II. Mysophobia

Sure,
now,
when I look to the right
of my bedroom door,
I see the light-switch for what it is--
a light-switch,
inanimate,
with absolutely no potential
to cause me harm.

But, at eleven years old,
a light-switch
is a breeding ground
for plethoras of
girl-hungry microorganisms
waiting to infect me
with some vile, incurable illness.

In the sixth grade,
I wash my hands the
same way I would
eventually come to write poetry--
obsessively,
with reckless abandon
and, most importantly,
with the insatiable desire to escape.

I flick on the light-switch and
I wash my hands

I touch the door handle and
I wash my hands

I just come out of the shower and
I wash my hands

I learn what a ******* is at school one day and
I wash my hands

I think of *** for the first time
(I enjoy it)
and
I wash my hands
(I regret it)

I believe God must be angry with me so
I wash my hands

I wash my hands.
with tedious precaution
so as not to miss
a single palm line
or fingernail.

I wash my hands
until my skin
splits like volcanic rock,
until dew drops of lava
clot across my knuckles,
until I've sacrificed every last
bit of my flesh
in my attempt at purification.

I wash my hands
until it hurts to
eat.
write.
pray.

(But in four years,
I will have stopped
praying altogether,
anyway.)

You can take the girl
out of the traumatic environment.

But you can’t take
the trauma out of the girl.

I pin the anemic bodies
of poems
to the bed of palm
like they are cadavers
waiting to be
d  i  s  s  e  c  t  e  d.

This is the
only
way
I know to
make sense of things,
each enjambed line
a heartbeat closer
to understanding this
sadness
(or letting
go
         of
it).

I gawk at the contents
of the shelves
that live amongst the
curdling strips of wallpaper.
Yellowing mason jars,
each containing some
tragic specimen swimming in  
formaldehyde tears--
Plath's last breaths;
Sexton's paper cut fingertips;
Van Gogh's severed flesh.

The sight of this
ghastly collection
sends the scars on my wrists
into a spiralling ache.

I once made the mistake
of assuming poetry
would instantaneously
exorcize the aching--
it only brought me closer.

But I must remember
that bleeding is the last stop
on the route to mending;
it's gotta hurt
before it can heal.

So I write,
bear the sting
of these words
as they stitch together
the tattered patchwork
of my heart;
until the scars meet
at the pinnacle
of my anatomy,
crisscross,
bright constellations
flowering from the darkness,
starlit tulips
that shake the
sorrowed dew drops
from their rain-torn petals,
celestial hieroglyphs
waiting to be read--
This is your history;
not your future.

“I’ve spent nights crying for you.”

“I’ve spent nights crying BECAUSE of you.”

I always look
my most beautiful
when I cry;

the bags under my eyes
burn as poignantly
as waning crescents,
lips plump as they quiver
with the same multitudes
of Artemis' bowstring,
chest heave-hoeing
against the tempered
vessel of my soul.

I wear sadness
remarkably well,
you know.

Like black lipstick.
or short hair.
or poetry.

(Cleopatra's got nothing on me, baby)

My reflection tessellates
against the swell of my tears,
evolves into
kaleidoscopic fractals
of smouldering thrones
and howling queens--
into images most
strange and terrible.

(But, oh, how I welcome them.)

A delicate curtsy of words
respires from my mouth,
forms upon my tongue
its homage--
hail thy shattered kingdom
hail thy shattered kingdom
hail thy shattered kingdom.

Men love a good Femme Fatale.

But they do not love an ugly Femme Fatale—

So they plucked her naked,
gave her a nose job, and called her
a “mermaid” instead

{Siren}

⚠Trigger Warning; the following poem contains subject matter pertaining to graphic language, substance abuse, suicidal ideation and opinions on religion that some might find offensive⚠

~

I do not
deserve
the name I was given--

Jade,
after the (semi) precious gemstone.

Girls named Jade
are not supposed to
give strangers the finger
more often than
they hug their mothers
or
say the word
f  u  c  k
more often than
they tell their fathers
that they love them--

are not supposed
to say
(or write)
the word
*******

at all.

And here I am,
having banged out
the word
*******

t̶w̶i̶c̶e̶

thrice
upon my typewriter.

Real charmer,
aren't I?

******* in front
of open windows
just for the ******* i n g sake of it.

(four times.)

