By. Lauren

Growing up gay in the south is like smoking.
You know it's not good yet you still do it.
Growing up gay in the south is a destiny to be shunned.
Growing up gay in the south is like having food in your teeth.
We're not afraid to point it out!
Because growing up in the south means you're quick to judge and even quicker to act on it.
If you grew up gay in the south than you know what I'm talking about.
Just don't do it.
Because growing up gay in the south is the epitome of all gays.

By. Lauren

I feel like I'm watching through someone else's eyes.
A glaze over mine.
This world is yours not mine.
It'll never be mine.
It's so blurry here.
Is it just the air?
My eyes don't feel like they're mine.
Will they ever be mine?
Is it just a lost cause?
Maybe I'm in a game.
A game I can not control.
A game where I'm the pawn.
A game where there is no win.
Only death.
My only outcome is death.
I guess this world really will never be mine.
I'm just a guest with eyes that are not mine.

By. Lauren

A Poem Dedicated to one of my dearest friends

Today's your birthday!
You've made it yet another day.
Let us celebrate.
A life well lived is a life well loved.
Although there are hard times.
You've made it through.
5,110 days you've been on this earth.
7,358,400 minutes of achievements.
88,300,800 breaths keeping you here with us.
Let us celebrate the one we love the most.
Today's your day.
24 hours to just be you.
1,440 minutes we get to be proud of you.
Today just keep breathing those 17,280 breaths and let the world celebrate you.
Today's your birthday!
We love you.

Here's to 14 years of your life!

By. Lauren

Living in the Bible belt is like living in hell.
Oh, the irony of it all.
Christ equals heaven that's what I was always told.
But does it really?
Oh does it really?
Really really really?
Does Christ really equal heaven in this hell?
From the age of zero, I was taught a religion that I couldn't understand.
My tiny ears couldn't even understand my own mother's words fully.
Yet, I was taught about a lord I later disowned.
Not to mention the scorching heat of it all.
The words their religious mouths set ablaze every Sunday afternoon.
The toxicity of it all.
Each Sunday afternoon sitting in a pew waiting to be pumped full of a venom I can't allow myself to believe in.
This is hell.
Yet I'm stuck here fighting because I know no better place to call my home.

By. Lauren

I remember touching his hand.
You asked me if he felt dead.
If he felt cold.
Numb.
You said I would feel sad.
Like I had lost a part of myself.
Yet I felt alive.
Like nothing had gone missing.
No need for searching.
When I touched his hand I felt the loss of blood.
The lack of emotions.
Like there was no one.
Yet I stayed calm.
It was as if I never knew him to be alive.
It was all the same.
The hand did not change.
From free to casket nothing was different.
He was only gone.
Only dead.
But was he ever alive to begin with?

Por. Lauren

El lenguaje es sólo una barrera que debemos desafiar.

By. Lauren

Poetry I miss you
Except
I no longer have the skills to write you.

By. Lauren

My imperfections glisten in your eyes.
I am a slate of marble.
Curved and imperfect.
Except I am still beautiful in the teenage day dream you call life.

By. Lauren

The sting of a bee is enough to make it **** itself.
The ring of an ear is enough to make one scream.
The yelling of the people around me is enough to make me tremble in pain.
The people around us influence one's inner self.
The words exchanged from one's mouth to another have an impact on one's conscience.
Because the world is constantly turning and spinning and making me think.
The world is much like our brain in the form it is constantly moving and we are constantly thinking.
And in the blink of an eye everything seems to fall apart.

By. Lauren

Inspiration I find myself looking.
Looking for something to do something to say.
Exploring this new place.
A fondness of delight.
A curiosity not yet fulfilled.
Inspiration where are you?
I've been looking for you in all the wrong places.
In all the wrong creases.
This place is not your home.
Inspiration why did I think you would arrive here too?
Why must you be so rude?
Inspiration why won't you come with me.
I'm searching and searching.
But where are you?
How will I live without this longing being fulfilled?
Inspiration all I want is you.
To hold your hand in this unknown land.
For us to be in this together once more.
Inspiration it's time.
I love you.

