his favorite color was blue i know because i when i was with
him all i could think of was blue all i could breathe was violets
all i could hear was the ocean and all i could taste was
the sky on my lips and heaven in my mind

the words i'm sorry have died on the edge of my tongue so
many times i'm beginning to forget how they form i
try to call you sometimes to convince myself that you deserve
an explanation but all i hear is static on the other line
i wonder if you can hear me panic on the other side
and the silence doesn't hurt as much as it used to but the
shock that you are no longer here for me always does

cigarettes are more expensive than alcohol i learned that
this fall and if i could buy you love i swear i would but the
loose change that make up my pockets are nowhere enough
and i have a feeling they never will be

(h.l.)

when i first met you i was shy and still wore
pink and had an uncanny obsession with
sweaters and you had smiled at me so warmly that
i couldn't help but have smiled back because
you looked so happy
//
when i first realized i was in love with you it was
a warm july sun and a humid air and you were
laughing as i rambled on about a book
that i can't remember the title of but
god, i had never thought that people could look beautiful
under the horizon because the sky was too distracting
but on that particular day, i'm sure the horizon was jealous
of how light your hazel eyes looked and how deep your dimples were
i laid awake that night, thinking about your smile
and how happy it made me, and how terribly bittersweet
this was going to be
//
when i look at you know, i do not see the sun-kissed
boy with laughter in his eyes and a permanent smile on
his cheeks, i see a shadow of the boy i used to love and
sometimes i wonder if i should care at all that you're sad, because
you never seem to care when i am, though i suppose that is what
love is itself, loving somebody so unconditionally that
even when they laugh and mock you, you would still cry with them
the very next day
//
although then again, i'm sure you don't know what love is

he is the sun. I used to think the sun revolved around me but
then I found out that I am heliocentric and if stars were infinite he
would never die but we do not live in a type of universe
where love can survive long distance relationships with hallmark cards our
wrecked art is a fire and I cannot tell if you are the gasoline
or if I am a lighter and i cannot tell what difference that makes
or if I really care about either all i know is that space does not exist
to me all that is relevant is the distance between us and they
say young love does not exist they say that this is only infatuation
but it can't be because I know everything about him religion does
not exist if he can't go to heaven the world was not made to
last but he was because he is a shining ember that doesn't
burn he is a form of poetry that never ends he is my favorite book
the chapters are long but I can never get enough and the way
he lies right through his teeth like a magician just about to draw
a rabbit out of a hat is not okay the way he inhales the toxic fumes
of requiem into his lungs is not okay and I know it but the
world was not made to be survived the world was made to be lived
and every time he breathes I swear I feel infinite it's like I'm drowning
but I'm not falling and he is not the brightest star in the
galaxy but he is mine and he is special because he is the *sun.

you used to love to draw, learned how to sketch when you were eight
painted me a sky full of smoke and liquor and told me this
was where happiness would always start
your inspirations were my frustrations said you never liked
my pretty face unless it was full of madness
i guess you're wish has come true because darling i'm a hopeless
addict without you, my arms are designed with the color of
your favorite wine and i know i should be happy, my
skies are full of beautiful blues but i've learned
that pain is happiness when i'm with you
he was my darkest shade of grey, my disastrous tale of love
and what happened after, you were a beautiful mistake
a terrible tragedy you carved your name on my heart and
and made your touch a weapon filled with poison i can't
find the antidote and now i'm searching desperately for all
the pieces but they seem to have all broke
and i know it's wrong to want to have you by my side,
you always made me think i was happy
but i'm starting to realize that skies are not meant be filled with
smoke and liquor and that the world would burn
with your love of fires and hurricanes of tears would
fill your beating heart with happiness and i know that
you're sick and twisted, i know that you are the very
worst thing that could have ever happened to me
and yet i cannot bring myself to say that you are black,
you my dear are the darkest shade of grey
you're a disaster, a canvas that's been broken and filled with
toxic paint, a ticking time bomb exploding every day and
for your love of fires you were gasoline although i'd rather burn
early than die later for i'm starting to find out,
i like my skies filled with smoke and liquor and hate
the way the sun shines you could have the been the worst
thing that had ever happened to me but i know, oh i know
i'm not alone, yes i know that i am the worst thing that has
happened to you

(h.l.)