Pounding tequila shots
as I grind against the moonlight,
Lana Del Rey's lyrics
throbbing from the speakers:

"My *******tastes like Pepsi Cola..."


Girls named Jade
are not supposed to
get plastered on school nights
(and tipsy before class)
or listen to music

(and the music is
always
too loud.)

about p u s s y.

They don't say
(or write)
the word
*******br>
either.

I've always had a ***** mouth--
this is what a man from church
had told me at eight years old
when I said "****" in front of him.

Girls named Jade
are supposed to go
to church every Sunday--
are supposed to believe in god.

Instead,
I outgrow religion
by the time I am sixteen
(perhaps even before then),

only ever consulting the bible
when I need inspiration
for some tragic poem
narrating the pangs of betrayal.


(It was not Womankind
who betrayed god,
but god who betrayed Womankind

just like I have betrayed
my own name.)


The only thing
I have ever truly believed in is
poetry.


Girls named Jade
are not supposed to
write poetry the way
I write poetry--

all *** & drugs & rock n' roll
tundras & hurricanes
infernos & molten lava
blood & violent minds
suicide & broken hearts

& broken hearts
& broken hearts
& broken hearts

& purple souls--

Girls named Jade
are supposed to
wear their souls
in the colour green.

And the matriarch
jumped
over his tomb

There is a fine line
between
selflessness and self-deprecation

(and I have crossed it)

For the longest time,
I would wonder
why,
on the mere cusp of 17,
I began to drink.

I'd always assumed it
was because I was so
sad.

But now,
while I'm sure that
sadness was most certainly
a contributing force,
I don't think
it was the true perpetrator.

See,
all the other girls
in my grade were always off
******* or getting high
or embarking on whatever
risque adventures
they'd broadcast on Snapchat
the next morning.

I think all I ever wanted
was a scandal to call my own.

I wanted to prove
something to myself--
that,
no matter what
people said about me,
I could be bad too.

~

This one time,
I bought a squirt gun
from the dollar store.

I wanted to get drunk
the way I'd watched
Cassie from Skins
get drunk
in this one episode.

So,
I filled up my gun
with *****
before holstering it
against my tongue.

Then,
I pulled the trigger.

Dear arch nemesis:
I have a a bearded dragon
and you don’t.

I win;
you ****.

And the irony, although cruel,
lies in the following fact:

People always leave,
but the loneliness never does.

I. The Funeral



Take the rosemary

they have pressed between my toes

and use it to garnish

your next glass of wine.

As you drink

make a toast,

not to merriment,

but to lamentation–

to the remembrance

of thy maiden’s death.



Cheers! to the unity

of our most unwavering

disgrace.



Cheers to what

has been broken.



In a fit of maddening remorse–

for this time the madness shall be tangible–

tear away the silk

lining of this

****** funeral bed

like you did tear

away the curtain and what

hid behind it.



Tear it away!



Tear it away like you did

tear the rat,

like you did tear and discard

the honour that did lie

between thy maiden’s legs,

like the river’s rapids

did tear away thy maiden’s life.



And once you have

sheathed your sword–

I entreat you–

kneel and bow your head

in surrender to the lilies

that lie before my grave;

you will caress their stems

and kiss their petals

in the hopes that

your love–the love

you did deny me–

will breathe life back

into these water-logged lungs.



But just as it is certain

that the flowers,

in their cyclical phases

of nature,

must bloom,

it is also certain that the dead

must remain dead.



For there is nothing so definite

as the blooming

just as there is nothing so definite

as the dying.



–Post Madness



II. The Drowning



My gown billows around

me like the slick

ripple of a mermaid’s fin.



I can hear the Lady Siren’s Song

and all of its guarantees:

liberation of this life’s

betrayals and heartbreaks,

liberation procured

by the certainty of death.



I **** the nectar of her voice,

drinking in every crescendo–

every last staccato–

of what the water has

promised me.

I **** the nectar of her voice

as I had so foolishly

suckt at the honey of his

music vows,

the same way

his own babe would

have suckt the milk

from the swell of my breast–

my babe to be

that shall never be

drowned by my sodden womb,

my babe whose mother–

certain in what proved to be

the uncertainty

of her lord’s love–

conceived him

in a bed of sin,

a bed of dishonour.



