219
you feel like one of those birds
with dead black eyesÂ
you go to the beach with your friends because
you feel the need to leave, even though
you are bloated and dirty and forget to shave
your armpits.
the beach is crowded
the water is so cold that it hurts
to go further but they are twenty feet away
waist-deep and they keep calling your name
until your skin is used to it
and hours later in the haze of your room
you listen to songs from last summer, the summer before
remember who you were, the difference between
then and now
if there even is one
if that feeling of lacking control is just in your skin
the strip of light as you close the bathroom door
that bleeds from the wall
1107
you don’t know what to say anymore
don’t know from where to take your inspiration
there’s a party at your friend’s house,
they mix lemonade and fruit and vodka
until it is bright pink and when you walk home
alone at 1am, the streets are thick with fog
ask yourself how a place can be
so terrible and beautiful all at once
how you make yourself see monsters in the shadows
how you have to be stupid to be completely happy
it is too hot to sleep and you turn in your sheets
and wake up early, still tired
unable to make your body rest
429
birds in cities build their nests out of trash and waste
but they don’t know any better
and it is sufficient
102
it’s too painful to talk about
the things she says, how she swallowed
a bottle of peroxide and all of her antidepressants
in a half-assed cry-for-help suicide attempt, and it’s
fucked up that you say that maybe, but how many times
over the past five years has she done this
suicide attempt, relapse, emotional manipulation
from another boy, another drug taking space
in her head
how you don’t want to make it about you but can’t she see how much this fucking hurts from the inside out, how it feels like bones breaking through your skin
the wings you’ll never earn, you are not an angel
not a bird, just a child with broken limbs
always stretched towards the sky
sometimes you feel so scattered, your heart
beating too fast, your veins blue against pale skin
you think of every blood test you’ve ever taken
you think of the time that you sat in the oncology ward
at the hospital, where two-year-olds played with legos
and the light reflected off their scalps, bald from chemo
hands gripped on an iv, and you realized how
lucky you were, how healthy
how death picks us on a whim regardless
he has no sympathy
and is that why people believe in reincarnation, because
there are so many lives that didn’t get to be lived fully
because they want a second chance for every dead child
how i cannot understand the human need to be cruel
to force loss upon others
that i cannot reconcile my fear with my will to live
that i am scared
120
somewhere in your heart there is a girl with cracked lips
trying to get out and somewhere in your heart
is a pair of hands that won’t let her
you keep trying to sing songs
that make you sound crazy
songs about death
you get tired, you wish to become somebody
else
somebody worth something, somebody who
is whole
you remember how you spent your days
languorous, wandering through a fogged city
how the tops of buildings were lost in cloud
the modern-day mount olympus
how we try to rival nature, how it becomes competition,
how we will always be uprooted in the end,
how the veins of the earth are stronger than any
human heart i have ever known
234
sensory memory
muscle memory
singing songs out of tune but you
can’t help yourself, don’t know the words
but there is something about it that touches you,
feels visceral, like some sort of nostalgia
of something that has been happening
something that hurts you below the skin
miss madonna
won’t you give me a kiss
you remember how it felt to be hurt, to not want
anyone to touch you, to feel rotten on the inside
damaged goods, that you were afraid
to be loved but at the same time wanted it
so badly
and you’re so tired, pretending to be
polished, graceful, calm
pretending that there is not a storm in your head
how you keep coming up empty, how you feel
so fucking lazy
you think of the tattoo that you finally want
three simple words, you don’t know where
but you know that you want it somewhere that isn’t
that easy to see
oh, these stupid things that you can’t stop thinking
that don’t even matter
how your thoughts are so unimportant, how your words
are so arbitrary
how you want to write something that hurts,
that will break you down, the dislocated room
and the missing key
and how the light dances on your face
and how you are happy
to be home
332
the stagnancy of summer
sit in your room, windows open
watch your curtains move in the wind
like the arms of a ghost, long and white and
reaching for you
the angels they write songs about
if every angel’s terrible
why do you welcome them
and it’s so strange, listening to the music
you’ve grown with, the past five or six years
feeling what you felt the first time you ever heard
these songs, and how you’ve changed since
she sounded like an angel
when she cried
you think about how
you’re actually in a long distance relationship now
you can’t run to him on weekends, four hours
turned into fourteen and you’d need a plane
to get to him now
it’s raining in new york
too much to wander around in the fog
listening to all the same songs, the same slurred words
you never remember
but the chords are imprinted in your memory
how you used to sing yourself to sleep
how you never really let yourself
forget
337
you are molested by the first boy who you thought ever wanted you
in the basement of his house that he shared with his parents
twenty-years-old but you thought he was your friend,
that you were gonna smoke weed and watch tv and just talk, ease into it, this fucked up relationship you fantasized (naive little girl)
about
you said no but he did not listen, and for two years
you did not let anyone touch you.
your best friend is raped when she is seventeen
she does not tell anyone but instead keeps having sex
with boys whose faces are blank in her memory, in the backseat of a man’s truck while she is on ecstasy.
it is so strange, the ways we handle hurt
abuse
indifference, the way you will call out
for help for so long and receive silence
and you feel like such a burden to your mother
a burden to your sister
a burden to your friends
a burden to your boyfriend
a burden to anyone who has ever touched you
like a slow-growing tumor underneath skin
mutations of cells, growing growing growing and
we can’t stop it, we cannot sense it
until it is too late
until there are syringes washing up on the banks
of all the rivers in the midwest and there are
men and women, skin thin to the point of collapse
we told you so we told you so we told you so
because everyone’s looking for the scapegoat, the victim
we try so hard not to look inside ourselves for the problem
so we try apathy, we
try thick skin, we try to drown ourselves
in sunshine and the flesh of someone you barely know
to hide, keep hiding
and you wonder, as a woman, why it’s you that has to be
the one who carries the child, who has to be fucked
why the women always have to be born empty, waiting
to be filled
and isn’t it silly, you think, that we are scared of what comes after
but not of what already is
1229
the things you weren’t there for
still hurt, isn’t that silly?
