Because Cunts Care - or - Bi Curious Charlatans - or - Breathe, Cool, Calm

the white plastic rectangle

on my right tit

reluctantly reads

"sandwich girlfriend"

four plush pink lips part

in a question mark

asking everything of

four white silent walls

embroidered

on my pink panties

and sweet ass is

"wouldn't you like to know"

big red

my autumns taste

like blood and cinnamon

now

and sink i hope

you know when i spit

on you

that you didn't

do anything

wrong

to mr braudigan

dick

i wish

i could make

them love me

like you do

so i wouldn’t

have to

(have to)

stay in bed

all day

with you

lost?

was too depressed to write anything

but post script, i will say, as evidence

SHAYNA: be proud of me i almost made it six days

KAITLYN: and it was the most miserable i’ve ever seen you

SHAYNA: that’s because it’s the most miserable i’ve ever been

KAITLYN: i know

my hair

is abandoning ship

waking up is hard enough but

i have to say hello to dozens

of tiny skinny redbrown corpses

that have agreed with my

internal sentiment

freewrite before work

a lie you told me

i play over and over like a record

i’m determined to break the needle on:

"if we need to fuck to still be friends

we can do that"

this and urinating while crying

is most likely why my head hurts

they skip your songs at the café

and cover my ears when we walk by them

(my friends are good friends)

i eat with them so they can see

that i ate something

they smoke with me so they know

i’ll sleep (too much or so little but it’s something)

in addition to you

i have lost my orgasm

i looked everywhere

it doesn’t want me anymore

i keep leaving it notes

on loose leaf paper that say

please one more please

sometimes i think

fucking you would do it

sometimes i think

i would just cry too much

but all the time

i do think about it

or at least

waking up in the morning

and laughing for three hours

before our bodies forced us out of bed

craving french toast and beer

i stand by what i said about my top

three breakfasts

(the other two were buffers)

i am sorry that i love you

i’m sorry i thought i could

fight moral battles to

find love in the crooks of arms for me

i’m sorry we can’t be friends

i’m sorry i’m working hard

to one day not be sorry

about any of this

two things you should know:

i always looked for something new

in my lovers. but now

i’ll have to look for this.

i fell off again on the way to your house

but you tried so hard not to look at my scrapes

you didn’t notice

i was bleeding and shaking and covered in dirt

but around you i always feel like

i’m bleeding and shaking and covered in dirt

and the muffin batter was fine so

i didn’t think to mention it.

sad ways to pass time

a playground pioneer

i mapped out

the surrounding

lands of the little

just so i know

where i can go

to smoke at 5

and never find you

on day two she said

my body measures time for me.

i painted my pinkie nail white

a “10 day no chip” guarante

one of the last times i saw you.

it is half gone.

seven days ago

my legs were red, embedded in asphalt

now, the hurt skin sheds like tiny oak leaves

and my knees turn hard and and black

designed to keep everything out.

the last time i got a haircut was for the wedding

where i excused myself for an hour or more

just to hear you make me laugh on the phone

my chartreuse cotton taffeta ass perched on

parking space cement blocks, railings

and perhaps you liked to know

how my knees fall at your whistle and that

so easily i put my face above that white dress

in the heat and joy and love of the evening

but my little tendrils grew long

and i’m shy and shaggy now

a mess is a better word.

last, quite literally

my toes remain blue and lovely

but poke at my socks

and ask them

have you seen the boy

that made her skin glow

and sucked out the grey

flaked sadness

we have all become

frank o'hara eat your heart out

it is four forty seven pee em

i have been up for almost six hours

and have found zero reasons to leave my room

escaping to the city, my city, would be of no use

i would be trading chaos for chaos.

it is almost five and i

i cannot leave my bed

i keep thinking of the dream

(ten hours is a lot of time for dreaming)

where the cafe turned into an

ice cream shop and i was so excited

they had toffee and i hoped they would

have peanut butter should you ever come

to visit

in the dream i had the best pedicure of my life

but she shaved off my heel and it looked like

my healing legs. i peeled off the skin like paint chips

and i hoped you wouldn't notice.

i arranged my drugs and forgot to take them

then looked at my packed bowl and my

antibiotics and arnica and laughed and laughed

and sat and sat and died and died

my shoes came in the mail

they are pretty to look at but

too big and i know even if they

were perfect i would not be happy.

