to everyone

“And if we get beaten by this winter,If we get strangled by regret, just

Let our love of life and tensionGasp in sweet and stuttered breaths, and

Have them lay us in a basement,Smash some bottles on the ground, and

Say we never knew the difference between the feeling and the sound.”

1

sunrise summer

effervescent

i. It was impossible that anyone could reek like that, but you did,didn’t you? It was unnatural,but you claimed it was, because wearing cologne is obviously gay. So I wonder,

doesyour house smell like that, like fruit and blankets and summer? I want youin a bottle, love, because you are too good to be true.

ii. We could hide on the roof of my father’s garage and sunbathein the dappled shade of the willow tree. We could take my dog for a walk andmaybehold hands because I promise you darling, these streets are empty. If we tookthe trails up to the empty field above my neighborhood,we could sit in the wooden chairs left beneath a saplingand pretend we ruled the world.

iii. Grab my wrist and pull me behind a shelf in the reference section; kissme because it looks like no one’s watching. We should hide not becausewe’re ashamed of what we are,but because hiding is so much fun, because we knowwe shouldn’t be doing this in bareness and noble, surrounded by volumes on theuse of ubuntu linux that no one will ever read but you, my darling, becauseoh-no-that-man-is-sitting-downand now you can’t kiss me like you want to and the regret turns sour in our

mouths.

iv. you stole the second-to-last pieces of bubblemint gum from my purse, and

there will be more, more bookshops, more laughter,more subtle kisses. becausethe hundred-plus-page volume on an obscure operating system that I will never

care about,and your braces or the fact that you always step on my feet when you hug me,or how we’re too shy and young and awkwardto ever fall in love—successfully—none of it matters. it’s summer; skies are blue and shadows are impossibly large,and darling, we are the sun, and we will make the landscape blinding.

five dead mice

keep running, boyyou’re chasing dreams, pavements and miceespecially the mice

they aren’t the kind that make nests in car enginesand multiply at a staggering rateof five to ten litters per female per yearfive

you chase the mice with fives in their namesyou chase the mice with tens of millions of dollarsrecording contractsand neon-spun nestsand television screens for heads

you’re too awkwardand your shoes are too bigbut it’s okay if you trip and fall flat on your faceoh wellat least you found the pavement

punk guys don’t shop at hot topic

turn it downturn down the tvturn down escape the fate screeching from my speakersturn down my blurry eyesturn down the dialogue in my headturn down my heartbeat until it disappears

i’m bloody and indecent and i won’t shower tonightand i think the hole in my chest is trying to tell me somethingbut i can’t hear it

sorry,

i stand too close to the stage when i go to concertsi can’t hear youi won’t hear you until you’re shoutingi won’t hear you until you’re yellingi won’t hear you until you’re screaming,ripping your throat out like some screamo guy

so come onrip your throat out‘cause yeahi like it like that

missed messages

i said i love you and you saidi camei said sorry,my fault

.

even when your couch is swallowing us whole and my clothes are so askewthey might as well be off,even when you’re touching me here and there and there’s desire likebrushfire in my heart,even when i can hear myself whimpering against your kisses and i’m thinkingdamn i am so utterly defenselessi feel like it’s okay and i feel fear shaking in my soul

.

i’m cold with clothes on and hot without, but the ice is inside mei am freezingand oh so scared becausei am not perfect and you are not perfect but somehow together we’re something—and if we ever make love, it won’t be like in the movies;the lighting will be wrong and the actors hardly confident;we’ll both be scared out of our mindsand i know that one of us will cry afterwardsyou’ll hold me afterwards, i hopebut you know that this is all impossible, as i never cared for such things

.