So now, my sweet child,

I do not object

to the deluge that

threatens to drag us

beneath the current,

for perhaps

this is the only way

to put the dishonour

to rest.



So float with me,

my sweet nymph,

and let us both dissolve

into spirits of the river.



–The Pinnacle of Madness



III. The Heartbreak



I, A maid at your window,

mouth glittering in anticipation

for your sweet, valentined kiss.



To the celestial and my soul’s idol, the most beautified Ophelia…



And so up you rose

to unlatch the chamber door–

to meet the nestle of

soft, petaled lips.



Doubt thou the stars are fire,



Doublet unbraced,

you undressed

and to this, My Lord, I

so willingly followed.



Doubt that the sun doth move,



Corset loosened and

gown discarded

with you, I did lie.



Doubt truth be a liar,



So certain I was of your love,

that sin no longer daunted me.



But never doubt I love.



And certainly I was proven wrong,

for in the escapade of our passion

we did touch so dishonourably.



–Pre-Madness (The Inciting Incident)

I don’t wanna be your friend anymore

I find it quite ironic

how some

men complain when

we don't sit with our

thighs pressed together--

when we don't

"sit like ladies."



Because these

same men are

so unfathomably eager

for us to spread our legs wide

for them in the bedroom.

TW: Self-harm
•••
I’ve never looked as good in diamonds
as I have in red. Blood:

a string of pearls around my wrist.
Crimson lace—garter caressing thigh.

Diamonds don’t shine in sorrow
the way steel does.

On the mornings
I woke up angry,
I would put on
a thick layer of eyeliner
before I left for school,
eyelids streaked purple,
a violet horizon backdropping  
the contour of my lash line.

I wore my makeup
like war paint
as if to send the message:

You cannot begin
to comprehend
this darkness I carry.

It is not an energy
to be toyed with.

I am not to be toyed with.

Don't you DARE **** with me.

She is a wild thing.



And I say “thing”

and not girl or woman

because She is neither;



She is both,

caught somewhere in between

the liberated innocence of childhood

and the maddening corruption of growing up.



And this is precisely what makes Her

wilder than the rest of us.



Some will argue that She is woman and woman only,

leaving little room for,

what are considered by many to be,

girlish trivialities.

But these people have only ever viewed Her

from a respectable distance,

a distance from which She appears to occupy

both the form and the essence of a woman

what with Her full ******* and

the manner in which She writes poetry–

with a sort of opulent brutality.



What you will not see

is the girl

(if that is what you choose to call it)–

the lovely child-beast

that dwells inside of Her,

antlers entwined with garlands

of succulents and autumn leaves,

eyes veiled with an ethereal mist.

A deluge of stardust drips from its lashes,

raining down upon the dry expanse of Her bones,

planting dewdrops in the barrenness–

honeyed globules nourished

by free-spirited ambition

and a nonsensical imagination.



And If it weren’t for you,

child-beast–

if it weren’t for your

incessant howling to the moon

and the sweetly curious expression

you get on your face when you’ve been daydreaming,

then this “woman” would be just that–

a woman and nothing more,

the same way you, lovely beast,

would be a girl and nothing more

if it weren’t for the overpowering

womaness of your host.



Do you recall

how you two first met–

the night She had first made your acquaintance?

How, that next morning, you woke up to find

your Hello Kitty ******* stained red,

a sharp pain stabbing at your belly.

You yelled for your mother

in a panicked shock;

you were convinced you were dying

(and perhaps you were, for this was

the very moment you began to grow up.)

But mama told you that there was nothing

to fret about– all females bleed, after all.



But you have come to realize that

while some bleed by nature,

there are also some who bleed out

of their own free will.



At first, it was Her mere nature that

had caused you to bleed.



And, after that, Her wildness.



But She did not mean to hurt you,

to burden your wrists with the

gravity of Her sorrows.



And so you must understand this,

my beast:

like you, She is a wild thing.

The only difference is that

She is a wild thing with a broken heart.

And there are some days where She

would do anything to quiet

the melancholic fervour of her thoughts.



I can see how this alone has destroyed you,

how you have been leached of your innocence.



