I remember the first time you called me fat
I forgave you

And for that, I struggle to forgive myself

I remember the first time you called me annoying
My chest fell into my gut
The feeling of my stomach acid eating at the words I pushed back  down my throat with whatever simple starch I could salvage
Is something I'll always remember

I remember the first time you said I broke your heart
And just how mine stopped
And how in 3 weeks it'll be a year since I gave my body away to a stranger and you held it over me like a plague in medieval times would've spread across my weakened body
I remember it strongly
I remember our first kiss,
I remember our last,
I remember the day I knew I didn't love you anymore,
If I could get that feeling to pass,
Because it's unfair you're happy,
When I'm still stuck in January when you told me in bullet form everything I did wrong
And it didn't make sense how I tried to leave but you wouldn't let me
Nd then you left
It isn't fair
You're gone, you're there,
And I'm no one, I'm nowhere

Partial to a past that explained my experiences in a causal tone. Like a story that had to unfold, I made sure it made sense because I felt myself losing control. I had to have control of it. Apologies for every mistake I’d ever made because amending my wrongs was praying for one night without terrors. Tug of war with God. Cause and effect. I earned my hurt. I earned my hurt.


People that believe in karma drive me ******* nuts. Plagued with guilt from my childhood because I got ***** at 21 and I thought maybe if I had been nicer to Cassandra B on the playground at 9 maybe I could have kept my dignity that night in my dorm room. But it doesn’t work like that.

I have survivor’s hands. *****, calloused, jealous hands. I am not innocent, I am vindictive and manipulative and when I argue with the person I love I get mean. When I talk to myself in the mirror, I am cruel. I am not innocent. I was a bully as a child. I thought all of these things were a part of the reason why someone took my body from me when I was 21.

Surrounded by people yet oh, so alone
It took me a month, 12 days and three hours to notice the hole
in my stomach from when you told me I deserved it.
Why is your voice, then, the one thing I wish yelled it?
The sorry sound of apologies I'll never hear,
the ones I make up just to rid of that shatter I feel in my spine everytime
I remember what you said to me April first before the line went dead,
Hell bent on apologies I fabricate and decorate with words my peers love,
to reinstate a relationship I all but deconstructed on my own,
so why am I alone?
Every mistake, I would blame everything you'd take, and I would give more.

I still have a bruise on my knees from the night I hit the floor.
I'd give until I had nothing left,
I have nothing left.

I'm a thief. Good at deceiving,
convincing everyone around who cares
I'm in a good place.
God, am I happy.
Convincing them I'm losing weight by eating clean and not because I lose my ******* appetite every time I remember you never missed me,
I don't sleep.

Why did it take a month to feel this hole consume me?
I'm empty

I think you loved me out of obligation
You needed a project, I needed salvation.

When roses grew between my lips and my place in your bed, you picked them and offered them to Someone else instead.

