I'm 13 the first time a boy in my class tells a **** joke.
I'm only 13, but it's been 2 years since I learned the seriousness of the thing him and his friends are now laughing at.
2 years since I had my favorite night shirt ripped from my back.
2 years since nails carved scars in my thighs my mother still thinks are from self harm.
2 months since I started blocking it out.

I'm 13 when a girl takes my backpack while I m putting my books in my locker,
Playfully yells over her shoulder,
"***** you".
I laugh.
I don't dare tell her what it's like to remake your bed at 4 in the morning,
Or what it's like to fight back tears when you ask your grandmother for new sheets for Christmas.
To only ever associate the summer heat with what it felt like that night between your legs.

About a year ago I watched the chronicles of Narnia for the first time with my dad.
It was one of my favorites growing up.
He says, "someone should **** that *****" when the witch kills Aslan,
And I stop myself from screaming at him that he had "the talk" with me a little too late,
That I lost my virginity to a man his age when there were still stuffed animals on my bed.
I don't tell him that I still shake when i have to be alone with him even though I know he would never hurt me,
Or that sometimes I still think I deserved it.

I sweat through my shirt everytime I try to write about it.
My best friend says she doesn't care who her first time is, that she just wants to lose it already,
But I wish I could make that choice.
I have lost control of my hands from the shaking when boys have asked me if I was a ****** over text message,
And have locked myself in bathrooms to sob because my sister said boys don't love girls who aren't pure.
I have heard girls called ***** who haven't gone as far as me,
And it feels like arsenic is in my veins everytime someone asks me how I know so much about *** if I haven't had it yet.
Or how my best friend told me she wants to hear about my first time because people still assume that triggers are only on guns,
And that every ******* romance movie is the perfect depiction of what losing your virginity is like.

We don't all get the soft music and the whispered names.
Sometimes you get hands over your mouth and years of ptsd,
Sometimes the I love yous get replaced with "don't wake your parents".
Sometimes I still feel like no boy should ever have to subject themselves to touching me,
For fear they might leave with their hands tainted.

You will never understand fear until you're looking at the boy across the room and thinking about what he'd look like without his clothes on,
Never understand depression until the tile of the bathroom floor is warmer than your thoughts.

I was 13 the first time I heard a **** joke,
And 18 the first time I told someone it wasn't funny.
Because for every second you laugh, I have spent years picking up the shattered pieces of my innocence.
Because it took me 7 years to realize that 20 minutes of not having control will never destroy the 3,681,641 minutes I have spent taking care of myself since it happened.
That the only person who will ever own this body is me.
That no amount of cheap laughs can undo the progress I have made.
So keep laughing.

She moved on, and
I feel sorry for you
Because she thought
You were the most amazing boy ever
If she could have had any guy
In the world
She still would have picked you
Now, you're just
Another part of her past
A memory more faded every day
And someday, she'll find the one
She deserves, and he will make
Her the happiest
Girl in the world

I have yet to find a word that describes the beauty in which an object unravels.
There is, however, infinite words to express the madness one must possess in order to fall in love with destruction.

I do not know why the ruins of hearts I've never known stain my hands like the tar from a fire I never set,
Or why I feel like an arsonist everytime I try to wash the ashes from my fingers,
But I do know that I have said more prayers for the chaotic than for the sick.
I know that while the English language has yet to supply me with a single word to sum up why I find hope in endings,
I can describe in detail the way the walls of my bedroom burn like they are being ravaged by the flames of my psyche,
And how I have never felt more at home than when everything is crumpling around me. 

When I try to explain that I have never felt safer than when my ribs were tearing in two,
Please do not deem me insane.
As if the concept of the deterioration of my own brain has not fascinated me since the first time "we're all mad here" snaked it's way through my consciousness.
I am a white rabbit,
Setting my pocket watch ten minutes fast,
Just to see who will run with me.
Digging holes in my skin,
Hoping someone will fall through.
And if I am mad,
Then you must be too,
For we are all just spilled ink,
Dying to turn blue.

The sky is electric blue
And though it's getting lighter,
It feels like it's getting dimmer.

I can't remember what I said to you the last time we spoke,
But I remember the way your sky blue eyes contrasted my own
which were stained red with rage.
I had never seen you angry and I think that's why I hated you.
Because you were everything I wanted to be but couldn't.
I wanted you to despise me,
Because you were perfect and I was inconceivably flawed,
And the thought of something so pure admiring my tainted soul tasted like shards.
I wanted to crack your glass eyes,
Slit my wrists with the remnants,
Make you understand what happens when you give your heart to someone who doesn't want it.
and though I didn't want you I needed you.
And I know that's a cliche,
But that writer you made me love embraced his so why shouldn't I embrace
Ours?

The trees are black against the now pale sky,
Their silhouettes look the way the tiger stripes of your irises did,
The way your faded scars did against your olive branch skin .
And goddamit why did you have to ruin the sky too?
I'm sick of everything becoming yours
You told me to stop giving myself away to everyone but you just keep taking
Take.
Take it all. 
I don't want it without you.
The electrons in the clouds are sleeping again
They're too tired to keep shocking me with images of your now permanently closed eyes .
And I can't help but wonder if when they sealed your eyes shut
If you were relieved because you had grown tired of trying to light up my permanently dark sky.

