'please don't ever
hurt me,' you whimper into the softer side of his
neck. he knows exactly where to put his
hands on someone who hurts
everywhere. 'the only way I could ever
bruise you is by kissing you too
hard,' he says back.

you collect his moans like cut out passages from the
bible, he's the reason people get in fights about
god. he might not be a real
thing but there's no *******
way the universe created your boy by
itself.

you want to scream that you
love him from every rooftop in every
city that is warless, every Spanish
town that doesn't have a
cross on the front
gate.

yes, you do believe the story about Jesus being draped from a
cross like your great grandmother's
laundry, but like the buckets being passed around at
church, not all of it was
holy.

he is splayed out on his
back in front of you, his shirt on the
floor and his arms out to the
sides. as you push down on his
hips he bites his lip until it
bleeds the colour he knows is your
favourite. 'the only way I could ever
hurt you is by holding your hand too
tightly,' you promise him, leaning into him like a
corner.

you remember his lips on
yours, how they felt like tar and you knew he was something
you did not want to stick to. the aftermath was like climbing out of a
net while covered in honey, he told you, smiling, how sweet you
were but you’re clenching your fists waiting for the
bees. sting me here and here and here and
here, cut off my hands so i never have to know what
losing your child before it’s fourth
birthday feels like.

when you were little, your
mother used to read you bedtime
stories about princes and dragons and lots of happy ever
afters. but where is the ‘after’ when your best friend
hates you? where is the
‘before?’

your therapist is reading you an
eliot poem in hopes it’ll calm you
down, in hopes you’ll replace memories of that
boy with bob
dylan and that couch with thoughts of empty
fields. every time it comes into your
head, bob won’t write songs about
you and the field screams ‘i am not
empty, i am
open.’

call you Vada, accuse you of being in
love with your teacher and killing your
mother; the first thing you ever ruined on
accident. you wish you were thomas
j, you wish you were genetically pre
dispositioned to crumble like a heart made of
sand when a bee sticks himself
into you.

your best friend won’t be your
best friend anymore and you’re ripping pages out of the
calendar and swallowing january
whole, there’s more ways to die than to stay
alive. suicides are their own
language, the suicidal are like
carpenters, they always ask ‘what
tools’ instead of
‘why build’.

you’re begging to the god your best
friend believes in to let you die
young. every minute of the
afterward feels like one more
tally on his list of worst
betrayals. satan is
smiling because you’re playing the game he
invented.

but what if the devil
doesn’t know he’s the devil?

it started out with a crash and a
blast and it ended in a mouthful of
bees.

