Dry white pills rattle
in their dark green chamber.
Large and hard and pure,
they leave soft dust
where they clack together.

The cap spins free easy
when I fumble the bottle
and they trip eagerly
into my hand, so that
I must select my savior.

It takes hold of my muscles
and releases their grip on me,
fills my hanging head with its
whiteness rather than my red,
and gives my grinding teeth peace.

It ushers in sleep,
who has circled at the door,
smooths the sharp edges
of my breath in the
darkness, and tucks me in.

Hydrocodone®
Lipitor®
Zithromax®
Zocor®

Zoloft®
Prozac®
Ambien®
­Fosamax®

Coumadin®
Klonopin®
Neurontin®
Naproxen®

Simvastatin
A­lbuterol
Glucophage
Metoprolol

I am hurting
on my knees
Can't afford
any of these!

how could I ever explain
the hiccups in my brain
(what was i just thinking)
writing 'bubblegum tongue '
degrades
the act of kissing

and I am full of carbohydrates caffeine almond milk
(vegetarian yes)
unmotivated to go vegan alone
sitting against a wall
with pink pig headphones in--my sister's I swear
reading grand hopeful endless infinite
quotes
oblivious to everything
fake
around me--I'm too preoccupied with
finding my alter-ego

                                                      ­                   was machst mich so glucklich

you can kiss
all the boys you want
pretty girl
but naproxen sodium doesn't
numb my pain
anymore than empty touch
will numb yours

She is blue raspberry slushee tongue
Meets feminist rant.

She is Moon Pie wrapper personified.
She is purple lipstick stains on wine glasses
Filled to the brim with cranberry juice.
She is three cats, one bed.

She is a scratch in your favorite record during your favorite song.
She is bubblegum bubble pop,
She is the definition of hypochondriac.

Curiosity didn’t **** her,
She killed curiosity.

She is dry heaving into the toilet bowl,
Claw marks on the inside of her stomach.
She is naproxen sodium
Swirling down throat,
Gagging up bullet sized pills.

She is the other side of unrequited.

She is no ones favorite poem.
She is her own favorite poem.

She is perpetual headache.
She is screaming for justice.
She is the jersey devil episode of the X-Files,
In other words,
She is a hot mess.

She is nature walks cut short due to laziness.
She is laziness.
She is lay in bed all day,
Drown in the sheets.
She is too many books, not enough time.

She is funeral song at a wedding.
She is dethorned rose, declawed cat.
She is waking the dead.

She is a renaissance painting come to life.
Botticelli would cry if he saw her,
His Venus,
Splashing in the water.

She is Jezebel mourning Ahab.
She is Jezebel being eaten alive.

She is ankle deep dimple.
She is never could quite get the words out.
She is lip bite, blood drip.
She is covered in bruises and she likes it.

She is listerine flavored whiskey,
She is a shot glass of formaldehyde.

She is an oak tree,
Thats what her sister tells her.

She is the x on the back of an 18 year olds hand.
She is conspiracy theory.
She is playing possum.

She is change the subject.
She is cry when being yelled at,
Cry when no one is looking,
Cry when everyone is looking,
Cry because theres nothing else to do.

She is leather jacket in july.
She is crop top and mini skirt.
She is lullaby.
She is dancing to the Law and Order theme song.
She is 8,000 tweets.

She is see how long she can go without talking.
She is goes so long without talking
That now she can’t talk.
She is novocaine needle pock mark.

She is her own mythology,
Her own god.
She is fire breathing dragon.
She is knocking on god’s door
Until blood erupts from her knuckles.
She is asking why.
She is Persephone feasting on pomegranate seeds.

She is two siblings in the hospital.
She is “call if you don’t feel right”.
She is disassociative personality disorder,
At least thats what she’s convinced she is.

She is anxious laughter,
Anxious smile.
She is sewing her lips shut.

She is only 11 Instagram likes.
She is learning to love herself with the lights on.
She is sleep to much,
Sleep too little.
She is curl on cheekbone.
She is protruding rib bone.
She is hip bones cutting glass.

She is Lilith saying no.
She is leading the serpent to the garden.

She is vegetarian on moral grounds.
She is not telling her doctor she is a vegetarian
Because what if its bad for her?

She is fate and destiny making out under the bleachers.
She is making nooses out of ****** strings.
She is choke on your own saliva.
She is burnt tongue tip.
She is puking in the parking lot of her dentist’s office.
She is a 1997 themed mixtape.

She is a stanza curving like a lovers back.
She is chapped lips.
She is brick through the window.
She is suffocating on suburban ideals.

She is Anne Sextons ***** bottle.
She is Maya Angelou’s silence.
She is Lucien Carr’s ****** knife.
She is Sylvia Plath’s last manuscript before
She stuck her head in the oven.

She is three am,
Get out of bed.
She is snow in september.

She is poetry.
She is poet.
She is music in fingertips,
Songs molded from simile.
She is metaphor flavored kisses
And a witchcraft tongue.

She is a girl crafted of stories.
A collection of make believe.
She is breathing passion.
She is daughter of nothing,
Lover of everything.
She is afraid of scorpions.
She is the venom.

She is a violin heart screeching out its last note.

I haven't been on here in months.
I haven't written anything in months either.
I haven't even opened up a book,
and my drum set has mostly been collecting dust.
It's sad I know, but to be honest
I haven't been doing much of anything lately.

I've been in and out of court,
in and out of towns,
in and out of schools,
in and out of hospitals,
in and out of houses...
It's been one hell of a time to say the least.