you said i love you and i saidi’m sorry

you said it’s okay,i know

flicker

i chokedwhen you said you’re sobitterbecause i was never somecandy-spun flossgirlsweet thing,i want to be pepper in your mouthi want to be acid onyour tonguedarling, i want to burnlike you burn mein a twilit basement i want tostart a fireon your skinstrike a matchacross your spinewash your hair with gasoline andignite

silent

there’s aching that drags a gasp from my lips and i don’t know if you know itbut i do. i know it like i knowcicadas outside my window or the slow roarof the air conditioning;some things that i only notice if i look hard enoughthis aching is called love and missing and i’m sorry,and god do i know that it hurts so goodbut this is familiar; i don’t remember myfingers acting so coquettish before,so light and teasing and touchingtouching like i enjoyed it, this thing called lovei don’t know if you know but i knowburgundy, i’ll whisper your nameinto my sheets andtry to ignore the hollowness between my hips, eating it’s way up my stomachand wishing i could be thinner so i could tattoo feathers and flowers and wordson my hipbones darling,touch me like i’m beautiful and untouchablewhisper, pretend we’re anywhere else but herepretend we could still be romantic if our clothes were offwhisper say i love you against myneck shoulders backpretend pretend thisthing called love can save us, darling, keep me safe like i’m somethingbeautiful, made of ivory,and not quite okay, keep me safe likea glass sculpture, woven with every colorbut very breakable andbe gentle with my feather bones and my hollow heart, please,

be gentle

2

lakehouse

sea-spun

i’ll stare out to sea and contemplate leavingbut i’ll gloss my eyes firsti was meant to be a mermaidexcept mermaids don’t worry about loosing baby fator getting talleri can’t control the seai only watch it from my bedroomhiding from the sun because i know i’ll burni cant keep my footing on the seaweed beneath the surfacei wish my legs would disappear when i fallleaving naught but a shimmering tail in their wakei’d swim straight back to youbraving motorboats and fishing nets and pollutionamong the other horrors of humanityi’d find you, still fish-tailedi’d appear in the lake by your house when the sun sinksand the water sparkles ceruleanand i could be beautiful, your siren song

light witch

i will ever be that girl who breaks heartsmine is the cold-aqua-teal colorlessnessof a sun set dusklaketoo iron to be of much beautyby my hands is the blood of a thousand angels spilledstaining the sea rust-redmine are the sanguineous, dying sunset eyescrimson, angry, coldfingers tipped with freezefyrei’ll disappear, toothe night takes mewraps me in its leaden-wingsand evanesces me into nothing

just think

cast you out to seaburn you at the stakecrush you against the rocksroast you beneath the sundrown you under the wavesstone you with the basaltleave you for the insects

dayaway

the sea is snow-grey, ironclashing winter with green treeswhat a disastercry the missed texts, bad tempers and lost pokemon battleswhat a shameto be lost here in the bleak, blizzard-seawith nothing but a navy-blue shirtto speak for the one who isn’t therethe poet does not complainyou don’t belong here anyway

The Ballad of Old Man Ocean

she wants to lose her virginity to the oceanher love is only for a cold, domineering seashe sits in the surf with her legs spread wide,begging “take me, please, wrap me in your arms andforce me under your waves and make me your queen”but the tide only laughs mischievously against her anklesoh, but i couldn’t, it says in a deep-throated voiceyou’re far too heavy to carryshe comes back a month later,her weight shaved down to 88 poundsbut still the sea shuns herhow could i ever bear such a heavy burden?it chucklesdown go the numbers87, 86, 85dizzy with hunger and the sea’s latest rejection, she loses her balanceand cracks her head against a bone-bleached rockthe sea tastes her blood, and takes hercarrying her body away for itself,battering and bruising her lifeless corpse,entering her in the most secret of placesand desecrating her from the inside outfinally, when the sea can no longer use her,it discards her, sending her broken body back to shoreleaving her rotting remains to rest with the fishesa tattered plaything laid to waste beneath the waves

take but do not touch

i. oneyour shirt lying, tangled in my sheetsit’s something i can’t placelike feelings i only wish i hador certainties i could do withoutlike why we insist on continuing, so foolishbut we know it must be right

