Today I decided to forgive myself
for everythings I am not,
for everything I am.

I have lived this lie
for so long I have forgotten
the person who lays behind it.

Tonight, I will pile every ounce of regret,
every pound of hate in the back yard.
Then like a conquered city, I will set it ablaze.

This conflagration will be a
symbol of my self revolution
against everything that says “You can’t”.

Today, for the first time in, a long time
I will say “I can” over and over
till I start to believe it.

Be kind to all kinds
Because you will find
By being kind to all kinds
Makes you the best kind of
One of a kind.

Don't tell you love her if you can't handle her during her bad times
don't tell her you love her if you can't handle her temper
don't tell her you love her if you can only think about her  *****
don't tell her you love her if you only love her looks
tell her you love her if you will be beside her till the end of time

You are the dead air after the joke my friends don't get.
I hear your laugh in the spaces between my family's oblivion and my sanity,
the crevices of pointless conversations.
You are an envelope with no return address.
You are the first person I want to tell about my day.
When my dad asks me how school was, I can only think of how you knew never to ask me that.
They say the nights are hard when no ones in your bed,
but what about when you spend your day in bed because you can't bear another day of activities that don't involve them?
I don't miss you only at 2 am.
I feel the sting of you in the night but you burn me in the afternoons with even greater intensity.
I prefer to be alone because then I only see your smile embedded in my walls rather than the lack of it on everyone else's face.
You are the silence after Wonderwall ends,
you are the lack of " I want to write something like that one day".
I am reminded of you when the girl next to me at a Fall Out Boy concert is sitting on her phone. I know you would scream every lyric with me.
I think that's what hurts, the knowing, especially of the things you aren't here for.
When I cry to "I'm like a lawyer" it's because I will never hear your voice sing it again.
So no, I do not miss you at 2am.
I miss you at 2 pm when I realize that everything I am doing now will never again be done with you

if i stopped eating
people would compliment me
on how thin i am
and when they saw the bruises
they pressed their mouths
shut tight
and just joked about
how clumsy i could be
with their easily uneasy smiles.
i don’t know if they
just didn’t see
or if they just weren’t
looking.
introducing him
to my friends was like
living in a ****** part of town,
having someone over
and hearing the racket of gunfire
outside of your window
and then having them say to you,
“oh, listen,
you can hear the fireworks
from here!”
and being too embarrassed
to correct them.
so maybe i’m not sure
if i believe in fireworks;
bombs are too often
mistaken for them.
but i can distinguish the difference
now, i can, and i will not
teach my daughters that when
he pushes you down in the dirt
and pulls on your pigtails
it’s because he likes you.
because when i covered up
those bruises on my body
in too-light concealer
like i’d never learned how to cover up
love-bites and tired eyes,
there was a voice in the back of
my mind that was telling me
that he only pushed me
down because he loved me.
i do not want a voice
inside my daughter’s heads
that sounds like me,
telling them that they deserve
their split lips.
i will tell my daughters to wear
boxing gloves over their manicures,
i will tell my daughters that
“love” is not an excuse,
i will tell my daughters that no one
is allowed to give you
a black eye and expect you
not to punch back harder,
i will tell my daughters
that you are not weak for getting hurt
because the weak ones
are those who let their anger
and insecurities
manifest themselves
in fists and words.
i will tell my daughters
the difference between bombs and fireworks,
i will tell them that they may sound
the same sometimes,
but fireworks don't ****
innocence.