On airplanes, it's requested that you secure your emergency oxygen mask before helping the person beside you. And this makes sense; how much help is a person when they can't breathe? The thing is, they do tell you to help the person beside you. You can actually sit there and do nothing, while whatever unlucky bastard is occupying the adjacent seat struggles and flails until the light goes out of their eyes.  You do have that option.  I mean, if the plane's about to fall out of the sky, who's really going to be paying enough attention to notice what you're doing, much less scold you? 

I've been thinking all along that finally, you're someone I can trust to help me with the mask.  And there's the thing - you can.  But for whatever reason, you're only concerned with your own oxygen needs.  In fact, you're so self-centered that I don't think you even notice that I'm not breathing.  Apparently, through all the non-emergency situations you've encountered in your life, no one's ever bothered to tell you that you're going about it all wrong.  Of course, go ahead, take care of yourself.  You've long proven that you can, which is important, because when you end up alone, at least you'll be okay (in the most basic respect).

It's starts in the same grey room each time. A wooden chair and a revolver sit dead center, facing the only door. And slowly, one by one, everyone I've ever met forms a line outside. They don't jostle for position or make small talk while they wait. Instead, they're silent and patient as they wait their turn. Over the span of hours every night, everyone I've ever met sits in the chair and blows their brains out. I watch the world commit suicide, as voiceless and helpless as I've ever been.

The dream is so real that sometimes when I wake up, I can't remember who's alive and who's really dead.

Do you know how many men have put their hands on me? How many men have put their hands on me even though I said no? I am a vessel for your unhappiness. I am the catalyst for your undoing. I am nothing with you and I am less without you.

I lay awake at night and imagine slitting my wrists. I wonder how much blood I really have left. There's a knife in my night stand, the only thing standing between this and nothing. Or is this the nothing?

I can't make eye contact with strangers because I don't know if they can see in my eyes how damaged I am. How worthless and unrepentant. I wonder if it will only take a glance for them to understand that I will continue to fail wholly and completely at anything and everything I ever do. They must know how useless I am. Fragile and untrustworthy.

Even my therapist doesn't call. I feel strangely betrayed by this. I thought she knew I needed her. She completes the trio of those who've seen me at my most vulnerable. Along with the friend of whom I barely see a flicker. Along with the man who brought me into his marital bed and fucked me when I only wanted to be held. How many times have I fucked people just so they would hold me after?

I miss my mother. I cannot see or speak to her because she will know what I am going to do and she will want to stop me. Seeing her makes me feel guilty. She is the only person in the world who will never move past my death, and so she is the only reason that I do not die. I need my mother.

I suppose I should tell someone what I want to be buried in.

Sometimes I feel like by the time the right people find each other, they've given so much away to the wrong ones that there isn't much left.

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-----

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot ------
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

I want more than the world is willing to give me, and I'm not the sort of person who thinks it's okay to take.

Late at night, when you’re so lonely
your shoulders lean to the center of your body,
you call no one and you don’t call out.

This is dignity. This is the pure loneliness
that made Christ think he was God.
This is why lunatics smile at their thoughts.

Even the best moment, as you slip
half-a-foot deep into someone you like,
deepens to the loneliness in it

and loneliness that’s not. If you believe in
Christ hanging on the cross, his arms spread
as if to embrace the Father he calls

who is somewhere else, you still might hear
your own voice at your next great embrace
thinking Loneliness in another can’t be touched,

like Christ’s voice at death answering himself.

Turmoil. People tell me I'm supposed to hold a piece of myself back in relationships, just for me. For safety, in case things don't work out. And perhaps in regards to love, I'm too optimistic - but that just seems wrong. Except in this case, where I feel like holding ALL of myself back. Oh, how I want to trust him. I do. I can feel myself falling, and at the same time, I'm still on the sidelines. Or maybe in line to leave the game. There's only so much back and forth my heart can take before I simply shut down.

I grew up in the aftermath of the ultimate, unforgivable betrayal. I wonder now if I look for men who are prone to lying, just to give them the chance to change? The chance to absolve an error in the way my father never did. Or maybe I'm just letting everyone else kill me, because I'm too scared to pull the trigger.

I'm sorry, heart, that I keep breaking you.

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter - bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”

You're in the breath that catches in my lungs, sticking jagged in the gaps between my ribs. You're the form I trace with my mind at night, skimming the edges of my own body with unending regret. Yours is the only voice that I want to hear on the phone; yours are the only steps I want to hear on the stairs. You're the first person I've missed because of who you are, and not because of who I am.

I pull your picture up every few hours, let it flood my screen, just so I can reassure myself that I didn't imagine you. It's not like I can't recall you from memory. The way your skin felt under my finger tips, the way words would catch in your mouth, causing you to stammer in such a painfully honest way... So many ways, so many ways, and none of them are leading me to you. Perhaps one day one of them will lead you back to me, but more likely, this was a one way street that only you could travel.

I miss you. With all of my heart, I miss you. And regardless of what I want to think, I love you. I am still yours, beyond the shadow of a doubt.

The only comfort I find is in reading stories I've written about you. Perhaps because I never give them an ending, in hopes that another chapter is waiting to be written.