I'll be the first to admit it was my weakest year in terms of my spirits. I'm naturally strong but this year I was lazy when faced with the challenge of having to adapt. New and unfamiliar tragedies struck, harsher weather hit and I was last in line to defend myself. Picking it all back up won't be pretty. Pieces lie around like shattered toys. Boy, is it something to watch yourself fall apart but care so deeply about another person you forget to care for yourself. It's another thing, too, to let yourself believe you don't deserve to get better. To deprive yourself of water and light to insist you're strong enough to fight fire with fire when you already burned out. What's that about? I was weak, and I won't pretend I was growing into something worth being proud of. I lied a lot this year, to myself the most. I watched my world crumble around me and those who bore witness claimed hyperbole. That was devastating to me. A world I'd carved with my own hands, shattered and then made into a mockery. So I let go of making the world mine, I ran out of steam. I was weak. I was so ******* weak this year and I lost almost every piece of me. I don't like that attitude, the whole "New year, New me" but boy, am I sick of being this one. I got too scared to ask for help, convinced I was in fact stronger than anyone on my own. That's until I was alone and I fell apart 125 nights in a row. I was weak, but I was more scared than anything. Courage came like sunshowers and lifted me above skyscrapers but only for field trips. We always forget we have to go home at the end of the day, remember? I would ask for a hand only when falling and would wake up and learn that I was dreaming. Reality hit me like a bus this year, and I never reached for a hand when I wasn't in bed. I missed that too, holding onto something warm after cold nights and red skin. Let it sink in, when you're falling out of love for the first time and you don't think you're going to get past it, you will. But you'll lose a lot of who you thought you were, too. I did that this year. I'm sorry. I'm not who I was when I was in love. I'm not that girl anymore and I'm not weak. I'm standing on my own two ******* feet here, now. I'm here, now. You haven't seen the last of me. I was weak, and things were ugly. I was drunk and I can't remember the last time I felt at peace where a substance didn't do it for me, but I've felt it before on my own and know well enough what that heat feels like when it sits in your stomach. I miss the flutter in my heart after writing a good poem or watching a sunrise in May. I miss a lot that I put away this year because underneath their top coats were memories I was not ready to face. I'm only 20, loss is something I understand now. Everyone said I would survive and for months I was convinced they lied but I'm here now, my hearts beating now. I can't say I'm weak anymore because I'm still alive to tell you about it. Just wait until you see what I make from the pieces I choose to pick back up and the new ones I make. This year is mine to take. Here's to you, 2017.

one time
in your best friend's basement
you told me that you never wanted to love anyone the
way you loved me
and I haven't heard a word
the same way
from anyone
since

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.

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

You will never see the basement of the church,
I spent months there begging for answers.
I will see the steeple.

You might never collect all the flowers in the garden
I spent weeks tending to the seeds.
I will reap the most vibrant yellows.

You will never hear the beating of the drum,
I spent months tuning it out.
I will strum my own strings.

You might never face the consequences of your past.
I may never heal.
But I will be better than what it left me.
I will rise up and I will feel again.

I wove a basket for you that I filled with my own flowers,
The summer drought killed my roses.
The summer rain drowned my daisies
But in the fall I die once more,
in the basket, I am reborn.
I wove you a basket you did not take,
so with my own heart I will make one,
in this basket I will keep
the flowers whose roots run deep.

I planted them myself,
for me.

According to my calculations,
google, if you're wondering
It would take 11 years to walk the surface of the earth

If you don't count the mountains and rivers and deserts and glaciers that might **** you first, it'd take 11 years to walk to earth

If you don't count the 47392 ways that you could die while doing this, it'd be romantic

Walking 11 years to prove you could,
To say you did

If you forget the time and walk the distance,
And make it there in 10 instead because you were so eager,
you might find yourself at the end,
She might tell you that you didn't have to move mountains or cross rivers to justify the first 19 years you spent dying,
By wasting 10 more trying to find something that you could have found

If you dumped your moocher boyfriend
And bought a book instead

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

You are as dull as you are mean
Rehearsed every word you said to me
I need to be clean
of the belief that what you took
was not stealing
If it wasn't, why am I still empty handed,
why are you still standing?
You mistake admiration for love
and left me in the dust,
worn out, unreeling years of cabinet feelings
I'm sorry I never brought them up,
you always put them on the back burner,
I got sick of being the chip on your shoulder
that night in October when you said
I was the reason you hated who you'd become
It wasn't me who forced you to stay,
but your insecurities that drove me away
each and every time you said my name
like the letters burned your mouth
as they left it,
then I left you.
I felt the same,
we did it mututally
As you left me I felt unxtinguished, yet fizzled out.
No spark or trace you left.
A pile of ashes once laid on the ground where the strongest trees live today.

I'll be okay.

Next week would have been our anniversary.
Tomorrow marks 3 weeks since you’ve smiled at me, and 2 since we’ve laughed together.
But next week would have been our anniversary,
And just a month ago we were so happy.
Isn’t it crazy?

