Before you love me,
I need you to know that I am the cracked knuckles you got from punching a wall after your mother told you she was leaving for good.

I am the old mascara marks on your pillowcase you've yet to wash off, the window in your bedroom that won't open all the way and squeaks like hell during the night.

Before you love me,
You need to see me on the nights when I can't breathe correctly because my mind can't stop counting all the people I've lost.

You need to see me lock the door 17 times and make sure all the faucets aren't dripping at all because I'm afraid of drowning.

You need to hear my voice crack when I shout, raw and insecure. And know that I'm not violent but my words sting more than the 14 shots you took the night your ex broke your heart.

But before you love me,
I also want you to know that I love to pick flowers when I'm at stop lights and I'll give them to you but I always forget a vase.

I'll sing about how our eyes match and how you kick me in your sleep but I don't mind.

On days when you can't stand to live anymore I will vacuum up all your tears from the ground and we'll go to the roof and scream until our lungs collapse.

In the morning I will kiss the nectar from your cheeks and trace the letters of your name on your skin so you remember to always think of yourself first.

I'll probably dream of silly things and we'll laugh about them and I'll make you tea with extra honey because I know you love it.

And even though I know you hate it, I'll always smile because of your dimples and count the freckles on your back and give you a new reason to love you every day.

Most of all, before you even think about loving me, I need you to love yourself.

I would hold a vase I made in high school art and wonder why I could never fill it to the top. I never understood what people filled them with anyway.

I would go to both my parents graves and ask them to forgive me even though I never forgave myself.

I would take the time to write out every disgusting and broken part of me and indulge in the fact that I am truthfully human.

I would paint stories on my skin in crayon, the kind that get turned into lessons and read to small children.

I would thank Mother Earth for letting me **** the life out of her until neither of us could bear it.

I would cry once for the children who only know what it's like to breathe underwater.

And I would take a yellow rose, plucking every last petal and name each one of them a different country I would visit; in another life, on another shore.

If you love me,
promise to me that you will hold my bones,
tuck my soul into a box and send it away with your thoughts.

If you love me,
wrap my tenacious spirit around you
when the sun resigns and the rain pours heavy.

If you love me,
whisper to the trees of how selfish and ungrateful and sad I was,
praise me for being truthfully human.

And If you love me,
you will erase the miles of self revulsion from your genes and
*let me carry your misery with me when I go.

Week 1: I was laughing exactly twenty-two minutes after I held your lifeless hand. They called it coping. I called it insanity.

Week 2: I haven't slept a full night in a week because I can't remember the last thing you said to me.

Week 3: I still reach for your hand every time an airplane flies by. I still despise planes.

Week 4: Can you ask God if I'm allowed to be angry yet?

Week 5: I mourn the grandchildren you will never meet and I will never bear because they might have your eyes.

Week 6: We lit a cigarette for you today as if God would let such a deadly sin into the pearly gates. Happy birthday.

Week 7: I've never liked this house.

Week 8: I jokingly call other people Dad until it doesn't sting to say that word anymore.

Week 9: "I want to have a better relationship with you," turned into "I'm so sorry," too quickly.

Week 10: Depression is such a mouthful, three course meal of arsenic.

Week 11: You always told me I had a natural beauty, didn't need to paint a face of porcelain. I wear a lot of makeup now.

Week 12: I'm still not ready to write about you yet.

Loving you was
the veins full of
Percocet,
Bad decisions and empty words.
Used our pasts to cure our presents,
Or to numb the pain
Enough to make it to sunrise.

Loving you was
The liquor lies we told
That burned my throat raw
When they asked about us.
Silent swears and repentance.
"Tomorrow."

War
can be like
love.
Gun shells and slamming doors
like confusing
apologies for ammunition.
trading
one life for the other.
Me?
or
You?
What are we fighting for?
starving countries.
Our hearts are
arsenals tucked behind closed minds.
Are you getting tired of the
shattering hearts and insults.
It started with
You.

I never understood
how flowers grew through concrete
until I saw the smile slice through your sad eyes.

And your voice echoed
like screams in an empty corridor
after losing the only thing that mattered to you.

You wore your pride like a crown,
didn't let anyone tear you down
but sometimes the throne was too much pressure.

You poisoned your spectators
slowly, like secondhand smoke
before giving them a breath.

Consequences do not apply
when your arrogance is blind
and you play the man in the sky.

