at 4 am I am reading Nabokov,

thinking about the taste of your lips,

the feel of your fingertips

I know that I am alive,

but sometimes I see smoke seep out of my skin,

and I swear you were the arsonist

to the burning building that is my body

I thought that if I stared at a fixed point for long enough

that I could be saved,

but you never made me feel safe

I was in love with you-

you were in love with something else

as I crawled on my hands and knees

trying to find a place to breathe,

to bleed

I don't know what to do with this body

I never could find a fire escape

everything I am collapses

to the sound of you leaving

I always see the end of things when they begin,

but none of my escape plans ever went anything like this

my emptiness is a bruise,

and it hurts to be touched

his hands aren't like your soft ones

and he can't see through me

I still beg him not to leave

because God, I'm so empty

I take off my skirt

my mouth is now a graveyard of his cells

I try to remember when my heart wasn't an empty casket

I wake up in mourning

I still felt you in my sleep

sometimes I still choke on how much I love you

and the shower makes me cry

because I remember getting caught

in the rain with you

I'm sick of holding my breath

like I'm at the bottom of the Atlantic

and I'm waiting for you to love me again

for a while I found comfort

in losing my oxygen

but now I'm tired

of the way I love you unconditionally

and the fact that it's been months

since you last called me

my chest is so black and blue and bruised

and I will not be the kind of girl

to bend over backwards for you

if you ever want to find me

I will be standing ankle deep

in the Pacific

and breathing

inside me is a house of mirrors

i look at everything from every angle

until i am lost in it

i take these pills to stop

the negative reflections of my haunted body

and sometimes i think that

it would take the whole bottle

to do the trick

i don't wear my mess with pride

i have been shattered so many times

that i'll end up with years of bad luck

and the glass shatters my stomach

until i can't feel anything else

i'm cutting my tongue

on the shards i threw up

and i'll keep on tasting this blood

until i stop trying to find a way out

she wrote out a to do list

on the corner of a college rejection letter

and tried to tell herself that her list

(1. get his smell off your skin)

was as easy as they used to be


she waited until midnight

and the moon lit her up with light

(and she thought, “God,

just like his skin")


she scrubbed his fingerprints off the shower head

and she felt the water break her

(like being underneath his skin)

and she watched as the scalding heat

turned her into a blood-shaped girl


she saw him on the steps of his house

(as she definitely did not drive past at this hour)

and she touched the skin of her knee

and smoothed down her skirt

and never saw him again when he wasn’t there

once you fell asleep i scoured dictionaries for a word to describe what you mean

when you awoke you caught me on the floor at 3 am

with Merriam-Webster's in my hand

and Oxford American's open face down on my leg

as i traced useless words with my fingers

and rolled them around on my tongue

"love", you whisper

"there isn't a word for everything"

the coolness of the Atlantic hits us like an epiphany

you tuck a willow in my hair

as i taste summer in the air and insanity on your tongue

those nights when we felt like fireflies trapped in mason jars

and we watched all the others follow the lifeless lights of city streets

enduring the foggy-eyed mornings that follow with a blanket on the floor with you

a forest fire ripping through my head

(i loved you)

a bass drop of a song in the backseat of your friend’s car

my heart flutters like sparrows to the sound of thunder

and the sun trembles over the horizon

i know how this will end, just like i know you

but for now we are young

the wind hits our broken pieces and fills the holes

i count up all our mistakes and they seem beautiful

as we wait for the fiery effervescence of violent waves

i hope we remember how they sound when we get old

we let the meaning of everything cloud over us for a while

(i loved you)

broken air conditioners and laughing out loud for no one to hear

and we wonder if we exist at all and i think how strange this is

as phosphorescent waters swish and spill

i scream inside so there is no echo

my sleep took over slowly that night

i used up all my colored film on you

and i found the pictures in the glove compartment today

i love(d) you

there are heaps of clothes on my bedroom floor

but none of them are yours

and my mind is traveling horrifying distances

to a place here you stretch yourself over me

like skin does to our bones

i want you to crawl inside of me and live in my ribcage

i want you to taste the daylight in me

to take all of my darkness away

until we reach a hot, incandescent point of no return

the astronomy of our bodies contains supernovas when we collide

touch me and i'll burn

without you my fragmented and lifeless heart resembles dying stars

i will be as beautiful in my own descent

so you can make a wish on me

i don't care about the story you have carved into me

or about the shape of your fingers that leave tiny oval bruises around my hips

i can't see your heart, but i see your ribs through your shirt

and i see the bits of skin that stretch over the bumps of your spine

and it makes me think of how the sea looks ripples over the surface before it pounds to the shore

looking at you reminds me that we are made of water and dust

i don't care to bring you back to life

but the white of your flesh reminds me of piano keys

so maybe i will write a melody onto you

that will turn your eyes into skeleton keys

and they will open someone else's heart

never tell a sad girl that she is an artist

or she will spend the rest of her life crying out for the moon

and pressing flowers into books

she will hide stashes of poems under the mattress like a ******

and she will try to start fires with her tongue

her fingertips stained blue from the sadness in her spine

her eyes will become maps of new cities

but when she closes them

she will be like that girl in the old photographs again

with the floral dresses and tragically fair hair

who held hands and cried

and felt no need to write about it

Yesterday my friend told me that she fell in love with a stranger on the bus. I think it’s funny how it’s so simple for some people, but I suppose it’s that simple for me too. I loved you first. I loved you second. I love you last. I love the ugly parts of you and the parts that remind me of rain and how my eyes are foggy in the morning.  

