when i told people in my first block class at school, a science class, that my favorite movie was straight outta compton, they all laughed.
and i guess i understood why. im a little white girl that was wearing a skirt that day. okay, so thats nice.
i guess i cant like things because i live in a pretty nice neighborhood and im white and im a girl.
but guess what.
i like straight outta compton because i understand the people part of it. like oh god.
i used to love going to the movies because i could escape my reality, which ***** more than people know because i dont tell them things sometimes, but i havent enjoyed a movie in years because every reality in my life has completely taken over and defeated me.
but maybe i like straight outta compton so much because for the first time in years, i actually connected with something that felt real to me.
yeah ok, its just a movie.
but watching the movie, i got to meet these characters and they became my friends. i dont care about how lame that is.
this is a poetry site. look at all the angst. and my gosh, look at that fourth wall i just broke.
ice cube is my friend. ren is my friend. yella too. all my friends, and i watched them get shoved to the ground outside their own recording studio.
because they were black.
and sitting in the movie theatre seat in my nice neighborhood in my white skin, i cried.
i cried my eyes out, because those actors onscreen were telling me a story in the personas of these new friends of mine.
i cried when eazy found out he had aids. just when nwa was about to get back together.
it was like watching a personal potential victory slip right between my fingers. it felt so close.
and i watched his body shake in agony. eazy cried. he had months to live.
in my white skin in my nice movie seat in my nice neighborhood where ive never had to watch anyone die, i cried because in that moment, all of it was real to me.
you cant explain something like that, not even to your friends.
in my nice neighborhood where there arent streetwalkers and people doing coke and peoples houses getting rammed down by the cops, my friends dont want to listen to nwa because of all the cussing.
and i think, there is so much that you miss if you initially reject it because you dont like it, because you think that it hurts your character.
hear no evil, see no evil.
you dont want the cussing floating around in your head.
its bad. its sinful.
but my gosh, its only words.
i dont think that eazy wanted the doctors diagnosis in his head.
i dont think that he wanted to deal coke and get almost caught by the police. i think he wanted to stay in the safe neighborhood with me in the nice movie seats crying about some other character on the screen that had their dreams crushed and their life taken.
i dont think that ice cube wanted to be taken advantage of by his manager.
i dont think i would like that either.
i dont like that people think that my friend, ice cube, isnt as smart as the little white girl in her biotechnology class. people might look down on him because hes black, or because gangsta rap made him do it, or because he didnt come from the nice neighborhood with the movie theater that i was crying in because my friends were being beaten.
maybe im crazy for saying this, but....i think maybe the movies arent supposed to always entertain us or make political statements or educate us or wow us with light shows.
maybe theyre meant to give us new perspectives we dont get because we live in nice neighborhoods with our movie theaters and our friends nwa that dont get to live here because they came from compton and got thrown in jail because they used their right to freedom of speech or got aids and died.
my friends werent all good. they did drugs and abused women, and im not okay with that, but i love them anyway, yknow?
because theres just one type of folks. not real or fictional, not actors and audience, not black and white.
just folks.
just friends.

I had thanksgiving with my St. Lucian family, my
loud, unapologetic,
laughs-too-loud, generation-gap
homemade ***, heads in phones,
blasting dancehall music
old ladies dancing
clap-back
talk-back
family.
"Play us a song",
my cousin and I sent to my room to play jazz chords, I
finger along clumsily. He's in college and his dark eyes close, fingers
sliding up and down the frets,
frowning in concentration, cursing quietly at a missed note.
My islander family comes over and prompts impromptu drinking games,
"I'm not looking, I saw nothing",
I lick a bit of vanilla ***** from my mother's shot glass,
alcohol becomes a family affair, it
takes away the danger and the stigma and throws a friendly, lovely
light on a vice.
It's raining, it's cold,
islanders do not belong on a Kansas porch smoking cigarettes in the dark rain.
I light candles on the wall.
They all outlast their welcome, between four and a half hours of transition
from uncomfortable "i don't remember your name", put on the spot,
only-child-becomes-one-of-several to
discussing baby names and family gossip, they
all wrap up their food slaved over at nine am, they
all troop out the door, they
take their coats, they
leave their wide smiles with us until next time.

