In these pages, in these words we will always exist
Because a clock can’t contain compassion
Not in the way we do
Because gears will only let love fall through
Will only grind it to nothing
But here
These pages may yellow with time
And crinkle in tears
The edges may rip from use
But this story
Will always be here
Running from the clock
And the calendars
Time will not stop this
For as fast as it runs out
It will never catch us

An Ode to My Crooked Teeth:

To the pearly stones knocking about
Dancing around each other
Bumping shoulders
Standing sideways

And a little lopsided

To the relentless little bones
That grind senselessly with nerves
That rarely ever chew
Without aches and pains

Braces tried to restrain you once
To make you straight
To match images perfected by society

But my stubborn smile
Won’t change for anyone

1
Every time I rip myself open to unearth my forgotten humanity
I accidentally allow sticky hands to reach
Into the weary caverns of my rib cage
Where they’ll pick apart the sore softness of my heart
Until it’s too bruised to be beautiful

2
She says it’s as easy as happy thoughts, as “positivity”
So easy that sunshine and rainbow sparkling can prevent
Deep-seated illnesses that plague the depths of a mind
Like maybe, really, anxiety and mood disorders are easily temporary
And I’m just not doing it right

3
I create an enemy of everyone who tries to help me
And weaponize their kindness into some sort of double-edged sword
Because nothing good comes without a cost
Or because my manipulated heart is far too vulnerable

When the world is far too quiet and dew has yet to coat the early morning air
And you show up as the clock strikes 3 am for the third night this week
Slurring in your own stupidity requesting bagels, uncooked with globs of butter
The way we always had them all those years ago, all those drunken nights

And you’ll claim love that you so conveniently forget to mention in sobriety
Love that we had when we were one in the same
The same love that urges me to hold your hair back
And nurse you back to feeling okay

Only to stand there stone cold, only hours later to watch you leave
In minutes that get shorter with every morning that passes

And as I clean up the only evidence of your visits
I pick apart the remainder of what we once called a relationship

Maybe one of these days I’ll take the leap from what’s comfortable into what we need
To end it

Watch out
Because I’m a writer
with a sharp tongue and poisonous ink
I’m a lighting bolt
Striking in the distance
Breathtaking
As it glides across the sky
But deadly when you get too close
I’m a fire
Burning with dominion
Crackling with mesmeric charm
Setting ablaze any cruelty or dishonesty
thrown into my flames

Watch out
Because I’m a rose
Flourishing in innocent beauty
But ready to puncture
Anyone who holds me the wrong way
I’m the ocean
Swaying with peaceful serenity
But swimming with unknown dangers

Watch out
Because I’m a fighter
Who has swallowed blood countless times
Continuing to defend herself
Through endless punches
Tired of holding everything in
And letting it slide

Watch out
Because I’m a storm
You don’t want to mess with
Because my strength
Comes from moments of weakness
When I physically couldn’t take anymore

I am resilient because of all the times I felt broken

Watch out
Because I am done hurting
I am done letting the pain control me
I am done letting my past determine the future
And I am done letting my anxiety define me

Watch out
Because I am so much more

In every word scribbled I find a story, a memory, a person attached to it
The subject of every poem is you and that person changes as quickly as I choose to run
Or she, a pronoun I so often hide behind because she is easier to utter than admitting I have felt pain
And there are always people hidden in the ink, whom I’ve hurt or helped, longed for or lost
And sometimes they’re the strangers I create lives for in the back of my mind, taking comfort in the creativity of it all, the fantasy of it
The escape

“We are all made of star stuff”

Because we are all teetering
On this verge of glowing—
And burning

A glittering twinkle twisted in hope
Or an impending explosion

Carrying the potential of wishful serenity
In the exterior of sparkling danger
Holding a wistful beauty all the same

If it makes us good —
Or bad
Depends on the day
Stars were never so easy to explore
And humans are near impossible to see

In the end it’s our fallen remains
That shoot across the sky for someone else
To wish upon