I open the window
So I don’t suffocate
But the air doesn’t reach my lungs
As I try to count my breaths

Monday I came in to see you
For the last time.
The last time.

And I never said goodbye.

Wednesday I took a test.
Back at school and then went home.
I don’t remember anything
Beside the PSAT and the moment you were gone from me.
I remember it was 9.

Dad in the hall
Bedroom door opens
“I’m home”
(the last time I believe in miracles as delusion and hope burn all sense of reason).
Is she with you?

“Where’s Mom?”

“She’s Gone.”

Black. Repeat.

I remember how everything got worse from then.
It doesn’t get better
You get used to it.
You get used to cold,
Just the absence of heat.
You get used to the holes when they become a part of you.

I don’t remember forgetting.
Your face gets fuzzy.
I conjure up your voice but I lost your laugh.
I can’t hold on to everything that’s flying away from me
In a thousand different directions
And when someone asked me last week,
I can’t remember your favorite food,
It’s been viciously consumed by the hunger of time.

I remember the look on your dad’s face-
This is what I remember most-
The look as he stared at you
With silent tears
And the face of a man,
A veteran of war,
Who was never prepared for the devastation of life
As he is told his daughter will die.
She will die slowly.
And he can’t save her,
But he can watch
As the life drains out of her.

I gasp for air uncontrollably
Leaning my head out the window.
As I am stuck remembering
Memories block air from reaching my lungs.
Stuck on repeat
Spinning spinning spinning
And it’s been two years.

Delusion?

I exist not as I am:
A mirrored image of glamour.
Trace back through each reflection
Until who I am is but a collection
Of women invented
With no incentive
but to save a man like you.

A would be artist
lost touch with who
Knows what; the scar is
Hidden but still you see;
Whats wrong with me?
Our unspoken debate.

I am reaching for myself
But glass stops true connection;
What if you only want to kiss my reflection?

I can fix this.
I’m always so terrified

That I will fall from the sky
And my wings will snap
Helpless to medicine and hope

Icarus and I (fall from the sky)
We burn
Chasing sunlit warmth
Suspended by devices devised of self-preservation
Crumbling before our eyes
That we can’t hold together anymore

These devices are needless

Let go and hold on

Trust the fall

See how I fly.

Putting together a patchwork home
Watching the water carve out the stone
Getting much better at being alone
Because I’m not.

Not broken but not fixed yet.
And I know now that hurting is healing
And I see the world pass on below me
And I won’t fall

So I soar.
I have fallen before.
I am still
Despite of not because.

I will fall.
And I will fly.

Crash landing,
I kiss the Earth.

You don't have to be happy all the time
to be deserving of love

Part to whole
Less of a whole
Just filled with holes
Filled with parts that don’t fit.

What part am I
If I’m not even whole?
What part is missing?
I ask like I don’t already know

“I am the sum of my parts”
Is an easy explanation
But what if the holes
Outnumber the parts?

Something is missing from me -
Parts that are
Irreplaceable for I don’t know
which parts fit in the
Holes
But I know I lost them a long time ago,
Or maybe they slowly faded.
Maybe I never had them to begin with.

I am a hole.

Pulling scrap parts deeper
As they fall right through me
But my persistence is delusion is relentless
For fear of being empty.

There’s little alarm
Brought on by
my alarm
Spitting its scream at 6:15.

For a moment I was free
From the trouble that is me
Or is it the work that is never truly done?
Nowadays it’s hard to tell.

I should prepare for the day
And break the cycle of dismay
Get ready for what needs to be done,
But I did my time
Last night until 2:09
So I deserve ten more minutes of ignorant bliss.

But the textbook by my head
And the notebooks on my bed
Remind me of what more I should’ve done
An A on a test
Is worth one less hour of rest
But my brain had decayed to an catatonic state.

6:45 and I’m already behind
Just with my first action of the day
I break out of bed
Pull a shirt over my head
Try and fail to hide the circles beneath my eyes

I need to succeed
So I answer my own pleas
For rest with empty replies,
“Work harder, plan more,
Get it done and just ignore
That feeling of needing to stop

For a few minutes

To breathe

And just finally

Think of nothing.”

Now it’s 7:15
I take my advil with caffeine
Leave the house
And do it all over again.

Every day has two mornings
One with the sun
Where beams kiss your cheek
And you’re off on the run

And one with time
Where it’s the middle of the night
Yet today is suddenly gone.
Only artificial light

And your mind is turned on
And you can’t get it to quit
Racing to feel every feeling
That you can’t show the sun.

A twisted version of safe
Comes from feeling so alone
Because here I don’t feel guilty
For just being a human.

I looked out my window
On a dark April evening
And my heart lifted up.

One
Yellow
*****
Had bloomed.

Had pushed through the dirt without any sun
Had lasted the winter without any care.
The smallest yellow *****
Had bloomed

On its own
And it was ok.
And I was ok.
And we would both be ok.

It is a cliche
But nonetheless a truth
That I like
Long walks on the beach.
Walking is heaven but running is hell

On a beach
Feet slipping on soft sands once so soothing
Dragging back the more I push on
Forward, forward
Without a definite end.
I’ll still get to where I’m going
But for time I trade beauty
And for time I trade peace,
running.

I’m running in circles
-- No, spirals.
Getting closer and closer each time I come back around,
Will I ever actually get there?

