and all of the names were false

april was an existentialist

April was an existentialist. She only believed in moments she could taste with her tongue outstretched, and with that, she deemed her story less important than the others, especially that of May. April and May could have easily been sisters. When they laughed, the sounds wove together, and when they cried, daffodils found the strength to get out of bed in the morning. In the dark, you could barely tell them apart.

Yet everything was more saturated about May. She was brimming with consequence. Even her biology reflected this, her full body barely losing the constant, precarious quarrel with her clothes. Her eyes carried the innocence and wisdom of sea glass, only made more beautiful by rogue tides. A guy could bask in her forever.

April was considered beautiful, but in an objective kind of way. Her clothes never seemed to fit quite right, either restricting her breath or swallowing her shape. Her eyes were often bright, but unstable, flitting from amber to dirt. You’d want to place April behind glass. You’d want to feature her under the gloss of a fashion magazine. You’d want to keep April at a safe distance. You’d want to fuck her, but only in your mind.

Many are colder than April, yet poets always consider her the cruelest. Maybe it’s the way she warms your skin in one breath and leaves you frostbitten in the next. Maybe it’s the way her harsh breezes overpower her subtle sunshine. Maybe it’s that she’s impossible to forecast, always one arm’s reach out of your grasp. Maybe she’s afraid of herself.

blind date

Someday you’ll understand.

Every leaf of inhibition mirrors the veins of your hand—

You compulsively tear strands of grass from the ground;

Since you were a child, you loved its lack of sound.

.

All I ever wanted was clean breaks and milkshakes.

But instead you told the waiter, “We’ll just have some water, thanks.”

And then over linguini, you told me how you felt;

You killed all my dreams with assassin-like stealth.

.

When tears come in streams, water tastes like moonbeams.

But water can’t feed all my fabricated dreams—

I need chemical strawberries frozen thick in my veins;

I need your ibuprofen stare to kill all of my pains.

.

High fructose corn syrup coats my soul, love,

It trickles my insides forming sugar stalactites.

I lie to myself while doing makeup in the mirror;

I’m lying to you now between bites of white rice.

.

Goodnight.

“She’s in a war of consciousness,” he said aloud.

He pointed the camera to the pile of limbs.

The image screamed “moderate hit with a sequel.”

The love-limbs grinned and turned to her side.

“If I hide my surprise, will you tell me how it ends?”

So he mouthed her last words from his lips to hers.

famous last words

The teen years consist of slowly coming to a realization that the world is not as fair or as conquerable as you always thought it was—-and that’s a terrible and beautiful thing. And you realize that Newton was right, and that with every terrible, terrible thing that you come across, there is a beauty that matches its terror, and with each beautiful thing, a terror that matches its beauty. And you guess that despite what anyone says, or preaches, or believes, the world can only be accurately described in two simple words: terribly beautiful.

love letter to a city unknown

New York City fucking scares me, but it makes me feel alive.

I don’t know much of anything. I often feel as if I’m regressing, fading into an oblivion negative enough to depolarize my every atom. I don’t know why. I don’t.

Yet whenever I’m in the City, I feel a physical shift. Something palpable. Something real. There is consequence to every step. Dreams are at an arm’s reach. So are the demons. So are you. But at least you can finally see them.

I have never before felt so insignificant. So absolutely present. So powerful. The suburbs shower you with the moldy grandeur of significance since birth, an empty baptism. You are special. Sing the gospel. Write your goals in the blanks provided.

Significance is a separation. Postulation, not protein.

To be insignificant is to be a part of something. Whatever it is, you’re in.

Influential.

The City and the person take turns playing canvas.

And everyone, every one, separate from path or sphere or goal or flesh, is always in motion. The spirit of the City is that we try. We all try.

We recognize the power of the City and ourselves. And we underestimate neither.

I’ve been trying to find a way to keep that feeling, for me to invoke it at will, so that I may go about my days with a sense of power.

I’ve tried snapping twice at inspiration, hoping to thread the senses.

Maybe there are no threads. Maybe they’re everywhere.

Maybe that’s the same. Maybe that’s beautiful.

