The seasons pour out of my joints and run down every limb.
My leaves grow out of my eyes and mouth and ears,
The branches wrap around every inch of my soiled skin

And she breathes.

I cry easily because
I come from a long line of women
Who spent a lifetime swallowing their anger, their fear and their pain.
They grew old knowing the taste of their own feelings and needs they wished to have met.
They swallowed their sorrow and grief for their own inner child and bred the same habits into new baby girls, creating soft little beings and secretly wishing they'd find a way out.

I cry easily because I come from women who hid their tears and held them back, who held the hands of the men who used those hands against them.
I cry for the women who never understood the feelings they had inside of themselves, and never knew their own strength.
For the women who were diluted and pushed into a box built out of "Love thy husband" and "Obey".
The women who grew up waiting for the day they were handed off to a man who would make her life worth living, and turn her into a real woman by giving her babies to birth.

I cry for them.

I am not this dark room.
I am not the person to continue this cycle of neglect and abandonment.
Quiet closed doors and feeling like
A stranger, creeping into my kids rooms to stare at their faces while they sleep.
I am not getting swallowed up by
My mental illness.
I am not alone.
I am not hopeless.
I am not my father.

I grew up as an invisible child.
The rejection and loneliness became
Familiar comfort.
His manic days were my favourite,
He turned up the brightness.
Was so inspired.
He would read me his poetry,
And even though I knew once it ended
Id be back to neither seen, or heard.
That moment was enough,
& what I spend my life seeking.

I found you in a hand lotion today.
This is the first year since you've been gone and the first year that Ive been present in this life that Ive had such a strong moment, seeing your face in my mind. I forgot all about it, and you. The garden, the pool, the twinkle in your eyes, your beautiful jewellery that always made me feel excited to be feminine, and one day all grown up. With my own lipstick and perfectly curled hair, sitting on my couch, one leg over the other, hands on my lap.
Like a lady.

My teeth are sharp but I don't know how to use them for revenge.
So all they do is cut up my mouth and it's getting to the point where I can't even talk, because all that comes out is a whisper and blood.
You just look away
Put your hands over your ears
And I'm left standing there
Naked for the entire world to see
Looking like I just lost a battle.
Am I fixable at this point?
Or do I just continue this routine that was written for me where I am going from empty to angry to desperate to nothing.

I am prettiest when I am myself.
My skin shows me how much life
I've lived.
And everything has softened
Over the years.
I've done less running away
And more standing strong.
I've done more crying
And spent less days frozen.
My hands are more rough
But my heart is more free.
My bones are louder
But my mind is quieter.

I am prettiest when I am myself.

If I were to do girlhood again,
I'd have more anger.
I'd flirt with kerosene
And encourage myself to light the match.
The bridges would burn and I wouldn't feel one bit of hesitation.
I'd feel the feelings
And scream them at the top of mountains.
Everyone would hear me
And I wouldn't apologize to a single soul.
My parents would give me space,
They would ask for my attention but never assume it's available.
I'd feel alive
it'd be written all over my skin.
And whenever someone asked me about what those words meant, I would tell them.
My tone would be firm, and gentle.
I would expose every syllable
Without fear.
Because being known for who I truly was,
Wouldn't be scary
Like it is now.

My body is not currency
That you can barter for
In return for everyday things
Like being a partner
Or friend.
My body is a gift I choose to give
When I want to feel close to you,
And words aren't explaining how
I adore you.

We can learn this together.

They stitch together an entire coat for you to wear, created with all of their layers
And layers
Of self hate.
disappointment.
hurt.
resentment.

They line it with wool,
And pick out the perfect pattern
That makes your eyes turn to stars
And your skin itch to have it wrapped entirely around you.

Ive started to notice the way the fabric silently pulls a needle and thread through every inch of this skin.
This hurting, dry, raw skin.

I refuse to hand this tradition down to my kids.

I used to look in the mirror and see someone else's body. Their eyes weren't mine and they would mouth words to me, knowing I never learned how to read lips.
It became a silent game of me studying every crack in your face and you dedicating every moment to try and teach me how to hear you.

My mom would tell people I had an imaginary friend, and that it was
"So cute" how I would sit for hours with someone no one else could see.

I never figured out a way to tell her it was just me the whole time.

I woke up half dead once.
Back when time was infinite and I believed in love;
I saw you.
The unbearable lightness of seeing you in your perfect glow,
Everything had stopped.
I was wrapped up in a moment.
Paralyzed, time was rushing through me in a tidal wave of past and present.
Had we known eachother before?
Deja vu blurred the lines between fact and fiction.
My heart sang the song of the universe,
Drowning the rest out.

