i wish like i could make her care about herself

the way i do

because it hurts me to see her hurt herself

“if s.p isn’t coming then I’m not either.”

-cookie’s last words

at home i don’t miss them

at school i don’t need them

and they don’t need me

have you ever wondered why

red riding hood followed the wolf?

some say that it is innocence of the dangerous unknown

but i believe she followed the wolf because

he offered her something outside of the woods could not

~you’re red riding hood in a sweatshirt

have you ever wondered why

red riding hood followed the wolf?

some say that it is innocence of the dangerous unknown

but i believe she followed the wolf because

he offered her something outside of the woods could not

~you’re red riding hood in a sweatshirt

have you ever wondered why

red riding hood followed the wolf?

some say that it is innocence of the dangerous unknown

but i believe she followed the wolf because

he offered her something outside of the woods could not

~you’re red riding hood in a sweatshirt

i wake up with a breathy gasp

my fingers clawing at the still air

fighting something from a dream

because what they don’t tell you

is that nightmares are dreams too

i am so sick in living in a dichotomy

enforced with the stereotypes that we live with

because if a girl is beautiful

she is under estimated

and an object seeking ownership for worth

for somehow she is not seen as a person

as if the mascara glues her eyes shut to global issues

thick medical textbook pages and marine diagrams

because beautiful girls don’t have brains

and brainy girls aren’t beautiful

i get sick in the stomach to think

that if i raise my hand in class,

put in the work to make my report card outstanding

and question boundaries placed by people who met satisfaction saturate their curiosity

i will be seen as a girl with brains

rather than a beautiful girl who finds herself challenging stereotypes she has found wrong and working her hardest to fight her way up to the top

i’ve pounded nails into my shutters

stuffed rags in the gaps underneath the door

and locked everything in tight

so now all there is left to do is pray

that my foundation was built strong enough to withstand the impact

i believe that there is poetry inside of boys

but it is not the same poetry that is inside of girls

because boy poetry is pink hair, black t-shirt, tilted head jaw-line photo,

bubblegum ice cream, sometime broken promises, trucker hat back-wards,

avaitar sunglasses, twitching finger poetry

and so when i find myself writing poetry about boys

i don’t write it the same way i write about girls

so for those of you who seek for equality

i ask what does that have to do with art?

boy poetry is different from girl poetry

because girls are different from boys

and i think that it is not an entirely bad thing

sprinkle over window seals and door cracks

said to keep the evil out

and when i chose it as our safe word

i was saying to you

“let’s chase away the bitter parts of each other”

where did we go wrong? i ask myself this as your texts appear with a contact name i am not sure i mean anymore. i ask myself this as you smile a smile that isn’t real but it is the only smile i am getting from you right now. i ask myself this as secrets swirl in the air above different people’s ears and i wonder where we did wrong. what i did wrong. we’re gotten through an argument so large that i have had two other friendships shattered by it. but got through it. i want to tell you the odds. i want to say that at age twelve two girls left me because one refused to choose and the other refused to listen. i want to say that at age fourteen i had two girls i thought were my everything but suddenly i was forced to live without them. and i was fine. i want so badly to tell you of the time i felt myself shatter from the marrow of my bones to the atoms inside my brain cells. and as i lay on the couch and felt my fingers shakily hold the phone in my grasp my fingers didn’t hesitate to type your name. but by god all i want is to tell you that you should report him and that your pina colada boy just fell for a hurricane of a girl. (you’re an after-thunder storm rainbow combined with a blizzard) you deny it. deny that you are pushing me away but those secrets you tell them, you used to tell me, i think it is because i have come on too strong. i’ve become more older sister than friend perhaps. but whatever it is, i just know that my words aren’t coming anymore. i simply think that we are both danylion seeds that found ourselves tucked together through the spring months but darling it is summer now and we must chose to stay or to f l y a w a y

i think of the people who have books published

and air plane tickets resting on their side table

and i ask myself what i am doing with this life

~ we are only allowed one………and i may be wasting mine

tonight i find myself pacing the floor and murmuring snatches of song lyrics. a tight feeling as found home in my lower belly and my fingers tense and flex. these are the kinds of nights that sleep doesn’t come and my alarm doesn’t wake me because i am already up. these are the kinds of nights i cut my hair short and bake muffins while spinning around. these are the nights i have come to know as inescapable because the cause i have to pinpoint. they are the irregular yet common theme that strings all my weeks together. on these nights words that have flitted through my head all day finally find a home on paper. on these nights even the therapy of the old keyboard that i learned to type on against my fingers is not enough. because of these nights, i find myself turned inside out as a hurricane lays waste to every firm structure in sight. people i confide in are suddenly blown away. i think the worst part is that i am not sad. i am not happy. i simply brush my fingertip over a freckle on my radius and smell the lavender oil i brushed through my hair. on these nights i think i forget how to feel and even as the hot water numbness of my shower weares off i fin myself searching myself for emotions but coming up empty. from ocean to desert and back again in a night.

i’m sick of thinking “in a month”

or pushing my plans and dreams further up the calendar

because i am so deathly afraid i will wake up

in a city that doesn’t know my name

living with a man who didn’t try to know my wildness

but simply put it inside of a cage

with friends who can’t smell the poetry on my breath

and living my days without finding beauty in fingers

and windows

~ i have started a rebellion against myself today as i pack a salad and buy running shorts

• the parallel holes in my ears from where i got them pierced when i was eight
• the branch i tore from a limb of my blueberry bush i got in the car to leave that life is the past (it is as dried and dead as the winters that have passed without me being home)
• my mother’s back from where she tore it working at age twenty-nine
• the scar on my knee cap from where i fell down a rabbit hole (imaginary) and had to claw my way back up
• the scars on my knuckle from a slip of the fingers while trying to carve a birthday present for my first love (i will still bleed for him)
• so many friendships documented in my journal with tear-stained pages
• the scraped two-inch portion of my dresser where in anger i threw a hairbrush the day i heard i had been assigned to a soccer team (they didn’t bully me but they didn’t love me either)
• my heart after you decided to take half
• and me. a person who wakes up everyday believing that stars are my cousins and that people are infintely good and bad is infinitely bad and there is no grey in this life (i don’t know if it is innocence or a coping mechanisim)

