friendship bracelets and long sleeves,
choking down rice cakes and diet coke,

pinning Victoria's Secret models to my wall and
keeping a tape measure at my bedside,

trying tips form Tumblr,
cold showers,
apple cider vinegar,
copious amounts of coffee
(black, obviously).

wondering why i'm shivering in the southern heat and
feeling proud of it anyway.

when i was 11
i spent an entire weekend pacing
around the backyard
pretending all i had to do was survive

on as little as possible.

living off pond water,
i chopped salads of dead leaves and
whisked red clay into something sweet.

i built a home of twigs and bed of mulch.
i let my body sink into the earth,
bones melting into roots and
skin into the ridges of the forest floor.

caught at the cross road of brittle blue nails and
softened angles,
all i knew was emptiness
and it felt like i was finally beautiful.

i tend to blame my mother for everything that is wrong with me.
the insanity and
insecurity
and addiction to temporarily filling a void meant for
her love.
My heart beats to the rhythm of her footsteps,
counting how many strides
i have left
to wipe away my tears before
she reaches my door.
there is no margin for error in her unspoken expectations.

i used to blame anything but myself for my actions.
i was a compulsive liar for 4 years,
a narcotic addict for 5.
i layered lies like pills
scattered throughout my room,
each finding their way into my mouth
at the wrong time.

i am the only thing that is wrong with myself.
i'm haunted by reflections in the mirror,
echoes of the girl i couldn't save.
i tried to scrub her off my skin,
carve around the edges and
crawl out of this body.
i became too familiar with the salty taste of bleakness,
a bittersweet over dose.
if only the child-locks on
medicine bottles
worked even after the child-like innocence was
lost.

i think
i want to be saved
a little more than
i want to be loved.

it's difficult to reflect on how the people we once clung to
become strangers again,
how we mourn the living.
the way we block them on our phones,
out of our minds,
forcing our brain to forget what the heart still holds on to,
but you can never really mend the imprint on your soul
and forget the person who left there.
instead,
you find mediocre replacements
that don't quite match their outline.

when our lives become so intertwined with someone else's,
you don't forget them simply because
they are no longer there.
you're stuck wanting things to go back to the way they used to be
or to not have happened at all.
those anniversaries,
first times,
intimate moments,
can't go back to being just another Tuesday.
you're haunted by heartache
planted in skeletal corners,
buried in every place you have ever been.
the reminders come at the worst time,
when that song plays in the grocery store or
you're on your way to a first date and
a car passes in their particular shade of grey.
suddenly,
you're sent back into orbit,
or maybe you never left.

i like to think that if you love something
a piece of it will always linger, but
sometimes
the scars left behind are too tender
to risk falling back into the familiar.
someone you spoke to everyday become
someone you have't spoken to since-
i want to believe that we forget each other out of necessity
and not a lack of care.
reminiscing,
you wonder if it was worth it,
what did you do to deserve this?
you want to fast track the pain into healing,
worrying that you're ruined.
defective.
damaged goods.

and when you least expect it,
everything will come to a halt.
the revolving,
spiralling,
self destruction
replaced by a pale pink tinge.
daisies return to nothing more than a flower.
you find new strangers with souls fractured
in the same way as your own,
complimenting collisions,
the type of comfort that makes you wonder
how you could ever have been apart.

after years have passed,
you return to a place you once considered home
and in the distance you see them,

that beautiful stranger you know too well.

the stars dance
behind her mask
holding her together
both helpless and unremarkably dull.

she did not ask for this,
but was made that way,
with sorrow unravelling,
complimenting her
like poets do the night sky.

my mother says i have an addictive personality, that i become addicted to people and places and routines. i become so intrinsically intertwined with them that i can no longer differentiate between the parts of me and the pieces i've picked up along the way. i love obsessively, captivated entirely.

my grandmother gave me a diamond necklace for my 18th birthday. i haven't taken it off since. i wear it all day, at the gym, in the shower, chain strung around my neck like a noose. i will wear it until the clasp digs into the back of my neck, skin melding around it like a tree branch growing through a chain link fence. i will wear it to bits, until there is nothing left. i can't accept jewellery as a gift anymore because how could i ever take off this necklace. i don't know when to give it a rest, let it breathe.

i latch onto people, lose myself in their mediocre attention, and watch as my personality slips through their fingers until i have nothing left of myself to offer. i pick bits of people and places out from underneath my nails, storing them in my bedside drawer with 21 years of cards and broken jewellery.

i am absolutely suffocating.

addiction is a tricky thing like that.
i tell everyone
i've been clean for 4 years.
truth is,
i've relapsed every one of those years and
for once,
i'm not proud of
the things i've done to numb myself.
yesterday,
i got a whiff of the perfume i wore at
the peak of my dependence.
i gave in.
i don't think i really tried to stop myself.
i was looking for an excuse to fall back into orbit,
each day revolving around
getting my next fix,
not this pit in my stomach.

one time,
i took all the pills scattered through my room and
lined them up on
my childhood bed,
counting and
recounting and
counting once more for good measure.

the rattling of pill bottles makes me nostalgic.

