What if the thoughts never developed
If I could leave them in the dark room
Better yet still on their film roll
What if I could take each step
Without words knocking on the back of my teeth

What does shame look like?
A desperation
To be young
To be wild
To be as desireable as she once was
Be so ******* for real with yourself babe
You’re not aging gracefully until you accept your age

Unfortunately once I hate you
It’s infinite
It grows and furls in every space of my mind
Unfortunately once I love you
I’m bound to hate you

Lately I feel like a bird with wet wings
In theory I have the freedom of the skies
But I’m stuck on the ground

The funny thing about standing at the mountain top
Is the way it casts a shadow on all the steps before
No matter that I’m looking down the path I just walked
I can’t feel that first step again
I can’t feel the feeling in my stomach the first time his hand brushed mine
I can’t feel the flutter of that first kiss
I can never again feel that first ******
But the cursed last one, that one you never forget.

Fingers like magma
Tongue like lava
Set my core on fire
Flames licking me from the inside out
Heat spilling from between my thighs

I love the high of discovering someone
Peeling back the layers testing their limits
Being whoever whenever to get the answers
It’s staying and watching them change, watching them disappoint and win and grow and shrink
It’s the staying that breaks my soul

Even in the places I go to escape you
I find you
I’m brought to tears in the middle of the dance floor with all of the motion, and lights and sound and smoke swirling around me
I feel the tangible space all around my body
I feel the weight of being without you

I could spend eternity
Sitting in the pouring rain
But it would never rinse you from my skin

It is deeply bittersweet
To see you achieve the life that young you dreamed
Which exists so separately from the one young me fantasized

I take solace in the health of your family
And heed in the love in your eyes that still remains
Even after we cut ties

I feel too much
Emotions like viscous liquid gumming up my veins
Bogging my brain like quicksand

All my muscles quake

Ever  been ***** and equally uninspired?
Not a single person keeps the fantasy alive

Emotions have always been too intense for me
Searing hot in my belly
I got too comfortable trying yours on for size
Now I don’t remember how to be **** if not for you

I always miss you the most in the spring time
I remember your flower shirts and linen pants
The way you would insist on brushing my hair 100 times a night on the front porch
How you always pretended you didn’t like your birthday
As your eyes glowed behind the candle light
You always seemed the lightest
The closest to your faith
The most comfortable
When the birds began singing
And the wind blew through the cherry blossoms

As I struggle for oxygen
And swallow the lump in my throat
I remember the way you saved me

As I skip breakfast
And walk for more and more miles each day
I remember how you praised me

I am as broken as I always was
And I remember what a beautiful thing to be

I learned to laugh the loudest
To drown out my cries
Sometimes the voice in my head screaming for help
Is magnanimous
I swear they can hear her in Mars

But no one cares about your suffering little one
They have their own packs to carry.

Cuz mama when it boils down to it we’re all fools
And I’ve become the monster that lets him believe he can fool me more than once

The crank of the pump is audible maybe for the first time
Drops joining a full line endlessly pouring into the vein
Skin so thin I can almost perceive the flow of morphine.. or is it blood?
I can count her bones as I clean
A pressure so light like when I was an infant and my father tickled my toes
No muscle or fat remaining they’ve already rejoined nature
But then the chest balloons, one shallow breath falling into step with mine
Sending a shudder down my spine like I’ve been electrocuted
Both of us hold our breath as i roll her bones
Black pools of blood on her back
Like ink spilling out on the page
vying to get out
And tell her story

The thing about people
Is you can scream your feelings
You can post them online
You can send them your poems
But they can never feel the way you feel
So maybe expressing it never really happens

The urgency to call you has faded most days
Sun rises and sets and I tell no one about what happens in between
And it’s freeing, but also it’s isolating
It is a reminder that all I ever had was the conversations I have in the dark

I want to suffocate your memory.
I want to burn your image.
I want to record over the soundtrack of your voice with a thousand new songs
Each day I wake up I dig your grave deeper.
It’s become so deep that the dirt has begun to fall on me
If only I could drag you down with me.

Was I born with this
The part that  can’t be tamed
She craves chaos
A cigarette between my fingers
A straw parting my lips
My bare feet on stone, sand, tile, dirt, mulch, glass
But she’s never here when I wake to wash the cuts, to rinse the sin, to recover the funds
Is she me or is she chemical

I’ve lost track of the time I’ve spent in this mental tug of war.
Im still hoping to be better than the last time we said goodbye.
I’ve been walking the line between demure and unleashed.
The glitter of others catch my eye, tho fleeting
None illuminate me like you.
I feel the dimming as I walk deep into this cavern.
The farther I walk the harder it is to see that from which I came.
I don’t recognize me; not in my reflection and not in my heavy steps.
There’s no certainty that this is a path of healing.  
And I know healing; my hands have willed it with vashe soaked gauze.
And I know healing; I’ve auscultated it in lobes and bases.
And I know healing; I’ve smelled it in the excrement of the bedridden.
And I know healing.
I know healing?