"I want to lose a few pounds"
"I want to love myself"
"I want to be thin"
one step
two steps
three steps
four.
you're in
it's got you now.
probably forever,
maybe longer.
you started with some healthy foods,
but then,
it's harder to eat anything at all
"Make me skinny"
"Make me happy"
"Make me perfect"
the little butterflies of teenage girls,
screaming inside their minds,
fluttering their wings
anorexia is glamour
bulimia is ease
eating disorders are the way to go,
right?
it's so easy
who would have guessed?
distract yourself here,
skip a meal there
but then,
your body starts to feel it
it hurts
you hurt
everything hurts
you mess up
you eat everything you see
your body craves nutrition
you can't have that
you have to get rid of it
stupid, stupid, stupid
how could you be so disgusting?
you read this online once
those girls...
the ones with eating disorders
they eat a lot,
and then they throw it up
one time won't hurt,
right?
it's just once
you feel better,
almost instantly
10 pounds
20
50.
everyone is worried
you seem sick
you look sick
you are sick
they're crazy
you're not "thin"
you're not "happy"
you're NOT "perfect"
you're not sick.
"Recovery will save you"
"Recovery will guide you"
"Recovery will rescue you"
no,
you shouldn't
no,
you won't
no,
you can't
but you have to.
the doctors are everywhere now
then comes weight gain
you can't even look at yourself.
10 pounds
20
67
you're fatter than when you started
but it's not so easy anymore
you keep eating
and eating
and eating.
puking ten times a day,
maybe more
but you're not getting rid of enough
"You look so healthy"
"I'm so glad you're better now"
"You've gained weight, I'm proud"
every mirror is a mental breakdown
you can't be sick
you're fat
you're revolting
you're a pathetic excuse for a life.
lose it,
lose it,
lose it.
tears fill the empty plates,
the ones you used to eat breakfast on...
when you ate breakfast.
you feel trapped
you can't get out
it has you.
it's a cycle, isn't it?
you realized too late
like so many other people.
it's not glamour,
it's not easy,
it's a living nightmare.
"I want to be thin."
"I want to lose a few pounds"
"I want to love myself,"
"But now I can't."
Jan 26, 2016
Jan 26, 2016 at 10:52 PM UTC
the street was as dark as our hearts in a cold October that made everyone shiver until they couldn't feel their toes. it hasn't snowed, but the sun had been asleep for years it seemed. the orange glow from flickering street lights fit our complexions like the shade of lipstick your mother liked to wear to the silly school award ceremonies that even we skipped out on. the night was dark and those lights danced across our skin like we were nothing more than two pale canvases. and that makes sense to me because you had always reminded me of an art exhibit. greens and blues and ***** grays with birthmarks and freckles and scars that were sometimes by accident and sometimes not. they had given your display case the perfect amount of little spotlights because I couldn't see a single flaw. every line was perfectly contoured and the texture of you felt perfect against every inch of my body. I had the sudden idea that I could never reach anything better than what I had in the warm crooks of your elbows. my mind became convinced that you were the Mona Lisa to that small town, and I was only a pencil sketch, but display cases always make things look prettier than they seem and lighting can be deceiving if masterminds know how to angle the rays. I was blinded by those pretty display case beams like I was stunned by those walnut avenue street lamps the night we danced in the dark and you told me about how your mother taught you half the constellations before you were five and that my eyes reminded you of the brightest stars that night. but stars always explode and that's what mine did in the art showcase that was so misleading to me from the start of it all. you had a frame as glowing as the gold streaks of Midas. but somehow, wooden splinters came out of a gold frame the afternoon you expressed in angry screams that you were fine, even though I could see the breaking of your glass heart. you were beautiful, more so than dragonfly wings or water color portraits. you were a new genre, we are a new artistic creation and we belong in galleries, locked up tight because we can't trust ourselves not to fall over or shatter or spill our own colors onto beautiful pieces and end up ruining them. you spilt your paint splatters all over me, didn't you? I saw a masterpiece covered in stardust and I tried to touch it, even though it wasn't mine. I put my fingerprints all over that mess of creativity and genius, and it left a mark on me too... you left a mark on me. my hands hurt and my heart ached and I wondered what kind of chemical they put in those acrylic paints, but it wasn't until I backed away, covered in your greens and blues and dusty shades of gray, coughing up all types of maroon, that I read the sign below your breathtaking display case:
do not touch
Jan 23, 2016
Jan 23, 2016 at 8:31 PM UTC
roaring ambulance sirens
chill me to the bone
they always make me wonder
if you are dying behind those flashing lights
you were never very stable
the strings holding your soul together tended to break often
like the morning you ran
through 5am dusty gravel roads,
until your legs collapsed out from under you
a string breaks
snap
your dad screamed a lot that night, didn't he?