resignation letter

i hope you have given up on these little thoughts. they are mine and they are not to be loved. i'm getting far less "i like that about you's", which is a thing, maybe i never said it, that i really, really like about you. there are no more cheek to lip fake outs in the bars of cafes. this is all to be expected. i am sick at the thought of remembering these moments for the rest of my life. i want to grow out of them, grow out of you, and discard the husk that was once my sexed pink skin in the autumn leaves. i want to be well. i want you to see me happy and normal, not sick with grief. believe me, i'm trying to find peace, but my mind, and the things it thinks it needs, are so strong. so this is my resignation letter. the one i will never send but know i should. i want so badly to be near you and there for you and happy and bright and helpful but my words and actions are poison.

by the way, she doesn't love you. she loves an idea of you, the one you choose to project. if she knew the real you, she wouldn't love you anymore. so you will keep yourself inside your chest and try and forget it but you can't. i'm not telling you anything you don't already know. it's easy to play a part for a weekend. if you don't live together there is not much to fight about. but you both seem to manage. i could take her away from you in 160 characters or less. i wouldn't, i wouldn't, but i understand the people who do now. i never did before. i never understood monogamy, jealousy, unrequited love. spending hours on mixtapes and other nice things without ever expecting to be reciprocated. my love was a business, a well run machine, something i gave in equal parts to those that wanted it. something superficial and something that never hurt. something very, very comfortable. i realize my love is not comfortable to you. it is strange and new and hard and fast and something maybe you can't understand or are afraid of or do not trust. that's fine. i can't expect you to switch from a huge fucking lazy boy to whatever this is.

please know i still believe i can make you happy. please believe i still think somewhere down the line, this could work out. i'm in a bad place maybe, and maybe you helped me get there, or maybe i did it all to myself. but know, please know, i have never felt such affection and admiration for someone like this before. i don't think you deserve it, but i want you to have it. it's the most important feeling i've ever had and it's the only one i have left. maybe i can't talk to you as much anymore. maybe i can't talk to you at all. maybe the only way i can get better is if i pretend all of this didn't happen. i don't want that. i want our old dynamic back. this new one is too painful, too dead. but know, in my little blue and white room, surrounded by my records and little glass animals, tucking my toes into clean white sheets every night, all i will be able to think about is this boy i have loved with everything i have who didn't want it and now it's gone.

ps: i don't think you will ever read this, but thank you for reading it at some point. it made me feel very special.

say anything

something about

your talk

the timbre

tempo

thoughts

tone

reminds me

of everyone

i have loved

but only

my favorite

parts of them

and the boy

to maybe fool himself into going but mostly to see what he was missing, the boy visited the campus he would never attend. and on that day, he would confuse a sweet little stoner chick with honey blonde hair for someone prescribed to him by destiny. they got really, really high, the boy especially, and talked all night, making out a little before bed. he tossed and turned, this boy who belonged here but not in this bed exactly, and couldn't find sleep in him. he quietly left and went for a long walk. by the time he was in front of the teashop, it was the darkest it would be before dawn, and he was a shadow. she was too, but in his heart of hearts, past all the anxieties and hesitation and general disbelief that anything good would happen to him, he knew it was her. wide eyed and very stoned, he quickly left the scene, but failed to convince himself it was a hallucination.

in the shop

she dropped her keys three times before breaking into the tea shop, but she decided she would have a good reading because three is a good number. to amuse herself and make up for lost time, she flung her body on the counter and rolled behind it to her tea leaves, like a slightly faster action movie. gingerly uncapping the jar, she rubbed the leaves between her fingers until some of them broke into her favorite mug. holding onto the mug full of warm water while it steeped made her sleepy so she closed her eyes. she thought about him in his city that wasn't this city, in a bed that wasn't her bed, and in a life that wasn't her life. upon a long exhale, she knew the tea was done, and looked straight ahead.

on the other side of a plate of floor to ceiling glass, on the opposite side of

the street, was a very normal looking man, with the exception of his stillness. he could have been confused for a lamp post if he had one leg and wasn't wearing a hoodie. he was looking straight at her and he looked scared, or perhaps he looked like nothing. startled, she dropped the mug, her favorite one. it shattered and the hot water burned her toes (she likes to remove her shoes when she's alone). she was startled and jumped and took off her socks and by the time she looked up again he was gone. she looked down. each individual dredge was pointing in the same direction, like a sad magnet that couldn't lie even if it wanted to.

