You have very sad eyes,

Remind me of my own

Hands soft but worn out

Would look good around my throat,

Like coming back home;

Today I am a shy brunette;

Golden locks in memory of a childhood

Where my pride would hang loose around

My waist;

We never talk about it though as
I drink beside you stale white wine,

Gloss staining the brim of my almost full glass,
I ask about your job but never about 

The golden ring around your finger 

As we eat cherries by the sea outside your car,
You start to tell me about your past
And I pretend to listen


I sleep with you but I
Never call you back





Today I am a cheeky red head;

Laughter like fireworks and eyes like that girl
You like to see naked online,

I expect you to pay for dinner as I show up
In a dress made of silk, you think I am a lady

I think you are a joke

Laugh at all your mundane jokes in hopes I
Make you think I am naïve and dumb

You tell me you want a wife

I tell you I want a life

Today I am an innocent blonde, 

The smell of rosemary on my 

Pink summer clothes, 

We make eye contact as I 

Sip my oatmeal latte from across

The café, 

You give me money only when 

I behave like a good little girl,

My mother always taught me from

A young little girl

That table manners are important, 

So I use the right fork to cut my steak

And you give me more money

Just for being quiet and hidden

When your wife comes home

For lunch break 

Today I am a sly girl with black hair;

Eyes darker than your past,

Mouth like sirens roaring through the night;

I never take off all my clothes at once 

And you never talk about me to your dad;

We catch sunsets every weekend in hopes

You can talk to me with your hands

In the backseat of your busted car,

I make sure to never ask you about your scars

Every time you put your shirt back on

Your palms give me a migraine 

I walk home

Every time

Today I am a skinhead,

A girl only from the waist

Down, but it doesn't matter 

Since you barely see my head

When we have sex in the dark;

You like to spice up your life

And I like cutting my hair when

I feel most suicidal, but lucky for us

My hair grows back faster and faster

Each month,

You tell all your friends about me

For all the wrong reasons, but you like

To turn on all the lights when I try a 

New wig on, and you tell all your friends

That you sleep with a different girl

Every night 

You always said you wanted to see

Other people, one of your biggest dreams

Was a threesome, so every night we fuck 

Me, you and my depression

You said you liked your girls mysterious, 

Layers like an onion, showing too much

But saying too little,

You loved me a little bit harder

With my hair dolled up and mouth 

Sewn shut from all the gloss

I met your mother as a brunette, and your

Father as a blonde, your friends know

All 7 sides of me, one for every

Day of the week, on Wednesdays I wear pink

And Thursdays I wear my long hair enough

To cover up my tear stained cheeks

but you only see me

The way you want to see me, 

Lights on when I wear

Your favorite hair 

Lights off when 

I remind you

Too much

Of the real

Me

 I cling to everything-

A chipped coffee mug with stains

Too stubborn to wash off. She'd only drink out of that one.

Cheap rings that turn my poor

Fingers green;

A worn-out necklace I found in her bedroom

The day my heart spoke louder than my mouth.

A recipe for Carrot cake she said she'd make one day.

I was never a lover of carrot cake,

But I did love her.

A shitty portrait of me I drew when I was twelve;

I never had the courage to take it off her wall.

A time vessel one would be silly to disturb,

In case it made it all seem a little

Too real.

Soiled birthday cards hidden at the bottom of my drawers,

Love you booboo, your grandmother x barely visible 

From all the tear stained fingertips that held onto it

On nights where the world seemed too small

And my grief too large

A wine-stained notepad discarded under my bed

That held all the secrets to my wounds.

The first, and last, scissors I ever cut my hair with.

My hair, how she loved it,

Is something I cling to the most.

Month after month,

I sit in silent agony

As my hair rips through my scalp, ever so slowly,

To give birth to long golden locks

She would have had half the mind to stay alive

To witness.

That is the only remembrance

I know how to give her

After she chose to jump
out of her window

As If to fly straight 
into the mouth of the reaper.

 

Old letters from friends, a toy dinosaur my first cat loved to play with,

CDs with love songs that play on loop, my mothers childhood blanket,

A discolored photograph from her wedding a lifetime ago.

As I sit, boring holes into that picture with my worn-out eyes,

I wonder if she knows

How painful it is

Growing the same hair out of my scalp

That she once wore.

 

Was it as painful

As the sharp concrete

That kissed her sunken cheek

In reunion?

