and making me want to die was something you were always good at.
not in a bad way
because for someone who has been suicidal since age 11,
that means you made me feel something.
feeling something has been a problem of mine for a while now
i either feel it all or nothing
and my therapist tells me that's
"black and white thinking"
and i tell her
"no, it's realistic"
and she laughs and tells me i must be colourblind
but the world has so many different tones of grey
and i tell her i know
i just can't see them yet
and she sends me home with a worksheet to fill out
she says bring it back tomorrow for our next session
but the worksheet asks me questions i don't have the answer to
"what's your favourite shade of grey"
almost arbitrary
could be written off
but i feel the breath catching in my throat
because i don't think about grey anymore
grey reminds me of the colour in your eyes
a colour chart that ranges from silver lining
to solitaire
you've ran off again
and i have to be honest
i'm glad that when
you left
you left
me colourblind
because i can't see grey without thinking of you
and i can't see your note so it's another night of feeling nothing
feeling something
feeling it all

1.  There is nothing romantic about the way our hair falls out or the way we hover over the open toilet like there's no other empty space in the house.
2. Do not think that it will be easier to love us because the love we aren’t giving ourselves will go to you.
3. You can trail your fingers along my rib cage, count every vertebrae in my back like marbles stacked high on top of each other. This is not beautiful, this is what dying looks like.
4. I’m sorry for the smell of my breath, but there’s no amount of toothpaste that could cover up the smell of myself rotting from the inside out.
5. “I thought you had to be skinny to have an eating disorder.”
5.   “You don’t look like you starve yourself.”
5.   I know that you wish you could hold me without worrying i’ll turn to dust if you squeeze too hard.
6.   I grew up being told that my body is a temple and I should treat it as such, but I don’t think this is right, see; temples can be destroyed but it always takes another person. I am doing this to myself.
7.   I can’t remember the last time I ate without feeling guilty.
7.   I can’t remember the last time I ate.
8.   One day, I will be nothing and you will be nothing, and i’m sorry that i’m already so close to being gone.
9.   I want to get better. I am trying to get better.
10. Do not think that loving us will be easier, because the love we do not give ourselves is gone, and we cannot love you more than we don’t love ourselves.

bone chilling moments
aren't what they seem to be.

my body resembles a corpse,
freezing to the tips of my toes,
with an ice cold heart
beating just enough to keep me alive.

i'm a dead girl walking,
littered in lanugo and
blue bruised, broken ribs,
and paper thin skin
caving in on itself
as if collapsing is inevitable.

bile inhabits my stomach,
yet hunger will always be
the second most important anyway.

pink, swollen cheeks are
replaced by hollow caverns
not even bears want to enter.

"i am an iceberg drifting to
the edge of the map,"
a girl who wants to be real-
but can't.

the blizzard winds in my head
have become too heavy to thaw out
and i can slowly feel my carcass of a body
cast away with the rest of my past.

i am gone.
  
                                    i am free.

As an Artist needs a model
A Poet seeks a heart
An object of adoration
to spark the more
noble aspirations
and the brighter
things that are

The entreaty of
a knowing smile
The slightly tearing eye
The overwhelming
joy of happiness
That sweeps from
your heart to mine

When adorations
meet the adored
It's then beyond
the poets words
For there it all
begins and ends
With the knowing
look of Love.

-R.

(11.13.17)
-LA
-4S