I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry

by Halsey

  I cry and there’s no burn in my nose anymore

  I’m standing in the middle of a 4-way intersection

  and a car is coming at me

  and I have no idea which way to go.

  Is this how it was supposed to feel?

  EVERYTHING

  Before I knew we were poor,

  Everything

  was magic.

  An empty fridge

  meant freezer-burnt Popsicles

  for dinner.

  Purple-blue mouths

  and toothless smiles

  calmed the torment

  in my mother’s crux.

  Everything

  was an adventure.

  A shared bedroom

  with my little brother

  meant an eternal playmate.

  A warm tent,

  closed off by a blanket

  hung from a bunk bed

  and a hair dryer

  snuck under the sheets to keep warm.

  Arctic explorers

  waiting for a rescue unit.

  Everything

  was a mystery.

  Voices resounding from the living room

  vehemently snaking

  through the short halls

  of the apartment.

  And then one day,

  I had

  Everything

  And

  Everything

  was over too soon.

  TRAVIS

  Travis was a junkie

  All my friends were

  I was a wallflower

  I watched them tie up their arms and collapse onto couches

  I was never high,

  and always on the same strange slow ride with them

  Travis rode a fixed-gear bike

  He had nowhere to live

  But never went without somewhere to sleep

  Travis was handsome

  He had a backpack and an iPad

  And nowhere to take a shower

  He would meet old ladies

  Whose husbands had moved on or passed

  He would make love to them

  For a week or two at a time

  Hold them in his arms

  And stroke their thin hair

  Kiss their lips, dissolving vermilion ridges.

  He would paint their fingernails and take baths with essential oils

  They would give him somewhere to stay and a few hundred dollars

  And by Sunday, Travis would tuck a perfumed envelope into his

  pocket

  And ride off on his fixie

  To score

  And he would come meet us

  With department-store lipstick on his collar

  And a pocket full of sour candy and dope.

  I asked him how he did it.

  How it didn’t rip his heart to shreds.

  “I really do love them,”

  he told me.

  “All of them.”

  ANTAGONIST

  Does a ghost

  know that he’s a ghost?

  Does a saint

  know that she’s forgiven?

  If no one knows,

  then I don’t know

  if I might be

  the villain.

  I don’t trust the author anymore.

  BAD DAY: 3

  I’m sorry

  I’m having another bad day.

  My tongue is twisted

  my words come out

  like venom.

  I only use my armor when you frighten me.

  Stuck in the middle of “I love you” and “I can’t take this anymore.”

  These things they come and go

  and I mean half of everything I tell you.

  I’m half of everything I hate,

  and half of anything I create

  is you too.

  So I start to hate the poems when I hate you.

  THE BAKER

  I baked him a cake,

  and now I watched him cut it open.

  The first slice always falls apart.

  I winced, as the pieces crumbled like a landslide.

  No matter how many cakes I bake,

  the first piece that’s cut

  always falls apart.

  The inside was cherry red.

  Globular, bulbous chunks leaked from the center.

  Like giant blood clots, bathing in buttercream.

  I imagined I had taken my still-beating heart from my chest

  and baked it into the middle.

  He took a bite, and grinned at me.

  His teeth stained like a row of garnets.

  Now he could have it,

  and eat it too.

  ORDINARY BOYS

  There are ordinary boys.

  And then there are boys

  who stick an arm down your throat

  and grasp your heart.

  Digging through your entrails

  while your teeth rub

  against the socket of their elbow.

  You drool and it pools around your lips

  and drips

  to their armpits,

  tickling down to their ribs.

  There are boys

  who you will write poetry for

  as an offering

  a gift

  an insecure gesture, to say

  “Please like me,

  for I have gilded you in gold,

  and therefore

  you should love me

  for the sheer fact

  that I love you.”

  Then there are boys

  who demand poetry.

  Who keep you awake

  at all hours of the night,

  purging your brain

  of their details.

  Hoping

  you can capture them on a page

  and then capture them in the world.

  You are choking

  with his hand in your neck

  and his fist around your heart.

  Your aorta pulses.

  And so does your aching pussy.

  You write to calm the craving.

  To corner them in fiction

  And say

  Finally,

  I have conquered you.

  FUN GIRL

  I am the fun girl.

