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’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.

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.

You say I never write poems about you
so I'd like you to know:

I'm very much
in love
with myself.
I don't need you to crawl into my ribcage
and kiss all the places you think are broken.

But I wouldn't mind
you all over and under
my skin.

The urge to run away to a seaside town,
To let the salt air peel the paint from the front of my house.

The urge to settle, to let it sink in, to decorate my front porch.
The urge to let my mind rest and work until my back's sore.

The urge to love you
And to be well.

In that salt air town,
Where everyone knows my name.
Most importantly,
The urge to throw it all away.

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 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.

You’re the final rope
that’s been cast out to me
in the Northern Pacific
and I can’t feel my hands,
and I’m pretty sure there’s tiny icicles insides my veins,
and all I can think about is
how peaceful it would be for the ice
to make it’s way to my heart.

I can hardly feel my pulse.
I don’t want the rope,
take it away,
don’t you dare pull me to safety.
What’s my name again?
I can only remember yours.
No, I swear to God himself, I’m never grabbing that rope.
Let me rest and wash ashore far away from you.
I warned you, I always told you, it got harder to breathe
away from you.

I need you,
I need you,
I need you,
but it’s far too cold for me
to want 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.

I have over two-thousand poems
free of the word ****,
so believe me, I don't say ****
because it's fun,
it's an emotion, but yet,
it's a social construct.

Don't tell me he didn't call me and scream,
over and over into the phone,
at 4 am,
"****, I ****** up
I'm so sorry, ****.
I swear to God,
I'll never **** up again,
just please don't ******* leave me
because you're the only ******* thing
I have left."

Because he did.
And sometimes,
after you find out
he just can't keep his lips off of
that girl's face,
the only word that comes out
is ****.

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.

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.

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.

Don't worry about him,
he doesn't love you
and he never did.

That's okay, love.
He's not full of hate and lust
just because he fell in love with someone else.
It's not his fault,
and it's certainly not yours.  

It's strange, I know,
that you don't scream or cry or even frown
because you can't feel anything at all.
It's four in the morning and you're drinking
his favourite tea and trying to keep your heart
beating without his name resonating throughout your chest -
and you can't do that yet, but you will soon.

I know it's hard
and all the bones in your body
sometimes ache with loneliness -
just don't think of him.

I know it's not much,
but think of how lovely your hands look
when you're holding your favourite mug of tea.

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.

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.)

Conor Oberst said
"I want a lover I don't have to love.
I want a girl who's too sad to give a ****."
And I'm sorry I think it's romantic
to be that girl.
I'm sorry I'm so bad at changing.
I'm sorry I can't love you more.
I have to leave, because the outcome of us is always this:
broken phones, empty bottles,
and endless drives at four am
when we both aren't taking
because we can't talk without screaming.

I'm sorry I'm too sad to give a ****.
I always told you I hated beginnings because beginnings have an end.
You're the most beautiful thing to ever happen to me.
This is the end.
I'm sorry.

I've never wanted people who didn't want me.
But I know one day you won't want me,
and I'll still want you.
I'd leave right now if I didn't love you so much,
I make your eyes light up when I say your name.
I'll keep adding scars to my heart as long as you are happy.

I wish your feelings for me wouldn't drown,
but they will.
You'll find a girl who has a stronger heart and a sounder mind.
It's okay,
I love you.
I'll stay with you for now.

I've stopped writing the way I used to,
because I've stopped feeling the way I used to.

I can't write the same,
my mind's changed quite a bit.  
I've gotten much older, you see.
I'm the not the same I used to be.

People are not all kind, wandering, lost souls
as I once liked to believe.
Life was happier then,
innocent.

Rural dirt roads bring me quiet joy,
they remind me of my childhood
but they're not realistic, are they?  

The world cannot be all beautiful trees
and unkept dirt roads.

We must advance.
We must get used to highways and airports and cities.

They world is growing,
7 billion people, is it?
The time of innocence is gone.

I don’t want you to know that
I haven’t slept in three days,
I haven’t eaten in two,
and I’ve put five hundred miles on my car,
because I couldn’t bear the thought
of the world moving faster than me.
But I’m sure you can tell,
here, at 2 am,
because my eyes are black and sagging
as you scream that you’ll never, ever
again put your lips near another girl’s face.
It’s okay, I’m sure it felt nice
to hold someone’s hand
that wasn’t shaky and bruised
from clinging to something that wasn’t theirs.
I’m sure you can tell,
It’s okay,
and really, I do hope that you’ll keep your lips
the hell away from her face,
not because I love you
(even if I do)
but because I hope that girl never does
anything deceitful enough
to deserve you.

