It hurt
when I fell
off my bike,
skinning my knees
against the asphalt.

I looked up in shock,
my mouth a perfect O.
It wasn't until I saw
the blood,
streaming down my shins,
that I began to wail.

Over the crest of the hill,
I saw my father,
running to me,
his face creased with worry.

Without hesitation,
he picked me up, held me
in his arms.
I clung to him, helpless
as I was, sobbing into his neck.

He assured me that it was fine
I was fine
He was there, and
Nothing would hurt me.

Later, once home, bandaged and clean,
he threw away his favorite,
now-bloodstained, sky blue shirt.


It hurts more now
when I fall off my bike.
When he's no longer there to help me
back up,
wipe away the blood,
and promise me that I'm safe.

a rat burrows through my flesh, into my stomach, hiding next to my liver.
they stitch me back up,
send me home with a bottle of placebos.

home alone,
deep into the night,
i feel him crawling and scratching around,
rearranging things,
misplacing my bones and lungs in the process.

i can't exist
without you.

I.
there have always been two constants;
i am weak, and you are strong.
you are dark, predatory eyes,
watching and memorizing my every move.
i am the snow, pure and untouched,
before the blood fell and ruined everything.

II.
these fantasies taunt me constantly.
a glimmer of what i might accomplish
if only i wasn't created from stone.

III.
i ruined my own body in an attempt to prevent
others from doing the same.

IV.
i told you that i was a fountain.
you bandaged my arms, kissed me goodnight,
and sent me on my way to unravel,
alone.

V.
anger pours out in a spectrum of colors
i never knew existed.
god is disappointed by what i've become;
he makes sure to tell me so at every crossroads.

VI.
i exist only as a figment of your imagination.
all of my demons come forward
to show you each and every brush stroke
that has graced my porcelain skin.

VII.
prove that my existence has meaning,
and, once you've finished, make sure that it ends.
we both know, without a doubt,
that i don't deserve anything more.

VIII.
it's time to stop caring
about my lukewarm limbs
and get on with your own
miserable ******* life.

IX.
i whispered against your skin;
"when god will smite the ones that have hurt us?"
the look within your eyes answered more
than you would ever dare to say.

X.
i am the ghost that's been haunting you all this time.
i don't know what you are.

i demand the thunderstorms to appear.
i come in waves of dust and flood.

i am a feared being,
one whom my followers know not to tempt.

the blood that you give flows
and i close my eyes, accepting your generous gift.

i believe that what defines the goodness in people
is the attention and love that they give me.

i am not a bad person.
i was born in the cellar of a murderer's home, welcomed into the world by a concrete, blood-stained floor.

i was born into blood, grew up through anger. i hid the memory deep underneath; plenty of time to grieve for my younger self later on down the road.

the wolves allowed me to shelter my broken skin in their caves, licking my wounds and entwining their souls forever with my own.

i cried tears blacker than the nail polish she used to paint my nails with on friday nights; they hit the earth and singed the grass.

the first time another man touched my scarred legs, i felt the rat you buried so long ago sprint from my body and exit through my mouth in the form of a sob.

at your funeral, i sat alone, kept my shoulders square, my head angled downwards. i met no one's eyes, for i didn't want them to see how dry my own were.

two men - one whom i adored and loved more than anyone, the other whom i wished death upon every single day.
it took me until they were both gone to realize that both left the same impact on my shaking spine.

i'm no stranger
to bathtubs and sinks full of red water
to red-stained sleeves
to blood loss.
no stranger
to losing people,
no stranger
to wanting to go home.

the moon loves you so dearly
as she illuminates your features in the darkness,
casting shadows to hide the pieces of you she doesn't want me to see.

the moon loves you so dearly
as every night she calls out for you, employing crickets to create her lonely midnight sonnet.
and eventually, finally, you venture out from your house to sit under her light.

the moon loves you so dearly
as she is the only one there for you when your chest begins the contract and the bile in your throat threatens to drown you.
she longs to hold you, but she sits in her sky as always, patiently waiting for you to return to reality.

the moon loves you so dearly
as she has witnessed all of your downfalls and betrayals and late night breakdowns that you've kept secret from me,
and through all this time, she has kept them a secret, kept them so close to her heart.

the moon loves you so dearly
that when she finally illuminated my own face,
and saw herself reflected in my pupils,
she did not protest when you began to empty yourself out of your love for her
to make room for me.

the moon loves you so dearly -
but you must give her space to heal. she has only one night each month in which she hides from you,
disappearing just long enough to shed a single, lonely tear;
a star shooting across the sky.
after wards, she begins to rebuild herself once again, piece by piece,
sliver by sliver.

you made your bed with
the quilt your grandmother made for you as a child,
     before she got sick.
you have it pulled across the mattress,
     severely taut,
just as she showed you.

it's late in the day,
yet summer sun still finds a way
to come in through the blinds.
     the slanted light draws lines across your arms

a distant hum -
the fan swivels back and forth
slowly shaking its head in disappointment,
     until you finally move,
reaching over to rip the plug from the wall;
silence

it's winter time now.

your grandmother's quilt
is gone now -
it has been for some time.
you got rid of it, remember?
after the second -
no, third? or was it even the first -
time you tried to -
well. you know.

after i held your body together with my own,
waiting for a miracle or at the least the **** ambulance -
remember how they drove past your driveway twice?
     i wanted to run out and flag them down
     but could not move
     fearful that in my absence,
     you would leave.
- as dawn broke through the blinds,
painting lines of light across your
red red red red red red
arms.

a glimpse of the brightness i once saw radiate from you
shined for me one last time
as you laid on my floor
and told me how much you loved
your nine year-old brother.

after you left that night, i dreamt of you.

i was walking alone
and saw you standing in a snow covered field.
the real you.
in your purest form
you manifested as your father.
covered in gashes
bones piercing through skin
oozing with blood and pus and venom

you opened your mouth as if to speak
but anything you might've had to say
was drowned out as the poison poured
onto the sneakers
your mother bought you for christmas.

you are the antagonist in my story.
i do not expect you to understand this.
i know that you will never be brave enough
to admit; you're your father's son.

