you want to see me stripped on the floor
a motor of a girl gasping for breath
crawling with her blistered knuckles
her wounds harsh and fresh
can’t you just breathe in deeply?
exhale, then inhale me
oh, for your sake baby
push it in then leave me diseased
you only see a body
you only see a body
you only see a body
you only see my body


—i wish so hard that you would just see me

i’ve written about you
enough times to count on two hands now
but i do not want to be in love.
and i’ve said that one hundred times: you must be sick of hearing it;
i’m sick of me too.
i make myself sick
in every way
because i can’t write about you
in a poetic way
because the way we coexist isn’t poetic
in the slightest.
the way my eyes curl around the edges
is not poetic
in the slightest.
i am not enthralled with anyone.
i don’t carve initials into my spine
so i can be yours and you can be mine.
i am not obsessive.
i don’t know how to give myself away to others
to waltz on their stages
with ballet slippers.
i have no idea how to be in love with someone else.
i don’t need anyone else
to make me worthy in this world.
i don’t want anyone else
to make me worthy in this world.
i am worth the first breath of sunshine
without a man sitting on the park bench with me.
i am worth the months i have spent
aching for somebody else to make me whole again
but i am whole and complete and my own entity
and i love who i am when nobody is around
i love who i am when i am just by myself.

i would like to love you like everyone else does
like a morning dove
awaiting morning
like a beautiful sunset
still forming
i would like to love you easily and breathlessly
count all the syllables in the words you say
watch you walk
watch you stay
watch you walk away anyway.
i’m so difficult to love:
i move in rhythms
i push away—i shove
i erode the land i pave
i can’t mend the things i break.
i can’t be in love with you—
that would mean i would have to stay.
i am disgusting, you are ravishing.
you are hourglass sand in my hands
and i have stab wounds too
you fall through
every time
through every corner of dying skin.
you would abhor me if you could just stop adoring me—
i haven’t felt useless since the day we met
but i have a selfish need to push, pull,
yawn and stretch
and move violently in indignation.
you were in the wake, you moving piece of innocence
you had no clue who you were meeting
and now i’m sure you regret
it.
i can’t be who you want me to
cause then i’d have to stay
and i’m not sure how not to move these legs.

in the end, i know that
i will watch you watch me walk away.

—i wanted you to love me
not in a selfish way
in a “i’ve never experienced love, can you dress my wounds” kind of way
i wanted your eyes to paint galaxies
over the acres of my skin
and make them shine like a constellation in the
light-polluted backyard

—i wanted you to adore me
not in a selfish way
in a “if you looked at anything else, it wouldn’t measure up, but that’s fine” kind of way

but you don’t have to love me
in a stain glass window church kind of way
you don’t have to paint over my cracks
and force me to stay
i would hold your hand no matter
even if the dam we built together suddenly came apart
i would hold you
soft—
ly

you’re so easy to love


   —i wish i was like you

i feel free
by myself
without any one else
any body that’s coarse and weak
i don’t need a body to complete me.
i don’t need your false sunlight,
your false sense of security.
i am better alone.
i am easier to manage.
i am easier to mold into something else
something cowardly
like trying to belong.
oh, why did i ever try to belong?
oh, why did i ever try?
who was i
to be so bold as to assume that i was anything more than just a dying art?
for you.
a dying art
for your cracked and callused hands
to hold and touch when the brush becomes a part of your hand
—you can’t seem to set it down.

i never loved you like that
it was just that you were
a raft to my dehydrated,
ocean-soaked body.
i never loved you.
i never loved your pores or your sweet talk,
it was just that you were the tourniquet that stopped the bleeding.
you were the peace treaty.
it was just that you were
the smiling child to my baby fever.
the edge of my doom was a little grassy field
off the cliff—
it was you.
i was never
—will never—
be in love with you
but you were a handmade quilt
constructed with a mother’s caring kiss
that laid over my body
so that the cold could not nip.
you were a constant.
and i know you know
i will never be in love with you
but i love you for what you made me,
for what you allowed me to become.
i will love you
till all time
for teaching me how to love who i am.
and hopefully,
one day,
i will be able to return the favor.

i never liked myself.
barely picking
myself
off the shower floor.
now there’s a storm
and it’s within me—
a dull buzzing
of a radiator
and a quiet alarm
singing its apocalyptic peace.