hold me again.
Your skin is humming
I’m sick in
cold sweats
ethereal healer,
I love you.
Say it again
you miss me
you could lie
but you won’t.
Let me trust you
not again,
it’s my first time:
pull pain from my
lungs until
I’m spluttering,
my faith splayed across your
perfect chest
my own
deflated like
old promises
forgotten by their giver,
remembered by me.
But you
exhale into my mouth,
carbon dioxide like
effortless anesthetic
I dissolve until all of
my atoms hit your floor
splattering ***** and crude
and somehow
you see each one,
you know them
and name them
and love them
and hold them
together
again.

i thought
somewhere deep inside,
you were an artist
but the red paint on your hands
was always blood

This is the story of smoke,
mirrors,
broken fourth walls,
and me.
I
used to play with fire and pretend
I was a goddess, like
I'd created it with my own
fingers.
I once set my carpet on fire
(that's not a metaphor),
and for one brilliant moment I
thought I might have
inadvertently burned down the house.
But I outgrew fire,
grew bored of ice,
and discovered the final frontier—
it was disappointingly tepid:
dull, a bit smoky
from ex-flames that scorched the carpet.
My once-raw lungs are now
jaded and fading.
What is left to grow tired of?
I don't care enough to find out.

This is the tightrope we
are so privileged
to dance on, my dear
as we tarry on the line
between danger and grace.

fear was all we knew
before we had the displeasure
of making ourselves known
to this perpetually unfamiliar world

(and it to us)
but here we are
always chasing satisfaction -

satisfaction
always two steps ahead of
fear,
satisfaction
teasing us with
greed

now fear is not
all we know
but we cannot say
that it is any less present
for fear is the unknown –
and each day we know more and more
that we know nothing at all

You're dangling again, darling;
existentialism isn't your color
flush bright and laugh skywards
finish your homework and fall in love.
You rise with blithe baroquism,
I can see it in the faint
shadows beneath your eyes
as you rush windward into past.

It's alright to love the program, honey,
but if you're over-cautious
you might turn too perfect.
Just don't while I'm alive, please,
for I love the curls in your words
and the feathers in your walk.

Be me when you don't want to,
and be you when you forget what it's like.
Just remember me around the edges,
paint me in the corner below your signature
and remember my kisses goodnight.

Slow chimes move
like silk waves across your breath
smile yearning upward,
lifting me with it
I sail lucid and pale
wondering where reason got off.
You're the last key on the piano,
ringing softly, haloed:
redemption calls like you.
I only meant that
you blaze
like seven raging stars
you illuminate fast and holy,
trickle down your depth and widen
until everything is you.
I won't complain,
I'd cut off my tongue if you liked,
say yes til I lost my voice
even before you asked.
No, this pledge is not dangerous,
my worship not idolatrous, for you
are only ever safety and heaven
(or so I hope).

doesn't hurt, not
always. Sometimes
it heals the cracks in your
ribs and eases you gently into sleep
for the first time in weeks.
Truth
is curious and ugly and forever half-hidden,
cowering uncomfortably behind
partial lies, obscured like
the sun rising behind the mountains.
It's seemingly more beautiful
when cloaked,
if only you don't look it in the eye
and let the darkness help to scatter
all its fuchsias and violets across the horizon.

Our divine mandate
fell suddenly, fire from heaven
on a Tuesday afternoon
landing on our tongues,
so hot that it felt
cold.
We refused to believe
our roles were scripted,
but defiance did not make us gods,
it only
proved us illiterate.
We mounted a roller coaster,
knowing in the end we'd
taste dust and blood.
Our calling has
always been progress,
never regret -
and we are nothing if not
debutantes.

I'd love to
create something beautiful
from my pain,
but it's not a skill you can learn.
I wish I knew how
to do anything but
cling to you when I'm hurting,
desperately hoping you
will lift me up
but every time, you fall
with me, and then we're
slamming into concrete
again
and I think to myself,
it's really rock bottom
this time
and it's my fault
again
and you don't know
how to help
again
and the only thing
I can think to do
this time
is let go of your hand,
watch you drift away
and lay here
alone.

