Do you ever just feel like you’re dying,
Like a million suns from unknown galaxies
Are crashing into you,
Stealing the space and air from your lungs,
Colliding with your heart,
Until what’s left of your soul detaches from your body?

Do you ever just feel like even starlight
Cannot keep the hope awake in your chest
And you yearn for the precipice that is the night sky
To swallow your whole?

Do you ever just think to yourself
That only monsters live inside you
And you are doomed to forever repeat
Your mistakes on time lapse
With despair in your bones?

Do you ever feel like there is no soul alive
Who is want for what you have to offer,
That the madness within is your only gift
But no one dares to receive?

I do.

Fire and mortar
Dust to dust
The sky stained red
From ashes and rust
The flames reach new heights.
They lick the sky,
Burning new trenches.
I wish I could say why.

The Highs taste like Lemon Heads
Before burning my mouth like Cinnamon Red Hots.
The Lows go down like soup of ash and cold water.
I am forever trying to find a balance between the flavors of mania
And the blandness of depression.
Often, I find myself hungry in the wee hours,
Dismayed by both options.

If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that blood speaks in run on sentences,
Slick syllables flow out of damaged veins like rabid speech
And end in ellipses promising that more will be forthcoming.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that antibacterial soap could never wash the sins out
Enough to make me the saint they always hoped I'd be,
And I am steeped in "nice girl" expectations that never came to fruition.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that my brain went to battle with my body at the age of 12,
And now my eyes have seen more than my heart can hold,
So I keep my emotions locked up like prisoners of war,
Hoping that solitary confinement will lessen their ability to contuse my soul.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that guitar strings leave calluses but release heartache,
That music and poetry are borne of the same cloth and stitch the same wounds.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that I've been trying to stitch my own wounds
Since I was a little girl,
Confused and afraid in a world that tried to **** all that was beautiful and different about her.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that this body loves to twirl and flap and rock, and shimmy,
That I am a perpetual motion machine designed to move with the tune of my own feet.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you I've made some ugly scars and beautiful art,
That the line between the two is proportional to my pain threshold.
Sometimes suffering demands that my hands commit crimes against my skin,
But I've learned that I can bleed ink instead of blood.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that I am often overwhelmed by the darkness of the night sky,
The way the blackness encroaches on the moonlight,
But there's no eloquent speech to convey the way the stars ignite hope in my chest,
Kindle optimism in my heart.
I am desperate to hold on to it.
If my hands could talk,
They'd tell you that I am sometimes so human it cuts me,
But I am learning how to exist within that humanity.
If my hands could talk,
They'd end this poem in a semi colon
Because there's still so much they have to say;

In remembrance of you today,
That you existed and touched this Earth
With loving hands.
Now, we've lost another in a similar way.
Keep him safe as he passes on.
You matter.
You are loved.
In remembrance of you today,
The joy you brought
And the kindness you bestowed.
My grief comes in waves,
But I never regret knowing you.
In remembrance of you today.
I miss you from Earth.

I am being suffocated by pain
That demands to be felt
But refuses to acknowledge its origin or cause.
How do I tame a beast
Whose name I do not know?
This season always brings with it emotional turmoil,
The joys of daylight's manipulation of bipolar disorder,
But this creature that weighs down my chest
Has not uttered its name.
Like all demons,
It must be named to be exorcised,
And it will not be cowed by my speaking in tongues.
Back ye foul beast
From whence you came.
By hook or crook
I will learn your name.

I am not made of miracles or borrowed prayers.
There is no magic in my bones or mysticism to my name.
I am made of sweat,
Of salt stains on flushed cheeks.
I am made of blood smears
And too much hand lotion.
I am made of toil and trouble,
Of mistakes and rectification.
I am composed of ink and paper,
Of ill-remembered idioms and words I've absorbed from books.
My existence is fueled by a certain brand of sock,
A teddy bear given to me at birth,
And a desire to prove that I was more than what they told me
That I could be greater than what I thought of myself.
I am made of laughter and twisted humor,
Of Murphy's law and learning to conserve energy and care.
I am made of misbehaved neurotransmitters and wild thoughts.
I have a love of the night sky and swimming in cool waters.
My soul steeped in the desire to frolic and eat sweets.
I wear scars that prove I have suffered and earn me judgement,
But I have survived a world and brain designed to be my unbecoming
Not because I'm made of miracle or magic or prayers.
I survived because I'm made of attitude, resolve, resilience,
And a thirst to prove that I can.
Most importantly,
There always seems to be a flicker of something that promises me
That even in my worst moment, I should continue to live.

