if you were not to love me
you would at least feel bad for me
i wanted you in my life even if it meant pity
you don't understand how i molded my lungs around your arms
and my security around your spine
the bending of yours fueled the shatter of mine

Picturing a life where
I am not in love with the sun
When we are together he resides
Inside my stomach and I need him
On my skin and against my lips
When we are apart I forget to breathe
I need him next to me and I lose control
Of emotions deeply rooted in affection
But played out like violin harmonies
In temperate weather under birch trees
Picturing a life where I do not feel everything and where I do not take neutrality as blasphemy
I do not feel my heart bleed each day
For something new because I am unattached
Especially from you

you made it so hard to care for you. you made it so easy to love you and easier to lose all progress, collapse in on myself every time we touched lips, when yours moved your words hollowed me out like a rusty locket I never took off even when it hurt me to wear, I was never fully aware of the fact that you did not love me back because it hurt to know that once again, I was the one who loved more. I got sick of the silence, it ate away at me like a wasp's nest invades a tree unexpectedly, I loved silence until I loved you and then it drove me crazy. You made me lay my past out across sidewalks of the town we grew up in. I told you everything. Please don't go. You convinced yourself that loving me was going to be easy and when I fainted and fell off my pedestal you darted before anyone could tell where you were going and no one has heard from you since. Please don't go. Why am I so hard to love? Why did you promise me that you would never hate me and then leave? Why am I so hard to love? Please don't go. I wear your whiskey stained sweaters as an armor and I fight with the mirror and the keys that you left in the door. Where did you go? Please come home. I won't ask you to make the bed anymore and I won't tell you the reasons I felt I was unlovable, I know it drove you crazy when I talked about myself like that. Why did you go?

I will always be too much to love
I’ll always love too much
I find my love is not enough
I find myself empty
Seeking validation in other souls
Outside my own,
Messy and alone,
I’ll always be too much to love

I fell in love
not with you
but the way
you validated me
when you grew tired
and could not hold my sorrows
in your shaking hands
I felt nothing
I laid my worth on you
full forced and terribly
I loved you not
for who you were
but who you let me be
and I am sorry

Some days I paint my skin
with the same colors as the sky
The way that it looked that night in July
when we exchanged souls
For the very first time
But my palette is watered down

But I want you to look at me,
The same way you did that sunset sky
Before vulnerability came in chains
Instead of white silken sheets,
Before promises came in broken glass,
And intimacy a day dream
I miss the way you used to look at me

The only thing I do well is leave before I’m left,
I’m a victim of theft in every sense of the word,
Consequently developed a cyclical sense of self defense,
Where I break my own heart and force everyone I know and love
to watch, and taking notes and noting cues so they can learn to do it too,
I find it to be easier to let others down first so they don’t get the chance to ask questions
I don’t know the answers to, questions I deny and refuse.
Why do you do what you do, when so many people love you?
I told myself I would not do this to you, and I did.
I did.
I’m sure I could take it back if I tried hard enough,
But I’m not sure I’m worth the effort you put in,
I’m bound to do it again and it’s that ******* self defense,
I use as an excuse to ruin everything around me that usually blooms,
I told myself I wouldn’t, but I did it to you.
I tried to hide it behind your apathy and how it drove me crazy
To watch sunsets hit your eyes and fade away like they were never there
In the first place but I did not know you were soaking them up to reimagine later
When you felt you had no other way to feel okay again, and warm again,
I took your apathy for devolution and I painted you a thief and I wanted my soul back,
But I had latched it onto yours, like I always say I’ll never do,
But I did to you.
The only thing I do well is leave before I’m left,
I’m the reason for the hole in my own chest,
I did it to protect you from everything I think I’m not,
I never wanted to hurt you so I had to leave before I could,
The only thing I do well is leave before I’m left,
You never showed any interest in going away,
But I made sure to do it myself so I did not have to force you to stay someday.

