My thoughts are confusing.
I love them, but hate them and I can never tell if they are trying to raise me up or destroy me. I will look at myself in the mirror and think that I look pretty. I will look at myself an hour later and want to shatter the mirror with my forehead and smear the blood from my glass cuts all over my face as makeup to go to work. What difference does an hour make!?

at a house party, you hold your own head and you bite your lip
open until it bleeds. at a house party, you ask me what i say
about you behind your back. at a house party, you ask what i
thought about you before-

when i was a kid my parents paid painters to paint portraits of me
i have a whole gallery of them. a few in my room, a few on the
walls. and a too many in the hallway, above the glass bowls.
before i turned sixteen, i tried to burn the hallway down, i tried to
destroy my room with myself in it. if i’d had a portrait of you, i
would’ve let it burn too.

you are so much. you fill the image of you, and then you spill over
the edges. like a painting that doesn’t know how to stop, doesn’t
know how to sign off with its own name, or the right time to die.

[i thought i could control the image of myself at least, but i
couldn’t even do that. you ask what image i make of you-

but the portraits weren’t me and my words weren’t you either.]

watching you hold your own head and bite your lip open, tongue
darting to the side of your mouth like you’re not thinking at all. at
a house party, the sound crashing against the back of my head.

at a house party, you ask me what i say about you behind your
back, in the same voice you say ‘none of these people deserve
to live’, in the same voice you say all kinds of dry things with

only good things, i say. and then i shape my face until it laughs.
it’s a lie, i don’t talk about you at all, i say with smiling eyes.
it’s the truth, it’s the truth, and it’s still the truth when i drag my
fingers, hard, against the side of your mouth.

what was that for, you say. there was blood on you, i say back.
that’s what i’d say behind your back, if i did.

you have a laughing face too. you just never get the eyes right.

Look again
and touch the surface
of another view
Then reach up, deeper
and find yourself new

water drops
     drip on rocks
          from the tops
               of tomahawks

Rocks ripple my river reflection
as amber and caramel leaves spiral
from sleeping oaks
landing atop water as lily pads
and clothing my mirror image.
I envy the resting trees,
tucked in for the winter.

sickness from life
alive and well, they say
you are your own destiny
they said

I stepped on the stage
and showcased my talents
rotten tomatoes they share
believe, in your self - they taught