Could mean brushing my hair
Or you combing my emotions for entry points.
Either way,
Untangling the knots
HURTS.

I yank the tears from my chest
As if plucking them out will some how
Cure me of Depression's persistent arrhythmia.
The salt water,
Flowing from my heart's wounds,
Is bitter and jagged and hard won.
I wonder if I cry enough tears whether
I will feel lighter or simply be dehydrated.

The price of being alive
Is coping with the memories of what I nearly
Didn't survive.

When I slam,
I am more human
Than humanity before me.

When I slam,
I am the queen
Bathed in poet glory.

When I slam,
I am mine alone.
No other beings touch me.

When I slam,
I am a warrior.
Syllables learn to fear me.

Sometimes I think that if my heart beats fast enough,
It could outrun this feeling,
Like if I reach a high enough BPM,
I might suddenly feel as if the world makes sense again.
I might not feel like I am drowning
In a vat of electrically charged water
Or trying to plug up the holes from which my emotions keep bleeding.
I think my heart believes that a little tachycardia might cure me,
Might purify me of this pain.
Why else would it speed onwards so?

I am touched every night
By the darkness,
The twisted, pale fantasies of an unconscious mind.
I am always the great protector,
Trying to save them from the evil he inflicted upon me.
It never works.
How cruel is it that I can remove him from everywhere
But my mind?

At age two,
The strangers flocked to my mother,
Cooing over the stroller.
They ask, "How long does it take to curl her hair?"
My ringlets fall in strawberry spirals,
Making even Shirley Temple jealous.
She tells them they are merely freshly washed.
Who in their right mind curls a two year old's hair anyway?
At age four,
I am no longer encased in my protective stroller,
And humanity has taken tacit permission
To run their fingers through my strands at any given moment.
After all, I am only 2% of the world's population.
Is that not consent enough to touch my child's body?
Their hands are abrasive and painful to my autistic skin,
But I smile and twirl for them like the polite little girl that I am.  
Long before I knew the name,
I was taught that the world fetishizes redheads.
I was taught that being rare is forfeiting your right to your own body.
I'm 5 now, and the teachers tell me I have angel's kisses on my face,
That freckles are the touch of tiny winged souls upon my skin.
Young me shudders at the thought of seemingly hundreds of dead spirits caressing my cheek bones.
I did not ask the teachers about my freckles or comment on their presence.
I already know it is not my place to discuss my body.
That right is reserved for others.
I'm 8 years old the first time I hear the phrase "Carrot Top"
And 10 before I hear "Volcano Head."
At least the latter indicates I'm not to be trifled with.
We're playing the elimination game in class,
And "Stand up if you have red hair" is the equivalent of calling my name.
I'm 12 when "Ginger's have no souls" is suddenly hurled at me.
I wonder when I exchange "kissed by angels" for becoming a vampire.
Perhaps it's part of the transition?
This is the age of growing self awareness,
The age where it's really beginning to stick that I am alien and different.
I am so tired of being asked if I am adopted because my hair is red
But my entire family's is brown.
I tell them I get it from my grandfather.
I do not tell them that he is the one who used to drag my grandmother
Through the house by her hair
Or how his drunken rages would force my mom and her siblings
To crawl under their front porch in search of safety.
I do not tell them that my mom saw him shoot himself when she was 19
Or that she hasn't opened a tin of biscuits since.
Mother reminds me almost daily that I am the spitting image of him,
Leaving me wondering what else I might've inherited.
I touch my face in the mirror, haunted by the sins of a man I've never met but whose reflection I apparently share.
I write letters to his ghost, asking him if he understands this affliction.
Why do they touch me?
Why do they buzz like bees, these strangers on the street
Around my hair?
Why do they think it is acceptable to drink from my reserves when I am dying of thirst for oxygen and personal space?
I am 16, still naive in my social perceptions, often misunderstanding the norms.
Autism has accelerated my intellect but delayed my emotions.
I am licking a minion themed popsicle with childlike enthusiasm when mother snaps a photo.
I post it to my newfound Facebook account,
Proudly sharing my joy.
Over the course of a week, I receive more and more friend requests from unknown internet men.
I am confused until mom tells me my gleeful ice cream moment could be interpreted as simulating a *** act.
"But I am too young," I tell her. She smiles humorlessly.
She knew what I would soon learn.
At 17 I'm informed that "redhead" is a category on PornHub,
That my beautiful affliction is as it has always been,
A searchable object for other's gratification.
18, baby faced and lonely, He finds me.
I still get mistaken for a 12 year old and this 42 year old man finds me ****.
I wish I could say I knew better.
I wish I could say I ran as fast as I could,
But oh how naive was I to believe that he meant what he said when he told me he meant me no harm, he wanted nothing from me.
I now know his behavior is called grooming.
He whispered his nickname for me as he ***** my bleary eyed body.
"Red," he called me.
Red like my hair, like the first sentence out of his mouth at every gathering
"She's a redhead."
Red like my volcano, how he said he never wanted to see me angry.
Red like my personality, how he liked "a woman in charge,"
Which was synonymous with do all the emotional and physical labor.
It took me a year to break free of his tangled, twisted, traps.
I was today years old when the man in the car followed me on my way to school.
Armed with nothing but mace and the attitude to back it up,
I gave him the look of "You can come get me, but I swear you'll regret trying."
My hair like a siren call to all wayward souls.
They dock in my port.
Red hair means they will fetishize me from 2 to 4 to 8, 10, 16, 20,
And 100 years from now the bones and dust of these keratin strands
Will cry out from the ground I am buried beneath
In support of the next child blessed or cursed with this beautiful affliction,
And all others whose rarity is seen as permission.
Hear me now when I tell you
My hair is a warning.
This redhead is fully loaded,
Is angry, enraged, head fully lit, and heart on fire,
Tongue fueled by two decades worth of injustice and the suffering before me.
Redhead means don't ******* touch me.

