i do not know how to love
softly,
i walk across this ocean like
i am from heaven
but my feet keep slipping through
the surface,
roughly
i try to hold my bones inside my body
but i have gotten used to the way
they look on the outside,
quietly
i hold my own heart with my hands
because i cannot trust anyone else but,
tightly
too too tight.
but do not tell anyone, megan
do not tell anyone.
i wish i could have loved you,
softly.

i am trying to remind myself that
i am the one who has always held
my skin together on the worst days,
the one who has sewed myself back
up time and time again. i have picked
my own body off the bathroom floor
more 4am's than there are numbers,
taken myself to bed. no one has cared
for me like i have cared for me and
yet i don't know when i stopped
thinking i was my own home.

paint fingers,
jelly mouths,
katie's teletubbies
bike helmet.
mom said
now don't go too far
and the park was just
far enough to not be
able to see the house
but close enough to
smell dinner being made
and hear dad mowing
the front yard. no
skinned knees this day
just riding our bikes
through the grass,
down the big hill
that made us scream
until the bottom. wind
blowing through katie's
hair, too long then from
her refusal to have it
trimmed even one inch,
and capri sun's under
the weeping willow tree.
before the sun went all
the way to her bed, we
made flower crowns
from the dandelions,
picked an extra handful
for the dining table,
waved to donna as we
flew down the sidewalk,
ran hand in hand to the door
before dad had to call our
names one more time.

i sit on the
cold floor
of the shower,
just me and
myself, and
i tell her there
are good things
in the world.
aren't there? i
know there is
a reason she
and i have made
it this far.
there are
beautiful things,
megan,
beautiful things.

i want to
breathe
fire but i
fear i've
spent too
much time
drinking ice
water.

i am a bad artist
my body is a vessel for emotion that nearly never gets opened
and when it does, it's confetti blown from a sawed off shotgun
but for now, the safety is on
and little pieces of colored paper decorate my sleep in the form of nightmares
putting my finger over that trigger feels a lot like losing control
i am powerless
fighting fire with gasoline in a house i live in, alone
i am alone
because the people who taught me how to love do not love me and that makes me
lonely

did it ever occur to you that maybe i'm exactly where i wanted to be?
years and years of self destruction in hopes that i'll eventually be sick enough to take the medicine
sick enough to be bed ridden
mother in the chair in the corner of the room, praying for me
calling all the doctors, saying "she needs help"
but i tell her im sick and she says "i need help"
and i don't know how to get well with a hypochondriac

they told me to use sage
cleanse my soul, my environment, my headspace
and i agree with them because i don't know how to say that i'm already clean without having to explain that i've taken 2 baths today
and yesterday

lately i just can't seem to find my faith
i think it may have gotten lost somewhere between the hotel, three different therapists, and the letters i get in the mail from a team of people that want to know my truth
my truth?
well i apologize, your honor, as my truth is
an ocean, a non-linear mass of blue, only 5-7 percent discovered

i guess what i'm trying to say is

i am afraid
that when you ask me to take the safety off and pull the trigger
i'll forget how to aim

i want apologies,
not praise
when i say i had a better day today than yesterday,
don't smile and say
"i'm so proud of you!"
then have the audacity to blame
a version of myself you made
for rejecting the condescending look
on your dumb face

my days fill up
like balloons
with forced breath

seeing light
shine through the messed up blinds
like a projector playing a movie across my skin
about something slightly nostalgic
but very far away

when i leave my house
my skeleton is magnetic
i feel nothing
but the push and the pull
the lack of choice
and a deep-cutting desire
to once again
have the world
and my body
belong to me

i still remember how
it felt to hold your temple
fine dark hair reaching past
my second knuckle
and now my fingers plug
into air, i still rememeber
just how much to spread
them apart to accommodate
the sharp shelf of your
forehead, how to trace
your brow bone without
waking you up and
brush your eyelashes
to show how careful
i really am, these details
scare
me.

pomegranate tea
you forget my name as you
introduce your mother
and wait for her to leave::
                                                  :: you make sure to steep the tea
                                                     before placing it delicately between
                                                     my two, small hands. there's no
                                                     innuendo, you can tell i am nervous,
                                                     but i want to change. so you lead me
                                                     to your bedroom and turn on music,
                                                     that i still can't hear.

the *** was okay,
i was happy that you were patient.

by the time we finished,
i had the taste of tea
still in my mouth,
nothing had
changed,
and i pondered
my lack of love
as i drove away.