Tell me,
Just one more time, about
How the way I deal with my life
Is useless, stupid, ignorant,
Crazy.
How they’re for attention,
For sympathy, for
Nothing at all.
Tell me again how
Someone somewhere has it worse
And how that somehow makes my feelings worthless.
Tell my again how stupid I am.

Sure, go ahead.
Tell me again, but
Don’t be surprised at the backlash,
The danger of the recoil.
You will listen to what I have to say now.

Don’t you dare cringe at my scars,
These are my battle wounds,
My badges of survival, of honor.
They are healing reminders
Of victory.
They don’t mean nothing
Just because the enemy was myself.

So yes, tell me again
How mental illnesses are real
But this form of coping with them isn’t.
Tell me again everything I’m not worth
Because of this thing that I’ve gone through.


Tell me again, just
One more time, before I
Absolutely and most respectfully
Spit—a delighted “fuck you”
In your general direction.

Delicate dancer, tiptoes
Down the alleyways of Brooklyn.
Feet aching, from the uneven pavement
Pressing against her fragile footfalls.
Tutu stained,
With the grime of splashed puddles
Thick with motor oil and cigarette ash.
Though in the dark of city streets at midnight
Its pinks turn grey anyway.

In a city too fast-paced and brutal
For flower petals and lace,
She tries to convince herself she is not alone
In the sea of late-night workers’ blue suits,
And the too-drunk-to-stands,
Claiming the rest of these cracked sidewalks.

The only music playing in the background
Of this artful and elegant, “interpretation of dance
In a place where no one wants to see it”
Is the stifled snickers of passersby and car horns.
Neither of which play a constant tune, nor
A steady beat with which to choreograph
Her mess of uncoordinated moves.

She breaks into her first pirouette
Next to three drug deals and a 24-hour coffee shop,
As the whole city,
Breaks into synchronized laughter—
Where there should be applause.

Delicate dancer, tiptoeing
Down the alleyways of Brooklyn.
Falls onto cracked concrete, robbed
Of point shoes and blind optimism.
Pink tutu turned grey in the dark of midnight.

(I wrote this last week when I was in a not so good place, so trigger warning)

_

The day you said those words to me,
I started carrying a safety pin around
In my pocket again.

When you wouldn’t pick up the phone
I destroyed a safety razor,
Slicing fingertips in the process.

But I guess I can’t just blame you.

When two strangers, passed me on the street,
Snickering in my direction,
I ground my fingernails in the soft spots on my palms.
And left moon-shaped welts behind

The day someone called me fat
For the first time, to my face
I let the blade touch flesh, but not hurt it.

It’s not just them either, though.

The day my head told me
My own thoughts were worthless,
I finally let my skin breathe out red sighs.

When I saw my future stretched out,
Blank and promise-less before me,
I dripped red stains onto the porcelain.

And, really, it was me who continued it.

When one wasn’t enough,
And everything in me begged for more,
I let the cuts stretch wider.

The day I bled oceans, into
Cool blue bath water
I pretended red was the only color that existed.

Yeah, it was all me.

The minute I saw those scars turn white,
Healing neatly into beautiful crisscrosses of “all better now”
I started all over again.

All it took was a mini van.
An empty stretch of road
And the blaring of our favorite songs on the radio.

All it took were our voices
Drowning out the songs,
And laughter filling the silences
As the DJ switched between tracks.

All it took was a smile.
An unspoken, “I want you around”
To turn my world upside down.

It’s weird to think that, to them
This is normal.
Makes me question my own definition
Of that word.

It’s weird to think that, I could
Have all this if I only opened up,
Blossomed into the me, that no one ever sees.

The one who likes her picture taken,
Who isn’t afraid to sing
In front of others
The one who doesn’t believe, everything she says
Is never worth saying.

The one who believes,
That she might finally remember
What normal is.

You told me it was nothing.
Happened once.
Was done.
Was only a hint of harm,
Nothing really serious.
Never going to happen again.
Not even legitimate anyways.
Baby scratches, nothing more.
And I laughed,
And my heart began to ache.
Because I’ve heard all of that before,
Passing from my own lips.
And look how well that turned out.

