if there were words to describe the past few months, i would cut them up, silver knife to granite, into lousy pieces and throw them in a *** to boil
turn the fire down when it starts to smell like bathwater, nail polish remover, and tobacco
if you're asking what it feels like to be nothing, i'll serve you this
abjection by the spoon full

my days fill up
like balloons
with forced breath

seeing light
shine through the messed up blinds
like a projector playing a movie across my skin
about something slightly nostalgic
but very far away

when i leave my house
my skeleton is magnetic
i feel nothing
but the push and the pull
the lack of choice
and a deep-cutting desire
to once again
have the world
and my body
belong to me

i want apologies,
not praise
when i say i had a better day today than yesterday,
don't smile and say
"i'm so proud of you!"
then have the audacity to blame
a version of myself you made
for rejecting the condescending look
on your dumb face

i am a bad artist
my body is a vessel for emotion that nearly never gets opened
and when it does, it's confetti blown from a sawed off shotgun
but for now, the safety is on
and little pieces of colored paper decorate my sleep in the form of nightmares
putting my finger over that trigger feels a lot like losing control
i am powerless
fighting fire with gasoline in a house i live in, alone
i am alone
because the people who taught me how to love do not love me and that makes me
lonely

did it ever occur to you that maybe i'm exactly where i wanted to be?
years and years of self destruction in hopes that i'll eventually be sick enough to take the medicine
sick enough to be bed ridden
mother in the chair in the corner of the room, praying for me
calling all the doctors, saying "she needs help"
but i tell her im sick and she says "i need help"
and i don't know how to get well with a hypochondriac

they told me to use sage
cleanse my soul, my environment, my headspace
and i agree with them because i don't know how to say that i'm already clean without having to explain that i've taken 2 baths today
and yesterday

lately i just can't seem to find my faith
i think it may have gotten lost somewhere between the hotel, three different therapists, and the letters i get in the mail from a team of people that want to know my truth
my truth?
well i apologize, your honor, as my truth is
an ocean, a non-linear mass of blue, only 5-7 percent discovered

i guess what i'm trying to say is

i am afraid
that when you ask me to take the safety off and pull the trigger
i'll forget how to aim

my house feels the emptiest when it's full
the scent of home made food and the sound of my sister's voice both parade out of the kitchen through the rest of the rooms like a new orleans funeral trumpet
laugh all you want, i know you still look at me like i ****** your husband
laugh all you want, i know you'd rather go home to get high in the garage
laugh all you want, just remember to remind your mouth to smile when you do
you smell like ash and misery and leave traces of it everywhere you go and if it wouldn't leave you lonely, you'd look at the cigarette in my hand and say *this is all your fault

i used to be a girl that got ****** on friday nights
spilling beer in garages across town, making boys laugh
calculating how many smiles or touches on the shoulder or seconds of eye contact could make me feel like i belonged somewhere, a cigarette for every unit of the quota i didn't manage to meet
even on mornings i woke up with sore lungs, i was alive
alive with meaning, with weightlessness, with two cups of diet coke on a patio table
watching snails climb up the aloe vera plant
i used to be a girl who felt whole on saturday mornings

it takes one hour, three glasses of water,
and the breath of morning between first awakened yawn and turning the shower faucet on,
bare bodied, stepping on the plate to present myself to the cold, small, square
an exhibit
a self examination
i'd say that those three numbers will dictate what kind of day i will have, because obviously,
it could only be good or bad,
but i will hate myself whether or not the number is less or more than the one before
and my last good day was about 15 pounds ago