Every word that falls from my lips is untasted, preserved in its bitterness by the space between me and you like a vice that ferments and grows in silence.
But in the reality that a tree will still make a sound if it falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, I’ll chance to tell your unlistening ears a story that fell into my head today.
I saw myself in a room, in the same reality as your past, but in my present body,
Knowing all that happened between us, and aware of a stigma that does not exist between us as of this moment in your past.
You are a silhouette, a small brown head, among how many other small heads in a classroom, around a table, on the stairways?
Elementary school, maybe even middle school. Years before I know you and you knew me,
When we were separate and had not joined, when existed but were unknown.
Maybe I was a teacher in a classroom, or just another student visiting, on some educational excuse, and watched you, and assessed you. Quiet, and with a quiet something wrong with your body. You were a defect. There was a quiet acceptance and maybe there was a defiance in your brown eyes. Chocolate brown eyes, or iodine? Or gasoline?
I don’t know. I don’t know.
What if I had the chance?
In this reality, I was, for the only time, taller than you. My shadow fell on you, but you were absorbed in a book. Typical. My shadow was too contrasted from the ink to divert your attention.
And here, I had the upper hand.
You were not on your guard, friend. You were trusting, or something like it. Maybe it was the childish, young semblance of cocky assuredness that you were immortal.
Maybe, in this instance, you were innocent.
Maybe you had not yet given up on the fact that none of us ever were.
Something was in my hand, as I stood over your shoulder. It could have been anything to fit the picture, a pencil, a pen. A sharpie.
My eyes were not on the object, so I don’t know. It felt long, sharp, and on the fence about what it was meant to do, to create or to destroy.
I too, was on the fence.
The classroom, suddenly (if it had been filled with filler characters in the vision before this transition) was empty. I, the unperceived grim, had the faceless and unbiased entity of silence on my side as my own personal weapon.
I could do it. I could hurt you. I could hurt you, and make you hurt, and make you bleed that blood through all your organs and your dysfunctional body that has something wrong with it that I will never understand through experience but was left to guess about because I had to trouble myself with something about you to show that I cared, in some form.
Maybe, it would make me whole, would keep me from being dysfunctional. Me, not having given up on the fact that none of us were ever functional to begin with.
Unaware that I was still there, a hovering, self-interested ghost, you turned a page and kept reading in the empty, nondescript classroom that my own mind had designed for you.
I wondered, in that moment, out of nowhere, where all the other kids were.
Knowing you, you had made the independent decision of keeping your solitude. It seems like something even a younger version of you would do. Something that always made me laugh a little, because your comfort with being alone made me uncomfortable in the way that misunderstanding something always makes someone feel uncomfortable with their own perception of reality.
But there was always the chance that (and I always wondered this): the other kids had not wanted to play with you at all, and in defense, you made the choice to be alone.
Was that fortress that you built yourself for the miser of a kingdom of one? Or did it make you feel like a monarch encased in a palace?
You will never, ever answer me that for the simple reason (and you would be right in saying) that I don’t deserve to know what the answer would be.
But back to the vision, in which you are defenseless and under my thumb, and I have been stalling myself from contemplating the morality of my choices.
The water had not yet crossed under the bridge, you see, and I was keeping myself in limbo.
Limbo, I find, is often easier than admitting that you are telling the truth (and finding that you don’t like it) or lying to yourself to make yourself feel better, but always having that little weight against your chest to tell you that you are a liar, and that is the ugly truth of the matter.
I stood over your pale, face with the budding defiance in your chocolate (iodine? gasoline?) eyes. And I would win, if I wanted to.
I took a step into the oblivion of my oblivion, the vision of my vision, the suspended reality of this dream world suspended even still within the reality in which you are reading these words-
I asked myself:
Is it possible to avenge yourself before you have been beaten?
In that reality, in which I stood like the reaper over a younger version of you,
before I loved you, before I hated you,
before I gave so much of me that it was somehow allowable for me to call a part of you mine…
I hesitated so quietly that even a literal tree would not have made a sound in the silence of that envisioned void.
Would it make it better, now, to fix something that had not even been given the chance to have been broken?
My God, what a ******* paradox.
The truth, you ungrateful (and I guess rightfully ungrateful, because this was only the mercy that I owed you) acquaintance (because I guess that’s all I have the right to call you, even after all this time and every word that we’ve spat that I still hear in my heart after months and months of typing messages and then deleting them because there is nothing to say to you and I am painfully aware of this distance within every neuron that makes up my own miserable, wretched, beautiful existence) is that I realized that you, small and quiet and alone by choice,
You had done nothing. Not yet. And it was not you that owed my blood.
And it was not you, in that reality, that was owed this apology.
This is an apology that you will never really receive, because although I have tried to find the words to throw at you, you would never, ever take them, because you are the king of the palace you built yourself,
And I’m just a stranger now, knocking at your doors, with a remarkably familiar face.
And as I lowered my hand, and whatever potential weapon was in it, the smaller version of you never turned around.
Secure in your innocence and protected by it.
At least in my innocence, and maybe even still in my hopes and wishful thinking about who we both are,
You are still innocent.
Innocent. Green, without the thorns yet that would someday make me bleed.
The vision ended there. I never saw your face, and you never saw mine. I guess there was no way to even know for sure that it was you, and not just my imagination placing you there for my own musing. Maybe I just wanted to see you.
Not in a naive way, like I miss you. If I miss anything, it is who I thought you were, not who you have proven yourself to be. I’m sure you feel the same way about me.
This vision must reflect a parting of the ways, a final apology and goodbye, though you will almost certainly never read this and even more certainly never acknowledge that you did if you somehow bridged the gap between the classroom reality and the one in which there is an elephant in whatever room we are accidentally trapped in, together, for the space of a moment before one of us steps out the door.
In the vision, I stepped out the door. My back to you, I heard you turn a page of your book, and continue the story from one page break to the beginning of the next sentence.
And in the same manner, reader, so must I.

