truth + exaggeration

back in high school, i egged a boy’s house because he ignored me after we skipped class and made out on his couch he was two years younger than me played baseball had curly blonde hair it stuck out from under the brim of his hat a few years later, he had a brain aneurysm and died on his bathroom floor when i found out, i never thought about how he didn’t call me i thought about how i egged his house how his parents probably cleaned it up how they don’t have a son anymore how we’re all just waiting to crack

like anyone anywhere at any given moment in time, and that's alright by me

i eat broken glass, yet my tongue does not bleed i scrape the shards from the insides of my cheeks spit them out while stuck fragments remain splinters that cannot be tweezed my palms hold the pain transparent and shattered i carry it, behold it, but do not release for even when i let go, a portion of it stays within me

back against the grass i stare into the open sky with the simple hope that a meteorite will fall crash into me bury me underground i don’t think anyone understands me maybe no one ever will

down near the lapping shore waters, eternity kisses the sands of youth sirens echo through the empty streets to reach this tropical wasteland of ours. radicals loot beachfront shacks and families             crouch in futile, underground shelters             while we stroll hand-in-hand underneath the pier in our bare feet counting down the minutes until impact, the impending collision of our land with intergalactic matter compiled of space dust and moon rocks. only the cosmos will survive and no one accepts this except the seaside wanderers rainclouds form overhead to accompany atmospheric changes             we are the eye of the storm during our final moments in this ethereal light in this sublime human form as the sun sets across the water, nothing shines so brightly as the flash courageously at peace, we inhale the breath of finality eyes filled with innocent childlike wonder, all sorrows forgotten

the problem did not lie in the clichés; i knew you were all wrong for me and convinced myself otherwise. the sweet nothings i whispered travelled nowhere, sweetly they hung in the air suspended in time like the idea of us, encapsulated in protective capsules like the ones we swallowed to force ourselves into suffering each other we chose to escape from reality and to lose control of our thoughts, which were filled with nothing but past demons and bitter grudges-- we created our own world our own hell of self-loathing and depression i look back from an unaltered transcendental state of mind nearly half a year later so down to earth that my feet feel like they are cemented into this planet, firmly planted in the memories that i decided to fold neatly and place into an old box like the touch of your skin or the scent of your clothes or the appeal of blasting off into oblivion we could never progress because we stopped time on purpose and stayed in a single moment until we almost destroyed our lives not once were we safe not you, nor i therein lies the problem-- we had a formula to reach our relationship as if we designed it by mixing chemicals and perhaps a bit of imagined magic you flowed through my veins when we shared substances experimental recreation we are still both fireflies in the forests of Flagstaff but together we don’t glow. i finally escaped from you from the existence we manufactured and the fights stopped as i regained my sight my lungs filled with air i could not remember it tasting so pure like the first breath after emerging from underwater. i never found the megaladon a trivial pursuit on my part i failed yet not for lack of effort, i endured the blackness for you until i felt myself slip away i brought back other things when i re-surfaced like confidence in my instincts the ability to see beauty and hideousness all at once the willpower it takes to stop myself from making catastrophic mistakes, you once asked me why i could not write you in my poems i refused to give an exact answer not out of ignorance but bliss, no matter how small or fabricated. you are the way i described you before and you always will be that haunting musical note you never quite went with my melody but you go with somebody’s; the day you hear your rhythm intertwine with her poetry, you will know that the fable you tell yourself repeatedly throughout each day is incorrect you will find her but you have not found her yet our adventure was a fantastical work of fiction we freed ourselves for a short while read aloud to each other in the form of reiterating the same points over and over until they lost meaning we memorized the tale from the front to back cover we idealized this version of ourselves and then we ended, as all stories do

and a confession i was afraid to grow up i still am life is such a joke like my rhyming nightmares a t-rex stomping on the playground bloodcurdling screams from terrified children all around. i often think of the end of days before i pause and wonder, “what if the zombie apocalypse happened right now?” why, you’d be editing this poem instead of doing something important like locating shot guns or the love of your life

these are the things to discard.

we molded into one person before a great distance tore us apart, the kind of distance which only seemed to get larger the closer we got.

