Your body was wonderful.
I could cup your hipbones in my hand
and sip wine from your collar bones.
thin
slim
and beautiful
You cold never understand why I was jealous.
Until you saw my body through my eyes
rippling thighs
and curved stomach

~j.c.s

My reflection shows in the mirror and
my rib cage protrudes from my skin
my hip bones jut out.
My hands run over my skin before I pull
a shirt over my head and pants up my legs.
You used to purposely freak me out.
You would **** in and skin would almost dissolve under your bottom rib.
You wanted me to stick my hand under your ribs, pressing into the dissolved skin.
That's the only part that freaked me out, pressing under your rib cage.
I didn't care that you could **** in and have your ribs show one by one.
I didn't care that you had me feel the dip in your sternum.
You used to pull your sweatpants down your thighs when you sat down.
There would be a skinny slot that the shorts you wore underneath and your boxers would leave because they hung onto your bulging hipbones.
I was to get over you.
I didn't fall for you until you showed your interest in me.
Finally, I began to like you in a way I never planned.
I was to get over you
that was the plan.
But you still have my head spinning
thinking I was stupid enough to fall again
and
here I am,
writing you a poem,
because hard work to keep myself in shape
even reminds me of you.
I guess I'm able to say life was about living for the night when I was with you
because talking to you alone got my mind off things and allowed me to have fun.

Forever beautiful until I saw you in raw sunlight
and realized you didn't shine anymore
you told me you would always love me
and ever since then I can’t believe anyone

I hate April now
it’s one of my least favorite months
and I blame you for that

One of the last times I saw you in your
beautiful tall pale freckled naked frame
you were inside of me and
you looked somewhere at my chest and
said you loved me

But you could not look into my eyes

And about ten minutes later when I was
resting my hipbones on yours
I started to cry

And instead of holding me close
and drying my eyes
you pushed me off
pulled on your pants
and left

and that was when I realized you are a
fox with a stone cold heart
incapable of caring for anyone

Much less loving them

this kind of readiness to leave
everything behind
is protruding
as much as I've always wanted my
hipbones
to

i dream of silk and black lipstick, leather and ice-burn
i fashion thoughts into clouds of smoke i ghost out of my mouth
into necklaces i will only ever give to you; you
are burnt russet bitten lip bleached bone coalesced into
constellation; you burn brighter
than any constellation i have ever breathed

i dream of your hipbones; stretch marks flicking over them
like lightning glimpsed between fingers; like wishbones silently pulled apart
in promise; you are wishbone you are gold plate you are sunshine
through a stained-glass window; my heart is glass
a cemetery to your footprints a cathedral to your broken
dreams; i can taste the honey in your scattered thoughts
like a prayer on my tongue
i dream of deep purple and yellow and green and
black and fading bruise and blood
at the corner of your lip; i can taste iron in your breath
rotting in my dreams slow-burning ice in my veins; vengeance
is a dish best served cold i know
that if i unfurl my skeleton and tuck you into the spaces between my
ribcage and my lungs you will taste just as sweet

i dream of ruby emerald sapphire in brooches pinned onto black i
think of the bruise-giver of the blood-spiller of cracks in my
ribcage of wishbones of constellations of iron-taste of ice-burn of you of you of you
and i let you in
and i am cathedral i am cemetery i am bonfire i am in l o v e
with constellation

My hipbones rock me on the wooden floor 
Protruding from my frame 
Skin bruises from simply laying on my stomach
Yet I am not skinny
 red lines mark where the folds of my stomach have been, 
my arm like wings 
my thighs hugging each other tightly
 stretching occasionally my eye catches the reflection of a stick like woman I can't recognize in the dark window until I realize she is me 
as that settles in my true details fill in 
morphing the strange woman into the ugly that is me. 
Striving to become the strange woman that once was 
I shove a finger down my throat

the body of this poem is about two bodies, sometimes poetic things are ***** and sometimes ***** things are poetic things under the dirt of what i'd been taught my whole life about my virginity. i was told that if i lost it i wouldnt be able to find it again. i was not told about a boy, tall and skinny and blonde, blue-gray eyes, i was not told that i would kiss him, i was not told that my kiss would be his first. i didnt know at the time that summer would collapse into one moment, i could never have guessed that two crazy transgender boys could coincide with virginity as strongly as we pressed our bodies together. i was fourteen years old and my body was a choppy pencil sketch of anorexia and rib damage, of breast tissue and scar tissue, of anxiety and hipbones. he was fifteen years old and to me he was beautiful, everything strange and weird in our brains was erased and forgotten, fogged up with our heavy breathing. i am wrapped up in firsts and lasts and the first time was not entirely the world-shattering that it was built up to be, we were built up, and then i forget why we stopped. but we stopped. but we stopped being far apart and afraid to tell each other how close we wished we were. we learned how to commit heavy sins, the kind that make you feel good. we learned that our relationship is textbook unhealthy, but unhealthy people means unhealthy partners means unhealthy- means *******, we are trying our best and *******, this is what love means. this tangle of fingers. we learned that we have to not only have secrets but become them. we didnt have to be taught what it feels like to need someone. we didnt need to learn how it tastes to be absolutely sure of something.
my entire life i was taught that i should save myself for a man, but instead i let go of myself and loved a boy.

I will carve into my flesh,
Whittle it away down to bone.
It's not about beauty,
Or wanting it to be gone.
I just want to control
The only thing that is, truly,
My own.

