i'm not proud to say
i'm 85 lbs
that's not much of a girl
but i remember
when being 85 lbs
was all i ever wanted
when i craved a flat stomach
thin wrists
a gap between my thighs so wide
when i spent my days
filling my belly with water and air
taking lunches to school
but not eating them
instead tossing them in the trash because the smell of fresh fruit
made me sick
when i look in the mirror
i see the ghost and skeleton of a girl
who's in recovery
and i'm disgusted
85 lbs
is not much of a girl
i remember when all i wanted
was to be smaller, smaller
when i was 80 i wanted to be 75
75 wasn't enough so i kept purging til i hit 70
70 wasn't enough
65 wasn't enough
nothing would ever be enough
0 would never be enough
-10 would never be enough
i remember when they forced needles into my papery skin
i remember when 80 was enough for me to keep my life
and i remember
when i decided
i would always be enough

Don't kiss me.
My lips are rough-- pure scar tissue.
Torn,
from coughing up self-truths,
regrets, sobs, misunderstanding
and formal apologies--
I choke.
Gasp
   retch
      retch
         retch
They are always a lovely shade of red
swollen, bee-stung, sometimes bleeding,
I blot the stains,
but their shadowy ghosts remain,
haunting aches, and throbs.

Don't meet my eyes.
They are wells
one might fall into and break a leg.
They will take him out like a dying horse
and shoot him behind the barn
and bury him,
in the dank soil.
And I will come later, sorry, and put dying roses
in his dead hands.
But what for?
Company?
The dead are happy,
only misery wants company.

Don't reach for my hands.
I will hold it fast, at first,
soft anchor, and the fingers will hook into my skin,
but I, in uncertainty,
put my claws in
and then retract them, drawing blood
I never wanted on my hands.
I should have thought of this before.
I am sorry I did not.

Do not fall in love with me.

A week and a half, a year before ship sails
Azalea path was already paved
Soon I found someone in the same state of mind as me
All insane of astrology, all insane of metaphors

There's this delirium episode going inside of me that made me
slash what carried me far to see if I could survive worse
even tried the continuum oblivion
till I dare my hands to drive me in to an atom collision

There are times when it wasn't all about wars
I spent it combusting to few places
When and where snow is an empire usurped by crippled leaves in the fall.
Fall, fall, fall
It was him who falls and leaves.

One night, or one day, I don't quite care
but that is when I got away
I ran with flames not yet ignited
I barricade the commotion out with flimsy threads, all I can think
Didn't even thought threads spread flames (if it's ignited)
(Well now it's ignited)
And someone caught up in it

I can still hear him even now
That's the end of my life
The rest is posthumous
talking me up

If “dying is an art,” you do not do it well.  I do not
have words, do not have thoughts; there is nothing inside
of me anymore.  I am vacant, hollow, and if this is what
time travel feels like I do not want any part of it.  Racing
past the stars, past the planets, past Andromeda's spiraling, galactic force,
I am light-years ahead and then light-years behind—I am
                two years                    too late.                  

You cannot know, you will not know, how
Auriga is waiting in the sky to whisk you
                                                                 away,                away,                            away.

Th­e bubbling of your oxygen sounds like the water fountains
you used to pass as a child, but there are no pennies at the bottom
of this.  And I wonder, with your eyes closed, if you feel like you
are swimming.  Barely treading water, fighting to keep your head above,
choking on salt and brine as you try to kick your feet, try to
swim to Lake Michigan’s shoreline.  I want
Poseidon to spit you out of sea like a cork, want
Neptune to come alive through the mosaics of your bathroom and
lead you away from the great, black, wave of stars that is
breaking and crashing and barely brushing your bare feet.

Some fish were meant to drown.  You are
not one of them.  Pisces is meant to swim                   forever.

This time machine has dropped me back into my nightmare again,
but it is not only mine, it’s yours.  I am trying to read
the constellations, trying to map the planets, trying to figure out
the moon cycles, but I fear that this is a language I had learned once
and tried to forget—we are now digging each others graves.  
The nurse in blue, the doctor in white, the sun in gold, and you,
red as dead and clotted blood, have merged into a new dialect
that does not mirror what I know the way the
Gemini twins mimic one another in the cosmos. (I think
                                 I have lost my ability to speak with angels
and this terrifies me.)

Is God whispering the secrets of the world into your ear yet?  Is Jesus
showing you how to be holy?  Are you tearing the bread for communion
and feeding it to the birds?  Are you taking shots from His heavenly blood,
getting drunk off the possibility of closing your eyes, leaning back, and
watching Perseus fight your battles for you?  
                                                        Do you want to be a constellation, too?

I am eighty miles away from you, but it feels more like
eighty light-years.  I am watching you through someone else’s eyes and
choking myself with my own hands as I try to show you
what you mean to me.  My hands are cracked and bleeding from
pounding them against the wall you constructed around yourself, but you
don’t have control over that wall anymore, do you?

You are too young to ride Pegasus in the night sky, too young to
build your own wings, too young to fall and drown like Icarus.  You
know how to swim.  You are learning how to fly.  There is no
reason for you to shake God’s hand yet.  Put the halo down—
                                                           ­                                                you are not ready.

The kind of girl to down shots of ***** and strangle your name on other peoples lips.
The kind of girl to keep you up at night praying to a god you've never believed in just for him to look over his creation once more, she can't love oh Heavenly Father she can not love. Let her love me.
The kind of girl to kiss after every accidental 'I love you' you managed to cough out in ****** words because God knows this kind of girl is the kind to run when spending the night in his bed gets brought up
The kind of girl to dig her nails into her own skin to keep from killing everything she is, everything she's feared she could be.
The kind of girl to dress her curves in all black and leave her lipstick stain all over your shirt

You were a dim light shining faintly in the dark;
I was a helpless moth drawn to your feeble glow.

It burns.
Badly.
The burning sensation
Can take over and ****.
But  you begin to like the burn.
Even crave it sometimes.
It's the kind of pain you secretly love.
Kind of like when you hurt someone you love,
Or when someone you love hurts you.
You know it's bad.
You know it's wrong.
But you just can't stop.
Because even though it's awful,
Even though it's painful,
Even though it's lethal,
It all hurts so good.

{alaska}