his favorite color was orange;
like the sunsets at Times Square
and he never told me that,
I just noticed it by looking at the way
his eyes would light up and he would
start to smile a little when he saw something orange
and I always used to wish that
he could stay that way forever-
entranced and happy with the simplest things
it was a futile wish, of course
all good things come to an end and that
was the calm before the storm
and what a hurricane it was
//
your eyes are brown and yet I swear I've never
seen the color red until I looked into your eyes
and knew you were gone from me
//
my friends still ask about you; and I
tell them I haven't seen you in awhile, because I hadn't
I hadn't seen you since the summer when we would
stand in fields of flowers filled with yellows and orange
after that you were never the same
and I buried my love for you in a casket,
deep in the ground,
if you ever find it
you'll see tulips and books and
a black and white Hey Jude vinyl
by the Beatles

all things i used to love before i fell into you

last night i stumbled into
a false reality
where i thought i was actually
okay because it wasn't raining anymore;
and the plants were actually growing
and my parents didn't fight
they just sat in silence
it was so ******* suffocating

but being suffocated is better than burning alive

my mom she didn't complain about how thin i was
and my dad didn't talk about
what a waste of space i was
my mind, it wasn't screaming at me
to fall apart
and the shards of the broken pieces
didn't sting as much
but then i woke up and realized what a mess
i was

my body is all angles; no curves
my hair is almost as dead as the plants
i'm such a waste of space
the broken pieces they still lie on my arms
and they yell at me at night
with the pale moon out they become so alive
and my scars they end up burning me alive

i want to suffocate

i.
you used to be the one that made my heart skip
beats and make the butterflies in my stomach erupt,
although now those butterflies are as wilted and dead
as the flowers you gave me the last time i saw you
ii.
i think the worst part is knowing that you are still
on the same shipwreck i warned you to stray from, that
you are still so heavily dependent on the same thing
that broke us, that you still love your cigarettes more than
you will ever love me, or her, or anyone and that
at the end of the day your drugs will burn powerful flames
that will last more than my love for you
iii.
i like to think that we would have given up on each other
sooner or later, that if it wasn't the drugs then it would've been
because of school or distance or because of him or because of her
but the truth is that all those pointless fights were just rocks
not mountains and we could have had it all, but you were more
hung up on cigarette daydreams then on true love
iv.**
i don't think you ever understood that when i said i would
crash and burn next to you, that it didn't mean i wanted too and that
while i could start fires with what i feel for you i would much
rather leave you now before i become a pile of ashes

i
am
stuck
in
a
perpetual
state
of
not
wanting
to
care
and
caring
too
much

­(h.l.)

the words do not come tumbling out of my pen anymore
the ink seems to have dried and i've killed the horizon
inside my brain with a cigarette ashtray that spelled out
your name there seems to be a permanent eclipse because
i cannot write like i used to anymore there are no more
tsunamis or hurricanes or tornadoes my mind is a
natural disaster all on it's own except there are no thunderstorms
or rain there is only darkness and drowning into a
sea of metaphors i wrote and analogies i spoke;
i think about the girl who thought of them from time to
time, and i wonder if she would be upset that no one
brought wildflowers to her funeral, even though they
claimed she was a sun shower they all ran away when the
flowers wilted, i don't blame them
i did too
(h.l.)

The thing is that I don’t know
I don’t know if I’ll ever find somebody who will understand me and forever love me
I don’t know if I’ll end up having my own family and if I’ll live in the big white house with the picket fence

I don’t know if I even want that
I don’t know if I’ll end up an author or a therapist or a doctor
I don’t know if I’m okay, and to be honest I don’t even know the definition of okay
I don’t know if I’m a good friend; I don’t know if I deserve good friends
I don’t know if anything I do impacts anyone and I don’t know why I think and feel this way
I don’t know if I’m going to stop writing all of a sudden and delete this

I am very confused because I. Don’t. Know.
I don’t know if I even have the right to know or if this stuff is reserved for the future
I don’t know if I love or if I don’t and I don’t know what I’ll do if yes, it turns out that I do love.
I just don’t know
I don’t know so many things and I don’t know how I feel about that
I don’t know if I’ll ever live down my regrets and I don’t know if this confusion will ever end

I don’t know if I’m beautiful or even remotely pretty
I don’t know if my friends and parents only say this as an obligation
I don’t know why it matters if I’m pretty or not
I don’t know why I’m so insecure so many times
I don’t know why people who are beautiful say they aren't
I don’t know why I’m thinking so much about what I don’t know
I. Don’t. Know. So. Many. Things.

And I’m okay with that.

i don't know why i like boys who rate girls based on their *****
and smoke cigarettes and talk about things that sound meaningful
but aren't, i don't know why i have trouble breathing sometimes
and why counting to ten doesn't work and why i get so angry
at little things that shouldn't bother me but they do,
i don't know why i have such high expectations but such
a low self esteem i don't know why i can see myself somewhere
in ten years but not in the next one i don't know why i lie and say
stupid things i don't know why i say ******* when i never
want anyone to leave because i don't want to be alone with me
i don't know why it bothers me that i'm not pretty or beautiful
i don't even know why that matters i don't know why i'm writing this
i don't know why i'm crying i don't know why my fingers are
shaking or when my house became so quiet i don't know the answers
to so many things i thought i knew him but i didn't i thought i could
handle all of this but i can't i thought i would never break down again
but i am and it hurts like hell i feel like i am being split into two
and someone is pouring gasoline on me and all i want right now
is to be set on fire so that i can burn and dissolve into the air
into a permanent state of nothingness where i don't have to worry
about why my heart feels like it's made of lead and why
i can't finish sentences without adding on other things because
i don't like the idea of anything ever ending

