your palm melts
to the contour of
my face and
I melt into you.
lords knows
I will come
undone under
the fever of your
fingertips and
lord knows
I will come
unraveled
under the
weight of your
want and lord
knows

flesh and fire
blood and stitches
I've said I feel
nothing
but time changes
everything
it's so hard
to get closer
it's so hard
to find home
and there's a
blank space
where you're
supposed to be
but it's a
temporary fix
slow high can't
let it go
and I'm sorry
I'm so awake
wide awake
but this is hell
hallways of
mirrors and smoke
laced with nerve
endings drank
the black honey
here we go
here we go

sometimes i ache to be mild,
clear skies and sunshine.
other times i am at peace
being less a girl and more
a natural disaster.

love is easy
when it's
slow and lazy -
like honey, warm
and sweet.

but it bites
at times like
a scared dog,
tail between its
legs.

this is how we
ran out of honey;
got rid of the dog.

sometimes I love you
is an empty bed
and heavy silence

sometimes I miss you
is cold shoulders
and empty hands

sometimes I'm sorry
is a lonely night
and a lonelier morning

sometimes I love you
is more hurt than heart
more ache than adored.

--

where is the line
between worth it
and walk away?
I always think I'll
know, and sometimes
I know I will never
make the right choice
because your mouth
says so many good
things, even when
it's saying the worst
things.

sometimes I understand
when people tell you
you can't love someone
if you don't love yourself
because you don't know
where that line is of enough
and too much and just right
and that terrifies me.

love isn't always enough
and I don't know how to
make that picture whole
in my head, where love is
right and where love isn't
enough.

eyes wide
hearts untied
swallowed pride
laced cyanide
quiet suicide

god knows
we tried

palm
to skin
mouth a
wandering
expedition
hollow of
my throat
valley
of thighs
fingers
plucking
the rhythmic
verse of
my hips
taking the
breath
from my
lips
undone
unwound
untethered
skin to
naked skin

I don't feel real anymore. nothing does. I saw myself deep in the throes of unbridled unconscious and it was terrifying. shapeless, worthless, needless. I can't stop seeing that. it's been hours and hours and I am haunted by that drug-induced vision of nothing. I have been pushed around and forcibly given and taken from for so long that I don't know where I end and everyone else begins. I am what they made me, and I allowed that to happen. I let people hurt me and change me and warp me into this terrifying mess. I feel like it scrubbed me clean of all emotion. I'm empty today, an unfeeling monster, and I can't get push myself out of it. it's made me realize that I don't actually know what feelings actually are. I don't feel them, I feel what I've been told feelings are supposed to feel like. I don't know how love feels. I don't know what happiness is. anger and fear I'm familiar with, but those aren't really emotions per se, just the mask deeper emotions wear and god forbid I ever have the ability to identify those. I am sick. I am lost. I hit that brick wall that holds everything back. the wall that separates me from unremembered trauma and the onslaught of emotion and the shell of a person that I've become. I don't know if I can break it, and I don't know if I want to. depression is already starting to slip back in, and I'm so afraid that if I push against that wall, I won't survive it. I won't come back from it. I'm so afraid of all the things I saw and what I am and I don't know how to fix it. or if I can. or if it'd even be worth it.

I am not worth it.

I am need
thirsty want
caverns of
desperation
finite light
and infinite
dark and
thousands
of moments
of undefined
shape I am
something
else I am
a heart made
for taking
exhausted
from giving
or being given
because what
am I but a
buffet line of
substance
for hungry
mouths that
are not mine
to feed

the abyss holds the
bared, screaming chasms
of my very soul - *******
the edges of unconscious
memory I can't bring
myself to touch. every
color on the spectrum,
colors I can't name,
the vibrating pulse
of very existence creeping
in through the soles of my
feet, the palms of my
hands and I still can't
find the meaning I crave.
I saw the bottom of my
soul and it was empty for
me, scraped bare by hungry
mouths and desperate
hands. I saw God and
he told me what I am
and I am not. I am a
shapeless vessel, an empty
canvas, energy designed
to serve the hearts of those
I love, those who mean to
love me. I looked into the
magic mirror, and I saw
nobody looking back
at me.