I never used to think about dying. And now I love you and I think about it all the time. Will I die and never hold your hand?

I feel like someone pulled my life out from under me like a rug and all that’s left is you and you and you.  

Today I sat next to a man in the library. He was reading Fitzgerald and told me his name was Adam. I keep telling myself I need to meet people and hear their stories and learn that there is more to this city than you. But the more I listen to them, the more I realize that you are the thing that holds my body in this place.

People tell me that they are in love, but I don’t believe them. All I know is that it’s possible to be.

I look at you and I keep thinking that you already know.

I’ve told you so many times in my mind, but in reality I still ache and I wait.

I am writing poems for you that are as long as Russian novels, but you’ve never read a word.

I build my heart up with bricks, one for every piece of you that makes me feel less like a ghost.

Do you see what you’ve done to me?

Even my vital organs are made of you.

words pulsed through my body but stayed deep inside me

because loving someone is not an easy thing

i keep trying to put a rhythm to everything

but it makes it all hurt even worse

i see ghosts and they look like you

and these broken pieces make up your shape

i’m trying to find my place without you

but the truth is cutting me open and i’m bleeding out

i swallow down your misery like i would cough syrup

but it only makes me sicker than before

they tell me i love too much for someone so young

i would rather be the paper i write these poems on

or the limbs of a tree

than to have to stay in this body as my lungs cave in

because i can’t breathe when you look at me

if only i could just exhale you to get you to leave

i wrap up my cuts and bruises

but there are still hot ashes around all the places you stood with me

i am still tasting you on the corners of my mouth as my feet burn up

and i fall asleep into fitful fever dreams

drowning and needing your air

i used to dream of having open heart surgery

and the surgeons would almost always find you inside me

deep in my veins and devouring me

and like the flowers they’ll put next to my hospital bed

i’ll be dead in less than a week

i collected glances under my skin

and kept touches inside my bones

i chose to let this grow into something it is not

but at least now i know that there are universes inside me

i’m giving you my permission not to love me

but i will still wake you up tracing “stay” onto your arms

my whole world fell apart

with the dull roar of your whispered breath

we set ourselves on fire

covered our mouths with smoke

and swallowed up thoughts of dying

patiently waiting on the edge

between dreams and sleep

our brains humming with the exhaustion of loving

but never doing anything about it

maybe this shouldn’t bother me anymore

but i’m tired of waking up on my own

you broke me and i just laughed

i kept looking for stars in the city at night but they never showed up

and loving you is looking for something i cannot find

every time you speak to me, you open even more of my wounds

and the hole in my chest rips me in half when you look like that

i think about the times that i wrote your name underneath my skin at night

and the sheets clung to me as i starved for a dream that would take me to you

you were never mine, even as i woke up with my bones screaming inside my body

and i know you could never have reached that deep anyway

you told me all hearts are broken, and that’s before you broke mine

i want to burn like those cigarettes you smoke

light me up and i’ll fade to ashes

cast a silhouette of yourself onto my skin

because i want to feel your edges in the dim light

your languid movements are like a dying language

that we still remember how to speak

your body is a staircase

and i will climb

until i forget what i was running from

i need you to fight against my skin until i remember that i am whole

the things we can’t comprehend

are laughing at us again

my skin is cold like the bathroom floor

how our coursing blood shakes the ground

a fingertip, a cheek away from never parting

there is nothing behind your eyes

you have lost your solidness

and are filled with hollowness and black

i need you so much closer

i fear no fate and carry no secrets

here in this dark and naked place

the gray november sunrise comes

i tear down the stars with my teeth

and whisper your name

hoping that someday

we will find each other there

I wonder how one who lives by the sea
can ever truly believe that love doesn’t exist.
Do you not see the desperation in the way
the waves pound endlessly to the shore?
They crash deliriously on the rocks,
and it reminds me of how I want you:
infintely, eternally, like the stars.

I am so tired of this sick, dysphoric feeling I get in the pit of me,
a dull ache in my bones.
I keep going:
I purse my lips and choke on my flowery words.
I won’t pretend to be a poet anymore.

I’m sorry, but I don’t want you to just love me ironically,
or kiss me sarcastically,
or undress me metaphorically.
I want this to be honest and pure.

