The insides of my eyelids are the only idea of love I now know.
Only darkness.
and if I squeeze hard enough maybe I'll see something.
If I shut them long enough maybe I won't feel anymore.
Sleep is the only love I know.
Conscious doesn't know my name.
But the bed sheets call it like they're back from church camp.
Religion is only known in the dark.
My saving grace is blackness.
The halo is the blue inside my eyes.
The high makes it disappear.
Sobriety and love are synonymous.
Both things don't feel so good after a while.
Both make you feel too much.
Give me high,
Love makes me only feel low.
Six feet under and I guess my lack of religion led me here.
Abandonment came afterwards.
After what?
Everything.
Consistently.
Always.
Left.
Give me darkness
It's all I've ever known anyway.

1) I still have not erased the imprints your hands left all over me. These days are numbered, just like the times you tried to ruin me. I've stopped counting on you to let me down again. I've stopped counting period.
2) I compare every single guy I meet to you, so far I'm doing my best at avoidance. So far none of them have made my stomach scream outside of my throat when they kiss me.
3) These pills are taken because I want to get better now, not because I don't. Milligrams don't always equate to death. I'm learning the language of recovery and self-discovery from a bottle and a progress book.
4) I can't see your face behind me when I'm naked inside the mirror, or under the sheets of ****** desire, I do not find you there anymore.
5) You do not control me- the reigns have loosened and your voice no longer lingers upon my tongue. I am no longer afraid of big crowds without alcohol. I am my own form of stability and sobriety.
6) This face does not need to be masked by propaganda in order to leave my bedroom, confidence has accumulated into my conscious now and there is no room for criticism.
7) You have left me for dead, just weeds upon an empty field- you made me feel as if my existence was a nuisance, like it was too minute to even recognize fully. But I will not let you be my deforestation, I have spent too much time growing these roots in a place where I will flourish- you will not be my wildfire, landslide or any form of natural disaster. You are a single raindrop at best.
8) *******.
9) *******.
10) You don't even deserve to know I'm better than what you did to me. But you need to know that when my father objectifies women, it cuts a knife deep into my spine that makes me slouch a little more and when other men do the same- it makes me stand up straight again. We are not a product of those who make us, we are just a result. But with repetition those results can change. All of us are theories, not to be proven. Always changing, collecting new data. Ready to be disproven. So test yourself, push your own boundaries and don't be afraid of change.

I got out of the box someone else put my innocence in- I found my way back to it time and time again but I realized it was only to get back what I had lost. Only to find that the box was empty, only to realize they never really had a hold on me. It was just a theory, you are just a theory.

Believe in me.
Take my hand
let me lead you through this life
that has lead you through the depths of hell.
We have felt our fathers wrath of opinion
and been scored by the sharp knife in the back of siblings.
These things shook us both-
took us by the throat and caused us to stop breathing,
Now we feel as if every breath we take could be wrong
every step is in the wrong direction
nothing ever goes our way.
Discouragement is a warm gun,
we sleep with it at night
and wake up from it in the morning.
One thing can shatter our confidence,
the curse of constant critic
has left us conscientious of our conscious.
So let me lead you.
Fighting a war is better if you have an army
and we both have enough strength
to walk through the fire-tongued
judgment day protocol.
I don't want to do it alone.

The way your arm curves into you, and your hands fall over me
shows me you know your worth.
You just need reminding on some days, so do I.
The briskness of your humor glides through your lips
like it has left you exhausted from lack of laughter.
Let me be your lack there of.
Let me be your all of the above.
We don't have to walk through the flames alone,
we don't have to walk through the flames at all.
My saving grace lies within your eyes
and I see it everyday, all the time.
Holding you close to my chest
you are my favorite defense.
The best weapon one can get
is a heart full of love-
and a sword found where you rest.

My lungs are turning inside out again-
and this poem will be void of the use of I
because it is not known to me who that is anymore.
This heart is beating outside of my chest
and my eyes can not focus on one fixed point.
It is troubling to me
words cannot express how my body is handling this.
Situational irony has always been a good friend of mind
and my emotions are diminishing further and further inside of myself.
Repression is to what my mind is prone to.
Ever since the child in me grew roots
someone pulled them out as if they were weeds
so this person staring back at me in the mirror
has always been a figure unfamiliar.
Always someone who longs to go backwards
so she can feel the familiarity of childhood.
Instead she wears a face not her own
and a body who she has trouble looking at most days.
This week the discovery was made
that in order to purge herself of all of this negativity
some weight had to be lost-
seems she doesn't know what that feels like
she doesn't recognize what that looks like-
but she makes a direct correlation between
memories and loneliness.
These nights have been mistaken for sleep
and the dreams mistaken for reality.
It's no question that identity has always been misgiven.

