I bought myself a ring and
you said it was weird
twenty dollars of sterling silver
now perched on my left ring finger
It doesn't belong to you
not some symbol that I'm taken
my right hand just does too much in
a day to be dressed up
but this ring bothers you
you said it looks like I'm married or engaged
and truth be told that doesn't bother me
because I look at this flea market buy and see what could be
I see what one day could be your ring on my vow
But you find it odd and unsettling
and I'm struggling to find that fact anything but unnerving

it's a change I knew was coming
a slow reality setting in that want and desire are overthrown by happenstance
I'm facing a loss and for that I grieve
there was denial on my lips for the longest time
months of agonizing over weather or not it was all in my head even with the physical evidence in my hands
anger in the unfairness of it all, my youth clinging to thinning strands I once struggled to control
I tried to bargain with myself--a last ditch effort of treatments that promised a solution until reality shook me by the shoulders once again
at least I have this
I tell myself
but I know what's coming next, and I fear for that moment when depression rears it's head at me again,
grabbing me by the throat and forcing me to face myself in the mirror until I do not recognize the face looking back
there will be  acceptance one day
I will be comfortable again in my own skin
but for now I grieve a loss that is no body else's but my own

there will be no grave to visit

I write because I cannot speak
cannot say out loud what I try to convince myself isn't true
I write and I bleed
thoughts and emotions
wet and raw and /there/
warmth slips down my face in a shaky line
I won't wipe
won't acknowledge is there
I'll look you in the eyes
splayed open
/bleeding/
     /real/
and avoid thinking about how the last time I showed these gorey parts of myself to someone else they left
/they left/
and they had /promised/
does it scare you too?
To know of the power you hold over me?
I try and I try and I try
And I still come out not knowing better
Hindsight saying I should have listened to my instinct
But I fight against it every time
I make the same mistakes again and again
Because I still have hope
Does that make me foolish?

I breathed and inhaled stardust
and I wonder---
how I can miss someone I've never met.

I met you without meeting you
I loved you without knowing you
and I will die without truly ever hearing you-

the lack of you in my life is just as substantial as your place in it

I was waiting for the other foot to drop


It stomped.

Often times I will love my poetry the moment I write it
Believe it to be one of the best I have written
but then I go back
and reread
and realize that I don't love it as much as the ones
I thought were sub-par

    --It was the same with you

When I was younger and still toeing the line between joining creative writing club --
I remember one meeting being asked to write about love
and I had been romanticizing since I was a little girl who spoke to trees around the neighborhood so they wouldn't get lonely

a little girl who carried a ziploc of cat treats to make sure the strays knew that they were loved

I played mermaids in chlorine and it didn't affect my gills

in my dreams and my childish whims I had a soulmate

believed everyone had a soulmate
someone destined for them
someone to have such undiluted devotion for then and in return

ride or die

Bonnie and Clyde

I thought I knew what love was

I didnt know until I met you and in the first 12 hours we had met I was already claimed.
you made my spirit settle
I've been looking for that peace ever since you left
I think you've been searching too--
in walmart versions of me in the city we both moved to for separate reasons

the excuses we make to talk now are just that:
excuses
I never had to have one of those before with you
pick up my phone to listen to you breathe
and in the nights where we were apart sleeping to the lullabies I'd sing
you'd request skinny love every time

but I think it turned into something like we hear in stories
when you have it you don't notice it
and you don't notice it until it's gone

I think you and me were a lot like that

I still find myself thinking of you and it's been 5 years
that amount of time seems so small and yet so daunting

five years ago I was 18
five years from now I'll be 28

I'm scared to see when these next five will take me

I still think of my life as a failure. I'm kind of in a standstill and have been since you left
I guess I'm still trying to cope with the fact that my dreams, while staying the same, don't feel right without you

you are still an intrical part in my dreamscape
still a trauma my friends hear about
still a trauma I am learning to accept


I guess this is to all say I love you
and I hate that I'm not the one you share your home with
I dreamed childishly before of soulmates
I realize now they don't exsist
for if they do you are mine
but one I'll never have again