Yeah. I woke up half dead once.

My body is not a gift
Given to you because
You deserve it.
I will never say
"Good job!"
Or
"Congratulations"
By unveiling my skin and
Offering my insides as a way to say
I am here for just you.

When I touch you,
I want it to be because of an
Unstoppable current of electricity
That needs our limbs to connect.
When I kiss you,
I want it to be because I can't find
Any words
But desperately need you to know
How I feel.

When I am here for you,
Its for me
Too.

I have gone through these 30 years of life trying my hardest to seek out whatever destruction will push me down the farthest into absolute darkness.

And then there was you.

The mandatory coffee break that the law makers of love and heartache and stars floating around my eyes created so we can know what it feels like to float through galaxies and release the pressure of living.

The ache is familiar and terrifying,
All at once.

My childhood was a mixed bag of
Climbing trees
And barbies,
With a handful of fire and brimstone thrown in.
I was taught that men are divine and I make a great support system just being a good woman.

I have 1,001 pieces
That never seem to fit together.
When he owned me,
It felt like I knew what I was.
And that felt nice.
When his words turned from
"I couldn't live without you"
Into
"Ill **** you and myself if you leave"
I thought, wow.
He's so passionate.
I craved that intensity,
Red hot,
Deep in my gut.

It felt like the kind of thrill you get from jumping off the cliff and into the dark water below, all these thoughts about not knowing what's underneath the surface but so excited for that first splash as you break the tension and sink down.
It was like watching a favorite movie for the first time and knowing that everytime I watch it after this, it'll never be the same.

I could never not think about kissing you.
You'd look at me, and if I let myself glance down to your mouth I'd be lost in watching your lips move.
Thinking about the first time you leaned in to kiss me at that stop light, and how it feels when you're laying on my lap and you kiss my thighs so soft.
You made me feel soft, everywhere.

If I could do it all over again,
The kisses, the movies in bed,
The drunken fights, the crying,
Putting my arm around you in public
Hearing you say I love you,
Watching thunderstorms on the deck,
Seeing you look at me like you were so desperate to make it work, but knew there was nothing that could help

If I could do it all over again,
The texts from you that ripped my heart into pieces,
The goodbyes and the last hug I ever gave you.
I'd do it.

There is more safety in the destruction I know than the destruction I don't see coming.

I'd let you do it again.

No one hugs me as warmly as that powder did. He never said no, or that he was too busy, or didnt feel like being touched. He asked for nothing in return.
Those lines were my yellow brick road
Leading to the fantasy of Oz,
A city where I could sing and sparkle
And take long journeys with a natural courage that I never had to steal from someone else.
It was mine, and it was all color.

I dont feel like a human being.
I feel like a
Mother,
Partner,
Ghost.
Everything I hear is an empty noise,
Every touch is painful.
My insides hurt.

There are cracks in the bones
And flaws in the foundation.
They tell me we are so lucky
We have eachother.
But our talks are never honest.
I walk into your home and I feel the furthest away from home.
You think if I put the hypersensitivity back on, and the fawning suit I used to wear it means we are back to being ourselves.
When all it is,
Is love on your terms again.

Thankyou for consistently teaching me to listen to my needs and learn to implement boundaries

Every 24 hours is spent cutting pieces out of myself to give to the people I care for. Creating two new humans has doubled the speed that I slice through each layer. After 6 years of pulling apart and giving away pieces of me that I can never get back, I am left with barely enough to live.
At night, I sit there and look into every crack and dark space, trying to find enough of myself to put together a collage of whatever identity I can find.

Just because he can't love me
Doesnt mean I am unlovable.
Just because I was told I am
Incapable
Doesnt mean I have to stop myself
From being capable.

I am valid.

I didnt want to get to know anyone else,
I just wanted to un-know myself.
The only way I could see that happening is by spending as much time as possible
Diving into new hearts and between new legs, holding onto new arms.

I secretly love that who I am includes more than one personality.
My passion is undeniable
And my heart will feel
Every. Single. Thing.
I love that I am fragile
And also bold,
Ready to speak up before my brain can argue that it's what I should do.
It's messy and even when it's quiet
It's really hard to pull yourself away
Because you're thinking at any minute
A new thing will happen.
And the new thing might not be exciting or even pleasant.
But it will always make you feel something.
Sometimes I will set my glass heart on a shelf that is missing a ***** or two,
Or balance it on a ledge
Just to see if fate is paying attention
And give myself the thrill of not knowing if I am going to break today.
I think I like the excitement and the pain of putting myself back together,
Because everytime it comes out a little different.
When I die I can tell the people in my life that I have loved them as many different people and that it is more powerful than anyone else who will give them that emotion.
My love is magic, excessive, everywhere and expressed in different ways depending on what skin I was wearing then.
And that makes me feel strong,
And special.

