Yesterday morning, I drove into work
Under the grey tint of a sunless morning
I couldn't feel my hands on the steering wheel
And my eyes recognized not the roads I've traveled
The roads I've seen for almost twenty one years, since I was a child
I'm not present in my own body
Cut off from space-time itself

Here we lie, tangled in
Each other, yet apart

My eyes focus, I track across
Your face, this room, these clothes
So known and yet as blurred
As the graphics on your shirt

I count your eyelashes
As though they are rosary beads,
And try to find you hidden
In their shells

I see you, but don't know you.
Bittersweet memories
Crash and break around me;
I lose you in their depths

Two pairs of lips in a blind dance
I barely follow.
Disgust and want fight over me,
Love lost in waves of apathy

Hormonal needs are met by hands
Ill-conceived kisses greet them-
Breath is caught too quickly
And my desperate searching fails.

Your mask grimaces. You smile,
I’m blank, and pale and still.
My mind and soul are smothered
By dark polluted thoughts

And when it's over, it's not finished;
You study my face for clues
While I trace the etchings of my skin
And yearn for clean release

It's not you, it's me.

It's not you, and it's not me either,
This room is not your room.
I drift, unanchored, unresponsive
Too tired to understand

So I silently indulge
You in complicity
And although our bodies join
We both miss our connection

My mind has turned the one I love
Into a stranger.

"God. You're so ugly without your makeup. You know you really shouldn't show your face in public. You don't want to end up on that People of Walmart website."

Yeah I know.

"No seriously. You look like you've been hit by a bus."

Nope. Not hit by a bus. Just your ****** comments.

"You know they say sarcasm is just a deflection of an internal struggle, it's an underling issue to something bigger. Maybe you're going crazy."

I'm not going crazy. I'm getting my **** together. I'm in college now.

"Yeah, sure."

No. I wake up at a reasonable hour everyday. I take a shower and do my hair and make up. I do my homework and I make good grades. How can I be crazy when I'm getting my **** together. I have my **** together!

"Look at your room."

What about it?

"It's a mess."

So what?

"It's a mess. Just like you are. You are a mess."

I am not.

"You can shut the door and pretend it doesn't exist. Just like you're doing with that mask you put on every morning. Beyond these walls you're a fake. But behind them, they show who you truly are."

And what's that?

"That you're crazy and chaos. Your room represents what's on the inside. You're falling apart."

I am not crazy.

"Not crazy? As if. You've just been talking to your reflection for the past 10 minutes. Just like you have every day for the past four years. Just wait sweetie, one day I'll come out and play."

there is a crack running the length of Main Street;
when it rains the crack fills and flows like a river.
Tonight it is raining
Oil slicks on the road reflect street lamps;
artificial Northern Lights.

He hadn’t paid his power bill, so
he leads me through his apartment by the light on his phone.
In his bedroom I see the mess even in the almost dark.
His bed is a mattress on the floor;
sheets barely cover it.
He lets go of my hand, pulls his shirt over his head.
The light flickers as the phone battery runs low;
he puts the phone away.
He undresses me.
In the dark I stand, naked, in front of him.

But then I reach for this zip along my side.
The zip begins under my arm and runs the length of my torso.
There is another along the length of either leg — hip to ankle.

I step out of my skin.

A river runs out of me like the one in the crack along the sidewalk.

I’m much smaller now
                                                  much more myself.

Some days, I think I leave my mind in bed
After I wake up
I hope it's still in dream land
I spend the day lacking in the space between my ears
Nodding like a bobble head
A repeating record track of affirmative and compliments
The wall between you and my mind and my mouth
Is a porous prison wall
Sometimes if it yells loud enough
Something earnest, something honest, something heartfelt will make it through
If I smoke a little Mary Jane
Let it pass from my lungs through my teeth
My mind forgets it's fear and rejoins me
If I have too much, it becomes all too aware
Of the stark grim reality
I am 24
I have no prospects, or aspirations, but I have a college degree
I am impermanent
The same hands I look at now, I looked at when I was 3
And will look at when I'm fifty
And I do apologize
If you ever meet me
When I've left my mind behind
Please come back another day
Because I'd like to meet you too.

(i'm 42% sure
i don't exist.)

intensely greased
plastic hair
secondhand green day
coldplay in the rain

i love the sound
that waxed paper
deli sheets make
and i could choke
on a glassed reflection
of celery salts and windex.

(i'm 42% sure
i don't exist
because when i look into
my eyes i see someone else)

i'm not catholic
and do not
understand who
st. peter is

but i wonder if he won't let
us into heaven because we're
failures or if we're failures
because he won't let us into heaven

(i'm 42% sure
i don't exist
and questioning how
bad hell can really be.)

too quiet for a saturday
i wrote the word
decaf so many times i
forgot how to spell it

decaf
decaf
decaf
decaf

(does decaf
have two f's?
because i don't have
two f's to give anymore
i mean i would but
i can't even find
vowels much less
extra consonants)

when i was a child
i always counted in
mississippis
now that i'm older i
find myself counting in
cappuccinos

i dreamed my
legs were bleeding
and i remembered
that they're not

i want so badly
just to sleep in
a bag of crystallized
ginger and swim
in a mixing bowl of
tasteless tea.

(i can't tell what's
real anymore
but i'm 42%
sure that i am not.)

i wrap my dreams around my head to keep me warm, i forget that it is the dead of summer. the new stars float and burn inches from my red scalp. the old stars let their empty celestial bodies fall to the Earth, like the skin of cicadas that litters the southern dirt when october rears its head. it feels as if it is forever dusk, but the heat of the sun persists. i am encased in my atmosphere always, like a straightjacket. i do not take the chance of letting any part of me fall away again. i let the black stars edge into my periphery. i feel safe in permanent slumber. all of my body is intact.

like smoke but no cigarette
only the buzz of the radiator fills my mind
a fever dream the color of raw flesh
under parts peeled from cuticles

a haze of memories
soaked in sludgy glue and paper machéd together, a new skull cap

I don't know you -- or I do?
many days I've spent with you but
your eyes are now parts of the ocean
I have not seen

the voice rattles in my chest but
it is not mine -- or is it?
I never know these days

messages I don't remember sending
nothing is real
smiles I don't remember receiving
nothing is real
everything is fine
I'm not going crazy but if I was


I wouldn't remember.

Golden hour daughter
Splitting eyes gouging light—
Harboring disfunction, not
Finding sensory stimulation
Beyond illusion— overactive/>

Am I a life force,
Or a chair for it to sit?

Stitching pixels to form—
A drive to keep an open
Ripped rib wind— about  
My drouth stomach,
Itching, salivating…