there are sounds, i can hear that much if i pay attention
but that's all i can hear anymore besides your
voice in my head and you breathing is still ****** into my
memory
sometimes, when it gets really cold i can still feel your
warm embrace around me and your heartbeat echoes in my
mind like a tune that never stops playing and
i don't know whose fault it was anymore at
this point all i know is that i miss you
i miss you
and not in the way i thought i would,
i do not miss you with heart-wrenching sobs and
an inability to breathe
i miss you with careless sighs and haunting photo albums
and an inability to live because you had
become such a permanent part of my life that
i didn't even notice you anymore you were like
a fresh inked tattoo that grows old and doesn't fade
until one day you wake up and you
realize it was all temporary
tattoos start to itch and they become a menace,
maybe i was a menace and yet somehow
i can't bring myself to have enough pride to
guard myself up again, i still slip everyday when you say hi
i say hi back and i promised myself that i wouldn't
respond the next time you called but i know
that in the end i will because i can't help it
*i miss you

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.)

he said his favorite color was blue because
that was the color of the sky and his mothers'
wedding ring which was the only thing that
survived the fire and he keeps the ring around his
heart so that whenever he is feeling down,
he can always remember the color blue

she said her favorite color was red because she liked
to light things on fire and she was the
heartbreak girl that burned everything she
touched and you can tell that's she's coming your way
because the first thing that you think of when you see
her is red

he wanted to disappear into the ocean, because he
was calming waves of serenity and peace but
she wanted to burn bright like the star she knew she
was born to be, and she did; she was the wild card,
the indigo of the world and she burned everything
she touched, everything she loved until one day all
that was left of her heart was a pile of ashes

he said his favorite color was indigo because that
was the color of her engament ring, the one that he
had bought her the day before she burned alive and he
wears it around his chest now so that whenever
he feels like a burning red, he had her in his heart
to keep him a steady indigo

(h.l.)

we have become saturated sponges,
soaking up unrequited love as if it were water
but we are running out of air and chasing nostalgia
like a blind man would his cane has to stop someday.
candy lovers all taste the same, sweet and sour
at the same time and bitter too. he told me he was tired
of just ******* around tired to coming in second place
tired of not being able to breathe because he was
a crumpled up dishtowel on that floor than cannot dry
because he was tired of absorbing my tears on his shoulder
and becoming a monsoon too big to live but too small
to make a difference. i said stay he said no i said i'll
change he said he didn't think i could i said i was sorry and
he said there was no reason to apologize for the truth.
but how can i not apologize when i have made you a trophy
story to tell my friends when i am drunk and moody
because you are no longer by my side. how can the words i'm
sorry not be carved into the cave of my mouth, tattooed
across my bottom lip with jet black ink when i still
call you, just to prove to myself that i am good enough for
someone at least how can i not be unyieldingly grateful
when you put me back together after i was a broken glass vase
and planted flowers in the deepest embers of my imagination.
i am sorry. i am sorry that i am too big of a mess to
acknowledge that i need help. i am sorry that i am so scared
of failure i hide behind big t shirts and razor sharp knives.
i am sorry that i lie through my teeth like a magician and
get angry when you don't tell me the truth, as if i have a right
to deserve it. but most of all, i am sorry that you cannot help
but grow flowers in a place where only weeds grow. my body
is an abandoned graveyard too beaten down to function
and you tried to make it a home and for that, for that
most of all i am truly sorry, from the deepest trench at the
smallest hole in my skeleton.

(h.l.)

she wrote.

she wrote words that no one besides her knew,
she wrote feelings that no one besides her felt,
and she spelled those words out at night, when she
couldn't sleep, so that maybe the next day she'd
have the courage to speak

she never spoke.

she never spoke about the thoughts she had
she never spoke about the itchy red lines that lined her thighs
she never spoke to the boy at the back of the class who
loved both guys and girls and who never wanted to get hurt
so he never spoke either

but they both wrote.

they both wrote about abuse, a five letter word that had
been stitched onto their skin with an iron needle and a a fist full
of scissors and the words we'll never make it

she never spoke. he never slept. but they both wrote
their suicide letters with felt ink pen.