We fear love because we fear vulnerability and I understand this paradox is common. And I understand that my struggles are not unique but being rudimentary and predictable does not make the pain in my chest that tells the brain in my head to take a knife to my own skin every time I am alone in a room with white walls, ever go away. It tells me to paint and I tell it to shut up because at this age, no one cares how badly you want to hurt yourself because at this age, you should be asking for help, and at this age when you finally ask for help they tell you that you should have come sooner and that this age is a weird one to start talking about how you feed off validation from others the same way your extended family feeds off alcohol. You never let anyone in because it’s all your fault. And you know it, so you suffer alone and you refuse to face vulnerability with self love and trust because the last time you trusted someone they shred your insides to dust and you could not see straight for two years. Tell me, what do you fear? Liberation or self examination?

How to conquer the world when you are manic and preserve it when you are depressed.

I had a close friend send me a text a few weeks ago
Reminding me how to breathe and that I had to get out of bed,
I thought if she could have read my mood from the west coast
As I rotted in cotton comforters in the east, I must have been pretty obvious
Maybe it’s because we have been friends for ten years or because
I plaster every up and down online to vague audiences, I cast out my emotions
Like frayed fishing line, trying to catch even a glimpse of someone who relates.
But when this friend texted me she said something that might help balance out
The high-highs with the unbearable lows is writing how I feel when I am both.
I did my best to put the feeling of flying at 100mph upside down with wings made of silken sheets into words but the minute I did they turned into wings of concrete and I lost my focus again. And so I went to answer my friend and I said ‘here is how to conquer the world when you are manic”

I am caffeine therapy,
engulfed in energy
I am yellow, I am green
I am everything at once,
I feel everything all at once.
Did I mention?
Hey, I'm really excited to tell you
I’m gonna save the world,
All of it.
Today.
try and stop me.
I woke up at 4 this morning
Watched the sun swallow shadows
Like it was yearning for something dark
To balance itself out.
Too much light is dangerous too.
I always like to watch the sunrise before I go out to save the world, Waking up early always gives me so much more time And today I will do a lot,  I want to save the world. I hope you know I'm going to.

I am yellow, I am green. I am everything at once.
I am traffic jams spread out across freeways,
I am six trips in a row to the same store because I kept forgetting what I needed,
Music playing so loud you can’t hear anything else
I wash down amphetamines with coffee
I am now Narrow energy. I'm traveling a perfectly paved road Home to a room where I cannot see the floor, but that’s okay because I’m
Going to save the world today.
It doesn't matter how fast I'm going as long as you see me get there.
I am validation starvation in calorie counting notebooks,
I am looks from strangers whose eyes wonder loudly how I got marks on my arms or how I'm bouncing my foot like energy is spewing out my body but still have bags under mine that insinuate exhaustion I never learned how to overcome.
I am a math equation stuck inside the text book
From that semester I dropped out;
I am heat energy dancing inside shattered beakers, I am weathered worn out sneakers still being used because it’s hard to let go,
I'm kissing catalytic conversations with those I love because I need a reaction to feel like they're listening,
I am potential energy ready to become kinetic,
I am energetic and today, I have the heart to save the world.
I am off track, my bad. Its like an “ADHD starter pack” but there's no warranty or handbook.
Anyway, I started by re-enrolling in classes because I have always been good at school,
Except for when I stopped going but I have always been good at school and I can understand why everyone around me might expect me to succeed, I emit determination from my mouth when my heart feels empty, but I did sign back up because
This time I'm ready, and this  time I won’t ever feel low again, I think i beat it finally
I feel it in my bones as I cross busy streets without looking either way
I'm invincible and incredible
I am yellow I am green
I am hydro energy feeding off the
Big deep blue sea,
I am gratitude as an action
Not a trinket I can break
and today I will save the world
and tomorrow I will not be low,
And today I will conquer my fears, all 647
And tomorrow I will tell my friends I love them
And today I will remind myself that skin cells
Replace themselves every 28 days
So I only have to wear long sleeves for that many more
And tomorrow I will wake up and do my homework
And today I will surely save the world,
I will never feel so low as I have ever again
How could I when there is so much to smile for?
I’m laughing so loud my neighbors are asking,
And my friends think I’m doing better and I tell them I am. I am.
I am yellow, I am serene,
I feel it in my skin that I am better
recovery feels like Holding hands at sixteen and iced tea, And this is easy!
I am yellow, I am green.
I am yellow, I am green.
I feel everything all at once.
floating between causes, altruism is a virus, slithering through my veins, celebrating how much I will do today. Did I mention how much I will do today?
I'm going to save the world.
After signing back up for classes I spread out my day like magazine clippings I'll never put onto a “dream board” because I will most likely forget about them, my dreams make better notes in my iphone where I can see them
As I check my contacts to see who I can talk to today. Or who will listen. I wonder who will listen. Or what kind of game I will play to make someone listen.
I am yellow, I am green. It’s noon and I am flying.
Here is how else I will save the world:
I will make sure I save myself first,
I'll clean my room and go to the gym
work off three weeks of sweets with three hours on the treadmill, I forgot how good it feels to run and I know that this is the last time I will ever, ever give up.
I’m better now. I run on a track that loops back in on itself because I find comfort in knowing it will always return no matter how many times I lose sight of where I'm going, I would get lost were I to run outside because when you are everything all at once you seldom stay in place, God there is just so much to look at. I will never look back at who I was even as late as yesterday.
I get lost inside rubix cube mentalities and short lived craft store hobbies, but I'm better.
I am yellow, I am green. And today I am going to be a wildlife photographer, And an artist, and when people ask me what I want to be I tell them
I will work for the United Nations and that I am going to save the world, they believe me and ask me how I'll do it and I realize that I have yet to start saving the world.
I woke up at 4, so sure today was the day,
I felt it in my heart like the time I took two of my adderalls by mistake because I forgot that I took one that day, I felt it and it was real. Throbbing like a bump from falling but real. I lost track of that feeling for a second and now it is fleeting.
What is happening?

