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  Apr 2015 Astrid Ember
Sam Knaus
There are blotches of red marks on my skin, my face,
bags under my eyes, 
I get around 5 hours of sleep most nights 
but every morning I still feel like I haven't slept in a century. 
This is a different kind of pain.
This isn't a migraine, or a stomachache. 
This is more than a stomachache. 
This is waking up every morning to arms full of scars that are so ******* triggering,
A stomach screaming "feed me" but skipping breakfast and lunch 
because I swear to ******* god, I've gained weight. 
This is a different kind of pain. 
This is my first poem in months which is why 
it doesn't fit together perfectly 
but since I penned all of my thoughts about 
my eating disorder, my self harm, my mental illnesses and my boyfriend,
I didn't have anything to say, 
I'd given my voice away by that point 
and that caused a different kind of pain.
This is the first poem I've written in god knows how long. I figured I'd upload it. Sorry about how depressing it is.
  Apr 2015 Astrid Ember
Sam Knaus
I promise I'm not crazy.
I promise I can make the empty mornings and nights
and tear-soaked sheets
up to you.
I promise I can figure out how to make you happy
when you're down-
I haven't quite figured it out yet,
but I will.
I still cry on the nightly
even when you don't see,
I see
that I bring you down
but you stay, and put up with my **** anyway...
It must be hard,
dating me.
It must be hard
on the days that I forget how to live
and I'm too weary to do anything
but stare at the drawings on my wall,
to do anything but breathe
and sleep and cry,
it must be ******* the days
that I beg you to ask what's wrong
but immediately say,
"I'm okay."
It must be ******* the days
that I can't keep any food down
that I'm clinging to your shirt,
stuttering out broken apologies,
it must be ******* the days
I'm scared to say "I love you,"
for fear that you won't say it back.
It must be hard
but it's hard for me, too,
and worse that I still don't know how to help you
when you feel that way,
when you feel like me,
so all I can say is,
"I'll make myself up to you.
I promise... I'm sorry.
I promise, I'm not crazy."
Astrid Ember Apr 2015
Well you see,
my skin melted
into a lot of things
last summer. Even my
bones mixed with a
few.

The fact that everything
became a liquid river
passing around my ankles
didn't help.
Time became a
cloud that a giant
walks through on his
way to get food.

My stomach and head
got a little sea-sick on
this voyage. Their ears
never really popped from
this altitude.
My body shivered from
the OD.
My skin burned and
melted with him.
Trees grabbed my
hair, leaves stained my
cheeks.

I had rotten skin
for bones and cracked
ribcages for flesh.
The rivers were
fire and the fish
rocks of ice.
A beast by my side
through hellfire.
Her eyes were marbles.
Her flesh cracked glass.
Her hands were iseicles.
Ripped tendons looking like
dreads hanging from her
head.

But this is only how she
looked in Neverland.
In my geometry class
you never would of guessed
she bent time around her
fingers, squished it into liquid,
painted her nails with it.

Everything is liquid with
her.
She could turn you into
fine wine or a **** stain
on the pants of a scared
kindergartner.

Walking into her house
the walls are mallible
black fur.
They'll nick your change
out of your pockets.
One time it ******
her dad into it.
She said he hasn't
emerged in 5 days.
"He's changed." She says.
"He said it's a way
to Neverland but, mom
says he comes home smelling
like Narnia." She whispered.

They had eyes. The walls.
I could hear them
churning. Black liquid that
gurgled and popped like
an exploding guinea pig
in the microwave.
The fur moved like legs
on a centipede.

Everything got mixed
up and colors stopped looking
the same.

I stayed over at her
house one night,
and I swear to
God faries came.

They called my
beast a pirate.
Said she's been
off duty too
long.
They thought I
was asleep.
In the morning
we walked out
her door and we
fell into the sky.
We fell through
time.
The world became
white and black.

We landed in the
ocean, emerging
through the sand.
She became a
new kind of being.
Her eyes were 8-*****.
Hair, blue fire,
and her skin was
moving black smoke.

She said I looked like
something she could
get addicted to.

One night I found
my hand melted in
her hair,
my hip bones
became Lego pieces stuck
to hers.
Fingers mashed in
places they couldn't
be seen.
Her eyes kept answering
my question of "should
I keep going" with
"**** yes". Her mouth
stretched smoke that
you could lose your mind
in.
Her body a maze
that I couldn't wait
to figure out.
We grew gills
and kept
breathing each other
in.

