my knuckles are bruised,
the colour of sunsets and
irony, because they say i'd
never hurt a fly yet i'd
throw my fist into a window
as a fatal act of defiance.

hasn't the world
taken enough from me?

i talk to trees instead of people. they listen better.

my bones are twisted. the
skeleton cracked at year thirteen
with what could only
be age or agony-
probably a gnarled collaboration
of the two.

i think i've been twenty-one
since i was born; at least, that's
what every teacher i've ever had
thought of me: "mature for her age".
so did every ****** guy high off of
green smoke with eyes glazed over in

lust, either staring at me or straight
through my jeans, whistling and howling
like wolves with blood dripping
down their chins and claws
ready to ****** something already

gone.

i think that's why i died young.

i slipped the silk fabric over the curve of my hip and the scarred flesh of my thigh in a dressing room with three of my friends behind me, ******* in the fat of my stomach. they say black is supposed to be slimming but it only made me bloated; maybe the mirror was a liar (i know it didn't lie). an elephant with too-thick eyeliner and a too-thick body stared back at me and i bit through the skin of my lip till it bled and i wanted to live on some other planet where elephants were appreciated.

"that's the best one you've tried on yet," someone said, but i couldn't hear them over the red-eyed demon within me which whispered of shoving ******* down the trachea, messy but quick, everything gone in an instant. if this was my best one, i was doomed because my eyes were glazed over with the misunderstanding that beauty would never apply to me.

"i'm just gonna go- go to the restroom-" and the red eyed thing inside me cracks its whip, takes over the nerves in my brain, makes my legs sprint to the toilets and it's over, it's done, the food gone among stomach acid, falling hair, and teeth erosion.

i can only imagine what the restaurant worker who was forced to clean rainbow-coloured ***** in the toilet thought.

you robbed me,
at the tender age
of non-consent and
bony knees from
something i will
never win back

and i'm not
talking about
virginity anymore

i am hidden somewhere behind hushed
silences, sporadic breaths, and a
fluttering heartbeat

i am sat towards the front of the
class with tears brimming my eyes
and fingers dotted with blood and paint

maybe someone will see me someday

i had a headache when i walked
into class and even though you were
at the opposite end of the classroom, it
felt as though glass was
crushing against the back of my
skull and there were spots of black and
blue and bruises in my eyes and i
couldn't feel anything but the
bile in my throat, not even my
lungs could tell if i was
breathing

when i fell into
the darkness which people often call the
pseudonym of "passing out" and my
instructor shook me awake, pulling me
from the depths of the unfeeling
(and how i longed to remain there),
i couldn't answer the question of
"why" and simply stated the cause
to be dehydration instead of panic.

you attempted to make eye contact with me
whilst people had me ingest water
against the currents of the bile
and i just can't look at you
without succumbing to all things
you might've read about panic
disorders and ptsd and lonely
women and sometimes
there's this wound nestled in my
chest and it refuses to heal properly
because you make me feel loneliness
in the worst of ways.

i don't want this. i don't need
you. i never did.

when i grow up, i'd
like to be a ghost
i'm already invisible
to everyone
so i think i'm
halfway there

i am lonely in a
body that has wasted
my skin to paper stretched
against collar bones and
my ribcage won't stop
trembling

i am isolated in a
body which hyperventilates
when it nears all things
sweet or salty or sour
or good because the weight
wrestling in the pit of my
stomach suffocates me

i am alone in a body
that aches for untouching,
unbruised skin and hair so
thick it'll never fall again but
it cannot give that to me any
longer because that would
mean i cannot be sick

i am in a body
that refuses to love me back

i will die as
frail as i came
into the world, but
the blood once covering
my entire being
will be

seeping
from
my
wrist

i haven't heard from you
in six days time and i had
never felt more free
until you sent me one final
message thirty-seven
seconds ago: i hate you.

the feeling is
mutual.