I am yellow, I am green.
I am yellow, i am yellow I am yellow,
Are you still listening?
I'm potential energy locked inside a pendulum
Hanging from a chemical tree that dies fast and grows slowly, Im staggered progress dressed up like empathy, I'm baggage too heavy
I am yellow, I am green.
I am fleeting energy
The kind that sparks a few times
On telephone lines turned pink infront of sunsets in july, gone before your friends can see it too.
They never really see it, too.
I am yellow, I am green

I forgot to shower every day this week but
I'm too tired to get out of bed,
What is happening? Can you remind me what I was doing?
I was supposed to save the world today
I’m sorry.
I was really going to save the world today
I'm taking in as much caffeine as I can without
Making my heart feel like it will push its way
Through my ribs out of my chest
Though being able to feel in my chest again
Might not be so bad. I’m stuffing smoke inside my cavities to fill them up, doing my best to keep feeling inside the skin I wear when I can feel it
Going numb, even it hurts at least I can feel it, I wish I could inject caffeine right into my veins,
I wish you could jump infront of moving trains without Hurting everyone on board,
I wish I felt less like this but I wish I felt more,
I reread texts from last night where transitioning
Felt like fist fighting recovery, her having one up on me,

I am crimson, I am grey, I am fleeting energy.
I’m so sorry.


I thought I said that before
And I might have but I forgot, I feel cloudy
I stumbled through steel wool tall grass to make it
Out of bed today and the weight of every single mistake I have ever made feels like it will surely break my spine Right in half, I don’t know if I will make it through today.
I wish someone would save me today.
I am crimson, I am grey.
I need someone to save my world today.

How to conquer the world when you are manic and preserve it when you are depressed.

I had a close friend send me a text a few weeks ago
Reminding me how to breathe and that I had to get out of bed,
I thought if she could have read my mood from the west coast
As I rotted in cotton comforters in the east, I must have been pretty obvious
Maybe it’s because we have been friends for ten years or because
I plaster every up and down online to vague audiences, I cast out my emotions
Like frayed fishing line, trying to catch even a glimpse of someone who relates.
But when this friend texted me she said something that might help balance out
The high-highs with the unbearable lows is writing how I feel when I am both.
I did my best to put the feeling of flying at 100mph upside down with wings made of silken sheets into words but the minute I did they turned into wings of concrete and I lost my focus again. And so I went to answer my friend and I said ‘here is how to conquer the world when you are manic”

