I was born mid-eye-roll,
c-sectioned from a punchline.
First words were don’t start with me,
second were fine, stay.

My spine’s in italics.
I bend for no one
but poetry
and panic.

I talk in skip-steps.
I cry in parentheses.
I kiss like a loophole.
He said you’re hard to read,
so I wrote myself louder.

Time doesn’t pass here,
it tantrums.
I clock in and out of myself hourly.

My skin’s on backward.
My hunger has subtitles.
My ghost writes sonnets in the steam on the mirror
and signs them:
Almost.

I invented a verb that means
to leave someone before they prove they would’ve.
I use it daily.
It conjugates into silence.
It rhymes with obviously.

The doctors say it’s chronic.
Pre-traumatic glow disorder.
I blush before the pain hits.
I glitter out of spite.

Don’t ask if I’m okay.
Ask which version of me is answering.
Ask if I remembered to name my wounds
before dressing them up like confetti.

I stopped listening to songs
with bridges—
they always begged.

I shrunk my appetite
until it fit inside
your gaze.

Then I shrunk
my gaze.

I killed the part of me
that expected softness.

She died
like a deer:
slow,
staring,
unconvinced
until the end.

I buried all of it
in poems
and told myself
that was healing.

But I check
the dirt
sometimes.

And things
move.

begin as a small soul-
stretch the ugly-
mind the dew.

Fill each borough with hands praying across beads,
******* in cheeks.
Here you can use the sky
to help you swallow.

Here you wonder historic in an orange wind tunneling
fierce, fluid, fast;
far and full,
Desperate to exhale
and spit down a subway grate.
No one’s looking for utopia anymore:
no rings
no wings.

Walk through haunted architecture for old times' sake.
What does ‘gilded age’ even mean?
On this block, our pipe’s clatter, burn up, and belly,
and the electricity smells.
We wear our shoes even as we sleep.

My body is a tenement,
families cram and people toil
in each room, room, room.
Layers of walls can be peeled off like skin,
we touch our lips and get dizzy.

I’m low light and no fire escapes, you’re growlers
of ale and some sort of horn in the saloon.
Together we are dangerous,
a public health emergency,
an evening that feels like home.

Laughter like glue dripping and drying;
exploring the oakwoods and getting itchy.
A moment, an arm, a radio.
A pinging kind of dire,
a different kind of parade.

His big issue is not company or crowds;
It’s nice girls like me seeing the same heart
but refusing to trip. I walk to bridges,
he stays sown on stoops.

We grip the same maps
but we seek a separate landscape.
I have bad thoughts and become the opposite,
we meet good omens and tuck them in the furnace.
I hear you aching like a slice of too-ripe fruit.
I remember not to look.

You look like the life I wanted
when I was pretending I wasn’t dying.
She’s beautiful, obviously,
and it’s not like I’m still trying—

I don’t miss you.
I miss the girl I thought I’d get to be
if you loved me right.

Do you ever
ache so privately
it feels impolite?

Because I do—
in airports where I don’t arrive,
in checkout lines I barely survive,
on Wednesdays, laced with something sour,
in stairwells meant for girls to cower,
in dresses hung with rosary thread,
worn to forgive what wasn’t said.

I am so well-behaved now.
I nod. I smile. I bite down.
I curtsy in crisis. I don’t make a scene.
I bleach my longing till it gleams.

I’m not still hurt, I’m just rewired.
I’m not that mad, I’m just so tired.
I’ve kissed the quiet on both cheeks—
but I riot in my lucid weeks.

I’ve made peace with playing dead,
but some nights I come back red—
in dreams that loop,
in memory's choir,
where the girl kept smiling
while walking through fire.

You look like the life I lied about
when I swore I didn’t mind.
You should hear what I don’t say about you.
It rhymes sometimes.

After miles of coasting,
trailing a stretch of steel remembered
more as an artery than a scar,

(back when the sun-stained arms
and scratchy palms
that laid each track across
an endless America
felt ageless and exhausted;

gripping great-grandbabies,
bibles and whittled pipes,
fingers coiled and knotted with stories,
ready to spring forth and croon
if only they were asked.)

They didn’t talk much during the in-between:
that window of time when their bodies
were no longer cracking and howling,
rooting rungs into dry grass
from ocean to ocean;
fitting the landscape
with a skeleton of its own-

but before the true rest,
when they'd let their bones shake
out the tight grip of untold tales,
and sink into the dirt they helped carve.

You think of them now as dust,
a rosary planted under pine,
a Sunday grace,
a shared plot,
a middle name.
You do, don’t you?
You’re not really looking.

At dinner, you carved our initials
in the table like we were kids
who couldn’t handle paper.
And when you kissed my forehead in that bar,
it felt like the closest thing to a war.

Who else deciphers you?
Who else lets you be this cruel?
You laughed like nothing ever stays,
while the room held its breath—
thousands of ways to break,
none of them mine.

You lit a cigarette, exhaled
my name, said love is just another
bruise to frame. Played Elliott Smith
until the vinyl screamed. The room went hollow.
I stayed, half-dreamed.

I’ve memorized the script you bleed,
still call it poetry, sharp and obscene.
Each line I write pulls teeth,
but silence is a grave too deep,
and I’m not ready to be buried.

The skyline’s fading into bruised blue,
and I keep writing about you.
If I ever make it big,
I’ll tell them the truth:
I sold my soul to the ghost of you.

Your eyes were glass;
your hands, stone.
You look like someone
who dies alone.

Who else watches you rot so sweet?
Who else begs to sit at your feet?
You kissed like a guillotine—
cold and clean—
said nothing’s sacred,
not even dreams.

You pressed your hands to my ribs,
sighed like a wave that knew it would drown,
said, “I wonder what breaks first—
the cage or the tide?
Does the cage crack open,
or does the tide betray?
Which one admits they wanted it that way?”

You laughed like the question wasn’t insane,
and I felt both collapse
in the back of my brain.

The tide swallowed the cage;
the cage choked the tide,
and I stood in the wreckage
of what neither survived.

As they broke, I saw it clear:
neither could win—
only disappear.

And I keep writing you,
line after line,
a hymn to the hurt
I still call mine.
If I ever make it big,
they’ll read every verse
and know I traded my best
for your worst.

Here’s to the ruins
we called our own—
the table we carved,
the war we’ve known.
Your eyes were glass;
your hands, stone.
You look like someone
who’s already gone.

I tried mining nuance.
I tried burying my limerence in
parking lots and kicking
gravel over the glowing parts.
My tongue was never that flexible,
and my knees were never that strong.

If I still smoked black cloves
with pigeon-footprint-fingers,
cooing with beaded arms,
and dissected birds,
I would be all in;
I would win this game.

A rabbit crosses the field.
Something caws.
Our clock is dead.
This filthy week has been
wind spun in darkness,
I’m inching towards light.

You’re stitching boring words,
every point you knit cheapens
my morning. I’m just here to gleam.
Daylight rolls toward me,
tasting my cheeks-
all light.

And then I’m gleaming,
warm, illusive, bathed
in a poem sunbeams
wrote because they missed me.

Live knee-deep
in language but be certain
of magic.
Dignity whispers
that you’re sleeping.

Not much closed to my kiss,
not much cracked to my scream.
I want to be a phenomenon.
Phenomenal.
All light. All gleam.

Everything is too
sugar-spine, salt-lipped,
staticstitched and jitterglow.

I can’t sit still
without turning into
a girl-shaped emergency.

I keep my synonyms in jars—
one for ache,
one for almost,
one for the word I made up
that means I miss you so much I become a faucet.

Language is a loose tooth.
I tongue it until it bleeds metaphor.
Call it poetry.
Call it coping.
Call it anything but what it is:
me, peeling the world into vowels
because I’m scared if I say what I mean,
you’ll hear it.

And then what?

You’ll answer?

You’ll echo?

You’ll send a voice memo
saying same
and I’ll combust on the Q train
like a well-read matchbook?

God, I am so
caption-core,
pun-drunk,
rhyme-accident-prone.
I named my stomach pit afterthought.
I named my wrists reminder.

And I named you
don’t.

But I still say it
every time I open my mouth
to speak.

You said,
“You’re better now,”
and I said,
“Not quite.”
I’m just quieter
when I lose the fight.

I’ve learned how to spiral
without making a mess—
I flinch like a debutante in danger—
I cry in the dress I bought for my funeral.

Healing looks holy
if you’re far enough back;
from across the room, I look redeemed.
Up close, it’s mascara
and panic attacks.

I am
so
well-behaved now—
I answer in lowercase,
I apologize in advance.

You’d never guess
I once threw a chair so hard
it split the act in half.

If I miss you,
I don’t text.
I answer fake calls
from you-shaped phantoms.
We fight.
I win.

I stand in the doorway
for dramatic effect.
I practice my exits
more than my lines.
I stage a comeback
with no audience.

I watch the part of the movie
where it all goes wrong,
then rewind it.
Then rewind it again.

I am healing
like a fraud.
Like a martyr with stage fright.
Like a saint who missed her cue.
Like someone who knows
I’m still your favorite bedtime story—
but only when I end.

I turn my breakdowns into brunch plans,
my grief into good posture.
I answer questions with questions.
I wear rings so I have something to twist.
I smile like it’s stage direction.
I rehearse sanity
like some girls practice wedding vows.

