(read forward, then backward, line by line)

I ran.
Not knowing what else to do
There was so much blood on my hands
It was mine
The kitchen knife
Caught in my chest
Guilt
Consumed by
Fear
I was heightened by
Adrenaline
But running on
Wasn’t enough
While trying to stay calm,
Losing control
It was me that would end up
Dead. Because
He was
In front of me
The whole time
It was too late
Trapped
I found myself
Locked in chains
My fate was
Death.

And so it begins

I can taste your release on his lips
Like it was my own tongue
That had gotten you to moan
So sweetly
So innocently
Innocent -
As if you weren’t the bi girl
Sandwiched between the sexually confused
And the dominating alpha

My turn now

To be innocent with your mouth
And to be guilty
With a man pressed against my backside
A verdict
That we agreed on unanimously
Because nothing is more thrilling
Than being wrong
With two people who are so right

One more time

Let’s make a chain with our bodies
He’ll stand
You’ll kneel
I’ll lay under you
Until we morph into one
Connected by the wetness between our legs
And against ours lips

Again
And again

Changing the three of us
Into familiar strangers
Intertwined in seductive affairs
Because baby
Two is comfort
But three is company.

My dear unborn child,
                 I never want you
                 To feel excluded

                 I never want you
                 To believe you're ugly
                 Just because you look different
                 From the other kids

My dear unborn child,
                 I never want you
                 To feel emotional pain

                 I never want you
                 To be ruthlessly bullied
                 Or be called a freak
                 Or a ******

My dear unborn child,
                 I never want you
                 To experience heartbreak

                 I never want you
                 To fall in love with someone
                 Who can't love you back
                 Or treasure your true beauty

My dear unborn child,
                 I never want you
                 To develop a mental illness

                 I never want you
                 To sink into depression
                 To the point where
                 You suffocate
                 And wish I had left you
                 Unborn.

My dear unborn child,
                 I never want you to hurt
                 I never want you to suffer
                 I never want you to end up
                 Like me.

My dear unborn child,
                 Because I love you
                 I have decided to spare you
                 I have decided to grant you
                 Your unspoken wish
                 I have decided to leave you
                 Unborn, forever.

When I see you
I get caterpillars in my stomach
Not grown enough to be butterflies
But alive enough
    To make me feel sick

The constant crawling
A thousand tiny legs
Scurrying up my esophagus
Ready to throw up
A feeling too real to ignore
And too nauseating to admit

So when I see you again
I’ll just keep my mouth shut
Live with the taste of dirt on my tongue
And swallow the caterpillars
   That live in my stomach.

I cherish the love letters
You write to me
When you're away
The ink on the page
Capturing the pretty things you would say
Just like you're here
                             by my side
Forcing my legs open wide
Your cursive understands
My ***** desires
So I'll keep re-reading your words
Until my fingers get tired.

All poets
Are in love with the moon
Romanticizing the mystery of outerspace
On a cold, lonely eve
To look up at the night sky
And sigh
At the glimmer of friendship
The sliver of hope
The reflection of love
Hanging next to the stars

Sometimes, I sigh
Remembering
The moon is nothing but a rock
Stuck in orbit
Stealing a poet's love.

To reassure me
You utter softly
                    "Just think of me
                     As a cookie
                     You've been dying to eat"
...
I'm nervous
My hands are shaking
When I place them on your knees

Sure
I've tasted hard lollipops before
And they were easy to take in my mouth
As my lips formed around them.

But I've never had a sugar cookie
Quite like this before
With a goddess
Quite like you

Your voice is calm
Collected
But weighed down
Over the sound of my panting
As your fingers tangle in my hair
                    "Relax"

My body twitches with excitement
Anxiety
Because I want to please you
But I don't know how

I lean forward anyway
And lick away some of the frosting
You moan
And I know you taste sweeter than ever.

I think the Moon knows
I'm watching Her
Because sometimes,
                           She leaves me presents
It may sound silly
But I've got a jar full of Her secrets
That I keep in a lockbox under my bed
The pass code; Luna
So I'll praise Her title
Each time I uncover
The hidden gifts She's given to me

Purified droplets of moonlight.