"Everyone wants to be a little anorexic" she says

"You know, like, in a glamorous way, like fashion friendly anorexic"

I bite my cheek and nod, pretend to agree

All I can think of is waking up to stars dancing on the ceiling

Pale skin with bruises of unknown origins

And battered feet on and off the scale

Almonds in Ziploc baggies

Bite marks on fingers

Hair down the drain

Measuring crunches by the marks they leave on your spine

And battered feet on and off the scale

Enough water to turn organs into boats

Eating an apple with a fork and knife

Desperate hands grasping for ribs

And battered feet on and off the scale

Standing and the world going dark

Coughing around shots of apple cider vinegar

Carrying an emergency rice cake for weak spells

And battered feet on and off the scale

Enough green tea to drown organs

Sugar free gum to mask the smell of decaying organs

Whatever nail polish covers yellow and purple

And battered feet on and off the scale

How many calories are in toothpaste

Thinspo blogs

Pillows squeezed between thighs

And battered feet on and off the scale

Is today the day my heart gives out

Waking every day in a new body

Fingers clasped around wrists

And battered feet on and off the scale

Notebooks filled with numbers

Purple crescents under eyes

Fingers clasped around forearms

And battered feet on and off the scale

Elbows knocking into hipbones

Being scared of your own reflection

Lies to get out of dinner

And battered feet on and off the scale

The stench of *****

Oxygen that tastes of Splenda

Fingers clasped around biceps

And bleeding feet on and off the scale

 

If this is your idea of glamour

Then you can have it

Upon your leave my body crumbled.
The doctors said thyroid things but I found it
poignant that you took ten percent
of my body weight and half my hair
when you went. My teeth broke,
but now you're back, and as I stood blind drunk
in your kitchen you said kind words to me
that I don't really remember but I know
in my heart they didn't fix me.

Two chicken strips
and half an order of fries
and my stomach hurts like hell.
You tell me
that I need to be strong
more so now than ever
because falling apart will have
dire consequences.
I'm not sure which would be stronger:
Restricting my appetite further,
or giving in to the temptation of
more than one or two small bits of food
per day?
Whether it is braver
to suffer through the pain
of chewing and swallowing,
or to attempt to curl myself into nonexistence
behind a locked bathroom door?
Is it stronger to work for hipbones
thigh gaps
sipping wine from my collarbones
pointed curves and sharp edges,
or to "accept" my thighs
my stomach
the way my skin covers my hipbones
to the point of indistinguishableness,
barely being able to wear tight shirts
for fear of how my abdomen looks,
I promised a week.
I promised a week
but all I can think about is
the control that I'm lacking
wondering if it's not food that I'm starved for
but self-hatred
and self control.

I’ve gotta go home and clean,* you say.
Clean my scent from your sheets,
I want to tell you
Come closer, baby,
Untangle my limbs and
caress me down,
orchestrate my symphonies.
Didn’t you see the stars, too?

I remember your breath all
over me
and how I tasted my very existence
within it.
I remember seeing infinity
in the golden hazel of your eyes,
those **** bedroom eyes,
soothing me past my boundaries,
hands pushing past my hipbones
and into my infinity.

And I want to tell you that I still taste
your lips on my tongue
and I still feel your teeth grazing my skin but
I don’t tell you any of these things.
I look you dead in the eye
those bedroom eyes, boring into mine.
I wonder if you’re playing back the scene
you moving over me
and I say, Okay.

Our whole existence
narrowed into one word
and in that moment I think I hate you
but the thought of your hands on me
still makes my sun rise each day
and I wonder if maybe
I love you in spite of
all the things telling me not to.

my first wedding will be a seance because
there is always destruction in my wake
and my words only make sense in your mouth -
i put a ******* hurricane behind your lips
and went silent when you ripped apart
i slit my throat over your coffee and i
think i understand now
why you didn't flinch
(someone is using you and i told you not to be so ******* gullible
and you said -better to be wrung dry,
better to be used to death
that to leave anyone
alone-)
lypophrenia lypemania lyssophobia i find it fitting that lysis means both
recovery
and the destruction of cells
because you said i saved you every day while i watched you
erode
slowly
i gave you love and told you it was armor i'm
so sorry for all the holes in your chest cause i
set you against yourself you tore out your heart you cut off
your left arm
to make more room for me
(you said to me
-i'm not as masochistic
as you think
and i don't pretend to be some sort of *******
martyr
but everyone has a purpose and mine is to be used-)
i've got mouth full of blood and fading anesthetic i need a distraction i hate
thinking about myself because
(i am caught between conflicting states
of lies
and nonexistence)
burn my fingers on a lightbulb and think of you,
trade numb limbs for phantom pain and try to learn to walk slow
to let your ghost catch up to me,
let anxiety pool in my calves so you don't feel so alone
let panic return to my diaphragm so i don't leave you behind
(you asked why i walk like i'm running from
ex friends ex memories ex selves
as long as i move i don't have to think i'll sweat out one more lie and never think of it again
i'll keep my teeth clenched so my diaphragm is a prison)
oh treachery! fraud!
i say so many words and don't know what any mean,
i take an oath for a god whose face i've never seen whose hand i've never held and whose scent
could not compare to
the smell of you in my bed the
smell of your shampoo in the rooms you haunt,
you lie limp on the floor and tell me stories of
jesus,
love and life
who fed himself to the hungry until he was nothing
-my body, my blood- you say
-my body,
my blood,
sustenance for the weak,
nourishment for the starved-
your hipbones through your skin (maybe you should feed yourself) i say
and you laugh
(someone is using you don't make me say it just don't be so naive
someone is using you i am using you you are the vessel for my violence and
emotional death is less apparent than physical and sometimes
you don't
realize
that you've been dead since october)
my first wedding will be a seance.
we will say our vows through an oracle
i dont need anything but proof that this ghost
will haunt me.
this ghost will remain and their scent will fill the room.
this ghost
won't believe when i lie
when i bleed into your coffee,
do not drink.
watch the ph rise like floods.
wait for my apology.
when the haruspex tells you the future is bleak,
believe them.
leave me.
make armor from discarded wedding bands.
do not be used again.

