the world is just starting to seem real
clay in a firmer state
studier but harder to mold
and i am still trying to shape it in my hands
without getting it under my nails
... something,

something under my nails
clambering for something to hold onto
anxiety racing, scratching, life catching up to me
why am i bleeding
why am i bleeding
this is supposed to be freeing
i guess i just
pick one of these lines
deeply clawed into my skin
paths like addict,
wash up,
footstool;
lives carefully planned for me since birth

i played trumpet in junior high
so that must mean i'll be a paralegal like my mama
regretting my love choices
regretting my life choices
wasting away at a job i hate
doing work i don't get credit for
destined to fade away lonely

but then again i've got my dad's bad habits
and twice his screaming spirit
so maybe i'll spend half my life in a bottle
and the other half trying to chase the dreams that i ****** away in my twenties

maybe i'll run all over creation
trying to be something bigger
someone stronger

yeah
that sounds about right

How dare the world keep turning.
Can't it see we're still mourning?
I am still stood still with shock,
Still shaking,
My heart still racing.
Still so soon, 50 other hearts stopped.
If this world keeps turning, revolving as normal
Then I fear that the sun may set and rise and bring us tomorrow.
A new day. How many hearts will stop?
How many hearts will be stopped?
The world keeps turning without a thought
Of the panicked, the broken, the shaking, the shot.

Did you know you smell like home?
I can't really describe it any other way,
It's something so you,
And sometimes I'll catch it in the air and remember nights spent in your basement and my backyard and our endless kingdom.
I wonder if it's normal to recognize scents,
Not too unlike the warm and sweet air in the kitchen where cookies are baking
Except I always feel a little bad
Because i haven't quite convinced myself it's okay to love you this much.

And do you notice
The weight that fills the silence
When i take too long to send a short reply with any simple message?
It takes a lot for me to stop
To keep a clear head
If I don't focus I might slip up and call you baby
Darling, sweet, my love

Gotta get it into my thick skull somehow
You are not my love
You are not my love
You are not my love
And you are not my home
I backspace, can't call you baby
I know, I know
It's too much
I'm sorry

Salty water burns my eyes
The seagulls caw their greetings
I will lay down on this soft sand
And sleep to the sound of the waves
As the sea crashes against the shore
The sweet breeze caressing my sun-kissed skin

there's something bitterly comedic about seeing you talk about trauma
like you're the victim of something great,
like you're holding all these secrets in those big, wretched, calloused hands i feel in my darkest nightmares.
poor baby, poor teddy,
oh brother,
do you feel small?
and did i feel small, hiding in closets, or under that loft bed?
under that same loft bed. hand made, white painted wood,
heart-shaped pillow, lavender dollhouse,
quiet games,
dead childhood,
stolen innocence.
come to me, cry to me,
you just lost your girlfriend,
you just lost your job,
your life all fell apart
and i am soothing you through gritted teeth
remembering how you ruined mine before it even had the chance to start.
they say
i know you don't like him but you must love him.
i wonder if blood is still blood once you've drawn it?
and i still feel like i owe it to you.
it was us against this whole dark world that left us
but you were supposed to protect me.
i should have been playing with toys,
but i was the toy.
when we went hungry i was the raw meat in your mouth.
you starved for anything you could tear into, cut up, make a mess of.
we had that holes in our couch, holes in my childhood,
"you're not on my hit list yet,"
"i'm just checking up on you" kinda brotherly love that is swept so neatly under the rug until it eats right through the floorboards.
i try to will those gaps back in my memory.
it would be so much easier if i just swallowed it right up dry, choked it down, let it digest, let it melt away to a stomach ache so i don't have to think about you.
i will scrub my skin raw at the end of this scream,
try to wash you off of me,
but this has been embedded deep in my skin for so long,
too long-
can you tell me when it started?
honest to god i don't remember.
what was it about me, soft face, soft limbs, empty mouth that made you want to hurt me?
my earliest memories exist in haunting.
my formative years are a poltergeist, you are the evil thing inside of me.
and so you come to me with stories and expect sympathy,
And i will hold my tongue in my mouth lest i feel enough like a wounded animal to try eating you alive,
pretending the iron taste of blood that floods my mouth is yours,
that i am as strong and metallic.

