Who are these people behind your pencil marks, why do some drawings look so much more detailed than others
Why didn't you draw his mouth
Why didn't you give her ears
Why do you take away their parts
What about it don't you want to draw
What about it don't you want to put on paper

I could stare at broken windows all day
And not once feel what it felt like
when I first realised I really didn't want to be put back together again
like dull crystals and melted snowflakes
I wish you would just notice me
I got suns inside me that would orbit you if you just as much as smiled at me

I've got mountain ranges trapped inside me like whistles on a broken melody of symphony
I speak in sonnets of Shakespeare my anxiety it's shakes fear
I've got oceans bottled up inside messages asking for saving
This is survival poetry.
So let me tell you about how I was saved by the colour brown.
They say fall in love with the girl with forests in her eyes
So my whole life I've been searching for hills to dive in.
Till one day I came across a mid-winter's night dream.
Of leafless trees and barren fields.
Of branches shivering in the cold wind of winters heart.
Every idea
Every sensation to exist
Every desire to consist-ently
Talk about how yesterday I was a graveyard but today I'm a orphanage
Not dead yet
Just searching for a home
For a family
I'm searching for serenity
Before I'd search in places made of gold and tender hands
Before I'd search in places that said the right things
Before I'd search in places called emotional abuse.
Called a trip down memory lane, except the memories were in the basement and I was pushed down the stairs.
Walking around with a broken halo and an excuse to call misery home.
But today I see sunsets reflecting off mirrors into the southern void of the Carcasses you once loved.
Scraping gum off the sidewalk of my spine.
Replacing them with burnt bridges and animal traps. Like claws saying, "don't **** with me."
You ever hear of the buddy system?
Well it's enforced a poor sense of self worth in me. Making me think that being codependent was survival. Making me think that I was incomplete in need of another half.
But I'm only now realising I'm both sides of the moon.
I'm the night and the day.
I'm the birds in the morning and the crickets in the evening.
I'm the ocean and the sand.
The mountains and the canyons. I'm the whole ******* in one.
The other day someone mentioned that whole and hole sound the same but are polar opposites and maybe that's why my whole life hearing the words "good enough" sounded like a request to empty an abyss.
Maybe I was misinterpreting. maybe it was a poor choice of words, like
i need you
But only to fill this void.
To take the pen and write a poem but then say, "it doesn't really mean anything I was just bored"
Bored like boarded windows and mean like the average amount of demons hiding in the brightest corners of my mind. (the answer is one less than the amount of hands clutching onto the pen.)
I'm addicted to this feeling of revealing every part of me in words that mean everything other than what they're inclined to be.
This world is Kryptonite in your veins and you've got are 24 steps left to reach the sun.
A day ago you were speaking about crystallized harmonies like your sister's violin chiming through the corridors of your two story childhood home. She had a room all to herself,but you had to share yours with skeletons in your closet, flies on the walls and the elephant who always seemed to be in the room.
However they weren't the reason you couldn't go to bed.
Cause after 17 years you've still got voices living in your head.

Father, is this our daily bread?

From the depths of my sister's eyes
I found castles built upon hills that would never be touched by the sun.
Here her fortress of human,
Cascading light outward,
Wrote symphonies of melancholy
Until every paradox played pity poetry.
She would not speak a word,
Yet arms enclosed around her,
"I’m sorry" I said.

Tears would hang onto the precipice of her eyelashes
Begging, “Please don’t let them know
That my ice, cold heart melts.”
Dormitories of lost carriages and open wounds
Like silver plattered i love you’s that would
Just get sent back to the kitchen.
It wasn’t what they ordered.
No, they wanted your confidence on a skillet,
A tall glass of Abuse Me,
With your insecurities on the side.
Now see that’s what indulges them.
Little sister, do not break as they turn your immobiles.
You diamond of strength,
With pure crystal lungs
And steal volt of a rib cage.
Do not let his laser hands touch you.
If he says he wants the light on,
Tell him about your moonlight smile.
If he says he wants to see you naked,
Tell him about your December in the psychiatric hospital.

You are not like the other mountains,
Your Everest avalanches into the ocean.
High tide with erratic currents washing up all the debris lost at sea.
Do not struggle its pull,
Or attempt to hinder its rise.
For all you’ll find is
Yourself,
Crushed under the formidable waves.
There is no rest for the wicked,
The rage does not wither with sunset
Nor wince come dawn.
Though you wish your waters would reach
The mouth of your volcano,
The high will not last the journey.

Somewhere in the foliage you will find yourself
Subsided,
In a battle field,
Unarmed.
Desolate.
Dead rose bushes will look like home
And you will fall asleep
Tangled in the thorns
But the cuts won’t hurt as much as that
Two headed dragon
That’s been trying to blow out the birthday candles inside you,
Not realising that he’s left
Every last piece of you in ashes.
But the candle continues to burn.
The sun won’t shine here.
Neither will you.
You will stare into rivers wishing the reflection would change.
You will try finding vines on trees strong enough to hang from, but pretty enough to still look like a necklace around your neck.

At these times, little sister
Remember:
You are more than skin on bones
You are midnight cast shadows
To the nocturnal.
You are laughter like orchestra,
Like finger’s on cello,
You are strings,
That will shiver and shake,
But never, not ever
Break.
You are eyes like Van Gogh’s finished canvas.
You are not the store bought version of beautiful,
You are the definition.
You are not an extra 5 cents.
You are the change that will make a difference.
You are the earth’s 8th wonder.
You are bombarded significance
You are.
You are.
You are.
So don’t ever give up.

when did compasssion leave you
and get replaced by apathy
and lips touching bottles of alcohol
like they belonged to her mouth
you only wish you could hold the sun of her face
sweat off your worries in her holy
let her know that to be resurrected
you first need to perish
let her feel the sadistic toll of stillborn happiness
let the content promise
be a threat
let her know you will not auction off your heart
for it to be sold again at a profit
let her fall asleep knowing that
you will be there in the morning
but you will watch her all night long
to make sure
she does not leave you hollow like a haunted house
an abandoned building
you've watched too many lonely sunsets
to believe that hills like her are anything more than a shelter
you've heard too many whispers of the wind
to think that the way she touches you will last any longer than storm

I used to play games
Where I'd walk on the ceiling
And pretend I was a fly
My hair would climb down
From where it rested on my spine
And walk the corridors of my childhood home.

I used to play games
Where my closet I'd be cleaning
As I watched my parents cry
As the skeletons came out
Slurring and shouting
And clawing at the heart
Of my oh-so-fragile mother.

I used to play games
Where I would die while sleeping
And on my single bedded coffin I would lie
A knock on the door followed by
"Are you okay?"
My parents made the most repetitive sounds.
"I'm fine," I'd whisper, clawing at my own grave.