i just need my best friend back

when i was eleven years old i felt afraid of a boy for the first time. my older brother had grabbed a pen of mine and threw it on the floor of our rental kitchen. his anger seemed to drive a piece of this plastic pink shrapnel to graze my leg drawing blood. as he towered three inches above my height i felt afraid. i promised myself that day i would become braver. i would never let another boy make me afraid. after he threw the pen down my pregnant mother bent down on the floor and gathered the pieces in her palm. she used a piece of grey duck tape to fasten them back together and gave me the pen at dinner that night. i have rarely seen my mother get as angry as she did at my brother that day. the day i confessed that i was afraid. she told me fear was normal and inescapable. but someone who is close to me shouldn’t make me feel the bad kind. i have always believed there are two types of fear. the good fear is the before-date fear, the moment in the air before you hit the water off of a rope swing, and the before the curtain goes up jitters. that is the fear that i have often. but the bad kind of fear is the raised hand, shouting voice, curl yourself into a ball fear. and i told myself long ago that the person who made me feel it next would pay. when my brother said sorry for breaking my pen, i forgave him. i smiled and the next time he invited me to play his favorite video game, i agreed. deep deep inside i had secretly thought that perhaps this bad fear would not come again. would not make me feel chaos ripping into my insides. for those who say that love is the most powerful, let me tell you of fear. fear stops controls and molds. fear reduces men into cowards. fear takes a hold of a woman whenever it is dark and she is wearing a skirt. i am not here to debate the fairness of this or to argue that fear is more powerful than love even. they are at constant war and odds. i am here to say that the bad kind of fear has come again. three years later i find myself gripping my bedsheets in clenched fists and angrily blaming the person who introduced me to him. the person who is in the middle of this mess. a selfish part of me argues that it is her fault and if only she had listened when i told her that he was no good. no good for her. i felt the bad fear again. let me tell you of a boy who is ugly not by his outside but by his inside. the inside that causes him to shout words that shatter the walls of encasing happiness that has cocooned me safely into this place. this bad fear has chained itself inside of me now, telling me i will be better off leaving in a year and never returning to school. this is the bad fear that caused me to have a panic attack while murmuring that he wouldn’t hurt me….would he? i know for certain that he is living a life balanced at the edge of a knife blade and that he has made me feel more bad fear than anyone else. now let me tell you of the girl. the girl who i called my best friend. i knew she was hurting and so months i tucked my own hurt away. i didn’t tell her about my rising ocd and how i am figuring out how to put a therapist on speed dial. i have not told her that there is this great black monster inside of me that i nor the internet can name. i have not told her of the fear he made me feel over and over and over again. when did i give him permission? she says she won’t chose sides and i know that written inside of the lines there is this message: “he is before you.” and so when i said i wanted distance i wanted her to argue. to not accepting the fate that she has been given and to argue. to fight and try to change destiny. she accepts. i never do. and so when i asked her if she was free wednesday i was asking her to come to a place that none of my other friends have ever been. and when i canceled our day together i said i was busy and the lie felt wrong as i typed it. but the simple truth is that she will always chose him over me and i will always try to fight when she has given up long ago. i call it distance but others call it an ending. i can’t be with her when he makes me feel the bad fear. i can’t make myself un selfless when i tell her not to chose. but by god i want her to because then it won’t be my fault we are over again.

i have one sang two times in the last three years

and i once said i would never let my throat go with lyrics

~I’ve broken promises too

we were labeled as the flawed

the imperfect sand the outcast

but mine are freckles and yours are scars

~you chose what you are

i wasn’t myself for months

and no one noticed

just like an abandon house

looks the same to everyone who never cared about it

in the first place

~ if my weeds were humans they would be the worst kind

this month has been laying heavy on me like the fog outside of my morning every window. i almost question if 2019 will be another year of scouring the unfamiliar places of this town i now call home, looking for something i can’t give a definition to. in this month i find that a girl i called my best friend is no longer. sometimes i feel as if maybe i am perhaps to blame. we did the big stuff first. letting our pasts stain and perfume the air of the bright aqua bedroom where we laid on the floor listening to brittney spears. we talked about brothers and boyfriends and whispered about some scars that crisscrossed our hearts. as i felt a feeling of untapped anger towards her i questioned what it could be. why i felt as if we were better off apart than together. in this stormy conflict, my fingers didn’t seem to hesitate as a text message slid off with the simple press of a blue arrow. i don’t regret that first text. i only regret everything afterward. in the heat of our argument, i demanded my favorite color. she guessed blue. a bitter chuckle seemed to sour the air as i told her i liked all colors. i then demanded by birthday. she was two months and eight days wrong. i asked her how we could call each other best friends when she didn’t know of the days i starved myself or even the day i was born. i demanded answers from her. and she had none to give. now as i have just send our parting text, allowing poetic sadness to mingle with the anger of the seven months i spent laughing at her messages. she passionately screamed for me to give a reason. just one reason why we couldn’t be friends anymore. i didn’t say a word, because she didn’t deserve anymore out of me. to put it cruelly she had been a waste of my words. a desert i had poured everything into, wanting it to become an ocean. i tried to tell her in poetry the difference between us but she snarled at me like a jungle beast. i can’t find anything else but poetry inside of my soul right now to describe how she took three of my friends with her when she left. or the fact that she had been building up a bird cage for me all along but i was just too naive to notice. i told her that she was confining. she challenged me as to how and found bitter pleasure in the fact my mouth refused to work. quite frankly i wanted to tell her that how could an ocean count every wave? i could not count or form words to explain the endless iron bands she bad slowly started to wrap around my soul. i think that deep inside of i thought we could work. i hoped that we could. a desert and an ocean. after all, i had sand inside of me too. yet at our bitter and not poetic ending, i find myself laughing at how i could ever compare us as similar. how i could find enough mating sites in our dna to question our differences and cover them with oily similarities. so yes. she has made me into the villian. she had wept tears and told others the big secrets i told her first. and i am honest when i say i let us go. i felt us falling but i did nothing to stop our descebt. and i think a small part of me was hoping thta she cared enough to try and stop us. but these hopes were in vain just like the regetful text messaes i sent telling her all the things about me no on should be bable to know and wield.

we started out as exquisite ions

living in a warped time frame where forever

seemed like hours and infinity was a constellation

we never could travel to in our light years together

and your fingers colored my luminescent skin

leaving it painted all the colors of the galaxies

and i whispered poetic fragments into the curved crescent moon of your ear

while asking you universal questions.

