My aunt is a journalist on TV,
She conveys messages to millions of people.
She's been to Afghanistan and around the world;
Providing a voice to those with none.
She is successful, intelligent, kind.

My grandma and I sit down to watch her show this afternoon--
My grandma wants to know what my aunt is wearing,
She tells me "she looks fat"
I say nothing.
Because we're women.
How many people ignored her message about the Syrian refugees? How many people thought about her hair or her body instead?

I broke up with you
Because I'm dishonest; a cough syrup symptom of walls I built so high.

I broke up with you
Because when I look at you I hate you; that glare of pain in your eye. The pain I've caused it hangs like smog over once beautiful hazel-greens.  

I broke up with you
Because you remind me of my parents' relationship... If you could even call it that. Doomed from the beginning, loomed and grinning over my sister and I.  

I broke up with you
Because I'm an *******.
Because I'm afraid.
Because I'm selfish.
Because I don't deserve love.

No matter how hard I scrub
I will never be clean.

I bite my tongue until it bleeds, but I feel nothing--
or is nothing the feeling of everything?

There were so many words we could've exchanged so naturally we sat in silence. Our minds loud enough to drown the need for conversation.

Sometimes I wish I could disappear
They never guessed this would rip me in half,
This is ripping me in half.
But it’s fine,
It’s just fine.
I can’t get high anymore,
I can’t get high because I need more and more and more and it’s never enough. It’s never enough to forget.
It’s never enough to forgive.
I can taste metal in my dreams—
this is all the life I’ll ever need.

It covers me in blankets,
and silences me like the morning after a snow storm,
here the world is muted, dampened, softened under its weight.
The noises start again when we dig ourselves out.
She doesn't dig herself out,
she sits at her window and watches the figures below,
she's been buried for so long what's a few more days?

There are paintings in my bones,
When I retract myself far enough from reality I can see every sight as a painting, a portrait, waiting to happen.

I had a nightmare,
But then I woke up to the rain,
Echoing softly off my window pane,
But I woke up in vain, because everything’s the same.

What do you want from me?
With your cities of concrete? Are you complete?
What do you want from me?
Your skyscraper views and your morning news,
What do you want from me?
Your holiday in the countryside, where does happiness reside?  
What do you want from me?

I found truth at the bottom of everything,
I found peace in the war that I’m waging,
I found belief in the lack of,
I found trust without love,
I found you, at the bottom of everything.

I crave a different state of mind,
Make me more honest, make me connect with people make me more open, smart and kind.

I don't crave the come down,
Make me feel tired, make me sleep but have bad dreams, make me feel distant, make my body ache and head pound.

So when the money comes around like it always does I'm constantly torn between up and down, a battle of is, isn't and was.

These last few months left a bad taste in my mouth;
The bad taste of dagger flavoured alcohol,
Of too much ****, cough syrup and coke.

This month left me empty and broke,
I want to choke out the truth to you but some things are too painful to speak--

I never imagined something so painful wouldn't bleed.

We are not dead,
We are just waiting,
Life is a joke,
Feels like I’m fading,
No way back, no way home,
Home is in the past,
All I do is roam,
Place to place,
Face to face,
No comfort in these crowds,
My head is foggy,
I can’t live here it’s too loud.

When I'm high it's not that I'm less sad-- I just feel the sadness in a different way... and somehow that helps.

Life is a cycle with a lot of revolving bits and pieces that are always changing in a million different ways, separating and joining. But it’s all a cycle and everything is made of the same stuff with the same energy in life and death.

Life is a cycle with a lot of revolving bits and pieces that are always changing in a million different ways; separating and joining. But it’s all a cycle and everything is made of the same stuff with the same energy in life and death.

What if I don’t have any answers?
What if I don’t ever know anything that’s true?
Does that bug you like it bugs me too?

Why am I so tired? My spirit is so low and dies with the trees and I feel the disease of human kind. Not so kind. Staring into the fate of the blind. We’re all so blind. So blind.so blind.

I am a crumbling doll of ash in a city of paper...

We’re all afflicted with the same blindness,
grabbing at objects in the dark,
Fighting because we don’t know better

I ****** my best friend.
We were drunk, but I can tell she wants me sometimes-- even when we're sober.
I forgot about it until lunch the next day. Hit me like a ton of "ohfuckwhatihaveidone" bricks falling from the delapitated crumbling building that is my life.

I ****** my other best friend too.
He's in love with me, so maybe it meant something more.

I'm not even that pretty-- maybe they just like the concept of the "hot mess"... Or maybe I'm the one attracted to them, maybe I feel I have nothing to offer except ***.

Within a moment I understand the universe— and then it is gone.

I create more problems so I have something to solve.
I’m the master of my own destruction and my own purpose.
I’m not sure I know what would happen if I stopped—
Who would we be?

Medicate a generation,
So no one wakes up or asks any questions;
I'll take the pills because the truth doesn't make this worth living,
and I'll take the drugs because I'm tired of living a lie.

I'm learning about life in a bubble.
I'm learning to use words but not speak.
So when I talk it sounds rehearsed or fake,
Until I don't even know who I am or how I arrived here;
but I look and dress and act like all the figures around me.
Am I part of this?
Is this really who I’ve decided to be?

"You're not alone"
Am I supposed to take comfort in that?
I want to be isolated in my suffering.
I do not wish this on another.

"But you're pretty"--
As
If
I
Only
Exist
To
Be
Aesthetically
Pleasing
To
You--
I am pretty,
So why am I empty?