nope
i lied
i lied i lied
i lied i lied i lied
i lied i lied
i lied
what did i think this was,
some kind of fairytale?
some magic world where
all the storms in my head
could just be waved to a calm
and i could just cary on living
my life
in a normal
healthy
happy
way?
am i that naive,
even now?
have i not been shown
enough times just how very sick
i am?
can i not be capable of giving
a **** about myself
just once?
am i just doomed
to sit and punch myself
in the stomach again and again
and again and again and again
and again
till my knuckles turn blue
and oh, what then?
do i care?
does it matter what happens to me
when there are fifty-two reasons
it shouldn’t matter
and fifty-three
why it does?
i don’t know
i don’t know don’t know
don’t know
but it’s time to go
the heck
to sleep, so
why am i still writing?

a hypocrite.
you made me one.
and to be quite honest
I’m a tad bit irked at you

because I promised myself, I
really did
promise I wouldn’t feel this way,
told myself I’d stay above the influence
of the oh-so-popular chemical switches
that get so dizzily thrown for
a happy distortion of reality
because that’s what it all is, isn’t it?
it’s chemicals,
reactions in your brain
and I promised
I promised
I wouldn’t go all weak kneed all
fluff brained all
googly doe eyed, not
for anything not
for anyone and certainly
not for you
(no offense)

but I guess here we are.
I’ve broken my promises
and it’s 100% your fault

who told you you could do that?
tell me
who gave you the rights
to my heart because surely,
surely it couldn’t have been me?
oh please tell me it wasn’t me
i’ve never surrendered anything
not already stolen.
nothing not already stolen
but you’re not a thief
so why do I rest in your hands?
I really don’t understand
how you made
the queen of anxiety herself
let go of something for once.

and kid, I don’t know what to do about
how everything is suddenly clouded by you
because I sat down to write today
unable to not think about the way
your breath kept hitching
when I ****** your neck
how the little spasms in your chest
got quicker and harder
the deeper I went
how your eyes closed
and your mouth was open
your lips quivering like they held back a sea
how your eyebrows were pressed
but then relaxed
and the way that you kissed me
when I got back to your lips
like every cell
in your body
depended on it.

you tasted like love
I don’t know how else
to say it
but you tasted looked sounded
smelled and certainly
felt like love
so cut the crap.

I forgot to think about chemicals then
I forgot to worry
about what was real or not
I forgot
I was so caught
so caught
so caught up in you
I forgot how to be scared
I forgot myself
I forgot everything I’ve ever believed
I forgot what it means to breathe
to the rhythm of anything
but the beat of your heart
and the touch of your hands.

either I’ve been wrong for forever
or I’m lying to myself now
but nothing has every felt more real
than this
more real than you, so
let me just say it–
I think I might love you.

i think that sometimes the earth
rotates in such a way that she never
exactly asked for, a way she
never particularly wanted or loved or
even thought made any sense in any way at all.

chaotically thrown against the walls of her own mind (and
having to watch as others have the same thing done to them
or to their friends) has often made her wonder:
is it her?

is it her that is responsible? unreasonable as it sometimes seems,
she often thinks it might be true.

the earth’s rotation only exists in her eyes, doesn’t it? that’s only natural,
her perception is all that she knows for sure so it makes sense to her in
every way: she must be the cause, she has to be.

cracked in the middle, aren’t i? (she thinks)
okay, but what does that mean? does she see it as a fault, as if every crack
oozes sticky black insufficiency, staining all it touches? no. no, it’s
less that than an awakening. she’s not wrong for being cracked;
everything good can only get in if a few cracks are there. besides, can’t
she see that she glows? surely she knows the inside of her is golden and
the only way to release it is through those cracks she so despises? surely.

kind soft and radiant, she glows even as the earth rotates against her, and
i love her for that. i love her. sometimes the hardest most cracked and
darkest shells house the brightest most beautiful royal souls.

you walk into bathrooms singing
singing
it’s sweet and soft
high in your register
not spoken
just floating on your breath like a dream

my voice teacher would say you need to support your tone
but I like it the way you do it
you do it the way a mother might sing a child to sleep
but you sing only for yourself
not to sleep or to perform
not making any fuss
just letting the wordless song be sung
by you
to you
for you
with no accompaniment but the sure click of your heels
against the bathroom tile

I spend a lot of time in bathrooms
(at least I used to and these days
I find myself returning more and more
to old habits)
the walls know me
the tiles are familiar
the locks protect me more than any living thing ever did

the sinks know my blood
the floors know my rage
the toilet knows that my insides are acid
and not sugary sweet like I once thought they were
(I respect it for not pretending
like others have tried)

I spend a lot of time in bathrooms
I want to thank you because
you make it easier
because you walk into bathrooms singing

you stop by the mirrors and
fix your makeup maybe
or adjust your jacket or swish your skirt
and I hope it’s not strange
but sometimes I watch you through the crack in my stall
(not so long that it’s creepy
just a beat that’s all)
and you always make me feel just a little bit better
because you’re so **** pretty
and so **** aware of it
your voice is sweet
you know it
and you’re not afraid

I love that
please keep singing
I don’t care if I’m there to listen
I just hope you sing

I don’t want to be dark anymore
I want the weight on my soul to crack
and shatter off in tiny fragments
and with the first free beat of my heart
I want to expel every piece of it
out from my body like a firework
a profound breaking of the capsule that once bound me
in order to set my beauty free.

