My mother tried to send herself to hell,
and in turn, my sister did the same.
Only, my sister succeeded,
at 11:03 am, there for the eyes
of her five year old child.

You see, I’ve never known poverty
or what it’s like to drive a used car
because we bathed in money
to drown out the sorrows,
and we tossed our spare change in garbage cans
to try and lose the devil.

What if Shakespeare’s not right,
and all the demons aren’t here?
What if my sister plunged herself into a hole
filled with all of her darkest fears?
I swear to God himself, I hope he’s right,
because I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,
I can’t even imagine.

I thought I was fine,
but I was only coaxed in
to the lies upon lies,
the same lies my father drowned in.
My habits are like chained skeletons -
they’re bound to the ground,
but also to me so
by the time they decay
and let me be,
it will also come my time
to host a party themed with black.
So welcome, my old friends,
I thought you’d gone and left town.
Stay for awhile, please, let yourself in,
before I gather enough strength
to push you back in your coffins.

You are a lifeguard.
I jumped in the pool today,
and I almost didn’t
come back up for air.
I thought of your hands on her hips
and his hand smacking my face,
leaving spots and scars
I’d have to conceal for weeks.
I thought of my mother crying
all alone in her bed,
and my father
with his face buried in
that other woman’s hair.
I almost didn’t
come back up for air.

I did, though I was choking
and coughing and wishing I didn’t
as I tried to dispel water from my lungs.
You are a lifeguard
because the months
you spent tracing and kissing and healing,
guarding my heart against days like this,
whispering, breathing, sighing at
one, two, three in the morning,
‘I love you, I love you, I love you’
all came rushing back
and reminded me
that I am not weak
and I don’t waste time,
and that I don’t need you
because you could never save me -
you guard hearts
but He saves them.

Before we leave in twenty-one days,
you should know that I don’t blame you
for all those times you thought you let me down.
I used to dream that my friends and lovers
were matured maple trees and would
awake to find they were always saplings.
I don’t blame you, I don’t blame you, I don’t blame you,
so please don’t blame yourself.
I’m a hard person to please.

All those times, you tried to gently brush my face
but then pecked, pecked, pecked
with your questions -
“How are you feeling today, love?"
I’m sorry because I never had the energy
to talk about it, or you, or life,
or how it was the hottest summer in years
or how I never really got over the last boy
I kissed, or how I locked myself away for two days
with Fevers and Mirrors on repeat
and a bottle of ***,
or how I got so scared of nightmares,
but not as scared as I was of myself
so I bought three more bottles of Jack
just so I could stay too drunk
to find where my mother kept the key
to the drawer with all the knives.

That wasn’t your fault, although you didn’t help
by planning adventures and conversations
and counting constellations without me.
You didn’t help by running away with the
hand of the last boy
I kissed when I closed my eyes.
It’s okay though, I’ve never wanted people
who didn’t want me.
Don’t blame yourself, please, because
it was me, it was me, it was me.

I needed you so much closer
than you were
but it was me, because I never trusted you
or told you about my feelings
or gave you a chance to care for me,
and I never told you why I drank
so much on weekends,
or why I lost twenty pounds in two months.
All of that was not you,
it was me, it was me, it was me.

An explorer never stops exploring.
If they do, they cease to exist,
to be, to live, to be free.
An explorer has to explore,
so what happens when they don’t?

I never wanted to stop searching,
but after two years
of contradictions,
when I asked God to heal my heart
but subversively asked you to break it,
I finally ran out of supplies.

I had to stop breathing light into holes
that you wouldn’t let me tent in.
I had to stop crying at dusk,
telling Him I needed Him to save me
from the jagged rocks I fell on,
and the game of Russian Roulette
I liked to play with the pistol I found buried
under your sand pit, just south of the stream.
I had to stop waking up each morning,
proclaiming I didn’t need Him,
just you, just you, just you.

