I sit and stare
At the walls
Out my window
At the passing faces in malls
At the cars passing on the road
I’m so numb
Everything I’ve ever come to know
Feels cold

Of all my years in church

The one thing I learned was

The devil loved tenderly

And god?

He was cold

I am drained
Sluggish
Unmotivated
Tired
I try waking up earlier,
I try giving myself an extra 30 minuets for sleep
Nothing helps
I sit and stare
Like a brain dead zombie
I don’t know what to say
I know I could do better
I could make myself work
I could push forward and hope to gain the motivation and strength to continue
But even the little things that used to be so simple I could do them in my sleep seem monumental to me now
I don’t know if my problems got bigger
Or I got smaller
But they’re definitely not being dealt with today

I have developed this poetic alter ego when I write
As my words pour from my ears out onto my paper
I know I have it
I have what many long for
It comes to me and I have to let it out
No matter where I am or what I’m doing
I have not ****** as many without emotion,
Or drank my life away
But I feel some nights my writing reflects the young bukowski in me
As a girl I would read his poems in solitude, I’d soak in his ooey gooey words that reaked of stale cigarettes and *****
They gave me something no other writing has
True untainted feeling

I thought healing was easy,
Growing and improving,
I didn’t know it was uncontrollably sobbing when I read my poems to people and binging on junk food,
But like I love to say “you must feel it to get over it” but
Who ever likes to really take their own advice?
I know it must rain for the flowers to bloom but I’m tired of being a bud

Is it really self care if I take another day off,
get ****** in my underwear and wait for the night to roll around,
**** a bottle then walk the town,

I thought sweet love poems was my thing
But nothing drips so smoothly from my chapped lips like the woes I leave scattered across my journals and notes
But I suppose I must revisit my past I set off again and again sometime
I might as well write it out

I can’t look you in the eyes
I can’t do my work
I can’t crawl out of bed for more than ten minutes at a time
My bones feel like paper and my skin feels like a jacket that’s two sizes too small and I can’t wiggle around enough to stretch it in the slightest
It’s like everything I once was oozed out of me all at once and I’m just a fleshy shell
I wish to regress to a simpler time
Say, being five and ignorant naturally
When all I was upset about was sharing toys or seeing my dad
I hate these big girl problems
The time it takes to heal
I want to get upset about dropping my animal crackers again then my punishment is taking a nap, I’m tired of feelin as if all I am doing is turning the wrong corner every chance I get, I didn’t think this is who I would ever be

My dryer recently broke out of the blue
Just stopped heating up
But I understood my dryers pain on such a deep personal level we bonded from that moment on
Except I didn’t break out of the blue I stopped heating up after you started to let other versions of you slip out
I stopped admiring how the light reflected off your once so utterly perfect face, I stopped sitting so close to you
Hugging you back
I stopped thinking you were the best thing I’ve ever seen and I started understanding every time I said it I meant it
“I love you more”
Really everything I did once upon a time
Almost made my stomach turn now
Like a dog in the night
You wait for me
Like a broken dryer I shake and rattle
But at least I don’t text other women

I just spent the last 30 minuets crying into my boyfriends chest
In the middle of my tear fest I choked out
“can we get Wendy’s?”

The sheets are a deep teal
The cat has a UTI and is ******* blood
Theres a bowl next to me,
Half smoked
You’re touching my ***
But I can’t shake the thought
Of never being enough for you
We live together
We sleep in the same bed
You pop my pimples
I check your eyes for styes
I scratch your hair
You hold me when I cry
But in the mists of it all
I feel I fell short somewhere between the *** stained sheets and the moments we can’t breath because we’re laughing too hard
I feel it lies somewhere in my character that I will forever fall short

The lights were utterly blinding,
as the shock of the recent events began to sink in,
It all comes back to me like I'm right there on the bathroom floor again,
NO
I muttered at least a dozen times
But would you have stopped had I spit out the word one more time?
You stole something from me that night,
a piece I have tried anything for to get back,
But when you were taking it from me the dimly lit bathroom went black,
I can still see the face your friend there at the time made,
I can see his peaking head staring, burning me with his eyes,
I have NEVER felt so *****, disgusting, and unclean
And it haunts me every night on the way to my dreams
God those blinding lights in my eyes about to spill,
My feet hitting the ground ware almost a thump in the distance at best,
My lungs burned, and I felt as if they were incapable of taking in air
When I made it to the place I was staying for the night
I remember sitting there staring for most of the night, knowing I had to burn those god blessed underwear because what you did left more than a stain
And I constantly battle with myself back and fourth in my head,
but I have to understand,
It was NOT my fault
and you are just a terrible terrible man.