  I am the spit hanging down from your tongue girl.

  I’m the choke me as hard as you can girl.

  I’m the give it all up for a man girl.

  I’m the plaid skirt and white knee-high socks girl.

  I’m a pistol that’s loaded and cocked girl.

  The don’t mind when you call me a slut girl.

  I’m the smack her real hard on the butt girl.

  I’m a swallow my feelings and lie girl.

  I’m a lie there and let him inside girl.

  ’Cause I don’t wanna make him get mad girl.

  I’m the better off being bad girl.

  ’Cause then nothing hurts when they leave, girl.

  Except with his grip on your sleeve, girl.

  You say yes to the threesomes and drinks girl.

  ’Cause you still really care what he thinks girl.

  You’re not boring or mean like his old girl

  she was crazy, or that’s what you’re told, girl.

  So you’ll get further if you are the fun girl.

  But you’ll never be the only one girl.

  You’ll get older and wish you had known girl.

  ’Cause you gave way too much of your soul, girl.

  Now you don’t expect men to be kind girl.

  You just use them and leave them behind girl.

  It’s so hard to grow up as the fun girl.

  You’ll be trapped in your days as a young girl.

  A memory, for men you loved girl.

  “Oh! That fun girl!”

  POWERLESS

  I’m locked in the bathroom on a

  commercial flight.

  Hilary Swank in a butch haircut

  sends a hi
jacked plane

  through my cerebellum.

  I am sweating.

  I pull my lips apart from my

  teeth like a dental diagram

  and I display my gums.

  I sit to piss and roll my eyes.

  cuff my jeans 2 times, 3 times.

  I am in my memory.

  riding a man on a mattress,

  back arched like a prize horse.

  grinding and grinding.

  tossing my hair around

  and gripping tight the ropes of ecstasy.

  pornographic cries echo through

  my head in the airplane bathroom.

  they key-change, minor 5th to

  humiliation.

  I shift gears.

  a woman beneath me, squirming like

  a slug under a magnifying glass.

  my veiny arms and slender fingers

  graze across her like velvet.

  why is the straight part of me

  powerless?

  LET’S HAVE BREAKFAST

  The light is creeping past your curtains,

  playing shadows on your head.

  I wonder how much

  I would have to beg

  to stay till half past ten.

  You won’t notice

  that I’ve overstayed my welcome

  once again.

  All great conversations

  seem to

  start in a

  king-size bed.

  DNA

  My heart swings

  in the balance

  of this longing.

  it is suspended here,

  anxiously awaiting

  sweet release.

  tightly wound tension

  throbs in my core.

  swells

  like an angry ocean.

  rises

  like warm bread

  rich with yeast.

  I tumble

  weightlessly

  through daydreams

  of your skin.

  the surface of which

  bleeds

  seamlessly

  into visions

  of your bottomless eyes

  and the curve of your mouth

  matching perfectly

  the curve

  of the small of my back.

  I am spiraling

  down a staircase

  of lust

  and comfort

  and withdrawal.

  I will lie back,

  and slide through

  the tunnel between

  your double helix.

  I will dive in your DNA.

  I will stay here,

  patiently,

  comatose in the wake

  of your everything-ness.

  Your all.

  I will make permanent residence

  right here

  in your acquaintance.

  16 MISSED CALLS

  It’s another Monday morning

  and you still haven’t slept in your bed.

  It’s only been 3 days

  but I’m told that

  Jesus did a lot over the weekend

  when we thought he was dead.

  FOREVER… IS A LONG TIME

  I spent a long time

  watering a plant made out of plastic,

  and I cursed the ground for growing green.

  I spent a long time

  substituting honest with sarcastic

  and I cursed my tongue for being mean.

  Weightless, breathless, restitute.

  Motionless and absolute.

  You cut me open,

  sucked the poison

  from an aging wound.

  And now 50,000 war cadets

  would cower at this small brunette.

  To my surprise,

  not 6 feet high,

  who’d reach and grab the moon,

  if I should ask, or just imply

  that I wanted a bit more light,

  so I could look inside his eyes,

  and get the colors just right.

  I spent a long time

  calling all my parts by evil nicknames,

  and I told myself they hate me too.

  But you spent a long time,

  tending to a home that’s burning in flames

  and your patience made me love you.

