I wrote this for you a long time ago on a coffee stained napkin, after you left me, full of love, lingering in a cafe.

"For you, in all your follies and faults and the way they make you so perfect for me.
For you, in the moments that linger in the vehemently insignificant corners and corridors of things, as if drifted of their own grandure.
For you, for the words that spill to the floor and the brilliant way you understand the deafening silence that follows.
For you, for your supernovas and clever shades, for your daylight smiles and nighttime skins.
For you, for your familiarity and the impossible truths that stand as martyrs to say that I have loved you before.
For you, despite the treachery and quiet sinister fun of the world.
For you, for making me so terribly scared of dying."
Yet here I am, in your wake, so full of so many thoughts and demons. Know that I have died, that I have loved and lost with equal measure.

When our lips meet,
I swear that stars collide
I can see supernovas
in your eyes
And even the lightest touch
Fingers on my spine
Sends shivers, pleasure,
surging through my veins
Once upon a time,
I was little girl lost
But the stars looked down
They shook their heads and said
“She shouldn’t wear a frown.”
They found a soul with scars to match my own
We stood to watch the stars collide
I saw supernovas in your eyes
And cherished the feeling
of your fingers entwined in mine
Now, when our lips meet, I swear
Stars collide to create a new universe
Souls tangle, they entwine and combine
And the word outside simply falls away
As fingers dance gently along my spine.

you know, i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
because all stars are destined to explode
and the more light you give off
the faster you burn out
i guess this is why they say only the good die young,
i guess i’ll live forever
but immortality sounds lonely and most living legends tie their own nooses,
and the rest of us live just by making excuses
i'd count out all the stars in between us like miles
but you're half way round the world and i'm more than a few days behind
i'd count out all the stars between us, make promises and wishes on them
but i know they’d both be empty
but stars are always dead on arrival
but you’re too far away even if you're right next to me
we were looking at the same stars, just not the same constellations
and i'm so ******* sorry for all the things i let burn out,
all the things i let go ruined instead of dealing with them
i’m afraid of failure so sometimes i don’t try at all
i’m sorry you got the worst parts of me
i’m sorry you got my collisions instead of constellations

you know, i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
because you were afraid of commitment mostly because
you thought you were supposed to be and i said
i love you like a bomb going off too soon
my whole body is on fire,
you ignite me like lighter-fluid and bad decisions
and the best things burn out fast
the shortest lights burn the brightest
it’s science, it’s physics, we can’t fight this
we were doomed from the start, it’s inevitable
that we have to take things apart
somebody told me love is having the perfect opportunity
to hurt somebody and letting it go,
so i guess that’s how i know we’re not in love
because we hurt each other just to prove that the other one
still cared enough for it to sting
because i learned that you’re not real unless you make marks,
so i hope it ******* scars
i hope you can always see the bruises in the shape of my lips
i hope you never forget

you know, i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
i’ve been thinking about whether comets or craters are more important
whether it’s about the way you blaze out or just your ashes
whether it’s about what you do or what you leave behind
i’ve been thinking about why we treat
black holes and supernovas as opposites
when they’re really not that different at all
both catastrophes in their own right, yet one of them seems more poetic
but you don’t get to decide the amount of pain you’ve inflicted,
we are all afflicted with this thinking that we’re the only exception
i think we are all guilty of thinking
we’re supernovas instead of blackholes

you know, i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
i’m a mess and not just metaphorically,
sometimes i kind of think i’d be a lot happier without
all the things that make me myself
i am in a glass jar watching myself implode because
i kind of wish i was born with more serotonin and a different kind of motivation,
like i’m an observer to myself
and i’ve always viewed my own heart breaks
almost as the out-of-body experience, like a third party
investigating the remains of what was or what wasn’t
i am the medical examiner of my heart
and poetry is a lot like dissection
and love is a lot like hate
and living is a lot like dying
but regret is just a waste of emotion and love is just a waste of devotion
and going out with a bang
is much more glamorous than going out with a whimper
and nobody talks about slow burn, only the explosion
if you were a star then you were a shooting one,
and you’re always most popular the day after you die
but i’m done with that ****,
this is not a dead poet’s society
this is a society of poets who wanted to die but didn’t
because i think this might be a sad poem,
but i am not a sad person or at least i've been trying not to be
because we were all born to die, but we were also all born to live
measured by the blaze of our burnout, the trail behind us
i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
i’ve been thinking a lot about comets
i’ve been thinking a lot about comets