By. Lauren

I know not of what I used to be.
All I know is poetry.
Would you like a key?
My poetry knows not of an invitation.
Walking in at 3AM.
No need to turn a key.
He's only there when he wants to be.
I can not invite him to stay.
Instead I must tell him to leave.
I enjoy his company.
Until I must clean him up after years of imperfection.
He wants me to write him, but I do not know how to say I must go to sleep.
He assumes my arms will always be open to see him at 3AM.
I am sad to disappoint him.
It's just he needs to leave.
How do I revoke his key?

By. Lauren

I thought I could trust you,
But it was a ******* lie.
I thought you where my friend,
But I was wrong.
I thought I could tell you anything,
But now you've made me want to die.
My tongue is tied.
You spoke the word I wanted to hear I thought your lips where sealed.
If only I knew you would stab me today.
Our friendship must have been a joke to you if only it was a joke to me.

By. April Crew (a former friend of my mother)

When I say I love you, know
that it is true.
I love you from deep within,
I hope you love me too!

I hope neither of us will
ever go
But I pray our love will
Always grow.

You're the best thing that
Ever happened to me
You're the one I love,
You always will be.

I remember the good times
That happened in the past
I hope we can make them
Last

I will always be here for you
So please don't ever find
Someone new,

If you ever leave me
I would probably die
Please don't ever say good-
Bye

But now I am glad to
Have you as my friend,
I promise I'll love you
Right to the very end!!!

By. Lauren

The last gulp of air.
The last chance at life.
The kids of opportunity.
The lack of oxygen to the heart.
The last heart palpitation.
The only chance left.
No more opportunities to be found in the lonesome grave of death

By. Lauren

Lately I've been crying at night.
Letting the tears drip down my face.
Lately I've been sad all day.
Hiding my pain.
I take my pills but lately I've felt conflicted.
Lately I've been searching for a reason.
A chance to not feel so lost.
Lately I have no words to say.
No way to describe my pain
Lately I've been full of regrets.
Why'd I give up on therapy?
Poetry was my only option left but I do not know what else to say anymore.
I have no wisdom left.
No advice to give myself.
So lately all I have been is lost.
I guess this is the end.

By. Lauren

Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
This poem sounds like the rest of them.
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
Am I repeating myself over and over again?
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
I feel like a leaky faucet of ideas.
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
Is there any creativity left in me?
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
My ideas don't flow out like they use to.
Drip.
Drop.
Drip.
Drop.
I think I'm done with poetry.

By. Lauren

You lied to me once,
You apologized.
You lied to me twice,
I wanted to cry.
You lied to me thrice,
I wanted to die.

By.
Lauren

Life is a book.
An ever-growing book.
365 new pages a year.
A new page each day to read.
Each page opens a new opportunity.
A chance to change the characters.
A chance to change the scenery.
A chance to change the loop.

The cycle that feels never-ending.
And then it snaps.
And there are no more opportunities left to change the page.

The book feels like it's never going to end until it does.
Until you see yet another person lie down their book to rest.
Then it all hits you.
Whether it be today, tomorrow or many years down the road each of our books will come to a close.

There will be no more opportunities to change our outcome.
No more days to change our page.
No alternate endings to choose from.
It's just a book we have to finish reading.
No giving up midway.

By. Lauren

I have this problem.
When I have to hold the hand of someone who does not accept me they feel dead.
It's as if there is no blood going to their head.
I don't know if it is because I am nervous or if it's because they know who I am.
Their hands feel numb.
Lifeless,
If you're not gay,
I can tell by your hands.
I don't know why I have this problem
I just know it's always true.
When I hold your hand
I can tell you are gay
without a doubt.
You have life to you.
Blood in your veins.
A shimmer in your eyes.
And a smile on your face.

By. Lauren

I desperately want to date a girl
because I am lonelier than a squirrel.
I live in a small town
Tinier than any other around.
I am gayer than a curved line.
Lonelier than a tree.
But I live in a small town
tinier than any other around
where no other than a friend or two
knows I am gay.
So I stay lonelier than a squirrel.

By. Lauren

Looking at you I can't help but wonder if you've been crying all day.
Your eyes seem to want to fade.
Fade away.
Looking at you I can't help but want to pump the happy back through.
Back through your veins.
Looking at you makes me feel dead.
Your skin looks so grey.
Are you okay?
Looking at you I can't help but want to cry too.
Cry all day.
All because I looked at you.
Looked at you today.

