Lord, fill my heart with Your love
Allow me to see You with open eyes
Forgive me for my transgressions
Take my hand and lead me home

And if you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born
then it's time to go and define your destination.
There's so many different places to call home.

Because when you find yourself the villain in the story you have written
It's plain to see that sometimes the best intentions are in need of redemption.

You laid on a towel, eyes glued to a screen
That phone was more interesting than me,
And you missed so much because of it
You missed the ducklings that swam by
Missed the giant pelican that landed on the cypress tree
You missed the way the current changed with the wind
You missed the croaks of the alligators
Missed the sounds of acoustic guitar and James Taylor
You missed the way the sun light hit my hair
You missed my brown eyes trying to find yours
You missed the conversations we could have had
You missed the tiny moments that make a memory
You'll remember a boring day or texting someone else
But I'll remember the birds, the music, the water, the smells
I'll remember the conversations in my head
And I'll remember how you weren't a part of it

I hope it broke your heart but I know it didn't
and now I have to look up at my own stars
learn to stop pretending you ever cared
to stop pretending it all ends up fair, my heart
and your heart are not *******, we are
drifting, weightless, the waves broken
cresting over and sinking one but not the other
I'm a kid playing Risk and I'm stuck in Austrailia
and when I lose, I cry out for my mother
and so do you. But you can't win them all.
I miss loving you but I have to move on now
I have to get over it. It's been about a year since
whatever happened began to happen, but since
it ended there have been new and fresh wounds
repeatedly pouring salt into my bleeding heart
and I'm sorry I can't stop bleeding but no amount
of cauterization or pressure can staunch the flow
when I need to keep beating to keep me whole.
I'm sorry I still care and you don't. I'm sorry hearts don't break even.
I'm sorry if you ever read this because I don't want you to.
I just want to be able to keep breathing when I see you.
I'm doing fine, really. It just hurts sometimes.

I was born premature
I came out tiny, skinny,
A whopping 3 pounds and whatever ounces
My parents told me they didn't expect me to have full use of my lungs
But I did
Premature babies don't grow very quickly in early childhood
But I don't think I ever saw that
I mean I always knew I was small
But I never realized how small
Looking back at all the pictures of me,
I was always the smallest, skinniest, and shortest kid around
The boys would scoop me up and carry me down the halls,
But not in the cute princess way
It was more of tossing around a toy
And I'd sit there kicking the hell out of them screaming to put me down
But it never occurred to me there was a reason I was so small
It was fourth grade and I weighed a whopping 47 pounds, the boys still carried me off, and I still didn't take it
Turns out, puberty wouldn't hit me like it would hit all the other girls
In fact, there wasn't even a need for my mom to have "the talk" with me
In fact, at seventh grade I didn't know what the hell a period was
I didn't even where bras.
In fact the first day of high school I wasn't wearing a bra!
And I cried the first day when I realized that ******* everyone had bras on and I didn't even own one
And to my dismay I realized my mom had actually bought my little sister bras, but I didn't have any
And I was the point of interest at hushed family get togethers
Hearing hushed conversations like
Poor baby, it obviously won't happen any time soon
Im sure she will catch up
And I certainly didn't realize why my little sister was taller than me, bigger than me, and now curvier than me!
That was my job ******.
And my favorite was when my mom introduced us to friends and they would always ask my younger sister how high school was and I would have to interrupt and say "Hi I'm the oldest actually"
I never thought it to do with the timing of my birth
But now I'm discovering that it turns out preemies are at high risk for physical developmental problems, learning disabilities (especially with math), ADHD, depression, psychosis, and anxiety in the teenage years
And much more likely if the birth weight was under 4 pounds! (Me)
But just like when I was four and the boys carried me and took turns lifting me off my feet
I won't let it stop me
I won't let it get to me
Being a preemie is tough.
Especially when you were born as early as I was, and as small as I was
I'll always look younger, I'll never look my own age, and I'll never be very curvy,
But I guess that's just something to add to the list of things that are supposed to hold me back.
I won't let them

so many poems tell you that you have to fill
the first few lines with a lot of ******* imagery
to fill the stanzas before you hit one or two lines
that actually mean something: and by that heroic
couplet, or whatever the english teachers say these days,
the whole ******* poem is redeemed.
I don't think I should have to write sixteen stanzas
for the sake of the last line, but here I am
so I might as well elaborate a bit on the rooftops
and the moonlight on her hair and the fact
that I cannot love her as I wish I could and
I never dreamed of Paris like other women always expected me to
the smell of baking bread and the Eucharist
hurts my knees and heals my soul, thank God
for God, but it seems unfortunate that we as people can't just
ignore the existence of our Creator. Something calls us back
something hurts us in desperate moments when we've
written sixteen hundred stanzas and none of them meant anything
and we're afraid to show our faces to a priest or our mother
when I drifted away from certain shores I thought
I wanted to inhabit forever, the cross I clung to
led me through sunny and tumultuous waves
I always did like being on the water. I always did
like salt and water and earth and wine and I am
a child of the Church- my Church that tells me
there's nothing wrong with being tender
nothing wrong with having a soft heart-
you see, our God's heart bled out
and He never concealed His tears.

I'm done with all of the angst,
I'm done hiding in dark corners
Sitting in a brew of unhappiness, simmering
I'm through with poems about being dead
Poems about the past, which is but a bump
In my bright future
I'm done having a boyfriend who I don't love
Who I tried to love, but once again, forced
I'm done feeling sick around certain people
(Even though I can't change the way my body responds)
I can't stand half the songs on my phone anymore
Because they force memories to the surface
And why the hell do I want to feel that?
I'm done being dark and twisty,
Done saying negative comments about my life
Done with cigarettes and done with substances
Created to make me feel happy,
When all they do is make me feel helplessly small
I'm done, I'm done, I'm done