do you want to know
about all the boys who have my skin burned into their memory?
or the boys who’ve touched me enough times that their fingers
move in a certain pattern across my hips
but their minds can’t differentiate between me and the next girl?

you say you want me to tell you about them
but do you want to know about the people
who have rearranged your daughter into someone you don’t recognise?
it’s possibly my fault you don’t know me,
but, mother, i don’t think you would love the fleshy redness of my inverted skin

there are small, but important tokens of me that you’ve collected
like a few of the scars on my wrists,
ones i told you i stopped carving years ago,
but how do you not notice the accumulation of darkened skin
and bandaids in the bin?
mother, i think maybe sometimes you see my rearranged body parts
and then look the other way because it’s not who you want me to be

in your head,
am i just your daughter
or my own person?
am i so indebted to you for giving me my life that you now own it?

i don’t even know what being my own person would mean to you
if all you know about me is carefully selected
by an idiot daughter

mother,
you ask me if i’ve been lying to you,
if i’m sure that last week i went out where i said i would
and i think neither of us are so stupid that we would be fooled
into thinking we are built on anything but an awkward bed of lies,
so, mother, please stop asking me
because i think my mom should be the type of person i can tell about boys
and wrists, and i wish there was some part of me
that felt you were more than just mother

who has never been fifteen and lonely,
who has never thought she was in love with a boy
how can you ask me to be honest with you
when your smile is painted on,
hiding judgments and disappointment before i’ve even disappointed you?

mother, i love you,
but i can’t be honest and perfect at the same time
and i need room to breathe
without having to hide every exhale from you
but i also don’t know how to change my perpetual lying
and awkward movements around you
so, mother, who do you want me to be?

i don’t want to be thirty
and wasting brainpower on
not
hurting myself

i don’t want to be thirty at all
because for three years
i’ve thought that sixteen was the cutoff line
maybe college
but surely, someday,
i’d find it in me to **** myself

but one more year becomes two,
and i don’t even remember
any of the last few months
except crying
and writing poems to make myself feel better
and then not
feeling better

i don’t want to be spending thirty minutes in the shower anymore
digging my nails into my skin
teetering on the edge of picking up a knife,
feeling jealous of fourteen year old me
who got the chance to break my skin
or one month ago me
who was selfish enough to keep cutting her hip
even though she said she'd stop

but to present me
who hasn't drawn blood since then
the milestone
doesn't even feel like one
because this is the worst i've ever felt

and i don’t want to be this volatile,
that talking to someone for five minutes keeps me floating
and that not talking
to one person
will sink me;
this is not life,
and it is killing me
that all i do is not **** myself,
and i am tired of having each sentence start with suicide
bone tired, chillingly casual suicide
because nothing stops it

i’m going to **** myself, aren’t i?
i don’t know where my threshold is
and when i’m going to reach it
but i am barely scraping by
through days that should be a breeze

but what selfish ******* does that?
cuts herself and then promises people who love her that she'll stop
then promising herself to die because maybe they don't love her

me, i guess

i am just
so miserable
and sometimes i don’t care that my parents would be permanently broken
or my friends scarred;
maybe when i’m eighteen
and just a little more alone

maybe when i’m eighteen
i’ll finally **** myself

i read a novel
about a boy who loved another so
he lost himself in his beautiful smile
and never quite retrieved his whole soul

it broke my heart to read an altered version
of a story that i'd become so familiar with
the idea of which i romanticised in my
sleep deprived head resting on my pillow
wrought with worry about who you told
i was your god and you, my mouthpiece on earth
and who you told you could never love me

because it happened that you'd wear our love on your sleeve
under fleece blankets and choked sighs
but still, you kissed me in the separate rooms of parties
and held my hand when i cried the most

but it also happened that most of my tears
were cried in your expense
and there were people who knew me
as no more than the girl you hated

did you really hate me?
i think the possibility of indifference hurt more
because if you hated me i mattered enough
for my sharpness to affect you,
your delicate skin
as twisted as it is
i loved any version of reality in which
i played a role in your life

but if you didn't care
if you didn't care that i still talk about you
that you've placed a target on my back
for all your friends to abuse my compliance
i'm just an ink smudge you have to look at everyday
but so insignificant you don't remember my name

do you remember all the love i cried onto your skin before you left?
i had wanted it to burn into your heart
so maybe someday you could live to forgive me
and never forget love at the end of each sentence

and i clung onto the hope
of you losing your tunnel vision
but love,
this isn't how it's supposed to be
we're not right, are we?