She said it was
a solstice one night
as we got lost in
seaweed.
I asked her what
that meant.
Before I knew
it, the ocean
****** us up
and the sky
spit us out and
we fell with the
rain. We were hail
being delivered with
drumrolling thunder
and lightning.

We didn't return
to "Earthly" beings.
We stayed in the
flooded streets, gills
still only needing
the other.

She said
she had to return
to Neverland,
but she wasn't sure
if I could go.

We'd find out soon
enough.
Just how,
do we get there?
She pointed to a sky
scraper.
Her see through
fingers found my skin.
She said my eyes looked
like black holes, my skin
had the milkyway trapped
beneath it.

Hopping from rain drop
to rain drop we got to
the top of that building.

We had to wait until
sunrise.
She told me the grass
is smooth like
the seaweed where
we're going.

That my blood would
look like northern
lights.
My mundane mind
wouldn't exist, I
wouldn't feel dead
anymore.
She said we'd be like
Bonnie and Clyde.

When the sun peeked
at our side of the earth
she told me
I might not pass through.
She said that might
be her case too.

She said we'd find Neverland
if we jumped off of that
building.
But all we found was our
bones infused in the concrete.
I was a tad bit high when I wrote this one too.
Astrid Ember Apr 2015
Glass has been shattered.
He's shattered.
On the floor and
I don't know who he
is anymore.
The light from the
exploding sky
has no clue which piece
of him is fit to shine
off of. Like all of him
is just so dark, no light
could ever escape to reflect.
    
There are always hidden
sights, you just have to
care enough to see. A Chinese
hut on the mountain with a
waterfall that turns into
the night sky.
There's a man in the sky
who's got tentacles for
half of his face. Northern
lights turning into vines
and flowers. A waif living
in acid with a cape of smoke.

The cracks in your lips
aren't just from the dry
weather. Your teeth are
rotten. I know it started in
your jaw. From clenching it
so hard. It started in the roots
of your molars. Was that just
the cigarettes? Has it spread?
Is that why the bags under
your eyes look like you're
leaving for good?
You carry it all on your
shoulders. Is that why
they always lean forward?
Guess you ran out of room,
wiped your eyes, set the
carry ons down there.
Your eyes droop already but
you'll be ****** in an hour.
Maybe you'll get so high you
can hang on to a plane,
find your destination
from the sky. It'd be easy right?
A place without clouds.
You want to see the skies so clearly
the angel's are practically
right next to your face. You could
stroke her wings with your eyelashes.
That is if you even blink. They wipe
away the poison spilled on your
tongue. They rub off your
bitterness like it's my eye shadow
on your shoulder. Pat your head,
erasing the memory of me. Because
I'm Alfalfa's out of place
cow lick that forgot how to stay
in its chains of hair gel and grease.
Forgot how to keep low,
forgot how to keep my neck
out of reach of all the razor
blades threatening me from the
walls. A conversation with you
is like putting on a ******...
Which we never do. How ironic right?
    
You're shattered. Been taken hostage
by the words in your head. Or maybe
I never knew you at all. Maybe you've
always been cracking, and I got to see
the tape give up and peel. I watched you
pick at the glue. I've seen you smile
as your entire being spilled through
the cracks. I missed the suspension of the
show getting a joint for your flowers.
I thought I'd get something to make you cough
instead of sneeze. I was thrown into
your big crowning glory. The huge
******. The insanely dramatic
denouement. When everything left, you
crumbled in. Your empty bones became
sand inside of you. I watched you in the
middle of the circus ring. All lights
focused on your skin. Your left knee
in the center of a couple cross wires.
The red dot sight focused on your chest
a ruse for us to expect firecrackers soon.
The dot shaking unsteadily having us on
the edge of our seats. The lights are
alternating, spinning, going faster than
the blood pumping past my ears. Somewhere
drums sped up and clowns slid out of
balloons like mercury. All shiny, their
eyes sliding up and down from fingertips,
to their right shoulder. They danced, spun,
Their bodies reflecting the light's lies to
our ears. The lies spin, transforming flying
at me faster than your fathers words cut your
strength. He slit your resilience's
jugular and already choked out your
light. We saw none of this. Eyes
focused on the red dot. You're swaying,
half way through the tight rope taking
a ****. The same star design circling
the ground becoming your pupils.
You never exhaled. But we see that last
cloud of THC seep out of your pores.
Liquid clowns suspended by your perspective,
start giggling at my shaking hands.
Their lies almost cover me like spiderwebs.
I feel them lick their lips like I'm
a meal they can't wait to pick out of
their teeth.
And I whisper "My bones will pierce your
lungs. I am made of razor blades, hollow
pipes, and my blood is infected with
plutonium. He is already glass, dust, you
find an annoyance to sweep off the
floor."

