wrapped up in pretzel shapes on my bed in the middle of the night
contorting and twisting
holding my head, lifting my legs
bending my knees
happily.
much unlike the way you contorted me for your own pleasure
much unlike the pretzel you kneaded me into
alike, but different.
so different.

that bridge is long burnt
embers floating away
in the water
the current
dispelling the nightmare

but i still remember the bridge.
and when i see a stretch of water i feel the ghost of it there
clinging to the dirt and the undergrowth

i know it was there.
and it frightens
me

casually observing my body from the outside
watching me fall apart
my face sliding off my cheeks
my abdomen rotting
my hands and feet lying listlessly against my bedcovers.

i have become a bystander
a slightly curious stranger
keeping an eye on the ****** on the street -
me
watching my antics
wondering at my behavior
cringing at the pathetic pleading that stretches from my eyes
to my toes
to his phone screen

i wonder how long she can carry on
before her head blurs in its motion
before her hands claw together
before she smolders out
a wait and see
sort of game
how long
can she
last
how fast
is too fast
how much
is too much
how long
before he leaves her alone again

even when you hate me
even when you wouldn't care if i bled out in my kitchen
even after everything you have done to me
you would still
**** the ****** up clown girl
smile painted on her cheeks
**** her as she trembles
loving every
quiver

you like helplessness
you like
innocence
and small, frightened noises
that is why
you loved
to **** me

black-eyed child of the morning
sings blue-eyed hymns in the afternoon,
chokes on black water at night
pouring from the ceiling
depression waterboarding her small cheeks.

black-eyed child of the morning
paints red smiles on her thighs
running down her knees
heaven on her mind
looking for the tormentor in the ceiling.

blue-eyed child in the afternoon
lets sunshine soak up her irises
turning the light rose-colored
laughs drunkenly just under the
feedback
lies in bed and finds worlds in her mind
stroking their edges
closing her eyes

black-armed child of the night
resurfacing at last
shaking on the mattress
talking
screaming
to her thoughts
telling them to stop
trembling under the black water ceiling
crying because she's suffocating
begging because there is no choice

black-eyed child,
blue-eyed sometimes...
beggars can't be choosers

i miss him.

why do i miss him?
how
can i miss him
after everything?

one dream last night, after weeks and months of torture
and i remember the good parts
and these new boys will not do
i stop letting them talk to me
i miss him
i miss that man that took advantage of my innocence.
i truly miss him.
and right now,
in this moment
i know i would take him back.

i wear ancient friendship anklets
chipped toenail polish, a gritty smile on my face
sunshine seeping under my fingernails i
walk on the top of the railguard and look down
over and over
teetering.

see the ditch,
see the road,
see the trees.
can't see the forest but i see the trees
and i feel a nearness to the wild undergrowth
missing that blank, trodden look of a ground too often explored
i crouch in the ferns and remember the feeling that i lost.

hair smelling like wind and earth and sky
fists against the trunk of the tree
in a forest i can't see
i fight the bigness of it all
i fight against the all encompassing picture that threatens to lose me
lose this tree
i chip off the bark and put it in my pocket.
lose the tree,
but still have
a piece

i stand in a forest that i refuse to see
comforting the trees
battling the sky
screaming at the crowded leaves
dead friendship anklets
dragging
me

i have always been frightened of people.
after mom left, it was angry white women that scared me
their dead eyes staring while their mouths worked furiously -
i couldn't even watch an actress scream on t.v. without my mother slipping in under her hairline.

i am still scared of angry white women.
but now i am scared of men, too.
anyone who believes themselves privileged
to be near me
to breathe my air and look at my body
and demand that i give them attention
they too frighten me.
and i no longer allow them near.

i will let you talk, because that is what you do.
i will allow you to look, because i cannot stop you.
i will allow you small pieces of myself
because i no longer feel anything
but i will never
ever
feel anything for you.

and if you get in too deep
if you like me too much
if you begin to love me
i will cut you off
and feel nothing.

because moose was right
i don't deserve him
no one deserves him
and the ugly, dripping animal that sleeps in his disarming chest
no one deserves to lose everything
for the mere excuse "i just can't control myself around you."

you can.
and you should have.
keep your poison out of my mouth,
and out of my veins.

