great calamity of the sea
please bring my baby back to me
for all these tears i've come to weep
as air bubbles and thrashing cloth emerge from the deep

Thrashing, clawing,
I drank the salt milk of the Earth
I learned long ago that if i try to breathe you in I
choke instead

Throat on fire and a head full of flowers, your name cusped my wrists like champagne grips the glass it drips from
Cold and sticky
Smelling like the soul of an old forgotten farmhouse
thousands of baby's breath swaying, the vapor is in the floor boards
just like I am in you

Dark, envy green stems thorn the tissue of my temple
and when they get out,
the blood drips so long and hard that it
carries its own longing
are you afraid?

i want to pull open your chest, dig my fingers to bone
red viscera clinging to cold, wet skin
i am all 117 pounds of longing to know the darkness inside, all the places you've been
i want you to hit me until a small part of you feels good
healed even

you playfully pinned my arms in california,
me, hundreds of miles from home. you, hundreds of microseconds away from snapping.
looked down at me with, well,
all perplexion and cinched dark brow
I couldn't tell if you were trying to figure out if i got a new pair of eyes since i'd last seen you
or if you were searching for the possibility of the ability to - absolutely undo me.
cracked open
shake out all the pins and twigs and thimbles

Terence White said
"Think of lust. Real blood lust is like that."
But White was talking about falconry,
and I'm talking about a sick personal desire to be obliterated

knock all the blocks down and cut the chord,
and like the graeae we'll share one heart,
one pain,
a shared experience in which we come out understanding
as if that's something that
we can even
manage

felt like a leviathan lift, a soul pull
that he cracked open and showed me
I showed him trouble and red marks about the neck
he gave me berries from his fingers and seashells

and he still liked me
best.
even when my cheeks burned off freckles of ash
somewhere far away

I like him best when both eyes clench and he sways
waves of autonomy transcending him somewhere I'll never know
only wish to be
to lay down my love, my life
my solace and my forgiveness in one sentry

on the tip of the bridge
I sink knowingly
Because I know you'll see
is it enough to suffer for you?
the less I know the better

it felt like a kiss from god
stung, swollen red and lots of
peculiarity

I move my hips in the mirror wondering if I'd look good to you
I just want comfort
it's so cold so much of the time

in an existence
chock full of unknown
I just want something to hold onto

so I'll do as you ask
I'll put your crimson hand to my mouth and pull
in
through my teeth

anything anything anything I can breath in
just to sit in a field of flowers
and feel a lively warmth radiate from within

through the turbulent toss of a coin,
time drew its arrow back like a metro bus slowing to accept sparse, fresh picked passengers.
love, mind, and my soul swim together in a psychedelic pool of
the drowned sirens of old.
When night is cold, cold like the ship brimming through ice
ice Atlantic Ocean water
Eyes heavy, warmth of sleep, drifting through dreamscapes
she comes to me and runs her salt licked fingers through my hair.
And it doesn't hurt when she bites - well,
or maybe I succumb to it like all things
but when she pulls me down into the water, it all
becomes oh so clear.
I'm here to experience, like you
and for now, I suppose that really can be all there is to it.
This morning, I woke up in the bath
Hydrated, aware, no usual withdrawal
But I can't explain all this water on my floor and walls

turn of tides, torn to pieces, I pushed you away
the pull to you - unforgettable, magnetizing, ever present
How am I supposed to dream of looking you in the eyes
for this long?

simple words, simple fall of leaves, the seasons change as they do
you grow older, wiser and fonder.
I wish the stars would tell you, my heart still aches for you every day

the snow is so white bone cold where I am.
Will I ever grow out of you?

so long, Erica - my funny nick name for you
I've been numbing this feeling of loss
of you
with whatever I can - yet you're still there every ******* time

polarizing. green, mossy pools in the forest kind of ojos are what you have.
it scares me what I'd sacrifice
to feel your palms on my stomach
if I lock eyes with you ever again, I swear to every God on this Earth that you will be mine
again, if you will
have
me.

more seeking and sinking,
more drugs and binge drinking
it's in a sweat, clawing search to find a pretty pretense.
I simply cannot evade getting lost in the mere cadence
of one with such pretty eyes.