I am just your average sinner,
sly glances say, I am second chance, time around .
I spin mediocre wildest-dreams
in rundown hope hotels
I am just a pretty sinner with a
dusty trail of lust
like green pollen in my wake.
A vehicle of possibility
to all the places we can drive our devils,
with cocktails and vague musician
who lean back on wooden chairs, against walls of fading paint.
with tables for sins
to be laid out like Thanksgiving.
My sins are neon signs in yellowed rooms,
My sins are rusted cans kicked in old beach towns.
My sins are hot pavement under cracked rubber tires rumbling above.
My back arched in a prayer to the sky.
The rise of my hipbones like majestic mountains.
My sins leak from my eyes. First one, then another.
Down, Down they fall
I fall to my knees.
They fall and I curse them for leaving me too.
I fall to my knees like the traveler who has journeyed too long,
On my knees and  I kiss the dirt of home.
I am humbled and groveling...within my sinning.
And I pray a much louder prayer. I am a much humbler servant, with much to forgive.
I wear my sins like a raincoat to keep me dry from all the
good intention and 'well-deserved!' that might be coming my way.
I twist my sin into a paper flower and wear it in my sinful hair next to my sinful eyes by my sinful mind.
I am just your average sinner
Dreaming of living a better life someday.
Praying to be a better me, someday.
Someday is a funny place to live
With towering hopes
and skyscraping desires scratching at its sterile walls.
No, not for me.
I am just your average sinner...
with extraordinary sins.

You filled your skin with sharp lead and your arms with cigaret burns, without any screams, but with the blue mass that touched your cheeks. You used to think, that to put on a massiv amount of black eyeliner, would hide the fact, that you couldn't sleep at night. And you used to think that starving yourself, would make you feel just a little bit better about who you were, but all you ended up with was a stomach you could fit your hands around, collar bones that stuck  far out from your skin, so they could break at anytime and your hipbones were like knifes, that could slice a man open. You used to do and think so many stupid things, and you were just this little self-conscious girl that needed to be loved and accepted by someone. That little girl is still inside you, but you have learnt to control her and say no when she wants to play.

It is 7.30 and I am still thinking about the way our hands slotted together like days of the week, normalcy perspiring in the air behind us.
It is 7.31 and I am still thinking about your cheekbones, collarbones, hipbones. I am still thinking about your bones. You haven't returned my phone calls in a week.
It is 7.32 and I am still thinking about forest fires.
It is 7.33 and I am still thinking about clocks ticking and how it's kind of funny how we are always counting the days we have left, instead of the days we have.
It is 7.34 and I am still thinking about how my apologies never really cut it.
It is 7.35 and I am sorry.
It is 7.36 and I wonder how hard it is to tie a noose.
It is 7.37 and I am still thinking about the normal length of a pause when you're telling someone you love them, too.
It is 7.38 and I love you, too.
It is 7.39 and I am still trying not to think about how loud the doorbell echoes in the entrance hall now.
It is 7.40 and I am still thinking about the absence of stairways.
It is 7.41 and I am still thinking about hunger pains and alleyways and the warmth of your hand on my spine.
It is 7.42 and there are some things you can't say to other people but holy ****, I miss you.
It is 7.43 and I'm sorry again.
It is 7.44 and I am still thinking about short hands on clocks.
It is 7.45 and I am still imagining footfalls landing heavy on the carpet outside my bedroom and trying not to hope they're yours.
It is 7.46 and I hope they're yours.
It is 7.47 and I am still thinking about the glass in my ribcage digging in harder than your fingernails ever could.
It is 7.48 and I am still thinking about the way our hands slotted together.
It is 7.49 and I'm sorry again.

Teeth, rib cages
Hearts, hipbones
Broken thrones
The enigmatic victory of horsefly contempt
Condemned fireflies in midnight sky
Social butterfly and awkward moments
Forced to live with baited breath
Exhale, inhale
Suffocate withering strands of hope
Embellished livestock
Wall street cattle
Compulsory impulse
Genetic malfunctioning solitude
The zenith is reached
Downfall is all that’s left
Watching with wonderment and sealed hearts

Black box breaking
Slowly breaking
Slowly
I saw the cracks
I saw them ripple down her back
I saw the freeze and thaw of nations
The renaissance and death and renaissance
I saw the wealth and worth of world powers
I saw them crumble
I was there
And I am here
I read it all and wrote it down
I saw it all and wrote it down
I kissed the survivors and wrote it down
I saw the earth in its entirety
I fell in love and vomited and fell in love
I saw her in her emptiness
I saw her sway in the winds
The winds grew cold and colder
She grew old and older
And so distraught
Mangled
Destroyed
Derailed
Demolished
Stripped of poise and polish
Stripped of it all
I saw her disintegrate
I saw her fall
Still I,
I still
I always standing
Watching still
Always seeing
Standing and seeing, I
Drinking tea
Calm, cool, collected, serenity

Now your turn
You see me
See me walking down the street
See my waist-long wavy hair
Blonde and sparkling in the sun
Lipstick smile
Hipbones and cheekbones chiseled and deadly
Long leg strut down the runway
Of center town sidewalks
The world is my oyster
See my backpack full of alphabetized books
Handwriting neat and perfect
Pen behind my ear I’m ready
For all of this
See me smoking cigarettes out my dorm room window
Listening to Mozart
And smiling fully when the strings jump in
See me on the park bench reading
Long Russian novels
I inhale the pages like heartbeats
In-hale
Ex-hale
In-hale
Ex-hale
Breaths and beats fully synchronized to the flipping of pages
And to the Metronome Mozart wrote me.

