by Halsey
I hope you cry at night
and can’t call me after
I don’t hope that you’d die;
just live to 75
And you spend every waking moment
Wishing you felt alive.
I hope that some girl takes a picture
of your sleeping body.
Wish you could go a single week
and not hurt anybody.
I hope your coffee every morning
is bitter and cold.
I hope you’re busy Christmas morning
and you miss the snow.
I hope your team loses the finals
I mean they already lost the finals
But the next one
And I hope that you scratch up all of your vinyls.
Hope you drive 80 miles
In your expensive car,
and run out of gas
in the wild.
I hope your knees ache
and your back hurts,
hope you lose your second phone
or can’t remember the password.
I hope every girl unites and they decide you’re a joke
But if they are anything like you
then I know that they won’t
’Cause their self-esteem levels are fatally low.
So you bury your pain inside them
after the show.
I hope your brother turns out to be nothing like you.
Hope another year passes
and you hurt even more than I do.
Used to live up the street from you
but since then I moved.
My new house is clean
and the sky’s always blue.
I sing in the shower
and I walk around naked.
I love my whole body
though you once made me hate it.
I eat lots of pancakes
and drown them in honey.
I’ve made lots of handshakes
and made lots of money.
I smile and sigh when I crawl into bed
’Cause there’s no more scar tissue
inside my head.
I heard what you’re up to
I’m glad that I left.
I feel like myself again deep in my chest.
Signed:
Sincerely,
Ashley
I wish you the best.
THE QUESTION
I stand before the mirror
and examine my breasts.
protruding forth from my chest
and demanding kindness, free
ice cream, and violence.
my speckled face, freckled pale
brown like organic eggs,
flushes pink.
my eyebrows unkempt
and short hair untidy at the crown.
I grip my buttocks.
dissatisfied.
I chase the paradox around my head.
The filmy, sticky grain of
femininity slides across my skin.
It twinkles in every stare
and as my weight shifts from hip
to hip, I’m gliding as I walk.
My clenched jaw,
my small lips,
my broad shoulders
like an adolescent boy.
I worship at the altar of
femininity in the women who
suckle the lavender from my breath.
It poses nothing to me
but a question
to which I do not have the answer.
I MET A MIND READER.
I have not seen the Sun in 7 days.
I have seen Frankfurt,
Oslo,
Copenhagen,
Reykjavík,
Helsinki.
5 countries
and 1 planet.
Just Earth.
No stars.
Just clouds.
And no Sun…
Earth is bleaker in the dark.
The gray hazy dark.
The upside-down and sleepless dark.
Not the romantic kind
that fills the gaps in between city lights
and candlelit dinners
and moonlight bouncing off of crystal glasses
filled with champagne, lipstick-stained.
I sat on an old bus,
packed in like crowded teeth in a young mouth,
and I saw a little girl.
She frowned at me.
I began to panic.
They say children can sense dread.
This is the first child who hasn’t smiled
when I cast a glance in their direction.
Has my heart,
once so full of love,
finally drained itself like a yellow raisin?
Will the children begin to notice?
She looks at me quizzically and smiles.
Kicks her feet
and then shakes her head no.
As if to answer my question.
I met a mind reader. Aged 4 or 5.
I have seen light burst forth from a magic eye.
From a heart more wholesome than mine.
Astronomic miracles, in an unfathomable form.
But I still haven’t seen the Sun.
THE TOURIST
I quite like how these jeans
Look hanging
’round your knees
And I love your dirty sneakers
When you kick them
off your feet
I’d really like to find
The place
between your eyes
Where I kiss you on the forehead
And make you smile
every time
I’m struggling to place
My favorite
freckled space
Between your hair,
hung
like a telephone wire
Swinging
’cross your face
And right now you’re inside
My favorite studio
on Vine
Complaining
’bout a violin’s
Misrepresented whine
And I can’t wait to take you home
Where I can have you
all alone
And overanalyze each part of you
I’ve written
in my phone
See,
I’ve started taking down
All of my favorite
little sounds
That waltz around you
in 3 quarter notes
With each word you pronounce
It kills me that you’ll leave
Off in a jet
over the sea
But I hope the air in California
Will forever
taste of me.