i don't know what words to write there are so many there aren't enough of them to talk about this tightness in my mind and the weight on my chest there's not enough words in this language to describe the way my entire being seems to twist and twist and twist until i can't tell where is up and what is down and i feel tight and i feel like i'm unraveling and i feel like there's no ground beneath me no sky above me like maybe i'm about to see that white light or maybe i'm gonna burn or maybe just fall into eternal nothingness and that almost seems preferable a nothingness where i don't think anymore i don't feel anything i cease to be i am not and that's fine there's too much air in my lungs but i still can't breathe

I wish I was one of those
picturesque kind of beauties,
curved and carved and made
of porcelain and painted up
lovelier than any sunrise.
their hearts are pure and
gentle, elegance laced
into every single step.

my beauty is chaos, fueled
by the storm in my chest.
I'm graceless, built by rage
and concrete. I'm the greenish
hue of the sky just before
a tornado and I am the
aftermath, an unrooted
forest strewn across city streets.

sometimes I'm sorry
for the disaster I've hurtled
into your life and sometimes
I wish you'd thank me for
the landscapes I am forever
repainting. I am hell and
I am home and I cannot
undo my weaving. love me
anyway. love my carnage
and my ravaged heart.
I wish I was picturesque
but I will never condemn
the chaos in my blood.

rundown rooms
and ***** sheets
the hum of
fluorescence
the flicker
of cheap bulbs
heavy handed
palms i wasn't
ready for

the tv groans
behind us
a sitcom for
a parody of a
romantic moment

you were not
soft or
gentle
or kind -

I felt the greed
in your blood
I felt your need
and I felt
the no die
in my throat.

it hurt
and then
you fell asleep.

left my body
in shallow river
and city
grew from
these bones

buried these bones
under miles of regret
pounds of regret

your skin my skin
my mouth your mouth
asking me

don't
let this be
this

this goodbye
thick and heavy
less goodbye

more goodnight
for now (for always)
but you won't

close the door
you'd rather
you watch me go

and i know you
wait for me to
turn back

but i didn't
even kiss you
before i left

take issue with the
light of my eyes
the need that
bleeds from
my skin
tell me how
every little
part of me
ruined you

if i'd gone
left that day
instead of right
if i'd made that
phone call
waited five
more minutes
finites and variables.

the pulse
the swell
these vultures
descending
to pick at the
wreckage
left of me

the walls
came down
that day
boys and bombs
and bodies

it's alright though.
remember the
phoenix and its
ashes...right?

eve runs in my
blood, she gives
me her power
so thick and electric
adam never knew.

she whispers
in my ear,
where did it go,
little girl? i poured my
soul into you and
you let hope bleed
from you like river water.
rise up. walk into the
fire. rebuild my empire.

i died on my knees
but i wasn't meant for
that. when the lights
come back on, i will
stand. i will no longer
be alone in this room.

I always
want
to  slip into you
like a dress
it's a lovely
little dress
but no matter
what i do
it's a bit
too tight
in all
the wrong
places

so we tangled ourselves
up in this weird nightmare
do you remember? sitting
on that couch, inhaling all the
air around us like smoke and it was
smoke but it was different -
thick and heavy like it was going
to choke us, but we kept
breathing it in like it was
oxygen and you watched me
bleed out, watched the tendrils
drip from my lips, slip out my
eyes - you would have
let me die there. and i did.
part of me did, listening to your
simpering neediness of
how much you needed me
how much you loved me
how i kept you going but
i wasn't i wasn't
i was drowning myself
for someone who couldn't
swim, someone who found
contentment in the mouths
of other girls and i was that
girl who blamed them and
hated them when i should have
hated you

you fed me that smoke. i thought
we were breathing together
but you were poisoning me
had me on a slow boil,
never knowing my own
mortality til it was too late
and you didn't mind.

do you remember how
we got here? that
map we followed?
i think we found
uncharted territory.
this place is
undocumented ocean,
it's distant roads
to nowhere,
marked by
signs that
say things like
no trespass
and
this is where your heart breaks.

we promised.
and we meant it,
at the time.

you said
i'm sure.
you say,
never leave me,
but i wait.
i wait for the day
that it's me
watching you
turn around.

it's me, left with
this faulty map,
because you took
the real one,
and i'm stuck
staring at the space
that says
here is where
i thought you'd always
love me

and the one a few
yards away that says
*i knew you never could.