1. the phoenix flapped her wings and we were reborn.

2. when you met me
you had a lifetime supply of love.

3. you bathed me, your hands so gentle.
you stroked my hair and told me that i was beautiful.
you promised to never hurt me.

4. overcompensation got the best of you
and you wasted all of your love within a week.
you burned up your ability to care,
to be seen as soft and safe

5. you told that you thought i was a source of happiness,
and let me watch as you pumped me dry.

6. you bathed me with cold water.
soap slowly dripped down my face,
into my eyes and filling my mouth.
remember when you promised?

details are important.
they are scattered across the floor like a painting. each shadow, a different story.
too many details can pile up and hurt you, consume you entirely. they nip at your ankles and trip you, dragging you across continents.
i don't want to know these details anymore.
i want to sweep everything i know into a bucket and burn it all.
i want to burn.
i want to forget what i know, forget how they hurt, how we hurt.
the windows need to be scrubbed clean of the blood, their blood, our blood.
they are broken and sad. we are too full of details.

your quilts are long gone and the mattress is new.
this one doesn't sag in the middle.
we sleep on opposite edges, not touching.

we draw poems on each others skin with our finger tips,
telling stories and myths with closed eyes and the lights off.

on top of the sheets; i'm in your arms.

we've gotten good at pretending after all this time.
our skin is slick from sweat,
you stained your sleeve with red wine,
i ate earlier when i got coffee with my mom.
these are the facts we have been forced to accept.

it's easier than fighting.

I have written
about you
more times than
i can count

and more times
than you will probably
ever
know.

Forgive me
you were beautiful
so kind
and so unattainable.

it was time for you to leave.
you veered off into the woods, into the brambles.
i stayed on the rabbit trail
and saw the holes you left through the brush from afar.

rats and poisons and rot sat in my stomach for years/body distended and painful/until it became too painful to bear/choking on the *****/holding tight in my mouth/lips shut/finally e xpl ode and i spill/onto the floor/
the consequences i dealt with/cleaned the mess/scrubbed the tile / tub / carpet clean/and i am clean/clean/clean/stand from the ground/shakey legs/i feel clean/

i didn't stop bleeding for a long time.

i gave away my blood to the tub more times than i remember
countless trickles soaked into cotton ***** and band-aids and pant-legs
i watched my life swirl down the drain in the form of pale pink water

i gave these pieces of myself away
and now as some sort of punishment, or maybe blessing
i have to keep these silvery lines across my skin as a reminder
to never take my blood and my life for granted again.

it repeats and returns and i run in circles around it
i'm faster now my legs are stronger but i still get tired

always repeating and repetitive and returning to rewrite the same words
over and over and over and over
broken out of cycles
of blood/ of hurt/ of being hurt/ of allowing hurt/ of scrubbing toilets/ of closed lips/ of poison

blame my lack of creativity on my meds
saw one comment on a forum saying that happened to them, just running with it
i think i'm just out of practice and don't want to admit it doesn't come easily anymore
but it can if i want it to

still repeating, still repetitive, still running in circles
waiting for the day i can slow down again
don't have to run as fast
because i'm not being chased anymore

did you know that when you took your hands and ripped me apart that it would lead others to follow the trail of blood and prey upon me as well.
these wounds you opened never healed and my flesh has been rotting for many years and it's too late to lob it off and bandage myself up.

this disease is living in my bones in my heart in my brain it the core of who i am and to extricate it would mean to extricate my own identity
you cannot **** it without killing my mind

i can't understand why the world looked at me and decided that i didn't deserve the happiness she so willingly gave everyone else.
she chose me to be one of the rotten people that exist solely to be hurt by those who are evil.
the rot and the evil are bound and stuck together. always always always we will find each other and the rot grow again and again and again.
it's what we were born to do.

wrote about the way the ghosts that used to haunt me convinced me to carve into my legs and purge my stomach of everything rotten
years later, i read it again. and again.
in every word i see you.
i see you and what you did to me and how you treated me.
you tried to ruin my soul, dehumanize every bit of me,
and i tried my best to help you with it by cutting it into smaller and smaller pieces.

was i complicit in my own destruction?
i made my decisions.
you dug my grave but i chose to lay in it

i took the drugs you supplied me and i thought that it gave me love.
you let xanax do the talking when you told me you loved.
you didn't you didn't you didn't.
and honestly! i didn't either! i tried to but i didn't.
but i cared when you didn't.

i'm tired of thinking about you.
i'm tired of trying to figure this out.
i didn't deserve that.

i was complicit in my own destruction
you dug my grave but i chose to lay in it
until i didn’t

i will never forgive you for what you did to me.
you blossomed weeds of anger and self-loathing inside of my lungs.
the flowers grew and grew until they infected my heart and my throat and my hands.

from this hatred, i have forged rivers and gorges into my legs.
forcing ***** in hopes that the memories would purge with the bile.
i shaved my head and cut my hair and sliced my soul into smaller pieces.
your hands linger and the scars still shine bright where you burned me.

i spent years trying to find a way to expel the vines slowly choking me,
poisoning myself and praying that it would be a sufficient **** killer.

it never was.