Plants seeds inside my rib cage
Makes sure to water daily
Until I am more wood than person
Already weaving my own casket in my chest

I am a constant train wreck waiting to happen
Always on the verge of almost not being here
There is never enough space to breathe
Never enough room to move
This world is my casket and I am frighteningly claustrophobic

Your hands feel like forest fires
Erupting on my skin
Each graze
A new scar
I will take
To the shallow grave of my heart

These parts feel like a lie I am giving to this world,
but it doesn't throw me back a sneer,
it pretends it doesn't know.

I am carving my skin with questions,
but it bleeds back no answers,
only trophies in the shape of these scars.

I am clawing myself out,
but the pit feels like quicksand,
the more I want out the more it takes me in.

I am half a person, half a ghost
already burying myself
inside the casket of my own skin.

If these gods were real
they'd have made us of sturdier stuff
than hearts that break apart at the slightest whisper.

When I was fifteen years old I came home from school one day and wrote a poem instead of cutting myself.
The next day I didn't write a poem.
Eighteen only wrote poetry in red.
Nineteen crawled under their desk with the lights turned off.
Twenty had panic attacks.
But thirteen still loved the world.
And ten only cared about going out to play.
And nine never thought growing up to be a gender would hurt so much.
But twenty-one can't breathe in this skin anymore.
And twenty-one doesn't want a twenty-two anymore.
And nineteen tried to pretend these feelings weren't real.
And fifteen tried to eradicate all the feelings altogether.
And seventeen just cried a lot.

My years have come together to unfold me into a disaster.
I am broken even in my most whole parts.
I am empty even on my most alive days.
If you send out a SOS into my chest the sound will ring off into its empty chambers and only answer itself.

The weather's like summer and rain
And I'm just looking out the window
Seeing you in vain
I've only heard you speak
And some pictures all 2D
But I've traced the lilt of your laugh
And it's nothing like some graph
Been trying to keep you off my mind
But you're just there all the time

I can't seem to fall asleep most nights
Even when I've turned off all the lights
Twelve always turns to two
And I keep thinking about you

Everything is brighter
Too much light
Too many people
Crawl back in
Crawl back in
This is all too much

Take a deep breath
Smile too hard
Smile too little
This is all too much
This is all too much
Pretend to be someone else

This will work
Try to be happier
Try to be brighter
Pretend to be someone else
Pretend to be someone else
Will survive

Laugh a little
Go out into the world
Go out into the light
Will survive
Will survive
Will definitely survive

We are drowning ships
crashing planes
falling skies

We are tragedies that never got
written
in ink
but blood

We are disasters they forgot
to record
or observe
or announce
or save
or help

We are train wrecks that needed saving
Instead you covered your eyes
Shielded your children
Dumped the wreckage into landfills
That are eating away at our plant

Ours

This world, it is ours
Yours and mine
It is not a kingdom that is your
birthright to take
to force yourself on
your rules
your mistakes
your judgement
your hearts

We are people
Collapsible
Collapsing
At every turn
every word
every day
every breath

We are still people
still alive
still able
still fighting
breathing
belonging to a world that has never accepted us
made space for us
let us belong

But we are belonging

​Some days you wake up with limbs that feel not quite right
Some days you walk around wanting to peel off your skin
Some days you dream about being something else
Something no one told you that you could be
And some days you don't feel like a displaced soul
And some days you don't feel like this skin isn't your own
And some days you even manage to own these limbs
But one day you walk into the wrong section and feel completely right

You who puzzles over this business of being alive
Of not crawling out of your skin
To fall face first into a world that does not understand
There are sharks in the water
But there are people on land
And nothing seems safer than nestling into those jaws

Streets with the blood of our sins,
washing souls marked unfit
to save,
to much effort
it takes,
we say.

Homes torn asunder,
lives to shreds,
but we here cry about
broken nails,
and lost sleep
where the dead lie with
eyes wide.

