God, I've spent so long trying to find the word to describe you
I have tried addictive, but that just wasn't true. Unlike a drug, I don't always have to come back. I could so easily stop... But I just don't want to.
I have tried beautiful, but that would belittle the facade that your pretty little face really is.
And god, you know I've tried wicked. But that is just simply not true. You are so **** amazing... and so **** horrible. But you are not wicked.
And, after all this time, I've found it. The perfect word.
Darling, you are
Intoxicating.

The walls in here are light blue.
And they feel like they are drowning you,
And I feel like there’s nothing I can do.
To resist being taken under the current, too.
The ceilings in here are white,
And freckled with big lights,
And looking too long might cost you your sight.
The people in here are sad,
And the silence makes me mad,
But I know there’s no conversation,
Worthwhile to be had.

I'm not mad...

Just disappointed.

Home sweet home,
Next to broken promises
Hidden cries
Large, fake smiles
And swollen eyes
Home sweet home,
Live, laugh, love,
But we are not meant to live
We will never learn how to laugh
And love we know nothing of.
Home sweet home,
Next to a drunk mother
Holding an empty wine glass
Next to a father
Holding an empty child
by the neck
Home sweet home,
Take away the sweet,
Take away the life,
Take away the laughs,
Take away the love...
And you've got yourself
a home.

The chatter in the hospital always died down around this hour. In the quiet, Kody sat in a chair beside me and read to me. He foot was kicked up on my leg and he was slumping down in his chair. He always scolded me for doing that.
“Shoot all the blue jays you want if you can hit ‘em,” He read, “But remember…” I looked at my feet, which poked out from under the blanket in front of me. “It’s a sin to **** a mockingbird.”

"Stay, please. Just stay. It doesn't have to be forever, just for a little while... please. Just... stay."
"Forever," I promised.

I knocked on the door lightly. I obviously got no answer… I don’t know what I was expecting. I opened the door and squeezed in, shutting it just as quickly and quietly as I had opened it.
The room felt duller than usual… I couldn’t tell if it was because of the weather, the boring colors, or the aura of a patient waiting to die.
He was looking out the window. The weather was cold, and the skyline had been invisible, thanks to fog. It was rainy. People ran through the storm to their cars below us. The windows had been covered in rain, and all you could here was the steady beat of the heart monitor and the rain pouring outside. It smelled like hand sanitizer and lies. A shiver crawled down my spine just being in here for 5 seconds… I wonder what it has done to him for 5 months.
I hadn’t seen him for years. I wasn’t exactly ready for this confrontation, but it had to happen. I knew that. If I ever wanted to move on in my life, I had to see him again.
His brown hair was messy and fell over his eyes. The light from outside had a soft gray glow reflecting onto his pale face, making him look ghostlier than ever. His skinny, underweight arms were resting on his stomach, and his green eyes had a dark tint on the skin under them.
Seeing him like this just made it more obvious why he was here in the first place. He didn’t sleep, he didn’t eat, he didn’t drink… he made himself sick. His bony fingers tapped on his hand anxiously. He turned to face me. His face looked dreary, and he looked sad in general. I gulped and widened my eyes, not ready for his icy stare when he looked like this.
He sighed and I relaxed my face, calmed down as soon as he wasn’t staring at me.
“Why are you here?” he asked me.

It's been a while, old friend.
Old razor, the one I put away.
I have been good, I have been okay,
But then I was not, and I needed to see you once again.
It hasn't been great, old friend.
I have cried too many tears,
and now I need a friend to console me.
Oh, how I've missed you.
How I have missed you dancing across my skin...
How I have missed the scarlet beads you summon whenever you prance by,
How I have missed the bumps on my arms and the burn in the shower.
How I have missed this feeling: The feeling that is not numbness, but cannot be described.
No, maybe it can... Relief.
Relief that I can still bleed,
and I am not a robot.
I am not a monster.
I am not evil.
Hey, old friend, am I evil??
Am I selfish?
Am I a good person?