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.

Don’t kiss me.
Unless you first understand that
I’m fine,
I’m not broken,
but I will break your heart,
(I don’t want to, but I will).
I don’t do commitment,
I do drunken kisses, picnics under trees,
trips to Paris, and sleepovers
in those tents we made when we were kids.
If we fall in love in the process,
that’s fine.
I’m fine,
(you’ll be fine, too)
but I won’t stay.
I’ve heard the sound of too many
hearts breaking through thin walls.
I promise (I think),
that will never happen to me.

So, don’t kiss me.
Not here, not ever.
Unless you’re good at goodbyes
and can cut strings cleanly
(without frayed ends)
when everything we ever had
screeches to halt.

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

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.

And you loved him so much you often forgot how to breathe,
One, two, three, exhale.
And you thought missing him at night made you think
of all the ways your insides can twist and scream and bleed.
And now you always start sentences with "and" because you're afraid of beginnings because beginnings have an end.

And you loved him so much, but
you walked in at 2:03 am,
you came home 30 minutes early
and his hands were in her hair
her lips were on his face
and he pushed her off, of course,
he didn't love her,
he loved you,
****, he ****** up he ****** up,
he's so sorry,
he promised he'd never hurt you, ****.

But it's 2:03 am
6 months later,
and you remember how to breathe
and his eyes only show you all the ways a heart can break
and he calls you at 2:03 am
he ****** up, he's so ******* sorry,
and you know, he'll never **** up again,
it was just ***, ******* ***.

And you miss him,
and his arms are empty but you want them anyway.

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.

I can’t give you lessons in romantics,
but I can tell you how to fall in love
with a heart that doesn’t want you.
I can tell you that you’ll move on,
but never completely, never completely
if you stick around too long.
Hearts aren’t too different from bones,
when you break them,
they never heal quite right.
Don’t go back there, love,
it gets harder every time.

You’ll wash him out of your hair
for five weeks, then months, then years.
If you’ve haven’t told him,
tell him, *******, tell him.
You already know the answer.
He doesn’t love you
he doesn’t love you,
anymore than trees love the leaves they
shed each autumn,
crisp, letting them fall,
decomposing, buried under snow and lies.
He doesn’t care.
Tell him.
You know,
you need to tell him,
or you’ll taste his name
in your blood and on your lips
until you wash your hair
for the final time.

Once upon a time,
my father and mother
tied themselves together
with vows woven under the roof
of a tiny church, and rings glued
onto their fingers.

Ten years later,
the vows were frayed
and the rings cracked
and fell off of their fingers
in shattered pieces.
Broken walls, ****** knuckles,
and bad words I wasn’t allowed to say.
They hushed and hushed me,
but I was only seven years young,
and still I was old enough to know
the screaming and fighting
would never, ever cease until
the papers were signed
and we moved seven states away.

I was only seven years young
and I made myself a promise,
I would never end up like my parents -
I would not end up like them.
I would not end up like them.
So, I will never fall in love with anyone,
not even myself,
and definitely not with him.

I forget what it’s like
to have my heart beat freely;
you’ve always controlled my blood flow,
squeezing blood with your palms
through my arteries,
softly suffocating -
pump, pump, pump.

I don’t know how it feels
for my stomach to make its way
up my throat, only when I had the flu.
Not every single day, when I see you
reaching your hand towards that girl’s heart
while you distract her with your lips on her face.

I haven’t forgotten how to kiss my father goodnight
and how to spend time alone in the trees.
I know what it’s like to heal a broken heart,
but please, promise me, before you reach in
and take her heart with your left hand,
release mine from your right.
Don’t worry about sealing it back in my chest,
I can do that just fine.
Just drop it right there,
I want to stitch back in what’s mine.

A) I'm tired of lists
and writers who can hardly breathe
when they wake up in the morning
telling me how to wash him out of my hair,
and how to hug my father when I'm sad.
I don't have a father.

B) They never tell you how empty you'll feel
when you finally leave him. It's for the best, you know,
you deserve someone who loves you. Not that he didn't.

C) What the **** am I supposed to do or choose or say?

D) You can fall in love with yourself,
but that's not a prerequisite for love.
You are deserving of love regardless
of where you are in your journey.  

E) Stop listening to people who tell you
boys don't fall in love with sad girls.
You don't want a boy, you want a man,
and he will fall in love with you - a woman.
Your depression does not define you,
you are so much more than that, and he knows.

