my dog was full of smiles
when she was in pain,
from the ends of
her large, worn paws
to the greying hairs of
her head, because she
was dying -

but we gave her pizza
as her last meal since she
always
loved it.
more than us.
more than her life, probably,
even when she was so dizzyingly
overcome with
dementia and arthritis and hurt, so much
*******
hurt.

and i cried when we lost her
because it was so sudden, sobbed awful, wet tears into
my brother's torn t-shirt
since we didn't have time to change into better
clothes when we put her down. to help her. to save her.

yet somehow, knowing that we
gave her up
hurts worse than if we'd
lost her in her sleep.

and someday, i might
get into a car accident, and
my guts will splatter along the walls of some beat-down car in brooklyn
and someone i never knew will have
to clean me up. my friends
will lose me my family
will lose me my significant other
will lose me. they may
never
get over it.

so i will
send reckless text messages
and tell them that i love them because ******* it
if they don't love me back, i will
not wait for signs that
will never come, i will
learn four new languages so
i can meet so many more of the people who
may change me, i will
go to therapy and learn
from it, i will
create art that bleeds from my fingertips, i will
weave patterns into the fabric
of other people's lives, i will
hug my little brother when he
needs one, i will
kiss them with reckless abandon even when my parents do not
want me to, i will
be okay with who i am, i will
work on who i am, i will
love who i am.

i will
eat my ******* pizza,
just like my dog.

in case i get into that car accident tomorrow.

i am mentally ill.

i have been since i was born,
or at least, that’s what i’ve been told.
although perhaps
i never knew it, perhaps
the symptoms
were triggered by trauma, perhaps
it was something that never really seemed
like an illness to me until i knew
what was considered normal. but
i am mentally ill, or mentally disordered, or mentally whatever.

and i ******* hate it.

i hate it
because i cannot think logically most of the time.
i hate it
because whatever chemical imbalances
are inside of me
make me want to scream
and bleed
and punch the walls of my home
until there are more holes than stable ground. i hate it
because me having to speak in front of
my ******* friends is cause enough to
cry for three days, because
my friends don’t understand why
i am ecstatic
around them one day when sadness
crushes my skull the next, because
my friends don’t see logic in a matter of feeling
that doesn’t make sense to them let alone me.

i hate it because
i cannot give a logical reason for this.
i hate it because
i don’t understand why i am the way i am
or what i did to deserve this.
i hate it because
i don’t understand my illness,
i don’t understand how people can
just go out into the world and be happy,
i don’t understand what it’s like to
have something go wrong in life
and react in a way considered to be “healthy”.

i hate it
because my younger brother sits
in class and suffers from his own depression
but refuses to speak up
because he believes his depression
is absolutely nothing
compared to mine,
when to me
it is everything.
i hate it because
he might be cutting himself open
every night
or at least wanting to

and

i hate it because
when i texted all of my friends
as i sat sobbing on my front porch
at ten pm
on a school night
with a bottle of pills
nestled safely in my jacket pocket,
several of them thought it was a suicide note
but none of them cared enough to push further
in my answer of “i’m fine don’t worry about me goodnight”.
i hate it because
the only person who noticed it thoroughly enough
was my ex-boyfriend,
who i scared half to death
when i told him “i’m sorry”
and “i loved you a lot before we broke up”
and “you’ll understand”
and he replied with “oh my god
please don’t
please don’t
please don’t”.

i hate it because
i ignored him.
i hate it because
i wanted out.

i hate it because
the sky fell through the earth’s floor
like shattered glass and the blood-orange
sunset bled towards the grass; i hate it because
i lay softly on the earth of my front yard
and allowed the blades of grass to soothe me
towards the afterlife; i hate it because
the world spun and spun and spun and
my vision blurred and
my heart threatened to beat so far out of my chest
and i could not stop my breathing
but i kept on taking more pills like a child eating candy.

i hate it because
when i realised i wasn’t dead,
i cried.
i hate it because
i had thirty two new notifications
from my ex and the people he had contacted
to see if i was dead
but most of them were from him,
all missed calls and texts and
heavy breathing on the other side of the phone
once he saw me calling. i hate it because
his hands were shaking
and i was talking
and sobbing
with an ex love
on my front porch as the sun and moon switched places
with half a bottle of pills in my system
and the taste of blood in my mouth
instead of talking to my friends
and family
and people
who were supposed to care about me.

