what we're not supposed to talk about

I could make a story out of
this. The blackout epiphanies
blinding me like a total eclipse
of any sense of rationality I ever
stole out from my parents' blind spots
when they turned the other way. The
boy I fell half in love with and
my therapist's unassuming questions
about why he was different, the way I
was never beautiful to him but he
still looked me in my bokeh eyes,
betraying and quiet, so that was enough.
My vain addiction to anything
permanently damaging and
more or less glamorous. The dreams
I can’t swallow no matter what shade
of delusion they come in, about
the imminent death of stars named
after deader lovers, and places
where the air is intoxicated with
the promise of Ecstasy, or whatever
name heaven goes by after you begin to doubt
the reality of putting one foot in front
of the other will get you anywhere at all.

I could write novels about my path
to self-martyrification and the moments
I cried for no reason except that
I had no reason tor cry. I could write
a million dedications no one
ever asked for, to the boy who’s more
scar tissue than man, or to the girl
who sits alone in the library
reading people like dirty magazines
and ends up disgusted with what
she sees, or to that watercolor child
on the better half of the mirror.

I could write so many poems
about my salty lungs and aching
stomach and blossoming wrists,
I could tell the whole fucking world
what it is to be in love with all these
people that never existed and
to resent the ones that do, what it is
to buy lessons on how to live. I could
make something worthwhile out
of every second I wasted mourning
catastrophes coming to life inside
my ribcage (you needed this.

here’s my poem about
the things that keep me going.)