Just one more mile,
one more night,
one more cave,
one more newly drafted map.
I can’t stop exploring,
because as much as I don’t want to live,
I do not want to cease to exist.

This is the only advice I’ll ever give:
you cannot fall in love with people
who don’t know how to love,
so please, for the sake of him,
and your mother, and expensive therapy bills,
don’t even try.

You can love him, all you like
but you cannot fall in love
with him. You can fall in love
with the idea of him, and fall in love
with the idea of finally fixing him,
and his arms wrapped around you
while you sleep, chasing away the nightmares
that started when you met him.

Love, you deserve a person who
will make you see that the Sun is ready
to heal you all over again each morning,
and who will open your eyes the right way:
with kisses and a cup of tea, someone who will
try their best to love your friends, your family,
and the stranger carrying their groceries.

Don’t allow him to keep
any more pieces of your already cracking heart.
He doesn’t deserve them, not yet.
If he learns to love, and love himself, and learns to
be with people without nearly destroying them in the process,
then rejoice, because you can heal together.

But he doesn’t want help, he doesn’t want you,
you cannot fix him - you can love him, and please do,
I encourage it, but do not fall in love with him
and don’t think you deserve someone better,
because you will not stoop to be bitter and petty,
it’s only that you deserve
someone who is ready.

I know, you’re sorry,
stop telling me you
want to hate yourself
for what you did to me.
I know, I told you I’d be okay
without you.
I suppose it wouldn’t help
if I told you
the nightmares started again
after you left.
It took me eleven months to
finally free myself from you
on the first go around,
and now that we’ve tried and
lost for the second time in two years,
just know it might take me
twenty-two months
just to let someone
kiss me on the cheek,
and touch my scars,
and say,
‘I love you, I love you, I love you.’

Stop asking to see me,
if you’re done loving me.
Don’t tell me you care about me,
even if you do.
I’m trying my hardest to climb out of your vines,
but every time you ask,
if we’re going to be okay,
another vine wraps around,
because there is no more we -
it’s just you and I,
and the cord that tied
us together has been frayed
for the final time.

I stretched myself
into a line so thin that I lost myself
along the way somewhere between you and him.
I became numb to the fact
that my mother’s cancer was spreading,
and I never said ‘I love you.’
and I stopped forgiving my friends,
for all the times they forgot or didn’t care
I couldn’t handle crowds,
and razors, and that I never slept
when I was alone in my bed.


When he told me he could never
want me they way I wanted him to,
I felt something for the first time in eight months.
But whatever I felt was not for him
it was him handing the piece back to me
only so it could ricochet off of the
Pacific and the thousands of miles between us,
because as hard as I try to rip it back,
and seal it to his heart with kisses and *****,
it will always come back to you

I knew I promised I’d keep writing,
I don’t break promises,
so I’m writing,
but you don’t know that.

It’s not that I don’t want to tell you,
it’s only that the leaves started to fall,
and I started to fall in love with old flames and blades,
so I asked God,
if He would please,
put eleven deadbolts on my heart,
and then toss the key in the Thames,
just so I could save myself from you.

My heart is healing
and soon won’t need such protection.
Don’t worry, He can craft new keys,
and don’t even think,
not even for a second
that I want anyone but you
to slowly take off the locks,
one by one, slowly,
one, two, three…eleven.

I promised I’d keep writing,
and I’m writing, and please just know,
that even though the keys sunk to the bottom
of the river, don’t even think that means
I didn’t try eleven times every day
to rip the eleven deadbolts from my chest
just to get closer to you.

When I was fifteen I started kissing
every single boy who held my hand,
because holding hands was simple, innocent, lovely.
How could anything but gentleness
come from a boy who just wanted to hold my hand?

My biggest fear used to be
failing to see the beauty and goodness in the world,
now my biggest fear is failing to see the world
for what it is, and trusting people
that would, without remorse,
run rusted, ragged, knives
through my ribcage.