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 let you go
So that we can grow
Separately on our own
It hurts to pull you through my fingers
But I need them back, I’ve seeds to sew

I turn 20 in 3 months.

3 days ago, I **** my pants.
Yikes.

What? Ugh, I know. Well heck, dude.
It was an accident.
Or it was laughter mixed with Corona.
Or it was nervousness taking over,
lactose intolerance teamed up with people intolerance,
**** did it smell, but
we did try to make the best out of a sticky situation,
for lack of a better word.
The air was stale, but at least I could breathe at that point.
It's in our nature to coat our ugliest metals in gold.
Why do we do that and feel bad when the copper starts to shine through?

I beg you something, I plead.
Stop calling  anxiety beautiful. Please.
What's beautiful about air stabbing your chest like
shattered glass as you hug your own knees for comfort
and beg it to make it to your lungs in time to breathe?

What's so beautiful about bloodshot eyes so red that customers tell your boss you're surely high when you'd give your left leg to be low enough to calm down, even if for a minute.
What's so beautiful about burn marks from coffee pots your dropped while you were shaking?

And what is so beautiful about freezing in the heat,
or not being able to distinguish between the two because goosebumps cover your entire body. Anything over 72 degrees and you can't breathe
because the air

is just
so
heavy,
it sticks to your muggy lungs
but you still tremble from the cold because your body forgets how to adapt to certain situations as it's too busy remembering how to function at a very basic level to keep you alive to experience every aspect of this attack so tell me what is so ******* beautiful about colors getting trapped outside the fog in your brain like prisoners of war, the kind of fog that you can't even see but that ***** the vibrancy out of things you used to use to fill up your empty parts, so tell me what is so beautifully tragic about your favorite grass being grey instead of green?

You try to turn something ugly, something vengeful into something to roll into a ball and cradle like a blanket or a toy, something pretty and controlled,

and you end up cold on the tile floor of Cumberland Farms
in tears
at 20 years old
warking your mother up at 3 in the morning
with a screaming ringtone
only to forget how to speak
when she answers and her voice cracks
"what's wrong? what's going on?"
And you don't know
but you konw you have coffee to make
if you hands would just stop shaking
please for a second
and that's why you smell like coffee now,
because more grounds get on you than in the filter anyway,
you just never stop shaking
but when someone asks what's wrong and you can't identify the source you do your best to forget what's even causing this in the first place
so tell me what's beautiful about any of this.

About your heart beating so fast you
swear it's racing someone else,
maybe racing to get you some help,
but what would you say when they arrived?
Where did this derive from?
Every single hair on your body rises,
it's so hot,
you can't breathe,
but you still freeze,
or are those nervous bumps?
You feel every chill like waves under a full moon

Tell me what the most beautiful part about a girl you can't kiss is,
is it the chase? The same one that pumps through my blood.
I'd chase anything for one long breath I didn't have to fight for.

Please stop calling anxiety beautiful.
Please stop coating my copper in gold.
Please don't tell me that it's something tragic but that it makes me stronger,
because when you end up on the floor of a convenience store, crying into coffee you already ruined twice,
you'll hurt the person who was only trying to be nice.

I remember a year ago
like it was last night
and I was searching our empty fridge
for anything to fill the void I could
barely identify
I worked out for hours
and negated progress with
entire boxes of granola bars
and laying in bed for days
man, I remember like it was yesterday
but I forgot how much, in that time
I have changed

A year ago I begged for a reason to stay
Today, I create it every day
I talk to God in new and scary ways
A year ago, fear plagued my mind,
Today, I value time
for what it brings me in the form of healing
though it does not always look like so,
but, oh,
how I have changed

A year ago, my tank was empty and I was jaded
today, I fuel my body and am thankful
that with each choice I make from sunrise to set,
I can mold my life and make myself the best,

or better than I was a year ago, at least

You got a call at 7:42,
It was your dad reminding you to drive safely,
the clouds were getting darker, covering cobalt blue skies,
the ones we tried to sit and admire with bare eyes,
but ended up just taking pictures of like we always do.