(h.l.)

i always used to call you my james taylor
because you would write these songs
and they were written in
a special sort of ink that you bought
at some convention somewhere and
apparently, the ink was supposed permanent,
we were supposed to be permanent
but it's funny actually, how the word permanent
can disappear on a cold december night when you
happen to have too much to drink
and i happen to be on edge because you're not
acting like my james taylor anymore, instead
you have broken your guitar and you don't go
to conventions anymore and i think the last time
you told you loved me and actually meant it was
a couple of months ago in july, i remember it
because of course, you wrote a song about it, you
always used to write a song about everything but
now you have run out of your ink and i fear
that i have run out of love for the both us,
at the end of the day i was the only one who
made an actual effort but by now i feel like giving up on
you and it's strange to even think like that
because i thought i would rather crash and burn
with you than let you run away but it seems
you are no longer the boy who i love so i guess
i'll be waiting to see your ashes float upon the sea

(h.l.)

i am not pretty i am not beautiful i am not
poetry i am not music i am not inspiration i am
not good luck i am not strong i am not lucky i am
not smart i am not a relationship i am never looking back
i am mondays i am not fridays i am not red or blue or
gray or black i am not a disaster i am not a tornado
i am not a hurricane i have no eye in me
i am not captivation i am procrastination i am a constant
dark sky there is no light in me i am not honesty
i am a bundle of never ending lies i am insomnia i
am a biting insect called insecurity i am not a butterfly
i am not a night owl i am more like a tree that never grows
i am not sunshine i am not the moon i am not a star i
am an asteroid i am a college workload i am an infinite
amount of excuses and insults loving me will not
be like falling into a cocoon of warmth it will be
more like being tied to a rock in the middle of the ocean
i am not a model type skinny i am instead a bag of twigs
i am not a calm swim i am drowning i am your last shot of
***** that turns into 20 i am the penny stuck to the bottom
of a jar i am lost money i am scalding hot chocolate
i am times square i am letters i am gigantic words that you
can't pronounce i am late night studying i am your favorite
coffee shop that closes early i am not the girl that
you will spend the rest of your life happily with i am the
key to a motel door and a night you will regret i am the
one night stand you wish you could stop thinking about
i am auto correct that is never right i am the phone number you
cannot forget i am reliable i like to think about running away
but i never will spending your life with me will not be happy but
it will also never be sad because i cannot stand to see
people sad even though sometimes i am and i use big
words and if you can't pronounce them then i'll teach
you how to and i procrastinate all the time but i'll help you
be organized and i'll wake you up early so that you can
get to your favorite coffee shop and i'll warn you that the
hot chocolate is scalding hot i'll cut you off after your
last shot of ***** and i'll write you bad poetry that'll make
you laugh to make up for it and we'll spend the
entire night watching bad romance movies and cursing
love so that you can try and forget that one night stand and
because i never learned how to swim i always stick by the
life guard so i'll save you if you drown and i am not
perfect but i am also not broken; instead i am a never ending
cycle of both regret and loneliness and so much more
but i'll make sure that you'll never have to suffer any of that
because i am your july thirty first thoughts, and you are mine

(h.l.)

your favorite color is not blue you lied to me, it is instead
a deep shade of grey so dark it is almost black and your middle
name is not poetry it is dececption it is let's take a break it is
not honesty instead it is cheating it turning the tables so that i think
i'm wrong when i'm not and you cannot just apologize with
the same sad smirk that you always have and think it is okay,
you cannot just turn your pain into poetry and think it's
okay because it isn't; it's not right to fake the color of roses on
your skin and then call me at midnight and talk to me as if you
were dying when you're not and you told me your star sign
was cancer but guess what you lied about that too because you
do not have a star sign you cannot be predicted by other
people who think they know how to read the signs of space because
you are an asteroid and i mean that with every sense of the
word and i do not want to be tied down by you because even
if i am a shipwreck that does not mean i need your anchor
because i don't i don't i don't so you can take your misery
and your sorry excuse for love and give it some other girl who
doesn't know any better

(h.l.)

she** is thin and wiry and so unbelievably charming it
is hard to believe everything she says is not straight out
of a 1980's movie that changed cinematic history
because for once the girl asks out the guy and I am just
a shattered home left battered after a hurricane

she is a ghost and I mean that in every sense of the word,
when she left I felt my brittle bones collapse
inside of my sunken body as if it were a cave
and like acid I dissolved myself into everything
as a distraction to try and forget her but
she still haunts me with her smile and her laugh
and when I sleep I find myself imagining her as the shadows
created by the moonlight

her love was toxic. I know this because her voice still
shouts at me to do things despite the distance that has
grown between us; when I met her I was in a bad place.
I needed someone to be there and she was. she was the
only one who was ever there for me; it was unhealthy and
cataclysmic but she was there and that was more than enough
but then my tears started making her happy and my
anxiety gave her strength and I told myself she wasn't a
problem; until I realized I couldn't distinguish who I used
to be before I met her and she still makes her way into my
life at times but I have found calling her by her real name
scares her. it shows her that I know the mask of deception
she wears and that I am no longer afraid. my therapist asked
what I used to call her, before I knew, I said a friend. I know
now who she truly is and the word still tastes like iron in my
mouth. Depression.

