I’m sorry
I’m sorry I pay attention to your wrists
But I do it because you’re beautiful and unbroken and I want the whole world to know
I want everyone too see how beautiful your skin is that your mother and father made, and how perfectly imperfect it is

I’m sorry I pay attention to your wrists
But I do it because I’m scared and worried that I won’t be able to protect you more than a knife ever did
I want you to know how loved you are and how you’re one of the best people I’ve ever met

I’m sorry I pay attention to your wrists
But I do it because I never want you to ever be hurt again; by other people or yourself
I want you to know how strong you are, and that no matter who hurts you, I believe you can pull through because you’re amazing

I’m sorry I pay attention to your wrists
But I do it because every single scar reminds me how I was too late
I wanted to be there more and even now, I continue to miss you and worry constantly, fearing that you’ll disappear from my life and I won’t be able to be a better friend

I’m sorry
I’m sorry I pay attention to your wrists
I don’t mean to do it to draw people’s attention
I know you’ve gotten enough of that already
Quick glances or long stares
I just want you to know
I’m here
And
I
Care

The monster of perfectionism//eats away at me in the bones//and when I finally disappear//no body will ever know

Give me your hand, or at least fake it
No matter what you'll do, I'll still take it
Interlace our fingers like so
I won't let you get cold
Because I won't let go

You're mine, only mine
Always only have been, and I've kept you in line
I won't let anyone else have you
Because only I love you

Her stomach hurts with a stabbing pain
Every day, again and again
No matter what she eats, she throws right up
And her boyfriend wishes it would stop

The doctors only give her pills
They use her as a money mill
He did his research day and night
Each growing day gave him a fright

Her pain grew to volumes she hadn’t ever had
Even to the point where she couldn’t even stand
He held her every day, he held her every night
But nothing in his power, nothing in his might

Could ever, ever help her
And he needed the doctors to learn
That if they didn’t help her, she’d be sitting in an urn
He never wanted that to happen because she’d never ever earned

That which was so deserving, only doing good
The only bad thing ever she’d done, as he had understood
Was break up with somebody, and that was all
So what was this, was this somebody’s call?

And so she’s slowly dying and the doctors do not know
They refuse to give her surgery, they refuse to diagnose
She cries of frustration and she cries out in pain
Every single night, again and again

Airwaves affecting our actions
Dissatisfaction guarantees
Money back disagrees
Buying happiness with ease
What an Amazonian tease

the only difference between *** for lust and *** for love is that you can tell when someone loves you, the way they touch you is gentle and their fingers crawl out ‘I love you’ on your skin

Everything they trace is a tattoo in a different color, everything they touch is another part they carve your body, providing definition, you are a sculpture to them; fragile and vulnerable, delicate and precise

Everything they run their fingers over is a new part of the sculpture piece, everywhere they kiss is highlighting the invisible words on your skin, ’you are beautiful, this is where’

but when someone loves you out of lust

everything is hard, fast, merciless, rough

nothing is careful, it is careless, no treasuring any part of anyone, even though they may act the part, it’s not true love

They don’t highlight you, they kiss you only because they can, they do it for the sake of doing

It’s all about being spontaneous, come, come, come, scream

Nothing matters, everything, everyone, even part is an object, nothing else

You were the first
You were the first person I ever truly loved, the first person I put time and effort into
You were the first person I felt truly understood me and took time to understand me, the first person who I thought listened and cared
You were the first person I fought with because I cared so much, the first person I wanted to kiss in the rain, wear a dress for, live with for the rest of my life, never lose. . .

You
You were the first person who truly broke my heart, the first person who walked away
You were the first one to start harming yourself
You were the first person to give up what we had, to let go, and erase

You were the first person who loved me enough to come back
You were the first person I ever kissed, felt safe around, and
You were the first to help me overcome my acrophobia

You were the first person to question Us, our relationship
The person who realized love isn’t permanent, while I was drifting off in a fairytale land, thinking love was forever
You were the first person who taught me that pain isn’t always bad, because it has the ability to make you stronger

You were the first person to know when I’m me and when I’m not
The first person who cared enough to say, ‘What’s wrong?’ when I’m hiding my face, the one who offered his coat to keep me warm in winter, the first one to wipe away my tears

You were the first person to threaten me
The first person to say ‘I hate you’

You were the first person to ever truly hurt me
And you will be the last

I know you haven’t dealt with mental illnesses throughout your life
You don’t know how to explain or control them
I know you don’t know how to explain or control me

