first heartaches
but not an innocent
and gentle
introduction
to sorrow

first heartbreaks
of fists and claws
tearing fibers away
memories of stumbling, gripping
the threads together, so far from sewn

stitched heart strings
together, or tried to,
fire came, not right
but right on time, and blazed through
the twines and lines

first heart pains
not kind or lenient,
or considerate of youth.
ripped and burned,
and drained,
and i had only a child’s blood to bleed.

here, another night
writhing
I should be asleep, comfortable
I should be… normal
instead I writhe
or I lie so ******* still trying to pretend
trying to will it away
inside I am clawing to get out of this body
inside I picture myself flailing, jerking,
thrashing, punching, kicking
I visualize breaking my own bones with how hard I fight the pain
I see it in my mind, I let loose and walk away bloodied, bruised, all cut up… but I won.
in my mind.
in reality I have no energy to thrash.
i lack the spoons to fight,
and this,
is an unwinnable war anyway.

so I lie still.
or I writhe, sigh, and cry.

wait
where did you go?
all I can see is your ghost
but you swore that you loved us
so, so, so

please
tell me that you’re still with me
just out there somewhere spinning
even if you’re far from yourself
please don’t let that news hit me

help
I’m over here always angry
and you’d never even thank me
give you every chance you’ll take,
and you’ll always leave me hanging

maybe it’s not fair
I could never not care
I’ll curse your name
while I carry your pain
and a mostly silent rage
god, take us to an enlightened age
not your violent grave

I think it's really good that I can't write poetry anymore
Or is it?
Am I fixed or am I numbed?
Did she pull all the broken glass out of my mouth?
Did I swallow it?
Can you run from the wreckage and fall apart in the very first place you ever felt safe,
Does that make it okay?
My heart is a tragedy
Always sad, always awake alone at night
And I would not change it.
But
Why didn't I ever dream of anything?
Did I forget?
Jesus Christ
I didn't build this life for me
My heart was torn and stitched and ripped and sewn and sprayed blood over half the country before I sat here in one place to say
Am I fixed?

I wonder what you've told them about me
I wonder if you told them the whole thing hurt like hell

I run my hand across my skin and expect to feel my old body, it's a shock sometimes
This one is heavier, stretched, scarred and permanently bruised
And I don't know what I'll see when they flash the lights
But lately I'm stuck in the idea that we never fit together very well
It's like pushing two wrong puzzle pieces together and realizing it makes a better picture than the one on the box
"Robin's better than the perfect girl. She's real."
But how many times do I have to make the worst decision?
For once I want to be something... Quiet. Content. Restful.
How sobering it would be to sit and think
"things are good. this is nice. I will never
need anything else."

Relationship to relationship
You know how you tie a song to a person
I lost so many songs
Movies and memories
Because you lose the person and the music hurts
But then i met you
And every lyric I ever heard was about you

On days like today
I feel like the hurricane and also everything it destroys
On days like today
I know most of the damage started a long time ago, started slowly, before people took notice
I know that when you swallow so much
You eventually twist and turn and rage over the sea
Smash into, inhale, devastate everything in your path
On days like today
I am so so so sorry

on a day that seems designed to make my arms feel a little emptier than all the rest
on a day i am supposed to celebrate those i am most envious of
on a day when i face my biggest challenge of being kind and selfless, i think i fail
because today i can't sacrifice my feelings to rise above, it hurts too much



Happy Mother's Day, 2019

I'm going through something
It comes with a lot of emotion and music and thinking and writing (most of which doesn't make total sense yet)
And, mom, I will be fine
I just need space
I need to not talk
Or I need to talk too much
I want to be who I want to be - I'm ready
I'm done sitting and thinking about it
And mourning
I don't want to grieve anymore
I need to let myself be hungry
I will forgive myself even if it came last
I'm going through something
And it comes with... Well, a lot

I hope you're okay
It's not like you not to fight back
But I don't have the right anymore
So I hope somebody in your corner
Is holding your hand and
making sure your eyes match your words
I really hope
Someone is looking out for you
Like you looked out for me

i would say, "here i am again"
but it seems to be a different place every time i fall down here.
maybe like a house you've been visiting since childhood but each time you find it, it's on a different street, it's a different color, full of different furniture.
i'm in it again.
i don't remember how.
it's a blur of empty words
too much sleep
miles of cigarettes
and a need to bleed.
it occurs to me there's no one to drag me out alive this time.