The size of a jewel
The weight of a diamond
The glow of an angel
The shine of a star

The Moon probably knows
I'm watching Her
Because sometimes,
                            I find a drop
In the bud of a flower
Sometimes,
                  in the pit of a well
Sometimes,
                  in the cave of an animal
Sometimes,
                  in the crack of a rock
Sometimes,
                  in the hollow of a tree
Sometimes,
                  in the current of a stream
And on the rarest of occasions
I'll find Her lodged between the pages
Of my notebook

I've collected a dreams worth of gems now
So whenever I find myself,
                                       Lost.
- Swallowed by the void -
I'll have enough moonlight in my jar
To ignite the darkest of days
And the presence
                             of Her presents
Will go unnoticed by no shadow
Or creature of the night.

Luna knows I'm watching Her.

I'll continue to gaze from below
And let no stone go unturned
So when the Moon drips again
I'll be there to catch Her
Another crystallized droplet of a blessing
To tuck away
In the box under my bed.

******* blood like black tainted wine
- Stain lips with this liquid of mine
- Tear my tender skin to pieces
- Pry through these mental diseases
- Feel my flesh with a fragile groan
- Break my body with brutal stones
- Bite my bones and then lick them clean
- Sigh your breath into my bloodstream
- **** my cells from savory veins
- Dine and devour the remains
- Grind my organs through gritted teeth
- Try not to think and simply breathe
- Weep with me as you dig the hole
- Forget I still possess a soul
- Scrape the sand from my eye sockets
- Tie my wrists with a sick promise
- Seize all of your sadistic dreams
- Bury me even as I scream
- Drown me with a mouthful of dirt
- Cry a lullaby through the earth
- Stop my story and seal my grave
- Fall to your knees and forge my fate
- Know that I was wanting this grief
- Die in this demented relief

Taste, stain, tear, pry
Feel, break, bite, sigh
****, dine, grind, try
Weep, forget, scrape, tie
Bury, seize, drown, cry
Stop, fall, know, die
Believe you're ill, but so am I
Together now, we die
                                       die
                                            die...

For you
           I
                   f
                    e
                      l
                        l

L    o    n     g
And hard

But for some reason

I wasn’t expecting
To be
              b       o       e
                   r       k      n

When the
                    f
                      a
                        l
                          l
                            i
                             n
                               g
Was over
And I
           hit
The ground.

When I grew out of my adolescence
I lost my crippling thrist to write

I stopped cutting myself in my early 20's;
just like the research articles said I would

Disorder direction, however,
was not the cause of my coping correction

I moved away from rampant tantrums
Sliding down the ***** of sufferance


I used to write to externalize my internal desperation
My frustration with the life I was given
(Certainly not the choices I've made)

Over a decade of time has aged me
From a helpless girl, to an impassive woman
Submissive to circumstance

Now, I chain bricks to my ankles
And throw myself in the sea of apathy

I will not expend the energy to care,
but rather intentionally strive for indifference


In doing so, I sacrifice my desire to write…
Losing desperation makes me hollow

Then again, helplessness is for children.

I am a woman now.

I no longer crave the ability to describe my emotions
Asking for help is not a viable option anymore
I've tried that long enough

My brain is a bowl of spaghetti
I can be turned with a greedy hand
And a rusty fork
Eating my thoughts
From an unwashed container

Please stop eating.

I don’t think I can afford
To lose another fork-full
    another strand of memory
Let alone
Be mixed up
With the other ingredients
Poured into my skull

It seems I’m getting sloppy.

Refills are impossible
Because the more I try to stuff inside
The more the contents overflow
And the threads of words
Come spilling out
When I beg them not to

Well.

I hate contradicting myself
But without anyone eating
And without room for refills
The nutrients inside
Will begin to rot
And disintegrate
Into nothing but molded mulch
So everything I try to retain
Will be useless
    and inedible

The filth accumulates.

Insanity will be the smell of my mind
It will control my every action
A single whiff
Strong enough
To lower the IQ of a genius

I’m losing myself.

I’d try to explain it
In understandable terms
But it seems the correct words
Were lost
    when I was bitten into
And scattered
    when I overflowed

This is what I tried to describe before:

My head is a box of noodles
I can be dented with a pinky finger
And a dull knife
Tasting my dreams
From a…
        Hm.
    Sorry.
What were we talking about?

