i am your favorite little **** up
your favorite mess to clean up
the dirt you sweep under your rug

they told me that i am deficient of attention,
but how can that be when i have memorized
every freckle dotted on your cheekbones and
every white-tipped scar mapped across your skin?
maybe it's because my mind can't make room for
anything else, because you are all i see when i close
my eyes and the first thing i see when i open them

they told me that my depression is in remission,
like a cancer that has spread throughout my body
only to go dormant, to lay quiet just beneath the
surface, waiting to try to drag us down yet again.
they told me that this was good news, i can be happy,
but all i could hear was the sound of the tide
always waiting for its turn to take me out to sea

they told me that i sit on the borderline of two states
of existence, subject to the shift between love and hate
and passion and wrath and infatuation and heartbreak,
always trying to ask you which person i should be.
like the flower i used to pluck the petals from
in my youth, constantly whispering to myself,
"i love you, i love you not, i love you, i love you not."

they told me that this means that i can get better now,
that putting names to the faces of the skeletons in my
closet will allow me to bury them in their rightful place,
that i can finally learn to ease my grip and let things go.
but it has taken almost two decades to find my way here,
to finally answer the question of what is wrong with me,
and the journey to get here was long, and i am tired.

you said my love tastes like
secret dinnertime texts and sweet red wine,
the reckless beginning of a new year,
and the gentle swell of hope
at the promise of something more

but your love tastes like
the burn of whiskey and the ash of cigarettes,
bitter disappointment and regret,
and birthday kisses gifted on
the mouth of someone else

they say that poison tastes so sweet;
tell me, why don't you?

you left me terrified,
wondering if the
distance between
you and her
will ever mean less
than the distance between
your side of the bed and mine

you rushed in like
the cold winter air
and left me there alone,
naked and shivering and
wishing only for spring

the only men that i speak to on a daily basis
are all younger than me by years.
because six and a half years ago.
i went to a party at a best friend's house,
a man i had known for five years.
i met a girl who made my head spin -
or maybe it was just the drinks she had poured.
i'm still not sure which.
everyone got a little too drunk
and had a little too much fun.
i've always had trouble falling
asleep around strangers.
it started when a boy three years my senior
decided to take the innocence
of an eleven year old girl.
but that's a story for another time.
see, i nestled myself between this angel of a girl
and my older best friend expecting to be
safe, needing to be safe.
but in the morning,
when the sleep had burned
the alcohol off of his tongue,
i woke up to his hand inside me.
it's taken me six and a half years
to acknowledge that he heard my
panicked breathing and tears and
mistook it for passionate gasping
and didn't realize what he'd
done until i'd grabbed my things
and ran out the front door,
heaving air through my lungs
and choking on the bile
forcing its way out of my stomach.
i still tell myself that i was
just being dramatic.
that i am still just dramatic.
that if he had hurt me, he would apologize.
and when he didn't...
well, maybe there was nothing to apologize for.
two days ago, i wouldn't close my
eyes on an airplane because a man
sat next to me and if i
can't trust someone that i held
so dear to not hurt me,
why would a stranger be any different?
****** assault.
it's the first time i've allowed myself
to consider that maybe, just once, i was a victim.
and i realized that nearly every man
that has held seniority over me has
coerced me or hurt me or violated me,
touched me without my permission.
and with strangers and new acquaintances
and even with new friends,
i keep looking for the sadism in their smile,
the betrayal in their movements,
the lurking deceit in their words.
i can't ever let go and just trust,
i can't let my guard down,
not for a moment.
i'm afraid of older men,
and i finally know why.

do you remember getting drunk on the shore of lake baryessa?
the way we drank three bottles of wine and
waxed poetic about the meaning of life before we
took turns ******* on the rocks and laughing until we cried
how you carried me, piggy back style, through the mud
because i'm the ******* that wore heels and ended up hiking
and how much my head was spinning as we screamed the words
to songs from ten years ago as you took those curves a little too fast

do you remember when you got off your flight?
**** drunk with a present just for me,
an airplane bottle of ***** that i drank a little too fast
as he threw cherry bombs at passing cars and you told us about
the ******* staining the remaining dollar bills in your wallet
and the way you hadn't slept or ate in days until you
came to my home and i gave you just what you needed
and you finally got the rest you deserve

do you remember the conversation we had?
sitting on the trunk of my car in my work's parking lot and
how you convinced him to come back home
when both of our heads were spiraling too much to
process the emotions coursing through our veins
barely more than a child yourself but
somehow bearing more wisdom
than the whole lot of us put together


do you remember?
i do

The first time you
slipped your fingers
into me, I bled on your
mattress. Afterwards, you took
me into the shower and
I ****** you there (on the floor),
letting the water rinse off
our sins and transgressions.
I've known from the beginning
that you may hurt me, but you
will always help to clean
up the mess afterwards.
You will wash off your guilt,
and I will wash off my shame.