the ring that went missing from your finger

every time I make an effort and you sigh at it,
every time I lean in and you don't look up,
every time you leave without saying a word,
I lay in your bed, trying to think of something
that might sting you as you so effortlessly sting me,
but I can never manage to think of anything close
to the same calibre of cruelty as your thoughtlessness

Ace of hearts,

Ace of hearts, you used to be the suicide king, you used to be such a fool for love.
You were of the same suit, but you had a sword through your head and a crown on top of it.
You were part of a full house but moved out upon realizing that the deck was fixed and not in your favor. I think I told you that I didn't want to play anymore, either.
Ace of hearts, tell me, is it good not to be king? A king means little without some sort of pair, but aces must get lonely, too.
Life as an ace is unpredictable. In some games you're most valuable, a hot commodity, everybody's after you. But in others you're next to meaningless.
In any case, this is to say that I like having you in my hand.

The kind that consumes,

He was at least seven different
people at once. Most of them did
not like me, but one loved me so
much that he set fire to my mattress
and made sure that I suffocated in
the smoke. I loved at least one of
him back, though I had reason to
believe that the other six plotted
against me quite regularly.

Dear Anyone Listening,

I never want children.
I could never tuck my babies in at night, knowing that someday they would have to grow up and stop being afraid of the monsters under their beds, and that, of course, someday they would begin inviting the monsters into their beds.

12 Steps for Fitting Your Lover Into a Shoebox

1. Find a shoebox.
2. Decapitate, dismember, and disembowel stuffed animals. When the stuffing blows away in the wind, pretend it's dandylion fluff, and you just made a wish on a rather large dandylion. Wish to show no mercy. It'll come true.
3. Shred all love letters with your teeth. Bitterly spit on each scrap until all paper is sufficiently damp. Mold scraps into a papier-mâché bust of your lover's head. Let dry over night. Set on fire in the morning.
4. Drag mixed CDs against concrete until the pavement plays your song. Crack CDs in crescent moon halves. Stomp on them until the sidewalk sparkles with shards of love songs.
5. Take scissors to all clothing items. Cut into strips roughly the width of your lover's conscience. Tie all strips together, making sure to double-knot. Saturate in grape juice. Hang in a place that you don't mind attracting insects. Let the moths take it from there.
6. Paste pictures of more attractive and emotionally equipped people over all photos of your lover.
7. Sob hysterically with regret.
8. Repeat step 7.
9. Repeat step 8.
10. Remember that this started with a shoebox. Fill shoebox with stuffed animal skins, papier-mâché ashes, CD dust, remnants of sticky moth-eaten rag, and improved photos.
11. Dig a hole so deep you can barely see out of it. Climb out of hole. Leave shoebox. Replace dirt. Stomp on the grave, if you didn't get enough stomping in step 3. Spit, if you didn't get enough spitting in step 2.
12. Walk away. Don't look back.

Higher Education

I wasted four
years scratching
his back with one
hand, writing her
poetry with the other

bhakti

I saw the black ink shrine in her mind

singing the polecat with technicolor hair

as she reclined with heavily painted eyelids

I saw the sensuous scene etched on the screen

preparing to be flecked with bright wet brushes

as she touched her tongue to the tip to begin

I saw the bible with soot-smudged pages

banging against the blinds in her bedroom

as she rubbed the canvas with a black rag

I saw the spill of shimmering viscous liquid

dripping down the tips of her stained fingers

as she shuddered at the sound of the shatter

I saw the string of shining prayer beads

resting softly on her cigarette paper neck

as she kissed the canvas

  "i won't let her good body go to waste"

Unwrapped,

I am nothing more than a gray
tangle of half-formed dreams
a headache induced by breathing
in the smoke of my own cigarette
a junkbox of thoughts belonging no
where that may be needed someday
thus spared from a garbage can funeral
though I once told her I was god
and she felt no need to refute it

A blond nun with black lips

My wings were made of unsturdy words,
and I sold you cheap smiles
in exchange for your services
as a backbrace.
To me, you were the most gorgeous
medical device. The prettiest piece
of lifesaving equipment I'd ever laid eyes on.
You held me in place for how long was it?
You made me feel strong enough
to stand up straight for once.
And then you rusted,
leaving my spine zigzagged
in the most unfortunate contortion,
which forced me to sit, stuck, gnarled
and staring at the floor.
It's been how long now?
And I still can't help but default to looking downward.

wherever she wandered

(she feathers when it freezes)

Evie never thought she needed an identity
she looked in mirrors and fantasized about smashing the glass
Evie always loved a good smashing
when she couldn't get the words to come out right
Evie broke bottles and fed them to her skin
it made her feel warmer sometimes
Evie was cold cold cold lonesome shivery
she had never shivered by herself before

(with wings like a bat in summer)

To my ink-stained darling,

You were made of bones

only thinner, like thread

only tougher, like leather

only brighter, like branches

only loud, like love,

but you were not 

any of these things, 

not really. 