Porcelain vase
Sitting atop
Your wobbly table
Good luck

Forgive me, my love, for I cannot love you right.
I don't know how to
I think you should leave,
And I hope you find happiness.
Woe to me, the monster.
Forgive me, my love, for I will never understand
How your mind works
I'm still learning to understand my own.
Forgive me, my love,
for I have grown to close to you
And it is now time for this monthly ritual
Of pushing people away
Forgive me, my love
I am just trying to do the right thing.

I asked my mom to teach me how to play piano.

She’s a prodigy, you know. She could play Beethoven better than the man himself.

She said, “I just took my medicine. As soon as it kicks in, I will come down.” She smiled, and I said okay and went downstairs to wait silently.

2 years later, I’m still waiting, I’m still laying down in my bed, because my mother should be down here soon. My room is messy, but I doubt she’ll be around to care. My blankets are warm, and even if she were to come down I would no longer feel like playing the piano. It is such a pretty instrument, and I do not have any pretty notes to play. How am I supposed to learn without a mother to teach me where to put my hands?

For no reason at all, I feel empty and alone. And I called my mom, but she didn’t pick up, and I called my dad, but he is too sick to spend time with me. I grew up around annoyed friends who were bothered by my clingy and annoying personality. For no reason at all, I grew up loud in class. My teachers and peers all roll their eyes, frustrated. It hurts when they call me annoying, but I play it off as a joke. And it’s funny, it is, but I keep forgetting to tell the punchline.

My mother doesn’t reply to the playful text messages I send her when I’m feeling happy, which is okay. That’s okay. Really, it’s fine. I’ll move on, I will. Which is why I know I shouldn’t be crying while I write about feeling confined to a bedroom that I could easily walk out of, and I would if there was a reason to. But there isn’t.

I thought about this today when I wondered how much I see my mother on a day-to-day basis. The answer I came up with once a day, when she walks through the door. She says hello to her boyfriend, Cameron, and she goes to her room. And I don’t see her for the rest of the day. I’ve no one to help me with my homework, so if I don’t understand it I just take the F and move on. My mom will be disappointed in my grades, but she won’t say anything to me. She’ll just glare at me as she passes by. My mom just… doesn’t talk to me.

Which would be fine, if it didn’t cause me to grow up an attention-seeker with attachment and abandonment issues… I lose more friends that way. I don’t have anyone anymore. I scared all my friends off, and it’s not like my mom is around to help me.
I am still so very excited to go to my manipulative father’s house, only because his lies require him to talk to me more. His apologies require him to spend more time with me.
The importance of an adult figure is commonly disregarded, and it is that neglect that has caused me to feel this empty and alone. Because I am constantly left alone with my very talkative mind, and the thoughts always make me question whether or not I am truly loved.

Am I?

Who knows. I’d ask my mom, but…
I doubt she’d reply.

Do not tell me to take a deep breath
You know **** well
I cannot breathe
That is just cruel
That is like telling
A blind man
To look how pretty
Your dress is.

My dad is sleepy.
He cannot move.
His medicine makes him tired.
His medicine makes him mad.
It's the medicine.
He's yelling because of the medicine.
"It's making me frustrated,"
Oh, okay, father.
I believe you.
I understand.
My medicine makes me tired,
Though, you call me lazy.
My medicine makes me moody,
Though, you call me dramatic.
But that's okay.
I understand.

I cannot sleep
In a bed anymore
Because it reminds me
of his
His bed he forced me onto
His bed he was holding me down on
His bed that I was exposed in
I cannot sleep
and it
is
your
fault

Do not touch my skin
No matter how much it calls for you
Because it is not me
that is saying your name
It is my skin
And my skin doesn't know what it wants.

My notebook is beginning
To look messy
Because the ****** words
Spread to other pages

I check your profile
I write a text
and backspace

And then
When all hope seems lost
I get that beautiful, long-awaited

dot
dot
dot.

Nevermind
My arms
It was my cat
Nevermind
My sleeves
I was using red paint
Nevermind
my tears
I have dust in my eye
Nevermind
my screams
I was just scared
Oh, these bandages?
Yeah, I fell..

I say I hate that word
Does it scare me?
Does it excite me?
Does it entrance me?
What does it make me feel?
And do I actually hate it?

