Today, I learned that when you touched me
My brain was still developing
In its ability to think long-term.

Today, I learned that I have persistent post-traumatic stress,
And that I cannot ever freely speak of what occurred
Without blue and red lights flashing
And slashing
Through your life
And mine.
So today, I felt your fingers again
I heard your breath replace my own
My body is, at most,
an autonomy forgotten
In the violent aftermath of your love.

Today, I hurt a perfect lover,
Who cannot taste the blood you made
Still wasting away, wrought between my hips
I was a young girl but, for you, I cursed the world
Cast myself into exile from those you said
Didn’t love me
Like you did
On that day

On that day
The sun blushed itself away into dusk
And I watched as I washed away
down the drain
The dripping dregs
Of what you’d craved, captured
And completely consumed
From me

Today, I know you willed my worship unto you
Because secrets from God
are worth dying for
when the suffering feels religious
and the pains feel like prayers
and the truth hurts so bad that I can’t
even think about it
alone
at home
with my eyes closed.

When 90 pounds wasn’t enough
And 90 days went by in a blur
And 90% out of the time  
My heartrate was 190 beats per minute

What there may be left to say
Is lost to my ebbing hedon’s memory
I let all the shades of you crash away
Evaporate the ocean of
a badly bruised mind
now left with little more
than terrified questions

When my back was pressed against
The paneling,
My soma was reified into
woman
And I threw my arms around your neck
and lost my sobbing to the friction
it burned so hot and sharp
and it smelled like bleach
as you ****** me
as we dangled
in that ****** metal box
You licked away my tears then
When you consumated this pain
for your *******
and I only wanted your embrace when
You licked my tears away

But its
Cold water on an old burn now
Your fingers, drenched in me then
Pried into my porcelain
Your love tasted like pennies and
It’s never left my tongue

Maybe it was your
Reddened thoughts that made you
Beat the color into me
Beat this sadness into me
But that was a long time ago.

The volume **** in your car is broken
but I think you like it that way.
You have your own dial on the wheel so hat
Only you control the severity of your environment,
Being on your own terms.
So I float here, in your vivarium
It'd be best to breathe your air
and bleed your blood
like my own.
Anglerfish love,
If only the fates were reversed
For I love you and also long to be you
How free to be you,
I ensure.
But could I love myself so dearly,
Embody my mother so clearly,
if my soul was not set
in its role-finding ways?
If I could not claim to be as I am,
Healer of the World for the Fascinating.
Oh, you,
my love.
My all-at-once art,
could you adore my vast emptiness
of who I could have been
if not dedicated to this practice of romance in earnest?

I've been saying that a lot recently,
not sure how to stop,
Anyway.
I'm okay
Just a little misplaced
Starting to think its really a
Personal Problem
Who the hell am I,
anymore,
Anyway?
I'm back home and being sober
For a while
Trying my best to figure myself out
Before it's too late and that's all I have left to do.
These thoughts arent shocking
and aren't new
when I cry in the middle of the night
in the middle of my new bathroom
These thoughts are piled up like my ***** laundry that drives you
Away.
Like you, I miss who I was
But how can I give up
again,
anyway?
How much letting go can I do
In my Youth
before all of who I am to the world
is lost
to painful, past potentials?
I am afraid
what's happening
was always inevitable,
anyway.
Because between the situational and unconditional
I don't know where we lie
so now I lie to myself
To feel a whisper of the warmth
to thaw this unrest of loneliness
and melt into my purpose, defined.
Anyway;

The least you could have done
Was show me the sunset  
You promised.
Or hug me back
when I wrapped my arms around your neck.
I wished to be held, so badly to be hugged
There was no love against the steel paneling.
There was no tenderness in your hands.
How to speak escaped me
And how to break, how to break, how to break
All at once in the elevator.
Oh, flower! Young thing! Flimsy girl!
Growing pains in November,
I felt them in that grown-up moment.
Life takes what it takes and gives what it gives
And you were a giver
You gave me so much shame.

The least you could have done
Was known better.
You promised
To care for me.
But when your hands melted into me,
I wished to be gone, so badly to be done
There was no love in the air, only bleach
There was no tenderness in your voice.
Only want.
I would have given you my world,
But why did it have to be so scary?
How to heal, how to heal, how to heal.
Torn and bleeding, leaking pains
It hurt.
Will I ever forget?
You were a giver,
You gave me so much pain.

Who am I now,

If not the apple of your

sharpest, most erudite eye?

Release from a love isn't easy

when without its life,

you know only to die.

Did I ever make you

feel loved?

Because I swear I did try.

Fire's still fire

No matter how hard I might cry.

A harp of a rib cage,
Every second, thrummed
By you.
And my muffled melody plays,
Each note faintly hummed
For you.

Soon, I know
you’ll want to go.
I cross my fingers
For time to slow.
But when you’re done
With your goodbyes,
I hope you think of me:
the mayfly flower who was
destined to die.

I dreamt of you the other day
I woke up with your scent lingering in the linens, where I laid
And my chest broke all over again, as it does
You could never love me again, love.
My weary heart has since used my body weary too,
And I am briars of what used to be a garden, owned only by you

Before,
I did not know what it was to be weary.
I felt the distress of a flower in bloom.
And somehow,
I was flower that knew
I was doomed to die.
And stricken with such a weight,
I compressed myself behind a pane of glass,
And became brittle as I prolonged the death of my purity.
Flat, dry, and faded, but I still hold my shape,
Under the pressure of the glass pane.

Shaky hands.
Heart tumbling down to my stomach,
Stop, please, stop
Look at my bleeding gaze,
painfully saturated eyes
my burning tears should burn you now,
Your hands melted and gripped my hair
like concrete wax
you were the wick and I,
I am the charred, melted remains
It shouldn't have hurt so much to love,
but it did,
Oh
It did.

The acuteness of the first fall is directly related to the acuteness of the pain,
And you are the sharpest thing I’ve ever felt.

First love,
And quite possibly,
The only one I’ll ever let myself know.

I give you all of my heart,
all of my self,
all of my soul.
A dangerous thing to do,
but so dangerously I love you.

I’ve realized, slowly,
That it’s not that you forget
You don’t have to be kind.
It’s that you are,
And you want to be.
How beautiful can you be?

I am lost,
floating, distant from my own skin and bones
My thoughts sway from vague to precise,
Razor-edged and burning.
I'm without you.
The world holds little understanding,
for me.
You did.
I ache, so out of control,
Remember my distrust for the theatrical?
I'm feeling so awfully, terribly, sickeningly
theatrical.

Slowly,
Shaky on my feet, like a child
I was practically a child,
When you found me.
Shaped me, molded me as clay
Your fingerprints, careful, intentional
Slowly,
They made my masterpiece,
My words, my life, my soul
Yours.
But here I am alone,
Knocky knees, pale cheeks,
Chapped lips and aching ribs
What am I to do with this control?
Slowly,
The world turns, still.
My own is shattered.
It lies on the glittering pavement
Where I fall to my knees,
With handfuls of my hair and racketing sobs,
Screaming with the anger, the hurt, the ache
Drawing all the attention I wished I'd drawn before
A cry for help, an outreached, black-veined hand
Though all in my mind,
Because I walk past, on the pavement,
And I walk home.
Slowly,
I breathe.
I blink, my eyes dry.
I've cried every tear I can cry
For you, or really,
For myself.
What's left is a battered, brittle, brackish soul
And a body in upset.