Did my affinity for
Bad guys
Give you the wrong impression?
After all,
No one loves a bad boy
Like the baddest girl herself.

I remember
My second year at summer camp
Last summer
An eighteen hour bus ride into the mountains
I remember sitting and listening to the leader one night
Giving us a talk
I was barely paying attention
Until he told us all something
Something I will never forget
He said that the best is yet to come
So every day
That term at camp
I looked forward to the last day
Because surely
Surely then
Would something truly amazing happen
But on the last night, the leader told us something that truly lodged itself in my brain
And I can't think for a second without remembering what it was
I thought he was talking about fun here at camp
But the reality was
He was talking about life
That little sliver of the future that hangs in the sky
When you must look ahead
Not through the mountains, but over
Beyond the clouds that carry the storm
And remember when it hurts the most
The best is yet to come

So, next week, I lose a limb.
I have it marked on my calendar in neat, purple letters.
Humans, unlike starfish, spiders, or Dr. Curt Connors, cannot regrow limbs.
They can be amputated or removed surgically to prevent disease,
But this is different.

You see, this Friday, when I lose my limb, I won't get a replacement limb.
And the disease, if you can call it a disease, well,
As far as I can see, it'll spread faster than ever.

Have you ever loved someone so much that they become a part of you?

First of all, it's very unhealthy.

Second of all, it's the most wonderful feeling in the world.

Well, if you've ever felt this way toward someone else, it's safe to say that someday, you will start to think of them as an actual part of you- like your other half.

The more time you spend with them, the more you'll read their expressions, pick up on the nuances of their speech and expression, the more you'll open up to them and sync up to their moods and habits-

It's frightfully parasitic.

And when they leave, it's like losing a part of yourself-
After all, you've put so much into each other,
So much that you'll never get back.

I'm in love, and it's beautiful and terrifying.

My love is a part of me that's getting ripped off this Friday.

You see, he's moving three hours away.

He's a year older, and he's going to college.
I'm more scared than he is about it.

