in ninth grade i came to school
everyday
with cigarette smoke
embedded in my clothes
i wanted so badly for
someone, anyone
to ask why i smelled like
a cancer ward.

i would write poetry
about how much i hated myself
thinking it would mean
anything to anybody
all the sharp parts of
my body condensed
into shot glasses
overflowing and draining at the same time
the chipped parts leaking *****
onto my bedroom floor
that i'm afraid
my mom will smell

when i was a preteen
i promised myself,
a pact only i can legitimize,
that if i wasn't happy by 18
i would **** myself.
i am a breath away from that
moment
within arm's reach of the
edge of something--
whether it's a
swimming pool's side
or a cliff's face
is up to me i guess.

here's the thing no one
told me about life:
nobody notices your pain
no matter how much you want
them to,
and if they do
they do it wrong.
you won't be able to find
the words in the
moment they ask.
you'll freeze up
and your only language will be
cigarettes
blood stains
and a faint smell of *****.
it will seem romantic at the time
but it is really, really not.

all it does is hurt and hurt
and hurt and hurt.
you will be scared when
she notices the blood
on your thighs/hands/heart
and the black in your
lungs/soul
and you will cry. it will hurt.

but hey,
so does everything else.

and if there's
anything i've learned
by now, at the
precipice of 18,
it's that
cigarette smoke,
the blood and *****,
the black;
it all comes out in the wash.

question: why didn't you turn your work in?
                 answer: being alive and having to function as a human being day after day is an exhausting and unsustainable exercise that i don't know if i can continue forever.
                 answer: i get so depressed that i can't move, can't do anything but wallow in my own revolting, pathetic self-pity.
                 answer: there are messages on my phone, friends trying to reach me, wanting to know how i am. the thought of replying to or looking at them fills me with dread.
                 answer: i've been thinking about entropy and the eventual, inevitable end of the universe. one day, on a scale that none of us can even comprehend, everything will be nothing and time will be meaningless. human civilization, all of our monuments and cities and societies, will be gone, with no one and nothing left to remember them. every act of cruelty and of kindness, any anger or joy or sadness ever experienced will mean nothing when us and all of our everything will be returned to the dust from whence we came. it's more than me contemplating my own morality, it's me trying to come to terms with the futility of the human experience. sometimes i get so overwhelmed with this sort of inconsolable nihilism i can't sleep.
                answer: i'm scared and i'm tired.
                answer: sometimes
                answer: i wish
                answer: i was
                answer: anywhere
                answer: but
                answer: here.
answer, spoken: i don't know. can i give it to you tommorow?

This is the world we live in
This is the world we end in
We'll end with it,
And it with us,
The absolute of nothingness.

This is the only comfort
I can offer you.
The finality of it all.
And, you know, these days,
Comforts are few.

When the world is burning,
and retribution is coming.
Those four men and all their horses
Barely held behind the gate.
Soon, there will be no wants to fulfill
Or desires to sate. Just nothing and ruin and what is left of our undoing.

The end is coming, but
That's alright. The fires
Persist beyond our door.
These are the only comforts
I can offer you:
Knowledge of the eventual end
And arms you can rest in
Til we both undo.

So, can we sleep while the world ends?
The distant sounds of grief
Have not yet reached our window.
Just hold me close, and I will, you
Though the world's set alight
I'll rest easy in your arms tonight.
In bed, embraced.
As the fires rage.

This is how the world ends:
Not with a bang,
But with a kiss goodnight,
With a soft "I love you,"
And a pause;
An eventual, whispered "I love you too."

And when the end comes,
Garishly and unkind
We'll sleep through it,
Peacefully and sublime.

my chest is an aviary,
hundreds of caged birds
flutter and shudder and whistle
soft songs and incomprehensible words.

my ribs as bars,
and my heart as feed,
and the birds all hum,
and we all have needs,

including birds, including me,
digging my hands, into my chest,
they peck at me, my insides,
to rip me open, we try our bests--

i scream and writhe and cry and whine--
i tear and pull and carve and break--
they sing and sing and sing and sing--
half-gored, i give in, stop, shake--

an albatross in my chest cavity,
the canaries' screaming pitch remains,
the robins and bluejays and wrens and larks,
all choir my unending pain.

i want to be free of them,
and them, of me,
but my ribs are bars, and my heart is feed,
and in my chest they will always be.

Alienate my body and mind,
commodify my core;
Is my existence
a means to a profit?
The 21st century's commercial *****.

My labor is not mine,
my art is not mine;
Everything I create
liscensed and taken,
another addition to a capitalist's shrine.

I understand the poached animal:
Ripped apart,
skin and teeth hung for all to see,
and then, admired for its beauty.

the train running by the baseball field,
looking around in wonder at the great sound—
(does it count as **** if he was barely a man at sixteen?)

my first birthday, giggling senselessly
covered in blue cookie monster cake—
(does he remember it as vividly and as vaguely as i do?)

my brother smiling and wrestling with me,
us both the perfect picture of idyllic youth—
(would any of them believe me if i told them how my cousin lured me into the bathroom, the perfect picture of youth still innocent—)

in the cul-de-sac, learning how to ride my bike, pink and sparkly with purple tassels hanging from the handlebars—
(does it torment him?)

falling asleep in the backseat, surrounded by my family, amber streetlight lulling me into a peaceful child’s slumber—
(does he get off to it?)

holding my breath as my brothers, laughing, dunked me underwater—
(he has a son now, will he ruin him like he ruined me?)

lungs screaming as i’m held underwater by my older brothers—
(does he realize how he’s ruined me?)

my child-like amazement at the world—
(molested by an almost-man, a boy who still has me utterly powerless in his grasp)

(does he get off to it?)
(does it ruin him?)—
(i can’t breathe)

i am held down in her grasp and i can’t breathe, knowing that my special moment saved for someone i love has been stolen from me by the almost-man, i can’t breathe because i know i’ll never have it back—
(i can’t breathe—)

my mother scolding my brothers and them releasing me, my tender face breaking the surface of the water and gasping down the air that had been stolen from me.
(and yet i am ever-choking on a phantom pain from six-years-old)