My body is a house
for a horde
of emotions,
locked away
in all the different
cavities of space.

Anxiety rents the room
at the bottom
of my stomach,
coming and going
whenever he pleases.
An open door
into an isolated room
filled with never-ending noise.
Messy.
Unpredictable.

In the middle
of my sternum
is where you find happiness,
her glow
- sometimes hidden
but never permanently
gone.
She warms my chest
when it feels
too cold
for anything else
to live there,
and keeps my hearth going
in times i was sure
it would die out.
Comfortable.
Simple.

I feel anger
in my lungs.
Their mass pressed against
My rib-cage,
tightening unbearably
against the bars around them.
They like to be the one
to break the valuables
I hold in my hands.
Hot.
Uncomfortable.

Embarrassment,
She comes to party
right underneath
the surface.
All skin
and no substance.
My capillaries
burst into patches
of reds and pinks,
the colours
she likes to splatter
against the walls.
Always the unwanted guest
that turns up
without an invitation.
Irritating.
Despised.

And loneliness;
Well,
they like to
make their bed in my head
Wrapped up
and suffocating any air
around them.
Boxes of memories
towering around them
with no motivation
to indulge in
anything that would make
their place livelier.
The lights are
always off in there,
so i can never see them
but i always feel their presence.
Dark.
Desolate.

My body is a hostel
available for purchase
from any feelings
that need a
place to sleep.
But it is the
one place
where the only person
who doesn't feel
at home
is me.

I am held together
by tape and pins inside,
make shift stitches
are the only things
keeping myself from
falling apart.
There are so many chips
In my skin
I do not know
If they are from mine
or everybody else’s
loathing.
My strings are so weak
there is no telling
when I will have to cut them,
and let my limbs
fall far beneath my feet.
You would think
I would be better
at keeping myself
from ruining everything else,
but I have spent too much time
tearing myself up
to know how to
hold anything worth saving
In my bloodied hands.
My lips have been
stretched so thin
from keeping all my secrets
locked inside
I drool blood and grief
through the sutures.
Please use me,
i have no idea
how to do this on my own,
and I am not my own master
anymore.
I don’t know how to exist
without you.
I have been left on the floor
for so long
I am a mess
of broken attempts
to fix something
that cannot be mended.
I am unsure
I will even work right,
but I need someone
to tug on my ropes
and make it seem
like I am more alive
than this.

I say your name,
and it's like the room
becomes a graveyard.
Everyone has left
and a cold emptiness
sweeps it's way in
to settle amongst
your headstone.
They all
buried you
a long time ago,
while i still pick dead flowers
to throw on top
of your grave.
My hands still grasp
at the pain in my chest
while everyone walks around me
with dry faces
that pretend
they don't see your ghost
still sitting on my shoulders.
It's like I never attended the funeral
they all threw
to cast you out,
and now i'm stuck
mourning somebody
no one wants to talk about.

You are entangled
In the vines of a 
codependent ****.
It will eventually **** the life
Out of you,
but only because
You allowed it too.

You didn’t need to
put yourself in it’s path
and offer yourself
like a sacrifice in waiting
- But you like the idea that someone else has the power to ruin you in the way you are too scared to do.

You didn’t need to
give your essence over
to something that will devour
anything that moves
- But you don’t believe your worth is more than being somebody else’s emotional feed bank.

You didn’t need to
willingly wait for death
while their vines held you down
and choked on your broken pieces
- But you don’t know how to survive in a world that is not dependant on you fixing it while leaving your damage to die.

You will be consumed
by the toxins
of a carnivorous friend,
and you will sit by and watch
while they burn the world down
around you
and still offer
your bones to be their home.

I have left fragments
of myself
in your hands.
Bits and pieces
bleeding through your fingertips
like fresh cuts.
I am waiting
for you to figure out
how to put back together
what you so willingly
broke.
I am not a replaceable prop
for you to use when you feel like it.

It’s been three months.
I watch you from afar
and cry silently
at the distance
between us.
Once a warm bed
with fingers reaching
for me
to lie close to
enough to feel your breath
against my cheek.
I am lost in the
empty sheets
you don’t
come to anymore.

Your clothes
no longer take up
the room in
the closet
except for the shirts
I took from
your suitcase
you dragged out behind you.
I still wear them
at two in the morning
when I miss
the way you smell
and it’s too cold to sleep

You don’t see me anymore.
I am nothing but a memory
to you now,
and you don’t look twice
when you walk past
my desperate spot
outside your work
just hoping to bump into you
the way we first did
So long ago.

You are no longer
a home.
You’re just a place
I used to know.

My mother was
a cruel joke
taught with a raised voice.
Her pain
the foundations
for the better half of
my childhood,
her loneliness the next.
There is a forceful kind of sadness
that comes with being raised
by a woman
destroyed by her past,
your future is determined
by her emptiness.
You are left to wonder
how you could ever be
any different
than those who came before you
If living hurt this much.
But I want to be more
than what I was taught to be.
More than skin
and bone
and a raw heart
always ready to stop beating.

