Megan Kemple

Mondays Can Hurt


I'm in a juvenile lock down facility teaching children
who have had harder lives and are more adjusted than I am
the patience and acceptance I do not have.
In the empty concrete room,
painted in murals of a tree on a hill and outer space
with chunks missing,
signed by fists long since and never forgotten,
an eleven-year-old tells us about the time his dad stabbed him.
Another boy sculpts his friends into a clay portrait of
his mother's fists in the air,
his sister hiding under the bed
as he takes the beating for her,
they are not speaking,
but the sound is deafening.
A girl without the slightest trace of puberty in her figure
chokes on the words "whore" and "liar",
a fourteen year old who can't raise her eyes to your face
hyperventilates in the corner,
I tell her to focus on breathing out, to open her eyes,
but I know she can't hear me through the white noise in her brain.

It feels like being electrocuted,
like a DVD skipping and rewinding
with the volume on 1,000,
like the past and future are the same
and you will forever live in those moments
because that's you at your worst,
your most human,
the most true
to animals and man and woman.
You are so grotesquely alive,
reduced to silence and fear and shame,
the disgust at your own impotence and complicity
burrows like a parasite in your gut.

A sixteen year old tells me his plan for staying off meth
as I'm coming down from my morning blunt,
a seventeen year old girl tells me she's not angry anymore,
and I believe her.


Colored Lights, or Something to Live for


"Did you wanna die?
Did you wanna die?
Did you wanna die?"
Lana asks her friend K
again and again
as my What's my m3? app
asks me if I want to connect to
National Suicide Hotline
before showing me my score.
If it's over 33 your mental health
is interfering with your life,
I score 103.
Two down from my record 105,
I didn't even know it went over 100,
until a week ago.
I'm an overachiever even in crazy,
found some form of extra credit.
I thought the app was just flattering me,
the way I blush when someone says
"you look so thin"
after not eating for three days,
a sort of guilt-pride
the feminist in me can't get rid of,
but no one else I force to take it
(I'm competitive, you see)
can even top 80.
Once again, I've aced a test
and it has added up to nothing.
I was kicked out of college
with a 4.0
for drinking,
or rather being anemic, bulimic and drinking.
When I stopped screaming
my paraphrased Constitutional rights
in a British accent,
and bruising my wrists against the restraints,
the nurse looked me in the eye
and said
"If you keep going like this,
you're going to die."
Then she gave me two blood transfusions,
an IV, and a Xanax.
I don't have health insurance anymore,
which is a disgustingly adult detail,
and a terrifying prospect,
like my 170,592 mile Jeep
I drive knowing it needs $800 worth of repairs,
before the heat, A/C, and radio,
I make bargains with my mind
when it starts sputtering,
"Not today, just please don't let it be today",
but I know it's coming.
My mom called me on my 25th birthday
to tell me I had a soul just like Janis Joplin's,
and that she had never been so scared.
Two people genuinely congratulated me
on still being alive this year.
I feel like I might be dying,
I'm spinning faster and harder
and more desperately,
hurling myself at anything and everything,
I'm always pushing the limits,
pushing people to their limits,
pushing people away.
I don't mean to get angry,
I'm just so tightly wound,
and terrified of everything,
and God, I'm exhausted.
Every night a new nightmare
in the same place,
same cast of characters,
a new fucked up situation
to clench my jaw so hard
I nearly break my teeth.
I don't sleep even when I sleep,
I can still think inside my dreams,
physically and emotionally,
everything feels real,
how often in those dreams
have I accepted dying,
only to wake up?
What happens when I don't wake up?
I'm terrified of taking my foot off the brakes,
knowing they're giving out anyway,
as my leadfoot anger constantly slams against them.
I'm afraid of doing something I can't undo,
my biggest fear is what I could do to myself,
if one pill, if one blunt, if one drink is too far away;
if one pill, if one blunt, if one drink is too close.
I'm afraid,
and there's no one to tell,
no help I can afford,
no step back from the ledge I know how to take,
because, like Amy said,
"What's inside her never dies".
I hope that's true,
the demons and the passion
because as long as that's true,
as long as fate is cyclical
and some part of you remains,
if your demons get you this time,
maybe your goodness will win the next round.
I have to believe in reincarnation
because girls like me don't make it very long.
We're animated corpses really,
decomposing as we dance on borrowed time.
I'm afraid to be still,
afraid it will set in like death,
that I will wake up and be fifty
and have nothing to show for it,
afraid I'm not everything I always thought I was,
everything I always wanted to be.
I'm afraid of my mind,
of its Mt. Everests and Marianas Trenches,
its earthquakes and tsunamis,
its arsenal of nuclear weapons,
the big red button is too easy to push.
I don't want to do it,
but there are ten million ways to die
and sometimes I start to shake
just getting behind the wheel of my car,
the world is just so big,
and so wrong,
and it could all be over before you realize it,
and there's no way to get it back.
So if this is my turn to dance,
I'm going to dance as fast as I can,
so maybe the edges of these anxieties will blur
and the world will be nothing but colored lights
and music so beautifully sad that I cry tears of joy
as I spin, and I spin, and
I try not to fall.