Don’t be deceived
I made my world and destroyed it and made my world
Independent to a fault
I made my living off stitching together broken bones
And melting old forgotten thrones
Sculptures that said I needed no one
No one could keep up anyway
I ran too fast
I ran all day
And kindof expected someone to care
But no one ever has
I was never worth the trouble
Pull me out from my own rubble
And kiss me if you can
No one knows my secret plan to live an embarrassing convention
All this glass is just pretention
I glued it together myself
I wrote my own pamphlet for self help
I pieced together my own face
I sculpted my own form and adorned it
I broke my own heart and mourned it
I arrived and left and arrived
And here I’ll stay
Black box breaking
Slowly breaking
Slowly
I saw the cracks
I saw them from the start
Death and renaissance and death
***** and love and *****

In your Sillouette,
Painted Gold, against Magic Curtain.
This Oz Stage, Hiding our bodies.
I am lingering.

You are gilded beautiful
Bare ******* pointed at Chandeliers
****** Capstones sealing perfect Arches
I am a foot protruding from your sculpture
In mustard.
I am that blot behind your Hip Bone

Cold Draft from the window
Opened Opposite the Magic curtain
A breath of ocean waves
Our bodies casting illusions
In ripples of Moonlit fabric
Dancing around our sillouette.

Black Moss collects in the shape of your tattoos
Silk screen thighs,
Underbust Corset

where the breeze whispered

where my fingertips wrapped your hipbones.
growing where we Calloused
In our Roughs
In our trenches
Rubbing Leather against Silk

You invested in our common interest.
A mirror, Fastened to the Ceiling.
Reflecting Our Two Loudest Vices.
Ownership,
And your body.

I love the Chips in your paint.
I hate the man who painted you.

infected by Tunnel vision Voyeurism
Sick with a Spiderweb brain
Spinning from your imperfections.
You are so, perfect.

Artists come from all over
To watch the magic curtain.

Your Golden arching Back.
My Mustard Toes.

we all look at you,
even you look at you.
we do not Blink.
Just stare, position ourselves.
behind this curtain.

Our callouses grow like the black moss
bodies marble under ocean pressure
erode from the chill winds
Your archaic exhibitionism
Carved From Counting Gazes
Mustard eternally pondering
why our sillouettes, different colors
Drawn by the same moon,
Casted on the same cloth.

Every other guy before you,
somewhere between midnight conversations, interrupted by coffee stains and the dreams that woke me up to talk to them, I fell in love.  One listened to history podcasts to fall asleep. One made me skip class so he could drive me two hours out of town and show me the home he grew up in. Another, used to draw my hands on pamphlets hidden under the pews at the back of the church. And each of these things is the seed, sun, and soil for my affection which maybe you understand, because someone does something you respect, admire, and want and all of a sudden, bam, they're so much more than they were before. And with every single person, I realized. I realized I was in love with the presence of their words and the feel of their existence.
But I did not love them.
I met you, and you wrote love stories on my flesh with your finger tips, and I saw your eyes groan with exhaustion in the morning, and you taught me how to be a bigger, better, stronger person. Every day with you feels like a Sunday morning with crisp bedsheets and lazy smiles, and you took me until my life wasn't mine anymore. You took me as a hostage, you got inside my head, piece by piece you disassembled my suit of armor and showed me how to love a person, rawly and deeply and I could never be the same after that. I loved who you are. The way your hands held my hipbones and your lips stole the end of my sentences, when we would drive home from the beach in your car the sunset would be blossoming with love. I don't know what to tell you, other than a giraffes heart ways 22 pounds, and when flies fall in love their entire brain is rewired to only knowing loving each other, and when one dies their memory goes blank. And my loving you was never about what I could get out of it, or what you could make me, but how full I could make you. And if I can't love you as a lover, I will love you as a friend, or however the song goes. But I know what I need in this world, and it's hidden behind your knees and in your hair and sometimes sits between your shoulder blades. And I know sometimes you can't decide if you want to *******, break down and cry, or eat a whole pizza but the entire spectrum of who you are reflects all the pages I could fill with the reasons why you are a spectacular person, Adrian, and you are the one, sealed with a kiss, you are my sun and stars, my stormy night, and you are stained onto my skin like the scar on my knee.

And with my ****** and romantic "experience," that you think I have more of, I promise you no one could fill the space you left. And even though what I gave you and how I loved you might not be what you want, I can also promise you no one will feel like that about you ever again. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing, you decide. And even if I don't have you, I will have every single memory. I will have the drive-in, I will have the row, I will have lying in the grass outside my house, holding you. And I will never forget what you made me.