i wonder who i could've been without the
sickly sweet lies,
entire lives buried beneath ignorant comfort,
if i had taken the time to know myself
rather than
sitting back and
missing out on who i could have been.

addiction is
living with the reality of rotting flesh and
damaged bones,
yet thinking of it as nothing other than a part of yourself.

addiction is
pushing the pessimism out of the inevitable
because
you're still naive enough to believe that
it won't be the thing to **** you.

i still jolt awake to the sound of your 3am suicide calls.
all that greets me is silence,
my phone isn't ringing but my ears are.

does it haunt you like it haunts me?
hyperventilating
every time i see a car in your particular shade of grey.
wondering why i can't keep liquor down anymore
or why clementines reek of deception,
or how many more night i will have to spend like this.

when i am with you,
i feel like i am dying,
but when i am not,
i fear you are.

i used to love the way you filled me with panic,
waiting for the next time your blood would be on my hands
and your hands would be creeping their way under my shirt.
not afraid of being alone, but
obsessed with the masochistic way you made me feel
needed.

someone asked me why i didn't leave sooner,
truth is,
i don't think i ever really left.

He is a gentle sort of love,
irritatingly fragile fingertips trailing down my side and
forehead kisses.
When we lay together,
rib to rib,
souls brushing shoulders,
i almost believe this life is kind.

He is effortless conversations and
sore cheeks from smiling ear to ear.
Sickly sweet messages late at night and
Constant concern.
I try to read between the lines,
Become a part of the dialogue in his mind.
There’s something masochistic that captivates me
entirely.

He is such a soft and messy thing.
I don’t know how to take care of him.
I would help if I could,
But he never tells me whats wrong.
I fumble for his hand in the darkness.
I want to beg him for a hint, but
that pretty little mouth will ruin this moment.

He stares at the ground when he says he loves me.
His name sits heavy on my tongue,
Each symbol rolling backwards,
Choking me a little more.

He closes his eyes and thinks of her,
While his hands explore every ridge of my body.
I am a reflection of all the ways he cannot love me.
I want to kiss the whiskey from his lips,
Kneel at his pedestal
at the foot where I bleed.

I am going to disappoint him.

i found what some call god
in the hands of my lover,
trembling and
rough and
thick with grime.
i store her kisses behind my third rib,
pathetic and foolishly subdued.

sometimes i wish she had broken my arm
or leg
instead.

i am good but
i wish i were better,
softer,
kinder.

i wish i could do it all over again and be gentle.

it's the day before my driving exam and i still don't know how to parallel park. i'm sitting in the passenger seat as my mother drives to our old church. this space no longer holds me. i stare blankly at the bug smeared across the windshield and hope my silence will be mistaken for submission.

we sit in the right wing of the chapel, half way up the staircase. i make eye contact with the girl i made out with last summer in the youth pastor's office. she is all sour cherries, collarbone tan lines, and the taste of salt water on my tongue. she abruptly turns and whispers something to her friend. the friend gasps, clasps her hands together, and starts to stammer, "Dear Lord.."

love the sinner, hate the sin. this love is choking me.

i know they pray for me over melancholic sermons, stale pizza, and gospel songs. then they write slurs on my locker, ***** me, and try to turn me straight all for the glory of God. i wonder if anyone ever thinks to pray for them.

the pastor starts to list things he considers abominations: bruised avocados, atheists, wokeness, his ex wife. my eyes glaze over.

as a child i learned "lesbian" was a bad word before i learned it was a part of my identity. i was taught that my love is inappropriate, immoral, nothing more than a **** category most commonly searched by the same boys that tell me to rot in hell.

thats when it starts, the same speech i've heard my whole life.

i am a sinner.

my sin is love. my sin is loving so deeply that i was able to reframe my thoughts, overcome the preconceived ideas planted in my mind as a child that preached hatred and shame and passing judgement onto strangers.

for once, i do not stay. i do not endure it. i stand up, fix my skirt, and climb over my mother, her eyes fixed on the pastor, nodding along. i walk out of the chapel and 2.1 miles down the highway. my mother does not come after me.

there are parts of me that she does not know how to love and has no desire to learn how.

my family always jokes that the dog is my mother's favorite child. i watch the way she meticulously brushes her fur, holds her when she cries during storms, and loves her regardless of the mud dragged down the sterilised corridor of the house.

i take comfort in knowing she cares about something, i just wish it were me.

the sound of men's careless mouths
makes me want to
drag a blade around the edges and
crawl out of this body.
throaty breaths sliding down the back of my neck,
calloused fingertips rubbing my shoulder raw.

this body is fossilised in violent memories,
fragments pieced together,
held by apologies i never got and
the closure i've learned to live without.

i don't know how to talk about it
without talking about how much i hurt.
i don't know how to address my scars
without scratching open the wounds.
i don't know how to share my story
without inviting you to become a character in it.

so instead i leave room for
all the stories i will never tell,
all the memories i will never reminisce,
a space eventually filled with,
'i don't know why i'm like this,
it's no big deal,
other people have it worse.

it's not like i have any real reason to feel this way.'