Or perhaps
I haven't found the right person
To hear it from

Denial… No… Confrontation, forgiveness, and moving on.
Moving on.
I’m skipping town. I’ve got nothing left here. I left nana a note. She’ll be okay without us.
I packed a bag. I put Squid and our copy of To **** a Mockingbird in it. I’ve got plenty of money, not that I’ll need it.
I’m probably just gonna follow Shiloh, wherever he is. I won’t need this cash. I’ll leave it next to a note if I write one.
Shiloh is…
Whatever. It doesn’t matter now. I’m leaving.
That should fix everything.
…I hope.

The nurse walked in. He smiled at us and then checked his clipboard. He turned to Kody, who was looking at him with an expression I couldn’t read on his face. The nurse gestured for him to follow and Kody got up off the floor. I watched them leave. Kody and the nurse both turned around to smile at me reassuringly.
What were they hiding??

You showed up at my front door
Looking for a place to stay
Because your father had been drinking
And screamed for you to go away
I welcomed you inside,
Make sure you felt at home
Because I knew that it's just a house,
Not a home of your own.
You told me about your issues,
I sighed and said I'm sorry,
I handed you some tissues
Your eyes looked sort of starry

Insert a word, letter, or phrase,
And then delete it just as quick.
God, all this writing stuff
Is starting to make me sick.
What words rhyme with vegetable?
Oh, I do not know…
I have no direction with this poem I wish to go.
With a swish of my wrist
And a flick of my hand
Boom! I’ve made a poem…
That nobody can stand.
Make it, erase it,
God what is the difference
It’s simply not as good
As those with a planned sequence

Look me in the yees
You can't tell that I'm a guy
I got the body of a woman
And it makes me wanna die
It makes me want to scream
But I can't even breathe
When I'm lookin in the mirror
Staring at my chest
Wishing I didn't have *******
Man, I shouldn't have to hate my own flesh
Sometimes I cut myself
To see how much it bleeds
Sometimes I wonder what would happen
If I cut too deep
I really wanna die
I would do anything to be a guy
Lord knows I should've been born with a
Y chromosome
But nah I got double Xs, oh
I got the body of a girl
But I know I'm a boy
But even if you look me in the eyes
You can't tell I'm a guy
My smile's not the same
It's all fake
I was a mistake
I'll tell people what I am
And they'll tell me the verses
But I wish I wasn't trans
I don't do this on purpose
I wish I could've been born right
So I could look like a guy
And I wouldn't want to die
I wouldn't even try
I know I'm a guy
I know mt name is Elijah, not Eliza
I should have a flat chest instead of a ******
Whatever you say it can't hurt me
Because deep down inside
I know I'm a guy

But I feel much worse
When I'm calling your name
Out of nowhere
When I'm calling to you
And you don't respond
And I grow heavy
And it grows bigger
Feeding off your absence
And I feel
Way
Way
Worse.

My brother knows,
Though really, he will never understand.
I ask him if I pass,
If this binder does it.
He says, "not really,"
I just look down,
but then suddenly,
My thoughts start to stray.
I realize I'm not flat,
I realize I'm feminine
I realize too small
I realize I don't fit in them
Them being the category that is a male
Them being the jeans that I try despereately try to fit my waist in,
Them being society,
Them being normal.
I stand in front of a mirror 20 minutes a day looking at the small details that remind me I am "She"
I will always be "she"
I will never be "he"
Never.
And my mom knows that, so why should she bother trying to change it?
She says I have chosen a stupid name,
But it is not like I had any adult figure to help me pick it out,
So why is it my fault?
I wish I didn't feel like this,
But I do not have a choice.
Well...
this is not entirely true.
I could choose to not think too hard when people call me "She"
I could choose to not look in the mirror and call myself "She"
I could choose to understand that everyone knows me as "She"
And I could choose to move on
But I don't.
I told my mom, she said I'd grow up to regret it.
I gave her the statistics, but that wasn't enough.
She said "she"
She called me by my name,
No, not the name that I have chosen, the name she had chosen for me.
And I ignored it.
And I didn't say anything.
But it still makes me feel empty when I realize I have too many parts that make me a 'whole,'
3 parts I can't look at without feeling my eyes sting,
3 parts I can't wait to get off of me,
But that will never happen.
Because,
I will always be
"She."