you pushed me to the brink of
i love you
where love is rain
that doesn't often grace these desert sands
and maybe just a little affection could
save us from this storm
i love you
and i meant it
when i slit my wrists for you
i love you
carved like a bitter song
i can't stop humming
i love you,
always caught in my throat
occupying the space
mixed with oxygen you'd once breathed
i love you
but we were never right
when all we've done
is cut down our hearts
so they could weigh the same
that can't be love

we put an expiration date on
one night stands and drunken texts
but there never was a cut off line
for my sick infatuation
with your skin pressed up against mine
the memory of which only lingered
in the middle of dreams fuller than life
i can delude myself into believing i still love you
and the memory chases me through the waking hours
but i'm tired of running
i'm tired

reinvent yourself like i plan to
strip your mattress of the bloodstained sheets
and find a new corner of the world
to win over prettier girls
as someone who never broke my heart
whose heart was never touched by my evil hands
we could be more
if you wrenched the letters apart
and left me
you could be more.

why are you so much nicer to me
when the sun sets?
no, why are you only nice to me when the sun sets?

this didn’t seem to be much of a problem during the summer
when i only ever the saw the moon
beautiful as ever, but still so sad;
when summer doesn’t feel like summer,
you would text me;
rather, i would text you
but it didn’t make much of a difference because your words
hung like stars themselves
suns,
delicate and ethereal
like i was privileged to see their light

when i only ever saw the moon
stars were awfully pretty,
stars that i clung to
like parts of a middle school production
hanging from string;
lifelines that glowed
and were warm, not scalding, to the touch;
and there were grown adults in the crowd,
watching a child monkey around on stage
but i was so awfully happy
i was so happy
it didn’t occur to me that i looked stupid

then the sun would rise
around the time i would fall asleep
and suddenly, miniature suns couldn’t hold a candle to that
this is something i was blissfully unaware of when i texted you at 3 pm
when i miraculously found myself awake and cold
this is something i was painfully aware of when you responded
at 3:02,
clipped and courteous,
like you were wasting your breath on me
in just those few syllables

at 6, i tried again
maybe
your stars needed to warm up
maybe they needed to rest
still
there was no hint of the warmth i remembered so vividly
from just last night
and even as the sun beat mercilessly at my skin,
reminding me it is summer,
and that i shouldn’t be glued to my phone,
summer didn’t feel like summer

you see, i’d come to learn that your stars
are ephemeral,
or in fact, your stars shine for whoever it is most convenient
to shine for
there are far better people to entertain in broad daylight
girls whose water soaked skin will glitter by the poolside
boys whose laughs are warmer than the asphalt beneath your feet
i couldn’t hold a candle to that

still, when the sun sets once more
and i text you, because i am once again cold
iwasneverwarmtobeginwith,
you glow
and radiate
and i hate that you glow and radiate,
and that i want you to emanate light for only me;
even so,
in the few hours i have before sunrise,
i will pretend you only glow for me
and that you always glow for me.

