today, i believe in rhinos and penumbras.

i saw this boy standing next to me who wasn't beautiful until he smiled. he had crooked molars and the incisors of a cheetah. he had the hands of a pianist and the heart of a lion and the feet of a green giant. i never did see his elbows, but i knew they were just like mine.

(we haven't met, but i'm your sister. we have the same eyes and our hearts beat at the same time and our fingernails grow at the same rate. at one point we might have felt the same way at the same time, like two fish swimming against the same current. do you know why fish never float to the top of the ocean? the pressure coming at them from all sides keeps them eternally submerged. i would like to call myself a fish and spend the rest of my life chasing worms at the ends of dangerous hooks and swallowing rocks and sinking like the Titanic, but the gods have deemed me human and who am I to defy them?)

human beings are the only animals who blush, laugh, love, have religion, kiss with their lips and wage wars. the more we kiss, the more human we are. and the more we wage war. i’ve lived through too many wars. most of them took place in my living room or in parking lots or in shopping centers - the ones with the clothing racks you could always hide behind. these were the war zones where too many bullets were shot, too many bombs were launched, too many words were thrown like daggers into people's chests. too many ears torn off, too many limbs amputated, too many hearts mangled and bruised by the hands of their brothers. too many things to carry, like the wounds that no one ever sees or the guns strapped to our hips like extra bones.

i woke up from the most perfect dream where i floated on top of the universe, swimming in that strange blend of darkness and lightness. your hand was my hand and our eyes were no longer ours because they belonged to something we couldn’t understand, like listening to a voice that speaks with sounds we’ve never heard of, like digging our own graves.

i took the whole world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question. i didn’t know what the question was or if there was even an answer.

i built a city and called it Cologne. i built another city and called it Perfume – a fancier name for Cologne. i have returned from Perfume, that place where i found exactly what i wasn’t looking for, so let’s do it over and give it another name, another empty room, another window painted shut, another endless hallway, another kitchen painted twenty times over, another bowl of oatmeal.

if everyone decided to play Hamlet at the same time, they couldn’t; there aren’t enough skulls in the ground left for us to talk to, but there are enough matches in a liquor store to set the whole world on fire.

i’ll leave the light on.

(our story begins on a Sunday afternoon, just between a fallen tree and a German town; a young man, not yet the pompous boy-king he is today, is lying on the grass and taking in the sweet smell of summer. it is at this precise moment that God smiles on him.)

when you were a kid, did your mother ever used to spray perfume in the air and walk through it? it was done with grace. wistful, elegant – she was the still point of the turning world. you’re like that. the smell of you will always fade, but I can still feel you on my skin.

it’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? all of that just lying there under the surface… whole towns and cities buried under years of waste and pounds of Earth’s anger and decay. whole lives consumed by the selfish lust of the sea and human beings – lost, forever.

he was beautiful. he was beautiful in the way that a forest fire was beautiful. tragic and unforgivable – to be admired from afar. and to think, it all started with a frenectomy and a stare.

the only difference between somersaults and summersalts is an asymptote. a little sodium won’t hurt. your tongue might swell, but you can still talk with your hands. the snowball effect of a somersault is infinite. it doesn’t really matter how far we fall – we just have to build our own wings and leave the ground alone.

this is the end of an addiction. no more insomnia, no more shortcuts, no more bottled water. no more boys with brown hair. I think I will simply round the remaining decimal points – those silly little numbers that serve no purpose and have no place. they are the crash-test dummies of an algorithmic universe. this whole life is made up of a million head-on collisions, only we don’t have airbags. we have blankets of space and time.

see spot. see spot run. see spot leave with sadness on his lips. see spot on carpet – be careful not to spill any vodka on spot, or else it will stain. see spot that reminds you of him and the (im)possibility of a love as great as a black hole. see bottle that erases your pain like magic.

one day, the Sun will explode. then it will shrink into itself and take us all with Her.
this too, will erupt and fade like a gun with too much powder.
ready, aim –
fire.

