I used to love
between the promise
        of forever
licking fingers -
cheap,
(road) salt fingers.


Midnight fighting fingers
    between mine -
        falling
fingers.

I miss my cocoon.
My
“don’t worry honey” hammock.
My
rouge meadow princess.
My
Honeysuckle
half full
holy hammock

princess.

My love,
this is no promise of forever.

This is only hope
and trial.
policed from earned trust
and bitter tongues,
and concrete
eskimo kisses.

Here lays I,
so I lie quietly,
No need for whiskey on a cold night,
no holy
honeysuckle hammock.
No snow princess.

I promise my paper,
I promise her forever.
And for you,
I promise now.
A partner in killing rose buds,
wilting petals that sing:
“No, look at me
please,
harbor me.”
clear as day,
with no envy.

Maybe missing you
is all I’m good for - maybe
I was made for you.

Maybe I live in
visions of past lives - maybe
I was made for you.

Maybe in five years
my body calls you - maybe
I was made for you.

Maybe, you are whole
honeysuckle love - maybe
I am made for you.

Black girl can’t twerk.
Black girl can’t handle hair grease.
Black girl is half white girl
     is
Grey girl
            is
White ******* 8 mile
     is
Black girl in cop cars
                 is
Not black enough
    is
Basking under the “Yes, there are black people in Portland” sign.

Black girl’s dad left
so white girl sits at Mormon thanksgiving.

Black girl says “wus good” to
wake up
and work with
within “welcome
to Starbucks
what can we get started for you today?”

White boy says “you a real *****”
Black girl turns around and says
“I already know.”
You’ve told me my whole life,
You’ve never let me forget it.  

Black girl
ties my hair scarf at night.
White girl does not fear the rain in the morning.

Other white girl tells me she’s
“only ******* black girls after me.”
  I. white girl answer back
“umm that makes me uncomfortable.”

Grey girl has the Beatles tattooed on her left arm,
Stevie wonder
in progress
on her right.

Black girl was not adopted
from white Momma,
grew from her womb,
still carried out misunderstanding.

Black girl wonders why white girl stays silent so often.
Black girl is screaming at herself in the mirror
too scared to scream for Jason Washington
even
too scared to scream for Trayvon
too scared to scream for anything.

We forgot “why are you always stopping me”
but remember “I can’t breathe”.
Only black boys last words are worth remembering.
Black girl
hides behind
white girl’s voice in retail and traffic stops
and phone calls.

Grey girl,
Waiting for the phone call.
The
Dad’s in jail brother is dead phone call
The
How dare you let them take credit for you phone call.

When I moved away I was a success story.
I was black magic
Detroit dame not dangerous
city girl
in the good way.
With the good hair.
With
the way in which black girl
works three times as hard
but I,
white girl,
still presents her work.

A second hit,
Green.
I’m clean
I’ll say I’m clean.

This morning I watched a girl’s heart
sink a few inches.
Through the bottom of her stomach,
past the only thing I’m keeping her around for -
It clawed through the crooks in her ankles,
and spilled out onto the sidewalk,
into pools of red,
before sinking into the earth.

My love for you,
engulfing her
suffocating her breath,
smothering out moans of my name.
Suffocating her until “oh gods” turned to
“oh...god.”

My name,
on her lips,
“while I dream about your lips,
on my hips”
like in the poems i wrote you when i was sixteen.

You killed her with memories of your tongue
.

Spitting “I’m so sorry” at me
for the hundredth time.

She died in the echoes of my shouting,
asking you if
“lonely” was worth it.
Was it a good enough excuse?

I’d  take you back in a heartbeat.
And now i’m left with a stack of apology letters
unstamped,
headed for the shredder.

Alyssa,
I’m sorry for not calling you back.
I was just writing to ask what gave me away;
Was it my inability to look you in the eye,
or did you hear me whisper her name?

Hannah,
You’re one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met.
Our time just wasn’t right.

Bryn,
Thank you for coming to see me that night,
after your late shift,
during dinner with your mom,
I owe you one.
You came clear across town to watch me cry,
all because she sent me a letter.

Emily,
God Em,
I wish I could mop your heart back up.
Suction it right back through the arches of your feet,
Guide it through your stomach,
weave through your rib cage,
and land right her within you chest -
where it belongs.

“lonely”
is a good excuse.

I’d trade a drunken uncle for five years of warmth
For a family rooted in chaos.
Your father recovered
But mine never will  (if I can still call him mine)

Envy is a deadly sin
a gateway drug
An invisible mistress

You have hand painted thighs from a boy who rearranged no
We both know him,
though you have been closer.
(LIAR)
But i'm still a fresh canvas,
Maybe a bit tattered, slightly greyed
But clean of self inflicted hatred.