Our devotion to violence is
the likeness
of the Moon
revolving
around our Earth,
constant,
relentless.

how to not be selfish
how to love
how to walk away
how to stay gone
how to not care
how to not cry
how to live
how to breathe
how to die
how to stay dead
how to try harder
how to stop trying
how to get lost
how to be found
how to not feel alone
how to accept love
how to identify love
how to not die
how to not want to die
how to breathe
how to breathe
how to breathe

Think hiding
Alone
Unnatural
For the thing that is the most natural of them all
Love

Your hate has made liars of us all
This world too much
Our lives too fake
Our hearts too jaded
And broken
And empty
With the holes of your abandon
And neglect
With a siege on our love
Until this law gives away

To the self-harmers, self-haters, the loathers, the detesters,

Our homes were the hiding places of things sharp, pointy and jagged.
Things to take away the pain with more pain,
the fear with control,
the uncertainty with decisiveness.  

Because we did decide,
to take ourselves apart.
Bit by bit.
Like their mutilating stares weren’t enough.
Like their toxic words didn’t burn away our innocence.

What would you know you’re *******.
You’re so fat a cow couldn’t compete with you.
Hey there ***, yeah run to mommy.
Hey ****, did daddy not love you enough?

But how could they know he isn’t *******,
his mind is a beauty you could never compete with.
And that fat girl hasn’t eaten a bite of solid food in eight days,
because the word beautiful has never known how to never stick to her skin.
And the *** doesn’t have a mommy to run to,
she died fighting a battle he would never wish upon anyone, not even you.
And the **** only wants to feel normal,
hoping she will if only she can carve out enough of the bits that feel different.

But if normal is you then normal is the worst thing in this world.
Normal is a bully hiding their truth behind venom.
Casting out into this world all their hatred, all their pain.
Not caring where it lands.
Whom it bruises.
Whom it kills.

The numbers are rising.
Higher than a mountain we can ever climb up to.
There are children on our streets.
We don’t look twice.
Our phones are outdated.
We worry.

What if our self isn’t enough.
Maybe these shiny coins will get us our attention.
Maybe then we will be enough.
Because the person staring back from the mirror is a friend who never was,
a stranger too familiar,
perhaps a ghost with our truths
dangling from the tips of its claws.

Worry about yourself,
because we will learn to be enough.
We already learnt to sleep on the streets.
Under the skies, near blue seas.
They said we wouldn’t make it.
But look at us succeed.

We are already enough.
More so.
So much more.

They teased and taunted,
Said things that had me haunted.
The curve of my thigh,
How I stood so tall and high.
But ther never really saw,
On my thighs the scars all raw.

I couldn't do what you said
This is a death note instead
There's these voices in my head
Just wanna put them to bed
They've been screaming 'bout the pain
That's been coursing through each vein
I've been trying to hit reset
This is all such a mess
They said suicide is a sin
But this game I cannot win

I'm a girl
But somedays
I'm a boy

The horizon
A fog dusted oblivion
And you
All alone

I am bad at falling in love
I trip over the broken bones of every word I never found the guts to say
I am broken more often than I am whole and even then I am still broken
I write dreams and fantasies at the back of my hand
I misspell the word trust on a daily basis
I dance with my own shadow when dusk settles down
I whisper truths only when the lights go out
I make sure I'm alone in already empty rooms
I hold my breath and scribble notes, scrambling to survive

When they first tell you to hold it in, you pretend not to hear,
you shut your eyes and girt your teeth,
you ball your fists and split your skin.

Sharp nails digging into pink flesh
Battered heart taking it's last breath.

Darkness surrounding.
Darkness inside.

When you rise again you let loose, you pretend not to hear,
you stare them in the eyes and let the words out,
you show them the light and you dare not fear.

Truthful words cutting through the life of lies
Still beating heart rising from the dust.

Darkness surrounding.
Darkness outside.

Trying to find you
But you are so elusive
Happiness isn't real

Sometimes less is more,
When more threatens
To become too much.

It takes processing.
Every slice,
every tear,
one pint after the next.

Waiting for pain,
once again,
the cycle isn't bound to end.

Under control,
the edge in hand,
a round of jagged scars all around.

On the house,
a bout of pain,
a pitcher of grief,
can't get enough of this misery.

The clickety-click-clack-clack of keys clicking
and the creek-creek-creek of the rusty chairs,
you grinding cavities into your teeth.
Is this your definition of time passing?
Time here is slow.
Almost unmoving.
You see a window,
consider the possible way through it.
Boredom does have a tidy death streak.