(fold my origami bones into swans or flowers. there is no other way to make me feel real.)

she ordered breakfast for me today. eggs sunny-side up with a side of hate. 
personally, i'd rather have a bowl of Fruit Loops or Cap'n Crunch - something sweet. 

i'd like to think of things in a sunny-side up kind of way, but life is just too damn fragile.
the yolks and shells will always break and everything will end up scrambled.

i have some too-burnt slices of toast, soggy-hashbrowns drowned in blood red ketchup, stale coffee and pulpy orange juice to get me through the day; each is damaged. ruined. i guess in that way, we are what we eat. 
i have torn paper napkins and utensils rotten with old water stains and smudged fingerprints; i am killing trees and living at someone else's expense - someone with calloused hands and a giant heart and sad eyes who i might meet some day in church.
i can shake his hand and say peace, but i can never know him. 
i hope he can look in my eyes and neglect that my face is falling off; he can ignore what lies beneath, however loathsome or disturbing, and see that i, too have a soul. 

          you are closer to me than my own skin,
          and that is why i treat you like dirt. 

the sounds are exactly
like the day: dull and lifeless;
warm, but overcast.

you cut your hair about once every 2 months. you always tell me your mom drags you to the barbershop so you won’t look homeless. your barber cuts off inches of your flaws - your guilt, your lies, your sin: the things you don’t want us to see. you come back a cleaner version of yourself every time, and it takes me a while to recognize you with your new smile, but I can still see beneath it all. you are as tainted as you were yesterday.

(words are a heavy thing. if birds could speak, they wouldn’t fly. each inflection would weigh them down – each hiss and every sigh would have been a bullet shot straight through their tissue-paper hearts.)

I look at myself in the mirror every day. I notice the changes. I see the scars – both real and imaginary. as of late, it has become more difficult to distinguish one form of pain from another, but I am no prophet. I can only see the shadows of ghosts.

(this business of pain: it gets under your skin. it's like a virus - you can't see it on your face, but you can smell it like strong cologne or cheap lipstick on your husband’s collar.)

I had a dream the other night. it wasn’t worth remembering; one of us died. I did what I could, but it still wasn’t enough. you mourned my death and visited my grave every day with my favorite flowers – white lilies. you went to our favorite coffee house and sat in the corner by yourself with a solemn look of sadness on your face that could not be removed by another woman’s love or by time. I woke up without you again and drank stale coffee again, but things were not the same.

the heart’s a lonely hunter.
it lives for one thing only:
the love in your soul.

(beware of enthusiasm and of love - both are temporary and quick to sway, fierce and unpredictable like the weather on a winter day in California.)

you will have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies if you want me to stay.

when we grow up, we stop wanting stupid material things and we start wanting things that matter.
good mothers and fathers, letters, friends, a kind smile with nothing hidden behind it.
no lies, no masks. just truth, without all the bullshit.

you will always be my joshua tree. isolated, cold, barren. i want to wrap my arms around you and listen to you speak
in the middle of the night where the demons hide beneath your skin. i wish i could blame it on my absence or my
nature of avoidance or my silence, but this time, i think i will just blame you.

sometimes, i want to withdraw from humanity and live in a cave where the only things i can own are my bones and
my heart and my feet, broken in like boots worn down all the way to the soul. the stars will be my only companions: they will
wink and smile, but they won't say a word.

i am your neighbor, and there is nothing more to say than that. your house is empty and your door is always closed.
i am just a new liar who left my cigarette butts on your driveway and let someone piss on your doormat. i used to stay
up late and listen to your band play crappy covers of rock music, but you are gone now, and i weep for the lost opportunity i may have had
to know you. i want us to start a new blank page of friendship. i will come to your door with cookies and you will invite me in
and everything that doesn't matter will just trickle into that pond we call life.

i am going to leave the first chance i get.

i don't want to play around with words.
i just want to lay with you and dream about the things i don't have words for - things like 
swimming pools full of love in the form of jello and naked bodies or
the way the sky looks when the clouds are green and the sun is purple or
the sound of a broken bone, a clean snap, a perfect fracture, hairpins and spirals and ligaments - all of it - 
because sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants,
and the brain can do nothing but sit still in some kind of anatomical purgatory until that other greedy 
organ decides it has had its fill foraweek or foramonth or forever.