I don't wanna write anymore
Don't wanna draw anymore
Don't wanna sing anymore
Don't wanna breathe anymore
When I was little they said I was wonderful at all these things
(Except for one
You can blame my dad who trashed my lungs)
And I
Being the budding flower of future disaster
Shaped myself around these things
I branded myself ART KID
I spent hours drawing the individual scales of fierce crayon dragons
I wanted to write and illustrate my own books
But when you get older you read Fitzgerald
When you get older you visit art museums
I can recognize a Rembrandt painting from across a hall so it's easy enough to recognize trash when I see it
Crumpled paper ***** lay scattered around my bedroom floor, my wastebin is full with wasted dreams and how did they ever let me think I could be worth something?
I guess I had potential
So they weren't really lying
But it hurts
You walk around in massive shoes expecting to grow into them but you just get blisters from the friction
I don't fit into this mold but I built it myself so why not?
It hurts
When you're used to the sun then suddenly night comes and you have to invent the lightbulb
But it was always there before
And now it's just gone
Like moments, like people, like potential
So where do we go from here?

I wear many masks if you keep me at a distance
I make an art of emotional masquerades
So if you are wise you will keep me at a distance
I tend to become attached once you let me within arm's length
And you will learn terrible things you didn't need to know
About the things that break me or that broke me long ago
So smile sweetly, stranger, from miles far away
I'm impulsive and imprinting
Hate it though I may

I'm playing your game,
Trying my best,
Going through the process just like all the rest.
I went to my therapy,
I go once every two weeks,
I tell her my problems;
She tells me I overthink.
I am a machine, though my gears may be rusty,
I still cannot make my frenzied brain stop its running.
I tell her I'm trapped, I say I'm alone.
Our time runs out and again I'm isolated at home.
This neighborhood sleeps but my insomnia taunts me.
It's dangerous, being the only living thing around suburbia's zombies.
Handfuls of pills,
Stress ***** and writing.
I'm playing your game but it's hard to keep fighting.

Your pretty gray eyes look sad and you say
"I guess I just want someone to love me back."
My laugh sounds sour, an odd rumble tearing into a half-hearted roar, not in tune with what laughter should be
Because I love you-
And I have loved you-
And I will tell you-
And I have told you-
Over and over.
I have years of smudged, tear stained writing,
Whispers
All in metaphors:
"I just want someone to love me back."
We'll continue this interpretive dance,
Catching and dropping one another
From higher and higher cliffs.
One day we'll die or fly.

cross legged in my bedroom strumming uselessly at an instrument i only barely know how to play,
crying "make me feel something good" to my bedsheets like a secret, like a prayer
and everything is still, so still
silent besides the strumming
waiting to hit the right chord
so i can write the right song
that doesn't feel like desperate noise
just something to fill the dead air
the only things moving
are vibrating strings
and trembling fingers
and i want you
to light me up
like Christmas Eve

I am the wrong kind of "sad"
Or, rather, I am NOT sad
I don't think I've ever BEEN sad, the word "SAD" is hardly in my vocabulary at all
It's not loud enough
My words are made up of screams, but my voice is not commanding
I have far too much to say but I can't phrase it in a way that makes you want to listen
I can talk all I want about car crashes and crescendos but it will go in one ear like a tantrum and go out the other like a suicide note I've rewritten twenty times to not sound like too much of a burden
I have the kind of voice that makes everyone else in the room stop talking
Not because they are interested in what I have to say but because "*******, does this kid ever shut up?"
I have the kind of voice that confuses you
Telling you how venom burns in my veins and I can't stop looking over my shoulder like I'm telling you about my favorite movie
No matter how hard I try I've never gotten the hang of expression
I'm the wrong kind of "sad"
I have to get the words out of me, bleed myself dry before I can sleep and all you will receive are stains that I will cry when you can't read
Creating more stains
I don't know how to organize my thoughts
It's so loud in here I can't think, except for when it's silent
And then I can't think anyway