I vote we change Content Warning
To Contact Warning.
Please keep your words off my emotions
And your knives out of my heart.

I took a walk for Sydney down the beach into the waves,
The ocean churning at my feet, icy,
White foam caressing pale toes trodden in black sand.
I imagined two hands,
Yours and mine intertwined,
The rare joy sparking in your face despite the cold.
I think about the wind whipping our hair back,
Laughter as the water soaked our pants.
I wouldn’t have minded.
For you, Sydney, I will dance in the sand, swim in the frigid ocean,
Twirl as the sun dries our clothes.
For you, Sydney, I will cast off my shoes with reckless abandon,
Forget sensory issues and the need for socks.
For you, Sydney, I will find joy in both the most beautiful and hardest of places.
You deserve only the best from me.
I took a walk for Sydney, down the beach amongst memories,
Your tears falling amongst their salty brethren.
Haven’t you heard how salt water heals old wounds?
For you, Sydney,
I will master the art of suturing the psyche,
Learn to bend time and space,
Inching the edges of the divide together,
Closing the injuries of your heart.
For you Sydney,
I walk down this beach with light feet and heavy chest.
I am yours, always have been.
For you Sydney,
I will hold hands, no autistic space bubble as I sit with you in your sadness.
I will wipe your face and hold your body against mine.
I will fight the monsters that seemed to steal the air out of the room.
I will search for meaning amongst these sounds,
Find depths in the swells and crests,
I will look for you amongst the proud rocks that jut towards the sky,
I will find you where you loved the hardest and the most,
In the beauty you forgot existed all around you.

Death does not frighten me.
It calls to me from beyond the veil,
Beckoning with it's bony hands,
And I resist it's siren song.
I do not fear it.
What scares me is that one day I may wake up
At 60 years old and feel exactly as I do now,
Wondering what the point is,
Trudging through the days like wet cement,
Feeling like all those expectations were wasted upon me,
And I have nothing to offer for all the burrowed time they gave me
But the scars that show I toiled to be alive.
It scares me that while others grow old with grace
And pass down stories of a life well lived
That I will be keeping the same desperate, empty company
I've always kept,
That existing will still feel like hard work,
And that I will have spent the next 40 years trying to prove my worth
By maintaining a body that's been trying to **** me since I was twelve.
It's not death that frightens me.
I am terrified of a life that does not feel like living
And a world that will be so disappointed in me for never becoming
More than I am.

