June drew by, warm days I ran through like the backfields. When the cicadas started to sing, school […]

I have a choice: I can let it rot, or I can face it. 

This is me facing it.

Careful, don’t slip on it.
Don’t look too close.
Don’t fall in.

It will be four years later. You will be walking down a tree-lined street after a day of classes, dappled sunlight shining softly through a layer of swaying branches, all lilting and turning and twisting in the breeze. There’s a good chance you will be deeply content, breathing in a lungful of fall air that has just begun to turn. You may cross paths with a smiling stranger on the sidewalk, nod at her, and as she passes, catch the end trail of her perfume. The same warm perfume that the really cute girl in your sophomore-year science class always wore.

I’m a computer, comprised of a series of zeroes and ones that code for the woman I am. […]

peel myself off pale, clinging sheets,
lethargy pooling under my eyes,
dark side of the moon hugging waterline,
readying for frosted floorboard’s touch on mine.

Summer’s warm smile has faded under the clouds, and I’m watching the leaves glow as they float down […]

Beneath the angry, red lesions, beyond the reach of my fingertips, I believe there is skin as smooth as glass.

He posed the question innocently: “Isabella, what do you know about marijuana?” 

C. Was it worth it?

Short term is the first to go. We saw it in you and they search for it in […]

Wait, Sweet Carnation!
How dare you grow with such haste
My dear friend has yet to return

Monday, May 27, 1912 Laid my mother to (permanent) rest a night agoGazed along her coffinetching it into […]

There I was, crouched like a cat with my palms to the concrete, trying to make out my reflection in the gray puddles since the pain was too searing to swallow. In my pocket I had four useless aspirin, one expired credit card, and five and a half nauseating cigarettes. And no water.

I feel it in my whole body. My mouth no longer salivates for the food, instead mechanically clamping and releasing, willing my throat to swallow the soggy lump. My grandma eyes me.

 Finish your food.

Her skin, once gleaming with coppery iridescence, is now riddled with new corrosion. Its sheen was replaced as years passed and She stood as an emblem of American pride, an ever-present reminder of what we hope to stand for. This change in Her skin makes Her no less alluring – Her green hue serves as a testament to all She has endured: harsh weather, the decades gone by, and an indefinite lifetime as an object of attraction. 

More sweetly than you ever have, the bottle of ethanol murmurs my name.
Craven is surrender, yet all the more foolish it is to remain in this hell
So I give in –
Liquid sizzling as it denatures the secrets lodged in my esophagus
The chemical scorching my putrefied abdomen, burning against my spine
Every trace of you now vaporized to a ghost.
My tongue and throat alight in flames and my stomach a graveyard, I return to myself to find close to nothing left
But you are also gone.