Look, another kid,
hungry for a metaphor;
taste of what its like
to make a point,
but it’s stuck on the
tip of her tongue.
Lack of inspiration,
from Walmarts to broken hearts;
world in black and white,
not even gray
enough to be sung.
Oh, how great the world
would be, if rainbows weren’t
only tricks of light.
If promises
meant something more than
give and take.
If words were said
with a sense of conviction.
Teach us what it’s like
to make a point,
if there was ever
any point to make.

Her eyes remind
me of mountain tops,
blue, pale like apathy,
speckled summits
dotting amongst her irises,

and I climbed halfway up,
and I looked down.

Have you ever dreamt of how

content
you might be
to observe the world,
its luscious waves
lapping at its shorelines,
from the top of a mountain?

It keeps me up at night.

There are some days when “us” falls out of my mouth,
heavy and hearty, throat opened fully
to expel an airy hope for the future,
instead of “I”, which begins similarly
and ends with the back of my tongue surging upwards
to stop the air flowing outwards,
closing my throat off to widen the sound.

“Us”, with guttural UH,
rooted firmly in my chest, its silky S
finishing off strong, hissing
like sea foam
washed up on the sand
shortly after softened waves slink back
from the shore.

“I”, with its AH like a sigh of
relief at the freedom of singularity,
its ending EE like the creak in the floorboards
when I’m home alone,
like the squeaky back door
that no longer calls out to me
as a precursor to your footsteps
on the kitchen floor.

I correct myself. “I”.

My life became a series of Just In Case-s
Strung along and hung like paper lanterns
Arranged on tables like flowers in vases

“You’re beautiful,” he says,
his voice a gin-soaked amalgamation of every
listlessly aging boss,
lonely husband in the shoe department,
loveless 3a.m.-hard-cocked stranger.

“Why don’t you smile?”

I widened my eyes
in an attempt to appear likable,
yet felt my mouth
straightening,
my upper lip sealing
the bottom like
a Tupperware lid.

I willed them to curl
upwards, unassumingly;
I wanted to smile the way
women seem to smile
while masking
ill-fitting intentions.

My mouth remained
firmly rooted,
obstinate railroad tracks running
the shortest distance
between the two plotted points of
left cheek and right cheek.

Behind these pretty lips lay
two rows of crooked teeth,
a cigarette-stained skyline
against the starless horizon of
tongue and epithelial tissue, ugly
and wholly my own.

To smile
would be a betrayal
of my own trust,
and if any man
were worth that
it certainly wasn’t
this one.

Let’s sit,
the grass is damp.
Hands steady,
lighting up one cigarette
too many.
Let’s smirk
and sob and scream
and throw up
empty beer bottles -
we dream
in starry skies
of shattered glass -
because we’re young enough…
let’s love.
Unbridled, rampant,
a river of
lustful glances
and constant validation
and words in mouths
and second chances
never taken.
Let’s walk,
us filthy animals,
until we reach the
end of the world.

Let’s drink
in our apathy,
thick and sweet like
how honey left too long
up on the shelf, behind
unopened oregano
and the mix
from when it was a bad time for cake,
forms a crystalline structure:
creamy, glassy bubbles,
so beautiful, but
it takes some heat
to make it clear again.