I swear there is more to me than this.
A week ago I couldn't spell my name out in anything but numbers and  commas , no full stop

See someone once told me begging isn't the same as praying but in my 19years of life I've spent too many days silently whispering please don't switch of the outside light , mama I want to come , I want to come home .

See, I want to tell you something
About how I never thought I'd ever be the girl in an empty parking lot with a tremor making its way from my throat right past my knees to my ankles because right then and there , I am only a grain of sand inside a storm

And how I'm somehow standing there watching you teach me how traffic signs really mean nothing when noones watching . I'm thinking about Anine Booysens , her bruised and brutalized body and in the back of my head I'm scared no one will ever find me . I want to crawl into the damp cave of mouth and sleep between the cheek and teeth of you that speaks in vowels only and stretches your Xs and Qs.

But I'm not there , I'm here and this man is touching me ,
Oh God this man is touching me
Mama this man touched me ...

And we can't do anything about it

Mans this man touched me

I keep having this dream where
I'm 14 again and I'm sure you're the love of my life but
I keep doing stupid things
And you keep saying stupid things
And all of our friends , they call us a stupid thing
Because really ,
All we do is fight
And it tears them apart
Seeing us tear eachother apart
And you're just standing there
Bc you know I'm gonna leave again
Bc I've left
A dozen times and once more at a cemetery
But this time it's different bc this time when i try to leave I trip over the reason I fell in love with you in the first place and instead of getting up I just kneel there

I will knock out your teeth if you try to
take my love away from me— and if you
do it more than once I'll start setting
things on fire.
I'm telling you, I don't think I could ever love anyone ever again  , I don't know
I don't know

see, here's the thing
it's the Sunday morning before my birthday and I'm laying in bed eating leftover cold pizza and simultaneously thinking about all of the good and the bad. The ugly, the
uglier and the so ******* ugly it's
beautiful

and I've decided I am so much
more than those things you pinned to my
skin like medals or scars.
although , ironically
I have a bulletin in my room
filled with all the horrible things I'd like to say to you , over and over and over again but I probably never will

I hope she gives you an sti, but not enough to **** you.
I want to tie you to a chair and make you watch as I burn the place you call home , to the ground


I keep staring at works because
it's so **** hard trying to decipher what is true art and just plain trash when I gone through something like you
I'm stuck feeling like frames are jails for paintings , and oil takes way to much time for me to even bother



I went out last night
and the waiter charmed me into drinking a cocktail made up of late night mistakes and sin
and half way through the drink I realized I have a hard time doing anything that doesn't end up with me being alone questioning why nothing ever really turns out as you think it should
I'm with Lynn and Im half talking half rambling about how
my pet puppy ran away when I was 13 and I named him angel.
i think I named him that because , well
i always got the feeling I wasn't living life like I was supposed to, Mother raised me catholic but I raised myself to believe in nothing but broken fists , ceilings and the kind of angels that hold your hair back only cause it suits them.
and it never made sense to my mom
and it never made sense
because none of it ever does
there'll still be hobos on Jan smuts avenue sleepin under  roof folds
there'll still be daily suicides and hospital stories that'll make bodies and spirits alike collapse and high school drop outs with dreams bigger then whole buildings , there'll still be boys that eat your dignity for breakfast ad girls that will put then above their own morals
and in the end , I'll always be here standing , flipping the light switch wondering why nothing ever really turns out like you think it should

it would probably never work because I've been through so many F words
and the only one that's stuck was fuckable and not the one that best described myself and life as a whole which I believe is fragile
you can't walk a day without bumping into an f word that f worded me and it's f word that it's common knowledge that I've been through so many f words but apparently not shared that I've spilled myself into coffee mugs and paint jars tryin to turn f words into futures and I've all ever been through so many cause I just want to be loved and **** it Freddy Kruger I just want someone to love
but F words will be ******* and and I'll move on to the next word trying to find a new sword to bleed myself out of being
cause he lied and he lied
and all I did was bend in angles set squares couldn't even triangle but in the end there's more then 2billion 6hundred and forty2 F words in language and I'll just always be the girl with too many f words and it's no shocker why I'm suffering from heart failure

I need to learn to say I love you without sounding like I'm asking for permission to breathe. You keep loving me in ways that make me itch , quiver and faint.

Everytime I think we're getting somewhere I know we're exactly in the middle of nowhere.

