the very first thought i have each morning when i wake up is "i'd rather be dead"
but i am still so very glad i did not **** myself at the age of fifteen.
in five years, i have known. i have known triviality
heartbreak
physical scars that shine white and straight on my skin, and
emotional scars so deep i am still recovering from them.
but most importantly, i have known love. i have known
love for myself, and love for the people who have sewn me back together
piece by piece
tear by tear
and smile by smile.
i have known these people inside and out
dreams and thoughts and ambitions and fears and most of all,
hope.
we hold each other together at the seams. every time we split
we glue ourselves back together with memories and heartache and drunken heartfelt confessions.

this is me, baring my birthday suit to you. my insecurities
are my nakedness. my heart
is on my sleeve.
i am scarred. i have
rolls and snags and marks where there should be none, i
am coming apart at the seams, i am spilling over
with feeling, with the idea that there is a beyond. what do you think people think of
when they think of a beyond? do they mean the one that comes to them after they die or
the one that happens to the world after they do?
sometimes i hold on to these ideas of almost-existentialism and try not to cry when we read about them in class.
i used to say i was broken.
when i said i was broken, i imagined a sea of smashed lightbulbs, filaments
flickering feebly in an attempt at survival. what i was, was broken mirror
shattered vase
and an unsaveable phone screen. in my head,
i was poetry. but this is me, in my birthday suit. not hiding behind my purple
prose, not hiding behind my blurry concept of broken. i
am not broken. i was never
broken.
i like to think about the fact
that iron flows through my veins. i think about it a lot, the way i used to think
that letting the blood out of them would help me vocalise my broken.
today, i went for a walk and i thought of ways to not go home and make it look like an accident.
(i am fat, i am worthless, i am redundant, i don't deserve to live i don't deserve to live i)
today, i came back home. i ate dinner. i wrote this poem. i talked to my friends. and i thought about whether anyone really deserves to live.
the way i see it, i've been holding on for so long for the promise of bright lights and soft smiles and long car rides into the unknown and someone to fix me, to put me back together
i forgot what i already had.
i have glue, i have drunken confessions and smiles and long drives and longer hugs from people who love me.
twenty-five is just five years away, and it feels like forever.
i know how fast it's going to go. i know. i know i'm going to look back, and i'm going to say
"i'm so glad i didn't **** myself at the age of twenty."

what i'm trying to say is chin up, sunshine.
this feeling will never go away.
you will always feel the pull of steel and you will always look at very tall buildings with just one guilty thought, and write bad poetry, and **** up your metaphors, and
hold on to your hearts of glass and your constellations and your big city dreams, and
that one person you can't stop writing about.
you're going to find your birthday suit. you're going to find your naked
your unprepared
your "i'm barely holding on"
your swan song. you're going to stand in front of someone with a full heart
and an unburdened soul
even if it is for five minutes, you're going to hold your best friend's hand and say
"i'm so glad i didn't **** myself five years ago,"
and
"i love you."

chin up, sunshine.
it's never going to get better
and that's more than okay.

<inhale>
your eyes are like sandpaper, rubbing raw
at my innocence under the streetlamps
that should have been repaired three years ago. i wish
i could look away, but
your razor hands are pushing me down
and your cruel eyes are stripping away my skin, my flesh
is vulnerable.

i wish i could breathe, but there is sand in my eyes
and gravel in my throat. you are so
heavy, so crass, so animal. my heartbeat
echoes your pants and gasps, bile
rises in my throat, and my bones tremble
under the weight of your ‘love’, but i
will never let you win,
not even when you strip me of my breath.

i will never walk gracefully to you, holding
my head down low like a lamb to the slaughter, like
a condemned man walking to his death. i
am a force of nature. i am a hurricane. i
am a tiger
stalking through the forest, i
will never let you win. i will look you in the eye as
you stab me through the chest. i am not destined for your
slaughterhouse, and i will breathe in till the end, because i
am not stardust, not
moonshine. i am not a delicate flower. i
am strong. i am the sun.
and i will shine.

<exhale>

the last time i wrote a poem about you, i compared you to a constellation.
it's so hard not to think of you like a group of stars, with your hair always in a disarray and your eyes like pools
of milky coffee i've drowned in on so many sleepless nights
( i don't even like milk in my coffee).
now, when i think about you
you aren't anything celestial in my head. in my head,
you used to be all i ever thought about.
now, now when i think about you, i think about your fingers
(holding mine when i am falling apart),
and your voice on the phone at 1 am
(and "crying isn't weak"),
and the weight of your head on my shoulder
(on difficult days, when holding ourselves up is harder than breathing)
and singing along to bad music in the car when there's nobody else around
(and the Doors when there is).
i guess you could say this is a goodbye poem.
i guess you could say you crawled out of the cracks in my ribcage and planted peonies there instead.
i guess you could say that i loved you once. i guess i love you still
but maybe this time my ribcage is my own and my body is my own and my heart is my own
and even if the peonies in my chest try to suffocate me, i know that you will pick them for me
and put them in that vase that always falls off the table when i get drunk.
i guess i'm okay
i guess
i do.
and i guess you are not celestial, you
are a Person, and i guess that i was wrong about loving you
(but i do).