tiptoe
just to hope
to ever tip
the scales
into that
uncharted
territory
of enough.

that rocky
cliff,
those jagged
boulders...
they are
the danger
of your
disappointment -
easy enough
to miss
but i still
catch skin.

i've worn out
every iteration of
i'm sorry
but we still
can't learn to
swim.

i knew how.
before you.

the lines of time
bleed onto paper
circling back and
forth and back
around to the same
blurry puddle
and they drip
drip
drip
to the floor
blue and gold
and black
holes and
smeared
galaxy
and grey time
slipping into
the ticking fingers
of an old grandfather
clock
and they fold
sometimes into
the bell tower
on the hour every hour
stamped onto
every wrist
glowing in every hand.
it's happening all
at once. you've
lived this second
infinity times before,
checking the time.
are you late?
are you early?
yes.

it is your
two good hands.
it is your beating heart
threaded into my skin.
it is your greedy mouth
stealing the breath from mine.
it is your violent fingertips,
your vicious palms,
leaving their trace
across every *****
of my body.
it is your two good
hands.

how lovely
it must be
to never
drown
in the
well of
your
own
destruction.

the wandering kind
adrift and heartless
looking for a place
that's something like
home.

sometimes it's four
walls, sometimes
it's a mouth and a
heartbeat.

you always want me
to find home in you
and i am a tireless sea;
always drifting away.

always leaving
some of myself
behind.

always leaving you
wishing I'd
stay.

i think we forget
time is not linear,
and we do not
exist on a line.
we do not exist
from this point
to this point.
it's kind of like
believing the world
is flat. it forgets that
there is neither
beginning nor end,
only continuation.
your end is a new
beginning somewhere
else. your timeline isn't
simply ended; it warps
and circles and splays.
you are not a momentary
blip on the map of the
universe, you are splatter
and chaos and birth
and decay. you are
so much more than
simple live and die.
you are so much more
complex than here
and not here. look at
the terrible beauty of
the poetry of everything.
we are synergy, we are
equally all and nothing.
i am the nerves spiderwebbing
your body - you are
the galaxies spiderwebbing
the universe. never
forget that you are not
dust - you are star dust.
infinite and complete.

doomed myself
to sisyphus

watching that boulder
roll past me

day after day
year after year

doomed myself
to narcissus

drowning in
the oceans of

my own expectation
for eternity

i am complexes,
i am enigmas

i am nothing i have
designed for myself

i am trapped in the round
tables of beauty and purpose

that have been created in
circle after circle after

circle and someday i yearn
to press my palm

through the surface for
what's beneath

and someday i will
destroy that boulder

and neither will rule
my existence

and i will be free
from that circle

someday.
someday.

more questions
than answers.
existing somewhere
like that layer
of fog that
wraps a cold
morning after
a too warm night.
we can't breathe
here, but we
try, gasping.
we fumble
forward, caught
up on invisible
things. we are
desperate for
peace and solace.
the satisfaction
of solitude. it's
lost to a sea of
discontent and
the all too eager
hunger of need.
I can't hold my
hand. I can hold
yours, though.
even when I don't
want to. as long
as you'll let me.
I won't have
answers,
but we'll
keep climbing
on
anyway.

I've held your bones,
strong as old oaks;
felt your blood
rushing like rivers
beneath the skin.
felt the constellations
of your fingertips
and the hurricane
of your heartbeat.

you are a universe
in flesh.

can we take a moment?
pause.
rewind.
unwind.
we didn't
stumble into
this mess by
accident
and the threads
are so tangled
my fingertips
are bleeding
from trying
to unweave them.
and don't
misunderstand -
we're here
knee deep
in misunderstanding
and I've
never wanted
to be anywhere
else.

you tear me apart
piece by piece
yet how peacefully
you sleep

he says good morning but
i'm already thinking about good night.
we are bathed in rising sun
but I already crave moonlight.
it's easier to tell hard truths
in the dark, but he's waiting.
he's waiting for me to shed
the skin of this version of me,
the one who shuts her mouth
when she should scream.
and I know this, that he'd
rather listen to me scream
than drown in my silence.
but it's like I've swallowed cement.
and he's looking at me,
he's looking at me,
and his face is filling first with
hurt and anguish
and I know he's thinking
I did something wrong
she doesn't trust me
and I watch it transform
into anger because he's afraid
that both those things are
true, that one night when
I'm silent in the dark,
both of us waiting for me
to say something, anything,
I'm going to slide out
between the shadows
and in the morning he'll say it again
good morning
but the bed will be empty.
and I'm afraid of the very same,
that one day he'll tire of my
sleeping tongue, tire of the
girl too broken to put herself
back together, and I'll wake up
to a cold bed and a silence
that is not my own making.
and somehow we're both
afraid that
goodnight
goodmorning
will become
goodbye, never said,
just left behind, like a ghost
in the bed we used to share.