I am caffeine therapy,
I am engulfed in energy
I am yellow, I am green
I am everything all at once,
I feel everything all at once.
I’m gonna save the world,
All of it.
Today.
try and stop me.
I woke up at 4am to watch
the sun swallow the indigo horizon
One last time before I go out and save the world,
Waking up early always gives me so much more time
To save the world, and I want to save the world.
I am yellow, I am green. I am everything at once.
I wash down amphetamines with coffee and I am
Narrow energy. I am traveling a perfectly paved road
Home to a messy room but that is okay because I’m
Going to save the world today.
I am a math equation stuck inside the text book
From the semester I dropped out;
I am heat energy dancing inside shattered beakers,
I am potential energy ready to become kinetic,
I am energetic and today, I have the heart to save the world.
I started by reenrolling in school because you need a degree
To save bees. That line might have been a joke but I did sign back
Up to finish my degree and this time I won’t ever feel low again,
How could I when there is so much to be happy about?
I am laughing so loud my neighbors are asking questions
And my friends think I am doing better and I tell them I am.
I feel it in my skin that I am better and recovery feels like
Holding hands at sixteen and iced tea in the summer,
And this is easy!
I am yellow, I am green. I feel everything all at once.
I am floating between causes and altruism is an ideal
Slithering its way through my veins, and today I am going to save the world.
After signing back up for classes I spread out my day like magazine clippings
I might never put onto a dream board because I will most likely forget about them
And my dreams make better notes in my iphone where I can see them
As I obsessively check my contacts to see who I can talk to today.
I am yellow, I am green. It is noon and I am flying.
Here is how else I will save the world.
I will clean my room and I will go to the gym
And work off three weeks of sweets with three hours on the treadmill,
I forgot how good it feels to run and I know that this is the last time I will ever give up.
I run on a track that loops back in on itself because I know that if I were to run outside,
I would get lost because I am everything all at once and there is just so much to look at.
I am yellow, I am green. And today I am going to be a wildlife photographer,
And an artist, and when people ask me what I want to be I tell them
I am going to work for the United Nations and that I am going to save the world,
And they believe me and it’s almost funny for a minute until I realize
I have yet to start saving the world. I woke up at 4 to save the world and I was sure today was the day, I felt it in my heart like poprocks the very first time or your first real kiss, I felt it and it was real and I lost track of that feeling and now I am scared that I might never save the world,
What is happening?
I am yellow, I am green. I am potential energy locked inside a pendulum
Hanging from a chemical tree that only grows each time it loses a leaf,
I am staggered progress dressed up like empathy,
I am yellow, I am green.
I am fleeting energy
The kind you watch spark a few times
On telephone lines turning pink behind July sunsets
And its gone before your friends can see it too.
I am yellow, I am green
I forgot to shower every day this week but
I am too tired to get out of bed,
What is happening?
I was supposed to save the world today
I’m so sorry.
I am drinking as much caffeine as I can without
Making my heart feel like it will push its way
Through my bones and out of my chest
Though being able to feel in my chest again
Might not be so bad. I am stuffing smoke  inside my chest to fill it up
I am doing my best to keep feeling inside the skin I wear when I can feel it
Going numb
I wish
You could inject caffeine right into your veins,,
I reread texts from last night where transitioning
Felt like fist fighting recovery, her having one up on me,
I am crimson, I am silver, I am fleeting energy.
I’m so sorry. I thought I said that before
And I might have but I forgot, today I feel cloudy
And I stumbled through steel wool tall grass to make it
Out of bed today and the weight of every single mistake
I have ever made feels like it is going to break my spine
Right in half, I don’t know if I will make it through today.
I wish someone would save me today.
I am crimson, I am grey. I need someone to save my world today .

