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For my mother—

My favorite writing I’ve ever read will always be the pages of your journal I used to sneak into my room late at night. I only ever wanted to grow up and love with such a passion as you did.

For Professor Bradford—

I loved writing in your class so much that I dropped out to go love it intensely.

And for the fans—

My capacity to feel has been stretched and molded with each piece of your souls that you reveal to me. I offer this in return.

INTRODUCTION

I’ve been looking for a place to put these pieces.

For 25 years I have flipped spastically

from FM to AM inside my head.

I am, still,

unaffected by the abrupt static punching through my ears.

I don’t mind riding along to fragments and pieces

of the different stations.

I don’t mind the indecision of a Motown record

spearheaded by a metal guitar solo.

The classical arpeggio climaxing

into the blue balls of worship music.

You know the sound, right?

An indecisive radio?

I have found a home here amongst the chaos.

The constant.

Every morning the muse puts her finger in my nose.

One, then two.

Sliding into me

pornographically.

She stretches my nostrils wide

until her slimy hand crawls past my deviated septum,

in between my eyes,

and into my brain.

Exploding into a fist

when she reaches the cavity behind my temples.

The muse is bratty.

She is smug.

She wiggles her fingers around defiantly.

She displays her palm expectantly,

waiting for a present I will drop into it.

She brushes and tickles the walls of my skull.

The muse is a flirt.

She’ll always tease but never put out.

Fucking bitch.

I so badly want to be liked.

Scratch that.

I want to be loved.

I want her to love me.

Scratch that.

I want her to leave.

I want her to scratch that.

Scratch that itchy itch of my swollen brain.

It’s only awful ’cause the muse looks just like me.

Dirty fingernails and gummy smile.

But she sparkles the way only a beautiful woman can.

A beautiful woman is a car crash.

Shiny asphalt and smoking rubber.

Melted plastic and metal edges.

Glimmering glass shrapnel iridescence

scattered across the road.

Haphazard beauty. Dignified and slightly terrifying.

The car radio flips from AM to FM.

The doors are locked and I’m trapped inside. My head bobs against the airbag.

It’s calming. Like a mother’s bosom. I would imagine, at least.

My mother was full-breasted. But loudmouthed, and sarcastic, and raised her babies out of our colic with camaraderie.

She didn’t hold me close to the muffled beating of her heart beneath a department-store sweater.

She didn’t breastfeed.

The nature and nurture in my sternum are arguing now.

My shoulders are held together by two rubber bands pulled tight in a schoolboy’s hands.

Sometimes I feel like my spine will unfold and explode like a jack-in-the-box doll.

I can’t carry all this weight, so I must put it somewhere and somewhere is with you.

You will take good care of it?

I want to walk away from my bones and set them down on a counter like my keys after work.

Let my skin sink into the armchair and lose its shape. Lose its form. Collapse into a sigh.

I see all things in this world as more beautiful than I, and I spin the details of their atoms in every paragraph and brushstroke.

I wish I had 11 hands with 55 fingers so I could paint and write and fuck and feed and grab grab grab everything.

I. Want. It. All.

It must be mine.

I want to walk away from the burgundy bags under my eyes and the periwinkle veins in my hands.

I hope you’ll stay.

I hope you’ll stay.

But I would leave me too, if I could.

DUE DATE

I was born 5 weeks early.

I couldn’t wait

to join the rest of the world,

and that is

exactly

the moment

my enthusiasm ceased.

The nurses tried to take me so my

“mother could sleep.”

But she refused to let me go.

I’m sure ultimately,

I ended up

in a common room for newborns.

And I’m sure ultimately,

I lay there comparing myself to the other babies.

Wondering if I were as smart as they were.

Or as funny.

Or as beautiful.

The average baby weighs 8 pounds.

I weighed 5.

The average baby is 20 inches long.

I was 14.

And it was on my first day on Earth

that I realized I didn’t measure up,

and I never would.

I WANT TO BE A WRITER!

It is not a want.

It is not a wish.

It’s simple.

A demon waiting

at the foot of your bed

to grab your ankles while you sleep.

It’s a gnat burrowing into your ear

and laying eggs behind the socket of your eye.

It’s sitting in your own filth for days,

staring at the shower across the room

while minutes become hours.

It’s six months since you’ve talked to your dad,

And whining like an infant to your lover

begging to be spit-shined

like a piece of silverware,

“I have given so much to the page,

please tell me I am not worthless.”

It is not a desire.

It is a clenched jaw and an aching back and a disposition to spite everything around you.

To find the world not worthy of your words,

and to find yourself unworthy of the world.

It is towering arrogance that says,

“Let these passages be free

in an existence that will cherish and worship them.”

It is a terrible self-loathing

that sends your teeth sinking into your lips.

It’s a gut pushed out

and shoulders slumped

and a sneaking suspicion

that everything you see is altered through your gaze.

They cry,

“But I WANT to be a writer!”

And my head hangs.

You are asking to be shot square in the head.

You know not what you seek.

You ask for bleeding brains

and carnage that stains your pillowcase.

You ask for jelly

in the place of the cartilage in your spine.

You ask for kindness that is never returned.

You wish to burn alive

in the flame of a love unrequited.

It’s simple.

Write.

HOMEMAKER

listen to that

cool

cool

water run

never been good at being alone

say “hello holy father.

where’s your daughter?

she could make this house a home.”

you got a

new

new

closet

never been good at savin’ cash.

chrome on the faucet

and you bossed it.

i’ve never seen you on the counter before.

listen to that

cold

cold

winter blow

never had time for absolutes.

new steam shower

for the powder.

his-and-her sinks

but

just

for

you.

you got a brand-new bedroom.

a clean set of sheets I’ve never seen.

thread count’s pricey,

for your wifey.

i know she don’t make the bed like me.

never seen a Persian rug look so homely

never heard a sadder voice

than when you phone me.

are you lonely?

you said it’s time for some renovations.

time for conversation.

but I flipped houses

bigger than you before.

enjoy the silence

in your kitchen.

been watering all these plants

made of plastic

and you think they’ll grow.

homemaker.

shiny new things but they’re all for show.

SUMMER FRUIT

I spent springs and summers

as a child

eating the fruit from a watermelon.

Grainy sugar bites

and juice slick up my cheeks

like a Chelsea smile.

My mother used to warn me

if I swallowed a seed

it would get stuck in my belly

and grow a watermelon plant.

My stomach would expand

till I’d combust.

I always spit them out

in horror.

I spent a spring and summer

eating the fruit

from the flesh of your lips.

The bounty of two round mounds,

hard like pink sugar.

Your grip on my cheeks

with a firm hand

holding my mouth open.

To drop seeds into my belly.

To spit a virus in my throat

that grew into a giant “you” plant.

The branches

crawling up the walls of my insides

and begging

to claw my mouth open

and make me say things I don’t mean.

The dying leaves

flaking off

and swaying to the pit of my stomach

in an imaginary breeze

landing with a deafening thump.

Echoes that bounce up between my teeth.

And remind my tongue there is no more watermelon.

Just empty space.

YOU WERE FIRST

So many men who came before you

So many women, one-night stands

I guess I found it easier

For me to charm a man

’Cause a woman always crumbled in my hands.

Could only act on what I knew.

Was raised to earn it that way too.

I guess I found it easier

to split men at the seams

At least that’s what I learned in magazines.

All this

soft skin, soft eyes

All these

Beautiful laughs and beautiful thighs

Always kept me up at night

The truth is I was terrified.

Pink lips, warm curves

All these

Wonderful aching shaking nerves

Heart like it’s about to burst

The truth is you were first.

I AM ANGRY BECAUSE OF MY FATHER

I am angry because of my father.

Because he would come home

Wrinkled from work,

And slam the door so hard

the house would shiver.

I am angry because of my father.

Because his furrowed brow

Repeats itself in my Punnett square

And opens the curtains

On my forehead.

I am angry because of my father.

I can hold a grudge like it’s a hand.

I throw my watch on my nightstand.

I am a worthless smudge

On the floor, in the rug

In the kingdom of the almighty

God who will judge

Me as hard as She can,

’Cause I won’t love a man

Unless he is angry

Because of my father.

LAYERS

Thank you

for stumbling

across the universe

with your confident swagger

and tripping right into my lap.

Wild hair spilling across your eyelids

and nestling into my mouth

with my kiss on your forehead.

Thank you for the freckles on your nose

that keep me

star-crossed,

starry-eyed,

and then cross-eyed

when I’m lying underneath you

and I look up at your darling face.

You’re made of everything good in this world.

Syrup-sweet and paining my teeth

dripping from my lips

like honey

from the bees buzzing in my head

driving me crazy, daily,

with the sounds of your voice

echoing through my skull

and the halls of my house

still ringing

from the last time you were here,

the last time it was a home.

Thank you for warming the industrial gray

of my concrete foundation

and turning my bones

from cement blocks

to rich mahogany wood.

Layers.

INVENTORY

He told me

about the women

he had slept with

when we were apart.

He was honest.

And I had asked for it.

He told me stories

decorated with leather

and violence

and anal.

Girls

who relaxed in sweet drunken smiles

and enveloped him in warmth.