a hollow in my stomach
sometimes i feel sick
a hole in my heart
maybe it was always there
a clock that only i can hear ticking
i wish i could say that i didn't know
it was possible to want something so badly it hurt but i have felt it before
just never so much of it
my tongue wants to speak cliches into repetition madness
my eyes want to cry an ocean up to the moon
my head gives me useless ******* logic

my heart wants you more every day

The world always made me feel like I am
too much, too fast
And maybe that's just really unfair
Maybe the only one I should apologize to
is myself
For saying, "shh, keep that in. They're not ready for that."
I am not sorry I lived too much, too soon. I am not sorry I know too well what I want and need now.

I am a house on fire
I am a cracked windshield waiting for a bump in the road
I am ***** clothes in the corner of the bedroom
I am a respiratory system full of water


You think your suffering friends never reached out because they thought you wouldn't understand, wouldn't be there for them...
No. The reason they didn't come to you
is because there was nothing you could do.

she understands my heart
she is forgiving
she is kind
she holds me when I don't know why I'm crying
she listens while I try my best to explain why I'm scared, or why I'm anxious, or why I'm sad, or why something means so much to me
and then she never forgets to say, "I'm always here, if you want to talk more"
she has the best taste in music
she got me in the habit of taking my medicine every day
she takes care of me, and pretty much everything else
she cleans the litter box when I'm in too much pain, even though she hates dealing with ****
she even deals with my crazy family

I love her because
she encouraged me to go to all the doctors when I was scared and in denial that I was getting sick
and now
she drives me to every appointment, she sits with me,
waits with me,
and then sometimes she speaks for me because she knows what it sounds like when articulation fails me, and my words get all caught up in my brain, confused on which order to come out

I love her because
she's my good feeling
she makes my stomach flip
she's my favorite smell
she kisses me with soft lips and care
she has little ears and freckles and the best **** smile you've ever seen

I love her because
when I was awful, she loved me
when I was lost in the darkest nights, she made my mind a better place

I love her because I used to spend weeks in storms of dark, listening to sad music and writing sad poetry

and now I write things like this
and listen to ridiculous happy fun music with her and we sing like fools
and she says "thanks for doing life with me"
and I have never been more at peace

Haven't you seen me sleep walking?
I've been holding your hand.
Haven't you noticed me drifting?
Oh, let me tell you, I am.
Tell me it's nothing.
Try to convince me that I'm not drowning.
Oh, let me tell you, I am."


This might be the worst I've ever felt

You don't have to be vulnerable.
You don't have to keep putting your heart in the hands of those who have been reckless with it.
You don't have to stay to feed their egos and wait for crumbs to fall your way.

Pick up all the pieces of your heart from around her feet, gather and hold them close; run, hide, glue them back together when you're strong enough to endure the cuts on your fingers
from dealing with
such sharp shards.
You don't have to be sad forever.
You can choose something else;
you can run.

You can choose something else;
you can run.

Run when the halo burns your eyes.
Run when she lets you hit the ground.
Run when she is a different person more often than she is who you love.
Run until you can lift off the ground and fly.

Spin around, keep running, run around until you fly off the ground. Be a hurricane. Rain your aching, screaming, built-up agony all over her house. Shake out all the tears she pulled out of your heart, wring yourself out and let it pour out of you as you whirl away. Leave devastation in your path if you must; she should have thought of the wreckage when she turned you into this.

Be strong, be all the good that you are, be all of it for only yourself, exhale every bad feeling you got from this, and move on.

you fall down, you have no choice but to get back up.
when you get back up, you lose something; a piece of your strength, energy, will... something. keeping on is not free.

you spent the day in bed. too exhausted to get up. you're so sick of bed. your body feels angry for being so still. you just didn't have it in you to move around today. this is fatigue. it isn't fair. in fact, it's cruel.

there is no feeling good anymore. there are what some poor souls refer to as "good pain days" which is just another way of saying
"I know what it's like to be in such bad pain that you want to die, and I'm just thankful today's pain was at least not the worst it has ever been"

you're on no kind of schedule. it'd be a blessing just to eat and sleep at normal times, with some regularity. you feel like crap all the time. you gain weight and lose muscle. you feel weak and heavy.

