i will take you to the piano hall, with the pink walls in the bad part of the neighborhood
we will sip rosé and slow dance in the sweaty gym
you will speak soft, and ill fix my hearing so i can appreciate you

i spent my teenagedom
checking on a book, in a deep deep vault in the basement of a library
yellow lights, with 1900s girl scout manuals
it is immortal. i am responsible for it

i felt your arms sink into my chest cavity,
like how ghosts float through skin, phantom hands in my body
you could pull out anything you wanted to

my feet feel like phantom limbs if i sit just right,
underneath my floral sheets, i sleep on the floor now
i made a nest. i will hide in it until i can see through my skin again

we met when your hometown was burning and now i have to return your  birthday present.

my good friends dog died. she was old and she liked to sleep next to the heater and they took her away and never brought her back. she told me in the first period locker rooms, when my buzzcut was still patchy from trich and unsteady hands and it was still cold outside. she cried and cried and told no one else. just me. no one posted pictures of her dead dog, said goodbyes, made instagram posts about it. she was just gone. we went to her house and her bed was empty and no one said anything. like she never happened. my friend was terrified of remembering her and i was terrified of forgetting her;

i saw her Eyes from the across the concrete field, not blue like an ocean but blue like my porch steps after it rains, blue like the bathmat i See as i watch it from above water, swirling and spinning under clear film, blue like the dorothy dress i Saw in the church when i was small, blue like my skin when i am dead and blue like my veins when life is brought unto me again. blue like the glow from my house's edwardian windows when i Look at them at sunset, blue like the wind and the goddess and the dew; she Looked back

all my dad bought was tequila,
so i spent my evenings staring into it, plugging my nose
(orange is my least favorite color.)
drip drip drip, onto our sidewalks, like an iv in an inevitably diseased vein
its still coming down, slowly. you feel it if you dont move
swallow me, into tunnels made of clear plastic film,
dry me out until i am the dust left by summer

i stood out in the middle of the road in the california smog
paved concrete over a desert, we wonder why it doesnt rain
i dont think ill leave here.

i want to go to a natural cemetery, no graves
the earth will be soft and all that will be left is nature, overgrown
they helped build it and i will too.

thirteen years old, you were too young
i cant help but say it pitifully, words trickling down my chin in strings
of empathy i dont know is really there or not. i want it to be
there were cracks by your fingerbeds and they were filled with sun,
bright and noisy, humming into still summer air while you slept
i couldnt, not that year

youre i-dont-know how old now,
someplace far, someplace i-dont-know how far but wherever it is its quiet and cold, i hope youre sleeping
or floating, i guess
skin turning to stardust as you near a sun that was never your own

take me east, in your mothers car. well wake up early and brush our hair, make ourselves look pretty and then  go to texas to see 3 person caskets and 19th century hearse carriges and glass coffins, well get jobs and pay for it all, the tickets, the hostel. itll be barely summer and well be dripping down the sewer drains, bones and all.

take my body south, to the desert. put my body in my parents living room, brush my bodys hair, make me look pretty (my white dress). my parents will pay for it all, the cemetary, the flowers. wrap my body in a shroud and toss me into the dry dirt, it will barely be summer and ill be back in the ground, bones and all.

i had a dream last night, ive been remembering them again, ever since the woods. i couldnt feel my leg anymore, i couldnt feel it like i said would happen and i cried and cried and cried (i slept till 1pm) was i always this disconnected? did i always zone out in cold baths, tracing checkerboard tiles over  and over again? did i always want to die like this? i shouldnt have helped myself. i shouldve given up 2 summers ago, when i could still have been peaceful, when they could still put me in some metal casket with nothing in my veins or chest cavity, when they would have tied my mouth shut with one of those bread ties in my gums

oú est-ce que je peux aller? quand je meurs, quand je suis dans le sol finallement, est-ce que ma amê est meurt aussi? protèges-la, stp. je ne veux pas aller le ciel, je veux etre dans le sol. je attendre pour le sol tous ma vie.

i stopped wearing makeup
i think when i shaved off my eyebrows,
(i wasnt allowed hair because id just pull it out again)
fake freckles to orange skin to nothing

"whats your favorite song?" my voice is quiet, i dont know if he can hear me a neighborhood away. maybe ill make him a casette tape like in the tv show with the lost kids, send it via stumbled conversations and the crowded hallways we float along like its the river of styx (i have 2 coins.)  

