in the small towns with unknown names, mothers drive vans with grass stains painted across the backseats. in the winters coated with snowfall, mothers make hot chocolate for frozen fingers to grasp and sip, letting it settle on little tongues like some untold secret. in the storms, mothers bring a candle and a story from the past to light the darkness.

and what can a mother do when she does not hear the rain on the rooftops? how does one illuminate pale walls and faded curtains without a guide of light? you could never sense the darkness. you could never hold my hand. mother, my fingertips are poisoned. you weren't going to touch them anyways. you know he says there's a forest in my eyes. but you prefer the city skyline, don't you?

I told father I never wanted to see you again. besides, he doesn't have to. why should I stick to this cracked leather couch when you rest on some beautiful bed down the street? mother, you can only **** a married man for so long. the stones on his ring are brighter than you. I might've kissed you, mother, but there have been too many lips pressed to mine, and you're immune to this sickness, and what is a sign of love without a flicker of pain?

when is the last time I smiled at you? there is a photo somewhere and I am nestled in your arms, and I'm wearing a red dress, and I think I would have slipped away if I knew who you really were. mother, do you want to see the cuts on my wrist? I should've given you that suicide note. remember that day you thought I was sick? I guess you never saw the pills were gone. you shouldn't have kept the matches so far away when you knew I loved the fire. you know, mother, I bet you don't know what a trigger feels like. you know, I was ten when I decided that I did not love you. I am the sliver of moon starving to vanish in the sky and mother, I swear I'll be new.

I remember when it first started.

You kept the Wild Turkey under the sink, and I'm sure you knew I'd see it. You left all the time. "It's Date Night, we'll be back soon." you'd say, the case of beer already slurring the quiet words you spit at me.

And so I nodded, and turned away, and you walked out the door with your trophy girl connected to your waist. and I like to tell myself she was a much better woman than Mom will ever be.

It would usually be about 12 then, who knows where a couple needs to go at midnight. but I did not care. as long as you were gone.

I would slide the glass door open and step onto the porch, letting the air chill me to the bone. I savored the shaking and chills that the twenty degree air gave me. It was much better than the shivers I got hearing you take hundreds of pulls from hundreds of bottles.

When I walk back inside, your absence reminds me of when you would first disappear. I remember how it started then, too. First the bars, but you got bored of that real fast. So you locked yourself in the basement with a new bottle every night. Then the hospital bed.

But now, in the new apartment, you were perfectly fine with pretending none of that ever happened. but I knew that Jack and I, your only children, were just disgusting reminders of the life you tried to build with an insane woman.

And so I'd reach for the Wild Turkey, chasing away the thought of you, the sickness, the percosets, the new girlfriend, and the new feeling I'd just discovered. The worthless feeling that once I walked into the room, I was not wanted. I was now a burden.

And I've stayed a burden ever since then.

Wild Turkey and cheap white wine ran through my veins for the first time that winter. since then, we are best friends. I remember the first nights I would lose myself, invite my real "friends" over too, just in case.

They laughed, but I was drowning.

That's all I can use to describe it now. The Drowning. it is simply that. an inescapable emptiness and weight that pulls you into what you might call Hell.

But at first, I was completely happy with it. you, her, him...none of you were on my mind. only the flow of sweet music or the begging calls of lovely sleep.

And then, things changed.

The drinking became a need and not a release. I would do anything to feel the fuzz and the effect it gave me. I would drink most of the bottle and desperately fill it with water, hoping you wouldn't notice. (Did you? you never said a word.)

Wild Turkey, Cheap Red Wine, ****** White Wine, and bottles with labels I don't dare to read are my only friends now.

In two years time, the once lovely drag the ethanol gave me turns into nights filled with heavy rain, chain smoking, and puking all over my friends floor without recollecting a single moment.

Waking up in other people's clothes and feeling my body stay drained becomes a strange reality, and I wonder how things may have been different if I never touched the heavy bottles in the first place.

I am sixteen, and I feel as if I've lived a thousand years. and maybe the scariest thing is knowing that eventually I will have access to any bottle on the shelves.

And I don't know if I'll be able to resist grabbing every single one.

they say in our existance it seems as though our entire lives flip in an instant without us even
noticing the gradual changes. year by year our friends come and go, we see new parts of the world, we witness things we never thought could happen. when I think of how life plays out like this, I try to spread out every single year of my life and analyze it. mostly I try and look for where the world seemed to go to ****. I wish I could remember when I changed, when I felt like life wasnt worth it anymore. but the truth is I dont even remember a time when I could look at myself and say that I was worth it, that life was worth it, that I was destined for something.

in the beginning my issues were simple and petty, growing up in a town with beautiful girls and brilliant boys with straight teeth and even straighter hair. my bones didnt stick out and my skin didnt look as perfect and tan as the girls who stood by my side in elementary school. They hopped out of their mothers cars with beaming smiles and kisses fresh on their foreheads. I sat outside of class thirty minutes early because my mom was stuck working in the awful hellhole of a school. they flipped over their chairs as the bell rang and scooted their tiny waists into the seats, talking about their lovely weekends at the pool, which I was too fat to go to, or at each others houses, where I was never invited.

I wasnt really a loser, and I wasnt popular. but this didnt stop me from mentally ripping myself into pieces every chance I got. the perfect frame lay traced out in my mind, and I didnt match up when I looked into the mirror.

this self critisism still continues, and has only grown worse.

ever since birth I had lived in a home with parents who bickered and spat at each other like roaches, screaming over nothing. in the beginning the fights were pointless, not a single purpose held in the shouting. and then it shifted to my brother and I. the drinking that my father did. the business my mother spread through her side of the family tree, feeding the branches. loss of money, faith, time. a million things I dont remember. a million words I wish I didnt remember.

at age eleven I laid shivering in bed, letting the hum of the fan above me lull me into sleep. I longed to hear the hum of my fathers voice singing to me as he did when I was a child. humming our songs to myself didnt work anymore. on this particular night, my father wandered into my room with a blanket wrapped around his shaking figure. His eyes stained beat red. he poured out to me that he was leaving us, my brother and I, my mother. he wanted me to speak, I didnt say a word. he wanted me to hug him, I plastered my arms by my sides.

the next day, he still sat on the couch, avoiding my frantic glances and wondering eyes.

constant blame stuck to me. guilt stuck even more than the words thrown onto me while walking down the halls in sixth and seventh grade. I would lay on the old tattered couch in the basement, trying to catch a glimpse of my father if he happened to walk from his den and onto the porch. many times, I did not see him. many days, I did not hear from him. and finally the day came where he came to talk. it was bright, and my mother and father sat before my brother and I. seeing them come together was something I couldnt even remember, so I assumed good news. maybe a new brother or sister, maybe a package in the mail for us. but no, of course not.