Lazily tumbling

through bedsheets,

glowing in the acid hue

of the outside lights.

Girls

who wouldn’t ask him

to pick up his dirty socks.

Or turn away from him

on a shared mattress.

Girls

who weren’t sad and tired.

Girls

better than me.

Who had learned to turn their trauma

into adventures

for him to stumble blindly through.

Instead of wallowing

in their brokenness

and breaking everything

in their path

as penance.

BATTLES

Been biting my tongue till it bleeds

cry over things I don’t need.

My mother told me

pick your battles wisely

but you made me angry

at the world

so I chose them all.

MEMORIZE

I’m a boyish

mess.

A boasting contest

with an inferiority

complex.

I can’t make friends.

I’ve got an

eager desperation

to be up on

“what’s next.”

I have too much

sex.

I say it’s ’cause

I’m anxious

and I’m

overly stressed.

I can’t take blame.

I funnel through

liquor

and spit up my pain.

I’m no good

with fame.

There’s a love/hate

relationship

with noise

in my brain.

Except

for when

you speak my name.

Because you take it in vain.

(Take it in vein!)

I could fall asleep

here.

Crawl inside

the sleeping bags

under your eyes.

But I stay

awake

to memorize.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME PT. 1

I remember

how the sky looked.

Your lips made my mouth numb.

Your face

grew closer to her neck.

It’s easy to play dumb.

I remember

all the chaos.

The frantic, nervous sounds.

I don’t remember much,

though,

once I hit the ground.

Everything went black.

Everything got cold.

I’m standing

on a sidewalk,

screaming,

“Over my dead body!”

I remember

tender spiderwebs.

All violet,

yellow,

blue.

It seems with one eye open,

still all I see is you.

I guess there was no casualty

that could make you refuse.

I hide

behind a strangled mind.

You tell me,

“Winners never lose.”

A hostage situation.

I know I should,

but I can’t leave

you

all alone

somewhere.

I know you don’t,

but I still care.

This Stockholm syndrome

might just be the death of me.

WISH YOU THE BEST

I hope every single day you put your socks on backward

I hope you cry at night

and can’t call me after

I don’t hope that you’d die;

just live to 75

And you spend every waking moment

Wishing you felt alive.

I hope that some girl takes a picture

of your sleeping body.

Wish you could go a single week

and not hurt anybody.

I hope your coffee every morning

is bitter and cold.

I hope you’re busy Christmas morning

and you miss the snow.

I hope your team loses the finals

I mean they already lost the finals

But the next one

And I hope that you scratch up all of your vinyls.

Hope you drive 80 miles

In your expensive car,

and run out of gas

in the wild.

I hope your knees ache

and your back hurts,

hope you lose your second phone

or can’t remember the password.

I hope every girl unites and they decide you’re a joke

But if they are anything like you

then I know that they won’t

’Cause their self-esteem levels are fatally low.

So you bury your pain inside them

after the show.

I hope your brother turns out to be nothing like you.

Hope another year passes

and you hurt even more than I do.

Used to live up the street from you

but since then I moved.

My new house is clean

and the sky’s always blue.

I sing in the shower

and I walk around naked.

I love my whole body

though you once made me hate it.

I eat lots of pancakes

and drown them in honey.

I’ve made lots of handshakes

and made lots of money.

I smile and sigh when I crawl into bed

’Cause there’s no more scar tissue

inside my head.

I heard what you’re up to

I’m glad that I left.

I feel like myself again deep in my chest.

Signed:

Sincerely,

Ashley

I wish you the best.

THE QUESTION

I stand before the mirror

and examine my breasts.

protruding forth from my chest

and demanding kindness, free

ice cream, and violence.

my speckled face, freckled pale

brown like organic eggs,

flushes pink.

my eyebrows unkempt

and short hair untidy at the crown.

I grip my buttocks.

dissatisfied.

I chase the paradox around my head.

The filmy, sticky grain of

femininity slides across my skin.

It twinkles in every stare

and as my weight shifts from hip

to hip, I’m gliding as I walk.

My clenched jaw,

my small lips,

my broad shoulders

like an adolescent boy.

I worship at the altar of

femininity in the women who

suckle the lavender from my breath.

It poses nothing to me

but a question

to which I do not have the answer.

I MET A MIND READER.

I have not seen the Sun in 7 days.

I have seen Frankfurt,

Oslo,

Copenhagen,

Reykjavík,

Helsinki.

5 countries

and 1 planet.

Just Earth.

No stars.

Just clouds.

And no Sun…

Earth is bleaker in the dark.

The gray hazy dark.

The upside-down and sleepless dark.

Not the romantic kind

that fills the gaps in between city lights

and candlelit dinners

and moonlight bouncing off of crystal glasses

filled with champagne, lipstick-stained.

I sat on an old bus,

packed in like crowded teeth in a young mouth,

and I saw a little girl.

She frowned at me.

I began to panic.

They say children can sense dread.

This is the first child who hasn’t smiled

when I cast a glance in their direction.

Has my heart,

once so full of love,

finally drained itself like a yellow raisin?

Will the children begin to notice?

She looks at me quizzically and smiles.

Kicks her feet

and then shakes her head no.

As if to answer my question.

I met a mind reader. Aged 4 or 5.

I have seen light burst forth from a magic eye.

From a heart more wholesome than mine.

Astronomic miracles, in an unfathomable form.

But I still haven’t seen the Sun.

THE TOURIST

I quite like how these jeans

Look hanging

’round your knees

And I love your dirty sneakers

When you kick them

off your feet

I’d really like to find

The place

between your eyes

Where I kiss you on the forehead

And make you smile

every time

I’m struggling to place

My favorite

freckled space

Between your hair,

hung

like a telephone wire

Swinging

’cross your face

And right now you’re inside

My favorite studio

on Vine

Complaining

’bout a violin’s

Misrepresented whine

And I can’t wait to take you home

Where I can have you

all alone

And overanalyze each part of you

I’ve written

in my phone

See,

I’ve started taking down

All of my favorite

little sounds

That waltz around you

in 3 quarter notes

With each word you pronounce

It kills me that you’ll leave

Off in a jet

over the sea

But I hope the air in California

Will forever

taste of me.

ONANISM

The corner of my childhood bed.

A stuffed bear, color: cherry red.

A toothbrush motorized inside.

A 15-mile dirt bike ride.

A pair of socks, balled up real tight.

A hot tub jet, alone at night.

Your kneecap, cased in denim jeans.

Victoria’s Secret magazine.

16 years of bubble baths,

a showerhead that can detach.

A pointed toe,

a cramping calf.

Disgusted in the aftermath.

THE PARTY

Your tongue is in my mouth in the kitchen at the party.

Why the fuck am I at the party?

My dress is too tight for you to get your hands under,

but I left my panties at home tonight

and I’m dripping down my thighs.

My lipstick is smeared and there are people

probably staring

but fuck them anyway.

It’s been a year and a half

of throwing glances in hallways,

and my hair standing on every end when you appear

and breathe down my neck

(so tell me, how the fuck I’m supposed to keep my cool)

So we leave for one night and it turns into five mornings.

Waking up and staying in bed for a couple extra hours

so I can see what color your eyes are

in that special light we only see at 6 a.m.

That silver peeking through the cracks

around your blackout shades

and bouncing off your brown eyes

that send me into a fully caffeinated rush.

Like they’re soaked in coffee grinds

and I can see the steam rising off of their surface

when your gaze sets me on fire.

So we turn up the heat again.

And your sweat is dripping off your chest

and your open fist is around my neck

and I’m grinding into your lap,

rocking my hips against your weight

to match the ins and outs of your breathing.

(Can you tell that this is the pattern I’m following?

Your breathing quickens…)

Your teeth are in my skin

and you’re pulling fibers of tissue from my lips and I wonder,

If I bleed, will you like the taste?

Now we’re driving down the highway

and my head is in your lap.

Tasting the salt of your skin

and feeling you grow in my mouth

and the hum of the engine

is like a million fingertips between my legs.

There are people passing by in their cars unaware

and unassuming

but I’m praying they’ll look over and watch me worship you.

Watch me work

to assure

that there is not a single millimeter of space in my mouth

that isn’t filled.

Your hair falls out of place

and you clutch the wheel

and press your belt into my cheek.

I hope it leaves a mark.

And days later my tongue feels

like it doesn’t fit in my mouth the same without you in it.

It’s your laugh, and your calculating eyes.

Your wrinkled brows and the static in your grin

when you can’t think of the right words to say

and I know it frustrates you

because words are the only thing

you’ve ever had total control over.

It’s the feeling in my stomach

like the moment

you drop a scoop of ice cream

into a root beer float

and the entire thing threatens to bubble over.

Carbonated

and chaotic

in my chest.

It’s the sheer comfort.

You’re as vibrant as a stranger,

but as warm as a friend.

Like every day

I get reintroduced to someone I’ve known my whole life.

Like meeting myself in a mirror.

The way you take over my entire body

and mind

like you’re putting your own personal filter over the lens of my life

so that I see it in your colors.

And my hands shake

and I swallow hard

when I realize how much nicer life looks in your saturation.

