From her dark purple lips hangs a cigarette with pink smoke, and headphones with no music play a tune inside her head, and she paints bright red words loud as a FRAGILE stamp on her skin, and maybe on yours too, but only when you seem particularly insightful. She knows every word to every song of a band you’ve never heard of, and when they play and she’s driving the car, she will literally pull over and close her eyes to absorb the sound into her bloodstream, which seems to be composed of tiny bits of the galaxy and maple syrup and diary entries she never lets you read. She will kiss you in the movies, but only in parts heavily dripping of gore and violence, a metaphor she’s explained countless times but you will just never understand. She will paint her nails with your name sprawled across the *******, hold your hand in the gas station while shaming glossy magazine covers and everything that’s just soooo wrong with societies expectations of women today (despite the fact she’s somehow maniacally maintained her perfect body in the three weeks you’ve known her), and tell you that you’re her favorite season, a thought that your mind will spin around in its head like you ran around your 3rd grade classroom when your teacher was introducing concepts of matter and announced “now switch from a solid to a gas!”
But she will never tell you she loves you.
She will curse under her breath when you climb your courage without a harness to break the cold silence of the night, while laying on your back on the street under the stars. She will whisper “I’m so sorry” and speed off into the night, running with an elegant skirt she found in a thrift shop- made in 1956 or some other far-off year- flicking like a black-and-white movie behind her, the last thing you see before she disappears into the night, before she disappears from the audience’s cares and back into your mind.
She was everything I wanted to be for as long as I could remember, a terrible destruction of the human mind, a horrific enigma that perfection was so messed up that perfection itself could never learn how to love. Manic Pixie Dream Girl was my role model, Manic Pixie Dream Girl wore shirts from France hand-painted with Swedish fables, Manic Pixie Dream Girl knew every Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros song on the xylophone but only played with her eyes closed, Manic Pixie Dream Girl hated her sister and her parents and told everyone she was a mess they didn’t want to clean up. A disgusting idea that a woman only exists to make a man happy, to cure a man of his dark cloud of spinning inhibitions, and if she dares become real then she no longer is deemed entertaining. Manic Pixie Dream Girl was my goal, and with this in mind I embarked upon puberty with a music taste straight out of a Wes Anderson movie and teal eyeliner and the idea that being broken was desirable.
Until I actually was.
Manic Pixie Dream Boy refused to listen to the radio, wanted to be a famous actor, planned days to simply lay in bed all day, and smoked over a pack a day despite asthma so bad I worried every time we went up the stairs. Manic Pixie Dream Boy wore clothes with animals on them, but said he didn’t believe in giraffes, Manic Pixie Dream Boy hated school but loved to learn, Manic Pixie Dream Boy was perfect. Until he became the thing I so desired, telling me relationships weren’t for him and he couldn’t possibly ever fall in love, he was too broken.
But now I was Manic Pixie Dream Girl, wasn’t I? Broken, just as she was? Just as I had so desired to be when re-watching The (500) Days of Summer over and over again in middle school?
I hate you Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I hate telling the kind boy with the good grades and nice intentions that I couldn’t possibly love again, I detest the enigma I now am.
But when new boy with blue eyes darker than the Pacific coast tells me to lay down with him in the gravel and tells me that he hates the number 63 more than wheat-brewed beer, I say yes and give into manic dreams again.

i live and breathe my words.
that's why sometimes they're
complicated, difficult to get out.
i'm asthmatic, and struggle
to exhale and rhyme and write
without wheezing typos and not pressing enter for each new line.
but when i'm inspired,
my lungs have no limit.
i breathe in and out freely,
i write fluidly, and i create.
and i live.

they like to hide in the walls
i have never seen them and i have never heard them speak out loud
but i think i felt their hands slide gently up my spine and. they grasped at the back of my neck and they squeezed down. they watched me squirm until they let go and they laughed together.
they laughed, they laughed as i ran away
and i could not hear it but i felt it echo through my chest.

its getting hard to tell if they're here or if they simply want to watch me squirm.

