"Most people are too afraid to feel like this, and for that I actually find you incredibly brave"

Does it scare you when you decide that you want to write poems for a living
Yet sometimes you can’t even finish a sentence.
When your ideas all come back to cliches
And ‘your whole heart’ wants to ‘learn to live with the intent to be alive’
But your brain just wants to quit and maybe move on to something easier
And less emotionally draining like physics.
Does it scare you when youve paid thousands of dollars to learn to do something
Everyone knows you cant teach.
and you still can’t finish your sentence.

Dress up in your Sunday best like god hasn’t seen you at your worst

I will not ask you what youve buried
With the hands that you used to pull me out of the earth.
I shouldnt ask you what youve tried to pull from the sky
With the fingers that you used to reach me to the clouds
I wouldn’t ask you what you’ve kept silent
With the mouth that you used to convince me from the shadows
I couldn’t ask you what you’ve run away from
With the legs that ran towards me.
I wont ask you why you did
I wont ask you why you shouldve
I wont ask you why you wouldve
I wont ask you why couldve
And neither should you.

I find it so astonishing
that people can stand
to marry or date
or be friends with people
who aren't pretty on the inside
that don't think thoughts
but just recreate what has been
forced into their mouths.
I find it so astonishing
that humans are exactly
as materialized and shallow
as we make ourselves out to be

i. I am elastic bands stretched just far enough
to stop springing back
but never far enough to break.

I am the camel with one too many straws
on my seemingly strong back.

Sometimes i am the straws.

ii. The elongated faces of my parents
weighed down by my lack of prevalence
the empty fridge door
the failing grades hidden.

I answer to their expectations
and i wonder what will happen
when they aren't the ones i need to please.

I am the promises of expansion
And the clinging to the known

I am silently imploding.

iii. I am the college acceptance letters that got lost in the mail
The 33% acceptance rate, the school that only looks at talent.
I am the lack of talent.
I am the hopefulness that i just can't see it.

I am the accepted to every school you don't want to go to
The i don't know why you still don't have a letter
Maybe we should just commit to another school...

The white girl with 2 white middle class parents
you don't need money, you're already privileged

I know i am, but sometimes it doesn't feel that way.

iv. I am your secret girlfriends toothbrush
placed in your closet.
I am finding it and wondering
when you bought me a new teal toothbrush.

The stammering explanations
The realization that the toothbrush wasn't for me.
That it had already scrubbed your saliva off her tongue.

The teal toothbrush goes flying, hurtling at your head.
I don't like the color teal anyways.

I am leaving you for myself.

Hello my old heart
i'm sorry to say
that during all the time you took off
due to being broken
you my dear
have been replaced.
For what you may ask?
Because you were always
too busy sitting under my ribcage
knitting scarfs and hats of messy emotions for me to wear.
It made it a slight bit difficult for your co-worker, the brain, to function.
And you know how important it is, that he does.
See this new heart doesn't talk much.
Its calmly sits and listens obediently to the brain.
To be honest, its wonderful.
As much as i remember how fantastic it was
to let you, let me love.
I also remember how much i hated
how you let me hurt.
So now i want you to think of this
next time you are placed under someones ribcage,
If you had only listened to the brain    
maybe you wouldn't have broken
and then maybe i never would have fired you.

i wasn't prepared for an attempted killing.
I was wearing a low cut shirt that said "I ****** your girlfriend"
and even after assuring him that my clothing wasn't meant to mean anything, he tried to killed me anyways.
I was a little drunk
He came after me still.
I wasn't carrying  pepper spray.
I didn't make it clear to the criminal that i had feelings
that i wasn't consenting him to **** me.
It's logic isn't it?
Who consents for someone to try to **** them?

Now replace all forms of **** with ****.
i wasn't prepared for an attempted ****.
I was wearing a low cut shirt that said "I ****** your girlfriend"
and even after assuring him that my clothing wasn't meant to mean anything, he tried to **** me anyways.
I was a little drunk
I wasn't carrying  pepper spray.
I didn't make it clear to the criminal that i had feelings
that i wasn't consenting him to **** me.