He said he loved me,
So why did he **** me?

Error 404: Higher brain function not found
We are sorry to inform you,
But the thought machine is out of order
Please, step back and remove your quarter.
We are taking your thoughts Tough Mudding
They must now swim through wet cement to reach your consciousness,
But fear not
There are legions of them 'Worming their way through your soft tissues
In between apathy and emotional volatility.
What's that?
You say you're going crazy?
Oh, my darling,
Nothing but a case of spontaneous dyslexia
Words and numbers were made to be in motion,
Slipping through your grasp and changing location
Just a spot of fun
It hurts to think
To exist is to be locked in a dance of exhaustive hyperactive misery
There is something wrong with my thoughts
Please, I do not want to listen to myself think

The first lesson they teach us in EMT class
Is to never lose our compassion,
Never forget that every patient is
A human being with a story, a family, a life.
They tell us to keep our emotions in check
But to never lose our respect,
The trust in the competency and freedom of choice,
For we are the link of survival
On the worst day of their lives.
We were not there to know the reason that led
Up to the call,
But we are there to get them through the danger that followed.
Why then does the text book instruct us to abandon our respect,
Abandon the presumption of humanity
At the mere thought of the words 'developmental disability?'
Why do the words Autism and Down Syndrome suddenly
Make it okay to condescend and patronize as if to a child,
To infantilize an adult whose intelligence we are not qualified to assume?
Why is it my duty to respect a neurotypical patient
And my job to abandon it for the developmentally disabled?
I wonder if they would encourage my peers to treat me the same?
After all, who cares that I am top of the class and squad leader to boot?
Who cares that I answer the most questions or scored highest on the test?
I am autistic. I am considered less than human.
No.
The textbook is wrong,
Primitive despite being updated in 2018.
Respect every patient means Respect ALL,
No exceptions,
No diagnostic caveats.
'First, do no harm.'
Treat with empathy and compassion.
It is their own inhumanity that prevents them
From recognizing the humanity inside us,
The developmentally challenged.
I live on planet Autism,
Population 1 in 59,
No less of a person than any other,
Perhaps more human really.
That humanity is the force behind my First Responder drive.
Do not deign to treat me as small child or foreign planet inhabitant.
Forget the basis in the archaic.
Respect and compassion for all cannot be checked at the door.
I am not less than.
My struggles have, if anything,
Forced me to become more.

Audacity is when your ****** texts you
To wish you a Happy New Year
Because his therapist advised him to make amends.
The price of breaking my soul
Is more than a ******* text.

The neighbors seem so vivacious
As they mull about outside my window,
Sun kissing their skin.
The mothers cling to their children,
And sweat clings to the aching muscles of workers
As they bustle,
Hustling mattresses out of the house
And building supplies in.
We exchange cautious smiles
As I sit here in the staleness of my room,
The monotony of this routine.
They are so alive.
I wish I was too.

Dear friends,
Now I must ask a favor.
A poetry contest is under way,
$100 dollars worth of books at stake,
The entry?
A poem about that for which I am grateful.
This means a lot,
Oh, Nerd I am!
Please follow this link and vote:
https://woobox.com/cr2p7k/gallery/IDjHt_wy23E
My deepest gratitude you would have!

Irritation is the dragon
That breathes fire and destruction
Should I dare to open my mouth.

The tree is dancing and flickering
Like some computer glitch,
ANd the sound of fpptstops trail me,
Doors shutting,
Chairs scraping,
Dogs barking in an otherwise empty house.
I do not know how to sav myself from this
Remix of unreal and reality,
Just hiding blasting music
Trying to drown out the sound of someone trying to **** me.
The figurine of the pink power ranger rests under my pillow while I try to sleep,
Guardian, protector,
Save me.
I do not want to listen to my thoughts.
They hurt adn conjure things,
Enamored of death or a way out of this hell.
At night I dream
Of people stealing the earrings out of mye ears
And hundreds of people chanting my name.
No matter where I run, they call me.
Even hiding amongst the frogs brings no relief
As their Ribbits shout my name from behinf the bushes.
Save me from this hell, my mind.
I don't want to listen to it.
I don't want to die.