Heartbreak:
seeping in between
moldy ceiling tiles and their
blissful indifference,
reaches me with rueful claws
and ***** my unsuspecting eyes
dry.
I don't have room for thirst
anymore,
I'm tired of water:
my feet are shriveled past prunes
from standing salty puddles
in which I'd hoped
I might drown.

i wrapped an anchor 'round my ankle
and dove into the ocean
in march
when spring blossomed and the
ice fractured beneath my weight
i swam not for shore
but for the ocean floor
the pressure crushed my frozen skin
i followed your map, encrypted
in riddles and cacography
and there, submerged in the fathomless deep,
it occurred to me that
perhaps you did not want to be followed
so i opened my mouth and closed my eyes
i let the water suffuse my tired bones
and i sank, as
gravity drew me closer to
you

This porched morning stretches
oceanward,
until it rains.
This is no happy summer:
it is weighty pondering
it brings heaven to earth
in a bolt of lightning
it electrifies the sea and
casts airbrushed stripes
of light atop the horizon
but it does not rain
yet.
The shore is
damp from the night before -
a thousand half-thought words
pattered down
smack, smack, smack
little bird feet running
towards and away.
They smell rain,
coming soon again
they love the wind preceding.
The air is expectant,
whipping pages
back and forth and back
and forth
the book will finally
snap shut when it rains.
The ocean rears and curls and sways unsteadily
nature inhales and bites cold.
It feels almost wrong
to be here, now,
solitary
without sun
awaiting the rain.

my life is yet untitled
and i do not want your name
scrawled across the cover
when you did not
sit here, writing
for hours
through splattered ink
and broken lead
and calloused fingers
and cramping hand –
that was me.
yet i continue
to doodle your name
in the margins of my pages
i am slowly realizing
i am the author of this book
i am not obligated to you
i am pulling out my eraser
because i have work to do

in the youth of the morning
a glass figurine grasps rays of light
the sun graces his soft contour
radiant colors bouncing off the
***** surface of the table
the dust does not near his skin
his lineament is something i saw once
in a dream, across the ocean.
do i brave those tumultuous waters?
to what end?
so that my fingertips may keep their distance?
so that we may breathe the same air?
so that our eyes may burn under the same sun?
my wistful dreaming knows
not reason but the desire
to witness the distant diamond
glinting like the stars
that beg me to drown in hopeless ventures
yet my lungs would happily fill with saltwater
if only my skin could know
the touch of an untouchable

I'll find her one day, years
from now
sketching wildflowers in a field
two states over from
where we met
and it will be the first
time that I realize I
truly lost her. I never knew her
to care about art, though I knew she would
paint houses with her generosity
until she’d given her whole world away.
She put everything she loved on
an altar and watched the smoke
swirling towards God
closed her eyes, inhaling
a promise that she would receive blessing
in return. So she did:
everything that happened
had to be divinely ordained
but me - I was not.
I was the earth she
was called to leave behind,
on her journey higher
and I watched her footsteps smudge
the lines drawn in the sand
and questioned how
you could ever tell someone they
weren't going to be happy
when every ounce of their being
believed they were.
The truth is,
I never found the answer
and I can still only
pray I'll ever
find her.

This existence is but a breath
vapor drifting past the lips of
life:
a Secret kept obstructed,
eclipsed by perennial paradigms
mutinous Mobs snuffed
out by the wind
a broken Hourglass, the
Sand seeping through the
cracks in the door
the Dust on the floor,
flattened by footprints beyond
differentiation
a Conflagration quenched as
soon as it catches
by the swelling tides of time.
Whether we're cursed or
self-destructive, our
affinity for chaos will
unravel our transcendent, twisted cataclysm before
we ever know our
beginnings and endings.

at the tips of my fingers
and in the palms of my hands
on the backs of my eyelids, where sleep should be
between fanciful flower petals, dead since long ago
upon the fabric of my dress, where your hand met my waist
within books and doors slammed shut, a restless cacophony
from falling rain, polluted by quixotic aspiration
under the breath swept from my mouth,
in a prayer that i am not in love with you

the day after christmas i
took a walk in the woods at
dusk.
i felt a city of eyes
staring, none
of which i could see.
i walked among them,
an obstreperous visitor uninvited.
beneath the rustling wind in the trees,
i thought i heard the
pounding of drums.
perhaps it was the rhythm of nature.
it beckoned me to run,
so i
ran.
i ran not from death, but
toward life.
i did not plan to run,
but i
ran.
i ran until the end
of my path.
i watched the puffs of air
float languidly toward the
sky, and realized
this was not the end, simply
where the path stopped.

