I toss rocks up at your window
that splatter like airborne blood clots.
My eyes are red from crying.
My tongue has been ripped to shreds.
You look at me once, go back to bed.

Oh son of beginners mistake
Son of pure unclean intention
Son of mothers midnight run to bar
Son of broken swan wing
Son of brokenness
Son of lack of sunlight
Son of ***** laundry

Boy of unknowing
Boy of drinking antifreeze
Boy of missing eyed crows
Boy of missing childhood
Boy of sorrow
Boy of stitches
Boy of afraid of manhood
Boy of afraid

Young God of suicide attempts
God of lying to himself that he ever wanted to die
God of lying to himself
God of lying
God of unholiness
God of shotgun misfire
God of unkempt basements
God of homeless dogs
God of death and life all at the same time
You ain't no God. You are a poser with wings and a capital letter to begin your wretched name.  

You won't be happy when you die, you are split between so many titles and you do not know which to choose. You are no one. No one. You are absolutely no one.

(Say, do you know the route to the nearest bar? I'm going to drink myself open, flesh off bone, apathetic skeleton, closest thing to happy. I'm going to drink myself away from you, this world, myself.)

Dreaming of you keeps me awake.
And I find myself here in the same place everyday,
trying to write out the way my heart skips a beat every time you even look at me but
I know it's never gonna be anything other than what it is right now,
me drinking ***** until I can't see your face burned into the back of my eyelids and pass out every other weekend.
And maybe I'm fine with it.
Maybe the way your smile makes me forget everything I've ever known about myself, and love, and breathing is enough.
But it's in the way my hands shake when I even think of you looking at someone else the way I do you that I know I can't do this forever.
And maybe I'll drink that away too.

Gonna get a dog
Name him Adderral
Hope he doesn't run away
That mangy mutt
Stay, boy, stay

I was born to love people too much
I resist telling them what I want
This is not how people should exist  

Come back here boy,
I haven't finished crying to you
Just yet

Sink into the
softest bits of my
skin

Let me bottle
the scent of
your t-shirt
after you have
held onto me

Let me be the
gentle waves
that rock you to sleep

(A simple love)

If you're so broken, why don't you find the bottle opener, cupcake?
Why don't you lick the frosting off the bottom of the bowl, stoner?
When you say you're just pitiful, I see rain puddles drooling from the pockmarks of your cheeks.
I wish you'd realize that the sun isn't just shining out of my broken skin knuckles.

Noxious air breathing, cry baby, softly weeping.
Why you babysittin only 2 or 3 shots?
I'mma show you how to turn it up a notch
God, I thought I loved you so. I should be less creepy, less easy, less up in your face, less pretty kitty in a push-up bra, less victim, less driving off an overpass, less humming in the shower, less falling apart, less in love.
Faded, drank.
I pass out counting the flecks of gold in your eyes.

2 a.m. The most rotten noise you can imagine.

I'm sick of you, baby.

Yeah? So, I know, God. God, what a name to have in this household. You're the only one with wings, the only one heaven sings for. It must be nice to look like something worth saving and brushing off and eating whole. It must be real tough to be so magnificent, always having to figure out who left which lipstick print on your shoes.

That's beside the point. Here, we're watching the movie of the life you could've lived. The one without guilt pin pricking your fingertips when you close your eyes. The one without whiskey bottle music combo, glass break handshake with death, mother without tear streaked face, father without closed fist, family without empty, love without "please don't leave", what a show, kid. What a way to be.

Father's sneer.

**** yourself.

Find sister's Oxy. Weakness.

Off topic.

I bathe myself in crystal ****, shimmering, lovely shades of nothing. I eat myself out of my walls. I tie my limbs into knots, look at my palms and see someone's blood, I can't taste who's, I spend the rest of the night obsessed. I have a dream about my boyfriend, he has no scars, he has no body, he is just eyelashes and whimpering. I can still see him. I swat a dozen flies until my grandmother reincarnated falls to the ground, telling me it's alright.

Tell me, what's the secret to being so light? Is it dropping all your insides at Love's front door? Tell me, how do I get over the rainbow from here?

Today, the Earth fell in reverse.

I watched a Western backwards, the blood seeping into the Vaquero's chest, his eyes roll forward, his challenger gripping his bleeding arm, the red spot on his jacket shrinking, putting his gun back into the holster. He climbed onto his anxious horse and rode backwards into the sunset, his intact body being washed over with shades of pink and orange.

