by Halsey
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For my mother—
My favorite writing I’ve ever read will always be the pages of your journal I used to sneak into my room late at night. I only ever wanted to grow up and love with such a passion as you did.
For Professor Bradford—
I loved writing in your class so much that I dropped out to go love it intensely.
And for the fans—
My capacity to feel has been stretched and molded with each piece of your souls that you reveal to me. I offer this in return.
INTRODUCTION
I’ve been looking for a place to put these pieces.
For 25 years I have flipped spastically
from FM to AM inside my head.
I am, still,
unaffected by the abrupt static punching through my ears.
I don’t mind riding along to fragments and pieces
of the different stations.
I don’t mind the indecision of a Motown record
spearheaded by a metal guitar solo.
The classical arpeggio climaxing
into the blue balls of worship music.
You know the sound, right?
An indecisive radio?
I have found a home here amongst the chaos.
The constant.
Every morning the muse puts her finger in my nose.
One, then two.
Sliding into me
pornographically.
She stretches my nostrils wide
until her slimy hand crawls past my deviated septum,
in between my eyes,
and into my brain.
Exploding into a fist
when she reaches the cavity behind my temples.
The muse is bratty.
She is smug.
She wiggles her fingers around defiantly.
She displays her palm expectantly,
waiting for a present I will drop into it.
She brushes and tickles the walls of my skull.
The muse is a flirt.
She’ll always tease but never put out.
Fucking bitch.
I so badly want to be liked.
Scratch that.
I want to be loved.
I want her to love me.
Scratch that.
I want her to leave.
I want her to scratch that.
Scratch that itchy itch of my swollen brain.
It’s only awful ’cause the muse looks just like me.
Dirty fingernails and gummy smile.
But she sparkles the way only a beautiful woman can.
A beautiful woman is a car crash.
Shiny asphalt and smoking rubber.
Melted plastic and metal edges.
Glimmering glass shrapnel iridescence
scattered across the road.
Haphazard beauty. Dignified and slightly terrifying.
The car radio flips from AM to FM.
The doors are locked and I’m trapped inside. My head bobs against the airbag.
It’s calming. Like a mother’s bosom. I would imagine, at least.
My mother was full-breasted. But loudmouthed, and sarcastic, and raised her babies out of our colic with camaraderie.
She didn’t hold me close to the muffled beating of her heart beneath a department-store sweater.
She didn’t breastfeed.
The nature and nurture in my sternum are arguing now.
My shoulders are held together by two rubber bands pulled tight in a schoolboy’s hands.
Sometimes I feel like my spine will unfold and explode like a jack-in-the-box doll.
I can’t carry all this weight, so I must put it somewhere and somewhere is with you.
You will take good care of it?
I want to walk away from my bones and set them down on a counter like my keys after work.
Let my skin sink into the armchair and lose its shape. Lose its form. Collapse into a sigh.
I see all things in this world as more beautiful than I, and I spin the details of their atoms in every paragraph and brushstroke.
I wish I had 11 hands with 55 fingers so I could paint and write and fuck and feed and grab grab grab everything.
I. Want. It. All.
It must be mine.
I want to walk away from the burgundy bags under my eyes and the periwinkle veins in my hands.
I hope you’ll stay.
I hope you’ll stay.
But I would leave me too, if I could.
DUE DATE
I was born 5 weeks early.
I couldn’t wait
to join the rest of the world,
and that is
exactly
the moment
my enthusiasm ceased.
The nurses tried to take me so my
“mother could sleep.”
But she refused to let me go.
I’m sure ultimately,
I ended up
in a common room for newborns.
And I’m sure ultimately,
I lay there comparing myself to the other babies.
Wondering if I were as smart as they were.
Or as funny.
Or as beautiful.
The average baby weighs 8 pounds.
I weighed 5.
The average baby is 20 inches long.
I was 14.
And it was on my first day on Earth
that I realized I didn’t measure up,
and I never would.
I WANT TO BE A WRITER!
It is not a want.
It is not a wish.
It’s simple.
A demon waiting
at the foot of your bed
to grab your ankles while you sleep.
It’s a gnat burrowing into your ear
and laying eggs behind the socket of your eye.
It’s sitting in your own filth for days,
staring at the shower across the room
while minutes become hours.
It’s six months since you’ve talked to your dad,
And whining like an infant to your lover
begging to be spit-shined
like a piece of silverware,
“I have given so much to the page,
please tell me I am not worthless.”
It is not a desire.
It is a clenched jaw and an aching back and a disposition to spite everything around you.
To find the world not worthy of your words,
and to find yourself unworthy of the world.
It is towering arrogance that says,
“Let these passages be free
in an existence that will cherish and worship them.”
It is a terrible self-loathing
that sends your teeth sinking into your lips.
It’s a gut pushed out
and shoulders slumped
and a sneaking suspicion
that everything you see is altered through your gaze.
They cry,
“But I WANT to be a writer!”
And my head hangs.
You are asking to be shot square in the head.
You know not what you seek.
You ask for bleeding brains
and carnage t
hat stains your pillowcase.
You ask for jelly
in the place of the cartilage in your spine.
You ask for kindness that is never returned.
You wish to burn alive
in the flame of a love unrequited.
It’s simple.
Write.
