this is worse than i thought it would be.this is harder than i thought.
i ******* know i should accept myself but its hard not to believe im broken
when the only model for happiness includes no room for me,
i don't want to be selfish.
sorry for forcing myself into a life never made for me.
i understand you don't care when i find it hard to breathe.
im choking to death and you just want me to hold your hand
while you breathe into a paper bag.
i'm not your friend, im your comfort object.
i want you to care that im in pain.you told me you love me.
you told me im too good to be true.
you like me the same way you like your coffee: sugared;
drowned in milk so you dont taste the bitter.
:it all feels so one-sided: you said,
:i tell you everything.why dont you ever tell me anything:
:i want to help you:
:like you help me, i feel so useless:
i cried and you pretended you didnt see.
you are a sorry excuse for a friend.you are selfish.if i told you i feel like im dissolving
youd ask if this means i love you.
youre corrosive.youre sulfuric acid and i never should have let you inside of me.
god ******* ******.im tired of writing about you.you make me feel unlovable and broken.
there are bones in the backyard of my childhood home.
there are eight rosebushes to choose from and i grew up
scratching myself ****** on the branches.
you like to disembowel anyone who makes me feel loved and when i try to fix myself you ask
why im abandoning you.
its always the same ******* thing.
its always the same thing.you're always crying and im always biting my cheek.
im always lonely and youre always kissing my neck.
its always the same.

once upon a time,
you asked me to tell you stories.
they never made sense but they made you laugh
but when it was your turn you'd shrug and look at the floor.
you can't weave fiction, you're too
cerebral,
ive always been the creative one.
now im stuffing your essays in the space between my ribs
and pretending thats enough.
youve always been more politics than poetry -
you hate poetry.
but you always came when i performed
(said my poems were the only ones you could stand.
said the others were static noise)
youre miles away, youre chasing cemeteries and im chasing you.
ive always been more
successful,
youve always been kinder.
when i cry you speak softly and i scream.
when you cry i laugh and you
go quiet
and i feel sick.
you still believe in duty and honor and
honest politicians
though i tried to convince you that everyone lies,
just like you.
i took you outside at night and taught you the only constellation i know,
told you about
desperate boys and girls like mountains,
and redwood forests at three a.m.
and blew smoke in your face.
now its your turn.
tell me a story.
tell me how they broke you to bits and built you up again.
tell me how youre afraid to die.
tell me how ive hurt you and youll never trust me quite the same again.
tell me about your favorite book
again,
describe the dragon so vivid my own monsters seem like broken dolls.
i'll offer you a drink and you'll refuse.
(i'm so sorry that you're gentle
and i'm cruel.
i'm sorry for treating you sweet then snapping your wrist.
come back.
this time i'll be kind.
this time i'll listen.)

your eyes are red like youve been crying but i know youve just been
trying to pour the ocean into your blown pupils.
you told me they were so dark because they were
burned from all the salt you rubbed into them.
you told me they were wide to find the
untouched valleys inside me,
virginal land, unsullied by
the eyes of man.
ha.
ha.
honestly,
i wish i could say theres so much more to me left undiscovered,
unknown by all those who  claimed to love me but, no, they
always discover the same
******* things
that arent even ******* there.
you discover that i'm broken,
a delicate flower of a poet,
whose feelings are gentle eggshells crushed by the hand of life.
discover depths of emotion safeguarded by an iron shell,
"discover" that i just want to be loved, 
is this some sort of sick ******* joke.
im not a ******* eggshell, im not ******* broken,
life hasnt shattered me. life will not shatter me. life has given me calluses hard as stone.
i will live to be old and crooked and sagging,
wearing a full suit of armor,
i will die old and withered.
when emotion catches in my throat,
i rip it out like multicolored scarves,
like a magic trick.
just because i dont choke you with the fabric
doesnt make it any less real.
i dont just want to be loved. i dont need
your love. youre not saving me when you look at me like
your favorite broken doll.
i don't just want to be loved.
i am already loved. i am overflowing with the love i have received,
i am full to the brim, my cup runneth over, i dont need you.
i don't just want to be loved. do you know what i want?
i want you to look at me and not see
the living embodiment of a metaphor,
a walking love poem, a verse in a poem you memorized and mimicked
instead of writing your own,
i could rip your lungs out through your mouth, i dont think you realize
what my body is capable of,
even if my mind is weak.
if i could stop thinking youd be dead on the floor
before i took a ******* breath.
i am not for you.
i am not writing for you,
i am writing to remember how to fall asleep without dreaming about soulmates-turned-strangers
and friends pulling out my teeth.
i am not dreaming for you.
i am not bleeding for you.
i am not for you.
i am not yours.