ii. we could be something;something as the liquid-lightning wavesor soft sand between toesthis is a world of palm-cupped suns and interminable nightsscented with firesmoke and cologneand made tangible by the slow plush of indefinite velvet kisses

iii. love is that of bloodhounds searching for lost sanityand the empty of a broken umbilical cordinsects crawl over my flesh at night, but i am far from rottingi write sanguine poetry away from your phosphorescent glowfeeling sweat tickle the backs of my legsand the sun ravaging my facehere, there are none of your lowlights to keep me crazynor your gangly, shattering silencesi just have the squirrels for companyand a just-fucked smile to offer

kiss me soulless

i think of you in the palm of my hand and i know i want you to stay therei know of us; i know of the high school romanceand so i do not understandthisthis childish wanting that keeps me in rose-tintsthis jealousy when i think ofyou, without meyou, with anyone elsei have you, yet you elude medarling, boys and girls were not meant to be kept cagedand yet here we are, here—this world keeps on turning, but for you with would be still

occulus

if i could live like thison a bed with tangled sheets, novels and books of poetryan ocean outside my window trying to seduce meand a dull burning in my insidesif i could live without human contactwhere trying to send a text message requires a 10-minute time slotbut you can always be far enough from your family to forget they existday three and i’m already forgetting what your voice sounds likebut i can see your eyes when i look in the mirrorand remember you, hazelboy, and your irisesand what it is to be seen as though you are the only thing in the universeand moreover, the most beautiful

fuck you

we’re sick againcrushed, headache-inducing bedlamnausea climbing my throat, throttlingcancerhere’s a lake in which i can drown myselfwaters to extinguish my rageand not, this bleakness, this emptyturned backs, words stoppered and kept in jarsfools not bold enough to speakand our undoing, a festering wound

the empty

i say your name over and over in my head and it enshrouds melike an enchantment, your magic spellwhat a wicked love you sendin just your name, etherealthis sorcery that keeps me breathlessly mouthing song lyricsout open windows, vainly hoping the wind will take themand carry them back to you, my hearthas stopped beating and i’m hardly aware of its presencethere, in my chestsuspended animation, the only way to think clearlyand recapture the sanity you stolewhen i am away, i see in black and greyeverything muted and flat as a paper star

<

when she moves, she’s a diamondreflecting light rays into the air and(fate fell short this time)sending rainbows over your headpeacock feathers dancing in her earlobes(smile fades in the summer)she’s a drop of water in an oceanbut she’s the one that catches the sun and sparkles(place your hand in mine)a little less than a miracle, she’sthe fire in you sunset(i’ll leave when i wanna)me, i’m notme, i’m not

look

i was never that muchnever that girl who draws eyes and their owners like mothsto a flamecouldn’t be that girli was, then, terrified always wishing someone could see meone, i think he was blindi gave him all i could but he looked straight through meand his smile, it was as sweet as a rotten lemonand as alive as a cadaver waiting for the knifetwo, well, i thought the stage lights got in his wayhe couldn’t see me because he sang with his eyes closedhe doesn’t know i can see 50 different tints and shades in his irisesi know i’m nothing special but open your eyesi’ll take you over if you let me

sleepless

your high heart, Gloriapainted hurricane clouds, muted suni want to clip your wings so you’ll never fly awayand be such a girl that you’d stay anywaysuch a girl that is endless, an oceanand flawless and eternalsuch a girl that can guess your heart my love, your high heartan unlit match floating in a tub of gasolinea fuse to a hundred of the brightest, loudest fireworkslet me be the one to set them offi’ll send you a postcard, but only if you write backand fill the pages with your uneven, one-a.m. poetrywith insomnia haunting the pagesand your letters written too boldly, for fear i won’t catch your meaning