his glass seemed to refill itself
over and over and over again
scotch and whiskey slipped into his words, like always
alcohol strengthened his grip, didn't it?
or maybe the afternoon,
at 2:35pm on a Sunday,
when you filled notebook after notebook
with reasons why you weren't worth everyone's time
snap
the pills they gave you never really worked, did they?
your mother cried in her bath that night
she clenched her hands into fists,
and pulled her head below the water
she almost forgot to come back up
or possibly the evening,
behind white and sterile walls,
that your little brother,
had to say goodnight to you in a hospital bed,
asking if you were sick
snap
his big brother couldn't handle his demons, could he?
he was only nine then,
but your mom didn't tell him
that she found his hero bleeding out,
in their brown two-story house
your father blamed you, didn't he?
it was your fault for being so weak
that's what he said in angry whispers,
the minute your mother left your bedside
could it have been the night,
seven years ago this month,
when your cousin couldn't take the voices in her head
the house was quiet that day
until a gunshot echoed down the stairs
and the atmosphere turned to copper
snap
you didn't fully understand, did you?
the police officers crowded in your aunt's living room
questions and tears and badges,
a monotonous start to your development
angels can never handle being on Earth for very long, can they?
I think it was the twilight,
when the city hall clock said 3:06am,
as you sped past it on your way to the bridge
in tears, hearing your father's voice in your eardrums
"what kind of man shows so much weakness?"
"what are you good for?"
"what a shame you haven't succeeded yet."
his tyrades between liquor bottles always lingered
"you're never good enough"
"you're a waste"
"you're nothing"
snap
you stood on the edge of that bridge, didn't you?
you were ready to do it
you were tired of being sick,
and sick of being tired
but you promised your little brother,
you would help him pick out school supplies
he was going to be a sixth grader,
school was only two weeks away
you hesitated
snap
you got back into your car, didn't you?
you woke up the next day
and pretended everything was fine
spiral notebooks were on sale
your brother bought a new kind of pencil case,
with as many jagged edges as your unstable soul
it's been a year since then
and every time I hear the whining,
of ambulances rushing through town,
I get scared
that your last string finally
snapped
Jan 23, 2016
Jan 23, 2016 at 8:29 PM UTC
your spirit wrapped it's hands around me,
cold fingers with chewed on nails brushing over my collarbones
"you are certainly worth getting to know better."
"you make me realize what I am worthy of becoming."
"you see the good beneath my bloodshot eyes."
demons do not scream
they do not possess children
they do not leave trails of black on your grandmother's white carpet
they kiss you
they lean in to your ear and tell you all the ways you two could be one day
"I want a house, and three girls,"
he would say, his hot breath filling my eardrums
"I'll be a pediatrician, so I can save lives,"
he would tell you, his hand on your thigh
"I'd never leave you,"
he would yell, in between thrusts between your red and gray sheets
lies
it was all a trick
demons climb under your skin and lodge themselves beneath your bones
they seep their ethereal words into your bloodstream so that it can flow straight to you heart,
so that it'll be the first sound in the air when you take out your blades yet again, to release your demons into the atmosphere
they leave the taste of their secrets in your mouth so that they come to mind every time you speak
they break your heart and pour bleach into your eye sockets because if they don't want you then no one else should.