I'm a puzzle
missing pieces.
probably never
going to find
them.

that's okay, though,
because you are
too.

and our puzzles
seem to look
a lot alike

and when we
put our left over
pieces together
we made
a pretty picture.

did you love me?
did you ever love me?
I was a bath to clean
your ego. I was the
food when you were
hungry. I was an open
mouth when you
needed to feel
good. I was something
to you, when you
needed it. I was something,
even when I was
nothing. I think maybe
you wanted to love me.
I think maybe
you never knew how.
I think maybe you never
loved anything
in your life.
so maybe you tried.
maybe you could.
but you did what you
do best. you lied and
you broke me, just
like you've done to
everything you've
ever "loved."

and you missed me
when I left, because
I made you feel whole.
I made you feel like
you didn't break everything
you touched. I made
you feel like you weren't
as worthless as you were.
I made you feel,
I was the love
you wanted to feel.
and when I left,
I left you a husk.

and I'm not sorry.
I fed you, and you
starved me. but nothing
could fill you. so I left
while I still had something of
myself.

and I hope you crumbled.
I hope you are ash.
and I hope you never
ever rise.

we waited.
we waited.
we fought like
hell to find
our power,
to live our life
standing up straight.

they cut us down,
died on our knees.
they laughed
at our
black dahlia
smiles,
helped us
tie
our columbian
neck ties -
they wanted us
to look nice,
you know?

our hearts tick like
wind up toys,
parading up and
down the sidewalks
manipulated by
little fingers,
little laughs.

our lives on stage,
a dollhouse,
on display.

we said goodbye
in riddles, and
I always swore
I'd be the one to leave
that I'd never
watch you go

but my heart is a
wind up toy,
ticking and naive
and my mouth
wears a doll's smile
and god
I loved you.

and when you left,
I stood on the doorstep
watching you round
the corner.
the wind up toys
reached the end
of their turn, our
ceramic hands
clapping til they
crumbled.

I waited for you to
look back, to look
at me once more.

you never did.

their sound is cacophony
buried deep in the trenches  
of your mind. they say it's
like a prison these days,
wounds and warriors
bound tight by the old
vines of loss and loneliness.
you look in the mirror
and you see the pale
reflection of a ghost,
someone you used to be,
the soul of life so long
gone that her shape is
tenuous at best, a translucent
curtain between this life
and another, one where maybe
you didn't live as an empty
vessel desperate for meaning.
maybe in that life you didn't
live as an undoing. the fractured
lines of this life are smooth
glass there, unmarred by
want and need, unbroken.
in another life,
you are clean.

I am not
your bitterness.

you.
you left a
bad taste
in my mouth -
your name,
remembering
the selfishness
of every kiss,
the greed in
every touch.
your poison
will not leave
my system -
I cannot forget
you, and that is
not sweet sentiment.
I cannot forget you
in the way someone
can't forget losing a
limb. I can't forget
you in the way you
look at a scar and
remember how the
wound ached and
bled. you're not
scar, though -
you're festering
wound that will
not heal. you're
bone deep infection,
spreading cancer,
airborne disease,
harming every facet
of my life. I can't
close my eyes without
remembering your
fists, without hearing
the sharp tenor of your
yelling voice. I can't
think of you without
shrinking into myself.
you were never
supposed to have
this power over me.
freeing myself from
you was supposed
to free me,
and ******* it
I am free, you are
no longer destroying
my life. but *******
you for haunting me,
******* you.

cliche little broken heart -
I used to watch airplanes
crawl through the clouds
above me, wishing I was on
them. no particular
care about destination,
just soaring above the ground
anywhere but here.
anyone but me.

