Memories slink like silken specters
Across my barren walls
With sticky fingers that pick pocket
My peace of mind,
Steal my sleep,
Leaving sweaty handprints across my skin
And the faint taste of a scream that died on my tongue.
I tell myself that I am safe now.  
Not a soul has breathed in this room since I examined every cranny.
Even I am existing on borrowed air,
As sleep slips so dearly missed from my grasp.
I guard my secrets in darkness while 4 am lingers heavy in this space,
Wishing unconsciousness to take me to a land
Where my heart doesn’t race in terror at every noise,
The shame of what I allowed to be done to me doesn’t echo in my mind,
And the scars are not so tender to the touch.
If only I should be so lucky.
The ghosts are restless in the way they haunt my body tonight.

I am lost in the memories
Of what my mind did to me,
Trying to take an accounting,
So I can unravel the mystery.
I am searching for answers,
So I am not a casualty,
Hoping that this heart will keep beating
In a body that once tried to **** me,
Demanding that there's a different ending
To this accursed story.

He doesn't like a girl with a ***** mouth,
Wants to water you down and wash you out,
Make you change all the things about you,
Fill you to the brim with your own self doubt.
He swears he doesn't like to play any games,
But the only word on your tongue should be his name.
Little girl, you better run so fast
Because you'll never need a man like that.
You'll never deserve a man like that.

I'm not angry that you hurt me.
I'm angry for the way fear stole the words from my mouth
And surprise bound my hands and legs to the bed.
I'm angry that my mind spun the dial and settled on freeze.
I'm not angry that you hurt me.
I'm angry that silence hung between us,
Thicker than the air I was struggling to breathe,
That the absence of syllables prevented me from giving name
To the violation.
I'm not angry that you hurt me.
I am angry that I let you,
That I convinced myself saying 'yes' after I'd already said 'no'
Meant it wasn't so bad after all.
I'm not angry that you hurt me.
I'm angry that others violated so many boundaries
I thought love was a race to cross the finish over every line I'd ever drawn,
That my best interest and your desires were somehow the same thing.
I am not angry that you hurt me.
I am angry I sought you as a protector to fight the demons YOU gave me,
That I thought you could save me from the fear you were causing.
I'm not angry that you hurt me.
I am angry that the walls are now caving in
Around the idea that I could ever be clean,
That I am alone with the thought I somehow did this to myself,
That had I listened and not been so hell bent on breaking free of the literal chains,
Not been searching for liberation from my childhood hurts ,
Or chasing my power in the line between '****' and '****',
I might still be a "gold-star lesbian" and not tainted goods.
I am not angry that you hurt me.
I am angry you might still get off to the pictures I sent you,
That my manic mental health crises were your free ticket to "play time."
I must have always reeked of angst and desperation,
Little girl playing dress up in a world she doesn't understand,
Seeking solace in a man twice her age,
But he would only seek to cage her in bars of his own making.
Meanwhile, Mother writes it off as having "bad taste in men,"
As if she was not a link in the chain of how I ended up there,
Neglecting to mention I did not consent to being manipulated by a predator.
I'm not angry that you hurt me.
I am angry that I thought seeing past the scars on my skin meant you loved me,
That acknowledging how others had hurt me meant you wouldn't do the same.
I am angry that when your face appeared in my nightmares
I let you tell me I was mistaken,
That when I began to hate the word **** and couldn't stand it to be mentioned,
I believed you when you said it had never happened.
I'm not angry you hurt me.
I'm ashamed it took me a year to leave
Even when you drowned me in enough red flags to make a Matador proud
Because I thought I could fix you.
Was I not broken too?
You made me feel like I owed you for loving me through the cracks,
And I am not one to skip out on debts.
I'm not angry that you hurt me.
I'm angry you stole the skin off my body and safety from my mind,
And I didn't fight back.
I wish you had just killed me so they can't say I was asking for it.
Was that not the purpose of the sword wedged under the mattress?
You should have finished the job when you choked me,
So I don't have to live with this.
I'm not angry that you hurt me.
I'm angry that I didn't stop it.
I'm not angry that you hurt me.
I'm angry that I let you.