like i do

i. poets watch sunsetsi curl myself around your shirtand let the static in my head whisper your nameweaving a two-syllable incantationto protect me from my nightmaresalone in this bed, i’d be too afraid to seek your presencebecause i know you wouldn’t be there

ii. poets raise the deadand the words flow from my pen like blood from a woundthat should’ve healed by nowthat i should’ve stitched up on my owni can’t stop writing eulogiesfor victims of my own poetic extinctionsthe words should’ve dried up when i stopped crying

iii. poets hidebehind shields of empty words and half-truthsyou’re not realyou’re not realyou’re not realyou’re about as tangible as the polygon sunset in front of meas fact as the novel i’m readingright now, i can’t remember what your voice sounds likei made you up, my prince my darlinggood poetry and nothing lesssomeone to bury when i cry

iv. poets whisper words to the windthere’s a reason thoughts are silentmine;hopewishred hot chili peppers i love yousuck my kiss i love yousunset sunkiss i love youi love you i love youi promised myself i wouldn’t say it first i love you

i should stop making promises i can’t keep i love youhigh higher than the sun i love youi love youi love you

v. poets take fingerprints just so they can write about the ridges of your

thumbs(p.s. they’re beautiful)

Bear-who-plays-with-toys

many boys love Bear;Fox, Sparrow, HawkFox is violent;he grinds his hipbones into hersand leaves bruises on her skin,marking the places where his lips and fingers have touched.Sparrow whispers birdsong against her hair,black as soot.he kissed her in places she didn’t know could be kissedand lays his feather-brown head on her collarbone when he finishes.Hawk’s touch makes her burn.his fingers are tipped with embersthat sizzled against her skin.he enters her like a firecrackerand his passion makes the trees tremble.but Bear yearns for Wolf—his soulless, haunting eyes, his ashy hair—the way he strikes her like lightning,making her world sway and the edges of her vision go red.she remembers their first timehow she screamedas if the world was crashing down about her head;how he silenced her by placing his mouth over hers,and how she continued to scream against his teeth.Wolf is her heart, her desirebut Wolf will never changehe’s too busy howling that the moonand chasing deer to be bothered with her, her lovebut like a vulture, she will circleand descend when her time comes

gullheart

if i said, right now, that i miss youthen i prove myself no amazoni am vardarac, the north windi tease and laugh and tug at your hairor blow through you like a hurricaneand leave you cold, breathlessi’ll leave youmy darling apollo, my rainboyi’ll leave youi cannot be your eternal eos, your sunrise, your morningbut i’ll be your ravenand i’ll never evanesce if you beg me not tobut, dearest thunderstormno-one can truly capture the wind

blue lightning

we were cyanic in our wantingin my dreams, you were a canescent horsegalloping across the water, so stillpallonian and reflectiveyou were a thunderstorm that swept across my heartand drowned the silence in your torrentmy tears you drank, cryosphericpulling them into the eye of your hurricanethe calm afterwards was amethystinebut the thunderclouds lingered like a bruisei will forever be in turmoil with this cyanide wantingfreezefyre in my heartmy darling, i want your azure soul, so calmexcept for the ripples that spread out from the center,where your heart dwells, burning an endless hennaand beating a kick-drum tattoo against the fiber of your being

3

sunset summer

promising

you were starstruck, with your mouth hanging openand your eyes shut tightfireworks exploding in our headsand god, are we hungryreelingwe’re breathingbreathingand this is soul expandingblissi remember an ocean, waves;i remember your five o’clock shadowscraping my nine o’clock libidothere were pale legs that could havespreadto reveal wounds that never healed but didn’t;oh, they didn’t need towhen the mosquitoes took our blood, they got a little more than they bargained forjust like i did when i found you

coitus

i fell and i’m still fallingand wishing you couldsee meslim, sweat-soakedcovered in dirt, all teethand lightning strikesand you can’t touch me for fear i’llshock youi’m on fire, boyand you can’t evenput me outcan’t even put your hands on mewithoutburn marks andblisters

