"I want to climb
mountains someday"

so I led him uphill
to a field of tangerine tulips
strung against cupid's bow

he left his backpack
for the Appalachian trail

too heavy to carry
as he claimed the top of me
for his own land

Names of affection and endearment tenderize couples with their prophecy of a life so sweet  oozes crystals of sucrose. I hope you've all brought the quintessential insulin for this ****** malady.
Baby girl, sweetheart. Who can say that to you, honeydew? He lies next to you and into your ears at night, whispers spoken in the silence of thoughts in the gradient dark.
I was given a name. It's on a certificate. I can show you. "Babe, it's okay."
"Why didn't you answer me?"
"... Huh? What? Sorry, Mom, I haven't really heard that name lately."
I had to write every day. 12 years. More. Circumventing the pale blue dashes of thin elementary parchment.
My goal at the end of first grade was to "not have loops in my d's."
And how can that be, Dear?
Avoidance is the opposite of absence, in which the avoidness is attentive and absence not able to produce a **** to give, the tattered red rag persisting to grow fonder.
An 'S is the downfall of all. mine. Yours.
"I'm so glad your mine <3"
Why am I indentured to you, only when I walk through the kitchen, can't standing to be barefoot because then only one last peg of the possessed woman chain is needed.
Not that there aren't more levels. Danti mentors. Heat lightning, electrocution- are you feeling the chemistry?
I was given skin.
Porcelain. A marble counter top. Albino creatures suffer for their melanlin-less beauty.
Is pain.
Why are purple flowers blossoming on my body that was once a temple in a garden?
My body is Detroit. Spray paint in the form of a Kaleidescapic, mountainous macabre- knuckle
avalanche going down the 90 degree angle that just isn't right but I can't call it obtuse.
I have gang signs littered across the human vessel, spotty and an embarrased brown covered by a collar, and green, yellow and maroon covered by sunglasses.
Love is not possession in the way abuse is not love.
Both own you. Sailing, he's steering. my cruise is on the Slave Trade Triangle route.
You never asked me to get your name tattooed on the past 18 years of dermis cut, shaved, kissed, caressed, burnt and brown.
That didn't stop you from placing yourself all over me, every blooming tulip as a penny for my thoughts stored on your test's word bank.
"Good" is only "not good enough"
mint condition only makes me green.

My body is Detroit. Spray paint in the form of a Kaleidoscopic, mountainous macabre- knuckle
avalanche going down the 90 degree angle that just isn't right but I can't call it obtuse.
I have gang signs littered across the human vessel, spotty and an embarrassed brown covered by a collar, and green, yellow and maroon covered by sunglasses.
Love is not possession in the way abuse is not love.
Both own you. Sailing, he's steering. my cruise is on the Slave Trade Triangle route.
You never asked me to get your name tattooed on the past 18 years of dermis cut, shaved, kissed, caressed, burnt and brown.

Stories always seem to start in the summer
Not as in
"begin"
or for the first time
be conceived,
but when they live

Winter is dormant,
all the laid groundwork
beneath frozen grass,
yellow-green ice shards
protruding from their
chandelier garden

Hopes and
wishes and
dreams and
sadness and
loves

Pent up
for the past 9 months,
emotional gestation
released in
a bacchanalian
of shameless
feelings
and ritzy wine-coolers

Drink from the goblet.

Fear of the Kool-Aid
has past.

It's immortality.

What is a heart without a soul,
and an eye without sight?

I am a wanderer through life
the woods a dark path,
and an ocean so wide that if you swim too far,
you’ve passed Go and there’s no money to collect

Hands choke
the only embrace they know
when the only place they’ve known
is the beating clock face
perspiring time
beads of seconds running down the wall

I am an enigma and senseless in my thoughts
Things I know, things that remain unchanged

My eyes are broken
glasses aren’t helpful
seeing as my tear ducts provide as much liquid
as Roman aqueducts

My hair is metamorphosis,
cornsilk in summer,
copper in winter,
which leads to the questioning of a soul
though perception of color
determines nothing in the realm of human life

I am closed doors and low lights,
the bare minimum to read

Intergalactic travel has been made available
with the library as our NASA savior

Food, water, shelter
basic life sources
but I feed off of words

a language leech
a metaphor monger
a wasted writer

I lead through words
actions
lack there of

How can I control 40 kids,
when I haven’t even figured out how to do that with myself?

I am a magnet
my hands gravitate to stray dogs
***** cats
hand sanitizer is a wonderful invention

I am lost in what I am not
the feeling of loneliness certainly possible
even when I must always have someone around

I’ve shed my cocoon
but it’s felt more like a molted snake skin

My wings, promised brilliant and strong,
brown, crinkled paper, illegible

The strength to fly
eludes my desire to leave

What’s life without a paradox,
and a journey with no goal?

I am mapless
a piece of paper even more unreadable to my leaky-faucet eyes
something I find beauty in as wallpaper
but nothing I could use

I am rolling tides
Emotions crash in waves
knocking me into the current
taking me away
with no buoy in sight

unknown,
sad,
frustrated,
alone,
hopeless,
lost,

and, in the rare instances,

content

What’s being without feeling,
and trying without wanting to do?

I am a daughter that has made parents proud,
without making myself feel anything

I am a friend,
one that has been left
returned to
used
and kept
only by few

I am a companion,
my eyes used where his eyes cannot see color
“The sky looks so purple tonight.”
“I don’t know what purple is.”