My hands are a mockery of what they create
Slit cuticles and short bitten nails
Somehow they still create beauty in ink
Maybe they can because they wish themselves beautiful
I try to treasure my hands
To treat them to sophistication as they deserve
But my job
My work
My habits
They prevent my hands from being anything more than peasant rough calloused
But I have learned those with hands like mine haven talents
Gifts they can give to the world
And so I have learned to love them instead of apologizing for them

I've known these people less than 48 hours and already the knowledge they leave on monday is causing ants to stamp their feet into my chest
I should be happy that they are leaving
that they've progressed enough to not need constant supervision
but instead I am anxious
already fearing the change
I'll still be here
and though they owe me nothing
I feel abandoned, betrayed

These people know more about me than my parents
these people know more about me than my closest friends
I have a hard time opening up to people
I have difficulty trusting
seeing them go feels like heartbreak
I will be alone again

--while I love to be alone, I'm not very fond of being lonely

You say you care about me
but it's not in the way I want you to
I want to grow old and share our lives
I want to wake up with coffee on the porch and a cat in our respective laps
I want to tell you about my day in a more than a friend kind of way

I care about you
but more than you do about me
and I'm still learning to accept that
a slow realization with heartache that we will never be what I want

and it's a shock to my system to acknowledge the fact that someone has felt this way for me before
I could not reciprocate then
and you will not reciprocate now

and it seems silly to think about
7 years ago I fell in love and I haven't fallen out since

i have turned to thunder
a response to your lightening gaze
i refuse to be silenced

I always knew you would change my life for good
How foolish I was to believe it would be for the better

You told me once you read my poetry to check in on me
Does  reading it sting you the ways writing it burns me?
It's been months
I haven't spoken to you in over a year now
I moved planets for you
You used my friendship for yourself
I've discovered I'm easy to use

I've been cheated on now three different times by three different guys
The two people I considered my best friends never saw me the same way
I was convenient
A scapegoat

I have trust issues now
Codependency comes quickly to me
And I'm jealous watching the people I now talk to talk to others
It's selfish
And stupid
But this is the damage you gave me

I throw money at people and things so they won't leave me
I mirror behaviors scared if I'm too different I'll be abandoned once again
I want love so badly but I'm scared to fall again and not be able to get back up this time

She loved me I knew, but that was difference
between us.
I was totally and completely in love with her.
I had fallen into an oblivion of skewed rationality in
her midst,
and she would never cease to catch my breath in
my throat,
or fill my lungs with her radiated serenity.
I fell deep into a pool of which she
would only see the lilies of the surface,
but it would never ripple for her.
And so, I had to let her go.
If there ever was a poisoned reason in this life,
it would be falling madly in love.
And I would rather breathe that poison
every second of every day of every year
just to see her floating in ecstasy with someone
else
than to be wading wrongly in love with me.
She would never love me as I her.
She would never lose balance in my kiss,
or become drunk off my scent like I did hers.
She would never stand in a hurricane
just for a chance to hear my voice calling in the wind,
And she would never fall into a tragic romance with me.
She loved me, I knew,
But that’s where the power of words come in.
She loved me, but I was in love with her.

    --An attempt to write romance:
       from my high school years

I listened to Tiny Dancer last night and thought of you leaping across the stage
make-up done up
long hair you always wished short tied in a bun
matching outfit with sequins
if I look close enough I can tell you tried to get the scuffs off of your shoes for this moment
but they are time worn and will never fade--
a testimony to your hours upon hours of practice for this moment
the moment you shine on that stage
with precision and elegance to your movements
I listed to Tiny Dancer last night trying to remember the feeling of freedom that you used to give me

I wrote this instead of sleeping
Because everytime I close my eyes I think of you
And I'm still unsure if it counts as a nightmare
If you wake up more longing than scared

A few weeks ago
while in a state of mania
I wrote down a physical bucket list
and you know,
I never thought I would cross anything off
Always figured my increased motivation through increased serotonin was untouchable by my average
instead I found myself crossing two items off yesterday
I succeeded where my mania said my depression would fail
I wrote more ridiculous tasks
who knows what I'm capable of

I don't think I can have children
I've always thought that I was infertile
It never really bothered me
I never wanted to go through that pain, those long nine months of probably bed-rest if my family's history of pregnancy is anything to go by--
My mother wasn't supposed to be able to have children
My sister is infertile
The girls in my family don't typically do well with pregnancy
So I was never phased by the idea that I wouldn't have my own flesh and blood running around
I'd have much rather adopted or fostered children who need homes and love
But when you
after years saying you didn't want your own kids
admit to me that you want your own flesh and blood children
It crushed me
I don't think I can have kids
Never really wanted them before
But I would do anything to give you that wish