I've never had to invent my own pain.
I know pre-portioned hatred
Another ******
Food lines
Bottled baths
Gunshot lullabies
Shoestring laced telephone wires.

I wonder how it feels to stand on the edge with everything to live for.
“We” don't do that
(even though I've only been halfway accepted as “we”)
I have someone to take care of.

I wonder if sleeping pills would help me too.
Packaged from white rooms with white lab coats and white skin.

I wish I could hide too
I hate that you don't have to
I hate that you'd abandon everything I’ve always wanted.

It wouldn't be the first time you pulled me away
Helped me lose green eyes
Softness
Freckles.

I’d never admit you saved me
From a breathing sunset
From midnight pain
From overdue essays
From idle hands and blood stained sleeves

Two years later and nothings changed
Except maybe you grew an inch
And I have someone new

I still count everything
Kisses throughout commercials
Staining my neck

I stopped to smell your cologne last week
Risked the sales-associate ambush
considered asking about who you've loved since.
Her hands aren't home.

We’re having dinner next week
At a new diner,
Because our booth isn't ours anymore.
And I hope you kiss me goodbye
Her mouth doesn't know me like yours.

Dry.
Evaporated from murky green water.

I hate it.
I hate you.
How can one person be strong enough to break an iron dam.

Tapes.
I made her seventeen tapes
I made you one too.

Maybe that’s me giving in.
Seventeen tapes for loving her,
One tape for wanting you.

Maybe it’s comfort, seeing my heart in your smile.
Maybe you woke me up.
I’ll preface everything with maybe.

And my god, how your hair turns to oceans
Sobering.
You’re the strongest high I’ve felt in years.

(The one where I’m feeling sorry for my cheating ex-girlfriend.0

We met the grim reaper on my 18th birthday.
He arrived to the party, uninvited,
dressed in ribbons
and legality
and student loans.  

Driving a silver Sudan
Eminem turned all the way up,
He hard braked in the turn lane next to us,
Skillfully smirking, words pulled back on his tongue like arrows.
ready to strike.

Bullseye.

There I sat, cross faded in your passenger seat, crying for the 50th time over how Brockhampton is like
The best thing to happen to rap since Odd Future.
Singing “who’s got the feeling” at the top of my lungs.
Happy.

I got a kiss at every red light.
No matter how quickly you turned away

Back then red and orange traffic lights were our dancefloor
We stood glowing in our favorite colors
Making up for every touch we could not share at prom.
I thought “god, if this barres me from heaven I’m already here with her.”  

I’d heard he always shows up at the worst times.
He, the reaper.
He’d really been there all along
In the smile of the lady at iHOP who invited us to church
In the down turned edges of mouths on waiters faces when I say,
“no, sir, we’ll be paying together”
I saw two girls kissing in the corner tonight and I only wish you were here to see it too.
I beg you come be with me.
Careful pitches “See these examples see what we can have”
Blue blood runs dry when their hearts are still soaked in red,
so no the money isn’t worth staying for.
You’re suffocating in red and right and trump signs.

She’s screaming baby, my love, pretty girl,
You are just too far,
and I am just too lonely.
We spent hundreds of days hating ourselves for loving each other.
Maybe we were too busy hating ourselves to actually love each other
She cannot meet me in the middle when she shackled to the start.

She reminds me of the reaper,
He lives inside her.
In the memories of being called a ****** at Christmas dinner.
Between picking out pears in the grocery store.
In the happiness over a haircut.
Happiness from my hands

Our breakup was not clean or neat or wholesome
It was all tears and excuses and hatred.
I still should’ve been there,
You’re the only one who understood how badly loving me hurts
I know it’s hard to love me.
To be good enough for me.
I haven’t figured out how to be good enough for myself either.

We’re Joking about how you mother thought we sat in circles
Whispering secrets, braiding
instead of pulling hair.
Now I watch as you pull yours out
Because ******* it you’re trying.
White people get away with killing kids all the time
Why would this be any different?

I’m in your passenger seat again
Asking what’s wrong, please answer me.
Where have you gone?
I’m pounding on a sealed casket
Pounding on the earth you lay beneath.
She is silent.

We held each other in pools of tears
Repeating that one day it gets better.
One day.
I feel guilty for living that truth
While you are stuck.

Yet still,
I will smile every June 11th
And wish you well.
I hope you’re still swimming
The creek we loved picked up quite the current.

Can you hear the sound?
Of heartstrings snapping? It is,
Incredibly loud.

- a haiku

If I was brave like before,
before him
we'd lay under salt.

I could replace pain with you
maybe
taste comfort again.

If I could string together letters,
pierce through their sides to
find an adequate picture of you -
press the arrow to knowing,
maybe we'd be full.
at least I’d hold my comfort.