I watch as you deteriorate

antlers withering to stubs

eyes weeping

stardust congealing

around your tear ducts

mouth frothing with whiskey

shards of broken bottle

embedded in your palms

your body degraded

blouses with alarmingly low necklines

skirts long enough to cover up

the scars on your thighs

but short enough that they feel

the need to whisper “*****”

when your back is turned

because maybe this

lovely beast

is the only way She knows

how to feel okay.



And maybe you have simply

found yourself caught in the

insatiable crossfire of Her darkness;

because the light you possess

was never enough to save yourself,

and it was certainly never enough to save Her.



No.



The wild in you

was never a match

for the wild in Her.



And it is here

in this state of unadulterated wildness

that everything  you are,

everything that She is–

Woman and

child and

Beast alike–

will eventually

be forced to surrender

to the chaos.



This is the place,

wild thing,

where you will be forced to

eat yourself alive.

You,
my Darling,
have a bite
strong enough
to cut through
sea glass--
do not forget this.

Maybe I don’t want success
maybe I just wanna get ******!

written across my anatomy,
a brilliant Poetica:

lips part/
line breaks

the dimple in my jaw

an

a
c
r
o
s
t
i
c

clavicles
mere sisters of verse

fingerprints are but
whirlpools
of apostrophe and quotation

the trellis of my ribs
composed of
stanza

behind

my papyrus heart
dwells

every beat
a turning page--

and this is my story

At thirteen years old,
I learn that
not all mermaids are like Ariel--
some mermaids are sirens,
femme fatales of the seven sea
who lure sailors to their drownings
with sweet, nectared voices.

Still, I wish to don the life of a siren,  
whose danger appears
dizzyingly seductive to me.
I have become fascinated
with the dark and the peculiar,
you know,
and, as a result, I too
have undergone a dark, peculiar
evolution--
and, as literature has dictated,
such a character as myself
is to be scrutinized
under an omniscient perspective:

She wears thick, purple eyeliner
and dresses only in
heavy blacks and deep blues,
an abrupt transition
from her previous adoration for
pastels and ruffled sleeves.
But it is not only her countenance
that is indicative of this disturbed youth--
there are the books she reads,
tales of death, gore, and
other macabre eccentricities.
Her favourite titles
are those by Edgar Allan Poe.

How suiting then,
that she should be an
Anabel Lee in the making--
"her highborn kinsmen came
  And bore her away...
To shut her up in a sepulchre
  In this kingdom by the sea.-- "
she just doesn't realize it  yet--
that she is a drowning girl impending,
that she was never to be the siren, after all,
but the poor fool
who succumbed to the siren's
dreadful tides.

It’s tough “love”
not
tough love

You are dreadful,
Darling

⚠️Trigger Warning: The following poem contains subject matter pertaining to self-harm, suicide, and involuntary psychiatric hospitalization⚠️

I don't recall a whole lot
about my first hospital visit.

I know only the
fleeting
keynotes of the experience.

And I'm not just referring to my first...
psychiatric (?) visit.

(I'm not sure if psychiatric is
the right word,
but I find that I often struggle
to find the right words
when I attempt to describe hospitals
and the time I've spent in them.


I'll do my best.)


See,
I had never been to the
Emergency Room for anything before.

(Well,
except for that one time
I tumbled off the changing table as a baby.
But I'm not sure that really counts,
my only knowledge of the event
having come from second-hand stories.)

Surprisingly enough,
being the clumsy child I was,
I had never sustained
any significant injuries
while growing up,
especially in comparison to my sister
who had a daunting repertoire.

When she was a toddler,
she executed a daredevil jump
from the top of the staircase,
breaking her arm as she crash-landed
onto the basement carpet.

While we were waiting
for her to be fitted with a cast,
I remember her doctor told me
to stop misbehaving.

While I can't remember
exactly how I was misbehaving,
I'm sure it had something to do
with the chaos of my temperament,
a chaos that has churned inside me
for as long as I have known.

Over the course
of my high school years,
when I would make several
appearances at the hospital
due to my own brokenness--
the very brokenness that persuaded
the lacerations on my wrists
and my lust for death--
the doctors would,
in their clinical, roundabout ways,
tell me the same thing:

to stop misbehaving.

In the ninth grade--
this here. this is the first visit--
my guidance counsellor and English teacher
had driven me to the Children's Hospital,
which was only up the road from my high school.

