Panic attack.

night was walking with fat balled-up feet in gray sweaty gym socks, wood-block toes in the dirt and thick clippings of flesh.

folds of dismembered fat on the restroom tile floor.

“NO MORE ANGELS NO MORE ANGELS NO MORE ANGELS” screaming gibbering shrieking the sound falling everywhere broken like rain. pale white toes scuttling frightened alone to dark corners, to cry in the dust of the radiator sizzle, dark burning their dreams peeling thick brown-white layers in strips from their nails. teeth marks on skin, and the naked apostles in bathroom stalls, “NO MORE ANGELS NO MORE NO MORE NO

Look at us go.

last week was such a beautiful week.
i wanted so badly to kiss somebody.
i ate when i was hungry and i unpacked my bags.


(she is tired, she says.
she is getting so old!
and she laughs like a
little kid again.)


i’m really sorry i stopped calling you back.

i’m still in love with that girl from before who made me
bruise myself up.

Stolen youth.

the beautiful girl she had
hair like guitar strings and
skin like cake frosting,
thick bones like a horse and
blank eyes.

she was too young, they said.
with her mouth torn apart and her skull busted open.
we will never get to tell her
to stay away from strangers.

Across the rusty railroad tracks.

we met at the top of the hill behind the mexican restaurant, overlooking broken chairs and a dumpster and bleak gray cement. i kept laughing and asking if this was your favorite spot, really?, to come out and think. and you laughed and slid your hands into my shirt to keep them warm. there were beer cans buried in the leaves and milk cartons and cigarette butts. then you breathed on my face like a warm puppy and i counted your teeth with my mouth. when we left we crossed the muddy stream and walked past the bent tree with the swastika carved.

“i used to love you so hard that my whole body hurt,” i said.

“oh.”

We can beat this, no really, no really.

“schizophrenia is just a disease,” she says. “just like cancer or allergies or the flu.”

but this time it means sitting in the corner with my head between my knees and not shaving or dressing myself because talking becomes too confusing.

“why didn’t you come when i called you last night,” you asked me. and i almost told you when you cried.

This is not really a love poem.

i think i was in love with your mouth.
so clean and precise in its movements!
so quick and so quiet when you ate.
or you talked. or just breathed.
so fascinating and small with such
beautiful lips!


...but you were not good at kissing.

I still get these beautiful dreams where the whole world is sick.

There is no poisoned grief at the death of an old man.
Not a cloud will wring dry in its morning; not a sun will collapse.

(i am old, my friend.
every time i exhale
i can feel my skin kissing my ribs
maybe for the last time.

Forgetting.

they say the dissociative anxiety disorder you got from just trying to cope has progressed to the point of amnesia. already you have told me in seven first voicemails. sometimes you are scared and sometimes you are sad and sometimes you say that you don't believe them. i just hope the last thing you forget is the time on my living room floor when you held me and i held you back and all we did was quietly cry.

(you're the only person i have right now and i'm sorry i broke up with you. i still don't love you anymore but i'm glad you've forgotten i told you. i'm sorry about my mood swings and the days i just can't keep them in and the day your dad hit you and i didn't pick up the phone because i couldn't breathe. i don't know if i should tell you the things that have happened or take this as my newest last chance.)

Leaving.

we never actually said goodbye.
“i’ll see you in a couple months, okay?” i said. you grabbed my face with your hands and pulled it right up against yours. forehead to forehead, stared into my eyes. up this close your eyes weren’t even eyes, they were fuzzy green glows, wet white messes that blocked out my vision. you held my face like that for almost half an hour and you didn’t cry once, but your hands shook. on my way down i stopped on the stairs and i waited and listened. you brushed your teeth, packed some boxes, urinated.
later that week when i realized i’d never see you again these were the things that reminded me of you. brushing teeth, packing boxes, urinating. the shapes that you made in the sheets.
all those times i’d hold you while you cried. “i want to love you more than i’ve ever wanted to love anything,” you’d say. and i’d tell you, “maybe that’s what love is.”
“no,” you’d say. “no. it’s not.”

Untitled.

when i held you i
traced your ribs with my heavy rough
hands feeling arches of
bone and thin
skin.

felt the cupped matching
blades of your back and i
breathed on your
neck.

(there is a little girl and she
lives in this house. breathing and
smiling behind the thick
glass of her
frame.)

i want her back i want i want her
back with your
hair in my
mouth.

Sometimes she had dreams about being in love.

She says she only ever fell in love once.
He bends over the dirty glass bottle and makes it submerge. The water is light gray and speckled with hair, bits of paper, a cough drop. When he pulls out the bottle and sucks all the water churns back and the bucket is full.
He was pretty she says. And he wrote her such beautiful poems.
In the big empty room someone laughs.

It didn’t last she said.
He sticks his tongue in and out and makes fists. It is ugly but the medicine works. So she tries to get used to it.
He is still beautiful she says. But he stopped writing poems.
Someone plays with their lighter, puts the flame in and out.

She says it was a bad year.
He says he feels like the blade. They just give their love the only way they know how to and it cuts and it hurts. But when he smokes he feels better.
He is doing his best she says. What is a disease anyways.
Someone is playing guitar and the steel strings cut into their skin.

Sometimes you just have to walk away she says.
He curls up in a ball in the corner and tries not to breathe as the room fills with gas. He can hear them outside knows they poisoned his food. He calls her on the phone and he cries says it’s starting again.
Sometimes love is running away she says. I don’t know what to do.
In the big empty room someone leaves.