I have had a raging headache
For days now
My ears are ringing so loud
I can’t tell if people are talking to me
Or I’ve began to go into psychosis
I don’t think I’ll ever kick
This wretched pain in my head

My trauma
It is heavy
Like stacks of bricks on my back
And I carry it with me
To the store, when I’m out with friends
It’s there when I wake up in the middle of the night
It’s often the first thing to cross my mind
It surges through my veins
It’s like poison in my blood
It makes my mouth taste bitter
It makes me want to run
But no matter how fast my feet hit the ground
Or how far I may travel
These bricks don’t come off so easy
They follow me town to town

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 think I started needing
Control when I started
To lack it from others
When my father stopped keeping me on such a tight leash
And my mother finally set me free
I don’t think I knew what to do
So I would cling onto people
And control their every move
Because I didn’t know that was
What you were not supposed to do
Until I ruined everything I had with you

It is the shadow under my step
It is the darkest of feelings
It drips off of me like oil
On wet wood
It is, and isn’t
Who I am
And
Who I want to be

I dimmed my flame for you
I smudged out my shine
I covered my gold skin in black tarp
Layer after layer
Until you could no longer tell
How glorious I once was
And I did this all so
You would feel comfortable loving me
I know I was intimidating
My twinkle was blinding
The diamonds buried in my chest, they more
Closely resemble coal now
But when it gets cold down here
In this damp dark hell
I often scoop out some coal and lay it out in front of me
I light it with my flame
That’s barely sizzling
And I remember what I once was
What I never learned to love
Until it was no longer me
And I shiver in the cold
Missin when I was a not just an ember

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

I don’t think I’ll ever forget what it felt like
To be struck like a match
And burn out in your hands
But I’d be a strike anywhere for you anytime
Because your heat was unforgettable
And my heart was left nonflammable

I woke up this morning
Gasping for air
I had been dreaming of diving
The deeper I went the less I wanted to go up
I just kept swimming
Knowing I could only hold my breath so long
I was almost happy
But I remembered that would leave me
Without you

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

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

How is it that everyday I find myself falling in love with you all over again
Like a sprinkle that turns to a pour you completely engulf me
And the tingles run up and down my arms and my chest touches the ceiling
I’m madly and completely in love with you like it’s the first time I realized it all over again and I swoon

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

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