my father was diagnosed with colin cancer. I do not remember the stage when they came and told me, I do not remember anything besides deep gray hopsital rooms which tasted like hell and flourescent white light bulbs which looked like heaven. I remember my mother sticking to my fathers side purely for recognition from the rest of the family. I remember how when the doors closed, the monster that she really is came out in low growls and snickering. I faked smiles for my father that I taught myself in school, I counted tiles on the hospital floor which seemed to similar to those lining the halls. the summer in which he was released was the summer in which we traveled the world. I tasted fresh bread from all corners of the world and I fed off the smiles of the people who lived in the villages, craving their happiness found in simplicity. I wanted it all. yet, I hated every moment of it. I knew I would never live a life so peaceful.

eighth grade started and so began The Wondering and The Wandering, the silence that hung in my throat and the words that filled my brain like acid, and not the good kind. I questioned existance, for I could not find a home in my friends, in my family, in myself. I could not remember when the chuckling from my cousins and aunts and uncles felt warm instead of harsh and cold. cigarette smoke stained my clothes and I clung to its scent like a child craved the smell of brownies baking in the oven. I fell in love with nights alone on the roof counting the stars and realized there were more in the sky than people in the world, and I felt truly scared for the first time. More scared than I had been when my father beat me for the last time and more scared than I became as he withered into a man I could not recognize. I was alone, I was vulnerable.

my death had come in the first year of highschool. the first day pushed me from the smiling faces of my innocent friends into the rough, ashy hands and curling smirks of my new friends. they introduced me to the world and I introduced them to my mind, and I also to the drugs, which just started with ****. I was welcomed to their table in the morning with beat red eyes that caused me to shy away from the mirror, reminding me of my father. I would laugh because my body made me. I would smile because I was floating far, far away. Looking down on them. they teased me, they pulled strings and I became their puppet. I was a doll and not a human. I burned myself and they laughed. my boyfriend held my waist and not my hand. he fed my sorrows and not my smiles. I was the fire and they fed me, they watched me, they listened. they split me into pieces and I snapped like my bones did in seventh grade when I skid across the cold gym floor in front of everyone. everyone I loved was vanishing in and out of my life like the flickering light bulb at my bus stop at five thirty in the morning.

I began to steal pills from the cabinets of my neighbors, filling the bottles with tissues so I could slip out of the house silently as the bottles fit snug into my shirt. it started with swallowing eight. then twelve. fourteen. eighteen. I swallowed them and let them burst in my empty stomach and carry me off, far away. so far away. I will not get in depth on the effect they had on me, thats a different story. I lost myself, and I was nothing. but I was not yet a ghost. my father had percosets, pills from his chemotherapy, shoved into his cabinet. I took 3, 4, then 5. my friends told me I shouldve thrown them up once I hit 4. so, I took 6.

I fell asleep with various ways to **** myself running through my mind. these were not new to me at all. they did not scare me, instead they welcomed me. knowing I could disappear so easily, so quickly. on a silent january morning I woke up, rubbed my eyes, rolled out of bed. I stared into my own eyes, and they were dim. I grabbed the percosets and took a handful. they gathered and slipped down my throat. they fought to return to my tongue but I already knew how to keep them down. I wandered into my mothers room and tried to spill a lie of how I was very, very sick (I wasnt) and how I needed (I did) to stay home. she told me no, there was no way I was sick (I was) and I wasnt staying home (I didnt).

I arrived at school and stumbled to my class like a zombie. five or ten minutes I walked out in the middle of the teachers lecture. I found myself clinging to the toilet bowl down the hall, crying, fighting every urge to stifle the screams that curled in the back of my throat. my skin blended in with the bleached tile. I probably threw up my body weight in the time that I was there. I dont know how long it was. I dont even know why I let myself walk into the building. but there I was, and then came the teachers, and I still dont even know where it is that they came from. they cradled me and my vision slipped and I know that I died there, in the deep gray bathroom stall which felt like hell and under flourescent white light bulbs which looked like heaven.

I like to ask myself every once in a while who I am. I don't know the answer, but I try to ask anyways, I try to get the spider webs in my mind to clear off. I try to bring myself back to what I could be if I never slipped away like this. I still have not found home. I tried to find my reflection in the hollow bottoms of bottles I stole from liquor cabinets across the neighborhood. I couldnt find myself in the blade or the oceans across the globe. I could not find home no matter how many cigarettes I smoked, no matter how many friends I made, no matter how many houses I collapsed in and puked on the hardwood floors. my questions always remain unanswered and my cries remain ignored. when I ask myself who I am, I remind myself that I am a million people. I am the little kids who followed me on red bikes in Italy and I am the girl I threatened who tried to hurt my bestfriend and I am the ghosts in the attic and the new kid at school who disappeared just a few weeks after. but one person I am not is whoever I was in the beginning.