MY NAME IS C**

      I GIVE BLOOD TO STRANGERS


I. Imagine a soul so pure.

The life she gives is held in empty fear.

She, fear,
Stands on a ledge,
Looking
down to the river
into the city,
Tracing wisps of smoke.


II. Fear is one with blood.

God weighs the damage.
For what would happen if she is spread too far?
Through the veins of the unholy
And wombs of the profane?  

The light is burning,
Smothering,
Loving.
Through the nourishment of greenery,
falling embers of cigarettes.

The light
melting comedians from cynics,
liberalism from slaves.
(Her light)
Burning girls out of bed after too many pills.

III.

She, girl,
Worries in unison.

She, girl,
Too winsome for words.

I won’t let my eyes meet the edge of your lips when you speak.
Or hear melodies in your voice,
Or
Won’t hear my heart through stereo.

It’s only happened once.
Maybe twenty-two times
That I’ve imagined a kiss from you to be...

Sorry.  

Maybe she does -
maybe,
Maybe I stopped eating because I only crave your fingertips tracing my collar bones.
If they show again maybe I’d love myself.
Maybe you’d love me too.

Maybe I only crave safety.
You
feel like safety.

Your fingers lose feeling from picking apart your brain.
Grey.
Pull out loneliness and an awakening.
The stars you wish to bathe in,
the melodies you live in,
the lips you dream of crossing - all fiction.

Strings of letters,
Ink soaked memories,
pale lilac wishes to reflect skies,
Green irises built from pine,
Nonexistent.
Intangible.

The planets don't owe you,
Not in prediction,
Not in stability.
They are content, home, radiant.
I keep time with my heel, below,
desperate,
passing.

I’m getting sick, yes.
Again, bleeding out in ink.
The loveliest death.

- a haiku.

I know now.
Every thought of weakness was preventive,
call them weak and you'll stay around -
so I’m learning to lie honestly
learning to lie for her.

I learned of a love for treehouses,
And 8 mile.
Both the Detroit and Farmington sides.
I gave up deepthroating and cigarettes for New Years.

I developed an attachment to bridges.
Morrison, Hawthorne, Burnside, Steel, Tilikum
All pacing my afternoon runs.
Ambassador.
My favorite thing about traveling is coming home at the end.

I met another soul mate, one I don’t kiss.
We read our poems between English classes,
Scrounge up quarters for midnight subway runs,
Bond over an old love of car rides and vampire weekend.
She says
Life is excruciatingly painful,
And as your best friend I’ll let you know
“I only smoke **** with you, on tuesday evenings.”
(“And I only cry in public bathrooms at noon.”)

I learned home is where the heart is,
And my heart is always with my mother
I inked our love onto my skin in June.

I know now, that ******* is less scary and more of a sad college kid thing.
(But ****** is just as scary as it seems on TV.)
I met the pigeon man on 6th and Yamhill,
Swarmed by hundreds of grey flying rats
Kissing each one on the head before setting them back down.

I finally lost my father.
It didn't hurt half as badly as I imagined it to.

I invited too many girls to stay the night.
And one too many boys.
But I never regret holding you all close because friendship is ******’ magic.
Thank you my little pony.

I learned no, you can't flush toilet paper in Asia
And yes, elephants are incredible.
That spinning on a pole makes you an artist before anything else.
That embarrassment is worth it.
That therapy is worth it only sometimes.

I learned a language where I can finally be quiet.
Admitted to
Guilty pleasures
In pop music
And fried food.
My body is a temple that can handle some mac and cheese.
And beauty is much more loving your current state than anything else.

I love my current state.
Rain, and no sales tax,
and a candlelit home.

…..And if a girl is a gun, i’m so ******* sorry.

She’s lonely on my sixteenth birthday,
I do not exist
in her world of thin skin,
freckled with scarlet beads
and conservative laughter.


I’m late meeting her.
In the name of hesitancy,
in the name of powdered armor.
Her laugh is a match box and I’m built of chlorate,
burning
lonely.
She will remain she, her,
distant.
A name is power,
her name is poison.
But she is the earth and sun and moon and blade and


no.


A name is power.
Green eyes break hearts;
green eyes broke mine.


I’m considering loving her.
A pipe dream of tangled legs,
and intertwined fingers,
and stained hollows of her neck.


I’m thinking about kissing her.
Frozen on a run down revolver,
in paralyzed time.
I’m thinking about kissing her,
and i’ve swallowed too much whiskey.


I am falling into the arms of no one -
into blonde sunsets
and creased smiles
stringing songs into confessions,  
realizing she cannot catch me.


She catches me between her lips,
between nervous kisses,
under clouds of ****** ****.