If only my dreams
About dreaming
Could instruct
My seemingly green
Concept
Of luck
I could
Interrupt
My seemingly just
Cycle of lust
Say
-Giddy-up,
Buttercup
You want to
Get *****?
-**** Mike,
It's only
5:30.
That's ok,
Just tryin to
Be flirty,
To make ok
The fact that
You'll hurt me,
To make passe
The fact that
My birdy
Flew away
And tried to
Lure me
To fly beside her
But that's behind me
Besides,
She tried
To cure me
But my wings
Were paper,
They broke
Prematurely
So I fell
Like disorderly
Swells
Of frequencies
I yelled pink noise
I could barely
See,
Passing for
Currency
Passing in
Front of me
Passing for
Apathy;
Apathetic empathy
Or sympathetic
Tragedy
For such pathetic
Entities
Who knows?
Who wants to be
One who knows,
To know
Eventually
We all fall,
Plummet
Suddenly
Into
Black holes
Of imperfect
Symmetry,
We will enter
Simultaneously
So I'll see you
Instantly
On the other
End of this
Wormhole's
Energy,
Baby b,
So until then
Plant a
Tree all
Gold and
Green
And name
It 3
Then climb
That ****
And look
For me,
I'll be
Lying
Right where
You *******
Left
Me
Singing
For clarity,
With
Only
Echoes
Returning
Eternally.

Everyday caught
In the labyrinth of mind,
I am,
Where dreams,
And desires
And lust,
From nothing
Conspire something.

Destination: Canada Water.
The next station is Surrey Quays.
Doors will open on the right-hand side.
Exit here for Goldsmith's College.

In the cerebellum
Fragments flash cerebrum bright:
Wheels in tunnels burn,
A neural screech amplified deep,
As waves of electrons churn,
And in multiple places keep.

This stop:
- My birth -
Is in Westminster!

It’s time:

Do you love me?
DO YOU LOVE ME?
          Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

In the space-time continuum,
The labyrinth is forever,
Within a fourth dimension.

It’s time …

You love me, right?
YOU LOVE ME, RIGHT?
    Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

DO-MI-NA-TION
DEATH FREE
DO-MI-NA-TION
ASH FREE

Lost in the labyrinth: a journey to an exit.
The Overground train pulls!
And from floor to ceiling,
Between vertical orange pins,
A medley of languid listless limbs lulls,
       Seated hips,
       Angled legs,
       Dangling feet,
And neck-less heads,
Lost, ghoul-like,
The disconcerted move doggedly on,
Everywhere somewhere; but forever nowhere
Through London's hills and bogs.

From  STOP to STOP,
In the labyrinthine network,
In tubes splayed out on cubes,
Of bright brushed viscose comfort,
Overhead, the ads exhort:

       Top Up Your Soul,
       Fast Forward Your Escape
And
       uSwipe
       uSwitch
       uSave

Like these,
A hundred escalating messages,
Each more insistent than the last,
Compel, enough to distract,
So man’s desire enslaves his heart.

Its time…

         You love, right?
YOU LOVE, RIGHT?
    Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

DO-MI-NA-TION
DEATH FREE
DO-MI-NA-TION
ASH FREE

How? Why?
Has bacterial sludge,
Built these edifices of glass and steel.
This labyrinthian cage,
Whose walls race up at the speed of light,
While the inner commuter flame gutters,
Everywher, in multiverses,
Supernovas explode in showers.
And for a moment, in the moment, The Overground chromatic glows.

New Cross Gate, Canada Water, Southwark.

Lit and digital and LCD:
        
  ALL CHANGE, PLEASE.
  THIS TRAIN TERMINATES HERE

A few automated steps, and:
       Southwark,
       Green Park,
       Then Baker Street,
Appear, fade and disappear.

Now walking down Belsize Road,
On the evening of the
Super Gibbous Moon,
As it rises high over the Ziggurat dimensions of the Alexandra Estate,
And all is blood orange at dusk,
As I, a slinking silhouette,
Make for the event horizon of home,
For surely given, and taken,
A few more bends, another turn,

It’s time, again.

         Love, right?
         LOVE, RIGHT?
    Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

DO-MI-NA-TION
DEATH FREE
DO-MI-NA-TION
FREE ME.

To the event horizon of consciousness,
To that black hole at the core.
In death's star-like eye,
Embrace, pass through,
(Fear not),
On, through the labyrinth northward,
Entering and exiting,
We go awhile, a little longer.

Stars, my Stars,
Again, it's time.

You love me, right?
YOU LOVE ME, RIGHT?
Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
DEATH FREE.
LOVE!
BE,
WINGS FREE:

     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL

One more stop:

       New Bond Street.

GET BEYOND
DESIRE,
BEYOND THE LABYRINTHEAN LIE,
CONSUMER, DIE!
BE
MATERIAL FREE.

Last stop:

       No-name, this one:

BE:

     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL.

