Natalie Quiles

For years you’d been starved, floating on air, running on the fumes of love and alcohol, caffeine and lust. Where one wasn’t, another was, and you’d shift between vices like a shadow, like the flicker of a flame.

One day, someday, today, the light will come.

Your memory rests in the shadows of my collarbone; you are dabbed like perfume
Behind the lobes of my ear, in the creases of my elbows, at the base of my neck.

My body is not a manifestation of my worth, but an expression of my self-love.

When you’re cut, I bleed. When you don’t eat, I starve. These are not words of sweetness or beautiful monogamy; this is a mutated cell that affects logical thought and choice.

Give me your pain
In the threads of your favorite shirt
That smell like sweat and musk and regret…
And a little like vanilla.

You shouldn’t be allowed to make me feel like this

What happens when you can’t even love yourself?

I’m sorry that I can’t learn from your mistakes,
That I’m too stubborn;
And dip my hand into boiling water
When I already know it’s going to burn.

In summer,
I am reborn.

You are my favorite nightmare.
You leave me breath heavy, heart racing.

We were a classic tale of hourglass love; the moment our eyes met, the glass had been flipped, and we only had hours to make our mark before the final grain of sand would fall.

She spun dreams out of moonlight

I crave numbness like a drug. It scratches at me, somewhere deep in my mind. It whispers to me, a seductive mantra that finds me at my weakest point.

Our yin and yang, our complimentary colors,
our lock and key love that matches, in
the pouring rain, hidden in thick drops.

I spit thorns between
two lips
scratching into those that come too near,
who try to buy my bouquet
without realizing
what type of flower I am.

I slashed sunshine slivers into my skin
and the gentle light has been eclipsed by moonlight
Raised silver veins that reach across tightly stretched skin and bones

I have a paper heart encased in a flame resistant ribcage; no match books are getting near this one.