and some people may not realize that the sun is a star

but oh i did because you have forever been my sun

and i am orbital being of flawed comet tails and nebula gas

who thought that maybe the wide expanse of filled nothingness

could unite just for one life time

composed of a thousand forever forming a grand infinity

where you and i could coexist in the same wondrous place

without the nebula inside of me fragmenting

exploding all the colors you gave me across the indigo sky

changing my form into that of a supernova

that slipped through the hairline crack of an orbit

centered around you

but i think that everyone has seemed to forget

is that i was never solid matter or mass

never something that could be confined into the bounds of a purely crafted infinity

no

i am such a flawed undefinable thing

that even in an orbit centered around you

i was bound to strain against invisible chains

until i found myself in a mirror universe

where light years could not be numbered without ten zeros

and living a world where you and i

simply didn’t exist

~ all that is left of us is dead stars

my sister writes me lunch notes and tucks them into the smallest pocket of my aqua backpack

and sometimes i get teased when a smile blooms on my face

as my fingers tenderly opened the irregularly folded paper

and my eyes alight on each letter written with her favorite kind of pencil

“you are beautiful,”

a letter she wrote the night before a boy called me fat

“no one is perfect,”

she wrote along side a stick figure drawing of me

and i opened it when a “c” was entered into my grades

so today when someone asked me if i believed in magic

i said yes without hesitation

because if anyone knows magic

it is my little sister with magic inside of her veins

and fortune telling inside of her pen

i laugh dryly while composing a text to you

my voice creaking like the chairs we used to sit in

eating popcorn and having sock competitions

and i find myself not plotting out a revenge plan

to make you hurt how you hurt me

to make you lose all the friends you turned against me

but i have come to realize that loosing me

will hurt more than anything i could ever do

because i am not just a name on your contact list in your phone

i’m a memory whenever you see pizza

or hear a dad joke

and so i feel no need for revenge by knowing

you won’t ever stop regretting how you let me go

and i have come to terms by realizing all the “friends” you turned against me

were never my friends at all

but simply people who chose you over me

and in the grand scheme of things this is not a betrayal

for their loyalty and care was never with me at all

but rather with you all along

~ a ending that doesn’t hurt

but i don’t want to say goodbye

~i thought we had a life time of memories left to discover

sometimes things are too broken to fix

and i think that i am too broken

to be friends with you

~you asked who broke first: our friendship or me

i think we’ve been falling for a while now

but only i’ve noticed

because while you had a parachute

i have a pair of clipped wings

that you don’t remember cutting

when you decided to leave

i couldn’t stop you

so i gave you a goodbye gift

of a photo album of our cries and memories

and let my pride fall away

to hold the door open for you

~i wasn’t worth staying for

i made a mistake by assuming

you were an air current pushing me up

when in reality

you were the watch trapping me in

~i am grieving only for the fact that my wings creak from disuse

my mom curls my hair in the bathroom

and her voice cracks and goes high

as she tells me of her childhood and a mother

who wasn’t there

and an older sister who drove away one day

and her boyfriends

~and i cry along with her

her translucent skin looks solid

a great façade she’s built

yet underneath her glowing sheen

her crystal heart is lacking half

and i wish i could say the remaining part

was whole and not marred

but it’s learned to put up walls from lessons

she learned because of him

and it’s more ice than glass now

but yet a smile is forever carved

into the skin of her face

and you could never tell that this glass girl

is as fragile as can be

today was full of bacon and my big brother

store bought ice cream is melting

dove chocolate and sorbet

and we eat three or four apiece

while laughing at the seagulls vain attempts

to take something that they never can

~i think you were a seagull

my skin is golden and smells sweet

like sugary sunshine

and i cut my hair shorter than its ever been before

~perhaps i am a golden girl

my slumbering defiance

has woken up and angered

at the war ground of my belly

between my bones

that i have tried so hard to crush

so i don’t have to be hungry anymore

~it’s awake and suddenly i’m feeling the pain of what i’ve done to my body

i just need to hunch in

hold it all in

i took a pair of elementary scissors

and sawed the ends of my hair until they were

two inches shorter

and i glared at my reflection

because i should be happy

~ I am a bird who can’t fight against gravity

sea air makes me want to do rash things

like cut my hair to my ear lobes

and dance in a bikini at night

i don’t know what to say to you anymore

because i want so badly to squeal about this cute boy i met

and try to admit that though he’s oceans away

i already count down the minutes until we talk again

but you have started to pull away

and stretch out this twine that connects us

even when we are states apart

and i can’t help but feel all my happy emotions

should be leaked out of me before i talk to you

because you need me to comfort you

and not ramble

and i know i said i needed me time

but you need time with me

virtigo encases me like an itchy wool sweater

and my belly is in turmoil

as i find myself stumbling on unfamiliar ground

fearfully questioning if i can do it

and if i am enough

if i have enough left to trust him

and not be afriad

~ tonight i am cowardly

how did i get here

so far away from you

with new pictures and numbers on my phone

with names that i don’t know

~i don’t know if I want to remember

they say don’t judge a book by its cover

while i am judged by my skin

and i find irony in the fact

that i judge it too

~the story of a poetess with too many freckles

they call me mundane

~ educated bullies

i want to smell like vanilla

you left another voicemail

but i won’t bother to reply

because i’ve reached the point where

i won’t be a opinion for you anymore

~i want to be a need

i’ve got so much stuff on my plate right now

that you wonder why i can’t eat it all

my auburn mess of fur curls at the tips

and my stripes lay soft in lightning bolts

against my pale underbelly

the whole world fell in love with me

but i was too busy looking at you

and so when the sun set

it opened my eyes more than it hurt me

(you were my sunshine, love)

i’ve always been jealous of the special people

who get songs and poetry written about them

because here i am

a poet of a girl

who can’t find the beginnings of the words

to describe me

i could be happy as long i had you

cheap peppermints

poetry

and fresh honey

please stop pretending that he will ever look our way

~ my brain this afternoon

~for cancer fighters and suvivors-also in memory of the many fearless girls i’ve met~

the fearless girl was born in a house with green shutters

and a boy who played basketball across the street

(she wasn’t born different)

and one day this fearless girl felt a pain

and the pain led to more pain

until she was loosing

h e r s e l f

and this girl felt the monster that showed up on her pet scan

settle into the home of her stomach

and let out a happy sigh

this fearless girl lived with a monster in her stomach

and this monster was determined

to make her waste away until she was so thin

that even the slightest breeze could make her

b l o w     a w a y

(she had to die for cancer to live)

and suddenly this fearless girl found herself

unable to see her fingers anymore

because her body was now 90% cancer

1% poetry

and 9% clear iv fluid

(is that 1% worth fighting for?)

