Sometimes
i feel as if
my thoughts
eat me
alive,
as if
they are tearing
apart
grey matter,
popping
brain cells
like pills,
getting high
off me
and the nights
i can't sleep
and the nights
i lie awake
and the nights
i am alone
and the nights
i am too quiet
as my
thoughts
throw extravagant parties
behind my forehead
and invite all their friends,
who bring their friends
and their friends
until my head
is a head
of raging thoughts
that dontcantwont sleep
so that
i dontcantwont sleep.
They keep
knocking, banging my skull with their fists
they keep
pounding, bashing my head with their screams
they keep
my eyes open
so that i can watch the floorboards creaking
so that i can hear the shadows pirouetting off my wall
so that i can smell the rustling in the darkness
as if i am the one ecstatically covering myself in angel dust
and not my thoughts
as if i am the one speedballing too fast, too fast, slow down
and not my thoughts
as if i am the one flying, crashing, idontknow, too fast, too fast, slow down
and not my thoughts.
They won't let me sleep
Just let me sleep
let me sleep
and you can
tear apart
all the gray matter
you want
and you can
pop
my brain cells
like pills
but
just
let me sleep
let me sleep
Just let me sleep

please.

Dear Someone,
You wouldn't understand me
if i told you
i'd rather sit in the company of myself
and
i'd rather sit with ourselves than myself
at the same time.
You wouldn't  understand me
if i told you
why i avoided the school cafeteria
(i never had anyone to talk to)
why i always have a book open even when i'm not reading
(note to self: when alone appear as if you're too preoccupied to speak to anyone)
why i don't go to parties
(because won't my alone-ness, with-no-one-ness, loner-ness be more obvious?)
You wouldn't understand me
if i told you
i wish i didn't know what feeling alone in a crowd was
and i wish I didn't feel so distant, so not-part-of-anything
and i wish i was somebody
and i wish i knew why I always take that back.
You wouldn't understand me.
You're someone, after all.
From,
A No one who's trying to stay a No One and become a Someone at the same time

you look like the aftermath of smudged letters and blurry words
after your tears are done smearing the ink into illegible cryptics
and after the ink is done twisting itself into something ugly.
you look like the tally marks on your wrist
after you've hidden them behind long sleeves
and they still bleed.
you look like you've been wearing an mask for far too long
and after you refused to let the sunlight in,
fed the flowers in your eyes too many salty tears,
they started to wilt—
dandelions, roses, tulips, lilies, forget-me-nots—
you just let them all die.
you look like you given up, closed down
tucked whatever was left of your flower bed somewhere dark
so you could pluck their wilting petals, watch them deteriorate.
you look like too many empty bottles
after you've lost yourself
and after the ***** is strong enough to wash away you
and bring something else.
you look familiar—like I've seen you before—
though you're not you.
you look like a vague face,
someone else and I know that person.
you look like that person
you look like her
you look like *me

There was a poem I wrote before this one
I wrote it somewhere between midnight and morning,
you know, the place where the tides are too heavy
they're cement,
too blue
they're black,
too sharp
they're knives
and you can't help
but drown.
The place where I sank into a well of words and emerged
as black as every single one of my demons.
You know, the place where the feelings come out
and where there is no delete button,
no escape plan,
no Plan A to begin with and no Plan B to end it.
I poured everything onto that poem,
every **** feeling
and every horrible thought that had the audacity to come true.
And when I realized what I had done,
I took that poem
and I burned it—
every drip of ink
and every drop of emotion.

her breath colors the winter air gray
not the ugly kind of gray that winter snow ages into
and not the kind that's pretty either.
it's the kind of gray that's too fragile for time to sustain
it's the kind of fragile too light for scales to hold
it's the kind of light that wants to be lighter, that wants to be weightless
it's the kind of weightless that only knows bony arms and hollow cheeks
and it's the kind of bony, the kind of hollow, that turns ribs into cages
and cages into prisons for hearts that want to be—
not ugly, not pretty, not fragile, not light, not lighter, not weightless,
and not even bony or hollow—
but just
*be.

i think i’m starting to hate writing.
i think i’m starting to regret the nights i stayed up
trying to find the right word
for the right sentence.
i think i’m starting to grieve over the trees i killed
so i could spit out poems
and then throw them away.
what good has it done besides leave me
with endless lines of dissatisfaction
and baggy eyes?
what good has it done besides isolate me
and force me to spend my waking hours
in solitary confinement
within my own sphere of words?
and all it's given back to me is
a crowd of imaginary friends
i only know how to speak to
through ink.
i think i’m starting to loathe these so-called “friends.”
they were only inky caricatures i wished into existence.
when i poured my heart out, sobbed into their pages,
because writing is “therapy,”
all they did was stare back
and let me inhale more ink
and exhale more words.
but they didn't warn me when i inhaled too much
and let the ink overflow my lungs,
clog up my throat,
bleed everything over in black.
they didn't warn me when the ink started
killing me inside out.
i think i’m starting to hate writing
for
i have become a corpse,
slumped over my desk
—decaying,
as unfinished sentences leak out of my mouth
and bleed past my ears,
cascade like tears
down my cheeks
but i,
i am only trying to read the missing words.

I think the words have left me.*
they've crawled out my ears
and pooled in my eyes only to spill
down
my cheeks,
and drip down my chin only to splatter
against
the page in black blotches
that mean nothing.