Because we know it'll hurt - I face and bind my fate
I put my soul on show so you can freely desecrate
Because, who knows how long we have to keep going
the rapture is buzzing, ringing, and bringing
such a light white hazey dream filled clinging
to all the ways I've know to destroy and start again
to touch your soul and truly know you, to be kin
would satisfy such a deeper part.
But if anyone knows anything, it's that old habits die hard

Suffocating bursts of wind envelop me,
Like honey catching dove wings
Soft pulsing butter-fly flutter of my chest
bloomed into mute silence of love and loss of words,
and breath -

clamoring up a staircase of glass and spit,
I pondered all the contrived ways which love hurt me.
wading through the solemn sharp,
I sung a song of myself and drifted down the river of
you
My skirt plumed, drinking you all up, black sludge skipped the edges
you pulled me down, under, a pop of deflating lungs
And then - your cold dark infinite.

the only time I’d desire another infinite -
when
the walls begun humming, then whispering haunting damnations,
tethering me to this one..  
The graveyard dirt is bitter, it stings hot nips at my skin.
The suffering of love, I equivocate evasive ramblings with scar-munched knees as my lungs fill with something other than
you.

An act of defiance, a resilient tribute to autonomy.
something dredged me from the ground - thick earthy sweat smell of moss and mineral tying me to this neutral plane between life
and death.
I want to hurt for art, for Ophelia.
for a greater cause, for moments that remind me of humility
even for the force of beauty

I cannot hurt for you, for it is not worth it to me

how do I even put words to this?
Take the concepts, stitch them out of the sand into fateful constellations
I just want to touch someone, I'm so sick of words.

I remember your eyes the most.
It's so cliche. The eyes being the window to the soul,
eyes showing what you try to hide,
eyes are
what often give people away when they lie
you technically never lied to me.

but it almost makes me even more heart wrenchingly distressed when I come to the realization that
that was because you never made me any deep promises to begin with.
which, would have been sweeter
I already know, the pain more bitter, in the end,
But I think that I would hurt
for you.

I know I would
, because I've done it before.
and you know it too, Because we both were...into it.
I remember sitting in the Driver's seat kissing you, feeling so good to enjoy kissing someone again, feeling their hair, the feeling of lips to lips, lips to your neck and
nipping
around the collar bones

you looked at me like I was real.
and by that, I mean when we made
and
held eye contact,
I simply adored the assertiveness
I loved looking at
you.

sometimes,
in the grey mattered
shredded dawn
when the sky is wrecking havoc on these poor, addicted, hungry, castaway *******
it will sound crazy.

It really
will
I swear it to you

But I wonder if because I was so perpetually infatuated with your
entire
thing

maybe we somehow share telepathic thoughts,
like twins,
and you can tell that I'm thinking about you.

It's raining.

I'm not poor,
I plead the fifth as far as addicted goes
hungry?
this is a poem, I guess I'm hungry for.... the thrill of being attracted and enthralled with another human soul?
wow.

Anyway....
It's raining.
I wish you'd text me. I wish I'd hear from you. I wish things were,
different.

You touched a part of me that I don't think I can ever scrub off.
and what I'm hungry for, is more of that.
And I know you'd know what I mean.

God.
I'm so helpless.

I want to fall on the bed with him
feverishly, colliding
take this part of me that hurts, please, please
make me able to trust that it is possible to hurt
in a good way
in a way that makes you feel alive

for too long I've felt locked out of myself
trying to swim to the top of the suffocate but getting my shoes stuck on a rock underwater
kicking and thrashing like a flower blooming under time lapse
but. do you see? do you see?
I can't bloom without the sun
you cannot give me the sun

perhaps the most forlorn thing this world holds
looking at myself, seeing those who hurt me the most reflected in my face

