I could tell you that I tip toe across the cold wet stones,
Careful with every movement,
But I’m not.
I’m unsteady,
Unsteady as the current rushing beneath me against the slippery rocks.
I could tell you that I’m dainty,
Soft spoken and polite,
But I’m not.
I’m brazen,
I’m honest,
I’m emotional.
I’m clumsy and I don’t have good balance on the moss beneath me in the water.
I crack under pressure,
I’m an anxiety filled vessel.
I hate to be the rain on your sunny day,
But baby I’m sorry,
I’m nothing but the girl who fell into the rushing waters below.

'Cause when I say, "Go to sleep,"
It means, "I love you."
Or when I tell you to eat,
That means, "Hey I care."
When you tell me that you love me,
and,
I call you an idiot,
That's me saying it back but with the equivalence of stupidity.
You are the reason I stay awake at night and dream with my eyes open,
You are the stars in my dark sea that I have been constantly trying to drown myself in,
You are,
For Gods sake's,
My Planet Earth because what else is going to supply me the oxygen I need when my brain says,
"Don't breathe."
You make me not want to die when all I could think of is dying cause you know,
Depression.
You are my alarm clock to when I sleep in,
My everyday phone call,
My back up plan when my back up plan needs a back up plan.
There are a billion of people out here that could have chosen me to deal with but you,
You at least tolerate me.
Thank you for the tolerance, at least.

Hello!
I am really energetic and I am caring and funny, I love to socialize with everybody. Yes I talk a lot only because I am excited to meet you and my energy is a bit much but you'll get used to it!

Hello.
Yes I am, still smiling and I feel great! Yeah haha only a scratch, how was your day? No don't worry about mine, I'm glad you had a great day. Talk to me more, I'm happy you're talking to me.

Hey.
Everything's fine. No I'm just tired, yes I'm fine. Haha, yeah, I just have a little headache, no need to worry about me. I'm sorry. No I just felt like saying sorry. Enough about me, how are you? Things going good? Please talk to me.

Hi.
We haven't spoken much, are you okay? No, I'm... yeah, I'm fine. Everything's going good. I wish we were closer. No I don't want something more, I just.. haha yeah I'm just kidding. We're okay. You have to go? Oh, I'll talk to you whenever, then. I'll be here if you need me.

Yeah.
I'm here, what do you need? Oh.. well if you must, it's okay. Yeah I'm fine with that, I'm fine. I'm okay, I just want to keep you happy, keep you here. No, I know you're not going anywhere, how silly of me to think of you to go. Oh? You do? Well, thanks, for letting me make you happy, anything I can do to help you.

...please talk to me.

Why won't you talk to me?

Did I do something to you?

I let you use me for your own happiness. Were you just in it to get what you wanted? Please, you told me you enjoyed my company, come back.

Yeah... haven't talked to you in a while. What's up? Oh? Yeah, I'm here if you need to satisfy yourself again. No it's fine, as long as I just get to spend some time with you.

...

Thanks for leaving me. I'm happy you got to use me for as long as you did, I really like you, you know. If using me meant that you could hang around even just for a second longer, please.
I'm in love with you
but
You're in love with them.

Don't fall in love with a writer.
A writer will take you to worlds unknown and you will get lost.
Don't fall in love with a poet.
A poet will construct stanzas of love and heartbreak,
Leaving you desperate for words unfathomable.
Don't fall in love with an artist.
An artist will paint you into their realm of never ending paintbrush strokes where love is just another color on a canvas,
Just like sadness.
Don't fall in love with her,
She is a mindless soul wandering the halls of heartache.
Don't look at her,
Her eyes will pull you deeper into the gold flakes that encircle her pupils like stars surrounding a black hole.
Don't fall in love with her touch,
Fragile fingers tracing patterns over your skin like a delicate knife cutting you open to create flesh wounds never to heal.
Don't fall in love with her body,
Captivating you with her honey drizzled hips,
Nectar inducing lips,
Taunting you as she strips.
Your skin is like fire,
Burning flames dancing and mingling with just a fleeting touch of her beauty.
Don't fall in love with her,
But,
You already have.

I watched the world spin from the windshield of this old car.
I felt the slip of the bald tires,
My hands tighten around the wheel,
And I screamed.
I screamed but somewhere in all of that mess,
That chaos,
I knew I was going to be okay.
I knew I was going to live,
Despite totaling my car.