lie in bed. peace of bedtime is a foreign concept,  your body aches to be comfortable, and you may doze off for 3 seconds before jerking awake by inconsiderate muscles that don't really care that you haven't had a solid hour of rest in 2 days.

pills are a blessing and a curse. relief and side effects. they allow you to rest and they mess with your brain. you'll get so sick of taking pills and you'll begin to hate them for needing them.

the very best you see in your future is surviving. that's what fibromyalgia is. your job is getting through the days of pain and exhaustion, the physical and mental detriments that come with it. your life is a fight, and you are so, so, so, so tired of fighting. you always, always, always feel you have no more fight left in you.



you're 21 years old and you fondly and bitterly remember a time (not too long ago) when you thought some things in life would just be givens; career, family, adventure, accomplishments.... health.

you're 21 years old and you learn that you get none of the above. you're too tired, you hurt too much, and this disease seems to only get worse... it seems to have taken everything from you

and then it takes some more.

"from the second that i was born, it seems i've held a loaded gun."

fourteen. ts, i choose my ******* boyfriend over you. you were always there for me. i never say sorry.

fourteen. em, you make me feel special. i make you feel stupid for liking me. you spend three years trying, i spend that time acting like a *****. i never said sorry.... for this.

fifteen. tdl, i lie to you over and over, mostly when i promise to be careful with my own life. i say sorry and i mean it a little. selfish. ******.

fifteen. al, life became about me in the worst way. i apologize two years later, two years too late. all i talked about was me and my ****. you had ****, too.

fifteen. jm, i hold your hand to a kitchen burner. this is the worst thing i have done and probably  will ever do. i was so tired of your hands. i spill mouthfuls of apologies to you for a year. i am still unsure if i owed you a single one.

fifteen...... you deserved better and my **** choices ruined your chances. i am so
so
so
sorry.

sixteen. em, i use you all year. i use you when i want and throw you away when i want. then it happened, you were thrilled, i was terrified. i fix my problem and simultaneously destroy hope in you. i said sorry and didn't mean it at all. you hate me to this day and you should.

sixteen. di, i make you a million promises. i find out everything you want in life and i pretend to be that. you hit me in a parking lot for this. i still like to pretend you never happened.

sixteen. al, bathroom floor. tears. panic. phone call. terror in your eyes. i am still so sorry. selfish.

seventeen. im sorry to myself for a million things. i wake up when i find true love and realize how reckless i have been. i feel like apologizing to everyone.

nineteen. mt, i am two years into this with you and still my heart breaks for her.
i don't dare tell you.
it'd break yours.

twenty. mt, i have to follow my heart. i have to run to her and let you take the fall. you were my best friend. i am so very sorry.



the hurt ive caused haunts me every day of my life.
the guilt i feel are weights of varying impossibilities.
i don't think i will ever learn to let go.

I feel guilty being reminded
Of all the many moments my heart ached for you
While I was supposed to belong to someone else.
I feel guilty
For also feeling something so right
About my entire existence yearning for you when you were a thousand miles away, years in my past. Your words were ghosts in me,
I had finally, finally forgotten your scent unless I tried really, really hard,
(Your smile, I admit, was branded in the chambers of my heart. It would never leave me, and I never wanted it to,)
and I had everything my brain thought I needed then,
But I didn't
And my heart and soul knew it.


In the most honest of dawns and dusks,
Logic forsaken me, my heart and I packed up and ran to you.




Is the wrong thing really the wrong thing if you do it for the most profound, paramount of all reasons?
Would the people we hurt forgive us if they felt the depth and truth of our reasons?; of this love? If they knew it was so meant to be, we may as well have our very own North star in the sky to guide us together always, a stack of novels and poetry and art that this love inspired?


