things i like.

giant fish,

poodles eating out of woks,

this thing,

forget-me-nots,

and lots of snow

"things you stole?"

"no."

clairvoyant hysteric

literally--i was just thinking that. then everything went gray.

guitar, guitar, icarus, icarus. the cross i made burned. the bread was heavy.

“i don’t explain often or ever but i know, really. why did you name the syndrome after your city?”

the prefrosh look like giants. they haven’t been shrunk down yet. “their tiny hearts will get crushed. it’s a williams tradition. send them over to the jilted maiden aunts club.” familiarity forced me out of the haze of hatred. which one of these things is not like the others? so maybe she should transfer.

i want to grow a silver tail and slip through fluid without substance. i want to be as light as a dandelion stem and curl up between the pages of the complete works so you will slam it closed and crush me. then you could find me later (when it would matter more) preserved in this most perfect form.

secret chord for the wasted girls

it’s been one week since i severed the tip of my thumb and told you i love you. it’s been the rim of acid on the important organs.

sometimes i think the very act of honesty is a lie. sometimes i think surviving a night like this is a lie. too blunt, too dumb, too blunt. honestly i think i’d try—for my mother i would not succeed but for you i’d try—the observation would be sharp, it’s not good.

i met her eyes across a dark street and we fell into false reality and just stared and stared at each other, turning as we walked to look and look and look and look, her blunt bangs and my slanted, her littleness and my hatred, us pretending we don’t exist: both her and me not existing, or at the very least not existing together--that’s not possible. anyway—she’s better—and i could be more blunt without my cowlicks, but i think if i was more blunt i would be a rock and not a girl.

sleep all you want. i am still searching for any kind of reason to abide—looking the way you look at a requiem or a white wall—looking at something where there is nothing to see, falling into the folds.

but there is the flannel, the culture, my mother. and the bluntness that is killing me and killing me is keeping me alive. so the worrying you aren’t doing is not important.

this wall—it needs a faucet. i think it was her.

boots, cats, ceviche, and that

i can talk to you with my eyes,

barely even nodding.

no one needs to invent my motives.

“i cheapen our relationship to the point where it’s this.”

you just spoke for me.

i had a life before, even if you didn’t know it. now you know it for sure, but it’s a fake life, i’m pretending, this is a happy mask, the only kind of lie i can tell, because it’s my childhood culture, fake-happy lies. you were my closest friend. you wanted me. i thought you wanted me, because i wanted myself. no one wants anyone anymore. only i have time to be pretty. it’s fake prettiness.

across the table i noticed you had written, as i spoke, my name and address, Annie S. Eddy, Williams College, Williamstown, MA. I poured pepper onto it.

(the ocean looks shallow from here.)

traded rilke for cigarettes, holes in my rainboots, lectured, clicked my heels.

fell asleep not alone enough, no sound of rain, burned churches, and thought about dolphins and harpoons and why,

you thought about her, about rainer, about rain, dreamed in german, not about the shark, not about me.

it’s this. it’s this.