I am free
or supposed to be
Each new sentence you sprout
Has another bar coming down
I walk into invisible walls
I wasn't claustrophobic before this
Now the air feels like cement in my lungs
A step forward is a step out of line
Anything you don't want to hear is wrong
I am a porcelain doll
Unheard
A pawn in my own life
You play out your ambitions through
When did I become so weak?
When did I give up?

And ten years from now when my daughter comes up to ask me I'll say
Don't ask me about Hiroshima, or Nagasaki, or the ten thousand other wars
Led more by human emotions running amuck than
By mankinds infinite need to be superior.

And there were rivers of blood and tears
Because mothers sitting in puddles of blood holding onto parts of their children
Because they felt incomplete
Because there weren't enough parts left behind
By the wreckage of the explosion that was meant to **** all of them
Yet ended up saving half of them and honey, don't get me wrong,
But the ones who were killed were the ones who were saved.

All that was left behind was flesh strewn all over the place
In an unidentifiable mess of who's -who
And silhouettes of men, women and children in a radius that numbers could never account for
Because honey, the affected weren't limited to the bounds of the city meant to be destroyed.

And generations later,
You can still see the scars and the ghosts they will never forget
And will hold onto like those carbon silhouettes
So don't ask me about Hiroshima, or Nagasaki or that endless stream of wars
Because honey, in a world where children are taught the word war before peace
I don't want to you to know that when I say humanity has no bounds
It goes both ways.

The trees
And leaves
In autumn
Remind me of you
Always falling apart

You can call me
Pretentious
With my fancy words and
My endless rants
About
These beautiful words, worlds and
Fantasy lives.

I talk about being alive in
The lilt of those words the
Curve of my tongue rolling off every
Lush little letter I talk
About poetry and magic and
An exasperating universe.
And god! I'm breathless

With the chaos of this beauty
And the beauty of this chaos.
And god every deep
Breath is another burst
Of magic and every new word
Settles into the depths of my
Soul.

****, I try to be humble but
Everything in me sways
And sashays
To the rhythm of these words
And its song entwined with the
Melody of my heart, I dance
And I jump and hum with all this joy.

Never pretentious.
Always alive.

It should be
Morning
But the sun
Has stopped
Shining

Today was the ending
I felt nothing
Maybe relief

Ten years ago I thought
This would be the day
The day I'd be proud

But see, I've done nothing
And here standing in a mass of people
I don't stand out anymore

I have lost that spark
That thing that made me so me
That some days you'd just smile and say
Never change,
Never change because I love you

But today was the ending
And I'm sure amidst the mass of colors
You didn't even miss me
You never will
But I will

You can call me Alex or Alexandra
The first time I said I liked girls my voice broke
Everyone turned to me as if I had cursed at the dinner table
My mother told me to go take a shower and think about it
But mom, you can't wash off who you are
And yes, I have been thinking about it
A lot

In a small town news spreads like wildfire
I was the walking disappointment in the middle of town square
I had been reduced to it till I was purged of this evil that threatened to claim my soul
No one would sit next to me in class
And everyday after the assembly I was taken aside and told I would burn
Hell had no mercy for those like me
But people, you don't tell a sixteen year old child that she is possessed by the devil

And the other day when I went to get my hair cut
They loped it all off
And they said there you like to **** girls now you can be a man
But a bad haircut doesn't make me a man
And all the abuses you can throw at me won't change who I am
And I stood there with their glares digging daggers into the back of my head
The old man cursed ****, and the parents covered their childrens eyes
As if I had a disease they would catch if they looked for too long

And they threw a burning stick in my front yard and said burn you deserve to burn
So i did
I burnt
I burnt myself piece by piece till there was nothing left but ashes
But remember you can burn down one Alex, one ****, one unholy sin but
There will rise another and another and another
Till this world will have to change and then
There will be a **** at every street corner and
I will look you in the eye and say how many will you burn?

I am sixteen years of
Apologies bundled into
One big mess

I am every lie I told
You when you clearly
Didn't know better

I am bruises left on
Skin that is now
A vile shade of purple

I am every stroke of
The pen that leaves
Scars deeper then knives

I am every shadow that
Wakes you in the
Middle of the night

I am the darkness
That took away
Your light

I am every breath you
Take when you're
Trying so hard to forget

I am sixteen years of
Apologies that I could
Never make up for