My feet
are burned and bloodied
with the dirt
from which i clawed
my way out of.
Every word
to tumble from my lips
might choke
on the teeth
lining my throat,
but i will still
spit them out.
My arms
may be scarred
with the cuts
of all the thorns
i had to dig through,
and my heart
might be back
in the grave you buried me in,
but I will still
stand in front of you
more alive than
you will ever be.

It’s the sound of the dial tone,
a conversation ended after a one-sided solution.
The voicemail being more familiar to you
than actual words.
It’s the empty feeling that follows
the footsteps walking away from you,
the echo of closing doors remaining
a constant in place of ringing doorbells.
It’s the sensation of tears down your face,
runny nose and sore throat.
Cringing under your covers so not to burden
the strangers down the hall.
It’s the heavy silence of your room,
your indentation in the bed permanent.
having all the blankets bunched up around you
as if they could make you warm again.
It’s the thoughts that roam your head
at every point in the day,
asking when did you let yourself become
an option
when you should have been
a priority.

I have left pieces of me
scattered around the graveyard
of my hometown
In all the places
I used to exist.
A part of me
in the space behind the garage,
pieces dug into the
fields of high school,
and broken shards
hidden throughout
the home I both
loved and loathed.

So much of myself
abandoned
like a useless toy
they can no longer
play with,
and no longer works right.
I see them everywhere,
just bloodied little bits
cast aside
after being picked at
by friendly vultures.
And the pieces of myself
that I still hold together
between my fingers
Are ones
I barely recognise anymore.

I keep thinking,
If I play the music
loud enough
and swallow the drinks
fast enough,
I can avoid
facing the awful truth
of just how hollow
I really am.

It doesn’t work.
No matter how far
I run away,
I can’t escape
the memories that haunt me.
My skeletons have dug their way
out of my closet
to stare at me in
the mirror
with a toothless grin,
and a knife to continue
the damage
I started
A long time ago.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
There you are,
someone who could
could teach me
what it feels like
to love myself,
and yet
I hold you in my hands
and I ruin
the chance you
hold out to me
so willingly.
I feel so damaged
that the pieces of me
that still cling
sickeningly to my ribs
don’t feel like me anymore,
But tiny monsters
that do nothing
but hurt
everything I touch.
My throat burns
with the words
that I don’t say,
thoughts so loud
that sometimes I want
to scratch them violently
into my wrists
so you can see them
and I won’t drown
in them anymore.
But I won’t.
And I can’t.
And if you don’t
get away now,
you will be nothing
but a broken memory
beneath my feet
that feel like they were made
to walk over you.

You do not want to love me.
I am a cold storm that you watch
from the windows of a home
and be glad you are inside.
I cannot keep you warm
on days where
the rain drowns
every good feeling
in our bodies.
I know
it is tempting
to linger,
all good things come
to drown themselves in me
eventually.
But I am a mess
of salt and bitterness
and the taste of sand
in your mouth.
And
If you stay,
I will be the one to
drag you out
into the sea
and leave you to sink.

I had so much faith
that your hands
wouldn't drop me,
the same way
everyone else's
did.
But as i fell
through your
fingertips
I realised
you were
all the same.

The clothes I wear don’t feel like home even on good days
and most days they end up at the bottom of my bed
in a pile I avoid putting away,
There is a museum of damage inside my chest and half the time
I don’t know what parts of me are on display anymore,
My lonely looks a lot like boredom
when I find myself standing in the bathroom
at 5:00 in the morning staring at my hands,
I have a bad habit of letting my emotions choke me
so that the only words spilling from my mouth
are black and blue lipped lies,
My body is a hostel ghosts like to rent when there is
free space in the attic,
The tendency to self destruct means I am willing to lie down
on your rocks like Prometheus and have you pick at me like a vulture,
I would burn your house down until I am
the only house you have left to run home to,
My breath is the condensation in the shower you forgot to get rid of
that will turn to mould if left to settle,
I can hear the pity in his voice when he calls me pretty,
there is a grave waiting for me when you are finished filling a void,
I am too lazy to figure out how to heal myself,
I have never been enough for those who did not stay.

I miss you
the most
at midnight.
It’s too dark
and not dark enough
and I’m just not myself
crying over you
for the third time tonight.
I think of the way
you always laugh at my jokes
and how it feels
like sometimes
you understand why I’m not laughing.
My bed feels like
a prison at 1am
when I just want
to hear you say my name
and you’re somewhere else
with someone else.
I can’t think about
your hands
and how I know they feel
on me
except you’re no longer
on me
but someone else
much better.
And it’s close to 2am
only now I don’t miss you
but the girl
I used to be
before you let me believe
I could be someone different.
She’s somewhere inside,
rotting like a corpse
because you’ve made
my room feel like
a graveyard.
Now it’s 3am
and I’m just wishing
for this to stop
so I don’t have to feel
so alone
anymore.

There is sunlight in your eyes
and it is a place
I wish I could
escape to.
It is warm
and I am cold.

There is sunlight in your eyes
and I know
it does not
live in mine.
This cave I hide in
does not have room
for you.

There is sunlight in your eyes,
in the world
I used to be in.
Nothing grows here
anymore,
but weeds
and a grey sad.
My hands are covered with it.

There is sunlight in your eyes.
You are alive.
I don’t know what that feels like.