I used to walk around
With a tornado of filth
Constantly in my head.
I was made up entirely of
***** words
Like "Addict",
"Victim",
"Mentally ill",
"Emotional",
"Sinner",
"Broken".
Now I walk around as the tornado,
Labelled as
Addict
Victim
Mentally ill
Emotional
Sinner
Broken.
And its ******* beautiful.

I wonder if all the people I ever touched think of me
And I wonder if those thoughts ever actually resemble who I am.
Do I even know what that is?
Not really.
I've set hearts on fire
And breathed air into so many lungs
And I wonder if the way they live their life now is at all attached to even a small memory of what I felt like.

Why am I so obsessed with making sure I disappear into whatever I can find out there.

I don't even like you.

I cant find joy anymore.
I have looked under every rock,
And behind every tree.
Ive searched through fields.

I dont know when she left,
I just remember waking up one morning feeling a little emptier
And a little more lost.

Its been cloudy every day since.

I never asked to be the person our family dysfunction ended with.
I dont want to be in charge of
"Ending the cycle"

Someone else should do it.

Im tired and worn down,
Losing layers of my own skin
Over all of your hurt
Is too much.

Ive always been the softest thing around me and every person who's buried themselves in me never even waited for an invite.

And then you were there
Totally perfect, and different
And I didn't feel worried about what you thought of me.

Then you kissed me just to kiss me.
And you told me I looked lovely.

They pollute me
And divide me
I felt watered down my whole life.

Then you kiss me
Pretty baby
Just to kiss me
Not to bring me to bed.

Everything's all of a sudden
Sweetness
It was simple
I don't wonder
I just kiss you to kiss you.

Yesterday I felt over flowing and whole,
Today I feel like I am too much.
The cycle is forever I guess.

Manic me needs to suffocate for days to feel complete.
Small me needs a safe nest.

The bones are tired.

They're tired and they need you.

Sometimes they separate from body and take their time traveling across oceans and up over mountains,
Coming back to me with arms full of new things.

I'm running out of room.

My organs twist and turn until they settle into one big knot, blocking any chance I had at comfort.

15 days until the death of my ego and I can feel her clawing up my insides, desperately hoping I will choke her up, and back out my throat.

You always know when I am
At my lowest
And most vulnerable.
You crawl in so delicately
With the most peaceful offerings
Of comfort.

I wish you would stop.

I have lived many lifetimes of
Multiple identities,
None of them representing me
Truthfully.
And now I am trying to dig through
These piles of dirt
And find the bones I have
Hidden underneath.
Ive buried every person
I thought I should have become;
The seeds other people have planted
But forgot to water.
They poked holes and
Pushed that life inside of me
Without even asking me if
My soil was ready to nurture
Anything but myself
And the life I was born with.

Little k, you sweet precious being. I will tell you everyday till we die, how your worth is infinite and not determined by other peoples insecurities. Everyday you wake up and decide to continue, you win. Your heart has been broken and glued back together so many times, and Ive never seen anything more beautiful.

Tomorrow it will be 9 months.
9 months without them.
Without injesting whatever chemical
Would make me feel the most
Invisible.
Everyone keeps saying things like
"You must be so proud!"
And "You are working so hard".
But the only words I can hear is
"You are not worthy of this clean life"

It's okay to let your mess pour out over the loosely drawn walls you've placed around yourself,
An attempt to be safe feels good for the heart.
And even though it feels as if
The entire world is looking at what exposed itself,
It's not even true.
The only people who can see it
Are the ones who love you
And can clean it up everytime this happens.
Mess isn't shameful.
Mess is human

Tell me why you think Im interesting and why it draws you to me. Laugh at my stupid jokes. Listen to the words I say. Listen to the words I dont say. Tell me you dont feel that way about me. Tell me you could never love someone like me. Tell me you just want to ****. Remind me that I am merely a prop to be put out on display, for you to stare at and imagine me doing all of the things you could never get your wife to do. I can be that dream girl, the one whos body feels like all of the feelings but never speaks of them.
What did she call it?
Manic pixie dream girl...
I set you up for a good story, that you look back on every now and then when you're up late or lonely or bored. I can be that story about that girl you once held next to you and escaped with. The one who wasnt anything to you, who listened to you talk about the sadness and heaviness that has taken over your life as you slowly made all the proper decisions in the right order.
How you're empty,
And men can't be empty.
So just like its up to you to care for your family and be a responsible adult
It is up to me to fill you up with what
I have left.
Thats what Im here for, I guess.

