There is no clean slate

You cannot restart the game

Only continue.

This is what she looks like when she's sad:
The human condition effective immediately.
Winter shades shift side to side,
exploding out of each iris.
Skin falling off,
when lunging forward to kiss me.
Fingernail daggers dig into my pores.
I'll bleed under her fingernails,
if she'll drag them down my torso
until her knees click the floor.

This is her tongue inside of my mouth:
We taste each other before we waste each other.
Hip bones parallel and our eyes rubbing shoulders,
my hands surfing her rib cage
and it's all the rage because she moans.
And when she moans,
color tones orbit around her head.
Planetary tumors dancing around her skull;
jump roping with her hair,
eating morals and removing plurals.

Those are her lips around me.
Her head moves up and down
but her eyes focus on me.
She makes eye contact
and I empty my dreams
into her mouth.

We are a public forum.
I ache with alcohol poisoning
and liberal undertones.
The terrain that is my face
bleeds oils that would lubricate
the axle of the car that she drove
into the tree
that we carved our name into.

Come back to me.
I miss you so much.
I watched you die.
I watched you die
and there was nothing I could do.

They told me that she wouldn't make it.
They told me that she might make it.
My hand gripped at blood stained blanket.
I think she said my name under the air mask.
I could tell if she saw me;
her eyes rolled back into her head
after she gazed a thousand yards away
into the field of black
that sheltered the tall grass
that we would chase each other through
and get lost in
as we got lost in each other.

I love you! I ******* love you!
My back, a membrane coil
that rises my stiff neck
that cares my head full of memories.
I turn on the light and you're not there next to me.
I put my hand on your copy of The Thornbirds
and know that you've read it more than the notes
I leave in your inbox,
hoping that it'll say that you have seen it.

Walking to your grave,
I am a darkness that the abyss has swallowed
and I have followed myself into nothingness
that is such bliss
that I forget
your kiss.

words. offered last-minute from thin-air and handed off heavy-hearted. words. nights spent sleepless and throats filled with sand & secrets and fingernails blackened by scratching away at the excess and unnecessary. words. all they do is **** me off because i can't use them right and i find myself drowning in recycled metaphors and romanticized abstract thoughts that have been regurgitated from a hundred different mouths and audaciously labeled as poetry. but i am not a poet, at least not a good one, in fact i can't stand most of my writing but i still try. because words, are the only way i can get the myriad of ideas inside my head to make some kind of sense but they're hardly worth a dollar so that's probably why i'm always broke. words. i learned to read them at five and i thought that was impressive but nowadays children half that age are already doing that, so i guess i'm not that special. but words, at times my only friend and often my greatest enemy, have the power to reduce crowds of thousands to tears and according to the book on my father's bedside table they once parted a sea. words can change a world. but they can be weapons of unfathomable destruction. it was words, that made me think i was ugly. words i longed to hear but never did drove me to starve for affirmation from the opposite ***. words on magazines told me what i needed to be and told me nobody would want me if i didn't comply. so it was words that made me stop eating, but not for long, because i am lucky enough that my love of food overpowers the hatred i have for my body. words made me tear my skin to shreds in the still of the night because they somehow managed to crawl beneath it without ever having actually entered in through my ears. words can either give life or they can take it. words are sticks and heavy stones and swords and we're taught that they can't break your bones but tell that to the first generation to have anti-bullying laws enacted because of nooses around necks and bullets through brains and blades on wrists all caused by words. so i urge you to craft your words with care and let them be like summer breezes upon the ears you speak them to. let your words be bandaids and hot air balloons instead of daggers and eulogies. speak like honeysuckle not wisteria. words are vines that wrap themselves around and consume whomever they have been said to. people can have memories shockingly resemblant to pachyderms so be aware that your words can live on like ghosts long after you thought they would have died. words are oceans upon which people can either float or sink below, and you are the decider.

