It’s the way I feel you before you’re even here
the silent tremors that glide down my spine
as I quiet down
tighten my grip
and swallow
The desperate pleas I make with you each breath I take
on my knees
insisting that my life is worth more than
one simple mistake
retracing my week, trying to find when
I accidentally left the door open
and you snuck back in
pushing me back
driving manically
to the four am Emergency Room
blood stained floors
as you pull me from another
night of sleep
another day of work
another arm wrapped around my side
I won’t try to climb mountains anymore
just let me live until March 4th
The moments when the hospital room slows into relief
when the medicine finally kicks in
and the nurse looks me in the eyes as she
tries to tuck me back  into the
white light sheets
hoping that will make you slow down
wishing the warmth  would loosen your grip
she taps into my veins to catch a glimpse
at the way you dance around inside of me
clinging onto my lower back, poking your fingers
through every layer I have left
whispering into my ear as they ask me why
I was in the hospital again
Oh it was just a routine check-up
You pull me by the neck
force my eyes open
to stare hungrily through the glass you built around me
day in and day out observing
the pace the world moves in,
orbiting around me
on infinite time
on a clock that’s hand doesn't just land on
on moments between IV drips
on moments between
when you decide to pull me back into bed
when you decide to hold me down and cloud my head
for days
for weeks
for months
Flooding my mind with memories when I wasn’t filled with orange pills
when my insides weren’t leaking faster and faster
with each passing season
Kind of want to keep living
but you’ve promised to
stop giving me a reason.

Ten years go by.
You survive. You find a way to create your reactions to trauma, you twist it, tangle it around every heart that beats for you. You bite your lower lip so many times that the scar sticks. You find the way matches, when applied to your skin feel safer than his hands did. You don’t let him win. You don’t win either.  You find the freedom in slipping away, you drink your friends under the table, you sneak out of the home after they fall asleep and you walk through the empty streets screaming his name, hoping he comes out of the bushes so you can finish what you started. You’re unarmed except for the empty bottle. Ten years go by and you jump into the way lovers make you feel safe, you show them all of your scars and you sit on the living room floor for hours - begging for them to place the delicate band-aids over each and every one. Some do, some walk out and don’t look back. You hold back physically assaulting several therapists because they ask you what you were wearing, they rationalize what was done to you as an act of your early peak into sexuality and that no one should be sexually active at that age, they forget you weren’t sexually active with the opposite ***. You wait five years, until your legs are up in the same chair, and they’re there, holding you down while you writhe in pain and no one really seems to be there to call but it feels the same way it did - but your family is two states away and all you wanted was a voice but they hung up so you swallow countless pills and wake up three days later. Ten years go by. You find the challenge in the sober moments when the fog is clearing on the north side of the mountain and you forgot to pack a lunch but you’re five miles in and you need to get back to your truck because the sun will set in two hours and you don’t have a flashlight and suddenly you hear his voice in the back of your head, the monotone pierce of realizing you could be anywhere and he’s still sitting casually on your shoulder. You wait seven years to slowly peel your victimhood off your skin, you sit in the bathtub and soak it through essential oils, apology letters written on soggy paper, words of hate, words of pain, words of realism. You respond slowly with moments of empathy, you allow others pain and trauma to top yours, you stop trying to push the labor of your life onto each heart that holds you. You hold yourself up, you climb slowly, you pedal faster, you feed your body, you whisper back each time he hits you with his voice, you say that you hear him but he has no power over you. Ten years go by, you take your voice and you allow it to lift others up, you take your body and you allow all the strengths and scars to be seen, examined, you take the vulnerable parts of you and instead of band-aids, you delicately sew in sutures, you show the ones who love you, the way you can stand up straight, tall, off the floor. You hold their hands and you grip into the power of ten years went by, he didn’t **** you, he tried like hell, but he didn’t **** you. You survived. You looked it dead in the eye and you forgave it, you pulled what you could from it and you moved on the best way you could. Ten years go by. You find the beauty in your trauma, you find the roses overpower the thorns and you celebrate. Ten years.

Define how you see me,
take your fingers and allow them to slowly climb up to my collar bone.
I paint you in scenes.
I find the familiarity in the way you mirror the comfort I always craved but couldn’t allow my throat to clear long enough to ask for it.
I wouldn’t find the absolutism in this moment, I wouldn’t be so present, I wouldn’t be so focused on the curvature of your lower lip as it edges closer and closer to mine.
I would be numb, you wouldn’t even be here, or your would be and I would have forgotten your name already as you climbed on top of me.
It’s like a receding hair line,
the pungent smell of betadine, the risky slip of ‘she’s not breathing’ but I heard them,
it’s deceiving.
lucky to see the way the sun rises, lucky to feel the pain
your terror exposes
how do I clarify the explantation
that unconditional only comes with the
vivid understanding that
god, it goes by so quickly.