Luckily, we're only separated by physical distance.
But honestly- you know that gag in movies where the villains tie the protagonist limb by limb to four horses and send the horses galloping off in four different directions?

That.
It feels like that.

This Friday, I'm losing a limb- for now,
I'm losing him.

So, soon, I'll have to learn to live as just one part of a whole.

That is, until Thanksgiving break...

my life is like a poem
stuck onto the side of a cold hard fridge
the way my body lays
on the cold hard ground
trying to put the pieces together
in a way that makes sense
so you think that im not hurt
by what im forming in my head
under the sting of the ray that falls
through your magnifying glass
shifting every now and then
to cover up the stains

It’s hard to tell whether it’s a blessing or a curse
To be around (just in case) someone else needs to talk:
Like a guardian angel, but let me say
After such a long time of putting others before myself
Sometimes I feel like an emergency flashlight
Collecting dust on a closet shelf.
Off to the side until it’s convenient-
But still on the line on the off-chance I’m needed.
And in the lonely hours I sit waiting and glancing at the clock
Waiting for someone to answer my text of “is anyone there?”
I begin to wonder what could be commendable
About being so solitarily dependable.

My favorite language is sarcasm
Have you ever noticed how subtly it can be used?
And how much less of an idiot you feel when you can say that you've given a little snigger at a snide comment
It keeps you in the loop
It lacks the grace and elegance of Spanish or French
But for all it's supposed pushing people away from other people
I've just found that it brings a select group of the jaded
Into being the best of friends
You can't ask a girl for her hand
Or tell her you love her
With such a tone as a sarcastic jibe
It doesn't do to tell someone
How beautiful they are
If they question your meaning
And still I love the musical sound of isolating the idiots from the cynically inclined
Because it brought me closer to you

A satin and reedy melody is sweeping across the soundscape and painting my world in
Traditional and elegant blacks and whites,
Sables, indigo moods, and orange skies.

I can't help feeling when I look at your screen
That our story should be rewritten, ain't all that we seem
I'm sitting at dinner eating all the lies that you dish out
Tell me I'm a fighter but I'm on the bench, sitting out
This ain't my writing, my screenplay was written for me
Acting like a drama queen, motion picture category
Didn't need your ******* but here I am, serve me
This ain't ******* tennis, there ain't no love in you from what I see
Loving in the dark like a parked car, cliché
Forced like a *** joke made in the third grade
Wish I could go back when I didn't know what ***** are
Push it real good, ***** ******* is a fine art
Ask to see my body like my personality’s a waste
****, got the audacity to claim that he’s a ******* ace
Flush me out, yeah no way I’m losing with a full deck
Confiscate my heart to keep the cards I’m playing in check
Heart is pounding out my chest I tell you that I feel sick
You’ve got the audacity to tell me that I’m full of ****
Ask you what you’re playing at you say don’t worry bout it
Friends say that you’re ******* me and man, I don’t ******* doubt it
Been down this road too many times, a year ago
You wouldn’t even talk to me yet here we are, and I’m your **?
***** that’s a joke, man why so serious?
Gassing up this mother, light it up
Fast and Furious

I've always wanted to step out into you
Where the waters are dark and uncharted
Alluring
But the first step is always shaking
Because I saw the wind
And I was afraid.

I am in love today.
But it is a quiet love.

There's something uneasy and unwritten in the texts you send
The subtext feels like the taste in your mouth when you go to bed
Next to someone that you said you love in your head
Wake up in reality to be sleeping next to someone you might
Call just a friend-
But the *** talk laughs at you
In all your stupid fun you
Been together much stranger
Still can't call her number one
Yeah she's just another *****, press send, turn your phone off
Nothing like these feelings to bother you when you're getting off
High like the helium
Ceiling can't hold you down
Standing on a mountain of broken hearts that you said you found
Leaving an ominous trail of notches behind you
Got your big-*** ego dripping in your eyes to blind you
Not like she needed to repeat it when she found you
Broken like a record from the scratches you collected all around you
Held you up until you felt that she belonged banged up, too
When she leaned in for a kiss, her lips met the closed door
Did it make you feel the buzz to take her like a cheap score
Sitting on the edge of her bed with her stomach turning
Thought you were a "something more" but ****, boy, now she's learning
Telling herself she wouldn't rather be dead
From all the wheels turning rotten in the sour of her head
Like the breath in her ear telling her that she can do this
Pounding on the bedsprings is her mantra, she's a Buddhist
Taking all your ******* like a cigarette drag
All of those years and you're still convinced that
She's still kicking it to be close to the one thing you'll never let her have?
Yeah you're a *****- but she loves you, and she's got it bad.

