I take compliments,
like I take sugar in my coffee
so,
not at all

it's been too long,
since I've seen you
and I wonder
do you still find my hair?
on  your sheets, pillow, sweaters, and cushions
or have they all been picked up
and let drift into the waste bin
when did you stop finding them
when did I need to come replace them
when did it start being too long
since I'd seen you

For the past several years
I have been writing break-up poetry,
About my body
How I am ready to be finally rid of it
To totally forget about it
Find a newer better one
How I wish I could have fixed it
How I tried,
How I’m trying to cut it out of my life
Starve it out of my garden, like a ****

I have been writing sad poetry about my body
About how it is dying
And dead
How it is broken
Had all the stuffing ripped out of it
Like a crackhead’s couch
Sitting out in the yard,
Free for the taking, but wet from the rain

And I have written this poetry for too long
I have spent too much time,
Breaking up with, feeling guilty over
And sad about
My body
And maybe that won’t change
Maybe I will always wish it to be different
But maybe I can learn to love it too
So maybe I should write for it some love poetry
For The way it stands effortless, a mechanical marvel in a stiff breeze
A wonder of motion, a running straining lifting machine
That does things,
Even the most sophisticated of machines, have yet to replicate
And how the pink mush between the ears
Lights the eyes like Christmas
And turns the body,
This body, this body that I hate, this body that I need
How it turns the body,
Into me

If you’re new here
I don’t like my body
And I don’t know how many more ways I can say that
All I know is I haven’t found one that transforms me into a fairy
Haven’t found the magic words, that if I repeat three times fast and click my heels
Will melt away my visage
Make me ready for the ball

On nights like tonight,
When I really don’t like my body
I try to remember that the apples are poisoned
That taking a bite, instead of a dinner plate
Will not make me the fairest thing in the land
That running from big bad wolves
Is not about burning calories
That I shouldn’t look for big bad wolves to run from
Just to try and fit into a red cape

I don’t know how many ways to say
That I don’t like my body
That I feel fat,
Like my stomach has 7 little dwarves sleeping atop it  
Like if a prince found me in the woods, I would be the beast
Not the beauty he was looking for

So here I am,
The incompetent one in the Disney movie
While the heroines and heros are drawn impossibly small
Jasmine with her tiny waist,
Mulan in her slim figure
Elsa with her narrow shoulders
The incompetent ones,
Ursula, all darkness and big body above her tail
Russel, with his house of balloons and naivete
The Queen of Hearts, crazy off with your head woman
Even a fairy tale metaphor, can’t bibbity bobbity boo
Away my torn up relationship with my body
I guess these aren’t the magic words
I guess I don’t get magic words
Maybe I would,
If I was small enough to be the hero

People always call anxiety
Butterflies
in your stomach.

but my anxiety,
feels like a million butterflies in my chest
all trying at once to fly out
when I open my mouth

or, my anxiety
feels like being surrounded by butterflies
all pushing, flapping against me
the wind of all their wings enough to wound
and I can't breathe
because when I open my mouth,
it's only butterflies.

and Butterflies,
Butterflies can see colors we can't
peer into the ultraviolet
to the letters written on the leaves
in the shades we can't comprehend
and things we can't begin to see
you could say,
they live in a whole different reality

kind of like my anxiety
they see things that aren't there
things that other people tell me,
them,
aren't there
but like the butterflies
I can see the the ultraviolet rays
and they're coming down on top of me and,
(isn't UV bad for you?
isn't UV how people get cancer??
isn't that how people die???)

but you tell me,
I'm afraid of things that aren't there
but like the butterflies
I can see it  
I can see the other colors
only,
when I open my mouth to tell you
to say I live in a different reality,
only butterflies come out

I want all my idols to be false
All my effects the placebo kind
All my monuments temporary
My loves the fleeting type
Cause I’ve got bones of gold
And I bend easy
Impermanently made
Permanently desiring
Permanence fearing
So make all my monuments temporary
All my loves the fleeting type