All I want is to be able to tell a story
But every time I try I cry at the happy parts and grin through the tragedies and the meaning gets lost
I constantly try to tell you what I am and how this feels but the English language is so full of ******* words like SAD
I am not SAD
Some days the weight in my chest develops its own force of gravity and everything around me is ****** in and my chest feels like it's about to burst
Sometimes you say the wrong thing or nothing and I have to hold my breath and think about anything other than the sickness that settles into my stomach
My sadness doesn't translate well for an audience
I don't have any good stories
I've never been arrested or gone streaking or done much of anything that involves leaving my bedroom
I tell myself that I am a creative but I'm just making this up as I go along hoping to stumble across a point because I feel worthless again
I must be alive, I guess
Pain does not make someone an artist
Pain makes you crumble and sometimes some people are just really good sculptors but I have a tremor and I think I'd probably just cut myself open on the tools
Again I tell myself I'll write something worth reading
Again I lose the point and get dizzy from bleeding

my bones urge me to
reach out, reach towards you
bear an honest to god broken smile
tell you how violence lives in the back of my mind in a whisper
tell you my will is as thin as paper
dissolve slowly in your arms
but you're so far away
and i have to find a way
to do this on my own
force myself to be okay
gotta stop getting you caught up in my
messy hot glue strings

We all have demons
mine just so happen to have
FACES
and
LUNGS
and
HANDS.
An eye watches me
disembodied
floating a little way from my face.
I can feel something
living in my neck,
and it curls around my spine,
unsettled.
THE EYES THAT LIVE IN MY SCALP blink,
constantly blink.
it aches.
they blink together to some unknown metronome.
I try to ignore THE HANDS that grab at my head and shoulders,
gripping the sides of my head,
pressing into my temples.
My demons loom over me and BREATHE,
Cold gusts,
So cold..
I tremble in fear of the man who travels through dreams
and wonder how much HE KNOWS
and wonder if HE CAN SEE ME now
and is he GOD or DEVIL?
for now he is my DEMON
and on the back of my neck
I feel his EYES.

it makes me sad to think
we'll never be that way again
and we'll never be how we could be
even though we could be

don't mistake my longing for a lack of appreciation
i am so blessed to have you here with me
friends, close as ever, despite everything
but i can just see it
singing with you in the kitchen
random hours of the night
early 2000s hits
dancing like the goofballs we are

i want that with you
but you don't want it with me

and that's okay
but **** if it doesn't hurt

your words
are written like ribbons,
tied in a bow
laced with scarlet and garnered in stone
you place your gold-plated locket on the table
to leave your writing for another day
now you go outside to outshine the sun
despite your scars and tears and all the things that you've done
you make the moon jealous, and every star too
god, i wish i was beautiful like you

I always knew it would end up this way
But I guess I hoped I was wrong
A foolish child with stars in their eyes
Cursed to see the future

you are just a child
and the world is not out to hurt you
darling, darling, please
slow down and take the love in
you are young and beautiful and reckless
no where near wise
far from invincible
you are running, flying away into the sound of your own voice
telling you you are so close to the sun and
you can't wait to burn bright and beautiful and turn to ash
but the sun feels much nicer from the ground, oh, the sun feels much nicer from the ground
we are not made to live like bullets
you have blood on your casing and much of it is your own
you tell me you know best as you hold your gun to your temple and yell
fire away, fire away

tell me how to write
the gnats out of my skull
the static from my fingertips
the fire from my veins
the infection from my wounds
tell me how to write
you out of this body

god it hurts like poison
i'm swimming in the ache of my chest
in the empty space beside me
drowning in the night
please don't let me wake up alone again
some nights i feel like you stole my soul away when you left
and i won't ever get it back
give me the nights in cars in walmart parking lots
talk for three hours, drink mocktail and feel eternal
fill me up with stars to burn out the void
i'm feeling so lost in empty moments
like my life is a cardboard box
i'm low on oxygen
breathe exhilaration back into my body
find the fuse to light my veins
i'm leaking, slipping out of life into sidewalk cracks
i'm here but i feel like i'm gone, i don't want to be gone
i don't think i can exist alone

I am afraid to sleep tonight
While the hands hold to my mind
While the cold embraces me
While he waits to haunt my dreams
And every eye that burns my body
is Wide Open
Staring
Waiting

oh god let this fix us
i can already feel the adrenaline racing
getting close to you is a near-death experience and i'm living for the rush
like this will be the shock that sends us back to life
it's been years since i've heard your voice in person
and i think i might overdose on 4 days after 4 years
i think i might be a little too high
i think this will probably go wrong and tear me down
prove me wrong prove me wrong prove me wrong
oh god please let this fix us
1 2 clear and we have a pulse again
you can do anything anything anything just don't hurt me
don't hurt me

