I'm all out.

I'm all out of poetry.

I'm all out of bedside prayers and forced conversation. All out of used tissue and hanging light bulbs. All out of evidence and skin. Sorry ma'am. Sorry sir. I'm all out.

My broken body's been taken off the menu. You can't order my hands anymore. I was a limited edition item, a seasonal special. You can't drink my blood as holy communion or pull me from the bottom of the breadbox, piece by piece. I died for you. I died for you.

I'm the happy prince's lead heart lying next to the dead swallow and I gave my eyes away a long time ago. The angels will sing "hallelujah, hallelujah" because of my beating heart. They never rest their elbows on the table and they never talk with their mouths full. They never use the wrong fork and they know how to butter their bread.

I'm all out of poetry.
We're chanting yes we can, yes we can, but the words don't reach our hearts.
We're screaming no you can't, no you can't, but their hands still force legs apart.

My lungs are full of water and I'm praying in five different languages, but no one can hear me.
My lungs are full of water and I'm all out of poetry.

Symbols are cynics and synonyms are pretentious. Metaphors never answer their phones and personification is overused by the best of us. The words don't want to get out of bed anymore. Every breath is labored and the doctors are still working on a diagnosis.

I'm all out of poetry.
All out of black pen, blue pen, lack pen, new pen.
All out of one stare, two stare, they share, no one cares.
All out of he she you we.
All out of poetry.

closed curtains

the flowers' petals sun-dried and wind-bled,
youth and colored cheeks long since shed,
their faces turn towards the cold earth.
my nails wet with red in the old hearth.

the grass whipped dry by mother earth,
soft dying breath whispered into dirt.
moaning as hands pull off my shirt,
i sell myself for warm sheets and cold feet.

my dad's eyes i no longer can meet,
i'm winter with closed hands and old dreams,
a sister with bruised hands and broken things,
a twister running out of steam.

a china doll pushed from the shelf,
cracked face shining in the hell,
icicles deadened by the bell.
god couldn't hear after darkness fell.

i see death in the eye of needle and vein of thread,
in youth and loneliness,
cold fingers and bated breath.
she's empty cupboard legs and stale bread,
she's empty classroom thoughts and a stump for a head,
she's empty compliment kids and brain dead.

her lips turn out the light,
the candle's wick blackened and shy.
she slits her wrists, the blood gone dry.
her eyes forever see the night.

look, these are my knees,
crease after crease meeting grease after geese.
listen, these are my pleas,
calling out to the hes and shes.
close your hands around the keys,
close the sands beneath the seas.

slept-in sheets and a hospital bed,
clean white sheets and open casket dread.
no one's eaten, cold eyes in their head.
no one's eaten, blood running red.
no one's eaten since i'm dead.

skeleton hands.

my heart can't remember why she wakes up anymore,
because every time she beats, she beats a dead horse.
she decided she'd rather drown than be found cold in the ground
but the waves might teach her a thing about the beauty of consistency.

my heart was so cold
i drew a bath to pull the warmth to its surface.

i threw out the scale
and wrapped all the mirrors in cotton
so i didn't have to look my insecurities in the eye
and remember their hands that begged for change beneath my skin.

i didn't want to hear their voices
pulling at the emptiness in my stomach
so i covered my ears,
because walls are the only way i learned to defend myself.

i sat on the edge of the tub
and hands pushed me to the water,
hands pulled at my skin and asked for more.

so i gave every whispered "i love you" my mother said
and every knuckle i ever bruised,
every lie i told myself to fall asleep at night
and all the truths i never came to terms with,
all the words carved into the soles of my feet
and every footprint that reads "you are nothing," "you are nothing."

but the water washed away the lines like a baptism
and the warmth ran up my legs
reminding me there was blood in my veins
and my breathing was voluntary.

but there were skeleton hands
wrapped around my heart like a cage,
and i've heard it's hard to kill the wishes of a dead man
and even harder to pry love from his fingers.

and the bathwater couldn't reach my bloodstream
with the bones resting in peace
beneath my rib cage.

so i thought about how many things have hands:
death,
clocks,
police officers,
and frost,
and how many of those hands close instead of open.

and i felt the skeleton hands,
the knotted fingers,
give way
and the water warmed the blood,
and the blood listened.

i heard my heartbeat in my ears louder than the voices:
"you are living,"
"you are living."

and my heart was so warm
my body sings "love," "love," "you are love,"
and i'm starting to believe it.

my hands are broken.
my hands tell a story i wanted to forget,
but even hands can be forgiven with time and warm water.

and i thank the clocks that counted down the seconds til now.

stereotypes and bridges.

today, someone told me that depression is not poetic.
eating disorders are not romantic.
self-harm is not artistic.
and crying yourself to sleep is not sentimental.

bleeding on a page won't sew my heart back on my sleeve.

