crying to sleep
ever so quiet
so they won't hear
my hurt
waves of hurt
hurts so much
make it stop
no, don't
they can't know
this is all I have
all I know
all I am
crying to sleep
all I want is sleep
all I want is peace
peace of mind
I had figured
that I would meet peace
at my grave
you understand,
don't you?

Hot water rains on my skin
The fog it creates holds me

Like you once did.

I breathe it in,
let it  travel   over     my           body
as your       hands          once            did
like I used to breathe you in
and the reminise our love-making left
in the air.

I close my eyes and let my mind float,
like the vapor,
to you and I
when we were still "us."

I loved you.
You loved me.
Why?

My hand detatches from the wrist
and turns the heat
up
        up
                  up.
Until it burns me.
Like you did, with your burning sweet caresses.

The steam fills the room
Fills my body;
an empty hot vessel without you.

This acid rain from my shower head,
It hurts so good.
Like our *******.
Like before.

Now that we're you an I instead of we and our,
I’m just left longing
For the kind of hurt,
For the kind of love,
For the kind of everything that a hot shower can’t give.

Hate swallowing pills.
Reminds me of memories
I rather forget.

Things I'm good at:
- Keeping A grades
- Public speaking
- Making people happy
- Pretending to be okay
- Sleeping
- Making a fool of myself
- ******* up my body
- ******* up other people's life
- Crying
- Giving up

Things I'm bad at:
- Guitar
- Patience
- Managing my emotions
- Self control
- Self care
- Sleeping
- Socializing
- Communicating
- Being a good friend
- Being a good "daughter"
- Being a good Christian
- Being a good person
- Being a person
- Being anything

- Poetry?

They find ways to argue
                                      with their inside voice
                                                                              so that when anyone asks

They can say I was just being dramatic.


                                                                                    I pretend to not listen
                                          Keep my headphones on
Ignore my own inside voice

                                                                                And pretend its all okay.

Your greatest poem.
Its okay if its not perfect yet,
You have time to make edits.

Don't mind the typos and awkward bits,
The "flaws" of it all is what makes it you.

It is to be dedicated to you and you only.
**** what others want,
This isn't about them.

This poem is constantly evolving.
It doesn't have to make sense,
As long as its truly yours.

I'm stale, spoiled, way past my due date
And yet I'm still here, in the back of the fridge.

I know the cold is meant to keep me around for longer,
But the prolonging was meaningless when my demise was inevitable.

I'm without purpose, without notice
I'm not quite sure why I'm here really.

I wasn't supposed to be around this long.
Just pour me down the sink already,
Theres no chance I'm getting better now.

I am the apple that fell off the family tree.
They say I don't fall far,
and its true.
Its impossible to completely rid of my roots.
But I still have the power to do what those stiff branches were too stubborn and fixed to:

Grow.
Grow from their flaws and generational hurt.
Plant the seed of healing which will grow with the generations to come into a new tree with deeper roots and riper fruit.

It hurts to detach myself from my history,
But it would hurt more to put my children through the same pain.

Nothing works,
I took all they gave.
Therapy,
Diagnoses,
Drugs.

And they took all I had.
Blades,
Technology,
Privacy,
My sense of self.

All to get "better."
"Better."

It seems that nothing works.
I'm just the same as before.
Or - I can't remember before,
I don't think I was there for that,
I was off where my own thoughts couldn't hurt me
(Maybe it got so bad because I wasn't there. I let go of my body and let It take the steering wheel and steer me towards my death.)

All I know is that right now, I feel like
nothing.
nothing.
nothing.

You were supposed to fix it.
What happened?
Why does nothing work?

You are the main character of your own story, so you better start acting the part.

Love.
Hate.
Grieve.

Treat yourself.
Boast shamelessly.
Feel pretty.

Be childish.
Be emotional.
Be angsty.

Be human.
Be you.
Just be.

Despite what you might think,
"I don't know"
Is an answer.

Stop telling kids they have to know,
Right when they're asked to.

Take your time.
The best decisions stem from
"I don't know."

Poetry isn't the description of the unique, never before heard.
Poetry is the carefully crafted common
The familiar and mundane
As an abstract art.

