I am untold metaphors
that contradict each others existences
I am lightness
and darkness
and everything in between
I'm also the lack of the in between  
I'm the lack of existence
And existence itself
I am every extreme
but most importantly
no perfectly constructed poetry
can define me
and I wouldn't want it any other way

I've stopped searching
for my missing pieces
Not because I'm whole
but because
I finally
feel
alive

You have to take care of yourself
Watch out
Don't go out alone at night
be afraid of every noise
but why are you so afraid
you don't need to be frightened
you're just weak
it's nothing

What does the color remind you of
The color red?
It reminds me of something
I miss
Something I can't have
and something I can't be
it's hard because the color is so pretty
Why must it remind me of you?
Why does everything
remind me of you

I'm waiting for leaves to fall off trees
for art to fall at my feet
I'm waiting to wear baggy sweaters
to be wrapped in something cozy
I'm waiting for pumpkin pie
a delicious treat
I'm waiting for sipping on hot tea
my liquid warmth
I'm waiting for Autumn

I still dream of you sometimes
Press snooze
Just ten more minutes
With the idea of you
With the idea I'm not alone
That someone would look at me
With amazement in their eyes
Just ten minutes
Okay?

I'm not here for small talk
I want to avoid the wave of
okays
and blank faces
I don't wish to drown in
meaningless conversations

How are you?
This isn't a surface level greeting
Dig deeper
How are you feeling?
Is your mind your enemy today?
Or your friend?
Or is there a disconnect, like an acquaintance?

How's the weather today?
I'm not talking outside
I can check that myself
but what is the weather in your head
Is it bland?
Is it nice?
Do you need protection?

Do you like this place?
This physical space
When you fully engage in the world
Do you like it?
What would you change?

What do you like to do?
How do you spend your time?
When the world is crashing down
What helps?

I'm not here for small talk
So don't get alarmed
When I try to get to know you

Not all the poetry I've shared
is up to my current standards
some hurts to read
knowing I thought
that it was good enough to share
but I don't want to delete any of it
because if I delete who I used to be
how can I prove I've grown

I love how I can transform words
into art
but I'm lost as to what I want
when the side of me
the one that hides in the dark
that holds hands with melancholy
grips onto anything
onto everything
that might make it worthwhile
is the one that writes so effortlessly
but the side of me that is most at peace
has trouble writing more than a line

He tied an anchor to her
Threw her in the deep end
When she came out with a fear
Of drowning
All they did was ask her
Why she'd go under
If she knew
She wouldn't be able to breathe

You want to kiss my lips
Inhale my lightness
Caress my skin
But only at its softest
Hold my hands
When they're not icy cold
You are looking for someone to hold
Someone to be your cure
Without acknowledging you have problems
I want someone to show the world to
Not just sunsets over lakes
But also rigid rocks
That you can cut yourself on if you're not careful enough

I want to ask
What reminds you of me?
But if you were to ask me back
I couldn't pick one thing
Because my mind likes to bring
Everything back to you
But then maybe my answer is
That I remind myself
Of you

On this map
This representation of an area
I marked 2 spots
One was me and the other was you
I ran my finger along the route between us
Telling myself that there was nothing in the way
Only a little space
There's a way from point A to point B
Nothing could get between us
Except for you were unmoving
And I was stuck
We are 2 separate areas on a map
But I was foolish enough to see the routes between us
And feel connected

You say you're not good at art
but I've seen you create things
on your hardest days
and it's a masterpiece
knowing that the world is still so bright to you
Even at its darkest
And you are darling in the way
That you try to pick something
You love about yourself each day
Because you know great artworks
Aren't always beautiful as a whole

I want to be creative
Correction
I want to have amazing streaks of imagination fill me
Until they flow out onto paper
And I want that everyday
I want the world to inspire me
I want to paint the world in a new perspective
To share it with you

Today I'm craving touch
I'm craving that the outside world will remind me I'm real
Or maybe I'm craving the absence of
The world
Maybe I'm craving the absence of myself
Maybe I'm craving to disappear

Today I'm craving knowledge
The knowledge of what I want

The first time you hear
"Beauty is pain"
Is when your mother is brushing tangles
Out of your hair
You're too young to care

The next time
Is when you're getting your hair done
For an event
Bobby pins everywhere
And this time it sticks

Your legs sting
After you shave them
For the first time
But you remind yourself
Beauty is pain
And go on with your day

You remind yourself again
As you pluck hairs
From your eyebrows
It helps you somehow

Beauty is pain
Your stomach growls
You haven't eaten
Because you want to be skinny
You want to be pretty

Beauty is pain
Is all you hear
When you walk into surgery
To change your face

Beauty is pain
Lingers in the back of your mind
When your boyfriend hits you
For the first time

One day you look in the mirror
All you see is pain
You wonder how it ended up this way

What would you highlight
In a book of your life
What's most important
Most exciting
Most inspiring
What reminds you everything's alright
And
Would you ever think to highlight my name?

