did i forget my medicine, or is it just my terrible personality?

you're a sweater with sleeves that only reach to my wrists,

i can't pull my fingers inside for protection, 

i've outgrown you.

and i know you haven't quit smoking,

i smell cigarettes on your cardigans,

carcinogenic, 

i can taste our suicide pact in exchanges--

but weren't you crossing your fingers too...?

sometimes i still want to steal away to california,

let the city air and city cynicism 

pollute me,

the way my vices 

and nights spent with you have been doing these two years.

but there's no place for sadness like home,

and there's no place for me much of anywhere.

*yeah i am pretty sure i messed up my medicine.

smitten, seering, buzzing, sweet.

[among the networks of overpasses
like swooping concrete ribbons,
transients perched in their
tarpaulin carpeted condos
watch the traffic and breathe the
thick-hot exhaust breeze
that's coming off of passing cars.]

i like a girl who
writes like my bruises,
who makes me think my thighs
flowerbeds
and my head a hot air balloon
tugging at my shoulders.

i like a girl who writes.

no.

you thought i was sleeping,
kissed my chapped, sealed lips
like they meant something, though unmoving.

so i've got on makeup like joan jett
and a shirt that smells like my best friend,
i will wash you from my skin
i will wash my skin from my skin,
nothing left of you or what you touched
will cling to me--
and i will be okay
in spite of.

i can't really talk about this any more.

thankyou for giving me a breakup poem to write, isn't that something every artist needs in order to be real?

the first day we talked like lovers,
with hitches in our voices that meant we were being honest,
i saw you sideways lying on the bed and thought
you were one of the most beautiful humans i'd yet met.
and you talked about your scars,
and how you weren't always strong,
and my god, i knew i was caught,
i knew i was in trouble,
i knew it would hurt.
but i couldn't leave your room
until well into the night, and i drove home
so full of butterflies i'm surprised i didn't crash into a telephone pole.

the afternoon we got lost in the suburbs,
i traded my hesitation for a two-story house
with french doors, bays of flowers and succulents,
windows so tall that the light they stream in
is probably pulled from the surface of the sun itself
in folding flumes of golden plasma.
but when i reached for your hand to give you the keys,
to lace our fingers tight to show i finally
knew i meant what i said,
you would not take them,
me or the key to the front door that
i finally believed in for the first time in a long time.

the week before you decided i was not yours,
you held me like you loved me,
you laid beside me like you wanted to touch me.
and i knew you didn't, but i didn't question it,
none of me flinched or buckled-- though
i could sense it would be the last time we'd touch like that,
i was so sick and sad inside that i was just glad
somebody cared enough about me to pretend
that feeling all of me was all they wanted and
knowing the pace of my breathing was
something they'd been
waiting for.

the night i shoved you into finally breaking up with me,
into saying what i knew you'd been holding onto unsure
for two months,
i was too tired to feel all that bad.
even now there's not much aching other than:
"i was unlovable to the first person i'd ever kissed,"
and "it's a shame, she's seen me cry,"
and "every time i held her hand,
her fingers went clammy."
i think maybe you believe in god now,
but i'm left with just myself and
i don't much feel like worshiping me this week.

the monday after we became just friends,
i was afraid of falling again
for the pretty girl with the heartache made of daisies.
but i didn't and i breathed a sigh of relief until
i realized what that probably meant-
it's going to take me a week or two to
never want to touch you again.

it was mutual but also i hate it.

the hardest part of breaking up with you is
nothing broke--
and i'm not sure how to handle it
or feel about it right now.

like firecrackers, inside skulls, but all wet.

i still don't like fireworks, i don't think i ever will.

they were curling my toes and shaking my heart the night i lost half my hope,

when i acknowledged that no matter who i became, 

i would probably never feel good enough for anyone i loved. 

i think i'd just like to feel good enough for myself again.

and i know i'm not that awful, but i know i'm not that great, because

i'm alone a lot, yknow?

i can't smoke, i'm just going to go buy as many sparklers as i can find, 

and burn them up by the lake.

(if i just went out and made friends, maybe i'd feel better!
but who am i kidding, i'm not going to do that.)

(but i used to be an asshole too).

you can't rip the skin from my body and call it

liberation.

when you applied the labels,
slurs
filled with razorblades,
knotted up with rough rope,
painted the colors of rotten bruises,
it was alright?

but now that the word "queer"
is mine--
you want it back.

you are not enlightened!
you don't see past
color
or gender
or the lacing together of my fingers
with another woman's,
though you claim
"we're all human!"

you simply don't
want the weight of
"straight"
"cis"
"privileged"
on you.

you started it.

and sometimes i need a name

to remember i'm not as damned

or lost or broken or disgusting

as you taught me.

i'm queer and

you're an asshole who refuses to even intelligently listen to the educated and valid insight of those your opinions actually affect in the end.