It's a funny kind of guilt.
I believe I did wrong...  I do.
I also believe I would do a million times worse for you.

how soft you spoke
when you asked, "really?"
as i held the ring out in front of you,
or how my heart was in my throat,
and the warm relief spilling over me when you said you would.

   two days later when we slept all day,
woke in the dark to a heap of problems,
we solved them and i felt we could do anything together. we spent hours and hours through the night together. just together. cold breezes hitting us, the world was asleep, my heart was quietly admiring yours and you laughed so much that night.

   the way you look sleeping next to me now. the sound of soft snoring always calming me. my advice the world would be, "find the one whose snoring you find perfect when you never even imagined something like snoring could be precious to you"

I will love you for the rest of my days and beyond. I will always save you. You make me believe in life, love, and higher powers. After all, this had to have been God-willed fate. I believe something more powerful than us created us for one another.
I will always want to give you everything, I will always take too many pictures of you, and tell you all the ways I find you perfect, tell you every part of you I have fallen in love with you. You may not believe me, and you may get oh so tired of my doting, but I will continue to try to convince you that I love every single piece of you, your heart, your soul, your mind. Were you made that way for me? Or was I made to love you?
And I will never forget these moments, or the beautiful million before them, because they're everything. You're everything to me.

i've always been a liar.

did you know i can't lie to you?

i cant do it.

i am a wonderful liar, i think i was born with it.

my talents are wasted on your captivating soul.

i can't lie to you, it hurts me. i don't know how.

how did you make me feel these things?
i honestly thought i was some kind of sociopath,
and you came along and made me feel.

i don't think i could ever comprehend
the wildfire you incited in my heart
or why.
i can't really know
how you took a heart that never worked right
never beat logically
always beat down
and held it in your hands.
(you keep it there, you pump life into it steadily)
i won't ever experience proficiency
in the field of life-ending, life-starting, life-altering
love.
all i understand now is all i understood at seventeen when i kissed you;
that i would die without you
that no one could compare
that my heart was yours for the taking, i was forever yours for the breaking, you could leave me shaking and aching and my world quaking.
the profound inferno rages and blazes on,
leaving me always smoldering in your absence,
while my heart roars with yearn and appreciation
for the light.

I've never been good at being alone.
Never.
I've always needed.
Needed and needed more.
Why can't I just be alone?
Why is it worse now?
She tries. Tries more than they did. She soothes.
I know I need too much.
Nothing's ever good enough.
It's true.  
It's inside me, and I feel it, and I ignore it, and it wrenches at my organs.
Why can't I be alone?

I knew I was being pathetic,
desperate,
but God, I just wanted to talk to you.
I just wanted to hide in that small, dark room forever, listening to your voice.

All that I need, all I've wanted for years, and even during the lost times, you were pressed under my skin like pure, warm aching. Had to go through it, we say now, had to lose each other entirely then to be heavenly entangled now.
Such great heights only after sunken deep lows.
Let me tell you, angel, I am certain you were made for me, and goodness, believe me, I could never leave.
We stood the test of time.
We endured the distance.
We have conquered demons.
You and I fought a ****** war, and hell if we didn't win it.

sit down, i could show you the slivers of skin replaced with scar tissue. i bet you'd think i was pretty ****** if i were to say that tonight i want to cut just to cut. i am not sobbing, shaking or sinking. in lieu of you, i want that blade.
maybe one of the truest things that could be said about me (if anyone knew me well enough) is how i never do so well when i have nothing to place my too intense heart inside of. and i might feel like it's shaking in my own ****** hands, but maybe i am daydreaming and maybe if you look close, you could see something the knife gave me.

you saw me in the dark, the night i asked you not to touch me, and i have twisted fantasies, and i know this side of me so well that i was sickly amused when i found the blade in the bathroom drawer that i had been searching for that night.

It took me a long time to love myself, and now I realize, I thank all the higher powers, I thank myself, and I thank those who helped ***** me up along the way, because my ocean-deep scattered head and my stitched scar-tissue heart are my two most prized possessions, and I've just about fallen in love with the way my heart breaks over and over and keeps beating

she isn't here right now

I would honestly do anything for you
youre the first and only I can say that to
there are loads of things I can't express
like that I love you more than I could even suggest

we finished a long goodnight kiss
you rested your hand on my hip
i could never thank you enough for never holding me too tight
yet i found myself wishing, hoping...........praying
Please, never let her let me go
Please, if you could give me this one thing
Please, keep her by my side
i dont pray, i dont believe
but i was asking someone
i was begging for any being more powerful than myself
i prayed for her to keep me always
i prayed to have her goodnight kiss
and her beautiful hands to always hold me
for my love to never let go