I swear my stomach
Doesn't know about Gravity
Because I can feel it
Trying to fly away
Leave the world behind
It jumps high
It even does flips
But it can't fly
However I understand why
It will continue to try

I'm not easy to manage
I have a storm in my mind
Trying to find its way out
And I will grip unto you
Like I've never seen sunlight
But you don't need to calm the storm
I just like to know there's still light

You come to me in a memory
You come as something broken
Something lost
Something long gone
You come as a message in a bottle
However the bottle broke
And the message is soggy
You come like midnight
Dark
A little too quiet
Or a little too loud to be happy
You come as a barrier
You get in the way of me moving forward
You come like an ice cold winter morning
A little too frozen to fix with coffee
You come as a memory of who I was
You come to tell me what I'm not
You come to me when I think I might be alright
But I'm not
You come to me in a memory
To remind me that's all I've got
A memory of something I lost

I used to be afraid of picking up broken pieces
For a fear of getting hurt
But now it's an obsession
I observe the sharp edges
Run my fingers across jagged points
If I bleed I hope it might act like glue
I want to mend the broken pieces
Because I'm broken too
And maybe if I fix this
I can be fixed too

I'm the smell before rainfall
And you're thunder in a storm
And it's a strange kind of beautiful
When dark clouds come to play

Sometimes I love this broken world
Sometimes I just love that it's broken too

I say I'm okay
but I'm not
I'll have my good days
and I'll have my worst
but until the day
I go to bed without
a feeling of dread
or tears on the bed
pounding in my head
the inability to catch my breath
I'm not okay

I won't truly be okay
Until the day
I can say hello
without having to rehearse it
or wonder if I said it
too quiet
or too loud
if it even came out
and worrying if
the conversation will go past that

If the most I say
about how I'm feeling
is okay
and you had to ask in the first place
I'm probably not

If I'm more worried
if you're okay
than I'm probably not
because until I unlearn
how to pick everybody but myself up
I'm not

I say I'm okay
so you don't have to worry about me
but I'll still cling to all the care
and love you give to me
because I'm still unsure
if its all I get
so until the day
I don't feel the need
for reassurance that you care for me
I'm not okay

Until the day
I can no longer relate to this
I'm not okay
but I'm working on it

Am I a hopeless romantic
Or a hopeless girl
I'm always dreaming for something more

I'm a puzzle
But half of my pieces
were thrown away
So I keep adding pieces
From different puzzles
I guess I'd rather be whole
Than be right

I say I'm done
with being treated like ****
because I'm a human
and I deserve respect
but I still get surprised
when I'm treated right
and I apologize
when I've done nothing wrong
but I do stand up for myself occasionally
so that's something
right?

The things I don't tell you
When you ask what I've learned
My friends care
But sometimes they don't know how to care for me
I can be with my friends and still be lonely
People can love me
Even when I don't
I can love how people feel towards me
That doesn't mean I have feelings back
If I love someone
Don't
Relationships are a mess
I'm a mess
But I'm not always the problem
I'm not the answer either
Its good to help when I can
But sometimes I can't
Its okay to leave problems unsolved
I don't need to know everything
I'm still learning

I should wear a sign that says fragile
but instead I wear fake strength
and pretend that I don't break

Where do I fall into your life?
or is that all
do I just fall?

I'm me for my hours spent on poetry
And my love of tea
And dancing off my energy
I'm me for singing quietly
And walking off shyly
But maybe I'm me for more than you can see
Maybe there's more to the hours spent in bed on netflix and tumblr
Maybe there's a girl that you don't see
She seems to think hiding is the best way to handle stress
And telling everyone she's okay will make her less of a mess
She rates herself lower than everyone she meets
She tries to communicate the best she can
But everything in her tells her to panic
And maybe I smile as much as I can
But something inside is crying out
And maybe I don't know me
Maybe that's something I'm still figuring out
Maybe I have all the pieces but they're mixed around
And maybe I could be more put together
But there's no such thing as perfection
So a little broken beauty won't hurt
I'm just another human
That has some things to figure out

I'm on a swing
Two chains
and a seat
I feel like I'm flying
or I could be dying
if I jumped
but the ground isn't too far from my feet
but the sky isn't too far out of reach
and I like to come back
to this swing set
when everything's too much
all my dreams
out of reach
grip the chains
and pump my legs
until my hands are blistered
from holding the chains
and my hips are in pain
from the force of the seat
because this is where I realize
if I push hard enough
nothing is too far from my reach