I was made of plaster, 

only thicker, like blood

only fragile, like feathers

only whiter, like paper

only soft, like love,

but I was not 

any of these things, 

not quite. 

We were made of hope,

only thinner, like tethers

only fragile, like lead

only lighter, like blindness

only ugly, like love, 

but we were not

anything, 

not anything at all. 

Dear Lia,

Lia, I am writing because our stories are gone. They were erased in a shameful fit of sanity, but now that I'm mad again, I need them.
I know that our stories can't come back because you've erased every trace of me, painted over me with thick, white acrylic to make room for something with fewer flaws.
This leaves me to tape up my mouth and bind my hands. This leaves me to chew my tongue and scar my palms with half-moon grooves. This leaves me to bite my nails 'til they bleed, just to keep my hands and mouth too busy to signal something significant.
When it gets dark, I light a candle to you; I wrap my arms around my body straightjacket-style and try to remember what came after once upon a time. The things I remember are better than the things we erased—no grabbing for gold, no accommodating the enemy, no star-crossing, just lovers. And this is the way that it should be. A soft madness cradles me to sleep.

Always,
Desirée

Dear Kit,

I know you're gone gone gone, dead and reborn as someone else's Robin Hood someone else's Cyrano someone else's Paolo someone else's Lancelot. The two of you rode off into the sunset, and you're still honeymooning. I know you told me once that your kind doesn't get happily ever afters. "Watch the movies," you said. "We always die in the end." 

And everyone is dead. They've been reborn in the same bodies, but the people I loved aren't in there anymore. They're all hermit crabs, and I'm in love with the shells. 

I know this, that you're gone. I tell myself that my Kit is dead dead dead and not coming back. I tell myself Kit's a new person happily ever after in the same old body, and I say to myself, my Kit is a shell made of watercolor and cotton and fragmented thoughts that lives in a box dead dead dead and buried in my mind. 

I know you can't come back. I could play Frankenstein or wish upon a monkey's paw, but you'd still be all wrong. I know this. I know this. I know this, but knowing doesn't stop the wanting. 

Always, 

Carmilla 

Dear Kitten,

I think that we are mad, and we will never stop being mad. 

We will never stop because once you've tasted madness, nothing else tastes as good. 

When we reach for our keys, when we go walking, when we wake up in the morning, we think, "Maybe today," when we should not be thinking at all. 

Nothing feels as soft. Nothing smells the same. Nothing makes me cringe like when I'm mad with you. 

We are meeting, laughing, talking, writing, dressing, talking, talking, too much crying, sleeping, holding, laughing, writing, reading, breaking, leaving, crying, crying, crying, together, alone, writing. 

We do this in real time, setting fire to each other's insanity again and again, timed like a circus act. 

We are most alive in the back of our minds. It feels like home to us. 

We make our beds of memories and we lie in them and lie and lie and lie, too afraid of the dark to wake up. 

Dear Jinx,

If I had the audacity, I would cover your life in yellow roses. Every day I would litter your walkways with fresh flowers to trample. I would dissect a perfectly good posy just to pile the petals onto your bed, make you a nest of something soft and alive. I would keep myself a secret. I would learn to make masks out of marigolds and morning glories. I would learn to be two-hundred different people, and all two-hundred of us would spend all 4,800 of each day's hours knitting you a brighter life out of daisy stems.  We would learn to hide under rocks. We would learn to thrive in shadows. We would learn that transformations are easy, if the weather allows. We would live and die weaving you a sunflower dream from behind a fat oak tree, watching you read on the bench nearby. We would use up our 6 trillion breaths on sighs so that you never had to waste yours because I know that you've spent a lot of time sighing already. We would do all of that for you, the one, the only one. I would do it for you. But I won't risk it on the all-too-likely off-chance that you'll pick up all my yellow rose petals and piece them back together in the shape of a mask that perfectly fits my face.