After our 3rd 16-hour shift we skipped down the gravel road in the 4 am dusk holding still numb hands
hysterically laughing about a snowman made of ****** fish ice and decorated with intestines
to our room of splintered walls and sand infused beds.

Drunk on sleep deprivation and the movement of the conveyor belts
Fiona demanded of the 4 am twilight that our work be easier tomorrow
I told her that tomorrow could always be the hardest
she told me that I’m Eeyore because my contemplation always looks a bit like pessimism.

A week later I stuck my finger in the pus filled lesion of a salmon
and worried that I wasn’t existing well enough
I asked Fiona if she thought we were more ourselves dressed in layers of sleep deprivation
She cut 3 tails and stated that we must experience more life when we’re awake for 18 hours a day.

This place had forced the clean carefully constructed versions of ourselves to collapse
but she didn’t want this coarse damp translation of humanity to be what we intrinsically are.

Water and pink slime slid down my rain gear as I processed her words and the fillets sliding by
60 salmon later she spoke again
“You said once that every person you meet has some sort of impact on your life.
Maybe you’re always you but never the you that you were before this moment
because who we are is infinitely changing
we won’t always be grime.”

My mom sends me a text almost every Sunday.
It reads “I love you daughter of mine.”
I respond with “I love you too mother of mine.”
It’s the 3rd year of this weekly text exchange,
I love her more now than I did in the beginning,
10 hours of distance has smoothed her edges and mine.

But this ritualistic exchange is hard.
I don't love the word daughter.
The word daughter makes my skin crawl.
It implies girlhood,
promises womanhood,
gives a chance of motherhood.

The word daughter means my mom is seeing something in me that isn’t there.
She’s seeing what she wrote on my birth certificate,
what she forced others to see when she wouldn’t let me cut my hair short,
allusions of an ill-fitting label.

I am not her daughter,
I am not another son either.
I am not even a child anymore,
though I am still hers

Her flesh and blood and tears and words are part of who I am,
I don’t know how to explain the rest of me.
I don't want to make her feel like she lost a daughter,
But I don't want to continue letting her think that she ever had one.

My nerve endings are infested with spiders
their creepy crawly legs tingle up my spine as I sit in class
teeth bite at my shoulders while I dance
poison is spat into my bloodstream
sharp toes stab into my thighs, my jaw, the palms of my hands

burrowed inside my joints
every morning screaming
as every knuckle pops and aches
daily wars waged in my intestine
rustling in my every pore as I lay awake at night
my sleeplessness makes them cry acidic tears
that run in rivers down the inside of my skull
someone please exterminate me

Butterflies primarily drink nectar from flowers
sometimes they lick minerals from the decaying flesh of dead bodies
they're also attracted to the salt in tears
as a child I read that having them in my stomach would be a good feeling
but I don't know if I'd describe this that way
maybe I'm a fully functioning ecosystem
but there are no environmentalists protecting my heart
one day a bulldozer is going to crush me
the building that goes up might be prettier than this
maybe the signs of my impending excavation are already up
I don't want to read them

because
right now she makes me feel
nervous
like a leaf
panicking as her eyes send me spiraling from my tree
falling slowly
without control
fluttering over the earth for months
thinking Oh God Oh God Oh God
maybe if she loved me I'd be grounded
we'd be mulch
improving the soil quality

but there are prettier leaves from better trees
I can't choose when to fall
if she knew
I think she'd tell me to stay on my tree
I don't think she'd choose me
but my life will never be an evergreen

I don't know if she's a leaf too
if she is she isn't falling
she's staying on her tree
green and thriving
she's so much stronger than me
she's not afraid to ask questions
she only blushes when she drinks
she doesn't fall easily
I am so afraid
reddening and falling are parts of my life cycle

maybe
she's a tree
the most beautiful tree
full of music
a sun dappled universe in her own right
and I am not a scientist
I don't understand the universe
but I know that her nostrils flare when she laughs
her smile might be the best thing to ever be directed at me
the noise she makes to fill long silences is the cutest thing ever
it would take an earthquake to make her fall
and she deserves someone who will rock her world
but I am just a dead leaf being eaten by butterflies

My mother always told me that “blood is thicker than water”
she meant that the family I was born into was more important than everyone else
but that's *******
the quote itself is *******
people misuse all the time
the original is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”
it means the exact opposite of what my mother was trying to tell me
the family you choose is more important than the family you're born into

the problem with one line sayings is that they are too simple
the problem with my mother is that she says one line sayings all the time
the problem with how I was is that I believed them
I believed that I'd attract more flies with honey than vinegar
that I should **** my enemies with kindness
that boys will be boys
that I should do unto others as I would have them do unto me
that the family I was born with was more important than the friends that I chose

but outlooks change
I don't want to attract flies
I don't have enemies but if I did I'd want to change them not **** them
I'm not going to be passive
I will do unto others the way that they want me to do unto them
I don't have to talk to a family who doesn't want to fix things

because I want to fix all of the things
and sometimes to fix things you have to destroy the bad parts
so I'm burning so many bridges
I'm watching them go down in flames
and from the ashes I'm building a life
that is more honest than any one line saying could be