at the bar

tonight!

she declared with great bravado

i will read.

and i will know how he is doing

you are drunk

the bartender said

and you know he is always

doing scared and miserable

maybe he had a good day

he could have seen

a bratty child faceplant

or he could have gotten a job

and maybe those things make

him smile

from what you have told me

said the bartender

nothing makes him smile.

i could make him smile

she emphatically slurred

then frowned and slumped

in her chair for a moment

before rolling off of it like it was

the hood of a car

in a shitty action movie

where no one gets the girl

to paint perchance to dream

tomorrow is a blank slate

i'm happy to fill in the lines

but we could flesh it out

but seriously

shanus shits on richards

shayla queefs on dicks

shaynal bleeding's heinous

anus has the shits

another one

i can mix popsicles with vodka

but i'm still drunk and sweet

on your smile

i can have a house full of friends

but i'm still alone on the couch

with you

reluctant writing

i'd rather go quiet on today

but if you must know

some things

i will tell you good things

like how i bought how my room is going to smell

and i can eat chips with the back of my mouth

kind of

and agent orange is a repeat offender like you

so like, don't feel bad because everyone is

a confused asshole with too much love

write a tasteful and elegant poem about your gum surgery and jeff mangum and put it here.

mention i am listening to hear where you are and tomatoes

and how you hope heaven is like being in a big wood theater in the round singing along with everybody

lessons with tolle 1

let go

ego

let go

things

let go

clothing

let go

everything.

everything

is out there

set it

all free

today's the day

i catch myself

folding laundry

arranging books

boiling water

reading in repose

and wondering

if you found me here

would you like

the arrangement

and rituals

i have chosen

for my life

without you

lets cross paths between days and fall in love

i saw her under her bright orange umbrella

as one day was ending and another beginning

for such gay rainy garb she looked so sad

she may have been crying. she kept her head low

i don’t know her but i know she is beautiful in her sadness

and all i wanted in that moment was to kiss her forehead

shuffling wet bangs with my thumb. i loved her in her

dress she wore like a hospital gown.

i want to know her and make her smile

because then she will never have

to wear her hospital gown like a dress.

dream #1334

hello?

boy number one?

this is the part where

you come in stage left with

fake plastic flowers

and say

i love you and

i always will my darling

but i caught you in

the isles

he stood there

with big blank eyes

in an oversized blazer and

tophat. holding the flowers down

by his side. miss, he said. i know how badly

you wanted me to. and i didn’t believe you and

i stayed in bed all day that day just sick at the thought of you

out here in your directors chair and your blonde bright beautiful head

dream #257

he was walking down the street and everything was familiar but it couldn’t have been home. no one was on the street and no one was in their house. he walked and walked and stopped in front of the piano. it was in the middle of the road and so was she. they stared at each other with great reverence.

“i’m moving”

she said after a great while

“me too”

,he replied.

“i don’t want to move”

(she looked tired)

“I don’t want either one of us to move”

(and he was in love)

so they sat on the piano bench together and when she looked down it looked like the belly of a big cat and when he looked down it looked like a sleeping python.

“do you want to hear the song i wrote?”

she put her hands over the piano and every key was depressed. every key was depressed and the sun moved across the sky like a scared sacred purple comet and when it kissed the horizon it could not process the beauty of every puzzle fitting with every other puzzle ever. so it exploded like a firework and the sunset - in that way - ate the sky. i liked it he said thank you she said. he went to open his mouth to ask her something but instead of words there were eight thousand bees. they circled around them both. she looked sad but she is smiling. she is smiling.

in the morning

when he woke up

it was to a body covered

in hives and ejaculate

and it was his own.

.w.o.m.p.i.t.m.

i am

notice ably slow er

when i smoke weed

on my porch

in the morning

a beginners guide to moving

take everything from your room and put it in boxes and wrapped paper

take all the things out of the wrapped paper and boxes and put them in your room

books on the bookshelf

sex toys in the toy chest

dishes dish rack

food fridge for food

paint the walls

not the color

of your ex lovers hair

(skin is fine)

frame everything

you are now an adult

ununpacked

too sleepy to see
monsters creeping
past sheets and things
too big to beat