I am not a slave to cliches
Or to the chemicals
That bind my skin
To my bed frame
I am not a slave
To the have-beens
Or to TV dinners
halfway cooked
Eaten anyway
because I counted the calories
Already
I am not a slave
To the pain of waking up
In a foggy room
Where I cannot see the floor
I am not a slave
To myself
Anymore

You broke my ribs
And bruised my lungs
When you left without warning
I hated you for burying me
Under the weight of your problems
While shaping mine into small white pills
And turning a blind eye when I choked

I spent a year alone
Because hate has a radius
No one can withstand
Or bear to be around for too long
And I could not lift it off my chest
I did my best to let go of the anger
Blisters scarred my trekking feet
I hated you for burying me
I could not see the poison of my ways
Until I hated you so much that  I hated me

do not say sorry
for being human
your forgiveness
is not a crutch
for him to lean on
it is a conduit
for the you
that can swim
across an ocean
alone
while he still hangs
on your ankles
do not say sorry
for being human
while you are still
learning how to do so

love is not patient
love is not kind

love is leaving
the very first time
he puts his hands on you
in a way other than to
worship the skin
that fosters your soul
love is knowing
you are worth more

use his words as tinder
in the fire that drives you
each and every lonesome morning
bask in solitude,
discover you;
every sight and sound
you are not too much
to keep around
he was not enough
to hold on to you
use his fearful words
the ones that used to sting
as the very thing that drives you
to be bolder than you were before
he dulled you out
don't stop now

looking back
is not stepping down
do not mix up
regression and humanity

it's okay to love toxicity
it's okay to want it again
but remember how it felt
to have your walls crash in
you can yearn for the past
from the present
to smile and to laugh
but do so through rose colored glass
carefully; you are finally free

wait until it hurts to write
and when it hurts don't stop
it's okay to feel everything,
all at once, scattered on paper,
it's okay to give your heart
the right-of-way, it's okay
wait until it hurts to write
and when it hurts,

heal with words

when he comes back to apologize
be sure to recognize if it comes from
his mouth or his eyes, my dear.
one is a trick and one is sincere.

a sorry from the mouth
projects blame on your heart
for being too loving,
for playing its part
a sorry from the mouth
will try to mend a reputation
rather than any pain he caused
with his years of manipulation

a sorry from the eyes
is a sorry from the heart,
he says sorry for being so cruel
and not doing his part
a sorry from the eyes
will feel like a kiss
just know you deserve this

when he comes back to apologize
be sure to recognize if it comes from
his mouth or his eyes, my dear.
one is a trick and one is sincere

you are worth an apology for what has been done
rather than what you have felt as a reaction
tell that sucker that you're not looking to mend
don't give him the satisfaction

do not use another's hands
to **** your own gardens


when the time comes for your flowers to bloom
you will gaze upon each petal in liberated peace
something you must do alone

do not use another's hands

that man is not your home

I guess I'm just tired
I spent all this time
Thinking I was healing
But In fact I was concealing
The fact that I still in love you
And even one year later when you sent me
An empty  apology that projected more blame on me, I accepted it and took the blame and used it to cool my burning body
And I have been hiding behind anger
Masked by nicotine and kerosene
To make myself believe
You aren't the person I thought I'd marry
And that forgiving you didn't destroy me

I said I wrote poems
N' that I've been stuck in time as of late
You said to write what I know
Who I love, who I crave, what I hate
N then they'll start to flow

I don't know,
But this: I am sick.
Of trying. Fighting. Loving.
I don't know,
But this: I am sick.
Of crying. Shouting. Hurting.
I don't know,
But of this: I am sick.
Of giving my all and getting none back.
I've got a world on my back and no ground below.
I know.

you know I ain't no good
I mix my liquor and my meds
I take a new boy to bed
each night, but you don't judge me
you know I ain't no good
but you see me differently
and I need that reassurance
to keep me grounded lately,
I need that reassurance
that maybe I ain't so crazy