Is it harder to love yourself when you have your mothers eyes?
Perhaps. But they are not your eyes, they belong to me, my own unique trench of blue and green
we'll say that they are from my Greek Grandfather, as he did not have the chance to make me want to look like someone different

the only power you have over me anymore is when I look in the mirror

I looked at you
You looked into me
and it's funny how there was a feeling of sincerity
Like the years of screaming fights, box springs in the street
The over-arching feeling of the heat, the heat, the heat
Is it just me or
I can swear your eyes just tied a rope around my waist and pulled me through it all,
whipped around by a horse, feet stuck in the saddle running home after last call
I see you and I know your hurt, because it is my own
And there are multitudes of actions that pain ultimately condones.
So I am sorry for it all
And I love you.

how beautifully reckless humans are
they are so afraid of the end, the great Black Death
so afraid that they use words to describe it as bleak, silent, cold, lonesome
If only they could see that nothing has to be culpable for bringing an end to things

He said,
“The way the words leave your mouth, it seems like they cascade down into a pool of your very being.”
I said,
“That is because my words are all I know how to trust.”
He said,
“Not even so.”
I said - yes, today; I can trust it.
And so I did, and so it goes.
Kurt Vonnegut was a better writer than me, and even he could realize when and how to pull the wool over someone’s eyes.

I wish to know
if humans were made to suffer.
I think the answer is perhaps just simply, some of them.
for in the world of solipsism, if it matters to you, it matters
Mind over matter, or matter over mind
there always exists a jubilance of time
to look within our selves and cast that ugly stain away;
to open your mouth & let the smell of soul-decay
find its way to me, please, for then I can recall
that I am home for once, and you can tie my wrists to a hook on the wall.
For I never find it simple or productive to trust someone who has not dipped their toes into the pools of that which eludes
me

there exists a fate within our mouths as soon as we are born.
Do we manifest into something which incites awe
or do we discontinue the reckoning days
&cry onto our cracked clay skin with severity?

Endlessless, or, freedom, is what I see when I think of you
Freedom of spirit and mind and tongue, a sharp one at that and you have this whiskey fire in you
phantom feelings leave nothing to trust or even to just
hold on to

Committed to lavish feelings of hedonistic desire
like a girl that knows wrong from right and looks at you to reconcile the two
Water, always water, placing us somewhere cold, where knowledge of shared experience can rarely push themselves on, tried
and true

And so the old saying goes, you've heard it before.
do you sink
or do you exhale in with the forced raspy mumble of when your Mother saw her first jewelry box?

The angel may dance, and holy, she may seem
and there is nothing more sweet than cathartic release of the torment you've seen

Breathe heavy in the exhale
Like a coma wrapped around your neck
and sure, no one heard the voices
or saw the chance of circular respite
Choke on your ugly and do it because you deserve it.

You're nothing but flesh and a mind drenched by solipsism and a weak sense of self
People before you questioned what the meaning of this all was, and people after you will sense the magic of your heart wrenching cries every time they walk by a mirror
that you used to
when you were 14
and the World seemed like something you could really stick your tongue into, something you could really lick from the inside

You feel like you know what it is, what is it?
It's all or nothing.
And this world is not kind to stagnate people.

burn down every word for me
better make it a brand
So I can wear my lies on my skin and kick myself to just ******* look within
make it a testament to the life I wish I had and the one
my parents fought to give to me
I'll always be empty
ruminating on the things that fill me with envy

I looked in the glass and the glass looked back,
then I slipped on a crack and whack.
ended up on my back
looking to the stars - no, to my right
and there is the thing which does delight
in hurting me so, making me feel weak
like the demons inside are the wolf and the real me is the sheep

to be small, to disappear into nothing
if I even got a call from my Brother, that'd be something
I tell myself what to do and I fall into this void
but the void likes me back, and I like this void

it wraps its claws around me and pulls my throat back
the feelings inside that stay stuffed down are unpacked
You can push them down, deny this existence
just know you feeling crazy? It's simply the exigence

The void forces me to look into the glass and crave a change,
The things is... I've already changed my name
my ways of speech and the things I say,
this growth feels less like growth and more like the void wants me to stay.