You tell me that you love me
and I wonder,
if it isn't that you love me
but rather
that you don't want to be left alone
but it's so much easier
to say
I love you
than
Don't leave me
and I get it,
because it is
so much easier,
to say I love you
than don't leave me
because I said
I love you
back
when I meant
Don't leave me

fall asleep with me
in nothing but underwear
and your skin
hold me close
fall asleep, fidgeting your way
into the right curves of my body
until you fall into place
or don’t,
maybe we’re forcing it
waking up to dead limbs
but that’s okay
for now
sleep with me shirtless
so I can rest my cheek on your bare chest
feel the softness of your skin
against my hands when I pull you into me
and when we wake up
I’ll run my fingertips
Over your collarbone
And clavicle
Your shoulders and the edge of your jaw
Till you kiss me
In the early morning sunlight
Falling bright and asymmetrical through the curtains
Forming a near spotlight
And my hands on your bare skin
The applause
A spotlight to you
To your hands in my hair
To the way you look at me
When you sleep with me shirtless
And kiss me in the sunlight

maybe someday
I’ll spill my guts to you
lay out everything that has hurt me and is still hurting me
give the story behind every poem I’ve ever written and heard and loved
maybe I’ll tell you everything,
you who was not here to witness
who didn’t see the rise and fall of rome,
the death of Latin but the survival of it’s plays
you who hasn’t been here long enough for the unfurling
maybe I’ll rip off all my petals
show you the inner workings myself
maybe someday,
I’ll tell you all the parts that I leave out, when I comfort you from the same burdens that crushed me
show you all the scars on my tongue, from biting it around you
tell you the stories these scars held back
maybe someday
I’ll just simply tell you everything
introduce you to my demons
and let you see the monstrous teeth that sit in rows behind my own
the blood under my fingernails, not all someone else’s
and see what you do
maybe someday I’ll tell you everything
maybe someday I'll spill my guts to you
maybe,
maybe one day

I miss you
I know you're in there
up there
working away
chin on hand eyes on computer
and,
I miss you
I miss my hand on your chin
your hands on me
and your eyes in mine
I miss you
I miss you
just wanted to say hey
didn't want to interrupt
just wanted to say
I miss you

A small inconvenience
I am,
I’m only 5’5”

how do you bury the hatchet
but save the woodsman

My body is falling apart
I crack my right-hand pointer finger
And it gets sore, each time I do it
Crunching, more than popping
And aching as it does

The fingers on my right hand
Don’t type right anymore
The pinky, ring, and middle
All tight and unforgiving
Clumsily stumbling across the keys

My jaw,
Pops and cracks on the right side
Always sore
Always an aching sort of pain
That clicks when I chew gum
And think about talking too much

The bones
On my right foot
Don’t look quite right
They bend in the wrong places
The skin above them blue
atop sticking calcium, where the skin should be smooth

my body is falling apart
and that is a metaphor
the right side
is falling apart
and that is a metaphor
because my body is falling apart
the right
is falling apart
and it is a metaphor
it is a metaphor
god
It is a metaphor
A broken metaphor

do you have some time to ****
to leave ****** on the floor
while my bare feet will dance around it
avoiding the pools
or stepping in them
to make art on the hardwood
out of happiness and the touch of my skin

do you have some time to rot
to bury in the backyard
where we lay in the grass
and I play with your hair on my lap
and the sky cradled laid upon my thighs

do you have some time to spend
the clink of quarters tumbling out of my laugh
as I shake pennies from my hair
leaving copper on your pillow, your sheets, your floor
the sheen of a dime in the light of my eyes
your skin, soft as a worn paper bill

do you maybe,
have a little time

Tonight I am lonely
Tonight I am opening and closing
And opening and closing
Every way I talk to people
Every app and site
Every link I have to connection
But still,
I say nothing
Considering all the words at my finger tips
Not ones that will be enjoyed by others
My company only an encroachment
Onto someone else’s peaceful evening
So I close
And open
My door to the outside
But still stay in
And stay lonely

I crave every life that is not my own
and wonder
why nothing fills me
the way I believe
being you would

I cannot cry with glasses on
Cannot shake the tears out of my eyes
Can’t drag them out by their hair
With glasses on
So I put my glasses on
Because I cannot cry with glasses on
And I do not want to be crying
So I sit in front of my computer
My fingers typing faster than my mind is racing
Just to keep ahead of the game
Because I cannot cry if I am working
So I keep my to-do lists long
And the obligations overflowing
The pressure never ceasing
Because I cannot cry if I am working
I cannot cry if I am working
Even if the working is hurting me
Because I cannot cry if I am working
I cannot cry if I am working
I cannot hurt if I am working