I hate reading you my writing. you've seen my skin split but that is nothing compared to this. I won't let you look at me because I am so afraid you might see how sorry I am. you can turn away but guilt is ebbing from your spine and I absorb it's heaving glow. I bet you didn't know flowers grow towards the sun
2. if I could count how many times I think you've lied to me I would need a thousand hands. every finger would be calloused and burnt but veracious. I've dived into glacial waters and lost perception of the surface. when I see the sky, I swim down to touch the sand
3. I once was with a boy who fell into an abyss of addiction. fourteen months of malicious intentions that rendered me to ash. now I am smeared across your mattress and swept into the cracked marble corner of the window sill, kissed by the silk rhythm of the curtains. I am the needles you dropped on your carpet. I would give you all of me but you don't want a fraction. you know, that boy had my ring that said "I Love You" and he tossed it in the lake. I had another that said "Always" and it's somewhere in your home now. the lake will dry before I ever see your bedroom again
4. you have more lyrics memorized than words printed in a novel. the backroads of Carolina are veiled by tree branches but these streets only seem significant when you're singing in the backseat of my car with your head cutting through the wind and your palms caressing the curves of the atmosphere. and after all, she is much more lovely than I. you recite songs we've heard in the exact locations where they flowed through us for the first time, although it's been months since we've listened. you can remember every time we've ever ****** but not one time you've grabbed my hands
5. we fell in love in the winter. it is so **** warm outside. I hate it because I can no longer become entangled beneath blankets heated by your body. you love it because there are a hundred places to be now. all of them without me. but it's the lack of words from you that destroys me much more than your dexterity. if you can kiss the hickeys on my neck why not the scars along my chest? why are there scratches marking up your frame like a road map and knive handles sticking from my back? twist them and I'll scream, cut me and I'll bleed, but nothing you will physically do can ever injure me.
6. there is something about the f word. and I don't mean any of the words you like to yell while you're ambling down the halls or skating down the street. this word: Forever- makes me want to hurl myself off a bridge. I wonder if you would stand there and try to talk me down like the one boy we saw who broke his bones. it was February sixth. It is April and I can't drive past there without wanting to mimick his very moves. maybe I pray for Forever so badly because you would never bless me with it. maybe its because sometimes I feel like my words are a foreign language and you only grow frustrated when I speak. maybe it's because loving you is mostly like sticking a loaded gun down my throat. I often slip into my fathers closet and pull his pistol from it's case just to remember how it feels. but you are far, far more dangerous
7. if you are hearing this you are sitting beside me, or beneath me, and you should know that you have saved me. when I found out you couldn't sleep in your own bed while I was gone (and how you could not write because music is too much like poetry) my brother told me, "good luck loving him as much as he loves you." what he doesn't know is how I can pick you out of a crowd of a thousand in just an instant. everyone asks me why I love you because they don't understand you. I don't understand you. that is why I love you.
8. I have read the minds of stupid boys with loud mouths and pretty smiles but your life is still just foggy windows that I cannot clear. I would love to hear you make promises but I don't think you can keep them. you were with me when you had two girls by your side- how could I ever know where your hands are now when I am not holding them? I would take a bullet for you but you're the one holding the gun. I always kiss you first. I always beg you to stay. but I am constantly so worried that you will slip away.

good, so good
that's what they say about it-
but when I peer down at the scrawl
led-dragged, so heavily
I know it can never be enough.

bokeh lights and smoke streams
an insignificant metaphor-
just as Love is an understatement.
bullet wounds don't match
how hard You hurt.

discontent gets old
and eight months of displeasure
of dead static psychosis
have rendered me useless;
defined me as dead
to whatever connection I held
with beauty, glory,
understanding.

so good, they say
as the pictures piece together
in the minds hungry eye,
starving to relate,
unknown to the fact
it can never catch the passion;
the poetry is powerless.

we were all born crying.
wailing, raw pink lungs
gasping,
choking, on new filtered air.

but maybe, we cry not because
of a cold chill
and fluorescent state of confusion,
but simply because we've been born once again.

maybe we cry because our past lives
will never repeat themselves-

no more grandkids, the splintered back porch with the hissing screen door,

no more ten day vacations at the spare house in Spain,

no more dates at a drive in, the 1981 firebird where the windows would always steam,

no handprints along glass,
footprints on the subway.

no more
"welcome home" kisses from your dog,
"goodnight" kisses from your wife.

when we are born,
maybe we cry because
in that simple movement toward new light
our hand lingers along the wall behind us,
and flips off the switch.

every painful lesson,
heartbreak,
first times,
failiure.
all of it recycled;
repetition that never comes to end.

maybe, we cry because
we have forgotten the words
of the song we know we've heard.
the one you once danced to
at your wedding;
the one they cried to, at your funeral.

maybe we cry because
we have forgotten the color of the ink
scratched on our past suicide notes.

maybe, because
we think the gunshot did not take us
to heaven.

but there are angels
and they don't wear halos and stroke harps-
they roam the earth.
instead of showing you the light,
they teach how to form the flame inside yourself.

we were all born crying.
and it is not from loss or fear itself;
not because our soul is homesick
for the house it can't recall-
we cry for the warmth of our mothers worn hands.
the new rhythm slow in her chest,
amber hair falling
from the foreign ***** of her shoulder;

we are just one soul on this journey
body to body, heart to heart.
maybe we cry because
in that moment, we ourselves realize
that each life is, a miracle.

you never think the voices could scream
any louder than they do,
until your fingers trace the sides
of your dads loaded gun.
people told me to look up,
but your face always grinned below me.
so I laid with broken bones,
and I never learned how to stand.

there are more crumpled poems
mocking me at my desk
than there are thoughts in your head.
and there are more bullets in the gun,
than tears on my cheek.
tired hands cradled my face, and sad lips
told me that I was precious. strong.
but lonely eyes never peeked
at the stitches holding me together,
the ones you pulled to see if maybe
I could crack a little more, before I shatter.

you never think the voices could scream
any louder than they do,
until your brain is climbing up the wall,
and your blood leaks into carpet.
people told me to look up, but
my face was twisted in the water below.
so the waves swallowed my frame,
and I never learned how to swim.

this is about the boy
who wrote a girl a poem
she never got to read,
who sang to her before he kissed her,
and loved her before he touched her.
a beautiful boy made of constellations.
with a chipped tooth
from kissing concrete
and a head full of curls,
spirals strewn across her pillows,
stars in a sea of satin.
this girl he loved wrote poems too,
and he never knew that she also has
a cracked tooth tucked behind
her lips (that he liked to call thin)
pale pink against porcelain.
she, like him, had thoughts that twisted;
the Devils fingers knotted in her hair-
this is the story of two lovers:
one sailing a foreign sea,
and one who knew each inch of the ocean.

how can it be that the only person
I hate on this earth
is the one who released me into it's arms?
you know, you can't be taught to love.
you can not ride a bike
the moment your raw skin touches
it's hard, torn leather seat.
there are no extra set of wheels
to guide you home,
especially when you don't have one.
love has become a sticky bag of green
tucked beneath my waistband;
a song from the 70s I will never hear live.
a white aerosol can that smells how winter
once felt, but only lasts in flashes of memory.
"it could always be worse"
is what they'll tell you.
but the fact of it is,
this is my reality:
a pound dog with it's collar too tight-
pink scars from the weight of the chains-
wincing whenever an arm is raised.
I wish I could drive a mile without
wanting to bury myself
in a metal grave, without a tag under my skin
marking
my
every
step.
signs are just an option.
countless turns too quick on the highway
in the car my parents let me use,
but never taught me to drive.
this pain, they dug it inside,
engraved in the roots beneath soil,
so deep that the sun can not leave its burn-
and then they locked up all the rusted shovels I could have used to find it.
the matter in the world is constant,
never made nor stolen away.
materials will fade and be born anew.
but emotion is infinitely expanding,
knowledge is control.
and love?
love is now only impossible.
on this earth, life is all I was given,
but I don't want a single part of it.