I remember how it felt
to sit on your bedroom floor
I see it in black and white blurs
there used to be color there
but it left with you
"you're the most intriguing girl I've seen in a long time,"
says the boy at the business conference,
he's trying to get you back to his hotel room
"you deserve so much more than this,"
whispers the baseball player,
he's trying to be polite
"I wrote you a song, since you remind me of music notes,"
tongues the musician,
he's trying to stop drinking
they're all trying
trying to be
nice
better
different
so many demons without souls
one put his hat in my locker last fall,
he wanted me to wear it,
I didn't.
one put his arm around me last spring,
he wanted me to taste his lips,
I didn't.
one put his sketchbook in my hands last winter,
he wanted me to realize I was art,
I didn't.
but sometimes you miss demons
one left me because
I wasn't loving enough
one left me because
I wasn't slutty enough
one left me because
I wasn't confident enough
I was
closed off
with closed legs
and closed lips
I missed his smile
but he missed my body
I missed his hands
and he missed where his hands went
I missed his eyes
and he missed my bed
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 9:38 PM UTC
They tell me to write how I feel but all I can think about are all the memories swirling in my head like an outburst of an addict just waiting to happen. And maybe I am an addict. But instead of shooting heroine in dimly lit basements with boys who don't give a **** or doing **** in an abandoned farmhouse off of highway 54 with the greased up girls from the stop and shop corner, I'm addicted to something so much more dangerous. Because instead of costing money or teeth or my mental capabilities, it costs the spirit of my soul. I'm addicted to spending rainy Thursday twilights tossing and turning restlessly under my laced flower covers thinking about how many lips your lips have touched since that far away time when you actually cared about me. I'm addicted to letting my eyes wander over old journal entries from back when this all began, letting myself imagine every picture perfect feature of the devastating war that ravaged my heart. I'm addicted to spending hours mouthing all of the poisoned syllables you breathed into my lungs before every letter and feeling burnt up into flames of gasoline. Before all of those silly, stupid ashes clogged up my throat just enough to silence the sobs of missing you. I'm addicted to driving down that road you took me on, just so I can pretend for a single second that things are almost the same and when my heart stops in a worn down, useless church pew or lying in a sterile, old hospital bed, my parents will shout drugs or stress, and my best friend will cry ***** or pills or a drunken suicide haze. But the doctor will come into the room with his fake empathetic eyes and his white coat pockets full of greed-earned money, and he will say in his calmest, most detached voice, that I, was an addict. And I, was addicted,
to you.
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 7:01 AM UTC
I'm trying to write something beautiful but I can't stop thinking about the way your eyes looked when you told me about your past and I can't stop biting my nails over you even though my family hates the habit. It's like the way your little brother corrects himself whenever he accidentally mentions your father's drinking because your mother told him before he could process it that what happens behind closed doors stays behind closed doors. It's how the thought that you can never be anything less than exceptional is woven into your bones because your parents love boasting about their college-bound son with the baseball talent but they always forget to mention the same green-eyed champion has tried to **** himself three times and hopes that every fire he fights voluntarily might **** him, because maybe then he would die with dignity. It's in these fires that you find yourself because the smoke in your lungs temporarily pushes out your demons just long enough for you to do some good and save someone's life. But it's through these flames that you consider inhaling too much or taking off your safety equipment just to die right there because it would be so easy to just go with the dignity of being a hero rather than to die on your second floor bathroom tile with a pistol in your right hand
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 6:57 AM UTC
One night when I was younger, before I was cracked and bleeding in every crevice of my soul, my father took my mother like she was a rag doll. They always fought, but this was different. They were arguing about infidelity and the price tag on the new stove, and then the volume was so loud my little ears could barely take it. My mother said go, and we were out the door. For a few seconds, minutes, maybe hours, he screamed at her to stay. And before I knew it, his hand was on her throat like he was trying to force the life out of her. It was his house and she was his too and all I could wonder is if this was what true love was; possession. My mother set of the car alarm and we drove down the streets, the music up and her tears flooding down. I tried to tell her that I forgot my bear and I couldn't sleep without him, but she told me to hush and try to stay peaceful. What was peaceful? Was it the way Dad yelled at Mom when she didn't do the laundry like she was supposed to do? Was it the way Mom liked to find happiness with boys that weren't Dad?