My brain buzzing

like the rattle of a neon light

at odd hours of the night

when I’m pacing

and wringing my hands,

counting the days till I see your face again.

And the irony in how fine life seemed before.

How quickly you made it seem like

nothing

would ever suffice

without you,

a part of it.

Why the fuck was I at the party?

THE BREAKUP

There is no combination of words in the English language,

that slice right between your teeth

with the perfect paradox of hate and love,

the same way as

“I love you,

like a brother.”

THE PROFESSIONAL

I am currently seeking employment.

I am a professional holiday girlfriend.

I have great references

and highly impressive past work experiences.

I have been featured in 7 family holiday photos:

—6 Christmases

—and 1 Hanukkah.

Specialties include

my “famous brownies.”

I will:

—do the dishes

—look through baby photos with your mother

—have a long list of baby names to suggest

for the child we will never have

but your grandmother will pitifully dream about us having

before she dies.

I have:

—plenty of clean, respectable dresses

—drinking games to impress your cousins.

World-class gift giver

and wrapper

(it’s easier to nail it

when you only ever have to give one gift).

In one particularly extraordinary history,

I made a baby blanket from scratch

for a relative who was expecting.

I will never complain

about missing my family’s festivities

for your own,

and I will accept contract termination by spring.

I am 5’4”

with a perfectly straight smile

(dental records included,

no history of braces)

and I will fill any empty space

in your family photo.

Please respond before autumn.

LULLABYE

sweet thing,

you hang like

a chain

around my neck

like a beesting

in August

in your hollow pain

I sweat

hollowed

we wed

I’ve gone cross-eyed

and tongue-tied

at the prospect

of your lips.

like a plaid-skirt-fitted virgin

with the devil on my hips

I’d melt like a mint

in the heat of your mouth.

like a hurricane in a dress shirt

headed angry

down south

I would give anything

to be slipping

down your throat.

VIRUS

I once had a fever so high,

I was left to my bed for 7 days.

There was a man,

Standing on my mattress with a shovel

Lifting chunks out of it angrily.

He wiped his brow and his sweat

Collected in the divots of my blanket

And made a little pond.

A scum pond,

With talking frogs and lily pads.

The pond grew deeper as the man dug harder and sweated.

I was drowning.

A goldfish swam up my throat and flopped around in my mouth.

I clenched my jaw and tossed and turned in the scum pond.

White and gray algae blinding me,

And filling my nose with fuzzy mold.

I tried to scream and retrieve the fish from the back of my mouth.

I was choking.

I tried to kick, but the man was standing on my legs.

His weight was too much to bear

And I feared that shovel would dismount onto my head

And split my skull if I provoked him any more.

I tried to yank the fish out again but it struggled.

It attached its jaws to the opening of my throat and it would not budge.

I yanked.

And I screamed.

And my mother came rushing into the room, tripping over her feet.

I was trying to rip out my tongue.

She fixed my blankets.

She stroked my hair that stuck to me like cotton candy dissolving in water.

I wanted to cry but feared I’d fill the pond again.

When my fever broke, I realized the man and the fish were all a dream,

And so was she.

LIKELY AS THE RAIN

I’ve always liked it

when it’s sunny and warm.

You like it cold

’cause you’re from the north.

Now I’m sitting by a window

watching rain fall down

…in California.

Looks like you always seem

to get what you want.

Even when it goes against

the natural odds.

’Cause it’s 7 in the morning

and my bathroom’s flooding

hard…

I never knew

what made you do what you do.

Tuck me into bed

and then you sneak off to

be somewhere with another

who’s more like your mother

and doesn’t expect as much of you.

An anomaly.

I’m not like you and you’re not like me,

or how we used to be.

You know what they say,

the all-consuming rage

and unbearable shame,

of you losing me,

was as likely as the rain.

WATERMELON

He loves to bring me watermelon.

Spits in my mouth, seeds.

To grow inside my stomach like

A thing that begs to feed

I lick his lips from watermelon,

Spread across my cheeks.

And that pink sugar Chelsea smile

Is hiding underneath.

Now I devour watermelon,

Bouncing on his knee.

I rock my body back and forth,

So he can feel the heat.

I’m dripping like a watermelon,

Soaking through my seat.

I bite my lip and suckle on

The words between my teeth.

And oh the taste of watermelon,

Subtle but it’s sweet.

I kneel down on the wooden floor

And beg him to proceed.

He fills my mouth with watermelon.

No one hears me scream.

To overdose on sugar is more

Painful than it seems.

My tummy hurts from watermelon.

He can be so mean.

But smiles like a gentleman

And licks my body clean.

And when there is no watermelon,

Only vicious weeds,

He puts his fingers in his mouth

To taste the way I bleed.

Now all I crave is watermelon,

Every time I leave.

BLUBBER

You went and caught a whale for me

Seven hundred days at sea

You cut him up in chunks

real neat

Turned him into kerosene

You said it was a present

You told me

to close my eyes

You tied me to a metal chair

And opened up

my thighs.

You rubbed me down in Vaseline

and pressed your body

up

against

me

You soaked me down

in gasoline

Lit me up

And then discarded me.

You said you’d always love me

from my

head

to my

toes

And then

All at once

you loved me to a little death.

PUSSY

Beautifully folded salmon sweater

Cashmere sleeves and slouching turtleneck

I want to slide inside

and feel the hairs on my arms

stand on end

Silver threads and white cotton

spilling from the seams

Japanese pink ginger

toffee and coffee taffy

Velveteen ear of a baby deer

Wrap around me like a ball python

swallow me whole

like a blind baby mouse

cinnamon in the swings

sour peach candy rings

Sweet surprise

She’s open wide.

I follow like a moth to the bulb to fry.

THE MIRROR

I’m pulling

funny faces

in the mirror,

wiping down

the glass

so I see clearer.

I’m trying

to feel safe

inside.

My body

doesn’t feel

like mine.

I look at who I am.

I think I fear her.

BAD DAY: 1

I’m sorry

I’m having another bad day.

My bones are creaking

And my eyes leak

Like a broken faucet.

My mind is a bullet train

And I can’t stop it.

I’m stuck in the middle of an avalanche and I’m not moving.

These things they come and go,

and I mean half of everything I tell you.

I’m half of everything I hate,

and half of anything I create

is you too.

So I start to hate the music when I hate you.

EIGHT

There was a mailman

I loved as a little girl.

He would stop at the communal mailbox

On the street

In the center of the apartment complex

And begin sorting mail away

Into 150 different little boxes

We lived in 1202

I would rush from my house

To greet the mailman

And he would talk to me as he worked

Filing away bills and cards and coupons

He would ask me questions

Quiz me

And give me a piece of Bazooka gum

For every question I got right

I would spin around and crush my sneakers

rocking up and down on my toes

I would curl one piece of hair

Around my finger while I thought of the answers

I would slide my tongue between my teeth

and the windows where they were missing

And between every mailbox

The mailman would look at me and smile

He’d pat me on the cheek

And tell me

That I was as smart as he was.

As smart as any man.

And I believed him.

Because why wouldn’t I?

I was 8.

I knew that George Bush would win the election.

I knew the Pythagorean theorem.

I read 300 books from the public library

And I could draw every animal by memory.

I liked him ’cause he gave me chewing gum

And talked to me in his low voice

Calm and soft

Not the shrill, high-pitched voice

They would use on my baby brother.

One day the mailman didn’t show up for work

I ran out and stopped in my tracks

There was a different man there

I asked if my friend was sick

The imposter ignored me

The new mailman showed up a few days in a row

The kids in the neighborhood said

The old one had a heart attack in a bowl of spaghetti

And died with noodles up his nose

I cried

One Wednesday I ran out to the new mailman

And asked if he had any gum

He told me to stay away

Because he didn’t want to get in trouble like Charlie

I didn’t know my friend’s name was Charlie

And I didn’t know how I could have gotten him in trouble

So I asked my mom

How you could give someone a heart attack

And she rubbed her head

and stretched her feet across the couch and said,

“It feels like you’re gonna give me one right now.”

I didn’t want my mom to die too.

So I hid in my room

And I cried

Because I was 8

And a murderer.

IS THERE SOMEWHERE ELSE?

You arrive late.

Half-smile on your face.

Your tongue is thick,

I love the taste.

“Welcome to my new place.”

Haven’t seen you in a year,

you come out of your skin.

You’re tripping on your sneakers,

beg I let you in.

I say,

“Where have you been?”

You answer,

“Where do I begin?”

You’re coming early.

I mean this

figuratively.

Demeanor is cautious.

Unprovocative.

You’re still

so fucking talkative.

“Haven’t told you in a while,

but you’re the reason for it all.

You’re a vital complication

I never seem to resolve.”

I say,

“Why all this silence?”

You answer,

“Mind’s been so violent,

a tyrant.”

You’re boring me

with stories

of your unproductive glory.

You say the only thing

as good as that

was me.

I put you in my bed

again.

I take you down

like medicine.

Revisit the same old

regimen.

Just substitute

the gentleman.

WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY

I am not allowed to want to die anymore.

Believe me, I have tried.

TONGUE TWISTER

Peter Piper

picked

a peck

of people

he could utilize.

Built

a better

batch

of music they could advertise.