Oddly enough,
I had been relatively compliant.

I had gone quietly,
devoid of the defiant uproar
that seethed under my skin.

Perhaps I acted as I did to prove that,
despite, my darkness,
isolating me from the world I knew
would be a grand disservice to me.

Or perhaps I feared
what would happen
if I was to purposely disobey,
that, upon arriving at the hospital,
I would be treated like the rebel I was,
promptly disrobed of my independence.

The remaining details of the visit
have been resolved to vagueness
as time has passed.

I only know my father  
came straight from work to pick me up.
Before we left,
the doctor gave us pamphlets--
crisis hotlines,
accessing resources
within my quadrant of the city,
alternatives to self-harm.

The doctor dwelled on this last subject;

if I felt like cutting myself,
I could still satisfy the urge
without actually drawing blood.

I could press ice to my skin
or write on myself with markers--
markers not pens--
or snap a rubber band against my wrist,
which was the method
he had particularly fixated on.

He explained he wasn't too keen
on me snapping myself
all the time, either,
but that it was a preferable
alternative until I improved.

"Doc,"
I wish I'd said,
"If only you knew
how lovely it is to bleed."

Shhh.

Stop crying.

Shhhhh!

Better cover that mouth of yours. Or else they’ll hear.

Shush!

The power’s come back on, the darkness can’t  protect you anymore.

Enough!

That’s a good girl. Now, let’s see a smile.

Can beauty exist in the aftermath of sorrow?

January 1st, 2022,
12:23 AM:

empty

Tears percolate from
round, fishbowl eyes,
cheeks a sting
with salt
and loneliness.

I barter with the deluge,
hold my breath
for as long as my lungs
will permit
until a motley of colour
bruises over my vision.

And I can't help but think:
perhaps fainting is
the next best thing to dying,
especially when you are too afraid
to commit to the permanence
of killing yourself.

My only dilemma?

What am I to do with myself--
with the tears--
once I regain consciousness?

Perched on bloodied haunches,

she stands beneath the

swirling blackness of

the night sky,

singing to the

bayonet moon

and gun-powdered stars

a song of heartbreak.



--Love is war

I am not an apostate;
I’m a feminist.

Oh
horrendous
Delilah—

You’ve cut away
the most
poetic
parts of me.

"I believe in you,"

whispered the moon

to the tide.

Dear Reader,

I give you permission.

I give you permission
to scar the spine
of this book
from the countless
times you will
crack it open.  

I give you permission
to highlight
and underline
and doodle
and annotate
these pages
until they have
no room to breathe.

I give you permission
to accidentally
drop
wet
spill on-
backpack-shove
the cover.

I give you permission
to dog-ear the corners
when you've lost
your bookmark
(and your way).

I give you permission
to break in these words
with the same
calamitous,
neurotic,
frenzied
passion with which
I wrote them.

I give you permission
to make this
Poetry your home.

My ****** writes a poem:

.

IV. Crimson

It's not about the way it hurts--
it's about the way I bleed,
the way my skin
splits and geysers.

A deluge of red
leaches from pale, marred arms,
adheres to cotton sleeves
like a seething tentacle
affixed to the stern of a ship
(when I get home from school and undress,
my skin will peel away
with the rest of my clothes.)

But at the first sign of healing,
I will take my razor blade from
wherever I've hidden it
(Under my bra strap,
pressed between the
mattress and the box spring,
tucked inside the alcove
of a hollowed-out book)
and tear myself anew,
watch with morbid tranquillity
as tidal waves of crimson
surge from my veins
as they threaten to destroy
the very body from
which they were birthed.

(And this is how the drowning begins.)

The girl wreathes
the perimeter of her mattress  
in salt
that has
fallen
like meteors from her stormy eyes.

Surely,
this ritual
will keep the nightmares away.

But her tears
lack resilience.
lack the necessary sting
of healing
as brine enters wound;

instead,
her tears
are broken compositions
of fragility and sugar--

a spoonful
helps the medicine go down
but cannot antidote
the parasitic demons
hosted by the traumas of her past.

“Is that the only thing people are good for?”
She whispered.
“Leaving?”

Boy math
is when men on Instagram claim women
who solve boy math equations are bigots.

Boy math is men who benefit from patriarchy
misplacing the meaning of the word “bigotry”
within their male privilege.