I light candles for each version of myself
you forgot.
I document.
I archive the damage—
like it might get reviewed later
by God.
Or worse, by you.

If you’re reading this:
I didn’t mean it.
(I meant every word.)

If you’re avoiding this:
good.
I wanted you to squint
at the poem’s edges
and wonder if the blood
was real.
(You always liked your violence subtle.)
(You always liked your girls learning your language—
just to beg in it.)

I pray more now.
Not to be saved.
Just to stay interesting.

Do you know how hard it is
to look healed
when your rage is wearing a rosary
and smiling in group photos?

Every time I wanted to scream,
I posted nothing instead.
Silence is the loudest performance
I’ve ever given.

I don’t raise my voice.
I sharpen it.
I sweeten it.
I lace it with facts
you’ll misinterpret on purpose.

My therapist says I intellectualize emotion.
I say, “Thank you.”
My boss says,
“You need to sleep and eat like you’re real.”
but she loves the **** I write.

I tell them both I’m fine.
I look fantastic
when I’m about to snap.

I know what I sound like.
I know how this poem reads.
That’s the worst part—
it’s always intentional.

That’s the best part—
I’ll pretend I didn’t mean it,
and I planned that too.

Part I


It’s admirable, really,
how you’ve turned heartbreak
into performance art.

Did I just say that?
Oops—slip of the tongue,

like when you called me a mistake
and dressed it up as self-awareness.

“I’m walking away
because it’s the right thing,”
you said,
as if morality were fear
in a designer suit,
polished for the press.

No, really, I envy you.
It must take a kind of brilliance
to gaslight yourself so thoroughly,
your airtight lies
barely letting air in.

I’d ask if you believe your own stories,
but I’m scared of the answer—
being that committed to the act.

Oops, there I go again.
Was that too much?

It’s just—
you make it so easy to write about you,
like I’m bleeding out for you,
staining the sheets,
while you dream of clean hands.

You’re a character that refuses to develop.
All first act, no resolution,
the kind of person who leaves a wound
and then calls it poetry.

You’re inspiring, honestly.
So inspiring I can’t stop writing you down,
line after line after line.
You’ll live forever in these verses,
like overripe fruit
festering in a golden bowl.

Oops—
did I just compare you to a metaphor
you’ll never understand?
My bad.

I guess I’m still trying to
turn the volume down
on how you left.


Part II


It’s impressive, really,
how you can ghost yourself in real time,
leaving echoes where you should stand,
how you speak in circles so tight
you vanish into them and bow.

But don’t worry,
I’m not mad.
I just hope, someday,
someone whispers “forever”
warm enough that you finally hear
what you threw away.

You’d rather wade in puddles
and call them oceans.
It’s cute, really,
how you mistook self-sabotage for bravery.

My bad—was that mean?
I didn’t mean it.

I just think it’s sweet,
the way you told me I deserved better,
like it wasn’t your job
to be that for me.

I’m not bitter, though.
(That’s what people say, right?
When they’re lying?)

I just wonder if you ever think
about the space you left behind—
a perfectly carved absence,
still shaped like you.

You’d probably call that poetic.
You’d find a way to make my grief
a compliment to your charm.
You always did like a good metaphor,
even if it wasn’t yours to claim.

And me?
I’ll keep apologizing for what you did.
My bad-
for trying too hard to make you stay.
My bad-
for thinking love was a language
you could learn to speak.
I should’ve known
you only ever mouthed the words.

But no hard feelings.
I hope you find someone
who doesn’t mind
standing in your shadow.

I hear the view from there
is stunning—

just like watching someone leave,
and realizing you built the door
and I locked it behind you,
my bad- I guess.

Wading through humidity,
adding to humanity-
the Lower East Side,
too hot to be still.
Too old to be kissing on sidewalks,
(doing it anyway.)

Let me show you my leprechaun leap:
run, jump, crash:
eight mimosas deep,
then I’m four limbs down
on a subway grate and laughing.

Twirling in the green dress I wore last time,
like a ******* cartoon character,
and you smile, but just a little.
And I grip, but just a little.

You hold my hand, lean me into walls,
where bricks radiate heat,
and I can’t tell you how lonely
Alphabet City feels
even now.

A heavy, dog-day eloquence,
the sticky camaraderie
of a heatwave, late August:
smirking with strangers,
running through sprinklers
like little kids.

Saluting a little light,
something curling the edges
like damnation,
lifting like prayer,
and I still haven't learned my lesson.
(I can’t rewrite my lonely.
Trying to write your name over it
will only stain more.)

Let’s just keep wading,
keep laughing,
and let the heat do the talking.
I will not say the next thing.
I will not say anything at all.
(I will not say anything at all.)

I’m always watching myself
watch the world.
Even in love,
I’m already narrating the ending.

I turn silence into stanzas.
Affection into evidence.
Every kiss, a metaphor.
Every absence, a motif.

People think I’m honest.
But really,
I just edit well.

Half of what I write
never happened.
The other half
happened too hard.

I’ve written the same heartbreak
fourteen different ways.
Gave it a new name.
Gave it better dialogue.
Made him softer
so the betrayal feels worse.

I say I’m writing for me,
but I’m always picturing the line
someone might underline
and send to their ex
at 2:03 a.m.

I’ve performed pain
like a dress rehearsal—
highlighted the devastation,
downplayed the shame,
cut the part where I begged
and called it pacing.

There are poems
that made people cry
and replies I never opened.
Because if I read them,
it might mean
I was never alone in it.
And I don’t know
if that would feel better
or worse.

Some nights I write
like I’m searching for proof
that it happened at all.
That he said it.
That I felt it.
That I was the kind of girl
someone could ruin
on purpose.

And if the writing is good enough,
maybe I don’t have to go back.
Maybe I don’t have to forgive him.
Maybe I just have to
survive it beautifully.

So I sharpen the line.
I fix the form.
I leave the ending open.
I publish the ache.

And I tell myself
that counts
as closure.

The betrayal was real.
The good lines were mine.
And maybe closure
doesn’t come in paragraphs—
maybe it’s just a quiet night
I don’t turn into a poem.

I think about purity;
the way I allow things in and out of my mouth in different rhythms-
sometimes gnawing, sometimes cramming,
sometimes clawing back up with bile and belief
until I feel empty enough to try again.

I can’t put any of it into words.
I can’t write short poems.
I over-explain. I overwhelm.
I over-draw and they oversee.
I start to stake but there’ll
always be things I can’t do-
or, I mean, things I won’t do.
That’s a lie.
I try, try, try
to feel alive.

I like the secret,
tipping towards transgression,
tidal, treading.
Nothing in me belongs anyway;
every piece is trespassing-
breaking and entering,
bouncing on chicken wire,
listening for sirens.

Nothing in me is solid enough.
I’m so many stanzas in and out-
each with its own wavering threshold,
each dependent on someones waffling regard.

Water around here isn’t clear,
puddles and streams pulse with
mud and leaves,
trash and scuttley insects.
My reflection exists only,
wholely,
behind a layer of milky film
and unclean things.
Things from nature.
Things alive.
Things also pure.

Purity like looting
when the wires are down,
like a cracked mirror,
a stagnant pond,
perfunctory ***,
and slow-seeping Lyme
thinning your legs and hollowing your eyes.

Trying a new rhythm; things still in,
still out,
but better aimed.
Still trying, still living,
still too many words,
and still not empty.
Never empty.
Never impure.

He once told me
he wanted to die in a place
that looked like a poem.
I told him
I wanted to live
like I was one.

We were doomed by aesthetics—
too many soft glances,
not enough spine.
He held my wrist like a snow globe
but shook me too hard.

He said I was all feeling,
no logic.
As if logic ever begged anyone to stay.

Once,
he told me I reminded him
of a girl in a painting.
I should’ve asked
what happened to her
after the gallery closed.

I used to count his heartbeats
when he slept,
just to know something
inside him still worked.

I wore my prettiest dress
to the argument—
just in case
he needed reminding
that I’m not easy
to walk away from.

He looked at me
like a cliff he might leap from
or photograph.

I stopped saying his name
and started writing
in second person.
It still felt like calling him home.

Even now,
I write you into metaphors
so I can pretend
you were never real—
just a concept,
a cautionary tale,
a ghost that rhymed.

You wanted tragedy.
I wanted truth.
We got
whatever this was.

A secret in my palm
and a secret in my mouth,
and the two are not the same.

God says He’s sorry,
and I say I’m sorry too.
The truth is not the same as the lie,
but they have the same taste,
the same weight,
so I swallow them both.

I ask God if He remembers
the day He knit me together,
with fear and wonder,
all thoughts and thorns.

He nods His head, and I nod mine,
and we both agree
that He should have been more careful.
I say I'm sorry again,
and this time I mean it more.

A plea in my fist and a plea in my throat,
and the two are not the same.
God says He knows my heart like
I know His mercy, and I feel bad,
I think He might be as lonely as I am.

God tells me a new song is coming,
and I tell Him hurry, I want to sing.
We both know that wilderness
is a state of mind, a state of grace,
and I let my mind wander.

(finaldraftREALtrashversion.txt)

openletterdraft13: i wasn’t supposed to feel this much
// open file: confession.txt
// modified: too many times

i loved you [ ]
  and by loved i mean studied.
  and by studied i mean starved.
  and by starved i mean
  i said “i’m not hungry” with your name in my throat.