But Peter

never learned the way

that people compromise.

His only method to communicate

was to harmonize.

He never

ever

spoke a word

when we were feuding.

Major to minor

like the color of a mood ring.

I only liked him

when he’d play me something soothing.

Could understand him perfectly

if he did it while producing.

Emotions come and go,

they’re either lovely

or abusing.

Maybe that’s the reason

all my records are confusing.

We met in a studio and I couldn’t break the silence

’cause he was raised

a Socialist

and I was raised on violence.

I had to be the best

and he was fine with trying.

Sometimes he built me up,

sometimes I was declining.

We got an apartment in a valley,

it was low enough.

Just like the song,

but we were far away from blowing up.

We fought like animals

and did the same when

making love.

I know that it seems crazy

but I really couldn’t make it up.

The only time that it was easy was in transit.

I’m quiet in a car

’cause I was on another planet.

Felt like he didn’t listen

and I couldn’t understand it.

It was more than different languages.

I took it all for granted.

The summer killed me,

skin was crawling,

couldn’t stay still.

A suicide

inside my body

(went onstage still).

I hear it echo

through the arena,

“Du er

et minne.”

AMERICAN WOMAN

My insecurity

hurting me

all these boys gonna flirt with me

But my head down

on a mattress

famous actress

and she skrrrt’n me.

There’s too much space

between her skirt

and

me.

“Let’s take some tabs of acid

at Lake Placid,”

I say certainly.

Still too afraid to touch her

but it’s

urgin’ me.

She says, “You’re staring

and quite frankly

shit is irking me.”

I’m feeling hatred from the waitress as she’s serving me

She thinks I’m spoiled

probably thinks I’m some suburban me.

Thinks I’m a child of a

Money-hungry

Prideful country

Grass is green

And is always sunny

Hands all bloody

Tastes like honey

But we’re finding it hard to leave.

I got no space in my memory

Just some pics

of a friend and me

I got a mailbox

and a mansion

But no letters that you send to me

That house has haunted me for centuries

Should take a rock

and throw it at the windows

but they bend for me

I want to break some.

Ache some.

Feel like I’m awake some.

Meet with all my issues

And then

finally

handshake ’em.

And eventually when you tell me

all the reasons that you’re leaving me

I have to hide them

so the people still believe in me.

THE FUNERAL

I finally killed my pride.

I saw you yesterday

and felt a funeral inside.

Like someone I love died,

and they asked if I wanted to see the body.

I know it won’t be the same.

It will hurt me so badly

I’ll choke on your name.

But how could I let this go?

I love you more than I love anybody.

This must be a nightmare

it couldn’t be a dream.

I’ll watch you in the shower

I’ll rub all your limbs clean.

I’ll rinse off all the wounds we caused

when we were being mean.

I’ll dry you off and hold you

and kiss you in between.

Your friends will all be happy

and mine will wonder why.

Your mother will start to worry

why you made your lover cry.

My father will be angry

and you’ll be left

alone.

HEREDITARY

I don’t look much like my mother

But I know my kid

will look just like me.

With eyes that gleam

and razor teeth,

And Jordan 1s

on two little feet.

I’m impatient

and passive-aggressive

compulsive

obsessive

But mostly poetic

I’m whatever I’ve seen

on a movie screen

I grew up banging

on a pinball machine

I spent a lifetime

trying to wake up

and be mean.

But I will

never

believe

That I belong to the side

with the guillotine.

(You should eat the rich

Even if that includes me)

I still run

on gasoline

But my insides

are gooey

Like gelatine

I’ve got:

Cellophane in the place of a windowpane

A mixtape where I used to keep my brain

Daydreams running like an Amtrak train

I’m sunbathing in the door of an aeroplane.

Imagine if I weren’t always busy all the time.

I would love to get a tan line

and call you from a landline

and maybe

hold

your

hand,

crash-land

In a land mine.

DRAMA QUEEN

Can you hear the silence of being alone?

The deafening stillness

of everything you’ve ever known?

Put on pause like a VHS tape

A full-on heartbreak

And you whine

and cry

and it echoes through the static of a television set.

Can you see the darkness of this void?

Bewildering emptiness of knowing that he had a choice?

Pause

like a checked cassette tape

An empty slate

And you scream and cry and it shakes

through the static of the radio waves.

Can you feel the fabric of being alone?

The rush against your skin

that vibrates all along your bones?

Pause like a broken zipper

A sterling silver whisper

And you shake and shiver from a velvet shimmer

(will you pull it down just a sliver?)

Loneliness never made for a good song

You’ve been singing on your own

all along

Writing records in your bedroom

since 15

Drama queen

Well you’re older now it seems

Loneliness never made for a movie

No blockbuster Oscar, no silver screen beauty

Behind a Technicolor lens since 19

Drama queen

Well you’re older now it seems

Why is everyone so mean?

TERTIARY

Peach clean

on a silver screen

He goes lime green

at the thought of me

He’s got big dreams

like you can’t believe

Been mean

since 23

Dark blue

like a deep lagoon

3 girls

in a hotel room

Missed calls

ringing to the tune

of dark tones

in your attitude

Soft gold

like a centerfold

He’s got

no taste for the rock and roll

He’s so

uptight and I’m no control

No reason to let it grow

Chartreuse like an aging bruise

He speaks

soft words but it’s still abuse

I forget

when you sweet-seduce

We’re in love

but it’s no excuse

Tell me nothing changes when you leave me

But I been making changes, please believe me.

TELLTALE

I think it’s for the best

if I should open up my chest

and mail the contents to your hotel room

to wake you while you rest.

BAD DAY: 2

I’m sorry

I’m having another bad day.

I’ll yell and scream

and tell you things

like “I hate you.”

My mind is the only place

where I can take you on.

I’m stuck in the middle of the ring, but I can’t fight today.

These things they come and go

and I mean half of everything I tell you.

I’m half of everything I hate,

and half of anything I create

is you too.

So I start to hate the painting when I hate you.

TORNADO

I can feel it burn in my nose.

I can feel the tears swell

like raindrops in the corners of my eyes

until they get so fat

they threaten to slide down my face.

My fingers graze your arm

and I can feel little electric volts

wrapping up and around my wrists

like a spiral staircase

like a static handcuff

holding my hand hostage to your skin.

I can feel my heart climb into my throat

and curl up on the carpet

with its head between its knees,

to hide from the

beat

Beat

beating loud

like a thunderstorm outside.

I can taste the salt of your sweat

on the roof of my mouth.

I can remember the taste

like it’s still on my lips

even when I am 3,000 miles away.

In my head,

I replay a mixtape of your laughter

sounding off from my phone

and I call you every 20 minutes.

I will hold your hand till my fingers are cold

and bluer than a Picasso

till the blood has left them.

I will kiss your head

and rub your shoulders

and bring you ease and ecstasy

till your foggy head stops ringing like a car alarm.

I will wipe every tear.

(I like everything about you,

even the things you give away.

Like tears

and laughs

and yawns

and lost eyelashes.)

I will be there when the sun comes up,

curled in your lap

shivering

rubbing my eyes and smiling softly.

I will listen to the same sad songs

over

and over

and over again

till they vibrate in my skull

when the volume ceases.

I love the sun for shining on your skin,

I love the wind for blowing through your hair,

I love the coffee for staining your teeth

and warming your palms in the morning.

I would protect you till the end of time.

I would lie down

in the middle of a tornado

and cover you.

LIGHTHOUSE

He was almost 7 feet tall,

with black oily hair

that stuck to his forehead in patches

like a Rorschach test when he’d sweat.

His bedroom was a dark, cavernous prison

at the bottom level of the house,

separate from the rest.

This granted him,

at first, privacy.

And, at the end, protection.

I used to love

being far away from everyone else in the house,

because it meant I could keep him to myself longer.

Keep him from being distracted.

But by the final days,

I cursed the distance

and would silently pray

that the earth would cave beneath us

and the bedroom addition

would grow closer to the main house

in a tangle of excavated tree roots and tectonic plates.

I silently prayed for an earthquake

so our guests could hear him scream.

He would stuff his nose with cocaine

for days on end

until the rims of his nostrils

were caked with white,

like cement,

and bleeding sores

leaking yellow-orange pus,

from him reopening the wounds

he had burnt into his airways.

He would pace the room in circles,

with his T-shirt sticking to him

in a cold sweat,

and cry.

A cry full of pain and loathing

that twisted his face

like pottery on an unmanned wheel.

He would punch himself in the head,

banging his fist

against his forehead

and temple

until his fingers

full of rings

left pictures on his skin,

and his knuckles burst open.

He would put his bleeding hand around my neck

and press me against the wall.

His eyes would flicker back to life

like a film projector malfunctioning

in a pitch-black cinema,

and before the title card ran,

he would stare

at the space between my eyebrows,

too cowardly to make eye contact,

and say,

“I’m going to fucking kill you.”

And I would believe him.

So I would take his hand

off of my neck gently,

and wrap my arms around his head

like I was cradling a newborn

and stroke his hair

and whisper that it would be okay

and again

he would cry

that Siren’s cry

like a warning to all ships at sea.