Surely, there is a word somewhere for the feeling of being
On the brink of creative explosion
But letting the feeling fester and die away, barely acknowledged,
While rain drops fall across the windowpane.

Addicted to the rush of the bubbles across my lips
Not so much a physical fetish but just a psychological condition
Of being dependent on a liquid that fizzes
Like the feeling of running down the aisles of empty seats
Feeling like a god, gliding on air to jump onto an unpeopled stage
With an unfocused spotlight
My vision is blurry and my head is spinning and
I'm falling in circles and it's wonderful
Bubbles coming up my throat
And it reminds me of thinking of you
The aches in the back of my calves
Running my fingers down the cold skin with nothing to warm me
But a feeling of warmth radiating out from my core
I'm in love with being tall and proud
In an empty room
With a styrofoam cup freshly drained
And nothing but love on the brain

I have seen a light today
In a tunnel of darkness that was crushing me
Standing over my dead body
Holding me down with its foot
That shook while I convulsed upon the ground
I threw it off today
I got up and I pushed the weight away
I watched all my storms pass
No, not pass, but fall to the floor
Because today, I'm not only standing up,
I'm standing above,
Looking down at those clouds
So low, so dark, while I'm high in the sky
Because every thing will be alright
Because today I've seen a light
Today I saw a face that I have seen so many times before
Someone I could push past or ignore
In the hallways just another person to block the path
I thought I should be walking
When all I wanted to do was make it to the next class
A busy drone in a cycle that ran one way only,
Inside out, wash cold
And hung out to dry
Because there was no reason to testify
There was no inspiration to throw my head back
And let the truth fly out from my mouth
But I have seen a face today
That told me I will be okay
That things will fall in line if I
Can find it in myself to rise above the petty little things
That mean to leave me adrift in a sea of brokenness
With no one to fix my wings
I have caught the wind today and I'm prepared to fly
To raise my voice and my head high and scream
Hello to all you broken and all you hurting and all you sitting in the corner of a metal bathroom stall
Sandwiched between a rock and a hard place because you live in a silence
A silence that holds you down, compresses your chest
Like an opponent in the flesh that has beaten you down
And there's a foot between you heart and you don't know when you'll get the next breath of menthol in your lungs to make you want to sing to the sky,
God am I ever going to be alright
But you get up
And you take that breath
And you shake that bitterness out of your mind, the foot is pushed off your chest
You can breathe and scream and be
All that you were ever meant to be
Because **** have I become myself today
Today truly I am free

Compared to the universe full of stardust,
How small the spark is that lights a fire?
That keeps me up at night, that keeps us
Alive,
Keeps us burning bright.
Kindling for a kinship, a friendship, a bond more
Infinitesimal than we are
Little ants,
More chemical, more toxic in smaller doses,
More blazingly erratic,
More universal than the stardust
That is us.

I used to be able to sit
And caress soft strings and sing
For hours
Letting my life slip away
by living through the bars and lines
On a page that I would write
And the notes would calm me like the hug from a father
Like a patch covering a gap
So I didn't hurt myself
Because, after all
The ends of the strings were torn and sharp
And I could have cut myself at any time
But these days
Something has changed
And I can't keep my head in the same place for more than
a few bars
Or a few notes
So I can't finish one song
Before another begins

From sweet embrace to life all alone
I'm left to bleed out and to sleep by the phone
I don't want to live to become so old
That I can't feel that pain anymore

In your eyes I can see reflected back at me
All the images of gods that we pretend to be
When we keep a finger's hold on our own destiny
What is to keep us from letting it go?