one-two fuck you

this is a day i feel like sayingyou fucking stole mei can’t even open my mouthsomeone would strangle me with the cord ofthat damn microphoneyou stole from my sweaty handsand the voice you sucked right out of mei can’t help it that i can only feel slighted by youfor about five secondsuntil you’re playing threshold and i’m thinkingsure,play threshold on my skinand pick my locksbut, oh, i remember when i could yelland convince myself it sounded greati remember putting on concerts—torturous, agonizing, hair-pulling concerts—for an audience of one who never existed, and i remember—darling, i rememberthe days when i just had a shadow

zap zap

we were mismatchedprobablyyou were 72% waterwith your four-o-clock shadow(maybe five)you wish makes you look like a hipsteri had espresso in my veinsand i drankantifreeze flavored kool-aidthere were changing rooms big enough for both of usand some jeans that would’ve looked better on austin(and maybe i would look better on austin, too,or at least the eyes following us through the mall thought so)and yes, i knowthat there’s some electricity here that has nothing to do with the lightsbut don’t give me your virginity;i just might lose it

late night all right

take me in the nightwhisper in my ear“let’s start something”tonight, let’s goto the edges of the earthsearching for midnight drivesneon lights, stars andno interruptionslet’s be forever, if you havethe time, and if you don’t—well let’s make somebe my saint, my mani’ll be the devil in your hearttake me in the night, whisper“let’s start something”and darling, i’ll take you

4

november eyes

them

i was punkzilla—i was the one who jumped off cliffs andlanded on my back every damn timei was the one who fell and fell and felland when it’s all over, i will be left standing

.

i was the willow tree—i lost my branches to the wind,and, indeed, i was left bare by early fallbut it was by my own hand that my leaves fell,and the wind blew through my skeleton without a sound

.

i was the dirt on your shoes—you thought you could walk all over me,like you didn’ t know i was made of metaland god, my heart is shaped like a bulleti believe in no one

.

i was the phoenix—everyone saw nothing in me but i saw everythingand i was the only one who got out alivei promised to never live in a small townand my children will know that i intend to keep it

.

i was nobody—and so i am still,you’ll never see me; i am invisiblebut i make your world turn,

and perhaps one day i will make it stop

.

i was short,i was fucked up like you arebut i was fucked up alone and that could have been the death of mebut now i’m fucked up with you and that makes it alright

11:30

i was thinking about you today when i painted my toenailsemerald green. i’m thinking nowthat maybe we’re on the verge of greatnessbut i don’t know. maybe i’ll have an answerafter i remember the feeling ofyou hands on me,all over me,and mine all over you. butyou put my head static andwear me down slowly and maybe half closed eyesstruggling to stay open because oblivion should claim us togetheris real magic and maybetwo heartbeats matching each other is true greatness,but i don’t knowso darling show me

laws of attraction

it was that instant when we realized there was lightning between usyou smiled at me; it dazzled my heart and shocked my souli’m trying to understand us and failing;i know that sparks dance along our skins every time we kiss,and that there are black holes in the spaces between our fingersi know that you’re setting me on fire with every breath your takeand that maybe, somewhere a part of me is lighting candles behind your eyesbut i don’t know how this is possible of mere mortalsor how i can keep both feet on the ground when you’ve clearly stolen my gravitybut maybe we are a sun that will burn for billions of yearswith the kind of light that dims even the moon

teeth

inside your cavernof a mouth,(those lips which have traced my skin so many times,casually or feverish—your were burning with desire, we both were)there dwells a serpent;warm, wet, who sleeps in a dank dark oceanonce, it was heldat bayby a cage, a forest of metal—keeping it from stretching, exploring beyond the boundariesof those perfect rectangles that guard the entranceand the brackets cut cruelly into its skin,and it longed for the day whenthey fell away,leaving the serpent to caressthese white sand beaches