It felt like a dream that
Melted down from somewhere
An odd machination with a bouquet at the end and a collector of sea glass
who more so could recite or recall but never obtain
With my mouth wired shut in this way, I can only hope I can produce the sounds that make you sing
when you sing the clouds rumble and strike, that old connection between Earth and Man.
Lighting the wildfires and forgotten solipsism I once held along my most private lines
Isn’t funny how the people without proper assurance tend to be the most
Loquacious,
Ha.
Lucky for you, days swish off like paper from a book I’ve sat at crumpling too many times for too many days.
I’m not too sure I’ll ever really know what I’m doing here
may you never know
that this ship once lacked a full crew, bodies had fallen over to give themselves to the sea
Kelp and widgeon grass found a home in their hearts, ears and lungs
In truth, they all know
that was when the ship was strong enough to never sink

she hears the blossoming explosion of the
fragments
buzzing with faint, low light
dispersing like fowl taking flight
but a reckless song is no match
for a beautiful funeral pyre

what they don't tell you is that words are weaponry
arrows that pierce the soft muscle
they are also the great
healer.
the wet rag on a hot forehead
the little girl dancing in the kitchen to
soft ballet.

it's three in the morning,
we don't call it that
we call it,
"not being lonely."
we have this funny
little way of
calling things a prettier name to make them seem better

just so you know.
I had to walk home alone
last night, drunk off of some dumb *** and coke and high
from hitting this Girl's bubbler and blowing the smoke through her window.

My body tensed up as I happened upon it.
They call it the **** tunnel
so it already absolutely did not
have a pretty name.
The bird flying around in my chest probably would have been
just as manic
if it was just the **** tunnel I was passing through
and not
where the fight took place.

I took that pride back.
I went and yanked it out of the ground it was rotting in, when I walked through and allowed myself to feel sad.
Now, it's not some tunnel where **** is implied because of its countenance.
It's not even a place where we once fought, anymore.
no
I've scared that all away
and now all I have is the memory of you sitting there on the
con
crete
ground.

Steel toe shoes kicking through the walk way
a jig happening
vivacious sort of rhythm accompanying the ability
to change
the
world

What do you see?

A door, three of them
There are different people behind each
one

Which door do you choose?

I like to smoke,
which is to say I keep
my head high and my
eyes low

I'm scared of bugs
at times
which is to say I remember
the days that
butterflies
were birthed from my throat

you told me never to come back
which is to say if your
heart aches like a prayer
you'll always
find your way home

and I'm always on time;
which is to say I remember
the days
I was stuck
waiting for you

there is nothing more soft, close in my mind
than the mirth-full screeches that reverberate off the trees
romping around with curiosity and a marvel wonderment at the world hidden away
I haven't been there in a while, no,
just like Keats I feel more home among the palace of the faes.

If you leave behind the forest, the trees do make a sound,
even if there isn't a soul there to know what is being said
I've heard it in a dream of mine
It's the sound of child-like wonder being buried.
but just like all things rooted in something deeper,
it will take only growth to bring me back there again.

I looked down at my hands and they looked like they weren't mine
and if I did try to find the time I don't think it'd be quite easy to find
the real me - the one whose under the covers - yes,
the fragility of the lace on a wedding dress
a promise to myself and all that I am or will be,
a very dry look at my civility

so let the doves out, baby, let them spread their feathers
and when your head is gone I'm sure it will make you feel much better to know they have a chance at flight,
death
and the hunt.

being alive is odd and all, I feel the withdrawal from safety as I try to find it in cigarettes
and laughter
and *****
and the general jubilant wildness of being young
for today.