Take a shot when you say something quick
To avoid repeating past trauma.
Take a shot every time you get sick over this big web of lies that you've spun up.
Take two when you say it without thinking at all and don't realize for hours later.
Take two when the shame of it creeps up your neck and you want it to leave but it lingers.
Three for the white lies and pity plays,
Three for the guilt that you feel.
Four when you've said it all so many times
That you're never quite sure what IS real.

what are you recovering from?
Your description says
"Learning to be okay again"
But what's so wrong, darling?
It's hard to imagine you sitting anywhere other than your throne
Mrs. Cancer Poem
Tell me again how I *"threatened suicide" by posting on my private blog about wanting to die
Cutting people off like you throw away toys
Little girl
Are you seeing the error in your ways?
Does it hurt to know you're not flawless?
Are you hurting from your mistakes?
She lacks a fundamental understanding of what mental illness is and feels like
Lavender princess lavished by adoring peers
Pouts in her a room for a while
But it's okay
Cuz she's learning to be okay again
After walking away with human wreckage in her wake
Crying that she's been shot when she's the one taking aim
Has the pretty heartless girl finally experienced pain?
Will she ever understand?
(Will she miss someday?)

I will spend all day reading poetry books
Like somehow the words will snake into my skin
Like this will speed up the process of learning to articulate my racing thoughts
I will read and read and read
Pretending that I can absorb art
Just as quickly and restlessly
As I put it out into the world

I ignore the lingering feeling of loss when I see your face, when we chatter away like nothing ever changed, when the echos of your laughter play in my head again
I ignore the feeling until someone lays it out in front of me in perfect words,
Heart-shattering reminder.
Even then,
You weren't really mine.
You have always been a bird in wide skies and I do want to see you fly
But I am flightless.
Reminder-
We must grow from our past
Not run back to it.
Nostalgia can be such a sweet-tasting poison.
I feel it eat away at me now.

compulsions.
check on you.
don't stop kicking.
check on you.
is that thunder or is my head throbbing again?
check on you.
something is touching my face, make it go away.
check on you.
cold. it's summer. why am i so cold?
check on you.
it's thundering AND my head is throbbing again. both is always an option.
check on you.

I ******* worshipped the ground you walked on
For you, I picked up the pen
I wrote poems, letters, songs
I wrote my heart out again and again
I felt lucky to breathe your air, blessed with your company
I couldn't for the love of God figure out why you'd waste your time on me
So I praised you, kissed your ******* feet
I wasn't prepared for you to step on me
Force the breath out of me
Even though I watched it coming, it ruined me
You abandoned me, loathe me
Kicked the emotional living **** out of me
Now it's been quite a while and I still can't breathe
I'm trying to move on but all I do is bleed
Your blood, my veins
Your veins, my blood
It doesn't make a difference
When all's said and done
I'm colored rust with the stains and you're somehow clean
And I have only one conclusion for what the hell that means
You don't care at all, you don't care a bit
I'm bleeding out on the ground, you don't give half a ****
I loved you, I held you, tried to be anything you'd need
You scorned me heartlessly while I watched lovingly from my knees
Now talk around like I'm a demon, like I was anything but doting
And they listen to your every word, trusting your fake-sweet candy coating
Queen *****, queen bee, I hope this catches up to you
Queen cold, queen cruel, I hope this **** haunts you

forget fairytales, magic and love are real life
i don't need a story
you're my happily ever after
every little moment is a song
and i find, somehow, i know the words
i know just how to harmonize with your voice

maybe our happily-ever-after
is that we reconnected after everything
after you hurt me and i scorned you
we came back to each other like
we were one another's boomerangs
finally coming back around after bring thrown away.
(i wish our story ended
a little more like a fairy tale
with us back in each other's arms
proclaiming the other home
but, my love, our lives have never been
that simple
or that sweet,
have they?)

the course of my river runs your direction
i am always changing state with your temperature
i freeze when your go cold, and i am ice, and i am heavy
and when we heat up, i feel like floating
we are always fighting floods and heavy downpours
when i can't do it, when you can't stop it
when we run circles around each other's feelings,
my exhaustion, your ever-changing
our little personal storm
sometimes you stay cold for so long and i am so tired of being frozen
waiting for your spring, waiting for your summer
god, right now, i am frigid
and i know i can't speed this up, i can't thaw this out,
some things must die to make room for more life,
but i am so tired
of being so cold

hard of hearing
bleeding out
taking pills
in excess
hearing voices
seeing things
unreal sounds
playing games
different face,
different name,
different hair,
never the same
afraid of stale water
afraid of change
keeping distance
finding blame
i'm sure some of it is true
i'm not a good storyteller after all
just a chameleon
self defense mechanism
stumbling through all the fog
when i was little i changed myself every time we moved away
i had determined that life was a game and i just had a bad hand to play
i learned how from a very young age to start bluffing and counting cards
when your identity is molded from ways to avoid pain you start to forget who are
don't raise your voice here
2 parts delusions 3 parts fear
please believe me, i love you
please believe me i do
please believe me i'm drowning
you don't believe me, do you?