You don’t understand how to react when I say I have anxiety
You don’t understand it isn’t easy for everyone to be exactly like you
You don’t understand that the worst response is ‘Get over it.’
You don’t understand what’s happening
But I forgive you

I know you haven’t done your research
You don’t really care to know more
I know you don’t really care to know more about me

You don’t understand what it’s like to want to die
You’ve never undergone depression; you only know to get past things without something weighing you down
You don’t understand that I can’t simply suppress depression when it rears it’s ugly head
You don’t understand that I need to be alone sometimes
But I forgive you, always

I know you’re scared because you’re used to having control
I know your life shatters with every Emergency Room visit
I know your life shatters with my every visit

You don’t understand why I do the things I do
You don’t understand the things I’ve done in the past
You don’t understand why I lock myself in my room
You don’t understand why I stop talking to you
But I forgive you, continuously

I know you are worried about me
I know you regret not knowing
But I bet you don’t regret not knowing me

I easily forget things
I can’t remember what I had to eat last
I can’t remember a lot of the past
My childhood was blurry because I was always in a hurry
I was always so busy running and playing tag, avoiding all my mother’s nagging

I don’t easily forget things
I can’t easily forget about people like yourself, your tongue, your teeth, your mouth
Fingertips and hands
Your hand in mine was the only sign I need
I’m so easy to read

I easily forget things
I can’t remember all of the songs I’ve heard
Can’t remember all I’ve learned
I can’t recall what I’m wearing
Ignore all the people staring

I don’t easily forget things
I don’t easily forget things like your smile, your eyes, your hair
How when I wake up in the morning, you’re not there

I easily forget things
Who I am, what I am
What I can do, what I can’t

But I can’t forget you

Some girls are like chess pieces, pawns of the world, the gullible
You can move them wherever you want
Push them around like game pieces, the game pieces to Life
No matter the color of the world you choose for them
The square of a world
Either black or white, dark or light
They are like chess pieces and will remain like that
Solid, moveable pieces
If you meet a chess piece girl, don’t take advantage of her

Some girls are like piano keys, sitting there, waiting to get played
No matter the color of their skin, black or white
Or the texture of their voice, their words
Sharp or flat
They are like piano keys and will remain like that
Solid, playable keys that live to sing when their heart is broken by someone who didn’t care about them in the first place
If you meet a piano key girl, don’t play her

Some girls are like one way mirrors, they close themselves off to people and only allow the people they trust to look into them
They’ve probably had a rough past or maybe just some trust issues
But even with one way mirrors you cannot force it to be like a regular mirror, able to see from both sides into the other
She may remain impassive
Don’t force her to show you her secrets, her inner workings, let her remain closed off about the things she wishes not to share
If you ever meet a one way mirror, let them be as they are

If you meet any of these types of girls, let them be as they are
They are, after all, still humans, right?
For the deeper we look in ourselves
The more we try to be different, extraordinary
If we do not have the most important values and virtues of life within
We still can resemble inanimate objects, cold and unfeeling

Learn a lesson from this,
And learn, especially
To really
Live

Would you fight for me
As I went swimming in the darkest sea
Would you know what to do
When there's no chance of rescue
Would you remember what you heard
When I'm drowning, choking on my words
Would you drink in the morning dew
When there's nothing left for you
Would you lay down by my side
And stare up at the bright, blue sky
Would you visit rain or shine
And bring flowers to my shrine
Would you sing me back to sleep
With the very tears you weep
Would you please remind me when
You screamed, 'God, let me in!'
Would you remember me
Locking the door, counting to three
Would you please explain why you cried
When you saw the bathtub, kitchen knife, and I
Would you take the knife out of my hands
And drag me to dry land
Would you please hold me tight
And stay the entire night
Would you remember all the 'I love you's'
And all of the 'I love you too's'
Would you kiss the dirt above my head
Because, my dear, I'm sorry, I'm dead

Know every wrinkle in your skin
Is from when you smiled or laughed
Every time you crinkled your nose
Every time you squeezed your eyes shut
There is elegance in your wrinkles, and I love them all

They mark every day, every time you spent feeling. . .something
Something is better than nothing at all

Make something beautiful, and perfect
2. Break it

You can count the little white pills with a green stripe around the middle
But you can’t count how many times in the last few years your mother looks at you with worry and resignation
Disappointment and consternation

You know she doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t understand that what’s going through your head are thoughts that make you lock yourself in your room and want to never come out

