i can't make decisions
i sit and wish someone else would make them.
eventually they do and i just follow along
playing a part i was gently dropped into.

no more.

no matter how gentle the drop i'm still doing something i don't want
no means no
your will frightens me
you think what you do to me is worth it because you are satisfied
forgetting the living person that you perform your acts on.

*******, devin.
i'm sorry you feel sad
i'm sorry you don't do well in school
i'm sorry you spend your entire day playing a game that gets you no where
but when it comes to the question of my lips
my waist
my neck
my hipbones...
you are not permitted a say in the matter
no matter how "worth it" you think it is
they are mine to command
mine to keep if i so choose
*******,
****
you.

Lately I've been thinking about becoming bigger than my body
I've been processing you through **** demos on my phone
Through grey skies and empty bottles
Through blank stares and perpetuated silence
( I used to need a rhythm to write but the white noise in my head seems to work)
I've been turning corners and changing lanes
Doing the dishes and doing my time tangled in empty sheets
And it seems okay
As long as I'm not by myself for too long
Because if I let the white noise in I'll be swimming in black till the weekend
I'll numb myself in neon shades
White hot and weighty
Glimmering image of the silver screen dream
Spent shadowed twisting out into the intersection until I remember that you are not the same as you once were
And I am not the girl you needed
I'm just processing
And working on becoming bigger than my body
More than my bones more than my skin more than my gender more than a character in someone else's life
More than a thin wristed timid thing weighted down by years of neglect and indifference
More than a pair of wide dim eyes
More than myself.
I'm sorry I didn't call you back.

my cousin always gets a new puppy when the last grows up incorrectly:
misbehaving while she's gone,
wrecking home and belongings.

that is how you feel
no, not special or an isolated circumstance
don't bloat yourself on the idea that you are unique to me --
you are every other boy who thinks with his ****
every other boy who seemed playful and innocent
and grew to destroy home and belongings...

this arm belongs to me, this breast
this neck
these thighs
you wreck every one
smiling in your play

i do discard you,
but not before you damage me...
and there is always another
ahead.

want to run back to the frozen frame in late may
shadow on the solid ground with a red tentative foot trying to move forward.
silent frame
quaking inside
tumultuous, skitter-scatter thoughts that always made me doubt my sanity.

want to run back and hold me
want to run back and tell me that to err is human
to doubt is to begin to see the wrong that is happening all around you
to scream is to know
that you are in it
and to know that you are in it
is the first step in getting out

want to run back to that freeze frame
hurt him
hurt him till his face is a blur
so i don't have to see it in my now quiet, late-night thoughts
any longer.

wish his face were gone.
see myself ruining it over
and over
i don't want to be a murderer
but what you did to me
placed such hatred in my heart
that the light cannot comprehend
the darkness that lies dormant.

they all want to think they have qualities that will entice me
dancing beggars throwing text into the air and hoping it falls in pleasing shapes
watching my snapstory and hoping i notice
trickling through my internet stream
laughing at my antics as if they know me
begging superiority by the green sword next to their name
thinking that my biggest problem is clickbait that they can just time out and make disappear.

i entertain you but it's not for you
it's for me.

the flowers grow back now that you're gone
the bamboo loses its sickly pallor
it drinks water now
instead of letting it stagnate.

i don't know how long.
i don't know how many months or days.
time passed is meaningless to me now
i have lost the desire to frantically recall what i lost each day i was with you.

the flowers grow back and i grow strangely around these past events
coming up through the cracks
like a gravelly ****
still inside me
but dormant

sometimes