I don’t hold hands with boys anymore,
because I refuse to redefine what it means
to hold someone’s hand,
so instead,
I’ll redefine myself,
and my lovers,
and redefine who is allowed
to hold my hand.

You’re as tempermental as the thermostat
in my grandfather’s farmhouse,
always bouncing between freezing and scorching,
even when it’s a steady temperature outside.
You’re working on that.

You’ve never been in love,
but you told me you would be
as soon as I let you kiss my scars,
and promise there would be no new ones.
I’m working on that, too.

There must be a reason
for which clichés
became clichés.
Those words and the way they intertwine
must’ve resonated with so many people
as to wear them out and lose their meaning.

But, they have not lost anything
because words don’t decay;
they are infinite.
So, believe me when I say
that I don’t want to live another moment
without you.

Please listen, I’m telling the truth
when I whisper that my heart
has finally found a home with you,
and that you are the best thing
that’s ever belonged to me,
and that I’m jealous of you

half as much as the King is for His creation,
and believe me, that’s more than enough.
Please, understand that I believe
that clichés haven’t lost their depth.
So, when I say I would give you everything,
I mean it with all that I am.

What if I told you I was ready,
and that I finally learned how to bear the burdens
of the world and not bend my back to the point of breaking?

What if I told you I think there’s a reason,
we shower each other in kisses
every time we open a bottle of whiskey?

What if I told you that
I haven’t been happy in eleven months,
but I was close enough when I woke up with your arms around me?

What if I told you I’m sorry for all of the times
you tried to touch me and I flinched,
what if I told you I was ready?

I fervently hope with all
the burning passion
of the Sun,
that one day my smile
will reach my eyes.

So that you won’t have
to gaze into empty tombs
and pretend you see
meadows instead.

Please, try to understand
why I couldn’t be there.
I’ve been wrapped
in chains
for nine months
and I’m just now learning
how to squirm out alive.

I pray with all the
hope and optimism
I have left that you will
hold my hand
and expect nothing more,
and that you’ll let me stand
on my own, because
you are not
my Savior
but I wouldn’t mind
if you tried to be.

It’s okay, I understand that you
think about holding her hand and
her being the first person you let inside.
I understand that you will eventually push her away
because you are the most difficult part of the puzzle
and the piece needed to solve it has to be a complete
antithesis to everything you are.
I’m sorry, love, but her puzzle piece
is almost the same as yours,
she can help you, but she can’t solve like you want her to.

It’s okay, I understand everything,
so don’t worry about me.
I can handle being your friend.
Would you like to know why?
It’s because nothing could possibly
ever come close to shattering my will
to love again as you did. You can’t
destroy my heart and leave it in more
pieces than you already have. I have learned,
and grown, and have already glued it back together
with an anti-venom against your poison.
Anti-bodies flow peacefully around my healing heart
and attack and burn every single fleeting thought
of you so that you can never possibly break me again.

So, yes, I think I can handle just being friends.

I wasn’t lying when I told you
I never learned how to love myself.
I’m not blaming anyone, it’s only that
my mother screamed at her reflection
and only God himself knows where my father was.

I loved many people
truly, I loved them as I love
the lake and her loons,
and the Moon and her wolves,
I just never learned to love myself.

I never understood why you could tell me
to throw away my scissors and razors and shot glasses.
I only understood why I could cry
when you wouldn’t throw away yours.
I never learned how to be okay.

I only learned fleeting and fickle,
lonely and lost,
I learned seeping and searching,
because when she picked up
her kitchen tools - I did too.

Please, be patient, don’t say
that you love anything about me.
I know, I know I’m stripping clouds
from the sky when I’m telling you
not to love me, but I’m only saying not yet.

Not yet, love; I need you
(and I don’t need people) but
I need you to wait for me
Please, for me, be patient
because I’m learning how to love myself.