Note to stranger:

Don't let her long eyelashes fool you
Stemming off from eyelids filled with promise
Pupils composed of green and brown paint
Mixed and made permanent by the look on her face when you ask her what love means to her

Because to her
Love is an antique promise
Tic Tac Toed into her shoulder blades
Another lost game

Lonely is made apparent by the reveal of her hipbones
Sticking out from the belt loops on the waistband of her dreams
Her clothes become looser

She is welcomed by friends to parties that she refuses to go to
Because even in a room of people
The only emotion she is capable of feeling
REALLY feeling
Is lonely

And you may argue that lonely is not an emotion
But a state of being
But when she truly feels it
Lonely becomes both

Discolored tulips growing for a flowerpot of unfertilized dirt
Masked by a smile that could fool anyone
Even her own father
Sometimes even herself

Mascara stained floor tile
Quick change scenes
Equivalent to her multiple personalities
Sad happy sad happy
Sad...

She is capable of being both sad and happy
She is introverted AND extroverted
She is 5 million different people
Sometimes wishing she could narrow herself down to just one
She is ME

You dipped into me like a pool
you hadn't swam in all summer, a hole
in the back of your mind you almost forgot
was still there. It was as if you predicted
the big splash, the droplets like crystals
I could see through to your heart, reading
your feelings like a bestseller on a lounge chair,
basking in the sun on the side. You broke
through my surface with your hands, those hands
that strip me down to just my tan
and hold my ribs like a steering wheel, driving
our bodies together as I kiss the chlorine
from your lips. I'd wrap you up in a towel
just to trace the ***** of it from hip to hip,
use that momentum to tell you
how much I love the way your smile looks
when you think my eyes are closed
as we lay on top of the sheets with a fan
circulating in the limited space we leave between
my baby sundress and your khaki shorts,
our bare feet playing with each others toes.
I like the way your hands feel in my hair,
pulling it down the line drawn on my back
with your knuckles, landing in the dimples
of my back like a raft, floating
on the feeling suspended in this moment
where I bite your lip and you sigh into another kiss.
I like how it doesn't get dark until eight,
how you make little circles around my hipbones,
the sound of your laugh as it bounces off my own,
smiling into another push as you pull
my heart over yours into the shade to cool.

You were born bone
I became tattoo
flesh tethered your scaffolding
Under my beautiful scars

Thin paint, Stinging red
Constellations of wings
Left them with fingernails
Your soft shoulderblades
snug under pale skin

A bit lip tease soft blonde hairs one by one
Down tips underneath
the divet in your neck.
I admire the canvas of your spine back to me, all red wing stinging.
Ready to fly off
Moving thigh and held
Shifting maroon blankets.
My mouth smirks
Attempts to hide how desperate
To taste it is.

Sweet bird. Sweet angel.
Awake all night
With a tattoo of an arrow
And her hand
Pressed to her forehead.

A glass of water.
Towel held like a childs blanket.
Still white.
Even used, it is still fresh linen smell.
We are still fresh linen smell.
Your hipbones agree.
My thumbs asked them.

I kiss your feathers gentle and let them burn softly as I trail down.

Your whimpers send me skyward.
Lighter headed now
Tight cheeked.

More rustled blanket
Your thigh dances over hipbones.
I feel the tethers between bone and canvas
Scar and silk.
Warm in these wings
Stars in this constellation.

If there’s Heaven and there’s Hell,
show me where I belong.
And if my place is not in either,
help me burn them down.*

I.
I don’t know where we’re going or what we are
or who we are and I don’t know the right questions to
ask; and even if I knew I wouldn’t know the answers
and I wouldn’t know anyone who could actually provide
an explanation for why it is all like it is. I am insane
and maybe you too are and we stand on shores but  
my shore is not your shore and is there even water
on these shores and why am I drowning. I think
I’m underwater and maybe we all feel like we’re dying
or like we’re already dead. I just understand that
learning how to swim and how to breathe and how
to live are the things my parents did not teach me
and all I feel is salty air but my lungs are decrepit
and how do I take a breath when the air is full of poison –
the one you’re emitting and the one I’m emitting,
and aren’t we all just so toxic?
So I’m knee-deep into water but I cannot force
my lungs to work, and I’m waist-deep into water
but they still don’t work; and now my body is
feelingless and floating and I don’t know
how to live. Do you? Does any of us?
So we just let go there on the shore;
it’s sanity and it’s stability and it’s safety all gone.
I knew all the answers but then I grew up
and so did you.
We were metaphors and the world spun around
so now we are just malaphors and we’re ****** up.
How do I explain to you, to anyone that I am drowning
even when I can swim and that I am dead, my eyes
reflect the light; they do not shine, I have a pulse,
I breathe but I’m so not alive
and I am drowning ashore, I am away from the water
and still underneath waves that crush my fragile skeleton
and make me crumble to dust.
I used to be a metaphor but I’m a malaphor now
and I will burn that bridge when I get to it.
That is, if I haven’t yet drowned.