and for the first few months a smile

dared to live on her freckled cheeks

but it too withered away along with this girl

without sunlight or fresh air to welcome

into her lungs

(she was always a fearless rose of a girl who needed photosynthesis to live happy)

and after a while this girl took a pair of the sharp medical scissors

and she let auburn curls form designs on her room tiles

as she clenched them in her fist and told herself

she could be not ok right now

this fearless girl felt like her body was a war ground

littered with empty atoms and burning chemicals

and she was not allowed to leave the white space of her bed

which was slowly sucking all the color

right out of this fearless girl

and she didn’t know if her 1% poetry would be enough anymore

because her belly was full of cancer

and her veins full of fluid and chemo

and she wasn’t a girl from a house with green shutters

or a out patient visiting the hospital because of stomach pains

or even a scared poetess

she was a girl who had 1% poetry inside of her

and a monster making home in her stomach

and this girl who was once called fearless

felt her it all slipping away

and she started to wish that she could be as small

as the cancer-free part of her seemed

and sink slowly into the clear liquid

that was in her iv bag.

because she wasn’t anything more than fearless

and some days it seemed like she wasn’t even that

she was only a girl who lived across the street from the boy who played basketball

and a girl who couldn’t find the words to write poetry anymore

(she once said a life without poetry wasn’t one worth living)

and one day she tried to see the stars outside of her hospital window

as this scared rose let it’s last scarred petal fall

and it was sick of trying to live in a world

without sunlight

(you have always been my sunlight, fearless girl.)

and this girl i like to call fearless

this poor rose who couldn’t adapt

the little girl who once learned basketball

so she could play with the boy across the street

and this sick almost-woman with 0.5% poetry inside of her

l e t      g o

(the monster read the words inscribed in the lining of her stomach; the 0.5% of poetry that this girl left as her final parting to the thing that killed her.)
that this girl left as her final parting)

this winter brings anxious thoughts from the cavernous depths of me

as i count on one hand the number of christmas’s i’ve spent here

and let nostalgia waffle in the air

as i think of the parties i used to attend

there were full of jingle bells and grape soda

~it’s just not the same anymore

through the days and weeks and months where i didn’t eat and let the monster of hunger make home in my belly, i knew my size. my horrible, big, ugly size. the bold number taunted me as slipped on my jeans in the morning, and wiggled quickly out of them at night. i knew my size because that number haunted me in every minute and moment. i flinched to think that of things that added up to that number, like 2 and 4. and when that monster called hunger in my belly stirred, i clenched my fists and whispered the number fiercely. i was that number. that number summed up my worth. and the monster called hunger paced in the cage of my ribs growling in a demand for food. but i was ruthless. and during this time hunger and i made an uneasy truce. i told myself i wasn’t hungry. and the monster was musseled. this sort of self control came hard because in the deepest part of me there was a little bit of light. and this light always told me that i didn’t need to be hungry anymore. after all, there was food. i could eat it…………..could i? trapped in a world of my own devising, food tasted like sawdust as it slid unwanted down my throat. and my size haunted me then. and when this time of starving ended and i started trying to be full again, i lost my number. it fled from my mind being chased by this new positivity i was trying. and suddenly the storm that this number had contained oh so carefully inside of my skin erupted. my number was something that had kept me centered and trapped inside the freckled expanse of my skin. but now that it was gone i was a sandstorm of pale skin and heat. i was an unstoppable storm of rage. and then one day i grabbed a size off the rack and felt the jeans settle on my hips. and the size tag that touched the tip of my spine grabbed control of me again. and i felt ok. i had a size now. a size that gave me a worth. and every day i ponder on the strangeness of a girl who hates number but somehow finds herself more in control of herself when she has one attached to the denim around her waist. but i’ve always been that kind of unorthodox girl. but then i finally found my size and i felt my life the earth’s shifting plates, settle smoothly back in. i had a size. there is strangeness to me being so afraid of my life without a number to center it around. there is also some lingering addiction from my obsession over numbers that led me to trust the scale with my very life. (which it almost ruined) but what i find is most unsettling is the fact that my size now is a shifting thing. a changing digit which upsets my life at will. and i find myself ordering shirts that are too big, with sleeves that effortlessly fall past my fingertips. words are strange like that to me now. my life was influenced by numbers for so long that i find myself having to memorize letters all over again. the easiest lessons such as how many letters are in the alphabet, seem strange. numbers have found a way to settle themselves at the very core of me, and some days i find myself fighting against my life being centered around them. i rebel against the number pressed firmly to the tip of my spine and with desperation wiggle out of the trapping denim. but the next day i always slip back in and go to school. i can’t rebel against the numbers because i always fall apart, i always lose focus. and i am so lost because my number is shifting that i find myself wearing too big shirts, too tight jeans and feeling my jacket tighten over my shoulders. my shirts may not go by number, but i find myself confused by just looking at the letter. i have never liked “s” and “m” is for the name that it is mine though it seems so strange. so i picked “l.” there are no bad memories with l. L stands for love and lipids and lonely and lucky and line. and while these seem both familiar and foreign, i find myself lost. numbers and letters confuse me now. i don’t know my size and i don’t know me. i am so used to depending upon a number to tell me worth, that i don’t dare find out who i am without one.

a joke tingles on my tongue

and mixes with the flavor of my grapefruit soda

and i start to look for you in the crowd

against my better judgement

~ you’re a habit

a pizza is drawn on my hand with sharpie

and the lull of conversation twirls around me

as my fingers flirt lazily with the keys on my laptop

irregularly coming to rest on a letter that forms a sentence

~last thursday’s observations 

i listened to my sad playlist in the bath

and tried to shove him and her out of my head

but this time i don’t think hot baths

lemonade

and even writing can help me

~ first boy i have lost sleep over

i am always trying to outdo her

~ why can’t i be your number one?

when i tried to make sure you were ok

i found myself fighting your battle

because it was always your intention

to leave the things in your life you didn’t

appreciate or like

behind

~ you leaving answered all my questions

i was a born a golden girl

a word seeker

with an appetite that would never be filled

and from a young age i learned how to pick the words up off the page

and dribble them slowly into my mouth

savoring the taste of adjectives and end marks

and i was never word full.

once i tried to make my own words

because i felt the part of a thief

taking words that were never mine

and letting them form stories that i could never tell

but no matter how much i tried

my own golden words wouldn’t form

leaving me a wannabe writer

with marker stains on her fingers.

gradually i stopped trying to make my own words

and just took pictures and letters from other people

who put them down in the page

not knowing a not-really word thief

could pull them right off

in long, black twisted lines

that twined around her arms and fingers

making her seem less of a golden girl.

golden girl (?)

wannabe writer

and a not-really word thief

my brother was not like me at all

because he was a blue boy who knew what words to say

and twisted them to form perfect spider webs

that always caught the unassuming fly (me)

and i always was left jealous that he could

use words that were his own

and every time i fell

until one day he grew sick of making webs as a blue boy

and packed all his words in a suitcase

along with a picture or two

and he waved his car keys in farewell

as this blue boy left as a blue man.