and the thing is, i don't want you to love me. 
i don't want you to hold me when you would rather not. i don't want you to lie to me when you tell me
that our hearts beat for a reason. i don't want you to walk around like a ghost for the rest of your life
wishing that you'd done something different or loved someone else, because  
once upon a time i fell in love with a tall awkward boy with dark hair and bony fingers
and he didn't love me back. from that moment on, i began to hate the idea of 
love, and maybe that makes me a bad person, but i'd rather be appreciated for my flaws i guess.

i can only say goodbye to each new day and hope for a better past,
one that consists of an infancy filled with love from the right (and often unexpected) people -
one where my grandparents were alive and showered me with silly gifts like cardboard trains and pillow guitars.
now, they are kept inside hollow wooden boxes and their memories will never breathe the scent of life again.
i will hope for a childhood that could never be lonely, that could always be lifted with a tender smile or a kind touch or
a gentle push on a rusted swing that creaked and moaned as if it were in constant pain.
i will hope for a present that does not allow me to wander through life like like a boat without a rudder or a map without a compass.
i don't know where i'm going, but i know where i've been, and i have no desire to go back.

stop trying to worm your way through my head to get back into my heart.
you do not belong there. you belong in a library, where i can put you on the highest shelf
and watch as your pages grow yellow - a place where i can never open you up or look inside you. 
i think i'll just burn you to cinders, though we both know the ashes will never really fade. 

would you erase me if you could? you told me you wouldn't.
i don't think i'm that noble. i want my mind to be spotless. 

seeing you makes me feel sick, and 
writing about you makes me wish for a reality that only exists in poems,
but  
there's nothing left to save. 



 

Satan is just as real as you or me,
and the entire human history of sin and desire takes about seventy minutes to tell,
but we don't have that kind of time.
Just sit next to me, hold me, love me -
even though we both know that this is not the right kind of love. This is not Casablanca love,
or The Notebook love, or Paris Je T'aime love.

This is Abandonment love. This is Desperation love. This is the kind of love that
kills.

I know you've died before - just once, though. Once when you tore your heart out and
pinned it to your sleeve for everyone else to see, only the rest of the world was
blind. 
Is that all?                
                                                                                                                    No, there's more.

I feel like a coffeepot; I am hot to the touch. I don't know what to do
with my hands. You feel like a 
hacksaw,
ready to cut off my defunct parts and feed them to the reservoir dogs. They are always
hungry
for rotten meat, or, more commonly, for leftover slivers of damaged souls.

The cow jumped over the moon, but landed in the dirt. Ker-plunk. Ca-pow. 
He makes a noise. Heart-beats make a noise. Pain makes a noise. We pound our fists 
to the ground and it makes a noise. Was there anyone listening? Or did they cut off
their ears, like Van Gogh?
You were always a Picasso; your scribbles and lines made the world seem more beautiful
than it really was.
I guess I was more of a Plath, wielding words like weapons and brandishing ideas like knives,
but I never did stick my head in the oven. I'd rather watch the rest of the world (the world meaning you)
burn. 

Imagine this: the sky is falling like a crystal chandelier to the marbled earth and we are underneath it.
But where is the emergency exit? Where is the fire alarm?
There is no trap door. What happens next? You tell me. Do we evaporate into thin air? Do we become
ghosts? 
Or are we already, have we always been, the living
dead? 

They want me to love the whole world but I won't; I want it all narrowed down to
one 
fleshy being who can pull my heartstrings just right. I'm selfish, but
it doesn't matter. We are a greedy brand of humanity.
Pay up or shut up. Hand it over or take the bullet.
We still don't get what we want. 

(There are two boys, here. One wants to stitch you together, the other wants to tear you apart.
And the thing is, you don't care who does what. The what is more important than the who this time.
So what's it going to be?
I'll take the knife, you say. Split me open, you say. So he does. And he likes it. 
The other one watches and cries. You wanted to love him, you did, but the knife got in the way and now your blood is
everywhere
and he doesn't have a mop.)

You know how songs work, right? Verse. Chorus. Another verse. An occasional 
bridge
that no one ever crosses. Predictable. Sterile.
The world (the world meaning you) is like that. The world is no longer mysterious.
I can read the world like a fucking book, and I read the ending before I even started the prologue,
and it ends like this: 

There's a bang. A boom. And no one gets out
alive. 