II.
I lie on the floor and boards are creaking and what is
wrong with me and with us and with everyone.
The dog is howling and there’s a silent cat but he’s
not chasing her and she is tired of chasing mice so she
just wants to die but the dog cannot bite and I keep lying
with snakes wrapped around my limbs and I am poison
and I ache. When did friendships become all about lies
and deceit and manipulation? When did I lose myself
in the world of masks? When did it all become about
sexsexsexSEX? Why is it all about who ***** whom
and why do we all want to die? When did we realise
that suicide is a way and how did we find out?
I hear noises and I drown in music and I scream
until my throat hurts and my lungs ache and I
keep thinking WHEN DID I DIE and why
is there no God, I need redemption and don’t we
all crave to be forgiven? I cut, you cut, we cut,
it’s not grammar, it’s life, we don’t do it for attention,
they all cut and we all cut, don’t we, with rusty little
blades ripping ourselves open, letting the pain flow
like red rivers on the floor and we think it’s okay
to carry our scars not like badges and medals of honour
but like shameful reminders of how useless and
worthless we are, and we cut hipbones and thighs
and we cut between ribs and we scratch and bleed
and drown in pure, unbound hatred that comes
straight from our vicious poisoned hearts
and we cut where it can’t be seen because just too many
questions that we’re not willing to face. And we all
write poems about how we want to slit out veins
open, how we want to slay our wrists and crumble and
diedieDIEDIEDE. Why do we want to die, why are we
the ****** up generation who thinks about ****** and solecisms
half of the time and death and virginity and self-hatred and
how our lives mean absolutely nothing?
When did we grow up and become so bitter
and when did our time in the bath become the time when
we want to drown and trains were fun once but now we
want to jump in front of one and trees are not where we
play but where we want to hang ourselves and we
want to jump from cliffs and all we want to do
is **** and die and die and ****, and we were kids
but now we’re not and we’re not adults so who are we?
We’re **** victims, we’re names crossed out, we’re
eulogies and pills and death notes and we want to be
over, why and when and how did the world
**** us up?
We’re caffeine-driven and we do drugs and we’re
all addicted to sadness and addicted to death and addicted to
hatred and we mostly hate us.
We starve ourselves until we can’t stand upright, we starve
until we can see the outlines of our cages and still think
it is not enough, or we eat and we purge and why did we
decide that we wanted to die?
Because we do. I used to be a metaphor
but I’m a malaphor nowand I will burn that bridge when I get to it.
That is, if I haven’t yet drowned.



III.
I want to hold your hand, just hold it and feel you with me
wrapped around and safe and home. I want to kiss your
lips and bite your neck and drown in your eyes,
I want us to **** and make sweet love and sing and
smoke and get drunk, I want us to roll on the floor
laughing and find ourselves on our backs with the wooden
boards underneath us and tears in our eyes, but from happiness
and not this constant sadness, I want love to mean something,
I want to be yours and you to be mine, regardless of gender,
regardless of age, love must be love.
I want us to eat ice cream and pizza and junk food
or healthy food or any food and not be judged and I
want us to live and to love and I want us to
look in the mirror and face our reflections and not
hate what we see, and this is it, this is us.
Do me do me do me, let me be your drug,
get high with me, get high on me, we’re greatness,
we’re power, we’re supreme. We can will it away,
we are who we wish to become, we rise and reign, we
shine and we are stars, we’re supernovas we bring down
kingdoms and we crown ourselves with thorns and twigs,
we’re rulers of ruins and ashes, we burn down temples, we
want to be the best but we think we’re the worst so we
just fake it, fake it all but we are all just galaxies with
potential that is not yet unleashed, we can burn bright if
we only learn how to, we need to learn how to live without
willing to die; we need to learn how to love ourselves first
before we love others and we need to stop hating
and we have scars that might never heal again but can’t we
just accept plain truths and bandage ourselves and move on?
But we some cigarettes and we breathe out the smoke or
we just keep it in our lungs until we burn and until we fall
apart and we’re just snowflakes that have turned to dust,
and we’re ashes that burn holes on the tips of others’
tongues, oh how I wish we could live without burning
scars, without causing pain, without withering away,
without crumbling, why can’t we, why do we all
so desperately want to die and drown and **** and die?
I used to be a metaphor but I’m a malaphor now
and I will burn that bridge when I get to it.
Oh how I wish I could love you and know you
would love me back but our world is so ****** up
and all we can ever do is leave gaping holes and
smoking wounds and salty tears and new ideas
how to die. Let’s change the world, or maybe not,
let’s just find meaning, or at least can we please
forever ever bring down Heaven and Hell
and learn to accept who we are. I used to be a metaphor
but I’m a malaphor now and I will burn that bridge when I get to it.
But then I’ll rebuild it and maybe this time
I will never ever drown.
And I will teach myself to swim and breathe
and live and love, I want to be a metaphor
one more simple and no longer lonely time.

Put a child lock
on the liquor cabinets,
and fasten me
to your kitchen sink.

Watch me drift slowly down the drain.

Watch shattered wine glass
stick between fragments of me
in the garbage disposal blades.

Watch broken sentences
arch over our faulty plumbing lines.

Watch pieces of you stick strictly to silver spoons.

Take the skin of your Cuban
and roll a noose around my neck
to yank the blaze from my throat
into the bile of my slip-ups
that pool on the kitchen floor
from an unattached pipe
that just can’t seem to keep
her pretty little mouth shut.

Penetrate my thoughts from behind
and throw plates at the walls
of my shoulder blades
when you need to hear the question again
because it doesn’t matter what she thinks
if her face is nothing but
a cracked serving platter.

Force your hands
onto the authority of my hipbones.

Pierce your wedding ring
through my belly button for safekeeping.

Decorate my body
with super glue
so your words can stick to me.

Sort me in
with the pots and pans
so your voice
doesn’t have to clang against
my eardrums anymore.

Reorganize me
again and again
until you can’t wash the stain
out of my bottom lip anymore.

Pour me a drink
while I drip Taps into the sink
because when I realize
water isn’t strong enough
to make me forget how blood
runs so much thicker over my skin,
tears begin to slip so easily off my eyelashes.

Let my death
be a pail
brimmed with ex-lovers’
cries for attention.

Let me kick the bucket
this time
when they begin to drown out
the sound of my own.