I cried into the darkness,
Tears dripping on notebook paper,
My reasoning scribbled between calculus,
Roommate snoozing as the clock blinked 1:00.
I pulled myself wearily into bed,
Empty Gatorade and pill bottles littered the floor.
I had not realized
Until after I swallowed
I didn't want to die
Anymore.

I wish *** was as simple as your mouth on my skin,
As the mountains of knees and valleys of hips,
The friction of your body against mine.
I wish *** was as free as the movement of your hands
Strumming my body to this new and unalienable tune.
I wish that *** had only ever been how it was in that moment,
Raw and sweet,
Approaching the crescendo with the safety of your trust,
Teetering on the edge of the precipice,
****** feeling not like the destination but part of the journey.
I wish *** was not my haunted house,
That I did not have to work so hard to stay on the front lawn,
Leave the demons inside to be exorcised.
I wish my memories were all lamplit and rain on the windowpanes
Of the backseat of your car,
Huddled in the blanket fort you made,
Tenderness.
I wish I could say my previous partners all cared whether their beds felt like
Silk to my emotions,
Not sandpaper to my fight or flight,
Grating on the nerves as I tried desperately to lay still.
Shhh, little girl, anything that happens in your silence does not exist in the morning.
You will not exist in the morning.
That version of you, so young and naïve at 19, will no longer have a name when the sun rises,
Washed like the blood and sweat and his calling card from your skin,
Washed from your mouth like the taste of the alcohol from his breath
As it hangs above you with the realization he has driven with you drunk,
Lost like the innocence as his mouth woke you before he entered unwelcomed,
And you cannot say “no,”
The scream frozen to your lips like the snow on the ground that December,
Your psyche the balloon floating on the horizon,
Pain the only anchor to this moment,
Gone like the idea that you could ever be clean,
The bite marks faded but his hand prints still linger on my nightmares,
The way he used *** the same as the sword wedged between the box spring and mattress,
Weapon.
*** should be beautiful,
The symphony of your skin taste of you on my lips,
The sounds of your climbing ever higher.
I want *** to be the Garden of Eden,
So comfortable we have forgotten we are not clothed,
Lost in the pleasure of our existence,
But even the Garden of Eden has a snake.
I wish that *** was not my haunted house,
Not a list of landmines longer than my forearm,
And though I have spent a year now opening the curtains, clearing the dust, and airing out the closets,
Sometimes I still ask you to please, leave the light on when we sleep.
Sometimes I can still hear the door closing with no hand behind it and acidic “You’re one hot *****.”
But you have reminded me why I fell in love with *** in the first place,
As a thread sewn between two people,
A connection of beings,
A safe place of exploration and expression.
I don’t always have the words to tell you what it means to me
That you honor both my love of *** and the haunted parts of it,
Create safety for me in the sheets,
But as we lay in the darkness,
Skin to skin,
“Thank you” will have to be enough.