I left my soul in ink on paper and I’ve
been writing ever since trying to get it back
When it left me I became hollow
I only feel complete when I’m burning
my mind in black
In words
In feelings
In worlds beyond imagination
But when that book ends,
When that final word leaves my finger tips
When the ink runs out
I lose my soul all over again
I left it in ink on paper
and I’ve been trying ever since to get it back

  --Is that why writers are always lonely?

Playing this game of life with the cards I've been dealt feels like an impossible task--
but I can't draw new ones
I'm forced to play with what I've been given: broken pieces, a soggy misshapen board, weighted die
I'm playing with a losing hand
the game stacked against me

--- the house always wins

And for years I dreamed of recognition
Of acceptance from my peers
But you showed me that I shouldnt worry about all the stars in the night sky
When I had the love of the full moon

And if I come back as a ghost
I will haunt you every day like you haunt my memories

I'm trying to put these feelings into words but I don't know the vocabulary
I know I am uncomfortable
I feel reprimanded---
chagrined in a way that is thoughtful but wary of change

these steps seem simple to you
but I am trying and they're steeper than I'm used to
I'm scared that if I reach the top
then I will fall back to the bottom even harder than before

and the climb becomes more difficult each time
and the summit is never as beautiful as I was told
so I sit at the bottom of the stairwell and watch as others around me sprint up the steps
They're waiting for me again dancing at the top to a rhythm I've never heard and will forever struggle to learn

Healing takes time

I told you loved you
And you said it back
I've never felt relief
Such as that

Can we go back to a time when I didnt know you?
When I didnt have these feelings everytime I looked at you?
When I couldnt read you with a glance?
Back to when I didnt realize how important you would be?
I want to meet you again
I want to talk about the trivial things--like what your favorite color is or what you wanted to be when you grew up
I want to relearn your little habits and ticks
Relearn all the things that set you off
Like how you have to chew your food the same number of times on each side of your mouth
Or how you pick at your ******* on your left hand when you feel uncomfortable
I want to go back to when I met you
When I didnt know that you were the other half of my soul
When I didnt know how fragile and beautiful you are
When I didn't see that you had been broken so many times before
But you dont need to worry anymore
My mom worked with fine China so I will treat you like porcelain I swear.
Let's go back
Let's watch the stars again
And stay up talking for hours again
And rediscover each other
Let's fall in love for the first time again
I promise this time it will be easier
I promise this time I wont take you for granted
I promise this time I will treasure every moment
Let's go back, okay?

   --Time traveling?

We went outside today
a concrete courtyard with partial sun
and like dogs we lined up
excited and eager to go outside and play frisbee
to draw with chalk
for the privilege to sit in unfiltered air

This place is like kindergarten
I'm drawing and coloring
with music class sprinkled in
our P.E. morning stretches
we lineup to walk to the dining hall

I think I needed this--
this childish retreat--
a place to have someone else take care of me for a change
with my peers, and in downtime,
I forget why I'm here
laughing, talking, able to speak without fear of judgment
we all walk in hand with our demons here and then I'm faced with doctors
and I'm forced to remember
forced to feel
I don't like that part

My tap shoes spoke words louder and
with more confidence than my voice ever
could

  --They still do.

I take my fingers and lodge them into the skin barrier above my heart --
Tearing the skin and breaking the bones: a gateway to the kingdom of love.
And as I remove the king from its throne, fluttering and warm, I inspect him for damage;
Scars and healing;
A sign of progress and growth.
This is a ruler who has fought and braved the front lines, walked steadfast into battle and came out the other side.
Sometimes he was victorious, other times taking more damage than his enemies, a truce the only resolution to the fight--
But he is still beating and strong and guiding and ruling
And with his beats mimicking war drums, I am urged to march forward
steady.