Let me be a reminder
that not all channels
you lose yourself down
have to be man made.

I want to run my fingers
along the indentations
your favorite pants
left pressed on your hipbones
after a long day

I’ve begun “The Wasting” once more.

That ragged uncovering of bones and peaks and ridges that crop up along my spine and shoulders.

My scapulas revealing themselves like the bed of a lake as the waters recede.

Indents beside and under my kneecaps, hollows that match the ones slowly sinking themselves back into my cheeks.

And the hipbones…the things I truly crave to see through the paper thin layer of my skin…

Those…I’d starve myself to waifish proportions just to graze my hands along the mountaintops of those things, those sharp little things.

I lose my hair and my colour and my shine just to dig my fingers into the hardness of my breastbone, just to know that my jawbone is an overhang, just to plunge headfirst into the thrill of being thin.

“The Wasting” and I are friends, and I want to drown in her.

On a cafeteria table,
in the middle of February,
the kind where it gets dark at 5pm,
sat eight minature figurines made of shells—
brown, speckled, like a calico cat
with googly eyes on the middle of their heads,
one business man with a black derby,
one with a pretty pink bow,
or even one with blue suspenders,
and all their chubby bellies
rounding out over their pants. The woman

with her iridescent nails, bony fingers,
the skin pressed thin against her knuckles,
lines them up in a perfect row, tilting
their heads into one another as if
they are having a tiny conversation
admist the numbers being called—
B14! She stamps in red. B14!
A man pushes a cart around the tables,
like one mows grass around graves,
with fifty cent candy bars and potato chips
on flimsy paper plates. He asks the woman
if she wants ice in her Pepsi, but she just blows
a long sigh of smoke and flicks the sparks
behind her back. He doesn’t ask her to pay.

G56! She touches the head of the figurine
with the mustache. G56! I’ve lost count
of how many numbers I’ve missed,
but then there’s you, your hand on my thigh,
creeping, your fingers pushing
my cotton skirt up, up, and up—
O74!
We play with acrylic chips instead of stampers.
We’d like to win the lottery tickets,
maybe cash them in at the gas station
after we drink a couple iced teas and snack
on Mentos cause we ran out of money
two bottles ago.

The figurine with the fishing pole has one pupil
that lies at the bottom of the eye,
lop-sided, and staring at me while I pretend
that I have G47! or pretend that this isn’t
the first time you’ve brought me here, G47!
instead of a real date. Or pretend
that I can’t hear the woman cough, and cough,
and cough as she switches stampers between every ten calls
or touch this figurine or move that one, just slightly,
this way or that or

N44! She doesn’t have it. N44!
I don’t have it.
Don’t worry, child, you’ll have it all someday,
she whispers, sideways from her mouth,
with your thumb making circles around my hipbones,
and the man pushing the cart, the squeak of the wheels
B7! But I don’t have it. B7! I don’t have it.
I don’t have it.

Still sleep warm,
I am coaxed into
consciousness
by your fingers lazily
grazing the elastic
of my underwear.
That smooth plateau
between the mountains
of my hipbones: home.
Overnight, my shirt
has ridden up, too hot
in the California nights
neither of us are used to
yet, proven by the pool
of sweat beneath my
lower back. The sticky
staleness of my skin
matches yours.
We are anything but
a disaster, and still,
I am a fault line. Feeling
the tremors rumble low
in my belly, your overheating
hands the magma forcing
plates apart, revealing
the new earth beneath.
There's danger in my inhale,
the risk of being shaken to
the core and unfixable.
Yet not even an earthquake
could divide us: love.


**V. K.

How could she do that to herself.
her collarbones almost popping out of her skin
because she is a skeleton already
her ribcage a tally of the meals she has skipped
one, two, three, four, too many to count
her hipbones protrude like shards of glass
shattered like her self esteem
thighs that no longer touch
calves miles apart
gaps on her body
gaps between meals

her head is a mixed up land
with broken mirrors all around
her friend ana reflected in the shards
she is so familiar with these eating habits they have a name
ana ana ana ana ana
runs through her brain
the calorie counter in her head runs
is an apple worth it anymore?
skip dinner
wake up thinner
pretty girls do not eat.

her body is brittle
she looks like she could break with a touch
but she is already broken inside
the fight is over
she knows it too
she is fading away.

how could i do this to myself.

pretty pink lips,
eyes so big.
swims in the sea like
a fish.
but which one?

you are free,
with silly stories and
hipbones that soar,
ill never know the mystery of
you.

your life hangs in a balance
a rotting see-saw
of deprivation
you listen to the chorus
of growling, pleading
from your internal organs
begging for sustenance
and you smile
are you proud of the pain you inflict on your body
or just yourself?
I'll watch you decompose
and tell you your decaying flesh is beautiful
because I know you're not looking for bones
or extra fabric on your jeans
but while your stomach cries
for yesterday's missing lunch
your mind weeps
for something to be proud of
and if the only thing you can do right
is your hipbones
then so be it

sea’s quiet tonight, iris and vagabond gray
salt coarse in our hair we can see it in the
last pink light

count the bubbles in the wake
sprouting from thin air and
imaginary whale songs

they won’t find us in the stern let me
look at your hipbones—I won’t touch
not yet it’s too quiet tonight

there’s orion, and there’s cassiopeia
stars swimming white fish in our
***-eyes

gulls’ heads tucked under wings
in the corners—goodnight goodnight
little gulls, dreaming you’re doves

even sirens sleep this moon
soft voices slumberous
smoky, hey—let me look at you again

under the velvet dark, sea in sterling drops
on our lashes, let’s take a break from steering
let waves and mermaids take the wheel

Twelve years old and I knew I was too much.