There is no sanity in inhumanity,
No reason to reprehensible.
I should stop looking for answers
Were there were never any to begin with.

It seemed like the world would go on forever,
Stretching past the horizon
As his mouth formed the words
"You have Bipolar disorder."
In that moment,
The air froze,
And time stopped.
Suddenly the atoms were abuzz again.
I knew
He was right.

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

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.

I am not the girl you made me.
I am the woman who grew out of the decay,
The dirt and soot and open grave
You once attempted to shove me into.
I am not the girl who shook like a child,
Clutched her teddy bear after you ***** her.
I am the woman with the sword
You once wedged under the mattress.
It's mine now, along with my dignity.
I will cut you when you dare enter my nightmares.
I am a woman now.
And you're just a man on a long list of men
Who never get to touch my life anymore.
I am THE woman now,
And you're just small.

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.

Naked and so very cold on the floor,
Lost in the volatility of my emotions,
Consumed by the forest of my thoughts.
How I long for the solace of sleep,
If only the medicine would kick in,
Pulsing through my veins for the last
Weary bit of my mania,
Attempting to reduce the heat under my overflowing ***.
Dying feels like a release from this hell,
An in between of too much and not enough.
With a coin in bipolar coffer,
My soul springs free,
But I have already given so much.
I do not travel there,
Near the edge,
For I am so excited by possibilities,
But my chest aches with the sadness of this cycle.
I miss me.
If only I could find her.

My bipolar fantasy is that one day,
I’m going to come home and leave my bipolar at the door,
Scatter it along with muddy boots and raincoats and winter mittens
I have no use for currently,
That I’m going to take it off and enter my house unencumbered.
My bipolar dream is that I’m going to go to bed tonight
Without measuring my sleep,
Wondering if it’s an indication of mania or depression,
If it’s stress or I need medication to push me into a nocturnal daze,
The haze of which will bleed over into daytime.
My bipolar wish is that this illness
That I lug around like a suitcase made of brick
Might lighten in load or unpack itself once in a while,
That it will not brand me as a traveler on a road
Pockmarked with landmines and loneliness.
I wish that this suitcase did not bear the mark of mental illness.
My bipolar life is a story,
One laid out in the lines of swinging,
Of flying and then falling
Before realizing they are often too closely related to tell the difference.
My story is written in the narrow margins between creativity and hospitalization.
Sometimes the two occur together.
My life’s manuscript is forever alternating
Between the way the night sky speaks to me
Or the way the bathroom smells like my blood.
It is being abuzz with electricity and then short circuiting your battery
And not being able to move.
My bipolar song is a tune alternating between grandiosity,
All hail my intelligence and beauty (psych!)
Before falling into apathy and self-loathing.
Sometimes it’s not knowing what version of me I’m going to wake up to in the morning.
My bipolar hope is that the dizzying combo of diet, exercise, and daily medication
Will keep me out of that 1 in 5 number I’ve danced with so perilously,
Keep me off of those bridge ledges and out from empty pill bottles,
Keep me alive in my skin even in this painful reality.
My bipolar fear is that when mania and depression have a love child
And mixed mania runs amuck in its terrible two’s,
The anger will taint the feelings of loved ones.
I fear callous words uttered insouciantly in my own misery,
Slithering from my mouth agonizingly slowly yet too quickly to stop
Might wound those I care for when I do not mean it.
My distress and agitation sometimes equal cranky.
My bipolar prayer is that when energy plus impulsiveness plus danger is no longer
A concept I understand collaborate,
Those around me know this is not who I am.
My mood is a high-flyer, a free-faller, and an everywhere in between,
But that is not my personality.
I am an optimist, a free thinker, creator, compassion giver.
My story is broader than the confines of bipolar.
I am sometimes aflame and others underwater,
But I weather it all with a twisted sense of humor.
I am a person before I am bipolar.