ONANISM
The corner of my childhood bed.
A stuffed bear, color: cherry red.
A toothbrush motorized inside.
A 15-mile dirt bike ride.
A pair of socks, balled up real tight.
A hot tub jet, alone at night.
Your kneecap, cased in denim jeans.
Victoria’s Secret magazine.
16 years of bubble baths,
a showerhead that can detach.
A pointed toe,
a cramping calf.
Disgusted in the aftermath.
THE PARTY
Your tongue is in my mouth in the kitchen at the party.
Why the fuck am I at the party?
My dress is too tight for you to get your hands under,
but I left my panties at home tonight
and I’m dripping down my thighs.
My lipstick is smeared and there are people
probably staring
but fuck them anyway.
It’s been a year and a half
of throwing glances in hallways,
and my hair standing on every end when you appear
and breathe down my neck
(so tell me, how the fuck I’m supposed to keep my cool)
So we leave for one night and it turns into five mornings.
Waking up and staying in bed for a couple extra hours
so I can see what color your eyes are
in that special light we only see at 6 a.m.
That silver peeking through the cracks
around your blackout shades
and bouncing off your brown eyes
that send me into a fully caffeinated rush.
Like they’re soaked in coffee grinds
and I can see the steam rising off of their surface
when your gaze sets me on fire.
So we turn up the heat again.
And your sweat is dripping off your chest
and your open fist is around my neck
and I’m grinding into your lap,
rocking my hips against your weight
to match the ins and outs of your breathing.
(Can you tell that this is the pattern I’m following?
Your breathing quickens…)
Your teeth are in my skin
and you’re pulling fibers of tissue from my lips and I wonder,
If I bleed, will you like the taste?
Now we’re driving down the highway
and my head is in your lap.
Tasting the salt of your skin
and feeling you grow in my mouth
and the hum of the engine
is like a million fingertips between my legs.
There are people passing by in their cars unaware
and unassuming
but I’m praying they’ll look over and watch me worship you.
Watch me work
to assure
that there is not a single millimeter of space in my mouth
that isn’t filled.
Your hair falls out of place
and you clutch the wheel
and press your belt into my cheek.
I hope it leaves a mark.
And days later my tongue feels
like it doesn’t fit in my mouth the same without you in it.
It’s your laugh, and your calculating eyes.
Your wrinkled brows and the static in your grin
when you can’t think of the right words to say
and I know it frustrates you
because words are the only thing
you’ve ever had total control over.
It’s the feeling in my stomach
like the moment
you drop a scoop of ice cream
into a root beer float
and the entire thing threatens to bubble over.
Carbonated
and chaotic
in my chest.
It’s the sheer comfort.
You’re as vibrant as a stranger,
but as warm as a friend.
Like every day
I get reintroduced to someone I’ve known my whole life.
Like meeting myself in a mirror.
The way you take over my entire body
and mind
like you’re putting your own personal filter over the lens of my life
so that I see it in your colors.
And my hands shake
and I swallow hard
when I realize how much nicer life looks in your saturation.
My brain buzzing
like the rattle of a neon light
at odd hours of the night
when I’m pacing
and wringing my hands,
counting the days till I see your face again.
And the irony in how fine life seemed before.
How quickly you made it seem like
nothing
would ever suffice
without you,
a part of it.
Why the fuck was I at the party?
THE BREAKUP
There is no combination of words in the English language,
that slice right between your teeth
with the perfect paradox of hate and love,
the same way as
“I love you,
like a brother.”
THE PROFESSIONAL
I am currently seeking employment.
I am a professional holiday girlfriend.
I have great references
and highly impressive past work experiences.
I have been featured in 7 family holiday photos:
—6 Christmases
—and 1 Hanukkah.
Specialties include
my “famous brownies.”
