here's to the ones who hold on.
who look back,
who still check their phone.

who stay signed into Netflix, letting their ex still log on.

here's to the ones who continue,
the people who don't thrive.

the break in breaking up.
the die in alive.

here's to the ones who stay,
who feel better,
who taste decay.

the ones who make excuses,
who speak of love,
who tie their nooses.

whether we stay or leave we're still holding on.
the go in going never turns into gone.
yesterday's actions brought back from the grave.
forced to be the savior when you need to be saved.

I am at a loss for words when she tells me that she’s not pretty. I try to tell her how wrong she is but I’ve already been labeled a liar and I can already hear the words passing through my lips and fading into the air like a plea of “not guilty”. I realize I’m not equipped for this. I’ve never known how to reassure people. I have such strong, misguided opinions on things, and all these high, impossible expectations for myself. Am I vain because I look in the mirror and search for a piece of myself to hold onto that feels real and right and pretty? I guess I judge other people, too. But I’ve never looked at her and wondered what parts were real. I’ve never wondered what she would look like if her nose was different, if her arms were different, if her lips were different, if her voice was different. It took me a while to realize that when I sit near her, I feel a person next to me. It was such a strange and new feeling. She turns her head towards me as she leaves a room and I understand why people start wars for women. But she’s already labeled me a liar and the moment has passed, and I can’t very well say all of this out loud. I don’t know what she thinks about me, but she rolls her eyes when I try to say what I feel and darts a doubting glare towards my confessions of insecurity all because I know how to hold a conversation with people on the street and I barely fill out a size 10. How funny, the one person who feels more to me like an actual person than anyone else doesn’t make me feel like one.

I look in the mirror and I am positive I see someone.
But I stare longer, and fuller, and I wonder -
How does this someone become real?
become real
to the man who saw me in the coffee shop,
when I turned my head
and the light fell from my hair
to my cheekbones.
to the driver who passed me
at the intersection
seeing the slight tilt of my chin
my eyes glancing quickly skyward.

I look in the mirror
and I see bruises under my eyes,
the marks of heavy tears, and
heavy scrunched up eyelids
that have left nights of despair on my face
as I've crawled to bed
clutching my knees to my heart.

I look at my hands and they have shadows,
valleys where dark green veins rise and fall
in tidy pulses.

I stare and I stare
and I wonder
when do I become real?
when the brains of brains of brains set eyes
on my sunken cheeks
my rushing veins
my scalloped knuckles?

I am embarrassed
to be real,
but I crave the pulsations
of brains of energy of connections
connecting
to flesh and eyes
and heart
and vein
and I sink into myself
and scratch the pen and paper
with red ink
and I am silent.
I pulse.
I pulse.
I pulse.
but who would know it?

Any moment is
the time to begin again.
It is up to you.

All I’ve ever wanted

was somebody who would understand.

Someone who would say

yes, you should **** yourself,

things really are that bad.

But you are not your circumstances

and you are not tied down by the choices
you are ashamed of.

And I know that tomorrow

you want to drive down the road,

with your windows open 

under the sun,

listening to your favorite song.

Because the sun does not discriminate

against those who want to feel it’s warmth,

it only asks

that you make it until morning.

tell me what to be
I've spent my life as a chameleon.
my head hurts from the smoke
of crashing and burning
too many times to count,
and I've turned into the flames this time.
you don't mean a thing to me
and yet I can feel my skin changing.
you don't mean a thing to me
but I'm tired of being grey
and searching
and camouflaging
and I can feel my skin crawling.

tell me to be brilliant
and I will swallow the stars.
tell me to be heartless
and I will sharpen the blade myself.
my head hurts, just tell it to be okay.
I am a chameleon
tell me to be myself.