SAY IT:

     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
     DEATH FREE.
     LOVE!
     BE,
     WINGS FREE:
    
     WE ARE:
     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL

you know how the song goes:
a stitch away from making it
and a scar away from falling apart.
holding on gets hard when
the light at the end of the tunnel
goes dark.

my friend told me he doesn’t purposely
befriend actively suicidal people anymore.
so when a 14-year old friend
was hospitalized for an attempt,
he was shocked.
I’m not fourteen
and i don’t go to the hospital for anything,
but when i was fifteen i
asked my mom to start taking me to therapy.
she told me,
sweetie,
you can just talk to me about anything.
so i started writing poetry instead.
but poems can’t diagnose me,
poems can’t prescribe me meds to
fix the chemical catastrophe in my head
poems can’t cure me.
but neither can people.

there was a boy that i used to call sunshine,
but he told me that he would
rather be the moon.

i deleted your number from my contacts
once you stopped using mine.
you don’t keep me up at night.
i’ve stopped losing sleep over you.

i haven’t broken the habit of checking
people’s wrists when they move
because of all the girls i knew in grade school.
i have a friend with the first letter of help
permanently scarred on his stomach.
we’ve never talked about it.
i don’t know if either of us know how to,
or if either of us really want to,
or if either of us really need to.

when my brother was 18, he was convinced
that he wanted to go into psychiatry.
i think the closest we’ve ever been
was when i had a mental break over
orange juice at one thirty in the morning,
watching him play GTA on his Xbox 360.
when my brother was 17, he was convinced
that his future was in professional photography.
i’m 17 and i don’t have a ******* clue.
I’m 17 and i don’t think I’ve ever felt so much
like I’m just constantly drowning.

they say a captain goes down with his ship
and I’ve set myself up for losing all my friends.

she’s got year-round summer skin
and winter has never been my friend.

i sleep seven hours a night
and i wake up exhausted.

my cat has all his claws
and when he crashes through my bedroom
when i’m on the brink of extinction
it leaves me haunted, hearing
breathing and footsteps that aren’t really there.
so i’ll put studs in all my jackets
and wrap myself in blankets.

i wish you were here,
i wish i was there.

the first rated R movie
that i saw when i turned 17
was that one that brought back ryan reynolds,
starring a moody teen with
the best superhero name ever,
a CGI man who acted as her mentor,
a pretty girl like a damsel in distress,
and the bad guy called himself ajax
but his real name was francis.
i cried
a lot.
i’m not sure why, really, but when the credits
started rolling and it was everything that i’d
been waiting for in a movie for the anti-hero
that I’ve been in love with since i was 13,
i sat in those velvet seats and started sobbing.

when i was six, my dad took my
9 year old brother and i
to see ‘revenge of the sith’ when it came out
in 2005.
the scene on mustafar, the volcanic planet,
the downfall of anakin skywalker
stuck with me until i was 12 and rewatched
all six of those old movies,
stuck with me until i was 16 and rewatched
all six of those old movies.
when i was a kid those scenes were scary,
now i see a mimic of Shakespearean tragedy.

i pick things apart until i know that they’ll scar,
but scars have always faded for me.
the first mark that ever lasted for
more than a month was when i
burned myself getting a cake out of the oven.
i remember my brother telling me
that he wouldn’t care about the burn
if i ******* up the cake.
we laughed about it because it was a joke.
i still think about it.

i still check to see if you
watch my Snapchat story.

i rip the hems out of all of my clothing
compulsively. I’m sorry.
i’ll pick up all the balled-up threads from
the carpet eventually.

i keep ticket stubs and scraps of notes
hazardously strewn across my bedroom,
because i’m too sentimental for my own good
but organization has never come naturally.

solar systems are borne from my fingertips.
supernovas power my lungs.
stardust glitters in my veins
(i tell myself these things in order to
keep thinking straight)

hey, look at the moon.
see how she reflects the sun for you?
it’s because she’s got nothing
of her own to give away willingly.
i gave you everything willingly
i spent too many nights
shredding notebook paper into pieces
of white birthday party confetti.

i swallowed six painkillers today.
I’m passive like aggressive,
letting my liver slip into uselessness.

it’s really hard to write poetry about bruises.

I wish that I
was filled with stars
intricate, intimate arrays
to guide me to the edge
of myself and beyond

my soul
the brightest
in a unique constellation
of my naming

my love
many-hued nebula
expanding
to fill the void

my losses
supernovas
both beautiful
and tragic

But I am not
celestial
earth-bound
I must navigate

by stroke of skin
whiff of memory
trace of sadness
night vision

rudimentary compasses
in a sea of misunderstanding.