what is a masochist?

when i found you last week, you were pressing the lips
of a broken bottle to your face, tracing a line of red tears.
when i asked why you did it to yourself, you said

‘i like myself better this way.’

when i saw you in the hallway, you held the hand of another
whore, and she held the keys to your heart.
when i asked why you did this to yourself, you said

‘i like myself better this way.’

when i called you three days ago, you were crying while you smothered
your mouth with your own hands, bruising the curves of your lips.
when i asked why you did that to yourself, you said

‘i like myself better this way.’

when i took you out for a drive yesterday, you kept yourself away. you stayed
quiet and bit your tongue till it bled, but your black eyes never left my body.
when i asked why you do this to yourself, you said

‘i can like myself better this way.’

when i came to your house today, you were tying ropes around your
neck. your floor was covered in ‘i’m sorry’ notes, all folded and unread.
when i asked why you were doing this to yourself, you said

‘i will like myself better this way.’

when i opened your note that said my name, it was still damp with tears. it
said all the things you wouldn’t say, all the things you wouldn’t do, and all the ways
you could have hurt me, but you didn’t because i would change, and

you liked me better this way.

her name was anne xiety

nor alive.

she was neither dead

trepidus sky-

and her heart was left with the

because her eyes belonged to a crying bird,

always half blinded by tears

she was






( note : you have to read it backwards.)


(trepidus: latin form of trepid or trepadation;
fear or anxiety about something that you are going to do or experience.)

i'm breathing without lungs

don't apologize. i can't breathe. i collapsed on the stairs at a quarter to two and i haven't found my feet yet. please help me up. please push me down. i think i'm letting my lungs collapse. i think i just spit up saltwater. is the carpet staining? i need you to grab my hand. i need you to hold my lungs together. i need you. i need you.

is it night yet? i can't see the stars. i can't feel the wind. my skin is numb and my eyes are on fire and i'm sitting in the middle of a room without windows and i can't breathe. why aren't you listening? can't you hear me? i'm choking on regrets. i'm choking on my spine. i'm coughing up alcohol from last night and i'm spitting out my teeth but i still can't breathe.

i need a prayer. i need a song. i need you to write a poem for me and read it out loud until i can't hear anything but your voice. i need to stop driving with my eyes closed. i need to stop pretending i have wings. i need you to close your eyes and pretend i know. pretend i don't need you. pretend i know what this is. pretend i know who i am. anything. everything. pretend i know.

where is my pulse?

help me find my clothes. help me find an answer. i'm fumbling in the dark and i'm turning upside down without a way to find my balance. i'm tumbling. i'm falling. i'm scraping my knee and bleeding all over the floor. i'm coughing up words we've never heard before and pretending they're beautiful. i'm rearranging the stains on my jeans and saying they're profound. you're helping me up but i can't see your hand.

stop saying sorry. stop telling me you can't give me what i want. i don't know what i want. i don't know what i am. how can i ask for something when i'm not breathing? i walked on my hands and knees for five minutes today before i realized the world looked the same from down here. my throat got ripped to shreds trying to swallow the world. my hands are shaking and hitting all the wrong keys.

we're not making music, we're making chaos. we're swirling every color together because we thought it'd be a rainbow. but it's just black. it's just brown. it's a mess and we created it. it's hideous and it's our love child. are you proud of what we've created? are you touching the fucking awful masterpiece and saying that we're a genius and somehow in this word vomit we created something worth reading? because we didn't. we just fucked it all up. we just took the sun and bagged it and claimed the sky looked brighter when it was gone.

we weren't wrong. we were just anything but right.
we're not alive. we're just too stubborn to die.
i'm not breathing. why am i not breathing?

Your song

if i could save you with a song, i'd pry open my jaws and sing pangaea out of the milkyway-ocean.

i'd open my hands wide, part my lips and pour my heart into the wind's silver arms. i'd let my voice ride high along the horizon and dip below to fish the moon out from her hiding place, tease the sun into kissing the silver light. and when the world was bathed in gilded chrome, i'd grab your hand and haul you from your watery grave. i'd pull the murky sea from your lungs and spit it out, breathing deep the toxins and filtering out the silt from beneath your tongue.

and if you were to cough and dredge death up again, i'd sing you hymns to calm the earthquakes and tremors from your palms. i'd trace your veins with comet tails until they burned through your flesh and set your bones aflame. i'd press meteor kisses down your spine, carving the chorus along your hips until you believed the words that sparked wildfires beneath my ribcage.

i'd sing until my throat was dry, until the words ran together, until it was nothing more than the warbling of the wild river. i'd plant orchids between your fingers so you could hold life, drape velvet promises over your shoulders to keep you warm at night.

i'd cradle your head and sing us through the valley's shadow.
until we sat showered with celestial light, i'd sing to you.

Singing dreams to life

i'm waiting for you where dreams kiss
reality. where sweet mornings are spent
with the currency of light, salted breezes,
fluttering linen curtains and heartroots
sinking as they touch, greet, bind.

where you rest your sleepy head
in my lap so i might lose my fingers
in your mad curls, lose my sanity
in the peatbog of your eyes, lose
myself just in time for you to find it.

where my breath brushes the scar
on your jagged nose and my lips
brush, trace, linger on the border
of the wicked temptation, fatal
destination that is your mouth.

where my rusted tongue loosens
to find the rhythm of songs i've never
heard, the ancient hymns birthing
on my nerves. where i won't be a lark
or a nightingale, but a songbird nonetheless.

where i'll stumble through the chorus
until i get it right. where i'll wring my heart
dry on my swollen tongue, offering the nectar
to you in hushed reverence. where i'll sing
soft, gentle lover, in the golden husk of dawn.

[until the reality of my clumsy voice sweetens
to the dream of my emotions, for you, i will sing.]

Winter heart

maybe it's the weather. maybe it's the steam in the morning and the fog in my lungs that brings these words to life. i can feel them stirring under my breath like a second life; i can taste them in the december air that teases nostalgia from the pitter patter of my winter heart.

it's like life is a faded photograph. its like time is a frozen lake. it's like i'm sitting on porches wearing oversized sweaters and holding cups that burn the tips of my numb fingertips. it's like i'm in a forest and it's damp. it's dark. it tastes like a memory and the rain looks the way it did two years ago when i was broken. it's like remembering something perfect in a moment that was anything but; like holding something just out of reach in the palm of my hand.

ten months and three days ago: i'm in a coffee shop with frost on the sidewalk. it is quiet and loud and i have the feeling that i really am all alone. but it isn't bad. it is peaceful. it is soft and my bruised heart breathes deep. i exhale. it is the knowledge of being surrounded and the noise being a cocoon. busy lives and i am still. i am a rock in the river and it is cold. my hands are tingling from the frostbitten air, but i am happy.

it feels like that. it feels like my soul is stirring hot under the frozen water - like now that the sun has set, i can stand the heat of my words. they cry and yelp as they rise from their dust-covered graves. they shake the coming snow from their shoulders and leap through the fog. it feels like that - liking coming home to the cold and letting the winter slip its arms around me. it feels like summer is gone and the cold has burned the edge off of july pain. like the cold had reanimated my still heart, my marble fingers; like the fog has softened my marble fingers, my granite tongue.

(like summer has faded and my silence finally can too.)