INSERT IMAGE:
  a girl in a bookstore touching the spines
  like maybe one of them will understand.

INSERT IMAGE:
  a girl standing in the moonlight,
  asking the low-flying planes if she’s forgivable.

EXPORT FEELING:
  named it something soft
  so no one would notice it burned.

he said “i don’t want to hurt you”
  which is what men say
  right before they hurt you
  with clean hands.

CTRL + ALT + DELETE
  but nothing closes—
  especially not the part
  that keeps writing poems in his grammar.

[SYSTEM ERROR: too many metaphors. Simplify?]

i called it love.  
he called it bad timing.

INSERT PASSWORD:
  seeme

ACCESS GRANTED.

NEW NOTE:
  i forgive you in lowercase.
  you don’t deserve the shift key.

open file: ruinmefinaldraft.txt  
last saved: 2:41am  
user: girlwhoknowsbetter  
status: still writing about him / (pathetic)  
attachment: none (maybe that’s the point)

INPUT: I’m fine  
OUTPUT: [you don't sound like it]

cpu temp: 100.4°F  
(she's burning again)

I bit my nails and tasted April.

biometrics: unstable  
heartbeat: typing...  
eyes: exit-wound wide, still scanning  
mouth: unsent, but spelling it with teeth  
spine: error 504  

/ BIOS update failed  
// scroll depth: dangerous  
// dopamine loop: infinite

poetry drafts: full  
dignity: low  
engagement: medium

attachments:
- crying.wav  
- voice04833.m4a (unsent)  
- screenshotwhiplash02.png  
- idontbelieveyoudraftfinalFINAL.txt

NEW GOOGLE DOC:  
  title: every version of me you didn’t love  
  sharing permissions: view only  
  editing access: revoked

collaborators:
- me (12am), me (3am), me pretending I don’t care  
- girlboss, gaslight, ghost  
- nobody asked, everyone noticed, Taylor Swift  

[CORRUPTED TEXT]  
  she said she was over it [DATA INCOMPLETE]  

attachment: none (unless you count the damage)

[404: identity not found]

everyone says i look good  
no one asks if i’m still here  
the scale goes down  
the poems get louder  
the body forgets how to stay

[repetition detected: again, again, again, again]

click to translate: desperation

plaintext:
  you’re not even that important  
  but i keep talking like you’re holy  
  what do you do with love  
  when no one wants to hold it?

click here to reveal what she meant (no one ever did)

>>> meanwhile: her stomach hurts for no reason again.

reminder: no one asked.

crash log: 3:14am, again

system flag:
  are you sure you want to feel this much?  
  [no] [too late]

[user breakdown detected]  
  INSERT MESSAGE: “i’m sorry for my part.”  
  STATUS: unacknowledged  
  TIMESTAMP: one year ago  
  attachment: olive_branch.png  

recovery mode engaged (no progress)

autosave: corrupted  
exported: only the parts that hurt

I googled "am I spiraling"  
and then took the quiz twice.

cloud access: denied  
  her incision itched—  
  but not as much as the silence.  
  the body healed.  
  the meaning didn’t.

when she stands up too fast and sees stars,  
she names them after him.

draft saved: yes  
sent: no  
read: no  
felt: yes  
ruined: absolutely

I’ve written forty-seven poems that almost said it right.

trash folder: full  
memory: still running  
love: running in background (not responding)

[DATA COLLISION]  
  she realized she never even asked for this  
  she just tried to make it mean something

CTRL + ALT + ME  
(force quit)  

> everything backed up  
> nothing backed down  
> terminal still open

You can play
with the tension
and not get caught,
but you can never
break it;

not when nerves
are taut telephone lines
purring with electricity;
thick enough to chew.
The cracks are deep
enough to bury a secret,
swallow each perforated promise,
and each broken beacon.

I can feel your pulse
racing against mine.
I can't tell whose heart is beating
and whose is beat.
We are two sticks of dynamite
in the same trophy tin:
sparks of breath singeing skin,
we hold each other up
until we hold
each other down.

The rules of war change
with your mood,
the laws of physics
are putty in your hands,
and the tides of time
are your own
collapsing conspiracy-
a house of cards you reshuffle
and repossess as the candle burns
a circle of wax on the table.

I can’t decide if you want to devour me
or decimate me—
adore my halo
or annihilate my hope,
love me with your whole heart
or wreck mine with your whole weight.
And you can’t decide either,
can you?

The light is unkind,
the land unforgiving,
and you are all
my favorite lies;
the canvas of my
incomplete portrait,
the crossed out pages
of my abandoned poems.

You can play with your edge
or throw me off it.
Either way, I'll be yours to keep
or yours to conquer.
I won’t tell you how to ruin me,
or beg you to spare me
from your rabid reign—
I’m not that kind of country.
I’m an open border;
a shattered compass,
spinning wildly.

But I will say:
the ruins
are all that’s left when
the empire falls,
all that’s real when the
games are done,
all that’s preserved
when the tension eases
and the maps are redrawn,
again and again.

I'll send a postcard
to your grave.

I was a god once,
but I got bored
and turned myself into a girl
just to see what it felt like
to bleed on a schedule
and be underestimated at CVS.

I used to throw comets for fun.
Now I throw up from anxiety
and pretend it’s acid reflux.

I traded omniscience for online shopping.
Traded lightning bolts
for a Bic lighter
I keep losing in other people’s cars.

I used to be prayed to.
Now I pray I don’t get ghosted,
pray my Amazon Chase card wasn’t hacked,
pray I remember why I walked into the room.

I’ve lived for centuries.
You can tell by the way
I roll my eyes at time.

My bones know Latin.
My knees speak Morse.
My spine hums with prophecies
I keep forgetting to write down.

I was a god once.
But now I’m just really good at parties.
Really bad at sleeping.

Really into ChatGPT conversations
and spending 40 minutes at a time
inside my ear canal
with an inner-ear camera from Shein.

II watch body-cam arrest videos at 3AM
and wonder if I’d beg prettier on camera.
Sometimes everything that comes out of me
smells burnt.

I think I’d make a good Saint,
so I keep my eyes open for miracles—
but I only feel fire in my bones
when I’m overstimulated.
And I feel really sleepy the rest of the time.

I still have revelations,
but they only happen when I’m doom-scrolling.
I still search for splendors,
I just call them coping mechanisms now.

I make eye contact with hawks.
I smell rain before it happens.
I know who’s going to text me
before they do.
Then they don’t.

Sometimes I float—
but only in conversations.

I leave my body at least once a day.
Usually in traffic.
Sometimes while folding laundry.
Always when someone says,
“You don’t seem like the type to cry.”

I was a god once.
And now I’m this.
A walking myth in leggings.
A fallen star with a Dollar Tree receipt so long
it reads like scripture.

Don’t worship me.
Just don’t interrupt me
when I’m talking to the moon.

Why do the stars seem brighter when you’re far from home?
How is it possible to feel so much and still be empty?
Was my love too heavy, or were you just afraid?
What if I’m always too much and never enough, like the way the sky bleeds at sunset?
Do you picture my tears like confetti?
Were the vibes sublime?

Why does the thought of you getting engaged on Facebook
make me want to throw up pretty bushes?
Why did I feel I was asking too much, when all I ever
wanted was for you to mean what you said?
Is longing always this loud, or am I the only one screaming?

How do we keep going when hope is just a rumor we tell ourselves at 3 a.m.?
When did we decide that falling apart had to be done quietly?
What if love is less like falling and more like standing
outside a door I’m too afraid to open?

What does your therapist think about me?
How long have you been saying my name in that room,
throwing it against the walls like something you can’t figure out?
Did you lie to me, or was it yourself you couldn’t face?
What if the map we’ve been following was drawn by hands that never touched?
What if we never touch?

Remember ten years ago, before this got so knotted,
we were learning lines in basements and smoking cloves behind the theater?
Did you think you’d be the one I shatter for?
Why does happiness feel like something I’m never allowed to keep?
What if time doesn’t soften the edges but teaches us how to carry the sharpness?

Why do the faces in old photographs seem to know something we don’t?
Is there a difference between being brave and being reckless,
or does it all depend on how the story ends?
What was the tipping point, the moment you shut down the parade?
What was the endgame? Why was it a game at all?
How many times have you pressed your ear to the silence,
hoping it might tell you something new?

Why does the idea of forever sound like both a promise and a threat?
How do I stop feeling like you’re the only poem I write?
Have you read the poems about you?
Are they easy to decode? Are they eating you alive?
Do you want to be eaten?

Do you ever wonder if the fire was always just fire?
What if the love I gave wasn’t meant for you,
but for the version of me that needed something to believe in?
Was I crossing a line, or was I drawing one?
What if I never stop mourning something I made up?

How do you carry an atlas under your tongue?
Does my voice still sound like a howl? Does it pierce your night?
Did you really have to detonate us two weeks before the release of The Tortured Poets Department?
Will the story of us linger like smoke in those songs forever?
What do you think about when you think of me—my voice echoing off the walls,
my *** in leggings, or my ceaseless need to be seen?
Will I ever stop dreaming about you?
Why do I know it’s been exactly 200 days since it happened?
Who’s counting?