I am a ****** friend
a ****** person
I blow off plans I make with others
I blow off plans I make with myself
and I sit
and I dwell
and I sleep
and I miss out on people
and places
and life

I am a sitty friend
self admitted
knowledge is not enough to spark change
I want to change
I haven't changed
and I still don't have a therapist
and I still can't hold relationships
and I still want
and wait

I am a ****** friend
and person
but I'm a model employee
married to my job
chained to my bills
caged by my own mental health

I don't like letting people down
I always seem to let people down
I'm tired of letting people down
I'm tired of letting myself down
I'm tired

I am a ****** friend
and I know this
knowledge of a fact is not enough to spark change

I'm painting myself
Dipping the brush in neons of yellows and pinks
The greens swirling with the oranges
Gemometric streets lining my arms
Rolling hills winding up and down my stomach
Dots placed where I want on my face
Stripes and stars and hearts over blemishes
This is beauty
This is forgiveness to the harshness of my own opinions
I'm reclaiming my, me, mine
This body is a body that does good works and grows and moves me from place to place
It can run and jump and hold others tightly
It can make music and drive and sing and dance
And now even with the lights off
I will shine in the blacklight of my mind
I'm bringing these colors to my skin
I'm reclaiming what's mine again

I think
There is a morbid beauty in the way we rust
Water and oxygen and minerals
Color out of steel
Weakness out of strength
The things which give us life
Slowly breaking us apart

     --She is always smiling
          But teaches me nothing

I met a girl named Megan
She was my best friend
Placed herself into my life and was unapologetic in everything she did
I admired her for that until I didn't

She lives in a one bedroom with my ex boyfriend
I have to go to work hearing him talk about the cats that once were mine that he now calls his
Those nights at 3am when I woke up with the bed empty next to me and finding him with you in the living room make sense
I was never the one people really wanted

I'm still recovering financially from what you did to me
I'll be recovering mentally for much longer
I'm realizing I don't have a best friend
I don't think I ever did

I used to miss you
I used to reach for my phone to call you and tell you about the miniscule events of my day
I used to bring you up in every conversation
Now I wish I could forget

He brings you around
And I'm not bitter at him anymore
I think I always knew we wouldn't work out
But I'm bitter towards you, no matter how much I try to forgive myself for what happened
Your name is taboo
A curse
A forbidden word that causes me to spiral down into painic attacks

I always knew that meeting you would change my life
I now wish I never did
I hope you're happy with this
I'll be having nightmares filled with you again

I am cobblestone cracking in the heat
Terrified of becoming inconsequential under your feet
Once a beautiful stone carefully layed now weathered and worn

----I keep thinking I am breaking

Like some terrifying ****
Stealing my voice
Gluing me in place
Driving a knife in my chest
I know the words she spat like a book
I had read a hundred times over,
Yet it always seems like the words
rolling off her tongue are fresh ink on the page.
Oh how I wish I could stop them

    --When I look in the mirror

It's been weeks since I've showered
the shower is clean here
ready for use
but bathing feels like a sign of progress and I'm not there yet
the shower here is unfamiliar
and cold
green plaster floors and walls match the green of the sheets I spend my nights on nothing like the cool gray of my shower curtain at home
no familiar scents for comfort
nothing to hang a towel on
they are making me shower here--
well highly encourage it --
but I haven't showered in almost a month and now my anxiety is making what should be a simple task difficult
I am once again having to face my own mind and its reluctance to let me (breathe, live, function) exist.

I'm stuck feeling for something that doesnt exsist
A dream I lost consciousness in too hard
The waking world doesnt feel the emotions I have
Words no language could begin to describe
They were artificial and simulated
But still the most I've felt in a long time

I'm sorry too
I'm sorry I'm a toxic depressing person who gives others her bad vibes
I'm sorry I didnt see how much you were hurting in these two years
I'm sorry everyone thinks I changed you
I'm sorry if I did
I'm sorry if I ever pressured you into anthing
I'm sorry that I haven't always been easy to talk to
anxiety often plays well with me and those around me
I'm sorry
I'm so sorry
But I can promise you this
I will never be sorry for loving you
For giving you my virginity
For trusting you with my secrets
For spending two years of my life with you
For our sleepless nights naked in bed just talking
For the songs I sang you to sleep with in the first few months
For the stupid road trips that always ended in rain
I will never be sorry for loving you