⚠️Trigger Warning: The following poem contains subject matter pertaining to substance abuse⚠️
~

A benzo
A day keeps the
nerves
at bay

404

ERROR

this girl no longer exists

Among the wreckage
of her soul,
lie shards of ribcage
(splintered like
the stern of a ship
that has weathered
many a beastly storm)
and fragments of heart
(veins as thin and lifeless
as the gossamers
of waterlogged spider webs).

Sunken treasures
you could call these things,
waiting in this perpetual limbo,
this Bermuda of Lovers Lost.

"Girl, overboard!"
he'd cried
(even though he
had been the one
to push her over the edge
in the first place).

Imagine that:

wrists tied behind her--
what hurts more?
The rope burns
or the cuts?--
feet sweeping despondently
across that doomed plank;
she can feel her love's breath--
frigid as Neptune's sea-bound winds--
undulating against the back of her neck.

She turns around slowly,
and he shoots her that
pathological
barracuda grin,
promises her that he cares--
truly, he cares--
that she means something to him.

But many a thing
a pirate does thief,
the truth
being one of them.

The next thing she knows,
she is plummeting
(watch how she does fall for him)
towards the convulsing
stretch of grey beneath her,
and as she whips about
through the bluster and the rain,
she stares up at him
with wild, pleading eyes.

She wants to scream out,
"Why?"
but there is no room
for words (or poetry)
upon the lips of the drowned--
after all,
dead girls tell no tales

You say the rain is
beautiful,
yet you judge me for crying.

If I went to school with you,
chances are
you've probably seen me cry
(and I cry a lot).

I would like to thank those
who consoled me during
my epoch of sadness,
one that reached out before me
like bubblegum stretched
to ligaments between nervous fingers
(I don't chew gum often,
but those fingers belonged to me).

Your kindness.
is remembered warmly.

But to those of you who
criticized me incessantly.
Called me
cry baby. overdramatic. weak.  
behind my back;

to those of you
who deliberately concealed
the truth from me--
unfortunate truths, they were
but truths that concerned
my reputation, nonetheless--
because you felt the need to
spare yourselves from the
"discomfort" and "annoyance"
my tears would bring you;

to those of you who
labelled me as if I were a
cardboard delivery box
containing fine china--
FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE

(REFRAIN FROM HONESTY):

your remarkable lack of compassion
serves you no purpose.
There is nothing noble
about making a satire of
other people's sorrow.
Being a stoic does not make
you stronger than me.

You cannot possibly comprehend
the strength I carry:

Many times I have shattered
and many times--
every time--
I have put myself back together again.

I conquer the Olympus of jigsaw pieces
that my heart has crumbled to,
place each fragment of myself
between my teeth,
letting the cardboard and paint
melt against my tongue
like Listerine breath strips.

Despite the bitter aftertaste of broken,
I feast until I am whole again.

I cry.

I lick my wounds.

And then I heal--

I always heal.

And my dreaded stoics,
you could heal too
if it weren't for your
self-righteous denial of
the deluge.

Watch me drink from its waters,
toast in acknowledgement to the pain.

I let myself feel
as I am meant to feel.

I let myself break
as I am meant to break.

I hope one day you come to learn
that there is
nothing
braver than that.

~

Whenever I shatter,
the Gods scream
"Opa!"
in celebration.

Because they know very well that
broken I shall not remain.

Was she actually clingy?

Or was she reasonable in her response
when you neglected her?

Was she really needy?

Or were you just incapable
of meeting her needs?

I think perhaps I will write
a poem once the pain has subsided.

There was never a “before” sadness.

Perhaps my sorrow is like god:
it is impossible to precede
something that has always been.

⚠Trigger Warning; the following poem contains subject matter pertaining to suicide and self-harm ⚠
----------------------
May 30th, 2018

These wayward breaths
lead me to
the Dead Sea.

"This is where you belong;"
whisper the spirits
of The Deep--
"this is where all
broken things
come to die."

The Dead Sea
is my bathtub-
ramshackle tiles,
contorted shower rod
bowing under the weight
of the fraying curtain.

The water sprints
in a scalding race
from the tap,
its gurgling clamour
veiling the sound
of Billie Eilish
playing on the speaker
(isn't it lovely all alone?)