I'm not a doll
I don't belong in a box with a label
I'm not a puppet
Don't try to control me
I'm not anything but myself
I am an individual
I defy society's pressure
To be anything but myself
I won't be labeled
Or controlled
Or molded into somebody else
I'm proud to be myself
Don't insult me for it
Because to be someone I enjoy being
Is far from an insult

I'm always in the way
It doesn't matter what I say
I have no power
I'm just a child
but I'm not as cute
I'm a teen
I'm in between
Always in between emotions
But the difficulties
They're constant

We crumble and fall
While trying to prove we're alright
We live behind a wall
Because we're scared of the outside
We breath in our tears
So we can smile
We name others as fake
To replace the name
We're taught to fight
And we forget to love
Only as we die
Do we learn to live
Because living is less accepted
Than to merely exist
And living is just the start
To defying this game
Because to live as we want
We have to rewrite the game

I always liked when it snowed
Because no matter how cold it was outside
I'd always have somewhere and someone
to keep me warm
And no matter how little I had
I'd always have something to give
And I'd wear a bow
Because the gift of family was enough
Why isn't it always like this

I wonder what will become of me?
If I'll ever be what I want to be
Could I ever be looked up to?

Just a stupid morning
Of sticking to routine
Just a tired morning
Not getting any closer to my dream
Just a boring morning
Out of bed
Dressed
Breakfast
Out the door
Is this how it is to live
Or am I not living at all

I've read my poems
over and over
It seems like the only person
I can connect with
Is me...

There is a monster in my head
It's feeding off my troubles
but for some reason
I don't want to let it go

There are women against feminism
And I really don't get that
Feminism is about equal rights for men and women
And without that
I would spend my life suffering through the remark
"Get back to the kitchen"
Because it wouldn't be my place to deny that
And little girls would grow up
With their purpose in life to be
To look pretty
And have children
Without feminists
I would grow up and never get the chance to vote
Without feminism
It wouldn't matter if I had an education
As long as I looked good enough to get a husband
Isn't there something wrong with that
And feminism is around today
Because some men still look at women as objects
Because women can't dress nice
Without a male seeing it as an invitation
Because women who have *** are *****
But guys who have *** are praised
Because women get paid less than men
Feminism still exists because so does inequality
And men don't think I'm blaming you
I'm blaming the society
That uses a woman's body to sell anything from burgers
To perfumes
I'm blaming the society
That constantly photoshops women
I'm blaming the society
That blames the victim
I'm blaming the society  
That makes women believe feminism is wrong

Sometimes I'm sensitive
Sometimes I'm strong
Sometimes I break
Sometimes I break free
Today I feel strong
Though tomorrow I may not
And that's okay
Because that's what makes me human

Here's a poem for my mother
My favorite teacher of all
She never stood in front of a whiteboard
She didn't have me raise my hand to ask a question
She was just always there when I needed her
She taught me how to be kind
And this needed no lecture
She was just the kindest person I knew
She taught me to fall in love with language
She never led me to believe that I had a reading level
She shared with me what she wrote
And she shared with me what she read
And even if I didn't fully understand
It still felt like magic
Knowing that words could create different worlds
And she taught me how to do just that
How to create a world with language
She never had to give me a grade
Because I passed creating something I was proud of
And she still teaches me
With everything she does
And this is why to me she's the best
Teacher
Poet
And of course mom

You don't find scars on my skin
So you think I'm just fine
You don't see in my eyes that I cried all night
But some of us don't wear our scars like clothing
Some show scars in poetry written in the dark
Where they feel the rawest emotion
And I'm one of them
I bleed my emotion into poetry
And hope you can make sense of it more than I can
So someone can you tell me
How am I feeling?

I wish I didn't feel so much
Because only now that I let you go
Does it truly feel like I'm falling

I wonder sometimes
If it's just me who's running away

Please
Can I have a dark night
Or invisibility
I need to disappear right now

Have you heard the broken words?
Of a happy girl
On a sad day
Have you read the letters
Almost Illegible
And tear stained
Addressed to the past
And even though she could have a bright future she only looks back
Have you heard the cries too familiar you can't sleep
Have you realized where you put your energy?

I'm begging summer
Can you please stay?
I don't want to go back to that place
I feel so small
Even walking down the halls
Just get to class
You'll be okay
Hoping that the teacher doesn't call my name
Just a hello
And I panic and look away
When lunch comes I don't want to eat
So many people I can barely breathe
Help me summer
I wouldn't have to feel this way
If you would just stay