He was driving for so long that when I snuck a sideways glance in his direction under the flickering light of streetlamp after streetlamp whizzing by at 70 miles per hour, I could see his eyes glazing over, dead to the world. I doubted for a moment if he was really behind those eyes, wondering if he’d secretly gone blind somewhere between El Paso and the Akron exit and didn’t want to suffer through the agony of telling me his misfortune. I thought about asking him if he was alright, suggesting to him that I take the wheel, even if we have to pull over onto the shoulder right here, that’s how dead he looked. I was afraid to go another mile inside of this death trap controlled by the ghost of a boy left beside me. For a moment I wondered—if I did ask—if I’d even get a response. And so, paralyzed by this fear, I let it be. If God gave him this space, allowed his soul to slip momentarily away from his body even though he was still controlling a vehicle, then maybe it was simply my time to die. So I spent the next few hours of silence staring out the window, analyzing each bend in the highway, each ditch and cliff along the side of the pavement, wondering which one I would meet my end in.

By the time I had allowed myself to pick one, a drop-off steep enough that the highway was level with the tops of the trees at the bottom, he finally seemed to return to his body, if only half-heartedly.

“I think,” He managed to get out, his quiet tone seeming to acknowledge the fact that it was invading the silence and ruining the theoretical space we’d created within it, “That we should stop here for the night.”

He nodded toward a glowing Super 8 sign up ahead that seemed so out of place in this existential drive. It was a roadside motel far too normal for this crazy delusion of a road trip we were on. Pulling off the exit, the slowing of the car seemed to slow time. It was as if we needed the extra time to break from the universe of silence we occupied along that highway and glide gracefully back into the real world. Our minds needed the time to start up again, to begin to operate as normal, or as close to normal as we could manage simply to get through this pit stop in the real world. Knowing it would only be for the night, only require one conversation at the front desk and then the energy to get our head to the dingy pillows where we could sleep for the night, our minds never truly woke up. They did their bare minimum, knowing we would escape from them again soon and there was no reason to carry us at full speed right now. No need to allow us to think until we were entering the real world long term.

Tonight was not that night. So we mumbled out our needs to the woman at the front desk, dragged out feet across the tacky design of the hallway carpets, fumbled with room keys, and dropped into the dusty mattress still in our day clothes. It took a small mental battle to even convince myself to kick off my shoes before I curled up into the comforter and disappeared into my dream world.

“Goodnight Jason.” I murmured into the darkness, my arm reaching out for him across the bed. He was already asleep, shoes hanging off the edge of the bed.

I fell asleep stroking my hand softly up and down his back, hoping I could make his dreams feel as comfortable to him, as sleeping here next to him was to me.

I Know It

The rattle in the dryer
Is actually the flash drive
Containing the only copy of my half-written novel.
The one that was going to buy me a house
So I no longer had to use a communal dryer
In the basement of this crap of an apartment.
It’s the thrashing of a stray cat
Captured in its attempt to find shelter
In the comforts of unguarded sweaters.
It’s a very, very important part of machinery
Without which, the entire mechanization,
That is my communal apartment dryer,
Will cease to operate, slash
Explode and kill everyone in the building.

I know it.

The sound, in the quiet of the dark of midnight,
Is certainly not, one of the other
Fifty thousand people, also occupying
This garbage bin of a city street.
But certainly the sound of demons
Escaping through a portal to Hell
Which has conveniently opened  up just a few short steps
From my bedroom window, the perfect way
For them to get straight to me.

I know it.

The shaking, in my voice, they hear it.
The one which,  yes, is a complately rational reaction
When I know that everyone around me is certainly,
And most absolutely definitely
Listening to every single word I say simply to analyze it for whichever
Deadly subtle sin I have made
In the phrasing and exact emphasis of speech.
And especially logical
When I know they are picking up on every single one of them,
Even though most don’t even occur
Outside of my head.

I know it.

The laughter
Offering in passing between one stranger
And another.
Is actually an horrid remark to some form of error
Which has graced my person today,
Simply to match every day before it
To complete the new fashion I call,
Screwing up everything without ever lifting a finger.
Today, it must be my brand new sweating palms, no?
Maybe the flattering shades of red,
Heating my cheeks for no good reason.
Actually, no. It must be that they can hear it,
The soundtrack of my heartbeat, playing a rushed symphony
Perfect to emphasize my stumbles and shaking
My avoiding eye contact at all costs,
My making all my gestures, with a gaze trained to the floor.

I know it.

