False gods have to ask to be worshipped,
You never had to.
Maybe it’s proof or maybe you were asking in the way you cried,
Gentle and feminine even at your lowest.
You’ll say you never wanted the offerings but isn’t acceptance a kind of encouragement?
I knelt before you and prayed that I’d find the strength to put my hands around your throat and finally end it but I never found the strength.
I wanted to love you, I swear I did, but the harder I tried the louder I cheered for your undoing.
When it came I wasn’t ready.
I knew my idols were false but I wasn’t ready for the fire.
Now I make my idols my friends, for if they weren’t, I’d have them dead.

The room is warm and dark and the stupid ******* crane lights don’t bother me anymore even though I still see them through the blinds. Cause when I feel a warm hand in mine and hear the music and close my eyes, it feels like home. And this time it belongs all to me.

Your love letter came in the mail and I read it and I felt nothing and when I typed up my response and put hearts at the end, I still felt nothing. You’ve gouged out my eyes but I haven’t left because really it wasn’t that bad and you didn’t mean it and it wasn’t your fault and it was out of your control and every second you made me feel less than human was my fault in the end. I tell you I love you at night and that I dream of kissing you but I don’t and we’ll leave it at that.

I try not to think about the ways I lost myself in high school, but it all comes back when I look at the way the paint peels in my bathroom

I sat across from my social working pretending to be a therapist and she told me that she’d never seen anyone be so logical about their anxieties
I didn’t know if that was supposed to be a compliment or what but I nodded because that’s what I’m supposed to do.

An hour wasted in the CVS shampoo aisle, staring at bottles of conditioner and thinking about which would make me break out in hives (No, I don’t have any allergies).
It took me a month before I used it, and even then, I thought I couldn't breathe

Peeling.. peeling... my fingers dug at every imperfection on my face. I got worked up into red hot panic, fingers burning the same red

There are birthdays of people I no longer talk to and birthdays of people is see every day and birthdays of people I miss
At least once, for each of them, I’ve celebrated their life
No relationship goes without little scraps of paper left in the pockets of jackets I don’t wear anymore

Is this what death feels like?
It’s the last thought on my mind when I wake
The first thought of a new life.
Maybe I was wrong
sometimes life feels so like death I can’t distinguish them

I cried on the night of my seventeenth birthday.
Why should I feel such an aching in my chest?
It was a craving that silently consumed me.
I want to scream.
I want to scream and feel every emotion as thoroughly as my body can.
I want the grass and the trees and the apartment buildings around me to hear.
I want them to understand.
And maybe they will absorb it into themselves, store it in every blade and branch and brick
so that when another scream echoes through those city streets, it will not be as lonely as mine.

I’ll store my love above my hip bone
So I can feel it when I reach for my keys
And you won’t have to know what I’m feeling for
I’ll store my yearning on my hard drive
But I told everyone the password weeks ago
And I’ll keep my affection in a letter, addressed to you, on my desk
And I’ll hope you find it by accident
But I won’t let you into my dorm

I can’t disguise my fear as something softer.
It’s not about my teeth and it was never about your throat. it was about the uncontrollable shake masquerading as anger
And wouldn’t that be nice? If I was angry at least I wasn’t weak. If someone gets hurt,
it was bound to happen, a fate of a ******, messy end.
the flood rinsed me out,
Inescapable fear, i saw its eyes in that wave
Now I’m making a mud house in its wake, building it up little by little.
It isn’t about my nails, clay stuck beneath them (I can no longer tear) but my hands.
Pulling chunks of earth to build up my walls, weaker than before—
It’s gentler than I remember. And it’s warm. It’s the steady knowledge of you
The sound of footsteps or a spin or the smile in your eyes.
This is where I quit. White flag raised, walls short enough I can throw my leg over and hop down the other side.
Acceptance.
Hold me, please. It doesn’t seem like a lot but it’s my
walking pneumonia finally clearing.

I’m not soft clay from the riverbed; I don’t love between warm hands
I’m foraged and cut and my love takes work
And you’ll speak to others and they’ll say look at this man, he loves easily. We should all love like him
But they’re forgetting it isn’t a choice of mine, that I need love to be whittled
I love like a feral cat: claws first and I’ll run once I’m fed
To the dirt where I’ll lay in the sticks and mud alone, alone
maybe I’ll come back when I’m hungry again

Every night.
It isn’t rushing tonight, it’s calm but I’ll still let go of the dock
One finger at a time, slipping off the biofilm
My toes are cold. I’d like to be cold
I’ve never opened my eyes underwater before but I’ll do it now just to see the sun

because every time I try to put words to it, they slip through my fingers
see me and know
a flood is drawing nearer (hear the rushing water?)
please stay and let it
wash over you
i can’t promise it’ll be clear, but it will be
deep enough to swim in

I don’t know why I’m resisting, what memory Ive forgotten makes my hands tremble when you ask
Even the idea that I might (just maybe) keeps me up at night

I wish you would call
so I could worry about
someone I know I can walk away from.