the problem lies in the clichés i would use while i lay in bed whisper soft beside you i must write you as protagonist and antagonist in my story tough to comprehend how you are one and the same yet i look at you and time stops, the novel main character la meilleure mauvaise idée pour mon cœur fragile. artists suffer from madness they feel when they discover a tear in the space time continuum the only repair requires a sweet surrender, to dissociate from the body willingly out of control and lost in a world only the artist can create. i observe myself from a transcendental plane high above my body as my pen makes streaks across this paper like jet streams in the sky. hidden in the folds are the shivers i get mere thoughts of us naked in a tent while the rain pours matted hair and balmy skin, on this page i live with you in sin in a reality without rationality unafraid and daring but also wondering how to progress if the second hand stays stuck in regress. i could reside in this single captured moment if i thought myself safe but my hard heart, somehow that's an easy target. the problem lies in the clichés as if a winning formula exists to describe how your essence flows through my veins, an electrified jolt that lights up the darkness like a firefly in the forgotten forest of my nightly dreamscape. escape from you? i could not even if i wanted to. regular fights and hot nights you anger me yet lift me up so high that i could don a cape and fly straight to the bottom of the ocean to bring you back the megaladon. i am already accustomed to breathlessness and blindness you conditioned me for it. i don't mean to look through a magnifying glass i know that's the fastest way to make things burn especially with so much sunlight around and my tendency toward self-sabotage but you asked me where the problem lies. i cannot answer exactly but speaking abstractly, if you were a musical note you would be a solemn bell that rings out in the distance as a cracked guide into battle for the liberty to be imperfect a difficult sound to reproduce but if you could hear it like i have heard it you would long to. so i search for the lines that will pop into my head and out of this poem into your own brain's never-ending monologue. these complexities are not the recipe for fiction though our adventure seems like a ubiquitous fantasy that i could read aloud for hours on any given evening when you are absent. i can relive your touch with a sole reflection on the fact that your soul has mirrored mine since our eyes aligned in the astral dimension, they say sensory lag trains us to constantly retell the story of our lives in our own minds. we can never be in the present always in the past contemplations of events we wish to last. as time loses meaning i try to scribble these frantic words before they find their way to the abyss of memory, writing you is a challenge because with no end in sight and a character-driven plot i have no authority over you for you go where you desire. you are not an idea but somehow you still wander into my head.

{unknown artist} first mountain winter moisture hangs in the air fills me with awe white particles fall along with his lips upon mine i am his secret. but like most secrets, i cannot be kept i wait for the anger to subside for his girl to be gone i wait for the spring thaw i warm up to him the more the sun comes around our lives exist in pools of melted snow and wild turkey but the whiskey is always too watered down for me to forget the burn of the alcohol never quite matches the sting of being the other woman even when his romance fades. best friends we decide to be as we highlight each other's faces yellow war paint don't forget the hooch and spicy chicken sandwiches we can sweat it all off in the sauna after a drunken dip in the chlorine that turns my hair green right before graduation. all throughout summer we can slow dance in strangers' houses dainty dangerous circles like merciful cyclones that quit before they destroy anything what can go wrong the hurricane already came and went i am its survivor. our lives exist in pools of reckless youth and spontaneity we hide underwater hold our breaths security guard lights shining on rippled water our lungs expand and contract all the while please catch us, i think to myself, you can end this now. put an end to naps in his bed while will ferrell makes jokes about dinosaurs to that under-aged giggle when his parents let me drink smirnoff ice to those late night diner adventures for greasy french fries and ranch dressing that seem to go all hours of the morning. put an end to gingerbread houses and my failure to learn how to drive stick and our wasted attempt at getting home safe take the pedals i can shift gears we should have crashed but we didn't.