Catching moonlight
Behind your eyes
Looking down
Even the stars sigh
Illuminating
The night sky
Gorgeous reflections
Never to die
A love struck gaze
In a moment's time
Kaleidoscope eyes
Purely divine
Perfect beauty
Caught by you tonight
Dazzling crystals
Catching moonlight.

I have a closet full of shadow puppets
They're funny
Don't you think?
Cuz even though I call them puppets
They're controlling me

Look at them
And you might laugh
Because they look asleep
But if you laugh
You ignite the wrath
Of what lies underneath
Their marble eyes
Like a void black hole
But stare at them
You shouldn't dare
Because from a single meaningless glare
They'll come to life
They'll take your soul
They'll eat you alive
They'll eat you whole

Because these are my shadow puppets
And they live inside my attic
But climb on up
And visit too much
And they'll turn your thoughts to static
They dress themselves in all black
But the fact is
They're not trying to hide
The fact is
If you get close enough
They'll lure you inside

Because these are my shadow puppets
And they live inside my basement
But saying that they aren't alive
Would be an untrue statement
Wooden dummies --
They might look
Hollow
Empty
Broken
Just don't be fooled by their vacantness
Take heed of what I've spoken
And if you enter the malicious trap
Just be aware
You won't come back

Because these are my shadow puppets
And they live on a string
But please don't try and make them dance
They're not as funny as you think
And if you accidentally tangle them
Or wrap their threads around their necks
You'll make them quite unhappy
And I assure you
You'll be next

Because these are the shadow puppets
And they're closing in on you
Let them inside
And you will find
They stick to you like glue
One tap on your bedroom door
Two more from the basement --
They're under your floor
Three extra knocks
From inside your wall
But there's more
No
That's not all
Four bangs from above
They're in the attic
Five pounds in your room
Go check the closet
Watch them creep in through your windows
Let them slip inside your halls
Let them dance up on your ceiling
Let them slink and let them crawl
Let them waltz into your dreams
Let them sleep inside your bed
Let them laugh when they hear you scream
“Oh, I WISH THAT I WAS DEAD!”

...

You have a closet full of shadow puppets
Dormant
Inside your room
Try not to wake them up too often
They surely want your doom

Because these are your shadow puppets
And they live inside your head
It's funny that you call them puppets
When it's you
Hanging by a thread.

There is a dead girl in the mirror
She breathes rapidly,
Her heartbeat vibrates her body,
Palpitating whenever she stands
Skin stretches thinly over her ribs
        darkens under her eyes
        turns grey on her legs
…
She scowls at the pinch of fat on her belly
Preferring to be scolded,
But knowing it will only leave her more
    shortwinded - lightheaded

She understands she is dead,
Counting the months before her collapse
Only hoping to see herself become a skeleton
Before they put her in the ground.

When you get down
On your knees in front of me
I panic:
                 “Please don't.”

I'm so used to
  Being the one to kneel
  Being your submissive
  Being the one
To caress your sensitive sugar cookie
With the tip of my tongue
Just not the other way around:
                 “Stop.”

I'm scared
Because what if
You don't like the way I taste
What if
I'm not sweet enough for you
The thought
Burns up my insides:
                 “please don't…”

But when you plant
A candy coated kiss
On my quivering
Inner thigh
I can feel myself
Dripping
My frosting
Creating a damp oval
On the bed spread
A gentle moan escapes my lips:
                 “stop…”

Yet
Your body is hungry
And my words
Only make your stomach growl

So you lean forward anyway
And kiss away at the sugar
My tension growing:
                 “Please don't. Stop.”
Dripping and melting
Into a pleading whimper
                 “Please don't stop.”

Evidently
I seem to be sweet enough for you.

