I buried my face
in the folds of your shirt
and inhaled the soft scent
of your cologne.

In that instant, I knew –
more than anything else –
that I could suffocate
in your arms

and die happy.

We are imperfect products
placed in the midst
of an imperfect society,
a vicious cycle of perseverance
and failure:
constructed,
broken,
fixed,
and fixed again.

Airbrushed and painted
to perfection:
pale skin
flushed cheeks
slim legs
and a smooth mindset.
Opinionated only
on the matter of
superficial products –
glamorizing and embellishing.

Deteriorating enamel –
cracks in a varnished frame.
A scratched surface,
damaged to the core,
polished and glazed over.
Skin made paler,
cheeks more flushed,
skin and bones,
and a mind wiped clean.

Unachievable expectations
and inevitable failure
are enough to b r e a k
even the toughest material

d
o
w
n.

The leaves are falling
in love with the ground against
their own dying will.

Crude naked figures
stand against a white backdrop
painted by the snow.

Kaleidoscope rain
drops distort the newborn buds
of flowers to come.

Freckles on a young
child’s sun-kissed skin whisper
of long summer days.

when your daughter tells you that she has an eating disorder, believe her.
do not mock her, do not tell her she is wrong. though you could not hear her in the bathroom on her knees at christmas or on her birthday or after dinner, listen to her now.

know that after she reveals this and runs crying to her room that she will lie directly on her floor and place her ear to the carpet and she will hear you discussing her declaration like a bad movie, a critic to the fact that yes she still has all her teeth, but you do not know anything about disorders.

when your son mentions at the dinner table that your daughter thinks she may be depressed, do not shake your head. do not continue your meal, do not let her escape to her room immediately upon mention of the subject. do not shake your head, and do not continue your meal.

when you ask your daughter if she wants to see a psychiatrist and she does not say no, take her. make an appointment, do not cancel it. take her.

after an argument, when your daughter refuses to hug you, do not be offended. do not make a sarcastic remark about how she is "really helping the situation," that will not help the situation either. only know that she is hurt, and that she is only sixteen.

when you buy your daughter acne treatment and teeth whitener and brand new makeup and pore strips and she refuses to use them, do not yell. rather, attempt to fathom why your daughter may be boycotting your unrequested purchases, and try to find three things about her more important to you than her appearance.

when your daughter tells you that last night she sat in her closet for an hour so that she could be safe from you due to the way her her heart races and her palms sweat every time she hears the sound of your footsteps outside of her room, please reevaluate the way you talk to your daughter.

when your daughter tells you that she is sick and that she cannot go to school for the fifteenth separate time this semester, ask her about in what ways she is feeling ill, because one does not contract the flu fifteen separate days over the course of five months. that is not how the flu works. it is not likely that she has been physically ill to the point where she will lay in bed until past the time she was supposed to be getting home from school. do not accept the fact that she has a "headache" and do not let her tell you that she is just fine, because she is not.

when your daughter stays up all night doing homework but does not complete her work, do not nag at her. do not tell her that you and her father are "just waiting for her to have a mental breakdown" or to “stay out of your face when she loses her mind” like you know she will, do not tell her for the twentieth time to get her life together. it will not help her get her life together.

when your daughter tells you that she thinks she may be depressed, listen to her. do not fail to notice the words "years" or "finally".
do not simply forget about it, do not wake the next morning and assume that just because she is at the breakfast table eating her cereal that all is well. do not assume that last night she did not make a detailed plan to **** herself and that the only thing that stopped her was a line of a song, and a boyfriend.

when you notice that your daughter has stopped going out with friends, stopped going to practice and stopped trying in school, do not yell. do not lecture. try to predict what she may stop doing next. but do not yell.

do not say things like that she is “upsetting  your  household” statements like that make it very clear in the head of your daughter that the household she lives in is not also hers, and that you do not want her around. do not make careless statements in front of your teenage daughter.

though you may not know that the most common word in all of her google searches is “depression,” it should not take that for you to realize that she has a problem. though you did not see her ask the internet how many of her vitamins she would have to take until she could be sure she would not wake up, it should never have gotten this far.

do not tell her that you are sorry. it will be too late.

im not a poet it's just that the low grumble of your voice sounds like music and the warmth of your embrace feels like home no im really not a poet just i can't stop comparing your laugh to a drink of cold water on a hot day and your touch to the sweet fingers of the hand that pulled me off that ledge right as i was about to jump oh i said im not a poet but i look for you in everything and i find you in all the good things in all of us, you are the reference point for every person i meet but they do not compare, they do not come close, my dear, i can compare you to hurricanes and tidal waves and stormy skies but, my dear, nobody and nothing comes close to the wonder that is you

you will have days where you will feel ugly and won't want to even leave the house. days like this are important because you will leave the house, and maybe in the process you'll learn that appearances aren't nearly as important as you think. one day you will grow old, and it will be okay.
2. some days you will lay in bed and cry for what seems like forever and that's okay as long as you get up after and appreciate the fact that you're happier then than you were ten minutes ago.
3. nobody is perfect and everybody fails at something so try not to be too ******* yourself when you do too because it really truly is not going to make you anything but sadder. try, sincerely, to be as happy as you can possibly be. i love you

i used to convince myself that you were a drizzle, not a hurricane. that you were not a force of nature but a gentle breeze that made my life better. i used that to tell myself that you weren't right for me. and i was wrong. you are not a drizzle, or a gentle breeze. you are a swift kick in the gut, one hell of a powerful blow to my stomach. you were always there and i knew you would be. you were always the one that cared more. always there, until one day, you weren't. you did not ruin my house and soak all of my belongings; but you ruined my insides and left me doubled over throwing up by side of the road right when i needed you most. you left because you were losing me. but i wasn't really gone until you left.