but i am always afraid and i feel the cold running through my nerves and my eyes dart to the corner and i am rushing in an attempt to turn to look behind me and i am checking under the bed, like a child, i am hastily rooting through the closet, i am running to my bed and hiding beneath the covers.
you tell me, "monsters aren't real, there are no ghosts here, i've got you, you're safe, i've got you" and i cannot hear you
my heart is beating so fast there is nothing but fear i am no longer here, I am terrified, I am terrified
They Are Watching!!!!
And They Are Disappointed

love is sometimes a replacement for loneliness
a lost cause coupled with apathy and the blindness brought on by losing more than you gained
you see, the heart is a vessel supplying life long torture
and the mind is the keeper of chains for your slave of a heart
your eyes are in a constant search for the perfect locksmith
your hands endlessly craving a passionate touch (desired: exactly what you want)
but you have no idea what any of this means
no idea what any of this feels like
you walk around every day looking for an idea of love

who needs a broken heart when you have no one to give it to
who needs a place to call home when you forget your address every friday night
who wants to be loved when it ends with your heart taking a crippling blow
who wants to be loved when love ends with either death or being alone

love is an ether that the innocent and unknowing are quick to believe in
love binds the masses to a predetermined expectation of who should be holding hands
love takes everything you have and leaves you with two possible answers
yes
or no
love walks down the road at dusk and love jogs in the morning
love creeps into your house after work and love leaves when it needs to
love doesn’t cater to the unwilling and love thrashes the innocent
love beats the lovers and love has no meaning
love is a person
love is a feeling
love is unknown
love is simply being

tic tac toe to me
isn’t what you think
in fact it really stinks

this is what you think:
that I’m not true
because I follow
the directions on my orange bottle

tic tac toe to me
is a lengthy process
I’ve been off of them;
I cared about myself way less

tic tac toe to you
just reminds you of me;
just like everything else.
reminds you of all my tells.

tic tac toe resolves our woes
they can go from head to toes
I’ll never fill a void…
you’ll only think I toyed

People always ask me about my anxiety and trust issues;
Why I was perfectly fine and then one day I wasn’t.
But I don’t exactly know much,
Except that it’s made of moments like this.
Mostly it’s annoying or upsetting but finally I see what they do.
That combined with not being able to do anything about it,
It’s driving me mad.
Maybe I should have given up after I’d been hurt the first time;
But you were so persistent in being sweet to me.
So when you told me that you liked me I decided to just let it happen.

What could go wrong?
That only lasted about two months,
Before you met someone else and I wasn’t good enough.
With that affection you had given me you also took the bandages.
My heart began to unravel.
Just when I got used to the idea that it didn’t matter,
That I couldn’t expect the things that held importance at night to bleed over into the day;
Right when I’d moved past it,
You’d become the remedy to the pain you had caused.
What could go wrong?

That’s what I said the first time.
And the second.
When other people decided to make my personal life their priority.
Remember that?
You ran scared like you could turn the feelings off;
And two weeks later we fell back into our usual pace
With absolutely no trouble or second thoughts
That is, until a face-to-face moment.
No more sweet, on-the-cheek kisses or affection.
You stayed distant until we were 100% alone;
Zero chance of anyone at all observing any slight romance between us.
As soon as we were alone you had your lips on mine,
Melting me, melting into me.
Just like that it felt like you were gone.

“But what could go wrong?” I said.
More like screamed, as over and over I somehow felt my world crashing down,
And memories bringing me back.

It was 8 January 2012 when you first told me you liked me;
Spoke of the butterflies I gave you.
Scared that I wouldn’t be adequate or that you’d meet someone else,
Shyness leaked its way into special moments.
When you assured me that you liked me,
Liked me way too much to go anywhere anytime soon,
I believed you and those words.
What could go wrong?

Early March, the 3rd I believe, when you met that other girl,
And started what would be a constant fear-fueled jealousy,
But it was such a blur that I can’t quite remember.

12 July we had our first “official date”
The 23? Our first kiss.
The 27 and 29 we went out again,
And 9 August you broke my heart.
I guess you didn’t mean to, didn’t have a choice.
But you did.
And on 1 September when you waltzed in and out, I let you.
Like some kind of yoyo, things continued.
You stayed the one to make me happiest,
But maybe I shouldn’t have put that responsibility on you;
Made you the only person I could trust with absolutely everything.
But I did, and you were.