THERE IS CLOTH AROUND YOUR EYES AND YOUR BRAIN AND  YOUR MOUTH AND YOUR HEART AND YOU ARE TELLING ME HOW TO SEE HOW TO THINK HOW TO SPEAK HOW TO FEEL
I AM TIED DOWN TO YOUR CRUCIFIX OF HUNGRY EYES AND I AM POWERLESS
YOU ARE AN ANOMALY. YOU ARE THE OTHER.
*****.
****.
*****.
****.

*FEMINIST.

i dream of silk and black lipstick, leather and ice-burn
i fashion thoughts into clouds of smoke i ghost out of my mouth
into necklaces i will only ever give to you; you
are burnt russet bitten lip bleached bone coalesced into
constellation; you burn brighter
than any constellation i have ever breathed

i dream of your hipbones; stretch marks flicking over them
like lightning glimpsed between fingers; like wishbones silently pulled apart
in promise; you are wishbone you are gold plate you are sunshine
through a stained-glass window; my heart is glass
a cemetery to your footprints a cathedral to your broken
dreams; i can taste the honey in your scattered thoughts
like a prayer on my tongue
i dream of deep purple and yellow and green and
black and fading bruise and blood
at the corner of your lip; i can taste iron in your breath
rotting in my dreams slow-burning ice in my veins; vengeance
is a dish best served cold i know
that if i unfurl my skeleton and tuck you into the spaces between my
ribcage and my lungs you will taste just as sweet

i dream of ruby emerald sapphire in brooches pinned onto black i
think of the bruise-giver of the blood-spiller of cracks in my
ribcage of wishbones of constellations of iron-taste of ice-burn of you of you of you
and i let you in
and i am cathedral i am cemetery i am bonfire i am in l o v e
with constellation

step one* // live in denial for most of your life. tuck yourself into closets and cupboards and slow-cooking pots of rice until all you have left to offer her is your warming breath

step two // warm her hands with your breath. tell her she's worth more than *that guy, than the number on the scale, than her grades, than anything in the world

step three // don't think about kissing her when her lips are bitten with worry. don't think about kissing her when you're tired and it's two a.m. and god, she looks so beautiful today. don't kiss her. don't kiss her

step four // let your breaths fill the closets again. you are eternal, you are infinite, you are alone, but you still have her

step five // write her a poem. metaphorize your heart of glass. verbally trace her hipbones. tell her she is a constellation.

step six // "accidentally" give her the poem. laugh it off when she says that poetry's not her thing, anyway.

step seven // only cry when you are alone.

step eight // bare your skeletons to her unflinching mouth. it's cold and dark where she comes from, too

step nine // when she tells you she loves you, let her. hold onto her tight enough to shatter your ribcage.

step ten // let her tear the breath from your lungs-it's all you had left, anyway.

one day
i will hold you in my arms
and know that the world will not be ripped out from under my feet.

(at 3 am when the dragons of my past beckon to me
and engulf me in flames
i laugh and embrace them because
they will always be there for me)

don't weep for me
my love.

one day
you will not have tears in your eyes
when you ask me
why i cannot stay.

I revel in the scent of bubblegum from your hair.

it will be cold tomorrow when you exhale your morning puffs of smoke and
it will be cold today when you slap me across the face.
it was cold yesterday, too.

today you are bubblegum
and I want to keep you forever and ever and ever

two days from now
you will sit in this chair
and you will not be bubblegum.

you will be whiskey and rye
you will be loud and angry and red red red red red red red
and I will be.

hello, my little moon rock, my crazy diamond, my fighter.