We’d resign into a damp bed,

and his knuckles would stick to the sheets

as the blood dried

and clotted

and scabbed

and I would lie awake as he slept

snoring through his coagulated nostrils.

I would stare at the ceiling,

too afraid to let a single tear escape

lest the subtle movement

be enough to wake him

from his docile state.

When he was sleeping,

he looked beautiful.

Like an old Hollywood star.

And with his eyes shut,

and the Siren scream no longer sounding off

from his slack mouth

in the master bedroom

detached from the home,

I became a lighthouse.

Dim glow beaming from my eyes,

a man in my arms,

kerosene running low in the tower.

Praying the gods would unleash their fury

and send waves so strong

they’d crash through the hills of California.

And the ground would collapse

and bury us both in the rubble.

THE PAINTER

My aunt had a tenant

who lived in a one-floor addition above her unit.

He had a fat red face and a heavy brow

and an accent that sent splinters underneath your fingernails.

He was a painter

who specialized in pointillism portraits of cherub boys

with Fuji-apple-red cheeks, dimples, and ivy leaves between their legs.

Hours of detail and perfectionism spent focusing his attention on every little inch of their baby skin and baby limbs.

My aunt hung one in her house that I would find myself staring at.

Half intrigued by his talent and other times to sit in the stillness of the stirring in my chest as if I were looking at something forbidden.

I dreamt about his studio often.

Sometimes the screen door would hang open and the smell of oil paints and turpentine and expensive ink pens would waft down the stairs.

On hot summer days I would lie in my tank top and shorts,

my tight curls tangling themselves like a frayed rug edge in a washing machine.

I would stretch across the carpet with cheap pastels and printer paper and draw girls.

Mostly faeries.

Naked and freckled with long straight flowing hair.

I drew what I wanted to be, and what was forbidden to me.

I wondered if all artists did the same.

I would lie there and the fragrance of his studio would travel beneath the door through the crack where the draft came through in the winter.

I was never allowed in the painter’s studio.

It was a dream that was separated from me by a dark staircase that bled into oblivion like a nightmare where you couldn’t move.

My eldest cousin strictly forbade me to enter the dark chasm.

I never saw him look the painter in the eye.

The staircase to the studio loomed like a stranger in a subway station.

It was a yawning fissure that I believed, if I could simply cross,

I would become a real artist too.

My family fought about the painter.

I would hide under the table in the spare room, while angry voices took the shape of shadows and bounced off the tile in the kitchen. I heard some strangers’ names.

We didn’t know much about the painter,

But we knew he had 3 children.

An older daughter named Rebecca who was born addicted to heroin, with longing coursing through veins that couldn’t recognize what was absent from her new life. Too young to understand why she had an erratic aching wound in her heart.

We knew his other two children were about my age.

But they never came around.

One day I was playing in the yard alone.

Kicking pebbles with my Skechers and pacing between the broken basketball hoop and the fence that curtained my aunt’s dead-end road from a used-car lot, he called to me from the roof.

He was working in vanilla-ice-cream-colored dickies, covered in haphazard smears of color, and holding 2 dirty glasses of sweet tea, and invited me upstairs.

So with the conviction of a child exploring terrain formerly unavailable to her,

I accepted the invitation and began the approach up the stairs.

This would be it.

I would burst through the door and run my fingertips across the glossy tubes of oil, and feel the brush hairs separate and fan out across my palm, and I would unlock the secrets to becoming a real artist. Like the painter.

But artists love what is forbidden to them, a fact I learned too young; too early.

I don’t remember being in his studio.

It’s an empty cartridge in my memory. I just remember walking down the stairs like I was holding a basketball between my legs in a relay race, and crawling back onto my aunt’s carpet in the corner like a dying dog who didn’t want to be seen.

Years later I was a 15-year-old on Christmas vacation when he came downstairs to our unit to make a plate of old ham and cold mashed potatoes.

My aunt was a kind woman who always offered her leftovers.

My eldest cousin sat in an armchair across the room and I watched his eyes follow the painter’s journey to the microwave.

I saw the darkness of the staircase, and the emptiness of a memory erased in my cousin’s eyes. The same foot planted, firm stare I gave the painter when his back was turned.

My cousin and I had many things in common.

The same furrowed brow, the same short temper, charming gummy smile, and aversion to touch.

And in all of these things I could finally see the difference

between what is the blood and what is learned.

I knew my cousin had walked the same stairs, he had smelled the oil and touched the brushes, and now we both sat on an antique carpet, cursing the same thing the painter stole from us.

I looked up at the wall, at the little naked child made of tiny tiny dots still held captive behind a glass frame on my aunt’s wall,

and I wondered what the painter had stolen from that little boy too.

MIND THE GAP

Flying above the quaint little houses under Heathrow.

London looks dirty,

but I keep this epiphany to myself in the baggage claim.

I land to a red-faced drunk at an outdoor pub.

He swaggers with unwavering confidence.

The brewing tension of a street fight.

Each step is like broken glass exploding on cobblestone that has

seen quarrels centuries old.

Slated in nostalgic hubris.

A nation birthed the oldest child.

It’s too cold,

and too mean.

But poets,

they hate everything.

So I keep calm

And

FUCK OFF.

GUTS

I got this bad habit

where I don’t think before I speak.

I fall in love like every week.

I keep a pistol when I sleep

inside my mouth

so I don’t fight my tongue

for saying all these things,

like how I saw you in my dreams.

(I really did)

I’m getting bad at it.

So I just numb myself instead.

I’ll cut my hair and dye it red,

and hope you get it through your head

that I’m in love

and it’s bleeding through my skull,

but I’ve been hurt before

so I can’t tell you

that I

keep this image

in my mind

of you sleeping

late at night.

I count the lashes

on your eyes,

keep my legs

between your thighs.

I could never tell you,

even though I’d like to.

I swear this never happens.

You know I’ve got a way with words.

I’d put a million in a verse,

but still can’t bring myself

to face what I feel.

I’m scared of something real.

I should spit it out

and maybe get the guts to tell you.

LAUNDROMAT

My mother would round up my brother and me,

Laundry baskets on her hips,

Like the National Geographic portrait of a mother

Carrying water

And her babies

We would march foot by foot

in the scorching heat

to the Laundromat

At the bottom of the hill

Of the apartment cul-de-sac.

The hill was massive.

It would be slick with ice and snow in the winter

And the big kids would sled down it

On homemade toboggans

Made of cardboard boxes

And laundry baskets.

Little rocket ships

For the poor kids.

We’d dive to the bottom

and ricochet across the parking lot

where the hill opened up into lawless concrete and pavement.

The wind would slice our cheeks raw red like sushi.

And beautiful girls

with beautiful button noses

turned pink like peppermint candy

would cheer from the landing.

In the summer the hill wasn’t so charming.

My little brother is dragging his sneakers across the curb

nasty little thumbsucker

He used a pacifier till he was 5

And even as he slept,

his mouth would pucker and suck on nothing

Oedipus baby. Mama’s boy.

I spit mine out the first time someone tried to put it in my mouth

I wouldn’t be silenced

Infanticide!

We are marching

To the Laundromat.

We arrive and immediately

I run to a familiar friend.

A big black cracked leather couch

with yellow stuffing seeping from duct-taped holes.

It looks like a giant monster

in the dark corner under the decaying lights.

I stick my arm inside

And fear large teeth will bite it off at the elbow.

I imagine myself pulling out my arm

and it bleeding like a stick of salami.

The first time I ever saw a whole lot of blood

was when my babysitter Jessie

invited her friends over to my house

while my mother was at work.

She told me to shut my trap

and she’d let me watch any movie I wanted on TV.

I picked The Shawshank Redemption.

They sat outside the apartment complex

and 3 boys arrived and smoked cigarettes on the porch

One girl came inside.

She was bleeding between the legs.

Dripping in thick strips like the syrup

I used to make strawberry milk

She asked to borrow a pair of pants

I was half her size

I pictured her bleeding legs

and imagined my arm dripping with the same crimson.

I waved my pretend amputated stub around

screaming for my mother.

She didn’t turn around.

She threw our still-damp clothes in the basket

And we marched back up the hill.

THUMBELINA

I am so thankful that your mouthful of 88 piano keys

charmed itself into my ear.

I am so lucky to have a handful of chocolate brown hair

in a bushel,

bunched up,

brushing my fingertips when you lie in my lap.

Your mouth slack and your pink lips parted ever so slightly.

Your rose-colored cheeks

and green eyes

and tan nose

and chestnut freckles

and blue-violet veins beneath the skin;

all the good colors of some angel

in a Renaissance painting.

Your eyelashes so soft and long

I close my eyes

and imagine them

brushing up and down the length of my body.

If only I could be so small

to lie in your eyelashes

as a hammock.

Swim in the whites of your eyes.

Dive off the Cupid’s bow of your lip.

Hang with two hands

from the corner of your smile

like Peter Pan from a clock tower.

Dance and splash

in the tiny brown puddles

of every single freckle.

Crawl into the lobe of your ear

and hide in the seashell cavern

where I can hear the ocean

and whisper it back to you.

Your face brings me all the joy of the entire world,

right to my bed.

Right to my hands.

Right in the breath like a tide in your chest.