i am tired of feeling like i am not worth anything, tired of wanting a better future, tired of having all these panic attacks, i mean am i really this ******* up? maybe i am. maybe we all are. actually that’s a lie i’m the only ***** up in this world i’m pretty sure that’s quite evident in the way i look, on paper and in reality. i’m such a disappointment, i think everyone hates me and i can’t exactly blame them. my parents probably regret giving birth to me and sometimes i regret being born. i used to be afraid of death but what’s the point of being scared of anything at this point; i’m pretty sure even monsters and demons have standards i can’t measure up to. i can’t measure up to anything really; i’m a horrible person, a waste of space in this drowning planet. i’m not a dying ember or a broken star that had to fall to make someone’s wish come true. i’m not anything really, i’m not important to anyone and the worst part? the worst part is that it’s all my ******* fault, I shouldn't have turned out to be a ***** up, nothing bad really happened to me. i was just a girl, interrupted, a seemingly hopeful burning flame that died out a little everyday and one day the wind blew particularly strong. i can’t blame that on the wind though because i’m pretty sure that i would've turned out to be a lost cause anyway.

we used to jaywalk on the streets and
play hide and seek in the rain
we would laugh about first kisses in
Central Park
and mimic people as they walked by
and the entire time it was you

I know that I am not beautiful
I know that when other people see me
they see the girl with the thin-and-very-awkward frame with
glasses that always seem to fall
I had just somehow convinced myself that
you saw more than that

When people ask me about you
I like to say that I don't know about you and that
it had been awhile since we talked
because it had
and
when they ask me if I'm okay
I smile and say of course
because I am
I should be
I'm not

tell me
am I now apart of your forgotten club
that is shoved to the back of you mind
will you tell your new friends about me
and will you say that you miss me and
will you make it seem inevitable

will you create a blank canvas of loneliness for
the next girl to find and try to paint on
will you whisper my name to her as if talking about
a shadow that shouldn't have existed

sometimes I find myself wondering if you were just some cruel
nightmare that my mind had conjured up to torture me but then I remember that
my imagination isn't creative nor beautiful enough to create someone like you

and now it rains like hurricanes but when I hide, I don't try to find myself, it's better that way

[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.)

you painted the moon on my hips drew constellations with
your eyes on my arms and whispered the word pandemonium in
my ear as asteroids exploded and as orbits formed
i drew the color blue on your fingertips and orange in the
corner of your smile and spelled the word requiem onto your
lips because i knew this wasn't going to last
we lived our love in the sky and memorized the names of
stars that were bound to die and last words we used to live
she spoke the language of the sun and i didn't understand
you spoke the language of wrecked love and made our
masterpiece a work of forbidden art

(h.l.)

it was michael's sixth birthday and he had on a suit
and a spiderman tie, his mom had gushed
over how handsome he was, but he didn't feel handsome
he felt so much pressure with the suit on and
he didn't like it at all
//
today michael was 13 and he stared at himself
in the mirror, questioning his reflection
he had stolen his older sister's skirt because he thought
she looked pretty in it, and he wanted to look pretty
too, and he does; he thinks he looks beautiful
the wonderful moment in ruined however by the
squeak of the door and the utter shock on his mother's face
//
michael's sixteen and biting his lip he had never felt more pretty
in his entire life, he had bought a dress with the excuse it was
for his "girlfriend" and he has tried it on and it fit like
a glove and michael cried suddenly because
he knew that this was the last time he would ever wear a dress
and feel special
//
at michael's funeral he is dressed in a black and white suit
with a blue tie, and all anyone could think
was what a shame, of course if michael were alive
he'd be thinking that he would probably look prettier
with a skirt on, and if only people would've accepted that
then he probably would've been there to say it

(h.l.)

my meds are missing my pills are gone the
windows are closed the curtains cover them and i cannot
see the lightning but i can feel in in my bones,
i cannot feel my heart beating instead i see you in my soul
and i was supposed to go to sleep a long time ago
but the silence pumps my blood it feeds my insomnia and
gives it hope i wish i could stop thinking i wish i
could stop thinking thinking about your smile and the
way you laugh when you fall and the windows are closed
this room is soundproof but that doesn't stop me
from hearing thunder because it reminds me of you and
i'm still scared of storms and the color grey
but i'm finding out that loving you comes with the price
of living in shades of grey; the flowers in my brain they died
the day you said you loved me and stopped meaning it
(when did you stop meaning it?) so i live my
life in shades of blue each one darker than the last and
everything is blue; my tears, your ink, even the walls of my
room look like they've had their heart broken by you
and my meds are missing, my pills are gone the windows
are still closed although it doesn't matter because i
can still hear the thunder in my head, it is almost as loud
as the silence that fills my room instead