at night i mourn
for the shooting stars
that we saw
all those wishes
wasted
wishing for each other
and i wonder
if i had never told you
all the things i wished for
would they have
just maybe
come true?
but i think the constellations
agreed, as they
watched us fall
we were always destined to crash and burn

i fell in love
with words
long before
i ever thought
i loved you
so maybe it should have been a sign
when you never
cared about my words
did you ever really care about me?

as i left
i set fire
to every word i ever wrote for you
so that it meant
as much to me
as it did to you
nothing at all

i thought of you
as i sat on the floor of the ocean
i could hear you
"open your eyes"
oh, the serendipitous sights i would see!
if only i would listen to you
"just breathe in"
i had yet not dared
to inhale
my lungs had started to burn —
a breath would surely suffice.
i felt you in every inch
of my body
in places that i did not want you
that i had never invited you
the pressure was great
there, on the floor of the ocean
i console myself now:
perhaps
he never knew of what he spoke
perhaps
you still do not know
or worse
perhaps
you knew all along

The elixir of life
is the stuff of self:
we are spit and ocean
minuscule, innumerable, pellucid
drops dangling dangerously
from windowpane and eyelash
anticipating the inevitable;
the fall
dying to dry
when the sun shines scarlet.
We are nothing more than products of the sky
earthbound, plummeting, wishing
we were suspended in the clouds
gathered just beneath heaven,
hoping to float higher than destiny
someday.

Why do we fall in love
with emptiness?
Why do we chase the void?
Somehow, nothing
is more comforting than something
sinking heavy in your stomach,
a reminder that
gravity binds us to the ground.
Maybe if we were filled with air,
we could float wherever we pleased,
refusing to relinquish control to the earth –
but something sits hidden away
in the nothing,
begging for more,
whispering that we will die if we don't
stuff ourselves up to our necks.
And we oblige; we
like the allure of weighty things
so we pack them in,
stretching our skin, and we
fall flat on our faces when
inevitably,
it becomes too much to stand.

You've never been to Spain,
but I could have sworn you were there
on the beach in July,
giving me sunburns with your golden gaze.
I was driftwood, tossed by panic, unaware
of your silent anchor sinking patient beneath.
I told myself everything but the truth,
and felt your your tears ebb and flow
with the tide, until I
finally agreed to swim.

My legs swinging at the counter
your soul sizzling in the skillet
my cheek pressed to cold granite –
is time running still?
Funny how the night turns
my palms to melted wax
they're stuck on your skin; I
dissolve.
We drift intertwined,
smoke into the detector
and
I'm sinking through the floor,
if you care.
If you don't
I'm gone,
and I was never here,
I never shuddered from your warmth
or cried into your pillow.
You could look for me but you
don't, do you?
You sit redly in the cold,
waiting for Love to love you.
I would be remiss if not to inform you
she is not I
we are not even acquaintances,
her heart and mine.
I am where you aren't searching
she is seated next to you,
waiting for you to give her
what you never gave me.

Year eleven
English class, you’d sit in front of
me, unaware I could hear
your pencil, scribbling
throughts you scrapped
when we all wrote poems.
The back of your neck would
flush angry red
as you tried to cram rhymes
against their will, into
stunted couplets.
You hated free verse (well,
most poetry, at that).
“It should have rules,”
you’d argue with
the teacher, trying to
derive the lexical formula
through some slip of her tongue,
convinced she was
safeguarding the key
to composition, or at least to
the coveted A.
I sat behind you,
sadly, seeing unborn poems
slip between your fingers,
trickle down the legs of your desk
and settle with resignation in the wastebasket.
I said nothing;
I sighed, and penned
a poem you’d hate
about all the ones you threw away.

if we are going to die
hand in hand,
then we'll be okay.

