The twisted reality is that bones break. People literally break and you dont always get better. Lives end, stories end, and people rarely get new beginings. The twisted reality is that none of what you thought as a kid was true. Not everyone can be president, and you cant be who you want to be. The twisted reality is that there are monsters in some little girls rooms, and thier moms cant make them go away. The twisted reality is that nightmares only end when you do, you dont get to wake up and think everything is fine. The twisted reality is that your parents lie to you. Not everyone is beautiful, not everyone is talented, and not everyone can be special. The twisted reality is that someone in your current school will become a 'villian' before thier life is over. The twisted reality is that we are all villians. Doing horrible things for what we think is right. The twisted reality is that most people will ignore what i am saying. Live in the lie. The twisted reality is people die thinking everything is fine.

I may walk slowly
maybe quickly.
There isn't a care in the world I have here.
The forest envelopes my soul like a young child that had
Lost
Her way and made it back in to the loving arms of her mother..
I have never run to the forest for comfort,
not before today.
I have never been to a real forest..
A forest of the mind,
that is where I am.
Now, in a meadow. I sit in the middle
Lost.
I'm lost, but I know where I am.
The forest has trapped me, I have let it trap me..

I have one problem, one problem in this serene world.
I cannot look up. If I looked up my world would be
Lost.
No one can tell me but myself
the forest of my mind is alive and active. But
I have found I am just existing..
Small, insignificant
That's how I've been made to feel.

Slowly I crumple under the anticipation of looking
up.
My eyes move from the ground
to the tree line all around me.
It's dark but not for long.
Light pours in from the sky into the world around me.
I close my eyes and lay on my back
facing towards the sky of my mind..
I say an apology
"For so long I haven't looked to you
dearest sky,
forgive me, I will look to you
and not the ground.
The ground I stand on only holds pain.
While all this time you have watched over me
and given me direction, light
and captivated me with your majesty."

The forest turns itself into a field of wheat
the forest is broken and gone.
I cannot see the ground below me.
but I can see my bearings.
I am no longer
lost.

You are the dead air after the joke my friends don't get.
I hear your laugh in the spaces between my family's oblivion and my sanity,
the crevices of pointless conversations.
You are an envelope with no return address.
You are the first person I want to tell about my day.
When my dad asks me how school was, I can only think of how you knew never to ask me that.
They say the nights are hard when no ones in your bed,
but what about when you spend your day in bed because you can't bear another day of activities that don't involve them?
I don't miss you only at 2 am.
I feel the sting of you in the night but you burn me in the afternoons with even greater intensity.
I prefer to be alone because then I only see your smile embedded in my walls rather than the lack of it on everyone else's face.
You are the silence after Wonderwall ends,
you are the lack of " I want to write something like that one day".
I am reminded of you when the girl next to me at a Fall Out Boy concert is sitting on her phone. I know you would scream every lyric with me.
I think that's what hurts, the knowing, especially of the things you aren't here for.
When I cry to "I'm like a lawyer" it's because I will never hear your voice sing it again.
So no, I do not miss you at 2am.
I miss you at 2 pm when I realize that everything I am doing now will never again be done with you

You may not have been birthed in the soil,
and granted,
you will not blossom
when spring melts winters wake
but inside of you
grows a thousand gardens
full of exploding stars.
You are of the earth
and your ashes
have been constructed with stardust,
and set free with the wind.
So you may not have a pretty face,
and your body may hold stories
of too many moonless nights alone.
But if you reach inside,
you will find a forest
for a ribcage
and a restless ocean heart.
So don't ever let anyone tell you
you are nothing.
You are a galaxy
holding a million different planets,
and my dear,
that is not nothing.

if i stopped eating
people would compliment me
on how thin i am
and when they saw the bruises
they pressed their mouths
shut tight
and just joked about
how clumsy i could be
with their easily uneasy smiles.
i don’t know if they
just didn’t see
or if they just weren’t
looking.
introducing him
to my friends was like
living in a ****** part of town,
having someone over
and hearing the racket of gunfire
outside of your window
and then having them say to you,
“oh, listen,
you can hear the fireworks
from here!”
and being too embarrassed
to correct them.
so maybe i’m not sure
if i believe in fireworks;
bombs are too often
mistaken for them.
but i can distinguish the difference
now, i can, and i will not
teach my daughters that when
he pushes you down in the dirt
and pulls on your pigtails
it’s because he likes you.
because when i covered up
those bruises on my body
in too-light concealer
like i’d never learned how to cover up
love-bites and tired eyes,
there was a voice in the back of
my mind that was telling me
that he only pushed me
down because he loved me.
i do not want a voice
inside my daughter’s heads
that sounds like me,
telling them that they deserve
their split lips.
i will tell my daughters to wear
boxing gloves over their manicures,
i will tell my daughters that
“love” is not an excuse,
i will tell my daughters that no one
is allowed to give you
a black eye and expect you
not to punch back harder,
i will tell my daughters
that you are not weak for getting hurt
because the weak ones
are those who let their anger
and insecurities
manifest themselves
in fists and words.
i will tell my daughters
the difference between bombs and fireworks,
i will tell them that they may sound
the same sometimes,
but fireworks don't ****
innocence.

Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.

She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around...
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.

Then she dances a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.

It's not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.

It's this dress that she'll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.





Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.