I cling to the answer

I'll never know.

I've entered the new year 

The same way

I've entered this life,

Crying and full of blood

That isn't my own. 

 It is January and I keep rocking my head in-between my knees 
Until I feel car sick. The flowers are still sleeping and I wish I could, too.

I chain smoke cheap cigarettes until my hair smells less like you leaving home,

And more like you picking up the phone.

I call you on my fifth glass of wine, and block your number on my sixth.

On my seventh, I take foggy pictures of every sunset dipping behind the trees of our favorite park;

The only measure of time I know how to document

Your absence. 

As if to make it more real.

As if I don't chew gum until my teeth hurt.

As if I am not loud enough in my aching, no one can look.

It is January and I cherry pick my tinder dates until they all morph into an image of your face;

Cry to my friends until they 

All have somewhere to be.

Lock myself in an empty apartment

Until someone comes looking.

Wear my shoes on the wrong feet

Until I walk around town feeling

Like a different person.

The city holds shadows I am not ready to admit exist,

Not yet ready to admit I need to leave.

Wear lipstick a few shades too dark to find my stained cup easier at the bar,

Laugh with strangers like they hold all the answers to my wounds.

Bleed on all the people I try to flirt with, save phone numbers I'll never call. 

I don't know how.

It is January and I still don't know how

You can drink five glasses of wine,

And not think about me

The way I think about you 

Vicious my attempts

To birth words from my fingertips

As if to mold clay from the ashes;

An exhale never deemed 

So tiresome

An inhale, so void

My hands, so barren 

With the promise of 

Expression;

Winter sweeps my bedroom floors

With a light feather,

Giggling at my feet, 

As if to silently bring despair 
And make a home to sit,

The winds rock me as I sleep

I dream of a house built from sorrow;

Etched into the granite of a childhood,

An echo of the past stained on a coffee mug

Copper is the song of the memory

That leaches onto me like a child

To a breast;

Like amber sap on a tree;

I tarnish the thought of you

With every passing week

Downing unforgiving spirits 

To erase the album of your smile

Flickering picture through picture

They all blend into one;

Only to be repainted with the light

Of the morning sun

Time is an unforgiving healer

My hands, they tremble 

Under such weight

 Grief is just love,

With nowhere to go

And I've nowhere to go but here,

And here is a wolf with a giant mouth

And here devours my lust for life

For life is but me fighting to repair

What it has broken mercilessly;

For here sinks its teeth into my neck

And has me begging for exile to a place

I do not know if exists, but against all odds,

I cling to hope like a child to a breast

And if I let go, I let life win her savage game

Making out
With seclusion
In the backseat
Of your car
Never felt so hot,
When it sticks
Its lonesome
Tongue
Down my
Throat,
I orgasm tears
Into the
Night,
In the back
Of your car;

I give birth to 

What never was

But could have been

Said I'll be ready in 5',

I'll be the one by the door

That smells like jasmine

And your next heartbreak,

I'll be the one that shines

The dimmest

With the smile you like;

A bit too crooked

The eyes you love

A bit too lucid,

I'll be the one by the door,

With sad lips to match your own,

Palms heavy with grandiose promises

And no place to call my home

I'll be the broken street light 

At the end of your road,

Blinking in and out of existence 

My love for such hollowed bones

I'll be the one you sing for

But too afraid to speak,

I'll be how the distance tricked us,

Stuck its fingers down our throat 

And how the past is born 

With each breath I take

Between your own

I'll be the tears that stain your cheeks 

When all has gone to meet

The pit

I'll be the spit to run down

Another girls lip

I'll be the one you want 

But too afraid to seek;

I'll be the love in retreat,

Long coat dragging on the floor

To hide my weak 

I'll be the one,

I'll be the one by the door,

 As soft as the fading light of the evening 

Plays chess Against my windowsill,

How the shadows cast the shape of you

Across my room like a hologram of my dreams;

Such a foul mimicry on a Monday morning,

I awake with a familiar tremor on my lips,

The parody of an earthquake;

As if I'd grown roots overnight, my bed a graveyard 

My body a corpse 

The memory of you as heavy as the tombstone that

Nestles in-between my hollowed crown;

A heartless projector it seems; playing on broken repeat

my leg swiftly leaning over my bedframe and being met

With solid ground instead of

A thick dense air,

The light, 

How I sadly marveled at the way it softly

Caressed your picture on my wall as if 

To cradle a baby,

How jealous I had been of it;