Darkness grins on the horizon
it looms and drags and coughs
I shudder and shutter my windows,
I board and splinter and nail and bruise and seal
and lock.
It's not quiet inside,
it storms in here too
it's acid rain,
it's sandstorm and blizzard
I'm igloo,
I'm fire,
I'm puddle
you echo and echo and echo
Won't you leave?
Why didn't you stay?
you echo and echo and echo
I scream and spill and slam and still -
in sudden silence
darkness seeps through
the gaps in the walls, then my pores
it's here, it's me
I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine
you're gone and
so am I.

i want to read you
cover to cover
but for the first time
i find it so difficult
to read
so often i have tried
to copy you down
but my pen and paper
do not know the words
that fit you
the way you deserve

i want to hear you
beginning to end
so often i have tried
to find the song
that sounds as sweet as you
but the notes and rhythms
cannot compose a melody
that fits you
the way you deserve

i want to see you
frame to frame
every brushstroke and hue
that are ingrained
in your composition
so often i have tried
to paint your lovely temperament
but this paintbrush and canvas
cannot quite capture a picture
that fits you
the way you deserve

my fruitless attempts at replicating
the art that is you
have only taught me
that in the end
it is solely
reality
that fits you

Willpower is strong
especially in us
but we cannot will
the world to stop spinning
the sun to stop shining
the tides to stop rising
the wind to stop blowing
the clock to stop ticking.

Willpower is strong
but darling,
we will never
rewrite
fate.

i would like back
every penny
that i threw
in the well
for you
i would have twice what i cost you

I'm alone this weekend
just me and the echo
of a plate breaking
on the ***** kitchen floor.
I wish you were here.
I spent the day sideways
wishing for your upside-downness,
how you'd peak at rock bottom.
I'm thinking of inviting you here
so you could take up enough space for
the both of us,
so my pain would no longer be
mine, it would
be you.
You'd ask me to
slow dance through
your field of landmines, because
only you
knew all the right steps
and I'd
trip one
so you could scream about
things you could never understand.
You'd feed me curses
and when I got thirsty
you wouldn't know how to be water
until I was
a grease fire.
But in the end,
I'm alone here because
the only person who loved to see
me hurt more than you
was me.

Loosen your grip
around my heart:
my chest, now collapsing,
burns at your all-too-familiar touch.
Why do I unravel
into your arms again?
How do you fold me
into you, so deftly?
as if I had not perished here
a thousand times before?
as if I did not know,
despite your absolute claim on me,
that you would not
could not
ever be mine?
I wanted you,
not for true love,
I wanted to conquer you.
I was inspired by
fantasies of my independence
those dreams long awaited, now still
unperturbed in a *** from which
I cannot tear my eyes.
Morbid curiosity, or
fascination
masquerading as devotion
still tugs at my heart
with the warmth
and the force
of your touch.

from the sky, looking down
i could almost see
every drop of our lives
in the vast expanse of the sea

Dark magic
black lace and
red lips.
I'm enchanted -
what was your name?
It falls off
your tongue like
caramel or tar
I'll drink it either way.
Saccharine sapphire
pulling me underwater,
showing me how to breathe
kohl pencil
feathered around your eyes
a punch to my stomach
I feel it in my toes.
The passion of the sun
cloaked in the moon
dangerously beautiful,
and I'm a connoisseur of hazard.

before you
my mouth and pen were dry
now poetry
rushes through my veins
pours out of my fingertips
flows from my mouth
you keep my head spinning
with words
and i need more and more and more and more of you

in the
dry air between
the beauty of poetry
and one too many
poetic licenses.

you are not
the sun
you are not
the moon
you are most certainly not 
the earth
you must learn
as i did
(when you were once my whole world)
you are a star
yet
you are one 
of seven billion

the day you realize
that humans
are so carefully crafted
so delicately designed
so infinitely intricate
will be the day 
you start to treat them
the right way

You always had to be strong but I
wanted to believe I could see through you
I traced your outline and
tried not to flinch when you
sliced my fingertips

I quickly learned that love is not fear
fear is when you called me
and told me you didn't love your father
your words wrapped around my throat and
pressed heavy on my chest and I
finally felt you
not in my heart but in
the marrow of my bones

You had seen things that I
could not bear to hear but I
had to bear them for you
I heard your mother's leg snap
and you shatter on the ground and I
stood over the fractures of you with
my needle and thread and
cried for the parts of you that would
never be the same

then I picked up a shard
and carved your name in my skin so I
could see you in rich, romantic crimson
but as the tides rose, I
inhaled the ocean water, I
let go of your hand, I
let my tears join the salty expanse
and swore on that night I
would never cry again

The dawn broke and the sun saw
a different world, with
your broken pieces at the bottom
of the sea, and
the soles of my feet have healed, but
you still sleep in the sand, scraping
the skin of those who have strayed
too far from the surface.