How do we reconcile the person we thought we’d be with the one we see in the mirror at 3 a.m., wide-eyed and wondering?
What did you get out of keeping me in your orbit, spinning in circles while you stood still?
Why does your name still taste like blood when I say it out loud?
Will I ever stop wondering why I wasn’t enough?
What if the real betrayal was how easily you let me believe it was my fault?

Words stick to skin like bad dreams. Awake,
cold sweat, twisted in sheets with a half-remembered phrase.
Every story has a part of it that's true.
That’s why I lie.

I’m sorry about your bedding.
I’m sorry about my teeth,
about the edge that tells me to laugh when I know I shouldn’t,
and I’m sorry about the way I pull your hair when you’re above me-
I forget that it’s not mine.

I used to collect ideas like friendship bracelets on the last day of camp,
I used to listen to your breath catch in sleep and wish that I had pitched it.
I used to think in stanzas, and sigh into verses,
like a poem about a poem about a poem.

Now I barely think.
I miss thoughts like trains.
I sweat your bed.
I hold your attention like a bouquet,
then knot it like a tourniquet.
I keep patience like a promise.
Now I collect only what I can taste,
only what I can swallow whole.

What happened while
the manuscripts choked?
Lighter shoulders,
stranger testaments.

Pardons reflect an ark
where shine means shout,
wind means worship,
and we stopped placing wonder
on anyone's elegy.

I used to be so young and severe,
trembling under any movement.
I played a ghost
until I became one.

I'd be crimped into vails,
rushed through verses,
roused from rest;
sighing
and hunting for your hand.

Echoes of ether-
loose-limbed and hearkening,
barely blinking;
saluting fences,
planting poems,
heeding baby-teeth.

Interred with you in
this chaos,
this grass-
fermenting fate
forevermore.
We tried to rise,
but failed to become the sky.

Since you cannot
take testimony seriously,
I had to rip it out-
our two wills colliding,
our pine coffins dissolving.

I was buried with jewels in
my open palms;
still offering,
still not atoned.

Your hands were buried empty
with nothing to answer for,
still tense,
still clenched in fists.

We harbor things-alive from our dead parts;
mice warm in your nest of ribs,
beetles declare squatters rights
in the tent of my pelvis and
raise flags from hip-bone heights.

Worms slink along fingers
and unite our pieces in peace.
In life we follied;
underfoot we fuel.
Tenable terrain,
we transform tomorrow tender.

The manuscripts soften to us,
the archives are kind.
We let ourselves sink into the rattle
and double into strange dust
so that new things
become.
blooming from us.

And still,
I sat with my hands in my lap —
palms up,
like I was waiting for something
I knew wouldn’t come —
like stale air was all I could hold.

I traced the shape of your name —
sharp vowels, crooked consonants —
one letter for every season since you left.
I lost count at 14.

And still,
I can hear you —
laughing through your teeth,
saying you hated your name.

I poured a drink,
watched the whiskey pool at the 14 mark,
glass sweating like it knew,
and thought about swallowing the whole thing.

Instead,
I held the glass so long
the ice melted to nothing.

14 notes app confessions,
all timestamped at terrible hours.

"I'm sorry I always spoke to you like I was keeping score."
"I'm sorry my questions felt like weapons —
I just wanted to know where you kept the tenderness."

"I wanted you to love me more than you could."
"Forget I said that."
"I would have let you ruin me if you'd asked."

I deleted them one by one —
like stitching my mouth shut,
like learning to speak without a tongue.

I know you’re out there —
shaking change in your pocket,
like the sound might drown out your guilt,
ripping napkins into tiny pieces,
thinking about calling
but never meaning it.

I know you drink with the lights off now —
like you’re scared your own shadow might tell on you.

I know you’re out there —
but I don’t know where.

And still,
I sat with my hands in my lap —
not calling,
not crying,
not moving —
just waiting for something
I couldn’t name.

I stood barefoot on the cold tile,
watching the faucet drip —
14 slow drops,
each one sounding like a pin hitting the floor.

I tried to count faster than they fell.
I always lost.

I counted the pills in the bottle —
just checking.
There were 14.

I closed the cap
and held my breath —
like it might open itself again,
like it was waiting to see
if I’d already lost something.

But instead —
I sat with my hands in my lap,
14 pointing to you,
if you know what to know.

I pressed my thumb into the bruise on my arm —
just to feel something bite back.
It bloomed like ink under my skin.
I counted to 14
and let go.

I still wake up at 4:14 —
lungs tight like I’ve been running,
like my body forgot how to breathe without you,
like something’s burning in my chest,
like something’s trying to get out.

I don’t pray for you.
I don’t curse you either.

I sit up,
open my palms —
the room holds its breath.

I listen.
I taste blood.

And still,
I sit with my hands in my lap —
palms up,
like I’m waiting to be handed something
I know won’t come —
palms up,
like I’m being punished for asking at all.

But my hands won’t stay empty forever.

14 pointing to you,
if you know what to know.

SAY EVERYTHING YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY.
Bite down. Spill.
Dredge the truth up from your ribs.

If it makes someone uncomfortable,
you’re getting somewhere.
If it makes you flinch, you’re close.
If it makes you ache, press harder.

LOVE LIKE YOU’RE BURNING IN REAL TIME.
Love with your hands open,
a pocketful of matches,
no fear of third-degree consequences.

Let it ruin you. Let it rewire you.
Let it make you unbearable.

If it doesn’t change the shape of your mouth,
if it doesn’t show up in your dreams,
it wasn’t love—
just a joke that went on too long.

YOUR SUFFERING IS NOT CURRENCY.
What you create from it is.

Blueprint grief.
Canonize longing.

Turn your past into poetry
and then charge admission.

TIME IS NOT REAL, BUT YOUR BONES DISAGREE.
You will feel the weight of years
in your joints.

You will remember things in your muscles
before your mind catches up.

A decade will pass,
and your skin will still tingle
at the memory of hands
that have long since vanished.

You are a clock made of flesh,
and time leaves fingerprints.

IF YOU MUST GO, LEAVE LIKE A COMET.
No quiet exits.
No slipping away unnoticed.

Let them watch as you burn through the sky.
Let them stare until their eyes ache.
Let them wish they had followed you.
Let them wake up years later
with your name still in their mouth.

YOUR SOUL HAS A B-SIDE. PLAY IT LOUD.
The version of you that winks at the moon?
Real.

The one who writes letters
just to bury them under snow?
Real.

The one who flew to Vietnam
to live with a girl she met on 2010s Tumblr?
Also real.

You are a thousand lives,
and all of them are real.

GOD LIVES IN BATHROOM STALLS AND BUS STATIONS.
You will not find divinity in neat places.

You will find it in the drunk girl in the club bathroom,
telling you you’re beautiful.

In the way strangers help each other
at baggage claim.

In the way someone leans in, just slightly,
when they laugh.

Holiness is the street musician
playing for shadows.

Start praying to that.

THE ONES WHO LEAVE NEVER GET TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.
Let them wonder.
Let them rot in their own unknowing.

Let them wake up years later
with your name still in their mouth.
Let them carry it
like a stone in their stomach.

THE DEAD STILL HEAR YOU. SPEAK ACCORDINGLY.
Your ancestors are listening.
Your ghosts are listening.

The version of you
who didn’t make it past that worst night—
she is listening.

Speak like you owe them something.
Because you do.

YOU ARE NOT A SUNDAY MORNING.
You are a Friday night
with blood in your mouth.

You are the reckoning,
the consequence,
the aftermath,
the mess they wake up to
and the ghost they dream about.

EVERY SETTING HAS A VERSION OF YOU STILL WALKING AROUND IN IT.
You are still twenty-four,
draping yourself around campus,
all short skirts and Adderall-eyes,
like you’re everybody’s daydream.

Still eighteen,
getting on the D.C. Metro with a book,
riding up and down the red line
just to pass the evening.

Still thirty-three,
kissing a face you’d been curious to taste
for ten years.

Still eleven,
jumping on the trampoline with your backpack,
waiting for the bus to come.

You are haunting yourself across time zones.

Be kind to the versions of you
who don’t know how the story ends yet.

EVERY SCAR ON YOUR BODY IS A SENTENCE IN A LANGUAGE YOU’RE STILL LEARNING.
Your skin is an unfinished poem.
Your bones are a form of punctuation.

Some wounds never fully close—
they just change their wording.

YOU HAVE LEFT YOURSELF IN PLACES YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO.
There is a version of you
still laughing at that one house party
where you lost your heels
but found a switchblade.

There is a version of you
still running down E 15th Street at 3 AM,
blinding rain, howling.

You are scattered across time
like loose change.

Do not try to gather yourself back up.
You were meant to be infinite.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN, GO DOWN IN FLAMES.
If they break your heart,
write them into legend.

If they leave you,
make sure they haunt themselves.

If you cry,
let it be in a ball gown,
mascara running down your face
like a Renaissance painting.

Do not suffer quietly.
Wreak havoc on your own mythology.

YOU ARE NOT A HALF-HEARTED THING.
Love like you’re starting a fire
in a dry field.

Love like it will be written about.
Love like you’re trying to leave a scar in history.

Slip between history’s fingers
like a well-kept secret.

Or better—
be the kind of catastrophe
they build monuments for.

