These days no shower is hot enough.
Every millimeter of me not red under the spray
is a study of gooseflesh topography,
an untouched map that begs for smoothing
before its mountains exhaust themselves.
These days I stand over the kettle
just for the heat of its scream,
and listen for the words in the smoke.
I want to follow it back to its fire,
like maybe that’ll be warmth enough
for my iced bones. Do you want to melt,
the sun asks, because I’ll help how I can,
but you have to come closer, soon
and I close the curtains and tie off the quilt
over my head. Let my lungs cloud
for the sky won’t. Don’t taunt me, star.
If I could supernova, my god.
Category: A Poem, A Day
Dec. 19, ’18
Sept. 27, ’18
right now all i know is i am going through hell
and i don’t know if my feet can carry me
he wrote a whole book on this spiral
this descent away from sanity
but it wasn’t an instruction manual for
how the hell to survive
i built this purgatory myself
but they took it over before i finished
and made it something i can’t navigate
i am blind and afraid and growing weaker every day
what i would give to see the sky again, the sky, the sky
Sept. 25, ’18
drowned on the way to school this morning.
someone said something stupid
that made me feel stupid
and now every step is waterlogged and
squelching, announcing my disgrace
to everyone in the hallways. these strangers
who pretend at sympathy but
comfort with cruelty. “it’ll be okay,
glass half full, you make your own
happiness.”
everyone keeps kicking down my block castles.
eventually you get tired of rebuilding.
living in the ruins is easier.
don’t even know what i would give
to sleep through the night again.
sleep doesn’t want me,
why should i want her.
the rain has always been my greatest lullaby
but this storm seems to be making
a mockery of me.
too quick to cry, too slow to thunder.
everyone running inside when i
slink by. hiding their faces.
can anyone make sense of this
lightning skitter pulse
it should have a bigger meaning
than this.
September 17, ’18
“When the Candle Goes Out”
I wanted so badly to be yours.
I wanted to be something you
wanted to keep. But these are not decisions
we can make for other people.
I will love you forever, even if
right now, I don’t very much like you
or the way you’ve made me feel.
But I will love you,
because you were what I needed
and I like to think I was what you needed, too,
to get to these places we are now,
even if they are not next to one another.
I wanted to stay there forever.
But if it wasn’t meant to be,
then something else is.
June 17, 2018
“Death Rattle”
It’s your car, and it’s dark out, more shadow than world,
more ghost than girl, my hands going inwards
every time you try and hold them.
The car rattles. Rocks. Lurches like we have been
swept out to sea, and the water is climbing
up the windowpane. Rain from below. Lightning cuts
through ink, so I can see your face,
just as we submerge.
October 16, ’17
I skip the bus and walk an hour uptown
to clear my head of the cobwebs I hung there.
poetgoes 