[are you drunk right now?
are you drunk right now?
are you drunk right now?]

cotton spider web sheets around my waist
i wish i could say this visit made me want to live another day
but the stranger in the bathroom doesn't even know
my last name. you called me at around five last night
asked if i was doing okay, i wish i could say i told you
the truth when i said i wasn't missing you

you're so ****** up babe
why do i love you?
you keep on leaving but i can't move on
you call us platonic in front of your
new girl and expect me to pick up the pieces
when she's not around

what a whiskey love affair i should have seen all the warning signs
but in my defense you seem more poetic in the moonlight
that in the tear stains on my new lover's bed

you're so ****** up babe
why do i love you?
you keep on leaving but i can't move on
you call us platonic in front of your
new girl and expect me to pick up the pieces
when she's not around

why do i love you why do i love you why do i love you

i'm so ****** up babe
you shouldn't love me
i keep on clinging to a broken past
i call us platonic in front of my new guy
but set matches to the fire that we had

(h.l.)

i light matches on non flammable things and start fires i
cannot extinguish, i start all consuming love and then tear it apart
viciously and tiredly and try to put back the pieces of my heart
in this sacred chest at the bottom of wherever my skeleton ends
because that is where it belongs, alone and protected
you were a cigarette i denied myself the pleasure of smoking you
were an old record player that i would dance to by myself
at 2 am just because and you were strawberry hill wine in the
middle of the park that tasted agonizingly sweet on my tongue
and scorched my throat into believing this was happiness
i still whisper your name whenever i drive by your house in prayer
that i will never see you again, you are still a ghost in the corner
of my mind and i have a feeling you will always be

(h.l.)

real; the unscabbed scars on my knuckles and arms remind
me of rough trees and the grimy surface of soil stomped
on, you compare them to wildflowers but i know that this is
only because you are the type of person to enter a restaurant
with a sign that reads caution and order something anyway,
simply because you are too nice and hate to think of businesses
shutting down and of people failing, maybe this is why
you love me, i still have not figured it out yet

real; walking into school makes me feel like a deflated balloon
and everyone that says hello to me is blowing me up
again with methane i am slowly becoming too big to be tied
down with a ribbon called responsibility and fear,
the anxiety that enters my mind when i am forced to stand in
front of strangers with judgemental eyes and fake smiles
becomes mind numbingly painful and it makes me question
whether or not i am still alive. i still have not figured out
why i am yet.

real; your smile lights up the lights on the lamposts by the
train station where we met it transforms phantoms into people
paper planes into reality and nightmares into dreams
your touch leaves nothing but good intentions and blissful hope
and it leaves my cold unbeating heart yearning for warmth. i
still have not figured out if i like it or not.

not real; you love me. you kiss my wrist because you care
about me not what i went through. you love talking to me, you
wonder about how stars could ever die because you
think i am a walking sun. you keep your promises and tell me that
you care every night. i'm a good person. i have aspirations.
those pills on my bedside are not mine. the mirror is shaking.
i never meant to hurt myself. i'm sorry for all the things i've done.
i have potential to be better. i am beautiful.
not real not real not ******* real

(h.l.)

iM sOrrY bUt I cAnNot find a way to breathe because you're
back and I'm not there and you're smiling and I'm crying
and you're laughing and I'm drowning my thoughts into a pen
without enough ink to put all my ideas onto paper and
i aM cHokIng oN yOuR sMile and how happy you look
I used to make you smile I remember when we were never
like that I remember when I never took you breath away
not like you did to me I remember crying early into the morning
because you aren't by my side I remember suFfOcAting
I remember hOw you never cared about me I remember loving
you so much that it would shock me and now you are back
and you never told me because you don't care and you
never did and ******* because I cared. I would've been
there despite what happened I would've hugged you
I would have stayed I wouldn't have run away I am not her
and I never will be but you don't care about that or me
I am nothing but a last priority you only talk to me because
you pity me and stupid stupid me for believing you when
you said I love you back I should have known that
nothing lasts forever, but God I honestly thought we would

(h.l.)

he is not heaven. he is not a deep breath of fresh air after being
trapped inside for so long he is suffocation. when his saturated fingers
touch me I am filled with a never ending fire that keeps me
awake until two a.m. and makes me question everything I've
ever believed. he likes to swear up and down on the metal cross
around his neck and pretend he is God when he looks at me.
his kisses are never filled with love they are filled with narcotics
and taste like a bittersweet kind of hatred. he smokes quietly and
slowly inhaling every toxic fume and making clouds
big enough to convince you that they are skies. everything about him
screams shades of cool he is blue he is black his smile is gold
his eyes are grey and he is the color spectrum at its darkest.
he speaks quietly and laughs loudly and cries silently when
he thinks nobody can hear him. I wake up every morning to the
sound of tiny bullets of water scorching his back but he
likes the burn so I do not say a thing. he loves the way I sing
and teases me endlessly and whispers ****** things when
our friends are around because he is an exhibitionist.
I do not know what this is. I do not know who he is.
but at the same time I do not know who I am either,
we are cataclysmic together and wreak havoc wherever we go
but there is something so beautiful about what a disaster
we are together that i do not want to say goodbye.
he is the lover I never have to worry about loving back
and that if nothing else matters

(h.l.)

11.25.15

when you are eight you will start to become sick of waking
up early to go to church but your mother will drag you
with her anyway and she will always spend too much time on
her makeup so you will both end up being late and the
sweet sickly scent of the perfume she sprays on makes
you sneeze and Sundays will very quickly become
the worst days of the week, this will be when you start
to be ridiculed by all the other girls for having short hair
and this will be when your father starts coming home late
enough for your mother to be suspicious and for the
sound of Frank Sinatra's greatest hits to stop being loud
enough to mask her cries as he hits her for being too **** curious.
Sundays will be when you learn that the devil is an infinite
amount of liars starting with your mother when she says
she is fine and ending with your father when he says
he loves you. now when you are bored you will start to
hide in your closet and pretend to be someone else.
your closet now becomes Narnia, it becomes the rabbit hole Alice falls
into, it becomes Neverland and it becomes the safe haven
your mother's jazz records no longer offer; when you are eight you
will feel the weight of the world stretched out onto your all too
little shoulders, compressed into your mind and a monster in it's
own right that is scarier than the one under your bed because you
cannot find a way to escape it, it lives and breathes inside of you and
it forms a pit in the core of your stomach whenever you see
your mother flinch as your father kisses her softly and later you will
find out that this feeling is called fury but for now it remains
****** into the walls of your mind like a bookshelf at a library
and it surges rapidly like a tsunami and leaves nothing but debris in
it's wake, when you are eight you will begin to dig holes in your
skin with your fingernails to release the pain and the frustration
you feel that causes wreckage inside of you and later on you will
learn to describe this as being cataclysmic but for now you are eight
and you wear your hair in pigtails even though it's much too
short and catch fireflies with mickey mouse in your mind as you
hear frank sinatra's greatest hits become increasingly louder

(h.l.)