Mud and sharp shells between cobblestones
The gray is stained red— I let it stain
I thought I was wearing shoes but I can’t remember (where I put them?)(must’ve floated away)
How much longer of this?
I count the days but I forgot the number
and each morning I start again
And each morning I look for signs from something greater than myself
There’s an odd number of shells, an odd morning I have but it’s always odd and never even
and it never adds up like it’s meant to. I wish I could make it add up
They must’ve floated away
I see your eyes looking back at me but I don’t remember them
I do remember what it felt like
approximately three feet away, that’s the separation
I can never tell if it’s growing or shrinking or doing both at once
It’s a wave in a flood
I’m so far gone it doesn’t matter anymore but it still hurts
The shells are washed up, wedged between the cobblestones

I write you a letter before I go but you probably won’t read it until it’s too late. That’s the beauty of life, isn’t it? The way love flows into hatred so seamlessly you don’t know it’s happened until it’s too late. Tenderness switches to anger like the flip of a switch and I want to rip your eyes out of your head. Don’t I deserve a thank you?

The water moves too quickly
It comes at me in waves, one after the next, unrelenting, cold
I want to give up. Sometimes I think it might be nobler to
Instead of fighting every step, tree bark under my nails
but when I take the high ground and look down at the rushing water
I have the strangest feeling that the dam broke because of me

I dream that I’m smoking
so frequently I can’t tell if it’s real
I can feel the smoke heavy in my lungs. I breathe in—
I don’t remember the exhale.

I used to think I wasn’t angry, I was gentle. But now the only gentle thing about me is how I’ll treat your ****** limbs after I rip them from your body. Why are you surprised? I’m not that good of an actor.

I listen. I watch every move you make
I look for stains on the tiles
but the signs keep slipping through my fingers
am I not looking hard enough?
am I letting you down?
Oh god I hope I’m not letting you down
I don’t think I could ever forgive myself for making the same mistake twice

I didn’t notice it coming closer until it was dark and there was no sign of stars. It’s suffocating. I feel my chest tighten and no matter how hard I try I can’t loosen it. I think I’m dying but I also think I might not care as much as I used to. It feels like a bad sign. I haven’t floated like this since last time around and it feels like a trend. I tried to break it but maybe I didn’t try hard enough. Or maybe I only tried to stop it because I knew it was coming. Like some ****** foreshadowing that you identify the first watch through but choose to ignore anyways for suspension of disbelief. I want to see the stars. Why can’t I see the stars. Where are they?

I sometimes forget nobody knows me at all. I don’t even know me like I used to, but I choose to ignore it. Suspension of disbelief. I can’t blame anyone but myself. Maybe I should talk more or maybe I should shut up for the rest of my life and rot like my body so desperately wants me to. I could be the stars if I tried. Or maybe if I stopped trying. Maybe if I let go I would float away into the sky and take their place.

I want everything to make sense
I want it to fit together. I want it to be an even sum
But it slips through my fingers when I try to count it
Dripping to the floor, lost to the count
And I’m left with nothing when I’m through
Just a load of guesses that never feel quite right
Will I ever understand how I feel?
I wish it never mattered.

I didn’t cry leaving them and I won’t cry leaving you
I can’t stay
And I usually don’t want to.

I’ve always been jealous of you but I convinced myself it was love. Maybe it was love, but not in the right way. Maybe it was whatever kind of love coexists with the urge to take a knife to your face. When I think about kissing you it ends with me swallowing you whole.

I want to sink my teeth into your skin but my jaw isn’t strong enough to draw blood but that’s all I want from you. I want to taste it and feel it dripping down my chin. I’ll compromise and stand in the middle of the road but you wont know because you don’t look back.

It feels so close to home I don’t care about the red flush starting at my knuckles. It makes its way to my fingertips pressed against his arm. I ignore it and pull him closer because I couldn’t give a crap about the burning if it means I can hold him. I’m holding him and he used to be afraid but he isn’t anymore and I’m holding him and he’s leaning on me and it’s a pressure that would make me dizzy but now it makes me feel steady. It’s stable. I can’t hide my smile when I roll up my sleeves in an attempt to cool down.

You said I knew you better. I can’t remember if you were holding my hands. You probably weren’t but in my head you were. I bet it’s one of those things you don’t remember saying but I do. I remember this time. Was I old news? I would have looked through your eyes into your mind if I wasn’t afraid of what I’d find. Or maybe I did and I don’t remember. ******* Cinnamon Toast Crunch box. I do remember that.

I line my shoes up carefully when I enter so you can’t tell I’m angry. But I’m neurotic, babe, and I have been all along. I wish I was sitting by the water and I wish I was crying but I’m not and I’m not and I’m not angry I’m just filled with the unconscious desire to grab your head and twist it too far to the right for you to breathe but it doesn’t surface until I see you shut the door behind you. I punch the air and I want a car to come and just get it over with but there’s no cars. So I cross the street. So I cross the street and I **** it up and I wish you’d think I’m dead. Just for a second.

I’ve never felt so at home and hated in the same place as I did in your bed. Maybe I was meant to be your ****** victim. God knows I deserve it. Your sheets would look good red.

When I cry, I look into the mirror.
I resist the urge because it’s a vain thing to do, but I always give in. I feel my face warp to look more presentable. Pretty.

Red skin and blue eyes. I can look pretty when I cry. Be still.

If I was not pretty, what would I be?