cradle songs

i was born a hawkimpossible birds, blue heronsthere were edges straighter than kniveson which i had to walk andcut the cocaine

the albatross was drugged—and the skies closed in upon herno breezes did she feelthe air grew clogged with pollutionthe cage got rustyfeathers made of steel cut through

the eagle skimming treetopsflying faster than speedblood is overrated, darlingmy drug is a beating heart

fragile soul

I COULD SCREAM IT AND YELL IT BUT i know i wouldn’t be saying it loud enough &these words are coming out of every pore of me like a flood like thesweat that made us stick to each other like the fever that burned in our blood& i’m pouring all these words over your beautiful head all these I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I LOVE

YOU’s& it’s a bit scary ‘cause what if it’s too much what if when i say i want to sleep with you every nightyou say damn i better buy some condoms when i only mean let’s take our clothes off and hold each other& oh, god, what if your heart isn’t three sizes too big like mine is what if it doesn’t choke youwhen you miss me what if you only like my breasts because they’re there& what if i cry the first time we have sex wouldyou cry with me?

magnify

i like looking at youi’d watch you like a television, aliving, breathing television, the kind thatturns red when it’s trying not to laugh and doesn’t give me headaches

.

your skin is like the rocks i’m (supposed) tobe studying in earth science, except it’s softer,the kind of soft that makes me want to touch itendlessly

.

i want to kiss the laugh lines in the corners of your eyes. your jaw. your eyelashes. you.

without

wake up. get dressed (put shoes on the wrong feet). forget her.chug one coffee (blackblackblack). brush teeth. rub last night from your eyes for the third time. forget her.buy and egg mcmuffin. swallow it, wrapper and all. forget her.job hunt. come up empty. ingest more pollution (cheeseburger). forget her.go to band practice. fuck up. get yelled at. repeat. forget her.go to party. meet people you won’t ever see again. hear names you won’t remember. drink, drink, drink (you

lied when you said you didn’t). forget her.go home. rinse mouth out with coke zero (today tasted like acid). fall asleep in your clothes (fuck the shower). remember her.

accidentally leaving

i remember when we used to beawkwardand i could only look in your eyes and see fearnoi could hardly look in your eyesyou could barely touch me

but like a hill, we started rollingfaster fasterstopwe haven’t stoppednot yetbut if [when] we do, we’llleave our grass stains behind us,shake hands,and walk away

accidentally loving

we couldn’t get those grass stains out with bleach becausewe used the same kind to whiten our teeth;you were my best coast but i’ll never tell you

.

our deal is the one where you kiss me and i kiss you and together we make a fire-breathing dragon. our deal is the one where i watch you when you’re sleeping because i loveto see you breathe. our deal is the one where every timeyou touch me you chip away more of my heart like i’m made of talc.

.

yesterday you stole my heart so today i swallowed yours wholei may have promised to give it back on monday, but then againi might have lied

.

(i’ll return it in the middle of the night, as long as you’re lying next to me)

cold

i was nothing and still am;when she saw him, it was not yet winterbut the air was already sharpand her eyes had long since turned blackhe captured her, and she was blindstupid girl; stupid to fall in loveagain, alone, alwaysshe waited lifetimes and lifetimesand finally he came for herwhen spring was a newborn hatchling,fresh from its sky-blue eggbut there was still snowin the ground and on her hearthe captured her, his prizebut she was nothing and still is

lucid

i don’t care for your coincidencesnor your premonitionsyou pull in and park so carelesslywith yourstupid american confidencei liked you for your placethe hole you rotted out for yourselfcavity among the crooked teethof a broken social scenei liked you for your willingness to sleep on the floorthere’s no crying overdropped callsi’ll make sure of this;that i always have youright where i want youso don’t be afraid topark that cardrop that phonesleep on the floordream about me