I once said I wished we were in love.
but it's only a daydream.
it runs through my head
in every moment that you hold me
and I feel love seeping through your veins
like light sneaks between the blinds at dawn-
I don't believe in god but I think
you were very right when you said
thunderstorms were his tears
at the sight of our intangible bond
that he will never get his hands on,
and only he knows his own angels
would try to strike me down
in jealously that they themselves
could not cling to you like I do.
I am stuck in a vortex of unfortuante
pain and dull days and bad luck,
but in a single moment you manage
to pull me from the depths of my grave-
untangle the roots that have grown
around my bones-
all with a single smile.
I love you, so much in fact that nothing I do
or say will ever begin to explain
how I wish I could give you the world,
because I know you could fix it.
I wish I could keep you here,
and maybe you would call it home.
I wish we were in love,
but it's only a daydream.

I've read poems about the way
sleepy lovers watched eyelids flutter
softly, like tiny butterflies
perched on daisies and wilting white roses.

I could only compare the light movements
of your eyes to the sun painting the clouds
in a way which made me wish to reach
into the sky and pluck harps by golden gates.

but I don't believe in angels.

I've read poems about coffee stained lips
and menthol cigarettes dancing
between fingertips, to match soft
Good Mornings and mumbled I Love You's.

I could only compare your speech
to the songs curling from the heavens
at three o clock in the morning,
as the quiet world sleeps and I
strain to hear broken lullabies.

but I don't believe in angels.

I've read poems about boys with irises
that run a thousand miles deep,
with bones made out of gold,
and with stories that pull girls
in like fruit flies in a spiders web.

I could only compare your eyes
to one who has seen the pain hidden
in the deepest corners of the earth.
your bones hold the weight of the world
and the stories you spin only seem fit
to one who carries shaking wings
and a glowing halo.

but I don't believe in angels.

it has been exactly a month
since I tasted salt on my tongue
and felt sand between
the ridges of our blankets.
the only thing I ever learned
from my parents
was that a boy
who loves his mother infinitely
would love me just the same
and you would've given yours
the world;
when you kissed my throat
could you taste the waves again?
I am so desperate to be the deepest parts of the earth-
I have veins like rivers
and you could dip your hands in.
my whispers may be cloudy
but my mouth is a cavern
the noise produced is dark-
you stole my sunshine, and you know
I don't think I've ever been so pale.
translucent and glowing like ice packed in piles beneath the stairwells
(in the neighborhood
where nobody knows my name)
it is warm but I love you just the same.
winter frosted the windows
shut for us
and when you dragged me
in front of the mirror
I was wide eyed and shaking
and you made me look
at my reflection-
"you look so beautiful"
the whole planet
should have looked in at the girl
with the cigarette
shaking between her lips,
and the bruises on her hips,
with the veins like rivers,
the cavern mouth
filled with diamonds,
that were planted by your kiss-
one day, I will be carried by the wind
or rushing through the sea-
and you will peer down at yourself
in the ripples of water,
see your reflection,
and you will look so beautiful.

There's a part of me that wants to believe that the world changes when the sun finally slips out of the sky.

Maybe the brain releases some kind of chemical that makes us more aware and appreciative of the world, allowing us to fall in love with the way the stars mimic the flickering in our eyes and shine even brighter than our sun ever could.

Maybe the world falls silent because it's striving to listen to every breath that you take. It always sounded like a machine to me, almost like dark waves lapping against the battered shore. A monotone rhythm, so consistent that nobody listens after a while.

But I will always listen. You are so much like the ocean. Deep, vast, with so many unexplored crevices hiding beneath the sweet surface. Those who hear the sea everyday may not appreciate it's whispers, but I hang on to every syllable.

they told me
"never fall in love with a bad boy."

what they didn't tell me
was that bad boys
are not boys with scars
that have no stories.

they are not boys
with split bones,
stretched shadows,
black irises, and blacker bruises.

bad boys are the ones who
stitch together their words,
silk spider webs,
wrapping you up,
just like he did in his arms.

they are not boys who hide their faces,
and spill smoke from thin lips.

bad boys are the ones who
fill your hungry cries
with red wine and black waters,
dragging you down,
just like he did with his words.

they told me
"never fall in love with a bad boy."

but I did.

it is exactly one month before my seventeenth birthday and I am standing in the road under dim streetlights that remind me of the candles that glow from the windows in the winter.

your silhouette beckons me from across the way and I drift towards it, executing each step slowly like a surgeon, although there's no need for silence anymore. it is 2:05 in the morning and I have left my house in the dead of night. I slip into the car and the welcoming aroma of menthol cigarettes and dr pepper engulfs me and I smile for the first time in a while. I am not afraid. I am not sad. I am home.

this right here is the part many will never understand. home is not made of four brick walls and a sturdy tin roof. it is not a fireplace or picture frames or a warm bed. home is where you feel like you belong. it is where you are loved. cared for. needed. this is my calling and I've reached out to answer it. this is the family I never had.

three hours in a messy car does not grind down my spirits of this little vacation I've begun. I have smoked half a pack and kissed you much less than id like to, but your presence brings the greatest peace of mind.

upon arrival, I take escape to the porch to see the waves lapping beautifully upon the shore and I think that I will miss this when I have to leave. it is 5 a.m. and the sun has not yet risen. we take shots of cheap tequila in celebration and pretend that they are water. only looking back on this do I realize what a hilarious irony it holds. in childhood, many of us would pretend that pretzels were cigarettes and take ***** shots with the caps of our water bottles. maybe this small act is a form of regression. maybe were all still children.

everyone begins to make music as inspiration spills onto them and I watch in awe. at 6 a.m. we are down on the beach. I do not remember how I got there. I can only remember seeing you sit high on the lifeguard stand, a king, looking down at the world as if it were yours, and I wish I could give it to you. my wind beaten cheeks meet the horizon as I topple into the sand in fits of laughter and happiness; I wish I could bottle this feeling so I would never lose it. Joy is a foreign language to me. others seem to comprehend it and spill it from their mouths so simply, while I do not understand a single syllable.

I don't remember how we arrived back inside. everyone seperated. we climbed into the bed that an old friend had broken and made love as the sun rose. it cut sharp through the glass door behind us and sprayed waves of light on my skin like liquid gold. I am thinking this could be the last time, I am hoping it is not. we fall asleep not long after, and this piece of communion that was placed so gently on my tongue dissolves and the bitter taste in my mouth begins as soon as I wake, a few hours later.

day two is a chapter I would most likely title: The Panic. it does not begin right away. our day mostly consists of laying on the beach and kicking sand at one another like ratty, wild dogs, forcing each other into the pit of frozen waters, and making bets we will never go through with. around this time news has reached me that my mother and father have the police looking for me. I try to push it towards the back of my head.

but you see, the inner depths of my mind are already flooded with sinister ideas and broken secrets I may never share, and this panic tip-toes throughout my body and sets into my bones, weighing me down as if I had boulders in my pockets.

