I can count on my fingers the boys with rough hands traveling up my skirt with their tongues down my throat that only knew how to destroy girls. I can close my eyes and see the girls with soft skin that smelt of cheap wine that spoke the sweetest words to me, but only wanted me as their secret or play toy.
I have started to self destruct, beating my fists on walls until they turn black and blue because I can no longer stand on my own with with these hollow bones and broken lungs.
I try and not think of you when the chorus picks up in that song or when the sun kisses the sky goodnight before it sleeps or when I'm staring at the bottom of the bottle but you're there you're there you're there
and there have been pills and pills and pills prescribed for my failing heart, but I've been smoking my cigarettes not giving a **** about the bomb about to go off inside me. My skin has become tighter around my chest, counting ribs like the days you'd told me you'd stay.
I fell for you again but I am always the other girl I am second I am last I am nothing
I find love in straight lines and giving away the parts of me that should only be for you or for me but my body is not a temple and you are not going to worship it, so why should I?
My first meal in weeks was a bottle of my moms prozac and I found myself behind the wheel driving past the bus stop where you first told me you loved me, not realizing what those three words meant to me. Why my foot pressed down on the gas and why I turned down your street will always make me question my sanity, but I closed my eyes until I heard sirens and your voice whispering my name.
I miss the comfort in your voice, but if you look at the moon and think of her too, leave me at the side of the road like so many before have because I am tired of being the other girl and I am tired of feeling trapped in three words that mean far too much to me.

You were hard
like sun-warmed
stone, your
eyelashes were
feathers – these
are things I can't
forget; I'll write
you poems forever.

newspaper pages, leaving ink on my fingertips
a taste I can't get out of my mouth    & I can't re-bite that first bite.
rough, textured like the bottom of a swimming pool and all I want to do
is sit here. run my fingers over.  in the slowmoving distortion of sound and sight.         peaceful, not to know what exactly you're seeing, at first
what exactly you're hearing, at first
but you have to come up for air                          eventually

Dear J,
   I may be at a loss for words half the time, and the other half I might have too much to say, but I can almost always say this; I love you. I have felt fear and I have felt bravery and I have felt loss. I can look pictures of us and I can recall everything we did that day. I can listen to videos of you and I can tell what you felt. And I know that you didn't think I was paying attention, but I knew how you looked when you thought something was unfair. And I knew the look in your eyes when you saw the light just right in a sunset and you knew that nothing could ever be recreated quite like that. I felt the same way about you.
   Wherever you are, know that loving someone isn't a matter of feeling something or not feeling something. It's a matter of knowing what you're feeling and when you need to let go.
   I think that people know that letting go involves unfurling your fingers and watching something fall from a great height. It's the act of following that objects downward motion that gets to us. That once it meets the ground or whatever surface it is deemed to hit, it's gone. What was there is gone. And once you think about that you think of what could have been there. That one last touch, that one last feeling of bliss that comes with knowing that the moment you wake up the sun will be shining in rivulets through fingers that tangle in hair fresh off the pillow. It's sad to know that nothing like that will happen again.
   The sun won't shine the same way. Instead it may simply fall. It won't cascade, it won't flow over the edges of noses or smiling lips. It's the same way water may lose a stone from a riverbed and from there on after it doesn't run quite the same way. But another stone, another pebble will fall in place because replacement happens.
   I guess what I'm trying  to say, is that letting go is letting someone else take a spot. In order for something else to happen you have to let your joints move out of their grip and unfold from their hold on something that wasn't meant to be held by you anymore.
   Sometimes you have to let them land somewhere new.
I only hope that it's somewhere even more beautiful than before.
            Claire

Over time
I built the box
wall by wall
day by day
composed of dreams
and desires
ideals, beliefs, and goals

Over time
it kept me safe
and where I wanted to be
within the boundaries
of what I wanted
pushing me to succeed
keeping me in line

Over time
it became a prison
trapping me in, not letting me out
leaving no room for growth
no room to move
to change, improve,
or to fail

Over time
I took it down
wall by wall
day by day
removed of dreams
and desires
ideals, beliefs, and goals

Over time
replaced by the openness
of being whatever I want to be
able to let things go
and to make mistakes
for to err is to be human
and with that I was set free