My mother and I fled that night, without my bear, and she told tearful stories about how we would never go back. But in a flash, we were home with Dad apologizing with tears and telling her that he only did it because she made him so mad. I didn't understand but whatever he said made Mom say she would stay. Dad took me into the bathroom with his hand on my shoulder and told me how sorry he was and how he would never do it again. I didn't want to forgive him if he hurt mommy, but he made it sound perfectly logical. And I remember, that I could taste his tears. But they weren't salty with sadness. They were artificial, bitter- forced. I looked into his eyes and I knew that those tears were not from his heart, they were from his mind. He smiled and laughed and said, "So do you forgive me, honey?" My throat burned with the truth only I could see, that Dad was an imposter and Mom was a fake trapped in a web of sadness and illogical thinking, but I said what I was supposed to say. "Yes, Dad" My lip trembled because the storm cloud in my mind was getting ready to leak its own tears,
"I know you love Mom. You hurt her because you love her."
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 6:57 AM UTC
people don't truly see a masterpiece until the artist is dead and maybe that's why no one could see her beauty until she was in a coffin
she cried and scratched at the edges of the wooden casing but they could never hear her screams even when she was alive
she was writhing in sadness and terror while he was trying to figure out which brand of gun was the most reliable to shoot and **** an animal, or maybe even a person
the funeral march played and the congregation sang prayers they had never blessed her with when she used to walk through their cemetery trying to find her soul
everyone teared up and were secretly happy because it was not them in the ground and the entire back row whispered about how she ruined herself
she wasted her pretty face and perfect cheekbones with vile injections of poisonous boys
death. it was the only thing she could control, and he knew that. he was inspired by her to end his own existence. it was the only constant.
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 6:55 AM UTC
there's his boy I once met at the corner bookstore across from the liquor store that all the kids bought beer behind
this bookstore had red shades on its door window
maybe to represent the blood of broken hearts that had found therapy inside of its walls
I found this boy writing poetry on a bar-like stool from a leaky black pen that looked like someone had used it and then left it to die
I didn't know what to say to him
hazel eyes that were a little too intense
so I reached into my purse, and I pulled out a pencil
"Here."
"Yours looks kind of broken."
"It's hard to hold broken things in your hands."
he just smiled and laughed
"I would know."
and that was the end of that.
but it wasn't
was it?
I went back to that bookstore later
on a cloudy Thursday afternoon
"Do you have any information on that boy who was here?"
"I was just wondering."
"Tell me if you can."
the clerk laughed
"he's banged every girl on this street."
"his father used to hit him."
"he leaves his poetry books here- in the back."
information upon information
I learned a lot from those books
so let me tell you about this boy
his eyes turned green in direct sunlight
he loved someone who didn't love him back
and his skin was stitched together by the words he wrote on paper
he had spent months under sheets that smelt of various perfumes
he had spent weeks inside of girls who's lipstick smudged on their too-long-nails
nails sharp enough to slit a throat
he spent years looking out windows,
while on his bed,
or maybe a girl who asked him home,
and wondering if the moon had broken the sun's heart when it turned to darkness
no one ever told this boy that you can't destroy love by faking it
the only thing he was really destroying was himself
but writing this is destroying me
and my pen is leaking all over the bookstore's new coffee tables
a church donated them
so I think I'm done
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 12:55 AM UTC
you were just a baseball player with green eyes who went to church on Sunday but the thing is that you don't know from the beginning who is important in your life and who will just be a background character. you stole my heart on a Friday and tore it to pieces on a Saturday only to arrive at church bright and early on Sunday morning with a new girl on your arm. you'd give her a silver cross necklace and a hand to hold and tell her that you had never taken anyone to church before even though my pink flower earring is still under the third pew. you would take her to the abandoned park across the street after the service and spill to her the sob story that is your childhood until you have her almost in tears for you. then after her pity for your sadness is planted in her mind like a poison, you'll tell her it's okay and you're fine and you'll lean in real close, so close that she can smell the cologne that you got for Christmas last year. you'll whisper in her vulnerable ears that there has never been anyone like her and that if she can just save her soul from the evil people of the world, society will be blessed with it one day. you will tell her tales of girls with fangs for teeth who tore out your heart valves and of parents with strong hands and angry words. her eyes will grow