you will always be alone and then you will die

I breathe and live and want; they call me 'whore'. 'Prostitute'. 'Bitch'. But I've never gotten paid and I don't hate anyone for it. I get what I want, and that's more than most girls can say.

Your stupid trailer is freezing, or I am, and I'm hungry again. I'm not above begging you for something to fill me. It's been three days. Baby, your pity tastes disgusting, but beef jerky's all you've got, so I'll take whatever you let me take.

Whatever I want to take.

You're in a cage and there's the stink of testosterone and blood and fear as you tear into other men like tissue paper. Like Picasso, you paint the walls and floors with red and linoleum and intestines before you sigh. I don't want to be here, anymore, I whisper, lost to the jubilant screams of your crowd, but you hear it anyway. Amber eyes rise to my green, suddenly shifting into my own, like you're saying me too or I'm gonna eat you alive.


I can be content with that.

Innocent. You want to keep me innocent, but I've got voices in my head telling me that I'm a sinner, an insult to God, to take what I want because it's mine, I'm no good, I'm better than anyone. And maybe, baby, it would shock you to your bones to hear what I've got in mind. I want to crawl into your skin and take you from the inside out, claim your heart with my teeth and grind you into the floor with my hips. I want to run my hands through your hair and bite you 'til you bleed (for me, again; this is getting repetitive, isn't it?). Have you dreamt about it? I hear you in the night, low voices and hitching breaths -- do you think about me?


Do you?


I am you and you are me, and nobody is a victim here.



(There's this line to this poem, and it's the one that thrums under my skin whenever I'm with you--)


I'm in a car with a beautiful boy and I feel sick to my bones as they creak against my skin because he's not you, and I want you. When did I get into this? When did you love redheads and propriety and tameness and when did I let you? When did you push me into ice-cold arms and ice-cold smiles and expectant hands?

Is it because I can't tell you I break everything I touch? They shatter and wither and die in front of me, you know, and there's nothing I can do about it because I can't let go. Not ever. Because you can't just sink your claws into someone and wait for them to shove you off, not when everything hurts more on the way out than in. Not when I want your claws and your everything, to compress it with the depth of your voice and the heat of your naked skin and swallow it so it's mine. So I'm happy -- so what? There is no excuse for this.
    (--you wanted to be in love and he happened to get in the way or--)



The road to happiness is the most misleading thing, the cruelest kind of ideal because it makes you put up with so much shit, baby, all for the sake of happiness. Happiness, they all tell me, like it's some kind of state and not a thousand moments strung together, not the high you run and reach for in life, not little presents from life to you. As though it's just another goal, another thing on your to-do list as you sit there in a pinstripe suit and briefcase and affairs with a secretary.


You make me happy, whatever that means. For what it's worth.
(--a man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he's still left with the river or was it--)

But you're always angry, you keep trapping these tornadoes under your flesh and it's not good for you, baby, to keep her from all these disasters. Sometimes, two people fall in love and it's tragic, it is, but sometimes, two people don't love enough and that's even worse. You've got tornadoes for her, hurricanes, blizzards and a dry, dry desert but she's a city of angels and sky-high towers and I'm gasoline and messed up wind patterns and the sun. You blame me and I take it, because you make me happy and I grew up in Kansas and I'm still stupid enough to believe in yellow-brick roads and evil, redheaded witches and a happy ending.



We're a terrifying, dysfunctional tricycle and I would have it any other way than this. Please.


And we're standing on the edge of a cliff, and we've both got choices to make, baby. But not really, right? I'd move mountains and cross oceans for you, but you'd die for me (and that's the worst part, it is, it is; it's not romantic like in the fairytales, having someone's life in your palm like that).

I am standing on the edge of a cliff and you're by my side, lingering in the peripheries, lingering in the darkness, until I kiss you, isn't it? I kiss you, mouth open and warm, and slide my hands across your chest, your back, and it's supposed to fix everything, isn't it? A kiss is supposed to wake you up, isn't it?