a fact or two

poets are in love with the wordhipbones,though it may not be a wordthey tack it on to the ends oftheir sentences like a kiss goodbye or a hand-drawn star,and enjoy the magic of those beautiful bones that allow you to walki never liked clichésor overusing words—especially ones with a spelling as ridiculous as“hipbones”but i am a poet,and i would love to kiss yours

on the margin of a flooded river

shallow-footed,the mud sucking at our toesguppies, flopping, half-alivecareful, be carefulthere’s a riptide pulling us inwe bend our tree trunk spines with the ebb and flow,giving the air in our lungs to the hungry river,the bark of our vertebraecrackingif we don’tbend

i’ve liked you for 1000 years

i’m just a kid, and i have no idea what i’m getting myself intosomeone should have told me that when i met you,because you were green-eyed and dirty blond and simple, and iwas crazy and terminally fucked up and ready to burn burn burn,and i thought that i was just taking a chance on a crush and thatbeing with you would be easy and quiet

but damn, i was wrong, because youmay have been green-eyed and dirty blond and simple butyou had a heart that beat like mine and blood that burnedlike mine, and pretty soon i was determined not to let you go

and suddenly, being with you wasn’t so easy and quiet;we were falling in love—you were falling in love with me wheni had never given you permission to,and like it or not, i was going down with you

so we fell in love, quietly at first, but thenpreposterously, outrageously so,and all i could think was how could this have happened wheni was supposed to be the one in control

we did all those stupid clichés that teenagers do in novels, likestarting fights and stealing kisses and strikingmatches across each other’s forearms—and when things began to slow, i told you, hey,let’s jump this bitch, let’sget higher than the sun, let’s run away to canada, let’s pretendwe’re older and we can make it in this world alone;

i’m just a kid, and i have no idea what i’m getting myself intoi’m just a kid, and i’m terrifiedi’m just a kid, but i want to fall in love with you again andagain and again, till all my bones are brokenand you have to put me back together again

5

flames

11

bentnaked in your bathroom you wrote songsabout the guy who left youyou filled up the bathtub with lavender soaps and rose petals;and you made a single cut on your wrist and swore you’d get out of this town

.

there was an unstoppable boy or three of them;one had black hair, one had red, and one was dusty blonde;but they all had guitars and dreams and eyes that were hazel or green or some incarnation of it—they wrote songs about girls and sang about integrityone’s already done it, one is fictional, and one hasn’t even started yet

wasting time

when you said“baby, be my punk rock princess,”i didn’t think i’d resent you for it—but you swept me out of myscene-kid haze and through a cloud of cigarette smokethat actually came from a dry-ice machine—your world of coffeeshop soundtracks andfalse pyrotechnicsbeer dashed to the floor, red plastic cups smashedunder endless trampling feetsometimes i hate the sound of your voice,and your basement-garage-cover bandand i just know it’ll be so hardnot to break your ep into a million piecesyou’re racin’i’m chasin’we’re wastedand i hate it

goddamn hipster lover

and he’s a talented motherfuckerto be sure,slicked up down and back,perfectly scruffy and oozingrivers cuomo charmbut i bet he fucks with his hair in the mornings,and i bet he doesn’t write his girlfriend love songsthey think she’s a lucky bitch but for the wrong reasons;fuck his blood and his ryan key tendons—he’s just so damn good when he sings for an audience of one

how many licks

if the softness of your body can mix with thehardness of my heart,

the wewill have toot-sie pops

lazy eyes

i thought i knew so many thingsi said yes, lets talk like we’re older andtouch like we’re older let’s pretend i’m not still a childyou said they could take you away for touching me which would be preposterous if you weren’t so nicebut maybe you’re not, maybe you’rescott pilgrim in micheal cera’s clothing and maybeyou’re already seventeen baby i promise youwhen i’m your age they’ll write anthems for me

recycled passion

you dripped your fingers along my spine,playing me up and down, up and down,and maybe knowing you had mewrapped around your fingers;eager and with clear intent was the way you touched me,because you knew it was okay if i stopped you,because we both knew that one dayyour hipbones and my hipbones will meet,and send sparks into the night—one day i will run a finger down your chest, past your stomach and your

runner’s calves,and believe that we belong to no one but each other

stars and trampolines

early fall touches cold hands to my thighs just like you if your hands were evercold.you know that i own a frozen soul andyou know you thought you could fix meand the thing is, greenboy, i might want you to

