I know it's wrong to love the wicked
but when you lit that cigarette,
memories of poison lingered in my nostrils.
My poison was stripped away from me,
when I realized that,
although smoking and drinking masked my negligence,
I was never a friend to you.
And I miss the days where the ones I loved,
the ones I called my friends,
would venture with me.
I spent the last five months of my life
with a lack of sobriety and compassion.
And I adored the addiction.
Now that things are settling back to the way
they were in the summertime,
I have become restless.
For you cannot resist the fuel of a wild heart.
They will crave and crave the things that are wrong for them.
So maybe that's why I ended it.
Because I kept running away from you.
From my responsibilities and
as it festered in the dirt,
I grew daisies out of my cold corpse.
For I felt alive.
Just for a ******* moment, I felt alive again.
So here I am,
lying on the bathroom floor in your arms.
Scared to let you go, reluctant to come back.
Stuck in a purgatory between love and loathing,
desiring the poison I fed myself
to keep me from dying.

She's coming to terms
With the face in the window
One beer at a time

my throat is a forest fire,
a burning map that never leads to
'the depths of virginia'

your hands are made of water,
icy cold and haunting and
I don't know what else to say except
"please"

I sometimes think that we should have a history book
rewritten with our names, because I'll be ******* if
we are not rewarded for the way we forget about our past

I WONDER IF WHAT WE TALK ABOUT AFTER MIDNIGHT
HAS ANY IMPACT ON THE WAY YOUR HEART BEATS AND IF
IT DOES IS IT WATERED DOWN BECAUSE OF BEFORE
AND I WANT TO KNOW IF MY WORDS HAVE THE SAME
EFFECT ON YOU AS YOURS ON ME AND I WANT TO SWIM
in the James River and forget how to sway my limbs around to float

this is not a love poem
this is not an "I miss you, come back" poem
this is a confession
this is a love letter
written on the palms of my hands because I know
you'll never get over how badly they shake

maybe I'm confused or lovesick or homesick
for a home that can only be found inside of warm chests
but I needed to write this for someone, for myself

maybe my questions don't need answers,
maybe they just need to be heard.

does a lion lie                                                                     do lies settle here,
beneath these sheets                                                             in these nested enclosures,
i've found myself strewn upon?                                      or corridors, from i to places
                                                                                                   never invented?
or just clusters of stars,
too distant                                                                               seven things
from wherever i found myself,                                        burnt oceans into sand;
or what breathing was,                                                         two glimmering points.
or emptiness?
                      there you were,                              a sign of rehearsal,
pulling life down, on trails hung                               or omen, or,
in perfect lines from                               just kind of nothing
each &every; spark in the sky                                         at
                                                                                 all.
nine. sharp.
am i
always just
this unmotivated?

do i truly perceive
the embedding nothingness                                                      does this get
from life, or just in dream still?                                                          any easier?

    
                                                                                                         i'd rather find
                                                                                                               myself at
                                                                                          the bottom of the ocean,
                                                                    some
                                                                             days,
                                                                      i guess.                                   sorry.

there comes a point in time where the word "nothing" describes everything that resides inside you.
the word nothing as in the black hole that has hypnotized you,
as day by day, you inch closer to your suicide mission of love,
the word nothing as in the abyss of words that you wish you could have said,
but now elegantly dance around the tip of your tongue waiting for their escape from the most torturous of prisons,
the word nothing as in what you felt as his foul hands touched every part of your body,
and as they touched your heart,
you could feel yourself turn into a statue with a sign of mockery that said, "this girl is diseased by what could never be" as the spotlights shined brightly on you.
so when people started showering you with "what's wrong?"
all that could squeeze past the dancing words that were still under arrest was "nothing."
and to some extent, you were right.
you said "nothing," as in "i feel like nothing,"
you said "nothing," as in "i have nothing,"
you said "nothing," as in "i am nothing."
but all those nothing's that corrupt your mind to the darkest shade of black,
create one big impeccable something,
that fills up a room like the air we breathe every second.
i breathe all your nothing's,
inhale them like the particles of dust that sneak up on your nose,
and cause the pre-cold that leads to months and months of infection.
and eventually, those dust particles of nothing begin to define you and invade every cell of your body until a big fat wooden sign appears on your forehead that says "warning: nothing,"
as if you were an animal,
waiting for its first meal of the day in a zoo.
are you really going to let this four by four block of wood define you?
are you going to let this nothing,
this void that flows through your veins more than the blood that keeps you alive,
become your everything?