so the question is
will you miss me
and all the mess i make?
i know i expect too much.
i really wished for the warmest of welcomes.
i leave
with
the most bittersweet of goodbyes
knowing not
if i'll return,
and if i do
if it will matter?
there sits that question-
will you miss me,
or did my return
destroy the nostalgia:
the thin thread
connecting you and me.

My mind consumes my reality
I absorb stories into my skin
I breathe escape
What do you do when the worlds in your head eat away at your life in the world outside?
Indulging in fantasy comes before school, work, or sleep
I do not live in this world
I exist within it
My heart and mind are elsewhere,
Places this vessel cannot travel
Places where this world doesn't exist
To beautiful worlds I go
And in beautiful worlds I stay
While this body is left behind
As I let myself decay

I find a poem that reminds me of you
In all your restless moonlit spirit
Besides
A few discrepancies

I forget that the whole world does not have your laughter memorized
And that others, too, have owned the night
From their own little corners

I forget this
So I softly curse the author
For confusing the color of your eyes

I want to rewrite the lines
Of every beautiful, breathless, footstep-tempo piece of poetry
Make little corrections
So our story is never convoluted

Our nights spent alive are far too precious and important

Sometimes I forget that these are not our stories
Others, too, have owned the night
From their own little corners

being a siren's exhausting
i never stop making noise
blaring in hopes that you'll hear past the monotonous droning and pinpoint my voice
i know it just sounds like more warnings
like a storm now is starting to move
I'm a human tornado, a thunderstorm waking, an uprising cry you can't soothe
if you listen I promise there's words here
if you listen closely you'll hear past the whine
the siren is blaring and blank eyes are staring
"I don't know if I'll make it this time"

I close my eyes tight
Grimacing hold them shut
I bare my throat to you
And feel your disgust
I'm sorry that I'm not a person
I'm afraid I may have mislead you
That you mistake me for something I'm not
I'm not much of anything and I'm sorry
I don't have magic in my bones
I used to pretend I was made of starlight
And that the night was something I could own
But I'm secondary, you see
I'm sorry
I'm sorry
Forgive me

i remember thinking you were beautiful
(you have always been)

i was so in love with you back then

(and sometimes the memories are tinted with questions)

you gave me a soft white jacket and i wore it every day so i wouldn't feel alone

when you broke me i threw that necklace into the street by our corner and i regret it to this day

i think i'd still wear it if i still had it

i'm terrified of forgetting and i'm terrified of letting go because i'm terrified that this will always have been the best time of my life
and i don't want to lose it
and i don't want to lose you

i think i'll always love you a little bit

i think my life would be much better if you were still a part of it

i still daydream
about running away
and having adventures
and never growing up

It occurs to me now that I still bring my voice low for you,
Dance on knives for you,
Do anything to accommodate you and assure that I don’t breathe your precious air.
All of this.
Even after you have called me poison
And accused me for emoting
As if I held a gun to your head.
**** your comfort,
**** your space.
I won’t dance for you anymore.
I hope my voice brings you to tears so maybe you’ll feel something other than self-righteousness.
I hope this poem makes you want to run away so you’ll know how I feel every time I see your name.
I hope you defrost.
I hope you melt.
I hope you finally feel everything you’ve never wanted to.
…
I hope you grow from this.
I hope you finally can be warm.
I hope you regret your frostbite.
I hope you never again hurt anyone like you’ve hurt me.
…
Somewhere deep inside, in the places I keep quiet,
I hope you learn to suffer.

I tear pages out of other people's scrapbooks,
Pretend I had a normal, happy childhood,
Dance around reality till I fall over dizzy
And my hands shake with the weight of everything.
I spend my life spinning in circles;
I regress and repress and repeat.
I tear pages out of other people's scrapbooks.
I paste up a collage and I name it Me.