Since the age of 10 I've thought that grieving is a weird thing, maybe it’s because no one told me how to do it, and you’d think they would have
because, people get cancer, give up, have heart attacks, are murdered and drown. People die and people are dying, and it’s always been hard
once I expected it and six times I didn’t, and seven times I prayed, but I don’t know if I believe in anything that I can’t see, that’s why I’m bad at chemistry, why praying is still something I do sometimes
because entropy increases and we always lose, loving people makes me vulnerable, I realized when grief was punching me in the kidneys that everything is entropic, I didn't know how to let the chaos out, grief is an emotion that lived in my soul and grieving is a process that I didn’t know the ideal outcome of
once I googled it and I read the 5 steps. I thought I’d maybe done the last two but those were someone elses steps and mine were different
I learned how to knit so I could knit my soul back together. I don’t know if I believe in souls but something was in pieces. I painted my toenails the colors of mermaids, but I was so scared of water, and I still am but I swim anyway. I devoted parts of my heart to drawers full of glitter and goat cheese and long skirts.
there was a point when the grief was an itch in that thing that was once completely shattered, those pieces never seemed to fit back together again quite right. I realized that sometimes rips are too big to sew back together sometimes you need patches. There was a time when my patches were food and swings and books, things that I thought were enough because they couldn't leave me, but that’s like patching rain gear with suede it lets all the salt water through and everything gets colder. There are better materials in the world for patches, literally and metaphorically
literally that metaphor is inadequate, because in that metaphor people are what became patches on my rips, but the people who are gone can't be patched over with more people, there's always going to be holes there.
people are quilt squares in the quilt that I need to wrap myself in to make everything seem okay, the quilt is ripped and the tatters are ugly in a way that only once beautiful things can be, but more squares are sewn on every time I love someone. Maybe it's enough to keep me warm  
the threads are my heart strings, all of them, because all of my heart is for loving people and loving the world. later I figured out that I had to love myself too because the only way I could get through the feelings of loss and the feeling of being lost was to love everything more than I thought I could. To hug more, cuddle more, express more
and that’s hard because it still makes me vulnerable and the quilt keeps ripping. I keep sewing because, maybe the ideal outcome of grief is love, and if it isn’t
it is what grief has taught me

when I say that people make me anxious
I don't mean it in an I don't like public speaking way
or in an I'm nervous around groups of people I don't know way
both of those are very true
but my anxiety encompasses more than that

it's when 3 times within an hour I texted my best friend, who had assured me 17 times previously that he loves me, and he didn't text back and the fear that he didn't love me anymore because I am too clingy became an all consuming ache in my stomach
it's when after spending ten hours talking with a girl who'd told me that she avoids people she doesn't like and saying 3 stupid things in those ten hours that I couldn't fall asleep for hours afterward, not because of the residual butterflies of our interaction but because the weight of my sheets was the weight of those 3 things and I was trapped as my mind fluttered over them, over and over them, I convinced myself that that beautiful person would never want to spend time with me again
it's when I spoke one poorly worded sentence in class and my face burned like a forest fire and for days I smelled smoke every time I thought about how much my classmates must abhor me for speaking at all
it's when I  chewed the inside of my cheek to shreds while I didn't tell my brother that his misogynistic jokes weren't funny because I thought that criticizing his humor would remove me from the spot of favorite sister even though I'm his only sister
it's when I'm afraid that cutting my hair short will make me too gay for my mother to keep loving me despite the fact that drunk texting her on thanksgiving about a crush I have on a girl did not
it's when I don't wave at people first because when I do wave at people and they don't wave back I assume that they didn't wave back not because they didn't see me but because they don't like me
it's when my hands shook as I apologized to my doctor for being sick all the time
it's when I did't tell my therapist all of my problems because I don't want him to hate me for being so weak
if I were rain I'd apologize for falling because I apologize to everyone for everything that I am

people make me anxious because I love people and I want them to love me back
people make me anxious because I feel that I am too much and not enough
people don't make me anxious because of people, people make me anxious because of me

sometimes I have to whisper
tiny words into my pillow
the words I need to hear
you are loved
you'll be okay
breathe

they don't stay
they crawl from my pillow onto my skin
then more words must be said
don't scratch

I can't tear the words from my skin
they will leave
unlike the words I don't say
the words I need to be make me better leave
but the words that make me worse stay

I pressed my finger to that soft spot just behind my ear above my mastoid process
imagined putting a barrel there
that spot is the best way to ensure death if I use a gun
that’s not how I’d do it in actuality
but I can’t mimic hemlock and sleeping pills with a finger

I whispered ‘I want to live’
over and over into my pillow
as many times as it took for me to believe it

my life is
mediocrity
plainness
inadequacy
weakness
and that is hard to change

I could end it
guns
knives
poisons
ropes
but that has it's problems
so I keep living

I can't fix anything
but it is changing
slowly

is it good change?
is it worth it?
I don't know
I don't really care
it is what it is.