I don’t need a love song sung at dawn,
or towers built in my honor.
Sunsets and moonlight are not for you, I understand.
I just want to feel you breathe against me in timed rhythms.
Rise, peak, fall.
I need this.

i’ve spent my whole life waiting for you

feeding for you

bleeding for you

not all cuts bleed, and mine certainly did not

instead they poured out prose

and wrapped around the lies you told me

like ribbons around your neck

curling close to my ribcage

i’m hoping that if all my pens have run dry

from scribbling on napkins and rejection letters

my veins will finally be numbed of you

i am writing these poems with my bones

your hands remind of a rainstorm

so broken and beautiful, you cleanse everything you touch

when it pours, i always step outside

and pretend that something other than the water is breaking through my skin

when you wash me clean you are as real as rain

i spilled ink on a blank page

and it spelled out all the things i could never say to you

on the phone, your voice sounds like it’s dying

and i hope that in the black of night

the telephone lines will carry the unspoken things in the spaces of my sentences

i have a gaping whole in my chest when i think of things that could have been

i bet you would have tasted like streetlights and rain that night

if i would have kissed you under the lamp post when i dragged you down to meet me

you would have felt like the cracks in the pavement under my fingers

you were the alleyways and the fog and the bricks that kept the buildings together when the sky broke through

i look at your hands and your lips and i think they would feel better than any glorious and screaming dawn

i wish i could tape you back together but our bodies are so far apart

i can feel it getting colder

i watch lovers turn to strangers

and it puts things in perspective

i didn’t believe in ghosts until i could still feel you after you were gone

i put the kettle on but it never goes off

and the calendar is thinning like the time

since i last touched you

looked at you

i usually hate change

but it’s you that’s changing these days

and i love you

it’s all so conflicting

my hair is growing longer

you said i looked like rapunzel  

but that was when our clothes stuck to our bodies

and now the leaves are falling

and i’m left clutching these books

trying to find what i need in them

***** the novels i read at midnight

it’s you i want

i’m putting on sweaters

i dont mind the weather

but i used to stay warm with you

and things hurt worse than they used to

replaying the things you breathed into me so many months ago

if you wondered why i never used your name

in those poems that i wrote

it’s because i used love as an excuse to be shy

i’m struggling to find hidden meanings in forced glances

but life is not a mystery and we aren’t all just stories

i wash the blood off my hands

to get rid of the guilt

but the bruises from the fall remain

and my knees look like they would break in half

if you looked at me again

let’s just sit in the shallows of our souls

and maybe you will trace my skin

onto parchment paper

run your fingers down my veins

my spine will forget about your lies

and remember your lips

i press your heartbeat against my chest

to feel you alive

because you don’t laugh anymore

i need to certify your existence

you feel like a ghost

slipping through my fingertips

the thunder in the clouds

matched the pounding in my head

i had nothing left to give you

when you left me there for dead

i will turn to dust here

in this fading place

my skin smells of metal and second hand smoke

books of religion and poetry and fiction line the walls

some lay open on the floor like i do some nights

a naked ******

i am not wedding-dress pure like my father thinks i am

and i waited for you

with all your missing words

always eight letters late

as you were off learning new languages

German, Dutch, Italian

do not speak to me in them

my roots do not match theirs

i lingered just enough

my fingertips graze the places you touched

and memories seeped from the floorboards

the evidence of your presence is fading

i just want to sin again

to finally feel normal

graveyard boy, you are all skin and bones
i cut myself on your cheeks until i am red and raw
and your heart bursts out of your chest by the marble stones

bones boy, the night seeps from inside you as the sun goes down
i count your ribs up one by one and stretch myself over your skin
cover me from this haunting that rises from your gray eyes

blood boy, you are red and screaming under flesh
i can see your spidery veins inside of your wrists
warm and speeding when your hands touch my throat

ghost boy, tie me up with ropes and lower me to the ground
let me be hollow with you and fill the spaces with silence
the moon will be gone once we have made it far enough

i read your body like a bible

kissed your lips like a prayer

then burst into hymns

screaming confessions in the dark

like some sort of sin

you don’t believe in saints

and you don’t believe in god

but i swear when you hold me

your eyes are greater than all cathedrals

and they tell me you believe in miracles

you are lazy like a sunday and irrevocable like my mistakes

you go slow with me because the burns on my body are still fresh

“you’re so sentimental”, i whisper as you fill every crack in me, like cement

you dug a whole in the dirt and told me to bury my past right there

and you watched as i filled the ground with fires and nightmares

when you tell me you love me, i know what you are talking about

my skin lifts away and my bones ache from the bareness when you look at me

you write vignettes out of the ashes of your cigarettes

and your body burns up like a building

the looks you give me leave paper cuts on my flesh

and your slightest glance will skin my knees

like a withering flower i will die in february air

smothered by the lingering smoke of unwritten prose

when words rip from your chest like new year’s explosions

i kiss your lips and tell you to write them down