There's chalk in my mouth, chalk on your lips, all chalk coughed from the lungs of black blocks. You always clap erasers with bravado, but you're scared to touch me, ask me… What if I help? Write dusty words with a dusty finger, scratch the board, leave marks you can't erase, smooth them to nothing with the joints of my fingers. What if I kiss you? What if it's hard, what if it's not what you thought it’d be, what if its bad, what if I said so what? What if a kiss is like a car, all metal and fear but inside, inside there is just smooth leather and seats that lean back. And the driving, oh god the driving is scary at first, but when you roll down the windows you feel the wind and you feel free. And you don't always have to drive fast, baby, one day we'll get still, and the leather will be worn, and your car will feel like home, and you wont need your chalkboard erasers, you wont need to be scared, you can just be with me.

I love few things quite like borderline darkness The promising Hopeful Winter 7 am dusk Or the Relaxed anxious excitement of 8 pm summer nights The smallest shred of light peers out from behind its curtain. I love when the sky goes that Blush brushed beautiful A sharp inhale of astonishment At that choke-on-your-bubblegum colored coral, citrus, and blue The one of a kind masterpiece that frames the air of an august dream. More striking than any Leak from the palms of man, woman, picasso, da vinci, monet A kind of unique Almost as incapable of being replicated As the human matching every shade of pink tracing every wisp of cloud Onto tight canvas. Not even a rigid sail or the needle of a high rise Could pierce that impossible to ignore perfection

hands at 10 and 2 processing each moment of sunshine as it passes me by like the blurring houses and signs, houses with signs filling the cup of jubilant freedom from which I sip the summer days slip like sand through my fingers desperately I try to capture something beyond the bounds of containment each drink of indulgent memory longer than the last severing my presence in reality I wish I could wear the feeling of unrestricted happiness slip it on like a jacket but all I’m left with are the faint ashes on my sweater an extracted specimen of what used to burn I reach out in the dark, but can’t catch the ghost I thought I sensed everything around me spinning so fast until Sharp red snaps me out of a day dream Desperately trying to freeze time warm days return to their keepsake box drowned out as I turn up the radio

Did you wake up one distant night to lightning crashing? Did you realize, while the thunder shook the earth and rain battered the window, that fear was a feeling in your body and that differed from your state of mind? That instinct was something you could override? Before, when you were pure physical sensation, had you found contentment in your mother’s womb and arms? Were you easily comforted and deceived by passfiers that took her place? What was it that had turned your crib a cell? The soft blankets that had once swaddled your bare body now suffocating? So crushing that you had made for a tumble to the floor, even with the anticipation that it would hurt when you fell? Did you understand, then, that flesh could be sacrificed for freedom? What was freedom? Do you understand that freedom is only restricted by your awareness of its dimensions and hidden limitations? Did you stumble and trip across the ground, barely accustomed to these mechanics but delighted with freedom? When you were obstructed by a closed door and the handle was out of reach, did you understand you were mistaken? Would you have started running if you knew you could never stop? That you’d always have something new to run from? Did you regret understanding? Have you started to regret understanding? When did you start reading faces as interpretations of complex intentions? When did you feel the need to hide your own? Decided it better to be misunderstood as you understood? Do you think that you grew vulnerable with age with every name that pain claimed? When was the first time you cried and nobody came? That you were shouting into desolation, desperately searching for another because you realized what it meant to be truly alone and didn’t want to be? Who was the first person you loved so much, it made you sick? Were they the one who answered your call? Make you feel something that lived between your heart and soul but couldn’t be defined- and you accepted that it, like nothing else, existed without understanding? When did they break you? Were you surprised by how deeply you were gutted? That you hated yourself more than what they had done to you? Why had you trusted them, knowing mankind is innately fallacious because you are fallacious? Why did you still long to? When did you decide to do it again? This time, did you hold the knife? Do you understand that when you look at the sky, you are choked by an understanding that you don't fully know? Do you understand that this is different from the freedom of believing that all we know is all there is to know?

The aetherial overworld is torrid and smoking- all the places you’ve been and all that you’ve sinned, just another ring The divine comedy You walked on shattered glass, having been told, the fragments would cut your feet Took off your shoes, to feel their release and let yourself bleed Searing your soles on a bed of coal Do you think that the dead dwell amid bounding elysian fields in the sky? Sail through beatific cosmos and recount days of the inferno? Are liberated by the end of elaborate plans and illimitable demands, existing for eons of zion as we will when we finally meet our time? Or will we be nothing more than stardust on the other side?