And if you from my last breath took
a lame and unprecedented look
upon my ribs of ethereal light
my blades cracked to signal flight
I could think of nothing more sweet
than to know, my love, that we shall meet
where the golden flowers grow
and it doesn't feel bad to not know.

pictures on a glass table
strewn about the place
I want to rip them up
I've got to have a taste

If I did rip them, what good would it do?
I'd still have the memories
held close by only a few

Today I cried in my car because I looked in the mirror for too long
It was awkward when someone walked by
I wanted to knock everything off of my face because it looked all wrong.

there is a certain beauty, an abundant kind of pleasure that comes with death
I know of the pain you went through, and I'll say your name until others know too.
Christina.
You liked unicorns and rap music, dressing up all fancy with gaudy rings and gold necklaces and wet n wild lip gloss.
Christina.
I know you were a practical joker. One time you smeared peanut butter on a pair of mom's underwear and showed it to her boyfriend. I can remember you snickering the whole way there.
Christina.
I know it felt horrible to confide in someone who is supposed to protect you and have them do the opposite. you were only a little girl. I wish I could time travel, so I could come and hold you and run my fingers through your soft blonde hair.
Christina.
Pregnant at 15. When I was 15, I was taking drivers training and learning how to come into my own. You had a child to think of before you even got a license to drive a vehicle.
Christina.
I remember you getting into a fight with mom and her telling you that she was going to take all of your Christmas presents back.
Christina.
If blood really is thicker than water, who was it that left you there in that crack house in Detroit?
we have our assumptions.
For someone who carried so much pain and ugly things in their heart, you sure did spread so much love and light.
Christina, my sister.
Christina, grandma's favorite.
Christina, the girl gangster who wore a unicorn pullover.
I love you, and I'm happy that you don't have to put up with the pain this life brought you.
But I'd be lying if I said I'd rather have you there than here with me.

i want to meet a very highly acclaimed french chef
but i want him to be ugly.

i want him to recognize the feeling of others walking past him and having not a clue how great he is, but making a remark on how he probably doesn't **** very much.

he'll want to turn to the speaker and yell with the force of 1000 chinese kettles screaming
"you don't know a thing! i make the best truffle oil angel hair pasta around, the girls can't keep their soft silk hands off of my body, plus you can’t even fathom the amount of money I make.”

in reality

he wishes someone were there to taste him instead of the food he makes
he wonders if his tears will make a good replacement for the sodium in the Alsatian Bacon ****
the ticket bell keeps ringing but his phone never does
and
despite all of the praise he gets, all he can ever picture is washing the dishes while She fills her belly up with his Cherry Gateau Basque

“the table in the mahogany section particularly liked their Steak Diane! great work today.”
he knows it doesn’t matter how good he can cook. he will always be ugly and ugly pairs with lonesome as much as tender lamb with root vegetables.

at night when the kitchen closes and everyone has gone home, he pretends he has his own tender lamb.

a Woman with soft skin and a heart that has been cooked at 280 degrees before

a Woman who doesn’t complain when he gets angry at himself for slicing his finger

a Woman who tells him to stay in bed while she makes him scrambled eggs and hot black coffee

And maybe she’ll feel a bit inferior with what she prepared but he’d eat it all up and act like it was the best **** meal to ever pass his lips
even better than the Foie Gras he had in France

but all of these thoughts remain dreams and he is ****** back to reality as the garbage disposal sputters and his soft tender lamb is washed down the drain with the rest of the food particles
and then it’s just him and his kitchen and the fluorescent lights and
the scent of grease.

I happen to like counting.
Mama used to say,
how many yellow flowers are there, baby?
then in middle school I counted all of my friends and
in high school I counted calories and now
now I count the beats that my heart takes to keep me alive each day
breathing in, out,
one, two.

there is more than meets they eye when it comes to you
a thick-skinned woman, loved by only a few
I hear the song that you sing and I sing it too.

If my eyes meet yours a fire will ignite
and try as I might, the urge to fight you will definitely be there.
A mother, they tell me, is supposed to care.

And I suppose you did, but all in your own way.
Now there's nothing to say as I lay here
writing this poem, to speak of my feelings when it comes to you.

You were crazy in your youth.
*****- drunk sitting in a booth
at a restaurant with your friends, ordering a burger.

Later that night, they say you hung from the balcony by your feet.
all of your friends from prior gathered and took a seat, yelling
"That Bonnie has absolutely lost it!"
But in reality, I think you found exactly what you were looking for.