I am told to "calm down, everything will be Okay." when tears frequently line my eyes in silence. they continue to tell me this when we find ourselves in the kitchen scrambling to pack our things because we've heard the cops are coming for me. they also tell me this when I'm screaming apologies and holding your hand in the backseat of the car. they tell me it when I say goodbye at a nearby park and give hugs I think may be my last for a while. but the thing about this statement is, I am always calm. I am in a numb state of inner silence hungering for bliss and just four little days of freedom. but nothing will ever be Okay, no matter how long I've gone away.

the walk home, only a mile, was beyond limits of the word beautiful. the stars were practically beaming and the air was cold but in the good way like a puppies nose when it's kissing your face. or like mist falling from the sky on a summer night. I don't believe in God or any higher power, but I take this walk home as a sign that maybe everything will be okay when I walk back into that house.

if I could describe how the weather should have been that night to match the actions that played out when I arrived, they would be along the lines of destruction. trees ripped from the ground with their roots showing. winds sweeping the roofs off this suburbian wasteland. lighting strikes bringing on raging fires. it must've looked like that to match the look in my fathers eyes. thunder should've accompanied the sound of him shoving my sore body against the wall. pulling my long brown hair and tossing me to the floor like the garbage I was.

the full wave of panic washes onto me in that moment. for some reason I thought of the father I once had that didn't drink every night with his girlfriend, the only one that ever seemed to matter anymore. I thought of the father before he left my mother. I thought of him banging scratched pots in the sink and slamming doors with the strength of one thousand men and shouting with the voice of a man with a million sources of pain. I thought of how he tried to leave us once. and then how he really left us. I wish he could understand. to me, this is the ultimate level of hypocrisy. I am persecuted for leaving the man that left me in my time of need.

I am almost relieved when he says I must talk to the police. I have never been a fan of the flashing red and blue lights and the uniformed men who are paid to protect you but only arrest you. I believe they do mostly harm to many innocent people. you may not understand this. you may not know how it feels to walk up to this figure with the badge and want to tell him everything, to see if some shred of understanding lies beneath the deep cold stare in his eyes. but he only accuses me and attacks me with loose words that do not phase me. he does not let me speak. he is not here to help.

and so starts the beginning of the end. finally reaching the point where I am as trapped as I have always felt on the inside. the only question I keep getting asked is "why did you do it?" and I have yet to answer this. maybe I was homesick for a place that did not really exist. maybe I thought I would find salvation in a bed id never slept in but already loved more than my own. maybe I thought it was too repulsing for the two people who brought me onto this earth to be one of many reasons I desperately wanted to leave it.

I would love to tell them, my parents. everything. the abuse, the drugs, the cutting, the suicide attempt, the hell that eats me away everyday...they should know. but when your mother laughs when your doctor tells her that you show signs of major depression, you tend to believe this is just a game to her. talking to false friends on the phone and playing rich sports will always be more important. my fathers favorite tv shows and nightly few bottles of wine will overpower my tears and pleads for help. I am always stuck in an all knowing silence that everyone takes for stupidity. I've always said "darkness is my only friend now" but I think that night time is too beautiful to be an aquaintance of mine, and my friends are the Family by my side when my fists are full of blades and my feet are on the edge. I think this is the type of darkness that welcomes me as I wake every morning and sleep every night. it is the only place I know on this gigantic prison called earth. it settles inside of me and runs through my veins. it is carved in the walls of my skull and keeps my heart beating in a steady, empty rhythm. home, sweet home.

a message to every person who's name still echos in my mind and makes me shiver.

1. you were the first to give me a purpose. my body was small and your hands fit me almost as tight as your sheets. you were lost, and found home in the curve of my neck and the touch of my tongue and every story I dreaded to tell. you were a headache that throbbed in my teeth and crept down my throat. but I had a taste for a different type of pain.

2. you were nights without sleep for fear of the dark. you were the monsters in the closet and the dust along my bookshelf. you were The Calm Before The Storm that made me wish I was landlocked. you were venom in my veins and rope burns glowing along my throat. I've never believed in God but I pray for your victims when I watch you play life like a vicious game, and I still hope for your salvation.

3. you were a test I knew all the answers to but still proceeded to fail. you taught me to crave everything that was wrong. adrenaline has become the new form of oxygen. you are speed and I am the streets and everything inside of us aches to be free of the roles we are still forced to play. the lines in your palms are more familiar to me than my own, but you never let me hold your hand.

4. you were red in a world of black and white. I watched you fall like waves at my feet and I felt you pull back over time. you were the tides, you were the new moon covering me with shallow darkness, silent as I stumbled in the sand. you were the whistling wind pushing my hair over my eyes just so you could have the chance to pull it back behind my ears. you were salty kisses and warm skin, but you were too hot to touch.

5. you were a fairytale I so desperately needed. you gave me purpose like 1, sleepless nights like 2, had the same name as 3, and held thoughts as loud as 4 but a mouth just as silent. you were a thunderstorm in a four year drought, a fire in my mind, a force I could feel and never see. you held flashing lights and warning signs but I only squeezed my eyes closed even tighter. you are the scars along my wrists that show me I am so, so fragile. you are the suicide note waiting so patiently to be read, a reminder that I am not the only one who doesn't want to breathe anymore. but I would die for you.

take pictures. walk to the drug store on a crisp summer night
and buy one of those old cheap cameras. carry it like you would a child.
when you smile, genuinely, take a photo. when you feel that warm touch of the sun on your face
and the wind tangling your hair into knots, take a photo. every moment
is so precious. keep these pictures until you are seventy three
and barely remember the names of the faces you once pressed your lips to.
keep them until "film" is an unknown word.

when love is coarsing fast through your veins,
wrap your hands around the source. squeeze tighter, don't stifle your breath. don't let
your words drop like anchors down your throat. don't let the world tell you
that you're not enough. love is love. it is not a hand on your thighs or the shaking afterwards.
it is not purchased in pink giftwrap. it is whatever you make it. and even though
it may not last forever, you can only pretend that
this will be the last time you ever touch. love infinitely and exhaustively.

never let anyone's opinions or decisions
put a halt to the pursuit of your own happiness. you
are the creator of this life that you own. you were born with so much potential and so much passion
that it floods out of you like rainwater. destroy the drought. you are free to be anything
you could ever dream of, and more. there are always second chances; every moment
you feel is a failiure is only a lesson in a perilous disguise. if you are sad,
do not drown yourself in your own despair. do not douse yourself
in liquor. do not keep secrets packed away in dimly lit corners. someone loves you.
I love you. there is hope in even the places that seem forlorn.

above all else, live every day as if it is your only.
take chances.
take chances.
take chances.
never pass up on an opprotunity due to fear. you may
slip up and make a faulty choice. but in the end, your heaviest regrets
will be not getting into that car. not kissing the girl with the beautiful blonde hair.
not hugging someone goodbye, or calling them to tell them you love them in the peak of morning.
every second is more precious than money can label.
stop dragging yourself from the grasp of your sheets when you wake with a sigh- rise even earlier
to see the lavender sky and smile because you're alive and every single **** day
is a novel anxiously awaiting to be scribbled down. grab his hand
and squeeze it tighter. hold her hips and memorize their shape. never let go. ask questions.
push yourself. live.