STUDIO CITY

I can’t tell how to condense my life into 100 words

For a piece of paper

For someone to hold and have and abandon.

Really does a number on your identity.

It’s not hard. It just hurts.

Because it bursts out of me like hot lava.

I find a million dandelions blowing through my head

and they are beautiful

But when they come at you like one furious wave

(a few times a day)

They stick in your nose and eyes and ears

You explode from the inside out

Like a time lapse of a decaying animal.

I don’t want to walk around department stores

that smell like wax crayons

too bright

so everybody looks like a cartoon

Bleeding colors

And breaking the fourth wall

and I fucking hate parallel parking

the silence of Hollywood is deafening

and I will die if I keep eating every meal purchased from the store.

I feel like I’m made of plastic

I breathe and it doesn’t reach my lungs

I eat and I don’t taste

I cry and there’s no burn in my nose anymore

I’m standing in the middle of a 4-way intersection

and a car is coming at me

and I have no idea which way to go.

Is this how it was supposed to feel?

EVERYTHING

Before I knew we were poor,

Everything

was magic.

An empty fridge

meant freezer-burnt Popsicles

for dinner.

Purple-blue mouths

and toothless smiles

calmed the torment

in my mother’s crux.

Everything

was an adventure.

A shared bedroom

with my little brother

meant an eternal playmate.

A warm tent,

closed off by a blanket

hung from a bunk bed

and a hair dryer

snuck under the sheets to keep warm.

Arctic explorers

waiting for a rescue unit.

Everything

was a mystery.

Voices resounding from the living room

vehemently snaking

through the short halls

of the apartment.

And then one day,

I had

Everything

And

Everything

was over too soon.

TRAVIS

Travis was a junkie

All my friends were

I was a wallflower

I watched them tie up their arms and collapse onto couches

I was never high,

and always on the same strange slow ride with them

Travis rode a fixed-gear bike

He had nowhere to live

But never went without somewhere to sleep

Travis was handsome

He had a backpack and an iPad

And nowhere to take a shower

He would meet old ladies

Whose husbands had moved on or passed

He would make love to them

For a week or two at a time

Hold them in his arms

And stroke their thin hair

Kiss their lips, dissolving vermilion ridges.

He would paint their fingernails and take baths with essential oils

They would give him somewhere to stay and a few hundred dollars

And by Sunday, Travis would tuck a perfumed envelope into his

pocket

And ride off on his fixie

To score

And he would come meet us

With department-store lipstick on his collar

And a pocket full of sour candy and dope.

I asked him how he did it.

How it didn’t rip his heart to shreds.

“I really do love them,”

he told me.

“All of them.”

ANTAGONIST

Does a ghost

know that he’s a ghost?

Does a saint

know that she’s forgiven?

If no one knows,

then I don’t know

if I might be

the villain.

I don’t trust the author anymore.

BAD DAY: 3

I’m sorry

I’m having another bad day.

My tongue is twisted

my words come out

like venom.

I only use my armor when you frighten me.

Stuck in the middle of “I love you” and “I can’t take this anymore.”

These things they come and go

and I mean half of everything I tell you.

I’m half of everything I hate,

and half of anything I create

is you too.

So I start to hate the poems when I hate you.

THE BAKER

I baked him a cake,

and now I watched him cut it open.

The first slice always falls apart.

I winced, as the pieces crumbled like a landslide.

No matter how many cakes I bake,

the first piece that’s cut

always falls apart.

The inside was cherry red.

Globular, bulbous chunks leaked from the center.

Like giant blood clots, bathing in buttercream.

I imagined I had taken my still-beating heart from my chest

and baked it into the middle.

He took a bite, and grinned at me.

His teeth stained like a row of garnets.

Now he could have it,

and eat it too.

ORDINARY BOYS

There are ordinary boys.

And then there are boys

who stick an arm down your throat

and grasp your heart.

Digging through your entrails

while your teeth rub

against the socket of their elbow.

You drool and it pools around your lips

and drips

to their armpits,

tickling down to their ribs.

There are boys

who you will write poetry for

as an offering

a gift

an insecure gesture, to say

“Please like me,

for I have gilded you in gold,

and therefore

you should love me

for the sheer fact

that I love you.”

Then there are boys

who demand poetry.

Who keep you awake

at all hours of the night,

purging your brain

of their details.

Hoping

you can capture them on a page

and then capture them in the world.

You are choking

with his hand in your neck

and his fist around your heart.

Your aorta pulses.

And so does your aching pussy.

You write to calm the craving.

To corner them in fiction

And say

Finally,

I have conquered you.

FUN GIRL

I am the fun girl.

I am the spit hanging down from your tongue girl.

I’m the choke me as hard as you can girl.

I’m the give it all up for a man girl.

I’m the plaid skirt and white knee-high socks girl.

I’m a pistol that’s loaded and cocked girl.

The don’t mind when you call me a slut girl.

I’m the smack her real hard on the butt girl.

I’m a swallow my feelings and lie girl.

I’m a lie there and let him inside girl.

’Cause I don’t wanna make him get mad girl.

I’m the better off being bad girl.

’Cause then nothing hurts when they leave, girl.

Except with his grip on your sleeve, girl.

You say yes to the threesomes and drinks girl.

’Cause you still really care what he thinks girl.

You’re not boring or mean like his old girl

she was crazy, or that’s what you’re told, girl.

So you’ll get further if you are the fun girl.

But you’ll never be the only one girl.

You’ll get older and wish you had known girl.

’Cause you gave way too much of your soul, girl.

Now you don’t expect men to be kind girl.

You just use them and leave them behind girl.

It’s so hard to grow up as the fun girl.

You’ll be trapped in your days as a young girl.

A memory, for men you loved girl.

“Oh! That fun girl!”

POWERLESS

I’m locked in the bathroom on a

commercial flight.

Hilary Swank in a butch haircut

sends a hijacked plane

through my cerebellum.

I am sweating.

I pull my lips apart from my

teeth like a dental diagram

and I display my gums.

I sit to piss and roll my eyes.

cuff my jeans 2 times, 3 times.

I am in my memory.

riding a man on a mattress,

back arched like a prize horse.

grinding and grinding.

tossing my hair around

and gripping tight the ropes of ecstasy.

pornographic cries echo through

my head in the airplane bathroom.

they key-change, minor 5th to

humiliation.

I shift gears.

a woman beneath me, squirming like

a slug under a magnifying glass.

my veiny arms and slender fingers

graze across her like velvet.

why is the straight part of me

powerless?

LET’S HAVE BREAKFAST

The light is creeping past your curtains,

playing shadows on your head.

I wonder how much

I would have to beg

to stay till half past ten.

You won’t notice

that I’ve overstayed my welcome

once again.

All great conversations

seem to

start in a

king-size bed.

DNA

My heart swings

in the balance

of this longing.

it is suspended here,

anxiously awaiting

sweet release.

tightly wound tension

throbs in my core.

swells

like an angry ocean.

rises

like warm bread

rich with yeast.

I tumble

weightlessly

through daydreams

of your skin.

the surface of which

bleeds

seamlessly

into visions

of your bottomless eyes

and the curve of your mouth

matching perfectly

the curve

of the small of my back.

I am spiraling

down a staircase

of lust

and comfort

and withdrawal.

I will lie back,

and slide through

the tunnel between

your double helix.

I will dive in your DNA.

I will stay here,

patiently,

comatose in the wake

of your everything-ness.

Your all.

I will make permanent residence

right here

in your acquaintance.

16 MISSED CALLS

It’s another Monday morning

and you still haven’t slept in your bed.

It’s only been 3 days

but I’m told that

Jesus did a lot over the weekend

when we thought he was dead.

FOREVER… IS A LONG TIME

I spent a long time

watering a plant made out of plastic,

and I cursed the ground for growing green.

I spent a long time

substituting honest with sarcastic

and I cursed my tongue for being mean.

Weightless, breathless, restitute.

Motionless and absolute.

You cut me open,

sucked the poison

from an aging wound.

And now 50,000 war cadets

would cower at this small brunette.

To my surprise,

not 6 feet high,

who’d reach and grab the moon,

if I should ask, or just imply

that I wanted a bit more light,

so I could look inside his eyes,

and get the colors just right.

I spent a long time

calling all my parts by evil nicknames,

and I told myself they hate me too.

But you spent a long time,

tending to a home that’s burning in flames

and your patience made me love you.

Build love, build god, build promises

build calluses, then build provinces

’cause I have found

somebody who would build life,

then demolish it.

And we could simply hit rewind,

to live it all a thousand times

find views in fucking Kathmandu,

to watch it from a different height

(and we’d comment how the sun shines)

I searched the world

to find

you hiding inside me

the whole damn time.

Weightless,

breathless,

restitute…

BAD DAY: EPILOGUE

“Swallow your apologies.

None of them mean shit to me.

And all you have these days

are bad days.”

These things they come and go

and I mean half of everything I tell you.

I’m half of everything I hate,

and half of anything I create

is you too.

So I’ll start to hate my future when I hate you.

L TRAIN

One day, just like any other day,

you will wake up

and something will stir in your belly.

It will shake

and growl

and rumble like a beast

and claw its way up your throat.

