flakes &

their kiwi feet &

how each of us,

one day, if

only once, will find

ourselves a slip

away from evil or

tenderness, depending

on which way

we turn in the night

I never know if it’s better to feel loneliness or unity in heartbreak.

I want to feel especially broken; I want to hold a stranger’s pinkie

beneath bathroom walls because we’re both weeping in separate stalls.

But then I can’t unlock the door, so I consider spending my whole life

on the toilet bowl, hips numb as I sit that age alone, with cell

service but not willing to phone my mom because she’ll tell me

I need to come back home. & I’ll tell her I want to wear eyeliner

now so that people know when I’m most vulnerable; I want

to undress to blank bones. & she’ll say I am too sweet & sick

& I can’t keep living my life like a poem. It’s written beautifully,

but the ending never ends well, everyone escapes but me.

It’s okay, though terrifying. I love too much & won’t let

go of that mercy. Besides, the world would be boring

if it clung to my knees, if it always stayed to care for my body.

I was lonely in the best way.

A trail followed me down each road.

Its treasure wasn’t mine but I cared for it.

Every lover I once loved dropped some dusty thing:

a notebook, knife shavings, a holiness, me.

& isn’t want just collecting belongings?

Which is why I adore people crying. They drop

pieces of themselves right in front of me, & I can see

which pieces they’re missing. Usually

requited desire. God I’m weightless.

We’re all just hoping the darkness parts itself

on our drunk walks home, aren’t we?

We’re all seeing the shape of lonely right in front of us

& traipsing through its cloud trying to grasp it

with both our hands. Life is about learning

possession, I’m sorry. To intimately know

your own sadness as magic. To own a body.

I’ve traveled to space for this

humble death, & the quiet astronauts

were right—everything lonelies,

the stars spinning in graves big as moon

I don’t know why I’m killing the connection–

I wanted to be a god but not like this—

before the geometry gives

I rip off my unpleasant suit

and pet the corroded wires

cutting my cord,

there goes my desire

all the little people yearn below me

I understand rust as a symptom

of longing—if i can be anything,

please strip me naked

Lonely needs a new name, some word

that terrifies, like a fire—I want to scream

HELP! I’M LONELY! so a crowd piles my bones

on a stretcher & carries me past all the body traffic together.

I crave vulnerability so ribbed it’s disgusting,

like a dead deer on the road, dirt-freckled & bloody.

I desire my funeral because I’ve always wanted

a procession of strangers to touch me. See, I can be

both pretty & wanting—wearing my lipstick,

heels on, posing for you, my arches cracking—

not on purpose. I was just born like this & grew tired

of changing, the way a sunflower exhausts itself

vaulting towards light & eventually decides to wilt.

Ask if I’m alone; my answer echoes. It always will.

With you gone, I’m the loneliest girl at the grocery store.

I watch pairs of strangers buy over-the-counter remedies

for their flushed stomachs that speak to each other in sleep.

Mine knots into itself, has no one who will listen

to how it laces alone each week, turning tight bow,

then loose string, then hitching back into double bends.

You didn’t love me; you left me, when we could’ve lived

in joint bathrooms together, feet on salmon tiles as we sat

doors-down on toilet bowls, our stomachs tethered by strange sewage

systems & soap. Now I own only one medicine cup & my gut turns less.

But my secret is that when I miss you, I drink crates of dairy

milk instead of oat. I look at Pepto Bismol & see

its brightness, that sickly pink, how I used to carry it

in my purse for you so no one would know when you needed it.

Even with you gone, I still wish I could give you that love.

I would’ve drank the bottle for you. I would’ve thrown up.

Spotify clocks me as lonely again. All my friends blend Tumblr grunge & Tinder want. I tell myself it’s okay to not know the difference between loves because I adore everyone too much no matter what. I’m still obsessing over 2017 when the downtown skies blinked pink & I told strangers I loved them so bad! I can’t kiss anyone I don’t want well; I can’t fake my desire. Most of my body gives me away—I want to act cool but parts of me still blush how they used to. My mom wants me to take therapy more seriously; my dad wants me to learn from the economy. He says I supply with no demand & oversaturate my friends. I argue that the problem is always inflation; my heart airs up & floats far from my hands.

O! You love me while I cry.

There are captions inside me I haven’t

strung into song yet. Love is a sky

too bright! I can’t look it in the eye!

O! Eclipse me! For you I would drink

the most flamin’ mountain dew.

For you I would change the channel!

O! There is nothing more beautiful

than sharing a dumpster couch with you,

our little vacuum of time. O!

When we collapse to Cheeto dust, we will finally

be able to touch each other

the way we’ve always wanted.

O! O! O! We remain.

I’m lonely in the sense that everyone knows

my name but no one wants to say it. I just wish

someone would ask me what I’ve wanted all along:

to live in a lake & never grow taller than the water.

To pronounce myself as a family of coral.

But I am lonely as forever, lonely as infinite,

as natural sequences, as order, as Google.

I do take comfort in the lack of a lonely growth;

I can’t wake up to more lonely unhoused bones.

Everyone I’ve ever met has their own least favorite elegy.

Mine tastes like soap in my throat & lives forward

& forward like a wheel goes around its axle. I’m okay!

I’m still sad, though. Say hello if you pass me on the streets.

We can talk about disappearing. We can lay on the floor & dream

of becoming black holes. In my favorite someday, I meet someone

who recognizes me instantly. It’s ridiculous, but beautiful.