365 days since I thought
The afterlife might be a more welcome stage
For the stale antics of my bipolar fairytales,
How Brother's Grimm only seemed to fall grimmer,
And I was oh so tired
But too wired to sleep.
365 days since the end neared
As I recklessly abandoned hope that suffering might fluctuate
And stole the heartbeat from my own chest with bottles of pills,
Leaving only a trail of words amidst chemistry and calculus to
Explain what could never be explained.
It's been 365 days since and I died
And 365 days since they breathed life back into my body.
It's been 365 days since I forgot why I had ever intended to live in the first place,
And I have spent all 365 days picking up the pieces.
Those first weeks were brutal.
10 days in a coma so deep they suspected I might never awaken,
And the first hours without the tube,
Struggling for air in a world full of oxygen,
Whole body exhausted from fighting so hard for what should come so naturally,
Until they put the tube back in,
And I wished feverishly they had let me slip away under my haze
Into the blackness I had planned for myself.
No better metaphor had ever existed for the mental state I had occupied,
Surrounded by people and resources who could not or would not help me,
An outside world that demanded I apply more willpower or skill to beat an illness I did not know I was suffering,
Sick mind and tortured soul unable to see in a deeply fogged mirror.
I can honestly say 365 days later I am grateful they didn't let me die,
But that gratitude is bitter and sharp to the tongue.
It aches with deep shame and regret,
Of never being able to undo that night but being unwilling
To part with the lessons I've learned.
I am glad I did not die.
I hurt, though, because they could not let me go.
And even now, with wonderful girlfriend and newfound explanations,
With EMT class and badass haircut,
Solid housemates and a clearer mind,
Even with so much good in my life,
When I find myself thinking of the pain of teaching myself to merely stand on my own two feet
Or the loss of my voice and change in my body,
I sometimes wish that the coma tunnel had not opened up.
When I find myself thinking of my roommate and the paramedics
Scooping me off the floor or mother's anguished face,
I wish at times that I had not been around to see it.
It is with a heavy heart and guilt in my bones that I say this,
And YET!
There is more new joy to be had.
There is some peace to be found.
There are thoughts to pursue and ideas to be contemplated,
The gentle and loving embrace of my partner.
There is music and rhythm to run to.
There are people to help and cupcakes to be baked.
I must not forget that being saved does not happen all at once.
365 days later, I am still being saved, everyday.
Yes, by medication and therapy,
Yes by the people that bring me joy,
But most importantly by myself.
I worked hard to celebrate 365 days,
Even if it is painful,
Especially because it's been difficult.
I've spent 365 days finding a new me
And learning to accept her.
She is new, a young and sometimes delicate version.
It is hard when her foundation is built on ashes and blood.
I am not pleased with why I ended up here,
But I am proud to have survived the journey.
After all,
A lot can be accomplished in 365 days.  
I wish I had known then how much can change.
I am glad I know now.

There is thunder in my bones where you lay.
Your memories dissolve like salt into a wound.
To this day,
If anyone calls me 'Red,'
I will rain down like the storm cloud you always hoped I wasn't.
My collective tears will burst from the dam
Until not a spot on your soul is dry.
I will tear out the tendons, remove the connective tissues.
You wanted to make me yours,
To erase the personhood until I was pliable for your will.
To some extent, you succeeded.
Your memories are stored in my body, trauma.
The bleeding is internal, is not visible, is just as deadly,
But I have staunched the flow.
There is thunder where you lay in my bones,
Lightning where you touched me.
I am tearing you away tendril by sticky tendril.
I hope you feel the sting inside you.
This girl is not your object.
This girl is a hurricane.
This girl is the end of your world.
There are words for what you did,
****** assault, ****,
But they are not sufficient for the way
My psyche floated out of my skin.
You counted on the scars keeping me bound,
But you had only started the storm.
I am a thundercloud, a lightning goddess,
Made from the sun, wind, and ocean.
You called me 'Red' like my hair,
But I am 'Red' like my temper, like fire.
Try me once more, and I will teach you not to play games
With young girls.

They taught us to scream "fire!"
"Help!" Would elicit no response.
They told us to wedge keys in our fingers,
To never walk alone in the night.
They told us to watch out for strangers,
To avoid masked men in dark alleys.
No one ever told me to beware of the man in my own bed,
To shudder when he told me he loved me.
No one told me that I would freeze,
Limbs powerless to fight him off.
They did not tell me I would know him, trust him, love him
Until the moment I couldn't anymore.
You can keep your **** whistles,
Your fists with car keys and staining sprays.
You can keep your roofie nail polish and SOS phone apps.
None of it would have done me any good
As I lay there, clinging to bed sheets and teddy bear.

Teach me to go
Where the sky meets the ocean,
My soul is at peace,
And my heart isn't broken.

I am but ashes
In your fire,
Consumed,
Until I stopped providing you oxygen
And fizzled you out.

You were not respecting my boundaries
By attempting to rearrange them
So you could continue as you pleased.

The moment she says,
"Me too,"
The air evaporates from my chest.
My shoulders slump.
The weariness eases.
Sometimes connection
Is the best medicine.
I tell her she's found a friend in me.

My soul is afraid
Of when love used to be dangerous,
When home was not synonymous with protection,
And when I wasn't safe
Even from myself.
Memories contuse my heart
And leave bitter embers on my brain.
I wonder when I will be able to let go
Of a past that should not hold so much power
Over a future I've worked so hard for.