i like to pretend you wear that blue coat because you know it makes me smile, maybe your messages got misplaced somewhere. ill wait for you, across the mud where those who have wronged you are stuck, ill send little messages through my fingers alone (in the air, spelling letters, or on here. youll find them soon enough.)

the hallway is too bright for six fourty five am words
(you still end up looking soft in it)
morning bites at my cheeks smiling nothings with you on our way to sleepy history class

i want to fill liminal spaces with you
i want to be bright and undeniable
and write your burning words in the stars
we’ll walk endless 0 period hallways
under permanently purple skies
and it’ll replace her last words, spoken in cold morning air
with your name over and over

seeing you is different. its

cold, impersonal. my skin feels the way it feels when i leave my fort in the morning, skin stung with unfamiliar air. i dont go out by choice anymore. i want to be the girl in the pictures, eyelashes fluttering and bangs caught in the artificial wind, glowing. he said i look like her but i just dont see it, im stringy, detached, like a third grade picasso. no one can hold that, can kiss that, can care for that. your eyes on mine feel calculated and i dont know what to say anymore. neither do you. what happened?

in 7th grade it was red, bood red, wine red. short and choppy and red, i hated myself. i cried until it grew, thinking my problems rooted in what was left of my hair. i lied that year, red lips spewing black oil, sticky and hard to wash out. in 8th grade, the summer i was a fairy, it was raven black, green under the redwood sun, too thick bangs covering my greek caterpillar eyebrows. a boy had a crush on me and girls carved words into their ankles, i didnt understand. i dont think they understod either. in 9th grade my hair was long, overgrown, knotted. stained colors i no longer could recognize, hugging my neck and back and shoulders when you ****** me over, i buzzed it off in the end.

maybe if i yell loud enough
across fuzzy love songs after my last shift
you'll turn your head like
the way you look at her in literature

and, maybe i let my eyes linger too long on your
blue hoodie, the blonde bits at the end of your hair,
when you walk me to class on tuesdays
i've done this to myself before and ill do it again

maybe ill drown myself in the number seven till
i can finally shut the **** up
and can look at its lines without hearing your voice

you hold him,
black hair against cold skin you hold him
even though youre still in blue spring
and he's somewhere else. somewhere over hills youve only seen pictures of, flowers and tall grass tying around your ankles.
like an ocean, when the wind runs through it right

he laughs on top of the hill you were supposed to walk up,
when its sunset by the lake
(the place no one would find, not for miles of blue water)
you were supposed to. you were supposed to sit under the little tree and sleep over rocks
supposed to cry little words into his shoulder,
supposed to hold him. supposed to hold him and stay there until flowers grew from your ribcage,
little twisting vines blooming gerber daisies

so you do. you reach your arms across oceans, scan skylines
walk across realities until you get to the picture of the hills,
the one with the oil paints your mother saw once, in a town with no name
and when hes not there you wait until they find you first. (it takes till summer)

i mix them together in the cold mornings,
coffee, tequila, brown sugar;
2 days from now i will be back in my blue-jacket,
the one she bought me, its been hanging on my door all summer
soon it will be cold again and ill need it.

i watched tapes of me dancing from months ago,
my hair was still long and the trees in my backyard looked like holograms.
where will i be in 10 years? in the house in the forest?
visit me, meet me under the redwood trees where i will read grammar books in years to come. where i will grow old, where my body will be thrown
meet me when i have my academia job and youll be a bedroom popstar
we can still drink margarita mix and look at the stars, i swear

theres a song about a cottage and rolling fields
and when im there i can only see you
we put bees in little jars and feed them sugar water
you walk with me through mud and too wet grass
and maybe its just because i have the pills you want but,
i hold it and i dont let it go

last autumn we walked through starlit streets and
i wore purple dresses and you picked me up on rooftops
winding metal stairs going down into secret passages through the earth i
i miss your eyes on my skin, my hair
those little things you told me before the walk home we’ll
be there soon

ill take you to the stream or i wont
words buried me once and they will ruin me again
tell me, do i fill that place in your bottle still? when
you reach for me under mosaics or tables
when that glass breaks and
swarms in puddles on our feet,
am i supposed to hold on?