there is nothing less comforting than the whiteness of a hospital
clinically and methodically assaulting your senses
which have already endured enough to last you a lifetime of pain;
for a place made to heal people, it is awfully lifeless
and cold

i was so cold
the whole time
and i don't know if that was anxiety or real
normal cold
but i was shaking
even when they gave me the scratchy, paper thin blanket
i was shivering

mom
i'm sorry we're even here;
if i'm sorry for what happened, or for telling her
it doesn't matter
because the awkward
and silent acknowledgment of how artificial our love is
is broken;
this is a discomfort that's far worse
because more than anything
this is discomfort

how do i tell you i lied
about every time i left the house
until i was lying about things that didn't matter
inconsequential details i still wanted to hide away from you?
because showing you any part of me felt uncomfortable
like exposing a healing wound to the cold air

a hospital waiting room
is probably the worst place to have this type of conversation
so instead i carry the weight, and sit stiffly next to you
and distract myself with nurses and women in wheelchairs

why are they here?
are their stories as tragically stupid as mine?
because it really is tragically stupid
a poem titled **** kit
should probably be about a girl who was *****

i don’t know if i was *****
i thought i was
then i thought i wasn’t
then it didn’t matter because i was speaking with a nurse
who told me we’d have to report this

i don’t even have any metaphors tucked away
waiting to be eloquently written
about how still the air was
i don’t remember a shift in noise;
all i remember was crying uncontrollably

what an effective way to wreck a girl’s life;
for a minute,
i thought this was karma for lying
surely i was lying
because this wasn’t happening to me

but it still didn’t matter
because i was now talking to a doctor
and my parents stood at the edge of a hospital bed
looking at me like i was contaminated

and when she took her leave
i wanted to beg her to stay,
because i didn’t want to be locked in a room,
feeling contaminated and disgusting,
with such an ugly reality choking the air
shoving itself so far down our throats
that every time i found the courage to speak through the knot in my throat
my dad would look down at me
like he hated me
i think he hated me

i hated myself a little, too,
because nothing would ever be comfortable again
and we would always be sitting on a ticking timebomb
waiting for it to blow up, any minute

when would we acknowledge this?
when would my parents realize
this was realer than any of us were comfortable with
and blow everything to smithereens?

this is what it feels like
to push a boulder down a hill;
because i’m reckless and stupid
i am not a coward
and i’m not scared of some guy who got drunk
and got me drunk
but i am, if anything, stupid

this isn’t a thought experiment;
i have to keep reminding myself,
because what i set in motion would **** people
my parents were just collateral damage
and i think my mom still beats herself up for not standing up to my dad
and he beats himself up for letting his own daughter get to a point
where she felt it was wise to lie to him and hook up with a guy in an abandoned house

but once the dust had settled, and they'd both recovered from the shock of realizing
i was no longer their daughter,
but an incredibly stupid person,
i had become collateral damage as well

there is probably nothing that can prepare you
for the feeling of your own dad calling you a *****
in so many languages,
and so many different words,
you’d think it would lose its’ punch
but it never does
and each time you take a blow
he yells louder
because, why are you crying?

why would you be crying,
when you did this?

i was a stranger to my own family
not because they think i was *****
but probably because they know i don’t think i was *****;
this hospital
has broken me more than anything that boy has done to me

because he is a stupid fifteen year old
who gave some girl he liked ***** because she begged him for it
but these are big, white walls
fully conscious of what they do to anyone roaming these halls
because my life isn’t now divide into
before he ***** me
and after

but before i stepped foot in that hospital
and after.

for every poem i'd ever written,
i wondered what my near candid thoughts
sound like to a stranger;
when i wear my heart on my sleeve
except it's draped in metaphors and vague sentences
how is anyone meant to understand
that this is the beautiful boy i'm talking about?
or that on some very specific day
i endured a trauma no one will fully know?

often i feel sad
in an empty way
like a mug no one drinks out of
and i don't even have enough emotion within me to write poems
so i read other people's poems;
perhaps it will fill some void within me
if i find the perfect set of words to explain everything away
and yet
none of them make sense to me
every trauma, every boy loved
doesn't make sense to me when i haven't experienced it

and perhaps i love poetry for all the wrong reasons,
because i never just
find it pretty;
but instead put the ugliest words inside me on paper
and shape them until i can stand to look at them

and there is little to nothing honest about it
but i am usually choking with these words
and anything remotely true on paper
may just ease my heartache,
so i write;