If only I hadn't been 

Haunting my own apartment

I would have had the strength

To cradle you, too

The transparent hands
Of time, swing me
Softly from side to side like a rocking ship

Caught against the current of my grief;
From past to future,
From here to there;

But never now,

I only move backwards

Through time;

Only relay the forgotten

Like the now;

Only live through the memories

Of the gone;

Only beat to the rhythm 

Of the dead,

A broken hourglass

Staining your palms

With sand;

The now and the would

Have been,

The should have been;

The never

Will be,

The never 

Will be,

 Drown out hunger with stale red wine on a Monday night;

Time has no meaning when all meaning was buried with her

On that day no one had the courage to talk about, but alas,

Here I am, singing and reciting her obituary like

My bones were modeled from such disaster;

Like the pain made a throne for hope to sit,

Like I did not search for her spark in every elderly persons eyes

I've ever came across;

Like looking for a needle amidst a hay stack,

Like searching for someone who had mirror eyes

To reflect back my own gaping hole of resistance;

A refusal so strong it broke my bones at every dusk

And rose to mend them at every dawn,

I sing for every inch of sorrow she felt

Moments before her head met stone 

In a silent agreement of the end

I look for her in every mother, in every sad story I've ever heard,

In every bottom of a bottle; In every faint smile from a strangers lips

I look for her in every sunrise, And every time the sun sets

Reminds me of another day recklessly spent

Searching for someone I will never

See again

 / It's okay that you don't answer your phone for days/ Your ringtone is his favorite song and your father sends angry texts and you wish he'd call instead so you could hear the song play until the very end/ It's okay to fall in love with men who have long hair/ their patience to grow out their locks means they have enough patience in their bones to deal with whatever storm you have brewing under your sickly sweet smile/ It's okay to leave the light in your room shut for days/ The sun always shone much brighter outside despite your mind being a lightbulb full of slideshows from that wretched day, long time ago/ How her purple curtains swayed gently in the breeze; a final breath of forgiveness you'd turn every stone to find, but yet a small part of your heart still calls out for a phantom of a mother that had to depart a moment too early/ It's okay to write too much about it, and drink too much about it, and cry too much about it at work while the boy across the street relays stories about your sunken eyes and how they remind him of two gaping holes where all the hurt comes to the surface to meet the light of day/ It's okay to only see the world through pain/ We seek the life we were brought up into/ It's okay to catch the plane you were so scared of and leave behind everything you've ever fought to keep/ Hide away into the snow and make the cold tremors your friend/ Discard close relatives like shirts and change your hair again/ Anyone who has ever stayed will understand, even with heavy hearts/ It's okay to scream into the night with a coarse voice, blame God for the unforgivable ache in your chest that sits like a rock amidst your vocal cords/ It's okay to spit gravel into the mouths you've ever kissed and call it love, anyone who stays surely has a death wish/ Anyone who stays surely will leave as hot coals burn under their feet; they will make you feel as if loving you was a sordid mistake, as if your heart burned with so much smoke and hurt; a church on fire, hands dripping with gasoline while you point fingers at others for the making of your own calamity/ It's okay to listen to the same songs on repeat; matching the sorrowful repetition of your heartbeat on days where the light stays shut and your mouth is sealed with all the promises you tried to keep but failed/ It's okay to be the first one to depart/ You've been training your whole life for this/ Shout withdrawal into the night and dissipate like the sweat off your back on that hot summers day you tried to warn him of your ghost like hands and how they melt into his palms like warm wax/ It's okay to stick like tar onto his skin; a constant black reminder on how you never let yourself fall in love with a fictitious tale/ It's okay to be a warning, a bitter lesson no one has the courage to live by/ It's okay to buy wine late at night with makeup running down your face/ Show them all what they are so afraid of feeling; life moves like a strong current against the mellow of your heart and sweeps everything in its path/ It's okay when you don't answer your phone for days/ It's okay if  you shower too often or not at all/ Some days you keep him on your skin and others you tare down the walls of hope apart and rebuild an empire out of every missed call he's ever had the courage to leave/ Ever had the courage to call/ It's okay to have his favorite song as your ringtone/ When your messages are dry, and his bed is stained with another girls love; at least 

You still have his favorite song

As your ringtone

At least he still lives on,

One way,

Or another