People often say to me “I wish I could write like you.”
Which to some degree I should find humbling
But if only they knew the truth
That every time I touch the pen I'm afraid of what it might do
Behind the guise of self expression it takes possession
All defenses are torn a sunder in pain under its reign
And I am helpless to stop it
Like I would, even if I could anyway
Each tear in me is subject to its tyranny
I watch every sunset fearfully
As the veil of darkness falls
So do the castle walls
It is then that the pen will begin to possess me again
Coercing confessions of sin
However, as much I hate it
I abhor I love it more
I concede that I need it
There is a stink of distinction
Between me and this ink pen
Yet still somewhat synonymous
Whatever I hide under the surface
Determines its purpose
And it always serves it
Even if it hurts when
I bleed through this pen.

I may walk slowly
maybe quickly.
There isn't a care in the world I have here.
The forest envelopes my soul like a young child that had
Lost
Her way and made it back in to the loving arms of her mother..
I have never run to the forest for comfort,
not before today.
I have never been to a real forest..
A forest of the mind,
that is where I am.
Now, in a meadow. I sit in the middle
Lost.
I'm lost, but I know where I am.
The forest has trapped me, I have let it trap me..

I have one problem, one problem in this serene world.
I cannot look up. If I looked up my world would be
Lost.
No one can tell me but myself
the forest of my mind is alive and active. But
I have found I am just existing..
Small, insignificant
That's how I've been made to feel.

Slowly I crumple under the anticipation of looking
up.
My eyes move from the ground
to the tree line all around me.
It's dark but not for long.
Light pours in from the sky into the world around me.
I close my eyes and lay on my back
facing towards the sky of my mind..
I say an apology
"For so long I haven't looked to you
dearest sky,
forgive me, I will look to you
and not the ground.
The ground I stand on only holds pain.
While all this time you have watched over me
and given me direction, light
and captivated me with your majesty."

The forest turns itself into a field of wheat
the forest is broken and gone.
I cannot see the ground below me.
but I can see my bearings.
I am no longer
lost.

You are the dead air after the joke my friends don't get.
I hear your laugh in the spaces between my family's oblivion and my sanity,
the crevices of pointless conversations.
You are an envelope with no return address.
You are the first person I want to tell about my day.
When my dad asks me how school was, I can only think of how you knew never to ask me that.
They say the nights are hard when no ones in your bed,
but what about when you spend your day in bed because you can't bear another day of activities that don't involve them?
I don't miss you only at 2 am.
I feel the sting of you in the night but you burn me in the afternoons with even greater intensity.
I prefer to be alone because then I only see your smile embedded in my walls rather than the lack of it on everyone else's face.
You are the silence after Wonderwall ends,
you are the lack of " I want to write something like that one day".
I am reminded of you when the girl next to me at a Fall Out Boy concert is sitting on her phone. I know you would scream every lyric with me.
I think that's what hurts, the knowing, especially of the things you aren't here for.
When I cry to "I'm like a lawyer" it's because I will never hear your voice sing it again.
So no, I do not miss you at 2am.
I miss you at 2 pm when I realize that everything I am doing now will never again be done with you

You may not have been birthed in the soil,
and granted,
you will not blossom
when spring melts winters wake
but inside of you
grows a thousand gardens
full of exploding stars.
You are of the earth
and your ashes
have been constructed with stardust,
and set free with the wind.
So you may not have a pretty face,
and your body may hold stories
of too many moonless nights alone.
But if you reach inside,
you will find a forest
for a ribcage
and a restless ocean heart.
So don't ever let anyone tell you
you are nothing.
You are a galaxy
holding a million different planets,
and my dear,
that is not nothing.

if i stopped eating
people would compliment me
on how thin i am
and when they saw the bruises
they pressed their mouths
shut tight
and just joked about
how clumsy i could be
with their easily uneasy smiles.
i don’t know if they
just didn’t see
or if they just weren’t
looking.
introducing him
to my friends was like
living in a ****** part of town,
having someone over
and hearing the racket of gunfire
outside of your window
and then having them say to you,
“oh, listen,
you can hear the fireworks
from here!”
and being too embarrassed
to correct them.
so maybe i’m not sure
if i believe in fireworks;
bombs are too often
mistaken for them.
but i can distinguish the difference
now, i can, and i will not
teach my daughters that when
he pushes you down in the dirt
and pulls on your pigtails
it’s because he likes you.
because when i covered up
those bruises on my body
in too-light concealer
like i’d never learned how to cover up
love-bites and tired eyes,
there was a voice in the back of
my mind that was telling me
that he only pushed me
down because he loved me.
i do not want a voice
inside my daughter’s heads
that sounds like me,
telling them that they deserve
their split lips.
i will tell my daughters to wear
boxing gloves over their manicures,
i will tell my daughters that
“love” is not an excuse,
i will tell my daughters that no one
is allowed to give you
a black eye and expect you
not to punch back harder,
i will tell my daughters
that you are not weak for getting hurt
because the weak ones
are those who let their anger
and insecurities
manifest themselves
in fists and words.
i will tell my daughters
the difference between bombs and fireworks,
i will tell them that they may sound
the same sometimes,
but fireworks don't ****
innocence.