as a dog returns to his *****
so I return to sin.

He's always waiting for me,
asking where I been.

He claims to love me
more so than kin.

I will leave him one day father,
just not sure when.

I ate too much for breakfast today
And lunch was spent wondering if I should slip away
Wondering if I should go back for seconds
**** it, why not?
My feet jiggled nervously under the table
Trying to think of an excuse to leave
Trying to figure out how much the barbeque chicken pizza would hurt on the way back up
Trying to figure out how much I’d regret it
Trying to figure out if my body was okay
My self esteem balloons up and down
Somedays I look in the mirror and like what I see,
Think I look cute and quirky in my glasses and skirt,
Think my body is almost okay
And then like black crossing over to white, like a light switch flipped on
No inbetween
All of the sudden I am ugly
My body takes up too much space
Loving myself, loving this body seem like an impossible feat
The little critic in my head is back
And he wants to move back in,
I’m not cured
Recovery is not about loving your body
Recovery is accepting it
I’m still working on that
The calculator in my head wakes up,
Regenerates every time I’m around  food
My hands still hover over the diet soda before forcing myself to pick something that scares me more
I still have to bargain in my brain
Eat a salad so I can eat ice cream and cookies
Skip lunch so I can have a big dinner
Strip naked in front of a full mirror,
Watch my body standing up, bending over, sitting
Grabbing, pinching, prodding, poking
Surveying this piece of meat
This thing
This body
That I know I need to be kind to
I weighed myself for the first time in almost a year
My toe lingered over the cold surface of a scale
Like a child about to dip his feet into water
I knew standing on that scale could drag me under
And I did it anyway
Loving myself is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done
When self hatred has been tamped into my soul
When my eating disorder was the only thing I good at
This secret lover, the most attentive one you could have
Took my hand and showed me how an empty stomach could feel like love
My eating disorder was my best friend,
The abusive relationship I kept going back to,
The most interesting thing about me,
The thing that was killing me
Having an eating disorder is easy;
Allowing yourself to slip into a disease out of your control
Having someone else make all your decisions
Your life reduces itself to the numbers on the scale
The slipping numbers on the scale assure me that everything is alright
But I can’t live like that
Having an eating disorder is easy;
Recovery is hard

I am black coffee with curves of sugar.
I am a spoon of chocolate
I am soul food
I am a wombed man
The rib of an african king
The golden crown of the cosmos.

I am full moon or a sunset
I am light,
I am a spark,
a flame,
a bonfire,
I am fire works.

I’ll leave traces of smoke in your nostrils.,
Just so you’ll recognize my presence when you’re seeking me.
I’ll shelter myself between your veins just to make your heart beat a little faster.
I am the revolution of love.
I am a silenced desire.

Hi, my name is female.
I might not fold my hands the way she does
Or flip my hair the way that girl does.

Hi, my name is female.
The width and length I am shouldnt define if I'm qualified for Vogue.
The way I lick my lips may not be as attractive as the next female,
How my eyelashes flutter may not appeal to you.

Hi, my name is female and I like mashed potatoes and Thai coconut.
They say “eat less, its prettier. Where this, it shows more.”
Why?
I shouldn't have to balance myself on misleading scales that does nothing but swallow my pride up.

Hi my name is female.
Because one chicken breast is smaller than the other….it's not the same?
Because another person's peach is plumper than mine….its better?  
They're still the same and we should treat them the same.

Words get thrown at us everyday and its expected of us to pick them up and change the way we are.
No.

Hi, my name is female and I shouldn't be talking this way just for a guy.
I shouldn't be crying for this guy,
I shouldn't be kissing up to this guy,
I shouldn't be changing for a guy,
I wasn't made for a guy.

Because I can't reach my toes like the next female, shouldn't mean a thing. Because my palms may ash more or my bones may creek more, shouldn't define how pretty I am.
Her hair may reach her elbows, her hair may touch her neck.
Her skin might love the sun, her skin might hate it.
Its still beautiful.

Hi, my name is female and I like mashed potatoes and Thai coconut.
Just because you may not like it, doesn't mean Its gross or Im repulsive..

One female can say, “I am” while the other girl across the street can say, “I is.”
“No I won't”
Or
“No I ain't”

I can still smile just like the next female,
I can hold a laugh,
Cough,
Sneeze,
Wink,
Eat like the next female.

We're all one conjoined masterpiece.
One cannot make me feel low of myself.
One will not tell me she's better than me.
One will not let me cry my eyes out.

