arms wrapped around my
waist feeling more like a chain link
fence I could not
jump reminding me of the
christmas my entire
family bought me boxes and boxes of
rulers to see if i measured up to their standard of
beauty of what a young woman should
weigh but personally I've liked feeling like an oversized bag of
sugar when everyone else is withering away to
nothing to the sound of your voice when I say it on a windy
day see I can keep you right
here if we're still in love in
winter and you get
cold at night you can go right
here in the folds of my
love if you get cold if you get
cold see I have so much to
give the truth is I never really gave a
**** about you but you were the only
person who could embrace
me without making some sort of
joke and I've never had a history of
humour

I might've been an only
child but I was never the
favourite. you trailed behind us at every
social event, pulling on my
hair and stepping on the backs of my
shoes. the bottoms of them were so
worn out from years of me trying to run
away that I could feel every footstep in my
lungs. at christmas none of my presents could be
wrapped, because we'd learned the first
year that it wasn't a good
idea. she made me spend hours tearing it off in a straight
line, using a ruler as
guidance. I was too young to read the
numbers on it. this year, I bought her a
necklace. I knew I had to give her something even though I wanted to
take. she never mentioned it on our Christmas cards, but it was
there, it was
there in the spacing of our
names and the negative space between our warm
bodies; we weren't allowed to
touch. she hates you so
much that she could never bear
leaving you. vacuums became my
lullaby and my father quickly grew
used to never getting kissed on the
mouth. I hate you. you were a thorn
stuck into the centrepiece of our perfect
family, and my psychotherapist says you're the
reason I still let myself
bleed.

if you are missing him, remember this. remember how cruel he was to you, how every time he drove away the moonlight made your skin look bruised, it made you feel soft. remember that you are not. you might break but you will always heal. think of the nights where he turned away and refused to let you touch him, nights where he moaned your best friends' names into your mouth while you tried to prove how much you loved him, nights where he'd refuse to stop yelling until you put your hands on him. do not think of his hands, or his mouth, or any of the bones in his body. they're not for you. they're not for anybody but himself and you should pity the fact he doesn't know how to love them. you gave your best to him and he crumpled it up until it looked like your worst. don't feel sorry for being emotional, he was a gaping wound in your chest and things like that deserve a good cry. if you're missing him, remember how distant he was, how when you'd sink down on him he wouldn't be looking at your face. how his shoes were always graffitied with the numbers of other girls. how in the middle of a date he asked another girl her name. I know it hurts, it's going to be okay, I promise. remember how unhelpful he was? how little he cared, moving so fast he could never type the 'I?' he blamed you for loving him too much, for being too sad: both things were his fault. I know it doesn't seem like it but I promise there is somebody much, much more lovely, somebody who will treat you like a cloud, and won't throw a fit when you start to rain. you just have to wait.

here's to those with seasonal affective disorder that made it through the east coast's incredibly long winter. and here's to those that didn't.

