Malinda-Rose

i. i cannot remember the day i fell in love with you. there was no single moment, no grand epiphany, no sudden realization. i did not plan it, or necessarily want it at all but that doesn't mean i didn't need it. i needed you, with your red jacket and peppermint breath and gentle words. i was a moth, and you, a burning flame, pulling me closerandcloser until it was too late. ii. i didn't deserve you. i was scared and angry and you didn't need that (me). you are stability - you are affection and i was nothing but bitter rejection but i held on. i opened like a nightflower to your sweet moonrays and your reflective light

stepping on cracks would never break my mother's back and isn't that a shame. isn't that a fucking shame. pennies aren't worth your hand-me-down bones – a fractured support system. you're eroding away before my eyes and who would want you? who in their right mind would want you

you have become the nicotine lining my esophagus dripping into my lungs darling i can barely take in any more oxygen it settles in my chest like bleach and burns like fire on my tongue and i want i want i want to wrap you in my arms but i think no scratch that i know you're just a bittersweet dream waiting to eat me away from the inside when you're gone for two weeks i'm on the floor coughing up blood and it looks like pictures on the linoleum but there's no one here to tell me they look beautiful anymore i am so broken without you my perfect drug and no matter how many times i get my fix i'm still crying out for more m

i. there's a boy who no one knows or sees but me because he's invisible and hides behind road signs because he's from nowhere and has no place to go ii. he's most beautiful when his ribs show and osteoporosis settles into his marrow so if i were to tap along his xylophone bones he would shatter iii. he's bleeding words in ringlets from the lacerations in his neck and all the paramedics are on holiday when you need them most or so i've heard iv. there's a shaking in his cells i don't recognize and a need for an immediate injection of morphine to his bloodstream but i'll just have to staple his eyes shut and tell him it's

the spiders are the only ones who listen to me anymore. they make beautiful patterns across the nape of my neck and down the curve of my back, their delicate legs making my skin shiver. they weave words over my teeth and down into the opening of my esophagus, and i have to learn how to breathe without destroying them. they want to protect me, they say. but it feels like there's an eyelash in my eye and they're intent on ignoring my pleas to go, go get it out as they continue their aerobics up and down my sloping vertebrae. and there's a splinter under my nail, digging deeper and deeper under my flesh and i can't move to

i'm nothing but a washed up cliché   with pages of poetry locked behind my eyes and forced under my damaged fingernails. skin is my canvas, an empty slate, and i'm painting stars in colors that do not have names; colors that only exist in my mind. every day is a wait for 11:11 and the opportunity to discuss my darkest secrets with four-leaved clovers and moving lights in the night sky.   i'm dancing on the tips of my toes to avoid stepping on cracks in the pavement and killing a family of ants. i spend afternoons making up religions   and teaching them to my stuffed animals just so i can f

i. pulling dandelions by the roots and watching as the wind takes hold of every wish and sends them on their way. ii. planning to kill eleven ladybugs with the palm of my hand because isn't that just a nice number? iii. engraving my name into your bones just to prove that you'll always be mine and dissecting your insides because i want to know every part of you. iv. talking in metaphors you cannot understand and watching my words pour as blues and greens from my splintered joints.

i am diving into the belly of the sea. my hair is tangled in seaweed and my ears are full of sand. i'm following in the shadow of a pirate's ship and discovering how impossible it is to paint its hull a more beautiful shade of rust. i'm catching glimpses of mermaids in the mirrors of an underwater kingdom and befriending anglerfish and bottlenose dolphins. + i am searching in the tide pools. i am reaching into each microscopic world and coming up with nothing but sand-encrusted fingernails and handfuls of hermit crabs. i am watching as starfish stretch their million little hands, reaching in search of something invisible to me. and my fee

i want to fall in love. i want to trip and stumble into a stranger's arms and through the dirt and the scraped knees i want them to see something in me worthy of metaphors. i want my heart to cough rainbows and diamonds and everything good instead of the sick black filth that's always rising in my throat. i want someone to look at me and tell me i'm beautiful and they love me and will never leave me. i want them to lie through their teeth. i want to know i'm doing something dangerous. i'm not afraid of the broken bones or the missing teeth. i'm afraid of being left behind while everyone else is learning to fall. so let's try falling, shal

here, you will not find gold-encrusted fairies or silver-coated unicorns hiding between the towering oaks. this is not a place you will think of as fondly as the patterns of falling rain against the window's glass. there are runs in your stockings, here. there are little girls smoking cigarettes and turning their thumbs to sin. here, you will stand under a broken umbrella while your mascara falls black against porcelain cheeks, giving you the illusion that you're crying stained tears. here, each blade of grass has long since turned to ash like the future generations of our community. here is not a place you wan