Here I am,
not quite at home here,
but comfortable in this pale skin.

I am here,
to tell you that things can feel better
and that when they say
'Look for the Silver Lining'
they don't mean it'll all be okay,
but that enough will be okay
some mornings you won't think twice
about waking up.
You just will.

Because tomorrow I am going to a wedding,
tomorrow I pick up a puppy named after a Russian Tsaritsa,
tomorrow is tomorrow is tomorrow.

It can be dark on this side of the moon,
but there come crescents
and there come full circles of light
and there comes morning once again.

It's worth it, no matter what you tell yourself.
It really is.

nothing is safe from these hands

how many know i used to write
in lowercase when
the senses died in my fingertips
do you remember
a time when i thought that it was better
you hated me than loved me
because i didn't have to fight it?
tired
has always been code for depressed
stressed has always been code for
undressed in front of the mirror shaking at the knees
because i don't like what i see.
i have been in denial
as to whether i am fine
for a few weeks because i don't have the option
of weakness right now

why
how
why
how

i don't know
who i am and i'm sorry
that you don't either and it confuses you.

I hope this reaches you,
somewhat crumpled and embittered,
but soft on the inside and still smelling of my fingertips and hair.

I.
This is just another bad poem
Just vomited-thoughts-left-on-paper poem
This is a collection of grammatical errors
This would surely make my English teacher cringe
But no worries, I didn’t write this for her

II.
This bad poem is for you

May my subject and verb disagreement
remind you of all those misunderstandings that lead to raised voices
and nights where I cried myself to sleep

Sentence construction was never my strength, it still isn’t, maybe that’s why you never truly understood me—
called me difficult and bipolar
You said that I was too much

Did it ever occur to you that you might just misread me, like homonyms,
same words but with different meanings
misread my jealousy with accusations,
my concern for excessive affection

You said that I loved you too much
but darling, did you even love me at all?

Did I put too much meaning on your words,
turned them into similes and metaphors?
Turned your literal statements into figures of speech
You told me that you liked me,
so I blissfully interpreted it as a hyperbolic expression— called it love when obviously it wasn’t

III.
I was never good at using punctuations
I put too much commas,
unnecessary, misused, I kept trying to hold on
Afraid of the inevitable end,

Switched to semi-colons in an attempt to make it a few words longer

Because despite all our grammatical errors
no matter how shameful our piece of literature was to the English language

It was beautiful to the untrained eye,
To those who read poetry as it is
To those who don’t dig deep in search of true meaning behind the metaphors
It was beautiful to me

But I eventually learned that infinitives and infinities are different,
in spite of sharing infinite as the root word
Like our love,

started with something so promising
but unlike most novels,
there’s no happy ending

So I accepted defeat,
accepted the inevitable and bitter end
No more committing the same mistakes over and over again,
the same words over and over again,

Accepted the fact that synonyms existed,
words with the same meaning but also entirely different
new and unfamiliar, foreign and peculiar

IV.
I accepted defeat
No more commas or semi-colons
We have reached the couplet of our free formed sonnet—

I was never good with endings, I don’t think I’ll ever be,
So darling I hand you the pen, set us both free.

One day
You will wake up and the sun will
look exactly the same,
the clutter downstairs
will sound like every other morning.
Your back will ache
in the same place,
the dishes will lie comfortably
on your desk,
dust will continue to collect
around the books you touch
mid thought.
But your father will leave
and it will feel absent, not dutiful,
your mother will smile
and it will be empty and served with
cereal,
you'll find your dog lying cold and stiff in the laundry.
You'll know, undoubtedly,
though it will take years to settle like rocks
in your stomach.
You'll know
that for every other moment following this, until you die,
it will be a raw knife edge you tread,
between Awake
and Asleep.

Three months of me,
Stealing your razor blades,
From your pencil case,
Because blood,
Doesn't stain sheets,

Not on my watch.