I sat down at a computer and tried to use words to paint to the feeling in my chest, or the lack of feeling in my chest, the sharp stabbing in my chest I felt every time our eyes met, every time for 365 days, the feeling in my chest that started to manifest itself in the shape of 14 hour naps and 750 mililiter bottles of alcohol. I could not formulate sentences much less images of what I could have been but instead had to face the reality of what I had become, it was not a who, but a what and that what did not know where she was going or why she let herself turn into something so empty and why she was not fighting for substance inside her. I was too weak to fight back. How do you teach yourself how to love your own self, while you fight like hell with her every single day?  I could not formulate sentences nevermind find the strength to admit I was empty to someone who could fill me and I spent a year trying to teach myself that humans could not fill the void, I kept looking for humans to fill the void. I kept looking and never found one single human to make me feel important. I have this problem where I think that if I am not important to the entire world that I am not important at all, isn't it important enough to be someone to those you love? I could not fill myself up with the cradling words of my mother, oh how my mother would have collapsed if she knew that the daughter she raised was out killing herself slowly every day and could not find the energy to care or cry or ask for help, I asked for help when it was too late and the cycle had already swallowed me whole. I found solace in condensing months of suffering into tiny pink pills that I could fit in my mouth and chase with ***. I used to drink until I ended up on bathroom floors but the night my friends all found their way into their lovers' beds after doing the same and I fell asleep on tile was the same day I told myself I was ready to fall in love again. It was the falling that I had missed, but not the love. I wanted the chase because it made the cavity in my chest feel more shallow even if it was for a day even if it was never going to go away, at least it felt that way. But the truth is, it never did. I slept with men who never listened when I talked and when I talked they said it was too much. I stopped trying to talk and eventually could not think and the smart girl who was pretty too became the loud girl no one wanted to spend the night with because she did not know how much was too much and I hated that girl.

you cannot twist
the bones
in my protruding spine
to get me to dance
anymore

you cannot turn me
on
or off
with your ***** hands
anymore

and leave me on the floor
when you are finished
when you get bored
anymore

I am not your toy
anymore

I'm in love
And it's warm
I waited 567 days for this
Liberation in my veins
From icy rusted chains
I froze to death for this revival

you are
the second cup of tea
after I spilled the first by mistake
you are
my third time, finally right
you are
stepping on the breaks at just the right time

before a head on collision
you are
the flash I saw before hitting the dash
you are
in between my seatbelt and my veins
you are
calming, cloudy rainy days
you are
something else I've never felt
but never want to stop
you are
new
you are you

cut me open with a sharp knife
so i know you don't have to try
like the others did, they'd pry
forgetting dull  takeweapons more time
and leave a darker scar, it's hard
they have to break past
everything you built to last
like layers of copper skin from years of solitude
use a sharp knife when you open me up for you

Never enough
Always too much
I overflow past the brink
Empty out into the sink
I'm sorry for what I am
*too much to be held in such fragile hands

loneliness consumed you
while you were busy finding distractions
your eyes sunk deeper, your nights darker
you found a marker and wrote it out in black ink, you left half a cup of tea by the sink,
one final reminder that you could never clean up right, your scars were not quite healing
men came and went like hopscotch manic feelings, daily warfare, gentle as a tide though
you would let them in just to let them go
crafted a plan to **** yourself
because you didn't know anything else
but the bottom of a bottle you swore you didn't drink you spent 11 months sleeping on the brink of death
loneliness consumed you
you took the bad parts, shaped them into something you could swallow and fell in love with the high from your insides eating you alive now you're full of sculptures you gave up on years ago and maps of places, far away, where you'll never get to go
because you're bed ridden and tired, you're only 20 and you did it, you have carved yourself entirely empty

Tonight was grand
I felt symphonies in my rib cages
Where music was out of tune before
Only for a second did he kiss me
But I wish it were an hour more
I felt zoos inside my bones
Stampedes of nerves wouldn't le'me alone
And then he kissed me and I felt a spark
Something I had lost last year, left in the dark
My third first kiss was multi colored
It was unlike everyone since my first and second
My third first kiss made my heart race
And I can't wait for it to happen again

Last summer I got drugged at a party
I felt my soul leave my body
The day I heard the news
My blood reached my skin
Faster than my hands grabbed her throat
I couldn't find it within me to seek revenge
Because I knew what had happened
And how this all tied together
No matter what I did I couldn't escape
The ties I made in the past
And it was my fault they kept sneaking back
In cheap beers on June nights
I'm sorry I didn't fight for myself then
Because now I don't have the strength