I don’t want to be dark anymore
I want to take my mind and wash it in a stream
and let every pesky piece of worry be uncaught
and released from the crevices of memory and matter
so that my thoughts float transparent through my head,
clear and bright like fresh cleaned pennies,
cool and soft like august clouds.

I don’t want to be dark anymore
I want to make a little glass door in my chest
and give my heart some sunshine
because with some sunshine some flowers might grow
and then maybe the floor of my room
could be scattered with soil instead of tissues
petals instead of fingernails
and leaf clippings instead of old expired medicine caps.

I don’t need to be happy
I just want to glow
I think I could glow like that.

it’s a low key sort of love
and I don’t mean that as in “to a lesser degree”
what I really mean is that if written as music
this sort of love would be played soft
very soft on the lowest key
so soft and low it would almost be imperceptible
but you’d feel it anyway
like an odd fuzzy vibration tickling your ear
in an odd sort of warm sort of way

it’s a low key sort of love
you’ll feel it when a stranger compliments your eyebrows
when there’s rain on a glass roof of a porch in the woods
when someone that doesn’t know you that well calls you by name
when you get silly when you’re sleepy with friends on a long car ride home
when someone leans their head against your shoulder
or glances your way for a beat on a train
or whispers a secret
or brushes your hand
or has a pet that likes you for no reason at all

it’s a low key sort of love
you’ll feel it more than you’ll hear it or see
but it'll seep into your veins
and run through your blood like a shimmer
so faint and so gentle
you won’t even notice that that night
you’ll glow in the dark

turn the page
turn the page and leave it be
let yourself let it go
I know
I keep telling myself and
I keep hearing from them
my mom and my dad
my therapist and my friends
turn the page
just one page
just one at a time
and soon enough the sheets will be clean again
I know
I know and I’m sorry
I’m trying, I am
and I know it doesn’t seem hard to turn one page
but my fingers are bitten, barren, and ******
and so dry you could use them to sand a bench
so dry that any time I try to turn a page
it’s difficult to grasp a sheet
my fingers slip off
and I never turn just one
I always skip a step and
go too far
I go too far and think I’m okay,
think I can forget
but the point of turning pages isn’t forgetting
and my journal wasn’t written neatly in pencil anyway
it wasn’t even stained permanently with sensible ink
there’s blood on my pages
mine and his and hers
and tears of course
mine running blue
his running purple
hers running black
all of them plucked from my shoulders and arms
combed from my hair where they fell
when I screamed my impermanence
retched my insufficiency
screeched  and hiccuped and sobbed my uselessness,
when my cracked lips and raw hands and broken frame
begged to not be forgiven
and all they did was nod and hug me
and cry on my shoulders and arms and hair,
cry from beautiful eyes that told me I was loved
eyes that left when I told them to leave
and stayed when I told them to stay
eyes that saw me
that knew me
that told me I had worth
that told me they loved me
that gave me everything I didn’t deserve
that were hurt by me beyond repair
but forgave me anyway
I want to do it for them
those specific pairs of eyes
so I’m trying to turn the page
I’m trying
but there’s so much blood
and it’s not all mine
and I’m trying to remember what you told me
about licking my fingers to unstick the pages
but wouldn’t you know my mouth is drier even than my hands
either from the medication or from talking too much
or maybe from not talking nearly as much as I should
but whatever the reason at least I'm trying and
I know they’re glad I’m trying
because they know there was a time when I wouldn’t have
and I’m constantly unsure whether
I’m going back there or not
back to when it was like that
when I wouldn’t have tried
sometimes I think I am
sometimes I want to
sometimes I find myself missing the familiarity
so I stop brushing my teeth again
stop eating food again
stare at my ceiling and cry silently again
think about every awful thing that ever happened
and watch as my nightmares of pink bathtubs
turn into fantasies again
but their eyes
their eyes that spilled over and told me I was loved
that forgave me
that did everything they didn’t have to
they want me here
they want me to come back to them
and I think I want that too
I want that for them
maybe even for me
so I’ll just have to keep trying
to get that page flipped
one page at a time and maybe
maybe someday bathtubs will just be for baths