I try to open my mouth,
letters bouncing around my tongue and teeth so they can form the perfect words.
I try to save my perfect words
for perfect moments
and perfect people,
but when my perfect time comes,
the universe is quick to remind me
that I am most certainly not perfect.
You see, I try to make myself believe that I can form a hurricane from my mouth,
that I can stand and stomp
and force waves to crash along the shore so you can hear the ocean...
As if I could be as intense as a hurricane
or as precious as a seashell that you hold against your ear.
I try to make myself believe that I could be the covers that keep you warm at night,
the blanket you hold tight against your skin
when ice is forming at your window
and the heater isn't on again because the bill is so **** high.
I try to make myself believe that I could be a photograph you keep in a shoe box,
the kind of photo you've hidden from the world,
not because it's bad,
but because it's this beautiful secret
and you want to keep it all to yourself.
It's always there to look at on dark nights,
this picture of a girl you used to know.
This picture is all you have left of her.
A photo that makes you so happy you cry,
but then you realize they are not just tears of joy,
because although it is too hard to admit sometimes,
you miss your past
you miss how everything was supposed to work out
and how you used to be king of the playground
but now you are just king of a one-bedroom apartment with a toilet that doesn't always flush.
I try to make myself believe that I could be hope.
I could be what makes you say,
"Hey,
this really isn't so bad."
...These words that I spit onto the floor will stick to your shoes when you get up to walk away,
and maybe they will stay there.
You will walk with them all across town-
step on gas pedals, stomp on ants.
I can believe my words belong on shoes,
side notes
blueprints
in unimportant categorizations that your mind will cast off as history and erase in your sleep.
I can believe that my words are like the paper airplanes I strung to my ceiling-  
Most of the time I don't even remember they exist...
but every once in a while,

I look up.

I could hear my parents talking about me.
I don't like that.
I don't like the way you looked so
disappointed
when I cried, either
or that I cry
or that my stomach bunched into ruffles
when you took my shirt off.

"I don't know why I get so sad sometimes," I whispered.

I had a dream
that a monster woke me up in the night
and slashed my wrists for me.
I screamed.
I kicked
I let myself bleed.
In the morning I walked up to you
and you didn't believe me when I said it wasn't me.

It smells like
pizza
and
***
and I am still a
pizza-less
******.

I am corrupting myself
letting my flesh hang from my face in long pieces
that dangle all the way to my feet
so I can step on my cheeks
and
I
will
never
be more than
trash.

I think
when the sun comes out
when our faces get laminated along with whether or not we'd like our living heart in a useless, smashed up, messed around body given away to someone who can make it beat life,
I think we will get in a car
and disappear for a week.
We should go to a beach, put the seats down in the back and sleep there,
and I'll pack us a bunch of food,
and I won't need to wear anything but my bikini
and sunglasses,
and I'll let your soaked up skin mingle with mine under the dead stars.
It will be the most perfect thing.
I will be nervous and scared but your arms will reassure me that this is okay
because in moments like these,
nothing can go wrong.

I will be so alive
and I won't ever want to wash the salt out of my hair.

My skin itches.
It's trying to crawl away from me,
out of this room
into the bathroom or kitchen or any place with a blade
because I am not empty,
but my mind is playing tricks on me
and everything is an addiction.

I am something like destructive.
I am lies and hunger and razors and headaches.

I should tear my muscles apart each night
stretch them all the way to your house,
so part of me can linger there
and dance around your dreams.

It's a selfish thought.

Don't tell me where to go.
Don't tell me who I am,
where I should be,
what part of my mind you think you can reach into and pluck strings at to make me work better, to fix all of this


I don't want to hear it.
Just because you scream, it doesn't mean I have to listen,
and just because you've stapled my eyelids open
it doesn't mean I have to look.

There is no him here to save you from me now
to wash my beating heart with blood coursing through our veins
I can hear that
I want to hear that.
But there is no him here to save you from me now
so I can yell until
your body hits the ground
and you will fall forever
and you won't make a sound.

I am a series of problems,  you see.

I am that annoying song stuck in your head, the reason you can't get to sleep. I am the creepy girl in some horror movie that you swear you keep seeing around town, and the notification you got a little too late. I'm the embarrassing email you just sent, the one simple word you misspelled on an otherwise perfect paper, I am the stain you didn't know you had on the shirt you got two weeks ago. I am your work that nobody else seems to appreciate, and I am the voice in your head telling you that you are not good enough. I'm the grammar problem spell checks don't pick up on, I am the big piece of cake you promised yourself you wouldn't eat, but ate anyway. I am the ****** you won't pick in public and the moment your favorite cousin opens the birthday present you got her just to be very disappointed at what's inside. I am the thunder your dog is afraid of, the bikini you're too insecure to wear, the frizz of frizzy hair, I am the pair of jeans you had when you were younger that you wish your mom never gave away. I am your lost pair of favorite socks, a cavity, a weight gain.

I am your disaster, aren't I?

My life will be one of those magic tricks
where I ask you to
"pick a card, any card,"
and you do and you memorize it and put it back in the pile
and I shuffle the deck and try to give you the right card
but I don't know how to do this trick,
and even though there's a tiny chance I could hold up your card,
I never get it right.
That's what my life will be like
and I don't know how I feel about that
or even how I should feel about that
and I don't know what to do about it.

