monster

I saw when he planted insecurity,
to replace my wild, unruly hair.
I heard him tear down my choices,
because I wouldn’t submit to his will.
I felt his envy when I wielded weapons better
than his could ever elicit pleasure.

I have a sharpened tongue to strike,
and even sharper teeth to bite,
men mad enough to blame me
for their own unnamed deficiencies. 

He thought me lovely when compliant,
but I’m extraordinary when I’m defiant.

I’m mighty and I’m kind.
I lash out when I insist everything’s fine.
Some say I went too far,
by deboning all those men
and harvesting all their hearts…
But what is life if you don’t draw blood?

Better to learn late than never:
The only one who’ll love me,
in my magnificence and my defeat,
is the monster that makes me.

lightning

I’m lonely
but my stomach doesn’t need to be.

I pick up chili-cheese fries,
a reliable companion
on any rainy night.

Next stop?
Our lookout.

Well,
it was ours.
It’s my favorite,
so it’s mine now.

Miles away,
rain cascades into the sea.
Thunder accents misery’s soundtrack,
screaming through the stereo,
while I devour my friend fries.
They’ll be fine.

Mid-bite.
White. 
The lightning came to me,
and I stared into its eyes.

boom 

I return to my lookout
with the diving rain
and wailing clouds.

That near-miss struck me.
My lips anointed in chili
My fingers blessed with cheese
This baptism in energy reminds me that
alone
I am more
that whatever made us.

birthday wish

I almost mailed you a letter.

After messing up the envelope
then mixing up the address,
I decided it was a sign
that you didn’t deserve
more of my sincerity. 

I burned my biggest hopes for your smallest dreams.
My letter shriveled in the flame
and whimpered as it shrank.
The final wisps escape as
I gathered its remains.

I blew the ashes into the trash
with the deep breath only used for a birthday wish.

I’ve wasted enough of beautiful words on you,
so I’ll keep the last of them for me.

casualty

The time for is grace long gone.
I leave flowers with unsaid apologies,
an offering to our happiest memory:
another casualty of a casual me. 

I mark our best with a simple stone,
its location known only to me.  
If you ever marked us at the same spot,
I will never know. 

We let love poison sacred land
with blood shed and acid rain
with ravenous fire and unearthed pain.

Perhaps
our salted soil will lay inert until
our war-torn wasteland finds new life
in the embrace of the open sea.

Perhaps
new memories will take root and
new buds will dot the landscape
where our bitterness once bloomed. 

Perhaps
our visits will overlap one day
after we’ve grown deeper into ourselves,
witnesses to the other’s renewal.

I’ve never been more certain,
I don’t want to know that version of you. 

I leave this place
and you in memory.
I leave in search of fields,
where new grass finally dares to grow. 

When I find that once scorched earth,
I’ll repeat myself for the quiet grave,
of a different man.

reclaimed shards

Slingshotting into
different beds with
different men
Until I said,
Stop.
No more.

I recollected the lost parts of me,
restless pieces in dormant dreams.
I rescued them from average men,
reconciling with my insecurities.

My smoothest edges met
my reclaimed shards,
clashing violently at the seams.
Ill-fitting for pretty girls,
but perfect for the most monstrous me.

With the softest of words
and the sharpest of tongues,
I thread myself together
to repair my still-beating heart.

half memories

All I have are half memories.

My half of our shared stories:
apple pies once
ice cream twice
cigarettes under starry skies
loosened lips
tongues tied.

There aren’t any pictures of you and me
just imperfect, fading reveries.
I’ve lost you once,
I’ll lose more of you to time,
nothing’s eternal in spotted minds.

traitor

I saw you
through a window in a crowd of one
at an ice cream shop six feet away
from my car on the crosswalk. 

Three times since we last talked
because of three words I wouldn't say.
A betrayal of your time in service of mine.

You must have seen me first.
You turned away so our eyes couldn’t meet.
The curve of your back said enough.

I only see your face now
in my blurry dreams:
Your back faces me first
then you turn around,
happy to finally see me.