By. Lauren

You make my heart melt.

By. Lauren

I feel lost.
No end in sight only a loop.
A marry go round of thoughts.
When will it ever stop?

By. Lauren

Your wings wrapped around me.
Like a trapped fish I squirmed and gulped for air.
Your wingspan was larger than my chance of survival.
You suffocated me to no end.
I was trapped in your toxicity.
Like a viper you bit.
Thangs unwillingly of release.
No chance of escape was to be found in my desert of hopelessness.
Only a dripping of blood from which I shed.
The sorrow of my later life soon reached.
You had left me helpless.
Only a hopeless soul in the abandoned desert of life from which I am searching for an exit.

By. Lauren

I zone out like a rocket lost in space.
I am always ready to come back to earth but my engine never manages.
It's always my mind making me write.
I do not know if there is an inch left of me that has not been weaved into a poem.
I once was my own person now I am shared with the world.
I once fit together like a puzzle but now I don't fit together at all without reading all my poems.
I do not remember a single one of my last feeling because I vent more than I feel
I am a rocket lost in space ready to return home.

By. Lauren

Love is a difficult message to convey.
As the flowers from your heart start to bloom you start to decay.

By. Lauren

L        
   o  
      v
         e

A none existent thing for me.

By. Lauren

If a guy likes a guy
then he likes a
******* guy.
If a girl likes a girl
than she likes a
******* girl.
If you don't understand
then leave them the
**** alone.
Because
If a guy likes a guy
then he likes a
******* guy.
If a girl likes a girl
than she likes a
******* girl.
In the end
Love is ******* love.

By. Lauren

You said you where like me.
That you knew my pain.
Why was I naive?
What did you know?
My body is a fortress with crumbling walls
Held up by a foundation that was never strong enough to prevent the settling.
Do you still think you know my pain?
Has your understanding grown?
A weary traveler unable to rest.
Are you really all that much like me?
Do you understand my pain now?

By. Lauren

Anorexia why must you return to me so soon?
I look in the mirror and see you now.
I thought you were gone.
Why must you come home?
My body was getting strong once more.
Feeling so happy again.
Then you came home.
My body knew no better but to let you back in.
You moved into the chemicals of my brain.
You changed me to satisfy yourself.
Anorexia I just want to be alone.
I once found a home in the foods I wanted to consume.
But now anorexia I can't seem to find a home in my own body.
You have eaten me raw.
All skin and bones no fat to call my home.
No room for a lover all that I can host is you.
You've made my body a structure I can not keep up.
A frame with no foundation.
Anorexia this is not who I'm meant to be.
You're not supposed to be.
Not with me.
We're not meant to be.
I know we once got along.
The two of us looking beautiful in that red dress.
The compliments we ate up as our only protein for the day.
"Oh you're so thin," they would say.
Anorexia I don't want to be with you anymore!
I feel like I'm breaking.
I'm sick of watching my weight.
5'2 and 40 pounds under.
Anorexia this is not how I'm supposed to be.
Just let me be.
Not you and me.
Just me.
Let ME be.

By. Lauren

Missing,
Missing,
More below.
I got the amber alert years ago.
It was a girl.
A girl that isn't me, well not today I must say.
She was short and fair.
Skinny and nice.
Kind and soft.
Now she's six feet below.
She was a happy girl,
She was me.
But the amber alert still is there.
I can't seem to clear the notification.
She's just a missing girl,
A missing girl that once was me.
Now she's flesh and bones,
No meat to be found on her.
She's so frail and pale,
You hear the grave calling her.
She's sick and scared.
All she wants is to find the missing girl for she is the real me.

By. Lauren

When my planner is full I feel alive.
When my planner is full I have a purpose.
When my planner is full I never actually get to any of my goals.
It's just when my planner is not full the spaces are engulfed in the words "don't **** your self" when my planner is empty I feel worthless.
When my planner is empty I don't want to write another poem.
The plan of my life seems to have a grater impact than the years I have lived.