Lately our shower has been doing this thing where it shakes when it’s running. But not as soon as it goes on, first there’s a light buzzing in the walls then BOOM not quite like a volcano, but a seizure in the veins of the house. I think it knows I’m about to collapse the same way, too. I feel the buzzing inside of me, somewhere deep down where the emptiness sits. The pressure just builds up, I’m turning from cold to hot in a matter of seconds, and I’m losing the control I had. Maybe our shower just needs to bleed out the **** clogging all the nooks and crannies that nobody can see, maybe it’s freezing over somewhere in it’s bones, maybe it’s just crying out in its own, solitary way. Everybody uses it, washing off the dirt they’ve accumulated through their nightmares and the dark nights, warming their bodies to prepare for the frigid pulse of life outside these four walls. Everybody uses it but nobody knows what’s wrong with it. It’s been like this for weeks. The repair man said it should be fine soon. The professional should know, we say. It’s becoming an inconvenience, you know. We don’t like the rattling, we don’t know when it will burst. Still, everybody uses it. We have a countdown, the shower and I. Who will go first, who will shake the longest until we collapse, how many people will use us until we’re used up.

my veins are crying out for the places you created
and my eyes search for the broken planets your tongue destroyed
there were pirate ships in your breath
when it was heavy outside last December
please don’t leave me in the cold
my veins are crying out
and your galaxies are fading

You’re worth it. You’re worth every single joy you’ve felt, every single pain and every single star you’ve thought wasn’t listening while you screamed inside, begging for the universe to listen. You’re worth everything this world has for you because you are brighter than any darkness you feel. Don’t run from the pain, don’t make it harder for the happiness to find you.

I was raised on bubblegum dreams
and fortune cookie promises.
I was never told that the stars
are just gas and debris,
and the moon does not glow
all by itself.
I searched endlessly for messages
in the constellations
but the sun would always chase away
the moonlight
seconds before
I found the answers.

He touched me
with the same
flickering debris
and fortune cookie intention
that I thought I knew
all about.

He told me
I was the moon,
but failed to mention
I would need the sun.

In the darkness
I would search for answers,
desperate to find
things I would not recognize
when in the morning
he would chase away my moonlight.

In the winter I am made of smoke,

rising aimlessly

in dancing twists and turns 

against dark, cold air. 

I wander with translucent skin

and mind

desperately feeling the sky with my fingertips 

praying for snow to hug my body 

and maybe bring me back down. 

I come in waves,

I hurt your lungs,

try to touch me and I will disappear.

I am weightless

but so, so heavy. 

Some days I feel like I am floating away

and foggy

and the result 
of something

burning.

seven problems with wanting "happy":

1. stop listening to lists made by other unhappy people in their happy moments. these things will only keep you up until something stronger comes to knock you down.

2. if you don’t want to smile, don’t do it. if you don’t know how to pick yourself up, don’t force it. but just know that one day you’ll be tired of hiding in the darkness, and that sadness flows in arcs. as many times as you hit your low point, you’ll find high points, and that’s what life is about: wholeness. you are not static, you are not a two dimensional character who can only feel one thing. don’t settle for anything less than being dynamically full of experiences. you do not need “happy”, it is a pre-packaged pill bottle sold to us by empty promises and bleeding scars that we cannot close alone.

3. yeah, some people are ******* toxic and negative and ******, but sometimes you need them. and sometimes, they really need you. don’t talk behind their back, don’t try to bring them down farther - if you won’t take them out of your life, then be kind to them. practice being genuine.

4. compare yourself to others. realize that you are not alone, understand their hurt. do not live in a vacuum. you are not striving for something alone. compare yourself by recognizing your pain in other people, and realizing that you are the same. their journey and your journey do not have to be taken on separate plains.

5. think. think too much. don’t buy the ******* telling you to stop thinking too much. question the world, question why you feel so cornered, question why you hurt, question why you don’t want to open that door and walk into the sunlight. then do something about it. even if it is the smallest scratch of letters in a notebook.

6. understand that yes, there are inspirational words out there that have been spun into webs that swallow you up, in a glistening masquerade. there are words out there that will ease the pain for a moment but will leave you when you are lying in your bed, emptied of tears and life and unable to remember which black and white letters promised they would make things beautiful again. they may make you feel better for a moment, but you are not required to live a life outlined by seven bullet points. you are not obligated to make tea and wear warm fuzzy socks but if you want to do it then go ahead. you are not a bullet point. you are not a list. you are breath and pain and joy and blood pulsing through veins. don’t cheat yourself of life. decide for yourself and try to live with kindness because no one knows what the **** they are doing, and maybe if we realized that then we could figure it out together.