misophonia is not getting angry when you hear people breathing or eating. misophonia is 'i'm supposed to feel
stronger because there's a scientific
reason behind all the pain clenched like a fist inside my own body, I'm
supposed to feel better.' that's what doctors say. but the answer is a long list of riddles the doctors can't
decode. 'we know why your heart is
breaking, but we don't know how to
stop it.' misophonia is the maximum number of pills I can hold without dropping any. it's the moment when my doctor says she won't allow me to go to a college more than two hours away. it's the effort to smash my own bones on cement just to drown out the sound of somebody talking about what they had for dinner. it's that autocorrect and spellcheck still don't  recognize it as a word. it's about hearing sounds so menacing and monumental that not a night goes by where they don't swallow me whole. it's the fear of leaving my house and hearing something bad. it's my hands not feeling like hands and everything I try to touch turning into snow. it's having to bring headphones everywhere in case I hear a word I hate. it's my doctor telling me with a sad look on her face that she'd be surprised if I make it to 45 years old. it's having to ask directors if any of my trigger words are in the script before I see a show. it's the knowledge that I'm a quickly ticking time bomb, that it gets worse over time. that I might wake up tomorrow morning not being able to stand the sound of my mother's voice. it's the fact that the most common result of misophonia is self harm but I've made it this far without it. it's my chest igniting every time I hear someone start to talk. (I'm sorry I can't marry you, I can't stand the sound of your voice in the morning). it's simple words that can cause my composure to break like a separation of continents, like all that hurt never meant anything. years of wishing, on my knees, that I was deaf so I could skip the chapters when my whole body feels like a slowly melting candle, like I'm not allowed to be afraid of fire. it's in 9th grade when the bell rang to go home and I was sitting in the back row of English class with my fingers pressed so far into my ears they popped, trembling, until Mrs Gitsis asked someone to take me to the counseling centre. it's not 'ew, I hate the sound of people chewing.' do you lose sleep because the reverberations of that sound won't leave your head? do you have to lock the windows on your second floor to feel safe? it's having to wear gloves in 90 degree weather because I can't see my hands without them. it's waking up at 3am to arms that turn into stumps, unable to go get help because the sound of footsteps makes me want to die. it's reaching for a knife every time somebody says a common word. misophonia is being taken out of school because I can't sit with other kids in the cafeteria. it's hearing clapping after a show that's supposed to be for me transforming into screeching metal tires reverberating around my skull at frequencies i didn't know were possible. it's feeling every nerve ending in my body start to tingle seconds before someone says a trigger word, like god feels bad for all he's done so far and he's trying to send me a sign. it's the fact that most therapists haven't even heard of it. it's the fact that the ones who have don't know a cure. it's that there is no cure. it's when all someone has to do is repeat sentences, words, and phrases they know will break me. it's when my second therapist told me I was making it up. it's when my parents told me I just wanted to boss people around. it's when I started not being able to eat dinner with my family anymore. it's growing up in a household with a parent affected by serious OCD who has to vacuum 24/7 but I can't hear a vacuum or else I'll try to see my pulse from the inside. it's the sadness and anger that clenches itself around my heart like a fist until I feel like the dust I was created from. it's when something as simple as the sound of a drawer closing makes me wish I were dead. it's the knowledge that one day I won't be able to handle feeling like an abandoned building and the volcano inside of my head will erupt. it's the knowledge that I can't get help. I can't ever get help.

you remember his lips on
yours, how they felt like tar and you knew he was something
you did not want to stick to. the aftermath was like climbing out of a
net while covered in honey, he told you, smiling, how sweet you
were but you’re clenching your fists waiting for the
bees. sting me here and here and here and
here, cut off my hands so i never have to know what
losing your child before it’s fourth
birthday feels like.

when you were little, your
mother used to read you bedtime
stories about princes and dragons and lots of happy ever
afters. but where is the ‘after’ when your best friend
hates you? where is the
‘before?’

your therapist is reading you an
eliot poem in hopes it’ll calm you
down, in hopes you’ll replace memories of that
boy with bob
dylan and that couch with thoughts of empty
fields. every time it comes into your
head, bob won’t write songs about
you and the field screams ‘i am not
empty, i am
open.’

call you Vada, accuse you of being in
love with your teacher and killing your
mother; the first thing you ever ruined on
accident. you wish you were thomas
j, you wish you were genetically pre
dispositioned to crumble like a heart made of
sand when a bee sticks himself
into you.

your best friend won’t be your
best friend anymore and you’re ripping pages out of the
calendar and swallowing january
whole, there’s more ways to die than to stay
alive. suicides are their own
language, the suicidal are like
carpenters, they always ask ‘what
tools’ instead of
‘why build’.

you’re begging to the god your best
friend believes in to let you die
young. every minute of the
afterward feels like one more
tally on his list of worst
betrayals. satan is
smiling because you’re playing the game he
invented.

but what if the devil
doesn’t know he’s the devil?

it started out with a crash and a
blast and it ended in a mouthful of
bees.

'please don't ever
hurt me,' you whimper into the softer side of his
neck. he knows exactly where to put his
hands on someone who hurts
everywhere. 'the only way I could ever
bruise you is by kissing you too
hard,' he says back.

you collect his moans like cut out passages from the
bible, he's the reason people get in fights about
god. he might not be a real
thing but there's no *******
way the universe created your boy by
itself.

you want to scream that you
love him from every rooftop in every
city that is warless, every Spanish
town that doesn't have a
cross on the front
gate.

yes, you do believe the story about Jesus being draped from a
cross like your great grandmother's
laundry, but like the buckets being passed around at
church, not all of it was
holy.

he is splayed out on his
back in front of you, his shirt on the
floor and his arms out to the
sides. as you push down on his
hips he bites his lip until it
bleeds the colour he knows is your
favourite. 'the only way I could ever
hurt you is by holding your hand too
tightly,' you promise him, leaning into him like a
corner.