When the dream pulls away
and I wake:
I know you’ll turn on me again.
You’ll turn on me forevermore.

A fitting punishment for a traitor like me,
the perfect price for my peace.

horror

Full of laughter and life,
you look at me and smile.
We hold our sweetness in hand
then the usual horror descends.

My apprehensive touch,
my suspicious glance,
my question resurfaces,
if I were a different person
is this what we could have had?

My memories are kind to you,
preserving your best in recurring dreams,
a thin shield from daylight’s decay.

You were never as gentle in your apathy.

Everything freezes and rewinds to when
you said I would never find anyone better
but you would never become better,
so I plummeted into hell with you.

I scream this isn’t real again.
You hold me like we’re new again.
I tell you we’ll never try again.
You call me a liar again.

How dare you make me live this again?

I claw my way to the waking world
and find my roars are just whispers wet with tears.
I already escaped your nightmare,
but you find me every night.

How many more until I sleep without your dreams?

vanity

I didn’t know what to create
so I settled on you.

A vanity project
for my excessive enthusiasm,
tangible proof that I could make meaning of messes.

When my progress was inadequate,
I turned my tools inward
and hacked away at myself.
Then I cut up my lovers
with the techniques they taught me
and twice their finesse.

They hated my skill.

I ruined them all with my conceit
wielding the tongue that clipped their wings.
I sewed cuts shut with my sharpest needling.
I papered over flaws with the thinnest skin.
My steadfast devotion to his happiness
divorced me from my own desires:
a dual life with conflicting dreams.

Were we artists in tandem
or mad scientists at war?
Did I make you the medium for my latest self-portrait?
Were you an experiment guided by my grandest delusion?

After the latest catastrophe in my path of ruin,
successive failures of my best intentions,
I finally declare the errors of each trial:

It was naive to believe
I could mend wounds born
long before you met me.

It was naive to believe
that gifting my own wounds
could teach you to understand me.

… but I wonder:
Did you arrive at the same conclusion about the scars you gave me?
Or was I a victim of your own vanity?

trophy

Men love the novelty of a wild girl,
a lifeless trophy of her stolen glory:
Doe-like glass eyes glued to a painted form,
safe to touch because you’ve sewn her mouth,
her skin on display after you sucked her life out.

I’d rather die feral with my feeble pride
than in the hands of men,
eager to tame me then take my skin.

Perhaps he did want to hold me, 
when I once was warm and filled with light. 
It’s a shame I could never tell
if he wanted to soothe me
or sate himself.

dolls

He dressed me up in fantasies
and kissed my painted lips.
He propped me up as a trophy
of his own benevolence.

He said no strings attached
but yanked on my heart
when I dared to detach.

He thought he could control me
when his hand slipped up my skirt.
He hoped to impress me
when he pressed into me:
A blank slate for his own desire.

Oblivious to my depths.

His hands could not capture my heart.
His words could not move my mouth.
He squeezed my lips and projected his voice
and claimed it was my desperation spilling out.

He hoped I would
cede my pleasure to him
forfeit my name to him
fill my womb for him
abandon my curiosity for him.

I should have learned sooner
his burdens were heavier than my own.
When I abandoned his dreams
I found everything I ever longed for.

Men say they don’t play with dolls
but they certainly played with me.

a malleable man

I see the way you move into the light,
hoping it would catch your best side.
Do you still have one? 

Your armor is a substitute for a backbone.

Without it,
your convictions crumble,
and you sink lower than the dirt beneath my feet.

Power granted by your costume
comforted you more than any of us could.
The sins you commit against us
twisted into misdeeds against you. 

With your once true tragedies,
you lie until your honor is restored
by the integrity of people
who still believe the chivalry you perform.

You don't want to heal. 

You’re in love with your gilded reflection.
A distortion meant to flatter you and invite sympathy.
You fear any admission of your weaknesses
and fortify your false strength with flimsy lies.

Make me the villain in your journey:
There’s no honor in your heroism.

When I live free of your covert tyranny,
you’ll scream you’re better off than me.
As your threats echo in this lonely exoskeleton,
will you finally realize that this beautiful prison
is your only meaningful creation?