I watched you trip in reverse, staring at nothing until you popped the shrooms out of your mouth, counted them and then shoved them back into your sweatshirt pocket. I listened to our phone call in reverse. I cried at first, you said something, shameful, then I reeled back, asked you what's the worst you've done, and you said you were okay. Ringing. Silence.

I watched myself in reverse. Laughing, looking at people I love, and all their wonderful dark circle shadowed eyes, messy hair, and dried tears. I watched myself stare at them from a distance, then I felt myself forget their names. I liked your tattoos and I liked your long blonde hair. I forgot about both of those things. I sat alone in my room, I cried, I took back everything I said. I shook off the sadness. I laughed again, fell into your [sober] arms, ran my fingers through your uncut hair. I forgot what your mothers name was, I forgot your favorite color, I forgot your bedtime. I forgot your name. I forgot I loved you.

I wanted to **** myself in reverse. I wanted to watch the bullet whip out of my skull, the bone fit together like puzzle pieces. The worm hole in my brain fills, my blood flows backwards.

My innocence is unfucked to me. My lips curl up. I am happy, I am smiling. My boyfriend takes his unscarred arms and wraps them around my waist. I watch his eyes frown upside down, he tells me he loves me.

I hit fast forward.

I'm watching my life be spit back to me, through God's mouth, God threw me away into the swamps of the ugliest parts of Louisiana, where mosquitoes don't dare lay their eggs. This is where the bodies of eagles rot and pedophiles and racists scrape up road **** for what it's worth and I am left searing on the road in the shimmering heat, waves from tar, crows circle in black masses, mass proceeds as the church burns, burn me with it, gracious God. I'm begging you to make my ashes worth something.

God sings out "Dastardly bastardly catastrophe girl, downing whole pill bottle model girl, where are you?" You called? I'm sitting in a parking lot, thinking how the man in front of ocean state job lot drinks a lot, I'm waiting for my mom and nothing in the world's more scary than waiting for what you call protection. The man drinks a lot. He thinks he should quit a lot for his wife and kids who he loves a lot. I knew a guy who smoked ***, quit because he used to do it a lot. That man from the parking lot, he bought himself another bottle of liquor with his wife's credit card. Life spins around me and I don't have time to keep up. I think of that a lot.

Beast of skipping stones, slip over me like the snake you are, wait for that Saint to catch you, hit the nail on the head and let it crucify you.

December gray makes its way into your old house, the one which you know which walls you were slammed against. Your mom sits sipping coffee in a chair.

She whispers, "I could **** you with kindness but let's see what's laying around first."  She wants to make blood soup out of you, she'll make it so you have a chipped spine, tell you to quit whining. She wants all survivor, no guilt.

Hey, I heard if you get high enough you can forgive yourself. I heard if you drink a lot you stop thinking. A mob's a mob all the same even if they're with you so let's make it like this, an army of drug addicts that sympathize with you. Holding needles and spoons and blunts and razor blades with you.

We sit under the stars and look at the sky a lot. Does the night sky ever look like it does in photographs?

I'm watching my life be spit back to me, through gods mouth, God threw me away into the swamps of the ugliest parts of Louisiana, where mosquitos don't dare lay their eggs. This is where the bodies of eagles rot and pedophiles and racists scrape up road **** for what it's worth and I am left searing on the road in the shimmering heat, waves from tar, crows circle in black masses, mass proceeds as the church burns, burn me with it, gracious god. I'm begging you to make my ashes worth something.

God sings out "Dastardly bastardly catastrophe girl, downing whole pill bottle model girl, where are you?" You called? I'm sitting in a parking lot, thinking how the man in front of me lot drinks a lot. He thinks he should quit a lot for his wife and kids who he loves a lot. That man from the parking lot, he bought himself another bottle of liquor with his wife's credit card. Life spins around me and I don't have time to keep up. I see you in front of me. I think of that a lot.

Beast of skipping stones, slip over me like the snake you are, wait for that Saint to catch you, hit the nail on the head and let it crucify you.

December gray makes its way into your old house, the one which you know which walls you were slammed against. Your mom sits sipping coffee in a chair.

She whispers, "I could **** you with kindness but let's see what's laying around first."  She wants to make blood soup out of you. She'll tell you to quit whining as she wrings your crooked spine. She wants all survivor, no guilt.