I know you know what it feels like to have thousands and thousands of fragments ticking away in your chest, pumping blood to a body that doesn't want to be anymore. I know you've felt your throat collapse from when your lungs felt like they were drowning and suffocating in themselves. I know you've felt your mind disappear, fragment by fragment, memory by memory.  I know you've known what it's like to wither and disappear into yourself. I know. you know. we both know how you've drawn yourself into the deepest recesses of oblivion. and we both know you need to come back.

fight.

tomorrow
when I beg you not to break my heart
and you smile
and you smile and you look away

tomorrow
when sharpened steel creates rivers
(creates outlets)
for the blood in my veins

tomorrow
when the songbird forgets to sing
for all of a
millisecond

tomorrow
when the daisies wither
(willingly)
in the unforgiving frost

tomorrow
when the promise of homemade blueberry pie
brings out the salty tang of a forgotten home
(a forever hiding place)
in my eyes

tomorrow
is when
you can let me go.

(inhale.)
yesterday I passed a person on the street who looked like you
and I nearly broke down.

(don't breathe don't breathe don't look up)
today I saw you and you
and you
and you
had eyes filled with so much pain I didn't know where to go
I didn't know where to look.

(you're gonna be okay
don't look up)
there is a mess of broken things where my brain used to be
there is a sea of broken bottles in the place we used to be.

(I'm not here, this isn't happening)
everything is disjoint
everything is a blur.

(your mouth is moving but you're not making any sense.)
"I'm okay."
"I'm okay."
"I'm okay."
you turn to go.
(exhale.)

sometimes when I hold your hand I'm not sure whether I want to kiss you or strangle you.

people talk about heartbreak
like it is the most beautiful thing.

but there is nothing beautiful about the salty rivers that run down your cheeks at one in the morning when you hold their letters to your chest.
there is nothing beautiful about shaking and anger and breathlessness and an anxiety so deep you think it will consume you.
there is nothing beautiful about thousands of text messages carefully formulated and then deleted
or the sense of worthlessness that comes after.
there is nothing beautiful about choking on sobs or the metallic tang of blood in the air.

*there is nothing beautiful about a person who is so consumed in love for someone else
that they have forgotten who they are.

it is the saddest thing I know
a longing to be extraordinary
while being
**mind-numbingly
painfully
ordinary.

sometimes I wonder what it would be like to meet someone
who would kiss my scars and my nightmares away.
then I remember
that I have myself.

I am strong
and I do not need anyone to rescue me.

I want to write beautiful poetry but I'm not particularly good at it
I want to love you but I'm not particularly good at that either

sometimes my anger grows large enough to eclipse the sun
but not large enough to eclipse your ego.

i bite my nails until they are raw and ****** and i can feel the pain every time i pick up a pen
i build sandcastles too close to the sea just to watch them wash away
i pick flowers that remind me of the glints of sunlight in your eyes and preserve them to look at when i’m falling apart
i make endless cups of coffee and pour most of them down the drain
i glance away when you hold my hand and drift away when you kiss me
i am so sick and tired of the girl i see in the mirror and i want to burn her away.

what i’m trying to say is that i love you
what i mean is that i never want to see you again.

they're going to trample on you, my darling.
they're going to tell you to be the perfect girl
they're going to prune you until your cheekbones are on a level of their own and your hair is as sleek as that of the girl before you.

smile for the camera, darling!

don't show your teeth
you don't want to look like a horse, do you?
cross your legs
you are a lady and must behave like one.

pluck.
wax.
shine.
buff.

don't let them trample on you, my darling.
don't let them convince you that you are stardust and moonshine and will crumble away with a single touch.

you are strong.
you are the sun.
and you will shine.

did you know there is a disease where  your heart swells up and you die?
sometimes I wonder whether you think of me as much as I think of you
or if your heart beats faster when you hear my name.

no,
perhaps not.

last summer, I knew you
and you knew me.
but today, when we pass each other we are empty
cold
unforgiving.

I want to go back to when I looked at you
and saw more than a train wreck waiting to happen.
but I suppose it all ended with the snap of my innocence between your teeth
(like bones)
in the darkness of your parents' garage.

*better a swollen heart
than a shrunken one.

he told me he loves me today
(you know he doesn't mean it)
do you think he'll ever me-
(no)
am I worth it?
(no)
am I worth it?
(yes)
I think I'm beginning to forget about him.
(a part of you will always hold on to the darkness)
I regret existing.
(so give up)
I regret talking to people.
(don't talk to them)
I regret living.
(you don't live, you exist)
I want to live.
(no response)
I'm not okay
*(you will be.)

you are iron
and he is wine

you flow through my veins. with every heartbeat
I feel you dissipate into my muscle and nerve and sinew
I cannot escape you.

he visits, occasionally. he intoxicates me.
with laughter and love and fake smiles
he beats through my blood. he conquers the iron
but only for a while.

you are iron and you are everywhere, you are the song of my heart and the pulse at my throat.

he is wine, he is stardust and lipstick stains on white sheets, a stray tear and an angry word.

I want iron, but I have wine.