We captured pearly white clouds and softening sunsets,
the way I feel with my friends is unforgettable,
and even on days where I feel like the pain I feel,
the one that reminds me that I miss you still,
is spreading through my body like a cancer,
one that is too far developed to treat,
I am reminded by the grass beaneath my feet,
that I have this beautiful planet,
I have the sky to myself,
I have clouds that shadow when I've had too much sun,
and trees that cover when the sky comes undone,
and a storm begins to drench us in shame,
and I got a call that was not the same as yours.

I got a call and heard the word "cancer"
and all I could think of was the way the clouds rolled across the sky
becoming greyer as the water continued to rise,
all at once the green grass lost its hue,
and I fell into the Earth
as I was consumed by the thought of losing you.

Let go
Of my exit strategy
The day I met you
There was nothing to run from
Only a home to come to

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.

Filling a void
I cannot identify
Trying to make meaning
of days wasted, afraid.
I waste away, waiting
I pray I am not as dreadful
as you used to make me feel.
Part of me used to laugh,
the thought of someone else
dictating how I felt sat lightly on
my lips and made them curl,
like pastel rose hips, I smiled,
no one would make me feel
anything,
but now I barely feel at all.

Remember what I said last night?
Neither do I
I felt my belly, there was no kick
I had too much to drink
Left my feelings in the sink
In ugly bitter patterns
It's been 9 months
I still ache for this
What I'd be filled with
Nausea from a life
instead of a loss
If things worked out right

The scrutiny is toxic,
it builds up like tar in her weakened lungs
she can't breathe
when everyone else steals the air right from her
and replaces the purity with rotten words that make her blood curdle
the scrutiny is toxic
she tries to brush it off
but it won't work
she can't breathe
please stop the scrutiny

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 ran out of cliches to use in my writing last year when you ran out of patience for my problems,
It was around the same time that we ran out of gas in the car because I got sidetracked again and instead of stopping I just kept driving because the song on the radio made me feel like I could breathe for once, and I planned our whole future when I went out to get milk but you were angry that I forgot the reason I left home, I came back empty handed and I still wonder now why you left me. It doesn’t feel right knowing that a year has passed and nothing that I have planted has grown or even budded, I starved some because I got distracted and others I smothered and they got overwhelmed and crumbled. I watched my lilacs collapse last Spring the same week you abandoned me and I’m sure I should have healed by now but it hit me only last week that I don’t know how. I don’t know if I’ve ever healed, or what it looks like outside of bandages and scars that I could watch turn white so I started reading about these homeopathic remedies for diseases I don’t have and I remember feeling like my body was going to give out every time I saw you in the summer and I blamed it on the heat but I spent most days inside in the AC. I wonder what the remedy is for that feeling because instead I tried to **** it and just felt weak. I would throw up and blame the alcohol and when my doctor asked me if I drank recreationally I told her no because there was nothing fun about blacking out to forget you and me. Last Valentine's day we had a bottle of wine and it only took me a cup to start crying and I remember you telling me you were disappointed when I didn't want to have *** which should have made me upset but I think what actually did was the fact that three months later I could drink an entire handle of ***** before throwing up and another half before I gave up on trying to kick this feeling that you might come back some day or the thought that I would take you back instantly when you never deserved me.  I know that and still wonder why I feel so empty when I see old pictures of us in our teens.

