I know where you are right now because I have been there too, I know how it feels to be so sad for so long that you can't imagine being happy again, to be so sad for so long that you stop trying to be happy again and so you just feed the sadness, just try to give it what it wants in the hope that it will be content enough to spare you, but feeding it only helps it grow. You have to starve it out. You have to lock it up, have to tell it "no", have to fight it. It will claw at the back of your eyelids, it will moan and howl so loud that you cannot hear your own thoughts, you will ache because it is aching and you and it are one but you have to remind yourself that it is created entirely of you, but only a portion of you is made of it. You have to make it shrink. It will not be easy. There will be days when you give in, when you feel bad for it, withering away, and so you throw it scraps of food under the table but there will also be days when it is silent. It will have grown so weak that it can no longer pound on the door, it will lie still there in the dark and you will forget about it, if only for a moment, and you have to hold onto that. There will be good days, days when you think to yourself "this is how happy people feel on a regular basis," days that remind you why you are fighting this beast in the first place and the next day may be bad again, you may not hear that silence again for weeks but when you cannot see an end to this torture, you have to remind yourself of the good days, you have to keep them tucked underneath your pillow and reminisce about the way walking felt easy for a day before you go to bed, you have to keep telling yourself that although this is an uphill battle, it will be so much easier on the way down the other side and the view from the mountaintop is breathtaking. You have to convince yourself that you want that mountaintop, have to tell yourself that the good days are worth the fight, that the sadness will not last forever, that you are not made of darkness although it is made of you. You have to starve it out; it is so much easier to live when you only have to feed yourself.

In speech class they taught us that people speak only to entertain, to inform, or to persuade so when I texted you at 4:31am after swallowing the liquor cabinet and talked about three years ago in Michigan when we watched that movie after everybody else had fallen asleep, I was trying to entertain you, trying to remind you of all the fun we used to have together before you changed and when I told you I missed you I was trying to inform you of the pit in my stomach that you left when you removed yourself from me, of the way I feel when you say my name and of the fact that yes, I did notice that you stopped saying my name and when I told you I was dying I was trying to persuade you to come save me, made it life or death so you only had two options and if you made the wrong choice at least I wouldn't be around to see it, I was trying to convince you that you needed me by showing you how much you would miss me and when you showed up at my bedside, I know you were trying to tell me you loved me.

I've got scars on my wrist
I've got scars on my wrist from the time I got too drunk
I got too drunk because I wanted to be brave enough
To be brave enough to tell him I loved him
I told him I loved him in the same breath as I told him I was dying
I was dying because my eyes wouldn't stay open
Eyes wouldn't stay open because I kept closing them
Kept closing them because I didn't want to see the blood all over one of the good white towels
All over one of the good white towels because I tried to wash it off in the shower but it kept bleeding
Kept bleeding because I cut deeper than I thought I had
Cut deeper than I thought I had because I couldn't feel it
Couldn't feel it because I was too drunk
I was too drunk because I drank all the beers left in the fridge and the ***** in the freezer
The ***** in the freezer because the beer wasn't strong enough
Wasn't strong enough
Wasn't strong enough

girl goes to bed with makeup on, wakes up with sore muscles
girl goes to bed without locking the front door, wakes up in the driveway
girl goes to bed without saying goodnight, wakes up to brother shaking her shoulders
girl goes to bed with the phone off the hook, wakes up with mouthful of *****
girl goes to bed in the bathtub, wakes up with an armful of black thread
girl goes to bed in brother's room, wakes up with the tv still on
girl goes to bed next to boy, wakes up before he does
girl goes to bed without sleeping, wakes up the same time as always
girl goes to bed with a candle burning, wakes up to the sound of herself choking
girl goes to bed early, wakes up to obituary
girl goes to bed with her hand in the cabinet, decides not to wake up this time

Please understand that when I say these things it's not really me talking, it's the concrete in my stomach, it's the staples in between my toes, it's the zip ties around my wrists, it's the scars around my wrists, it's the coals in my throat, it's the liquor in my throat, it's the liquor in the cabinet my mom never had to put a lock on until I started hiding in it, it's the noose around my neck, it's the smoke in my eyes, it's the bullet in the barrel, it's the gun in my dad's closet, it's the gun in my hand, in my mouth, when I say these things it's not really me talking, it's all these things trying to get out.