2-8% of ****** go to jail.
Despite the mounds of evidence against them.
No one say someone was murdered because they "asked for it" or "knew the risks"
Why should i have to dictate my life over the fear of potentially being abused.

I hate you for holding me in your bed like it meant more
I hate you for thanking me for sleeping over
like I had been special
like I had done you a favor.

I hate that you made me think that waking up alone in the morning was normal.
I hate that you never really hurt me enough for me to let go.
You are teaching me to abandon things before they abandon me
my first lesson was you
and I still haven't mastered the art quite yet.

I hate that you are always there when I'm feeling desperate
I hate the way you touch my waist and drunkenly ask me to stay
and how I always do
thinking that maybe I was the reason you wore a button down shirt.

I keep trying to start this
in a way that gets my feelings across
but that is incredibly difficult
when i don't even know what my feelings are.
I don't know what i want to happen
or for you to
say or
do or act.
I don't know what i should
say or
do or act.
I hate being in the dark with you
because i can only swing blindly
for what you want.
I wish i hadn't met you
because no happiness is worth
this
much
stress

In the event

that I am left parched of purpose
abirritate the parts of me that are left gaping.
and imply to me that not all hagiarchies are holy

and in the event

that I am kissed on the hand by a saint
that has been through the process of heterotransplantation
remind me that I long ago gave up the study of frogs.

because in the event

I am left with only those maliferous lips
that emulate cainotophobia
press me to say that I deserve to grow

In the event that all is pressuring me to shrink

I only cry in the shower
Because you feel your eyes start to blur
But maybe it's from the steam
Not from the wrecking ball of emotions

I only cry in the shower
Because no one can come in
And see you falling apart
They can't even hear you

I only cry in the shower
Because you can't tell the difference
Between the water from the shower head
And your own tears
And for some reason I feel comfort in that

You say my personality revolves around exhaustion.
I say yours revolves around passivity and foolishness.

The room is thick with humidity from bodies that pulse to the beat of each lung's exasperated sputter of breath. Your mouth is thick with want. Want to say, want to bite, want to cling to those that your hands don't have the strength to hold.

You tasted like every shortcoming I had ever experienced.

My toothbrush thrown on to the ***** floor of an apartment that I had to sneak in and out of. The sound it made mimicked the sound of my ribcage snapping from my heart spilling over with a mixture of relief and guilt. You said that I reminded you of going home when you were small. You never told me you hated your mother

Hearing someone say that you were almost good enough to ****, but turns out you aren't as good of a kisser as they had hoped. Remembering that your first thought was you don't have to kiss to have ***

After nights upon nights of sleeping on couches and finally being invited to sleep in your bed. I had already made myself a make shift nest on the floor, when you told me that you would never let someone like me sleep alone. We kissed and I felt the romantic short-comings spill out of my mouth and into yours.

I should've know you'd spit them back in my face.

Where do you want to go to college?  
Excuse me, while i go take advil to clear my head.
What do you want to be when you graduate?
One minute please, i just have to go have a quick panic attack.
Why did you drop spanish 4? Are you crazy?
Ill be right back, i just can't really breathe right now.
You know that if you don't get yourself together you'll be living at home?
Ill just be one second, i suddenly feel like i have to throw up.
Emma. Stop avoiding the problem, you won't get anywhere with that attitude.
Believe me i know. Maybe if i just go to slept for a bit...
If you work hard now, you'll be much happier later.
Thats what people say, but why can't i be happy now too?
Maybe you could get into Berkley, they look for special talents, you know.
Special talents like what? Im pretty good at memorizing lyrics to songs that no one knows.
What are you thinking, you need at least a 3.4 GPA to make it.
really though i can't breathe.
We aren't made of money, if we can't afford school and you don't get a scholarship...
Please stop, i really don't feel well.
Did you do well on the math test?
My stomach can't handle this.
My brain can't handle this.
I just can't handle this.

It was never about how you made me feel
It was about pretending that I was happier than I was
It was about how I felt intellectually supreme when I took a drag of your cigarette and stared out onto the ocean.

