for your birthday

the smoke from someone's 9am cigarette break
a blue that cuts the sky like glass,
a morning winter is proud of-
its viscous golden sunlight, its arctic wind like a
disembodied herd of wild animals; i welcome them-
my hair, like sails in a storm, obscures my
disappointment with the heaviness of each day;
i am trapped in unforgiving amber
i can't remember of a time before waking
up with tears in my eyes from a heartbreak that
never ends, just builds day after day;
i will never be an artist,
and you will never love me

one million sighs and one reason to grow

i told you

the only goal i have in life is to not have death break my heart upon its arrival

and you told me, it won't, because i love you

but that's what i fear, is that love itself will cause my heart to break worse in the face of death

i realized, it will not be the circumstances of my last day,

but who i am on that day which will determine whether or not i've reached my goal

fellow inhabitants

i found everyone in the world

dead in a room filled

with the promising light of dawn

alone,

i will discover everything there is to know

about the birth and death of the universe

before i discover anything about myself

my heart holds more and more

life shows its cold self in marred bodies,
pinks purples reds of flesh, folds and incisions,
the gore reminding us what
our insides really look like; scenes insensitive

to our dangerously

and
beautifully crafted
hearts.

fresh memories of summer fool me
so i remind myself they will grow old
may we always curse ourselves
for not savoring it a little bit more,
just a little bit more?

i remind you that our time together will end,
and that it is ok.
i tell you, 'we can love in spite of it,'

and the occasional
sighting of spilt organs reminds
us what we are made of

stories

when we are asleep we know everything;

our dreams cannot fool us, only waking life

we are our own gods, the storytellers,

i am living alone in an asian metropolis

i am living in a cottage with mystic people

i am having a love affair with someone i

see occasionally in real life,

but have never actually spoken to.

we do not question boundaries and

despite the strangeness, nothing is absurd

when we wake we have tears in our eyes

we are/i am , pacing amongst thousands and millions of other lonely humans.

mundane activities increase in the summer. they plead for company the most, as the passing of time is fatal.

i was always lonely in the shower . always.

and i was always aware of my shortcomings that are a result of being still only a kid. those feelings made time slow and stretched it thin across short periods, almost unbearable, but nevertheless bittersweet; perfect for nostalgia to be felt in the future.

summer led to too much time to sit and think

which led to too much time to be drunk

which led to too many conversations in which i butcher my thoughts and express them, prematurely in crude formats.

these poisons of the idleness of summer-bodies led to the worst moment:

re-realizing i've only ever really known the loneliest people

i'm drawn in to them and expect to find comfort in the shared trait, but there are moments when you lay right next to them and feel they're just as lonely as they were without you;

my stomach sinks

i can smell my own fear

blond girl who used to wear pink berets

you played the violin and it made me feel like i had travelled back in time.

i painted begonia eyes with coral hands on a flesh mountain that month,

when you lived by the warehouses.

we were less human, run on electricity,

our teeth would do funny things and i felt like i was in a soft fishbowl

or a television set, contained and safe with round edges

and we would buy pop from a machine next door

for only

a quarter. and

it made you feel like we had travelled back in time

new age bullshit

i'm watching people i used to want to know in plastic lawnchairs that reflect a sick dull light of new age northwest bullshit and i feel my own young sallow eyes that can't drink in anymore

i checked "no" bubbles with a sordid smirk for questions like "do you ever drink until there's nothing else to drink?" and "do you ever drink to feel better and relieve stress?"

and no i've never blacked out, never done coke, never took pills never never

but i didn't tell enough lies and they're making me come back,

the catholics are making me come back once aweek for two months.

i could tell the lady felt funny when she asked about what kind of things me and my friends talked about and i got all confused and looked out and window and said "strange things i guess?"

i used to pretendsilly, a teeny oblivious, that i was a little black girl who lived in georgia and had peach cobbler and sunday school dresses and a big smiley momma's lap to sit on

nowadays i think about things kinda similar like living real simple in chicago or pittsburgh or new orleans

i was born in DC in sultry july of 1993 and i do miss the fireflies and lightning bolts but now i live here

and it's dark and the buildings are new and the streets are stagnant

worst thing is we stopped learning how to love when we learned how to be scared and sorry

futility blooms in our hearts like a smoked salmon coloured poppy

(Requiem æternam)

like an atheist

in a cathedral:

if this feels like holiness

what must it feel like

to the pious?

at home still

i was a towering dandelion seed, carried wayside by the legs of an ant

swayed by the wind that should have been strong enough to pull me off with it,
not gripped in a creatures jaws so much smaller than i.

but by some miraculous force of ant-nature, i was kept at home still,

through currents, on ant feet, on dirt;

blanket of human

i wish you would smother me like a

blanket until i'm damn positive that

(unlike two Oceans meeting via fictional borders),

we'll always only be Capable of being

two separate creatures that stare back at

each-other exchanging mysterious emotions through

nothing but senses and Trust

milk

guts made of milk fat spilled on roadsides underneath the phosphorescent residue of human thought our memories are moving a thousand miles an hour spun by velocity like gossamer wool along cosmos

when i drink soymilk my spit is iridescent white like the walls of your soul that burn white because i am telling you thank you thank you on the last day of your life