I found myself in your apartment. blood red lights stringing along the walls, mimicking the flashing in my old driveway. I played music sung by dead girls and blind boys who couldn't get over them. I left the window wide because the frigid air slipped off the pine needles and bit at my wrists. numbness and normality were no longer friends of mine, and misery was my first lover.

I left myself on your back porch. seven cigarettes stuffed down my sweater, shying away from heavy rain. it raced down the roads and I thought of how you tried to run away from us. I watched the streetlights carve patterns into concrete. I watched you slip away in the plastic blue chair across from me. my favorite song dancing and curved in my ears but I only found comfort in the voices. I longed to fear the world again, as I should've. as I used to.

I hurt myself with the drag of the first cigarette which you watched me light effortlessly, the flame flashing in my face for just a moment. I felt your bambi eyes trace my tender, quivering jaw. you were a fragile fawn with heavy bones, knobby knees, and empty whimpers. and I was the forest hiding your shaking limbs. I swayed with white wine running through me, raw liquid heat that warmed my bones and calmed my screaming mind.

I lost myself when I flicked the third cigarette three stories over the rails, dripping black like my favorite ink. dark as the nights we curled together, seperated by only greedy fingertips. nights loaded as your sleepy lies that I so longed to trust. but I was gone. I had stood silent in death, led by embers, led by your voice which still echoes in my skull. led by the world my brain had painted when my eyes couldn't grasp reality. you twisted my spine until I had no sense of direction. I am still so lost.

I have always been drawn to destruction;
air too thin to breathe-
I carry a pain eyes can't receive.

life and evil are only a letter apart,
and I've come to believe
this was no mistake;

the devil wears sweatpants and a rosary.

he weaves his fingers
through yours tightly
every time he holds you down-

and he shines-
stolen halos line red wrists,
they bang against the drywall-
its four in the morning
and he's come into the room again-
he forever invites himself in

maybe this time God will hear the ringing,
clinging together,
the halos,
the angels
will flee to ****** back
their innocence.
brilliance.

and the motion will cease.
the clouds, close.

claiming "possession"
is out of the question
for he did not seize my soul-
I extracted it, split my skull
all for a taste of the afterlife.

he loves mirrors and other pathways
of reflection;
the evil only seem to love themselves.

I am used to blinding confusion
and bittersweet illusions,
I crave the burn that follows pain.

he likes to leave a mark
beyond scarring the skin,
but I promise,
the worst is within-

life and death are only a day apart
and I've come to believe
I am stuck in between,
and the devil continues,
blissful and free.

I've written too many poems for too many people. something about you, I know, is different. even the image of your cold eyes skipping across the words I'm creating is nothing short of a miracle. the thought of your distant mind holding a blurred depiction of me seems impossible. you deserve more than a poem- more than standing up on some balcony thinking, just for a second, you loved some girl you never met. and maybe you loved her because you saw the best of her. but, she loved you because she saw some of the worst in you. and you made her see it in herself.

how can I miss someone I've never met? someday, you'll just become another insect weaving along the streets. a heavy look, yet somehow empty, stained on your face. it will age even further than your mind already has. it will flash on TV screens and billboards who advertise a man they think they can define. just know, I'll refuse to say your name- and I'll still miss you.

this is not a poem. it's not a sonnet, nor a song, nor a love note. this is something to remember on the subway. something to hold on to when the sting of fluorescent lights loses its luster, and the smell of the city is deemed no longer potent. it's easy for me to believe in a years time, I will still be the face you never laid eyes on and the body you never touched. it's harder for me to percieve this as truth.

wherever it is that you go, I know it will be with confidence. I don't have to worry about your success or stability. I will worry I have been forgotten, just as swiftly as the thoughts I've told you when you're the only one keeping me up deep into the pit of night. you teach me more than I have ever learned in a textbook; sometimes, even more than I have learned as I walk amongst the pests inside this anthill. I cant make you feel: I can't make you miss me and I can't make you love me; I don't want you to. I can't make you touch me, and you shouldn't. I can't make you accept the warm embrace I'd willingly give you, hell, I can't even make you give me the chance to try.

I can't make you do anything, but wherever you go, whatever you do, I will always think highly of you. I'm sure you'll live wearing gold along your knuckles thats worth more than my life, and chatting with strangers I can only read about in novels. maybe someday, you'll reach back and taste just a hint of nostalgia from some scrap of me that flickers in your mind. maybe someday, you'll long for endless nights of voiceless conversation. and maybe, someday, you'll miss me too.

sheets bind your legs
you're covered in white.
I watched you in battle,
and you lost the fight.

your skin's now a canvas.
scars. tubes in your arms.
the ache to be free will not
stop those alarms.

so you break from the bed,
trace lines on the wall.
eyes scan the room blankly,
on me, they don't fall.

my arms long to hold you,
I stick by the door.
I don't even flinch when
you fall to the floor.

the nurses are gone now,
but I couldn't yell,
when you slipped from the window
and laughed as you fell.

it wasn't the drugs.
dope, coke, or crack.
all you needed to live
was for me to come back.

long ago,
I could tame a lion with the click of a pen,
watch the teeth burn to ashes in his jaw,
and his gums bleed, dripping with every word.
drip, drop.
funny how lions are a symbol of God.
funny how, I used to glance into the
cold black irises of my strongest demon,
and tell myself I loved him.
every boy I've ever written for
seems to vanish before the novel ends,
before the sun sets, before they think-
maybe,
"it's safe to leave her before she falls in love"
little do they know that love was my oxygen,
love was my unused journal
from a lost friend,
love was nothing until I met you.
you cannot be another night
without razor sharp stars in the sky.
you cannot be the hundreds of songs
I can no longer ******* listen to.
you cannot be another Willow Springs-
another road I think I've traveled,
I've seen children pray on the corners of Italy;
I've seen mountains breathe
and thought it would be my last time
kissing their snowy tops.
I've seen straight into the
amber eyes of the lion
as I lay under fluorescent lights
with sixteen pills rattling in my stomach,
thinking maybe,
the King of the Jungle will release me
with His jaws of life.
but the truth is,
you are the only god I believe in.
you are my savior,
you are the King of the Jungle
and the closest thing to heaven
I will ever know.

it has been seven days and I have smoked six packs of cigarettes, been in the car for five days, slept four nights, made three new friends each afternoon, stole from the same two stores, and died once. I don't remember the last time I had a meal, although you've tried so hard to cook for me.