stop talking about god.
you told me you dont believe,* he said.
whats the point of mourning something that was never there?
[its not that i don’t believe,] i said or apologized.
[it’s more that i can’t.]
i wanted to believe in a god that would sell my bones to an artist
to make something more beautiful.i volunteered myself
to every altar i could find,
laid at the feet of the sky till i learned that i am a ******* holocaust.
im a burnt offering  no god would claim.
im covering up my body and pretending it doesnt exist.
strangers grab my waist and i want to be sick.i want to spit acid
like a snake.my friends say im too kind for my own good.
i knew what he wanted but i talked to him anyway
cause he said please.
i always expect to be saved.
suffering doesnt feel real.
i know how you think of me but i talk to you anyway, and
i know who loves me and who
doesnt care,
but id like to know that someone hates me the way i do,
(maybe we could bond over
mutual enemies.)
last night i was sick. last night i puked in my father's garden.
you say you can tell when my smiles are fake so then
why do you just laugh along?
it is two am,
i am at a park by my home,
im waiting for a text from you but it doesnt come
i am a geode.split me open. all you'll find inside is salt.
im sleeping on hardwood floors because the word 'bed'
is still a synonym for 'crime scene,'
'earthquake zone,'
'tsunami warning'.
the world shook last week and i ran to the coast
watching for tidal waves.
i needed god.i screamed to the sky.i committed all the sins i could, but,
stubbornly,
god continued to not exist.
i needed god but god did not need me.i am using past tense to forget that today,
i stole a rosary and nailed it to my wall.
my voice cracks when i shout that i,
i am strong,
i am invulnerable.
there are fences i do not want to scale and doors i do not want to open.
did you break me?did you unmake me?
or did you just taxidermy me,
freeze me in that time,
and all i am now is the organs you threw out,
the heart and guts you didnt need.
i have not suffered; i do not suffer,
i am nerveless and numb.i am a scarecrow,
i do not care when you pick out my button eyes.
you're a papercut and i test knives for a living.
a bruise on the knuckles of a girl who keeps
punching the walls.
a splinter in my palm and i just broke my jaw.
you were just the starting gun and ive been running alone,
slow like through sand,
like a nightmare.
i dont dream anymore, i just
replay jumbled memories, i cant tell
if im asleep or awake.
im at a funeral and im
sketching your face on the back of a napkin;
a ****** composite.
all my family has to say is she'll be a heartbreaker, that one.
they're gonna be crying over her.
my mother tells me its a compliment.
its three a.m. and she asks me why im awake and i
mumble something into the blankets about impossibility.
we're interpreting the bible and he's on the other side of the room,
he's staring at his desk or his hands or nothing at all.
i'm on the roof of some building and im writing a poem and
every time i talk about you you're someone new.  
there was an earthquake while i slept but i pretended it was my heart, i
didnt clean up the broken glass
on the floor.  
i compare myself to natural disasters to absolve myself when really
im a pyromaniac in my own burning home,
i keep digging graves in my backyard and ive finally fallen in.
it’s a matter of fate, an act of god, i wont fix myself but
at least i have an excuse.
its like there are nettles in my arms caressing the nerves.
its like all the false confidence in the world cant change the way
every muscle in my body is clenched so hard
they’ve compressed to stone.
its like i am medusa and ive been alone with only mirrors
for far too long.
ive given up on being eloquent.
ive given up on making sense,
i am not articulate or intelligent or sensible and i was never meant to be an actress.
this poem is an emetic
and the bezoar you left in me will not remain.

the words stopped coming.
not to my mind,
but to my mouth--
forming in the chamber of teeth and tongue,
out with my breath,
into the air(
creating)
what we call
'voice'.

bottled up letters
filled my brain to the brim
like a stack of  tethered
dictionaries
that mildewed
and smell of
doubt and old dogs
with no new tricks.

the gathered dust
on my lungs-- look
closely enough it is
alphabets upon alphabets--
the unspoken sentences
my heart forged
and mouth rejected, swallowing
them back, crumbling
them into
a graveyard of lost
thoughts,
killed by the fear
of being an unsolicited
opinion.

she wears her jewelry proudly
purple, sometimes green,
maybe yellow
but it is always
beautiful.

she will tip back her head
and show you her
long neck and you
are overcome by the sight
of such
beauty
in one person.

sometimes she wears bracelets,
delicate
purple bands encircling
her dainty
wrists
and the colors are so beautiful.

she hardly ever wears rings
but for the purple one,
maybe an amethyst
that sits upon one of her fingers
and she will flinch
even wince if you try
to touch it.

but sometimes, maybe just once or twice,
you might even manage to
forget
that her necklace,
and those lovely bracelets
and that beautiful amethyst
which she wears so very proudly
is made up of

**fingerprints.

I’ve never found charm in speaking
words that you don’t mean
or falling over sentences
struggling with broken speech
the same way that I have never found home
in the body I call mine
that internal war I fight
between my heart and between my mind.

The world will never understand
why I tremble in daily conversation
I cause confusion in my thoughts
skipping over words in trepidation
But miscommunication then turns to judgement
without a second glance
and your lack of hesitation destroys me
tracing it’s steps into my one woman war

Well isn’t that just like your fears,
setting you up for failure?