a relapse washed over me like the break of day
a firm and gentle wave caressing my every movement
this was only ever as far away as the edge of my finger tips
now I glide across the ice, and the blood flows red as your lips.

I've lived so long with you there.
Just sitting and waiting
it’s almost become calming, the way you press yourself against my skin
until you finally found a place.
Inside, I am reminded of you every time
I open my hand, to hold something more.

I live in a small room, overlooking the sea.
You are silent, breathing.
heaving my chest up and down, like the sound of solemn waves.
There is fear in me, that you’ve been in my lungs for so long
If I were to remove you, I wouldn’t be able to breathe.

I’ve lived so silent while you were there.
almost anxious of the sound of my own voice, rising up to
puncture the air, send sounds to bring you tumbling down
like the walls around my heart you crashed into,

I live in a big house, every window
Every door, is open.
People flood in
But so does the cold.
Trapping you inside of me, stinging my eyes
My throat is freezing, flooded with salt.
I can't speak so much to scream.

they think we die loudly, screaming and in protest,
in fact we die with our eyes ******* shut, so close to freedom
but afraid to see it.

Maybe if I write about it, it’ll go away.
Maybe if I spill my guts to a room of strangers I will no longer feel the danger
Maybe, just perhaps. If I **** in my stomach for long enough, it will leave me alone.
If you put a frog in boiling water they will jump out, if you put a girl in a corset she will shout that it’s too small! It won’t hold all of me and why would I want it to?
You see, cooking girls is a lot like cooking frogs, you’ve got to promise them cold water on a hot day, and you’ve got to promise that you’ll accept them even if they’re gay. If their legs are hairy, if their thighs are knee deep in celluloid you’ve got to insist that you can sit with them at the dinner table and while you’re slowly cranking up the hot water dial, you’ve got to let them believe that they’re not on trial, and when the water gets warmer so slowly that they can’t feel it until it’s too late.
You’ve got to create an atmosphere for deceit so when you hand them the revolver, it’s because they were the first ones to reach.
It’ll start with her friends, they’ll make comments about her plate size, or they’ll joke that they themselves have an “eating disorder” Only that they’ll, eat dis-order and dis-order and she’ll laugh and choke down another serving, while trying to order the thoughts in her mind, trying to find a way to respond to the obvious oddities of her social standings and trying not to be standing too close to the bomb when it drops, and when it goes off she’ll offer her baby fat as a portion of the poison that put her in this position in the first place.
So yeah, maybe if I write about it it’ll go away, maybe if I open my lungs like she opens her throat and purge the thoughts I’ve got squished into size two jeans that seem like they fit, I’ve got a bit of a chance that I can stand against the enemy. Which in the end is me, mind you, my mind fighting against the trails that I’ve hidden behind, maybe my self-esteem is lower than they would have it seem, and maybe I make the mistake of seeming like I’ve got it together when in reality I’m just living in the shadows of rehabilitation and I’ve been debating with the part of me which is still holding the revolver, that maybe I’m not over it and there’s a good chance I’ll never be, which might be okay but could also cost me my life.
Who knows though, maybe if I write about it, it’ll go away, maybe if I tell people what I’m going through it’ll be harder to relapse maybe I can just collapse on the notion that I’m notoriously negative and critically cynical about myself which means I deserve to skip desert, maybe it’s called EDNOS because my eating disorder knows which buttons to push when, and which messages to send, like you look like a whale when you sit down, your thighs don’t touch the hold onto each other in desperation, the amount you put into your stomach can feed a small nation, maybe if you write about it it’ll go away? Do you think dispelling words onto a blank is the only personification I crave? Do you think I’m small enough to be crushed? Can’t you see that I can’t be killed?
All I know is that I can’t keep this inside, I can’t hide from the demons in my mind anymore, I’ve let them fester there too long, I’ve got layers of lies making for a disguise with too many holes to hold anything but *******, I’ve got to let some of it out, I can’t keep living like this, I can’t keep lying to myself, I have to put this part of my life on the self. I don’t know if this will help. I just know I need to let it out.