wide as you spin the paragraphs with memories of lonely and dark nights where you almost jumped off of that ledge your mind put you on. then you'll lean away from that young girl's ear and you'll look in her eyes and tell her that you didn't jump and you're okay and it's okay. but it's not, is it? that's what she thinks, and you know it. you seem vulnerable, but strong and brave to defend her from all of the toxic waste the world holds. but what this girl, with bright blue eyes and a soul with barely any scratches doesn't understand, is that you are the demons you talk about. maybe once upon a time, in another world, on another street, you were a normal little boy with big dreams and a lunchbox your mother left notes in. but somehow that little boy went away and was replaced by the shadows that lingered under his bed and in the corners of his room painted in blue. the boy with the hot wheels cars turned into a heartbreaker in a baseball cap that didn't care about anybody but the person he saw in the mirror. you'll tell her that her dress looks pretty and you'll go on and on about pointless little things that will make her fall for you. your tongue will wind around syllables that tell her about how you love kids and your favorite food is Oreos and you hit your first home run when you were five. her eyes will see hearts and her innocent little heart will break into pieces for the boy she thinks you are. her clean and new soul will now have cracks and bruises, but it's okay, because she thinks you'll actually stick around long enough to help her heal them. her mind will listen to your heartbreak stories as you sit in the sand of that old park, and she'll mess with that necklace because she realizes that all of these girls who tore you apart are prettier than she thinks she'll ever be. but you already know this. you planned on it. picking out the nicest and most self secure girl with big doe eyes and watching her break down piece by piece, as she continues to think you're a god. it's a game and you always win, no matter what the cards are. this girl will go home and wonder about you and stress herself inside out trying to think of how she can fix the boy with the hole in his heart as you load your gun to put bullets in hers. you'll talk to her all night with sugar on your lips about your favorite constellations and you'll slip in that you ran away once, mentioning it for long enough that she feels your pain, but for such a short second, that she feels shut out. you'll shriek into the receiver in the middle of the night telling her that someone broke into your house to crush your essence but you'll lock all of the doors and windows before she even gets to your gravel road. go ahead and repeat your patterns so that I can sit from the sidelines as it passes by like clouds on a stormy day. show her that you're bleeding inside and your lungs have been punctured and bandage them the next day as if it never happened at all just so she feels the right amount of hopeless. give her the key to everything you've ever been and will be but change the locks the day after. whisper names of loved ones you've lost and tell her of your past as her lips brush yours and make her feel everything you hold like an anchor dragging her down. show her the trees you climbed as a child only to finish by mentioning that you broke your leg in the fall from it's branches. kiss her in September and drop her October because things like that are easy. she'll sit in her room at night six months later wondering why she never passed the test and why someone so sweet would throw her away like that. she'll spin your phrases and quotes in her mind instead of sleeping until she's utterly convinced that it was entirely her fault. she'll write in her notebooks about the perfection that is you and the disaster of her that ruined any chances she had. every time you pass by she will be absolutely tortured with the want to run up to you and scream until all of her organs fail. maybe after a year, she'll finally get you sat in front of her again on a cafeteria stage and you'll spit up every blood soaked lie you can manage. apologies and random nothings will climb up your throat like parasites, leaking into her and latching onto her bone marrow until they drain her dry. she'll laugh with you once again and it'll feel like heaven to her when it's really all a dysfunctional daydream, and as soon as you leave, so will the color from her cheeks. maybe eight months after that she'll start to forget that you ever existed, and she'll finally be able to see dugouts the same way again. but you can sense it. like an animal that can smell fear miles away, you'll come right back and only stay long enough for her to question everything she knows again, then you'll vanish. you can't handle not being in someone's nightmares and dreams, it feeds the fire where your heart was supposed to be. from now on, she always fixes her makeup to try to look like those girls you used to talk about. she always tapes her eyelids shut at night so that maybe she won't see your face. no one with green eyes will look exactly the same, and she hasn't attended a baseball game without thinking of you. her hair will always be brushed, covering her ears so that no one can whisper any lies into her thoughts. but it's all her fault, because after all, you were just a baseball player with green eyes who went to church on Sunday.
Jan 2, 2016
Jan 2, 2016 at 9:58 AM UTC