(h.l.)

whenever i paint my nails i cannot help but
be reminded of the way you smoked cigarettes
because the fumes of the nail polish are
terribly toxic and yet i crave it because
some nights we would stay up all night--
you getting high on your cigarette daydreams
and me getting high on how happy you looked
with a death stick in your mouth,
i should've stopped you
i should've been there next to you, at the very
least in the back of your mind a warning, you
should've thought of me, you should've cared,
you should be right here next to me,
laughing because i got nail polish on my hand and
teasing me about how i should just give up
you should not have been driving home that night, you
should've known, you should've stopped--
months before that, you shouldn't have even
began drinking or smoking or even driving
for god's sakes you were only fifteen
and so was i, i was only fifteen, much too young
to fall in love, and much too stubborn to care

whenever i paint my nails i cannot help but
be reminded of you inhaling smoke from your
marlboro silver cigarettes and i cannot help
but make a mistake and stop midway and scrub it all
off because you are no longer there to tease me
about how i should just give up and i can no longer
get high from the image of the boy sitting on my
window sill, for he is now dead

(h.l.)

his hands twitch and he starts to blink and attempts
to calm down, because it's okay, people
get nervous and this is what happens when people
get nervous but his hands won't stop twitching and it's
the one imperfect thing in this entire room, the walls
are white the people are silent the floor is
polished the chairs don't squeak and why the hell
is his hand still twitching; he starts to panic because
he can feel the bile rising in his throat, he can feel
goosebumps on his arms he can feel the anxiety
radiating like a furnace he can feel it all and he doesn't
blink, he just tries to focus on his breathing but he
can't he can't he can't he can't all he can do
is look at the boy with the twitching hands and hope that
he stops because it was ruining everything all he
wanted him to do was stop stop stop stop but
he wouldn't, he would never stop it never
stops no matter how many pills he takes no matter
how many therapy sessions he attends, there is
still that boy in the back of his mind and his hands
are constantly twitching and they don't stop they only
become distracted by the ceiling fan or the tiles on
the floor or the hanging thread on her dress or
the on and off switch and having to turn it
on and off on and off on and off on and off
four times before it feels right
nothing ever feels right anymore, it is all a matter
of becoming distracted and trying to focus
******* anything else but the boy with the twitching hands

(h.l.)

it is easy to become lost in the blinding lights of new york city
and the deafening sound of yellow taxi cabs and screaming
neighbors and the chatter of mundane conversations between
people who are ghosts in every sense of the word with
their paper thin hearts and transparent minds and the inability
to feel something other than the heavy weight of coffee
in their stomachs

it is easy for people to say that when new york city was made
God himself struck down and said "let their be light" but all i ever
see is the blur of motion as everyone runs to jobs they
all hate working with people they despise and then spending
their money at stars that don't even shine in poorly lit movie
theaters when the real ones are in the sky and in new york
every expensive restaurant is vegan friendly and boasts animal
rights and shames everyone who doesn't but no one
ever wonders what happens to the ducks in central park during december

it is easy to fall in love with new york city.
with the magic that it spreads with the euphoria that you feel being
surrounded by others with it's almost frightening ability to
take away your loneliness and manipulate you into thinking you
are happy, it is easy to fall in love with new york city.

it is also easy for you to say that you lost yourself in new york
because even when you say it no one will hear you
over the sound of madison square garden and it is easy to
call new york paradise it is easy to call it the city that never
sleeps because everyone stuck there is paralyzed

(h.l.)

Your favorite color is green like the color of eyes
not like the color of grass
and you love playing sports but hate the outdoors
and you spent hours one day searching for a lost battery
somewhere in the park and I was there  
as always with you searching for this mysterious battery
already knowing we weren't going to find it
but not caring because it mattered to you
so it mattered to me and when you went home that day
with disappointment at the pit of your stomach
I could only try to find other ways to smile
because my lips has stretched far too much
and I couldn't express happiness the way
I wanted too when you had shown up at my house
at midnight with a deck of cards and a bottle of gin
and we played ******* and I had lost because
for some reason I could lie to everyone else but you

My favorite color is blue like the soft sweater
your aunt knitted for Christmas not like
the color of the ocean and you wouldn't know
because you don't really care and it should bother me
that you don't care but it doesn't;
like the last battery in the park,
I already know our love is one that is not
meant to exist or to be found and it would
only ever prevail on the nights where you come
to my house at midnight and on the
days that you lose batteries at the park

(h.l.)

crumpled sheets wrapped around your waist and the
scattered t.v. remote you were looking for falls into a fold
of the blanket you are intertwined within; you can no
longer give yourself the motivation to do anything, not even
move slightly to the right and stretch a little to catch the
tiny battery in your frail and delicate fingers. your overdramatic
and completely unrealistic soap opera will have to wait until
your grandchildren get home and one of them can turn
the t.v. on for you.