Snap, crackle, pop, *******, maybe one day our way of life will match up, maybe someday you’ll shake the sad and sick way you sound with your face buried in the ground, snap crackle and pop, snap, crackle and pop.
Snap, like snap dragon, like fire breathing flower beating pollen from bee stings, letting you insert your syringe in, snap, my neck to keep me stagnate, snap your tongue as I walk but, cackle and cat call, call me something derogative, like *****, snap, my negotiative nature has me nearly kneeling on my knees screaming at the stars, snap, because I’m snapping out of this phase, faking it until I’ve made it am I manly enough yet? Binding my breast, walking with my legs apart holding inside the pains of a broken heart until it leaks from my pores, shorter hair and it’ll seem like I don’t have a care in the world, snap crackle pop *******, maybe one day your say won’t matter, maybe someday I’ll shake off the need to impress you when all you’ve done is oppress me. Impressively I’m openly opinionated still, despite your
Crackle, like cackle, like a catapult of insults, like injury that has no bruises, like being lost and found and the sound of your voice, is crackling. Caressing my nape with knives, making the demons inside harder and harder to hide from when they hide inside your hide, your skin, which you stick to me like crackle, snap crackle pop *******, maybe one day your opinions will be shattered by someone who’s louder. Maybe someday someone will smother your power. Maybe someday your soap box will be lit on fire. Snap, crackle, pop.
Pop, like gun shots, like self-entitled macho misters, mysteriously gliding into plain sight, entitling themselves heros where the title terrorist is more fitting, letting themselves let loose and losing themselves in the blood bath created by a society which values machismo over women saying “no” pop, like people placing bets on how many lip stick rings they can get around their *****, pop, like men making markers holding us down with words which pop our ear drums and drum us silent, like silently held hand guns hidden in plain sight, like women lined up to be killed where men should be lined up to learn, where girls are hurled under the bus because our skirts are too short and our voices too shrill, where we **** ambition that grows like snap, like a snap dragon, a fire breathing flower found beautiful but dangerous, like crackle, the cackle of your cat calls and like pop, like gun shots sounding into the streets, like the silence of the women we never knew we needed to heed. Snap, crackle, pop. Stop, holding your tongue and stay your hand, take a silent stand.
Snap crackle and pop *******, because today I can’t afford to let your words matter.

The sun rose with your name dripping from her lips this morning
every inch of myself itched with the burning imprint of your fingertips.
and with every moment your teeth scraped my hips.
My cries were a symphony that clashed with symbols of my satisfaction.
Our mumbled blessings cursed with the morning light.
Our memories washed by the whiskey of the previous night.
in this haze I can’t think
Of the difference between wrong and right.
4:00 am has never shone so bright.
and you and I aren’t bound for life.
I doubt we’re even bound for tonight.
But she and I and I and you
have stuck through tougher things,
with bound hands and stick like glue.
but if you lose yourself.
I will find you, underneath a blood moon.

Bumble bees aren’t built to fly. But that doesn’t mean she won’t. It has been scientifically proven that the wing span of the average one is too small to hold up its body mass, but that doesn’t mean they don’t, I like to imagine that every time her little wings manage to miraculously pick herself off the ground just high enough to hover about the flowers, she smiles triumphantly because she is doing something that everyone has ever told her was completely impossible to do,
I like to think this because it’s how I feel whenever I open my mind to talk to you.
Whenever I do, my strong words come out in mumbles, they tumble forth like crashing waves and the saving grace that’s saving me is the fact that you’ve held on this long already.
When I lift my lips to caress your palms, lay them flat against my cheek so the heat keeps moving between us can catch me off guard. When you hold my hand and disband the negative thoughts clouding my better judgement. I like to think that the width of my hips has only ever been measured by milestone makers, that the bones in my spine are the rocks we will walk on, that the spaces between my fingers had only ever been held by placeholders, that the broken hearts that felt like boulders were never louder than your soft voice whispering how beautiful I am in my ear, just soft enough for my demons to hear, and whenever you draw me near I like to think that it’s more so because I’m another warm body than the idea that you could find solace in the shape of my thoughts.
There are insects living undetected in the un-dissected regions of the legions of my organs. Butterflies with razor blade wings and they sting the sides of my diaphragm spiders biting the inside of my cheeks turning them fusica, I can’t write this poem.
I thought I would be able to pen exactly what it is that I want to say to you when the light hits your eyes and turns their emerald light blue, I overestimated my vocabulary and it’s twisty turny ways, I thought I could think of all that I wanted to say but I can’t.
Not because I haven’t been trying, I’d be lying if I said that I don’t think of a new way to describe your beauty every day, a new metaphor there was no doubt a Greek word for, it’s true that every inch of my mind burns with curiosity when you’re close to me. It’s just that I can’t write this poem…
I can’t capture you with these hands, they’d shake and snap you, I can’t carry you with these arms they are too small and they’d break too. I can’t carve you out of marble and marvel at my masterpiece because honestly the piece of mastery is how and why out of all the women in the world you would have chosen me! I can’t write this poem. I can’t blame the color of my cheek on the spiders in my veins, I can’t conjugate a verb to make sure it’s not only heard but understood. To understand my feelings towards you I have to try and understand you.
I can’t write this poem, like bumble bees aren’t built to fly, I can’t form a structure around the constant beat of my heart when it palpitates whenever we’re apart.
I can kiss you.
I can’t write this poem and offer you the better parts of me. I cannot be the strong and lonely bumble bee. I can base my laughter on the crinkled corners of your eyes, I can surround my words around the good deeds you’ve done, I can become undone under your patient and practiced thumb. I cannot write this poem, but I can’t stay silent. I cannot simply shy from the way your eyes pierce my shield, I can muster up the strength to stretch out my tiny wings and sing, I cannot write this poem, but that doesn’t mean I won’t.

