[x]

Therapists, I don't like their taste.i.
in 7th grade
i didn’t know depression
until she told me her name,
carving forever scratches
along my limbs like
little love notes on the bark
of a tree.

she stole my rings
and left me hollow.

ii.
i had only ever met anxiety
in passing, until one day
he handed me power and told me
to hurt someone else with it.

iii.
inexperienced,
with an uncontrollable
quivering in my fingers,
he whispered, “ to survive,
you must learn quickly.”
as i shoved the bevel of a needle
into a strangers arm.

iv.
so, if a therapist
could talk away my scars
like iodine disinfects,
guide the ships
through

Please,don’t make me
fall in love with you,
again.

I don’t want to remember you,
those Sunday morning
wake-me-up kisses,
or the way your
lost boy eyes always,
always found a way
to find mine.

There are only so many times
I can allow you to slice
through my scar tissue
before I finally

fall
ap art.

lion boyi knew a boy with
eyes of gold & fire
in his footsteps.

he would roar to the
stars, declaring himself
as fearless as a king
& as regal as a lion.

"ad lucem,"
he would announce
every night when leo
would coax the virgin
from her radiant
castle.

five times around the
sun & loyal fangs bared
to shield his kingdom,
my lion boy
dances with flames.

ExposureThe wind invites itself
from underneath my door,
it reaches under
it pulls open-
the leaves come in.
A bird hops over the
threshold and tilts its
head in quick, informative
motions.

The rains follow in
after the wind and
now I have to reason with
both the animals and the storm.

Those abandoned wooden barns
with one wall collapsed,
overgrown with vines and ferns.
The epitome of giving in.

I close the door
and all the windows,
leave it to the glass
to challenge the rain.

That little bird,
somewhere in here,
is searching for where
the wind has gone.

Thunder knocks
once, then
twice.

I imagine lying
on the hood of a car
beneath the desert su

i shouldn't write when i'm stonedpeople say you're
an asshole. but that's
okay because people say
i'm an asshole, too. maybe
that's one of the reasons
you love me and i love you.

but i think more than that,
i think the biggest reason
we're drawn to each other is
that neither of us fit anywhere.
we are both lonely. and we are sad.
but we don't care, and we love it.

we are good at being
alone. we are good at
being together. if i could,
i would paint a picture
of two souls tethered close
but sitting in separate rooms
and i would point to it. then you
would understand why we will
never come apart.

String TheoryThis is determination,
existential numbness in which
I drown from the paranoid spittle
of that dreary-eyed girl
lost in the mirror.

Jesus,
what would you do

if you saw me now, all grown in
to my predetermined curves and
the nihilistic fabrications knotted in my skin.

Maybe you still want to be
a brain surgeon. Maybe you still
weep when you’re happy and stop
when you’re lonely, drooping over like
the puppet no one remembered. Maybe
you still smoke like it’s a defiance, and love
like it’s a war; maybe time preserved you
like a corpse in formaldehyde, and maybe

you still think of me,
too.

ExperimentalistShe always said she was
An experimentalist.
I knew otherwise.
This girl was raised to
Believe that the ability of
Counting the bones in your
Rib cage is beautiful.
Sixteen years old
With sand in her blood
And shoulder blades
As sharp as knives
As long as wings.
That day I knew
Her smiles were painful
And her laughs were just
Recorded in her throat
From so much practice
In a life that was once
So happy.

A little punk rocker with a gift for singing songsGirl with the rock and roll smirk curled behind her teeth
Burning her insides for fun because there wasn’t much else to do
Aside from skipping stones across car parks
And sipping the last dregs of forbidden liquor
Behind broken trees to keep up the act of normality

Late at night when the moon is asleep
She lies on dismantled bed frames
Counting stars because lambs are too often sent to the slaughter
Lucky star heartbeats and posy veins
Hides broken windows behind her pupils

Ceiling lights tracing patterns on her cheekbones
As late night contemplation's lead back to Rome
Atlas limbs curled into her ribs
With a sense of obligation she

Pack rats I want to be
that
stale as bread,
peeling
picture of her
that you
stow(ed) away
in the beating
of your breast
pocket

this habiti have this habit of thinking without thinking.

my mind will be walking down a road
between cities

while i am plugging away at the factory,
while i am putting groceries away.

if someone were to ask me what i was thinking,
i wouldn’t know what to say.

i would have to wait hours,
long after they’ve gone,

until my mind comes through the door,
tracking all manner of shit onto the floor,

and explains himself.

Love LettersWith their condescending ink
They wrote patterns of gold
Upon parchment leather paper
Within letters of words foretold

Perhaps with this envelope
And its rose tainted scent
I can find peace in myself
In the summer days spent

Where I took in the musky smell
Of your heart.
As I held it against my chest
I picked up a pen and began to start

Dear love, oh love
How I wish to see your lovely face
These days, these mornings are
What keep me hoping in sovereign grace...

