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

its 99 cents for any cup of
Coffee
MakeDamnSure is playing on the radio
It’s colder outside than last night
But last night I was woozy
From the *****
And it could have actually been colder than it is tonight
The alcohol makes me warm with feelings that get to finally creep from the shadows
You know even I get tired of keeping it all in sometimes

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

We never appreciate the social currency we receive until we find ourselves broke

I like silk kimonos after long baths
Filled with beer and bongs that never go unpacked
I like cigarettes when my visions blurry
And midol for the headaches
I like to sleep later that I should and wake up in the middle of the day
I like long walks to nowhere and short walks to somewhere
Big fields and vast waters
I like feeling free

I gave everything I had to you and still you wanted more
I broke my ribs to make you trinkets
And my skin to keep you warm
I overworked my emotions just to keep you from feeling bored
Now here I am
Empty
Alone
And worn

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

You walk in, noticing every obvious trap set
To make you crawl from that shell and open the conversation,
Then you sit
They must make a truth serum that they spray on those couches in the shrinks office
Because they make you spill your guts
Not more than a minute after sitting down it set in
I have to talk now
The water works started and I couldn’t shut them down
“There’s tissues to the left take your time”
The words are like tug of war and your tongue is winning concealing them in shame the embarrassment of feeling
Every sentence is broken up like a child learning to talk
The session passes in what seems an eternity as if the door was a portal to say the twilight zone
The minuets turn to centuries as sweat pools around you
Is this recovery?

Every few months I find myself in the same parking lot
At the same laundromat
In the same parking space
Listening to the same melancholy music
Smoking out of the same bowl
But always having new conversations, never seeing the same two people

We spend hours planning our lives with our friends as children,
but we never plan the disasters
We never plan for the waves so high they wash away the hope
we plan for the best days, the big days and those in between
but why don’t we plan for the pain, the hurt and the disappointment,
It’s almost like I set myself up with these ideas of true accomplishment
I dreamed of a life filled with more than this
And now when I share the life story of me there is one term I hear over all else
Turmoil
How could somebody so young with so much hope be crushed so deeply?
How could they not?
What keeps us from the inevitable?
I think I wanted so much I wanted to go so far
Although I shot for the moon I did not land amongst stars
I landed in the vast emptiness of disappointment, the dread you feel once it’s all laid out in front of you
ever memory ever moment seems so much bigger than it did,
Maybe I never stopped to smell the roses
Or maybe I just didn’t realize how good they smelled at the time
But I can tell you when looking back at my life although sadder than expected it’s a road I’ve been assigned, and turmoil looks a lot more like growth the farther you walk the line

Falling in love
Feels quite similar
To doing your first whippit
Tingly and warm
Oblivious to what’s around you

In your presence
I am liquid
But in your absence
I am ice

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

It’s okay to take a break
It’s okay to need some time
It’s okay to not feel guilty
It’s okay to be okay
It’s okay to help yourself
It’s okay to separate from the mess
It’s okay to do whatever you need to do to continue feeling like you can make it
Because you will

Smudged makeup became the usual
With puffy eyes and bruised fists
Knees so painful I can’t leave bed
A back that feels broken
Its like I’m flying through the forest at a 100 miles an hour and I keep hitting everything
I’m so wreckless and so scared
I never thought this is who I’d be

I’m a stranger to myself
The reflection I yearn for
Is empty as of the past few months
I stand in front of the mirror for hours on end
Just hoping to see
Me
But I am unrecognizable
Some nights I sit in the guilt
Of continuing like I know at all who I am
But what do I say
I hope I can wake up one day
And really see me

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