sitting on a living room floor
watching a boy play guitar
there's a tattoo on his arm
and i've never heard it before
but i love this song
and with another shot of whiskey
my toes get numb
and for once i don't care
about being alone in crowded rooms
you're driving to my doorstep
you're gonna get here soon
and i'm getting too used to this
like another house show
acclimating after the first few songs
with you i let go
and today the air is saying
get realistic
and i want to say no
but it clogs up my chest
and forces out an obedient
yes

-

you smell the way i used to after showering at summer camp. fresh, and new. like shampoo that makes your hair very soft and the dew that pools up on leaves at dawn. it sticks to your skin, because you are an early riser.

-

i know this girl
fleeting, like cold hands
and cheap soap
but in an okay way
and this girl can ***** up every single thing
and still always be on time

for these unwanted affairs
these personal issues
being aired in a court room
and her hands are fanning the air by her knees
as she sits on a bench that feels more like a pew

the size of her fear is bigger than
a sentence
a thought
that could never express itself in words
because this girl hasn’t been writing lately
they never meet the mouth
delicate, like a glass bottle
something turned stale as it left it’s owner
something as cheesy as this poem

-

i needed him like my stomach needed nourishment, that doesn’t mean we get to have those things.
we all need a lot of things we can’t quite grasp onto
wet leaves after thunderstorms
antibiotics to cure every type of virus the catch being that the magic pills are carcinogenic
everyone is a pessimist these days
a happy ending is just an affair that turned out better than expected
they tell me to be a grown up, but when i talk secrets into his ear
i am a child
the world is a dangerous place.

-

the day it first came to life i bought white flowers
hanging plants, i put them on the balcony
and the day you explained yourself
what a mistake it all was
i watched them rot before my withered eyes
they couldn’t believe i could care for people
how can you love things that are so so so

petals red and juicy were blossoming sticky on my thigh
and i’ve attempted five billion feeble ways to die
every day i keep expiring but i don’t stop breathing
it’s chilling that i am allowed to exist in this manner
rotting incessantly never quite speaking
when you should.

-

once you’re friends with someone for long enough
you find their weaknesses
when you love someone
you learn their deepest desires
caring isn’t creepy it’s so real
i know this
i can ******* spit on his lips

beg your better judgement to steer you home
and in the car forget his name and remember
his hands like they were your own
and at night
i am see through
easy to touch
hard to love
bitter for the things felt so loudly but unsaid
stopped dead in the dark, unable to see
your love has become nothing more than an idea to me

-

she had fingers so delicate
but they let me in
love is not supposed to be a feat of lock picking closed doors
if the lights are on
i will move towards your porch
he turned them off and i rubbed my arms raw with sandpaper
so the skin would heal up thicker, and stayed away
but her door was open and her lips were tempting
so i gently crawled in.

her shoulder blades were made of a thousand paper cranes
so breakable and small
when they hunched she seemed to whisper
i could fly away from here
and you won’t ever know me at all

we thought about the ice age
we made picture books
and discussed the likelihood that we’d find her
captured in an iceberg
her bones all melting into snow

and we had a leader once
but he’s been gone since the temperature
dropped so low
we all know, he’s somewhere we’ll all eventually go
sometimes my acceptance is the only thing i have to offer

now we sing and chase in circles
waiting for the part where we all
fall down

the day you come around
will be anything but beautiful

the preacher never wrote a poem
about dahmer's baptism:

1.

he leaned across
the jail cell table
and his eyes were honest
when he said he believed in god
deeply
his eyes were honest
when he said goodnight honey
and gently draped his body
in a tub of sulfuric acid
his open jaw glistening in the moon
dissolving in the dusty noontime soliloquy
of crickets outside his apartment window

2.

can an honest man
bathe in those kind of wounds
and be allowed to ask
for a penance?

3.

for two weeks they left
his baptismal robes in storage
they asked if he really believed it
if he could believe in all this

4.

“when i was a kid
i was just like anybody else”
he had said
he seemed to think
being like anybody else
could dull the bloodstains
reduce the skeletons
still tucked into his closet
to powder
make his wishes into holy water

5.

yes jeffrey, anyone can drink it
but getting drunk on holiness
isn’t enough to repent
all of their fingers are wrapped around
your heart
doesn’t forgetting seem foolish
to the brains in your refrigerator
isn’t it just useless
to the spare ribs, in your bureau
drink all the holy water you want
you will always carry their bodies
on your chest
have you ever had a heart
other than the ones you collected
and did you ever know
what a soul feels like?