I've been to the city's courthouse so often, it's almost funny.
Almost.
I recognize the security guards every time that I'm in there,
even when they switch shifts.
I know the layout from the first to the seventh floor.
I know which of their vending machines is the best to choose from
and how the elevator doesn't work the way it should.
That place is too familiar for my own good.
It's a world of officials in immaculate suits,
dishing out the ***** work in the most vicious of ways,
with small talk, fake smiles, sweaty palms and anxiety.

In the past year, I've lived in four different places
spread all across the Keystone state.
I look back on the first house I grew up in with a twisted nostalgia.
How could things have been that simple, that easy?
With one big happy family under a suburbian roof,
in a small little town that nobody's ever heard of.
The simple times.

That simplicity was shattered,
with the family broken and trying to go our separate ways.
I did love our next house for just a few reasons though.
I loved the fresh new perspective.
I looked at my town in a whole new way.
Hell, I looked at everything differently.
I felt safe and secure,
even though we were living paycheck to paycheck, day by day.
Our next-door neighbor was the sweetest woman that I've ever met.
She brought the culture of her home-country to us,
getting us together for meals,
brewing tea with sugar cubes on a silver platter.
And even though things were turning into absolute ****,
I thought that it was going to be okay.
It was nice while it lasted.

Living in the mountains was refreshing.
I was torn away from everything I had ever known and loved,
****** into a living arrangement that was not exactly ideal.
Secluded by trees, nestled at least a half hour away from civilization.
But you take what you can get when you have nowhere else to go.
It's funny how life works.
I grew to appreciate the simple things:
having a bed to sleep in,
food to eat,
a place to shower,
clothes to wear.
I finally started understanding my life as it truly was,
a big, swirling mess.
But it was okay, because I was finally going to start anew.

Wrong.
Suddenly we were back down where we used to be.
A tad bit further south, just on the edge of the Maryland line.
Once again I had a new perspective,
once again in a living situation that was not ideal.
It's been rather awkward,
being forced to live with family friends.
It was either that, or I would've been forced to live with a monster.
You take what you can get when there are no other options.
This is the life.

It's pitiful to see the state that I'm in.
One would think that I am a pill-popping drug dealer,
for all the bottles of pills that I have with me.
A little bit of Naproxen, some Carafate,
along with Pantoprazole, Methylprednisolone,
standard painkillers and Flexeril, among others.
But nothing is touching the pain,
and the doctors are running out of ideas.
If my father doesn't **** me, this stress certainly will.


Ladies and Gentlemen, I know this isn't exactly a poem...
I don't even know what to call it.
It's just something that I've thrown together for my sanity,
because I've tried everything else.
It's just a big clusterfuck of words,
because I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.
It's just what I've been up to lately.

when i got my first period,
i was thrilled.
marked with the crimson stroke of womanhood,
i was no longer a little girl.
i was no longer too young
to be a part of the whispered gossip filled conversations
of the women in my family.
my sister and i could share boxes of pads and tampons,
bottles of advil and naproxen.
i was no longer too young to go bra shopping,
too young to understand.
i could read Teen Vogue and relate to every word,
i was a woman.

no one told me that it was now okay.
it was now okay for men to comment
on my new chest.
it was now okay for boys to yell their
tube sock dreams of my wider hips.
no longer protected by the shield of childhood,
it was now okay.

while i experienced many new things
after that first visit from Aunt Flow,
i also began to feel things i had not felt before.
an unexplained, unwarranted hatred of
the body i lived in,
my burden of anxiety heightened
with raging hormones in my blood,
mood swings worsening the monster
living under my brain named depression.
red spots on my face that boys liked to make fun of
as if their faces were not acne warzones themselves.
another growth spurt, as if i was not already towering
above the other girls in my class.

“don’t let anyone see your pad when you go to the bathroom to change,”
my friend whispered to me at school,
“it’s inappropriate.”
“don’t say period in front of boys,
it’s gross.”
“don’t talk about puberty,
boys think it’s unattractive.”

suddenly i realized that my body
was not for myself
and it was my responsibility
to act like I didn’t feel like there were
earthquakes in my ******.
it was my responsibility to hide my new body,
because my education was not as important
as the pervy boys in my math class.
it was my responsibility to not bleed through
my new jeans,
and miss class because i’m crying in the
bathroom as i call my mother to bring me
a change of clothes.

because being a woman is unattractive,
but when she’s half naked on the cover of ******* we like it.
because spreading your legs open for a ******
is gross,
but when a man is in between them it’s hot.
because a woman’s body was never for women,
unless it’s ****** and crampy,
then we don’t want to hear about it.

i am here to say that Womanhood is for women.
i am here to say that young girls should take pride
in their new bodies.
your body is yours and no one else’s
and you should never feel ashamed of it.
you should never feel shame
when the crimson wave comes.

Burn in the deep seat of your throat.
Ibuprofen in your sleep.
Naproxen sodium, whatever;
couldn't sleep so he daydreamed
all night.

A room with more than four walls.

Sprouted from the concrete
with resentment and defiance
in his DNA.
Double
Helix-
Hell is two more aspirin to
get through the rest of the shift
and realize it's not enough.

Sprouted from between the cracks
in the sidewalk, birthed into a fight;
sunlight as your first caretaker.
Screamed in his head,
because you think in one volume.
Never bit the hand that fed.

Sprouted from the sidewalk.
Crushed under hurrying heels.
A love story in two weeks.
Died in sunlight,
under white collared boots.
Rush.