when i was older i didn’t feel like a golden girl

i felt like a wannabe everything,

because my word appetite was growing stronger

and numbers displayed on a thin black square

were suddenly burning through and inffecting

the words i had stolen from novels and magazines alike

(numbers are like that)

and suddenly i made myself not word hungry anymore

because i wanted to be a wispy golden girl

with a waist that poetic words could twine about

(poetic words are the most delicate, like snowflakes, like the blue boy’s man’s spider web.)

my stolen word were dry

the ink i’d stolen with them as dried up as soon as it left the page

and they caught ablaze that lit up the sky of eyes

and made a ring of gold around my pupil

like i was a golden girl

(i wasn’t)

but soon the sky was choked with ash

and even the embers that were the skeleton of these stolen words

refused to burn to be saved

because they were never mine to have.

and i was left a wordless girl

a wannabe everything

a word-thief behind bars.

so the wordless girl that i was

lost the sweet taste of words

(they taste like lemonade, honey, blackberries and ocean water)

and so she didn’t care that she was word-starving

she didn’t care if she was a wannabe everything

and a word thief in an iron cage

she only cared if poetic words could fit around her waist

and brush over her skin

so for a moment she wouldn’t feel like

the inky expanse of her heart

hadn’t been ripped and stitched together again

using numbers.

one day this girl

picked up a book that used to be her favorite

and dared to crack up the first page

which she knew by heart

because she had smiled when the 12pt words in this page

had slid down her throat

because they were the closest thing to her own words

(if she had any)

that she had ever found

but she found that the page was blank

only a creamy white rectangle

(other people could see the words)

and it was then this wordless broken girl

let some of the salt water she had collected

from tasting words all her life

run down her cheeks from the grey site of destruction

and the ring of yellow

(a scar left from her once-burning words)

that were her eyes.

a wannabe golden girl girl with poetic waist

a wordless girl

and a withering away word thief

and so i

girl who used to be golden

the word thief in jail

a wasteland of word skeletons

a girl who is word starving for a poetic waist

 i

shattered

and the plastered skin that i had somehow adopted broke

and my (real) metallic golden skin glinted

and my true voice left my throatin a raw almost-plea

because all the words that i had been suppressing

by leaving myself word starved

into my veins and was pumped by my heart

where brittle numbers had stitched both ventricles together again

(the blue boy man will always have half)

and for the first time

since the golden girl had been born a word seeker

she found what she had been looking for.

a golden girl (with the most poetic not-skinny waist)

a fledgling writer (and poetess)

a word thief no-more 

a word seeker who found her words.

i wrote a letter to a ghost of my past

but i won’t send it to the address

that she wrote in her best handwriting

on the back of my hand

the day i got in my car

and watched her disappear out the back window

(the writing faded slowly until it looked like a blurred bruise)

wisps of memories still stir invisible currents in my mind

as i think i hear her laugh

and offer me out usual snack of nutella and apples

or get the special berry syrup for our water

and a small selfish part of me

still wishes i was that little girl who laughed in her backyard

and scarred her knees in the blackberry patch

behind the tree house we claimed as our own

and snorted while playing twister to violin music

~ because things were so simple then, before her betrayal made leaving the lesser heartbreak

a house doesn’t equal a home

~the lesson i learned on may 17th, 2016 when i left my home to move into a house

every time in my life when i’ve seen a period

i’ve tried to turn it into a comma

~ i’m a little girl before I’m a writer

i fell in love with you

when you got excited over stars

~ never change darling

i’m a girl from a place that no longer knows my name

there’s is said to be

a red string of fate that connects us

to the person who we are meant to be with

forever

and if that is true

than my fingers are raw and bleeding

from trying to follow the thread

hoping that it leads to you

~are you on the other end?

there’s a missing spot at the table

and there seems to be a gap between dishes

because your sweet potato crumble should be there

~ first thanksgiving without you

i found a gold necklace i was given the day

i turned 13

and it makes me sad to realize

that i haven’t taken such good care of it

and so now the chain is knotted

where it is too small

and chokes me

~ you were my necklace, dear

take me to february eye doctor appointments

clumpy cherry cheese cake

and head aches that don’t hurt

~ I miss last year

i can’t walk into the library anymore

or lay on the cushions at our spot at lunch

because your laugh echos on repeat

and i am always catching a glimpse of your brown leather jacket

turning a corner

leaving me behind

i am missing all the books i haven’t read

because the black 12pt font seems to swim in front of my eyes

while oxygen burns tracks through my heart into my lungs

~ i am starving for words to replace the ones you stole

fear seems stamped on my eyes whenever i look at you

because no matter how many times you tell me

that you are not him

i don’t believe you

~ he’s gone but the scars aren’t

a laugh doesn’t want to leave the cavity of my throat

and my stomach clenches in an acidic fist

~ when you say my name

twizzler candy is on the carpet of our classroom

and there is a debate on the color of nail polish

held by all boys

so with glue from a project making my fingers sticky

i laugh like a free girl

~ i feel like home when i walk through the lobby

anger has become a constant threat of mine

as it paces in the cage of my ribs

just waiting for the moment when someone says the right words

and i can’t stop from releasing it

~ recapturing it is hard

pieces of you have twined with me

and now i can’t tell the two of us a p a r t

~unwilling yen yang

the leaves are brown

and they clutter around the roots of trees

and the sun isn’t shining very much anymore

and neither am i

~ winter has never been my friend

as thanksgiving creeps around the corner

in the in between space between pages of a book

i feel familiar fear coil in my belly

as i wonder if i am the same girl as i was last year

and what i will do if i’m not

~  i am not as fearless as you think, a. 