{artwork by michelle blade} you remind me of a time when i was so naïve i actually believed the only battle i'd fight for the rest of my life would be with my own ego. your mischief hypocrisy the oversimplified spellings of our relationship (whatever that was) too complicated for me to understand, a struggle of two like minds. proof and the surprise that i could not even recognize the possibility of defeat by anyone but myself. sometimes i can still feel your fingertips across my collar bones self-escaping though i am, i cannot leave my body when i want to. marked for oblivion i used to recite alphabetical lists a long ceremony of reasons of declarations to pretend like i knew you and i would catch myself making parentheticals in regards to you notes to self like he lied (but he must have good reason) you are only a piece of memorabilia of what could have been a myth-shattering epidemic to my world but all you are is a disease a disease i can feel in the roots of my soul do you ever have sweet dreams? of gouging my eyes out to put in a jar so you could stare at them forever? of me eating your heart straight from your chest? so you wouldn't have to worry about that fatal condition i can't seem to remember the name of yes, my memory fails me but has yours? why would you invite me to your family's house for thanksgiving if you were going to change your mind later you gave me bullets the first time we were alone drunk on your bedroom floor teaching me how to imaginary snipe i wish i could shoot and kill any conscious recollection (bittersweet vibrations) of us wrestling on your bed you taught me self-defense how to shock and hurt so if i ever got attacked again my strength would never be an issue i still wrap my hands before boxing gloves the way you showed me not too tight spit on them to keep them in place. why? you gave me bullets the first time we were alone and i couldn't understand until now you could never protect me from yourself i don't think i could ever trust you you're too much like me you never know what you want but you always think you do i saved them for our first official date zombie apocalypse you say you've been shot you aren't afraid but the day my neighbor comes for my brains the chaos that ensues would cover up any murder the day won't come and lucky for you because instead you can drown in your alcohol in the beer that you brew.

we become competitors undefeated except when we must express our femininity our inflatable lives take the backseat make way for       firearms and ferocity       pomp and pride that rest in our most active muscles only to get laughed back into castles for domesticated dogs to come to us with their most valuable telephone numbers and sometimes we attempt the flips and go the distance and struggle for normal a complete free-fall our feet never quite                         touch                         the                         ground we continue to gain altitude and gain altitude until we can’t even see the specks of your homemaker sexually submissive eager to please weak in mind and body materialistic bullshit.

we lived together three long months thought i might marry you sometimes i'm an idiot. got fired from the hardware store lumbar sprains and drug tests the older i get, the more sore i get after a night of drinking. when was the last time i cried? socks are bullshit. my little sister got married and pregnant by an ecstasy burnout douchebag fake mom wants to know when she can expect grandbabies from me. please. i'm so flattered when i get booty called twice in one weekend rejection is fun but i get tired of sleeping alone. i liked your sister and your mom better. if one more motherfucker betrays me during team slayer i am going to teabag a bitch. secretly, i like being pretentious my grandpa has alzheimer's but i'll always remember him as my father. all the women tatted up in gowns like some biker wedding. i came back from vacation moved all my stuff out like life's a fucking hollywood movie. at least weed is legal in colorado now and amber ale is worth the muscle aches. how many times can i say no before the message translates? i guess it was when i finished 1984 and felt like killing myself or at least binge eating. one day he fell asleep in his blue reclining chair woke up, the sun was gone took 30 minutes to convince him what day it was. it wasn't the best job the janitor found a dead rat in the popcorn bin once. man, i really had to walk that one off. i don't care if he forgets my name as long as he remembers who i am. why do people always run upstairs in horror films? it's like they want to die. maybe a lot of other people do too i don't (give a fuck though) i'll give you something else. the archaeological findings that detail the extension of the maya calendar past 2012, but i won't say i told you so. merry christmas i hope you aren't in too much debt.

twenty-one years i finally met you i look more like the man whose name should be filling in the blank on my birth certificate and it’s a damn good thing fake teeth and falling eyelids barely in your fifties better than a black and blue face from fists of drunk men you say you’ve quit. broken bottles pulverized pipes nonexistent needles but the booze lingers on your breath itching for a quick fix for the horrors of your life sister says you told her to od off herself pretty pink pills maybe they’d work better the second time around you must be sober as sober as she with your grandson in her round belly. she swallowed them last november without your help she just wanted to sleep soundly night terrors night sweats night sobs night screams where were you when the monster touched her in the dark and ruined rest forever how could you let it in act like it was a real man a decent man you found her in puddles of vomit and you never blamed yourself but i i know better you are not a mother you are a monster.