the critics tell me to be more poetic.

i admit that it is hard to smell the roses and stare up at blue skies
while cradling the hollow, echoing black hole that boy left me with;
it is hard to walk through meadows and think convoluted thoughts.
it is really just hard
to enjoy anything
these days.

instead of telling you what happened to me
i guess i could make it a metaphor
use nature
and frightening, twisting black words
to paint a landscape.
so you truly blessed, poetic ones
would respect me and what happened.

this is for you shakespeares
who need metaphor
to truly understand horror.

my life is a perfect confusion of pure, childlike, listless happiness
big smiling cheeks and full hearts that break because they are too happy
and a howling, screaming, heaving, ugly beast that hides in my shadow
that no one can know
towering over my small frame
wrapping his spindly arms around my torso
ripping into my stomach
voice dripping in my ear
that's a good girl
drooling on my shoulder
the monster trevor constructed for me
out of all his horror films
and naked women
and rough, rough fingers.

i hug everyone too tightly
my ghost body trembling to cling to something
someone
but too thin
not real enough to stay near anything too long.
it drifts away and stops replying to messages
lies in the corner of the green room that once frightened it
and waits for more wrong to be committed.
begs for every word
every wound
every scrap
waif-dog, waif-girl, gouge that cannot dissipate.

how much must i say
to get this terror out of me
to make this heaving monster leave my chest
how many poems must i write about a ****** that i loved
how many times must i doubt
how many times must i apologize
how many times must i cry
till it all comes out
till he leaves me alone at night
till i am able to not be frightened anymore?

how much must i say
and in what manner
for you to understand me
respect me
love me?

this beast cracks his way into my bones
and i will not be a daisy-chain rough-footed child much longer
i need you to find me
i need you to help me
i need you
to hide
me
in a secret place.

there are a lot of people in the world that you don't need
and that don't need you
but i have never been good at figuring out who those people are.
i let all of them stay
and pull me, drag me, **** me
back and forth and up and down until suddenly
they are telling me they love me
and i am saying it back
because there's nothing else that can be done.

my head and my heart know that i don't truly love them like they love me
and that in the end i will stop replying to messages
and make up excuses for months
and months
and months
until they just stop trying
and that i will end up hurting them more by allowing them to love me and then leaving
but i cannot close myself off to them.
i have declared myself public property
everyone gets a piece of me
to place their country's flag
divide me up like a chocolate bar
eat me in one melted bite.

i wonder when there will be nothing left
to give.

maybe it would have hurt if you said goodbye.
as is, i feel a hollowness but nothing more.
no need to pursue
no need to frantically call you
text you
message you
beg you
i have no need
no need
no need
please
please
please
let me let me
let me
get what i want this time

it's so amazing how easily i can determine
that i was not insane for a year and a half
now that you no longer block out the sun.

yeah, maybe i still can't look at your face
because i am so afraid to see you and have you trick me back into sympathy and compassion.

me, the girl who loved a ******.

maybe jesus taught me too well to love those that persecute me
he made me to fall in love with the man who grabbed me by the wrists and held me down.
would my father
would my pastor
would anyone
honor me for the sacrificial love i displayed for a year and a half
holding him
giving myself to him
loving him
would they pat me on the back
and say that i truly understand the love of god
letting a man ravage my life
for a year
and a
half

i don't even know the months anymore.
i've stopped counting
because i've stopped torturing myself
because i no longer can say
"here is the day he took it away from me
and here i am, still letting him over and over again."
the months past do not matter now.

i will start counting for a different reason:

1 month since i told him enough is ******* enough
2 months since i cut my arms open, writing my sins in my flesh
3 months since i decided that jesus was wrong
that loving my enemies will **** me
make my insides rot
that not loving this enemy
is simply
self preservation
4 months since i got my voice back.
5 months since i started to feel a heart beating in my chest again instead of a hollow socket
6 months since i laid in bed my head and tongue bursting with hate at the mere thought of his hands rough against me, mouth against my ear
7 months since i stopped lying to everyone around me about what really happened that first night
8 months since my body revolted as my mind toiled on in utter confusion, darting from one frightened thought to the next
9 months since i had to worry about carrying a child that he conceived alone
10 months since i beat my head against a cement wall, trying to smash the memories
of what he did to me
11 months since i hugged his mother and met his family wanting to tell them they had a ****** predator for a son
1 YEAR SINCE I LET A BOY CONSUME THE ESSENCE AND JOY AND PURITY OF WHO I AM AND WHAT I WISH I COULD BOLDLY STAND FOR.