An ugly little girl
in an ugly little  world
Raises a fist to the sky
As the rain ignites
On the face of the last dead leaf
Burning it to a crunch
As it falls from the vine
That circles the bars
In the prison of her mind

it's being alone
it's being judged
by shallow people
who think my worth negatively correlates
with my pant size

it's knowing that isn't true
but secretly thinking I deserve this
as if somehow my outsides reflect my insides
it's being so concerned with making myself better
that I'm making myself worse

it means I have to try harder
to be better at school
to make more people laugh
because I can't rely on looks
I can't just be me
because my fat defines me

it is hard
but not as hard as poetry
not as hard as not writing
not as hard as not letting the characters out
not as hard as keeping my ideas inside my head
not as hard not trying
it is hard writing a novel
but not as hard as the alternative

they are so worn out
but I can't let them go
so faded orange
***** white
and dusty black
my socks peek through
little frayed holes
they've been with me in the best of times
but not in the worst

these are ones I got in the beginning
they ushered in the golden years
they've been bird watching
they've been mini golfing
they've been waiting to slip into
on so many mornings
after so many nights

they've listened to me sing Taylor Swift songs at the top of my lungs
in a little blue car
mobbing through this quiet little town
at a quarter to midnight
summer rain pouring down
with my best friends
with my first real friends
on those nights that are my ideal
the ideal of being a teenager
of being young
and in love

not with a person
but with a feeling

they've absorbed these feeling
absorbed the love
the stars
and the high
the high of being alive
spinning in circles
so close to the edge of adulthood
they hold me on the precipice of something new
and when I fall
they go too

colors stream round and round
rocking and pulsing and pushing
they burn the backs of my eyes

and my foot steps stutter with my heart beat
as it thumps erratically by the side of the road
the buses, cars and logging trucks
they pass me by
I care too much, ****

but I just
I want to be the pavement beneath their wheels
such a fight
flight is too easy
and too too hard

and so it goes
my hand against the fuzzy inside
ripping up my coat pocket
tap tap scratch
tap tap scratch

beating a beat
marking a mark
a deep humming under my skin
a magnificent sinking
as I'm falling in

my thoughts collide
breaking under massive waterfalls
I can't seem to catch
all the drops of myself

any faith in God I had
it shattered when I was eleven
like the shards of glass glittering on the road
next to my puppy lying in his blood
like Grandma's tears as I held her hand
while she died so, so slowly
like the dew on the grass
that I stared at for an hour instead of going near Uncle's grave
like the ruthless eyes of the Husky
as it ripped into the torso of my one month old sheep
like every prayer that went unanswered
this God thing is a lie
I learned
it can't be trusted

any faith in people I had
it left when I was twelve
like my father
and the step father who screamed all the time
and the creepy old man who slept with my mother
the guy that tried to touch me with his greasy hands
the fool with a shovel and a gleam in his eye
standing in the doorway and swinging
crazy
people are crazy
I learned
they can't be trusted

my faith in air
that's what I have left
even if there is nothing else
I learned
I can breathe

In the day I am too big
but in the night I am too small
I lay in bed with my feet near the ceiling
air currents wisp around my ankles
and the world envelopes me
darkness surrounds me
Words overwhelm me
I think
I think
I think and can't stop
about everything and nothing
It is all too much
I wish I could just sleep

from a young age I was
manipulating them
making them mine
playing them over and over
letting them use me
but really I was using them
then tossing them out
to move on to the next

more and more and more
ripping them off the page
tearing apart the ignorant ones
making passionate sense to them
and spitting them back out
fingers digging in like quotation marks
burning them into parts of speech
adjectives, nouns, verbs
taking advantage of them all
I'm an equal opportunist

I only had one
for my childhood
at least the parts that mattered
the laughter
the tears
the fun and the fear
rolling in the grass
swinging in the trees
growing up
wild and free

he taught me to swim
and pulled out my teeth
made me sandwiches
and helped me shear fleece

he let me be little
while he could not be
he was my protector
from everything

from the yelling
from the fists
he took branches to his body
and a shovel to the face

I wish I could have been braver
taken away some of his pain
I wish I could reciprocate
for all that he’s given me
and more
for I have
the best brother in the world

all was calm this morning
and now it's not
it changed faster than tachyons
how can it be?

