Step 1: Get out of bed
Step 2: Look in the mirror
Step 3: Practice your smile
Step 4: Eyedrops to hide the red eyes
Step 5: Conceal the dark circles
Step 6: Breathe
The curtains are almost up
Step 7: Lock down the pain
Step 8: Ignore the weight on your chest
Step 9: Silence the screams inside of your mind
Step 10: Choke down the sobs
Step 11: Ignore the stinging in your eyes
Step 12: Swallow past the tightness in your throat
You’ve put on this show a million times
Step 13: Don’t let them see
Times up. Curtains up. Camera rolling

I walked out in the rain

Unlocked my car

A yellow 76’ Mercedes Benz

Opened the door and just sat

The smell of dust and leather mixed

I put my key in

Heated up the diesel and started it

I got out of my driveway
And just drove

With one hand on the wheel
The other on the shift

I really didn’t care
Where I went

The rain hit my windshield
And tears hit my cheeks

I couldn’t stop crying
I couldn’t stop

I didn’t have a reason to cry

So why am I?



I pulled over
And sobbed into the steering wheel
For no reason

For no reason..

flatten your tongue
slip it between your teeth

n.

your little lips
forming an elipsis

o.

put them together
and may you declare
a word you’d so carefully deny—
no.

you spell it out
on table tops
shout it
from the rooftops

and when cursed hands
seek to defile your shrine
may you exclaim
"i am mine"

If you saw yourself at a dance
Would you ask yourself to dance?

Would you love yourself enough to say yes

Would you accept yourself enough to say yes

Or

Would you say no

And dance alone?