i will count the future months
on the gritty pockmarked sidewalk to recovery
until i find again my way
to a sound mind
a sound body
and a sound heart
victimize me no longer,
you who removed from me my innocence
and hung it around my neck
like an albatross that i shot
and not you...

to love again, will be an awfully big adventure.

i'm tired of the feedback in my ears
and the low, settled silt in my abdomen.
i'm tired of staring at the little box on the screen that you try to communicate with
and i am so ******* tired of hearing you cry.

i will be my mother if i stay with you
i am amazed that history so perfectly repeats itself.

true
or not true
i will accuse.

i say i hate you out loud
over and over.
i don't type it to you
just whisper what i am too afraid to say to you
sometimes screaming through the screen
i hate you
i hate you
i hate you
it soothes the claw in my chest
i hate you
so
much
i wish you would die and leave me in peace
leave me to find someone better

i hate
you

i get stuck on ideas and things that happen to me
i write about them over and over
trying to understand them
i am sorry for the repetition,
and grateful for the few that have stuck around.
thank you for staying with me.

i am a wild, tearing black hole without you
stumbling over words
listlessly letting the ceiling absorb me.

with you i am whole,
but so full of hate
that i feel it rising up
springing from my tongue
filling in my eyes
blackening my cheeks.

there is no win-win for me.
destruction and burning agony either way.
i do not understand
why i need you so...
you who ***** so much more
than just my body.

big sister thinks she knows how boys work
big sister hasn't been with a boy like i have.
first he's kissing you
then he's got his hand up your shirt
and no matter how much you promise me
that your christian ideals will stay in tact
watch how quickly those lines blur and degrade
the hand that holds you will hold you down soon enough
i know how it goes
i'm not a *****

big sister,
i wish i could tell you
what he did to me
maybe then you would be more careful.

just casually enjoying looking at other people's birthday pictures
and waiting for my boyfriend to drive two hours
to say goodbye to me
because even though he's the ****** he's the one who gets the last word

i try not to let it hurt me
as i try with all things
but it lances through my stomach

you try to manipulate me into feeling sorry for you
a ****** predator
i will no longer.

one last hurrah
for Red The Liar.
she forgives the man that ***** her
and stays with him
how many more times,
miss Red?

ARE YOU
ANY BETTER
THAN HIM

ARE YOU NOT GUILTY
OF SIMILAR SINS

why does he now repulse me so?
we are the same.

i got a lot out of this relationship
but most of what i got
wasn't anything at all
bamboo desk plant
little caged bird and vine,
comfort me

pack up the room of pulsating anxiety.
these walls that are seeped with your hatred will bleed into your delicate spiderweb nightmares no longer, baby.

pack up your clothes, books, shoes, hundreds of papers marked with ideas of how your mind operates
pack up your soiled, tired sheets
covered in mascara and aching disappointment
that hatred that lies on everything like a film of dust
pack it up,
put it away.

and as you fold and pile and scrape, honey
forgive yourself.
forgive the objects.
lay the knife in a box and apologize for the way you used it
whisper sweet nothings to the underwear he removed from you in his bed
tell them it will be ok.
tell them that you won't let him touch them anymore
that you won't let him touch you anymore
that he will not be able to reach you anymore
that all the filmy hatred that left your pores and entered into everything that makes up who you are for an entire ******* year
WILL BE BRUSHED OFF.
WILL BE LEFT BEHIND
IN THIS ROOM OF CRUSHED BONES AND RANCID INSIDES

that you...
you are going to a better place.
you are putting to death the you that lived in this room
that cried in this room
that died in this room
stake it through the heart
cut off the head so it cannot return
mutilate the frightening, hideous, trembling manifestation of yourself that labored in the night
in this
room


in going home for the summer,
return home in your mind.
find that place again, baby.
find it and make a home there.
remove him from you like the parasite that he is.
go home for the summer.

go
home.

there was never any romance because there was none in you to give
your mind bubbling up with the backs of naked girls
lying in beds
that you will never have
but you had this one
and oh,
how i wish you hadn't.

wonder at the innocence of the year before
feel tired of complaining about it
feel nothing when the anniversaries of your eventual demise begin to unfold
ungently
ripping the lace and dirtying the satin

feel like this is just the way the world turns
and that you turned with it
turned from everything you learned
turned to all the horrible
disgusting **** that you knew was in you from the beginning.

just let it happen
just let it let loose
stop trying to stop it
stop crying after ***
don't you want it by now?