Cobwebs made of dead skin falling from my
ears, sliding off like an unsupported
pair of sunglasses. I hear no bullet.
But I see you get another puff out of
the roach. You smile, spread your arms.
******, tattered, wings rip from your
shoulders. The angels didn't give you the
beauty they promised. Lies are like enamel,
layered in everyone's mouth. Your last words
were shouted into a crowded circus tent,
but they echo only inside my pulse. Seconds
pass like minutes. Children giggle in
front of me. Intoxicated on the whiskey
they sipped from their dad's coca-cola.
Their father's looking at the pictures
he took of his secretary. The mom at the
house "working". Too busy riding the same
secretary's face to tag along. Everything
floating by me. Strings I could pluck, make
music out of dead lives for the bullet
fighting it's way towards my mosaic window.
He's shattered. His insides decayed. His
body condemned. The mortician said no
embalming was needed with this one.

I was too busy focusing on how your body
swallowed the light. You became a swirling
black cloud of battery acid. Sulfur
assaulting my airways. Arsenic unnoticeable
but my stomach covered in it, eating my
organs. Everything went into you.
There was no shadow, everything was
engulfed in your tornado. No silhouette
for my peripheral vision to catch while I
watched your magic trick. How long have
you been dead?

You tried to put on my gear, armour, if you
will, I burned it. Not wanting to give
you the satisfaction of helping me
while simultaneously snapping every bone
in my body. You couldn't prepare me for
this. No matter how much you tried
to explain, I wouldn't be able to grasp
the red dot disappearing, a bullet going
though your knee cap. The boney see through
wings tearing through your skin. Shouting
"I'm golden."
The wings tried to take your body with them,
but the rotted bones weighed your
cracked shell of a body down.
Your take off failed. Furthermore the angels
****** you up, they went back on their deal.
Your eyes shine like they've had halo's
stuck in them for years. You're 17, ******
up in the head, and your last words were
a reassurance.
    
Did you know I'd hear you?
Did you know your body would explode
into a cluster **** of gases? Toxic enough
to singe your eyebrows.
Everyone's cheering. I see the spiderweb
lies stuffed in their ears like cotton
I wasn't wearing safety goggles.
I wasn't ready for your skin
to fall like ashes. Bone shards stuck in
the ceiling. One jutting from the
moving eye ball of a clown.

I realize you've become a snake.
Shedding and leaving your skin by
my back door. Habit's changed.
I'm an old *** rag, that you're
probably never going to wash.
I want to glue you back together.
Lay in bed with you again, have the sun
shine brighter than your eyes.
When I was so deep in love fluff I
hadn't realized someone ****** on
the cotton candy you had just bought.
I want to go back. Everything used to
be so simple. School, work, hang out with
you, go home and sleep.
  
Just tell me one thing...
How'd you fake being alive like that.
You've been dead for months.
But you burned brighter than
The exploding sky that refused
to shine on you. Maybe you breathed
it all in, ****** the entire sun
into your bones.
Is that why you finally crumbled?
  
Why did you die?
Why did you crumble?
Why did I have to find out
at a ****** up carnival?
It's really long I'm sorry. I was in like an adderall trance. And I don't remember writing but I know it took all night, and I think it's kind of good. Idk.
  Apr 2015 Astrid Ember
Daniel Magner
Ink smudges cover
the side of my hand
All because of
you
Daniel Magner 2014
  Apr 2015 Astrid Ember
WickedHope
Manufactured wings the world gave me
Mechanical design tried to cool, tame me
Freedom certainly, subdued undoubtedly
Strings attached make an angelic marionette
Strings leave me free to come undone
Snap or be pulled back, unraveling into a fall
Fly faster to the finish line as higher I sail
Rule restricting 'rights' are the limits they lied of
Wind hushes the voices that still scream
Wind drowns them out in partial foreshadowing
I am still among the chaos, only soaring up
I am myself for the first time as I am carried
The wings carry me as if in a dream
Nothing seems real but it couldn't be less fake
This is the first time I feel risk, authenticity
I taste the breeze and sun-rays on my tongue
Cutting myself lose I become focused on up
I break away as I approach my potential
I grin with the new power I have found
In these wings that were made for me
*Grinning, I slip quietly into the sea
I've decided to burn my wings,
the wax that holds them together already drips off.
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