My soul itches for poetry,
Fingers long for the tap of keyboard or scratch of a pen.
My mouth curves around syllables,
Missing the way they slam against a microphone
As I make myself heard amongst a crowd of those
Who know what it means to be beholden to this master,
To write lines of a poem the way some breathe the air,
To be so made up of adjectives and metaphors
That I no longer know where I begin and the poetry ends.
I am simply molecules and letters masquerading as a human,
Trying to become whole again on paper.

I drink Redbull for dissociation,
Trying to caffeinate my desperation,
As if I could vibrate into the 4th dimension
To find myself again.

Sometimes dreaming is my escape,
But others
There is no escape from dreaming.

In time I have found
The memory of your touch has softened,
Your smile but an imprint on my heart.
It has been nearly a year now,
Since you've been gone,
But I am still
Broken open,
Waiting for you.

My heart yearns for the way
I feel in her presence,
For the candlelit warmth
And melted wax flowing over my soul
As it casts out this winter's dying embers.
My heart yearns for her heart
Like two strands longing to be coiled into rope,
Stronger together.
My skin longs for her softness,
For the gentle caress on valleys of skin.
My ears long for her 'I love you,'
And my mouth so desperately wants to say it back.
Sweet Love of mine, we are almost there.

The fire ignites at take-off
And grows as I exit the stratosphere.
But it burns even hotter upon re-entry.
I am often at my brightest right before
A crash landing.

The hardest thing to reconcile
Is that you genuinely believed you love me,
And I truly loved you.
Now, I confuse gentle touch for hostile
Because you were wonderfully gentle
Until you weren't,
Before returning to gentle again.
The hardest part to reconcile is how you could be "so in love,"
Yet in that moment,
You were only concerned for your pleasure.
With a love like that,
I would never need enemies.

I am so tired
Of swinging from the vines
Of mismatched emotions
Until I,
Not unlike Tarzan,
Collide with the tree trunk
And remember why
I was not given wings in the first place.

Stop asking for medical advice on Facebook,
Your superglue stitches and peroxide mismanagement
Will cost you more than a doctor's visit.
Stop asking for medical advice on Facebook
If you want to keep your limb.
I've found more competence on the "interweb."
Stop asking for medical advice on Facebook.
An oxygen embolism and cellulitis will
Have you putting out more than the Urgent Care.
Please, stop asking for medical advice on Facebook!
-Sincerely,
The EMT student who is constantly preventing disaster
For people with minor injuries who think 50's era first aid advice
Is a suitable alternative.

I am a member of the Flat Affect Society,
Similar to the Flat Earth Society.
My existence is in two dimensions,
Is unreal,
Is like dragging a bag of bones
And me through concrete.
Was I not on top of the world 2 weeks ago?

I love her the way the stars love the sun.
She is the brilliant light in my infinite universe,
Encouraging me to shine brighter myself.
Sometimes the space vacuum is cold or dark,
But we are lighting it up,
Together.

My greatest wish
Is that one day someone will love me,
Not for what I can give them,
But because I have intrinsic value myself.
My greatest wish is that one day
My story will not be too much
But just the right amount
Of ME.

This is to say that Storm Clouds
Are the accumulation of water in the air,
That Hate is the buildup of prejudice and fear,
That Change is when humans grow tired
Of hearing the rain fall on deaf ears,
Watching people with umbrellas wondering
Why those without are getting wet.
This is to call upon Love,
The accumulation of Compassion,
Encourager of Empathy,
The feeling of sunshine when you smile at me.
Hope is the keeper of faith,
Knowledge that tomorrow isn't always the same,
That even in the dark months, sunlight is inevitable,
And eventually we all reach the end of the tunnel,
Hope knows sometimes Change has to Rain down
Upon the lands of dry grass and wildfires,
That floods are a risk when the dirt has lost its purpose,
But new foliage grows where the ground once cried out,
So we may one day sustain ourselves on the land
We thought could never bear more life,
The world we thought could never Change.

Sometimes life gives you lemons.
Sometimes life gives you your one and only
Partnered ****** with your
******.
And sometimes,
Sometimes,
I don't know what to do with that,
Especially when I want so badly
To show my new lover
What she does to me.

He is scared that I'll go someplace he can't reach me,
So he's chosen not to connect at all.
I do not intend to be absent,
But I wish he knew
It hurts equally to regret love not given
As it does to lose love you've given your all.
Regretting time not spent and care not shown
Is a special kind of hell I do not wish upon him.