im sorry i texted you too many times
when i was that sad kid in your literature class
who talked too much and wore that sweater too many days in a row
blue and orange are complimentary, and i painted with them last night but
i wasnt listening to your songs anymore
the ones i put your name on, at least

i smoked a cigarette during third period today to not feel this
gnawing
kind of gaping feeling in my stomach and
tugging at my dimples
your smile was all jagged lines this morning but
i dont know if you could tell or not. i hope whoever she is does
hey
do you feely guilty?
because i sure as hell do

the lovers

bright, bright, bright, i
haven't felt this kind of
burning since i
put my hand to the stove when i was six
neurons firing under our skin
in fits and starts you
would look into my quiet
what do you see, love?
push me up against that wall
race me down those concrete steps
one more time

queen of swords

greedy hands in the dark
you choke me and
it wasn't comforting this time
there are tear stains on that
blue hoodie now,
the one you let me wear
out of pity (take it back) when
we were stuck in the city
and my feet fell numb.
i tripped over them as we
ran across the street and
you laughed.
i just laid there on the asphalt
thinking maybe, maybe a
car will come, right now,
and i'll be flesh
in the grooves of it's tires so
i won't have to drive you home.

ace of cups

i'm saying 'she' sweeter because
'you' is out of my vocabulary now
she, she, she, the
way she leans against me at the park
the way her tongue searches for mine
like my mouth is the only thing left
in this dimension.
a rose quartz heart in between
our two hands, she says softly:
"pick a card"

i cried in your arms that night, under blankets and wires tangled up our shoulders. i carved something out of the deep insides of my chest and i showed it to you even though i knew you didnt have a place for it anymore. thats okay. you left when the sun came up. thats okay too. you didnt want me that night, not really, but you reached for me anyways, because we were high and lonely and stupid and i wanted nothing more to hold on and i still still still do the way that feeling pounds on my insides. i want to silence it or crush it under rocks something powerful and definite but i hold it in my hands and scream i cant i cant instead. im sorry. things would be so much easier for you if i could. i want you to be happy sometimes more than i want to breathe air, i want to burn that feeling between us that makes you cut off and cold but i know its no use because i put it there in the first place. i hope she loves you, and i say this with no hurt in my words, i hope she loves you like i never let myself when i had you, i hope she holds you tight like youre the light in a sea of nothing, i hope you show her all your favorite songs and take her to concerts and shower her in soft little words she knows are hers. i want you, more than i think ive let myself want anything in too long, and ill keep my hand untangled for you, but please, please dont grab on unless youre going to stay.

the world is so beautiful and i have no place in it. every day there are birds and beetles and bodies off of buildings and they all fly and we take pictures of it. and skin smiles, and the group waits for the crosswalk to start talking, and the capillaries break, and we hold everyone in the world closer; and i drink from the plastic water bottle hidden in my pillows, and i slip out of the arms. i stand here a place-marker. let's say i **** myself. in all the perfect ways i know how, the train and the bridge and the car and the pictures. i'd steal little pieces from everyone and you would drag out the printer paper again, you would make room on the altar. the world is too beautiful for all of this, so here i stand, a monolith, here i stand, a neon billboard, i stand here a place-marker. please come visit me, yes take pictures of me yes take a look down the street see i'm still here. i'm still here! breathe that sigh of relief. my *****-end will dig further into the earth. my blood will not ***** the sidewalk, you can cross the street the light is green! my body will not wade under the bridge. the world puts on its swim-shorts.

i had never seen her cry, i realized

my skin was pinched pale
(i hadnt seen the sun in months)
when i came back to this golden-land,
look, from the window:
there goes those yellow hills
there goes the concrete strip mall

the carpet was torn up
and my childhood home was empty,
except for me alone, past artifacts
shoved into plastic boxes
i put on my charms and
we rode our chariot over highway 87

her palace was made of peeling couches,
long rusted cars stacked out in the front
swarming with people looking for
sweet wine in libation, or rolling papers
(whichever they could find first
on the decaying table in the backyard)

i hadnt seen her in 4 months, i had eaten
a pomegranate and was kept down, down
in an ice soaked world with white hallways
i didnt feel real. she called me a ghost
because it didnt sit right for us both
the thought of me, among the living

my brother said words to us both
simple things, wine soaked
but i had just been spit from the earth
and i was tired. she was too, she'd
been tired from the moment she was born,
cut from her fathers thigh

i mourned, then, open mouthed and thundering,
for the life i had left behind
but she just laid her head down, down
and her tears were so quiet i only
noticed them when they stained the fabric
and her face came up sickly red

i do not think i will ever see her cry again