HOMEMAKER
listen to that
cool
cool
water run
never been good at being alone
say “hello holy father.
where’s your daughter?
she could make this house a home.”
you got a
new
new
closet
never been good at savin’ cash.
chrome on the faucet
and you bossed it.
i’ve never seen you on the counter before.
listen to that
cold
cold
winter blow
never had time for absolutes.
new steam shower
for the powder.
his-and-her sinks
but
just
for
you.
you got a brand-new bedroom.
a clean set of sheets I’ve never seen.
thread count’s pricey,
for your wifey.
i know she don’t make the bed like me.
never seen a Persian rug look so homely
never heard a sadder voice
than when you phone me.
are you lonely?
you said it’s time for some renovations.
time for conversation.
but I flipped houses
bigger than you before.
enjoy the silence
in your kitchen.
been watering all these plants
made of plastic
and you think they’ll grow.
homemaker.
shiny new things but they’re all for show.
SUMMER FRUIT
I spent springs and summers
as a child
eating the fruit from a watermelon.
Grainy sugar bites
and juice slick up my cheeks
like a Chelsea smile.
My mother used to warn me
if I swallowed a seed
it would get stuck in my belly
and grow a watermelon plant.
My stomach would expand
till I’d combust.
I always spit them out
in horror.
I spent a spring and summer
eating the fruit
from the flesh of your lips.
The bounty of two round mounds,
hard like pink sugar.
Your grip on my cheeks
with a firm hand
holding my mouth open.
To drop seeds into my belly.
To spit a virus in my throat
that grew into a giant “you” plant.
The branches
crawling up the walls of my insides
and begging
to claw my mouth open
and make me say things I don’t mean.
The dying leaves
flaking off
and swaying to the pit of my stomach
in an imaginary breeze
landing with a deafening thump.
Echoes that bounce up between my teeth.
And remind my tongue there is no more watermelon.
Just empty space.
YOU WERE FIRST
So many men who came before you
So many women, one-night stands
I guess I found it easier
For me to charm a man
’Cause a woman always crumbled in my hands.
Could only act on what I knew.
Was raised to earn it that way too.
I guess I found it easier
to split men at the seams
At least that’s what I learned in magazines.
All this
soft skin, soft eyes
All these
Beautiful laughs and beautiful thighs
Always kept me up at night
The truth is I was terrified.
Pink lips, warm curves
All these
Wonderful aching shaking nerves
Heart like it’s about to burst
The truth is you were first.
I AM ANGRY BECAUSE OF MY FATHER
I am angry because of my father.
Because he would come home
Wrinkled from work,
And slam the door so hard
the house would shiver.
I am angry because of my father.
Because his furrowed brow
Repeats itself in my Punnett square
And opens the curtains
On my forehead.
I am angry because of my father.
I can hold a grudge like it’s a hand.
I throw my watch on my nightstand.
I am a worthless smudge
On the floor, in the rug
In the kingdom of the almighty
God who will judge
Me as hard as She can,
’Cause I won’t love a man
Unless he is angry
Because of my father.
LAYERS
Thank you
for stumbling
across the universe
with your confident swagger
and tripping right into my lap.
Wild hair spilling across your eyelids
and nestling into my mouth
with my kiss on your forehead.
Thank you for the freckles on your nose
that keep me
star-crossed,
starry-eyed,
and then cross-eyed
when I’m lying underneath you
and I look up at your darling face.
You’re made of everything good in this world.
Syrup-sweet and paining my teeth
dripping from my lips
like honey
from the bees buzzing in my head
driving me crazy, daily,
with the sounds of your voice
echoing through my skull
and the halls of my house
still ringing
from the last time you were here,
the last time it was a home.
Thank you for warming the industrial gray
of my concrete foundation
and turning my bones
from cement blocks
to rich mahogany wood.
Layers.
INVENTORY
He told me
about the women
he had slept with
when we were apart.
He was honest.
And I had asked for it.
He told me stories
decorated with leather
and violence
and anal.
Girls
who relaxed in sweet drunken smiles
and enveloped him in warmth.
Lazily tumbling
through bedsheets,
glowing in the acid hue
of the outside lights.
Girls
who wouldn’t ask him
to pick up his dirty socks.
Or turn away from him
on a shared mattress.
Girls
who weren’t sad and tired.
Girls
better than me.
Who had learned to turn their trauma
into adventures
for him to stumble blindly through.
Instead of wallowing
in their brokenness
and breaking everything
in their path
as penance.
BATTLES
Been biting my tongue till it bleeds
cry over things I don’t need.
My mother told me
pick your battles wisely
but you made me angry
at the world
so I chose them all.
MEMORIZE
I’m a boyish
mess.
A boasting contest
with an inferiority
complex.
I can’t make friends.
I’ve got an
eager desperation
to be up on
“what’s next.”
I have too much
sex.
I say it’s ’cause
I’m anxious
and I’m
overly stressed.
I can’t take blame.
I funnel through
liquor
and spit up my pain.
I’m no good
with fame.
There’s a love/hate
relationship
with noise
in my brain.
Except
for when
you speak my name.
Because you take it in vain.
(Take it in vein!)
I could fall asleep
here.
Crawl inside
the sleeping bags
under your eyes.
But I stay
awake
to memorize.
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME PT. 1
I remember
how the sky looked.
Your lips made my mouth numb.
Your face
grew closer to her neck.
It’s easy to play dumb.
I remember
all the chaos.
The frantic, nervous sounds.
I don’t remember much,
though,
once I hit the ground.
Everything went black.
Everything got cold.
I’m standing
on a sidewalk,
screaming,
“Over my dead body!”
I remember
tender spiderwebs.
All violet,
yellow,
blue.
It seems with one eye open,
still all I see is you.
I guess there was no casualty
that could make you refuse.
I hide
behind a strangled mind.
You tell me,
“Winners never lose.”
A hostage situation.
I know I should,
but I can’t leave
you
all alone
somewhere.
I know you don’t,
but I still care.
This Stockholm syndrome
might just be the death of me.
WISH YOU THE BEST
I hope every single day you put your socks on backward