Sunday morning
and I'm tired of macDs and cigarettes and diet pills and coffee
they don't make me happy
Im not thinking about you
because I think I hate you but I'm not really sure if it's hate or annoyance because
if we're to be honest I'd have to love the **** out of you to hate you,  or even feel just the slightest bit of emotion
but I don't
because I've realized that's resent you for being such a ******* of a person
you disgusting , ******.....
I asked you multiple times not to drink my mother's coke and you assured me you'd bring a full bottle right before mothers came home from work but you had no intentions of doing that
you disgusting , ******......

anyway this is not about you
it's about how I've burnt myself to ashes trying to understand where I am right now
and why
I think I love almonds cause they're good for me and are just what I need and the doctor won't warn me against it,
but almonds are boring and are nothing like the nauseating feeling of finishing a whole pack of ciggs alone outside of a lecture you know you're gonna pass anyway , unintentionally

Im here thinking about how I know I don't want any of these things but I do,
and conjunctions, **** conjunctions and the way they're meant to connect two things together but when it came to you and I ,
our only conjunction was the very scripture I was too scared to tell my sunday school teacher
because I made a deity out of you to the point where you were my king but the only time you made me feel one with your royalty was late night's on bent knees , when you held my crown to control  the motion of your pride finding warmth right deep down my throat .

throat

And the answer is


RENOUNCE

It's like you've left me with all this yellow paint and I have no idea what to do with it

Your talent is clear to me
You're unbelievable

you never loved me but you sure did teach me how to love somebody ...
and those are the last words I say to you right before throwing broken glass into your paupers grave
death never was physically dying to me and I guess that's what makes dealing with your leaving so bearable ,
I swear I've never meant it more than when I swore you're dead to me and that in itself is a shame considering ......



i keep thinking of you in ways that don't make sense .

"you'll never find someone who'll love you the way I did"

God, I hope I don't .

you loved me in a way that made my insides corrosive and that's probably why I felt as cold and empty as a church confessional when you entered .

you never loved me but you sure did teach me how to love somebody ...
and those are the last words I say to you right before throwing broken glass into your paupers grave
death never was physically dying to me and I guess that's what makes dealing with your leaving so bearable ,
I swear I've never meant it more than when I swore you're dead to me and that in itself is a shame considering your insides have been cold and corrosive since before you ever set eyes on me
I keep falling inlove with dead people

Andractive

For some strange reason I can't imagine you leaving me
And that leaves me with this staggering thought that I might be the one to run away one day
And I think maybe you have that thought too
You're always telling me I'm scared of a lot of things and so I choose to run away from them
And I want to argue
But
My dad taught me how to leave
And I've never really stayed a day in my life since
I try and convince you I'm just being cautious
But you can tell that's not it

My tummy rumbles when I'm with you
And I lie and say you give me butterflies
But really that's just stomach crouching behind my spine
I'm sorry I write these essays
And call them love letters
I'm sorry
But if I don't
IM stuck with all these paragraphs in my head
And they get in bed with me ,
Waiting , for a splint amount if sleep to emerge before ripping me apart from the inside out.

But i'll try and stop
Even if they infest me , silently and unexpectedly like an army of ants
Or as harshly and violently as a waves colliding into one another
I'll stop
Because one 3am letter about cognitivity is a ccompliment
but 6 letters on the same subject is nothing but a shame
The fine line between you holding me
and you holding me hostage is  wearing
so thin that I can hardly see it
-Allie

yeah, but you didn't love me
"who says I didnt"
and I pull down my vneck and show you all the scabs that were once hickeys
you say you're sorry but your apology sounds like you're asking me to pardon you for not remembering whether or not you put them there and I swear to God I will never lover another man like I'm shivering in the middle of winter again
i wrote my best poetry about you
I've never been afraid of the dark but I'm terrified of you
my tummy growls all the time and you think I'm forever hungry
but the honest to God truth is
my stomach has trained itself to clench in desperation whenever your deception hurts too much
and I am nervous around anyone who shares our world because you've never spoken mine but I've muttered yours like a mantra and in the end Im the fool and you the stop.
i keep saying I've had enough, I'm leaving
but each time I do, I conjure up the image of you laying in your bed dancing to songs I can't fathom to call mistakes
and it makes me smile so much how adorable you are just then
and I pack all the shame and misery you've poured onto me,
I put you and all the horrendous things you've done before me and stay
cause even though you've done nothing but make a mockery , a fiend out of me
still
the last thing I  want to do is hurt you
i am so hurt and because on numerous accounts I have dropped to my knees ripped to shreds on your honour
like your word is a holy relic and
godforbid I go against it
yet all you've ever done is take and take and take
chunks of me like I'm not disabled
myself in need of things to keep me whole
I walk a line of shame cause everyone who knows us call be a mirror bc I'm always bending for you like light
never questioning why and
all you ever do is reflect my  flexibility to a few that judge me anyway
I think I'm done being yours
(who am I fooling I never really was , you never really coined ownership at me I just kept begging for your acceptance and it never came)
but now I'm as hurt as America was when Benedict betrayed her and it hurts real bad I can feel it in my veins like the roots of a lemon tree protruding out my thinning arm skin
and I can't even show anyone
cause they'll just laugh and whisper behind me
like this has been a secret everyone was keeping from me
you've fooled me into the smoothest heartbreak I begged myself not to suspect
and I owe it to my dad not to let myself be that girl for you anylonger
you've broken my heart in angles ever set squares couldn't fathom and im barely able to breathe
I pray God gives me the strength not to go back to you cause this is the most humiliation I can ever endure
-Allie