Hey, I heard if you get high enough you can forgive yourself. I heard if you drink a lot you stop thinking. A mobs a mob all the same even if they're with you so let's make it like this, an army of drug addicts that sympathize with you. Holding needles and spoons and blunts and razor blades with you.

We sit under the stars and look at the sky a lot. Does the night sky ever look like it does in photographs?

I. He Will Refuse To Find a Way Up
A fifth hole in the wall this week opens and I crawl inside it while your knuckles are still freshly bleeding. I will find myself grasping at straws to justify your rage. You reflect it back onto me, an uneasy mirror that makes me want to tear open my own cathartic hands and find what made me so angry so long ago. I shake my head. I have loved you. I have helped you grow. I have been the soil you have stretched roots in and the fields of lavender you have scorched. I let myself let you go before I crawl into another drywall void.

II. She Will Not Be What You Remember
I can hear the echo of my voice reverberate where I thought your heart was. Your soft hair that ran through my fingers smells like burning hair. Oh, these things cannot be taken back, I know, I know. I will watch you turn to sand in the hourglass on my nightstand, next to rose petals, bottle caps, and other sentimentally valued found objects. You will trickle to the bottom grain by grain and be unstuck. It will mean nothing. I will watch it as time passes and try to break it no more.

III. You Will Have to Let him Go
We did it, like I promised: we laid with the cold to our backs, faces to the empty-not-empty sky, and let the snow cover our mistakes, dissipating our frail bodies into a million tiny oblivions. You fell apart, your ashes blown across several states, thousands of miles. I caught your dust between my teeth and when I flicked it off my tongue, it spelled poems and threats and manifestos in languages I could never understand. You're dragged by your heels into the hospital, cursing my name as my heart breaks. I'm sorry, my baby, my little brother, I'm sorry to the child I tried to raise like my own. Schizophrenia is a hard word to learn in every language, and understand in yours. I did not want to lose you. But sometimes, you weigh your sins, and the heaviest of all is the one that's easiest to utter into the world.

IV: How It Will Go
I've wanted to talk to you for a while.
> I know.
So...
> So?
So, I can't tell if I've missed you or not.
> ...
What I mean is, how do we know this is right?
> It is. We're no good for each other.
We're new people, well- maybe not new, but much different. I don't know if me now will like you now, but me now is longing for you then.
> You're not making any sense.
I know. I just want to say I'm sorry. I don't even know how to begin to say it.
> Sure.
I am.
> Alright.
Some part of me still loves you. She is biting her tongue because she doesn't want your name to roll oh so comfortably off of it ever again.
> Stop.
I'm sorry. I don't want to make this complicated again. I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm stupid I'm-
> Just shut up, okay?
Okay.

That night, I will claw into my throat and release the shrieks of grief snowpacked in it. I will congratulate myself on allowing the sun to set on the most golden thing I've ever been given the chance to hold.

My lungs will still take in air and send it back into the sky for you to return to me. It won't be the same. It won't be comforting. It'll sting and needle at my soft insides, sending all the words you ever spoke to me into my blood in tangles until it clogs my veins and makes its way to my brain. I will be left with half my face permanently lopsided, stuck in a frown, while trying to remember what did it in the first place.

V: Ideally, as if In a Dream*
The sun is dripping down your hair. It steams in golden runnels down your forehead and it casts a halo in your eyes, sainting you.
I am blessing all the uneaten meals, broken skin, and chewed up fingernails. I will bless how I raised hell and then settled it back into the dirt so I could bring down heaven for you and I, and it's warm, bright caress. The sweet, sticky clouds- they smell like marshmallow and clean laundry and kisses on the forehead.
I will be able again to think of your thin hands as being prom-queen-gown-silk swaddling blue jay bones: fragile and masculine and hollow and splintered all in one. I will run my fingers over your knuckles- as soft and as familiar as my baby blankets.
You will breathe in deeply, and I will too, just for the sake of doing it together.
I will say, "I've been waiting for this."
And you will say, "For what?"
And I will say, "this," just looking around.

Every time I'm with you, I can see your eyes dull. Which shade of blue were you last time I saw you? Maybe you're just tired from work, maybe you're just tired of your mom telling you to get a job. Maybe you're just avoiding my question because you don't know how to answer. Maybe you're avoiding it because you're scared. Maybe you're somewhere far away from here.

I can see the way you look out the window. What are you looking for? Maybe an escape, maybe the trees are just in bloom. Maybe you're just quiet because you're reading a book, playing some stupid game or something. Maybe you're just sitting and thinking, maybe you're just as scared as usual.

