What if our tears of loneliness
fell from our wet cheeks
and met at our chin
to make each other whole?

Maybe it started when I used to beg you to play barbies with me and you'd
Sit down for five minutes and then make up an excuse to leave.
Or maybe it started shortly after your mother died and I used to come into your room
And brush your hair back with my tiny three-year old hand and say,
"Mommy, I dusted your bedside table for you." Hoping I could maybe
Do something nice to cancel out the bad in order to get you
To stop crying and pay attention to me.  
Or perhaps it started when I used to sit at the bottom of the stairs in the dark
And listen to both of you fight for hours about nothing, wondering
If other peoples parents used words as knives.
Or perhaps it started the night of your birthday, right after your brother died
When your friends had to carry you inside the house and you were so drunk
You could hardly make out a mumble,
I had to check on you a thousand times in the night to make sure you were
Still breathing.
Or perhaps it was the time you told me about your childhood abuse,
The trauma that had never left you,
The attempted overdoses  you  made sound like you wished hadn't failed.

Or maybe there was nothing that started it, maybe
I had always had it.
Whatever word you want to fill the space of "IT" with,
Is fine by me.
Because I sure as hell can't put a finger on it.

But it's there.
It has been there for as long as I can remember.

*The presence of absence.

Missing you, I am
Flotsam in the pounding surf
In, out, up and down
Taken by the undertow
Drowned in the deep emotion

Those dry little words
So neat upon their pages
Filled with blood and tears
Staunching my lettered bleeding
I wrap my lines and tighten

one thing is for sure:
it's easier
to replace something
than to change something.

for a long time she turned away from the mirror
and watched herself replace
scars with *****,
validating it because at least
she was only hurting herself
one way and not both.

for a long time i moved away from my mother
and turned into a doormat disguised
as a magnet that attracted
people that used me just as often,
and loved me just as little and wondered
why i still felt the same level of worthlessness at the end of the day
that i felt as a little girl.

for a long time i pushed people away
and to this day
i wish someone would have told me
how childhood abandonment will stick with you
through the long haul of adulthood,
but no one did and so i watched people leave
and wondered why they left, where they went
and for the people who stayed, i wondered
why they were still here, and how much more awful of a person
did i have to be
to get them to leave me.

"you wanted this." some would say,
when they found me drenched with sweat and blood and tears
sobbing on the floor
"get up. stop crying. you're being pathetic."
and i agreed with them, because i didn't know
any better.

it's easier
to replace your feelings with somebody else's
it's easier to blame yourself for why others left you
it's easier to assume no one will ever love you
more than they love getting drunk and having fun

but a good friend of mine once told me,
the easy thing is very rarely the right thing
and that maybe she should take her own advice
and that in retrospect, yes,
replacement is the signature replica of how you were raised
but real change,
that is the true definition of a life transition.