I want to walk
and keep walking until I see something other than these faces and the places that are engraved in my mind

*******, the lot of you
wish I could say it would hurt to say goodbye

I cup my hand to my face
and think of a better place to be
than here

my bones feel old, soul feels old and I'm sick of being told what's right

I just want to know
I just want to know.

It feels like I'm sinking in this deep water
grabbing onto my memories and searching for
you
who knew that I would like the taste
of water in my lungs

it tastes like things not said,
a cigarette shared on a porch and a book given back to me
before it had the chance to even be read

if I drop your name like a whisper on a cold morning, full of dew on the grass and at long last
gone
will you come and pick it up?
I promise I won't tear it in two, if you only knew how much effort it takes for me to keep these promises.

my love for you looks like my parents marbled counter.
beer soaked and falling off of one of its hinges
but it still manages to stay up
strong.

there's more than meets the eye
and no matter how hard I try,
I want to love you in the ugliest way possible.

ugly like going to bed and forgetting to brush your teeth because we're too busy with other matters.
Mind is strong but my heart is feeble baby,
I am craving your steeple and the taste of unrequited love
and to hear the birds sing
like only they know how to.

Feel the light on my skin and know my love is akin to those dreams you have
when you're falling and before you hit the ground
you wake up.

there was once a man
who loved painting
he could create worlds of his own with the flick of his fingers and
every time he created something he made love to it
as only a creator getting lost in his own world can.

he painted a woman
with strong features
unlike anyone he had ever seen
eyes that held secrets he would never know,
hands that touched things he couldn't imagine,
lips that whispered to him in his dreams,
"I am as real as you make me to be."

he often would get lost in fits of drunken rage,
wondering where she was.
he knew nothing about this woman,
as he only painted the surface.

there was so much under the paint
it made him feel a bit faint
if he thought of it for too long
so beautiful, but only
to him.

after a short time, he became obsessed.
there was something so captivating about this woman, something so real
he thought that if he kept painting she could be real
too.

years and years later,
after the paintings spilled out of his home and his soul and his cracking, wrinkled hands
he felt the sun on his cheek and his body naturally awoke.
surprised, he saw that it was still night, and he found the woman from his paintings standing right there
in front of him.

the faint glow of his lamp welcomed her, and his buzzing ears rose as he smiled a crooked, ugly yellow smile.
every cell in his body relaxed
sighing
finally.
I knew it all of these years. she is real.
I know her.

she stared at him,
taking in his words not spoken,
smiled a smile not quite human
and said to him,
"I know you too."

he coughed, spitting up the phlegm of his last cigarette.
"you're all I've wanted, all of these years. I've rejected marriage for you, knowing not even the best wife could make me forget you. I've turned down high paying jobs for you, I've ate only stale bread and old beer for months for you,
I have given up so much to devote my life to making you."

she exhaled a cold and sharp breathe, and he tightened the blanket around his body.
after the room felt like it was going to break in two,
she spoke.

"yes, but was it worth it?"

he closed his eyes in a bright acrylic daze
and died
before he had the chance to tell her that yes,
yes.
it was.

I want to know where the wild ones are
the ones that have eaten gravel for all three meals of the day
know how to land a punch better than they know what they are feeling
that grin at a skinned knee and know exactly how much alcohol they can drink
before it's their cut off point
with eyes that forgot how to deny from so long of doing so.

the ones that are just a little more human than the rest of us
just a little more versed at life and
loss and
love.

the ones that have hurt before
know they will hurt again
yet still rise from the bed of expectation and
forget to make it
and carry on the only way they have learned
to.