She doesn’t understand that the thoughts in your head are so dark you don’t want to wake up
And every day you struggle to find a reason to wake up, and when you finally wake up, the sun is blazing, burning itself into your sight, burning

Burning like all the secrets and feelings bottled up that are going to spill over at any moment, the bottle of feelings that cracks every night before you fall asleep, the liquid running and soaking into your pillow as you try to blink away your perspective on the world, on your own life

You try to guard your heart with steel walls, try to duct tape the bottle of feelings inside, crashing and thrashing around, being careful around the shards of your glass heart that have cracked and have come loose again  

But duct tape can’t fix everything, especially not your heart, and every time you try to pick a piece of shattered glass heart up, you continue bleeding, pouring from the scars and wounds you tried to sew shut, the things from battle that will never fade

Your mind is an ocean of constant stress, worrying away at your very soul, your desire to live, and all life gave you was a little boat that was called Hope and walked away laughing, saying, ‘Good luck’

Your depression rose up in waves around you, dragging you under breathe in and up breathe out and under again, never calm, and you’re struggling on the outside, everyone can see that, but you feel like you’re the only one who understands enough, why wouldn’t you be able to understand yourself, why can’t you understand yourself, why?

Because your depression left you stranded on an island with no one to talk to, with nothing to do, nothing you want to do

But you did all you could. You wrote notes on whatever you could scavenge, pushed it into a bottle, threw it in the ocean and waited

Waited for the sun to come up, waited for another day, another reason, for living

It was like ordering something online, just when you think it’ll never arrive, it does

An orange container of white pills with a little green stripe around the middle and by then, you realize you’ve survived on an island by yourself, you’ve lived this long, the sun is still shining, birds are still chirping

So you dump the pills into the ocean and watch them float away, smiling and waving

‘Goodbye depression…goodbye’

And when depression comes back, washing over the island, remember that life gave you a boat called Hope and when it walked away laughing, saying ‘Good luck’ you smiled and said ‘Thanks, I’ll need it’

A girl was walking home, and the skies were getting darker, someone had scribbled the skies out with a black marker
The wind kicked up, and the leaves swirled on the sidewalks, above the girl was a circle of hawks
The dreary weather made her hurry home and she bit her lip but she was stopped by a small, stray strip of paper that flattened itself against her chest
She stopped, for a moment, to catch her breath, picking it up, she read:
‘You will soon achieve perfection’
It belonged to a fortune cookie, that should tell her it was lucky, but she didn’t want any of it
‘I don’t want perfection, I’m just wonderful the way I am, any other type of perfection besides self love is just a type of sham’
The shadows behind her began to stir, and she was too late to cover her ears as they whispered to her
‘You’ve put on a lot of weight and you’re slow, you’re ugly enough and that’s such a crime, you should be on death row’
She looked down at her stomach and hastened her gait, she ignored the shadows as she quickened her pace
‘I know I may not look like much, but I have everything I need. Go away, I’m not to be bothered today’
The shadows continued to follow her, almost as a race
They slithered up brick and stone walls alike on whichever buildings she passed and continued to whisper their little lies into her fragile heart, their voices sweet as pies on a summer day, but she ignored them, continued on her way
‘I have friends who love me no matter what I may seem’ she smiles, and the shadows laugh
‘If you say we tell lies, then what is that? Lies of how they don’t pity you dearly because you’re always lonely if not for them, they see you, clearly, and use you up, throw you away like garbage because that is what you are. They tried to fix you, tried to make you a shining star, but you were hopeless. Are useless, because you can’t do anything on your own, you can’t even get it right when you’re alone.’
The sky began to tear, it began to spill it’s tears just as the girl spilled hers - accompanied by the countless fears that everything everyone had told her had been right
She had done her best to ignore the doors that shut when she walked past them, the whispers and giggles that followed her around like monsters in the hall, tried to ignore the walls she built up for herself because she did her best to let people in, never shoving them out, always forgiving because that’s what she had decided to be about
Of the boys that asked her out every day just so they could walk away, hands in their pockets, shrugging and saying ‘Oh, what a loss’
The girls that turned their faces away when she passed because they couldn’t stand to “look at that,” she was dehumanized past the point of any reason, every dig on her because they saw her as a pig, eating slops from the ground, less than nothing, never amounting to something because of her weight
Her loneliness they all attributed to her looks even though her heart had always been in the right place
Don’t you think she knows?
Don’t you think she knows what the world thinks?
Don’t pretend you don’t know she thinks because she’s told, she belongs in a slaughterhouse with the rest of the corpses of animals
That the way she chews is too loud, but no matter what they said no matter what, she was proud, because she was who she was, and she didn’t care, ignored the stares every day because loneliness is a camera that blurs the background to both reality and happiness, and sharply focuses on just you  
She stopped her walk in her galoshes to the front door, stains on her shirt from a food fight where it had really just been her against everyone else
‘I am already perfect’ She said, and she opened the door, wiped her boots on the rug, stepped into her slippers of crimson red, she went upstairs
Her mother was there, downstairs, cooking supper for just the pair of them
The girl sits on her bed for a second
Thinks of what all she could do
Weapons and medications, what to run from, what to overdose on
But supper
But
But supper was done
Her mother called from below and she hurried down because no matter what perfection was, she didn’t care for a moment
She wiped the rims of her eyes on her sleeve, wearing her heart in the same space, always had been in the right place, still determined to give the entire world everything she had
Because today, at least for one more day, she would live