7. let yourself discover what you need. it is okay to tell yourself that you will change but not know how. it is okay to not want to change at all. it is okay to be confused. take a deep breath, delete this list, and walk away.

today I was wondering what gives you the right to comment on someone else's life

the way you do

with such ease,

and such venom,

and as if you have never felt the ridiculously hindering sting of humanity

for yourself.

and I guess I realized that you're nursing your own wounds
and I guess I realized that's what makes you want to point out someone else's
because bandages can be humiliating
and scars won't go away but you can diminish them with dog-toothed words
that bite
that judge and spotlight someone else's faults.

and I've always loved the spotlight so who cares,
right?

well anyways,

it's harder to wish for you to be okay
but I'd rather do that
than feel blackened by the soot
of two-cent words
that go bump in the night.
I don't need a conscience
to dig into me with a blade
or you,
for that matter,
to dig into me with
letters grasping for footing
in vain.


because I have my own scars
that don't deserve to be mocked
because they hurt just as badly
as you are hurting.

To whom it may concern,

I am sad today
but I am trying
really hard
to be better.

Today it hurts to breathe,
and I think there is a stingray
swimming in my chest,
but I am trying
really hard
to be better.

To whom it may concern,

I do not know who you are,
but you should know
that I swear,
I have all these dreams
and ideas
in my head
that I try to love with kindness,
even if they weigh me down
when I gather them in my arms
to keep them safe from the dark.

They are trying
really hard
to give me space
to be better.

But, Dear Heart and Dear Head,
you ache like statues of stone -
discarded graveyard relics -
and I can feel your cracks and shattered edges
as I skim the hard surfaces
with my cold hands.
I can feel the pain
and it gets heavier
as my words pile dirt
on my brain,
like damp soil shoveled
over a new grave.

Today I am sad
but I am trying
really, really hard
to dig myself out
to stop suffocating
to shed the heaviness
to get better.

My words are on repeat. Flux of syllables that circle around each other like sharks in the salt water. They repeat. Again and again I explain myself and again and again I am not heard. And the sharks keep swimming, circling in tandem to the rhythm of the sharp consonants ticking like tongues against teeth and full vowels swallowing up warm water. The same words, the same words. And the shark bellies fill with stinging salt and the blood in the waves dances away like ballet shoe ribbons, and I am alone and torn apart; sinking back down to the depths of my brain where the words will circle me again in pursuit. Again and again. A cycling whirlpool of blood stained black and white words.

Halloween doesn't know
that you beat it to the punch line
years ago.

Your jack-o-lantern eyes
glow bright yellow in the spiral staircases
twisting through the coils of my brain.

I never believed in witchcraft
until you spun cobwebs
into your breath
and filled my lungs with spiders.

You are rust brown leaves,
dancing in the rain
with the crescent moon
clothing your skin.

I am rust brown leaves,
suffocating in the fall air
with the crescent moon
blinding my brain.

I saw her standing
on the edge,
still and silvery.
she was an abandoned car
reflecting moonlight
off her cold, metallic exterior.
she was the rusty outline
of a haunted house
whose ghosts didn’t know
it had been knocked down long ago.

she was overlooking
the lights in the darkness,
a silhouette painting against a galaxy
of scattered neon.
a silhouette painting against a galaxy
of broken glass.

she took a step
onto the stars
and
felt the moonlight
fall from her hair
and into
her
bones.

My heart seems always to be crying out for things, pulling me toward things, and shattering me apart because I do not understand its muted beating. It craves sunlight yet thrives in the night. It is tired, it is raggedy, it is hurting and it won’t tell me why. It just speaks in sentences too quiet to understand. It doesn’t even listen to my tears anymore, it just silently waits while I sew myself back together, into a shell for it to hide in once more. It has taken me from my silver, hazy, smokey mind and laid me down on its weary, tired and broken shores. Watches as the salt water gently covers my grey skin, tide inching closer, and turns its back on me while I choke on all the things I cannot control.

This taste in my mouth reminds me too much of the eagerness that would drip out every time I tried to talk to you. My eyes are heavy the way they got that night in the dark, with shadows pressed against them like your fingertips on my body. I have to take a deep breath. I have to breathe in the fall, and the leaves, and the frigid air just to know that I am not there anymore. I just want to close my eyes but they won’t let me see anything but the scars on the inside of my brain that were left there, sliced by fishing hooks. All the remnants of the words you caught me with; hook, line and sinker.