Sometimes ignorance is bliss
The kind of ignorance that keeps us from knowing how a hospital smells
Or what the person we love the most truly feels about us
Or what it feels like to say goodbye

But sometimes ignorance is a fire
The kind of ignorance that keeps you from accepting someone
Or the ignorance that puts you at war with those that are suffering
The kind of ignorance that preys on vulnerability

Sometimes curiosity kills ignorance
Takes vengeance on the unknown
Curiosity becoming a crossroad
For which most of us take the road traveled most

Killing beautiful ignorance for good.

She' s seven years old
She's too young to worry about her thighs touching as she walks
too young to know the what she wants is to be less
less in size, becoming less of herself

She's ten years old
She's too young to feel her stomach knocking against her empty rib cage as if someone was knocking and never getting a reply
She's too young to refrain from cartwheels on the beach, too young to no longer leave foot steps
She's too young to already have a monster that follows her around

She's 13 years old
She's too young to inhale that first cigarette because she hears it will help her not eat as much
Too young to understand that her lungs are on fire, next to a lot of things that have burned long ago
Too old to go to mom's bed at night when she has another nightmare about taunts they give her at school

She's 18 years old
She's too old to deal with the ******* anymore
Too fed up with the ideal image that burned in her brain like she was branded by it
She wears the names she has been called her entire life like a crown
for she is too young to know what beauty is, but too old to be imprinted by it

I have a gender. I was born a woman therefore I have fear.

I have fear. I am taught at a young age to fear the monsters that come out at night, on the street corners and in dark allies.

I have a particular monster. When I was 11 I was diagnosed with anxiety, a fire that becomes uncontrollable at times.

I have a home. To get to this home I have to walk multiple blocks at night.

I have a phobia. This phobia includes those who walk behind me, and those who walk too close.

I have rationality. I am told I am rational for fearing those who surround me as I walk home.

I have what is expected of me.  By society I have expectations of what I am supposed to look and act like to be considered a successful woman.

I have a roommate. This roommate smokes to curve hunger and in her cigarette burns more than ash but less of what she desires.

I have a mother whose wrinkles are beautiful and tell stories. These wrinkles tell the story of every smile she gave and every laugh she enjoyed, but she is told they are ugly and she covers them day after day.

I have ears. With these ears I hear women telling themselves they aren’t good enough.

I have eyes. With these eyes I see my own reflection and try and see myself as less of an image, or reflection, and more as a person.

I have mind. With this mind I create a vision of a place where people hear what I say instead of seeing what I wear.

I have a life. With this life I want change.

I always feel this way when the wave rushes in
Claiming what is its from the shore
Leaving it barren and
Vulnerable

I always feel this way when the nausea sets in
Crushing against my ribs like a weight making itself comfortable for the night
Crushing me further and further as I beg it to stop
I plead that it stops

Back to the ocean what the wave has claimed lies at the floor
Another wave takes what is left, farther out to sea
The place where the horizon meets the ocean, farther than the eye can tell the difference
So far away that no one cares to look for it anymore  

It is forever lost

Happy, or so it seemed
Happiness with you seems like inadequacy
Happiness may feel like a bad stomach ache
Or saying goodbye over and over again

Maybe happiness is biting your tonuge
Telling everyone you love “no”
Watching yourself slip away
Pushing yourself off the highest peak

Maybe happiness was finding myself at rock bottom
Watchng you bury me even farther into the ground
Watching you laugh as you put the dirt over my face
Making sure I was really dead

Happiness was actually getting up
Brushing the dirt off
Looking myself in the face
Finding myself alive again

Why is it that once we age we find ourselves defined by our bodies? Something that we have simply become a bystander in has become all of our identity.

Why is it that what grows around my soul is all anyone sees?

Why is it that I am judged for every mark or hair that I didn’t put on my body
But I refuse to remove

Why is it that I am taken by the arm and told how to act
How to be someone that does not sleep alone

Why am I so out of control for thinking of my body as a temple and not a place of warfare, not a conquest to be had
Why am I the crazy one in a room full of addicts?
Addicted to the place they’re in when they skip a meal, or get rid of the one they just had to indulge in
Addicted to society telling them that for every bone they can see, that they did well
They wear their bones like gold stars
Making sure they are vulnerable enough to be wanted
Making sure they are wanted, period

Constantly wishing to be less
Hoping to have lost more, every morning while looking in the mirror
Taking time, lunch breaks, to get rid of more
To purge what is rightfully theirs

Until it’s finally gone

The way I loved you can’t be measured
It can’t be measured in kisses, or sweet nothings
Because we never touched, despite only the slightest of hand holding
And everything we said meant something

Tell me old love, can you remember what it’s like to live without regret
To only have the worries of when we would meet again on our minds
Exchanging of words meaning just that
The world was so kind

Draw me a world that was that kind again
Paint me a world without reality
Take me back to the times of star gazing
And writing children’s novels

Thinking those days were everlasting,
Take me to that kind of infinity

Checking the pulse on our love in a room that felt so dead was the hardest part
The worst was hearing the faint thump,
only coming from one side, mine.