PARTS OF YOU WILL DIE IN BEDROOMS WHERE YOU WERE LEFT ON READ.
Parts of you will die
in cities that still call your name.

Parts of you will die
in the arms of people
who kissed you like they meant it
and lied.

And yet—

Their mother still asks about you.
You still feel their breath in your hair.
The love stayed—only they left.

YOU ARE A FAITH. ACT ACCORDINGLY.
Worship your own survival.

Build altars to the times
you almost didn’t make it.

Pray at the church of your own spine.

There is no church holier
than the space you take up.

Your body is a relic.
Your mind is a temple.
Your lungs are a sanctuary.

IF YOU MUST GO MISSING, MAKE IT A SPECTACLE.
Disappear into the night
wearing red lipstick and borrowed jewelry.

Slip through the cracks
like a motel vacancy sign at dawn—

Flickering.
Fading.
Gone.

Make them wonder if they imagined you.
Make them see your silhouette
in places you’ve never been.

Make them ask strangers,
“Did you see her?
Did she leave a note?”

IF YOU MUST RETURN, BURN THE BRIDGE BEHIND YOU.
The past is a country
where you do not have citizenship.

Stop applying for visas.
Stop sending postcards.

If you return,
take only your bones,
leave only an echo.

EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL HAUNT YOU. LOVE IT ANYWAY.
Your favorite books will betray you
by meaning different things as you age.

The songs you once danced to
will one day leave you breathless with grief.

Every person who ever touched your skin
left fingerprints under your ribs.

This is the price of having a body.
This is the price of believing in beauty.

Keep paying it.

IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ALIVE, IT WAS NEVER A WASTE OF TIME.

I used to write gently.
Let the metaphor bloom
before I buried the body,
then buried the lede.
Let language unravel
like stolen ribbon—
then strangle the scene
it slipped from.

I used to offer softness
like it wouldn’t run out.
Let your cruelty masquerade
as clumsiness.
softened your edges
with my own skin.

I won’t stitch myself smaller
for men who call me complex
while collapsing under complexes—
then call me poetic,
like that’s the point.

You said,
“That’s not what I meant.”
I said,
“I know.”
And dragged the line
like a corpse
through the ******.

Framed the silence
in gold leaf
and gall.
Made you a myth—
then fed you to it.

You said,
“The right thing is to walk away.”
So I followed you
into the poem
and made sure
you never left.

You wanted a loophole.
I wrote you scripture.
You wanted soft closure.
I carved your apology
into a tombstone—
your smile etched wrong,
your teeth too sharp
even for fiction.

They never looked kind.
They never were.

Don’t ask
why my version hurts more.
Ask why yours
never held up—
until I told it
wrong
on purpose.

(because location is not a cure and I am still the problem)

The motorbikes don’t care if I’m sad.
The coffee is thick like secrets
and still I manage to spill it down my shirt
like a metaphor.
Like I’m trying to prove I’ve learned nothing.

I watch two women bargain in a language
I still haven’t learned—
I tell myself I’m soaking it in
but really, I’m just sweating through my bike-shorts under polyester dress
and writing poems in my head
about men who don’t know where I am.

I eat noodles at 9 AM
and think about what it means to be soft
in a place where everything is louder than me.
I walk past altars and incense
and pretend it’s for me.
That someone here might pray me into clarity.

I keep writing like I’m in a movie
about a girl who flees the country
to find peace
and ends up writing the same poem
with different weather.

I take pictures of lanterns and puddles
and temple steps
but the notes app still opens
to that one draft
with too many ellipses
and not enough closure.

I know I’m lucky to be here.
I know I’m lucky to be anywhere.
But even halfway across the world
with lychee tea on my chin
and house shoes that don’t fit—
I’m still writing like I’m in Connecticut
still craving something impossible
still carrying my ghosts
like they made it through customs.

I came all this way
and I’m still me.

That has to mean something.

You said, “If I loved you, I’d make you my wife,”
I smiled with my eyes while that cut like a knife.
I shrugged, “Playing house in the forest just isn’t my thing,”
You grinned, “I know, but someday you’ll look good in my ring.”

Then, “We’d make beautiful kids, no doubt,”
Pan to me spinning out—
the ****’s that about?
You cast palmy lines out in lakes of blue,
Reel them back just to watch me bruise.

Every glance is a bait, every word a disguise,
Painting me futures with half-open eyes.
You string me along with a touch and a tease,
Like these promises don’t steal my breath and my sleep.

You talk in circles, keep me halfway there,
Trap me in snares, gasping for air.
I’m the half-written story you stash on a shelf,
The pretty idea you save for yourself.

But I’m done waiting for a life you won’t start,
Done being a muse in your second-rate art.

Hypotheticals shuffled in black and red,
A game where I’m playing, but I’m underfed.
You bluff with a tell that’s more tale than truth,
A plot spun from lips that lie more than soothe.

You tuck the truth into creased, hidden folds,
Like secrets are currency you get to withhold.
Bits of confession slip through your jest,
Building a house of cards in my chest.

I’m done with your “someday” that drips with delay,
You paint futures in grayscale but I’m done with the gray.
I won’t be the punchline in your past-tense tense,
No longer the girl caught up on the fence.

I won’t be the footnote you write in small print,
Or the flash in your memory that’s starting to tint.
I won’t be the whisper you keep on the side,
Or the “could’ve been” girl that haunts your pride.

I brush my teeth like I’m getting ready for war.
Or I forget to for three days
until my canines are wearing sweaters.

Temu moisturizer like battle paint.
Who knows what’s in there.
Who cares.

Upside-down Claddagh on my ring finger like a threat.
And it might be.

I put my hair up like a woman with secrets—
on the days I brush it.
A bumpy bun the rest of the time.

I shed like a stripper.
I strip like a thief.

I walk out the garage door like I invented sorrow.
I get in my car
like every song from Reputation to Tortured Poets
was written for me.

I wave to strangers like I’m about to die.
Cross the street like it’s a choice.
Clock into work like I have a hit on my head.

I **** Elf Bars like they’ve got confessions inside,
and blow out like they won’t give me cancer—
because they can tell
I approach them with pure intentions
and a positive spirit.

I know how to make an exit
that feels like a funeral.
I know how to hold a coffee cup
like I’m accepting an award
no one else can see.

I take bites of dropped chocolate chip cookies
but spit them out before they ruin me.

I spend too long staring at my own reflection,
just to make sure I still exist.

I catalog new moles.
Curse the milia above my eyelids.
Buzz off my mustache.
Denounce my chin hairs.
I think thin.

Sometimes I blink
just to feel time move.

I keep novels in my bag like armor,
and a journal like a last will and testament.

The expensive pens from Amazon
that don’t crawl up my left hand
like a disease.
That don’t smudge the page
like I have something to hide.

I pay for Spotify.
Skip the songs that hurt.
Play the one that ruins me.

I cry on the train
like I’m filming something important.
Because I will be.

I want everything I feel
to mean something.
I want every single ache to echo.
I want my poems
reverberating in the minds of people
who are emotionally legendary.

I want the world to apologize
for not feeling it first.

Sometimes I walk
like I’m being watched
by everyone who’s ever left me.

Sometimes I smile
like I know something God doesn’t.

Sometimes I think I was born
just to document
what it means to be alive
in the most dramatic possible way.

Because I am the first girl
to ever feel anything.

A vile sort of silence drapes my summer
with white-silk cheeks and gauzy sighs,

it's been ages since I've killed my darlings;
drenching them in light, hoping to be surprised.

Each poem is steeped in saline,
each line laced with sparks and sour,

but the syllables still sing, sing, sing
for their own satellite-sake,

the stanzas still dance, dance, dance
like drunken angels in heels and tulle,

the metaphors still spin, spin, spin
with bits of gold through my mind and muck.

Each night I feed myself tales of my own glint,
each morning I warn myself to get a grip.

If you can keep a secret,
you can keep your distance.
If you can keep your word,
you can keep your head down.
If you can keep score,
you can keep your eyes on the road.

Night crawls toward hot-morning on its belly,
dawn breaks like a thousand tightrope hearts,

hot-pink pain seasons the sky with oozing, vivid blush,
blue-blood bats flutter from my hair like disgraced prayer they rushed.

The last larkspur dies,
the first swallow flies,

each hairpin I lose in my mouth is a line,
and each hairpin I find in the field is a sign.

Darlings,
we both know you should be dead by now;
all shiny and benign:

Darlings,
I’m all summer-soft and quiet-taut-
no ****** on my mind.

(verse1)
You always had a talent for leaving the room,
Broad-backed, sharp-dressed, all charming and doomed.
Your entrances grand, you’d win over the crowd,
Drop stunning subtleties ‘til the lights dimmed down.
"See me," a soft plea, your eyes on the floor,
Like I should memorize your tragedy but never ask for more.

(pre-chorus1)
I ignored the fine print;
"Lead actor has a habit of vanishing mid-play."
I killed my role as the girl who believes,
but belief alone won’t make a bolter stay.

(chorus1)
Exit, stage left, door swinging wide,
You ran like you rehearsed it a thousand times.
You said, “See me,” but meant, “Don’t look too close,”
You wanted a witness, not someone who knows.
Left me with questions folded like paper planes,
Tossed into the air, but never explained.