  Build love, build god, build promises

  build calluses, then build provinces

  ’cause I have found

  somebody who would build life,

  then demolish it.

  And we could simply hit rewind,

  to live it all a thousand times

  find views in fucking Kathmandu,

  to watch it from a different height

  (and we’d comment how the sun shines)

  I searched the world

  to find

  you hiding inside me

  the whole damn time.

  Weightless,

  breathless,

  restitute…

  BAD DAY: EPILOGUE

  “Swallow your apologies.

  None of them mean shit to me.

  And all you have these days

  are bad days.”

  These things they come and go

  and I mean half of everything I tell you.

  I’m half of everything I hate,

  and half of anything I create

  is you too.

  So I’ll start to hate my future when I hate you.

  L TRAIN

  One day, just like any other day,

  you will wake up

  and something will stir in your belly.

  It will shake

  and growl

  and rumble like a beast

  and claw its way up your throat.

  With two strong hands

  it will wrench your lips apart

  and force your mouth wide open

  and you will say,

  “I want it.”

  And you do.

  Painfully so.

  You will decide it’s yours.

  And from that moment forth

  you will never be the same.

  Your eyes will glaze

  with a glimmering film

  that lights up the dark

  with its iridescent flickering.

  Your teeth will grit and throb

  and threaten to burst

  like cracks in concrete.

  Your stride will become faster,

  stronger,

  quicker.

  Cutting through the air

  like sharp shears through parchment.

  Your pen will hit the paper

  like a body hitting pavement

  and you will scrape your knees red

  over

  and over

  and over again

  across the fine lines.

  You will shut your eyes to the world

  and retreat within yourself.

  You will wait there.

  Patiently.

  Languid in the wake of your potential.

  And then one day

  You’ll explode.

  You’ll shake your head

  and laugh

  and scream

  with hysteria.

  Every single eye

  will focus on you

  with laser-sharp precision.

  You will have them in your grasp.

  And your fingers

  will fold

  around them like shelter;

  a dark ceiling closing in,

  and you’ll keep them there,

  in your kingdom.

  One day you will explode.

  And your pieces will scatter

  to far corners of the world

  never to be found again.

  You will trade these pieces

  for that thing.

  That thing you wanted.

  You traded Everything

  to have it.

  HIGH-FIVE KIDS

  Back t
o where it all began,

  this time with another man.

  ’Cause mine has found his place

  amongst the fountains.

  One-hundred-dollar wine to drink

  The blood pools in the kitchen sink,

  and buildings line the windows

  like the mountains.

  Stuck in limbo,

  I’m bent backwards.

  Crooked spine,

  and broken plaster.

  Tell me, do you know the password?

  We’re denied by heaven’s master.

  Back to where

  the pavement breaks.

  Lined all along tectonic plates.

  The stars soaked in the sidewalk

  spell the message.

  When all your lovers

  start to die.

  You wake alone

  and wonder why

  they left you here

  to document the wreckage.

  They tell me that it’s art I make,

  in all this chaos I create.

  They tell me that it’s much too late.

  To rectify all my mistakes.

  The kid is dead and gone

  back to the

  Kingdom.

  HAVING

  How strange to write about

  “having”

  when for so long

  I’ve drawn inspiration only from

  longing?

  Pink cheeks.

  Stubble ripples across them

  like a flower

  still clinging to the earth

  it was plucked from.

  Your eyes are static electricity.

  You’ve missed me.

  A STORY LIKE MINE

  It’s 2009

  and I’m 14

  and I’m crying.

  Not really sure where I am,

  but I’m holding the hand

  of my best friend Sam

  in the waiting room

  of a Planned Parenthood.

  The air is sterile and clean.

  The walls are that

  “not gray but green.”

  And the lights are so bright

  they could burn a hole

  through the seam

  of my jeans.

  My phone is buzzing

  in the pocket.

  My mom is asking me

  if I remembered my keys

  ’cause she’s closing the door

  and she needs to lock it.

  But I can’t tell my mom

  where I’ve gone.

  I can’t tell anyone at all.

  You see,

  my best friend Sam

  was raped by a man

  who we knew ’cause he worked

  in the after-school program.

  He held her down

  with her textbooks beside her.

  He covered her mouth