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
it was the worst best of times

please don't tell me you'll never lie
everyone lies.
big, small, all-encompassing...
somehow we lie

with our bodies, with our voices, with our emotions
we all lie
it's alright
just don't
tell me
that you
don't

dream that one day daddy will let go.
that he will stop wearing his wedding band and appealing to god
for the restoration of our family.

that family is gone.
we must build a new, smaller one now.
**** mom.

father,
rebuild something else
pray for something else
pray to get past all the **** she put us through
so we can stop looking behind us at the stagnant past
and instead look to make our future better
the part we can actually control.

please,
please...stop praying, dad.
no one is listening.

little rock clinging to long grass.
holding each other on the couch,
seeking solace.

rain pattering outside
wet mineral air drifting through the porch screen.

how can we compensate
for the evil we both committed?
how to remedy
the craters that we have conjoined
in our chests?

searching for the truth in the ache
pondering the wonder of the gaping facade that lies ahead
crying on the couch.
holding
hoping
crying

small raindrops hitting my cheeks instead of tears
leaning against you in the spring night time...

solace.

virginity lost,
virginity found.

solace.

i ache for the dimly lit late night cafes with wine bottles on the walls
and foamy brown cappuccinos on the tables.
i lust after the nameless, elegant dishes
and the martinis
and the sophistication.

you are wendy's at midnight
a chain restaurant on our anniversary.
practicality.

i want mindless rewards without guilt.
i want cafes and restaurants no one outside of this town has heard of
i want to be what i am:
twenty years old
fresh off the french coffee press
ready to sweep my way through all the archetypes i have observed longingly.


you're seven years too late, darling.

cement box of aching torture
housing another worst year of my life

airtight vacuum seal my pain
so i never forget

ground into the glossy walls
built on the bones of other pulsating, tired freaks.

lost the sacred part of life in my twenties
because knowing that i participated in a normal act comforts the crater in my chest
where i was ripped from normalcy by my mother the month i was supposed to graduate highschool.

society has a real effect on people.
like rocks and minerals deep under pressure and intense heat i formed
in the magma pocket of this culture
pressured into fusing what was born inside of me
with what i was made into.

all these silent rules that drop and fall like dinner plates my mother threw
hot food splashing our arms
spittle flying from her lips as she screamed
just things that were put in place before i existed
just rules that i can hear crash
and feel burn
but just watch
silently
as they rage
by me

i wonder what it would be like to not know the rules.
to not understand what wasn't "ok"
or expected of me.
i wonder if i would still like the things i like
or let myself sit in prison dorm rooms and cry over a relationship i deeply don't care about.

i can feel the fringe of society
the frayed edge that begs for someone to cut away the loose strands
i see it
i feel it
i know it
but i do not wish to sever it.

cast not thine pearls before swine
bare not your heart
to fools.

don't show him the twisted, living coil that hides inside -
the innerworkings of your insecurities
he will not find them illustrious.

my worst fear
is to be thought
dramatic

don't ever let
the hand you hold
hold you down
rip your underwear
turn a deaf ear
to your crying
to the way you say
no
over
and over
don't let your boyfriend
take it
he is not
entitled
get away from him

hurry

labeled by the personality test i took for you
hoping you would understand the ticking in my mind
the blurred, erratic lines
that make me nauseous.

you don't even try.
you don't care for the beautiful wavelength that i bleed onto
alone
tired
waif-like

i just want a boy who cares about the noble tangle
the poetic fight for my life
that i begin every time i awake
still alive
the delicate balance the tension in my neck
maintains

i just wanted you
to give
a ****

slippery
body-less.
mind weaving back and forth
making me see-sick.