You said that you've been watching me for years.
You said that I keep you steady here, on the ground.
I'm not a girl for you to pursue, you said,
just a girl to look at when things get crazy.
Just a girl who has got your balloon head
tied to her wrist.
We're barely past strangers
and I don't know how your hands have pried open my skull and bones
so you can inspect.
You never asked permission.

You said your resolution for this year is
to stop thinking about me.

I'd like for you to be content
to be happy
but you are not the boy I dream about
and I'm afraid that's what
you want me to be.

I think
we all think
we're different.
I think
everybody thinks
they're alone
and nobody understands
and life is
so
*******
hard.

Sometimes I look out of open doors
take a cold sip of juice
and life doesn't seem so difficult
because it's easy to be sad.

I dream a lot
and I'm still at a point in my life
where I can walk through fire
and come out already healing.
There is no wrong where I am.
You just do
what you do.
I don't know the exact moment I fell in love with you,
but I'm still at a point in my life
where I believe in love.
It can last here,
and grow,
and even when it fades,
it leaves a trail of sparks.
I'm not sure what path I am paving for myself,
but I still believe I can forget about what I am supposed to do
because it's what you do
and simply do what I need to do
what I want to do
go where I want to go
and I still believe taking chances today
won't leave me dead in the morning.

My desk holds no pencils-
every mistake I make
will never erase.

I grip my flaws with a fist
because they will always be mine.

Do you know what my bones are wrapped in?
Uncertainty.
And I am waiting today,
uncertain as always,
if you will come or  not,
and I hope you will,
but I know if you do,
you will not have much fun.
I will wrap a blanket around my head, hiding my face from any light,
and you will wrap your arms around me and I might even shrug you away.
Today
there is no point.
This morning has made me realize that people will always keep secrets
and there are no permanent connections anywhere
and the factors that make you LOSE
are much greater
than anything that makes you win.
Dreams don't have to come true,
and people will settle
for a life they never wanted,
but they'll pretend it is good
that they are happy,
when they are working for nothing but to die.
I'll admit, sometimes I wouldn't mind dying.
Only because I've already had my 10 seconds of fame in this village,
and ladies reassure me that that was it. That is all there is room for.
That is all I am good for.
My dreams are the static of a tv set.
waver
waver
gone.
I am empty today,
and it is so silly that my biggest concern
was not having grabbed your **** yet.

God, life can be ******* pathetic.

Your words spit truth
but even truth isn't always truth after a couple hours of thinking about it.
I often daydream of all these things I'd like to do
things that would make you like me
keep me
things that would make me like me
but they end as just dreams,
and I am
so
tired
of
that.

Tonight will be me on a skateboard,
spray-painting my village something yellow.
I hope I'll like it as much as the truth thinks I will.

The story is
I let waves crash over my eye lids
the salt water keeps them open at night.
They sting
sometimes.
Violins ring in my ears
it's a beautiful sound,
but when the trees get high
the music can take over my mind
and make me fall.
This whole 'nonsense' scene,
the curtains half closed because no one knows why,
but no one can fix it and no one on stage is smiling.
I don't get it, either.

Thorns down my throat
so
I spit them at you.

Don't let go tonight.
I'm not.
This won't slip from me,
the thing I answer with when asked,
"What do you love most in the world?"
This is it, when the lights are shining and I am not me
I am not anyone
I am just something to make you smile.
I can't really narrow that question down,
but I blurted my answer
and the room didn't know if it was right.
It's dance.
But sometimes, I dance for you.

Today I was thinking
if you see things you hate in my eyes-
I couldn't help but think of your goodbye.
In a parallel universe, maybe that's all you ever do is say goodbye to me.

Most moments I have the urge
to get out of my seat and lay on the ground,
so I can stare at the ceiling.
Not much else to do or say or see or hear.
No where else to be.

If my room was clean
candles were lit
If we could forget about
the lives we live
you'd be here right now
I'd trace your spine
the night would be ours
forever.

I used to slice my thighs apart
in emptiness
and a feeling I don't really know how to describe.
I'd sit under the shower jets,
let the water pool in all the creases of my body
and cover my ears with my hands,
put my face through the heat,
the sound not the shower,
but a storm,
Like the whole world was raining on me.

I've still got a cloud over my head sometimes,
and I know my lightning will come back.
I'm not sure if I hate or love that storm.
I am positive that I don't need it.

It's so dark,
the only light spinning,
and your eyes don't look through me.
You see me clear.
Your lips make their way down my body and back up again, and I wish you could
stay longer,
stay the night,
stay with me.
"I don't want you to go," I say,
and the light keeps spinning,
your face green then blue then red,
and I'm tangled up in you beneath my gray covers,
the most comfortable I've ever been.
"I don't want to leave," you reply to me,
quiet words because our volume shrinks as we dig deeper into truth.
I never know if I always say the right things,
and I know I don't always do the right things,
but sometimes you make the world feel right
and I feel like I am included.
Like everything shifts and falls into place
and I no longer need to want,
because there is nothing out of my reach.

Then you kissed me goodbye at my front door
and went home, a little late.
I bit my lip
walked up the stairs
fell into my chair,
and my brother walked in, saying,
"Do you know how fragile this world is?"

For a while I thought I could get better.
I thought
the wind would pick me up and let me glide.
I guess I was wrong.
I usually am.
The day got dark, and my mind slipped away from a closed fist,
bits flying while time slowed and the beat of my heart thumped around in my chest.
It usually happens like this.