Okay so one day I'm 17 and in love with a Xhosa boy whose love is tin packed sardines wrapped in a dozen hallelujahs and the next an Artist who drinks way too much and cheats a whole lot more and I'm back sitting on my bed saying the clicks altogether wrong and telling you you're dead to me , I'm swearing to myself I'll never love another creative again and craving for the way you touched my waisted like old photographs and enveloped your hands into prayer when my shirt came off. I left 6 countries for yours and crawled underground so the border guards wouldn't see me . I loved you in a way that meant my fingerprints turned into lines of photographs and my identity was you , was you, my identity was you.
I hanged myself on paper clips and signed my name on your walls and danced without a care and tied my hair up and laid down on your word and covered canvases with paper and drew sticks of mistakes because my identity was you , my identity was you.

I'm not entirely sure what it is about looking at you that makes me feel like churches collapsing , my entire life is sore and I can't barely breathe because everytime I open my mouth apologies cramp mdown my throat and to be honest never have I ever been so tired of love because it just reminds me of rows of suits on bent knees and a little too lates
maybe one day I'll be able to laugh without the fear of cockroaches marching into my mouth and, well and...........
and.......

Daddy never clutched a bible to his chest
But I'm guessing he wished for one that afternoon when he's blood ran hot and a heart attack creeped on him
I bet he clutched his shirt in agony and anguish
God I prayed
My two knees gave up on me and I kneeled right beside the hospital bed
With the old testament in my lap , gripping his hand tightly
I held on to the last scraps of my being
And God I prayed

Every single night since then I have this reoccurring dream
Its the 17th of may
And I'm in my black dress , hair wrapped in a dainty black turban
There is no life in me
I'm clutching my chest cause it pains
And the tears are streaming down my face as I watch them lower daddy's coffin into the ground ,
The pounding wind of the early winter is cruel and mocking
And I want to scream and tell them to stop,
Its a mistake
No
My daddy's still alive
But he's body is so cold
Pappa tsoga , why o tonya so?
Pappa ....  

I'm standing there and my legs buckle under my weight
And it hurts to breathe and it hurts to blink
And I'm buried in tears, not silent and controlled tears but loud and unrestrained
Flooding out in harsh breathes.
And it dawns on me that
O tsamaile papa
And I must now
Stumble and crash through this life thing without him
With this prominent pain where he ought to  be

I'm starting to think God loves me better when I'm in stitches and scars,

It's 3pm on a Saturday afternoon and I've ditched a warm house  warm soup and am now in a cathedral whispering " Hi, I'm Allie........ and I erm...I've got an eating disorders"

I'm 50% silk and 50% shards of glass but Somehow I've carried myself past the stairs & now I'm here feeling like the walls are mocking me...

I've spent the past 7 Augusts draped in bulimia and anorexia like a coffin and I'm ready to change clothes because I'm tired of wearing black and I'm tired of how it feels like I've been dressed for my funeral all since I've turned 13 except I'm already there watching myself get lowered into the ground but I never get there.
I never get there

My heart shatters , the pieces fall through my body , settle where they land and turn into things like a sharper tongue and clearer hindsight.  I need to know why you kept using VonGoghs paintings to ruin my life

I want this to be the last letter I ever write you my lover
I'm tired
I've written about a dozen letters to the moon complaining of all
these chest pains and honestly it's getting ridiculous no one reads
them,  they just sit here accumulating evidence of a romance so
twisted the one lover can't even spell the others name with out
quivering with a certain uncertainty
These letters dont  mean a thing
I don't know why I keep writing them,  they're strange and unintelligent things
And I'll be ****** if the last thing I ever do is write about a man
who is my anchor , keeping me anchored which is ironically insane
considering an anchor is the very thing that sinks you down to the
very bottom
I'm very confused and we're very complicated
I can hardly decipher which one of us is the ship and which the anchor

I realize that I'm not as kind and innocent as I'd like to think I am
I've done ****** things just as you my king
And it's a shame I like to pretend otherwise
But not as shameful as being unable to tell whether I'm the hero or
the villain in our situation , and that's just another unpleasant
thing about us I'm never writing about again.