It feels like the skin has been stripped from my body,
Like I am a raw house unable to contain this feeling.
Sounds are dissonant and salt to the wound.
My synapses are buzzing through every tissue.
I am so whole and yet so incomplete,
Angry, electrified, and scared.
This body of mine does not feel like a habitat.
It is more like a zoo enclosure.
I wonder when people will stop gawking at me
Like I am some caged animal.
I am wild.
I am easily provoked when afraid.
Please do not tap the class.
Please do not feed the animals.
Leave me where the ground cries out in anguish
For the blood of my psyche shed in the tall grass.
I was not made for this.
I am not a performer in some circus, some exotic parade.
They have stripped me of my skin,
And this body does not feel like home anymore.

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

And then the brain chemist spilled
An entire bottle of hypomania
Into the *** of depression.
Hell has many names.

I wish that I could trust my brain
To, at the very least, remain the same,
Forever wed to depression's corner.
In the dark, growing colder.
But now Paranoia like a flower blooms,
And I hear the footsteps as he haunts my room,
Breathes down silky skin of neck
To prove he's there and away I shan't get.
His shadow lurks around every turn,
And he taints the world with smells that burn.
I am lonely in this terror
Of stalker and murderous specter.
I tell them he's coming to get me,
But alas, only I can see him.
I wish that I could trust my brain,
But it makes monsters all the same.

He attempts every method of contact,
Of intrusion,
As if I will somehow forgive him for breaking me,
Apologize one last time for HIS behavior.
What he does not know is that
Every crack he instilled
Only made me realize how much
I did not want to be broken anymore.
The sound of the last break
Was the front door,
Closing behind me.

I am often told that love will leave me breathless,
But I hope I never know a love so greedy as to steal the air from my chest,
For I have memories of a time when my body was oxygen starved
And my lungs unable to draw in breath,
Bogged down under soupy pneumonia that clung to my innards
With vice-like, snotty grips.
My mind is sometimes lost in the sensation of frantically
Drawing air inward,
******* it into my chest with great gasps that never alleviated the burning of my lungs
Or the way pins and needles tingled down my limbs.
My brain cells were consumed with desire to force O2 to bind with the red blood cells churning in my veins.
The air surrounding me was dense with particles that refused to aid my survival,
No matter how much effort I exerted to the contrary.
Sweat dripped off my too thin form and pallid skin
As I drowned slowly from the inside out in a room full of doctors
Until they finally placed the tube back into my throat to breathe for me.
The pain receded as oxygen raced back into my cells,
And I marveled for a moment at the fact that I could not feel myself breathing,
Couldn't feel the rise or fall of my chest.
The mark of my vitality was absent,
And yet,
I was very much alive.
I remember what it was to be truly breathless,
The blind panic that seized me before finally giving way to a wish for death.
It's because of this I hope love never empties my lungs.
I want a love that makes breathing feel safe and exciting,
A love that feels so gloriously alive that I am acutely aware of my chest rising.
Love should always make breathing feel like both a right and a privilege.
It is a privilege to love her and be in her presence.
But I hope she never leaves me breathless.

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

Academic conversations about consent are a pure form of agony,
Listening to students and Professor toss around the word like it's a hypothetical commodity,
As if there is question that autonomy and dignity belong to every living thing in that room.
We are asked to dissect the most intimate of physical safeties as if this is a lesson in biology,
Solve 'consent' like a particularly challenging calculus problem,
Pretend as if this didn't happen in the confines of my body.
It's excruciating to have to take an equation,
We'll start with y=mx+b,
And calculate which variables determine basic human decency.
I was young, female, gay, autistic, bipolar,
Clinging to his professions of love like they could stitch the gaping emotional wounds,
And somehow that didn't make me human when he did the math.
I don't know how to argue, Professor, with which philosophical tools,
Professor, that I was a person, Professor,
When he decided to **** me.