my heart ached
lament of displacement
while i was committed
to someone who was not you
that was wrong
i was in the wrong place with the wrong one
you were in the wrong place because you were anywhere without me
i get that we have to make mistakes to learn and i get that we have to have the bad to appreciate good and i really, really understand why we had to go through that time where the whole entire universe felt wrong
i could sit for hours in one place inside my head
there were times you were a hundred thoughts
out of ten in my mind
and i could lie in the wrong bed and only want you
and cry for you and know how it would never be okay again
because i knew, i was so certain,
i would never have you again


you told me, last night, in my bed, right where you belong, you told me
you were so happy
and your eyes were so soft and warm, looking at me like you meant it,
and your smile, your smile was the stuff of dreams

maybe you'll get lucky and you'll be someone like I used to know who gets to say "nothing really bad had ever happened to me"
maybe you'll get lucky and be someone like I thought I was who gets to say "yeah, it was bad, but I'm fine"

maybe you'll be thirteen and it'll all happen way too fast.

maybe you'll be fourteen and perfect will go downhill so steeply you'll break every bone as you tumble down.

maybe at fifteen you'll learn loss like you shouldn't have known for decades, and then spend your time convincing yourself not to die.

maybe you'll be sixteen and endure a goodbye so horribly complicated that you won't be able to make sense of it, and you'll give up trying. maybe that year you'll find your favorite hello.

maybe seventeen brings your fiercest love and your biggest fall and your hardest crash. seventeen leaves you crawling, bloodied, into the safest place you can find.

maybe then you're questioning that this isn't the way it should be. maybe you're asking why it all had to happen to you.



maybe you spend three years in your own head, trying to escape, numbing yourself over and over, and for your own sanity, blocking everything out.

eighteen.

nineteen.

twenty.



maybe you'll be twenty-one when it all finally hits you. maybe the "you're too young for this" you heard at thirteen finally makes sense. the "are you sure you're okay?"'s of fourteen will echo in your head. you'll hear your fifteen year old self shrugging off the shock of "you're sure handling this well". and you will know now you never handled it at all.

you will feel it all at twenty-one, a little more every day. maybe your mind was protecting you until now. maybe now you're thinking you can handle it. you can't. you aren't ready. you wish it would go away.

maybe it will.

there will be days your hands feel weak and it will hurt your legs to walk forward, your skin will feel ready to break and your head will feel so heavy on your shoulders. there will be moments you talk yourself into giving up, there will be moments when you settle for the best you could do. there will be lovers that make you feel like you already gave up, there will be one lover who will always love you best. she'll make your skin stronger. there are going to be days and sometimes longer stretches of weeks and months when you will crave nothingness and you will feel like you have failed when you have not. you don't have to always give your best. it's okay that you don't have the energy to sprint towards perfection every day. you are sad and you are loved and you are lovely though you'd disagree, you are in pain and doing your best to be okay. it's okay.

You found me entangled in nothing after you lost me a few years ago. I'm so content for the first time time to be blissfully existing in your love, I'm so finally happy, living between the moments when we both need each other and the ones we comfortably know love. I'm yours no matter how long you are mine. I can hope for eternity while my heart knows you'll never leave.

Burning gas and my lungs is better than sitting alone with all the empty time to think
Think about the tears and layers of neosporin that you went through trying desperately to make the lines heal without a trace
Trace the lines of her face on the cold screen because it makes you feel closer to her somehow
Somehow you're carrying on, you feel weight of the universe on your shoulders and you're too dizzy to stand much longer
Longer than the miles between seems to be the time until you next have her in your arms
Arms that are weary and sore and cut up, but they still pull and reach and grab and push
Push everyone away until you're alone again, bridges are what you're best at burning.

distance
depression
desperation

She's got a bit of understanding of me in her pocket, though she's never treated me like Margo Roth Spiegelman or Alaska Young, but I so appreciate that she knows I am not ordinary either. She won't ever know the ways that I love her for loving me when I fall short. Over time, maybe I can make her understand that I spent three years being treated like a normal girl, my broken shards swept aside and the rest of myself glossed over with a simple layer of facade and denial, and I embraced it, and it took something from me quite incredibly devastating. I spent my growing up years being treated like there was no hope for me. But she loves my heart, knowing all it's debilitating flaws. Though I was once some terrible, selfish child, she loved me through it. I am miraculously confident that even one day when she comes to know how much strength it took to learn to speak on the phone without wanting to cry, and that I still have a lot of trouble looking other humans in the eye, and almost every day, I smoke cigarettes and listen to loud music until I give myself headaches, and I just really don't care... I believe she will still love me. She doesn't see me as weak as I see myself. I hope she knows I call her angel because looking back now, I know she's saved me a hundred times over. While I'm not quite sure yet how to exist in a love like this, the way love should have always been, I am eternally grateful.