Isn't it?
   (--love, too, will ruin us.)

snow angels

i'm drawin' little snow angels
on your frosty windows

you've got the A/C on high
and the radio's nothing but static

each raindrop thuds against my fingers
and my pulse, in venn

your misty exhalation brushes across my bare legs
little ghost kisses as you switch the dial from FM to off

i burrow into my cocoon of cotton and candy and cutting words
and flowers and elegance and dior flood the air

your lips, as red as my eyes, press thin to stop a litany of my name,
and a little golden shackle, glares at me.

burnt opals

liquid sapphire drips away into
a blood red ruby
bevelled burning opal
(dips and furrows darkened
by the opaque night)
sneaking down to meet
jagged jutting topaz
rays tumbling over each other
to press fleeting, shy kisses
burning opals
illuminated.

and liquid sapphire drips away
                                              away
                                                      away
                                                                                                  away
as blood red ruby
floods the sky.

lemonade

and it's just a glass of water

you're staring into

and you're the cup's

half-full

kind of girl

and the water tastes

a lot more bitter than it should

it's the corners of his smile

that reach out like chains

to wrap around your ankles

and p u l l you in

and you're drowning in it

drowning in your reflection

soaking up the reflected light through your pores

you drink it in

the condensing beads of self-hatred and loathing

running d

                o

                     w

                                                         n the side of your glass

and you're caught in this m    z    of thought

                         a    e 

itunes on repeat

                                     how did i miss this?

what's wrong with me?

                                                   what did i fuck up this time?

and maybe, maybe a part of you is asking

what did i do right?

what did i do so perfectly that it managed to push you to this?

[and maybe a part of you thinks

that this is all you'll ever deserve

-- it's not.]

a lone droplet

sends a thousand ripples across

the inertial waters

and it's stained your cheeks

and let's not kid ourselves, here.

you've never been

a

glass

half

full

kind of girl,

and maybe,

maybe

that's just fine.

for thedreamer

i love you, always, and be strong.

almost-burnt apple pie

1.
so, there was this car. it was a nice car. black. sleek. handsome headlights.
      the only reason i liked it was because the
      thought of you driving it gave me shivers like
                                                   i'm in a personalised winter.

2.
i think it was your eyes that i fell for first, but i won't tell anyone. if i was more poetic, i'd say shit like how your eyes had all the days i pretended to smile and all the nights i cried in them. but i'm not. to be honest, they kind of remind me of my ceiling back when i was ten, the one with the stick-on glow in the dark stars on them.
                      i f
                          e
                             l
                               l for your eyes first, and your soul second and yeah, i can be pretty poetic.

3.
last night i had a dream about our car. you know, the black one. we were lying on the hood and pulling cliches like looking up at the stars. and you let your hands take up the space between mine, like shuffling grains of sand, and i dreamt that you told me you didn't believe in wishes. that, if you wanted something, you'd go out to get it.

i woke up alone.
it wasn't a sad dream.
but i was miserable anyway.

4.
i wanted to tell you something. it was probably something important. but my tongue doubled and twisted like a cherry stem or a vine and squeezed the words to oblivion. oblivion keep those words, oblivion can put those words where all the lost people go, where car keys go when you need them, where your left sock goes after the washing machine. i can make new ones.

they weren't important, anyway.

5.
when you're angry, you smile like knives. i wear the pants in this and i like to say that i'm always the one to find you. i am. but you're always the one to find me. and i'm the only one who's lost. your smile cuts apples into bite sized pieces and i don't lament that we're not adam and eve.

when you're happy, you smile like the sun.
we could bake an apple pie life together, if you'd like.

6.
no one's ever made me cry more than you do. 'broke my heart' is too light but 'breaking me' seems too harsh. you make me want to save myself, 'cause you're sure as hell not doing jack, to put on my rusted armour and fight the lions and wyverns and tarantulas curled around the back of my mind, because i could actually be worth something to someone.

no one's ever made me cry more than you do.
it's weird, but i don't regret anything.

jumping in puddles

moonlight's stifled by the choking curtains,
and it's something like love, something like heartache,
that curls around my heart, curls around my thighs.

i think, if i could bottle up all the empty wishes i had for you,
the pacific would look like a puddle.

reflect. then deflect

i've got shards of glass and silver where my soul should be,
and whenever someone smiles, it's not really me they see.

you shield your smiles behind closed lips and closed eyes,

eyes are the windows to the soul

and your smiles are light



and i curl in to hide this emptiness.

glass cuts,

and it cuts deep.

mannequin

when i think back to my childhood,
there is a doll.
                      no wait, that's not right;
                      i was more a mimicry of humanity
                      than something so easily different

so, daddy carved me arms and legs and
a mind of diamonds and rosewood and
sugar, and big glassy doe eyes complete
with a set of curled eyelashes as i wrapped
men around my fingers like a chinese finger
trap or a set of rings, three sizes too small,
                      but he was never really happy with me,
                      not really because there was always something too plastic
                                                                                                glassy
                                                                                                transparent about me,

this isn't a case of the bitch biting the hand of its owner,
not when the maker calls his child a whore
but you made me, goddamnit

and these are the words i will never be able to tell you,
because my mouth has been sewn shut by my web of lies;

-

i'm an unfinished work of art,

but i'm still art, right?