Yowza, when I met you I was knocked off of my feet
Must’ve been that semi that had a brush with me
That was the beginning of our life together
A brush with death through the heather

Yowza, our second date
Was just as great
We were chased by a murderer
I was jealous - I’d never heard of her

Yowza, we locked our doors extra tight
As we got into bed that night
The both of us didn’t get much sleep
And the next day, we didn’t have much to eat

Yowza, I think she might’ve been the crazy ex you’re always talking about
The one that has our house programmed into her GPS route
She left a human head on our front porch
For reasons unknown, it was strangely scorched

Yowza, you closed the door quickly and brought it inside
The voice within me told me to hide
You smiled at the lifeless sockets
And you went and got a box of small rockets

Yowza, in the backyard you began a Satanic ritual
Telling me to sell my own soul
With a blood sacrifice, you opened a portal to Hell
I thought for sure this was a tale I wouldn’t be living to tell

Yowza, how did it all come to this?
I refused to sacrifice the head but you insist
I hope this proves my love to you
As I lay in the center of the circle for proof

        Yowza, the head began to glow and vanished in flame
When Satan came up, he spoke your name
“This sacrifice is not enough for me.”
And you turned to the only thing you could see

       Yowza, I resigned myself to being shoved through the gates of Hell
      All’s well end’s well
      Almost everything except
     You got back together with your ex

     Yowza, roses are red and I am blue
    One day, I’ll drag you down here, too

Abuse me, abuse me, now you're gonna lose me

When you have sat so long with a dinner knife and fork poised around your neck, how can you not expect to be eaten?

If your stomach growls and you are told all your life to remain silent, how do you know when to start speaking for yourself?

When your ribs practically carve themselves, pushing into the soft canvas of your skin, screaming to get out, and you have been told you do not deserve to eat - how do you know when you should?

How did you ever know you had the option to begin with?

And when you figure it out, how can they not expect anything less than anger? How can they not expect fear, distrust?

They can't seem to decide what you are.

You've been treated as a kenneled hound dog all your life, been told that baring your teeth was wrong, been told that you bark too loudly, sit too widely.
You've been treated as a show dog, led around on the arm of someone, never to look, never to breathe, never to think. To start dogfights. They laugh in their booths with money raised in clenched fists - it's entertainment and their bet is on whoever's teeth is the sharpest but both of you have had your teeth filed down for generations. Still, you fight, because it is all you've known.

You've been trained to not even be perceived as human, to not even perceive yourself as human, had orders barked at you your whole life but when you try to protest, you're told that you are arrogant and selfish.

Even then, some of them will continue the slow march of bringing the silverware ever closer, metal scraping against the table because they see the fight as a challenge. They like to play with their food, it's tag and you're it. You can pretend all you want that you're the main course, the whole meal, but that doesn't change that you will still, in the end, get ripped apart. Ripped to shreds, to pieces, violated even further when you thought it could never happen. That it could never get worse.

People tell you that they are just as much victims. They need the money from betting to survive, even if it's from betting on losing dogs with dull teeth and dull eyes. They tell you that you need to love them more and they will be kinder. That they will stop treating you the way they have. That they will stop being entitled.

But all you've ever done is loved, loved with your entire being, and nothing has ever changed.

I'm not a game
So please don't play me

Wrap your arms around me like silk
And wipe away the stars that fall from my eyes

Take a breath and just-
Pause
And think and wait
Just remember, it’s not too late
You can solve this in a myriad of ways
I promise