Leaving cigarette ashes all up and down I-40 for nearly 900 miles. I just got done breathing you in enough to last me for 31 days and all I want is to go back to sleep in the curve of your body. I can't help but feel this drive would go much faster if you were in the seat to my right, but I'll keep barreling down this road, alone, headed home, but I'm not sure I can call it that it that, because no one there understands that I didn't take my heart with me when I pulled out of the hotel parking lot, and I'll never know the right words to explain why  I am so low when I return with the smell of your embrace still on my clothes, and I can still feel your flesh burning fresh in my mind. And I know that my mother is worried about my heart but I can't figure out how to make her realize that this is different, this is it, you're it, you're mine, you are my future. And I know better than anyone that you were always meant for me. Distance is not for the untrue love. The truth is, angel, I am feeling again and that is because of you. I feel every moment I am not next to you and, oh God, how I feel every second in your arms. Darling, I want you to know how much I hate the space between us. At least as I head back to Carolina, I know I'll be searching for a place we can hide away together. I can feel the miles growing and hurting but I also know that we can be strong through them and through the time we're missing. You are my whole heart, you are my girl, my world, forever.

I'm trying really hard to be okay with what's been done to me
I feel more okay when I can do the things it takes to be okay
I feel more than okay when I'm going 100 miles an hour down the road I grew up on
I'd feel ******* great if I could destroy my body a little bit more
That's all I want
I just want to be okay
I want to forget

every single time
i falter and stumble around
it's like i can feel a stopwatch resetting.
"it's been zero days since my last mistake"
it's like that timer needs to get somewhere
somewhere specific
before i can really begin.
it might never get there,
i might never be stable enough to satisfy
and i can't be okay with that
because who wants a "zero days" kind of girl as a wife?
that girl shouldn't be a mother, for certain.
that type of child will never reach responsibility
stability
to have the life she wants.
the clock goes back to midnight
stopwatch to zero
i won't begin until i can stop
doing all of these things that spin me in circles
and let me fall down
down
down.

When someone goes missing from your life, the clock slows to some kind of impossible speed where you're sure no time is actually passing at all.
Somehow, painfully and miraculously, it's been six days. But, still, you feel they've been gone a million years.
And you would give anything if they could just be here in this, any, and every moment with you.
You're craving them like they were a drug and now you're washed out, you can try to have a good time with anyone else but your best times are to be had roughly 850 miles away, or in the future, or five nights ago.

I'm dreaming of having no where to go
having no one to be
or maybe if I could just go back
and try being me again
but the me where nothing bad happens
I'm never hurt or forgotten or abandoned
that's the dream

the first day was hard and the fourth day was harder, this week has been the longest of my life.
i desperately want to dive back into our week together,
let's just relive it and we'll
sleep and drink everything else away.
i'll go to bed tonight and dream again of a time that is too far away
where I never tell you goodbye again. just goodnight.

no
I don't want anyone else around
get them out of our life
forget her and we'll forget everyone
that led our hearts to here
leave it all behind
look down the road and never back
it's the only way to survive but now
we could thrive
you can hate the love songs
and I can hate the past
because I just have to love your eyes on me
your hands on my back
your smile against my lips
maybe every month
maybe every once
in a really difficult while

we're here now
and
I can't
stand to think
of all the nights
you'll be missing from me

I want to tell every addict in the world how high I get looking at you.
When I'm looking at you, I never want that blade again. I never want anything else in my lungs but your breath. I don't want anything shooting up my nose but the smell of you every time we finally meet again. I don't want anything running through my veins, except this burning love.
When I'm looking at you, everything makes sense.
God help me if I ever have to go through withdrawal again.
You're in my veins,  you're making me see things.

time lapse
Collapse
time and again
I
i will let myself down
Love's never done anything but fall short
and neither have i
Can't stop shaking
to shake it off