A body too much- a stomach that stretched and stuck
and a waist left red, dented, stinging after a day in jeans.

A brain too much- a thought process that took flight
without permission and dropped rogue missiles of ideas
in phone calls with great aunts, deep in essays
during state funded tests and leaked from brown paper bags
in middle school lunchrooms, leaving me silent and sticky and
only just fitting in.

Any conversation was secondary to
the fuzzy way I could feel
my mouth tripping hard to keep up with a dizzy brain
and even before a sentence finished
Feeling regret like warm honey coat my throat and
seep down hot and solid to my roaring gut.

I was a heart too much.
Tears ran forceful and free for
so long. There was the heavy,
lonely feeling that grabbed root at my pelvis
and lounged, languid for days- ******* any hope I could muster
out of tan hide until only leather shell remained.

Dawn would find me ushering in chilling spells of misery
triggered by the whole wide world-
a boy with a gun on the news,
a teacher’s tight forehead while mean kids flexed their puberty,
Or finding a picture of my parents before they were my parents,
and wondering if they ever actually knew love.

At twelve years old my soul was stretched out and sagging.
At twelve years old I held tight to being less
At twelve years old I knew only one way dull the aches sprouting
as fast and fresh as ivy inside my bones.

At twelve every birthday candle and eyelash,
every wishbone and 11:11
was devoted to smallness and simplicity
So certain that the less of me there was
the less I would have to bear from the world.

More than half my life I’ve spent in pursuit of sharp
bones to shield and a lithe tread to conceal.
I have itched to be a sole shrinking girl among
the growing and gaining of peers-
to finally find quiet in a body that
was beginning to ripen in a shrill,
panicky way that would just not do.


More than decade I’ve spent with bile on my breath
and scrappy knuckles desperately begging
the arrangement of meat and bone I live in
to contract; to fold back in on itself and strengthen
into a place where I could catch my breath and
learn to tend.

Now, too many seasons and too many
mistakes later- I do wake up in
a smaller body. Twelve year old me is
beaming as she sneaks glances the XSs
stitched in labels and the chorus of likes that
coo and comment how darling I look in dresses.

Twelve year old me is quietly,
solemnly psyched about the bruises that bloom across
my paling curves after a good stretch on ground.
She even nods her head gleefully
to my swaying pulse as it dances to its own, faraway music.

Twelve year old me could care less about the bone-buried knots
entombed along my spine and the putty-snap cracking
bones I show off like party tricks.
She sees the yolky shimmer of eyeballs and trail of hairs I shed
like bread crumbs marking my path and she doesn’t bat an eyelash.
She’s glad she managed it-
and anyway the price is worth the discomfort,
health in youth is mostly over-rated.

But I do wonder what greedy, vicious
twelve year old me would think if she knew
I am still, secretly, too much.

Could she muster any pride as she feels
my heavy, fatigued heart expand to fill the bits
and dark corner secrets I starved away?
Or any pity as she watches empty-word fog crawl
between ribs and bellow out like a pirate’s flag under raised hipbones.
She meets the murky mass that fills my frame- heavy and suspended
like a dark towering cumulous
waiting for the bow to break and the storm to fall.

Maybe she’d find my brain chemistry unnerving.
Seeing desperate fists pawing at ideas as they are born and implode
and holding numbly to loose bits, reeling them in stunted fervor like kite strings.
Thunder cracks and I’m not nearly electric.

So I grip tight;  sinking decalcified teeth
into the catch of the day, rowing a rusty canoe out of the
whirling, mirrored lake of my mind and back to shore.
I will attempt to fit my
hard won ideas into any and all variables.
I will drive myself crazy with inspiration
but never create a **** thing.

The thoughts coursing through my almost-there body are
flexed horses. They gallop around
the same dirt track for days on end and I have bet
what’s left of my youth on photo-finish losses.
I’ve got nothing to show for who I am these days.
Except for the dresses.
I look good in the dresses.

His wrists are my favorite part of his body,
Bones pressing delicately through pale, unscarred skin in a way mine haven't since the 6th grade.
The only bones showing on my body are my elbows and knees, just barely
And the worried bones of my insecurities.
I wish I could see my shoulder blades and hipbones.
I'd never hoped to be a skeleton but
I'd hoped to be proud of my appearance.
Even though my best friend tells me that I'm pretty just the way I am,
I know I'm not as pretty as my sister;
We're twins but no one ever believes us
She has gorgeous blonde hair and pale skin and sky blue eyes,
Hourglass shape.
I think she got the looks, but I always hope I got the brains.
Today I don't know which is the better end of the deal.
I know I am fat. I don't need any doctors or parents or bullies to tell me that
My curves are not big-*****,
Obesity doesn't run in my family,
No one runs in my family,
And by no one I mean me.
My every outfit is prefaced by compression shorts and slimming colors and self-conscious shame.
My stomach has ugly purple stretch marks like tongues of hungry fire
Burning away my self-esteem
Summer evenings aren't fun anymore
When my father tells me I'm too big to swing on the swing set
And my mother asks if I'm pregnant.
I'm not.
I'm a size 14. My mother thinks I'm a size 10.
When I try on the too-small clothes she brings home  
I cry in the privacy of my bedroom mirror,
Oceans of salted pain worry over my face,
Try to rinse away the guilt.
At least I'm not an ugly crier.