She makes no sense of her poems
and these words she writes down like they're her last.
The shaky hands make it hard to type
and she doesn't last more than a second in self-assessing,
she knows all too well the deep cut of judgment
but clings to the idea of contrastiveness.
Hoping that comparisons will not be her downfall
and that these words somehow make sense.

Again is something she insists on typing
because repetition and consistency is what she longs for-
but it never seems to come from anything but her own mind
and a body that is too in tune with the chaos in her bones
she shakes too much, and feels nothing all at once.
Calamity and clarity are not words she knows the meaning of-
only catastrophe
she puts it on her shelf and is proud of how she ended up with it
worked too ******* the life of others
and no hard enough on herself
but she still sees it a prize.
Even if she's not the winner-
even if she doesn't reap the benefits.

It took me one minute after you soaked your words into me
that I broke down and the only thing I could muster up
any amount of courage to say is "why me?".

It took me five days to give in again-
tracing your words like I trace the scars on my wrist
an outline of memory I cannot seem to let go of.
Try to picture myself with anyone else
but it just made me sick inside
so I started to compare you to everything I love.

It took me seven days to take your sorry and wrap it around my lips.
Standing there wondering why I feel so nostalgic
why this ache inside my chest feels so ******* familiar.
The first time we kissed began replaying inside of my mind-
the memories demanding to be heard
and the flashback played as our lips collided.

It took 730 days for you to get it right-
but one night, two separate times you ******* it all up.

It took me one week to act like they didn't happen.
It took all of my strength and I've become nothing but weak now.
Basking in mistakes and self-loathing,
animosity and admiration.
It seems imitation and repetition
are more related than we thought.
I'm having trouble wrapping my head around yours
why it took repeated mistakes for you to realize they exist
realize that a future with me exists.
See, repetition can sometimes be a good thing-
but not the kind that breaks me down
not the kind that tears me apart inside.

I do not want to break
because I do not think there is anything left of me.
This baggage was left on the plane a long time ago
and she watched as everyone took off-
time and time again everyone comes and then goes
no one comes looking for her anymore,
no one even realizes she's missing.

Succumbing to the silence
has left me ill-hearted.
The head that has been placed
between these shoulders
weighs heavy on my conscious.
The only way to stay sane
is surrounding myself with noise.
This chair that has been kicked
from beneath me has a name now.
It calls out mine when I sleep
and it repeats in my head
until I understand why it's there.
It's purpose is to make me feel alone-
so far it is winning.
So far, I do nothing to stop it.

This ache inside my chest
has left me concave-
I used to be so convex.
Used to fall outside of everyone else's angles
and now I'm closed off
so inside myself that I am blind
to anything other than your smile.
I would like to talk about how the pain hurts
how I hope the air I breathe becomes poison
and I don't wake at all.

I try to scream,
no one is around to hear me anymore
they're all stuck inside of others
when no one will even stick around
to see me come outside again.
If you fall down and become a train wreck
and no one is around to hear you  
does that mean you haven't gone off the rails?
Does that make your pain irrelevant
and the mess you've made non existent?

I guess I'll never know-
because I seem to be the tree that never grows
just stays dormant until my time comes
but I don't think it ever will.
Seasons don't mean much to me
and I wish I could be happy.
But this type of soil where I try to soak my roots
is not nourishing enough to let me grow.
So I wither and no one seems to know I am here.
A flower un-bloomed I have lived unknown
and no one will see me become beautiful
because I keep getting walked all over,
no one cares unless you've blossomed
not until you've become worthy of picking.

The more people try to help me
The more it hurts.
Thought as if I was doing fine
Until everyone acted like
I was faced with a death.
I guess I was, am-
Plagued by the ruins
you left in my chest
And the more people try to help
The more it hurts.

No one knows you like I do-
So for them to make assumptions
they know nothing about
When I all want to do is defend you-
I guess all this time defending you
has become routine for me.

You took my heart and traded it in
For an older model
and I'll never understand why.
She has more miles and it seems
you ruined her too a long time ago.
But you keep hoping she will
give you what you need-
take you where you need to go
And I sit in an empty field
watching everyone drive by me.
Hoping that they stop looking at me
like I'm so broken and beyond repair-
Hoping that I can present myself
good enough to turn heads
Hoping the next time someone
tries to take a journey with me
I don't break down.
But here's to hoping
that maybe one hits me.
That way I won't have to find out.
That way I won't feel so ******* used.