The screams were so raw
I’m so sorry.
I hear the sirens call

The bodies lay on the floor
Covered in blood
**** one more

No! Stop! I have to fight back
The voice says to keep killing
I can’t do that-

But, maybe just one
Yes! ****!
One final shot of the gun

That’s it! Now you’re thinking
My hand shakes as the gun is raised
The barrel pointed at the voice, my heart sinking

No wait! What are you doing?
Bam! And the voice stops
We fall to the ground as one

He lived in my head,
Now we’re both dead.

I’m so tired of hating my body
So tired of seeing girls who are big and beautiful
and not seeing the same when I look in the mirror
I’m screaming all day
love your body!
love your rolls!
love your fat!
I don’t love my own body
I don’t love my own rolls
I want anyone’s fat but mine
I see bodies not unlike my own and scream YES! BEAUTIFUL!
How gorgeous every creature god created is
and I look at myself and think, except for that one
Except for me
I go to the museum and stand in front of beautiful paintings
of women with stomachs that roll on and on
and thighs big and strong and graceful
and I think how much I love bodies
All bodies
Perfect because they keep you alive
My body works so hard to keep me alive
and I do everything I can so it fails
I poison my lungs with smoke
I binge and I purge
I cut it open, scratch it, pull at it, examine, pluck, poke, and **** at my body in scrutiny
But turn around and see a girl whose figure is similar to mine
and think wow, she’s amazing
I think no one will desire my body
I think I don’t even desire my body
I think ******* to the blood that comes out of my wrist
Think stop keeping me alive
Think I don’t want to be alive as this
Think no one will love me with rolls and stretch marks and fat
Think I will never be more than that
Think will I ever let myself be more than that?
I think you’re beautiful
I think you’re desirable at least I desire you
I wonder do you desire me?
Do you still want to **** me when you notice my cellulite?
Do you love my stretch marks?
Or how much I chafe
When my face falls because the pants don’t button
The top is too tight, can’t get it over my *****
When you can see my rolls and I’m not even sitting down
When my back fat hangs over the straps of my top
Do you still love me?
Even though my body is undesirable
Can your heart stop your eyes from focusing on my fat?
From roaming over my body counting every lump, curve, roll that’s not supposed to be there
I wonder do you love me with the lights off?
I wonder do you love with them on?

As I stare across this fire,
The heat from the flame is
Directly reflected in my eye.
I know they see my jealousy.
That girl with hair as warm as this fire,
Is not looking at me.
Not like she should be.

Instead she’s making secretive glances at her boyfriend.
While my face is heating up past boiling point.
I can feel my heart ripping itself apart
Literally piece by piece.

It starts with all the parts that are attracted to this girl.
Ripping away all the gasps when she smiled at me.
Then the times she held me close.
The memory carved into my heart
Of that ******* smell she carries.
Like home.

More specifically, my heart rips away that night,
I fell for her in a diner bathroom.
On the floor while I was falling to pieces
And she put her arms around them
And held me together.

She said it would all be okay.
But it’s not right now.
Not while I watch her snuggle on this cold October night
With this boy who I really actually like,
But couldn’t possibly hate more
In this very moment.

I want to rip them apart,
But apparently I settle for ripping myself apart.
My heart scratches at all the times
They warned,
Don’t fall for a straight girl.
But I didn’t listen.
And I couldn’t listen.

And here everyone looks for love,
But I’ve found it
And let me tell you she’s not as pretty
As they say she is.
See Love isn’t a *****,
But she is deceiving.
She pushes you head over heels,
Then Fate comes over and kicks your ***.

When a gay girl
Falls for a straight one.
She hits the ground.
And in my experience,
I’m still trying to get up.

Here I draw semi colons on my wrist
Over scars that once were bleeding
To show I could have died,
But kept living despite my wishes,
And despite my best efforts.

Here I listen to people laugh
I tell them I’m scared of the pope,
Eating, the rapture, opening doors, and the apocalypse.
I don’t think my anxiety is funny.
Did I miss the joke,
Or is my life the punch line?

Here I fit into a mold of an artist.
While I laugh at the irony.
And I create my own mold of a person
With mental illness and poor drawing skills.

Here it all goes.
Life and love and my anxiety.
Seamlessly blurring around the lines on my wrist,
The lines of her body,
And the lines on this paper.

Here I am.
And here
I think I’ll stay.
Despite my wishes.

I sat in my living room watching Modern Family with my dad and my mom mom
When my mom mom turns to my dad and says,
Todd I am so proud of you for not having any homosexual children.
Now I realize this could’ve been the moment I come out.
But instead of feeling like that was my open door,
I felt like someone had just pushed me back inside the closet
And slammed it shut.