The day I blossomed from my mother's womb
I had two blue eyes, ten pudgy fingers, ten tiny toes,
And 300 bones.
But as I’ve grown up, day by day, year by year, person after person,
I’ve been reduced to less --
Just 206.
Where did they all go? 94 gone
Since the time I was young
The infrastructure to my being has faded.

What happened since the time I believed  fairies flew through flowers.
Since I sat on magic carpets imagining kingdoms rushing by on my kitchen floor
Since I believed that I held undiscovered superpowers
If I concentrate I can levitate this book
That part of me is missing
I’m a trained machine that engrains into my mind what is inside that book.
And It tells me that I cannot make it fly.

What’s different from when I would stand three feet tall
In bubble gum cowgirl boots and glittering tiara tangled in tresses
Strutting around town never holding back
Flowing through squeals of joy, shrieks of anger and sobs of sadness
I lack the support. I’m missing 94 bones.
Hide my excitement, hide my frustration, huie my grief, hide my unhappiness,
In order to appear a pleasant and likeable human.

What changed since the days when I went
Springing out of my butterfly bed awaiting the new day
Maybe filled with sunshine, greeting pill bugs under pebbles.
Even a day with grey skies meant my favorite ladybug rain boots
I awake to stiffness.
Rain means clammy skin and frizzy hair.
Even the sun is clouded over as its glare becomes an inconvenience

How could 94 bones leave without notice?
But now it’s too late, they’re all gone away.
Gradually worn away
By time, by sleep, by terror, by souls.
94 pieces missing of my puzzle.
Leaving an abstract figure
Gradually hardening into my new skeleton.

I can’t go in.
The smell of medicine that isn’t working,
Desperately masked by overwhelming sanitizer that stings my nose as I inhale.
No sunlight makes its way through the windows.
It fails to even reach through the clouds.

I haven’t seen blue skies in months.
I’m cold, clammy from the perpetual rain conspiring with a nervous sweat.

This room is too big.
Too big and only four people sitting around the same coffee table.
There are four people, but no one makes eye contact --
They try to hide a fear they never expected.

I stare ahead at the doors.
The doors I simultaneously crave and dread opening,
Is ignorance torture of bliss?

Why am I out here?
Why aren’t I in her room?
I know she’s in pain, why can’t anyone help her?
Is she dying?
What if she’s dying?
What if she’s dying all alone?
What if she’s dying surrounded by strangers with medical degrees?
What if she’d prefer that I’m not there?
What if I exhaust her, bother her, multiply her suffering?
What if she doesn’t recognise me when I go in?
What if her hearts beating and her eyes are blinking, but she’s not there?

What if I never get to see my mom again?

To smell her perfume,
Hear her voice, her laugh,
Touch her skin.
Feel her soft hand holding mine,
Feel her arms around me as she holds me close
Keeping out any monsters that could poison my mind.

Those monsters don’t scare me anymore.
My fear comes from sitting in an empty house that’s no longer a home.
My fear is knowing without you, I’ll never be at home.
My fear is the thought that you died resenting your daughter
Who never took the chance to say goodbye.
My fear is that on those days where the sky is gray, my eyes are tired, my ears don’t want any more music, food tastes like sawdust, I can’t get up from my bed, and my heart feels gray, that I won’t bounce back, my soul will be consumed by the emptiness caused by your absence.
My fear is every morning waking up. The feeling that you’re gone, and there’s nothing I can do to ever see you again.

I hesitate
To admit that I tend to put things off until they absolutely must be dealt with

I was born here.
I’ve moved between neighborhoods but
These mountains have watched me grow up.

It’s always been the same
But somehow different
Things get older and people get bigger
Sometimes better sometimes a little scratched up
But they never get worse

There can always be found new in the old
Born again without ever dying
So we have to allow the old to grow
Let it be free from expectation and reputation
And say goodbye

If the heart is a muscle
How can it never tire and never rest?
I worry that when it’s pounding in my chest
It’ll eventually reach a breaking point
Where it can’t take anymore
“never again”'s and things left unfinished.
The price you pay for loving is losing
And because I can lose I know my heart is full and I have been given so much

From the sidewalks to the sunsets to the imaginary rattlesnakes
To fire pits and family dinners and my favorite burger place
To the family I’m not related to but always offer me a home
And the high school that may be falling apart but is held up by the people inside

But it can’t last forever, so
Even when the flowers die
And the vases sit empty
And act as gravestones to the things once celebrated
I will come lay a fresh bouquet
Say Hello to Goodbyes
And love and remember
The ones who made me.

I thought I lost someone.

She wouldn’t be back, and now
Music struck no more notes
With her heart and she spoke
Without song,
Lips moving but no light
From within would guide her
To a place that was home.

Gave up swimming upstream
And slept without dreams
Slept until it seemed
The water that held me
Would drown me.

And maybe it did.

But rescued from purgatory
My head broke the surface
And i gasped for the
Cool morning air.

And as I inhaled
The sweet taste of life
Filled up my mouth
Like a **** made of summer fruit.
Something about January
Made my heart open up
And thaw whatever frost
Had frozen it still.
It’s pounding to the beat -
I am loved, I am loved -
And I make it repeat
Until finally, finally
I am free from defeat
And

I finally feel like myself again.