Not only your beloved persons or unrequiteds,

But that kid that always sits across the cafeteria with their head buried in their sketchbook.
That old man flipping through the contents of the half-abandoned little library.
The boy resisting the leer of sleep as he nods of on the bus,
And the lady that walks her dog as the sun meets the horizon.

Remember to love long hot showers,
The moments of serenity between wake and sleep.
Dancing with young children,
or listening to their plotless stories.
The last period of an essay.
Late nights writing poetry.

Most importantly,
Remember to love
yourself.

I walk into church and know I don't belong.
Feel the eyes tracking me down like its the final judgement.
Put me down like a dog for my sins that are emphasized by the lens of stained glass,
Then hang my beat body to be "saved."

(Y)our lord and savior died on that cross for the salvation of humanity, yes?
Then it makes sense why you dehumanize me, because I seem to not be on the roster.
I can repent all I want but it won't change who I am, only whose mask I wear for the holy supper.

Tell me I'll be eternally ****** for my estrangement.
Thats alright. I'm practically already there.

I fear that I'm an insignificance of the universe
Lost in the marvelous stars and moons

But, even the pieces in a puzzle that are but a fragment of ocean or sky that have so many others like it
Are the only one of its kind

But, they're only noticed when they've gone missing.

I'm sorry I let go.
I know I promised, its just

We were the wild children,
Never where the adults needed us to be,
For the world was our playground.

We were one,
Joint at the hip.
I thought that we would never get lost as long as we stayed together.
But as the illusion of childhood dissolved, so did you.

You used to look up to face the adventures of the day,
But eventually your head grew heavy with the foreign disease
And you could only stare down at your shoes,
And then you couldn't even lift it off your pillow.

I didn't understand why you no longer wanted to explore.
You told me you were tired.
But how, if you were always in bed?
I was told that you were sick.
But I thought fevers and colds left with rest and time?

I waited for you,
Sat at your bedside,
Missed out on my own adventures with the hope of more with you once you got better.

But you never got better.

I know that I told you,
Promised that I would follow you to the ends of the Earth.
But as your heart hardened and your mind wandered,
I no longer could find you inside yourself,
And there was no one left to follow.

Thats why I let go.
You were sinking, drowning,
And I couldn't too lose myself in your Mariana Trench.

It feels like
Relief.

Taking a deep breath and
Breathing for the first time.

Looking in the mirror and seeing someone familiar
Instead of that stranger that only grew more foreign with time.

A weightlessness from letting go of the heavy load
That had accumulated over the 15 years.

If feels like
Utter, pure joy.
Excitement.
Relief.
Freedom.

If feels like giving in,
Like all the progress was for nothing.

Nothing.
At least this makes me feel something,
Even if that something is nothing more than a dull burn beneath my lemon-orange socks.

I don't know why I do it.
Why I try.
Why I cry every time,
Why I can't just ******* ---
...

I never thought I could get in trouble for staying quiet.

It was a form of self-protection, I suppose.
A coping mechanism, you can say.
Every time something that brought pain or confusion or any complicated feelings,

I just
left
my body.
I'd be there
but
not really.

You can always get in trouble for spilling too much, I thought.
So if you don't say anything at all, don't let anyone in, don't let anything out -
You'd be safe.
I was supposed to be safe.

But when I was threatened with the psych ward for staying silent
I realized
that wasn't true.

I'm not safe
I'm not safe
I'm not safe

I'm not
safe
here
real
okay.
This is supposed to fix me,
supposed to make me okay,
why am I not okay?

I am
dying
dying
dying,
drowning,
asphyxiating,
drowning,
drowning in

Lies.
Lie.
That's the only thing I can do now.
Now it's all just lies,
I'm a lie
I'm a lie
I'm a lie -

Hah.
Don't you wish you never asked?

You left me.
But you're still here.

How could that be?

How could you be so close,
But disappear every time I reach out?
Every time I need you -
Do you understand that I need you?

To everyone else you act so real
But when I am near you fade away like mist into nothingness -
Like a rainbow.
You're full of lies,
You intangible thing.

Do you understand how you lied?
Do you understand that you left me?
Do you understand that I love you?
I love you
I love you
I love you

Just say it back,
I love you too
or - at least an
I hate you.
Anything, anything to prove your existence,
Anything that gives me some sort of sign of what to do, what to think-

You can't just leave me like this.
Please.