When you think of a homophobic person,
You imagine someone who is mean and extremely religious.
But my mom mom is a kind and generous woman.  
Anyone can be homophobic.
I was homophobic.
Raised in a “Christian” household I grew up in a church.
My roots were in prayer and god was my sun.
I shamed gays and eventually
I shamed myself.

You always hear how people come out to their families,
but next time,
Ask them how they came out to themselves.
Because that is the hardest part.
Or at least it was for me.
I ripped up all my roots, blocked out the sun, and dug into myself
To change the parts of me I thought were law.
Things my dad had preached to my church
About gays being an abomination
And now here I am, the abomination he spoke so often of.

Once you start realizing your parents weren’t always right,
You have to start making your own judgments.
What do you believe in anymore if up to that point,
Every opinion you defended was one you took from your parents,
Passed down to you like character traits.

My dad and I are both stubborn
And we were both homophobic until
I started not just wanting to be certain pretty girls,
But I stared wanting to be on certain pretty girls.
I had to change every part of me that hated myself
And I found so much love in me that I never thought I had
And suddenly a lot of things made sense.

In a perfect world, my family would dig up their roots too.
Look to God and realize that
He is about love for everyone without the “no ****” before it.
God is not homophobic.
My family is.

Sometimes I stare into the night sky and I realize how small we are.
I look into infinity and
It doesn’t look back because
I am a spec amongst bigger things and smaller things
And life and death are everywhere
And what am I to a universe that
We, humans, the smartest life we know to exist,
Cannot even wrap our brains around?

And then I think about homework.
But how am I supposed to even think about homework
When the sky is always present above our heads
Filled with limitless possibilities that I can get lost in for decades.
I could waste perfect days lying in the grass day dreaming up anything,
But you want me to memorize math equations?

During the day all seems so hopeful and bright.
I think of the way your hair would move in the breeze and
I imagine your big eyes filled with wonder and curiosity
As you stare into the clouds.
Clouds made of the ideas people dream up during class
While their teacher tells them how to cite sources in MLA format.

And at night my fascination with the sky becomes
Less excited and more scared.
I think not of the way your hair would move in the breeze,
But of how your hair would move
While someone else tucked it behind your ear.
And the noise you’d make as they kissed your neck
Crimson lips, swollen with lust.

Somehow the stars don’t give me dreams,
They give me nightmares.
Of you behind my back,
On your back with other women,
Or worse men.
But you’re always there to calm my fears of betrayal
And kiss me back to reality.

This life is one that,
As far as I know, we only live once.
And we can’t waste it getting caught up in the what ifs of the past,
But we can waste it getting caught up in the wonder of what else lies outside of our grasp.
And we should ponder the unanswered questions of the universe

Because when we can’t sleep at night and
We can’t focus in class and
When we are drowning in the stress that comes with the human life,
We can look up at the sky, and remember
That we are all small.
Specs to the universe and

If the ocean can rise and fall with the moon in perfect harmony
And the birds can fly thousands of miles to warmth
And our dogs can always know when it’s time to eat
Without the ability to read clocks,
Then we can always find our way out of these messes we inevitably fall in to.

I never know any of the answers,
But this life is one worth living,
And I’ll spend it trying to figure it all out.
And I’ll never do my homework.

If roses grew too tall for soil unwatered,
And your buds bloomed far above the clouds
I let my leaves crinkle
And hope that one day soon
I may sprout a bit higher,
But never quite high enough to meet you.

Maybe I’ll even get a drop of water
Falling from your ivy leaves
Or a glimpse of the sun
Peeked between your petals.
Casting a red glow upon my own
Dull stem.

If roses grew too tall for soil unwatered,
And your buds bloomed far above the clouds,
I bask in your vibrant shadow,
And consider it an honor
To grow alongside you.

Kiss me into your favorite song
And watch me sing.
Dance with me maybe.
Let me fill your ears and pour over
Into your mouth so you can hum me out.

Kiss me into your coffee
And watch me melt.
Brew me in the morning,
Bitter and drowsy.
Feeling all the ways I swirl around your tongue
And soak into you.

Kiss me for each way I said I hate you
And watch me love.
Push me into myself
Then pull me back into you.

Kiss me all the shades of the rainbow
And watch me fall from your grace.
Beautifully dying and being dyed all the colors
That make me feel alive.

Kiss me into hands that shake
And watch me tremble.
Anxious ticks, fingers twitch,
Body quakes, nails rake.

Kiss me into eyes
And watch me dilate.
Swollen and crying
I see you

Kiss me as I am.
For I am many things.
And all of me
Is in love with you.

People say the truth is hard to swallow,
But I just took a whole bottle of pills.
I cut the tension on my wrists,
Split the seams of my skin,
Crossed the lines of my scars,
And I'm drawing the line
At this last line of red.