these days, I look up
and I see planes and they
are simply planes on their
way to some far away place
and there's no part of me
that would be anywhere
but here

in this place with you,
this place where your hand
fits so perfectly into
the curve of my hip,
where your mouth so
perfectly lies against
the curve of my neck.

take me down,
down to the knee.
spill my blood,
smear me across
canvas. let me
bend like soft
wood, twine
my roots through
earth and body.
flood me like
waterfall, cascading
down the jutting
cliffs of your ever
sharpening body.
let me rise like mist,
disappearing
into cold dark sky
absorbed into
the atmosphere,
into the everything
and the nothing
where I belong.

her silhouette behind the shower curtain
her dress on the bed
she sings while she dries her hair
swears when she smears her
makeup

the shadows of her life are
all over this place
they mingle dissonantly
with mine

and yet I find her chaos
bleeding all over my order
to be the most beautiful
form of life
I've ever been
exposed to

and so this morning
instead of complaining about
the mess
I kiss her soft face
and she smiles
and everything is alright

every so often,
we lose the fight.
the night sky disappears
behind thick cloud,
and we lose the light.
and the rest of the world
seeps in like thick smoke,
and we can't ignore
the raging fire out there
anymore.

you ask me a thousand times,
please take my hand,
and even though
you're within reach,
I let it go.
I won't mean to, but I
let go.

I don't know how to tell you
but you're my glue.
I'm sorry I came to you in
sharp shards and broken pieces
and sometimes those pieces cut you,
but you're my glue.
you're the thing that holds all
those little bits of me together.
you keep me whole and
you keep me sane
and you'll never know
but you're my glue.

his fingertips graze my skin
and those few moments are enough
to touch every little
corner of my existence

I stitched my bones together,
repainted my skin.
and yet somehow
the monsters still creep in.

when I let go,
universes fall away.
I found myself in
this sort of abyss,
floating somewhere that
is and is not. I am
no longer broken bones,
severed spine. I am
transcendent, I am
luminescent, omniscent.
I am everything,
I am nothing,
I simply
am and this
weightlessness
is more than divine,
it is the universe coming
to its conclusion, it is
beautiful combustion
it is starting over.

I am clean.

it comes in waves of loss and longing -
the bitterest taste of realizing
I will always be this way. I write
letters of apology to the ones
I love, because I will always be
this way. letting go is a battle
of blood and arms, and god
sometimes it takes years. they
still don't see my scars when
I think about all that I've lost
and all I've had to let go, and
the graveyards of all those things
I was so desperate for but
never quite got to hold on to.
when I lay alone, in my quietest
moments, all I can seem to grab
onto are barbed wire thoughts
and I know it shouldn't be like this.
I am a whole girl, I worked so hard
to put myself together, but it still
feels sometimes like I put myself
back together with tape and
I feel those pieces of me starting
to drift apart again and I wonder
if I'll ever actually be whole, if
I'll ever see the version of myself
with the golden veins of glue
that hold me together - she was
broken, but she still fills. and I'm
sorry I can't help but fall apart.
these days it happens less and less,
but god I gave away so much of myself
and I got back so little that it's like
starting over and over and over again,
and I'm trying so hard. I am, please
believe me: I am trying to be whole
for all of you, because you've loved
me so kindly and thoughtfully and I
want to be whole for the sake of us
all. I don't want to be the ******* the
bathroom floor falling apart at three
in the morning. I hate her, I hate
that she still lives in me, I hate that
she still thinks of the boy that broke
us so uttery and completely that he
stains everything I continue to touch.
I hate that I have something here
in my hands so wonderful and new
and all I can think about is how
soon this, too, will ******* break. I don't
want to live this life looking around
every corner, waiting for my next
ruin. let me live, let me be whole,
let me that broken girl who still
shines in golden puzzle pieces
because *******,
she is whole.

fits and
starts
where I end
where you
begin
the lines
are intangible
my fingers
grasp
desperate
for something
to hold
on to
for fear
that we
will start
to slip
before
we even
begin to
solidify
because
because
because
this kind
of bliss
is foreign
to me
it is
new and
terrifying
and it
feels so
so impermanent

because these good things are almost always preface to my ruin and my heart slows in anticipation, in dread, because I'm waiting for that culmination.

because
nothing
good ever
stays.