1. The Death Penalty

the past stepped on my dreams today. i stood and watched, empty handed, with a heart as open as the sky, and i couldn't save them - i didn't have a lifeboat or a bullet-proof vest or a rabbit-proof fence to save them. does that make me a murderer?

2. Global Warming

i am sick of your bullshit. stop hiding behind your ivory tower of illusory pain. i want to know the truth. if the truth is what sounds right, and beauty is what looks right, what is really "right"? there is this nagging voice in my head telling me "beware of symmetry. beware of light, because it blinds you. stay in the dark - it's safe here. your eyes will get used to it, i promise." should i listen to the light bulbs, or the shadows? the sun is an ugly, garish thing, and so is the moon; one is a dangerous headlight, and the other is a treacherous pot hole, but the two of them make something beautiful, don't they?

3. President Obama

what happened to you? i need to see you bleed. i need to see your heart shatter, because this is the only way i will know it exists. i need to know that it isn't made of stone. i need to know that every man is made of flesh and blood; that every man can be torn apart and ripped to shreds, like a sheet of paper. we are like paper, you know. maybe we aren't even humans - maybe we're paper mache dolls. what happens when we are covered in other people's words? what happens when someone glues our eyes shut with the sunday morning news? what happens when we get recycled? 

4. The Separation of Church and State

their faces were bright. they had my facial structure. they had my teeth, my eyes, my ears. i could see him in each one of them, and that scared me, because i didn't know they were real. for God's sake, they were trapped inside a decayed photo album that smelled like mildew and 1960's suburbia in a bubble wrapped package in a closet. i wondered whether or not he tried to suffocate his past, like he did the last time, but i couldn't forget them. they were like sores on the roof of my mouth that would not heal. 

5. Space Exploration

i want the past to breathe. i want to take it out for a walk and give it some fresh air. i want to take a trip and revisit memories that don't belong to me, but we all know that getting what one wants is about as likely as an angel falling out of the sky. lucipher has not been seen in over 2,000 years, and i think it would be nice to have a chat with him and ask him how it feels to be rejected by the one you need the most. i think he'd understand, and i think he'd be a good listener, too.      

          6. Indentured Servitude

          listen - there are times when life calls out for a change. there are times when spring comes too late, and times
          when winter comes too early. there are times when you want to scream for a reason, and times when you
          want to scream for no reason at all, but when you scream, you feel alive. you feel like you know you exist in a
          world full of murmurs and silence and unspoken truths. a feeling comes over you, and it's like remembering
          something you've never known before, or have always been waiting for, but all of a sudden, you feel it...
          just because you feel something
                                     doesn't mean it's real. 

7. Is there a Heaven? 

you and i both know that our souls are beyond saving,
so let's stop playing God. let's stop pretending. 
spill the truth, even if it sounds wrong. 
                                                                       it will never be wiped clean. 

a true friend stabs in the front, so why is my back covered in scar-tissue and nearly-forgotten wounds? why do i suffer from post-traumatic-stress syndrome of the soul? 

you are a shitty 2 am infomercial – “buy me, use me up, i’ll be good for you, i promise.” you forgot to add “results not typical” and “may cause diseases of the heart” to the cardboard advertisements plastered to your counterfeit smile. speak the truth with lies on your tongue - i'll listen. 

i am a degenerate consumer, throwing love and trust away like confetti, allowing my soul to be crushed and torn by grimy potters’ hands, molded and sculpted into a person who does not exist with accordion arms and cotton eyes. press the right button and i will sing for you – pull the wrong cord and i will rip you to shreds. 

throw me away like you would a splintered flip cup. i know i am not biodegradable or easily decomposed, but maybe, under the peaceful ground, i will become something important, worthy, charming – something you can put on your shelf and admire for its simple beauty. dig me up and give me a new name. 

someone told me once that faith does not ever confess its flaws – it is weak and transparent with shaky foundations and poor upholstery, but we make a home there, shivering under newspaper quilts; we hope that one day, God will build a roof over our heads, protect us from the cruel sky, take us under His wing, give us a reason to live. 

