Your sent is intoxicating
Your the drug I crave the most
The drug I can never consume
I want to overdose on your eyes but they rarely ever meet mine    
I want to make you feel saved the way you've made me
I want you to see your smile and cry tears of joy just as I've
I want to devour your pain and make it my own
I want to steal your heart and mend you're soul                            
I want our broken pieces to collide in one beautiful spirit

Lives lost
a terrible cost
for the stupidity
of men seeking power

Many children do starve
with no turkey to carve
for the stupidity
of men seeking power

Many more are now homeless
as the people grow hopeless
for the stupidity
of men seeking power

It's this power they seek
that paints a picture so bleak
for their stupidity
of caring only for power

your arms feel like home
and i've been homesick
for quite some time

if i stopped eating
people would compliment me
on how thin i am
and when they saw the bruises
they pressed their mouths
shut tight
and just joked about
how clumsy i could be
with their easily uneasy smiles.
i don’t know if they
just didn’t see
or if they just weren’t
looking.
introducing him
to my friends was like
living in a ****** part of town,
having someone over
and hearing the racket of gunfire
outside of your window
and then having them say to you,
“oh, listen,
you can hear the fireworks
from here!”
and being too embarrassed
to correct them.
so maybe i’m not sure
if i believe in fireworks;
bombs are too often
mistaken for them.
but i can distinguish the difference
now, i can, and i will not
teach my daughters that when
he pushes you down in the dirt
and pulls on your pigtails
it’s because he likes you.
because when i covered up
those bruises on my body
in too-light concealer
like i’d never learned how to cover up
love-bites and tired eyes,
there was a voice in the back of
my mind that was telling me
that he only pushed me
down because he loved me.
i do not want a voice
inside my daughter’s heads
that sounds like me,
telling them that they deserve
their split lips.
i will tell my daughters to wear
boxing gloves over their manicures,
i will tell my daughters that
“love” is not an excuse,
i will tell my daughters that no one
is allowed to give you
a black eye and expect you
not to punch back harder,
i will tell my daughters
that you are not weak for getting hurt
because the weak ones
are those who let their anger
and insecurities
manifest themselves
in fists and words.
i will tell my daughters
the difference between bombs and fireworks,
i will tell them that they may sound
the same sometimes,
but fireworks don't ****
innocence.

But you stood there and watch me destroy myself.

she leaves
everything
on a page,
all her sorrow,
her love
and her rage,
and I truly believe
she will write
herself free
of the jailers
who fastened
her cage.

I wouldn't call them scars. Our bodies are ancient calendars marked with times and places. Tonight, you are not real. You are the desperate ocean lapping at the shoreline trying to take back the secrets in the bottles cast off by lovers, and children, letters to the dead sometimes. They are not your secrets, but they came to you first. They are full of feelings you have once felt or will feel. The bottles glisten in the sand mockingly, beautifully, painfully, like window shopping for jewelry you'll never be able to afford. You never expect to want the glass back after it has been pulled out of you. But the stories inside are your stories now too. You cast them off in the same manner hoping somone better than the sea will find them. The story about your cancer, your mother, the love you feel right now, the love returned, the time you thought of the beauty of a flower, the flower you killed to show someone how beautiful it was, the realization of the importance of stillness. All those stories like broken bottles in your skin. Like jewels encrusted on a big brass door leading to a room you live in. But tonight, you are the ocean at high tide, finally getting your bottles back.