I wonder how many times you have climbed into a tub and thought,
"Wow maybe I could drown in hopes of escaping my life."
I dont know how many of you have thought that but let's just say a few.
One: I step into the tub with my left foot and the water is immensely warm.
Downing pills couldn't be that bad right now.
Maybe I could grab the bottle without anybody noticing.
I wonder if I could make my own concoction of medicine would suffice.
Concoction is a funny word.
Two: I step in with my right foot and everything is tingling from the heat.
If I charge my phone from the plug over there by the sink,
Could I electrocute myself?
I wonder how bad electrocution hurts.
Deep fried food would be nice right now.
Three: I sink into the tub and pull my knees to my chest.
if I lay back now and fight myself from breathing,
Could I do it?
I wonder how long it takes somebody to drown themselves in a tub while fighting their instinct to survive.
I could adapt and grow gills.
Four: I lay back into my tub and watch the water rise.
The water is warm and my body is heavy.
I can't **** myself because my headstone will be something sad,
My funeral will play music I'll hate listening to as a ghost,
People I don't even know will show up.
What if my ex shows up?
Five: I sink lower into the water until I can no longer hear clearly and it tickles the side of my eyes.
What's the point in breathing.
Breathing is so weird.
Why do I have to maintain a body that's going to die anyways?
I wonder what dying feels like.
Six: I've been in here for an hour. Maybe I should get out.
This water has turned mildly lukewarm.
I'd like to stay but I'm getting kinda cold and I like the warmth.
Could I just empty half and add more hot water?
I am sitting in a pool of my own dirt.
Great.
Seven: I'm climbing out while simultaneously pulling the stopper.
Theres so many different ways to say that you or somebody is dying;
Kick the bucket.
Pull the plug.
One foot in the grave.
Bite the dust.
Croak.
Some of them are kinda funny.
Eight: Realizing that I love baths but hate the thoughts that come with the quiet bathroom.
I'm exhausted.
The mental kind of exhausted.
Can I stop now?
Can I just lay down and close my eyes?
My anxiety is overworking me.
Nine: I open my door with a stiff towel and a cold room.
I love the quiet but the quiet kills.
I love my mind yet the way it works is poisonous to me.
Ten: Nothing.
Sitting.
Alone.
In my empty bedroom.

I know that I have killed myself a thousand times in my head,
Never fully grasping the concept of leaving.
I do not know when the thoughts started,
I guess they've always been there,
Whispering and taking turns rotting my brain into the landfill of decay and broken thoughts.
No longer the pink fleshy muscle that sat presently in my head.
It had turned to tar,
Black and thick,
            R
               U
              N
               N
             I
            N
              G
Dripping,
Suffocating the light away from the open cracks where creativity once flowed through.
Unfathomable, the thought of dying, ceasing to exist.
What have I become?

It was the flash of colors,
Your eyes covered in the hair you hated so much.
Reds,
Blues,
Oranges,
Pinks.
Colors mushed together to find what made your heart beat out of your chest.
Blurry,
Blurry pictures of you.
Like you were always out of reach to me.

A story isn’t a story without the beginning.
A beginning that told us from the start that there was an end,
An end so near that we were not ready.
I was afraid of the cliffhanger that approached quicker than a rolling thunderstorm,
A storm that looked only of dark skies with hopes of a drizzle,
Not a flood.
Our passion died like the fire within that storm,
The drizzle that turned from a downpour into a flood warning into a whirling tornado of unhappiness.
My dear, I wish I could say we were the storm but I was the rain and you were the fire but the thing was,
You saw me coming.
You saw the storm and the rain yet you lit yourself upon a dry Sahara of promises and the secret I do’s we whispered to each other during the night.
That dry, crackled earth turned soft and squishy from the waves of turmoil that rained down onto the surface,
The fire doused with remorse over a lost lover.
You weren’t dead,
You just left without saying goodbye.
The ****** was nothing of a ****** but a steady decline of I love you’s to, “Have a good life,”
To barely talking,
To trailing down a hill to the very end of our story,
Regret.
I regret everything but you, my darling.
The damp earth will grow again and while I may remember the dry Sahara,
I will grow a rainforest of color without you in it.