i will never be good at math. i don’t know how to use watercolors. i can’t paint sunsets or oceans with sidewalk chalk. i don’t know how to look anyone in the eye; i fear they can see into me, and behind my bones, there is nowhere left to hide. 

i only know how to string words along like cans, stick them together like incompatible magnets, and hope they will turn out right. 

i.

i would apologize, but the i'msorry's and the idon'thateyou's would be engulfed in the silence – dust in a vacuum, sealed, shipped off to a foreign country without a name, buried under years of poverty and chaos and radioactive soil. i could’ve sworn i saw your heart once – it was atom-sized, a particle, a molecule, invisible to the naked eye; God gave me a microscope when i was fifteen. i saw right through your blemished transparencies, right through your tissue-paper skin – i knew you were afraid under your tattered armor. you can hold my hand like you used to – i promise i won’t mutter under voodoo breaths. 

i won’t cross my fingers.

ii.

“i am not an abuser of dreams,” you cried…and the valium swept through your insides like minute men…and the last human bits of your soul were eaten by parasites…and the grass was not greener on the other side…and you are no longer a person, but a feeble soap bubble – it is only a matter of time before the world’s obtuse desk corners will disfigure you. 

please do not pick my bones dry.

iii.

i am a butterfly without wings, a clock without hands, a wide flume, a hollow statuette, a mason of memories and grotesque pottery. there is something noble in the novelty of fragments, halves, missing parts – pick up the pieces, bury them underground…God knows they will claw themselves out of their shallow graves with broken nails and torn flesh. 

i am not a paper doll, but you still fold me like one.

iv.

love is a skinny mean man, a damn tramp – selfish, one step forward, five steps back, an atomic bomb, a tumor…it will break me someday, and i will crack like ice in boiling water and disappear and the door will lock and the sun will not smile as it sinks like a ship, as night swallows it whole. the camera will flash – 

promise me you’ll blink.

v.

i’ve always been a runner-up, a hand-me-down, an honorable-mention, a close-but-not-quite. i dropped the baton, i never grew into your ancient apparel, they spelled my name wrong on the award for mediocre talent, the ribbon at the finish line was already torn…so i stopped running. don’t tell me to keep going. don’t tell me i’m beautiful. don’t tell me you love me. 

don’t.

vi.

there was barbed wire in your skin, fire in your lips, venom in your teeth, sin on your tongue. satan spoke through you with words as sharp as knives – slice me open, take a look at my insides. can’t you see they’re rotten? can’t you see the wormlike words eating my library heart? can’t you see the ink pulsing through my varicose veins? i will become a typewriter, made of scrap metal and faded keys. you will put me to good use after i become a mindless machine, 

won’t you?

vii.

say you’ll prove me right. say there’s still sand in the hourglass, light at the end of the tunnel, love in your blood. just 

say it.

(i’ll tell you everything about being free.)

somewhere there is a cathedral filled with people in black coats, with polished heels and ripped nylons, mourning, ages ranging from three to ninety-two. somewhere there is a body in a casket, buried six feet under, with cold flesh, with teeth still in tact, with a doll-face and a still heart. somewhere there is a mother without a son, a car without wheels, a system without nerves. somewhere there is a man dying of tuberculosis, of stage four pancreatic cancer, of a contracted disease of the spirit. you don’t know who he is, but you love him because you know how it feels to tread water while people pull you under with pruned hands. 

(i put my faith in a man without a name or a face.)

someday you will be loved by a vowel, an eight-hundred page novel, a beautiful boy, a magic lamp. someday you’ll have something to pour yourself into – a mason jar, an empty swimming pool, a frying pan, a human soul. someday you will be five inches taller – you’ll be able to reach the top shelf of your kitchen cabinet without having to stand on your calloused toes, on your father’s back, on her dead body. someday they will tell you they love you and mean it – you will not see doubt in their chapped hands or swollen lips.

(it started with a municipal bus.)

eventually you will be able to see his name without wondering where you made a wrong turn. you will be able to look at him without analyzing every last detail of the could-have-dones and should-have-beens down to your frayed cuticles. you will be able to hold his hand during the “Our Father” without beating your head against a cement block – forgetforgetforget. eventually your grandmother will remember your name – she will make your favorite meal, a frozen tv dinner, wrapped in cellophane and disapproval. you will sit at the dining room table and transport yourself back to a time when God was real, when your mother was beautiful, when your eyes were blue and your heart was made of gold.