(verse2)
Playing the beats, thought we were learning this dance,
But you let go mid-spin, never gave it a chance.
Said, “I don’t think you love me,” like a closing remark,
Like you needed an ending that cast you as smart.
And God, you delivered that line with ease,
Like a man who never had to beg on his knees.

(pre-chorus2)
I should’ve caught the way you blinked too slow,
Like you were already erasing our bloodstained tableaux.
Should’ve noticed how your hands stayed cold,
Like they knew how to pinch but not how to hold.

(chorus2)
Exit, stage left, no roses, no rain,
Just the weight of your quiet, hollow and plain.
Left me with questions I can’t even write,
Like a coward who mistakes falling for flight.
You said, “See me,” but meant, “This isn’t quite real.”
Like we were just a scene to perform, not something to feel.

(bridge)
Do you ever slip, do you ever miss,
The way I knew you before all of this?
Do you search for my outline in backlit frames,
Or in the curve of girls with softer names?

Do you fold your love letters before they’re sent,
Start a confession, then drop the pen?
You speak our language when no one’s around,
I know you flinch at the ******* sound.

Tell me, when you walk past mirrors at night,
Do you see a man, or just another boy in flight?
Do you ever wonder if you could’ve stayed,
Or do you still mistake running for being brave?

(chorus3)
Exit, stage left, no sound, no applause,
Just a door swinging shut, the quiet that claws.
Left me with echoes that won’t let me rest,
Like names on a headstone you never addressed.
You said, “See me,” but meant, “Don’t get confused,”
A love built on punchlines, but never for two.

(outro)
No curtain, no bow, just the echo remains.
No curtain, no bow, just the echo remains.
No curtain, no bow—just you crossing out my name.

It’s not that I like him.
It’s that I noticed he drinks oat milk
and I decided that meant he’s emotionally available
and a little bit broken
in a way I can fix
with eye contact
and carefully timed Instagram stories.

It’s not that I want him.
It’s that I saw the veins in his hands
and immediately imagined
what it would feel like
to destroy him
and then write the best poem of my life.

I don’t flirt.
I cast a spell and leave the room.
I curate a presence.
I drop one compliment like a trap
and then disappear for three days.

He posted a story with a girl
and I spiraled so hard
I almost became someone else.
I googled her.
Then I googled “how to stop googling her.”

I’m not in love—
I’m conducting research
on how quickly I can unravel
over someone who
has never asked me a single follow-up question.

I’ve named our future dog.
I’ve blocked him
just to see if it made him feel something.
I’ve unblocked him
in case it didn’t.

He doesn’t know it,
but he’s already been a metaphor
in four poems
and a villain
in one voice memo
I’ll never send
but might transcribe
for the memoir.

It’s not that I like him.
It’s that I have a deep, unhealed need
to be chosen
by someone
who never saw me coming
but somehow always knew
I’d ruin him beautifully.

I step out of cabs like a kept woman,
like someone who has never once
had to chase anything down.

My skin glows like old money,
like generational wealth,
like I was never stupid enough
to beg in the first place.

I walk past mirrors like they owe me something,
like they should be grateful
to hold my reflection
for even a second.

Gold hoops, collarbones like carved marble,
lipstick the color of a closed door.
I lean into the frame just to see it—
how time has made me rarer,
like something kept behind glass,
like something men whisper prices for.

My laugh costs more than your rent,
my absence is designer,
tailored to fit only me.

I wear silk for no reason.
I order the cocktail with the longest name,
just because I can.
I walk into rooms like I invented them.

God, I look so expensive now.
You can't even afford to miss me properly.

Pretend it’s just another party—
an apartment filled with ghosts in rented shoes,
the air so balmy-slick and regret-thick
you chew it between clenched teeth and canapés.

Laughter echoes like it's hollow—
like it's searching for a way out.
Smile anyway, teeth shining shields,
polished by all the swill you've swallowed.

Conversations carry and carry on,
half-truths wrapped in nicer clothes, familiar faces
wrapped with softer shadows, words slurring to silk, then blurring to tilt.
Wave at someone you used to know;
pretend like you have any say in how you’re remembered.

Pretend the warm hands on your shoulders aren’t anchors
dragging you back to conversations you’ve outgrown,
then pretend your feelings were never knives
dressed as whispers,
and strangers in your skin.
Pretend you've never been the best thing at the party.
Pretend you've never been the worst.

The ghosts taught you some tricks;
pour drinks and flatter, don’t spill souls and blather—
the art of being just enough, but never too much,
your heart near the door, the gravity of leaving,
a muscle that’s learned to scheme and stay still
in ways your body can't, your mind never will.

Pretend just another party—
just another night to swallow or score.
You’re so much younger than you ever were, and braver;
one eye on the exit and one foot out the door.

Exits beckon another entrance:
but that wouldn't be pretending,
would it?

The best thing at this party
only pretends to leave-
the worst thing at this party
is smiling anyway.

I wake up at 3 AM like a corpse reanimating,
heart doing running start round-offs,
lungs filled with something thick, something that lingers.

Some nights, I think I wake up screaming,
I check my phone like a widow at the shoreline,
I check my texts but no one has asked if I’m okay.

You said: I think you like that I hurt you.
And I should have laughed,
should have told you—
I don’t like the pain, I just like the proof that you were here.
You saw forever and let it rot in your hands.

But all I did was blink,
felt my pulse stutter like a dying lightbulb.
I didn’t want to give you another thing to run from.

Now, I pace the house like a ghost with unfinished business,
whispering things I should have said into the silence.
I still talk to you like you’re in the room,
like you’re just beyond the veil,
like maybe if I say your name right,
you’ll knock once for yes.

If I say I’m over it, will the algorithm believe me?
If I change your name to "him," will it still cut?
If I don’t tell them it’s real,
will they call it a masterpiece?

Sanctified and starry-eyed,
I thought I could have bad thoughts
and still sit dauntless
and debrided
on my mighty throne of miseries.

I thought I could pocket poison
and still polish my poems
with punch-drunk hands,
still bleed revere into the wide-open
unbearable,
still beg for big words to break
the uncanny uncertain,
still dance with a demon in a moth-eaten skirt,
still giggle like a new tango for your ballroom
brainwaves and barricades.

I thought my gaze could pin
your fancy and fury to my wrist,
let the rapture steal through the window,
burn down your pretense,
your pathological provocations,
and find us intertwined and divine.

Lovelorn and luridly-lit,
I thought I could spin you
to a dizzying depth of sirens and stars,
diffuse the bomb in your mouth
and be the ballast
for your throbbing, cracking heart,
your writhing wilderness,
your wretched wreckage.

I thought I could buck up-
brush my hair,
and rose-blush my way through
your strange dark and
your winding labyrinth;
the coiling curse
of your unquiet heart.

Jilted and jagged-pricked to the quick:
I thought I could be the saint of your history,
the angel of your archives,
the verses you could not flee,
the name you could not outrun.

I thought the city I built could outlast
your spite, I let you burn bridges
while I slept under them,
collect your sharpest flares,
your longest shadows,
and postmarked daggers,
then drown them in my last-resort lullaby.

The flames I stoked could do the dying for you,
and the sky I swore to keep
would not fall for you like I have.
I thought I could find the key to your riddle
and wear it like a necklace,
we lose our thread,
then find it as matching knots on our wrists.
It’s really not that hard to be
the answer to your own question,
you just have to know what to ask.

I’ve seen your kind of mercy,
and it’s got teeth.
You said you’ve broken stronger women than me.
What a line to throw at someone still standing-
someone still holding your words like a knife
they haven’t decided to drop.

What a way to remind me
that you’ve already decided how this ends—
with me on my knees,
and you walking away,
your hands clean but your mouth ******
from everything you’ve said,
apologized for,
then said again.

I hate that you asked me to tell you
two opposing views I hold.
Did you realize you are one of them?

We laugh like it’s nothing,
like we haven’t spent years
cutting each other open
and calling it something softer.

You still picture it—
me, maybe, or just us in the abstract—
and I still think about how it feels
to be reduced to skin and nothing more.
Like flesh is the only thing between us,
like there isn’t a whole world
I’m dragging behind me
every time I open my mouth
and you close yours.

You ask questions like a knife,
not to open me up
but to see if I’ll flinch.
You talk like the past
is some far-off country
you never visited,
like the scars on me
are postcards from someone else’s story.

But I still feel the weight of it—
your mercy,
your silence,
the words you said twice
just to be sure they cut.

Do you?

Cruel summer in viscous reds and pinks; wine stains,
sweating cans, margaritas in plastic cups,
everything pulsing on a sticky dance floor and sad.
Screaming and flirting with the easy and the lost as the sun drags bodies
to a place where hearts are haggard and hungry,
where the hunted steer to survive.

Cruel summer in tangerine-dream and traffic-light-greens,
the slant of bruising metals, the hollow of a hollow,
hot-hopes of the blue of blue and more blue.
A polite laugh, a memory’s memory, a wish on a still-burning candle.
I’m nothing if not a witness to superstition and the way faith tastes like fear.
I’m everything if I play my cards right.

I’m roving about;
a derelict architect, a soul with someone else's name carved across it.
I’m in and out of the city,
in and out of the conversation.
I’m in and out of his vision like suspicion-
he walks past our claw marks on corners and song-scratched streets,
he looks at the city and the city looks back, and he thinks of me.
Planted and planned and made to be.