I'm writing out a bill for the last 25 years of therapy.
Your IOU fell through
And I pretended I didn't keep track.
I abandoned my post and thought
"Thatll do it."
If I put a province between us
We could start over and make up
Our own separate stories about
My childhood.

We could forget about the late nights of talking you off the ledge of all those buildings you built yourself.
Each one closer to the clouds.
You would look at me, tears in your eyes, saying things like
"I love you" and
"Goodbye" in the same sentence.
And I didn't understand how those words could be so close together,
Doesn't one negate the other?
If you leave, was there ever any love?

I'd watch you love these other women who would never be my mother,
And they would eat up every night with hours of phone conversations behind your closed bedroom door.
You'd come to me in love,
Proposals being imagined in your head,
All this beauty after so many painful days of you breaking your heart over and over.

Within weeks you'd be back with me, and we would book another appointment.
I'd sit across from you,
Digesting every word
Making notes for my future loves
So I would know what to do.

Love and leave.
Love and leave.

It is not my job to prove who I am
To people who misunderstand me.
Removing myself from what hurts me
Is a solution, not running away.
I get to choose my family now.

Being small never suited me and being anything besides indulgent and in constant search mode sounds like the worst way to live
So I'm just gonna do the thing I've always done and feel the things I love to feel then feel what I hate feeling and one day when I'm old or in that moment before I fall off a cliff, or walk into the street not noticing the car begging to meet me - I'll just think wow, she really spent her life in the center of the things the rest of them were afraid of.

Sometimes I forget in the moment that at the end of the day when I've spent every spare minute trying to distract myself with another human, I will feel the most empty I've ever felt, even more than the day before.

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in groundhog day,
But not the one with the warm kiss at the end where the people leave connected and have learned how to love again.

It's always the one where I just end up smaller than I used to be, and I can never make enough noise so that the person next to me actually hears it.

I wake up every morning saying there is worth here somewhere in this body and it takes only hours for me to have fully rejected that ridiculous notion that somehow I could have ever been of value.

When Im in a crowd of people
Ive always felt like
I take up too much space.
That I am a woman,
So I should speak in hushed tones
And soft glances.
Never be bigger than those who
Surround you.
Be the laugh track put in so people around you feel that they are funny.
Be kissed,
Get ******,
Keep your body covered,
Agree to their brilliant ideas,
Offer up yourself as
Reward,
Apology,
Validation.

Now when I feel large,
I say "Hello"

Wholesome
Is something I feel only
When Im with you.

Its funny how those scars on my legs,
That remind me of how much pain Ive been in,
Have now been braided into the marks that write out the story of
How my body grew the two greatest
Loves of my life -
Flawlessly and without any of the brokenness I was convinced would easily be passed onto whoever came into contact with me.

I want to throw myself into something that will consume and destroy me.

I used to say
"If that isn't love,
Then I don't know what is."

And then I realized,
I don't know what love is.

I've had some hands that have touched me, break me.
And they live inside of me still.
Sometimes when I listen too closely I can hear everything they said to me and it takes everything I have to remind myself not to listen.
I want to love completely someday and without being afraid.
But every person I look up into I'm worried they have a mask on.
I've seen lovely and beautiful people but all my hands want to do is search for that corner of the mask that's lifting so I can catch it before it scares me again, deeper than before.
A habit I can't seem to break.

Im half dead from comparing myself to everyone around me.
Been blaming everyone but me for this mess and now my shoulders are tired from carrying this bag of tears, slung around my neck by the thinnest piece of thread.

I cant let this **** me.

Itd be nice to talk about whats going on in my head to someone who doesnt talk, and listens instead.

Ive wrapped this rope around my neck hoping that it will pull me out of this dark cavern of a soul,
not thinking about the possibility of it strangling me on the way up.
I crave chaos and fire deep in my gut, I live off of gasoline and insanity.
I grab at whatever strand I can find, tying bows until it looks like the cutest little tangled up mess.

Admitting powerlessness does not =
Giving up.
Asking for help does not =
Weakness.

I will turn this rope into the softest golden thread, and weave in the most incredible love anyone has ever seen.

Theres a girl who lives inside my head
Who tells me what I should do
And when I should do it.
She managed to sew thread into all my joints without me noticing for years.

Now its too late,
Im all set up for the show.
Theres never an audience,
Just us.

Sometimes she puts down the wires
& we sit, she tells me all these things about what will make me feel better, and what will help her feel quiet.

And its true. She gets quiet.
But her actions get louder.