I am love too powerful to maintain
cloaked in fear, disinterest, anger

I am not what I appear,
my mind thinking it’s a good idea
to display the opposite of what I feel

Freudian defense mechanisms
never gave much protection
offense tangible
tasting distaste
the words can be on the tip of my tongue
and cliff dive head first
into social suicide
Tolkien, Card, Rowling, King, Bradbury,
protectors and hopes

Paper can burn
memories sear
words pain

I am independent,
refusing aid
most cantankerously
when it’s needed most

I am depths
I myself don’t know
a venture that seems too dark to take the plunge
an open pit of life
disguised as littered ground

"She was as
slender as
a weeping willow"
maybe that's because
she was a rain
forest
every much as in
danger
and
covered in
dew drops
as the
***** of
Brazil
and the
basin of
my ******
delta

"eat me"
i told you
so you put
a napkin round
your neck
and hung
there
with a look
buried in
your eyes
that still
consumed me

it doesn't make sense
how 160 lbs
still leaves me feeling empty

Connecting the dots
A to B
became an interstellar travel cost
burnt iris to inky pupil
take a dip
south for the winter

tantric spiderwebs
threads of creation, silver lining
no train of thought
off the rails
envious of the golden fleece
yellow felt
painted with sad sunshine
sweating from torn tear duct
weeping with every poor pore

Pour me
glass for one
liquids keep you in place
all the mobility of the seven seas
for one cylindrical cathedral of
plastic and dishwasher age

between my teeth (no cigarette)
down my back (nails on a chalkboard)
back to bed
I'll clean up the blood in the morning

I am beyond what I see and am what I feel.
Flowing to the sea,
bring me back to you.
Under the stars, dreaming of the shore
The way he looked
as he walked across the bare cement floor,
basement near done, but that was close enough,
his footsteps become my ****** pulse
Tobacco between his teeth,
No look to me, none at all, but we all knew we were there
Someone lit the fire
I know who,
we all knew we were there,
though
when I think of the one with the rolled affection,
everyone else melts into a painting on the wall
Shadow puppets gaily riot
trapped by the blank stare
a dance of their own

his dark curls are his most obscuring feature, but they lit up the basement that night
He lit me up
Like a cigarette that would burn at both ends
taking life away twice as fast
giving thrice the reason to live
making me fall infinitely more into him
all while knowing
I can never have him

i wish
i could wipe
your
finger prints
from my
memories
but there's
this one spot
that never
comes off

Glance in,
peer out

Not even sufficient for a thought
to be worked out
another day, another damage

Acrylic may as well be water color
for all the gravity held
the mark, made by stroke
good intentions turned poor attempts

Corneas, retinas, pupils
eyes referred to as windows  to the soul
while the body isn't treated
like a temple

not just anyone can attend mass

Stained glass into a ruined mirror
stared at
as unhinging as
seen through
if only the reflection
left the pane
to the window

Memories past
displayed in a museum
populace none
                        a   b r o k e n  exhibit,
for blinded eyes

"Rip off it quickly"
they all say about the band-aid
"It won't hurt as much"
they supposedly claim

Of course it won't hurt
when you're the one tearing

You're not the one who healed
Protected
And saved
Precious dermis
embraced with a sticky strip

The blood ceased to flow
and the slivers faded
While what covered you
absorbed the pain

But, once you're healed
it holds no more to you
and what was your cure
is poisoned by your absence

Loose clothes
I’m restricted within
hanging to my knees
my own cocktail party dress

Your attention served on a platter of horderves
small, insufficient to fill
feeding off finger sandwiches
I wouldn’t dare
touch with bare hands

unable to unbutton
oh, boys and girls,
it’s so easy to undress each other;
buttons line up on opposite sides
clothes caught in the line of fire
hung out to dry

Billy Mays can’t save your slip
oxiclean, oxycodone
I’ll hide my ****** braisers
in a creaking chest
while mine lies open
pandora’s box
I can’t find the lid to

I’ll break
worn out hairbands
I can’t contain
what chains my cotton
mouth too dry, pressed
dried tulips
cracked, two lips

Heat & moisture of a summer day
iron-released steam
I’m burning the clothes
you can’t get me out of

One day,
I’ll be able to walk outside
a naked moon dangling
one eye to see
all that my bedroom shirts
conceal

I’ve grown far too large for the other half
of our once-shared trundle bed
the drawer, open every night
has been shut
a store bought out by big money
and even bigger boys

If I look hard enough,
I can still spy the specks of glitter you left on my windowsill
one here, two a couple months later
not enough to lift me off the ground
not enough to call you back through my curtains

I didn’t want to go, it wasn’t me
I wasn’t the one who thought this would work
You said
You said you’d come back
“spring cleaning”
only emptied me

I cringe with every tick of the clock
and you’d throw it out the glass door just to watch time fly
but what they never told you was
time doesn’t have wonderful thoughts to think
it only has seconds to take, minutes to die

You’ve grown far too small to have your eyes look in mine
too often rimmed red, purple, gray
you stayed the same while the world changed
you stopped time
you couldn’t stop me

I want my arms to reach you
my heart couldn’t take it
if you cried and thrashed away,
how I know you would

so here my arms are
holding myself
as I fall apart
on a bed far too small
for a girl
for too broken
to be much more than
a clock with a cracked face
and shaking hands

they taught me
my body's a
garden
I call my
purple petals blooming
violets
but you'd
call them
bruises
you didn't know
who tended to
my weeds only
made them
grow

Embrace differs from suffocation
as love differs from hate
in the sense that
your passion of Christ
swings one way
but your compass rose
blooms in both yards

I’d never plant flowers by you.
Comparisons of beauty
pul-chrit-ud-i-n-ous
soil the soil
mark the territory
dog **** couldn’t save you

Bound by situation
a sad plight
out of my hands
not large enough to
cup a sufficient sip
water from the well
I couldn’t fall down

I’ll break the mug
shattered until shards
replace the linoleum floor
walking on eggshells
has never been so easy