With two strong hands

it will wrench your lips apart

and force your mouth wide open

and you will say,

“I want it.”

And you do.

Painfully so.

You will decide it’s yours.

And from that moment forth

you will never be the same.

Your eyes will glaze

with a glimmering film

that lights up the dark

with its iridescent flickering.

Your teeth will grit and throb

and threaten to burst

like cracks in concrete.

Your stride will become faster,

stronger,

quicker.

Cutting through the air

like sharp shears through parchment.

Your pen will hit the paper

like a body hitting pavement

and you will scrape your knees red

over

and over

and over again

across the fine lines.

You will shut your eyes to the world

and retreat within yourself.

You will wait there.

Patiently.

Languid in the wake of your potential.

And then one day

You’ll explode.

You’ll shake your head

and laugh

and scream

with hysteria.

Every single eye

will focus on you

with laser-sharp precision.

You will have them in your grasp.

And your fingers

will fold

around them like shelter;

a dark ceiling closing in,

and you’ll keep them there,

in your kingdom.

One day you will explode.

And your pieces will scatter

to far corners of the world

never to be found again.

You will trade these pieces

for that thing.

That thing you wanted.

You traded Everything

to have it.

HIGH-FIVE KIDS

Back to where it all began,

this time with another man.

’Cause mine has found his place

amongst the fountains.

One-hundred-dollar wine to drink

The blood pools in the kitchen sink,

and buildings line the windows

like the mountains.

Stuck in limbo,

I’m bent backwards.

Crooked spine,

and broken plaster.

Tell me, do you know the password?

We’re denied by heaven’s master.

Back to where

the pavement breaks.

Lined all along tectonic plates.

The stars soaked in the sidewalk

spell the message.

When all your lovers

start to die.

You wake alone

and wonder why

they left you here

to document the wreckage.

They tell me that it’s art I make,

in all this chaos I create.

They tell me that it’s much too late.

To rectify all my mistakes.

The kid is dead and gone

back to the

Kingdom.

HAVING

How strange to write about

“having”

when for so long

I’ve drawn inspiration only from

longing?

Pink cheeks.

Stubble ripples across them

like a flower

still clinging to the earth

it was plucked from.

Your eyes are static electricity.

You’ve missed me.

A STORY LIKE MINE

It’s 2009

and I’m 14

and I’m crying.

Not really sure where I am,

but I’m holding the hand

of my best friend Sam

in the waiting room

of a Planned Parenthood.

The air is sterile and clean.

The walls are that

“not gray but green.”

And the lights are so bright

they could burn a hole

through the seam

of my jeans.

My phone is buzzing

in the pocket.

My mom is asking me

if I remembered my keys

’cause she’s closing the door

and she needs to lock it.

But I can’t tell my mom

where I’ve gone.

I can’t tell anyone at all.

You see,

my best friend Sam

was raped by a man

who we knew ’cause he worked

in the after-school program.

He held her down

with her textbooks beside her.

He covered her mouth

and then he came

inside

her.

So now I’m with Sam

at the place with a plan

waiting for the results

of a medical exam.

She’s praying

she doesn’t need an abortion.

She couldn’t afford it.

Her parents would “like totally kill her.”

It’s 2002

and my family just moved.

The only people I know

are my mom’s friend Sue

and her

son.

He’s got a case

of Matchbox cars

and he says that he’ll teach me

to play the guitar

if I just keep quiet.

The stairwell beside

Apartment 1245

will haunt me in my sleep

as long as I’m alive

and I’m too young to know

why it aches in my thighs

but I must lie.

I must lie.

It’s 2012

and I’m dating a guy.

I sleep in his bed and

I just learned to drive.

He’s older than me,

and he drinks whiskey neat.

He’s paying for everything

(this adult thing is not cheap).

We’ve been fighting a lot.

Almost 10 times a week.

But he still wants to have sex

and I just want to sleep.

He says

I can’t say no to him,

that this much

I owe to him.

He buys my dinners,

so I need to blow him.

He’s taken to forcing me

down on my knees.

I’m confused

’cause he’s hurting me

while he says “please.”

And he’s “only a man”

and these things he “just needs.”

He’s my boyfriend

so why am I filled with unease?

It’s 2017

and I live like a queen.

And I’ve followed damn near

every one of my dreams.

I’m invincible!

and I’m so fucking naive.

I believe I’m protected

’cause I live on a screen.

Nobody would DARE

act that way around me.

I have earned my protection,

eternally clean.

Till a man who I trust

gets his hands

in my pants.

But I don’t want none of that?

I just wanted to dance?

I wake up the next morning

like I’m in a trance.

And there’s blood.

My blood.

Is that my blood?

Hold on a minute…

You see

I’ve worked every day

since I was 18.

I’ve toured everywhere

from Japan

to Mar-a-Lago,

I even went onstage

that night

in Chicago

when I was having a miscarriage.

I pied the piper!

I put on a diaper!

And sang out my spleen

to a roomful of teens.

What do you mean

this

happened

to

me?

(You can’t put your hands on me?

You don’t know what my body has been through.

I’m supposed to be

Safe

Now.

I’ve “earned it.”)

The year is 2018

and I’ve realized

that nobody is safe

as long as she is alive

and every friend that I know

has a

story

like

mine.

(And the world tells us

that we should take it

as a compliment.)

But heroes like Ashley

and Simone and

Gabby,

McKayla and Gaga,

Rosario,

Ali.

Remind me

this is the beginning,

it’s not the finale.

And that’s why we are here,

and that’s why we rally.

It’s about Olympians

and a medical resident.

And not one

fucking

word

from the man

who is president.

It’s about closed doors

secrets

and legs

in stilettos,

from Hollywood Hills

to the projects

and ghettos.

When babies are ripped

from the arms of teen mothers,

and child brides globally

cry under covers,

who don’t have a voice

on the magazine covers

and you can’t walk anywhere

if your legs aren’t covered,

they tell us

“take cover.”

But we are not

free

until all of us are

free.

So love your neighbor.

Please treat her kindly.

Ask her her story,

then shut up

and listen.

Black

Asian

poor

wealthy

Trans

Cis

Muslim

Christian

Listen.

LISTEN.

And then yell

at the top of your lungs.

Be a voice

for all those

who have prisoner tongues,

for the people

who had to grow up

way too young,

there is work to be done,

there are songs to be sung,

Lord knows there’s a

war

to be

won.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME PT. 2

Abandonment

is a complicated complex.

You’re longing

for somebody who will leave.

I walked into a promised land.

A decorated,

perfect man.

With something vile

hiding up his sleeve.

I wonder

what I’ll ever have control of.

Rejection breeds

obsession,

so they say.

I left my heart

and all my hope,

my vindicated tales of woe

in Sweden

on a freezing winter day.

LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP

that fleeting moment

at 4 a.m.

when I am shaken from a deep sleep

because I can’t feel your skin

against mine.

when my entire body hangs

suspended

in that silver sliver of time

is a tiny speck of fear

that reminds me

that I love when you turn over

and kiss my neck

two feet of space

2,753 miles

any distance becomes too much to bear

a warm bed as wide as the world.

SMOKE

It’s funny, the human fascination with smoke.

Every writer has flexed

and fucked

and abused the metaphor for centuries

“It vanished like smoke”

“Her body wound like a thin stream of smoke”

“I inhaled his presence like a cloud of smoke.”

We are enamored.

Schrödinger’s element.

It is there when we restrain ourselves from touching it,

And it disappears when we reach for it.

It looks solid, it holds form,

and then evades our grasp as if to taunt us.

Not transparent, not opaque.

Is it arrogance?

Smoke, the reminder of the fire we started?

The flame that humankind willed into existence in desperation.

Or is it fear?

The remnants of something we need to survive,

but could die in the thrashing embrace of.

Does it arouse us,

to watch the smoke?

The lingering aftermath of the thing that we feign control of,

But are at the mercy of?

Do we envy the smoke?

(If I could disappear as quickly as I appeared,

I would.)

In my 65-degree bedroom,

On a duvet covered in dog fur,

She puts her cigarette out by smashing it between two fingers.

Like a final period placed on a hand-penned letter.

I reach out to touch her,

But she rolls over and her mind escapes

to an empty corner of the ceiling.

Knee-deep into my own cliché,

I sink.

ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER

When he is away from me,

my heart reaches from my chest like a wet toddler in a crib.

His voice fills my ears like brown whiskey in a crystal glass,

occupying every single tessellate crevice.

When he is away, his smile shines like sun on fresh snow,

And his eyes flicker like chunks of glitter

falling through the clear goo in a snow globe.

When he is away,

His touch seems hot and scarlet red.

Feverish and desirable.

When he is with me,

My heart retreats like a salty oyster into its shell.

His voice rips through me like a scissor in a seam.

When he is with me,

his smile is so loud I hear it with my eyes shut

And his nose drips

and his mouth drools

and his hands are clammy and awkward.

He is gilded in light from 5 feet away.

He is bothersome from 3.

Why can I love him,

only when he leaves?

READY

I knew I was ready to forgive you

When I wrenched the knife from my back

I held it up high

and it cast a menacing shadow

over the face of the young man in front of me.

