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.

my skeleton never liked me
very much. it cracks in unusual
places, ribcage poking out of its
skin prison, the frailty of it
breaking beneath the musical
whispers of the wind through hollow
spaces.  i see

light bursting beneath the flash
of a camera and my skin
incinerates - do not look do not touch
do not look - and the charcoal in
my lungs is set on fire. i wake up
with ash beneath my tongue
far too often. my skin

despises me now that i have
bruises in places no one could
kiss better. there's this scar above
my right knee, which dislocates when
my life falls out of its socket, and it
reopens and blood pours from the
renewed wound too often. i think

i have a body that likes to believe it is dying.

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 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.

all my love's going to drown.

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

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

"her writing depresses me" he says

my voice quivers, falls up toward
space and crashes
down
against the sea-salt waves. my voice

s-s-s-stutters, repeats the first
syllable five times and once again
for an even six, repeats, repeats,
repeats. my voice is

quiet and every teacher i've
ever had calls on me with a
"speak up!" but no one ever
listens.

writing is the only voice i've ever known
you will not take that from me.

and when fireworks stop cracking on the
night sky
and when the stars
refrain from blinking down at
streetlights guiding the path to our future
and when you kiss me goodbye with
burning lips
and my own are unscathed whilst my neck is
blooming third-degree burns,
flesh melting on the site
and when the sun turns to moonlight
because its own flames have known
no heat
and when i will stop finding metaphors
about firefirefirefirefirefire
and when every winter
you'd put us through ceases
its frozen barricade
and when i stop
discovering myself hovering over the
edge of a lake donning memories
that refuse to drown
and when i
stop wishing there was some possibility
of drowning myself in the bathtub -

i will finally have the guts
to say

i don't love you

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.

the curves on my
frame are the lines of
a sketch bent slightly
too far; i'm an awkward
angle in geometry
class no one dares to
find and this tiny black

dress is revealing too
much in too little
time. the whispers of
crisscrossed marked
thighs and starry knees
swirl before me and i'm

gone, disconnected. they say
black is slimming but
i've never felt more
potent and i hope
to god no one can see
right through me.

formal dances aren't
ideal for the invisible.

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

it's a friday night and i am sat at the top of the bleachers with three packs of maltesers i told the cashier were for my friends with a blurry grin and the hot chocolate in my hands lied. it's lukewarm and tastes of milk, not sweets, and the taste of it still taints my lips because i'm forcing myself to drink it anyways. the stars are yellow set against navy hues and they're blinking down at me.

there's announcers shouting something about the game occurring on the field but i'm not listening, never listening, never apathetic or empathic enough to want to. the music blares, cheers roar, announcers boom, the scoreboard flashes-  it's cold enough to be huddled beneath blankets but i've only got a sweatshirt hiding my hands, hiding my fingers, hiding me. my ribs shiver and the ghosts in the spaces between them gather closer for a warmth that won't come. the moon says hello to me and i struggle to catch enough air to say it back.

my friends are nowhere to be found and i can't feel my fingertips and the flavor of lukewarm hot chocolate leaves me and i'm closing my eyes, shutting them tight, disconnecting.

there's suddenly no one here, just me and the blackness behind my eyelids. it's like i'm watching humans but never being one of them. maybe i'm meant to be an alien- maybe that one star blinking at me is a planet welcoming me home- maybe if i lay my lungs to rest they'll leave me be.

i can feel my heart giving up on me.

in the beginning of my first
year of high school, i was
the girl with messy hair
who tried to off herself
in summer's past, the one
with tired eyes who skipped
lunch despite empty stomachs
feeling heavier, the freshman
with open wounds grazing
the veins in her arms who
sprinted out of classrooms
due to the sporadic nature
of panic attacks.

i'd like to say that i've
transitioned out of the cocoon
of panic disorders and ptsd and
depression, but somehow,
the butterfly wings haven't grown in yet.

a girl the year above me
killed herself today and i can't
stop thinking, can't stop spinning,
can't stop hurting; there's a gaping wound
in my chest the size of her heart but
i didn't know her, no, not at all,
and everyone is crying
but everyone is crying together.

i am terrified of the voice
of my father because it
sounds of unknown irony -  how
the one who is called to
love is able to spin fear and
anxious hands and nervous thoughts
through words screamed
so loud the blood vessels in my
eyes break instead
of his.

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

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've spent my whole life
searching for an escape route
that has never appeared
at the fondest of times
but ******* it, i
will paint that sign myself,
in the rusted blood seeping
from my heart,
if it means this will end

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

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.