Cruel summer in jaundiced yellows and mauves,
the pain of​​ the sun on shoulder and bottle,
the ache of a smile and a lie on lips.
His hands on my waist, my mind in a hot room,
my glint swimming in his eyes,
his voice snared between my sharp, sharp teeth.

Cruel summer in grimy greens and stained-glass jewels dripping
another bartop, another night where just friends melt and merge,
another morning spent tangled and giggling,
like all of this exists to see each other smile.
Like this wasn’t a dutiful ritual and a route to ruin.
Like it wasn’t the most marvelous game to play.

Cruel summer in royal purples and gold beading, holding his hand and my tongue,
meeting the train with a sinking chest and a straightened spine.
Another kiss before I hop the turnstile.
Another three months wracking and whirling;
cursing his hands, howling the night, willing him to pitch me the ball.
Just waiting for cruel summer to bloom in shades of blue,
beaming because cruel summer doesn’t lose.

I write in fragments, splinters of bone and honey,
syllables cracked open, spilling
the sweet rot of almosts, an ache left raw.

Each word wears two faces—shadow and shimmer,
tiptoeing like smoke across split lips,
dressed in disquiet, cloaked and crooked,
and, and, and—

each line drips slow, a fever-burn with sharp teeth.
Commas scrape their knees, a bleeding scab
I can’t help but pick clean.

I leave bruises on pages, backwards and barefoot—
not wounds, not quite, but something
that lingers like woodsmoke in the morning.

My lines stumble like drunk apologies,
guttural and gripping.
You don’t read my work;
you trespass, you crawl.

What I say and what I don’t—
they hold hands in the spaces between,
like shadows slipping past each other.

Sentences flex limp and knotted,
stones in my throat waiting to choke.

This isn’t a poem—it’s a map of missed exits,
each word an ache left half-sewn,
stitched by hands too tired to be careful,
fingers too numb to be precise.

I write in whispers and warnings,
half-lives and half-lies, spurting soft and sideways,
graffiti on walls in rooms no one stays in.

This is language as ruin,
syntax frayed, stretched to ache
till it tears, a glimmer of tendon beneath.
Not a story, not even a sentence—
just pieces scattered like dry leaves,

prose unmade, too jagged to hold,
but clinging like sap,
sweet and hard to forget,

leaving you haunted,
a little lost, a little found,
with edges sharp enough to cut.

I went to war with trouble,
daydreams dropping gentle.
I’ve stabbed too many
precious provisions
to wave my flag now.

Every stoop in the Village exhales
in moon-words beaming electric.
I crave a language
as mean and antsy
as your fast, feral fever.

Tinsel secrets slip to the street
from high-rises and fire escapes,
we only stop kissing to check if
the skyline will confess.

My mouth tunnels
to epiphany,
your hands' twist
toward apocalypse.
Together we can core clouds.

Force a laugh,
lead the light like a vow,
paint the night like a song,
teach me to undo
the deep parts
before they undo me.

My hand on your chest- relishing,
your hand on my ***- savoring.
Everything between us pulses
something torrential.

Everything inside me buzzes
wreck, wreck, wreck,
wreck, wreck.

Spin our night with fingers crossed
across charming evening plagues,
past spines I stitched like statues,
to bridges where we stole steel,
then drowned
our senses in the river.

Not touching you
is where it hurts.

‘I just started feeling like I was hurting you.’
Your narrative, not fine but okay.
If you want it then ask for it, don’t show off for me.
Cringe and grin, loaded questions, uneven answers:
Your ******* between my ears,
my rot at the center of your chest.

Your mind’s a weapon of my destruction,
my heart’s an insurgent on your tongue,
war crimes and an urge to confess sins
I’ve yet to commit but pray to.

Your conquest, my damnation,
my crown, your thorns.
The best laid plans of mice and wrens,
and all the flesh that must be shed-
******* it up again.

Diametric wonder like impenetrable alchemy,
'I just wanted to use the word penetrate.'
like I didn't know that; like I'm not flushed,
tripping and dripping at 'alchemy.'

A single shadow for two ghouls,
born from a short play and two ****** fools.
One grave, two lives,
one coin, two sides-
‘my head, your tail,’
poetic every second of every day.
Ease into this, okay? Sometimes it works out.

You’re not that horrible, you know what I mean.
The taste of something like a target ****** upon me.
You told me you love damaged girls,
and I’m unparalleled, all broken and brilliant,
all twirling, starting fires,
all strange and wonderful, relentless and ravishing;
already here, all ready here.

You told me I’ve never really played along,
but I played merry hell with our ransoms and struck more nerves than we thought I could reach.
I have plenty of your secrets,
and you’re the milk-silk viscera
weaving through so many of my poems.

Whiplash, so it comes to nothing.
Whiplash, and hardly a tool for self-harm.
How dare I turn your hollow eyes into a lens that looks back to me?
How many lives do I owe your blue and burning?
Whiplash, a quick, heart-drop minute, a long, wretched second.

‘I did not see that coming,’
listing tautologies, I have so many reasons
to believe you but I don’t.
‘The right thing is to walk away.
Not string you along, try to use you, ******* around,
all the things I want to do.’
and what are you actually looking for?
You imagine you’ll die before you find out.
It doesn’t have to be so hard.

I still think there’s hope under all the blood and terror,
the unholy mess and the violent red,
your commitment to torment and a stubborn that’s just stubborn.
I still think there’s a place where we can lay our weapons
in the grass, sign a treaty in the dirt, and call it a covenant.
I know there’s a place where our hands are clean
and the poetry isn’t tangled in throats and fists,
where the light is warm, the sparks are softer than you think,
and whiplash is just another way of seeing stars.

I’m fine.
I don’t think about you.
I’m over it.
Say them three times fast,
watch them turn to ash in your mouth.

I’m fine.
That’s the easiest one—
it babbles from the curve of your lips,
but drowns you just the same.

‘Fine’ is what you say
when you’re still holding the knife
and pretending the blood isn’t yours.

I don’t think about you.
Not at 2am,
cross-legged on my bedroom floor,
a Sharpie in one hand,
a grudge in the other,
crossing out filler words,
preparing for the silence that comes
when the ghosts get louder.

Not when I drop a joke in a stranger’s lap,
and it lands like a stone,
and I remember how you laughed—
not just at the joke,
but like you believed in the person who told it.

Or when headlights slice through my blinds,
speeding down my street,
and I know the driver is singing
louder than you ever did.

I’m over it. It’s over.
Over it—
as if heartbreak has an expiration date,
as if time knows how to cauterize.

I’m fine.
I don’t think about you.
I’m over it.

The holy trinity of lies,
lit like candles on an altar
I built from all the wreckage you left.
But don’t worry—
it’s just for show.

I’m fine.
I don’t think about you.
I’m over it.

And I wonder—
what will I do
when the wax runs out,
and the shadows disappear,
leaving me alone with the wreckage,
no place left to hide?

I didn’t text you.
I just stared at the message box
until the words pooled like ***** rainwater.
Left it open all night.
That’s not the same thing as wanting you.

I didn’t reach out.
Just opened your last text
like a window in winter
and stood in the draft,
hoping the cold might say something
you wouldn’t.

I didn’t dream of you.
Just lay awake with my hands crossed on my chest
like I was practicing
being the kind of dead you’d miss.

Tonight, I’m romanticizing survival:
eating cold tortellini with a fork I found in my car,
wearing a dress that smells like gin
and someone else’s cologne.

The moon’s out
like it wants to get punched.
The stars are just freckles on a drunk god’s face.
They’re blinking like they’ve seen this before.
The night air slips in where I didn’t shut the door.

I’m not waiting.
But if you called right now,
I’d answer from
the cold part of my bed
and pretend it was a coincidence.

And if you asked what I’ve been up to,
I’d lie with my whole face.
Say, “You?”
like I didn’t write this
with the window still open.

The ache of August is more static
than buzzing bugs and cracking thunder,
more stubborn than stop-motion memories,
more constant than our stop-and-go days,
more shameful than our pay-to-play nights.

It’s the smell of sunshower-damp pavement;
the heavy breath and sweat of the city,
all the restless, anxious bodies filling up bars.
All the things that keep us up and keep us tired,
the sad swarm of souls on their way home
again.

This ache that slithers around ribs,
presses with cramped fingers, until it finds the bottom
of a spine and squeezes.
It claws and clutches,
grabs and grabs,
hooks and holds.

A grip, a fist, another white lie,
another calloused hand.
Another crook making a mess of my words, stealing
color from my eyes and hope from my voice.
I August-ache. I August-break.

The sky hasn’t been blue since April.
The A train hasn’t run express since the last time we talked.
The universe is an oil stain that will never wash out,
and it’s been a while since I believed in anything,
but I’m still trying. I’m still looking for light.

August sighs, hot and empty,
daring us to flinch or flee, remember to regret.
Springtime-thrills smoldered,
nights by the mouthful,
hands in hair, all burned down.

In August we ache. In August we break.
We hold our hurt like a secret and our fear like a crime-
then with whispered mornings and honeyed winds,
September comes and shakes the ashe out of our sheets.
In September, I’ll be in the light.
In September, the sky will be so, so blue.

