Drops of water collide
with the paper,
a casual rendez-vous
with the ink.

Colors run,
expanding from the
thin lines of my heart,
blurring my intentions.

A girl with arms and legs
A brain
A liver
A heart
 
A broken one
The liver I mean,
Not the heart!
Lost, but never in-pieces
 
She doesn't personally own one,
Or she does, it was stolen you see
The one she has now, she loaned
Just until she finds her own!
 
Though the time she uses to pay back her loan
Is time away from finding the stolen core
She pays through her liver
And her innocence
 
Speculating where her heart actually went
She gradually rewinds her life
To see when it disappeared
 
Maybe it was beaten out of her by her father,
Or flushed out when she put her finger in her throat.
Maybe she left it with her virginity,
Or she threw it away with her dignity?

My little blue dress hangs in my closet now, and my black ribbon is around my wrist and not my hair. I've cut my long blonde hair shorter, and my childhood fantasies are a mere haunting that reach to me at night, reminding me of who I am.

I once dreamt of you as a wonderland, a place of fear and magic and horror that I would suffer a thousand lives to feel a moment of.

Then I grew older, and recognized that this wasn't a wonderland; or perhaps, it was, but not quite the wonderland I was thinking of. This wonderland had a name, a name that came with frightening connotations.

Bipolar.

Those fantastical moments in which I was flying, in which nothing but the flowers could sing with me as I danced in a purple field of wonder. Where the bluebells kissed my hands and the crochet was with hedgehogs and the pond behind my house was much more than it seemed.

Bipolar.

Each corner I turned in which a shadow hid behind, shadows I could only see and that chased me through the darkness unto the stairs and into my bed, holding me tight and strangling me until I woke up and realized everything was ok.

Bipolar.

Each friend I made as a child at night that wasn't tangible, though we shook hands and danced and read books together as if we were real. As if anything was real.

Bipolar.

It was a game I was playing that I didn't know was hardwired into my brain, that this wasn't just Grace and her wonderland, it was something darker, deeper. But alas, that's how it is as you age, isn't it?


Wonderland gets darker with each visit, and with each day it grows closer to me. Its terrifying how it may begin to affect others, others i love, but there's not much I can do, is there?

My one wish is that there will not be another blonde little girl, with my green eyes and my blue dress, finding herself stumbling into a wonderland that she cannot handle.

If it means I can never have the one thing I want more than anything, then I am willing to sacrifice everything to protect that little girl.

I will never lead another little girl into wonderland.

Never.

Its a heavy feeling, on your heart, when you realize your manic ravings have some harsh truth to them.

I am dangerous.

The pills help for now, holding my insanity deep within, but what when I grow tolerant? What when they stop working? What when i forget, like today?

I could hurt people. Break them, tear them, maim them, **** them. Maybe **** me. Its devastating and terrifying to realize the monster under your bed is none other than the reflection in the mirror.

You were once a little girl, Grace, full of dreams and hopes and promises of forever and rainbows and smiles and happiness. But then experience and biology kicked in and you became... this.

You would be so scared of this, little Grace, so scared of the hallucinations and the voices and mood swings and the hatred and the sadness and the anger. You are using so many ands and you would hate yourself for it, you do hate yourself for it, but you have bigger fears at the moment.

You're going to hut every person you love. You'll try not to, little Grace, but you're going to. Every day you forget, you get closer to becoming the monster you know you are in your heart. The one who doesn't know right from wrong and is hyper and screams. The one who is killing herself slowly from the inside out without even trying.

You hate her, Grace, the girl you grow up to be. Parts you love, the sane parts that love so deeply it hurts and cares so much for others, but the parts that could **** everyone? You hate that.

God help me I'm coming undone.

My wonderland is terrifying. I'm terrified of it, of me, and you will be too, Grace. Never forget who you were.

Its the only possible way you may be able to survive this, to survive wonderland.

Its our only hope, you and me, and we have to take it or everything we love?

