Mi culpa

Sometimes it can feel like every bad thing that has happened is because of something I’ve done because I’ve messed things up so many times.
And it’s just really hard.
It’s the most lonely feeling realizing that the common thread of your loved ones’ sadness is you.

Maybe I'll never get over it...

I thought that this pain was over,
that when I turned 16, I finally understood that the way
I would have wanted things to be
was not necessarily what was best for everyone.

Those 15 words hit me like 15 bullets,
piercing my skin, driving through my major organs...
"In these moments,
I would love to hear what your mother would have to say."

We are made for dancing

Finding another function of
the human body is impossible
while I am tangled in a string of
synths, beats, ballads, and treble.

What kind of alternative purpose
would my arms carry aside
from rising and falling to tunes
like a refreshing summer tide?

Trancing, dancing, romancing,
the bobbing of light-washed skulls
frames my perceptional painting--
They carry me through the booms and lulls.

My body -- a crisp leaf, is whisked
and caressed by the slight, mild wind.
Hypnotized and mesmerized, this place
is unlike anywhere I have ever been.

silent tears in the library

The simple-minded would assume that the man who
labors daily for countless hours at a food
cart on the winter streets of New York City
would be someone that would envy
Me: a privileged white girl attending
university on the California coast.

But the truth is, I envy this man because
he has the privilege of being able to serve
you
and see your warm smile
as the hot and slightly greasy Styrofoam meets your
cold hands, bitten by the winter air. He watches
you turn, nodding your head to the beats of songs
on a playlist that I made for you. I can imagine
this scene but ceaselessly wanting to be in it
is a pain that the man who works the cart
doesn't understand.

Fuck the Quarter System

Why
do I do this
to myself
and suffocate
myself
and drown
myself
and burn
myself
and taunt
myself
and torture
myself
and lie to
myself
and beat up on
myself
and smother
myself
and overwhelm
myself
and expect things from
myself

The Poem Has Been Written (In response to: The Poem Unwritten by Denise Levertov)

In that instance, we both knew that no one would know us better.

Ever since that moment, the pen that lives

caged by rusty metal in my chest has yet to cease

scribbling the thousands of thoughts that you bring

to my seemingly insane conscious.

When hysteria knocks on my skull,

turning the soft thumps into deeper booms,

infinite ink oozes from the tip of my pen as my blood becomes

the words that I am endlessly sewing together for you.

As long as I am living, you will have poems.

Moving these words from blood to paper

Is not as simple of a task as moving from place to place…

Budging this boulder, giant and realistically an impossible feat,

with words and commas, suddenly becomes possible.

My dear, the poem has always been written.

people are garbage

The way that people ask me
"Why are you being so nice to me?" --
How is it that hard? To simply care for someone else.