by Halsey
and then he came
inside
her.
So now I’m with Sam
at the place with a plan
waiting for the results
of a medical exam.
She’s praying
she doesn’t need an abortion.
She couldn’t afford it.
Her parents would “like totally kill her.”
It’s 2002
and my family just moved.
The only people I know
are my mom’s friend Sue
and her
son.
He’s got a case
of Matchbox cars
and he says that he’ll teach me
to play the guitar
if I just keep quiet.
The stairwell beside
Apartment 1245
will haunt me in my sleep
as long as I’m alive
and I’m too young to know
why it aches in my thighs
but I must lie.
I must lie.
It’s 2012
and I’m dating a guy.
I sleep in his bed and
I just learned to drive.
He’s older than me,
and he drinks whiskey neat.
He’s paying for everything
(this adult thing is not cheap).
We’ve been fighting a lot.
Almost 10 times a week.
But he still wants to have sex
and I just want to sleep.
He says
I can’t say no to him,
that this much
I owe to him.
He buys my dinners,
so I need to blow him.
He’s taken to forcing me
down on my knees.
I’m confused
’cause he’s hurting me
while he says “please.”
And he’s “only a man”
and these things he “just needs.”
He’s my boyfriend
so why am I filled with unease?
It’s 2017
and I live like a queen.
And I’ve followed damn near
every one of my dreams.
I’m invincible!
and I’m so fucking naive.
I believe I’m protected
’cause I live on a screen.
Nobody would DARE
act that way around me.
I have earned my protection,
eternally clean.
Till a man who I trust
gets his hands
in my pants.
But I don’t want none of that?
I just wanted to dance?
I wake up the next morning
like I’m in a trance.
And there’s blood.
My blood.
Is that my blood?
Hold on a minute…
You see
I’ve worked every day
since I was 18.
I’ve toured everywhere
from Japan
to Mar-a-Lago,
I even went onstage
that night
in Chicago
when I was having a miscarriage.
I pied the piper!
I put on a diaper!
And sang out my spleen
to a roomful of teens.
What do you mean
this
happened
to
me?
(You can’t put your hands on me?
You don’t know what my body has been through.
I’m supposed to be
Safe
Now.
I’ve “earned it.”)
The year is 2018
and I’ve realized
that nobody is safe
as long as she is alive
and every friend that I know
has a
story
like
mine.
(And the world tells us
that we should take it
as a compliment.)
But heroes like Ashley
and Simone and
Gabby,
McKayla and Gaga,
Rosario,
Ali.
Remind me
this is the beginning,
it’s not the finale.
And that’s why we are here,
and that’s why we rally.
It’s about Olympians
and a medical resident.
And not one
fucking
word
from the man
who is president.
It’s about closed doors
secrets
and legs
in stilettos,
from Hollywood Hills
to the projects
and ghettos.
When babies are ripped
from the arms of teen mothers,
and child brides globally
cry under covers,
who don’t have a voice
on the magazine covers
and you can’t walk anywhere
if your legs aren’t covered,
they tell us
“take cover.”
But we are not
free
until all of us are
free.
So love your neighbor.
Please treat her kindly.
Ask her her story,
then shut up
and listen.
Black
Asian
poor
wealthy
Trans
Cis
Muslim
Christian
Listen.
LISTEN.
And then yell
at the top of your lungs.
Be a voice
for all those
who have prisoner tongues,
for the people
who had to grow up
way too young,
there is work to be done,
there are songs to be sung,
Lord knows there’s a
war
to be
won.
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME PT. 2
Abandonment
is a complicated complex.
You’re longing
for somebody who will leave.
I walked into a promised land.
A decorated,
perfect man.
With something vile
hiding up his sleeve.
I wonder
what I’ll ever have control of.
Rejection breeds
obsession,
so they say.
I left my heart
and all my hope,
my vindicated tales of woe
in Sweden
on a freezing winter day.