This much I know is true.
It’s 10 am on April the 13th 2014.
Despite the ruckus caused by me packaging my books up my roommate is still fast asleep.
I woke up this morning with a sore throat and a rage that boiled like the water I use to make my coffee.
I pretended to talk to you this morning, like I’ve done before, on mornings when the sun didn’t quite rise fast enough, and my eternal clock is stuck on the look on your face when you told me to leave.
“It’ll be hard for you to come back”
I heaved a slow breath from my lungs and told you that I was angry at your inability to talk about the elephant in the room.
“When the doors are locked, and you don’t have a key”
The way I see it, the locks we rusted and you didn’t really want to keep me away.
That being said:
I’m not in love with you.
This much I know is true,
It’s 10:15 am on April the 13th 2014.
I’m wondering if I’m actually going to send this to you, or just let you slide out of my life.
Like I had wanted her to do the first time you kissed me. But I wanted you to miss me, not the physical closeness, of course that was also nice, but just the way my smile widens my eyes, or the bashful way I play around the diabolical sin were in the middle of committing.  
Not my soul, but the sound of my voice, not my heart, but the way it beats.
My roommate just woke up, it’s weird because I’ve started to put my life back into boxes, I still feel like I live in a fox hole, faithless. There is no god, I re-realize this fact when a book of poetry slips from my hand and lands on my foot, and I curse myself and continue taking things of the shelf.
I missed you, maybe the bitterness is just that I wanted you to miss me too.
Not because I’m your lover, but because I’m your friend.
Also, the *** was really good and I’d be kind of sad if that had to end.
This much I know is true.
Please believe me, I’m not in love with you.
It’s 10:30 am on April 13th 2014
I’m hungry and I want to get something to eat, this is the last verse and I can’t beat myself up about the things I wrote, I choked on my on imagination and when it finally passed and I could breathe I assumed it was best for me to let it be, and because it’s exam week and the stress has made me weak, I didn’t fight it, I thought that you had gotten bored with me and moved on, I thought it  was kind of ironic that it had taken this long. That was a joke, self-deprecation, when I reread the poem I realized it was a lie.
Like all my poems are, stretching truths over spools of thread to weave around the language I’ve been given. Stumbling across synonyms and subjects, pulling inspirations from different interpretations and sometimes that comes off too strong, but know all along I meant it when I said.
If I get to close I’ll leave, I need you to trust that that is
as much as I know to be true.

They used to call me the shoe less poet, because even though my mind was never quite in one place, my thoughts always knew where to fall, and I walked with a steady pace. When I called someone’s bluff they didn’t stuff around and after all was said and done. She had come undone and I was the only one there to listen, so with burdened hearts and heavy lids, she bid me welcome into her bed. I kissed her ripped skin raw, and she saw just how gentle another human being could be but she didn’t see how I could possibly respect her if she said no, because a certain time ago a wolf in hot boys clothing had stolen into her heart, but not before ripping her apart.
He had said, consent is ****.
She was 17 with her heart in her chest and just trying to do her best with the subject of objectification and recommendations from her friends to go for it, when he rounded the corner and saw her and saw that what she was was beautiful.
only two points pretty and three points potential love partner, he’s heard stories of what she’s done and how with a certain touch she comes undone, she came undone under his thumb and now the thing is he doesn’t even know what he’s done, but instead he’s said.
Consent, is ****.
So get on your knees, she doesn’t need another reason to heed her mothers warnings that boys will be boys who will beg and plead and lie, but she’s still trying to come terms with idea that she might actually be worth a second glance, another chance, a single dance. He was never supposed to be anything more than a single pleasure, but he put pressure on her bleeding parts and now part of her feels inclined to decide to let him lie down beside her and hide from the monsters inside.
He said. Consent is ****.
Like her ***** is a wave he can ride until the tide of her mind comes to terms with the lies he’s presented her with. ****, like maybe if you stopped to check, when her thighs opened it was because of his vice grip, when his lips met with hers it wasn’t with love, but lust and he must have been drunk because surely a sober man would know better than to force a 17 year old girl to hurl as he shoved himself inside her, hiding his guilt with the lilt and the tilt of his head and his killer line, “consent is ****.” Baby, it might be, baby it can’t be. Because she’s trying to say no but it’s hard to mutter words when his face is curled into every positive memory about this place, when she has to drink her weight in *** to over come the memories of a misshapen youth, you can bet shes begun to become undone, but it’s not in the right light, her brown hair doesn’t shine in the same way that she has in past and the last thing on her mind was the way you grasped her behind and told her that.
Consent is ****.
Like, maybe if she just said yes she could stop bleeding better yet, make a bet that basically says that she’s useless without his hand to help her stand, perhaps if she just said yes and moaned a little louder it would block out the bleeding passage of herself that is begging and pleading and trying to lead herself to show her true colors, which is red. The shade of shame spread on her bed spread. So when I kiss her wounds and slowly wound her around my wrists, I have to take things slow so that I can’t hurt her and puncture her soul because she’s been mangled tangled around lies and this mistruth that was presented to her when you said.
“Consent. Is. ****.”