misophonia is not getting angry when you hear people breathing or eating. misophonia is 'i'm supposed to feel
stronger because there's a scientific
reason behind all the pain clenched like a fist inside my own body, I'm
supposed to feel better.' that's what doctors say. but the answer is a long list of riddles the doctors can't
decode. 'we know why your heart is
breaking, but we don't know how to
stop it.' misophonia is the maximum number of pills I can hold without dropping any. it's the moment when my doctor says she won't allow me to go to a college more than two hours away. it's the effort to smash my own bones on cement just to drown out the sound of somebody talking about what they had for dinner. it's that autocorrect and spellcheck still don't  recognize it as a word. it's about hearing sounds so menacing and monumental that not a night goes by where they don't swallow me whole. it's the fear of leaving my house and hearing something bad. it's my hands not feeling like hands and everything I try to touch turning into snow. it's having to bring headphones everywhere in case I hear a word I hate. it's my doctor telling me with a sad look on her face that she'd be surprised if I make it to 45 years old. it's having to ask directors if any of my trigger words are in the script before I see a show. it's the knowledge that I'm a quickly ticking time bomb, that it gets worse over time. that I might wake up tomorrow morning not being able to stand the sound of my mother's voice. it's the fact that the most common result of misophonia is self harm but I've made it this far without it. it's my chest igniting every time I hear someone start to talk. (I'm sorry I can't marry you, I can't stand the sound of your voice in the morning). it's simple words that can cause my composure to break like a separation of continents, like all that hurt never meant anything. years of wishing, on my knees, that I was deaf so I could skip the chapters when my whole body feels like a slowly melting candle, like I'm not allowed to be afraid of fire. it's in 9th grade when the bell rang to go home and I was sitting in the back row of English class with my fingers pressed so far into my ears they popped, trembling, until Mrs Gitsis asked someone to take me to the counseling centre. it's not 'ew, I hate the sound of people chewing.' do you lose sleep because the reverberations of that sound won't leave your head? do you have to lock the windows on your second floor to feel safe? it's having to wear gloves in 90 degree weather because I can't see my hands without them. it's waking up at 3am to arms that turn into stumps, unable to go get help because the sound of footsteps makes me want to die. it's reaching for a knife every time somebody says a common word. misophonia is being taken out of school because I can't sit with other kids in the cafeteria. it's hearing clapping after a show that's supposed to be for me transforming into screeching metal tires reverberating around my skull at frequencies i didn't know were possible. it's feeling every nerve ending in my body start to tingle seconds before someone says a trigger word, like god feels bad for all he's done so far and he's trying to send me a sign. it's the fact that most therapists haven't even heard of it. it's the fact that the ones who have don't know a cure. it's that there is no cure. it's when all someone has to do is repeat sentences, words, and phrases they know will break me. it's when my second therapist told me I was making it up. it's when my parents told me I just wanted to boss people around. it's when I started not being able to eat dinner with my family anymore. it's growing up in a household with a parent affected by serious OCD who has to vacuum 24/7 but I can't hear a vacuum or else I'll try to see my pulse from the inside. it's the sadness and anger that clenches itself around my heart like a fist until I feel like the dust I was created from. it's when something as simple as the sound of a drawer closing makes me wish I were dead. it's the knowledge that one day I won't be able to handle feeling like an abandoned building and the volcano inside of my head will erupt. it's the knowledge that I can't get help. I can't ever get help.

here's to those with seasonal affective disorder that made it through the east coast's incredibly long winter. and here's to those that didn't.

I had a dream that I could
Fly out of your reach
And you could never find me
I had a dream I was free
                     You had a dream that I was always in reach and
I would always return to you
And that you were all I knew    

While you were dreaming, I was leaving.
Because this wasn't love,
It was a jail for the worst.
And maybe your dream would've come true,        
If I hadn't woken up first.

you call out
"god help us"
in the quietest voice,
and I hear in it a desperation to be heard.
it's the way a mother would die for her child, as if it were no choice at all.
and the same sort of love that it takes
to stand between bullets
and your sister.
it's how a husband will do anything and everything to protect his wife.
it's what matters.
it's the way it should be.
you would lie down your heart to save what it beats for.
and at the the end of the day,
at the end of time,
it will be what saves us all.

I went numb for a while, 'cause it was easier than all the questions
and all the depression. But I also think maybe I was numb before that,
probably a little more each day since I lost a bit of myself, and then I lost a lot more.
Life is just too much to let it all in, you know? How is one young soul supposed to absorb it all?
I think we shut it all out and we get selfish, because it is one hundred million times easier to focus on our own silly little problems than to think of those that suffer horrendous crimes, families who starve, or even to think of the brutalities animals face so we can have a dinner we prefer.
What about the lonely people?
How could you live a carefree life if you let in the thought of how many people you've hurt, or how those few hurt you? God, no.
Why would you? It'd be torture. You let that go, even if it takes a while.

But what if you can't? What if it turns out, you aren't like the rest? What if all the sadnesses and tragedies keep you up at night? What if you're 19 and you're pretty sure life is eventually going to be so ******* much that it will inevitably crush you? What if you are scared to death that you operate so differently than other humans, that you won't make the cut?

What if you're shaking and crying in bed at 11:58 pm, after a day of putting in all the effort to act normal
and you are burying yourself in music praying to fall asleep before it all really hits you
and it occurs to you that empathy and worry and fear is going to drive you six feet under?

What will happen?