(i’ll use your body like a ladder.)

one day, you will remember what it feels like to pray with a broken rosary, to sit in mildewed chapels with aged bodies who can’t remember today’s date or the year they were born. you will remember how to ride your bicycle around the park while your grandfather stays home and makes your favorite soup – chicken noodle with a dab of milk, a pinch of salt, a hint of love. you will remember that you once fell for a boy named Justin who lived next door. you haven’t seen him in fourteen years, but you still remember that his hair was brown and his hands were clammy and his bones were made of porcelain and iron. he was a gallant little gentleman. 

(i’d rather keep the bullet.)

can you see it now? it’s clear, it’s right in front of you – it’s a twenty-ton semi coming straight at your feet, eighty-nine miles per hour, a man high in the driver’s seat, a six-pack warming in the back with a tattered book and a hollow gun. can you feel it now? it’s a name he says behind your back, sour and discreet, unremarkable and rancid – curdled milk in the grocery store, on the shelf, in the shopping cart, in the trunk of his car, in your ceramic bowl full of bananas and Wheaties…eat up, honey, eat the breakfast of champions, eat his words like poison laced with ecstasy and hallelujahs.

(i’ve read the back of the book, i know what’s going to happen.)

here is the beginning, here is the box, here is the heart you put in the box. here is the bed, here is the muffled pillow, here are the wrinkled sheets and forgotten pajamas. this is the place you made, the place where the monsters are always hungry and they’re always three steps behind and the cake is never eaten. here you are, leaving murky clues. here you are while Jerusalem burns. here you are, mirrors set, key in the ignition – the light is orange – pump the gas, speed up, fasten your heart. the wheels are singing for blood, humming the tune, whistling the funeral hymn. here is the in-between, the space between the lines, the part where you confuse her hands with deadly anchors. 

      step aside,          
                leave room for error.

                           run.

 i.

once upon a time, i knew who i was.

ii.

i remember when i connected my heart to the rest of the universe with a shoe-lace. it was weak to begin with and grew more decrepit with age, like the neglected kaleidoscopes of immortal astronomers - they are still alive in the vague glimmers of fading stars. you can only see their light in the blackest of nights, in the middle of nameless deserts, amidst Mediterranean seas and Andalucian shores. 

(somewhere, there are lights that never dim and keys that do not lock.) 

iii.

bless me mother, for i have sinned. 

iv.

i remember when kings were still princes, when princes were still paupers, when paupers were still precious in the eyes of a merciful god. you used to believe in him, before darkness made a home in your heart, before your bones turned to glass and shattered in the shadow of sunlight. you used to pray in pews, next to your mother, next to images of saints without names or faces while your father took naps during the tired priest's homily. your priest never knew your name - he merely called you a child of god. you told him you were a child of William and Mary, a child of cereal and cartoons, a child of swimming pools and wishing wells. 

(he blessed your poor little heart, as if he were preparing it for sacrifice – you were a pascal lamb: innocent, naïve, splintered.)

v.

one day, i’ll learn how to fly. 

vi. 

i remember the fresh scent of early novembers, of premature springtimes, of long-dead winters and corrupted summers. your hair grew long, caught in cobwebs spun by your grandmother’s arthritic hands. she used to watch over us like an aged Ave Maria as we sat on rusted swings and rolled down crooked slides, still damp with the precious morning dew that covered our world like a wet sheet of saran wrap. 

(pack yourself up and make a pilgrimage to Mecca – build a city and call it Bethlehem, call it Forgiveness, call it Regret.)

vii.

you will never find your place in a world that was not meant for you. 

viii.

i remember when you used to throw pebbles at my window at midnight, when house lights were bright with secrets and the moon was full of undiscovered mysteries. we lived full lives in our fever-dreams – we were biologists and zoologists, english professors and medieval philosophers, portuguese translators and brazilian drug lords. 