Exhausting.
The last drips from the shower are plummeting down the drain as I focus on the slurping noise the water makes as it cascades down the old buildings plumbing. 
Exhausting.
As my lower back aches, my toes squirm, the pulsing beat behind my eyes hums along to the same rhythmic migraine it’s been stuck in for the better part of the last five years.
Exhausting.
The nervous tick of sweat beads down my back while my mind whirls through scenarios, ways I could have been better, ways he could be thinking about me, how soon this will all end because,
Exhausting.
Remembering the day I sat in the dim room
“Anyone ever told you, you’re bi-polar?”
The relief the explanation laid out in front of me,
the look of pity on his face.
“You suffer from years of PTSD, this is going to take a life time to conquer.”
Exhausting.
“With your chronic illness, this is going to be an uphill battle, each flare up will set you back.”
Exhausting.
“Of course, we cannot medicate you with your other medications.”
Exhausting.
“Please call the suicide hotline the next time you feel that way.”
Exhausting.
The way the same cut and dry of cold desolation their turned back screams as I play victim to a mental illness I’ve never bothered to master.
Exhausting.
As I play victim to a physical illness that never subsides.
Exhausting.
As I ride out the same perils each lover faces while they face me, naked, dripping, towel wrapped around my hair, gritting my teeth with a Iknowwewerejokingbutpleasedontcallmethat
Exhausting.
It’d be easier if I was dying, it’d ward them off quicker, give them a time limit they could count on.
“I love her but I can’t handle these mood swings, I never know what to say around her, I can’t keep doing this if this is all it will ever be.”
Exhausting.
As each partner holds a seance, brings up every dead lover they can muster and finds all the right avenues to trigger, poke, ****, promise, and be gone.
Exhausting.
I’m here, until your mania isn’t quirky, I’m here until your mania directly effects me, I’m here until you become a mirror to everything I fear.
Exhausting.

I ate the petals
One by one
The delicate euphoria of
Rushing hues from yellow
To maybe it's you's
I sipped the same wine
But somehow I
Was the drunk one
Rolling around on the floor
Whispering
More, please, more.

I am aimless in the typography of simple moments where the lines change and suddenly they’re asking from me. 

Where did I go? 

What am I thinking about? 

How do I feel?

The endless parade of the safest valley on earth. 

The way the mountain ranges hug the fault line and enunciate that I will be ok while they keep me sedentary, 

watching as the snow piles on the hill sides and melts away with each season, 

I became addicted to the fog

hugging  the ethereal realm of consciousness,

 unlike the bitter evergreens tickling the sides of jagged rocks,

lightly dipped clouds slowly secreting drops of dew seemed to delicately keep me at ease, 

calm my bitter, ever-growing disease.

you told me it would end the way it needed to

I thought those were the worst moments in my life.

somewhere inside I heard the senseless pounding of hope compromising  

repeating the same thick mantra of I would only claw my bloodied fingers onto simpler heights

The way the rings delicately sat on top of each other

how it steamed up the sides of the white walls

expected nothing less from existence when my eyes finally lifted

from the heavy slumber

how the florescent

at first glance

did not bring me to my knees

any kind of inspiring prose

or please

it just lulled me into

another moment where my

eyelids

begged for visions

of

from the highway you can see this one view

twenty minutes north of California

my hair is blowing in the wind, caught by the ripping shards of desert tempermant

the way you smoke your cigarette as if

any day one of them will be your last

succulent gliding allegory of the brutal

moments of leisure connection brings

while it rips itself from our absent moments

the sun is right above

if you listen closely

there is the song

slowly humming

the one i played

repeatedly for you.

Hey it's me. Can we talk?
It's just the the full moon is rising right now
on the last month of this year
and I am feeling the way you used to press on
me
the existential dread of
everything existing since
I last heard your voice
is yanking me under
six feet of soil
and I know you
don't know how to swallow
when you hear my voice
I know it makes the heat rise to
the tip of your chest
and you ball your fists
but can I just hear you
one last time
tell me
that it will all be ok
can we pretend
that this year never happened
for one second?
Just one ******* second
I want to absorb the decent
life that once  
kept me glued together
once held the image of you
that wasn't just fractals
spewed with hate
distaste
bitter notes of
'I ******* hate you's'
It's me. I know
you forwarded the call
and I know she's home
there with you
while your new life
boils in the kettle
the steeping bags
of I once sat on the same counter
and tried to not die
from the heart break
I just want to pretend that  
one day
we'll be at a place where we can
silently lay beside each other
hands clasped so tight
and fade into
a sleepless night.

Anyway, I wish you well
and I'm sorry for all the times
I told you to go
to hell.