i think in all my life

the worst thing that someone has ever told me

was that my words were worthless

~i bet he doesn’t even remember it now

i darkened my eye lids with dark pink eyeshadow

and ran my favorite minty lip balm over my lips

and i told myself that just for tonight

i would let the mirror tell me if i was pretty or not

~ i wasn’t

when i see you again i am going to give you the biggest hug. before you left me i couldn’t because in the nest of wires were you lay, there was no room for my arms to entangle you tightly. when i see you again i am going to talk for three hours about everything i have wanted to tell you since then. before you left me i could only choke out about the boy i was friends with and how the lake water at the place you called home, had swirled around my bare toes. when i see you again i am going to tell you how my world was all grey for weeks.  before you left me i saw a yellow finch, ate vanilla ice cream and helped pick bright orange mini roses. the color left when you did. when i see you again i am going to ask you all the questions that have been piling up like snowdrifts inside of me. before you left me i thought we would have so much more time for me to ask you about your college and first love. when i see you again i am going to ask why you always read the novels from walmart, and if they were any good. before you left me i didn’t have a chance to ask and now i am left staring at your pale purple bookmark embedded midway through a book. you’ll never get to finish that book. when i see you again i am going to ask you to teach me how to make my favorite peppermint cream pie and how to fry okra just right. before you left me i thought we would have another christmas with the two of us in your kitchen smashing peppermints and you instructing me on chopping furry okra. when i see you again i am going to tell you all the friends of yours i got to meet. before you left i didn’t know you near as well as i did now. that makes me sad. when i see you again i am going to make sure that you show me how to hold my knitting needles right. before you left i didn’t treasure cold metal and fuzzy yarn against my palm. now i feel like it ties us together. when i see you again i am going to tell you how amazing you are. before you left i could never say the words. when i see you again i am going to give you my journal filled with tear stained pages, full of all the times i’ve been asked about my grandmothers. and me having to say that i only have one left now. but most importantly, when i see you again, i am going to say i love you, i love you, i love you. because bfore you left me, i don’t think i ever said it enough.

my hair fell in spirals on grey tiled floor

and the snip of scissors clicked by my ear

so when i looked in the mirror again

the lush desert dunes of my face

and pooled sea of my eyes

seemed foreign

~ remembering

i’ve not cried in so long

that yesterday when i felt my eyes swimming

i found it a strange sensation

~the girl who never cries, cried

she warned me that i always fell

for boys with ocean eyes

and in her finest handwriting she wrote

a guide on how to avoid them

~but i met your stare from across the room and now i’m drowning

ash as long since settle

in the circular space around my pupil

and magma boils at my core

glinting off the metallic sheen of my hair

~ i erupted so long ago no one remembers

the difference between the two of us

is that if words were the falling leaves

you are the gardener who rakes them neatly

and i am the child running with my arms open

just trying to catch a few

~ you are not a word sharer

you picked my pretty feathers off

so i could no longer fly

and then with glue you put them over your own

and no one noticed how different i was

because they didn’t notice me at all

~they only knew me by my feathers

i’m listening to music from a thousand summers ago

and i can’t help wonder if

i’ll ever see the people who helped build my smile

and taught me how to laugh

ever again

~ love forever

they have long since lost their hunger

and forgotten the sweet taste of adventure

so they build up walls and make weapons

to try and take the wild ones

~ refuse to be tamed my wild child

cold air has fizzed my curls

and i drink apple juice

with meat loaf

~ it’s hard to believe today is monday

i know i probably can pick myself up again

and claw myself back up

from where i’ve fallen from

but i don’t want to miss another seventeen months

of my life fighting to stay above waves

and clenching my fists to survive

because what i’m fighting

no else can see

~i never let myself forget that it is an invisible demon

i can’t staple my seams together anymore

with the pretense that my insides are ok

because there has to be a reason

for why i’m reliving this nightmare

~ what malfunctioned in me this time?

there are two holes in my pj shirt

and i’m wearing socks to bed

which i hate

but i can’t make myself reach down

and slip them off

because i was looking through our old messages

and i remember how you used to make me feel

and that has me paralyzed with the feeling

that i denied myself happiness

and let you get away

~you’ll always be my biggest regret

there is a familiar lump of panic

that curls itself into a tight little ball

in my chest and throat

when i look down at my dinner plate

and see a cheese burger

i can’t physically finish

~ it was my favorite restaurant too

i would give up all my remaining sunsets for you

~i will find my you one day

today i wake up to find

that my favorite jeans can’t stay up on my hips

and i know that they’ve been getting looser

for the past few weeks

but i’ve been denying that the few meals i didn’t eat

couldn’t have caused them to be baggy

around my thighs

and loose total shape around my hips

~ deep inside i know it wasn’t just a few meals

dear middle school me.

it seems a little bit silly that i never think of sixth grade as middle school. sixth grade seems like a whole different place in time all together. in sixth grade my dad lost his job. in sixth grade i started only to be able to see him on the weekends. in sixth grade i lost my best friend. in sixth grade i first looked with loathing at my reflection in the mirror. in sixth grade we didn’t know if my future little sibling would survive. in sixth grade we sold my home. in sixth grade we moved into a rental house. in sixth grade my dad got a job states away.in sixth grade I grew up. but if i could go back i would have some advice. listen better madie grace, because in sixth grade you write your first poem. you win third place in your schools poetry contest. so listen. listen to your teacher as she explains. you learn a lot that year. don’t be sad about your brother. he still loves you. quit worrying about his problems, because you can’t fix them for him. don’t feel alone. your mom needs your help right now. work more around the house. complain less. read less. i know little madie grace that reading was our haven then, but what were we escaping? the missing sound of our dads car door every evening? the absence of our brothers laugh intertwined with ours? read less. those words you soaked in and embedded beneath your skin, could have waited. books are constant. but the problems you could have helped with, were not. oh, and sixth grade me, let out that pain. run to that favorite tree of yours (chester) and let the torment of tears that had been swimming in the blue of your eyes for weeks. dig your fingers in the moist black earth in elli’s garden and let apple juice dribble down your chin. swing more of the hammock. let all your pain and tears come out in a tidal wave of poetry. seventh grade me. stop it. stop with skipping breakfast, and counting on other people’s love to fill up the hole where you’re used to be. stop ignoring the feelings that are building up in your chest. stop letting other girls make you feel inferior. stop letting all your secrets escape in between the cracks of your crooked teeth. stop pinning away after him. he’s rude. he wouldn’t treat you the way you deserve to be treated. appreciate your friends more. because you will find yourself in ninth grade laughing over a text that brought back s flood of memories. you are a good judge character. don’t doubt that. don’t be ashamed of a label of mental illness that has been stuck as a subtitle underneath your name. no one else can see it. only you. and only you can manage how it affects you. don’t pin your happiness on a person. because then if that person lets you down, they drag your happiness away too. your happiness all shouldn’t depend on a person. don’t hesitate to hit that send button on Courage by Superchick. that song changed the way your moms eyes look at you. in a good way. it gave you saturday pumpkin bread and nights being rocked to the rain. oh, and dont forget the magical feeling of finding your first pair of jeans that fit perfectly.i have so much more advice and stuff to say, but i think you probably know it all already. eighth grade me. bump up your chin. they’re just toxic. don’t let their acid eat away at you. quit comparing yourself to that popular girl. stop. she has the red hair that you were born with. the clothes you wished you owned and could wear. and the guy you’ve always liked. but at what price? she buys fake hair clip ins, and is failing most of her classes. stop. stop judging and thinking of perfection. she doesn’t have it. instead she has a binder that says “cool kids never sleep” and a makeup palette in her bag to hide her dark circles. stop skipping meals and worrying mom so much that she buys vanilla protein drinks. and that she takes you the store and goes through isles saying “will you eat this?” as a shopping list. be less selfish. be more you. i know that your anxiety is tripled and every day you come home bent over with the weight. but you were born with broad shoulders for a reason my sweet. oh, and don’t take her betrayal so hard. don’t be angry at E for abandoning you for the popular. if middle school was a galaxy, she will always be a sun. i wish i could say more, but it would take weeks to go over middle school. and weeks more to tell of tears, fruit cups and boys. so middle school me, i leave you here. i leave all the heart ache and loss at the end of this post. what’s done is done.

