⚠Trigger Warning: the following poem contains religious allusions that some might find offensive⚠

Memories belittled by dust,
preserved, taxidermal fashion
inside an anthology
of vintage photographs.

Though,
I am aware that  
"vintage"
is only a euphemism  
for a possession
that was once beautiful.  

Your treason
has turned all the photographs
ugly,  
their corners curling up  
like the spiral of a chameleon's tail.  

Vivacious colours devolve
into lacklustre,  
sepia tones,
blending in with  
the palette of my
surrounding melancholy.  

Ensnared in a dilemma:  


Do I miss you?  


or  


Do I hate you?  


(perhaps a bit of both,

but never

I love you--


not anymore.)  


Apertures mewl,
bruising the gallery walls
with tears.  

I frame your
betrayals
with gold and
garlands of daisies
in an attempt to soften  
our past  


(it never works).  


These
vacant
hallways
trap your phantom footprints
beneath the cobblestone.  

Was it really  
such a guiltless task  
to walk away from me?

Embedded  
across the rungs of my spine
are the scuff marks  
from where you wiped the dirt  
off your boots only after
wrenching the welcome mat
from underneath me.  

I have accepted that
our friendship was
merely transactional
to you;  

I served up  
all the love I had to  
give
like John the Baptist's head
was served up upon a silver platter.  


You feasted  


while


I starved.  


Yet,
full is this menagerie
of lost things.  

I know
I should burn  
the polaroids
in the name of closure.  

Perhaps
I am just afraid there will be no art--
no poetry--
left to sculpt
from the cinders that
remain.

They romp on hour glass beaches,
Tee-up North and down South;
Pack ****-straps in bleacher bags,
And gutters in ten pin alleys.

They're raging at the crosswalks,
Flail arms at intersections,
Like scarecrows on the Yellow Brick Road;
They foment insurrection.

The thick won't mitigate.
The thicker congregate.
The thickest dissipate.

⚠Trigger Warning; the following poem contains subject matter pertaining to suicidal ideation and self-harm ⚠
~
A note to any friends who read this post: while this poem is written in the present tense, please be aware that it is merely a memory I write of--not a present circumstance.

~
They say

cut

d
o
w
n

the

road

if

you

wanna

off

yourself

not across the street

but
  

         I
                          
                      j walk,  slashing
                                                 ­    d
                                                        i
     ­                                                     a
          ­                                                  g
             ­                                                 o
              ­                                                  n        
     ­                                                              a
                                                                ­      l
                                                         ­             

onto thighs like lightning bolts

                     caught in the storm
                                   of this limbo
                                                           ­     cuz
                                                        ­              i don't wanna live
                     but
                            i don't wanna die


either.

The other day,
I unblocked you from
Instagram.

Not because I miss you.

Not because I am inviting you
back into my life
after a year and a half--

Because I refuse
to remain in hiding.

*
Olly Olly Oxen Free,
Darlin'.

You're playing my game now.

volume i
A Portrait of My Sixth-Grade Self
___________________­

Eleven-year-old fingers
swollen with baby fat
dig into the gaudy shimmer
of turquoise eyeshadow
encased in its shattered compact.

I apply the pigment,
erratic smudges extending
from my lash line
to just below my untamed brows.

The blue powder accentuates the swirls
of my fingerprints in dizzy figure eights.

But you can't quit your own skin
like you can quit ice skating lessons.

I am in the sixth grade
when the Popular Girls
in my class tell me that,
if I want to get a boy to like me,
I have to change the way I look.

I abide by the rules of the
Unofficial Mean Girl Doctrine:

{no. 1}

I mustn't wear sweat pants,
these sloppy Old Navy rags
that I have owned for three years.

See,
denim is superior to cotton
even though it leaves
cavernous indentations
on my stomach.

Sweat pants forgive
the extra swell of your waist line.

Denim punishes you
for what you don't have,
more specifically
for what you have too much of.

I ask my mom for skinny jeans
because perhaps if I can
shrink all that I am
into this blue, unyielding fabric
I will feel thinner than I actually am.

We buy the skinny jeans from Old Navy.

{no. 2}

My signature high pony tail is
unacceptable.

I should wear my hair down,
they profess.

I am not sure if this is
because of the tufts of frizz
that loom over my scalp
like wasted dandelion seeds

(I wish... I wish... I wish...)

or if this is just a necessary ritual
in the abandonment of my girlhood.  