I know you won’t.

Gold suits a malleable man.

A pathetic man who earned apathetic me.

retreat

When fireworks bombed the New Year’s sky,
you clenched your imaginary weapons
instead of shielding your ears.
I held you as color returned to your face,
but we both knew,
goodbye would come for us someday.

This city never meant for you to stay.

On your final evening
with sparkling buildings
and cars screaming,
I plant the final kiss
and breathe in your sunscreened skin.
I run my fingers slowly once more,
through hair the sea made so coarse.
I trace your shoulders with my fingertips,
and memorize scars made from surfboard slips. 

I send you off with my silent wish:

Please find lullabies in the rustling trees
solace in the gentle breeze,
restful sleep without haunted dreams
in mountain peaks forever green.

I hope this retreat will grant you peace.

perennial ex

You sprout up unexpectedly,
like unwanted weeds in the spring.
Your friendship a lie,
for weeks of my life,
a lie I fell for every time. 

You demand my affection,
repayment for your generosity.
I could never give
what I didn’t have,
and like autumn leaves,
you turned on me. 

You’d lash out like the summer sun
then fade before the fall.
You lay dormant in the winter,
and when spring returned,
you’d call. 

You’d call me selfish.
Try harder.
I’ve been called much worse than that.

I resist your persistence,
despite your insistence
that you always knew best.

It says much more about you,
with your many falls and passing moons.
why are you chasing
a girl so young and so new?

I’ve since named you my perennial ex:
Any other name is an insult to weeds.

maybe

Maybe you enjoy my company.
Some thoughts are loudest
in the hours past midnight,
best comforted by my warmth. 

Maybe we really are just friends,
though you never called me in fair weather.
We all have friends for different occasions.

Maybe you wanted more,
although you never asked.
Why would you settle for anything less? 

Maybe you’d find wonder in my mess?
Maybe you think of the world of me?
If I’m brave enough to ask,
maybe the answer is yes. 

On that courageous night I learned
my maybes flew too close to the sun.
You think of me too little,
I thought of you too much.

Under the cover of moonlight
I took my tattered wings,
then abandoned my once-hopeful maybes.
Like a ship feeling a foggy night,
I found calm in dawn’s unfiltered light.

tears

This time
no flames
no ash.
You begged for one more chance
and offered a single tear
to the ocean I filled with mine.

Your single self-serving drop in my sullen sea
was for all you’d lose if I leave:
My steadfast devotion
to the corpse of a dreamer
forever chasing hazy highs
to cope with his well-earned reality.

pathetic

What difference exists
between blood
between sweat
between tears
when they all taste of salt
from a life well lived?

Only tears taste of joy
now fleeing with our once happy memories.
For just one of yours,
I shed a million of mine
to free myself from the curse of you.

You never deserved me.  

Pleased by your performance,
satisfied by my response,
you left with flimsy evidence that
my now stone-heart was moved.

darling
you’ve always called me a liar

It’s true.
I lied every time I came to you.
You should have learned sooner
it also made me
a better crier than you.

panic

Pitch black.
Panic.

Someone’s in my bed. 

Streetlights creep in through the curtains,
revealing a back turned towards me.

Was he there when I fell asleep?

Reaching out for a clue,
my fingers craze his hair.
I hold my breath and listen to his:

In the darkness
flashes
the ghost of a smile from years ago.

It’s his bed, not mine. 

We fell asleep every night,
made a new schism every year.
Our shared sheets became traps
that tied us to the hell housed here.

I could have, would have, should have, stayed
but you don’t deserve any more of my time.

I disappear like smoke into the night,
and take with me
my overdue goodbye.

I turned on you and found me

I pulled off to the roadside,
respite from my longest night.

I watched lights dance across the sky
crossing galaxies to kiss the sea
before making its way to me.

At the lookout and to the stars,
I confessed my sins along with my silly dreams.
They promised to carry them home for me.

Renewed,
I weave between
love letters left unanswered
and riddles knotted between trees.

Free of the roundabouts in my mind,
a gentle moonlight revealed
the answers waiting within me.