push me through my skin

forever think that you'll be back there again

sorry but you make it look real easy

quit a million times till the very end

hold me by my hands

oh you’re sober, but the fall’s much more fun from this end

sorry but you make it look real easy

piss away what we had in the sand

mouths making sounds

movie lines

doesn’t make sense

reply “yeah alright”

empty feelings got its pain

but I know I’ll hold my hands someday

up in the clouds

of now

take this train day by day

coast through the edges of outer space

been so long

the suns have died

my silhouettes say “it’s time”

makes so much goddamn sense sometimes

still on the table

I’m sorry to say

eyes keep on blinking them away

and they keep on seeing another face

“maybe for now”

whispered aloud

so can we take a moment to appreciate the fact that you are sitting here a living human being breathing seated in a chair or something and reading this online, perhaps at least somewhat comfy loving life a little maybe, maybe not entirely right now, but subtly knowing that because you're breathing, your heart is beating and the words on this screen are thought producing encouraging a grateful energy to enter you hopefully filling you with satisfaction knowing this moment is over the second you question but otherwise lasts as long as you can hold it.

The goal of my thesis was to discover the answer to the age old question, “When I injure my hand, do I feel the pain in my hand, or does the pain actually register in my head?”

So I laid my left hand on the table and swung the hammer as hard as I could, striking the middle finger a solid blow. It took a good second before I could scientifically say I felt anything at all. It occurred to me in that singular moment that the reason for the time lapse was due to the pain having to travel through the nerves from the alarmed fingertip to the unaware brain. I was on to something!

So, with hopes of stopping that flow of pain-signaling neurons from reaching my brain, I delivered another ringing hammer blow to the side of my head. This worked, as the pain in my hand immediately dissipated! Eureka!

Unfortunately, when I awoke I could not remember the outcomes, and realized I would have to start my experimentations all over again.

This time though, I think I will video tape it so that future generations can see the results.

it’s four-eleven am

and he calls me to ask if he

can pick me up to take

me to see one of my favorites

things, i can’t say no

it’s four fifty-two am

and im sitting in his car

watching him drive up the hill

because “the sunrise looks

best from this point of view”

it’s five-twenty one am

and im listening to him talk

about his hopes and dreams

and how he wants me to

be apart of them

it’s six-eighteen am

and he watches my face

while i talk about why i favor

sunrises so much, his

fingers dance with my own

and i think this is love

and I turn myself inwards

bike chains rattle

with the hangers up high

and the sky threatens

to split open

as an airplane flies by

and ferries a kaleidoscope

of dreams, hopes, and fears

down where my shape is

leaves scuttle across pavement

curling my ears

and trees thrum ocean hums

while birds boast to each other

just how much

their branches can bear

and somewhere in the distance

kids play and dogs bark

in a language I used to know

when I was younger

but had now forgotten

and now learning, again

there’s peace

in this kingdom of heaven

ebb and flow

of circling labryrinths

and an uninvited yet welcomed presence

that’s meant to be held, then to let go of

you once said to me there was a rhythm in the way we peeled ourselves apart; like fruits spoiling in the sun, tearing off each other’s sweet flesh and melting peach into the earth.

in another version we are peeling back our shoulder blades to make room for angel wings. you’re saying come here, my little icarus, the sun is so far away and i am so close, and there is no flight in this sacrifice of ours, anyway, no mythological wonder, we are too godless and small to touch the bird-blue sky.

and they wouldn’t say it like this, but i know we became divine for one moment. it was the second where you were tending to my wounds, rebuilding your little barefoot lover in the white dress, and i was watching the stars turn above the open field, and in the silence i swear i heard the humming of your lawless boy body.

there is one more version of this story, of course, the one where i am clawing at the legs of your ghost in the middle of the night, and i am tearing your bones apart for one last glance at your heart. but you are already gone, darling, there isn’t a thing beating inside of you, just a drum-boy marching down a burning hill, beating out a war song. he is the sacrifice, the showman, all dressed up to die. he looks up into the vast sky of your body

and i am a god for one breath

as he tells me you are long gone.

kilojoules kilojoules

burn with the wind

send my ashes

a burial amidst sand

from this cage

where I scream

and rustle my leaves

with the question of

what’s at the end

all I get

is more of the same damn thing

hand in hand

with the ghosts of my ghost

they echo

“solitude's not always profound

you’re the same as a mirror

for a dust mound”

can I keep holding, holding on

keep on plucking these strings till I’m gone

can I keep playing untuned chords

end longing for things I’ll never know

ibidem

ampersand

didn’t learn a thing

path's waist high deep

from all my encircling

now I’m beached

on the cusp

of my over-bleached cuffs

singing bad songs

I can’t even sing

in the end

subsets

of who I am

bear the dreams

of Gods and dead suns

now in life

flashing guillotine cleaves in time

see myself as my own seed and son

can I keep holding, holding on

keep on plucking these strings till I’m gone

can I keep playing untuned chords

end longing for things I’ll never own

shaved some ends for my own amends

ships doubled over and sunk

ocean depths, lie our salt and threads

never knew when was enough

you said I think my own pain’s

a novel for the dead and the blind

but the reason I left for a long while

cause I know that you have enough

We all seek to be absolved.

When I ripped open my college career with my canine teeth, I was looking for it to dance in front of me like a monkey. Instead, I found myself in a hospital yet again. The color of blood, I was told, is never beautiful: it is just red.

Tumblr is where some people my age got famous. It's all I ever wanted. I wrote about a girl named Dolores for a while, got a few likes. It didn't matter that my hundred followers were mostly porn pages, and that my words were being bounced off of robots. So goes the internet: we fall into the black void, knowing we won't be heard, but hoping beyond hope that someone hears us and clicks on what prompts a notification.

Michelle K grabbed me. She had a Tumblr page, the only one of the hundreds I followed that I remember now. She wrote short poems that exploded in angst in so few words as to insult the black rainbow vocabulary of depressed writers everywhere, but in the best possible way. She knew it, and she wrote the truth.

Her words are the mouth moving in the mirror, saying each syllable of pain in exactly the right way.

Her poems are hard candy you savor, light on fresh snow, what becomes a tattoo that completes the missing part of you.

My memories of Michelle K start in college, the happiest time of my life. Her poems, to me, still bleed red. But when I read them now, I smile, because I know where we all came from is not where we are going.

xx

And it has been

one hell

of a year.

I have worn

the seasons

under my sleeves,

on my thighs,

running down my cheeks.

This is what

surviving

looks like, my dear.

― Michelle K., It Has Been One Hell of a Year

"Perhaps the fact that I chased a boy who ripped me to shreds says a lot more about me than it did about him."

Michelle K.

"Some women are lost in the fire. Some women are built from it."

Michelle K., Some

“Nostalgia is a dirty liar that insists things were better than they seemed.”

Michelle K.