Under painted pink sunsets,
before the storm,
before the needle.

Confidence is built through quiet breathing,
through uneven tabs,
through pulling her mattress closer to mine.


I’m loving her from hospital beds and limited calls.
Tipping back paper cups
only to hold her.


I’m hurting her through letters,
writing a separate note.
I’m loving her until I die,
because breathing is too heavy.


And this is everything I’ve wanted,
she is loving me,
pressing into me - and for a moment i’m glad i’m not dead.
I am hurting her as she is loving me.
I am leaving her,
she is loving me.


We fight through six months and snowstorms,
ugly weather brings uglier words.
I am drunk and hating her,
sober and driving her insane.


I am taking her for granted,
pushing her further as she’s pulling me closer,
begging time to slow down.


I catch glimpses of her between class as we aren't speaking,
as she is falling,
and I let her hit the ground.
And if a girl is a gun, then ****,
I’m dead.


She always forgives me,
giving trust away as though it costs nothing.
I lay on her shoulder and kiss her inner thighs,
as she believes I am good.


We stop time together in the same way as last summer,
losing ourselves in lyrics, and phone calls,
and basements.
She stays when I am no longer profitable,
I am loving her,
she is teaching me.


She says she’ll never forget me,
though I wish  she would.
She is my sun, my love, my heart,
holding back tears in my driveway.

I saw the red and blue sparkle of crime.
I felt my lungs overflow.

Spilling,
words,
blood of too-much,
thoughts of too full.  
Tears constructed of *****.

Bleeding
cold,
freely,
dragging out the strength to emerge from admittance -
to find comfort
in a home built for destruction.

As the blood boiled over, spilling from my mouth,
spattering murmurs of naive hope before drowning out the cities’ cries,
I clawed through a sea of red,
light falling through fingers -
I let go.

Years of blue striped tablets
comfort in the church parking lot
bites you for getting to close.

Idolizing a sadness of sick children,
crusading on acid
Nicotine, aspiration,
the tongues of others -
who find a place in a world of unrequited love for existence.

This blur is the final fracture of bones worn thin from chosen malnutrition,
malnourishment of the skin.
Pigment.

So the reaper knocks on the back of your skull,
not to punish you
Not for
subjection to chemical poison,
but to remind you:
dreaming of her body on yours is cyanide.

Candlepins are only disguised pills
the fall, counted.
One by one, swallow. Repeat. Swallow.
Swallow.

Because spitters are quitters, right?
Spit.
It’s only good after cinnamon griffins scale your throat -
comfort in knowing it’s over.
Spit.

If it’s bitter, spit.
If it’s bitter you're too late.
You should have warned me -
the walls did.
They breathe with me,
twisting
patterned.

Because words are only patterns right?
Subtract an “s” from a “t” - keep the “o”
(only for yourself)
Draw up “weak” to steal a “k”
Steal permission.
Breathe with the walls.

Spit.
Chew, choke, spit.
Choke on the numbers.
Steal.

Emptiness, breathe.
Bitter, breathe.

If blue lines held in hands marks our end,
Blind me.
Allow me to never see our shade again.

One hundred eighty-three.

I still find boxes of our letters,
Catch your scent on my pillowcase.
Rosemary, Gardenia.
It’s become pleasant again.
(But I still can't see your shade of blue.)

Because blue blood runs dry
her lips were ugly words.

Because
I envisioned my body splayed on pavement,
Life leaving slowly,
skulls shattered on doorframes
A non-existent lust for life you promised to nurture

Mens Sana in Corpore Sano
Boys sanity in corporate security
Because his hands followed me down every hallway,
Through every lesson
Every no turned to yes turned to quietness.
all I ever learned was to be quiet.

It’s why so many combust
high - among the stars
Pressure compacted and shot into darkness
By the sound mind
The sound body
The sound of a body hitting the ground
The sound of my body hitting tile
Your hands grasping my skull.

I am not the wife she needed.
she never need a wife.
she needs a man.
a michigan man.
a medicine man.
a mans man
a masculine mass of muscle man
a man to make more little men with.
a man who watches us make out
mouths on mouths on mouths
till he finds the courage to drag **** out of his.

the first girl I slept with told me i didn’t count.
the first girl I loved is still in the closet.
the first girl I dated has a boyfriend now.

In this man’s world
she still sips, steals, stinks with liters of whiskey.
Texts me the next morning saying i went home with two guys last night and i am still
so empty.
She hides in holes of london
Hides in fear of hell
Hides and heals in me.

My love hides in middle ground
perched like a bird on the fulcrum of a teeter totter
nested in the arms of justice between the scale.
she texts me everyday
“everything has gone to ****. I wish I wasn’t too scared to make myself happy”