It was never about my attraction to you
It was about being a more sexually liberated college girl
It was about pretending and wishing that I could handle being unattached

It was never about being with you
It was about Far Far Away being so close
It was about feeling different than how I wished I wasn't perceived

I don’t want to be touched in ways that make my insides turn to licorice
I don’t want you to hold my hand because it binds us to the public and you own me.
I don’t want to kiss in movie theaters.
I don’t want to have *** in the back of your car.
I dont like doing things that feel like a betrayal to myself
Every time our hands intertwine or our lips press together
In a half hearted attempt to rekindle the butterflies that are long gone
Sit at the bottom of my stomach. Dead.
When I fake *******, smiles, lies about how happy I am
I feel apart of myself tangle up
Making me smaller and smaller until im a ball of knots.
I don’t want to be anyones *** interest
Safety boat
Most important person because it limits me to what I can be to myself.
I don’t want to be touched in ways that betray myself and make me any less of my own most important person.

Jealousy is how you say my name
To show distain
Regret
Resentment
But underneath
To show pride
To show that you still believe you can get me back
That I made a mistake
And that we were in love
Despite that it was just lust
Laced with pretty words
To justify our intentions
Of banging the living daylight out of each other
And it was you that made me feel like I had to justify myself
Because *** is something beautiful, and meaningful
Was something lovely and inatmite
Until you made it shameful.
You say my name to brag about how
You were in love with a girl who was ***** and impure
A girl who confused lust and love
A girl who got lost in your intentions
A girl who was not in love with you.

Maybe I learned it face down into a pillow
          Feeling heavy day old mascara lift off light eyes, salvaging the reputation
that enervates, dead-beat bones. Maybe it was the way
     Boys seized at your hair
         only to learn that man-handling pins down your sanity
Left wondering if he really thought you were a *****.
    Maybe it was how I’d cut
         my knees scaling the rock invested grounds
of the alley between our houses; slitting my legs
     into paper cut towns, rolling with vigor. Maybe it was how you
         Didn’t learn to exist without being wanted
How the right amount of despondent desperation in a voice would launch her hips,
     and they’d sit layered in his smoke and your culpability,
         compulsive, taking in the show. Wishing you hadn’t attended
Or maybe it was how we read each other romance novels
     in the lunchroom, sharing particulars
          of genitals and true love.
Maybe it was the way we learned to be quiet
     our insides begging for touch one more time, the sweetness
          we discovered in the bones of each others backs, in the closeness
I felt when you told me about your relationship with your mother
    Maybe it was the face close, Lips on the side of a neck.
           Fingers run down your spin. His we still aren’t together
I wonder when Haley comes back. The way he alone,
     creates the complete ruination of a half broken body.
           The way I loved him anyway
the way you learn to stay quiet.

We are acting as juvenile
as two middle school kids
convinced their in love
when all they do is hold hands
and maybe sit together at lunch.
If they are feeling brave.  

This is as pointless
as straightening my hair
when the rain dribbles down
begging to invade my smoothness
and turn it into a waste of time.

This is as painful
as running with shin splints
and pushing on anyways.
Except it hurts on the inside.

This is as over
as it is.
and i would like to say
i am sorry for not being more okay
with juvenile pointless pain.

One day i woke up
and we no longer spoke the same language
that we had been speaking yesterday.
Always wasn't in my vocabulary
yet it had been replaced with forever in yours.

i have never
not once
not even one time
been able to write a story.
I have prepared characters
hair
eye
skin color.
I have prepared their
likes
dislikes
quirks.
I know when they
are born and when they die.
I know why they hate driving on highways
and why they love sour cherry jellybeans.
I know who they fall in love with and
with whom it doesn't work out.
But why, for the love of god,
can't i write a story about them.

Age 6 when my best friend got a new puppy
Well you might have gotten a new puppy, but my cat does magic in the attic at 12am every night'

Age 14 when my teacher announced in front of the class that i was the only one who got a 100
I didn't even study

Age 16 when i lost my virginity
Yes I'm ready and i love you too

Age 16 when i broke up with the boy i lost my virginity to
We can still be friends, and no i don't regret anything

Age 17
*Ill think of you even when I'm in college and everytime i ***** someone else

You can claim
That you were unaware
Of the disaster your body would create
Because mouths say what brains think
And hands touch what hearts want
And sometimes you feel like
You're being controlled
not by your soul
But by a group of ruthless
limbs and organs
That could be exchanged
when you die anyways.