- m.f.

this is an open letter to anyone who has the audacity to try and love you like i did.

dear whateverthefuckyournameis,

i apologize in advance for spilling my boiled blood on the hem of your skirt. what you need to understand, is that you are standing on ground previously reserved for my feet, so forgive me for any bitterness that seeps through the cracks in my clenched fists. i don't hate you, but i can't be your friend. you probably don't know about me, and if you do, let me commend your bravery. i have a tendency to set my problems on fire, and in my bouts of anger everything looks flammable, especially girls with paper complexions. i'm sorry. i have never been one to walk away, so i don't know how to explain to you the holes in the bottoms of my shoes. but i have been further than you will ever go. this is not supposed to be an angry letter, but lately that's the only thing coming out of me. i don't even know your name but the thought of your hands reaching for him makes we want to break them. i will douse your dreams in gasoline and strike the match against your cheek. but i know that's not right, see, the poison crawling out from the end of my pen belongs to a scarier version of myself i try not to know. my heartache is an insatiable war cry in the dead of night, that will stop at nothing to shatter all your windows. it shames me to admit that i've found a sort of twisted satisfaction in using passive aggression to breach your armor. i am sick with missing a set of arms i was not privileged enough to know. i speak with all the grace of an atom bomb and wonder about the rubble at my feet. you are white picket fence and i am barbed wire. some girls are lions, some are lambs, and i learned to love, teeth bared and snarling. one of the only things that keeps me going is the hope that one day i'll learn how to love something without making it bleed. i may have never been his, but for a time he was mine, so please understand why i taste acid when i think about your mouth on his. again, i am sorry. i know it is not my place to be so full of resentment, but there is a part of me that sincerely hopes it bothers you to know he dreamt of me before you were even a thought. there is a side of me that thrives on the image of the color being drained from your face when you read this. but i am trying to learn how to be softer. this letter is the manifestation of a self-inflicted war that has been raging in my chest since he first told me about you. you will try to be good to him, and you might even succeed. if you ever find yourself singing him to sleep, like i did, don't ask if he wants to hear another song, just keep going until his breathing slows.

- m.f.

That day I sat
naked and
                   alone
water collapsing upon my spine
acidic or compelling?
cradling what I thought was my hands
within themselves
and waiting for daylight to break me.
I was already broken

decrepit in fact.
caressing substance as supplement
the figurines of moving reality
plaguing consciousness
As     drips
                         drops
        fell
                     struck
My initiative was no longer to cleanse
or ease
but to forget,
God oblidge me
          please
ghosts of armies amidst armistices
raging with questioning calamity
every minute
every        second

It was easy
to hear and see it
placid           to act
as if gum on a shoe
was used and trashed
but stuck somewhere new
               disgusting

Meanwhile
this water
troublesome with cleanliness
corrodes my cadaver
(Cadaver, because it seems that way)
Blood runs with it
and overtakes the pigment
like color from the sponges
I’d used for the color the needle left
instead of creating

life in color
death in color
feeling in color
There were none

unnamed and buried
internal pieces of me
              Extracted
with simplicity
by mouth
and flushed
to not exist
               ever
to anyone
but deep in the realm, of conscience
hidden
and    drowning

smiling a denial
what a sweet smile
"you're always so happy"
a clicking music box

i am free i am calm i am smile i am happy i am
and in the annex alone i listened to him speak
snow falling like angels' feathered tears
on black wet pavement glassy.

i heard his voice and i heard him speak
and my skin it ripped and suddenly i knew-
and
i heard the muffled sounds come clear and come clean
(i am not free)

shaking every angel
as my own serpent arises
in the very dark back
corner of my brain

that i conveniently forget about.
a loud mind. singing foreign songs, a dream lilting deja vu.
his voice opened me up, he spoke about his mother joy reality and
as candles they do burn melting red over faded photographs and the sacrificed man's naked face
opened and i knew

and when his voice faded, screaming stopped their tearing of thunder and ripping of tightly woven threads-
the hole closed.
and oh father
i am numb again.

They say real eyes
Realize
Real lies,
So when you're hypnotized
While you socialize,
It's time to decide
Should you anesthetize
Or recognize
The time
To cut ties?

(©NDHK