how did that blue sky
breathing life into the little white flowers
the ones that tell me it is spring
the ones that seemed to smile as I passed them
how did that turn into this?

this torrential down pour
these ferocious winds
the sideways rain hits me like bullets
or at least paint *****
turning exposed skin red on the run
the wet trash is hurling down the street
faster than the rushing creek
the creek that serves as my driveway

how did the sounds of the birds chirping
turn into thunder crashing louder than the ocean
thunder shaking my house
we're in the Yahtzee cup of the God's dinner party
shaking around
no clue how we will fall

I hate the weather.

the utter exhaustion at the end of a book
after not being about to put it down all afternoon
those 5 hours spent out of my world
feeling another person
feeling so much more than I have ever felt as me
my mind so darkened from this overwhelming feeling
the feeling that my life has just ended
or that part of it has
that part that was so much greater than reality

memories like bullets
are firing at me from a gun
the fists fly from my mouth
as it's all turning south
my life is crashing into the sea
because there's no you and me
I'm vacuumed packed
shrink wrapped out of air
lost and alone
sinking like uranium
radiating all these manic fish
floating in this deep blue foam
screaming that it's okay
but I'm a tidal wave
trying to tear down their dawn  
and this whole world is watching
me feeling so far from so close
I can't have come this far
just to sink into earth

The sun
The rain
The ocean
The clouds

Ferocity
Passion
Love
Thought

those beautiful things
they hurt the most

they burn, dehydrate, and blind us
they flood the land, and drown our people
they carry diseases, spread blights, batter our shores
they electrify us with their crashing waves

they ****, ******, and maim
they *******, mutilate, and ****
they break, batter, and wound
they incapacitate, wrong, and hurt us
our mind, our bodies, our souls

they are malicious
they are pain
they are life

eternity
life
death
limbo
all the circles of heaven and hell
all the worms crawling in
all the worms crawling out

some go through life without a doubt
delusional, insane, the best kind of crazy

some of us
we feel
and we think
we never really know

what is wrong?
what is right?
should we even care?
what matters?

in this moment
in infinite moments
Love

matters
shine is what loves
hurt is what loves
forever is love

embrace forever
forever shall be
your enchanting misery

tangled up in flannel and dreams
dreams that fade into mmm bop
and the realization that it is tim
time to turn off the alarm
almost back asleep when pirates seep into my consciousness
snooze button
rolling over
head banging
against the wall that is
I know
I've gotta get up
I can't get down

pirates once more
out I roll
banging my knees on the bed frame
bumbling to the dresser
grabbing the 4 essential items of clothing
heading towards the shower
if they don't look good right now
well I don't care right now
because it is the morning

other girls say they want to be tall
they don't really
they want to be 5'8" or 5'9"
so that they can be skinnier or a better basketball player
or just so they can reach the top shelf
it doesn't work that way
because that isn't actually very tall
and even if you are that tall
or taller than that
your dreams won't come true
because when you are slightly above 6'0"
you can still be fat
like me
you can still be bad at basketball
like me
and even though you can reach the top shelf
you'll get hit in the head with tree branches more often
like me
but I can pick from the top of the bush
and I can change a light bulb without a ladder
and I can hold onto the ceiling while trying to do yoga
it has it's ups of course
but the downs hit harder
because it's farther to the ground

the feeling before is the worst
when I know I'm going but I can't stop
it's blurred vision fuzziness
and then bees on fire
dark and wooshing

and I'm out
for 3 minutes or 10
I can never be sure
it's like being in a pool with your eyes closed
but not wet
and I dream

the dreams are the strangest of my life
they are dreams without thought
dreams without shape
color is felt
liquid is breathed
thoughts are as solid as non-Newtonian fluids

when I wake up
I'm still in the dream
still in the dark colors and thrashing out of it
then it's cold tiredness
even if the room is as hot as my face
from the embarrassment of having people look at me
even when people are just my mom staring at me while we sit by the side of the road
best case scenario is when I'm at home in bed
it's so much worse when people are around
hitting concrete and have to be taken away on a stretcher
through a school full of kids who will be talking about that girl who fainted
when I came back every one stared and asked how I was
I didn't know how to act and I did't know what to say
but it faded like my consciousness did
until it happened again

I am not fantastic at something
at anything
really, truly, honestly

I am good at a few things
math, science, reading
being the kid that jumps through the hoops
I get good grades is what I'm saying
A's and B's, but B's aren't great

I am mediocre at a lot of things
hockey, basketball, most things physical
being a friend, being funny, writing poetry

I am bad at certain things
analyzing literature
being a nice person
being healthy
saying the right thing at the right time
most social situations

I am not the best at anything
I am not great
I am not extraordinary
I am not special

but in all likelihood
neither are you
because I am average and most people are