I am digging down
Pushing dirt and rock and seed and grass
Up, out, behind
Up, out, behind
Away from the surface
The light and color and noise and flutter above
Down, in, behind
Down, in, behind
With earth’s heavy insides
And my head and shoulders and fingers and feet
Move further and further
Towards the warm, holy center
The soft light and heat
Away from the blinding, the deafening, and unbearable above
To the below
Where all is quiet,
Just the heartbeat of the earth,
Cradled in the womb of a planet
Where nothing is hurting,
Here,
Beneath the dirt

and today I feel
so very tired
of feeling so very trapped
so very locked
in tiny bird-cage cages
that I am so very very tired of

My friend the feeler
Tells me to stop thinking
To follow my intuition
As though thinking,
Has not been how I’ve gotten myself this far
Like telling a runner
To stop using their legs
To cross the finish line
To walk on their hands, if their feet are tripping on the dirt.
I tell my friend the feeler,
That I’ll try
Knowing full well that this is not something I can accomplish
I am a thinker,
I know my strengths
What I am good at
And I know where I fail (though I loathe to,
and never will, admit it)
So I tell her I’ll try
Not that I can’t,
Not that I can’t stop thinking
Can’t stop using my legs,

But that I’ll try
Because I am a thinker
And I know that learning something new isn’t impossible
Just hard

Why do I insist
On steeping myself in melancholy
On sleeping atop tea bags
And in jars of coffee grounds
Then wondering why the sky is dark
And the taste bitter

We’re out for a walk on an unusually warm fall afternoon
On the street corner we wait on
A faded poster is stapled to the wood of a telephone pole
She tells me,
That lost dog posters make her feel sad
That somebody somewhere, is missing their fluffy little guy
And that they probably won’t find them
Because when did a poster ever do any good
Dogs are like people,
She says
If you don’t find them in the first 24 hours
They’re more than gone
The poster, is a last ditch effort
At finding something you lost
And it isn’t really an effort
As much as it is a scream into the void
A wish that others will acknowledge your pain

I wonder, if she likes me
Because she thinks I’m a lost dog
She never saw the poster for
So she took me home,
Gave me a bowl and some water
A soft warm place to sleep and two walks a day
A cuddle at night when the lightning is heavy
I wonder If she sees me as missing
From somebody else
So she took pity on me, and took me in herself
Was my dating profile
My lost dog poster
Did she see the name and number, what I answered to and what I liked
What I was wearing on the day I went missing
And know that no one would find me, why else was there a poster
Thought if I didn’t have a place,
Well wouldn’t a dog be nice?

Why do I feel
Like I've just inherited
The body of someone who's done something
Worth being praised for
When all I feel
Is like something made of paper
And peppermints
All sticky and clingy
And fragile and flimsy
Why do I feel
Like I do not belong
In this praise
Like it is not me
They are talking about
Like it is someone else
Like the greatest game of switcheroo
And old 2000s movie
Like the ones I watch
To try and not cry for and 1 and 40mins

What do I have to do
To be made of iron again
To be made of polyester
Never rotting never dying immortal
To be made of wood
To be solid and warm
When all I feel
Is made of paper
Like the wrapping
For a gift I'm not

“don’t do it,”
I say, to the brown eyed best friend opposite me
“don’t ever love anyone. Not ever.
It’s how people get hurt,
Believe me
I saw what happened to the others.”
Her brunette waves bounce in an agreeing nod,
“just,
just promise me you won’t.
Okay?
just, promise you’ll focus on you”
there’s a stunted wavering, to my tiny voice
as I try to find the words to match my conviction
“Don’t get distracted.
You’ve gotta make something of yourself.
Something real big okay,
I know you can.”
her chin drops and she averts her eyes at my praise
as though she doesn’t know yet, what she’s capable of
“You’re going to be something real big,
Just, you can’t do that with anyone else
Okay?
So, don’t love anyone
They’ll only get in your way”
Your better than me
You can’t let anything get in your way
You’re supposed to be something.”
At this,
Her lips turn from cupids bow to longsword
And she scrunches up her freckle frosted nose as her eyebrows knit themsleves into a sweater
“So promise me,”
I say, scooting closer,
“Promise me you won’t care for anyone.
Not even me,
Not even me. I’m not good enough.
no one at all.
Just be the best.”
She nods, defiantly agreeing
To the plan
though looking away in discomfort
I catch her eyes, not done yet
not satisfied with her response
“Pinky promise?” I say, Extending my nail polish chipped baby finger
To hers
an unbreakable pinky promise
to be doubly sure no one will break her

she extends her
Nail polish chipped baby finger towards mine
And I reach for her,
crossing the distance between our hands

until I hit the mirror