the untouched food is not symbolic
and you can't eat enough pages of the bible to coat your stomach.
the toilet bowl is cold and unforgiving.
i could write about tracing my collarbones with my fingertips
and i could write about how the mirror will always look with dagger eyes
and i could write about how i'll fuck you no matter what you say to me.
"but i no longer need you to fuck me as hard as i hated myself."

the words don't make the medication go down any easier.
i still have a hard time swallowing because of march
and no matter what font i type the letters in,
the emptiness is not beautiful.

don't tell me it's beautiful when my chest doesn't work right.
i just want to write about blue birds and yellow skies.

here's to living.

these are the ways you make me feel

these are the ways you make me feel.

the world is drowning, and the last key is on my tongue.
the phrasing of your words reminds me of home.
fingers on my spine turn out my rhythm.

these are the ways you make me feel.

your hands are sandpaper, and my chest is pine.
every pulled whisper on rewind.
you're counting change, asking god for more minutes
and i'm tapping the time.

these are the ways you make me feel.

i start looking for you in religious texts
and my eyes see in color again.
i'm not buying tool kits in the hope of screwing my head on straight.
the world's no longer turning.

these are the ways you make me feel.

hot baths.
heart attacks.
alliteration.
forgetting punctuation.

sea salts.
1950's malts.
cliche rhymes.
keeping up with the times.

these are the ways you make me feel.
these are the ways you make me feel.

i want to be

but mention "death" one more time, and i'll tell you the truth.

it makes me jealous.

because i want black nail polish and black shoes, but more importantly, i want to see a casket from the inside. i need more than one key to lock me in, but i don't want to keep the cold out anymore. i want to keep the cold closer to my heartbeat.

i want to hear your footprints above my head
and i'm thinking of you with a runny nose and chapped lips kneeling in the snow.

at first i'll be laughing about your breathless prayers and how you never knew what to ask for. but then i'll repent for all the cynics out there. just in case god's gonna pull me out of this box someday and drop me someplace worse.

sometimes, i want to be the reason the sun stops rising for you. sometimes, i want to break all the hands who touched me, i want to starve myself because they called me fat, and i want to be the reason you cry yourself to sleep every night. i am why you start drinking. i want to be the black that makes the rest of the colors brighter and the backdrop of every thing you decide to change about yourself.

sometimes, i'm selfish.

i want to be every time you said "no" and why you won't go out tonight. i want to be the first teacher who told you that you weren't special. every pet you buried in the backyard and every fingernail you ever chewed. goddamn it, i want my face to be stained on the back of your eyelids.

i want to haunt you like a bad ghost. i'll come back in the form of every girl you meet at the small town bar and every shot you take to drown your thoughts in. hell, i'll be the thoughts that learned to swim and the devil that taught 'em. i'll be everything that keeps you up at night.

i want to be the thing that finally kills you.

we're glass and sand

and even though you're rubbing me just right

i'm rubbing you just wrong.

baby, i want to be your muse. i want to be every word you write about and every letter you type about and i want you to forget what day of the week it is because you're so damn busy living in the curves of my name.

while i forget to think about you, my name is carved into your chest with my favorite pen.
and the wound bleeds black.

the wound bleeds black.

you've got

it's dark outside, but it's darker inside.

i can see the inches i've grown pushing at the foot of the bed
and i can see the inches between who you are and who you were
in the bad habits you've picked up on the road to november.

there will come a time when you'll forget whose bones are buried in the backyard
and the cigarettes will pile up in the kitchen sink.

my mother's hands will wear the nursery rhymes thin
and the grass will fade to gray.
the world will be rewritten in black and white
and the pull of the moon will keep the men from their lovers.

but you've got forget-me-nots for eyes
and instead of lines in your palms,
you've got fortune cookies from chinese restaurants.
and you're proud of them.

you've got police tape wrapped around your smile
and a therapist wearing construction orange.
you say "maybe" instead of "yes,"
and "no" instead of "maybe,"
and your heart isn't as steady as it's cracked up to be.

you've got february eyes.
seeing eyes.
looking eyes.

and you wear these glasses to frame them,
but i know your lips have always had the camera's focus.

you always manage to bring sex into a conversation,
and you pull men to the water's edge like a siren
before you push them on their way home.

listen, you've got typewriter hands.
calibri font hands.
"watch me" hands.

you've got "give me" hands.
credit card hands.
atm hands.

you've got an ampersand kind of voice
and we're all waiting for what happens after the word "and"
but you've also got an ursula kind of voice,
when she steals ariel's boyfriend.

you've got a mean streak tucked beneath your blonde
and i've always wanted to be the thing that kills you,
but you pray to him more than i do
and his eyebrows lift as your lips move.

his eyebrows lift as your lips move.
my eyebrows will never lift as your lips move.

listen, you've got a lot of things,
but you'll never get me.