Evil comes, reaching and creeping
Darkness leaving you, shivering and weeping
Grey shadows fall, they bring doom
All around, trapping you in the room
Ready to claim you, as you scream

And you realise that this is no dream
Life almost deserts you, you're left alone
Lonely thoughts are chilling you to the bone
Almost as the nightmare starts becoming true
Now you feel the horror striking out at you

Panic begins stabbing inside your head
Out there come those you believed long dead
Endless laughter comes from a solitary raven

They all say that you've changed
I know for sure that you haven't
As you always do, you complain
about the smallest things
You choose to argue with her
instead of admitting that you might
actually be wrong
You stare at me from the corner of your eyes
knowing that what you do is wrong,
and that I see it
but you continue to do it anyways
Because you are old,
and you are set in your ways
that is no excuse
being older than me
does not give you the right
to think that I am always wrong
just as being younger than you
does not give me the privelage
to always be correct
You pray to your God,
this God I don't believe in
and you tell me I will burn in Hell,
a place I am also unsure of
I am not entirely disbelieving
only to the point
that I would not dare hope
that someone I have never met
will save me at a words beckoning
You still taunt me, wishing I was the obedient
little girl
that you first met
The girl who was scared of everything, unsure
and now that I am confident,
you cast a disdainful eye upon me
For I no longer accept you treating me as a little girl
I am almost eighteen
almost an adult
and while it is normal for adults to wish
a child to remain a child
It is unnatural to simply refuse to accept that I grow
and that I have grown
I'm proud of who I am today
because before, I was afraid, self-conscious,
and now I am more confident, and the fear has been pushed away
I never thought I could, or would, hate you, when I was younger
Now, hating you is all I know
How could I not hate you, for squashing my ideas
Telling me that women with voices are women best unseen
Telling me that as I am now, confident in my belief
that all are equal,
no man would ever marry me?
Telling me, that I would never succeed, if I didn't know how
to cook and clean
But I don't want to cook, or to clean
I don't desire to be a slave for man to use up at their hearts desire
I want to exist as an independent being
with a job
I want to be a nurse, a doctor
Help people willingly, instead of against my heart
Why is it so hard to believe
that I, a girl, a women,
am also a person?
With hopes, and aspirations, dreams?
So, no
I don't think you've changed at all
You have yet to prove it
I doubt that you ever will
for while you are demeaning
You are also a coward

Maybe, maybe, maybe, if you say sorry enough they’ll believe it, know you mean it.
I think your heart could use that kind of break.
right now it’s breaking.
For some small comfort there’s the night, the silky smooth night, the moon and stars.
For the hopeless romantic and pragmatist- for we’re but a second in eternity, a speck in infinity
But what a privilege it is to be so.
And what a burden it is to be so.
To be so….what?
Because here, for the first time in a long time it’s not my poison.
It’s his and hers and theirs.
Regardless, I’ll drink to my place in forever and infinity, and in regards to how my throat burns holes in my heart as it goes down, I’ll make do as I’ve done before.
Down is where it mixes with the roots,
With the ashes from which this sort of deep pain burns in the embers of my own broken glass
That’s right, I’m filled to the brim with bottles of what used to be stale beer, scorched purple in the sun of some far off desert.
They’ve been lathered in hope, rinsed with cynicism, dried with the same snot ridden shirt sleeve that dried my tears.
From them, I’ll drink poison until their pain is gone and my wish washy smile resurfaces, blood in my teeth from a war not mine.
When the straight laced meets the twisted, who bends and which way?
For better or worse, or shall I stay here in the numb, sweet and cool embrace of neutrality?
No, because I seek warmth.
It gets more than warm, hot enough to bend steely figures into what seems human.
Don’t touch. Too hot.
Proximity is a dangerous game here, where you risk skin and bone bubbling, dripping into the fire.
Burns leave scars, did you know that?
I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
Contradicting, questioning, quizzically,
I’m making my way through this like a blind man through a labyrinth of the social species.
Say maybe, so you don’t land in concrete, before you freeze from waist down and can’t breathe.
Say maybe, so time moves quickly; or stay here and bear their moment, heart and soul rough and bare.
Say maybe, so you don’t have to be sure you’re forgiven.
Say maybe, keep on holding their sins so the weight can pull you away from your own.