My heart aches with a pain I’ve never felt
A pain you couldn’t love me out of if you tried
Everything is cold
And I think I need a cigarette

In every sweaty faced, teary eyed, frizzy haired argument I found myself facing you in,
I never once failed to crumple to my core,
Like waves carrying immense riptides you dragged me in every room around the house by the hair, by the shirt, by the neck, by the wrist,
Like a ******* dog you had me,
wrapped around the leash closely bound by your fists,
And no matter how far I may stray from you,
How long gone I want to think the distant memory of you is
I can still feel you tugging on the chain never fully unlatched,
I listen to your voicemails, I decline your calls by hand,

You are the juggernaut of my fears,
the final boss I can not face
Every time you raise your voice I find myself as a little girl again,
those big dumb blue eyes that didn't ******* understand,
When I looked at you I hurt so deeply inside,
When I look at you I hurt so deeply inside
We both know I'm not busy
We both know I'm avoiding you
But when I listen to your voicemails alone in my room
I feel like that little girl again who wants just so desperately to believe you love me,
you loved me
That you're actually miss me
But I still feel the ghost pains from every smack, slam, and blow
so when I don't answer the phone understand, I'm fighting back everything in me to not answer and let you know,
I don't care if you have, will, or plan to change
The time I granted you to do so is
long gone,
I'm standing up for the me who had not yet learned to love her now callused shell

A taste grows in my mouth,
the longer I stare,
like battery acid it pools,

At the sight of a loving father,
I find my stomach turning

I know it is but only my jealous heart,
This bitter taste so familiar,
sour it is indeed

I feel as if ill never heal this aching pain
of something I've never had

like an itch on an absent limb,
I have discovered,
nothing can quite scratch it right

I reach out
     until my ******* tendons
snap
     and you just watch
standing inches away
     mocking me,
*******

The chatter in the room is almost mundane
The woman behind me has a dog she’s keeping outside who the neighbors aren’t too fond of because he’s a bit loud at night
I got to my hair appointment almost 15 minuets late as I slipped through the door of the I suppose modern styled ‘Yellow Strawberry’ my mother was on the phone
She wears this head set that wraps around your neck and never realizes she yells when she is talking to people and it makes me cripplingly anxious
The mirrors are tall and filled with unimpressed faces glaring at us as my marvelous royal purple polyester velvet skirt glistens in the sunlight peeking in from the dropped shades
I mutter out the time of my appointment apologize that we are late and give them my name
I know it is spelt wrong in the computer, and the odds of one of the people in here having a dog named bella are unbelievable high
As I’m escorted back to my hair dressers station I remember, I need to repaint my chipped glittery red nail polish before I pick all of it off and feel disgusting
But this particular nail polish is extremely difficult to get off and I regret every-time I paint my nails with it
But it looks so ******* beautiful in the sunlight and my lover adores the color against my almost porcelain  like skin so I indulge from now and again
I am here to hopefully cut about three inches off of my hair, it’s getting too long it sits painfully at about an inch or two below my shoulders
Four months ago I cut off about 10 inches and I felt about 50 pounds of anxiety lift from my chest
I think my fears started to manifest in my curls and the knots that kept returning reminding me over and over again I needed a desperate change
And now I’m finding myself approaching another much needed change, it’s nice

To the lizards getting stuck behind my window screen,
I understand the feeling of confusion and panic,
like the beautiful flowers obliterated in harsh storms and the flies stuck aimlessly flying in dining halls with no escape,
I truly understand,
It's never easy being so alone