"I was the only one who never tried to change you"
words from my Babushka from across the small kitchen
the smell of salt Baltic air and fresh baked goods from the shop down the quiet street filled with soviet style block apartments.
In my childhood and in my adolescence, there were those who said "that girl needs to be broken in"
shes too brash too uncompromising too unmalleable
I wrap my fingers around my mug of instant coffee, the acidity colliding with the sweetness of the cinnamon pastry still on my tongue
I thought how lucky am I to have just one person who took me simply as I am

I lived on an easel that stood on its own
a canvas untouched by impatient hands that sought to take and take
you took the brush out of my hand and drew me as you saw fit
I lost the energy to keep jumping off your canvas
so you finally trapped me with a frame and nailed me to your wall
I never liked how you painted me yet I'm still here, hanging.

The bathtub faucet has been running all night
Bubbles on the surface edging closer to the rim
I want to stand there, just watching the water run
Over the lip, onto the cold tiles
and soak into the rug at the foot of the toilet
Pool into the wells of the grout
and slink under the crack in the door
I want to dance and laugh and splash in it
Pull on my rain boots and feel like I’m 5 again
Forget the years I’ve spent using a kitchen rag to absorb an ocean  
Drying the tides as they lap against the shore and back
It was always futile, I’ve retired from trying.

I’ve only ever known dangerous love
Not the love where you feel naked- soft, light comfortable
But love where you feel naked- vulnerable, targeted, caught in headlights
It’s where you’re pulled to place your hand on the hot stove
Step onto the tracks while the train whistle wails
Jump off the edge while the wind rips through your clothes and hair
I wanted endless thrill and torture
With gritted teeth I made crescent shaped cuts in my palms with my nails
And wished I could want a softer love

I give a love that feels like gambling at the casino
You take your risks, play the slots, roll the dice with me
And on the chance that I let you in,  
Thoughts of you will consume me, enwrap me
Difficult to understand, difficult to know deeply
The odds of success with me would make a reasonable person cut their losses and go home
So I surround myself with risk-takers
It makes finding someone to love me back that much harder
But that much more gratifying

regrets curl up through my gut
like vines of ivy and it makes me feel
like I’ve been wrung out and hung up to dry
envisioning alternate realities
where i could take back my choices
just play-dough that I could twist and shape
into my ideal version of the past

No matter how I contort
and perform and stretch
and dance for you
criticism is first to escape your lips.
Always swallowing your praise,
As if being great is my everyday expectation
you could crush me like a bug underneath your ego and your pride

I wonder sometimes if we’ve been playing tug of war
I’ve been pulling our collective weight for so long
You make me think I’m winning,
you let me take a breath
Not a minute goes by and I’m already lunging forward
I’ve had to learn to put up my defenses
Learn to strike when you’re weakest
And I know you’re testing your strength
Trying to catch me when I’ve exhausted my options

I’m just the lightning rod atop someone else’s home
I’m made to absorb the shock
To comfort and protect in the storm
But when not necessary I sit forgotten
And rust in unfavorable weather

You are a force of nature
You have taken me through continents
Tasted cuisines, walked terrains
On your skin is a map of where we’ve been
A blueprint of our experiences
Tracing your birthmarks, constellations
You carried me but I never thanked you enough
Or loved you enough
Not the way you deserved

Have you ever wanted to crawl out of the skin you’re in?
And I don’t mean what you see when you look in the mirror,
Something as obvious as outward appearance
I mean escape the inner workings, the machinery that makes me tick and move and break and cry
Because when it does break, as it so often does, it renders me helpless and useless
I’d like a thicker barrier, to put up protection on the outside
So as the inside corrodes and the gears become misaligned, as I squeak under the weight of my age and emotions
I should at least be able to cover myself with a pretty plastic wall
So the outside never matches

I think of the girl I was just a few years ago
A happy girl
She never felt like something was missing from her
She never saw in others what she lacked
Every experience was exciting because it was new and it was thrilling
What happened to her
Now every time I see myself I see cracks and I see pieces
I feel like I am floating above myself watching myself move through motions
I look at others only to see my lack
I cling onto the wisps of memory of innocence and think about when I was greener
Nostalgia

Do you know what it feels like
To have never experienced that teenage puppy love
The innocent kind where all you do in the first 6 months is kiss and hold hands and thats okay
To have lost your opportunity to be someone’s first love
To have been someone’s person, the one everyone after will be compared to
Instead i am the one that gets used to recapture the juvenile spirit they longed for
I am the one who they exploit every inch of while they imagine touching the first girl
I wish someone could take 22 away from me and crush it underneath the weight of their expectations

When men like me I feel as though I am made worthy of praise
When women like me, I feel like I just came home after a long day
When men look at me, I feel like an object of desire, an accomplishment I can tick off my list
When women look at me, I feel relaxed, I feel free to be unbuttoned
Yet when I dress it is like my whole being is performing for the male gaze, the hyper-feminine touches: the curves, the cutouts and the pink blush on my cheeks
I need to be wanted but I want to be at ease

I am the most exciting person in a room and simultaneously i am invisible
The space feels too tight to fit me now
I shrink myself for these rooms and for others I expand myself to be bigger, brighter, smarter
I am already a light in the dark but you feel the need to throw lighter fluid onto me

Nobody ever talks about a specific type of loneliness.
The type that isn’t caused by self-esteem issues.
Not where you think you’re ugly or unlovable or unworthy.
But the type where despite knowing you’re worthy, you feel numb, empty, devoid
Of the capacity to love back, in a romantic, vulnerable, open, throw your whole heart and soul into it type of way.
The way you would imagine your best friend deserves to be loved