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.

there's a fever grinding
against the front of my skull
and ice is crushing along the
bends of my spine and i
haven't cried since i found out
i was dying

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.

everything is meaningless and i
mean it. there's no point to this
there's no point to me there's no
point in existing other than to
breathe and love and make sense
of why we're here and
i'm sick of people telling me that the smart ones
are the sad ones
because i'm not smart,
i'm sick.
i'm vomiting up all the
feelings that are so overused
and overexaggerated that i cannot
tell what is normal or not
until someone informs me
that daydreaming
of slashing wrists and leaking
red when i
drop a glass of water
isn't normal. i used
to think everyone was
this way and i used to
think there'd be some
cure
to this, some magic pill
filled with stardust
and a tendency for
chemical codependency
that would make
me stop throwing up
all the feelings
bottled in the pit of
my stomach. (the
magic pill made me throw up,
just not the bad things. only
the good ones.) and
i can't stop thinking about
how everything is meaningless
and we are all here
and they are all there
and no one will ever
know one another completely
and that's not okay with me.
it's not.

tell me someone will love me
fully clothed
and

tell me someone will love me
with blood on my hands
and

tell me someone will love me
shaking, trembling, convulsing
and

tell me someone will love me
when they're searching for gold and i am rustic bronze
and

tell me someone will love me
with veins ripped apart
and

tell me someone will love me
with a starved stomach and empty eyes
and

tell me someone will love me
when i am dying
and

i'm asking you
//please love me//

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.

darling, i should never
call you that. "darling"- it's
a synonym for everything
i used to feel with you and all
the guilt which follows it. so
badly have i wanted to stop
using it, to stop referring
to you as that, but your
name hurts too much.

darling, did i ever
mention that i traveled to
the moon? because i did,
on a night where the earth
was spinning too quickly that
all the colours bled into one
and the painting made me
*****. it's not a kind story
and ever since then, i haven't
been kind either.

darling, what's the
difference between heartache
and dying? i'm tasting flakes
of flaming ash on my tongue
and it's scorched my mouth
so bad i cannot speak everything
i feel (not that i would've
anyway). you're everything
drawn on the back of my
eyelids and everything
knifing my stomach and
everything, oh god,
you're everything.

darling, you're
nothing, you're
absolutely nothing,
you don't mean a thing
to me.

darling, i realise that
seems ironic but i've
never been anything but
that. i've been treading on
the moonlight and inhaling
charcoal and the bullet-wounds
have cracked against
the silence of your
absence.

darling, i think
i'm losing my mind.

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.

i swear to god i'm not
envious of her i just
want to break her precious
fingers when she touches him
i just want to sever the
thinned space between
them i just want to shove
her from his grasp i just
want my hands to stop shaking
when i see them together i
just want to see him stop
gazing at her with eyes
brighter than moonbeams.

i swear to god i'm not jealous.

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.

because sometimes
metaphors aren't obvious enough

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.

everything i've ever known
turns to dust, spiraling in a
constellation of tremors and
hyperventilation and worry,
so much worry, and every
moment in which i exist i
can feel my heart threaten
to beat straight out of my
ribcage and maybe i
want it to.

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.

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.

why does it hurt so much, so intensely, so often?

you kiss me hard with your teeth and
blood coats the roof of my mouth, metallic
and sharp, and i will envelop
myself in darkness
for that is where
i belong

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.

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

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.

everything is strange and eerily quiet
and i am not allowed the delicacy
of feeling sad
and i am not allowed
to feel anything
i am hiding bad habits underneath
makeup and there are blooming
bruises on my arms and
she is so beautiful but she's dousing me in kerosene
nights and lighting matches for her cigarettes on top of me
but i - i - i am not allowed to feel this
i am not allowed to feel this
sixteen years is not enough, it's
never going to enough, i am
never going to be
enough

there's no relief in death
but there's some sweet ecstasy within it
which i've been literally dying to try.

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.

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 wanted to scream so loudly
the cells circulating my body would
freeze - sadly, the ice which
settled in my blood cells refused
to cave in. the weight of this
has not left  me yet and she
was more beautiful than a
monarch in flight before
she clipped her wings
clean off and the wind
from the act blew us
all away and i'm failing
in this attempt to discover
any merits in thinking about someone
who is unable to come home

yet i'm still texting her
"please come back".

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.

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.

don't tell me how to write poetry or how to write stories or how to write at all. don't tell me there's a rhyme or reason to this; don't tell me that i should be using iambic pentameter or separating each line into delicate sestets or  molding metaphors out of things that were never intended to be meaningful. don't tell me that there are rules i need to follow and that nothing i ever make will be precious and valuable and wholesome unless it conforms to the artistic, intellectual way of doing things because i am not artistic and i am not intellectual and i will write however i please because my writing is imbedded layers beneath my skin, so far down i could never tear it out in any way that wasn't raw or real or rustic. don't make those parts of me insincere simply to hold them to ideals set by different old writers in older times with different old feelings and dreams and beliefs than mine. don't tell me how to write. don't tell me how to not be me.

i want to go home
and swallow each tablet
in the bottle of pills
which are supposed to
make me not want to
do so.

i can't help but bleed out the good in me