entrance

The seashells sing on the beach when the Mud Man laughs, stinging his foot on the jetty and balancing his heart on his pinky toe, leaning back and letting out a hard, hearty laugh, like the gravel that gets stuck between your toes, but never seems to wash out in the shower. Kindness dances around his head, singing lullabies and blowing smoke around a jewel-encrusted carousel, loving each dip of vanilla bean ice cream and hating the feel of tasteless plastic against one’s tongue. Imagine you are on a river, and your golden watch falls into the deep, touching the foam and spiralling into nothing. You are left on the raft, heart bleeding out your song, wishing you could go back two days ago, when things were so simple, when things were so hopeful. Imagine you could, and that every droplet of spray falls back into the river and the fish swim backwards. Your wet watch returns to your hand, snaking around your wrist, and you slowly float backwards, back to the circus, where you were held captive, or so you thought. Imagine that you didn’t eat the wrong lunch, that you didn’t know disappointment, that every time that you opened your mouth, that you sang on key. Imagine that this were real, that it could be. Because it is. It’s been slumbering inside of your soul since your mother whispered your name. It’s been there since your father has thrown you a baseball, and you caught it, for the first time. It’s been there since the fire department gave you their word, their word that you had something in you, something that could save us all. All of these things, imagine them scratched into the cement of your sidewalk in your hometown, next to dandelion puffs and the moths you always saw as butterflies. Imagine this, because you can. Because it’s real. Because you can. It’s all you have left to hold onto. You can’t even recognize your own face anymore. You used to like to watch yourself grow, ticking off your height on the wall next to your kitchen, dreaming, but never drowning. That is a time you long to go back to. You need to create your own scars.

butterfly cafe

please don’t stay, you are oceans away.

breaths that carry lilacs carry me

to a mental July. I put down

my perfume, the bottle flower-shaped,

and your voice was like diamonds crushing,

and my heart, it was flower-shaped too.

I swear I have a heart, and it blooms

only when the moon does. white and blue

4-o’clocks, not am but pm,

grow on the glowing screen. I can blink

ever since I met you.

Fountain of

you are the dark place in my mind
the corner I revert to when my synapses sink in time
crush me and caution me and garnish me with your care
planning dyed hair is a strange affair
an affair that’s never a thought, but a symptom
pull the knife out of your back while I play the victim
are you tracing your feelings, reasons, meanings with a blade?
miles of Niles in your system left to untangle in the shade
of a chemical, hereditary, primary reaction-function
truths dripping from the salty-sweet eyedropper venom
of your eyes veins eyes veins eyes veins eyes
lies brain wise brain tries brain, synthesized
Synth is a religion and nightclub floors are the pews
bass is the gospel and flashing lights are the hues
that currently color in the skeletons of blueprints
you drew for your dreams, defined old reality with
tongues in others’ lungs doesn’t make for an answer
but I hear your prayer, girl, and I echo your seance
bodies twisting in rhythm with anyone who will feel us
people, sweat and Ciroc are all liquids, what’s the difference
searching for a Fountain of Amnesia to heal us

hell is a dmv

Getting your driver’s license is pretty much society handing you the keys to the BMW. It’s the mother eagle pushing its child off a cliff. It’s everybody’s Bar Mitzvah. But mostly, it’s society’s way of testing your boundaries. To see if they handed you the keys to power, to freedom, which road you would take. At my school, getting your license is a pretty big deal. Once you get your license, you run out of things to talk about with your other friends. You’re sick of bitching about your hometown; you never want to see another one of its pizzerias or pavement cracks again. Freedom is a cult that everyone starves to be in. But you have to go through Hell to get there.

And all of these thoughts are rushing through my head, a demented mosaic, as I walk the familiar streets to my town’s DMV. I hear terrible stories, stories that, I hope, had gained fire as they crashed through my school’s sphere of gossip. John told me that it’s so hot in there, that five minutes waiting in line made the river of sweat on his skin bubble. Lisa swore to me, with wide and honest eyes, that her driving test administrator was the Devil herself. Pushing the cloudy glass doors open, I prepare myself for the worst.

The waiting room is a fiery sauna. Scarlet seventeen-year-olds are packed against maraschino cherry walls, drenched in sweat and rubbing bloodshot eyes. There’s one boy crouched on the floor with his head on his knees. At first I thought he was praying, but I realized that he must have lost that instinct long ago. I wonder how long he’s been waiting here.

In the far corner next to a pot of dehydrated roses, I see a line of desperate teenagers in front of a heavy water cooler. There’s no cups, so they rapidly press the lever into their hollowed-out hands, but as the water touches their skin, it dissolves into vapor.

Minutes slowly turned to hours, and I’m on the verge of saying, screw it. Screw it all. Screw responsibility and adulthood. Right now, I terribly want to crawl back into my mother’s stomach. But I hear my number called, so I drag myself to the distant voice. I push through the heavy iron door. It could have been a safe. And I felt a burst of snowy air. My salvation.

The secretary smiled, and she’s an angel. She’s wearing a flowing white dress, and her golden eyes look like the gates of heaven. “Lily Thompson? Please enter the first car on the left.” The shifted her body to point to the door, and I saw a red tail.

I entered the car, and it was even more hellish than the waiting room. The seat burned my bare legs, and the black leather wheel made my skin sizzle. “Good luck,” sneered the red man who seemed to materialize next to me.

***

I barely passed, and I’m barely alive.