The past is a rundown motel that hasn’t had any visitors in a while but yet you try and stay.
You know the walls are molding and the ceiling has long since caved in but here you are
Residing in a bed with the springs pricking all over your body,
Numbing you to reality.
You cling on to when the room smelled of fresh paint and it wasn’t so dark.
In fact, you can even almost see the sun peeking through the window as if it was yesterday.
But yesterday,
Was many years ago.
The rust,
The damp air,
The rot,
It takes over Yesterday.
Overgrown weeds and musk cover the floor,
Yet,
You still walk barefoot as if it was the carpet that was once there.
You checked in to this marvelous moment not even thinking it could turn into a place.
A place that you began to frequently visit even if the people that lived with you there have no longer occupied the space since,
Well,
Yesterday, it seems.
You sink lower into those springs,
Unaware of your broken bones and puncture wounds because you decided to live in that moment,
Instead of walking out the door at the first sign of flickering lights.
When you knew,
Deep down,
Staying wasn’t an option,
But revisiting became a habit.
Only if it was Yesterday.

Ode to my depression.
Applause to you, my friend.
Lightning strike,
Grey plaid,
Everything oh so bad,
To you,
Depression.
Sharp knife,
Locked door,
No, mom,
I'm not taking nudes.
There was a time when I was 15 and my younger sister joked I was going to become an addict of some sorts,
And I joked back with,
"As an alcoholic."
The look of appeasement trying to joke with me wiped off her face,
Whether I could tell I was joking or not made me question my entire existence.
An avid life of a drinker was not full of red solo cups and parties,
It was full of lonely nights clutching a bottle closely to my chest,
Afraid that it will grow legs and leave me,
Tired of the way my lips caressed the opening to drink the poison that I hoped would succumb me into nothingness.
Much like you,
My darling,
Growing tired and ever weary of the way my grey plaid shirt resembled so much like your heart,
The way lightning struck the ground like your eyes struck me in awe.
I spend my days binge watching shows with endings I have already seen a thousand times,
But what do I do when checking my phone every two minutes becomes routine,
When refreshing my messages becomes apart of my subconsciousness,
When I've drank black coffee so strong that I no longer feel the rush of alertness.
Subway trains echo with the tired grumbles of those stuck in one-frame lives,
Too tired to move forward,
Too stuck to look away from the past.
I know I mean nothing to you just like the dirt beneath the shoes I bought you,
The phone I changed my wallpaper on because it never felt right,
The google browsers cluttered with things like,
"******* yourself without actually dying."
I've become so easily submerged in mundane society,
Routine,
Routine,
Routine.
Wake up,
Drink coffee,
Forget to shower,
Walk out the door,
Hoping my world ends.
Taking that locked door to my bathroom at two in the morning,
Holding a knife with a not-so-ever gentle hand,
My mother knocking on the door I have collapsed upon.
Mother,
I am tired,
But you do not get when I say I am tired.
You do not notice my window covered,
My lights turned off,
My settings on the lowest possible in hopes that heartbreak will never find me,
But the bright light from my phone screen is still too bright and the picture of you while I'm scrolling though my feed on Instagram stops my heart.
My lungs no longer work,
My body goes numb,
Tears that I thought I had run out of the night before have returned.
All I feel is the chest splitting pain that seems to resonate through my body,
Trailing down into my fingertips,
Hands tingling from the absence of your hand in mine.
So I roll over,
Turn off my phone,
I whisper a goodnight.

Nervous,
Scared,
Frightened,
And alone.
Physical,
Emotional,
Mental,
And alone.
Exhausted,
Dying,
Destroyed,
And alone.
Frustrated,
Angry,
Tormented,
And alone.
Drowning,
Swinging,
Bleeding,
And alone.
Alone,
Alone,
Alone,
And still breathing.

"Dear God, what happened to you?"

I couldn't look at him.

I couldn't look at him with sad eyes with what was left of my broken heart pouring out of my chest. I hugged myself and kept looking at the ground as the tears fell.

"I fell in love with you. As stupid and as simple as it sounds, It's more complicated and intense than you will ever know. I didn't just fall in love with your laugh or the way you looked at me. It was the passion and drive you had for the future you wanted, the meaning behind every song you showed me, the life behind the eyes of someone who breathed fire into my lungs for the things I loved most; you. That is what happened to me."