I keep saying "I should stop" and hearing "just one more" and wondering how long it's been now, a year or a minute, and I have decided a lifetime can be lived in a single moment. however I am not alive. I can not decide if this is a blessing or an omen.

on mornings when the sun leaks through the spines of the pine trees, we drive back to where you ran away from. there is a sign at the entrance that says "drive as if your kid lives here." I wonder what your parents think when they see that. I wonder if they wake up in the morning and make you breakfast thinking you'll come down to the kitchen with messy hair and a crooked smile. you say you're too prideful to fall back to love. but I think you are lost in this jungle. these houses all look the same anyways. you must have lost your way.

I have sat in the backseat of at least a hundred drug deals and my favorite part is watching the eyes of the kids right before they open the car door that has been kissed with ice and dented from the product of your recklessness. half of their bodies are shaking and the other half are motionless, paralyzed, fingers skinny and stained with smoke like some characters from a book, and although I thought I was once a writer I am simply the antagonist of this tragedy.

I have learned that people keep the plastic on their cigarette packs to put their drugs in later, so I started giving them mine, and they started telling me they loved me. they started clinging to me like precious gold, and they told me my eyes were emeralds, and my body was their greatest treasure stolen away from an old ship beneath miles of ocean, and I started to believe every word as if it were written in blood. but I have found that you are only loved for how willing you are to hop in the trunk, how many pulls you take from the bottle, and how many words you can memorize from their favorite songs.

I have tattooed the lyrics on the backs of my eyelids and I will close my eyes and sing forever if it means someone will just look at me different for once. when these songs came on as we jumped in your parents bed, I pretended not to think of all the other times I heard them. when you woke me up by dancing your fingers across my skin at three thirty in the morning, I pretended to be asleep. when you told me you liked your coffee black, I pretended that wasn't some form of poetry.

I managed to betray the boy who loves me in the back of his car but he still held me when everyone fell asleep. he was shaking. they are always shaking. but not me, not anymore, because the blood has been drained. the sun now shines above the tree tops and the pines wait in vain for warmth to return. the world smiles at me with bleached teeth and hungry blue eyes. but even with this boundless mind and these knuckles lined with silver, I have never been so worthless. I have never felt so cold.

I want to know what it is
that draws me to the floor of the shower
when the water is burning my flesh a stale red,
much like the color of your lips.
my skin may cry, but my bones lock,
holding me under the water.
it pounds like it once did
against my cracked window,
trying to burn away the words
you carved into my frame.
my wrists starve to see the white tile floor turn
dark.
crimson.
red.
while my eyes pull closed,
in an attempt to stay shut forever.
and the water dripping in it's slow rhythm,
from my shaking, aching lips
is the only thing
keeping me sane.



I want to know what it is
that draws me to the cigarettes
that tear me into pieces.
my lungs feed on their heavy smoke,
and my porcelain skin seems to
fade.
dull.
crack.
the glowing between my fingertips
reminds me of the way it once
danced and swayed
between your strong, rough hands.
but still, it seemed almost as if
it were a part of you.
(which I would never be)
my lips, and my cigarette, both agree
they'd be much happier
pressed to your waiting mouth.



I want to know what it is
that draws me to you
when every inch of me, inside and out,
is a reminder of how I've been hurt before.
how the words that have been thrown at me
now wrap up my organs like vines.
thorned chains pulling tighter
as I fall harder for you.
the way you speak,
fragile.
soft.
strong.
the look in your eyes,
and the whispers of the thoughts
you are so reluctant to let me hear.
the words that you speak so delicately
as if they will shatter, or I will shatter,
before your very eyes.

you're a love tease
resurfacing when I have
finally forgotten
how you sound,
how you feel-
flashing your smile and
reminding me that I
did not give it to you,
as if I hadn't died trying.
how real can your love be,
could it have been,
if you use the same words-
pair royalty and faith-
with a completely new face?

you will never understand
my ultra-sensitivity,
the pain that's overtaken me.
so deep that I'm lying
where the light has never touched.

I buried you beneath
an oceans worth of sand
too hot to touch, just in case
I thought for a second
that I should try to again.

I hate you so much
but love you even more,
so much so that I can forget
over and over
every knife
that was plunged
through my body
every lie
that made me bleed inside.

perhaps my love is unconditional.

With every dawn that rises
I find myself
suspended in normality,
scrambling to scavenge some sort
of beauty in the bleakness.

My own past, passes me by.
those who were once called lovers
all love another,
(someone who had always been
desperate to reach the foreground)

So many times have I wished
that I could split myself-
send each piece sailing into the sky
and see which road leads me to destiny.

But- I am whole.
with this, I must decide upon a single path-
accept normalitys cold, clammy palms
gripping my thighs, holding my waist.

The only reason we feel
a way towards something
is because we've been trained to.
it is valid for flowers to be putrid,
and hell to be heavenly,
if we so wish it to be.
the most twisted of things in your mind,
lie in my own morning routine.

You've never met a wanderer like me.

Countless pathways and I remain
barefoot and bleeding along the same trail,
knowing **** well it will **** me;
glass hidden between pebbles,
ghosts kissing my heels,
my own self, blind to the foreground.

they say the mind is most active at night.
maybe this is why you plague every passing thought
when the earth turns its face
far from the kisses of the shuttering sun;
and the black skies sweet breath
fogs up my windshield.

there is a moment in my mind
for every star in our galaxy.
with you, I can lay with my back to the street
and never worry of approaching cars,
because even if they were to gnaw
at me with their steel teeth,
and crush me with black rubber feet,
I wouldnt mind dying by your side.

with you, I can defy the laws
that have bound me to my bed.
you give me the strength to let the light in,
to set sweet fire to my skin
and - instead of burning -
I only admire the glowing left behind.