I sit in a tree,
observing
I see all and know all
Even the dark souls
of the lonely people
who trespass onto the land
of the loved

I gave you my time
And I don't get that back
I gave you my life
And I didn't have much of that to give away in the first place
I gave you my love
And that is on a cooldown
I cannot use it for years after what you did to it
I have to fix it up first
I gave you my confidence
Now I am left with soft apologies and broken hellos
I gave you everything
And I don't get that back.

Please come home
You spry little thing

Depression.
Some say it's all in your head, others say you're just being dramatic.
But what they don't understand is that you already know that.
You know because you tell yourself that every single time you feel that pit in your stomach that says, "I am empty, but I do not know why."
No, the pit in your stomach will not go away, but you will never know why it's there. You are not sad, you are not lonely, you are just empty.
This emptiness takes away any and all will you had to just write a five hundred word essay that is due in 5 hours. The feeling that will change when you sleep, when you eat, how you dress, who you keep around, and so on.
This feeling will drag you by your cut wrists to the bathroom to step on a scale you already checked 5 minutes ago.
The feeling shouts, "You are worthless, and nobody loves you."
The feeling says everyone hates you, but you know that's not true.
...Deep down.
But until you've dipped your toe in the water, you won't want to dive deep enough to understand that you matter.
That you are loved.
That you are needed.
Depression is commonly mistaken as a monster.
The monster under the bed that you need your mom to spray with a 60 mL bottle that carries the vaccination.
But it is a lack there of: It is emptiness.
It is tiredness.
I try to find what is making me feel so empty. When I was little, I thought I had found a cure.
I thought it was so simple.
I thought, "Oh, it goes away when I am distracted!!"
But now the feeling has evolved.
It began to feed off of my self-hatred,
and it has grown to be a most wretched beast that will no longer be conquered.
And now the only pieces to the broken puzzle I have found are the broken shards of a mirror I broke when the mirror said I was so horribly ugly.

They showed me his body today. In fairytales, I would shut his eyes gently and say how peaceful he looked. But we all know this is not a fairytale.
He looked awful. Bruises were everywhere, his eyes had dark circles under them, he looked blueish and gray… he looked like his last moments were spent in pain.
I just hope Heaven can wipe his memories of all that pain. I wish Heaven could wipe my memories of him, while they’re at it.
Then maybe it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

Projecting the blame
as long as it's not me
it's you, it's him, it's her, it's them.
It's just not me.
Because I cannot handle
messing up
one
more
time

My mother loved stories.
She quoted some of her own fictional realities to herself in her hospital bed to avoid the fact she would never see anything outside of the dull walls of the place she’d been stuck in for the past year and a half.
She always smiled when she saw me. “Oh, my beautiful baby boy.” She’d say. “How I’ve missed your company.” And I would always smile and say, “Me too, ma.”
She didn’t say anything more. All she did was watch cartoons on the television, waiting for the nurse to come in with her medication.
When the nurse came in, mother would always call her ‘Lilith.’ She thought she was my little sister. She wasn’t. The nurse just smiled and handed her the pills. She never knew how to break the old woman’s heart. Lilith has been dead for 10 years. Mom had a brain tumor along with Alzheimer’s.
Mother traced the outlines of the city with her finger when it was too quiet for her to handle. She always said the silence was too noisy.
After 10 minutes of noisy silence, she asked for my father. Every time, I had to be the one to tell her he left us. She sighed and said, “No, he wouldn’t do that.” And every time I just looked at my feet, unable to repeat myself.
I used to want to know more about my dad. She would always say the same sentence. Nothing more, nothing less. “He loved music.” She said. And every time I pretended to be amazed. Though, that was always something I’d already heard. And it didn’t tell me much, except we were alike in a single aspect. I sighed when she slept.
Until her last day.
She turned to me and smiled.
“He came from the stars.” She said.
And died.