Realizing that being half alive, was worse than being dead.
I killed it, you killed it, we both did away with what was left.
We waited for the silence, the final breath, but when it came time
I was the only one to witness it.

I want to take you by the hand and show you things
I want to talk about space
Roll my eyes at you when secretly I can't get enough
Show me your atmosphere

I want us to have separate constellations in the same Galaxy
I want to be able to see your star from mine
The patterns of light that make up who you are
The patterns only space knows of

I want you to explore
Admire every inch of what you find
Look for a vacancy among the stars that compose my thoughts
And feel so comfortable there that you never burn out

After all is said and done, what exists now are the shadows
The shadows of what was once torn by the fabrication I created
The shadows tell us a story we know all too well
They tell us a story of what we were

After everything, all that exists is the cool shade we bring from our bodies as we shield the concrete from the sun
We thought we were so transparent that the sun would go right through us
But what was found was not hollow, but not quite solid
What was found was fragile

And what exists now, is broken.

I have never cared more deeply for something so temporary
I trimmed the dead leaves and put them in water to preserve them for as long as I could
Make them stay alive
as alive as I felt when you gave them to me

I keep them in sunlight
something so beautiful deserves to see more than my desk
and the papers that flood it
The ornaments of my life that surround the vase in which my flowers reside

The ornaments that sometimes remind me of when I didn't feel as alive
The poems I had forgotten to finish
for emotions can be just as temporary as flowers
but we try and keep them alive

So we cut the dead leaves
we stick them in a vase
feed them sunlight
and care so deeply, even if it's as temporary as flowers

Fear dances in the halls of my memories
Fear resides in most of my present
It does not care where I am
It threatens me

I see fears shadow in things I used to love doing
I see fear in the eyes of those I love
Fear dances with others
Fear is not faithful to only one

Fear is reliable
However fear is also the last to leave
But the first to arrive
Fear is a four letter word

Or an enemy

It's not that I miss you
I miss your scent
I miss the way it wraps me up, tucks me in

I miss your skin
The way it collaborates with mine
To make what we know as a beautiful masterpiece
The map of you and I

I miss the trails that lead us to sleep
The roads that we don't remember taking
Until we doze off to our final destination
Ultimately being morning

I miss the smell of nostalgia
The collaboration of skin

But I don't miss you

I don’t think I love you anymore.
I give up on trying
I can’t bring myself down enough for you
I am already nothing

My heart is a piece of paper, crumpled again and again
There are only so many times you can look passed the wear and tear
The water stains from the words you say
The small rips, with no intentions of destroying me completely..
but doing it ever so slowly..

What was once written upon it is no longer legible
No longer easily seen
Maybe the words have already faded
Maybe I can’t get them back

And I have already forgotten what was once written there

I find myself relating to the trees
Especially now that it’s fall
Slowly leaves are falling around me
Creating a heap on the floor, disassociated like someone I used to know

If a leaf falls does the tree feel no pain?
Rooted in the same place it has no choice but to watch it fall
Why does it take so long for spring to come
Why does it take longer for these new leaves to grow?

Do you ever feel you are in a purgatory of your own making?
Do you ever wish something would transition
Transition to the side where I am living again
push me to the side that isn't so stale

The side that doesn't resemble the exhausted tune you can't get out of your head
The side whose lyrics aren't tired, whose shoes aren't worn
Something new, neither black or white

A place where there isn't only black and white,
Let me find the gray area and live in it
for although it's uncomfortable,
it is far more colorful than anywhere I have previously been

There is something really beautiful about waking up with someone

Sleeping is such an intimate thing

To trust someone enough to lay there with them unconscious for hours

Waking up and remembering where you are and who you're with

It's like we both survived to see another day, a personal victory of mine lately

and although I can't promise you the next year, or month, or week even

You have the next 24 hours in my head

A place that was once so vacant

Is a place to lay your head.

I feel like nothing when you touch me
Parts of me flaking away
Being carried away in the winds that you control
carrying them places I am not allowed to find

I feel heartbroken
Every time you take a piece
Not even examining it before crushing it on the floor
Making me feel crazy for wanting attention or to be read

Picking apart my every thought
Making me feel it should be my last
making me feel nauseous at the sound of my own voice
Making me want to throw up everything I ever said to you

I am wrong
Always wrong
I am nothing
Always nothing.

to you.

Maybe some things need to be read over and over again to be resonated

Sometimes we think we have read it for the final time because it hurt the most or it felt like the past


But maybe we have more control than that
Maybe the last time is exactly when you make it.