*** is an equation
                              it seems
And I'm your calculator

Because when I'm with you
You know all the right buttons
                                                to push
                   All the right combinations
                                                to plug in
To make me your hand-held
                                                property

Your relentless fingers
                     Unpausing
                                Pitiless
                                       Unremitting
Lacking every sense of the word
                                                  "Mercy"

Despite my begging
My programming goes against me
And I'm forced
                     to spit out the answer
That you request

So because of your brutality
It's easier to lie
                        to myself
To lie and say
That I don't want
                          to keep making equations with you

(a.k.a. What You Must Have Been Thinking)

“Let's make confetti
With your little paper heart!
Smaller and smaller
Until there's nothing left to split apart.”

“Let's make confetti
And throw your feelings up in the air!
Shred it down to scraps
Until there's nothing left to tear.”

“Let's make confetti
With your diminished, pathetic soul!
Ripping up your spirit
Until we've left nothing whole.”

“Let's make confetti
With your miniscule emotions!
Leave them completely trashed
Until there's nothing left to be broken.”

“Let's make confetti
With your fragile paper heart
Punctured and torn
So your love can never restart.”

A love so fragile
That it hurts when I breathe
Shattered memories
Swept by the breeze

A love so scrambled
That it leaves me confused
My heart’s been abused
Black and blue bruised

A love so tangled
That it ends up in knots
A tied-up blood clot
Starting to rot

A love so unraveled
That it loses control
A physical toll
Burnt on my soul

A love so fragile
That is breaks when I try
Starting to know why
I do nothing but cry.

Lay me down in the bed
you've slept in hundreds of times
It's your habitat
But I intend to make it my nest

I settle into the softness of your kisses
Countered by the weight of your body
A gentle whisper tells me,
"I want to *******"
Before I am swept away
By a tornado of lust and wanton moaning

My desire gets lost
Wandering the canvas of another person's skin
I feel a hand on my throat
Guiding me like a traveler providing directions
Yes, "choke me"
"Choke me harder"
Squeeze like you want to hurt me
Even if you care for me
"Harder" like you hate me

It's enough to send me reeling
I hit the edge, slamming into ******
Your grip on my neck loosens
Kisses,
          Soft kisses
Compensate for our carnal behavior

As I lay under you
A feeling I don't recognize rears its head
Not happiness, no
Euphoria, yes
I've claimed your bed as my refuge.

Now you're in the sunken place
Clawing at your own skin
To escape
Break free
From the prison inside you
Pulling apart
Your rib cage
Because it feels like
You're suffocating yourself
Panting
        Gasping
              Grasping
For reality
But the only thing you catch
Is a handful
Of your decaying flesh

And now you're in the sunken place

The tears like acid-
Poison to your eyes
Burning through your sight
So you fight
With clouded vision
Stumbling into
The labyrinth that is your brain
Colliding
        Crashing
              Bashing
Against the tissued barriers
The padded walls
Insanely insanity
The darkest type of mental institute
Locked with three clicks
Inside your head

And now you're in the sunken place

Constantly slicing yourself open
Searching for a key
To unlock the psych ward door
A key-
Lost in your vital organs
So you cut deeper
Deep-deep down under
Drowning in gallons
Or your own crimson blood
Muffling your screams to girgles
You try and hide
In the fissures of your bones
Tearing
       Splitting
            Ripping
Through yourself
To escape yourself
To survive this hell
To outlive your jail cell

So now you're stuck
In the sunken place

Quietly psychotic
Waiting for what comes next
Paralyzed
         Frozen
             Broken
...
You're the patient in **Asylum X.

I welcome psychotic breakdowns
Ugly crying
Violent arguments
And overwhelming bad news

Don’t worry
Each disturbing moment
Is just a chapter in my story
A short clip
In the kaleidoscope montage
That is my reality

Capture a heart wrenching moment
In three second bursts
And repeat
Until there's an hour of footage
So when it's done
Twenty years will have passed
From the first moment
To the last

In a futures world
I'll be better off
In a successful career
Traveling the world
Not famous enough to be recognized
But known enough to be quoted
For a line of my solemn life
To be an everyday phrase
Recounting my memories to strangers
Creating inspiration for the broken

Freeze frame.
And rewind.
Because this isn't my movie.

I'm in someone else's tale
No matter how tragic my back story is
I'll stay locked in
As a background character
A bully?
A victim?
A destroyer?
A teacher?
An enemy?
A friend?
Will they know I'm their co-star?
Will they make room for me on screen?
Will they even notice my presence?