"why?"*

my breath hitched at
the question and i
thought my heart
would jump straight
from my ribcage, and
maybe i knew it would,
because you do
not want to know
why or when or how i
stopped loving
you

you just want me
to hold your
hand again, you
want the nights of
sugar-tainted lips
and whispers of i love you,
i love you when the
world around you shattered
and pieces of the broken
sky felt like the glass
shards in your lungs

you never really
wanted me
you just wanted
a hand to hold

you've been sending me
text messages along
with slivers of the heart
you once claimed to own
and i cannot give
you anything of
mine because

there's nothing
left

i ran away from home
when i was fifteen for two
weeks, packing blue knee-highs
and makeup i would never
use, and fell into
the mantra of not knowing
where i was going but
the apathy wrestling inside
of me said it never mattered
so long as i was
free

i hold my breath in
an unsure pen.
my soul is battered,
beaten, and scarred and
i cannot decide if this
is a result of tragedy
or my disease; it's
more a painting of the
two, a swirling of the colors
which have turned me
black and blue and i
am not who i once
was for my breath has
escaped my lungs and
collapsed into the ink

of a pen whose melody
has not yet been
sung.

to the girl who wrote me asking
me for advice at four o'clock in the
morning when her brain was high
off of an ashy heart: stop
******* around with toxins, and
no, i don't mean the drugs
turning your life into
unwholesome chaos. i mean
your ******* friends who told
you that
your problems are nothing
your demons are nothing
you are nothing. stop
it. you're better than
them.

to the friend who asked
for advice on how to turn
herself into a walking
skeleton: get over
yourself. anorexia and
bulimia will not fill
some hole in your tragic
past, they will ravage everything
good in you until you
are nothing but the flesh
you have despised. do
not ask me how to "become
an anorexic" because all you
are asking me is how
to die.

to the boy who i have
dedicated so many poems
to: god, you are so oblivious
to everything. to the soulless
"i love you"s spoken out of
pity, to the feigned grins, to
the fact that you are ripping
me apart. i was always told
to not love someone
who was sad because they would
drag me to the pit of the ocean
with them, and i should
have listened. there isn't
enough of me left
to share.

we met two years earlier
on a night when my makeup
was smudged against
the tears. i jumped in front of
your car with aching
sobs burning in the rear
of my throat, knocked
backwards into traffic
with blood seeping out
of the crack in my wrist. i

screamed and cried as
my lungs caved into
this pointless oxygen
addiction but you called
an ambulance anyway, holding
my hand despite the ******
fingertips all the way through. you

visit the hospital each day
till i'm released, whisper "it's
going to be all right, love, stay
golden for me please" into my
hair when you believe me
to be asleep. i fell for you

as hard as the stars would
fall for the moon and our
love story as beautiful
as a flower blooms in the
winter despite the cold.

you were diagnosed
later that year and i watched
the sickness eat at your
heart. i clutched your pallid
hand as you shake, and you'd
never stop trembling for months
on end. you heaved stardust
all over the floor and drenched
your clothes in perspiration
and i could taste the champagne
tainted on your lips

but at night i
whisper "it's going to be all
right love, stay golden for me
please" in your ear, knowing you
aren't sleep.

i held you so close to my
heartbeat but dear god,
when yours stopped
i died with you.

god, you are
so beautiful
i want to
drown myself
in your
love i am tired
of developing
an ill
stomach over
someone who
will never love
me back i fall
in love with
people who
scar my
heart and
bruise my
arms and
burn my
thighs, people
who have
made me
scream in
the middle
of the
night but you,
god you are
so beautiful
i want to
drown myself
in your
love.

consuming chocolate happens to grant
a more therapeutic, enlightening
experience than any counselor
has given you. the sweets
melt into your tastebuds in a
vast array of decadent
flavors, but the remedy
for your heartache is shattered
just moments after the candy is

devoured. soon,
the bathroom is decorated
in earthy browns, chunks
of violet, lines of indigo,
sunset orange lumps, and
snippets of
incapacitated self-esteem
among spots of your own
red blood because

you need to feel
empty.

when the word "****"
resonates from the lips of
any teacher, i cannot
help but perceive
how many students' heads
fall downward, staring at
their disquieted hands. i am
wondering how many people are closing
in on themselves, lips pressed together
in thin lines, burying themselves

six feet under into graves
constructed however long ago.
somewhere within the catastrophic enclosings
of their minds, they are the people
reminiscing violent robberies, not
of television sets or radios, but of
innocent souls. they are suffering
from the post-traumatic stress

of feeling  naked skin and cracked
ribcages and heaving lungs
never burn in the turbulent
wildfires left
behind in their burnt
lives; a simple word
is enough to have them
reliving the mournful
affair forming their
empty chest. i glance around the
room for students whose
memory gnaws at their
scarred skin, and

the  problem is
is that there are too many.