Whatever it was, I felt it in my gut. Organically. Euphorically. Even when it came back up, I did not mind the taste. You made me feel like I could stomach anything though I always hated sour food, I spent my afternoons kissing you when I should have been at school. My grades started to drop and you told me college was a waste because the world did not need my help, you did. So I started learning how to fix broken things. There isn't much literature about broken people. They say you aren't there to fix them, but to love them instead but you drilled it in my head that those two were the same and that if I didn't do it I was useless so I ran myself thin trying to piece you back together. You never even told me what broke you in the first place. I spent months trying to get into your headspace to figure it out and you boarded the windows on our apartment so the heat could not get out, or that's what you told me anyway. I guess I never told you how I felt about all of this and I'll never get the chance, but you made me feel something I still can't. I look for it, believe me. I tried everything. Nothing matches the rush I got when you would knock me down then pick me back up. Nothing struck quite like your words even when they were used to step on the path I was planting for myself, but I never asked for help because I didn't know it was wrong. And now I don't know how to fix it, or me. I should have looked harder for those books on how to fix people, I guess.

How do you beat
the feeling of being defeated?

I've got taxi cabs where my feet once were
and left my cash on 39th in my purse

even if I had the money
I still have riptides in my chest
I know how to swim
but can't catch my breath

*I feel alone
I feel defeated

High school optimism
Auditorium curriculum
Pressed into our heads like wet clay
The world in front, nothing but green grass
Below us, what on earth could stop us?
Hearts beat like that time Jake put adderall in our Redbulls
We laughed it off, and talked about who
We wanted to be in 5 years
What we did not
Until the sun came up
Every body had a plan
and my chest filled with bees
I started to think about leaving
I walked 12 miles before I realized I was scared
I ended up at the beach
Sea foam etched mandalas in the sand
Like when I was 17 and thought I had a plan,
it made this wall as if to shield
The pebbles on the bank from drowning

I want to leave an imprint on the world
But still have wrinkles in my skin from
Laying in bed for months at a time
Exhaustion set in last year and never left
She's a thief and I'm a forgiving friend
I have a heart full of hot air balloons
And sparklers, flocks of birds fly toward the sea, rocks where my brain used to be
Weighing me down
I moved to the beach to get away
And now my lungs are filled with water

We joke now, in our adult days
About being kids, attached at the waist
How we would grow old n still be the same
I'm happy to say that nothing has changed
You have blessed me with a landing place
An inn, free of charge when I'm wavering
A laugh in the morn, a hug during the day
I'm happy to say that nothing has changed
Twelve years of friendship, 100 remain
The kind of love I don't go about in vain
Thank you for being the kind of love I don't fear losing
Twelve years and it is me you are still choosing
I owe you the world, so take what you need
To my best friend: I love you so deeply

I could not tell you why
Or how
How many
Or when it starts
If it will end
But I can tell you one thing, dear friend
The aftermath is more detrimental than
Nuclear weapons at the hands of evil
Restrict, binge, repeat
The Devil himself spoon feeds my mind
Restrict, binge, repeat
Every time
Restrict, binge, repeat
It's a cycle that has swallowed me, too
I fear this will become my life
Or be there always
Haunting me to the grave
Restrict, binge, repeat

Lie awake
Goodwill paintings
Cracked tea cups
Wet nose kisses
From your kitten
Smile big you made it
Bask in reality you feel it
Settling in your sodapop veins
Cotton candy cigarettes fill your lungs
You swung from playgrounds into motels
And I watched you dropping weight
Like a broken highschool vending machine
Taking time between each menthol drag to
Talk to God about missing Mom
I wonder if she misses you back
She left you a note in your art box
But it's been locked since that day
You'll open it some day
Some day

Isn't it something?
To place the churn
In your gut
Onto light blue lines
And bathroom walls?
Isn't it something?
To flip that nervous
***** onto a canvas
For passerbys to notice?
Isn't it something?
The way heartbreak
Claws open your ribs
One by one as if
She were tasting each
Slowly letting you bleed
And how the world could see
But far less often understand?
Unless you put it on a paper
With a pen and with your hand
Isn't it something?
The way words can mend the sores
She left the day before,
Or make them seem urgent at least
So there is less of you for the world to feast
Upon the vulnerability that you have become,
But it is words you leave
Eyes that see
That do the caring
The world may sit and read
For it is human to be hungry