(h.l.)

on your very first birthday, you will hear many things
you will not be able to decipher them yet but
they will echo in your ear until you go to sleep,
you will hear about how big you've grown and how
beautiful you are or how beautiful you're going to be
and the highlight of your day will be when finally you
get to cut into that delicious chocolate cake that your
aunt made you and you will run around the yard
and laugh as you trip endlessly and the big kids won't play
with you but that's okay because you're one and you
don't really understand that strange feeling in your heart
when they say that you're too little to join in on their game
of tag and everything is so confusing because
your grandmother said that you were a big girl now but
somehow you are not big enough and you won't be for
awhile but you don't really care because in that moment you
are one and everything is an adventure for you;
from the wet grass in the backyard to the weird kisses your
older brother and the girl across the street exchange
but that just makes everything ten times more interesting
and you are still protesting even though it is futile that you
don't want to go to bed and even though you are still
forced to go to bed earlier than you want, you are happy
because today you turned one years old and you are big
enough to cut the cake with some help from your
mom but still too small to play tag with the big kids and the
concept is confusing but exhilarating and you cannot wait
for the next day and as your breathing becomes more
even you succumb to the dark and fall asleep and everything
is okay because you are one and you do not know yet
that when you are five your mother will stop making time for
you or that when you are ten everyone will stop caring about
your existence and that when you are thirteen the boy in your
school that you really really like will tell you that you are ugly
and everyone else will follow and when you get to be
seventeen you will be so desperate to leave this misery called
life that you will try and force yourself to go into a
different type of sleep, the more permanent kind and your father
will say you're being an attention ***** and your
mother will start to wonder where she went wrong
and your older brother won't care because he won't find
out that you are depressed or sad until the day of your
funeral, when you are nineteen and finally asleep,
although this time; you don't try to fight it
instead you go willingly and succumb to the darkness
much like you did when you were younger and
unaware that life is not a great adventure, it
is more like a never ending hell that will make
you wish that you were one

(h.l.)

They stand tall and smile beautifully,
any gaps between their teeth is held together by
glue called fear of what could happen if they are
anything but perfect. This glue, it is strong and sticky
and unbelievable expensive, it costs both your pride
and your happiness
[but it's okay, because both would've been taken
anyway. This is America you are a girl and you are a
shade of black so dark it blends within the moonlight.
the skinny twig girl in your class will call you a slave and
you will bite back the salty and sour response threatening
to spill from the back of your throat, that she is the color
of cafe con leche left on the porch and dried too long from
the burning sun of the Caribbean sky; and when she and her
white-washed friends laugh you bitterly think, wow there's no
difference between her and every other ****** here.]
They are gorgeous. Lips so red they remind you of blood at
a nurse's office. Stomachs so toned you want to scream that
your color is not a trend, that your milky white and yet charcoal
black skin with small bumps easily mistaken for traffic signs
with how easily their colors change is not a beauty status. your
skin is not pretty. It speaks an oppressed language with eons
of history behind it like your great grandmother's blood that was
shed onto the white man's land after he conquered something so
precious it could never be given back and you carry that with you,
within the stitches of glass cuts you forcefully made onto your
black skin, sickeningly thinking that you weren't good
enough because you aren't them and inside the skeleton
of your body is your grandmother
and she was a warrior in her own right and you carry her within you
and inside it not something middle school girls can laugh at.
it not something bitter old white politicians can mockingly ridicule
and sarcastically apologize for. it is not something that a boy,
years later at a frat party can try and belittle,
as if saying you are pretty for a black girl makes you feel better.
your great grandmother's soul and the woman before her give you
that milky white and charcoal black skin that can only be described
as the sky at midnight, when everyone else in the small town
you live in is asleep but you are awake and it is beautiful.
it is a hurricane with an infinite amount of water,
it is warfare at it's most addicting point and it is cataclysmic,
and they have no right to spray the dark color of the moon
onto their skin and pretend that the sun does not exist
until it is advantageous for them.
They are pretty.
They are beauty.
They are white,
and you with your Dominican kinks and sunburned skin
are not and this is something that now you do not like
but within time you will come to love.