I haven't seen you in months. What medication are you on? In what ways is it making you more depressed this time? What happened to your therapist? Has your mom noticed yet?

I sit in silent worry every night. Maybe it's just jealousy of the pillow you cry into. Maybe I just want to talk to you. Maybe I'm tired of losing everyone I dream about.

I taste the pills on my tongue like Marilyn did, so pretty in life, so much prettier in death. I watch everyone around me offer up their love in homemade hashtags, I'm the next trend, pretty and dead.

Come one, come all, local girl kills herself! Actually does it! Come see, covered in her own ***** and Xanax, regret filling her lungs like balloon animals, right after the bearded lady, before the strong man, come one come all!

I think of all the people around me, inches from becoming local commodities. I think of their dimples, their veiny arms, the way they walk with their hands straight by their sides, the way they always know how to make me laugh, the way they are so alive, full veins, brain firing snap after snap, cheeks still flush and warm. I think of that gone and I cry cold tears, wipe them with cold hands, grow cold to the cold reality of "it's a part of life".

I think of something worse than heartbreak.

*& so to tenderness I add my action.

I want to undress the sorrow that bites the wings off doves, make it bear, make it holy, make it scream.

I want to sing to the anger that shakes your hands, beads the sweat upon your palms. I want to soothe it to sadness, soothe it to scared, soothe it to self-loathing, and then soothe it again. I want to rub its shaking shoulders and kiss its forehead until it is serene, sleeping in the backseat.

I want to whisper the stories from all my birthdays and what age means to the God that chokes the air from your blood and puts fear into the stomach of mothers. I want to calm the waves of your heart, be the lighthouse to the way you felt at age five, wrapped in the forgiving and fragile skinned arms of your grandfather.

I want to be the lung unchanged by smoker's death wish. I want to be the alcohol that slips passed your lips and makes you tell your mom that you love her, tell your sister it wasn't her fault, tell your dad that you're healing. I want to be the ****** that moves under your marked skin, the blood that can't pass the tourniquet.

I want to feel myself inside your throat, climbing to taste your teeth and thread string through the spaces between your words, make a tapestry of every missing apology.

I want to be the wind shaking the curtains of every girl who has starved herself, cold and realizing that a woman is not a body, a woman is the bearer of life and bearer of tenderness. A girl eating an apple, telling the grass that the moon is everyone's mother and will never let the tides rise or fall without a gentle tug on the sleeve of the oceans, "breathe".

I want to be the life that moves through the earth, the snapshots in motion that we call time, the peace that the bottom of our lungs must feel.

How holy the night looks, dressed in its crushed velvet gown, folding in all the delicate and beautiful places.

I tuck my grief into bed beside me and as I feel it's cold heat, its head careening onto my shoulder, I wish I could have your thin fingers lapping over my wrist, your delicate and blue beauty settling into the space next to me, left by my own two careless eyes. I want to feel your body curled up beside mine, safe and righteous in its temple of quilts and comforters, safely lullabied by a 10 episode Netflix binge, popcorn strewn on the carpet like exploded snowflakes from when I tried to throw it in your mouth, missing because I shook with butterfly laughter.

I want to take your sadness and whisper it to a memory. I want to kiss the fading and cooling parts of the sun back to life. I want to taste what every word you've ever spoken sounds like, feels like, lips on biography on lips on pearl's surface. I want to hold your heart like the wildly beating wings of a tiny bird. I want to love you so much, so beautifully, so genuinely, so big and wide and lovely as the ocean, so that love is spoken back into existence.

More often than not, I feel like a head case taking up space.
I mean, maybe it's less often than not? Who knows? I can't keep track of the hours, the days, the months, the friends, the loss, the love, and the dreams.
The dreams. I reach for them and feel them soak into my skin like smoke.
Are they there? Are they gone? Are they with me? Without?
Are you there?
...

I dig up the contents of your soul:
Scissor Sisters songs sung out of tune
3 stray hairs at a crime scene
An urn gathering dust on a sidewalk
Elvis Presley's shoes, worn down soles
An unflattering camouflage hat
The cries of the elderly, alone and alone again
Your mother, trying to define love
The oldest oak in Boston
The carcass of a deer, shot to the left of her heart

Can words ever really be enough?