Until 28th January 2013.
When you said you didn’t like me and hadn’t for a while.
Still through the following months your actions contradicted your words.
Much like the psychology I had learned.
You probably don’t remember much but I’d explained your behaviour to you.
About how there must be some conflict,
Between what you want and what others define as acceptable.

Now it’s crossed my mind that perhaps I was just making excuses.
Because I don’t want to see you as anything other than the prince I have been seeing you as.
Even now I’m making excuses for you.
Saying that maybe you had a viable reason for all of this.
Deep down, I sense that you don’t.
Probably never did.
This is because you were never willing to be serious with me.
Not serious enough to get into a relationship.
Not serious enough to so much as mention me to your best friend.

So yeah I guess it seems like I’m bitter,
When really that’s not it at all.
It’s called pain, heart-break, whatever.
It’s the feeling of uncertainty.
And all the questions about nearly every moment we’ve ever shared.
Wondering if it’s because I wasn’t pretty enough,
Or if I didn’t give enough;
Why somehow I just wasn’t enough for you or anybody else.
Or maybe I was; maybe I was too much.
Or loved you too much, or whatever.
Somehow it could be a billion things or none at all.
Somehow none of that matters.

Just not knowing and never getting an explanation,
While you leave wordlessly to happiness,
And I sit in silence overcome by thoughts,
Crying in the shower for hours…
That is the cause of this passive-aggressive bit.
About how you’ve broken a part of my trust in you.
Just like many others.
Surely not the first and certainly not the last.

Sometimes, I wish I had cameras in my eyes so we could look back on these moments and hold them and you could see how you made them golden.
Someone in the future could put my life on the screen,
cut scenes when I go to sleep, special behind-the-scenes of us making these memories
and I could just delete the ones I didn't want to keep.
I would never lose a second.
If my life was a piece of cinematic genius then I might try harder to keep this up:
I'd adjust my angles,
I'd check my volume,
I'd have the perfect songs to sing along to and everyone would buy the soundtrack CD,
if they were
just like me.

But you aren't.
See, I had a better opening verse but when my mind is made up of rhythm and rhyme, everything that isn't written down gets driven away in a ******* metaphorical hearse, the kind that you aren't allowed to ride in yet.
Your job isn't finished until mine is,
car crash collisions, underwater violence, silence, broken heart strings strung on a violin and a bass drum keeping us up to speed. See?
I'm a mash up of bad one-line poems and I'm not slowing down, not for anybody.
I've seen angels with broken halos and featherless wings, trying
so hard to fly but they're as successful as that extinct little kiwi,
who all died trying to fly but, hey, at least they went down swinging because we're
all
slaves
to gravity.
So these angels find spaces in their minds to curl up and sleep.
You've got your body on autopilot and don't you find it exhausting, to just stop trying?

Let's get back to the movie.
By then, we'll be living to infinity, like, for real, not just a symbol on the skin but a time to live.
Immortality.
So watching me breathe will be nothing in the wasteland of time that they will have to waste--
not currently, no, because currently our lives seem so short especially with empty promises of infinities and galaxies and light years away on another inhabited planet a kid like me is saying the exact same things because
there's no more originality,
not in this space,
not in the void of immortality.
And in My Life As A Movie, they'll see me:
standing in the street with you, holding hands and praising bands and feeling alive again,
because now we're aware--
of the angles,
of the volume,
of the sets and costumes,
of the film and the video rules
that I learned in high school.
Now that we know it's all a big production, we'll ruin the show.
Our voices will be whispers or shouts and the microphones will be too scratchy to catch what we're saying.
Our feet will fly like the angels once could, ruining any chance of an easy shoot.
My memories of you
are golden,
and I'd sell my mortality just to keep a good hold on them but I can't.
I don't want to.
Infinities are found throughout our galaxy,
but my only real infinity is you.
You, like a scratched DVD that sometimes slips off the screen because
we have our rough times, too.

I sometimes find myself wishing I had cameras in my eyes,
but then I think I'd rather be blind
so no one else sees you like I do.

The world isn't ready for that yet.