Where the **** did you go when I needed you?
I trusted you, opened up and bled in your palms,
we held hands for so long
I forgot what it felt like to
use my own, alone, to sculpt and shape the world around me.
I melted in your arms a few years ago,
I felt sparks.
The red beamed out of my eyes and I felt like a ******* superhero,
but it wasn't anger, never rage, it was something you created,
a passion for another person I can't seem to find anywhere else no matter how hard I look or what color I paint it in.
How could you let that happen? You just sat and watched as I crumbled into uneven pieces all over the sidewalk
for the world to see but just keep passing?
That's the funny thing,
you told me you would leave
and I didn't believe you,
I just kept trying until the day you did
and now I write letters I know you'll never read, love
I get it..




I wouldn't stay with me either.

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 got sick of comparing you to drugs
that did no justice to the high I felt each time you held me
and juxtaposing ,
you to a sunset was *******
I feared I could not capture all your colors in words
what the **** do I compare you to?
You swallowed me whole and let me crumble in front of you,
you digested me until you were sick and spit me out like dip,
I got sick of comparing you to songs,
I didn't want you stuck in my head anymore
and juxtaposing you to shattered glass didn't pick up the pieces on the floor from when I could not articulate the hurt in my heart and
threw all the ******* picture frames against the plaster wall,
I got sick of comparing you to a missed phone call,
because at least then you'd give me enough attention to ignore it,
juxtaposing you to the sunset was ******* because you never stuck around long enough to really sink in
,****

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

My red scars have been replaced
and now pink bug bites remain
I fill the dark with sunsets
from the top of the park where we laid.
But I did not think of you today.

My summer heart beats steady,
July winds lifts me up,
the grass underneath might leave little cuts.
But they leave room for me to breathe.

I watch the sunset every day,
I take in every color,
I stopped waiting on a call
from a past- life lover.
I do not miss you at all.

I lay in the light,
reds, oranges, sherbert pink skies,
my skin takes in all the earth gives,
The sky wraps itself in mid July,
ribbons for clouds decorate the sky,
I do not ache for you this time.

Instead I crave the palette,
the warm hues of summer scattered,
those colors fill me up
they remind me who I was
three years ago in June
before I lost it all to you.

My scars were replaced
by ugly, pink bug bites,
my heart was replaced
by warm, itchy nights.
But I wouldn't change a thing.
My soul is hung up on a string.
Out on display for the world to see,
finally.
And every night, while it dries,
I have a chance to bring to light
everything your winter nights
tried to hide.

I take in your love like fossil fuels

The guilt will **** me faster than
The illness
I wonder what it’d be like to be free
From all of this
Where would you put the sun
If you did not have to hold it up
For me
Every day
Would you rest?

When you learn how to write they teach you
"show, don't tell"
to keep the mystery alive, to keep it vibrant, keep it flowing
They tell you keep it short and sweet, with details subtle enough to envision the beautiful girl you make the protagonist who beholds every quality you yourself are lacking but can compensate for in another, ficticious character.
And so you decorate her with
serendipitous flaws and stories that resolve once the page has turned
but as you type you lose who you are.
Show, dont' tell. So you make sure well enough that she glows so that all the readers know she is not hurting. You make sure her eyes beam and that her smile radiates so that no one knows you're breaking.
How do you show, and not tell, when the only thing you feel is yourself collapsing? How can you show that you feel nothing inside but outside remain alive and
how the **** do you show that you miss someone because they took so much of you when they left and tore the pages of you two out of their memory?
I cannot show that, I cannot tell that. And so I write.


You forget that what you did you cannot take back so you ensure
she does not make the same mistake unless the page reveals it was okay in the first place.
How we would **** for a story book ending as we beg for feelings that aren't pending, waiting for another reason to be happy that you cannot write back in

You discovered something as you wrote
you choose who hurts who
but in fact, you cannot choose who hurts you
so you write away the mistakes you've made
those ones you pretend you didn't
those ones that haunt you as you remember that
the person you once loved is gone forever
You finish a chapter hoping to forget that you are nothing but empty
writing does not fill you up
writing does not allow you to see deeper
it makes it easier for you to pretend that you do not miss him

It makes it easier to remember the nights you spent laughing as you make them into inciting incidents when in reality
they were tragic endings