Have you ever fallen in love at first sight?
I didn’t believe it could happen,
And then I met you.
You have no interest in keeping me,
I have every intention of loving you.
You weave in and out of life,
Unpredictable,
Unknowing of where you’re going to show up next.
Your smell is intoxicating,
Lingering in the air around me,
Falling asleep next to you with your back towards me.
I’ve tasted you on my lips,
I’ve felt you settle into the bones of my life and yet,
You are so fickle.
I know you are not good for me,
I know you aren’t reliable,
But *******.
Why do I feel like I need you like I need air?

I want to give you the sorry you never gave me,
I want to forgive you for your mistakes when you never owned up to them,
I want to give back all of the memories we had together because they do not hurt anymore.
This is my goodbye to you,
My closure,
My end to this chapter.
I no longer think of you,
The nights welcome me with open arms again,
My bed is a place where comfort now grows.
You do not hurt me anymore,
I do not hide from heartache,
I do not resent you.
I could say thanks,
I could be the bigger person,
It was the pain, though,
It made me inhuman.
I left our broken happiness in a box where I hope you'll find it,
I thought I needed an, "I'm sorry."
You did not make me a better person,
I went through a change,
An altercation.
I will say it anyways,
Thanks,
Not for the drastic changes,
A thanks to myself for finally being able to breathe again.

Maybe two years ago I would feel the need to tell you,
"I love you."
Maybe a year ago I would have felt like you were the breath in my lungs when all of the air was knocked out of me.
Maybe a couple of months ago I realized you weren't good for me.
Maybe a couple of weeks ago when the *** burned in my stomach,
My head over a toilet,
Trying to drink away the thought of you,
I would've called to say,
"I hate you."
It was the alcohol that made me realize that it's unhealthy for me and
So
            Are
                          You.
It's burn made me dizzy after my sixth cup of chugging,
Of forgetting,
Of consuming.
I know I'm over you,
But the nightmares won't stop.

I wonder if truck drivers ever get tired of the open road,
Where cars speed past in angst of their destination,
Red and white lights filling the darkness.
Endless dedication to wearing down the pavement that sticks to the Earth like a bandaid.
I wonder if Earth gets tired of us littering,
Destroying,
Peppering it's surface with blemishes to be reconciled with.
I wonder when humanity is to be torn down,
Another plague roaming the planet ready to be wiped out soon enough.
We don't compare to the locusts,
The frogs,
The volcano ready to wipe us out.
40,000 years overdue,
The ash ready to cover the sky and pollute our lungs until we suffocate.
I wonder what will happen to the highway then,
Maybe reclaimed by the grass that once existed here.
I hope the car lights stop shining,
I hope the truck drivers reach their destination to finally rest from the constant stop-and-go.

Hello, mother,
It's me again.
Remember the monsters you used to check for underneath my bed?
It turns out they are all inside my head.
Mother,
I know you couldn't see them at first,
I couldn't either,
But I heard them whisper,
I heard them chatter,
They listened to me weep.
I don't think you understand,
No, mother,
I know I'm not a child anymore,
But the underside of my bed is all cleaned out,
Yet they still remain.
Empty pockets,
Unopened boxes,
Light switches turned off.
Mother,
Help,
They're intensifying,
They're horrifying,
And they're-
Oh.
You have to go?
With the lights turned low,
You shut your door,
I'm all alone.
What about the monsters, mother?
I know you can't see them,
I know,
But I hear them,
I listen to them,
I no longer weep.
You said they weren't there,
I believed you.
You said it was the nights anticipation,
But it was my damnation.
Mother,
You're still not listening to me.
Yes,
They're inside my head,
I have this sudden feeling of dread,
I have to get this feeling off my chest,
Mother.
Lay me to rest.
That is my last request.

I just want to roll over
and fall asleep,
instead of feeling
the pain crash
over me in waves.

Soft sand and hot beaches,
Wild winds and beach *****,
Towels and sun tan lotions.
A little girl as old as six,
Kicking up broken shells and sticks.
Wind-blown sand ripped across her bare ankles,
Hair a mess,
Full of tangles.
Squishing sand between little toes,
Little miss curious with cheeks of rose.
A toothy grin turned up to the sun,
Laughter ringing through the crowd,
A mother calling out, "Go have fun!"
Long dark hair bouncing through the crowd,
Skipping back to the shore,
Smiling faces all around.
Suppressed memories of a little girl the age of six,
Something remembered,
A mind to fix.

