I've got an assignment.
Alone for an hour outside.
No music
No phone
No family
Nothing

The loneliness takes pieces of my being.
She takes it in her cruel hands and throws it to the ground as a child throws an undesired toy back into a sea of discarded dreams.
The lovechild who always seems to be clinging to my side.
When I feel she's gone and off to college,
something brings her back asking for gas money.

But what am I to do?
This is something of my own making.
The worst ones always tend to be, don't they?

They say you can't fight fire with fire

but when the fire is the only thing

warming a cold heart,

is it okay that I don't mind the flames?

She tells me that my hands make beautiful things.
Why can’t I see it?
She expects more of the things
I can no longer give.
Stupid stupid stupid
Since when did I start doing this for everyone?

“Mija, you’re doing it wrong.”
“Mija, why can’t you just listen?”
“Por favor! Ay help me, dios mio.”

Words of disappointment from the most admired woman in my 5 year old eyes.
She’d yell and hit.
“Quita la mano! Move your hand!”

After a while I stopped crying and she’d stand there with the belt, now useless.
Just another accessory, I guess.

But when she would yell
That’s where the real tears threatened to spill.
Shameful flames on my cheeks.
These were not reflexive tears, mementos from the belt, but tears so hard to hold back, you’d think I’d never breathe the same again.

I would keep my long lived streak of disappointment.
I would not show her tears.

She became my first heartbreak.
The reason I stood silently reaching for the butterknife I believed I could end my life with.

At the ripe age of 5, I held this butterknife out with the dull point aimed at my stomach because I thought, “She screams so much and it’s because of me. Why would I want to burden her so much so that these violent words come bursting out?”

I was too cowardly to do a thing.
A decade later, I finally found the courage.

The courage to end my pain and suffering ..
with the kind words of a friend.
I sliced at my skin ..
With silky blades of grass.
I cried ..
Tears of joy as I watched the most beautiful sunrise I would’ve never experienced if I’d been courageous enough of make one very important decision at age 5.

My first heartbreak let to my eventual mental repair.
I thank my mom for the verbal bullets she shot at me.
I can no longer feel them,
For the scars are too deep.

But my cowardice saved me
Whether I admit it happily or not.

I wish things were better.
I know this sounds ungrateful, but believe me, I’ve even written them a letter.
Ignorance is what my mom calls it.
I call it *******.
We were family, quite literally.
Don’t use me like you used your sick husband for his life insurance money.

I never noticed your hateful stares behind my back.
The way you kept your money in an air-tight sack.
You would go as far as stealing from your own sister?
Or lying for years about that Mexican Mister.

I guess it’s none of my business.
***** that, it IS my business.
YOU made it my business.
And I will put an end to this.

how can i heal in the same place i hurt

maybe a change in scenery

will allow old wounds the space to mend

space and time are seeming concepts

that my life revolves around.

so why should it make a difference?

it makes all the difference.

someone get me out of here.

I’m no mathematician, but maybe I should be.
After counting all these calories, I’m worthy
Calculations my math teacher would be proud of.
These numbers that starve me.
Instead of counting sheep, I count the days I have left
Until
The starvation
The malnutrition
Finally
Catch
Me.

I always believed that I was
too ******* you

Throwing the ice cold bucket of truth
Into your beautiful face

It pained me more than you know
To tell you things as they were

But it hurt a thousand times worse
To see you show them kindness

I heard conversations you never did
Words sharp as knives from those closest to you

I knew I was pushing you away
As I told you the truth

But to see you now,
Happy and alive without those
Sorry excuses for humans

, although I may not be there either,

Makes me happier than you’ll ever know

The thought that I might never know the feeling of being loved in that way makes me want to leave this skin behind.
It makes me want to crawl into the body of a more desirable creature just to know what it must be like.
At times, the feeling of wanting to give this love inside of me to someone becomes so overwhelming, I am left with nothing to do except let it spill from my arms into the floor around me.
For someone with such limited options, perhaps I shouldn’t be so picky.
Perhaps I should settle for a love I don’t deserve.
I am restless in the night as I caress my own body pretending they were the arms of someone else.
I am helpless in the evenings as I twirl in the kitchen around the ghost of a person who I might’ve loved in another world.
I am a loveless being with nothing but love to give, and nothing but these words to show for it.

Now that you’re gone,
I realized something

When I found you,
You were conveniently in the place
That I wanted to call home.

But now that you’re gone
And you’re no longer in that place
Where I once found you

I realized
That it wasn’t the place that made me
Want to call it home.
It was you.

you ask me why I look towards the sky.
I hope to see you there.
you are the scars in my sky.
The white slashes that decorate them.
These beautiful man made machines
they are what can take me to you.
that is why I look to the sky.

“I want to be famous.”
Is what I used to tell my parents.

“Why?”
They’d ask.

“So people will love me”

Now that is partly true,
Who doesn’t want to be accepted and loved by those around them?

But

I have something else to say.

I don’t only long for the people to love me.
I long to stand up for the people who don’t know they’re being taken advantage of.
I want to open people’s eyes.

To show them that there is more to life than
work, or politics, or who’s dating who, or what the **** the Kardashians are wearing today.
There’s beauty in everything, but the media blinds.

I had lost my vision for a while.
I’m slowly recovering.

I used to think of material things.
Superficialities.

Now I think of how stunning the way the light reflects off of the brightly colored walls of my room.
I think of how sad it makes me to see trash littering my city’s roads.
I think of my friends on the other side of the world who are doing their own, normal, mundane, beautiful things the very moment I am laying my head down to rest.
I think of injustices being shoved into innocent faces.
I think of my future and what I plan to do about it.

but I think that little parts of me,
Still wish to be loved, no matter how cruel I know this world to be.

The sweat stings my eyes
Running running running
I pretend I’m running away
Like my parents ran from their home country
To one that hates them
Taunts them
Uses them

I’d like to get out of here, but then
My parent’s sacrifice would’ve been for nothing.
These sacrifices I probably didn’t deserve.
Guilty guilty guilty.

I guess it could go either way, right?
I stand in the middle of two evils
they both lead to my demise,
but
i cant seem to see that

i always believed that i paved the roads i walked on.
must be why the only thing ahead of me
is the backroads.

it seems i've made it to an impasse

Thank god
Although I’m not sure I even believe.
I know that I’m not alone.

Thank god
For these words that express
What I feel in my breast.

Thank god
That I found  
You.