So picture this:
Mother's perfume
Cannabis car seats
Lover's knuckles
Best friend's scars
Saddest sunset

Watch me as I turn every word into
My grandpa, gardening
My best friend, taking a selfie
Me, worrying if you hate me
A tree, rotting in its grave
The way the world is so quiet

I feel the heat of your shoulder bleeding into mine. We are laying in the grass. No- we are laying in my bed. No- your bed. The TV is on. You fell asleep in my lap playing video games. I'm wearing red lipstick. Moments earlier, I arched my back like a kitten and took a picture of us sprawled over one another. You weren't looking. My lipstick is red. My shirt is red. My skirt has flowers. Your hair is bleached on the top. I peel the blankets from us and now it's grown out, curving over your forehead in a w. You're wearing all these pukka shell and wooden necklaces. I don't know what gave you the idea. It doesn't match. I love you. I love you so much I giggle just tracing the curve of your nose. We watch YouTube videos slowed down and laugh until we fall asleep, your hip bones pressed into the small of my back. I open my eyes and we're back in 2015. We're eating pizza, but not too much, because your stomach problems are just beginning. You accidentally say you love me back when we part at sunset. The gazebo is in the background. It's always in the background. I walk away and find myself back at your door. You struggle with the key for a moment. We just got off the bus. You couldn't drive yet. I saw your dog, pet her on the top of her head, nose turned away from her rotting teeth. Your bird sings when we walk away and we laugh at how he hates us. I stop laughing and he's dead. Your mom threw him away. You were more heartbroken than you told your friends while you laughed in the library. I shut the door behind me and you're shaking your head no a year later, me asking if we can talk, last weeks tears prickling my mind.  You say you'll think about it. You don't. I do.

Let's see how pretty those blue eyes can

(Stop. Wait. Feel for your heartbeat. Press your hands to the warmth of your cheeks, feel them soften with the perfection of your smile. Run your hands through your hair. You're alive.)

be. Be what you see in the sun, warm and shining and all seeing and all loving. Stop lamenting for just a

(She has moved on and on and on to more and more and more and it is still less than you.)

minute. In a minute the blood from your wrist will start to look like her hair, waves tapering into split ends, feathering. Don't panic yet it's

(Sweetheart, please don't cry. I can feel it across the **** carpet surface of my tired heart. I'm aching to soothe whatever shakes you.)

not over.

You looked me in the eye today for the first time in three weeks. The silent conversation went like this:

"Hey, it's me. Haven't heard from you in a while. Call me back."

Hello, promise breaker. I bet you never thought you'd see the scar on my forehead again. Here it is, my mother's voice paired along with it, "αντίο". You don't speak the language I hate myself in. You don't see what I see, two tabs a day does this to me.

"Uh, hey. It's been a while. Gimme a call. Bye."

My hair is parted to the other side, like it? Of course you don't. You hate change. You hate looking at the empty spot in your heart. I packed my **** up and moved out a month ago. Took all my liquor and all my cologne and boxes of chocolate and handwritten letters too.

"Getting kinda worried. Call me back. I love you."

Speaking of my letters, have you read them lately, Lauren? Have you read all the times I called sunshine? Wanna think of it now? Wanna think of how you've cried yourself to sleep over me every night for the past week? That's what I thought.

"Look, I'm not mad. We can fix this. Please call me."

Okay, yeah. No one knows about us. No one knows I'm hiding. Let's keep it that way? Hey- quit crying. Guys don't go for that. I'm not there to see it either. Waste that on someone else.

"Please pick up."

You're gonna miss me. You're gonna miss loving me. You're gonna miss the silent denial that it's over. You're gonna miss being upset with me because at least I was there. You're gonna miss my eyes when I stared at you like you were my whole **** world. You're gonna miss crying into my t-shirts. You're gonna miss me keeping you up all night. You're gonna miss my sense of style, me always sending you new shoes. You're gonna miss my sense of humor. You're gonna wish I was ruining your life. You're gonna wish I was there at all.

*"... Love you."

I'm so tired of writing about how you broke my heart.
I'm tired of herding lambs into the ocean, watching them entangle and fade into the sea foam.
I listen to their cries, how it sounds like the great barrier reef dying, the coral dissipating and the sharks shedding their fins.
I guess the number of tabs it takes for your brain to think in color.
I guess the number of bowls you've smoked trying to unlearn my name.
I guess the number of days until you're running the track marks up your arm.
I ***** my eyes shut and say, "stop thinking about him."
I watch as your face morphs into a rose, spreading petals across my ribs like tumbleweeds.
My heart strings braid themselves to keep from snapping.
This isn't happening.

