When you have sat so long with a dinner knife and fork poised around your neck, how can you not expect to be eaten?
If your stomach growls and you are told all your life to remain silent, how do you know when to start speaking for yourself?
When your ribs practically carve themselves, pushing into the soft canvas of your skin, screaming to get out, and you have been told you do not deserve to eat - how do you know when you should?
How did you ever know you had the option to begin with?
And when you figure it out, how can they not expect anything less than anger? How can they not expect fear, distrust?
They can't seem to decide what you are.
You've been treated as a kenneled hound dog all your life, been told that baring your teeth was wrong, been told that you bark too loudly, sit too widely.
You've been treated as a show dog, led around on the arm of someone, never to look, never to breathe, never to think. To start dogfights. They laugh in their booths with money raised in clenched fists - it's entertainment and their bet is on whoever's teeth is the sharpest but both of you have had your teeth filed down for generations. Still, you fight, because it is all you've known.
You've been trained to not even be perceived as human, to not even perceive yourself as human, had orders barked at you your whole life but when you try to protest, you're told that you are arrogant and selfish.
Even then, some of them will continue the slow march of bringing the silverware ever closer, metal scraping against the table because they see the fight as a challenge. They like to play with their food, it's tag and you're it. You can pretend all you want that you're the main course, the whole meal, but that doesn't change that you will still, in the end, get ripped apart. Ripped to shreds, to pieces, violated even further when you thought it could never happen. That it could never get worse.
People tell you that they are just as much victims. They need the money from betting to survive, even if it's from betting on losing dogs with dull teeth and dull eyes. They tell you that you need to love them more and they will be kinder. That they will stop treating you the way they have. That they will stop being entitled.
But all you've ever done is loved, loved with your entire being, and nothing has ever changed.
Apr 13, 2023
Apr 13, 2023 at 6:56 PM UTC
You are the only one who I will let undo the zipper down my back, ever so carefully, your fingers working overtime, and I can feel them trailing down my spine, so fine, so fine. Your gaze is so steady and determined, and sometimes I can't make eye contact, but I do my best. Forgive me, I wasn't dressed for being undressed. For being addressed so directly, I'm used to confrontation, and your care disintegrates every part of me that was angry at, and tired with, the world. I don't know how to respond sometimes to the love you give me, unused to being able to get so close, to be so close. To be able to lift my face and drink in your features without being scolded, and I am ever so thirsty.
Mar 2, 2023
Mar 2, 2023 at 2:56 AM UTC
I saw you standing there, in fields of vision
There were clovers at your feet
You were holding a bouquet
Your face held rosy cheeks
I drank you in with the liquid sunshine
As flowers bent their heads
They were showered with praise
But I got insults instead
The storm clouds then started rolling in
And you were so afraid
Thorns started swallowing you up
But you said you'd be okay
Jul 26, 2019
Jul 26, 2019 at 9:44 PM UTC
Airwaves affecting our actions
Dissatisfaction guarantees
Money back disagrees
Buying happiness with ease
What an Amazonian tease
Jul 17, 2019
Jul 17, 2019 at 8:56 PM UTC
I'm in love with your skeleton, I'm in love with your bones
I love your tongue and your teeth, your flesh and your ghost
But the thing that I hate, is the one I hate the most
When you disappear into thin air, leaving me alone
Jul 17, 2019
Jul 17, 2019 at 8:51 PM UTC
A girl was walking home, and the skies were getting darker, someone had scribbled the skies out with a black marker
The wind kicked up, and the leaves swirled on the sidewalks, above the girl was a circle of hawks
The dreary weather made her hurry home and she bit her lip but she was stopped by a small, stray strip of paper that flattened itself against her chest
She stopped, for a moment, to catch her breath, picking it up, she read:
‘You will soon achieve perfection’
It belonged to a fortune cookie, that should tell her it was lucky, but she didn’t want any of it
‘I don’t want perfection, I’m just wonderful the way I am, any other type of perfection besides self love is just a type of sham’
The shadows behind her began to stir, and she was too late to cover her ears as they whispered to her
‘You’ve put on a lot of weight and you’re slow, you’re ugly enough and that’s such a crime, you should be on death row’
She looked down at her stomach and hastened her gait, she ignored the shadows as she quickened her pace
‘I know I may not look like much, but I have everything I need. Go away, I’m not to be bothered today’
The shadows continued to follow her, almost as a race
They slithered up brick and stone walls alike on whichever buildings she passed and continued to whisper their little lies into her fragile heart, their voices sweet as pies on a summer day, but she ignored them, continued on her way
‘I have friends who love me no matter what I may seem’ she smiles, and the shadows laugh
‘If you say we tell lies, then what is that? Lies of how they don’t pity you dearly because you’re always lonely if not for them, they see you, clearly, and use you up, throw you away like garbage because that is what you are. They tried to fix you, tried to make you a shining star, but you were hopeless. Are useless, because you can’t do anything on your own, you can’t even get it right when you’re alone.’
The sky began to tear, it began to spill it’s tears just as the girl spilled hers - accompanied by the countless fears that everything everyone had told her had been right
She had done her best to ignore the doors that shut when she walked past them, the whispers and giggles that followed her around like monsters in the hall, tried to ignore the walls she built up for herself because she did her best to let people in, never shoving them out, always forgiving because that’s what she had decided to be about
Of the boys that asked her out every day just so they could walk away, hands in their pockets, shrugging and saying ‘Oh, what a loss’
The girls that turned their faces away when she passed because they couldn’t stand to “look at that,” she was dehumanized past the point of any reason, every dig on her because they saw her as a pig, eating slops from the ground, less than nothing, never amounting to something because of her weight
Her loneliness they all attributed to her looks even though her heart had always been in the right place
Don’t you think she knows?