6.

and that day
they took him to a prison tub
and his body
glistened under the water
like a drowning animal or a martyr
jeffrey doesn’t float

7.

as he opens his eyes
his mouth wide
he looks just like him
suspended in white
ripples curdling in currents across his pale skin
a solar eclipse
covers the sun
as he comes up
for air

you refuse
to let me help
you move in

this is a new place
that i am not a part of

a coffee shop
a normal saturday morning
i wait at the speckled counter
and count the deformed donuts with sickened reassignment
a little girl is sitting at a diner table to my left
she stares at me with awe and darts up
handing me a picture she looks right at me with glee
“oh wow did you make this?” i ask
in the way an adult talks to a child
she nods and i say “this is great
do you draw a lot?”
she shakes her head no
“well you should” i say
and she, laughs and says
“no, i don’t need to do it more.
it doesn’t matter
i do it when i want to
i just like to”

i think of the way the little inflections upon her talk
mirror in my mind the voice of camus
you are not just what you do
you are more than the opportunities in your environment
absurdity arises in the aperture between you and the world
the world is real but the choices it allows
how can you exist when they close around you
from all sides, like a test from hell—i mean school
we have to choose a b c d
it doesn’t give a human space to breath—i mean, be

what i’m saying is
i’ve been washed up into the land
you go to when the fairies die
i’ve learned to lie with a very straight face
i’ve been had by the dollar bill
and in some twisted way
i only work for the prize these days
and still i’m willing to admit
a child outwitted me
and i’d rather it be that way
because sometimes i need to be put in my place
while rational and logical and adult
i have been living without being
and she
has tripped the strings
attached to the knots in my fingers
and my throat
this poem, i owe it to her

as you jiggle
nervously
in your seat
during therapy
i can only imagine what
is eating at you haley

no that’s not true
i know a little bit about it
for instance your mother
drains the medicine cabinets
instead of sink
the last months’ worth of dishes are still *****
she takes her pills with *****
because they are her water
rubbing her stomach clean with alcohol
yet she has never picked a rag up
to scrub the sickness from her house
red stains on your blouse
haley does she even know
what grades you got this year?
haley did she ever notice
when you dyed your hair?
to feel like you fit in somewhere
when you didn’t fit in her lap anymore

you come home from school
with scratches on your arms
and she never asks where they come from
so you tell her:
you feel like in a past life
you were a dartboard
because at school your peers play bullseye
with your forehead
and sometimes when they break your glasses
and you skip classes to do lines on your skin in the bathroom
with your walmart scissors
you just tell her you tried to kiss a stray cat
on the way home
and she actually accepts that because
she’s the one who taught you to play dumb

and at thirteen you’re still
suckin o  your thumb when you think that no ones looking
and though you don’t know it
the reason you do that
is because you’ve been drinking from a bottle
since you were a baby
and she never even attempted
to breastfeed

haley doesn’t understand
when i read her stories about the buddha
she just knows my voice
is comforting
haley doesn’t know
she has this inner peace
and all i want to do is
gather up her gashes
and put the pieces back together
haley doesn’t think she is lonely
but she thinks that i’m pretty
and she subconsciously wants
to make a mother of me

so at the end of the hallway
when she’s crying in the corner
because she misses freedom and light
i ignore hospital rules
and rush past the nurses
to hold her tight
and i teach her to breathe with her nose
close to our open window
and tuck her in when the bars
make shadows on the floor
in the moonlight

we sleep in beds of ashes but i know
that someday haley
will rise from this and grow
out of suicide
because in her sleep
she still hears me in her periphery
whispering of siddhartha cross legged under the bodhi tree
and how he discovered
life and death are not separate
and they each come accordingly
and right now she should just
focus on her breathing

and before i close the book
i also add that she’s beautiful
because it’s an important footnote
hermann hesse would want her to know

when i left she hugged me tight
with a tearful mumble goodbye
and when i walked into the sunlight
the two of us had dreamed about together
haley was still just a patch of phoenix ash
an egg hatching but i know her
and it’ll happen fast
but someday suddenly
she will realize she is
full of fire