every grade i've ever received
branded into my skin
birth defects my mother left me.
every huge C on my forehead
every tiny A, hiding under my arms
every moderate B on my stomach.

panic.
panic.
have to be better
have to be greater
have to be smarter
funnier
happier
prettier
better.
have to be better.
have to be better to save daddy.

work harder.

panic.

possible to be more traumatized than i was before?
yes.
wondrously.

we're back together but i don't even want to talk to you
because it frightens me
because you don't interest me anymore
because all you hold is the capacity to hurt me more
because i simply don't like you anymore.

but i don't like any of the boys on tinder trying to take me out to coffee, either.

i think i want to be alone.

weeks ago i was beautiful because you owned me.

tonight i am beautiful because you don't know what you're missing.

tonight i will kiss someone
and you will no longer be the only one who has tasted the liqueur of my lips
or perceived the garden that sleeps around my neck like a jewel.

tonight, another man will sample the variety of decedent wonders
that you took from me
forcefully
crushing
the crystals
and ripping
the satin

tonight
someone more gentle than you
will receive
the glory that i have to bestow
the power and pulsating, vibrating music in my walk
in the sway of my full hips

tonight
you
don't
know
what you're missing.

tiltawhirl insides
careening back and forth
opposite ends of spectrum
ugly, bucking horse.

blood of mother run deep
blood of mother run quick
blood of mother run sure
blood of mother run thick...

mother cut me open
as i was ripped from her womb
placed this grisly clown act inside me
left an open wound.

grew to love the hole
grew to let it hide
grew to let all people that i love
stand in line for the ride.

tiltawhirl wants to whirl life,
but blood of mother will drain.
solace in the edge of a knife
solace in the biting, silver pain.

boyfriend will want another taste
before my flag's unfurled
he will want another ride
on the tiltawhirl.

we all float on
all shine on
like the sun and the moon and the stars
like light glinting off the shiny new fender of a car that's going to get me places

i'm gorgeous.
i'm infectious.
i have a beautiful ***
and i can state euthyphro's 5 definitions of piety, *****.

do i look
like i need
your sorry
***?

comfort in my bed
in my phone
in the text that you sent me
that didn't say goodbye
but meant it.

discarded.
empty stomach.
the word mother carved into my arm.
finally proven insane.

chasm carefully constructed with the carcass of our love
lying in the bottom of the shallow swamp water i am grounded in.

alone.
so, so alone.
this white washed prison soaks up the bad thoughts and the blood seeping from the cuts and reflects them back at me
the mirror through which i see our relationship.

you will never
ever
understand the torment i have endured
i would give anything to have simply been a bullied, privileged fat kid.

your apologies will never satisfy the aching block hole that is my abdomen
mostly because you never apologize.

today i wished i could tell your mother that you are a ******.
today i spared you, and cut open my arms instead.

i am not flowery.
i am not poetic.
there are many more adept than me.

i simply wish to express
the best i can through the language that i am confined in
the truth of emotions
the purity of rage.

i feel the hot edge of hysteria beginning to creep in behind my eyes.
i become very still
tense
poised for flight

i do not wish to go to the doctors, darling.
i do not want them to tell me what i am so afraid is true
can we just pretend
one more day?

i hope you find my redhair in the backseat of your car
on your clothes
on your pillow when you lie down to sleep
and i hope that these remnants of me
remind you
that you
******
up

stomach pregnant and distended with the weight of calories consumed
sending sharp pains shooting

empty stomach acid gnawing at my intestines
feels better than this

everything echoes mother.

the paranoia.
the ****** abuse
the tears
the screaming
the threats
the self-hatred
the abandonment.

do i understand her more now that i am her?
the only thing i understand is that i
like her
am weak
her actions no more justifiable than before
but her state of mind
the frantic chase of terrified, irrational thoughts littering her brain
i now understand
and feel
the
fear

hope you read my poetry now
you *******

maybe you''ll understand how i've felt for the last year
for ******* once

i'll give you
mindgames

i fill my hollow stomach with hateful words that i spit at you
from the swamp of self-induced numbness that i stand in
ankle deep
even my self pity
is shallow

blood will bring me back

cocooned in march 2014.
i expanded and never left the nest that i suddenly found myself in
that i created
(i am only
to blame)

as time goes by
the walls solidify
locking me in
with
**him