Sometimes i wish i could write poems
with all the similes clinging to your thoughts like barnacles.
And describe people with metaphors that wrap around the actual meaning like weeds grow on to other, more pretty plants.  
It would be nice if i could use edgy things like cigarette butts, half filled bottles of beer, and lipstick stained papers with a number jotted down
to describe mundane things like sadness and fear,
although lipstick stains and cigarette butts do leave an awfully mundane stench behind.

You act like liquid
conform to your surrounding
rearranging all the things that define you.

you are trying to scratch off your freckles
Widen your eyes with your fingers
**** your stomach in.

Laying in the car on my back
Trying to trick myself into believing
It warm and sunny
And realizing how easily I can lie
To myself, and it scares me.

And now when we talk, my hands become alien things. Touching and pulling at things that are just fine where they are. My words become too big in my mouth, and tumble out whenever it opens. Maybe you should hear them, maybe you shouldn't

When I tell you that you scare me
I want you to take it as the biggest compliment
That I could possibly give you.
Because people who come and go
Who just scratch the surface and leave
Are easy to deal with.
They don’t make me believe that if I cry hard enough
All the bad will be washed away
They dont make me want to kiss them for the feeling of
Time passing and not regretting one second of it.
They dont make me fall apart like
A crumby piece of cake squished by a toddlers hand
They dont make me laugh until you cant even hear
My sound let alone my words
They just don’t make me feel anything.
So when I tell you that you scare me
Its because you make me feel things in extremes.
Its because I know that there is no possible way
That I can get out of this and not be changed
I will never be able to go back to the person I used to be
Because you wont scratch the surface
You will break me, and scatter me into a million different pieces
And maybe thats why you scare me so much
Because you make it seem okay
To not be a whole
And just be pieces of undetermined fate.

Crying under the covers
half hoping that you suffocate
is not cute.
Breathing into a paper bag
because you can't breathe the air
that everyone seems to inhale so easily
is not pretty.
Ruining yourself on the outside
to fix whats on the inside
is not beautiful.
I don't care how many
line breaks you add,
how many fonts you change,
how many pictures you can etch into your skin.
It is not something to allude to.

Stuggling with something that is not yours to struggle with is difficult. The shortness of breath whenever I try to understand is uncalled for. The tightness in my stomach when I try to write about you is not mine, unexplainable. You did not try to **** me. You did not confide in me. You probably didn’t even think about me. But I think about you. I think about you in a jail cell. I think about you, thinking about what happened. I think things that make me bend over backwards, that make me swallow my tongue, that make me shake. To be truthful, I wonder more than I think. I wonder if you feel alone, I wonder if you even remember. I wonder if defending you is even worth it, because last thing I heard from the internet is that detachment disorder means you never cared about any of us. That it could’ve been me. I could’ve been killed. That you probably didn’t even think twice about it. I wonder if you’ll want me to write to you. I wonder if you’ll be upset that i’m going to your trial. I wonder why. Such a stupid question to answer an already unjustified feeling. Why. People loved you, people wanted to be around you, people wanted you to be happy. Why. You always used to talk to me, you listened you were sympathetic, you cared. Why. Thats what they do Emma, Thats why they’re sick because they know how to manipulate good people. Why. You aren’t bad, you aren’t crazy, you’re hurt,  and you’re alone. Why. I have dreams about you, that you’ve come back, that there was a mistake. Why do I miss you, it probably could’ve been me.

I've been looking for a life boat in your eyes
Looking for an fire escape through your hands
So please refrain from trying to comfort me
When you tell me that the last life boat is gone
And the escape ladder has already been burned away.

Blue spit laced with the sour taste of pining
for someone other than the one you love.
The tea bag immersed in blood red water
thats the same color as the hands that were
supposed to catch.
Everyones eyes that are looking and not understanding
Yeah ******* too.

