it's hard to have friends when we're all depressed.

it was strange the way it suddenly felt

like we'd been caring for each other 

through a pane of glass,

and all at once i thought: 

we're going to 

grow old with other people.

because i can't remember the reasons why 

i was in love with you for two years,

and months ago, i wrote long letters to tell you 

you were lovely.

i'm sorry, it's probably just because i'm sad;
i don't like myself or anyone all that much this week,
i have my own insecurities burning new on my hip,
and it's hard to find a position to sleep in,

and this summer is disappointing me already.

i just want to play songs with everyone.

i don't like this poem/ i'm still not sure how i feel about me.

and that summer i started playing war games,
digging thin trenches across the battlegrounds
of my lonely-cool skin.
even with the medicine to put my play to bed,
some nights i let you into
my tent where you turned my cot to
a crude operating table
and went about your hacksaw amputations.
the ringing of explosions beating in my ears
has persisted for two on-again-off-again years.
and i write letters to a girl who loved me
sometimes.
sometimes she loved me, not sometimes i write,
because i write every goddamn day,
with shaky ink scrawls she couldn't read
even if i'd ever sent her anything more than
dismembered parts of me free of explanations.
but this isn't a game anymore,
it is stinging showers and picking scabs
nearly every day this week,
and i think i might bleed out of love with all of you
if i don't go back to sleep.

i have a fear of heterosexual intimacy (i'm wrong but still).

i imagine he drills holes in you
while your eyes are closed,
your back against his bedsheets,
and with a clumsy tongue he
scoops from them the best bits of you,
drip-sweet from the
honeycomb catacombs
of your chest.

i imagine he lights matches
against your skin.
and burns your lips, in the name of a kiss, pinker
than i've ever seen them before,
a blood-rush deeper
than when we learned to laugh
even though nobody
loved us.

i imagine that he leaves bruises
with his vein-ridged hands and soft fingertips--

that he loves you clumsy like
a neglected guitar neck,

that he strikes sour notes on your flesh

and composes pages of hickeys in a key
so sad i want to smoke cigarettes and
mourn.

i imagine he swallows your words whole,
so nobody can hear the
colors in your voice
when you sing or when you
moan.
he paints his insides with
your spectrum, and when it begins to 

peel, he touches his tongue to yours and drinks.

i imagine he is hungry, hungry
and never satisfied,
biting your ears in the morning and whispering
your name, whistling your name,
until you crawl back into his den
to let him scoop, burn, bruise, and drink you
again and again

until you are just a pair of socks,
pants,
tank top,
curled up inside-out on his rug. 

relapse.

i put the trigger in your pocket when you weren't looking,
because i knew you wouldn't notice or care--

i put the trigger in your pocket,
sometimes you shift and i
go off.

i am scared of being too human for you.

i don't know how to tell you i need you to kiss me.

i accidentally mumbled i love you while we were kissing.

so my sunburned july flame faded like summer freckles;
i haven't missed it for months,
and i pity the we that was so crippled by one-sided infatuation that
i couldn't even see her very human face anymore
through my pride and metaphors.

that night in the car, 
we kissed a handful of times in the front seat,
even though you were afraid your dad
would decide to take the trash out at ten p.m.
and catch me biting your neck in the parking lot.

i may be infatuated again,

in like with the thought of falling asleep

with you tucked against my chest, but--

it's a nice thought and for now, i'll keep it.

in any case, i don't think much about dying anymore.