It's the kinda love where you're being swallowed whole.
You want to melt into their bones.
You walk them to the door,
tip-toe across the floor,
12:04.
You don't think you've ever felt like this before,
center of the sun, molten core, honey drizzled on toast.
Wash them from your hair,
check under your nails,
go to bed,
their face imprinted on your eyelids.

Hi my names Lauren and I love things that can't speak.

Hi my names Lauren and I love things that break their own bones and choke on their teeth.

Hi my names Lauren and I see kids with bruises, kids with no excuses, kids with cuts, kids howling at the moon like mutts. They're begging to get out of their skin and into a more feral suit, they want their bite to be worse than their bark, hang themselves in the park, finally be noticed, glowing smiles like that of an alley cat, spat out blood last week, "must've been the pills, that **** kills."

Hi my names Lauren and I forget my name a lot. I write it in the hearts of heartfelt hoodlums, not so brave victims, mothers' worst nightmares, mothers who don't care, boys who dare set themselves on fire, light it up ******, you aren't getting any brighter.

Hi my names God and I ****** up.

Hi my names Lauren and I talk to the dead. They tell me about the papers they keep under the bed, poems no one reads and suicide notes with things unsaid.

Hi I'm Lauren and the dead can't dance when they speak. They're not too steady on their feet, dangling from rafters with chairs beneath.

Hi I'm Lauren and I ****** up, you ****** me up. You won't talk to me, and he won't look at me, and dad can't stand me and mom tries her best to understand me and I once hit my head so ******* the wall I fainted. Yes mom, it was on purpose. I thought we painted that pretty picture in my blood months ago.

Hi I'm Lauren and I write poems that don't lie about the truth, I write poems about depressives, lost boys, starving boys, ****** boys, and my boys. Those all go hand in hand. I write poems about heartache, bone break, undertake, and personality fake. These are all the same. I write poems about things I've seen, things I've done, things I've ******, and threads that were spun into ropes tied into nooses and put behind the pile of ***** laundry on the floor. I write about pills in dressers and knives in scabby skin and how much I hate god but love his children and how my brain is broken and I'm still stuck hoping I'll be left with something to write about next time I forget my name but can remember yours.

Moon child dances over water
Long hair covering eyes, color not seen by man before, unimaginable
Fresh bruises of rose, lemon, lavender
Appear on her soles

4 weeks and this is not at an end.
You're not yourself, haven't been in months.
You might never be again.
Plaster over the scar on your forehead.
Staple shut your eyelids, tear off your eyelashes.
You might never wanna see me again.
The curve of your knuckles, the part of your hair,
I watch myself burn and turn to gold again.
Stay in bed, dreaming of fresh rose and lemon.
Play Russian Roulette with the pills in mom's cabinet.
You're not clean, haven't been in months.
You might never be again.

I'm chewed up and spit out, gum in the mouth of you.

I am riddled with the soft impressions left by molars on my back and stomach, I am gnawed and shaken like a bone in the jaws of everyone I love.

I am hollowed out by turpentine stomach acid, stripping me of my insides. I purge what is left of my rag doll body into the sink every morning after looking in the mirror and seeing nothing but bones.

What used to be eyes are just holes.

My friend wants to **** himself. Who do I tell?

I've come to believe all life is precious. I watch each person, each interaction, each laugh and smile and sneer with such absent curiosity, I feel my brain and 7 names fall through my dry palms. I snap my gum. A girl snickers, covering her mouth, her friend grinning along.

****, he's the one with abusive parents, sometimes homeless, right?

I feel my mouth go dry, my tongue swells, balloons to the roof of my mouth, my teeth sweat and my throat rolls over. My stomach and heart switch places. Words are only sounds; they mean nothing without pattern, without memory, without culture, without hearing. Why are the things with the most power in this whole **** world so inaccessible?

Don't tell anyone. A call from the school could get him killed.

6 hours later, I look to my right, my best friend resting in my arms- asleep, tranquil, clean of bruises and the same abuses. My skin radiates warmth and worry and relief and everything that's entailed in loving someone that's always so close to the edge.

Give him my number. Good luck. Keep me updated.

Close to the edge of what? I would say God only knows, but He doesn't know everything. He has no plan. I'm the only one with a plan. I'm the only person I can trust.

