, I feel
Like I am overflowing onto the ground below me.
For the first time,
I don't want to write about what hurts. I want
To keep it inside of me and let it burn me. I want
To carry it in my palms for as long as I can.
I should write
About how we've said goodbye so
Many times that it turned into a threat, a weapon
We made with our tongues.
I should write
About how I lied and got away with it,
How you got caught with
Your hands tied and no one to blame.
I should write
About how it was over before we waved the white
Flag, and I know what it means now
To hold onto a sinking ship.
I've never had anything to die for.
I should write about how I've never wanted
Something so much that I devastated it completely.
We loved in harsh conditions, under sun and darkness and
I don't know how to write about how
The love didn't save us.
I don't write about letting go as much as I write about
Holding on, and I want
That to change.
I don't want to write hurt just to feel it.
The next poem I write about you will be
About me. About how I held on and how I let go.
It won't be about your love, it will be about
Mine. It won't stop me from hurting, but
It is how I make it out
Of my love alive.

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

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

Your love is anarchic like a storm
and gentle like waking up to raindrops on the window.
It is steady, a drumming on the walls of your chest.
You fall in love, and not a breath is wasted
In the absence of a kiss.
Every "goodnight" is drowned
With your hand in mine under the covers,
Because even next to each other is just too far away.
Your love.
I've been here before.
I've felt this downpour
Against your arms, against your heartbeat,
On your lips.
Intimate and domestic moments,
Grabbing my hips,
A hand on the small of my back.
Your love sticks to me like a wet raincoat.
I've been here before,
Watching the clouds roll in as the day gets dark.
Your love.
Something I had tasted and felt and
Died for a thousand times.
I would do it a thousand more.
Like a steady drizzle on my face as I stare towards the sky.
I am praying for rain.
Let the rivers flood.
Let the water wash away all of our hurt.
Let the clouds pour until there is nothing left,
Let me keep your love.

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.”