By. Lauren

Sooooo I washed my hair last night.
Not because it was gross just because I had the motivation.
I know this whole motivation thing is absurd.
Only doing things when I feel like my body can withstand them.
The audacity of it all.

Sooooo I didn't tie my shoe on the way to lunch.
Not because I didn't want to.
Just because it felt as if I would snap.
One more stretch and the whole system would be out of whack.

Sooooo I did something I didn't need to do.
Washing my hair so I could feel more real.
Using my new found motivation in favor of my future.

On the contrary, I didn't do something I needed to do.
Tying my shoe so I could walk without stumble.
Conserving my energy all for the fall.
Not breaking in the action but breaking from the reaction.

It's crazy what motivation can do to you.

By. Lauren

A throbbing pain,
A moment in which I hear nothing.
A bullet to the head.
A scream to leave me alone.
Doctors say “if a headache lasts more than 24 hours than there is something wrong."
“What about 24/7?” I scream in my brain.
My headache is not a scream for your help;
It is a scream for the God I left years ago to hurry up and **** me.
For as long as I can remember my headache has been there for me.
My headache comes over at the worst of times banging on my door refusing to leave.
My headache is worse than the Jehovah’s Witness banging on my door every Sunday.
My headache is an intruder refusing to leave even after I call the cops.
My headache makes me scream,
So keep away from me.
My headache has taken a hold of me.
My headache makes the lights in my room look like the holy light waiting to blind me.
I know not of the life I had before headache because headache has always been holding my hand.
My headache is a lover who I can not seem to leave no matter how many times I say,
‘I am through”
My headache is the person on the other side of the aisle
Saying,
“I do”
Before I could run away.
So when the doctor gave me the bottle of pills that rattled in the passenger seat of my car all the way home I was shocked to see I was afraid to divorce my lover headache.
Because
My headache loved me.

By. Lauren

I never knew love until I met you.
I didn't know how it tasted.
How it left a tingly feeling on my tongue.
I never knew something could be so sweet.
I don't know why it took so long for me to fall for you,
But once I did I knew it was love.
The love where you can go back in time.
The love where you can still go on dates at the playground and eat ice cream by the pound.
I never knew love until I met you.
I hope you feel the same.

By. Lauren

I do not feel at home here in this cathedral of emptiness.
Not a place to lie my head only a place that will break my heart.
Snap my bones.
Then throw me out.
How do you expect me to feel at home here?
Whenever I stay here I hear thumping in the walls.
It's as if someone is coming to get me.
How am I supposed to feel at home here?
Sleeping in the rooms marked "do not enter".
You hide me as if I am a creature.
I do not feel at home here!
I need a break.
A breath of air.
I'm sick of this darkness!
And I'm sick!
I'm sick of being sick!
But you keep hiding me.
Will you stop?
Send me home.
I do not feel at home here.
Not in this cathedral of emptiness.
Not here where I can not lie my head  only break my heart.
Snap my bones.
Then be thrown out as if I was an unwanted creature.
A useless guest.
Just a waste.
This is not home.

By. Lauren

It's been a while.
I missed you.
How are you?
It's been so long.
Why didn't you answer my texts?
Let me cling on to you.
You're mine.
No one else will ever love you.
Why won't you let me love you?
You're worthless.
If I can't love you then no one can.
I miss you.
I love you.
If you leave me I'll do it.
I still have the pills you told me to get rid of.
You're mine.
That's all you'll ever be.

By. Lauren

In the bleak early morning I watched as the adoral was passed from palm to palm in the swift attempt at teenage rebellion. Then I watched as the recipient gulped it down as if it was candy. From the early age of 12 children are exposed to a world full of drugs, ****** abuse, and other crimes too. As they watch their peers down a bottle of liquor like water. The only evidence left of these teenage crimes are the trails of ****** needles only the sharpest eye can spot in the lonesome parking lot of our very own school. At the age of 12 I watched as a girl was cat called in the middle of the hallway as all the boys yelled dam girl because at the age of 12 children are exposed to the early pubescent of later criminals. All of this  just because the school system was too flawed to see what needed to change and actually take action.