6 hours later, I worry myself into my sheets and below my mattress, through the floor and foundation, cradling my head in the soft soil beneath my comfortable, quiet family home.*

Sometimes, when hope is all you have to hold onto, you find yourself holding your own hand.

I want to write about the debilitating soulfulness with which I love you and your broken heart and gentle hugs.

I can't seem to find the words to describe how soft the blue of your eyes is.

I can't find the right bat of my eyelashes to show you what my mind is wrapped around.

I cannot laugh in the right way to express bubbling joy, swelling memories.

My heart aches itself to the size of a quasar, begging to find a word greater than love.

As my lungs crinkle and deflate into themselves,
I'm reminded that breathing is easy
I just **** at it.

I hear Lou Dog bark- good dog- and hope he's still out there, biting pornstars because for sure, not all Rastafarian dogs go to heaven. The music's down here.

But you're just the most boring cliche with a pretty face.
And I'm still surprised you're on this side of the dirt.
What a conscience you have.

(Huh?)

You open your jaws, wide as bone allows.
From the spaces between your teeth
people fall like blood-heavy snowflakes.
Grandmother, brother, mother, daughter,
all made up of paper-mache.
Everyone in front of you sways,
backs arched, lips curled,
curdled like milk in the summer’s heat.
They protect the fragility flying over them.
Wishing cracked and broken things whole.
They fold and tear like origami. Your
brain illuminates itself, paper lantern.
Brightening the thin walls before you.
The weightless, the worldly and the writhing.
They breathe easy.
They peer into our lungs, divulging our restlessness,
our dreaming. Only their synapses
remain, blood slick;
they bind and unbind to yours.
Consciousness ends and consciousness begins.
Consciousness ends and blood begins.
We are unholy Goddesses.
We are unholy goodness.
We are unholy and unbroken and good and God.
This is the only form of song, the pitch from our neurons,
the blood beneath our fingernails, the swaying, the swaying,
these minds and minds
and the never-ending
mindfulness. These crawling, floating,
grieving, forgiving minds.

"You never cared."
A bird bath in California empties.
"Oh yeah? Remember Christmas Eve?"
A mountain in Greece chews through itself.
"**** that, what color do I match yellow with? Do you even remember?"
Everyone in Boston swallows Vicodin until they throw up and die.
"You don't even spell your name right."
Quincy's streets wish the water dry.
"You have a family. Do you know what I'd ******* give for that?"
All the colleges in New York shoot themselves up and down.
"Your mother isn't human. Shut up."
A small town in Massachusetts washes all its white skin off.
"This leaving, this is for good isn't it?"
A forest is consumed by the songs of an imaginary bird.
"It isn't as hard as I imagined it to be."
Every door shuts, all at once. We all go deaf. Deaf. Deaf. Echo.
"Where's my happy ending? Huh?"
Echo.

(The day I met you, I relented: “Friend, do what you are here to do.”)

I flicked the gas card between my fingers. We had $50 to do whatever we wanted, maybe even take that aquarium trip up to Boston we had talked about so much. Your birthday was a month ago, you were then 17. This was the second birthday of yours we shared together and before you left- not before I told you to drive carefully, my love, and before you forgot all the leftover cake at my house- you kissed my cheek. I laughed into the naked air over my bed- Judas. You are my Judas. The Bible never taught me anything.

I don't think you know what anger can do to a person. You see, I haven't cried about you once. Not once, in one year. I have laid in the same spot where we first kissed, and I have not imagined your clumsy lips over mine.  I realized then you could love something more than yourself- as yourself. The heat from your shoulder never bled out of my body. But, I do not imagine much more.

And maybe I'll be here, standing in the spot where we looked to the stars, a spot whose coordinates will never be written in history books, a spot with numbers I have no reason to remember but I will, and I will be screaming, where are you? Where did you go? Where did I go?

But I know exactly where you are. I will know you are lying asleep in your too-neat bedroom, the one blanket you had before me pressed over you like origami. I will know you are not thinking of me, and definitely not dreaming of me because you do not dream.

And I will know that when we were 15, we dreamed about 18. You could finally drive to who knows where, the window of your car down, music as loud as the law allows, the soft Cali sunlight sainting you. But now, my Judas, you are a birthday and a lifetime away, and where you are now and forever is wherever I left you when we last held hands.

(Today: “I will not kiss Thee as did Judas; but as the thief, I will confess Thee: Lord, remember me in Thy kingdom.”)