And all I see are the blessings in front of me
Dangled far away but still close enough for me to breathe
The wonder and light of sugarplum fantasies
Of days I still remember

Falling in love is a dull spreading ache
And falling out is a warning that comes too late.

Sunday is gloomy
But monday is something much worse
Monday I wake up and dreams turn to ashes
The spell you put on me
My dear is a curse

All the rosy pictures I drew in my head
Are bleeding out my eyes
And turning my world red

There is no yellow brick road
To bring me back home
I’m out in the fog and the mist all alone

Sunday is magic
Compared to the tragic
Transformation from night
Into day

The dark is a safety on which I rely
When the daylight reveals all the details in sharpness
That contrasts the dullness I feel when the lights are away
And I’m not awake

There’s nothing but a maze in the traffic
As I look out my window to peels from their horns
It’s a cacophonic orchestra funeral march
And it’s bidding me throw myself down

Dear Refrigerator
You have never let me down
Even when I have emptied you out
And eaten all that I could see
You've taken nothing from me
Even when I forgot to clean you
You didn't complain that I didn't keep you
well
And when I stopped eating
You didn't nag
You didn't share your discontent
But you welcomed me back with open door
When I opened my mouth again

Against my better judgement, I'm trying to help you
Even though I know it's better for me to stay away
I'm drawn closer to you like a reluctant magnet
Voices in my head telling me to stay
I can't stand to see you falling down
When the storm's passing over for me
Wish I could drown the tears from your eyes
Maybe then you could finally see
That the struggles you face make you stronger, and I
Just wish I could let you know
That even when you keep yourself from
Getting
Back
Up
We will never let you go

We lost ourselves together tonight
In the bright lights swimming in our eyes
Embracing under October skies

In the morning I can face my reflection
Though I know I may not be the prettiest
Your anger hurts, but I'd have no reply still
Even if I was the wittiest

She painted white on her cheeks,
Like a cheap imitation of marrow;
She didn't need black for her eyes.
Tracing in streaks down the bruised skin in sorrow;
Remembering where she came from-
And wonders where you will be tomorrow.
Falling off stars in the night to watch
The dance below,
The rhythm beating in her skull?
The bone against bone of consummation
Beating against the floor-
Stumbling out the door to place
An empty bottle by the grave,
Because they'll taste the liquid from where it has dried
On his lips-
When they glide from the sky to meet hers.
And the sangria red
Will transfer.

Up in the morning, and pull your hair in a ponytail, brush the greasy strands out, block out the pallor with overkill blush. Sling your bag over one shoulder and give yourself more problems, more pain with every book you add, every line of knowledge you absorb through the osmosis of sitting bored and dull through seven hours. Walk on eggshells down the hall, numb like you're dead on your feet, and lace your sweaty fingers with his. Punctuate every thought you have with lol, to make it seem less serious in real life. Hold back the arsenic you taste in your brain. Sit behind a desk and ignore the sound of social lives blaring like white noise in the background of your life. You are not the main character of your own life. You are stuck in the static.

i dont want to seem ungrateful for your love
or whatever it is you call it when your hands are all over me
i just need the space to grow and become who im meant to be
i just need the room to breathe
and to let "like" transpire into "love"

Your name is beautiful to me;
Like poetry, it drops from my lips,
Tasting like heaven but
Without a sound- I mouth it
Silently.

Si no me quieres ver,
Te puedo buscar más facilmente.
Si me digas que no me quieres,
Me hagas sentir mas enamorada de tí.
Me encanta tu cuerpo y tu alma y
Lo odio.
Quiero morir
Pero tus ojos me digan, vivir.