-

weight on my shoulders

you're scary and you know it but we both gotta admit

i can be pretty fucking terrifying too.

i can see the gratefulness in your eyes as i bite the

insides of my cheeks raw and my overbitten nails

cut into my palm and my teeth grind into nothingness.

i hold back my words because you don't need to

see this part of me, not ever and you know it, and

you're just sitting there, harsh words falling on my skin

uncommittedunfocusedundisciplinedlazyunrefinedclumsystupidstupidstupid

like a new brand of morse-code bruises.

and, maybe, that's what hurts;

you expect too much from me,

sometimes.

block

i let you fill up the silences, whispered words and stuttered sighs,

until there's this e n d l e s s rushing in my ears,

so that maybe, i won't feel so alone,

so that maybe, my screams won't sound so

c h i l l i n g.

and i let you fill up the s.p.a.c.e.s between my words, each i and t

dotted and crossed with your eyes and smile in mind,

so that other memories don't se e  p where,

where i should've apostrophied your name,

to show you're mine.

and i let you fill up the sp.a.c.es. inside my soul, because i 

never knew emptiness could be so heavy and liquid

and viscous and it's better to have you there than that

d-r--o---w----ning me in endless misery. but there's these things lying

[                   in wait between my thoughts and memories and they're                  ]

murky and malicious and malevolent and they look

and awful lot like

em|me. 

but sometimes, there's nothing left to fill, because everything,

everything is you and it scares me because there's nothing

but you where something used to be. and it scares me because

then, then i have to talk about myself instead, a broken sob and

endless crying and i have to write about myself instead, in brackets

as an afterthought or even a post-script (p.s.don'tlookoverme) and i

have to face the fact that i'm so broken i don't think even my

mother loves me.

shall i compare thee to a summer's night?

(for the earthgoddess. i love you and keep strong.)

this is easy, you think, and purse your lips.
pillows are deppilf to the cool side as you press your feverish skin,
and you're sure you can't sleep tonight.

it doesn't take much to forget, you reckon, as red strands caress your cheek.
push them away and huff some more, soles (souls) of your feet pad-padding against linoleum ground,
his voice and hands follow achingly in your steps, thick molasses stretching out along your shadows.

you still kind of love him, you admit, and drink freezing, condensing water,
it's not that which drips steadily onto the table in front of you and each droplet shows you a thousand moons;
the stars are dead, long before you see them.

oh, these worthless words

i sing for you,
for you,
and you're always asleep.

i speak for you,
for you,
and you never hear me.

i look for you,
for you,
and you're never here.

i love only you,
only you,
and you'll never even


fucking know.

breaking point

you're the sun,

warm and comfortable on my back,

burnt, black skin peels away in face of your radiance.

you heal as you tear to shreds,

e v e r y piece of me,

i'm being stretched beyond my limits,

don't ever please 

stop.

( i don't need you & please don't leave me

there's more to my life than you & you're everything

your happiness is mine & why do you love her and not me? )

divine retribution

seraph blades,
slice at your heart;

hope hurts.

iris

green eyes,

like apples,

sweet

no, you say

green eyes,

like ivy,

poison

sorry, you say

green eyes,

like glass,

broken

growing up and moving on

your poison seeps through each cell of my skin and mutates me into a ball of suspicions and fear and jealousy. each of your words play over and over in my mind and all i can think is why am i not good enough for anyone ever. i'm so tired of keeping everyone else's pain and misery in mind. i'm so tired of looking after you and watching your back only to have myself stomped to vicious pieces just because you felt like it. i'm tired of being shattered by people that i actually care about. i have a heart too. i get hurt too. i cry too.

grow up and take responsibility for your actions; it's not like i haven't told you what the fuck the problem is.

and that's when it hits me.

i am good enough; i've always been good enough. it's you who's lacking, it's you that's the problem.

if you want to leave, just fucking leave already.

(stop putting on fake tears and smiles and love yous.

you're tainting the word love, and making me taint it too 

[love you, love you, fuck you, fuck you.]

and that's not fair to everyone else i really, really love.)

i won't stop you.

and i won't cry for you.

ever

ever

again.

[the circle is finally broken.]