Reach past barriers
Fingertips press like a tender kiss
Or like your body when it melts into the ocean.

Inpatient
Crashing
Straining
And never enough.

Love me hard
Love me so it hurts
Love me 'till you can't
Love me forever after

I am fine
Go ahead, Turn blind eyes
Ignore the signs

'Cause I am fine
Theres no mental decline
And its not like I hate this life of mine

I'm fine
Totally fine inside the mind

When I say "goodbye"
For the last time
Don't gasp and cry

Couldn't you see past the glass lies?
Couldn't you see that I wasn't truly "fine?"

Or were you willing to simply stand by
Only caring to care when I had already died.

I'm still a child,
in most senses.

I would be one to say no child deserves to die.
And so I don't deserve to die.

Don't say your parents don't love you.
I wish my parents loved me.
They're not liars, at least not in that sense,
But I fear that they love the concept of their daughter more.

Don't paint them to be loveless monsters.
They're not, I know they're not.
Thats what makes it hurt more.
The fact that they hold so much love
That I am simply unworthy of.

Don't you love them?
I do,
But aren't I allowed to love myself more?

Listen
While I cry to you all the wrong of the world.

Hold me
While you whisper to me all of her beauty.

you blame your past self
say you were so **** stupid...
but they're just a kid.

You can't open  the session with,
"How suicidal have you been feeling?"
And expect me not to immediately shut down.

"[Deadname], I know you're not..."
Choose your words carefully.
"stupid,"
Score.

"I know you can do it, you just choose not to."
It was never a choice, just a response.

"Come on, [deadname], just talk to me."
How am I meant to tell you to tell you of the deepest darkest parts of myself when you don't even know
my name.

Mama and papi
Fighting over whose paying the mortgage.

Gotta spend less on vacations,
Outings,
Birthdays,
Treats,
Heat,
Groceries.

Guilt
Gu­ilt
Guilt.

Mama and papi
Fighting over how they're splitting bills.

Saying he pays too much,
Saying that he can handle it.
Saying she gets anxious,
Saying how he's in pain.

Guilt
Guilt
Guilt.

Why do thwy do this anyway?
Asking, asking,
Why they'd sacrifice so much?

For you.
Yeah, for you.
You ungrateful waste of space, time, money.

Guilt
Guilt
Guilt.

My love,

I missed you,
The way you held me and caressed.
Distracted me from all else
and kept me safe from my fears.

You traced my body like I was a sculptor
That you just had to make perfect.
I wanted so badly to be perfect.

I didn't mind fitting in the cusp of your hand, edge of your blade.
But they say you chipped away at me, make me smaller.

Isn't that what sculptors do?

...

They took you away from me, my love, I'm sorry.

But as I let go,
I was able to rebuild what you broke.

It was never you who broke me though, was it?
It was me, really, allowing you to do so.
And just as I am enabled destruction, I am able to recover.

My scars heal,
But still they remind me of you.
I miss you, so much so that sometimes I go back,
But I now know that I am more than your rigid sculpture,

I am the ever-changing product of my own acts of creation.

Please, if you're going to say you love me,

Say that you love me the way you love the sunrises on school mornings,
City nights where the stars are shining bright enough to touch,
Plants flooding fire escapes,
Stained glass windows nonexclusive to churches,
Sweet watermelon on a salty beach,
The beady-eyed plush dinosaur I carry by my side,
and the waxing-gibbous.

Oh, please love me the same as the waxing gibbous.

Twain
Rose
LOOK "RIGHT"

FLOWER
Said
not

My disgust and horror

the
Greatest Rose
doesn't
ACTUALLY HAPPEN SOMETIMES

You can't eradicate me,
Mr. President,
Just because you say I don't exist.

You can't speak me into nothingness
With words full of bigotry and lies.

I'm still here,
Mr. President,
We're all still here.

Even if it isn't safe for some of us to be ourselves openly,
Even if some of us haven't found ourselves yet,
Even if some of us are 6 feet under because of the people who believe in your definition of an American -
One that excludes anyone you don't understand,
Anyone that challenges your beliefs,
Anyone remotely different from you -

We're still here.
We're still here.

How can you love me
When the name you know me by
Isn't truly me?