Hi, my name is female and I have a name.
My name defines me.
I am beautiful just like the next girl who likes mashed potatoes and Thai coconut.

Embrace your beauty, honey. You're gonna have it forever.

Week 1: I was laughing exactly twenty-two minutes after I held your lifeless hand. They called it coping. I called it insanity.

Week 2: I haven't slept a full night in a week because I can't remember the last thing you said to me.

Week 3: I still reach for your hand every time an airplane flies by. I still despise planes.

Week 4: Can you ask God if I'm allowed to be angry yet?

Week 5: I mourn the grandchildren you will never meet and I will never bear because they might have your eyes.

Week 6: We lit a cigarette for you today as if God would let such a deadly sin into the pearly gates. Happy birthday.

Week 7: I've never liked this house.

Week 8: I jokingly call other people Dad until it doesn't sting to say that word anymore.

Week 9: "I want to have a better relationship with you," turned into "I'm so sorry," too quickly.

Week 10: Depression is such a mouthful, three course meal of arsenic.

Week 11: You always told me I had a natural beauty, didn't need to paint a face of porcelain. I wear a lot of makeup now.

Week 12: I'm still not ready to write about you yet.

She was wild like skinny dipping at midnight, stars watching overhead and falling in love with moonlight. The way it lay upon her skin made the ocean envious of her depths within and sometimes between us. She was my sister, not in blood but in orbit. A Venus to my Earth, forged from the same collapsing star and if the universe was in fact to be infinite then this moment would happen again, and again, and again an immeasurable number of times. I found comfort in this thought, knowing though our existence was meaningless, it was still full of feeling, and this feeling, right now, it insisted on existing forever.

His Down's Syndrome makes
His age a tough guess, I'll
Say eight to ten.

Wide eyes on machines,
Ice cream dripping on the
Pavement outside the

Construction site.
I wanna work like this when
I grow up, he says in

Young enthusiasm to a mother
Whose eyes well up with
Gratitude when I approach

And kneel down in front of
Him. So you want a job,
Buddy? I ask him with a

Wink. He suddenly remembers
His ice cream and bites into
It shyly. Nods, glancing at the

Tools in my belt, the scratches
On my arms, the brick wall
I've been attacking with a

Wacker jackhammer. Nods
Again. Well, I'll see you in a
Few years, I say with another

Wink, this time to his mother,
Who'd look her young age if
Her eyes weren't as tired,

But you can start with this
And get some practice. I hand
Him my Stanley Fat Max

Hammer. His ice cream
Hits the ground as he
Recieves it with both hands,

Looking to his mother for
Confirmation that it's ok.
Oh, it is. She mouths a

Thank you SO much...
They walk away, his chatter
High pitched and fading

Around the corner. And I
Head over to the foreman to
Report that I lost my hammer.

Don't ever employ me.
I can work a good game, but
I'm too soft around little heroes.

Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines

She was drowning in an ocean full of broken diamonds;
each shard sharper than the other
cutting into her creamy skin and filling the ocean blue
with a velvet red

But she didn't feel anything,
her body was paralyzed by fear and her lungs exhausted
Yet she wasn't thinking of how young she was
Or all of her hard work
She wasn't praying like she thought she would do in her final moments
because there was something more important than all of that to her
She didn't care what her funeral would look like
Nor what the tombstone would read
She didn't care that she probably had a minute or two to live
In her final moments all she was thinking was

Will you remember me?

Some things fall apart and can't be put back together

Don't let them destroy you, you're better than that

I'm sorry I broke our promise

It wasn't your fault

I never told you, but yes, you are beautiful.

I love you

She had drowned in an ocean full of broken diamonds;
*his eyes were the sharpest, and cut her the deepest

sorrow is born of burning desire
when you sew lonely nights on your fingertips or unzip dresses that he used to unzip for you
my aunt told me years ago that loving someone without loving one's surroundings will make christmas taste like grandpa's death
you cannot leave without leaving marks, she said, you cannot stop breathing in crystal air in the winter-time, she said, you cannot love yourself if you keep pouring all your love into hollow bodies who cannot be saved
pills can make them high for a while but blue and orange and white cannot free their minds
be their rush but be a decent one
let them get high on you instead but if hating your freckles seem to be the price for attention, then they are not worth your time
you are the most important piece of joy walking on this earth
the second you forget about it, you waste your soul and become as empty as the soda-can you filled with out-burned cigarettes and corrosive tears, she said
perhaps it is better than being alone, i answered her back
at least i am something to someone

*(k.w)