He wore a wolfs skin,
a thick hide of coarse fur.
He hid in the forest and only came out at night,
Stalking amongst his prey.
I saw him at the woods line,
Eyes glimmering like the blue green sky in the midst of a new moon.
The air around him clouded,
The cold silent wind rushing in the space between us.
The still of the night softly whispered to us.
My heart thudded,
My lungs were like bricks under the light of the pale moon sky,
My eyes fixated on his.
My wolf,
My spirit,
The churning howl deep in my belly.

I think we all have our, "Hold on," moments.
Our, "Wait a minute," moments.
The, "Stop and breathe," moments.
I feel like we jump too early,
Or we close our eyes too late,
Premature to seeing something that scares us most,
Unable to get a good look at the attacker.
Take this into consideration;
One, breathe but don't inhale too loudly for your fear will hear you.
Two, stand your ground but don't stand too tall because it's like challenging a broad shouldered victor in the room.
Three, listen closely but with caution,
You might hear something you do not want to hear.
Four, wear your smile like a pendant but if you do beware,
there are people willing to take that smile and brandish it with their own chemicals.
Do not underestimate yourself,
For your body is a gun to which only you have access to the trigger so when you go off, do not blame anybody but yourself.
If you have exposed your trigger to another do not let them anywhere near you for your trigger will be their new weapon of choice.
Five, please don't expect to hand your fully loaded body to another and to be put upon a shelf and shown off because baby,
They will empty you chambers,
They will hold you like a threat,
They will own you like your name isn't on the document that is your skin,
Baby, they will load their own bullets into you like you're the one at fault for firing because you thought handing your body over to somebody you love would not pull the trigger.
I know it is not your fault but the jury does not think so.

It was like an abyss.
Swirling with emptiness,
Consuming.
Black nothingness.
The color was like dark ink on white paper,
Slowly creeping across untouched perfection,
Staining the starkness.
It reminded me of a lionfish,
Slow and poisonous.
Reaching 300 feet,
The sun still breaks the surface with it's tendrils moving with the ocean,
Scattering patterns,
Creatures,
The vulnerable into a predators' jaws.
The deep dark.
Where the fear of emptiness waits,
Where the sun cannot reach,
Rushing water filling your lungs,
Where lungs cannot be lungs but filled with that dark ink.
Your lungs thin as paper,
Stained by the cold currents that continue to fill the empty space.
Paralyzed while everything turns black.

I can’t find the words.
Sometimes it comes out in a jumble,
Other times,
It’s all so quiet.
Help me make sense of the words that seem to fall out of my mouth.
I just need a little help.

Moon-lit slits through ivory curtains,
Windows kept ajar for creeping secrets,
The sound of humming busy bugs.
Beds kept warm through unconscious bodies,
This was what summer was about.
Silly whispers of unkempt persons,
Clothes of disarray,
Tangled limbs and kisses of good mornings,
Time seemingly kept at bay.
Memories never made so none were lost,
Places never visited so never seen,
People of uncharted territory so they were never missed.
Fingers roaming unwanted strangers in the dark,
More silly whispers about a forgotten tomorrow,
No more good morning kisses of today.

Listen to me,
My love,
listen to me.
The urgent call of your name rings through the air,
Like a warning bell being sound off.
Loathe the way you wash over my body,
Consuming the dark corners of self indulgence,
As if you know the culling sways my every move.
If you knew the damage,
The turmoil,
The rot in my brain,
That spreads the more I touch you,
The more I breathe you in,
Poison in the warning bells.
I sink lower into these depths,
How I will rise,
I do not know.
But it begins with engaging with my pain
As motive.
I begin here,
Forfeiting my life to the self indulgence I've denied myself.

We fell in love slowly,
Not at once.
It was never like the movies where we touched hands and softly gasped,
Never a look from across the room,
We didn’t have a magical moment.
We grew together like the leaves reach for the sun,
We gravitated together like magnets with a light pull.
We danced in empty kitchens,
Sleepily grabbing each other in cold nights,
Sharing the oxygen in the space we occupied together in white sheets.
You made me learn how to love my bed again,
Feel safe in an area I wasn’t made comfortable with,
I found myself feeling okay.