I'll be forgotten
Lost in a sea of miniscule roles
So these disturbing moments
Won't be reduced to three seconds
And there'll be no Twenty years later flash forward
I'll be stuck in every second
Forever pushed to the sidelines
Forever questioning
If the next person I meet
Will be the main character
In this movie I'm trapped in

I looked up at the Moon through the hole of a straw
Her dusk, crescent shape
The only thing that I saw
Blocked from my pupil to the darkness around
The rest of the stars
Blazing without sound

Take away the straw, gaze up at the sky
The whole picture I missed
Not seen in my eye
A mess of twinkles shoved into a collage
Starring above
The Moon and Her entourage

The Moon as their chief, keeping the playful tamed
But night rules are fair
Sparks are never contained
Dance around each other, sail kisses through wind
A shooting star zipped passed
Its light never dimmed

Sparkling stars, next to Her, you're an image
Stay close by Her side
To stretch beauty's limits
Litter the earth with a fistful of bright spots
Sing out in space
Leave it gleaming and hot

Shine as their leader and protect the night sky
Yes, Moon, that's your entourage
Stuck in my eye
Being naive, the Moon is all that I saw
So look at the whole
Not through the hole of a straw.

Now read it backwards.
Demented.
Know you're lying when you say you're
Beautiful, purposeful, and wonderful
Because you're
Rotten, misshapen, and broken
Let these words define you
Don't
Say you hold perfections in your faults!
Know that's a lie
Tell yourself you're just misfit and
Let negative thoughts consume you
Please don't
Try and boost your self-esteem.
Now read it backwards.

We left footsteps on the moon together
An imprint of our souls
Stamped in immovable ink

But our walk was short lived
Because you got tired of stumbling
Stum - bi - ling
Over the pebbles
That blocked our steps

I tried to remind you
That every step we took
Was history
But history meant
Less
          and
                   less
The more there was to look back upon

It wasn't enough anymore
So you ran
Before we could continue walking together
And new craters consumed you
Before I could catch up

When you were long buried
I tried to collect the essence of our prints
But the moment I touched them
They unraveled to dust
Erasing what should have remained
Forever

So each time I reached
Each time I grasped for us
Our history became
Less
          and
                   less
Until there was nothing left to look back upon

Not like you would have turned around anyway
Because you were too busy
Creating new craters
With new others
To see the pieces of soul we left behind

Maybe it meant nothing to you
But I still keep a handful of dust
In the bottom of my pocket
To remind me of the way
We left footsteps on the moon together
Footsteps that vanished
Into nothing but dry particles

Dust
For someone else to walk on.

*** is ice cream
But Love is whipped cream
                  with the cherry on top.

Next time you crave for plain vanilla

Ask yourself:
Do I want the toppings too?

I woke up this morning
In bed next to Depression
Although,
I don't remember going to sleep next to him
I think I would've remembered that
I know I would've remembered that

Because, Depression and I
Haven't seen each other
In a very long time
We actually separated…
In fact, I dumped him
The instant Joy returned to me

But I guess I should've know better
Than to get clingy with Joy
Because last night
She left
Again.
So suddenly
So abruptly
So randomly
I thought we were happy together
But changing circumstances
Sent her running for the hills

Depression must have heard that she ran
And seized the opportunity to get to me
Yet, until today
I thought I'd never see him again
I hoped
Because I didn't want him here
Not anymore

So I told him to leave
Over and over
But stubborn as ever
He refused
Over and over
Which escalated into a shouting match
One minute, I was yelling
But the next…
I'm on the ground
I mean
I've seen Depression hit Joy before
But he's never hit me
…
Until today

I don't remember much
But I'm still bruised and bloodied
And when the tears came down my cheeks
He sighed
And sat down next to me
To embrace me

I wanted to push him away
But…
I guess I just didn't have the energy
And even as I cried out miserably
His hold
Seemed to comfort me
Well… not “comfort” maybe
But I became comfortable
In his arms
I am comfortable
In his arms

And despite
How badly he hurt me
I don't mind the fact that he came back
Because
Until today
I had forgotten what he meant to me
I had forgotten
How much Depression and I get along.