I always needed excuses for
Why I Loved someone, or How.
how could I cling to a force that
ground me into nothing but ashes,
littering the carpet beneath my bare feet.
and how could the world see me as a child,
with a freckled face and starving eyes,
and batter me with hatred, betrayal, fear.
confusion. until, it consumed me.

but all of this seems lost now;
it has risen like mist,
rain from the cracks of the concrete-
vanishing into oblivion.
with you, there is no Time.
there are seconds ticking, trying to
rip us apart, but there is no past.
there is no evidence of a shred of misery.
with you, I have hope for the future.

our child will laugh just like you,
not only in sound, but his eyes will squint
and his nose will scrunch up like yours.

our child will have her mothers hope.
she will view the world
from the eyes of a beggar-
but touch the earth with the hands of a God.

our child will reach out with boney fingers
and grab the soul of every baggy eyed, dead human, filling them with sweet fire.
and you and I? we will admire the glow.

I was born with a knack for reading and a passion for writing and a terrible, ten cent memory. although I can't recall what I ate for breakfast (unless your mother made it) I can still remember the first time we met.

I remember looking up at your apartment, seeking refuge from the cold, pushing away "this is a bad idea" and thinking maybe honey colored windows and smokey air could change my life. plants hang like bodies behind the blinds. now I think "this was a great idea" and I still can't decide if I should've ascended those stairs- two flights- right into your life. you were sitting on the couch and wouldn't look my way because the cigarette between your lips was far more intriguing. car horns and screams erupt from the tv. this is the first time we speak since I first saw you in middle school, pushing my friends into the bathroom of the wrong gender.

I remember spending every day working my way to the couch. first the floor. then the chair. then beside you. and once I found this place God knows I knew I was at home. I've never liked watching you play video games and swing from roof to roof and flip a truck with the push of a button, but now there's nothing I miss more than the sounds of that glowing controller. only when I traded my dark sweaters for a tight tee had I caught your attention.

I remember the night we taped your mouth closed and your wrists tight and tossed you in the trunk as a joke. I still have pictures. you tried to speak and although your words were muffled, I could understand. I was the translator. and I still am. you told me you'd be satisfied if you kissed my best friend before the night was over. I told you I couldn't handle myself on an empty stomach. I puked all over the side of the car.

I remember trying to start a fire for forty five minutes and chugging liquor like water before our friends returned. asking you to sit with me that night was an invitation to fall in love with me. however, the type of love you showed was not one I knew well. I never let anyone **** me because I was too afraid of myself. but I never stopped you because you weren't afraid of anything. I wonder if you still would have done it knowing how far along id take you. I wonder what kind of dreams you had when you passed out in the trunk and I shuttered in January air, 3 am and the tape from your mouth is on the steering wheel. there is no such thing as silence. there are only hands rubbing my back as I try to remember how the sun feels.

I remember bruises on my thighs that looked like Van Gogh touched a canvas with a blindfold on. I swear I shook for three days after That: when I saw you, when I wanted you, when I thought of you. three things I still tackle with every morning smoke. I used to think you'd never speak to me after that night. who would've guessed we'd have a million more.

I remember the first time you had me completely exposed, and it was not just my skin. I was knocking things off my bucket list, knocking my head on the headboard, knocking on your door at midnight with a blunt in my back pocket. remember when you punched me in the throat on accident? I leaned into it. should've knocked some sense into me.

I remember laying on your bed listening to the messages my first love had left on my phone a year ago. "I love you, I love you. please come back. I love you." you thought they were creepy. I wanted you to need me this badly. I wanted you to hold me when I cried. "message deleted." "message deleted." I wanted to keep you from walking out of the room, and I wanted to keep your mother from walking in. she thought I was a good one. "I like her," she shouted, cackling over the sink. "she's good for you. she's so good for you." she doesn't know I carved her couch with your knife. she doesn't know how you dragged me in front of the mirror and told me I was beautiful. she once called me and told me I used her as a hotel. it was my home. I am still there, somewhere. I remember so many things and yet not one is valuable when I try to find words to fit. I can't tell you what love is. you can read every poem and hear every love song and see every photo and you will never know. but if you give me an hour and a bottle of wine, I can tell you what it's like when it's gone.

to the first boy I ever loved.
you had tan skin and black hair,
and the hum of your voice
was a tight life jacket
as I struggled
to float in the current,
two years ago.
you were in love from the start.
I gave you my heart,
and you made me believe
that Forever was still real.
I almost died with your hands
around my throat.
and your name is written on my heart, fading.
you left, and things are not the same as you've come back.

to the second boy I ever loved.
you had tan skin and black hair,
and the slur in your speech
made me question my tone
as I whispered
in the dead of night,
one year ago.
we were in love from the start.
I gave you my hands,
and you made me believe
that Hope was still real.
I almost died with your lips
on my pale thighs.
and your name is written on my insides, burning.
you left, and things are just the same as you've come back.

to the third boy I ever loved.
you had tan skin and black hair,
and the beauty in your words
made my mind spin even harder
as I washed down
wine and whiskey,
one month ago.
I was in love from the start.
I gave you my mind,
and you made me believe
that Love was still real.
I almost died with your love
just out of reach.
and your name is written in my skull, screaming.
you left, and things will never be the same. you won't come back.

I used to write about smoking cigarettes
and stealing bottles from shopping centers-
about love that never deserved to exist,
and people who would now not recognize
the shape of my own being.

it's conflicting to constantly know
who you are today cannot compare to tomorrow;
and the thoughts that cause feelings of brilliance
are only echoes of past stupidity.

I'm supposed to hate myself for what I've done.

My bones should snap under the weight
of my own guilt, but there is none.

Perhaps I am incapable of feeling sorry,
even for myself, since no one else ever did.

Maybe I can't control my own demons,
because I never kept them in chains,
and it's only a matter of time
before karma catches me.

You will never understand what it took
to love You again,
and I will never comprehend why
It all left it in the first place.

We hold a thousand memories,
but the hundred I have molded on my own
burn and singe-
the sounds of your unanswered calls-
over and over-
releasing myself from a speeding car window,
losing myself in the bed that was never mine.

What would you say
if you could see the looks
on all of their faces?
Contorted and blurry by my own incoherence
and their inability to understand:
"Who are you, now?"

But I know myself.
I know I hold the anger of my father,
"You're pathetic" and "burning bridges"-
The loveless love of my mother.
The ability to disconnect from my own mind,
that has hindered me useless for so long...

You don't know me, and if you did,
these petal like lips would lay untouched, You
wouldn't believe in love
that the truth that created
the depiction of me,
would **** you.

And so I sit in silence.