(they say some people are born with old souls, though their skin is young and their eyes are polished.)

ix.

fill me up, buttercup.

x.

tell me about the day i was born, when you looked into my porcelain eyes and twirled my pudgy fingers and decided i was perfection in a fleshy bottle. i will never be as beautiful as Molly or as handsome as Adam. tell me about how they took me away from you – pried me from your once tender arms. tell me about the day i turned four, when my body was still possessed by light and love and all things honest. tell me about the day you stole my childhood and locked it away in an invisible treasure chest. tell me about how much you loved me once, when verses sailed under bridges and choruses like boats. tell me you’ll be there when hell freezes over in the middle of our kitchen.

(tell me you knew this would happen all along - no surprises, no hidden agendas, no shit swept under the rug.)

xi.

run away, and don’t look back.

xii.

i can ruin the people i love with the snap of my fingers, the flick of a switch, a heartbeat, a kidney-stone, a bullet. you preferred the noose – quick, silent, easy. 

xiii.

things happen every minute that have nothing to do with us.

xiv.

things happen every minute that have everything to do with us. 

xv.

…so you start walking - no goal, no destination.

(your hair is purple, and it is the beginning of summer.)

the sun is suffocating, like chloroform - ultraviolet rays wash over you like a cancerous blanket. flip flops are cages - your rebellious feet just want to be free. swimming pools are internment camps; bathing suits: jumpsuits merely missing balls and chains. blades of grass are satan's knives digging into your skin, still pale in the hope of preserving the purity of winter.

"i just want you to be happy."
her tears hit your shirt like bullets. this isn't the first time you've died. (you've been shot before - there was a lot of blood loss. strange men pumped oxygen into your smoker's lungs...your heart barely managed to survive...whatever's left of her isn't even worth saving, they whispered behind your back, still aching with the remains of via dolorosa.)

you think the world's problems can be solved with words - with the image of black marks on white parchment. you put your faith in verbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions. they bear the greatest significance - they remember what you can't. they keep alive what doesn’t exist anymore, like memories, emotions, decayed limbs, tales of love and childhood innocence that your storybook grandfather never told you when he tucked you in at night. simple phrases can bring your battered soul back to life.
"where is your self-love?"
(it is stuck lost between the lines of words she will never read.)

you won't be home for her birthday. she'll be over half a century old, and you will not be there to count the crow's feet around her swollen eyes, to watch her blow out her candles, to mourn the death of her wax memories as they melt into a sugary grave. you will be sitting at a table with a false title making a collage. you will carve yourself out of confectionary paper, use violet yarn for your inhuman hair and green sequins for your makeshift eyes - your cartoon self will jump off a macaroni cliff into an abyss of midnight buttons and bobby pins.
(a part of you will not come back.)

they weep for the lost years of yesterday, when you were still drenched in innocence and simple childhood regrets; for those days when you forgot to eat your broccoli, to water the shriveled chia pet in the front of the yard, to say please and thank you, to pray before bedtime. you can almost taste your youth in a piece of zebra gum - the sweetness of escaping adulthood on the tip of your tongue. they had high hopes for you when your bones were still young in the shadow of adolescence.
(you never could reach the sky, even when you stood on the top of your grandmother’s dining room table.)

it takes approximately four and a half seconds for a withered leaf to fall to the ground. it would take you fifteen seconds to climb up the stairs, two seconds to open your window, and four seconds to fall from it. it took you six years to grow up, fifteen years to learn how to accept yourself, and five minutes for the world to collapse.
(in thirty days, reality will burn you to a crisp with the hands of an angry Arizona sun.)

greetings will be ingrained in your palms like braile – they’ll describe everything you can no longer see: the blue that used to linger in his eyes, the red and green embers of a sunset painted in the sky on a wednesday evening, the hundreds of paper boats in the middle of the ocean - sailing, burning, sinking.

stay
afloat.

(i think we've found that place we all need.)

in the home of his handsandthe flush of his cheekandthe cushion of his hair -
in the backseat of the car with wrinkled clothes and loose lips and bare skin -
in the hum of God's imaginary breath in your ear -

or

a team of doctors are huddled like
plastic clouds above my paper heart
with red marker pens and scalpels held
in spaghetti fingers.
they think they can put me back together

onomatopoeia: a word that imitates the sound it represents...

( imitative harmony. )