his name was surprise. as in surprise i could find it
within me to love someone so much that their smile was
engraved into my mind at 3:02 pm when i was mindlessly
staring at a window that reflected a world i did not
find any beauty in. the overwhelming desire i had to not
only love but to be loved was so staggering that it shocked
me; i know because i can still hear my mother's yell as i
dropped a glass plate on the floor when i realized that
i had allowed myself yet again to fall into another person.
my mother said i was lucky that i didn't cut myself with the
glass but all i was thinking of was the contagious laugh i
knew you would utter when i told you this story.
[you did laugh by the way, your chest rumbled and your cheeks
were so red they reminded me of wine on a white dress;
you put your hand over your mouth to cover the slightest gap
you had between your two front teeth and the happiness
on your face set my veins on fire]
i say that i fell into you and not that i fell in love because i
do not believe it is possible to fall into something so
deep and electrifying and morose and survive. i do not believe
it is possible to fall into love as if it were an ocean and it
wouldn't swallow you whole; as if love was some kind creature
that let you swim in the whirlpool it inevitably created. as if
someone could possibly fall into love and not drown as it
mercilessly threw you screaming, begging to be saved. i do not
believe in falling in love because i do not think i could ever be
one of those lucky people who are washed up survivors of
hurricanes so frightening and beautiful you chase it without
knowing why. i am disastrous enough to drop glass plates on
floors to see you smile but not cataclysmic enough to stay while you
try and do the same for me. so when i told you months later that
i was irrevocably captivated by the dimples of your smile and
you furrowed your eyebrows curiously, trying to figure out how to
let me down gently, i already knew the words you were going
to say. we joke about it now, it seems to be an unwritten rule that
you will ignore the wince on my face when you talk about your
new girl and that i will ignore the fact that your favorite of my poems
are the untitled ones written about you. i say that i do not miss your
arms around my waist anymore and it's true, your hugs have become
quick and reluctant so that you do not give me any false hope. but
there isn't any hope left that hasn't been dried by bitter insecutity
and a stubborn need of mine to move on.  i don't miss the way
your endless mood swings affected my day and
i don't miss the way you used to call out my name, joyfully and
excitedly  i have simply forgotten about old conversations
and unfulfilled promises and i have a feeling you have as well.

[forgive me though, your name still slips from the ink of my
pen onto this secondhand journal from time to time. simply for
the sake of writing.]

(h.l.)

Color me in the right shade of hate
fill in the vacant holes in my heart with pounds of abuse
starve me from my right to eat because my weight is normal
(and normal isn't nearly as depressing as anorexic)
paint me perfect and leave me looking
devastated and depressed
cracked and traumatized
leave me wanting to **** myself because
suicide is trending right now and the more alone you feel
the more popular you’ll become
leave me looking mysterious so that my prince charming
can look for the girl with the broken smile and then
fix me
break me so I can be perfect
leave me feeling worthless because hating yourself is cool
teach me how to cut my skin because
scars are proof that you’re broken
and the more broken you are the more whole they want to make you

paint me perfect
by tearing me apart
after all,
*why would you want to be happy?

locked in this box pushed to the corner of my room
are letters that form
knots in my stomach every time i read them,

who knew words could send such pain?

my mind is trying to escape the little prison the
words set up and yet
it's pointless because i remembered every single word
that they wrote-
telling me why they had lost hope in me,
telling me why bright stars always fade,
telling me why i wasn't good enough
and god, i'm sure they didn't mean for this to happen
they probably didn't know that the words they
wrote would end up creating dozens of
little paper cuts that run on my arms
almost like little soldiers marching towards
war except there is no enemy, not really, except
the guy who works at Walgreen who told me they only
have orange bandages but orange was your favorite color
and it reminds me of tulips like the ones you would pick for me
and now i'm crying even more and i'm at the
corner of Happy and Healthy except i'm neither and i just wish
that i could throw out the **** box but i can't
because if i do then i don't have any proof
that you are real; sometimes i wish you weren't but i'd rather
live in a world where you exist but you ignore me than
a world without you

then again, there aren't enough bandages in the world
to aid the wounds given to me by
paper cuts

(h.l.)

the scars that line your wrists remind me of
fallen paper planes, like you
tried so hard to make it perfect, to
make it go places, to make it wonder
through hills but instead it went crashing down like
your tears midway, like it thought it was hopeless
you thought you were hopeless because all
the other planes had engines and
they were battery operated from the start,
so statuesque so perfect
they were trained from the start to stand tall,
****** in stomachs, labored breathing and it
hurts so much but it doesn't matter because they
were pretty, the best of the best
and you were just left in the dirt, stuck in the mud
like a fallen paper plane so you gave yourself
paper cuts because you thought you deserved it, you thought
that they were right, that everybody else was just born better than
you; they must've received some sort of memo
that you didn't because god it feels like that,
it feels like a bitter desperation and a lonely hatred all
at once because some part of you hates their beach blonde hair
and magazine worthy body
but the worst part is not watching them receive praise
and lead the life you can only dream about, no,  
the worst part is knowing that no matter what
you will never be able to compare to them because
you are a fallen paper plane, filthy from the dirt you had fallen
in, scarred from the thoughts you can't turn off, and hopeless;
already too old to know better than false naivety

what they never tell you however,
is how easy it is to rebuild a paper
plane and how all batteries will expire
and one day, that certain shade of beach blond hair
will become discontinued and that
life goes on until it decides to stop  

(h.l.)