lets believe in me

“we are standing outside a building and i’m smoking clovers and not coughing which is amazing because if i could, i’d hack until i turned hollow and he is staring up at the stars and i wonder if he can hear them shout like i do, crying out as they burn to death because he’s just like me and wears more scars than layers of clothing and i’m kind of drunk so i whisper “i am so inspired by graves what does that say about me” because my poetry is one-eighth open wounds, seven-tenths closed rooms and locked doors, my poetry smells of rot from the people that i have buried (so many that the soil is starting to build up under my fingertips and when people say things like “she’s dying” i just say “so?”) and my poetry is festering like it’s filled with gangrene which is the same illness that took my grandfather’s eyesight (he’s dying too, just letting you know) and the boy who taught me how to roll a joint in the middle of class without getting caught but who sometimes calls me crying and begs me to take his life back as if it was a present with no receipt and defunct as a result of bad manufacturing: he fixes his blue eyes on me, so dark in the night where we have hidden our secrets by telling the darkness and hoping she doesn’t snitch on us and he just shrugs because in real life people can’t give you answers to questions that only exist inside of your ribs but it’s been a while and i’ve been thinking about it and maybe the reason i’m so enamored with tombstones is because i’m not a lover, i’m a corpse, i was supposed to die so long ago that birds are picking at my insides and i can’t breathe for it sometimes, maybe i’m all shut off because if someone comes close, they’ll figure out that nothing about me is working anymore i mean when i was thirteen i cut myself while babysitting my neighbors. how fucked up is that? what kind of kid explores pain while she’s taking care of children? what’s even better about this is that by the end of the year i was getting pretty bad and when i told my good friend she laughed about it and said “you wouldn’t” and many years later when i relayed this story in an offhand manner as if it hadn’t been haunting me since then he got so angry that his face turned all red and i was so flattered that even his blood was springing to my defense the best kind of jokes are the true ones, i guess. the joke of this poem is that i wind up addicted and he winds up dead.”

“i. we’re laughing on the docks and i say i’m gonna be late to my own burial ii. the joke is that when i tried to bury myself i woke up with a bloody mouth and guilt spilled down my shirt iii. tonight i want to kiss you until we both forget about our pasts spent cowering under quilts and instead when we wake up we’re both cured of our mental illnesses and nobody knows us as the fucked up kids iv. do you think if i run i can escape the map edge, or will my skeletons escape the closet i put them in? do you think i’m a failure because i tried but i couldn’t commit or are you like me and kind of glad i botched it v. what i’m saying is that it’s an accident we’re both here and on this planet and while most things suck you seem to get me and i’m into it so yeah we might not be able to save each other but at least i know that you’ll be the one making sure i don’t show up at that funeral vi. i mean it’s been months since i felt good but i feel something like good when i’m looking at you and i feel something like healing when i think of the future and i feel something like belonging when i’m holding your hand so for right now vii. reschedule my burial i can’t make it, i’ve got other plans”

LGBT Book Recs for Pride Month!

“i’m covered in freckles you’re covered in scars i call yours beauty lines you call mine stars”