Books
Portals to faraway magic worlds
And time machines to the past and present
Gateways to parallel universes
Made from the bodies of long dead giants
That lived and grew as far as the eye could see
Slaughtered by the thousands
And drenched in the blood of liquid night
In strange characters in rows one after the other
We are the hopes and dreams of the crafter
And the living embodiment of the mind of the user
We are the collective knowledge of a civilization
And the collective imagination of them too
We are the storytellers of eras gone by
And eras yet to pass
We paint ourselves with bright colors
In order to attract the eye of the user
We say what we tell on our backs
But we are dying
Our users ignore and abuse us
There’s so few left to share our knowledge with
And when we can't share our knowledge
We die
Once we die so too dies all hope for a better future

I want to feel my head on your shoulder
And your hand in mine
Not from the lust of some schoolgirl dream
But from the desire to finally feel
Safe and sound.

your numbers and letters
are frying my brain
with all these equations
im going insane

My head is threatening to burst open
And spill your poison
All over the floor

I don't think of you often.
The days have long since ended, the days we shared,
The days that we were ourselves but not by ourselves.
But you come back and haunt me like a familiar song I forgot
That I used to love.
It's fun to enjoy for a moment,
Sweet and innocent and nostalgic,
But followed by a wave of nausea akin to the feeling you get
From eating too many sour patch kids.
And your sweetness filled me for a long time,
Then left me dripping out with a sour, bitter taste in my mouth.

Billie, Billie, strange and blue,
Does not the spotlight shine on you?
And guide your satin step across the stage,
And illuminate the notes on your page?
In bleaching limelight, your sighs wide and bright;
The curl of your lips is slick and alluring.
Your voice assuring,
Your melody mellow from radio’s retelling.
Billie, Billie, Sunday’s child,
You rot in a corpse-bed,
But haunt visions my head.
Serenaded with bittersweet, indigo hues,
In every vein, I carry your blues.

This is a letter on account of that poem
You left in the hallway.
I was walking by, and I saw it on the floor
All torn into pieces, and well
I'm a sucker for puzzles.
Two nights ago, I spent almost two hours
Painstakingly placing the pieces in particular places on
The looseleaf
Well, I recreated your poem like the deepest lyrical anthropologist.
It's all glued and taped together now, and what an irony that it was only
Love poetry from ninth to twelfth grade.
The lines are not that bad, but a little trite,
Someday, the girlfriend and boyfriend you used to call yourselves
Will grow up and away and apart.
And I will never ask either of you why
You left your poem on the hallway floor in little shreds.
I could look you up, find you, I have your name after all...
But I would rather leave the story up to my imagination.
This is merely me expressing my appreciation for the puzzle
You left on the linoleum for me to solve.

Words are strong enough by themselves
But when they come from you
They are like Samson tearing down the roof of my mouth
When I try to whisper, to negate what I've said
Because now the feeling's dead
Is it my fault that my clock is set a little bit ahead?
I can't control the voices that are telling me
That no matter how close we are
There are always sharp edges
To press into me, to leave your scars

Silly school girl with someone else to hold her
Can't compensate for how much you care

Let me taste your sweet drops on my tongue
****** or thick as you like
Sharp and pointed with bitter fermentation
Dancing through the night
Lick my lips with your bubbly spice
And fill my mouth with the laughter
That comes after solid advice
Memories and late night talks
Of anything within the bounds of space
Energize or sap me but
Your anesthesia don't replace
I love your sugar high so lay
The sugar thick tonight
Anything but alcohol
To keep me from the light

One moment, you're on the top of your own little world
You can see the people that you love,
They are like ants under your feet

But as you're soaring to the sun,
The wings beneath you seem to melt
Wave after wave of burning wax
Cover you until you drown.

And just like that, I find myself underwater
Unable to breach for air
I find my will to care
Slip away

I just want to sleep all day

I don't want to think
Don't want to stop and create

I want to sleep all day

Everything I took for granted
Seems to fall to pieces
The higher I try to climb.

Friends I love are floating away,
Pulled in four directions-
But none of them are going my way.

It's hard to trust myself these days,
How could I lay my foundation on ground when I don't
know if that ground will be right here tomorrow?

I open my laptop I sigh,
I open my bank account, I cry
I open my eyes in the morning and wonder:

Wouldn't it be better to let it all go?

Wouldn't it be better not to know the things that I
Won't ever know?

Don't want to try, cause if I don't try I won't fail,
Won't feel pain if I don't care.