I used to think that ****** was the same as *****,
And therefore I was both broken and unclean.
I have learned that you can wash the blood off
And cast out the stains of yesterday’s misfortunes
That I may kneel before you and tell you
That I am still sacred in my own skin.

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.

Keep me away from myself.
It is not safe to exist in this body.

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.

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

I say, “I’m having a hard time with my PTSD,”
The words thick in my mouth like I am choking
Or somehow allergic to this admission,
Body, killing itself in an effort to expel the allergen.
I am stuck at a crime scene,
Whole body present for the ****** of me.
I am watching them examine my clothing,
Searching for motive and signs of a struggle,
Nobody staunching the bleeding.
I am a cadaver to them,
Mangled wreckage of what once was and could never be again.
I see the yellow ‘police line’ being rolled out over and over in my mind,
Wondering why the only one watching him break me
Was my teddy bear who’d been cast onto the floor
And the mattress on which I was the sin he committed.
Sometimes I wonder if the blood stained as it ran from me.
Did he think about the ****** when he washed the sheets,
Or was this just another day for him,
He who is lucky enough to inhabit a whole body?
What was it for him about the act of making ghosts,
Leaving me half dead every time,
How he choked the air from my body,
Just enough to separate my soul from my physical form
But never finished the job?
Now, I haunt this in-between space
A purgatory of murdered and broken pieces,
Parts too dissimilar to be reconstructed.
I wonder how they all used to fit into a whole
When their jagged edges now mar my skin,
Spilling blood that no longer runs red in my veins.
It’s blue like the sheets on his bed,
Steel gray for the threat of the sword he wedged under the mattress,
And purple like bite mark bruises up my thighs,
How he opened his mouth and somehow closed mine,
Stole the syllables off my freshly kissed lips,
The taste of morning breath and acid fear welded to my tongue.
I am left to carry my own dead body with hands that don’t feel fully mine.
They’ve left bruises of their own but none on his skin.
There’s no signs of an external struggle,
No blood stored under my fingernails,
Yet I wear the internal wounds like armor.
Closed doors don’t erase the existence of violence.
What happens in silence still leaves an echo,
Even if it’s only the drip of tears on the pillowcase.
I used to be lucky enough to inhabit a whole body,
But he struck me dead at the root of my innocence,
And now I am here telling you a ghost story.
When I say, “I am struggling with my PTSD,”
I mean I am a stuck at the crime scene of me,
But the police are not coming because I didn’t know to ask for them.
How do you tell someone that love left the bruises and you let him
Because your world was too cold to differentiate between being kept warm
And having someone light you on fire?
How do you report a ****** from beyond your own grave?
The “Police Line: Do Not Cross”
Tells me where not to touch,
What to leave alone less the remembering begin again.
It tells me not to let others too close to the scene of the crime,
Not to let them see the evidence locked in my mind.
I am so tired of carrying around my own dead body,
Trying to feel safe in the same place
I once wished he’d just killed me.
How do you escape the crime scene
When the scene of the crime is your own body?

Let's be clear,
Compassion is not a kind of currency.
****** favors are not a type of contract.
The pictures he received were not consent.
My outfit is not an open invitation,
And there's no justification for what he did.

I am the washed up shores
And ***** of sea shells,
Sharp "Ouch!' and cut of feet.
I am sandpaper to gentle touch
and dissonance to your symphony.
I am the chaos they claimed
Only existed in your imagination,
And yet,
You still dare to love me.

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?

I have a memory that kills me
Like shards of glass sliding through my atrium,
Undetectable until it has ripped an
Irreparable hole in my heart.
His arm is tightened around my neck,
Pressure behind,
Pulling me to him,
My fear thicker than the air I could not breathe.
And then it was over,
Over like the red and sweat of my face
As the oxygen rushed back in.
Therapist says it was not an accident.
In 30 seconds he had tested me.
I was controllable.
Pass or fail
Depends on who you ask.