Its shiny metal gleamed and glistened.

I stood heaving

and the veins in my face erupted

like tree branches gnarled into the forest floor.

I held the weapon

retrieved from my own back.

I gripped it once,

twice,

and then

I put it down.

REFRIGERATOR BLUE

2 eyes

the cold comfortable blue

of a refrigerator light

glowing in the temptation of a midnight snack.

How I rub your head

with my fingertips

and press my open palm against your skull

like I could push right through the bone

and grab a gushy handful of your brain

and take a chunk of it home with me

to devour later.

In my underwear,

off a plate,

in that refrigerator light,

like cold Chinese.

Grip my face

and scold me

for taking more than you wanted to give,

and I can feel my smile rising

push my cheeks through your fingers

like a handful of clay,

malleable in your grasp.

I’ll miss your lap

and the heat between my legs

and showering off my sticky thighs

in the quiet when I get home.

Oh will I miss the stern, saccharine voice

melting from your lips

hovering over my open hungry mouth.

THE CAVE

I don’t suppose I really know you very well—

but I know you smell like the delicious damp grass

that grows near old walls

and that your hands

are beautiful

opening out of your sleeves

and that the back of your head

is a mossy sheltered cave

when there is trouble in the wind

and that my cheek

just fits

the depression in your shoulder

and that is all I need to know.

PARASITE

I thought I knew what a muse was until I met him.

I’d been inspired before.

I’d been intrigued.

But I had no idea what a muse was

until he put his pink lips to my neck

and spit parasites into my ears.

Let them climb in and make a home

in the soft tissue of my brain.

Bred

and multiplied

and bit into my mind

till the memories of him opened

like sores

and festered in the heat of my anxiety.

I opened my mouth

and Times New Roman print flew out

like a plague of moths from its depths.

For 48 hours I was held captive

by the college-ruled lines

of a composition notebook.

Wrapped around my wrists

like the leather-bound work of a dominatrix.

He cracked a whip against my skin

and sliced my flesh open,

scarlet

like the margin taunting me.

The violet bruises on my neck,

my chest,

could hardly compare to the scar

that rose when he petrified me.

He shocked me.

Terrified me.

Because he inspired me.

I wasn’t prepared

for the chaos that would follow.

A muse.

A parasite.

A symbiotic relationship.

Feed his hungry mind from my open mouth.

FOREVER CURSED IN LOVE ARE THE OBSERVANT

My mouth tastes like cinnamon whiskey

and menthol cigarettes.

Cabernet Sauvignon,

spearmint gum

and your hot heavy breath.

My mouth tastes like all the things

I should have said.

I don’t want to be this way,

but I have been since you left.

I should have never counted your eyelashes

when you slept.

I should forget the way you take your tea,

but it haunts me.

2 sugars,

please.

THE PATTERN

What will be left

when I have broken all of my favorite things?

When the glue of sweet apologies

and bat eyelashes no longer repairs them?

What will be left when I have shattered it all?

Carelessly, it will evade my grasp.

And I will have

nothing.

I WOULD LEAVE ME IF I COULD.

This must be a nightmare.

It couldn’t be a dream.

I’m washing in the shower,

my limbs clean,

until they bleed.

I sometimes miss the quiet;

the chaos of the streets.

I keep it all inside my mind

and every night

I scream.

I can’t remember

what it’s like to smell the ocean.

I can’t remember

what it’s like to feel the sea.

I can’t remember what it’s like to face a mirror

and not hate the person staring back at me.

I wish that I were dead

or at least somewhere else.

I try to keep the riot quiet

like a diet

for my health.

Stealth.

It’s moving silently.

It’s heavy.

It started from my knees

and now it’s creeping up already.

Just another second now,

’cause here comes the confetti.

Please, hold the camera steady.

I encore 7 more

and everybody’s like “That’s plenty!”

I would leave me if you’d let me

I would leave me if you’d let me

I would leave me if I could.

BRIGHT EYES

They told me that she’s beautiful

with bright eyes and fair skin.

She’s from a city off the coast somewhere

where the girls are “made for men.”

Is she a naked mess in underwear

on a dirty bathroom floor?

Do you look at her disgusted,

thinking that you deserve more?

But does she scream at the top of her lungs

praying you don’t leave her?

Does she scream from an open mouth

begging you to feed her?

Will she set alarms obsessively

to check in on your breath?

Does she know the ways to touch you

with her lips upon your neck?

Is she agreeable and careless?

Does she answer all your calls?

Because I know you needed someone

who was fine with feeling small.

But does she scream at the top of her lungs

praying that you’ll need her?

Do you scream at the top of your lungs?

Do your veins bleed her?

DEVIL IN ME

I won’t take anyone down

If I crawl tonight

But I still let everyone down

When I change in size

And I went tumbling down

Trying to reach your height

But I scream too loud

If I speak my mind.

BRING ON THE BLACK!

Can’t decide what’s fake and what’s fact

So you’re up late screaming, “Bring on the black!”

Smoked so many cigarettes alone on a bathroom sink

I think my lungs are full to the brim with ink

And I can’t get it past my throat to my fingers

to the paper

to the stingers

of the hive in my head

Last week I had a dream you were dead

I was on the phone calling

Begging for your body back

Screaming, “Bring on the black!”

I’m opening a faucet and I’m scared to let it run

It’s been easier the past few months

when I would hold my tongue

’Cause when I write it all down I have to face it

But when I hold it inside I can pretend it’s okay

I haven’t called my grandmother in a year

’Cause she’s the only one I know

Who tells me shit I don’t wanna hear

But I need to hear

I’ve been in the gym these mornings

It takes me 7 minutes to run a mile

And 7 seconds to run from my problems

I’m working on my lung capacity

Fun capacity

Uptight bitch

Take a breath and relax,

it isn’t so bad.

Keep drinking keep dancing

Keep hopeless romancing

They say that keys open doors

But you handed all your keys

To your friends and they dip ’em in a powder sack

Screaming, “Bring on the black!”

And every single second is like late-night TV

A Skinemax freebie

Watch the night sweats

drip down his back

Yelling, “Bring on the black!”

My father said,

“You’ll never belong to a man till I’m dead”

So we just belong to a bag instead.

Winners don’t lose, right?

Except sleep.

Counting sheep.

Relentless beep.

Of the hotel TV.

Too high to react.

So I’m up late begging,

“Lord, bring on the black.”

SOMETHING FOR THEM

This is to remind you that you are a lover.

That you melt at a glance

at a touch.

That you are a baby.

You are soft and fragile

and you need someone to tell you

that everything is going to be okay.

That you are an idiot

and you are going to fuck up

1 million more times the rest of your life.

But this is to remind you

that you are a statue, gilded in marble,

and there is white lightning in your eyes.

Change shape.

Give in.

SEVENTEEN

It was cold for California

when my phone rang half past 3,

my little brother’s on the other line.

He’s shaking like a leaf.

At 17 years old, he lost his

best friend on a field.

There’s no battle in our history book

compared to how he feels.

Alabaster faces,

all lined up, turning gray.

I watched my brother hold a casket

before his graduation day.

The boy’s poor mother cried

with screams that echoed through the town.

Like a Siren on a shoreline,

begging God to let her drown.

So my brother crawled beside her

and he got beneath the sheet.

He let a woman hold him,

so that she could make believe.

She said, “Your arms are a bit smaller,

and your hair has got a wave,

but you smell just like my little boy.

You’ve almost got his face.”

So he lay there on the couch

until the sky turned red and tan.

And in a full-grown woman’s arms,

my little brother was a man.

I LEFT THE PARTY

I looked through the window and saw the lights flicker

like salt and pepper flakes across the Tokyo skyline.

I saw the amber glowing from the floor lamp in the corner,

warming the room with its thick embrace.

I saw the pink in my lips and the orange in my eyes

and the blush across my chest.

And I wondered how could I have not noticed

the ways in which you dulled my senses

and stole the color from the world right before my eyes.

Of all the wrongs you committed,

the worst was keeping me from the beauty

in anything

that wasn’t

you.

I WISH THAT I WERE MANIC ALL THE TIME

Be patient with me

When my limbs become trees

And my roots become reeds

And the sounds from my mouth start making sense

My mind is messy but it’s beautiful

like I’m in utero

I don’t say it often,

but I’m proud of the woman that I turned out to be

You might think I’m crazy

Wild and young and free

But really I’m just:

careful

quiet

overthinking

analyzing like

It’s logic

over loving

and emotion

brought me nothing

but disaster

so I hold my drink

and sit right in the corner

smiling.

Wish I were a wild child like I say I am

Wish I really meant it when I say

that I don’t give a damn

Wish that I were manic all the time.

Think I like me better

when I’m all outside the lines.

But my colors bleed

And they bleed bright red.

I keep this pistol near my bed

Inside my mouth

so I can keep my tongue from tearing up my head.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HALSEY, born Ashley Nicolette Frangipane, is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

www.SimonandSchuster.co.uk/Authors/Halsey

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First published in the United States by Simon & Schuster Inc., 2020

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2020

Copyright © Ashley Frangipane, 2020

The right of Ashley Frangipane to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-4711-8907-4

eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-8908-1