I don't want to care.
I don't want to wake up and check to see if you'll be there

When I don't even know if I'll be there.

Away into the future in days we don’t know
Lived a girl with her dear mother’s wife
And abandoned traditions of decades ago
Made no impact on their joinéd life

The profane was normal and it was expected
That gender give no weight to love
And long dead protesters long since had defected
Though they lose peace long sought from above

But this girl was among those chagrined by their fate
Doomed to carouse in shades of grey
For no matter the forward evolution’ry prate
This upon her good conscience would weigh:

She cared not for caresses of sexes together
But feigned the feeling for fear of misuse
Resignéd to normalcy’s smothering tether
For her one-sided view was to others obtuse

They did not comprehend that her dead eyes did gaze
Upon silhouette man for whom her slow heart beat
And sat quietly she for a number of days
With contemplative question, enamor discreet

‘Till her lips formed the answer with truth late in coming
With sentences all but forbidden
Breaking the chains of society’s numbing
Sympathies quoted unhinged, unhidden

A love once forbidden by color of skin
A love once forsaken for money or pleasure
No more to be bound by the horror of sin
She opened to her mouth to declare without measure:

Affection is lessened by norm that encumbers
To love someone mirroring their ways with thine
It may disgrace you that I do not count in your numbers
I’m in love with a differing gender from mine

And lo that day not a jest was utter’d
To the maiden now soaring with spirit unshuttered.

Our future gloomy uncertainty,
Uncharted as the rolling sea.
Doubtful monsters slither in the water
To ****** at our feet and
Drag us beneath the deep.
Sinking and separated, we're whipped
By the pale winds of indebted and petty misery.
Never to return, never to return
To a place we used to know
Or to whom we used to be.
Seeking refuge like heathens in heather,
We friends meet again,
(If only in thought or misty memory),
And band together in stormy weather,
Clasping hands tight.
Incessantly pressing
Onward, guessing everything might be alright.
Even in different boats, 'long different shores,
And under unclear skies...
We find each other under the same moon.
Floating in the same ocean,
Traveling by the same wind.

I love the way I hate the way you wish that I would smile.
If only you could see that so much has been taken from me
That I couldn't love you for a while.
It took those awkward smiles through the camera to see
That I could love you the way you love me.

does it ever occur to you
the second best
feels like last place

have you ever thought
that i smile
because its expected

did you ever question why i changed
my name
because im not beautiful enough to fit it

do you ever lie awake at night
and dream of me
like i wish someone would

do you play broken records too?

It's something ambiguous, like the punk rock first few bars of your favorite song, during which any listener could point left or right, to a minor or major key; but I try not to buy in. It wouldn't suit me to let these thoughts fill my head, to walk on eggshells yet again. I sprung the first trap right under my feet while I was standing next to you...Looking up in that awkward angle so that I was looking up and maybe a little left or right, still avoiding the signs pointing to barren futures that haven't sown their seeds into the earth just yet. I try not to count on fate, what is supposedly written in the stars. Because I can feel the wet droplets of tears, either of joy or sorrow (that accurséd left or right) clenched in my fist on a quiet Friday night when you're not here. That is to say, I can feel the space beneath my sheets that is minus one of you. I am solitary for now, and I carry on down my paths diverging-yes, left or right-because I want to follow you. Not to fall. I'm still afraid of that part. Maybe further down the road, the fog will roll away. I carry on to meet you, at the fork of the road someday.

I love you so much that I want to stab you.

******* me dry and leaving me dead
Living a nightmare alone in my bed
With a pounding that's pumping hot in my veins
Sickly and messy and flashing with pain
Trying to resist the kiss that I need
Digging my nails in, postponing the bleed
And it's red and it's sweet and it's making me sick
And it's making me lie and I'm dying to kick
The undead thorn that's hugging me closer
Wrapping around me and whispering "dose her"

laying with you is calm and safe
i didn't want to leave today

I've realized that I seldom title my poems
With capital letter at all (or any punctuation)...
Maybe this expresses how afraid I am
Of truly committing myself to anything-
And how much easier it is
To write a story without a clear ending.

How tragically poetic.