*** used to have meaning
I used to feel it
not plead for anything to make me believe I didn't need it

and now it is nothing
it is a hobby or past time

I miss mixing my soul with another
instead of trading sweat with someone I didn't even bother
to ask their name

Yours was the only one I cared to know

I zone out sometimes and in the back of my mind
I can still hear your whispers that sent chills up my spine
and though they're three years old I hear them boldly,
quiet hushes play louder than music I turn up all the way
so that no one can hear me screaming about how it's been a year
and I have not healed yet
sometimes I wonder if I ever will or
if this is what I am ****** to forever,
I asked god once if he was real simply because
I could not feel anything for days,
I searched frantically in cigarette boxes
for cement feelings gone and lost,
I found ***** change and pocket lint, but
not love, nor pain and I thought
only he could take that away
but it went and came
in viscious waves
that drag me in and
tides that drown me in memories
I forgot how to swim for survival when I spent years
with my head barely at the surface just to catch my breath
I tried to leave behind last spring in hallways of buildings
marked "condemned" now
and I asked him what it meant, God,
to not believe in him but to want to
because someone had to be at blame for this pit in my chest
I tried to map it out by pinpointing stars that mimicked sharp jolts
on my heart but I only connected old words you said
into sentences that still eat away at my brain in my head
and I wonder what the **** I did to deserve this
unbearable rememberance
for someone who forgot me well before they even left

you said alright
when I said I was leaving
and I should have known there
to pack my bags and stop treating it
like some well-written romance novel,
because your care was fleeting the first time
you saw who I really was and I forgot what it was
to trust someone with absolutely everything
because when you left I had absolutely nothing

My stomach drops
My heart stops
And starts again
And stops again
Unsteady beating
My skin is peeling
My face is stinging
My hands are clinging
To anything that feels real
I'm breathing sharp air
My lungs feel heavy
My eyelids pulsate to a steady beat
I can feel every single drop of blood course through my veins
My stomach tightens
My fingers ache
I can't describe how this feels
Just please hold me until it's over

I always wonder what the last song I hear will be,
what words will grace the fingertips of my grave
and will they make a difference in the way that I decay?
What print will they leave on my soul, strong enough to stay
when the oak I said I didn't want, but got, has rotted away?
I always wonder what my last song will be,
if the strings will harmonize with me,
and dance with the wind,
and steal the tears from my family,
because God knows they will have plenty,
when they hear the last song that I chose
before I said my time on earth was plenty,
I always wonder what my last song will be,
if I should make it sad, to make it easier to go,
or happy to make sure they know that's not why I did,
I always wondered if I would still be able to here it, after
God knows that song would be something I could live for, forever

I gave you something that I cannot get back.
Believe me, I've tried,
countless nights, donating my time to strangers
begging God for one second, if anything,
of that feeling that I used to have with you.
He never delivered and I haven't stopped trying
to find that feeling elsewhere,
endlessly unsuccessful and franctic in my panicked ways,
worrying about the days I'm wasting wishing for something greater to come along.


I'm hurting people without caring and it's scary,
this is not who I was before you left me and I am not sure
what you took when you went but I need it back,
desperately,

Desperately I'm searching for a permanent way to fill this void
the one that has only gotten bigger since you left.
I think it's my heart that you took because nothing sticks anymore the way it used to.
I am numb and I wish I could find something or someone to make me feel something again without the bitter taste of our last kiss
burning in my mouth and forcing me to curl my lips hard,
and my fists harder,
I'm harder now and I miss how it felt to love someone deeply.
I miss me, too.

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.

Cut my hair off
dead ends on the floor
peel my skin off
begging you for more
make me feel new and clean again
though I will bleed, that soon will end

Shave my body hair
make me as fresh as the day we first met
bleach my stained skin fair
beg you to finish what you haven't yet
make me feel new and clean again
the process might burn, that soon will end