blood sugar sex magik (explicit) - red/hot chili peppers

you call yourself strong
while the tears stay inside

keeping the blue
inside

and you can't see past the red
lights of the cars in front of you

and you drive away before the porcelain cracks
and you fill up with words

that never made your lungs
feel full until now

and your fingers are cold
and so are your toes

like they're blue
like they're going back to blue

and he walked away
and you don't know

where he went
and you don't care

about him driving stick
in your automatic

even though you remember
passing every red

light in front of you
every red

light falling
behind you

so you just adjust the rearview mirror
push your seat forward again

so you stop worrying what color your car is and
what color your heart is

because they're both
just fucking red

because everything's
just fucking red

and you worry about the cracked skin
on your knuckles

how the cracks are red

and they're different
from the cracks in the skin of his

but they're fucking red
too

and you remember the
good songs that remind you

of good times with people
who were bad for you

because you were good for them
and you're tired of being good for anyone

but yourself

because you're blue

you're fucking blue

and your lungs are full
and there's air
and you breathe in
and it's blue

your lungs are blue
even if your heart is red

and your car is red
and your knuckles are red

your lungs are blue

and you breathe
and you breathe
and you breathe
and you


--erin

headstone

my body
is a graveyard.

the bruises are fading
the nail marks have healed
but they were only gravestones anyway,

marking the places
you had whispered into my skin.

a lot of words
floating like smoke
from the coke can you passed me.

fogging up my head
like the words
that crawled beneath
the gravestones
you placed

beside my hips
beneath my collarbone
between my thighs.

the markers have faded
but the words are still there

light as smoke
from a coke can:

youre so beautiful.
rest in peace.

--erin

My body (or: a year and a half later)

(x)

from my skin:

keep me to yourself
stop letting them scratch me
pinch me
slap me
touch me
stop letting them touch me
stop letting them fucking touch me

from my brain:

you smell like him
you smell like cheap cologne
your puffy eyes are your own fault
you couldnt keep yourself to yourself
you didnt ask him to stay
you didnt want him to stay
you said its what you wanted
its not his fault
he doesnt know
that there are pieces to pick up now
you can still taste him in your mouth
you dont even know his name

from my bones:

its your fault i feel bruised
its your fault
you asked for it
everything he did you asked for
its not his fault you regret it
you asked for the backseat of his car
he gave it to you
he gave it to you
you asked him to touch you
he gave it to you

from my heart:

i thought i told you to listen to me
you ignored me when i told you
not to do this


--erin

sometimes, when you are a man

i'm forgetting my soul at the bottom of a purse
with red lipstick and a grey notebook
that's quiet enough to make me wonder
what it would say if i got around
to opening it.

my thoughts slide back down into a pile of
"gothic cathedrals tend to have rib vaults
and pointed arches.
romanesque cathedrals usually have groin vaults
and rounded arches."
"lady macbeth goes crazy because she focuses so hard
on distinguishing imagination from reality
that when her imagination becomes her reality
she doesn't realize it."
"i hate myself for loving you.
and by you i mean 5 seconds of summer.
i swear.
all my indie street cred is out the window."
"hitchcock usually gets credit for creating the accordian zoom
because of his application of it in vertigo.
this is significant because it is used a means
of character development and revelation."
and it all gets lost.

i'm drawing in the chipped parts of my
black fingernails like they'll redeem me.
it doesn't mean anything.
it doesn't mean anything.

i'm used to holding myself together like the arms
around my torso can keep the world
from falling.
my arms are around my torso but the world
is falling.


--erin



you wear stretchy pants in your room.
it's for fun.

a girl on my floor is engaged and i haven't even had a boyfriend but this mostly doesn't have anything to do with that.

my bookshelf is overflowing with good intentions
and my eyes are overflowing with misperceptions
and my mind is telling me to pay attention
and my heart is telling me about imperfection

because i'm watching with shaking hands.
i'm asking if i understand.
i'm learning about myself and
and i'm learning that i'm made of sand.

and i'm a sand girl
with a sand castle
and the ocean is brushing my hair out of my face
like mama always did,

with her fingers slotting through the strands.
with my fingers slotting through the sands.
and you can tell my mind it's supposed to expand,
but it'll tell you about my hands
and how they aren't as soft as they're supposed to be.

my thoughts are written out on my ribcage
and my skin is as quiet as a blank page
"you'll understand when you're older" isn't a stage
and they'll tell me to act my age,
but i'm falling asleep to the lullaby that played when i turned the key.

sand girls and boys
line up and down the road
and we're asking what we're doing.
we're older.
we're wiser.
we'll lie to our sisters when they ask us,

because they'll understand when they're older.
they'll understand when they're colder.
they'll understand when their shoulder
shrugs off the questions of their sisters.

because my bookshelf is overflowing with good intentions,
and my eyes are overflowing with misperceptions
and the wind is taking me apart as i get older.
the wind is taking me apart as i get colder.
the wind is taking me apart and my hands aren't as soft as they used to be.
and the wind is taking me apart as i get older.


--erin

don't cry in college.

there's an ocean in her eyes.
she looks like a river.
she feels like a desert.

she watches as the light buzzes above her.
she watches as the stars come out.
she watches herself fall.

her face.
her tears.
her everything.

alone.

she can't help but feel.
she feels it all.

she wonders
when she last cried like this.

everything she is,
exposed in the bright spots
when she feels dark.

she asks when her cheeks burned
and the blue in her eyes
started to drown.

she can't remember.

too strong.
too long.

she can't remember.

she can't remember.

she can't remember.

she tries to breathe.

i can't remember.


--erin