Hope, I start to see it in the distance. Almost at complete peace with myself, Just one more piece to solve. But right when I see it, When I am contempt with myself, The struggle is almost done- or so I thought, I see it look back and stare. With no mercy- I can see it laughing at me, And wandering off. Then drift off farther, I almost had it. Maybe one day I will get it, And I hope it’s soon- Because I’m ready.

A tide of gold hair flows in vibrant shimmering rays, its strands flowing like Sif’s, golden hues of the sun kissing my sparkly mane. A tide of gold fell over my eyes I saw the God of mischief appear, feeling the hot flare of his confident stride, his striking gaze blinding, A tide of gold, gold of a God, God is a man so he must want me? To be loved by him is his gift, to be touched by God. A tide of gold is a little girls heart, To hope, to want, to love. A heart so good and gold, screaming love me, love me! A tide of gold came up to me with a burning, blazing hand, and grabbed my hair in golden glory, dragging me into deceit, to be no more a girl. A tide of gold were my shimmering tears, as golden hairs lay on the floor. Dripping crimson blood, silent screams, my beauty disappeared. No longer was there a tide of gold, but a stream of dull-hot tears, whose little bodies fell from cheek to cheek, staining my tattered skin. A tide of dirt fell over my body, Fall, fall, Into despair, not a woman, No longer a girl.

You deserve more than the daisies I bought you, even cheaper than they should be. I could’ve paid full price, I should’ve, but she told me,“They’re two dollars a piece, though you can have them for less. Everyone has to eat lunch.” She doesn’t know that I lost my appetite when, for you, my love handed off dignity, ripped it away like it was easy. One night, crying, screaming, dying. Today I told you about it, laughing, gasping, choking. You looked worried. Around a table, counting scars and proving brags, only you notice me running out of fingers to count on. Girls my age turn much younger, much older, leaning forward through candle light, holding wide grins like eager weapons, conspirators in hunt of something that could really hurt. “Tell us a secret you’ve never told anyone.” Greedy hands reach out to grab what’s theirs, but their hands fall though my heart like wind. There's nothing left to have. My secrets have already traced your ears, the words have left my mouth, spoiled, rotted. They sit untouched and heavy in our stomachs, desperate to sicken us and escape So at the very least, let me buy you more daisies, even cheaper than they should be. She won’t let me pay full price so I’ll get you lunch too, because everyone has to eat lunch.

Once upon a time, A girl grew up being told that she had “such a pretty face.” Only her face Because her tummy was rounded like the edge of an apple And her thighs jiggled back and forth as she walked You couldn’t see bones poking through thin skin And her arms were full and meaty But her face - it was beautiful A perky little nose that twitched as she spoke And high risen cheekbones with a heart shaped face Her skin was like milk, her complexion - tan and rosy With pursed, full cherry red lips And her bright twinkling blue eyes were the second thing people noticed The first of course, being her figure But my, my what a pretty face! They always said that her mother looked good for her age But she didn’t look good Because she had loose, flappy skin and stretchmarks on her tummy Her once big, beautiful, lion’s mane blonde hair was riddled with grays which she tried desperately to conceal Her skin was peppered with blotchy, coffee colored sunspots And her forehead had fine lines which wrinkled more when she spoke But for her age, she looked good Her body was strong and lean - she starved for it And many vials of botox attempted to keep her smile lines under control The stitches in front of her ears pulled her skin back like a mask And her bathroom was filled with little white and blue bottles labeled “anti aging” and “miracle serum” And the frown constantly plastered on her face was the second thing people noticed The first of course, being her age For her age though, she looked good And her best friend was always told How beautiful she was Never anything else Because her long, slender legs reached to the sky And her bouncing black curls were never frizzy, always perfectly twisted in place Her dark mocha colored skin was soft and untouched by flaw’s hand And her curves were perfectly proportioned to her impossibly tiny waist They didn’t notice that she loved to read books about magical fantasy worlds Or that she went to therapy after school on Tuesday They didn’t notice that she was insecure and shy Or that she didn’t like to go to parties or dates with boys and other such pretty girl things Her personality was always the second thing people noticed The first of course, being her beauty Where did we go wrong?

I always talk about the past I stay stuck in it like a car stuck in a rut Or the left over food stuck at the bottom of your pan No matter how hard I try to acknowledge the present I cannot scrape off the past Part of the reason I stay in the past is because I'm scared to leave it Just like I'm scared to leave anything I want to preserve my memories Because I know they will one day be nothing but forgotten specs in my ancient mind It hurts to know we are all nothing but ticking timers Ticking away before our time is up There is nothing you can do to slow it down It's like putting a rock on the brakes and just letting yourself go I never knew the concept of time could be so real Until I started to realize my time was up So here I sit Crying into my pillow every night praying to relive the old memories And not experience the new