The world warps
And goes fuzzy around the edges
Like I am not real,
A place holder or chest piece.
My limbs do not move like they are mine,
As if they are foreign bodies attached to my trunk.
The floor is the only solace.
I melt into the stiff boards and rough carpet
Until the world tilts back and becomes
Whole again.

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.

They want to know if I went to Heaven,
If the moment my heart stopped,
I was blinded by the White Light
And the love of a Higher Power.
They want to know if I saw Him.
I recognize now that it is more for their own sense of comfort,
But the first time they asked,
My eyes met theirs with a scorn fierier than the seven circles,
None of which I saw.
They want to know if there is something out there waiting to embrace them
In warm and loving arms.
I cannot say.
I saw nothing,
Just blackness
Followed by the soft browns of the coma tunnel,
Bubbles sweeping gently around,
Shapes resembling sea stars,
The dwellings of an unconscious mind.
Sometimes I miss that tunnel,
Neither hot nor cold,
Jubilant or depressed,
Just floating,
Swimming almost in the vast entrapments of my brain,
Breathing in the liquid,
No emotions.
People might ask if this is my own personal Heaven,
To which I would answer ‘no.’
It was missing an achingly familiar face,
That of a friend,
Gone from this world too soon,
Much in the way I had attempted to exit mine.
They want to know if flat lines mean white gates and Heavenly choirs,
And this I do not know.
I find no glory in my own death,
Albeit only for a minute or two.
I find no great discovery of the afterlife,
Only the aftermath,
The physical pain,
The long and drawn out healing,
The fear of friends and family.
No,
I did not go to Heaven,
If there is such a thing,
For I know,
Sydney will be waiting for me.
In my coma tunnel, I was left all alone.

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

Loving you is the easiest thing I've ever done.
It's simple, like breathing,
Deeply ingrained and automatic,
Necessary and fresh like the air.  
Remembering that you will love me too,
Even if I am unconventional at times,
Even if my brain is more difficult some days,
Is harder.

The electricity flows through my bones,
Making love through my synapses
As it courses through my system.
I am alive with the buzz,
The heat and cacophony.
I must share this with the world,
Charge the very air with my existence.
I could power the whole universe
If only some of it would leave my body.

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.

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

She runs amok without restraint
In pursuit of the high,
The thrill of the chase.

She's up for a cigarette
And down several pounds.
You'll find her naked outside the house.

They can force medication
But can't treat denial.
The CPS case is going to trial.

Her bipolar diagnosis
Remains hard to accept,
But stability is better than manic distress.

She could lose it all quickly.
No time for delay
Lest she face an endless stream of regret.

I understand her pain,
For I've walked this road too,
But with the right help she can make it through.

I hope she'll make haste in  her recovery,
That she'll see on the other side
Is a taste of what it means to be alive.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes I hope that someone might notice my difference,
Might intuit that the first approach,
The handshake, the "Can I join you?"
Is simply more difficult
And make the first move.
Sometimes I hope that people will realize the hand motions,
Foot tapping, slight rock of the body or toes
Are not merely a restless fidget,
Not impatience, nor disrespect.
Sometimes I want to be invisible,
Normal,
Neurotypical,
To be just another human being,
But mostly I wish to be accepted,
Autistic, quirky, kind, creative,
ME.

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.

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?

The only thing I ever learned to flirt with
Was danger.

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!

Granddaddy Dan,
You were a man few in words
And large in heart.
You soared in a plane the open skies,
And now you've taken the final flight.
As I'm forced to say goodbye,
How I wish we'd spent more time,
But the hours we passed were a gift.
Sometimes love leaves no words
Other than "You'll be missed!"

Her fingers dance across the keys,
Creating perfect melodies.
Next to her, I sit young and eager
To please my loving and patient teacher.
She coaches me on how to place my hand.
How lucky am I to call her Grandmommy Anne!

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.