I stare at the Exacto Knife
clutched between my
water-pruned fingertips.

And
the moment you pick
up a knife instead of a
shoddy razor blade
from a dollar store
pencil sharpener,
you know you've
hit rock bottom
(did you know
the Dead Sea is
the lowest
point on earth?;
have you ever experienced
the remarkable plummet
of that kind of low?)

I trace the patterns
of invisible
constellations
on the terrain of
my flesh;
at first,
I am too afraid  
to press down
but when I do--
my god,
when I do--
I draw blood
with the same artistry
borne from a
painter's hand,
each laceration
a brush stroke closer
to someplace beyond this
sadness.

The Spring
detests the girl
with the ivory complexion,
dollops of rosy flesh
sunk against her face
like discarded peach pits
(and discarded
is she.
forgotten
is she).

Mother Nature's
Alabaster *******,
they've dubbed her.

And tried Mother Nature
to preach tranquillity
to her daughter,
a reminder to always keep
still
amidst any tempest
****** into her path.  

But mother,
I am the tempest.

Come tomorrow morning,
the spring snow
will have melted,
but frigid I shall remain.

Dissonant and
storm-wrenched
I shall remain.

All the world begins to thaw
as I loll about in
the tundra of this loneliness.

When dawn arrives,
I will draw the curtains
before the rising sun
shoots me that beam
of apocalyptic grin.

The world is not ending,
you will tell me
(but mine is).

I have always existed
separately
from the rest,
you see.

The bright evenings and the even brighter mornings.

The unmistakably poignant scent of freshly-cut grass.

Marmalade sunsets that descend effortlessly into their celestial counterparts.

Flowers blossoming to profound vibrancy.

I wish I could tell the flowers
it is only a matter of time
before some wandering child
will rip apart their petals
in a ruthless game of
“He Loves Me
He Loves Me Not.”

(Child,
I Know this game
all too well—
the perils of picking
an even number
of petals).

And it is only a matter of time
before autumn dolls out
its wiltings.

I am also well accustomed
to the art of wilting,
you know.

The only difference
between me
and the sunflowers
is that the spring
belongs to them.

It is the epoch
of renewal,
of second chances
in spite of their inevitable
witherings,
both past and future.

But the present--
the spring--
it will always belong to them.

I know not
how it feels
to heal alongside
the sunflowers.

I know not
what it means
to shed the prospect of
death
even if it is only
temporary.

My heart is caught
in an impenetrable limbo.

Tell me
Mother Nature,
how do I move on?

For letting go
seems a foreign enigma
to me.

So,
really,
what else am I to do
but draw the curtains
each sunrise?

As I am left to weather
the deluge
while all the world blooms,
as I am left to
pour,
I desperately
await the
rain.

For it is only
in the rain
that I shall return home.

When I say
I wish I was beautiful,
I mean I wish I could
sculpt myself into the same loveliness
borne in the eyes of Marble Goddesses
In Ancient Greece,
I know I would have been pretty
you know;
curls a liberated wreath atop my head,
a nose as grand as Mount Olympus,
body as curvaceous as the summits
of Mediterranean waves.

I mean I wish I could
steal Orion's Belt  from the sky
and wear it around my waist
to cinch away all the extra room
I know I take up,
cuz there's no gravity
in outer space--
it's impossible to feel fat
in outer space.

I mean I wish I could
be as cliche as a rose,
because,
despite being starkly unoriginal,
everyone loves roses the same way
everyone loves photoshop sleekness
and Tumblr physique.

I mean I wish I was
lucid dreams / leather journals / dewdrops on leaves / fairy lights / eyelashes on pillowcases / moon-gazing /  listenin' to Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time / standing ovations / the butterflies in your fingertips / frost congealed on tree branches / lightning storms / Disneyland fireworks / soft bed sheets / champagne kisses / polaroid photographs /  whales howling at sea / midnight inspirations / double rainbows / bed time stories / the skyline at golden hour / foggy 7 AM’s / snow under streetlights / the colour purple / when I say I wish I was beautiful I mean I wish I was
a poem.

⚠️Trigger Warning: The following poem contains subject matter pertaining to substance abuse⚠️
~


Dear Billie Eilish,


I wish I could make you proud


it's just


I DO


need a


Xanny


to feel better