After I unsheathe my curls
from their rubber-band Bastille,
their trial commences.

My ringlets slither
in hostile circulations,
executing frequent detours away
from anyone who might scoff
at their animalistic bedlam.

If only I could will
my spectators to stone.

Cuz no one ever dared
**** with Medusa
and her curls.

Instead,
I settle for a flat iron.

{no. 3}

Do everything in your power to be
Beautiful
including, but not limited to,
the laws indicated above.

Yet,
despite my grandest efforts,
it is never enough.

I am never enough.

I am the Walmart Edition
of what the Popular Girls
want me to be.

With my gaudy eyeshadow and the
cheap Dollar Store bracelets
that I wear around my wrists,
plastic flowers blooming
upon threaded stems
that nip at the hair on my arms.

One day on the bus ride home,
a boy from my class tells me
I am too hairy.

"Huh?" I ask,
pretending I haven't heard him.

"Nothing," he mumbles back to me.

See,
little girls are supposed to play with
jump ropes and Barbie Dolls.

They are not supposed to
play with razors as they strip away
every misplaced hair on their body
or consult Teen Vogue
for the latest beauty hacks
like they are Gospel.

This year of 2011/2012
has been engraved  into
the historical road map
of my every insecurity.
The legend of this map,
depicted in smeared globules
of sugar cookie lipgloss,
deliver me to my destination:

self hatred.

Mascara stains the
topography of my flesh
in inky, dotted lines

I follow.

I plummet
like the eternal run
in my stockings.

One way plane ride
non-stop
never to return
from this perception of ugliness
and then--

flight


down.

Every step I take
is catatonic,
an acute contrast to
the way my thoughts
bolt about the
convoluted labyrinth
of my psyche.

I couldn't stop crying this morning,  
so I took an extra Cipralex*
in the hopes that
my mind would slow down,
even though it has
only been twelve hours
since I last took one,
even though it is
a once-a-day type of thing.  

When I go to brush my teeth,
I stare, bemused,
at the bristles,
how it appears as though
they have been passed under
a fisheye lens.

I feel like I am framed
in a Margaret Keane painting.
Every object or face
I happen to fixate on
seems so comically magnified
that it's actually quite sad.

For I simply haven't the room
in this heart of mine
to house something so
colossal.

I am a broken home.

I try to cover up
the blemishes
the thumbtacks have
left in the walls with
glow-in-the-dark stickers
and photographs of
Audrey Hepburn.
But the stickers have begun
to bubble and peel,
the photographs never
resting flat against the surface.

Your typical bandaid solution--
but bandaids don't heal scars,
they only cover them.

When it is dark out,
the scars look like tree branches,
the type that scritch-tap
against the window pane
only to startle you awake
as the world approaches
the pinnacle of night.

I've strung up
fairy lights round
the perimeter of each room,
in the hopes that the scars
won't appear so ghastly
amongst the shadows.

Sometimes,
I plug too many
lights in at once,
the circuits overload,
and then--
blackout.

This dollhouse has shattered;
up until now,
the other girls and boys
loved to play with me,
though they never did play nice.

They pried my doors
from their hinges,
stole away the secrets
nailed beneath the floorboards
only to shun me
when it came to
their own indiscretions.

Atop the satin bedsheets
their tear stains,
some clear dollops,
some mascara-winged streaks
across the pillowcases.

But when I would cry?

The corridors would
ring with silence--
with the echoes of
nobody.

Empty.

Forgotten.

In my mutilated aftermath,
the little boys and girls
no longer had any use for me--
rarely does anyone wish
to entertain the broken.
A cruelly ironic situation
considering they were the ones
who tore me apart in the first place
(but god forbid
they ever take responsibility
for their transgressions).

So they hid me away
in their attics.
at the back of their closets.
underneath their beds
amongst the lost socks;
the dust bunnies;
the monsters.

This is what it looks
like to be continuously
taken advantage of
without ever quite
mustering the courage
to stand up for yourself.

I am the marionette girl.

Eyes a porcelain glaze,
I watch you leave.
I try to look away,
but the strings
protruding from my scalp
pull me upright.

There is no liberation
for the betrayed.

There is only sadness
for the betrayal,
only pills to stymie
the sadness.

But like these strings,
this sadness remains
tethered-to-me

(always).

~

"Why do you want to **** yourself, Jade? So people will miss you? Is that it?"

"I want to **** myself because I know they wouldn't."