LONG-DISTANCE RELATIONSHIP
that fleeting moment
at 4 a.m.
when I am shaken from a deep sleep
because I can’t feel your skin
against mine.
when my entire body hangs
suspended
in that silver sliver of time
is a tiny speck of fear
that reminds me
that I love when you turn over
and kiss my neck
two feet of space
2,753 miles
any distance becomes too much to bear
a warm bed as wide as the world.
SMOKE
It’s funny, the human fascination with smoke.
Every writer has flexed
and fucked
and abused the metaphor for centuries
“It vanished like smoke”
“Her body wound like a thin stream of smoke”
“I inhaled his presence like a cloud of smoke.”
We are enamored.
Schrödinger’s element.
It is there when we restrain ou
rselves from touching it,
And it disappears when we reach for it.
It looks solid, it holds form,
and then evades our grasp as if to taunt us.
Not transparent, not opaque.
Is it arrogance?
Smoke, the reminder of the fire we started?
The flame that humankind willed into existence in desperation.
Or is it fear?
The remnants of something we need to survive,
but could die in the thrashing embrace of.
Does it arouse us,
to watch the smoke?
The lingering aftermath of the thing that we feign control of,
But are at the mercy of?
Do we envy the smoke?
(If I could disappear as quickly as I appeared,
I would.)
In my 65-degree bedroom,
On a duvet covered in dog fur,
She puts her cigarette out by smashing it between two fingers.
Like a final period placed on a hand-penned letter.
I reach out to touch her,
But she rolls over and her mind escapes
to an empty corner of the ceiling.
Knee-deep into my own cliché,
I sink.
ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER
When he is away from me,
my heart reaches from my chest like a wet toddler in a crib.
His voice fills my ears like brown whiskey in a crystal glass,
occupying every single tessellate crevice.
When he is away, his smile shines like sun on fresh snow,
And his eyes flicker like chunks of glitter
falling through the clear goo in a snow globe.
When he is away,
His touch seems hot and scarlet red.
Feverish and desirable.
When he is with me,
My heart retreats like a salty oyster into its shell.
His voice rips through me like a scissor in a seam.
When he is with me,
his smile is so loud I hear it with my eyes shut
And his nose drips
and his mouth drools
and his hands are clammy and awkward.
He is gilded in light from 5 feet away.
He is bothersome from 3.
Why can I love him,
only when he leaves?
READY
I knew I was ready to forgive you
When I wrenched the knife from my back
I held it up high
and it cast a menacing shadow
over the face of the young man in front of me.
Its shiny metal gleamed and glistened.
I stood heaving
and the veins in my face erupted
like tree branches gnarled into the forest floor.
I held the weapon
retrieved from my own back.
I gripped it once,
twice,
and then
I put it down.
REFRIGERATOR BLUE
2 eyes
the cold comfortable blue
of a refrigerator light
glowing in the temptation of a midnight snack.
How I rub your head
with my fingertips
and press my open palm against your skull
like I could push right through the bone
and grab a gushy handful of your brain
and take a chunk of it home with me
to devour later.
In my underwear,
off a plate,
in that refrigerator light,
like cold Chinese.
Grip my face
and scold me
for taking more than you wanted to give,
and I can feel my smile rising
push my cheeks through your fingers
like a handful of clay,
malleable in your grasp.
I’ll miss your lap
and the heat between my legs
and showering off my sticky thighs
in the quiet when I get home.
Oh will I miss the stern, saccharine voice
melting from your lips
hovering over my open hungry mouth.
THE CAVE
I don’t suppose I really know you very well—
but I know you smell like the delicious damp grass
that grows near old walls
and that your hands
are beautiful
opening out of your sleeves
and that the back of your head
is a mossy sheltered cave
when there is trouble in the wind
and that my cheek
just fits
the depression in your shoulder
and that is all I need to know.
PARASITE
I thought I knew what a muse was until I met him.
I’d been inspired before.
I’d been intrigued.
