Tinted glasses
In a lightless room
She reaches and grabs where she can
But it’s always a shallow effort
Transactional love

But that’s not the love I want to receive
I want to know you trust me
I want to feel you support me
Not take and take and take

I learn to cut the strings for people who are great at wasting my time.
But I mourn each thread of the girl I used to be.
The little girl who hugged lonely looking people in the grocery store.

Sleep escapes me again.
I listen to the train whistles come farther apart
And the wheels on pavement grind to a halt

Lights that once illuminated the peaks and valleys of my skin have all extinguished.

And funny that a stranger stated my truth so plainly.
To describe these nights of torture ;
My existence ties my stomach in knots.

Squeak squeak
Rumbleeeeee
Tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk
“MOMMMM”
“Hey babe I just got through security”
Rumbleeeeeeee
Tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk
“Those flying to Charlotte will board on gate A11”
“Girl let’s get a drink”
“Dad I’m on my way home, I board in 20”
Squeak squeak
Tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk tuk
“Ladies and gentleman may I have your attention please”

You’ll go far and you’ll go home
You’ll run to love or from heartbreak
But nothing brings clarity like the unbelievable stillness in your heart as a wallflower in an airport gate.

For all the sadness in my bones
Nothing can negate the peace I have laying
In the grass watching the sunset

It was in the soft pattering of snow against my pane
It was in the crisp morning air
The stillness of the world
That I felt his soul untangle from mine
I watched his ghost dance across the wood
And slip through my door

Leaving me to quiver alone.

I think I’ve loved you in a 1000 spaces
I curse my consciousness for being in this one

I find myself admiring the stained glass
Of the church next door
I watch the way the light changes behind it

I think that window reminds me of myself

I used to long to be another half
But lately I can’t imagine anything more empty
Than shaving myself so thin

It’s in the good morning texts
And the look of pain when he smacks my ***
The way you tease me about Joanne
And spray cologne to visit me on a Sunday afternoon.

It’s in the way you stroke the crest where scalp meets face
Brushing my hair behind my ears
And then stroke where legs meet hips
Making my toes curl and back arch

I love you.

Sometimes I drive so far down the highway of my mental illness
My loneliness becomes my whole.

I’m just spinning in circles
Looking for signs
Looking for the road map.

I think I spend half my life mourning the versions of me before
And the next half terrified of reaching my final form

If it were one of the girls
I would tell them to run
Why do I not think I’m good enough to run

I never expected you to hurt me
I thought I was cutting off the lust
And the impractical
To feel something real

But I was never ever good enough to you

So many things I wanted to say
But the sugar coated my throat
And the cream turned my stomach
And your voice drowned my thoughts
So I opened the car door
And I walked back to myself

A song, a taste, a color
Any could knock the first domino
A tangled mess of linked traumas
That gave way to present strength

You’re gritty between my toes
I watch my roots sink deep
Anchoring me, through the high tide
Imprisoning me still
As you recede

Was it the patchwork dress I wore for my 8th birthday
Or the mud pies we made after the snow melted
Was it the green and black pleated skirt
Or the behavior chart with little red exes

What of these things rooted
Shallow and wide like a redwood
Shading my heart and soul
Encasing me in doubt

I think today I realized you are the reason I stopped celebrating my birthday
I’m not sure if it was your presence or the lack of it

Smoke curls
Prison soap
Jameson

Eyes nose throat

Shut
Wide
Squeezed

Eyes nose throat

I hate how much you mean to me
How much you have always meant to me

As I lay here watching your favorite show
Which became mine
I think of how much I moved my heart towards yours
And how much you ran in the other direction.

And it’s sad.
Not because I love you
But because you will never love like me
Until you let go

I’m not sure why I’m always squinting my eyes to the piercing light of my future
My own hands keeping me from seeing my potential

I loved you so much I thought it would break me.
But missing you.
That’s so much harder.

First I feel it in my fingers and toes
The buzzing that grows
Grows into a quiver
From my thigh to my spine; a shiver

I clutch harder to my safety blanket
And run my hands over the goosebumps
This too shall pass, little one.

I’m dangerous
He croaks, throat dry
His blue eyes open wide
Like pools reflecting his truth
Lonely for so long he stoped wanting anything more
And what a woman like me wants
He’ll never understand
But he still chokes me
And whispers your disgusting in my ear
The ***** of the year
Me: educated, beautiful, independent.

I know I love you because when I look at you I hear music.

You told me so many times
That I deserved better
But I never heard you

I love you
Three words I’ll never tell you
And words you’ll never say

Though I hear them everyday
In the whistle of the tea kettle
And your laugh against my temple

I love you
Three words you’ll never utter
And words that would break me to speak

Taught to think a partner is happiness
But never being truly happy with ourselves when we are a partner

Constantly trying to be better than the pornstars, models of his dreams
And let’s be real
Better than his mother

Tonight I won’t sleep
Maybe tomorrow I won’t eat
And the next day I may turn into a Marlboro Chimney

I try on different ways to **** myself slowly

I always imagine that being loved will be  
Like sunshine on my face
Like silencing my racing thoughts
Like slowing my heart rate
Like the smell right after it rains

But then they fall in love with me
And I lose all my senses