Jesus Christ I swear I'm trying it's just not working, everything keeps falling through, keeps slipping through, and maybe I'm not doing this right, maybe I'm just making mistakes, but I don't even know where to start, I'm trying to take it one step at a time but everything happens all at once and I'm not fast enough, I'm not strong enough to carry on like this, my feet are tired and I don't care enough to try any harder, I'm giving up, I'm sorry

I'm doing the best I can but I can't do this anymore, I keep crying in my sleep, keep having nightmares. I thought I saw a ghost yesterday until I realized I was looking in the ******* mirror, I'm haunting my own house, possessing my own body, I'm ******* the life out of myself. I tied a noose around my finger just to prove that I could do it, I keep a razor in my purse just to prove that I could do it, to prove to myself that I'm strong enough to not do it, but they keep whispering my name. The bottle of mouthwash with 5% alcohol keeps screaming at me and I can't use it anymore, it leaves that taste in my mouth, tastes like hangover and relapse and accidents, and they're all teasing me with promises of making it all just stop and God it sounds so sweet, sounds so sweet, I know it's not.

My body,

This overgrown graveyard,

This home for ghosts of the wrongly loved,

Doors open to broken souls,

Offering a warm bed,

Clean clothes,

A listening ear.



Most come in the winter

When the cold starts to ache and

The snow sinks through the gauze bandages and the wounds start to drip again,

There's never enough firewood,

Have to start chopping down trees,

Even the new peach tree at the edge of the yard,

So they can stay warm.

The blizzards shake the power out so they all congregate in the atrium,

Divulge tales around burning furniture

Of how they found this place,

This decrepit shelter

Turning more skeleton than home,

Their voices bounce off the hardwood floor,

Come to a resting point,

Fade out.



An old man with sad cheekbones who tried to drink his father back to life but only stumbled through the front door drunk,

A child in her Auntie's pearls led to the porch by a boy hungry for anyone,

The brokenhearted boy and the girl he could never hold tight enough who walked in on the same night but never called it fate,

The swollen lung man who choked on his words and fell blue faced in the entryway,

They all take up rooms here,

Mark their heights on the pantry door even though it never changes,

Claim ownership of these walls as they pull off the paper and paint over the scraps left behind,

The roof is starting to cave in because

They've started using the pillars for kindling.



They don't call this place home,

Don't plant any seeds in the garden that will take too long to sprout,

They call it an in-between,

Call it a place to spend the night,

Call it falling apart

As they tear it down,

Call it a place to hide while they fix their mistakes,

Leave their mistakes stuffed in the knife drawer.



When winter begins to melt

And the grass sticks up through the snow

They find their way out,

Leave with fresh pink scars,

Leave their used bandages in the bathtub,

Take a strip of wallpaper,

A peach from the tree by the edge of the yard

To remember it by.

Hi, I'm sorry for texting you so late it's just that everything feels like it's falling apart and I can't even recognize myself anymore sometimes it feels like I'm not even the one living my life I'm just watching it like a movie I'm just going through the motions and I don't know who to talk to anymore because I just keep making more problems but I need help I need someone to hold me and tell me it's okay I don't know how to make it through this on my own please just come save me

Today I watched your
lungs turn inside out against themselves,
the air unsure of where to go so it just
hovered
in that middle space between coughs,
when you thought you'd caught your breath but
your voice hitched when you tried to talk and
you started choking again,

I saw
that today, your
eyes watering as you struggled to
remind your body how to sustain itself,
you cussed between fits and asked,
"isn't this supposed to happen on its own,"
you wheezed,
"shouldn't something so
instinctual
be easier than this?"

You didn't sound like you wanted an answer so I
kept my mouth shut,
brought you a glass of water.

To fill the emptiness with hollow things

To speak through our teeth only in whispers

To find remorse in the beautiful memories

To pour the milk ourselves

To walk away from that which we hold closest

To clog the drain with pebbles from our shoes

To hate those who love us

To hate those who cannot

To dog-ear the pages in borrowed novels

To hide lies beneath our skin

To lie thorns beneath the bedsheets

To forget to say hello

To forget to say good bye

I can't let myself
fall for you; I'm too close to
the edge as it is.

Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness
stitched into the tag in the neck of their coat.
They carry it like a wallet weathered from use
and old gift cards in the pocket poke at the seams.
They keep it tucked away like a pressed flower
in between the pages of their favorite novel
and find it while they're thumbing through
for that line about love that they have forgotten.
They leave it in the bottom of their shoe
and let it poke at their soles when they walk,
and, becoming accustomed to it,
no longer feel it at all.