Destroy Me


My life is falling apart and all I can think about is how much I want to fuck,
not softly,
and not with my boyfriend.

I need a new he,
a he that doesn't exist except when he is inside me,
uncomplicated by plans and expectations: hopes, dreams, or feelings.

I need arms without a face,
not for holding me close, but for holding me down,
drilling me out of reality, until there's no room for anything else.

like Ryan Murphy's addiction demon,
orgasming on self-loathing and
masturbating over every masochistic moment.

My world turns upside down and I howl at the moon,
my arteries are itching, and I can't control my rage,
I just need a way to get it out.

So fuck me from behind,
waterfall scratches and bite marks,
pull me up by the hair and throw me against the wall.

Just don't let me see you,
don't try to open me up or calm me down,
fuck me like you hate me and leave me to my thoughts.

There is no water in this well for you,
it's poisoned with self-pity and ambition,
and if I gave it to you, you'd choke on it.

So choke me instead,
show me how angry you are that a bitch like me has the balls to use you,
to fuck you and leave you before the first sign of trouble,

Bring on the bruises,
write my faults in blue letters down my back,
carve my fate into my wrists,

be my lunar eclipse oracle,
whispering the truth into the cracks in my spine,
break my body to match my spirit.

But first, let's get high,
I've got an awful lot of issues to work out,
and you're tonight's target.

We're going deep tonight,
burying bodies in the sand,
burning draft cards and disappointing daddy.

You like that don't you?
Daughter desecration,
it lets you work out your anger issues.

I don't mind,
we'll both get lost in our heads,
years later I'll wonder if you were even here.

I've got secrets I can't stop shouting,
so gag me with gin and tonics,
numb my throat until I can't speak,

I only flinch at gentility,
so give me what I deserve,
fuck me so hard the pain drowns everything out.

Let's forget our names,
forget the rust melding us to the floor,
fuck duty, fuck monogamy, fuck me.

Such a funny word monogamy,
the most revered poison the world has ever seen,
silently siphoning the life out of an entire planet,

Like anti-global warming,
the conservatives know it's real,
but I find it a ridiculous conglomeration of syllables.

Can you imagine if we let ourselves taste every mind we momentarily fell in love with?
Made every fantasy a reality with a simple choice,
a choice to be happy.

A choice to be slutty,
to cheat and let them, because if you decide it doesn't matter,
it doesn't matter.

We're all animals anyway, right?
So let's wreak carnage out of love,
broken ribs and missing hearts.

You can survive on muscles and blood.


Megan Kemple is a writer and actress currently based out of Buffalo, NY. Her plays have been produced by Buffalo United Artists, American Repertory Theatre of Western New York, Road Less Traveled Productions, and Niagara University. Her poetry has been published in Vending Machine Press, Ghost City Review, and Feminspire. She spent the last year as a teaching artist with Barter Theatre's Project REAL, and previously worked in the Literary Department at Florida Studio Theatre.