.

and the day you will have me is the dayyou warm every inch of my skin withevery kind of heat; the day my veinsburn with your fever and your heart beats in my chest—and the day you will have me is the dayyou make me whole again except i may be yours already

this is why i scar

i trace the [not]smallness of my waistwith your eyesand i can taste you

.

i choke on my prideyou walk away and i diewhen i don’t stop you

maps

she was half alive and she crossedstate lines to get to where she was goingshe didn’t own a carand maybe her dreams were haunted byblue-eyed boys and promises stuck to dashboardsmaybe soul meets body stole throughher head at every instant but you’ll neverknow, will you, because youdon’t know her

lay down

the sun rose and i had a feverfor once it wasn’t you—for once the heat under my skin hat nothing to do with your fingers;i was bedridden and you slid letters in my inbox and through the cracks

in my windows,saying darling, get better soon,and you knew as well as i did how much you wanted to sweep me from

my bed,toss me in the passenger seat of a pickup truck and just drivei got better eventually, and when i did you put a note in a bottle and the

breezecarried it to my window;it said tonight the sun is hiding behind themoon and you’re the only thing i want to seeso we sat up on the roof of your car and watched the solar eclipse,and you told me i was beautiful,never once shaking

feather rings

i knew youand i knew you’d take my words and spit them in my facewhat else was it you promised me?i don’t know. but i’m lacing our fingers togetherlike the black-and-red converse on our feetand i’m wishing you’d stopuntying the knotsstopopening these doors in my headand picking the locks along my legsi think you should know—i black my eyes to remember the scars i carryand i write about boys with blueeyes because i know i’m still lost

1314

i will be the rockstar girlfriend thoughi don’t know how;if you leave those girls with theirv-neck t-shirts andif you can find me in the crowd no matter where i am—you know i’m not lying when i swear you sounded wonderful,because girls don’t forget when they fall in love;(i fell for you when you stoodunder blue lights and sang about how no one wanted youwhen you knew damn well that we alldid)—

and if you wouldwrap your arms around my waist and whisper“let’s get out of here”over the noise,take me home; take mein the dark halls of your house,and when we’re tangled in your sheetsi’ll forget you’re in a bandand honestly i never cared anywaybecause your breathing sounds better than any song you could ever sing

14

i thought i was beautiful, once,and i thought i could be yours,easy; and under your eyes,your queen—but i also thought i was strong enough not to shatterbeneath your fingers but i lied about that too

the easiest ones to break

there was a boy and he wasdestined to love a punk girl and have his heart broken,(though maybe not in that order),and maybe one day he’ll dyehis hair blackand sing songs and feel like he has a home somewhere,and he’ll lay punk girls on his bed,just one, perhaps;and she’ll love him forever (she doesn’tbelieve in forever) and she’ll never breakhis heart because she promises not toevery time he sings thatsong

green eyes

you traced lines on maps with buckshot fingertips;you bent the mississippi backwardsand forced chicago to her kneesi ran all the way to new york and barricaded myselfbehind a wall of hipsters and shot glasses,but somehow i woke up in your car,covered in a quilt that still smelled like youyou promised to come back to me in a post-it stuck to the dashboardand you were making indiana scream and florida come as my breath crystalized

in front of mei lost a part of me in the ashes of a manhattan cigarette,you sent me letters addressed to your parents;i slept in the back of your mitsubishi and breathedyou in