The reminders, not to worry
Are simply a gesture to lessen the burden
Of friends’ ears when dealing with my bad days.
The simple statement, that these thoughts
Are quite irrational, just a
Ploy to get me to let my guard down
Just in time for everything
To go completely and utterly wrong.

I know it.
(Don’t try to convince me otherwise.)

Just because you haven’t thought of it
Doesn’t mean it couldn’t, wouldn’t,
Won’t.
Happen.
You just wait and see.

I know it.

There are some things
In this life, that we,
Must walk into blindly, and
Hope for the best.
Some things—most things
Cannot by taught in a classroom,
Written nicely in a manual,
Or outlined, even
By the most careful hands.

My parents once told me, that
Raising me
Was one of those things. That
There was no guide, and
To this day they still wonder
If they’ve screwed up somewhere
Along the way.
They tell me they
Still don’t know if they’ve
Done a good job.
But hey,
Neither do I, so…

So, we’ll spend lonely nights,
Wondering if
Things could have been better. If
They could somehow have
Taught me to,
Deal with heartbreaks, and
Inevitable loneliness,
Right after
Showing me to tie my shoes.
Taught me
How to get over the fact that
I was born to die, and
I will always be alone, no matter
How close I can get to another human being.
Right after teaching me
To ride my bicycle.


Sure, they’ll think they missed some
Golden opportunity to
Tell me about their first kiss,
Their last day of high school,
The last time they
Heard their own parents’ voices.
Think they missed some
Life lesson, which
I may forever be lost without.

But I tell them,
Or at least—I think of telling them
That there is no guide,
Because there is nothing yet to build.
No standard 2 by 4 design, so
Whatever results
From the memories they did share
Along the way,
From the lessons taught,
and remembered
Taught, and forgotten.
Will work out just fine.

With a,
Few scratches and
Bumps along the way,
I’ll get there.

They used to tell me
To look at the skies, used
To wake me at midnight,
To gaze at Haley’s comet.
Used to beg me
To keep my eyes trained eastward
Until the sun began to rise.

There are many things,
In this life
That we do with no guidance
That force us, to
Forge our own path, following
Nothing
But the trail of Haley’s comet
And a few fingers
Vaguely pointed eastward.

And I try to tell them,
That there’s no way to
Do this all wrong, because
I’ve yet to see this world,
Yet to,
Build an expectation high enough
To beat them down with.
And so,
There’s no way to disappoint me, only

Infinite ways to show me your way, just
Hope you’re pointing
At least close to the right direction.

I like to think about you in the shower, no
Not like that
I like to think about you when I’m in the shower, still no
Not like that.
I like to think about you when I’m at my most vulnerable
When I’m most alone.
I think of you when I am surrounded by silence
Broken only by the steady beat of water
Hitting the floor of the bathtub.

I like to think about you when the warm water
Can wash worries off of my chest
And those that remain float up with the steam,
Away from me.
I like to think about you
When my thoughts can condense on the tile
And fall away.

I like to think about you when I’m washing my hair
And I wonder if you’d like the scent
Of my new shampoo.

I’m not gonna lie to you
I started this poem too,
In the shower.
Where the water kept time
And the hum of the ceiling fan made sure,
No one could hear my words.

I admitted, shamelessly
To the moisture, hitting the porcelain
Around me
That I like to think about you when I’m
Washing underneath my fingernails
Paying close attention, to details
I might have easily overlooked.

I like to think of you when the fall of water
Makes it appear as if I’m not
Crying.
I think of you when there is more water
In the air, than oxygen.
When I feel like I’m suffocating
Or might start to soon.

I think of you when my hands
Wash softly over old scars,
Whose pale white lines still spell your name.

I think of you when I leave the warmth
Fall, heavy and damp
To a towel which is too course to comfort me.
And I think of you when I face an empty bathroom
Still covered in cooling moisture.
And fight to pull myself out into the cold air,
Alone.

Seagulls soaring
Over landlocked shores of Pennsylvania.
Circling high.

Maybe too far above, to know that
The blue below
Is the roof of a high school,
Not the ocean.

Too  far above to know that
Its color is static.
Unmoving.
Unaffected by the tides.

Seagulls
Calling out sounds of summer
To stale winter air.

Breath still reeking
From late August feasts
Of the freshest summer fish,
Even in the midst
Of February snowfall.