By. Lauren

There once was a time I could look into your eyes and actually see life.
Now it's just a fantasy.
No glimmer of hope not even of chance.
All I can see is death.
You are not gone from this world yet.
Where has your fun gone?
Once upon a time you enjoyed time.
Now all you see is black and white.
The minute hand never seems to move to you.
You do not hear the ticking.
Everything is frozen to you.
You do not see the play button.
Can I help you?
Just this once.

By. Lauren

It's crazy how much can change in a year.
The difference between healthy and unhealthy.
The difference between standing and sitting.
It's crazy how much you will want to fix due to the changes of only one year.
A whole rhythmic difference in the heart and a deeper breath from the lungs.
All in the course of a year your blood pressure can change.
And your world may spin.
Only 365 days to change a whole person.
And then it starts again.

By. Lauren

A friend opened up to me a day or two ago.
She held a story up to me, a story she'd never told.
I don't know why,
But I could feel her scars engrave into me too.
I could feel his hands creeping up me like they once did to her too.
They seemed to hold me in all the wrong places,
Nothing about it was comfortable.
It all felt so real, it felt like something I had been through.
I didn't know how to tell her I had been there too.
So I just shook my head and cried with her too.
I hope she knows I share those memories too.

By. Lauren

My body took care of me like a rotting corpse,
As it threw me into the gruesome cemetery of my own mind
Where the trees even screamed for help as their roots ****** up the poison from toxic bodies like mine.
Every last leaf that fell that fall was due to our toxins.
I was not alone in this cemetery of mental health abandonment;
there appeared to be more people than you can count on your fingers and toes or even at night like sheep.
All of their bodies had left them like a family too lazy to attend their own family members funeral.
This lonesome cemetery was full of lonesome people like me.
We all were just there for
Help.
So we popped a few happy pills or two, and in that moment our cemetery turned into a luscious forest where the flowers couldn't even stop laughing.
We had made our cemetery into a future for others like us.
Our cemetery was then named
"Mental Health Awareness".
It was our safe haven some may say it was even our therapy oasis.

By. Lauren

Pain is something tall and thin starved to the brink of extinction.
Pain is something that hides behind a mask only the most attentive eyes can spot.
Pain is something hidden by all those who truly experience it.
Because, pain is a monster taking a hold of me.
Pain is a demon refusing to leave.
Pain gets stronger throughout the day.
So, pain will stay
And pain
it will be.

By. Lauren

What's it like to wake up comfortable in your own skin?
No doubts of your beauty just ready for the day.
What's it like to not weigh yourself multiple times a day?
Calculating every gram that puts your astray from your Instagram model body.
What's it like to look good in anything you wear?
Not too big or tall.
Not too small or short.
Just perfect for everything.
I wish I had that beauty.
The kind where your skin glows even in the driest of seasons.
The kind where your legs are always soft no hair to shave.
What's it like to be perfect?
Perfect like you?

By. Lauren

From the age of ten I learned to swallow a pill.
A pill to numb the pain.
A pill to make a change.
I listened to the instructions the doctors gave me.
It's only,
day by day I felt more pain.
No more change.
Only an increase in range.
An increase in pain.

By. Lauren

My ears have engulfed more poetry than they've heard music.
They hear the beat in the words not the rhythm in the beat.
The words you write play a melody in my head before they are even read.
My eyes see poetry as a world waiting to be explored.
My eyes see words and read the beat.
Without poetry my mind is set ablaze.
My thoughts engulf me to the point I no longer feel without poetry.
Poetry keeps me sane.
Because poetry is a beat needing to be played.

By. Lauren

Poetry,
A symphony of words.
A description of something far too complex for the average person to comprehend.
Poetry has many lovers
In every shape and form.
Poetry has happy and sad moments.
Poetry is a rocky pathway waiting to be discovered by the weariest traveler.

By. Lauren

I never take the time to put my pen to paper.
It's always thumbs tapping in a rampage to type my feelings out.
My mind storming and swirling.
My lungs compressing.
All trying to keep me going.
To keep me alive.
But it's not working.
Has it ever been working?
My heart never wants to pump its next pint of blood.
My legs never want to take their next steps.
It's always a process I can not get to end.
Just I can't seem to make it work properly either.
So what's the point?
What's my purpose?

By. Lauren

My poetry is a work in progress.
Before I can finish one I'm on to the other.