I told them
About the hungry and the barren
being I had become
about the not eating
the crying
the ice coffees
the empty calories I had become

The silence in the room was
Screeching
at me
I didn't know what they would respond with
But worse than anything I considered was
The silence
the calm
they responded with
The noise of my sobs
Too loud in this small sunny, peaceful room
I've now ruined

my father hates me
because I remind him
of my mother,

and he hates that
he fell in love with her
only for it to end
the way that it did.



my mother hates me
because I am
my father's daughter,

and she hates that he
believed there was romance
when all it was to her was
a warm body and a fun night.



my father hates me
because he hates my mother.

my mother hates me
because she hates herself.



my parents never failed
to make me feel unwanted,

but now I realize that
it wasn't about me.

they wanted children.
what they didn't want
was each other.

their hatred for one another
outweighed their love for us.



I know now that
all of that pain was aimed
at each other.

it ricocheted off of
the walls I tried to build
to protect myself,
and it hit us instead.

it hurt me so badly

but I realize now that
it was never my fault.

pony-tailed playmate
head tucked in her shirt
gazing steadily down
at her toes in the dirt

chaos tiptoes around her
naive oblivion
journeys in far away lands
just west of the meridian

watercolor fairy tales
bleeding outside the lines
unaware of the danger
unaware of the signs

let me sit with you, darling
in the dampened flower beds
and paint a new world
for us in our heads

most people see me as
a happy person because
i laugh easily,
i smile a lot,
i joke a lot.

but deep down
in my heart,
i am fragile,
i can get hurt easily,
but i choose to not
show it to the world.

instead of being sad,
i choose to laugh to cover it.
maybe you can call me
"the queen of the mask"

by this,
you can tell
that most of the time
when I'm laughing,
I'm not really laughing,
i was trying so hard to hide
my sadness.

Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t just been the backseat of your car,
Intoxicated. My first drunk hook up. My first. Period.
I picture myself being champagne on Valentine’s Day.
I picture myself being you, nervous in the car, holding Starbucks
because you know I love coffee. Sometimes, I picture myself as her,
calling you a stalker and ignoring your calls,
but then I see myself. I call you beautiful,
turn you into poetry, laugh at your bad jokes,
I see myself as I become your drunk Wednesday night
when you’re sad. I see myself as I say no,
I become a “this is not a good idea”
and you a “we’ll deal with the consequences in the morning.”
We laugh because this hurts too much.
You take her out for dinner and I burrow money
for Plan B because you forgot you don’t like condoms
and clearly have no idea how children are made.
I have already named him. He has your curls and
my anxiety. He is smart. Except, I never wanted kids and
you would be a great father. Instead, you tell her
the beach reminds you of her and I cry in a McDonald’s
bathroom with my friend as relief floods through me that
the test comes negative. I stop talking to you,
move forward, meet someone new and before long
see myself becoming you. Because isn’t that the cycle?
Bad men turn good women into bad women who turn
good men into bad men. I’ll set him free so he can hurt
someone like me, and I drink red wine as I read her
poems about him and me.