i've never had a home so i tried to make my own
but nobody told me you can't make homes from human bones
i got lost in the forest of your ribcage, climbed the tower that is your spine
crawled through your rotting liver in the hopes that i'd find
somewhere to rest my weary head but instead i found a vacancy sign
where your heart should've been & i thought about
leaving but your voice just made it so inviting
i didn't realize how fragile the tissue was and your body came crashing down around me
my world came crashing down around me but that isn't your fault
i made this bed so i'll ******* lie in it
while you lie in every word that drips from your leaky mouth
you left me drenched in blood, crumpled on the ground and homeless
i tried to stand but found that my back was boneless
i guess you didn't learn from me- you can't make a home in a place you're not meant to be
and you can't build the walls from the skeletons you've collected
you never had a closet to put them in so what else were you supposed to do?
you're supposed to ******* set them free
and that's how i know you never loved me

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.

when she dies
never speak her name again
because she spent her whole life trying to listen
let her rest let her go forget her face

when she dies
keep her name behind your teeth
lock the memories away
do not remember do not take away her peace

when she dies
do not look for her in butterflies and
do not see her face in the clouds and
do not reach for her in your sleep she is gone

when she dies
do not hear her voice in the wind do not taste her tears in your whiskey
do not kiss the roses to remember her lips

when she dies
forget the way stars swam in her eyes
forget the way she tried to be bigger than she was
forget that she was the wind

when she dies
take her pictures down her ghost will not live in your walls
she is gone she is gone she is gone
never say her name again

when he dies
do not say his name again
do not beg him to hold you one more time
do not cry to the stars for him
let him rest let him die

when he dies
do not remember the way he smiled like every breath was ecstasy
do not look for him in the bars downtown
you won't find him

when he dies
do not listen for his words in the ocean waves, do not
ask him how things could have changed
don't let his name poison your lips

when he dies
do not visit his parents asking about his childhood demons
do not taste him in your morning coffee
he is at peace let him be

when he dies
don't look for him at the bottom of his favorite bottles
don't call his phone to hear his voice again
don't beg him to call back

when he dies
do not remember do not wish
do not contemplate joining him
he is finally at rest he is finally home
do not speak his name again

my brain is self-destructing, my heart is  begging me to let it stop,
my eyes see nothing in front of me. only backward
but the earth is still turning
shards of glass from my shattered bones glide through my veins,
like a newspaper boat riding the current, and
i am begging for one piece to stick in my heart, just one little piece,
to make it stop, explode
i want to carve every adjective that cannot describe me
into every inch of my flesh, so that maybe you will understand
why death is what occupies my dreams the most,
so that maybe those little shards of glass will leak from my skin to the floor
and she'll slip on them, fall on them,
make them her problem
because the devil knows just how tired i am of being her ghost
but the birds are still singing
the current is still pushing that boat
my demons are singing my heart lullabies that travel down my spine,
across my ribcage, and echo in my lungs
they want it to go to sleep and god sometimes i wish it would
the notes leak from my lips and my nose when i exhale,
travel through the air into ears of bystanders but nobody hears them, nobody knows
nobody realizes just how much my misery craves their company
somewhere her car is hitting that curb again and maybe this time she'll get what she wanted
but other people are laughing, smiling, moving forward
she's driving as fast as she can to leave me in her dust and
I'm still sitting on the curb right where she left me
because my god did her misery love my company
she left a piece of it behind and it is destroying me from the inside, I'm bleeding out internally
but babies are still being born and their mothers are smiling

i was merely shrapnel from your downfall;
a hunk of tire on the shoulder and you spun into oncoming traffic
i wasn't strong enough to keep you going
my hands are still shaking
and now I'm rotting in the sun on the side of the highway with the rest of the roadkill
i watch with dead eyes the cars passing by,
none of them quite as shiny or fast as you
the city cleaned up the mess you left and barely survived;
they swept the glass, said your troubles would pass
but what about mine? what of the pieces you left behind?
nobody kissed death that day but lives were destroyed, people were crippled
had i still been human then i imagine i would've been driving the car that hit you first
the one that sent your head into the steeringwheel where the airbag should've been; the one that hurt you worst
but i wasn't human then, and I'm not sure i am now
i was just the ring of rubber you'd melted me into
i just kept you going and now I'm stuck because you are long gone,
probably thousands of miles away in a brand new car with brand new tires
i hope they're enough to get you to wherever it is you were headed in such a hurry
or maybe i hope that they give out more quickly than i did, that you're over the river this time and the barriers break
that concrete crumbles, falls away
and you get carried downstream to the ocean where you find the bottom nobody's touched
but maybe even at rock bottom you'd still be driving way too fast and maybe
you'd still leave a trail of roadkill in your wake.
all i know is that this rotting flesh is starting to smell in the summer heat and i feel like maybe this is where i belong