Here in America, number who knows what in education,
Where we excel in standardization,
Of souls and resumes
Where you need a 4.5 gpa
And hey, I know I’m one of the ones in the 1%
I’ll repent for my hypocrisy in saying “break free”
I know, poor me, being reduced to numbers just isn’t my thing
4.33, schedule block B, math, PE and chemistry
Sometimes it’s hard to breathe
I can feel my chest cave and shrink
That chewing glass feeling
And imagine the kids sitting on the brink of failure
Which has grown to become something:
A cacophony of the anti American dream
And therefore we’re stripped of autonomy
In the land of the free
“I pledge Allegiance to”
The US public education system which finds its niche in the fact
That witchcraft seems to be the way to survive it
Deviation from the norm is only embraced for a profit
So basically unless you’re an actual prophet I’d color in the lines
It’s not like you could find the time
After the 7 hours of school, 3 for homework, 2 for sports, 7 for sleep, 2 for eating, and half a minute for breathing
So on Gregory, on Denise, to your 9 to 5s
Of course there’s those that thrive
Living their best life outside the American Assembly line, like in algebra there’s an exception to every rule
So I’ll run the rat race September to December to spring break to summer and then start it over
I’ll chew my glass, if you’ll fill one up with champagne for June of 2020, when the real world begins,
Because the world of high school and imaginary is where I live.

I want to crawl out of my skin and transcend. I want to feel all the things I have forgotten that don't have names. I want to slip away. I want to laugh freely. I want to feel the way I used to. 

this bed is stripped down to the mattress and it shows all the faults and failures. it knows my name, bears my secrets, and held me up for four years. this ceiling houses my soul. these walls have both imprisoned me and set me free.

Laura gets emotional whenever we go to the towneast NA meetings. she says “this is the room I got clean in.” 

this room is where I rose and fell; transformed and burnt the remains of my monstrosity. I have evolved and endured within the confines of these walls. the scent of psychosis and freedom still lingers in the wallpaper of the bathroom after a long hot shower.

I have changed my entire existence within this room. I have lost my mind and soul in here. I have been empty and numb, trapped on this mattress. I was determined to make it the last thing I ever saw, once.

I have been to heaven and to hell on this bed. now I question if either exist. everything I have ever known, I have learned in here. everything I have ever questioned happened within this room.

I want to burn it to the ******* ground.

Every day I fall
and flail
I stumble and stutter
and slur my words together
I do so well some days
Those days I am proud
but on those awful
otherdays
I fall even further than the last
You lure me in like
the perfect predator
as I am the perfect prey
topping off my glass
the moment that it empties
You, who tell me I need not ever use a cup
that I might touch my mouth
to the top of you
and it would be fine
so long as I drunk you all
to myself
and when your poison is in my veins
and I am thoroughly gone
you teach me how to walk
and how to talk
and how to scream aloud my every thought
in ways I would never imagine without
your harmful presence
but I need you
it is as though the very thought of you
makes me yearn for your bitter taste

Liquid burns
as does smoke
and both share the same portal
both the same host
this liquid that burns
does not wash away the ash
that also burns
their host, how she croaks
and liquid burns as much
going down
as she does
coming back up
but not ash, who sticks
soundly to her host
loyal only to the tender pink flesh
of both lungs
and whiskey, she coats her masters
insides
as a freshly painted wall
And sometimes they converse
a friendship of
cotton-tasting tobacco,
and bittersweet alcohol
the best kind of pain
self inflicted
unwilling
regretful
but oh, how these twice-given agonies
go together so well
with their host, their slave
who is also their master
but never completely
for control between these three
must be separated by four
ash, whiskey, the host, and the choice