My wrist is spewing profanities.
My mind is a prison, they say.
But my mind doesn't stop at the prison gates
It wonders in every direction.
And I've lost control.

I find it in my razor.
At the bottom of a bottle of pills
I swallowed my control,
And I found true things.

This is the rapture.
Someone is behind you.
You're wrong and everyone knows.
Don't turn the light out.
That man has a gun.
They are looking at you.
****** Mary
****** Mary
******

No,
I took the pills.

I stared down the street as your car gradually faded from my view,
You slowed almost completely to a stop,
And a tiny part of me hoped you’d stay.
But you kept going.

And that’s when I realized as fairytale like as this week had been,
Not everything in life can be a movie.
Even though an hour earlier we were lying in my bed crying,
And you kissed me really, like you were giving me a part of you to keep,
And you looked at me and said,
“I’m going to marry you someday,
And we’ll look back on tonight and it won’t matter.”

And we kept kissing like if we never stopped
Time would
To accommodate us.

And now the next morning I’m in my bed,
Wet face and puffy lips
Trying to forget you were ever here.
But my whole room is falling apart without you.

I woke up and there was puke on the floor next to me.
The lights on my Christmas tree blew out.
My body shook and I watched as the ceiling lights gave up too.

The hardest part was cleaning you up.
I sat in the middle of a ruin of you.
You left a lot here you know.
Four hair ties,
A cell phone cord,
A travel sized mouth wash,
An unfinished can of Coke Vanilla,
And me.

I felt like somehow if I picked up all your things and cleaned my room
It would be easier to forget you were ever here.
But I’m in bed writing this now and I can still see you next to me.
I can still feel your hands rub my neck.
And as I read this,
I can still feel your lips
And smell your perfume.

I took down all of our new year’s decorations.
I put away everything that reminded me of you and I still can’t stop thinking
Maybe if I had just begged a little bit harder,
Maybe if I had shown you how really desperate I was for you to stay,
You would have.

But you left me here in my little life
And my little problems came back
And your face suddenly appeared everywhere
In this little ******* town.
And I now know how perfect life can be with you,
And that makes living a little while longer,
Worth it.

My mind has detached itself from my body.
My mind has detached itself from my body.
I’m going crazy and I can’t remember anything.
I’m going crazy and I can’t remember anything.
Crazy has my mind and my body detached from itself.
I’m going anything-I can’t remember.

Fuzzy, my brain tries to function.
Fuzzy, my brain tries to function.
Sentences are not forming correctly.
Sentences are not forming correctly.
My brain function tries to correctly.
Fuzzy sentences are not forming.

I can’t think at all anymore.
I can’t think at all anymore.
It’s getting worse every minute.
It’s getting worse every minute.
It’s all getting worse anymore.
I think, can’t at every minute.

I think my brain has detached itself.
It’s going crazy and are not forming correctly anymore.
Sentences can’t remember anything.
I’m fuzzy, my mind tries to function.
From getting worse every minute.
My body, I can’t at all.

Of the many ways to tell you how I feel.
I could shout out loud,
Write in the dirt.
Paint in smoke across miles
Of the sky all the ways
I love you.
But none of it would mean as much.

So with the last ink,
Of this last pen.
I’ll write the words
Which too would be my last breath.
I love you, my darling.

Her pale skins scabs over and grows back translucent.
She’s disappearing, but she glows like starlight.
It bursts from her pores, shining and silver and still.

Still, so still.

Inside she’s screaming, clawing at the nerves of her brain.
Spiders crawl across her arm.
She’s a prisoner in her own skeleton.
She breaks her skin, though she can’t break through.

Still, she cannot move.

Her body fades into transparency as the world looks on oblivious.
Look, class!
Look how she rattles at the cage of her bones.
Look how they shake and lock her in tight.
Look how still she sits, so still.
Look how beautiful she’d be if she smiled.
Let’s stitch one across her face and tell her she’s fine.    

Still, I watch her from a distance.

I can’t look away, but I can’t help.
God knows I’ve tried.
I kiss her lips, hold her wrists, try to tell her body it’s still alive.
I try to tell her that life is more than the bones which imprison her.
I try to see her, but she’s disappearing.
I try to hold her, but my hand passes through her like smoke.

Still, I try.

I see her and I feel love in my gut.
Cutting into me, but only the feeling
Of cutting into me
I need proof of this pain.
My arms a clean slate with faint lines
I start by tracing those scars,
Remembering each reason.
Most a prayer to a god I don’t even know.
A god I never talked too much,
But now in my desperation
I’m suddenly calling to “Him” for answers.