F) Most of all, do not listen
to your friends
that try to explain life to you
in lists.

Someone told me
you can't write (p)oetry ab(o)ut things
you don't want to romanticiz(e).

So for a long (t)ime
(because of w(r)ong people like (y)ou)
I d(i)dn't write drunk,
becau(s)e the(n) I c(o)uldn't
guard my feelings.

But now I'm drunk as hell
and no(t)hing in my life
is close to romantic
and I don't have to explain to you
why (b)oats, oc(e)ans, and words
are the only things
that e(a)se my open wo(u)nds.

I don'(t) have to tell you why
I don't scream or cry or f(i)ght
when I think about how many of my (f)riends
killed themselves.
I write instead,
and it's not romantic.

I am not
in love
with words.

I am
in love
with them
and they're no longer here,
breathing, holding my hand,
and singing me songs about rivers
and how we'll always find each other.

But we won't,
because there's not a
single f(u)cking romantic thing
about how I'll never hold their hands
again.

So I drink,
and I write,
and I do not (l)isten
to people like you.

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.

Don’t ever tell me again
that you know,
that you understand -
you don’t and you can’t.
Because you are who I used to be;
breaking hearts and losing count
of the amount of times you kissed someone
just to feel warmth in your frigid, wandering body.
I know who you are,
and I knew before I let my lips breathe your name
the very first time
that I could never make a home inside
a body as cold as yours.
I tried anyway.

You can’t understand.
but just know,
that someday you’ll fall in love
(not with a girl)
with a woman’s collarbones
and freckles, and
sleepy conversations at 3 am.
You will understand,
and you will know,
when she wrenches out your heart
and watches it fall to the bottom
of the Pacific,
because she doesn’t have time for love
or you, or loose ends.
She moves one thousand miles a minute,
and you will understand
what it feels like
to make a home inside a heart
that doesn’t want you.

This is how we say goodbye.
I haven’t seen you cry since your aunt died last May.
I wish my eyes could stay dry for you.
I promise I’ll stop talking about drowning.
I don’t know how to be in love
when I only trust you enough to *******.

This is how we say goodbye.
You’re so completely lovely when you cry.
You’re not screaming you love me when I need you to.
I’m whispering I have to go.

This is how we say goodbye.
You’ll find her. She’ll have perfect hands,
and the softest voice. She’ll never date boys
who grab her waist a little too rough
and never walk her to her door.
I love her for how happy she makes you.

(I) promised you I'd stop chasing thi(n)gs -
chasing ***** with ***
and chasing boys who'd n(e)ver satisfy.
I guess I kept chasing to see if you'd care,
how far you'd stretch, to se(e)
if you'd come back after you'd left.

It's my sixth shot tonight
and I can't be your friend.
I'm not sure how to (d)eal with missing you so much
that my brain's too foggy to make my morning tea.
Sometimes I stand in the kitchen and I cook breakfast for two
but I throw it all away because I don't know
what the hell I'm supposed to do in this God-forsaken house
without (y)ou.
  
So I keep kissing boys and
I keep writing with *** in my veins
instead of blood.
It's my eight sh(o)t tonight,
and I don't know how many boys I'll kiss before I forget the way
you said my name.
I don't want yo(u) anymore.

In 1814, my grandfather’s barn collapsed
from the greediness of the farmer’s
haying to their own delight
and stocking the barn to the brim
with more hay than it was equipped to hold.
It broke and fell on top of them,
my grandfather too.

You have to stop letting
the weight of the world
make a home inside of your heart.
You can take it all in,
and shake and sob until
you can’t feel any longer,
but don’t linger.
Don’t stop feeling,
but before every problem you face
and every demon you meet,
reach down deep inside and grab
all the pieces that don’t belong in your soul,
because your heart can break,
and it will,
if you don’t realize you can’t heal the world
(but please, don’t stop trying)
but first, don’t let the dark camp,
scab, and scar inside of your heart
so that you can no longer
see the light.

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.

You have every right to be scared.
They will all break your heart
and your heart is not a bone.

It does not get stronger every time.

1.
I’ve been in love
for three years,
with a heart that rejects
the very thought of my name.
You cannot break hearts
in worse ways.

2.
I’ve watched my dearest friends
bend their backs until
they finally cracked,
and while mine was broken, as well,
I bent down and gathered their pieces.

3.
My mother entered a plan
of self-destruct
for five complete years,
teaching me
your heart can break in ways
that it was not meant to break.

4.
My body has been broken,
my body has been healed.
Take heart!
Take heart!
We are not alone.