I will:
—do the dishes
—look through baby photos with your mother
—have a long list of baby names to suggest
for the child we will never have
but your grandmother will pitifully dream about us having
before she dies.
I have:
—plenty of clean, respectable dresses
—drinking games to impress your cousins.
World-class gift giver
and wrapper
(it’s easier to nail it
when you only ever have to give one gift).
In one particularly extraordinary history,
I made a baby blanket from scratch
for a relative who was expecting.
I will never complain
about missing my family’s festivities
for your own,
and I will accept contract termination by spring.
I am 5’4”
with a perfectly straight smile
(dental records included,
no history of braces)
and I will fill any empty space
in your family photo.
Please respond before autumn.
LULLABYE
sweet thing,
you hang like
a chain
around my neck
like a beesting
in August
in your hollow pain
I sweat
hollowed
we wed
I’ve gone cross-eyed
and tongue-tied
at the prospect
of your lips.
like a plaid-skirt-fitted virgin
with the devil on my hips
I’d melt like a mint
in the heat of your mouth.
like a hurricane in a dress shirt
headed angry
down south
I would give anything
to be slipping
down your throat.
VIRUS
I once had a fever so high,
I was left to my bed for 7 days.
There was a man,
Standing on my mattress with a shovel
Lifting chunks out of it angrily.
He wiped his brow and his sweat
Collected in the divots of my blanket
And made a little pond.
A scum pond,
With talking frogs and lily pads.
The pond grew deeper as the man dug harder and sweated.
I was drowning.
A goldfish swam up my throat and flopped around in my mouth.
I clenched my jaw and tossed and turned in the scum pond.
White and gray algae blinding me,
And filling my nose with fuzzy mold.
I tried to scream and retrieve the fish from the back of my mouth.
I was choking.
I tried to kick, but the man was standing on my legs.
His weight was too much to bear
And I feared that shovel would dismount onto my head
And split my skull if I provoked him any more.
I tried to yank the fish out again but it struggled.
It attached its jaws to the opening of my throat and it would not budge.
I yanked.
And I screamed.
And my mother came rushing into the room, tripping over her feet.<
br />
I was trying to rip out my tongue.
She fixed my blankets.
She stroked my hair that stuck to me like cotton candy dissolving in water.
I wanted to cry but feared I’d fill the pond again.
When my fever broke, I realized the man and the fish were all a dream,
And so was she.
LIKELY AS THE RAIN
I’ve always liked it
when it’s sunny and warm.
You like it cold
’cause you’re from the north.
Now I’m sitting by a window
watching rain fall down
…in California.
Looks like you always seem
to get what you want.
Even when it goes against
the natural odds.
’Cause it’s 7 in the morning
and my bathroom’s flooding
hard…
I never knew
what made you do what you do.
Tuck me into bed
and then you sneak off to
be somewhere with another
who’s more like your mother
and doesn’t expect as much of you.
An anomaly.
I’m not like you and you’re not like me,
or how we used to be.
You know what they say,
the all-consuming rage
and unbearable shame,
of you losing me,
was as likely as the rain.
WATERMELON
He loves to bring me watermelon.
Spits in my mouth, seeds.
To grow inside my stomach like
A thing that begs to feed
I lick his lips from watermelon,
Spread across my cheeks.
And that pink sugar Chelsea smile
Is hiding underneath.
Now I devour watermelon,
Bouncing on his knee.
I rock my body back and forth,
So he can feel the heat.
I’m dripping like a watermelon,
Soaking through my seat.
I bite my lip and suckle on
The words between my teeth.
And oh the taste of watermelon,
Subtle but it’s sweet.
I kneel down on the wooden floor
And beg him to proceed.
He fills my mouth with watermelon.
No one hears me scream.
To overdose on sugar is more
Painful than it seems.
My tummy hurts from watermelon.
He can be so mean.
But smiles like a gentleman
And licks my body clean.
And when there is no watermelon,
Only vicious weeds,
He puts his fingers in his mouth
To taste the way I bleed.
Now all I crave is watermelon,
Every time I leave.