Don’t you think she knows what the world thinks?
Don’t pretend you don’t know she thinks because she’s told, she belongs in a slaughterhouse with the rest of the corpses of animals
That the way she chews is too loud, but no matter what they said no matter what, she was proud, because she was who she was, and she didn’t care, ignored the stares every day because loneliness is a camera that blurs the background to both reality and happiness, and sharply focuses on just you
She stopped her walk in her galoshes to the front door, stains on her shirt from a food fight where it had really just been her against everyone else
‘I am already perfect’ She said, and she opened the door, wiped her boots on the rug, stepped into her slippers of crimson red, she went upstairs
Her mother was there, downstairs, cooking supper for just the pair of them
The girl sits on her bed for a second
Thinks of what all she could do
Weapons and medications, what to run from, what to overdose on
But supper
But
But supper was done
Her mother called from below and she hurried down because no matter what perfection was, she didn’t care for a moment
She wiped the rims of her eyes on her sleeve, wearing her heart in the same space, always had been in the right place, still determined to give the entire world everything she had
Because today, at least for one more day, she would live
Feb 21, 2018
Feb 21, 2018 at 7:39 PM UTC
Yowza, when I met you I was knocked off of my feet
Must’ve been that semi that had a brush with me
That was the beginning of our life together
A brush with death through the heather
Yowza, our second date
Was just as great
We were chased by a murderer
I was jealous - I’d never heard of her
Yowza, we locked our doors extra tight
As we got into bed that night
The both of us didn’t get much sleep
And the next day, we didn’t have much to eat
Yowza, I think she might’ve been the crazy ex you’re always talking about
The one that has our house programmed into her GPS route
She left a human head on our front porch
For reasons unknown, it was strangely scorched
Yowza, you closed the door quickly and brought it inside
The voice within me told me to hide
You smiled at the lifeless sockets
And you went and got a box of small rockets
Yowza, in the backyard you began a Satanic ritual
Telling me to sell my own soul
With a blood sacrifice, you opened a portal to Hell
I thought for sure this was a tale I wouldn’t be living to tell
Yowza, how did it all come to this?
I refused to sacrifice the head but you insist
I hope this proves my love to you
As I lay in the center of the circle for proof
Yowza, the head began to glow and vanished in flame
When Satan came up, he spoke your name
“This sacrifice is not enough for me.”
And you turned to the only thing you could see
Yowza, I resigned myself to being shoved through the gates of Hell
All’s well end’s well
Almost everything except
You got back together with your ex
Yowza, roses are red and I am blue
One day, I’ll drag you down here, too
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018 at 9:08 AM UTC
I am on the street every day. Holding a chunk of cardboard, standing on the strip of street right in the middle, pretending I’m okay. Every day, I am hungry, chilly, alone. The winters are the worst without a home. The summers are almost as bad, but I can tolerate the weather then. However, in the winter, I am weary and thin. I don’t know how I make it by, no lie. My stomach would scream if it could, but instead it is reduced to lowly growls because I don’t know where in time my next meal stood. Every day, cars drive by, locking their doors, thinking I want more, shutting me out because I am begging. But what would you do?
What would you do if your marriage fell apart, they completely broke your heart, and you didn’t know how to save it? What if you lost your job to alcohol and depression and you can’t recover because you’re hesitating, and you end up thrown out? Thrown out of the small place with the dingy light over it because you can no longer afford the roof over your head- you know you’re dead. Pushed out, shoved out, called out, because higher classes of society lock their car doors at the sight of you, change to the other side of the street too because they think you’re going to cause them harm. How safe they are, in their small bubble without trouble, how nice it would be to live a life just that easy.
The homeless shelters always put me in a box, force me to be something they see me as - it ***** A thief and a lowlife someone who never had a kid or wife, someone who’s beyond hope, someone who wields a knife. And I’m scared because maybe they’re right. Maybe I am the one who wanders out in the night, hoping to give families a fright because desperation overtakes the body when you make this many mistakes.
The Walmart employees alway glance at me, don’t judge what I buy. I’m just getting what I can to get by, so I can stay high and away from reality, but no matter, I can’t escape me. I can’t escape myself and the things that I’ve done but c’mon, maybe you could with some cents - just one.
And maybe at the end of the day, I won’t give up hope. Maybe I’ll buy some patches to stop my habit made of smoke. Maybe one day, I can crawl out of this cold, and maybe right then, I’ll finally be whole.
Feb 16, 2018
Feb 16, 2018 at 9:04 AM UTC
Take a breath and just-
Pause
And think and wait
Just remember, it’s not too late
You can solve this in a myriad of ways
I promise
Feb 11, 2018
Feb 11, 2018 at 8:12 PM UTC
I easily forget things
I can’t remember what I had to eat last
I can’t remember a lot of the past
My childhood was blurry because I was always in a hurry
I was always so busy running and playing tag, avoiding all my mother’s nagging
I don’t easily forget things
I can’t easily forget about people like yourself, your tongue, your teeth, your mouth
Fingertips and hands
Your hand in mine was the only sign I need
I’m so easy to read
I easily forget things
I can’t remember all of the songs I’ve heard
Can’t remember all I’ve learned
I can’t recall what I’m wearing
Ignore all the people staring
I don’t easily forget things
I don’t easily forget things like your smile, your eyes, your hair
How when I wake up in the morning, you’re not there
I easily forget things
Who I am, what I am
What I can do, what I can’t
But I can’t forget you
Feb 11, 2018
Feb 11, 2018 at 8:11 PM UTC