I want to have gardens on my arms
I want to carry pictures of all I have loved
and all I have lost

I want roses
and roses
and roses.

after ***
I read about self care
self healing
self love
to make up for the fact
that you will not hold me
you will not heal me
after wrecking both my body
and my expectations.

I know
my mother is not proud of me
when I change my hair
bejewel my face
or tell her about the newest boy.

I am my mother’s daughter,
and we have made so many of the same mistakes.

I hope
my mother is proud of me
when I get a nice job
in the tallest building in the city
wear nice clothes
and sell my soul
to become another piece
in the people’s machine.

what a wonder
to be comfortable in your own skin

and my body
scarred by every sin

what a life
to scorn the skin I’m living in.

“I’m gonna get it done this year.”

I speak the words, just above a whisper. Some sort of self assurant mantra, but mostly I speak them to you. You - two feet away from me.
You - two million miles away.

And as my lips shut, my heart opens, like always. Waiting for some sort of response.  Some kind of reassurance that you have the pride and hope in me that I always seem to lack in myself.

But you - two million miles away, with your nose buried in the vapid pixels of your phone.

My heart closes yet again.

I’m gonna get it done this year.

Done.

This.

every night I walk the dark
the burning headlights blinding
I pray to god id catch an eye
and in the street, they’d grind me.

oh
****

I wish I could stop getting attached

anybody

who dares to show me the slightest hint of attention, or affection

interest

an instant reply

just wanna hold you
let you hold me
I picture in my head how we could be

pathetic.

every day I waste away here
I entertain the glorious idea
of getting up
and walking out

Alas

I need this job
more than I need my dignity.

I have been lilac  

I have been the sea.

I have been black as night,

(brown was just alright)

and a honey-blonde me.

I feel like every color of the rainbow

wouldn’t be enough to draw you to me.

I hear the electricity humming above me as I make my way back on the long dark road. Lampposts scarce, my way is illuminated by the irregular volumes of light pouring from the cars that pass me by. I catch glimpses of roadside carcasses  in the abstract light, and through my open mouth.

The path is clear but it is jagged. My canvas shoes have gotten wet from the shallow puddles I couldn’t see.

Sometimes it is dark. It is lonely. There are no cars, carcasses, or other urban romantic ideas to keep me company in my travels.

Sometimes I get so focused, furiously typing. I end up in the middle of the street. A horn blares. My heart catches in my stomach and I correct my failed trajectory.

It is 7:43 pm on a Saturday night at the end of February and I wish you were here to walk me home.

There is a point I come to every day on my walk to work. An outlook, messed and marked by tall grass and weeds. You can see beyond the valley there, to the low rolling mountains of the Allegheny. Sometimes when the sky is just right, you can even see the smoke stacks of the power plant near my old home.

Most days, I pass by this vista.
I can't bear to look it in the eye.
It reminds me of the wideness of the world, the fear that touches me when I speak of leaving. The dreams that I have spent like breath - time and again - departure from this life.
To leave the job that kills, the friends who've forgotten, the lover who cannot remember how to love.

Most days I walk past.
I will not lift my head.
But the vast emptiness of the space between me and the world, the openness, the cold and absence of safety, with no promise of home... it calls to me.

Like the angry seas to young sailors, it cries my name. Something unsure. Something more.
Something that will nurse, something that will drown.

It beats me down.

And I will let it beat me til I break.