Insults thrown as easily as tableware,
And I catch every single one.
I never learned to duck, dodge, or weave-
Plates fall and shatter,
Ceramic cuts my skin.

I stopped trying to get out,
Accepting the pain,
Because I believed I let it begin.

But pain never asks permission.
It just makes itself at home.
Living with it is hard-
But no one tells you
How hard it is
Once you kick it out.

Plates no longer fly.
There are no holes in the walls.
Nothing lurks around the corners,
But still,
Your heart races in the dark.

Safety is an illusion
You can barely see.
Healing is so daunting
When you're attached to pain
You shouldn't be.

She sits with her silence,
Bound by her thoughts.
Life continues anyway,
But join in, she does not.

Though she would like to,
It takes time to decide,
And once she gets ready,
There’s no room in the ride.

So maybe she’ll start walking,
Or she’ll stay frozen in fear.
She wants to go somewhere else,
But she seems to be stuck here.

She’s found a doorway
Just a handful of times,
But every time she moves closer,
Further away it flies.

There must be a lesson
In this self-aware prison,
A continuous torturous cycle
From which she hasn’t risen.

Swirling and thrashing
In circular motions,
Part of her must like
Being breathless in the ocean.

Yet there’s a small part
On the left side of her brain
That hates this **** cycle,
The suffocation insane.

But she doesn’t control movement
And barely steers thoughts,
So here she goes again,
Busting down doors that should remain locked.

She’s scared to read new stories
With endings untold,
When all familiar tales
End predictably bitter and cold.

There’s bite to the freeze, though,
And pleasure in pain.
Echoes fill her mind’s chamber:
“Free us from these chains.”

No, she doesn’t need saving,
She’s working out the clues.
You say she’s isolating,
But it’s what she has to do.

So very easily distracted,
Hypnotized by honeyed words,
She falls in love so quickly,
Abandoning her puzzled curse.

And when it surely fizzles out,
She’s back here at square one,
A couple days of crashing out,
Erasing all the work she’s done.

simple things are all it takes
to tie my heart in knots of devotion
for i'm a simple girl
with simple wants:

to feel loved
no
to feel loveable

A wish sent with the wind

Invasive to some

A beautiful meadow to others

In the middle of an ordinary cornfield,
In an ordinary place,
Stands a small group of trees
Spared from agricultural fate.

Chosen by fairies–
Forever their glade,
Or spared by corporate greed,
Property line arguments man-made.

Whatever the reason,
It rests in the fog,
Magical as ever,
Eerie, a bit odd.

Yet it doesn’t look out of place,
It fits just right,
A hidden little wonder
Tucked away out of sight.

I hope there are fairies,
Or witches, or gnomes,
Living in that haven,
Their whimsical home.