AdultsI envy those people
who leave home
at eighteen
and live like twenty-five year olds,
looking out for themselves
like folks did in the good ol’ days,
drinking whiskey straight,
driving all night with no limits,
loving and fucking without apology,
never having to remind someone
that they’re old enough—
Goddamnit, they’re old enough
and if they’re not cut loose
they’ll suffocate to death

without ever having breathed
on their own.

Sea sonnet for the girl with ocean eyesShe was southern Californian storms
On a good day
When the skies nursed the shoreline like a wound
And the rain tasted like two scoops of mint chip ice cream

She held the nebula in her palms
And poured it out onto the sidewalk
So that the gutters would have something
To talk about at night

She swallowed the ocean
And held it in her eyes
deep pools
Of mountain rock blue straining against the sky
The bluest eyes I’d ever seen
Sparrow girl with the breathless wings

Embellished in vinyl’s and cassette tapes
Gramophone gilded lashes and half-moon wrists made up
Paper tapestries taped together with Shakespeare and Green

Sunday mor

Alaska is hiding behind her eyesA girl caught up in the same game
Where circus tricks and trapeze artists
Are nothing compared to the burning of lungs
Where insomnia stains the people’s smiles
In a pale wash of sea foam angst bottled up and thrown
Into the horizon where the sky meets the earth
In a disjointed seam

She had hurricane rage eyes
And wishbone sleeves pulled tightly across her chest
To suppress her Medusa heart from cracking
The stars open and drinking their flames

Ocean funeral where Chaconne
Is played to sirens and sea urchins
Coiled beneath the oily depths of seascapes
Where her kite string spines push against the thin membrane
Of split grin skie

On the road again searching for lost thingsLake bones carved into words
The slow baked Texas heat seeping into
Galaxy veins and Saturn ring irises
Like cross hatched road maps
Leading to lost cities gilded in gold
The skies nursing oil spills like a wound

Your cat eye palpitations lingering
Behind drowsy eyelids
Where childhood adventures of never growing up
Spark between neurons and sneakers pounding
On old dirt tracks
Boyish dreams of Milky Way heroes
Make up the constellations of your breathing

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More from ~the-balcony-scene

some days i don't knowthere is nothing funny about killing washed-out poets and making stew from college professors

these are not clips and phrases made in jest and they absolutely are not sarcasm with shock appeal to get a laugh

but disguised they are harmless ramblings of an angry student, passable as empty threats to entertain

to blow off steam perhaps

if the backbone was possessed or maybe triggered by the final push from sanity; if this perversity materialized

you wouldn't laugh then, would you.

cold handsMacy once asked Emma why she always wore finger gloves, even in the summer.

Emma told her: "Because my hands are cold."

-

Emma told Macy a lot of things.

Many were true, like the time she'd burned her hand on the stove or fell out of the top bunk and had to go to the hospital for stitches.

And then there were the other stories, like the ones about her uncle being knifed in the city and her father being kidnapped by secret agents.

But some were half true, like when her older brother climbed up onto the roof and jumped onto the trampoline.

-

When Emma didn't come to school that one day in Grade Five, she told Macy she'd been sick.

Macy

there's never much to saymary's wide eyes are an icy blue like wind that chills to the bone, but beneath lies warmth that spark the nostalgia of hot chocolate in the winter and sunshine on the beach. she is hard to read but easy to trust and i always imagined she'd be a good mom.

she was with child last i saw her, close to term and demanding in a passive-aggressive surge of hormones, her husband making pickle runs at her every whim. mary in my memory is tanned and warm, a soft voice with a hestia heart. she is thin hands and white scarves and crystallized breath in the hockey rink, a styrofoam cup bitten around the edges and crumpled in by young children's blunt tee

the loss of faith backwardsv.
somewhere along the lines, you forgot to tell me that sometimes parents lie, too

iv.
if i meet god on my supposed judgement day, i will apologize for putting faith into you instead of him.
he seems like a reasonable guy and i think he'd understand

iii.
i'm not sure i believe in god,
but turns out the idea of his existence is more credible than you ever were

ii.
i was eight then.
i believed in god and church like i believed in unicorns and magic,
like i believed in marriage that lasts and love that forgives and endures,
like i believed in the mystery of fireworks and fish breathing underwater,
like i believed in you

i.
i ask

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and the thing is

by ~the-balcony-scene, Jul 30, 2011, 8:36:19 PM
Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

i don't feel guilty for forgetting, exactly,
but i feel guilty because i should feel guilty
(and she always was the best at guilt-trips)

(jesus never guilt-tripped me, but he was dead)
(i never got the hang of my "god talk" in sunday school, you see)

and if anyone overused parentheses,
it just might be me but you'll have to excuse me here just this
once because old forgotten friends are just the type for them

and the thing isby ~the-balcony-scene

Literature / Poetry / Human Nature / Free Verse

i cut a fuckload off of this, and i'm not sure if i like it like this. but when it was longer, it felt like it was reaching. gahh.

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and the thing is

and the thing isby ~the-balcony-scene

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