Art feels like the difference of living and surviving. Maybe that's why my hands are always making. Each pencil pressed against my skin a silent scream for something great. A dream I dare to animate, breath life into. They say to heal trauma is not to become ready  to cope with the pain but instead the ability to bear joy again. The life I dream with you feels rebellious. Feels far fetched and delightful. It lights small flames of hope inside me. I am either a fool or living on the edge of what I am capable of. I have breathed life into a co-created dreaming. Tenderly nested and spoke of my love for them. Kissed them until my lipstick wore off. Was drunk in their laughter. I know what it feels like to simply survive. It's a place much easier to rest in then to return to.

Art feels like the difference between living and surviving. Maybe that's why my hands are always making. Each pencil pressed against my skin a silent scream for something great. A dream I dared to animate, breathe life into. They say to heal trauma is not to become ready to cope with the pain but instead the ability to bear joy again. The life I dream with you feels rebellious. It feels far-fetched and delightful. It lights small flames of hope inside me. I am either a fool or living on the edge of what I am capable of. I have breathed life into a co-created dream. Tenderly nested and spoke of my love for them. Kissed them until my lipstick wore off. Was drunk in their laughter. I know what it feels like to simply survive. It's a place much easier to rest in than to return to.

That night we wept open
Love poured from my eyes
You held my heart flooding
Even you cried
I let love hang like honey
Sweet and so pure

The next day was different
You loved me at my worst
Triggered and tangled
You held on so tight
I fought and was frightened
So scared to be right

That day I wept open
Love poured from my eyes
You held my heart flooding
Even I cried
I let love hang like honey
So sweet and so pure
Stuck in you love
Safe and secure

Love is a weighty thing
Soft sometimes
Always sharp enough to keep you bleeding
I always felt the harder you loved
The farther the fall
The kind of fall that kills you
I started imagining the impact before feeling it's warmth
I would negotiate with myself
"A punch to the face would ease the lonely"
I had been choked out by the hands that held me
To be touched was not breathing
Love is a fist fight inside me
Is wreckless abandon
Love is a weakness
Always being exploited
A knife fight
And I have nothing left to be taken
Love is a weapon
Love is a word
An empty feeling left unheard
Love is a knife fight
A weighty thing.
Don't ask me to love you,
I could never
I care for you to much

Some days I am hideously alive

Decomposing memories

Deeply trenched in manipulation

****** noses and broken hearted…

dark circles and scabbed over

clotting and bruised

Festered wound pushing out poison.

Some days I am defective, calloused and weak

Some days I am gnawing and farel

Less human and more lizard

Puckered scars and blistered skin

Healing isn't always pretty

Some wounds get infected

Bones have to be reset…

Abscesses drained

I survived…

But I don't have the same skin

You wouldn't recognize me

I'm breathing

Some days that hurts

I know how old love turns to torture
how your burnt lungs fill with water
how rib cage restricts heartbeat
how mean you move away

I push through old scars and burning houses
Try and make something from ruble, ashes
soot-stained skin and smeared mascara
ocean pouring from my eyes
and endless void makes me cry

you run from me
I am drowning
I try to hold on to you
I
Can't
Breathe
why
don't
you
just
leave.
If you sit here so empty anyway
just dying to be somewhere else
each moment killing me
all I want is for you
to love me as you use too.

I take up space because I am valuable.
I say that as I eat and rejoice in my outward growth
Delighted in food as it hits my mouth, and how it hugs my body.
I say that as I stretch out on the bus
Tacking no less room then the man spread that is so recklessly unaware of itself.
I say that as I raise my voice refusing silencers
His voice will not penetrate an overwhelming truth, no matter how loud he speaks over me
I say that as I stand tall, combating the overlooker
I sway surly and head held high as I am worthy
As I celebrate my *******
Praise the blood that shows my strengths
I cast away the thought that a bleeding thing is weak
Is it not true that he has been known to bleed too?
I take up space because I am valuable
Treasured for my thoughts and wholeness
I say that as I work out, muscles showing
My strength oblivious to the male ego, without fear of being any less of a woman
I say that as I challenge myself and others
Because meekness was something I was taught, not something that I am.
I say that as I refuse to be consumed
I am not a product for pleasure I am a human, a consciousness with feeling.
I say that as I really am, as a goddess, a queen, an equal
An individual with agency and determination
As I celebrate my character
Praise the misguided for building me up
Refuting the idea that blood is shameful
Because my womanhood is in part my pride
I say that I am valuable very simply,
because I am