she was all lips and hips and
empty words spilled onto the table like a jar full of house keys that didn't open any one single door.
she used to throw the keys off the table and tell me;
you aren't going anywhere because there's nothing out there for you. this is as good as it gets, this unconditional life that requires nothing from you but to exist for nonexistent purposes.
I used to stand behind slammed doors, and hear her demons growling in her ears
I remember, at first, she'd try to get them to quiet down because I was in the other room and she didn't want them to frighten me
but after a while, she got comfortable
and so did they
they'd walk into the bathroom and leave the shower curtain open
they'd puke in the sinks and leave the oven as high as it could get
they'd roll themselves up in my sheets and cackle in my closet
they'd punch holes in the wall and shatter lightbulbs
there was always evidence of them there, but I never quite saw them
for who they were.
I guess that I could say the same for her

i want to be your woman.
not your girl, your sister, or your friend
a woman.
who can breathe words that burn like placing your hand on a hot stove
yet can also bring the utmost relief with just a press of the lips.

i want to be your woman, baby
in blue jeans and a white tee
(the uniform of my femininity, with a coffee stain on the sleeve)

most of all, i want to take the worlds that bite down on your shoulders
look into them, understand them, and therefore, understand you.
then i'll toss them into the dishwasher.
i'll take them out when the cycle ends and place the polished worlds upon our dresser
so we can see just how nice it is that we have each other in this one.

so whenever you get loud and stomp around or i start swearing and crying, all we have to do is look and see.

i'm lucky to be your woman, and you're lucky to have me.

have you ever seen a ghost?
i think that one time, i actually did.
i had just swallowed a few pills
and there she was.
sitting on my dresser, quite curiously.
she told me that i shouldn't be doing that, i'm just a sweet kid. too young.
she told me that the mother we shared was not a mother at all and she didn't want me to be end up like herself,
cold and on the floor after an overdose.
i said, "i was supposed to look up to you."
and you know what she told me?
she said "sis, the pain doesn't stop, and no amount of pills can fix the glass in your ears. you must learn to cover them instead. you can't be so sensitive when it comes to her."
i kicked my dresser and told her to get the **** out.

often times i have wondered,
where is my passion?
perhaps, i misplaced it all in my stomach.
surely that's it.
so in the morning i'll do a steady crawl to the toilet
and after a few deep, earthy groans,
i'll throw up rose petals the color of your tongue
the color will cause the thorns to come as well
and finally i'll know what it's like to suffer for my art.
and because it comes up,
it must come down
so i'll stand outside in a cigarette ash stained storm and let it come down
my passion
all over me
i'll write about the journey each drop took
the way it worked through the cacophony of wind and blaring white electricity
just to land upon my freckled cheek.
maybe when i'm done i'll crumple up the paper real good and give it to a puddle.
because in this life, one must learn to never hold on to things.
but one will. one always does.

one, two, three shots
a cold basement, a cold count
the sound of laughter and half-hearted attempts at conversation
i feel myself loosen up and even get a bit
friendly
confident
i have my lover at my side and it feels like everything makes sense like
everything is supposed to be this way
this is how people like me have fun
i love how the alcohol warms and coats my throat
until
i feel my mother

(can I call her that?)

her hair, a flame of tangled curls and the smell of
men
drunk off of her and her magic
radiating inside of me
my colloquial tone begins to fall away as she
climbs
up
up
up
and i try and try
but i can’t hold her down
she is suffocating me with her illness and she whispers to me in a drunken tone
she tells me that this is the way to live

see all the people laughing, my dear?
they aren’t sad
hearing their cries boom off of their bedroom walls
trying to pretend the beating of their heart is a death drum
shuddering and shaking violently to the beat of the song at their early funeral
no,
they are loving each other and talking
in their own tongue

this is the way to find me, your mother.
to feel my liquid embrace.
warm and
sharp

so drink, my dear.
drink until you pour your insides into some stranger's toilet in the early hours of the morning.
you won’t worry about the fact that you just got sick,
and your mind has the possibility to get sick like mine did,
that every step of life could easily take a violent turn that you won't be able to stop
you will be happy that your stomach is empty and you are finally
finally
hollowed out

the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, my dear, and the past repeats itself and
i have handed you mine

so drink up.

i used to pass my fingers through the flame of my lighter when I was 10
in order to see how slow I would have to go for it to start hurting
now,
can’t you see
why I was afraid when you asked that we take it slow