But I had no idea what a muse was
until he put his pink lips to my neck
and spit parasites into my ears.
Let them climb in and make a home
in the soft tissue of my brain.
Bred
and multiplied
and bit into my mind
till the memories of him opened
like sores
and festered in the heat of my anxiety.
I opened my mouth
and Times New Roman print flew out
like a plague of moths from its depths.
For 48 hours I was held captive
by the college-ruled lines
of a composition notebook.
Wrapped around my wrists
like the leather-bound work of a dominatrix.
He cracked a whip against my skin
and sliced my flesh open,
scarlet
like the margin taunting me.
The violet bruises on my neck,
my chest,
could hardly compare to the scar
that rose when he petrified me.
He shocked me.
Terrified me.
Because he inspired me.
I wasn’t prepared
for the chaos that would follow.
A muse.
A parasite.
A symbiotic relationship.
Feed his hungry mind from my open mouth.
FOREVER CURSED IN LOVE ARE THE OBSERVANT
My mouth tastes like cinnamon whiskey
and menthol cigarettes.
Cabernet Sauvignon,
spearmint gum
and your hot heavy breath.
My mouth tastes like all the things
I should have said.
I don’t want to be this way,
but I have been since you left.
I should have never counted your eyelashes
when you slept.
I should forget the way you take your tea,
but it haunts me.
2 sugars,
please.
THE PATTERN
What will be left
when I have broken all of my favorite things?
When the glue of sweet apologies
and bat eyelashes no longer repairs them?
What will be left when I have shattered it all?
Carelessly, it will evade my grasp.
And I will have
nothing.
I WOULD LEAVE ME IF I COULD.
This must be a nightmare.
It couldn’t be a dream.
I’m washing in the shower,
my limbs clean,
until they bleed.
I sometimes miss the quiet;
the chaos of the streets.
I keep it all inside my mind
and every night
I scream.
I can’t remember
what it’s like to smell the ocean.
I can’t remember
what it’s like to feel the sea.
I can’t remember what it’s like to face a mirror
and not hate the person staring back at me.
I wish that I were dead
or at least somewhere else.
I try to keep the riot quiet
like a diet
for my health.
Stealth.
It’s moving silently.
It’s heavy.
It started from my knees
and now it’s creeping up already.
Just another second now,
’cause here comes the confetti.
Please, hold the camera steady.
I encore 7 more
and everybody’s like “That’s plenty!”
I would leave me if you’d let me
I would leave me if you’d let me
I would leave me if I could.
BRIGHT EYES
They told me that she’s beautiful
with bright eyes and fair skin.
She’s from a city off the coast somewhere
where the girls are “made for men.”
Is she a naked mess in underwear
on a dirty bathroom floor?
Do you look at her disgusted,
thinking that you deserve more?
But does she scream at the top of her lungs
praying you don’t leave her?
Does she scream from an open mouth
begging you to feed her?
Will she set alarms obsessively
to check in on your breath?
Does she know the ways to touch you
with her lips upon your neck?
Is she agreeable and careless?
Does she answer all your calls?
Because I know you needed someone
who was fine with feeling small.
But does she scream at the top of her lungs
praying that you’ll need her?
Do you scream at the top of your lungs?
Do your veins bleed her?
DEVIL IN ME
I won’t take anyone down
If I crawl tonight
But I still let everyone down
When I change in size
And I went tumbling down
Trying to reach your height
But I scream too loud
If I speak my mind.
BRING ON THE BLACK!
Can’t decide what’s fake and what’s fact
So you’re up late screaming, “Bring on the black!”
Smoked so many cigarettes alone on a bathroom sink
I think my lungs are full to the brim with ink
And I can’t get it past my throat to my fingers
to the paper
to the stingers
of the hive in my head
Last week I had a dream you were dead
I was on the phone calling
Begging for your body back
Screaming, “Bring on the black!”
I’m opening a faucet and I’m scared to let it run