He shook his head. “Is he going to be okay then?”
“Yes. We can add some meds to his regular ones to treat this, too.”
“Okay… how much?”
I looked out the window at the skyline, fogged up and cold. Matched my mood. It was rainy and the gray clouds covered up the sun. Kody sighed and rubbed his head. I ignored what they were saying and looked at the IV in my arm and rolled my eyes.

Bound to look over the empty population;
Who **** each other,
Hurt each other…
All for the sake of a sick game
The point of life
Surviving
No matter who you have to hurt in the process.
I am bound to the sky,
Looking over the men,
Who are oh so selfish.

You try and speak
About your home life
And I go, "Yeah, felt that."

*****
Everything
Is always about me
isn't it

I’ve been throwing up a lot recently. I threw up in Kody’s lap the other day. He gulped and cringed, then gagged, but he just patted my back and told me to ‘let it all out.’ I threw up a whole bunch more. It felt like an ***** or two was gonna come out.
When I was done, Kody went to go get a change of clothes. I felt real bad.
I ***** about 3 times a day now, but now we keep the weird green baggies next to me at all times. It makes a nasty noise and Kody gags every time he hears it. It’s disgusting, but I can’t stop. I feel constantly dizzy.
My stomach aches and turns, I lose my appetite, I get real dizzy, and then I *****. This horrible and painfully repetitive cycle began just last week, but I’ve already grown used to it.
I feel sick.

Why is reciprocation so difficult
You came up to me
With a homemade batch of chocolates
on February Fourteenth
You came up to me
With 3 words that would haunt me
You came up to me
And you were so nice
And I am so sorry
I couldn't
give
that
back.

I am doing my best,
Ignore what my teachers tell you
I am trying so very hard
Even though all I can manage
Is a C-
I am trying.
I really am.
I promise I am.
I'm not like you.
It takes me a week to finish a single assignment,
And I don't know why.

A man is making his move on me,
This I can clearly understand,
Though, I never learned how to say no.
I said I want to write, and that was the end of it.
I will wait until he goes to sleep.
He touched my stuffed rabbit,
And I couldn’t breathe.
I don’t like it,
But I never learned how to say no.
His tongue is jammed in my mouth,
He smells and tastes awful,
And something so wet should not be so warm.
I am uncomfortable,
But I never learned how to say no.
He says gross things.
“You’re pretty,”
“You’re cute,”
“I love you,”
It makes me wanna puke,
So I say ‘Ew’ and try to move on.
I ignore his ****** comments.
It’s awkward,
It’s uncomfortable,
And it’s stressful,
But I never learned how to say no.

I was ****** at the doctors. I’m angry at everything right now, but more than anything, I’m mad at him.
How dare he.
He broke so many promises yesterday. He promised he would stay here. He LIED to me!!! He said he wouldn’t do that ****** surgery!!
…
…We, uh… we had the um… funeral. For Shiloh. I just… No one… I was the only one there. Nana didn’t even come. What the hell?
Nobody shows up to your birthday, fine… but really? It’s a funeral!!
But… Somehow, I’m not surprised… because…
…The Peacock Effect: Who cares if you exist?

I have been so very confused
And my search history has turned into
some monument for you
"Heart stinging?" It's a sickness
"Too much loving?" Call a therapist
"How to not love you anymore"
nothing useful
just a bunch of wikihows
"How to stop loving someone who doesn't love you?"
Ouch, that's rude
seems a little too direct
but that's okay
it's your fault, too

Ouch, that stings,
but that's just the pain that your love brings.

He told me to get in the car,
He wouldn't tell me where we're going.
We drove on a deserted highway,
Where there an abode was nowhere to be seen
His hand rested on my thigh
And the reflection of the sky
Was cast upon his sunglasses
And the orange glow of the sunset
Was making his golden hair
Turn a orange-ish shade
And my eyes
Turned a lovestruck blue
And I felt

...peaceful.

Little young lady,
I have missed your face,
and I know you're lying
when you say that you're okay
I notice your face,
your clear fall from grace,
No matter how obvious,
your family looks away
When all you need is someone to ask you
if you are really doing okay
everyone looks away
so are you really okay?