It'll die.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

The voices are ringing in my ears, a thundering conundrum I have yet to figure out. He's screaming, no he's whispering, oh I can't tell anymore, from a thunder to a shiver its all the same to me I'm deaf I'm blind I see with echolocation I am a bat in its cave begging to see the light though I know it burns.

Each sentence blurs to the next a word a whisper oh there I go with whispers again did I forget a comma, some punctuation? Sorry my mind is a mile a minute when it feels such frustration in its bones that it cannot feel its toes anymore.

Wait, my brain doesn't have toes.

Nonsense. I am practically a wonderland character with all my nonsensical drivels about love and mania and speed and tears and lust and death. Give me a hat and I'm practically batty, my good sir. I will make a march with my hair and wish you a very merry un-death-day, or however that goes.

Falling down my rabbit hole, no my cave, I'm a bat, remember? I have found a way to fall sideways right into your heavy arms and you stare at me aghast, for I am not who you once thought I to be. There is a face for each hue, each color of my pigments, I'm a leaf, each season brings out a different color, well unless your coniferous but that is besides the point and very much more about needles, but I digress.

Wait, I'm a bat. What is this nonsense about leaves?

Sit down at my table and I will explain it all to you dear, how my brain is wired like a ticking time bomb, ready to set off at any moment, particularly if my pretty little pills aren't butterflying in my bloodstream, those little friends of mine simply forgetting a swim day.

Funny how one day without them can be average or it can be, well, this. Quite mad, isn't it? Tick tock, tick tock. The mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck twelve and the bat swept down and the mouse is left to rot. Tick tock, tick tock.  

Give me a cat or two and then there's a name for me, but I bet your bottom dollar every single one is a chesire, grinning, tormenting, taunting, killing. They reflect the little demons in my heart.

Have you ever been so afraid of your own reflection, or the butter knife at the end of your table, and how it might just slip into your fingers at ever the wrong moment and you might regret your next action for the rest of your life? I've only once or twice, but it was a once too many, and now I'm terrified of that little butter knife resting on the end of my table, taunting my demons, knowing how much I fear them.

Should I be a true ****** and enter a hospital? No, I will never learn honesty, all these thoughts kept up in my pretty little head will never leave my pretty little head, they enjoy their tenancy too much. Just pop the pills, Grace, darling, and everything will be ok.

A few more hours, and then I can be reunited with my dear little friends, and like the good little bat I am, recoil back into my cave, and let the butterfly angler I wiggle out be the beautiful front everyone sees. No mad hatter, no march hare, no alice, not even a bat. A pretty butterfly that everyone loves.

If only they knew what this butterfly had behind her; a cave full of wonderland.

And everyone should be afraid of that.

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

I shouldn't of told
you that I couldn't live without you,
because I'm still here.

Funny how a song I hate could be thudding in my ears with a resounding pound that only I can hear.
Just a kiss on your lips in the moonlight.
I don't know what it means, if it means anything. But for a moment again I feel alive, for the first time since that spring in which my heart grew three sizes and was crushed simultaneously.
Just a touch of the fire burning so bright
I'm terrified of you. I haven't been so scared of someone in awhile, because once again I realize I could fall for someone. I could really easily just dance, trip, and fall into you.
I don't wanna mess this thing up
And then you held my hand and walked off into the moonlight, and I know its the beginning and an end and an everything to anything.
I don't want to push too far
You've made me magic again, with intoxicating tendrils of texture running across my tongue, texture of words to create something beautiful once again.
Just a shot in the dark that you just might, be the one I've been waiting for my whole life
I will never know in the present where this will go, but for tonight, this is enough. You are enough,  I am enough.
*Just a kiss goodnight

there are people and things
that take the pain away.

who tell you you're pretty
and kiss your lips until you believe.

who don't keep quiet when they see
your treasure map wrists.

who talk until 2 in the morning
when you need a distraction.

but even the most beautiful
stories have a last page,

and the ones who fixed the pain
become the ones who cause it.