dear little girls,

who taught you to open your legs before opening your mouth?
who taught you that the only use for a woman's lips is anything other than speaking her mind?
who taught you that women who say "leave me alone" are worth less than those who say "yes, daddy"?
who taught you that the fire behind your eyes should be snuffed out?

Those people are the worst teachers who little girls like you are learning the most from.
I say, look those people in the face and say "*******."

That flame behind those fierce eyes of yours?
If it will set the world ablaze, I say let it.
I say let gasoline fall like rain.
I say dance in the ashes of the world that thought it was fireproof.
I say
Let.
It.
Burn.

Lately when I drink
I drink at bars two miles
Away from my house
Four shots of whiskey and
I usually get sad and I
Walk home
And the other night
I did that
And caught wind
That was missing
Someone

I began to stumble
My way home
I usually try to look mean
And unapproachable
But still I hear
A "hey baby"
******* can't
See I'm crying
And I turn around
On fire and tell him
To *******
He tells me it's thanksgiving as if
That means ****
To me
And I barrel home
Thinking he doesn't
Know that I am
Just starting to notice
All the cracks in
The pavement
And the empty spaces
Where the honey combed
Brick used to lay
And I'm wishing
I hadn't felt so
Strange toward you

happiness in my life exists transiently.
never have i been able to trust it completely.

on the occasions that things consistently go right,
my stomach drops and my mind keeps me awake at night.

i ponder why i must live in constant fear.
perhaps, it's due to the leaving of people i once held dear.

my hands clasp and try to hold you tight,
but my inner negativity makes this a constant fight.

i pray that one day happiness will be a friend to me.
that i won't fear its leaving and enjoy life peacefully.

I tell him that three of his freckles disappeared today and that I can’t help but notice that his eye twitches twice before he falls asleep.
He sometimes wakes up to an empty bed at 2 in the morning. It is not because I can’t feel comfortable with his legs tangled in mine but, because I found the sight of not knowing where my body ended and his began so poetic.  
Some days, I feel as if I’m living life in the shadows. Always noticing but never seen, are words supposed to scream this loud?
He says that when we kiss, he has to dust the commas and colons off of my eyelid and that he repeats his sentences four times because he knows that during the first I was catching a thought, preventing it from flying away and that when he speaks for the second I’m trying to take notice of the exact degree he tilts his head and that by the third I’ve already crafted a stanza about the way he licks his lips in the cold.
I tell myself that I will not carry a pen wherever I go, but it doesn’t matter because on certain days, even my bone marrow writes poetry about the cells dying and being born in my blood – supernovae of molecule scale.
My brother tells me that my quadratic equations are written in limerick form and that he does not know why I’m taking Calculus and Statistics if I already know a formula for the perfect novel.
The truth is, I don’t know why I notice the way my love wrings his hands twice when I ask him where he’s been – is that lavender I smell?
I know that he tells me the truth, but the other voice in my head can’t help but make me ask him why he drank his coffee with milk instead of creamer today.
He tells me that he loves me by holding me far too tight when I’m sad, so that he can crush the blue out of me and by barely touching me when I’m happy, afraid that he’ll break my spirits, he knows that my pink is a Porcelain Doll – fragile.
*He doesn’t use any words, and for once, this is enough for me.

I lay in bed listening to the rain
Falling against my windowpane
Soothing but still I cannot sleep
All I can do is think and weep

I wonder when did I get like this
Constantly thinking of those I miss
Worrying about how I’ll end up
Draining the coffee from my cup

It’s 2 AM now I think think think
Further into myself I sink sink sink
My bed is cold and filled with tears
I Feel like I’ve been awake for years

Insomnia has gotten the best of me
My eyes are open, but I barley see
The world is fuzzy through my eyes
Each night another piece of me dies

The day moves on.
The week moves on.
The month and year all move on.
Life, of course, moves on.

        But some of us
        Life moves on without.
        We're left where we stopped
        Sitting along and wondering why.

              Life has no time for our selfish thoughts,
                    Life has no care for how we cope.
                         Life just moves on.

And so
Must we.

Easier said than done, I suppose.