i expect too much of people

i let myself get hurt too easily

i don’t like bananas

i am a different person for everyone

i always sing along to my favorite song on the radio

egg rolls are one of my favorite foods so my breath typically smells like cabbage

mustard is my worst enemy

i hate phone calls (a worst fear/phobia of mine)

i tend to invest too much

i have yet to learn how to let go

i still cuddle up in a care bear blanket when i am sad

i am addicted to hot cocoa

~ a few of my flaws

oh my darling don’t you know

that beautiful people have problems too?

the shore of your tan skin

against the blue of sea

contained inside your eyes

~ an addiction of mine

she has come to the ultimate conclusion

of why her feet feel heavy on the sidewalk

and the reasoning behind her adoration for the sky’s colors

and every rain storm

~ a bird never likes a cage but a mangled one might adapt

i’ll say i need a break

but my souls ablaze with the truth

that words are an ocean

and writing is my life boat

~ i can’t stop

dear child you can’t escape your grief

and distractions only work for so long

~stop waiting to become numb

anxiety is just a little thing

that can fit into every crack of me

depression just floats endless in the air

a cold, and aggressive thing

insomnia is loud and playful

and doesn’t seem bad at first

perfection is all gold and bright

with decay at its center

~ four against one is not fair, but monsters never play by the rules anyway

there is no ok

if we expect ok to to be perfection

like a perfect family

friend group

and talent

~ i am not ok……..but that’s ok

a banana popsicle taste is lingering on my tongue

and my fevers at 101

~you expected me to say i was fine

i’m done crying for tonight

and my eyes are red and raw

~ i’m such a fragile girl

i said too many things

brought up too many memories

and i find myself the one to blame

for my hurt

~i am never strong enough when i need to be

i said too many things

brought up too many memories

and i find myself the one to blame

for my hurt

~i am never strong enough when i need to be

we have titanium at our cores

with the inside of our heads brittle

from the constant wars and pain that has shattered us

in only a place we let a few people see

and i wish we could tell about the scars

that cross our souls

and the salty rivers that come from our eyes

as a form of raw poetry

but we both were taught a long time ago

that always seem to block the wrong people out

~ maybe we have a shared piece of shrapnel?

i’m always the one who moves away

or leaves people behind

but here you are tearing out a piece of my heart

and taking it with you

~i’m not used to being left behind

i love when i eat cinnamon bread

with pumpkin spice cream cheese

with a 99 F temp

and think about the people

who i miss every weekend

you’re not allowed back into my life anymore

and i hate how one side of me still whispers

“but we loved him”

~ a boy once broke my heart and trust all at once

be brave. be silly. be your own kind of magic. be kind. be present. be open to change. be free. be you

~ be beautiful

why am i not enough?

am i too loud or quiet?

am i ugly if my thighs touch……or don’t?

do i share too much or too little?

should i smile more or less?

am i too clingy? or absent?

~some questions i ask myself daily

i’ve always been your second option

and now i am not too naive to see it

are such a starry eyed

loved person

i’m doing me.

i’m eating spicy chicken chili

drinking more water

stumbling from laughing with friends

making pinky promises

singing along to all the songs of the radio again.

i let go of you when

i stopped being a good person

because you weren’t one

and i didn’t want you to feel

ashamed

~i sacrificed so much for you

i think of you

whenever i eat yellow starbursts

because they are your favorite

and i still find myself thinking of the times

you were nice and gave me a compliment

but times got so bad you didn’t even try

to coat your poison with honey

~ i gave love your family didn’t, but it never was enough for you

the drums are pounding in time

to my heart

and the band’s vocalist is crooning words

that are better poetry than mine ever could be

~ comparison kills creativity

i feel like i’ve felt this feeling before

and then i lost it

~ you asked me why i was so afraid to be happy

dear subway cashier girl.

it’s been almost a year since i saw you. and i’ve only seen you once. it was a day in early December.my friend and therapist’s words were swimming in my head like comforting fish, and for the first time in a while, i felt happy. my dad stopped for em to grab something to eat before decorating for a dance that a friend of mine was hosting. you were at the register, and i will never forgot your eyes. they were much a deep and sad brown. the kind people could get lost in. and they were without a spark. your wrist had a small typed tattoo that said “i am art.” but i don’t think you believed it. and what i think is strange is that i can’t visit a subway without thinking of you. because when i left your subway, i promised i would never lose my spark. because then i could help girls like you, find yours again.

i left my house yesterday

and i went home

~ lakehouse is embedded in my bones

fall me has come at last.

i am sitting in a brown leather seat

wearing a green military jacket

with cherry coke on my breath

and a laugh spilling out of mouth.

and i have snicker bars in my backpack

and plans of helping a friend to get ready

for a Halloween dance on Friday.

~ summer baby fall gurl

i’ve finally reached the point in my life

where i am wearing a pair of too big socks

and chacos

with shorts i went running in

and a t-shirt with holes.

and the road is open in the car head lights

and my green military jacket

is loose around my shoulders.

then i buy a lottery ticket

and realize that money can’t buy happiness

because here i happy

with midterms in the morning

and smelling of watered down hot cocoa.