stomachs churn, insides
twist, anxiety bites
chunks from the swollen
brain. silver glints in the
corner of the eye, quivering
hand snatches metal
weapon, slicesliceslice.
feels warmth ooze from
wounds, thigh catches
fire, singes part of any
remaining self-control when
roses fall from
perfect blood lines.

the tears fell
onto her feathers
in iridescent moonlight
after she broke her own
wing attempting
to fly away from
home.

you ripped my heart
out of my chest and swallowed
it whole on a day where the
sun shone brightly; despite the
clouds hanging over
my head, there's still
a sunburn where you
used to

touch me.

i know we are
terrified of each other
in the most oblivious way
and that you kissed that girl
with lips tainted in cigarette
smoke last friday because
you thought it would make you
whole; but my dear

heartbreaker, she broke
you in a single touch.

my face smashed against the concrete
when you kicked me from your
life; i'm still picking jagged stones
from the spaces between my
teeth. because of this,

i don't smile
anymore.

i called you at 4 am with mascara
tears and bloodied knuckles grasping
a quivering cell phone in the
rain; you drove three hours
in the middle of a storm to hold
me close and claimed you'd never
let me be alone again.

you
lied.

i ruptured into a
million flickering stars
too long ago, breaking from
touch-induced trauma and the
poisonous aspects of
bleach. my thoughts drip
from the ink veins
of pens; ******* it,
i cannot allow myself
the privilege of
saying, “this

is every secret i
ever hid.” i am not
soft or pretty or
loving; i am small
and hurt and reticent
and guilty and abandoned. i
long to be the

little girl i was six years ago
before he shredded my
insides, sprouted roses
in my blood, wrapped his ******
thorns around my throat. there is
no recognition of that beloved
innocence. the girl in the mirror
never looks back at me: she is knotted
hair, decaying paper skin,
scarlet gashes, pink
scar tissue. i am not

sweet or darling. i am
ravaged. van gogh swallowed
yellow paint to create some
feigned happiness, and i understand
that in the nastiest way. i spent my time
trying  to shelter the black and blue
daisies on my hips with makeup,
camouflaging razorblades in fields
of sunflowers, pouring every
unhealthy bit of my starved
stomach into the beautiful
lilies in the flowerpot in the
bathroom. i have unearthed
that home is not the
safest place to be.

i was infected and diagnosed with
the disease of loneliness
by age eight. this wound
has burdened me yet the
ticking time tomb nestled in
the crooks of my devastated
personality will soon detonate; they
told me i was sick, and i think
i finally believe that.

sometimes i compose
so many poems i think
i bleed them out; some
days i believe the ******
poetry nestled in my veins
are all that's left of
me.

i will tell you this: the devil
is inscribed in the details. when you
haven’t spoken to someone
in months, it’s like greeting
a stranger anew; they are not
who they were five months ago,
or six, or seven. they are a
collection of newfound

cells and new skin and new ideas; they
are not the brilliance you once
observed at 3 am when they
were crying out their reddened eyes
over the fact you did not
love them like you used to. even
if they find some new person kissing
their wounds in a failed attempt
at intimacy, they may still latch
onto your once-love as a blood-*******

leech. the god of trickery and emotional
manipulation is named “my ex-
boyfriend” and i don’t think i like him
very much. “are you missing me” he
sighs to me over the phone, and i
cannot reply. if i whispered “yes”,
he’d grab my wrist and pull me into
his side again; if i whispered “no”,
i’d observe it devour him alive and
bring him into the warmth of a
broken heart.

sometimes the navy hue
of 3 a.m. and the patter of
raindrops sinking  into
cracked concrete is enough
to console me into sleep. sometimes

it pains the bruises on
my heart slightly too
much that it aches to shut
my eyes; you always loved
the scent after rain, and i always
loved you.