There's a subtle violence to the way we interact
your eyes linger, half a dare, half a dismissal—
waiting for me to say something that will make it easier,
like my mouth will invite you to betray me before you even start.

You say my name like it's a sigh you can't quite swallow,
and I answer with a laugh that tastes like a talking doll,
plastic and metallic, sticking to the back of my throat.
We sit in the silence that pulses between us,
thick as the secrets we keep beneath our tongues.

A smarter girl would have seen the strings,
a dumber girl would have played along,
a bolder girl would have set fire to the toy shop,
and a braver girl would have never
let herself be a toy in the first place.

There's a subtle violence to the way we pretend;
clinging to skin with fingers made of willow and ash,
clinging to diving boards with the same desperate grip.
I wonder if this is love or just inertia—
a habit that clings like the scent of smoke,
***** and aching, lingering long after the flame is gone.

But you hold me at arm's length,
just vague enough to haunt,
just close enough to hurt,
and I know better
but I still reach, I still grasp—

I still fall like a dream dissolving at dawn,
a fall that feels like freedom,
weightless for a fleeting second:
no strings, no metal, no violent subtleties, no smoke at all.

And when the ground rises up to greet me,
a cruel embrace that whispers
what's been in my mouth all along,
what the doll tried to say before she burned:

that letting go is never the hardest part,
it's surviving the landing that shatters you,
and knowing you were the one that jumped.

Summer sharpens its teeth, whittles light down to
bedroom shadows, narrow eyes, and last August’s howl.
I’m counting hours, yearning gentle,
dreaming blue and nothing new; heart-heavy on a blank page.

I’ve been working my way back into the world,
licking the dead off of my fingers,
scraping back the hair on my legs,
reacquainting myself with dirt-days and sun-skin.

I’ve searched the streets for a midnight-blooming,
but found I was the one who was missing,
I was the one who forgot how to breathe.
Now I meet the sky on my own terms and glow.

There’s a lot of green out there.
There are lots of little suns and stars,
glistening, waiting to be drawn into frame,
ready to make a wish or watch it burn.

There are so many ways to tell a story.
There are so many ways to say “I am.”
I could find the world in the slow stretch of July,
in the way light fights back when held up to heat,
but I can’t find a way to say “I’m not.” and mean it.

Sharp summer cuts a furious lesson,
a swollen sketch, a yearning hand, and a bruised map.
I am still learning to tuck in my tongue and to taste softly,
I am still learning that my thoughts are mine for taking and breaking.

Something is clicking and it’s not my bones or my pining;
it's the sound of my own name in my mouth and my own hope in my hands.
It sounds like a horse galloping and like water boiling.
It sounds like a question. It sounds like an answer.

Sinless summer: sharp but I’m sharper, beckons
me from springtime’s sleep. It waited so long to hold
my face and sing me forward with a shimmering song
that sounds like a promise, that sounds like a way to say “Yes.”

The first few lines of a poem always sound like they should be the last,
the last few sound unnecessary,
I'm not sure if the next line is a metaphor or just
a way to keep my hand in the fire;
I think it might be both.
I think this might be it.
We’re all just a few lines away from being forgotten,
but we have to keep writing like we’re not.
We have to be careful not to die before we die.
We have to say goodbye before we say hello.

You know what I mean, don't you?
Like the poem should be written in ashes, but
the lines are too long to fit in the hearth.
You try to keep a notebook and end up writing on the wall,
you try to fit the words into your mouth before they're swallowed,
you try to taste them before you choke.

Brevity’s a virtue, I’m a vice.
I have yet to see a chasm that I couldn't swan-dive into-
I have yet to wreck a heart that wasn’t mine.
I still can’t describe what I really mean.
I take up lines like a layer of locusts, like I’ve got a plague in my pen.
I’ve never finished a poem in my life, but I’m still careful not to die.

I know what I mean, but I don't mean it.
My sentences sometimes look like the death
of a small animal, blood and fur, feathers and bone,
twisted muscles all tangled together,
rotting in the sun with no one to bury it.

Decay in blunt, angular letters and a mottled pink sky,
a rusted machine, the worst of me.
The pulpy feeling of sentences clawing their way through my skin
just to get out and get away, to gnash their teeth,
chase a phrase, or find new mouths to fit into.

It’s the last line again, the one that belongs five stanzas up,
the one that wants to kiss your cheek and leave a stain,
that stokes the flame and knows what you mean.
A last line that clings to your skin,
drips into the next poem, because it wasn’t quite right,
but will be remembered. It will be buried.

I kept all your secrets.
hid them in my clavicle
next to my old poetry and
the night I almost died
but didn’t tell anyone
because it didn’t feel polite.

I never wanted to ruin you.
just wanted to be understood
in the original latin—
to stand in the fire with.
but you mistook the blaze
for a signal flare
and bailed.

I lit candles for you
like a saint or a fool—
same thing, really.
Wrote prayers in the margins
of receipts and prescriptions,
called it hope
because obsession sounded ugly.

Now I write like an arsonist
with nothing left to burn
but the drafts I never sent
and the version of me
who waited
for you to come back
smelling like smoke
but brave.

For when I’m pretending to be widow at the opera.
For when I’m following a pigeon down the street like it owes me money.
For when I spray perfume on my wrists before bed, like the dreams deserve better versions of me.

For when I go through Korean Customs just to eat Lotteria on the Incheon sidewalk, then redo check-in and security for my connecting flight.
For when I receive a message I’ll overanalyze for the rest of my life.
For when I write a text, delete it seven times, then send “lol” as if I didn’t bleed for it.

For when I apologize to a vending machine for using a credit card.
For when I press my ear to a seashell and hear an argument I lost ten years ago.
For when the chandelier is on fire, and I jump up to light a cigarette.

For when I catch a fly in my hand and let it go, like I’m proving something to God.
For when I lose an earring in the street and think, “This is how pieces of me disappear.”
For when I find a hairpin on the sidewalk and carry it like a talisman.

For when the theater goes dark, and I sit there wondering if the show is about me.
For when I open a fortune cookie and write a rebuttal in the margin of the slip.
For when I break my own heart at 2 a.m. on purpose.

For when I sit at a piano I don’t know how to play, pressing keys like I’m calling out names.
For when I’m smiling at a stranger, just to prove I’m still kind.
For when I feel like a disco ball in a dive bar where nobody dances.

For when I dress up for an event I don’t want to go to prove I’m still trying.
For when I page through books I carried around in high school, hoping they’ll whisper a version of me I’ve forgotten.
For when I fold a map along the wrong lines and feel like I’ve ruined the entire world.

For when I bite a grape off the vine and pretend it’s the first fruit I’ve ever tasted.
For when I wake up with dirt under my fingernails and no memory of where I’ve been.
For when I dream of him and wake up keening.

For when I gasp and say, “This is just like Wuthering Heights!” in the dumbest moments.
For when we build a pillow fort, declare it a sovereign nation, ban all taxes, and call it “Pillowvania.”
For when we develop a shorthand where “Let me know when you’re done being weird” means “I miss you,” and “I miss you” means “I’m sorry.”

For when I flip a coin, and it lands on its edge, daring me to choose.
For when I don't.

We kiss on the roof,
disturbing time and space.
We hold tight to each other,
watching the landscape quake.

(I point out fires for him to see-)

Six stories down, this street
mirrors my marrow:
young, velvet, ******-
a little bit further than
he’s willing to go.

(I light my torches and set them free.)

The dark parts flare and
we are alone.
Forget breathing,
now we pant.

(I burn things before they burn me-)

The heavy parts leak and
we are alone.
Forget tasting,
Now we take.

(I burn things before they burn me.)

I keep setting my mind on fire, but it’s still so dark.
I hold my breath, and hold burning torches for your ache.
I have taken a thousand flowers to bed and none have bloomed,
I have held a thousand sighs and none have made me cry,
I have broken a thousand hearts and all of them were mine.

I’m on the wrong side of the river,
laying in the weeds and getting itchy,
waiting for the buzz of a motor,
praying for the sound of a train,
thinking of you.
I’m looking up at the sky
to see if there are still stars,
half convinced they won’t be there,
fingers stuck in the dirt and holding on to the ground for dear life.

I’ve thought of your body in a thousand ways,
all of them have been wrong.
I’ve thought about the room you keep locked away,
how it smells of a mother, the air like a grave.
A cabin without windows, like a body without blood,
a grazing patch for all the blows you’ve taken to the chin,
for all the heartaches you can’t put into words.

A ripped map, a bed for dead feet,
a closet to stow forgotten things, a radio that isn’t plugged in.
It’s a tomb and I won’t disrupt the dead.
I can offer to blow a hole in the roof,
string Christmas lights on every wall,
and lay a gladiolus bouquet at the door,
but I can't turn a haunt into a home, and I won’t try.

There are so many ways to touch you, I’ve imagined every one of them,
but none are enough. I can taste you on the back of my tongue,
I can smell your gloom some mornings. I can find you in the empty wine.
I can feel you in my bones, and see you in the light
that filters through the cracks in the blinds.

I want to destroy everything that destroys you.
I want to make you a home you don’t want to burn down.
Has your mind been on fire lately? Has my love been a flame?
I’m drawing a new map for you to read, I’m reclaiming the wrong
side of the river. I’m building a bed where everything blooms,
Where we can lay on our backs and see only stars.