I'm biting my tounge as tears run down my face
Iron and salt meeting in a macabre
I always surrounded myself with grey
I didnt mean to press that color onto you
Maybe I shouldn't have wasted my time or my poetry on you but
I will still bite my tounge bleeding evermore before I apologize for loving you

I had so much to say I wrote it on paper, folded it in a square until I couldnt anymore, and sealed it in a bottle
When I dropped it in the ocean I thought nothing of it--
Thought nothing of who would answer or where it would end up
A part of me believing it would break and sink to be unanswered forever
Theses bottles
These messages
My secret.
I can tell you, the ocean, the river, the stream
I can whisper my words into your waters.
Hope comforting that they will evaporate in time
And rain down again
An answer in their downpour

She asked why I loved the rain
I didnt know what to say

I know that better days are coming
I haven't seen them in years
every time I think I'm better
or that life has delt me a good hand
the gamblers curse returns
and I'm in worse debt than before
this dealer is good
he knows just how to deal to make me play
gives me a enough wins to think I'm ahead
but the house always wins
and the dealer for my life always steals back more than he gives

---I've tried to quit before, but addiction is prevelant and I can't seem to stop playing this game called life.

His tongue felt too big for his mouth
A cotton plant growing in his throat, but he choked the words out around the dry leaves and the tears that threatened to fall and water it.
"I'm sorry too."

she told me setting boundaries is being kind to myself
and I've never really been good at that
being kind that is
I will cower and fade to the detriment of myself  before I will admit that this is decidedly unhealthy

but I'm trying to do better
be better I mean
as a person I call myself cruel to be kind
as I know my mind better than anyone else's
and I know that it is condescending at best

but she tells me to be gentle
treat myself with patience and grace
but I have never liked my name

I don't know if fear exists in the absence of courage or it is accompanies it with a hand on its back
leading it into the forest among all the beasts that lurk there

I don't know if forgiveness should be this contractual obligation that it is in my mind
a softness I rarely allow myself to feel
and while you cannot **** me in a way that matters
I will still feel the blade forcing itself further
the sharpness a stinging not unlike lightening
a gripping of my heart in a too tight hand

she tells me to breathe
a laboring shaky breath that allows air into my lungs once again
the hollow void of the knife leaving behind a scar I cannot be rid of
a reminder of weakness in the face of a wicked beast

she tells me to be kind
to forgive myself for something I shouldn't have to forgive
and well,
I'm not very good at that part

I took a shower tonight
borrowed hospital gowns replaced mine
so I can wear clean clothes again
showers normally feel like catharsis
tonight it felt like defeat
anxiety swelled in my chest as I forced myself to take calculated breaths
slow
in
out
in
out
breathe. repeat.
the shower I was in had a chair
and that made it easier to stomach the idea of "clean"
I don't know why I felt that way
it shouldn't be this way

If loving him was a cool shower,
falling for you is a warm scented bath.

---For so long I was stuck in that stagnant place between freezing and boiling

I feel stupid
humiliated
embarrassed rather than chagrined
and I want to cry like a child who has lost their favorite toy
I am a downfall unto myself

but I cannot scream
and I cannot cry
because doing so would be admitting defeat--
even if it would give me some relief

I feel like I'm in a constant fight to prove myself
where previously I would have been given grace
I find I am given none,
even with it being my name

I could breathe again in your arms
my ear directly over the mocking of your heart beat
it's fake
        it's fake
               it's fake
yet I stayed

--hindsight says I should have trusted my intinct

They told me stay true to myself
never change
and I'm nodding along
like i'm paying attention
hoping they won't see how much I already have

I stitched for years
Pricking my fingertips until they bled
A slow steady bead of red rising to the surface
Reminding me I'm human time again
But still I stitched
Thread into thread
Feather into feather
These wings supposed to make me fly
Taking much longer than I estimated
How large they needed to be to support me
To carry me into a place where I could break apart the universe and understand it better
But when that time came to jump I couldn't
The fear of falling so much more terrifying than the prospect of rising
And I guess if Icarus can walk then so can I

I'm fearful for the day I lose all sense of self
and it's not like my worth is equated in belongings
but I'm losing mine now and that's something to grieve
realistically
I know
they are still there
just tucked away for a later date
but for now I lose the enrichment in my enclosure
and can't help but feel a void opening in this cavity I call a chest