Connected by one stem,
Two wholes glistening together
Red in the warm spring sun.
I lower them to my lips,
And consume the both whole.
I pick the empty stem
And tie it in my mouth.FV
You bought me cherries,
every holiday.
I was never allowed to eat too many
But on that day I could have as many as I liked.
The day you died, I was tongue tied.
Everyone picked me up from school,
And I thought it was just because of Valentines Day.
But on the day that love usually comes, love left.
When I tried to wear red to your funeral,
My mother scolded me.
She said it was the devils color.
At the funeral, I was so mad you had left me.
I felt forgotten.
Afterwards, they presented me with a gift.
They had found them in your fridge.
Shining in the warm spring sun, I felt you with me.
Connected by one thread,
Two souls glistening together.

I’m learning to jump through rain puddles again,
even though I was afraid that some were full of glass.
I am starting to believe in superheroes again even though in between then and now,
I realized that heroine and ****** weren’t spelled much differently.
I’m starting to put the bandaids on my own scathed knees,
and whisper comforting words to myself when facing my dark, empty closet.
My social anxiety sits on my shoulders, but I am tipping him off of me,
and finding the childish ability to create friendship by just simply saying
“Hi, I’m B. And we’re friends now.”
The notes that I find in my lunchbox are the ones I left for myself,
saying “You got this! P.S. I hope you enjoy your fruit cup.”
Grey skies have always clouded over my mind,
but today I bought a rainbow kite and flew it through dusty, dreary weather in the park by myself.
I have been feeling so low,
that I forget how good it felt to climb a tree and be up so high.
There are still glow in the dark stars hanging above my bed,
that remind me even though I can’t see them, the real ones are always above me.
I have been so concerned with changing,
that I forgot the power of regaining.
When somebody else makes you feel inferior,
and you believe yourself to be less than you use to be,
remember that you once thought dandelions were flowers,
until somebody else told you they were weeds.

I have been depressed. I will not say am. This is a six year ongoing illness that is formed itself into a personality trait, and now an uncomfortable, casual day to day topic.
I wish I could take the heaviness out of the words “I want to **** myself.” because they have never felt like a heavy sentence to me. They are words that string themselves through my brain at least twice a day and occasionally can be formulated into joke at my expense.
I tried to **** myself when I was twelve. It was a two week long ordeal. I was a hospital project for a week, an out of home charity case for a week, and after that, it became a running joke.
“Do you still have a few screws loose?”
“Are you still a basket case?”
“How many pills you think you could swallow?”
Over six years, I have become a great actor. I am best at holding my tongue, swallowing my spit when my throat is closing, and pretending like I am breathing steady. I often laugh in the face of my problems and I distance myself from people when I feel rocks sitting on my chest so they don’t smell the rot of a dying conscious. I have never been untruthful either. Just honest in a way that wears a theatrical mask and relinquishes an audience from an awkward state of “wow, I’m really sorry.”
But some nights are the farthest things from jokes.
Some nights are all choking up on words that don’t make any sense and some days are “nobody actually likes you.” Some days are not having enough energy to do laundry or dishes and then  hating yourself because how could you, you’re so lazy. Most nights are complete self hatred and manic heaving into a wet pillow while your brother sleeps quietly in the next room.
The worst thing about depression is that it’s so uncomfortable. It’s become such an awkward conversation to me. It’s like coming out as something that nobody has ever seen before until it’s living in front of you. It taints everything I do with a feeling of disbelonging with the people that love me because I don’t believe that my depressed presence is comfortable enough for others.
But I am trying. Tomorrow morning, I will wake up to a sun that still shines, even if it is covered by clouds and I will still be depressed. I will pick up a book that  I haven’t started, and wait in a sitting room full of other people who are emotionally sick. I will be the same person that I am, and have been. And I will know that right now, I am also trying very hard to become so much more.

does hamburger meat stick together because it is still searching for the ghost of it's bones?
in college, i worked in a factory.
i trudged to work every monday morning at five thirty and put on gloves
to plunge into the sticky mess of beef that i weighed and clipped and submerged in.
the meat sticks together and bleeds into the same palm, which is my own.
i am livestock.
i am a nonsensical sticky mass of fat that is being pulled apart by another.
although i am trying to pull myself back together,
the bones i clung to were yours.

and here i am again
at the intersection
of pedestrian language
& old wives tales
swallowing gum
like 7 year memories
opening umbrellas inside
cause i can't seem get away
from all of this rain
i ******* with my left hand
cause i was told
back in highschool that
"it feels like someone else is doing it"
it gets me wondering
about the difference between
losing you and finding out
that some one else found you
or my sleep
or lack thereof
its starting to tear me apart
i keep having this dream
where you are in
an unfamiliar body of water
trying to wash my poetry
off of your hands
or the one where
something happens in my chest
every time you sit
on someone else's bed
i'm tired of feeling like something you've misplaced
but don't have the heart
to look for anymore
tired of you saying my name
like you're trying to bury it
i'm tired of wondering
if you can tell the difference
between the absence
of my voice & silence
the other day
i almost started sobbing
at work when a woman
asked me about
our equipment
i was explaining how
things come apart
and almost mentioned your name
it made me think
of how you used to say
things like "what would you do
if i showed up on your doorstep
one day?" now, i haunt
the windows in my house
i don't leave for weeks at a time
i sit on the porch like the dog
you didn't shoot behind the shed
the one that refuses to die
until you come home again
i told somebody once, that
you didn't even know
what my voicemail sounded like
i wonder if they thought
it was because you
are so important that i never
let it ring that many times
before picking up
or if you dont know
what it sounds like
because you've never called
you can't be the ****** weapon
and the search party
i'm tired of all the seats
to the ferris wheel in my chest
being empty
tired of your voice
being the one i look for
in abandoned places
that one sound i beg
to bounce back
down vacant hallways
i just seem to stand there
in all of that quiet
like someone looking for a mistake
on an eviction notice
so i guess the hardest part
isn't letting go
it's forgetting
you ever had a grip
in the first place
and since you've been gone
i wonder if when
you pushed yourself away from me
you used your left hand
so it felt like someone else did it

Sometimes my mind runs,
so my feet walk.
My brain is an unsorted file,
and my body is a disconnected server.
There are moments in life where I am so in love with it all that I cry.
Moments when I am so upset, I laugh.
I can not fully understand the loops that my mind takes
over and over.
But I still ride along them.
When I was younger, I use to be so scared of the mess in my brain.
But the truth is,
I am full of clutter.
I am the home of loved objects that is messy,
and lived in.
I am a cloud of multiple thoughts
that lead me to sing at the wrong times.
Love harder than I should.
Feel every emotion at once.
We are all cluttered boxes.
I promise you,
you are messy
but full of love.
And I promise you,
we will all be pulled
from the attic
and taken
back home.

Theres no use in pretending that I don’t think of you often.
But there isn’t any use in telling you if you don’t feel anymore.
I have no words to say other than
“Please, don’t do this.”
But i will swallow them and say
“Hello, whats your name?”
Your absence is everywhere,
in strangers that have done me no harm.
God gave you a common name,
so that I could choke every time
I meet with it again.
I need to know that I will find better,
but tonight I’ll find home in the middle of a hurricane.
A hurricane
with
a
common
name.