I never believed you when you said
that you were a wolf in sheep’s clothing,
until now.
You are too poisonous to be anyone’s cure;
did you know that I didn’t
need anyone until I met you,
or that before I never once
cursed at the stars because
I forgot what it meant
to love myself?

Please stop whispering
my name at three in the morning
and weaving Foxglove laced threads
through my heart
and don’t even think
about kissing my hands
or murmuring your darkest secrets
while you sleep next to me because
you don’t need me
and I’m as tried and tired
as my grandmother’s splintering rocking chair
of you needing you.

You are not mine,
you were never mine,
not for seven days
or seven hours but
I felt like you were mine
all those times
when we would lie under my favorite apple tree
and we were careful not to touch hands
and you told me all those things
you kept hidden from everyone else.
Why did you tell me all of those things?
Be honest.

I was so careful not let
my cheek brush yours
when I hugged you,
and I never looked at my phone
before I fell asleep or when I woke up
because you had already grown like dandelions
in every part of my life, and I wanted
to be careful that you were not
the first thing that crossed my mind every morning,
and the last thing I thought about before I finally
drifted off into sleep, ensuring that you’d
always haunt my dreams. I was so careful
to not let myself
fall in love
with the idea
of you.

(But I did anyway.)
(Maybe I wasn’t so careful after all.)

I absolutely hate planes
but I love airports.
It’s because I hate sloshing stomachs,
empty eyes, and broken bones
but I love freshly cut sunflowers,
kneading bread, and healed paper cuts.

No, I am not okay
because I’m a bush airliner
and you are an entire airport;
I am constantly failing to make myself
into something lovely,
just a landing pad.

I can’t make myself into a home
or even find a place to land
because the harder
I try, the higher I fly, and believe me when I say
I do not like
to fly.

I only want to land
somewhere new
with you. I want to be loved,
I do, I promise, and I promise
that I don’t break promises
like planes break bones.

Everywhere you kissed, my skin burned
but, you quickly backtracked
and healed my skin with your hands.
I should’ve stopped and warned you
that it wasn’t okay for you to reopen wounds
that weren’t your fault
and then heal them all at once,
but everything was blurry and slurred.
I didn’t mind.

My heart and my mind constantly let me know
that they don’t enjoy being at war with each other.
I would like to relieve them,
but I don’t know who to let win.

(Please, don’t kiss me like that ever again.)
(I don’t know what I want.)

He doesn’t owe me the very breath I just savored
so I yell at the stars,
“I think He owes me a favor.”
He does not.

Yet, there's mercy.
Even more, there's love,
and still I spit
on jewels wrapped in burlap
I don’t need You.

What more, I plead and bargain
for light to peak through a crack
in the crevice of your soul
that cannot feel, nor love
because precious, precious jewels wrapped in burlap
do not compare to an explorer’s find of Alexandrite
in the cave I call your soul.

A fool, an explorer – one in the same,
there was not one jewel in burlap,
but many.
What imprudence! I still long for
one glimpse of Alexandrite
hoarded under hate and lies,
deception and malice.
What nerve! To demand for
light to leak in caves
that are not mine to reconnoitre.

An explorer is a demitasse
for when she is graced with eternal diamonds
she selects coal instead.

I’m trying harder than I ever have before
here, today, now
to **** you in all at once,
and then eject you from my chest
with the force of eleven crumbling mountains.
I don’t want to know you anymore
and I want
to forget how you stammer when you’re excited
and have a closet full of comic books, but you
have a whole bedroom filled with cracked skeletons,
as if skeletons weren’t broken enough already.

Today, here, now is the last time
I will wash you out of my hair,
and use your first name in poems,
it’s the last time I’ll let my heart palpitate
when you mention her name.
Today, here, now is the last time
I’ll breathe you out, slowly but I promise you, today,
and I swear to God, it may take eleven shots
of ***** chased with ***, but today,
I will inhale and exhale you
for the last time.