Please God,
I search for help.
I look for the answers in my veins
Watching the blood bubble on my wrist.
I’m crazy.
To be gay is wrong,
They say, it’s a sin.
God, I’m begging you.
You made me this way with no mistake.
****** to Hell by your word
And now you’re silent.

I’m not finding answers in my wrist.
These lines of red don’t make sense to me.
I can’t read this message if you’re sending one to me.
I’m crazy.
Please God try to forgive me.
Show me a miracle or give me a sign.
Leave me with faith in you and an answer
To this madness it’s all starting to blur.
But that’s probably just the panic setting in.

Then I think of her.
The way her hair falls in fountains around her shoulders.
Her thick lips and big eyes the size of moons in the sky.
The lisp I can only hear when I see her speak.
And I see the blood dry in lines on my arm.
And I see the proof of the pain of my love for her.

But where’s God?
I prayed, I did what they say to do.
Cried and begged forgiveness time and time again,
And I still love her.

I guess I can’t change.
But it hurts when you can’t even be honest with your mother.
When you’re brother tells you that you’re going to Hell,
And you see the look in his eye and you can tell,
He means it and it makes him sad.

But I can’t help that
When I see her I feel love in my gut
Cutting into me, but only the feeling
Of cutting into me.
Only this time I don’t need proof of this pain.
Because this time there’s already
Blood dripping from my wrists,
And pain dripping from my lips.
And love every time we kiss,
And I hold faith in my fists.

My counselor asked me once,
“What are your dreams for the future?”
A bakery in Seattle,
A book signing in New York,
Late night concerts in Philly.
But it starts with you.
In every dream you stand with me,
Hand on my back pushing me into my life.
When I see you, I see the next 60 years.
I kiss you and I ******* 30’s.
Waking up early to coffee and your lips,
My favorite combination.
I touch you and I feel my 50’s on your back.
I trace my hand over achy knees and wrinkles
Over our grandkids running through green grass
Past white picket fences.
And when I hear you say, I love you,
I hear my whole life in three words.
I look up and blink at my counselor.
Just like that,
You are my only dream.

After we broke up I decided
I am a shell
Not the kind you can pick up
And hear the song of waves
Crashing down on shores
Right in your eardrums
But the kind of shell that is nothing.
The kind that sits and breaks and makes no sound
The kind that fills itself with other things and still never quite feels whole
I am a shell who silently lets people hide in me
Who lets myself become a home for the abused
I never make a sound
I only wear down and crumble
I body for the weak and troubled
I love and grow attached and make no sound
When I remember I am just a shell, I let you leave
I let you leave and I even pushed you out
Even with you hiding in me I was empty
When we broke up I realized I was always this empty
You hear no oceans in me
No waves sound off inside of me
I have always been this
I have always been this quiet
This unimportant, this passive, this tired
I am a doorway to better things than me
To shells that sound
To waves that crash
To oceans vast and wide and full
That's okay
I'm glad that you will be able to hear the sounds next time
I'm sorry I never made any

The words that never make it out of my mouth
They stop at my lips
My tongue already formed to make the first letter
Dripping with the same confession
I find too hard to tell anyone

I can feel the words heavy in my mouth
Wanting to be spit out
Shouted loud and proud
But I mumble at best.

To that woman at the grocery
No my boyfriend isn't lucky
But my girlfriend is.

The thing is
I’m not who you made me up to be
And I never claimed to be as good
As you think I am.
But you’re way better than you claimed to be.

And I, am the dirt under your perfectly manicured nails.
Like you taught me how to fly and I…
Fell.
You pushed me off a cliff and thought I would soar,
But I sunk.
Like you put me up so high and
Hey! I’m down here.
You’re jumping from mountain top to mountain top,
And I’m crawling through the valleys.

Like you love so deep and I,
Hate. Myself.
I hate myself.
I hate you,
For putting me on clouds with you and expecting me to float,
When we both know I only know how to fall.

Like you always seem so confused
When you look down at me,
But if you’re a bird then I’m,
Well. I’m not a bird.

And I’m not trying to bring you down,
But I can’t be brought up.
And I’m not saying you’re trying too hard,
But I am who I am.

You are smooth classical,
And I’m heavy beats.
You're brunch with the family
And I’m 10 o’clock microwave dinner.

Good and bad are relative.
Next to you, I’m a sketchy motel.
Next to the crazy guy on the train,
I could be a 5 star hotel

But the funny thing is how,
You can be so blinded by love
That you see diamonds
Where there is really dirt.

You see me as a sunny afternoon on the beach
But I’m just a cloudy day at work.
And I have grown to accept I'm just average

Now I need to ask you for a favor,
And I don’t think I’m asking for too much.
Will you please accept that I will never be
Your made-just-right afternoon tea.
But I would be happy to be
Your room temperature coffee after work.
But more importantly,
Your just below average girlfriend.