If i reacted the way normal people did
than id probably tell you that you are  
a no good, wretched, hypocritical, *******.
Because that how you act
at least towards me.
but because i do not react the way normal people do
i simply take it
and move on.
Half because i don't want to loose you
and half because i can't.

People value grades and numbers
Like an under-confident teenage girl values her make-up.
Both are always at hand trying to prove themselves
Something that their not. The only difference is one hides
The physical lacking, and the other hides
The personal lacking. Status doesnt equal opinion
It doesnt equal thoughts or qualities.
It equal the amount of space that your brain has left
To memorize other peoples discoveries.
Value the things that are already taking up space
In the remarkably capable brain of yours.
Voice the things that you’ve tried  to replace
With equations and vocabulary because  
Nothing haunts us like the things we don’t say.

Why is it that I let myself settle for less.
For the 60 seconds of being the most important person in the almost empty room

Everyone will open their already satisfied arms
and welcome your starving body
as if they could feed you
without actually filling your body
with the intense affection you need.

They'll place their calloused hands
onto your soft ones that are directly attached
to your newly broken heart
and tell you that just because it hurts now
doesn't mean it'll hurt forever.
Tell that to your own hands mom.

With you
i am attached to reality

Without you
i could float past the clouds.

He wanted a housewife not a hurricane*

He wanted to converse about how the liberals were eliminating the idea of evil.
He wanted to go on picnics in the afternoon at the beach.
He wanted to argue over things like finances and how to parent his children.
He wanted her biggest problem to be what color to paint the nursery
and what the most nutritious thing for dinner was.

She was the liberal. Everyone was born good, and those who acted evil had been in environments that poisoned their brains.
She wanted to go on picnics at night in the graveyards, and do satanic rituals to make deals with the devil.
She wanted to throw things, scream about things that she was passionate about.
She didn't want kids. She wanted to be chaotic.

Yet they fell in love anyways.

When i first met you
you told me you could do a 360
on a wave
with your boogy board.
I told you i liked to paint
because you looked like a painter.
First of all i was lying.
I can't paint pictures
but i love to paint souls.
I love to splatter them with vibrant memories
and to add on to your mind with soft strokes of pastels.
I would love it more than anything
if you were a painter of souls too.
I need someone to paint my mind
something other than dark moody red and browns.
It would be lovely if you could paint me with yellows
and teals and pinks.
Maybe ill even let you paint my heart
Maybe ill even paint yours.

Gut me.
finger my seeds
from the core flick
them from your thumb up
and onto the floor where you
will only step all
over me.

Have you ever noticed
that poems are kind of like
paragraphs except
with
many
indentations.

Someday when the birds learn how to mock our cries of scrutiny
You will gravitate away from the floor that is magnitized with your mistakes
Will you change your polar relevancy and float away in such a manner that you can hear the birds screech about trivial actions that somehow became your reputation.

The water coming from the shower head
is  cleansing
yet burning
and i put it all the way up
so that i can prepare myself for hell.

Why did you keep your love letters hidden up inside your brain
We both know you were going to throw them out anyways.

Don't put other peoples feelings before your own for too long. You can act selfless sometimes, but not forever.
2. Don't debate whether you have a right to feel the way you do. Emotions aren't there to be questioned.
3. Stop saying i hate you as a result of spontaneous frustration. Because you don't hate them.
4. Let your heart embrace all the positivity it can. Try things, experience things, say yes if you have even one inkling of interest.
5. Cut out the negativity (go back to #1)
6. Eat healthy. Drink a glass of water before those Now or Laters. Then eat them.
7. Write more.
8. Learn to *** in public and no be uncomfortable. Everyone in there is there to ***, you aren't special.

You hold me together the way bobby pins keep the hair out of my face. Keeping the distractions hidden from my eyes.

Spinning me in circles, except not like a carousal, but like a blender, slicing me into pieces at the same time.

I want you to realize
Realize how much of me you have in your hand.
Handle me a little more gently.
Gentleman who barge and crash aren't looked upon fondly.
Fondling with my feelings isn't something I'm ok with.
Without you I collapse into pieces.
Piece me back together.
Together until I'm one
One without you.