~ i don’t regret not winning that lottery

dear little girl.

i’ve seen you at the library before, and each time you walk in the sliding doors, i see the magic that alights your pupils. you smile, with your mouth missing a few teeth, and eagerly run to put your books in the book drop. then from there, you disappear into the runs of paperback books with velvet soft rounded corners. i envy you. the shelves tower over your head like the most perfect towers of knowledge. covers in violet and shimmery silver taunt you as bold letters march across covers to spell the titles. i envy you because the magic of the library is not as strong in me as it is you. i love the jerky rattle of the sliding doors, and the air that is perfumed with ink and yellowed paper. i know the places of my favorite novels by heart, and can tell you teh story behind every brown stain. i can tell you which books i loved and which books made my soul splinter and me rethink everything that i have ever learned in this life. the magic of the library is typed in imperfect black letters across my heart and soul. but i still envy you. for i have grown out of the stories of peter pan that pepper the shelves which i have to bend down to see now. i still adore the lost boys and the idea of a island where you never have to grow up. but i do not live there. so the looks i get when i wander into the section of the library with cartoon unicorns of the cover of books, is not to be desired. so when it is thirty minutes until the library closes, and most everyone is gone. when street lights illuminate the black and white parking lot, and the yellowed lamps at the library station gleam on flowery pens, i creep in. i walk quietly and quickly past the librian station, and creep  towards the books with a familarity that makes me bones ache. these are the books i held with my small child hand and read underneath the pink quilt on my bed. these are the books that alite a passion for words inside of me. these are the books that were my first true friends, and my source of comfort for so long. and these books little girl, you can read. and i feel like a stranger to them in the daylight. when the library is crowded with young mothers and little boys with blue blankets. when the library is letting out girls with pigtails through the doors. then these books seem strange to me. foriegn. so i creep in at night when almost everyone is gone, and i slowly walk towards the shelf where i know they are. and little girl, i find the shelf empty. i look and see all my favorite books gone. and then i think of you little girl, reading the words with a spark in your eyes. and it does make me sad. sad that i can only hold my comfort blanket of books unashamed at night. sad that i have almost forgotten about my first friends that live on this shelf. but then i am not sad, because i think of the thousands of children whom i share this with. this magical feeling of familarity staring at the same book, cover, and title. then i am not sad. i am full of passion. and so little girl, take care of my books. take care of my first friends. they will never fail you. never. and when you leave this library and this place, you will see these titles again. on a new shelf. but the books will be the same. and even if you change and grow up, the books will never do that. and one day you will be like me little girl, and i image that we both will see our names underneath magical titles on shelves. because the magical feeling that we share, is the feeling of being a writer and a reader. and i wouldn’t change it for the world.

my freckled shoulder is covered with chill bumps

as it peeks like a pale sliver of moonlight

from the dark expanse of my sweater

dear october me.

you need to take fewer pictures. realize that memories don’t need to live in hard drives, or in the photo app on your phone. you don’t need to capture every funny memory with your friends, because if you try hard enough, they’ll be your friends forever. stop worrying about that girl in your p.e. class, who makes everything seem effortless. don’t overthink the way your hair is fixed on a plain tuesday, because if you have to spend thirty minutes on your hair to impress them, you don’t need them. don’t eat less so your jean size goes down, or shove your feet into your converse which pinch your toes. study your best and don’t think a grade is all you are. a “c” on your french test doesn’t say you are unworthy. it just says maybe less romance novels and more verb endings. please don’t take anything for granted. don’t put off something just because your hair isn’t perfect and your breath smells faintly of peanut butter. start running again to clear your head, and roll your eyes at the people who stare. you’re gorgeous the way you are. spend more time in the kitchen, because all of your favorite foods are in season right now. get drunk on chilled apple cider and pumpkin bread. put up your citrus perfume and exchange it for cinnamon and cloves. don’t give up all the dreams you have just waiting inside your brain, and don’t be afraid to be alone. because you never will be for long. follow your heart wherever it might lead you. october me, it’s finally fall. this is your season. you m ay be a summer baby, but you are a fall girl. so rake leaf piles and ride your bike at 6:35 pm. eat snicker bars on the porch swing and crinkle brown leaves in your dry palms. buy all the lipbalm, because you know that your lips get dry and cracked this season. dig around in yoru closet sand find the knitting needles you threw in lazily. it is about scarf season, and you want a fuzzy maroon colored one. buy the packets of all your favorite mints (watermelon and spearmint) and give them out to your friends. give hugs freely and encourage your friends to go ask that boy or girl out. fall is a time for snuggles and pillowforts. have all the sleepovers you’re allowed, because it is about time you break out the titanic and anne of green gables again. let your hair go without being fixed on the weekends, and spend hours under the pink quilt on your bed. oh and october me, be fearless. you’re an autumn girl and it is time to do what autumn girls do  best: fall.

today i find myself

wearing my favorite dark grey sweater

that is not too long for my wrists anymore

and thinking about the girl i was

the last time i wore it

 

~last february that girl hated herself

we always had so much to say

a year or two a ago.

so much that our words ran together

and our foreheads frowned

but over time we have both learned silence

and now our words are nonexistent

i have come to the conclusion

that my friends found me.

that in a world full of people

i was a magnet for the people who make me laugh

who snort unapologetically

give me a “boop” on my nose

that most often misses and lands on my ear

~ i love being a magnet

sparks fill my soul when i write

but i burn when i am written about

~ poetess is in a poem

we are both raw and honest.

our flaws haven’t been polished to look like perfections

and all our cracks have yet to be filled in

and we talk over the phone

with our voices cracking and salt water wetting our lips

~ best friend now, geodes forever

i drink hot cocoa and it scalds my tongue

and my wrists smell like lavender essential oil

~ how can one be so broken and lost, but still find pleasure in the little things?

i drink hot cocoa and it scalds my tongue

and my wrists smell like lavender essential oil

~ how can one be so broken and lost, but still find pleasure in the little things?

i will never wear shoes while wading

or tell you the end before your done

and i can promise you that i am not the person that you want

if you want to find an unflawed girl

~ you’ll be searching for forever

they say that it is just a bad day

and i tell myself it is just a bad week

and you would think i would know better

when i say that it is just a bad two months

to understand that bad only goes so far

and i surpassed it five days ago

~ there is no better here

not everyone suffers loudly.

i hold the storm inside my skin

refusing to let loose the painful torment of tears

and half breaths from sobs

~ if pain were a storm i would be a category 5 hurricane

we never said it

but i think we both knew

that my brain played titanic music

and my lips curved up with a shy

yet sly smile

whenever i was with you

~ we are both too fragile and too wild for a label

last night i found myself

in a world that was all fire and smoke

and i was forced to face the flames

i felt the sting on my cheeks like warm tears

and the burning smoke filled my chest

like anger and hate

and i was forced to realize that i

am just a girl

~i am no phoenix

hunny is that day yet?

 

is the day where you are scribbling down words

from a book on your shelf

and you see them as something more?

 

is  it the day when you relize that words

are not just times new roman font

and they are not just telling a story

 

is that day?

 

the day when you rellieze that slowly

these words have knotted themselves around your heart

and that ink now runs in your veins?

 

hunny,

is it the day when you come out of the pages of your books

and look at the world through new eyes

as words and ideas tumble through your head?

 

~are you a writer yet, hunny?

 

i wanna eat strawberry popcicles

and feel the sticky juice on my wrists

and drink lemonade in the car