i hate it because
the next day i had a pulsing headache
and a suicidal mindset
and all of my friends were cracking jokes
about how they believed i was going to **** myself
when they had no idea
how hard i’d been attempting to do so.
i hate it because
i smiled and lied through gritted teeth
and cried in the bathrooms
when a teacher pulled me aside to say -
he thought something was
“off” with me. i hate it because
i still wanted to die.

i hate it because
i can’t think straight most days.
i hate it because
sometimes everything is okay
and fine
and i can breathe without the alien invasion of
“panic attacks from the planet post-traumatic stress disorder”
and cinnamon doesn’t trigger memories
i would like to forget.
i hate it because
people don’t take mental health seriously
enough to understand why
i leave classrooms in the middle of the day
or why some kids miss school for
two weeks without explanation or why sometimes teachers
with dead eyes are more dead inside
than the human skeletons dancing in the science classrooms.
i hate it because
teenagers make suicide jokes
near people who are dying.
i hate it because
i don’t know if i got out of bed
last tuesday or how long it’s been since i last showered
or if i still love writing as much as
i used to
or if it’s just habit now.

i hate it
because my illness makes me hate myself.

i hate it because
my illness
does not define me
but it sure feels like it does.
i hate it because i cannot explain my illness myself.
i hate it because i hate my illness
and every part of it that creates me, shapes me, moves me
like a ******* puppet.

but ******* it all
if i am going to let it ****** who
i am supposed to be any longer.

ink scratches appear on skin in the
morning as the sunrise falls
into the streets. cars are
screeching and
smoking is rising and
screams are echoing off of the graffitied brick walls -

there's a woman dancing
on the ledge and
she nearly
trips, nearly
dies, nearly
cries out, but her hand grasps
the gate holding her
to the concrete cracked beneath her
feet. sirens are blaring and people are yelling till their lungs
burst and she is laughing because she -

the lines separating happiness and paranoia are faded
when the brain chemistry of a human being
is constructed of hopelessness and oh god why'd he leave me
and the kisses from people who
slowly ruin our bodies, our hearts, ourselves, and -
and -
and -
there is no such thing as black or white; merely grey,
and paintings have no colour when
chemicals in our brains are exploding
chemicals in our brains are spasming
chemicals in our brains are murdering us.

and the woman laughs as she
dances off the edge, the blood
orange sunrise bleeding into
the highways as
black
and
white
and
grey.

everything grey.

i am -
i am homesick for a person who
left when i forced him to leave,
pushing him out the door,
arms shaking,
tears cracking in the back of my throat,
and i hope i don't ruin you
when i know you will ruin me

and now - now it is
too late at night and
i hope the moon is not my only friend
because he has forgotten me
for a girl with ginger hair and a scar above her lip
who is just like me,
except that she's thin and vegan and doesn't like harry potter

and i -
i am convincing myself not to send text messages
i should have sent
before my eyes turned ancient with the ache
of heartbreak and he
refused to look at them.

messages i should have sent

2:14 am, day one
i miss you

3:23 am, day two
i still miss you
3: 24 am, day two
**** why did i make you go

6: 25 pm, one week later
do you remember when i thought
you hated me and when you thought
i hated you? that was
all lies.
is it still a lie?

6:26 pm, one month later
can we
still be friends? it's so hard to see you
in the hallway without
bursting
into
tears
and
flames.

12:01 am, three months later
halloween doesn't
taste the same and
sugar is more sour and sweet and the
moonlight dancing across the haunted street
is not beautiful to me anymore
because you are not apart of this.

4:34 am, seven months later
it is
the day of love and we spoke
for the first time in person since the
school dance a few months ago and my
heart
hurts so badly

3:57 am, eight months later
i am trying to love new people, better
people, and he tells me i am the world
to him but i
don't want him to love me because
he's
not
you

2:31 am, nine months later
i put you first, i always ******* put you
first, and i never made you feel a ****
thing.
2:33 am, nine months later
i still ******* miss you.
******* it.

now
i am trying to convince myself
i don't love you anymore
but it's growing so difficult because
                                                 because
maybe i still do
and i don't want to, i don't want this, i don't want him.
i don't.

he ignores me without reason
and does not try to be
my friend
and does not
look me in the eye

and he is the tear in my heart.

so, hello again,    
                        poetry.
will you be my lover now?

everyone i've written about
has left me.
so you must understand
why i will not immortalize you
with my words,
why i won't turn you
into a poem.

maybe this way
you'll stay.

because sometimes
metaphors aren't obvious enough

i have lost myself
again
in the rain, in the sky, in you -

but the rain is going to pour
without you inside of it and
you will not land on my tongue

and the sky is will be lovely
without you residing in the clouds
and you will not remind me of its colour

not anymore