But you will fall to your knees
because it's Judgment Day,
and you're the world's biggest sinner.

My father made a new friend
Mother does not approve of.
Draped in orange and white,
bears a fire in her he cannot handle.

But with lips pressed against her
he took in her hidden ugliness.
She was too clingy.
He said,
"I can't breathe."

Those three words became the worst we'd ever heard
right behind
"You have cancer."

Time became a distant tune;
waiting,
waiting,
waiting.

My father has expiration dates
tattooed under his eyelids.
He plans his funeral like the 50th birthday party he will never get
but there will be too much blurry vision and black,
no one will know the difference.

1.  It is hard to love beautiful when it is made of porcelain.
2. You cannot tear off your flesh to keep someone warm and expect to be fine.
3. Thunderstorms and the way you say my name both make me fearful.
4. Breathing in toxic fumes will make your lungs collapse and your heart ignite.
5. You taught me that making love to your mouth was the only way I'd ever be heard.
6. Men do not love like women who love like breathing is not a priority.
7. There is proof God exists.
8. Burning down the truth while it is still in your mouth is not poetic.
9. You can't wipe the blood from your hands if it's been there for too long.
10. Purple is not the color of royalty, it is the color of sin.

Empty promises;
you learn to admire them in their pretty little boxes.
Wrapped in silk lies,
smoothed over with false hope and contradicting faith.

Hollow chests and shattered hearts are the equivalent
of birthing babies who cannot breathe,
aching for something that will not be there.

Angry tears and snapping jaws
were born in the same moment
disappointment crawled into your womb
and made a home of your soul.

Loving in hate longs for clarity,
clings to sound with deaf ears,
singing songs about heaven and hell.

Vacant eyes and unstable thoughts
make for nice conversation
with a man that teaches you
how to tie a noose with your words.

I thought poetry was a series of
notes and rhythms;
had to sing myself to sleep
with a voice too raspy from the tears.

I didn't know poetry was the coma
you wake up from
when you find the right words
to express your thoughts.

I didn't know it was
the lonely you feel
on the nights surrounded by humans
but no people.

So I waited and prayed for the words,
didn't let poetry bring me to my knees.
Praise God,
praise God we can express ourselves.

And I would've never believed
that poetry would make you
feel alive in the pain,
proud in the shame,
forever changed.

Back when I thought poetry rhymed.

Each time you said my name,
gun shots went off in my mind;
warning sirens.
But I often mistook them for fireworks.

Your words were like bullets,
the kind Cupid would use if he had a shotgun.
They killed me.
But not as much as they made me feel alive.

A little less than classy.
A **** and chuck,
one and done.
But that's fine with me, baby.
No emotions,
no feelings.
Just two lonely souls that make something
that doesn't come close to love, at night.
I wonder what we could bring to the table
if we laid our hearts down
like sacrifices to a God we don't believe in.
And I want to hear you plead guilty
to the jury of my not-so-innocence
because the only praise I'll ever get from you is
the sound of my clothes piling up on your floor.

These are the lies we've broken
and the promises we've told.

Sing to me freedom,
fight for the song.

Surrender to the King,
bow to the battle.

Drink the blood
and spill the poison.

Confused by your words.
Tell them softly.
No questions allowed.

I can hold my breath for
1 minute and 15 seconds.
I still practice sometimes
in case you come to hold me again.
You held me a lot back then-
up against walls and doors and even as we lay in bed.
Your fingers left ever-present bruises on my neck.
You convinced yourself you left them with your mouth
but your hands were my enemy.
*****. Wuss.
They are still curses to me.
Pet-names
You called me when I clumsily ran into your fists.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
I can’t remember anymore.

My love
for you
has me tying
my own
**noose.

They come in waves.
Kamikaze planes or
lovely flowers and sweet lullabies.
Blood boils,
slapping against my skin,
Sometimes.
My love is seasonal,
It won't stay.
Don't expect anything from me.
You will be bitterly disappointed.

You've been my best friend
and worst enemy.
I've felt my heartbeat rhythmically pulsing into the ground.
When I cannot stand
you are there to catch me,
always.
But there's another catch too.
I'd like what you stole from me.
Too many times in which I've lost my breath
because of pain you inflicted.
Why do you let so many terrible people walk all over you?
And she-
She is buried six feet into your skin.
A gem to this world but you'd never know it.
Dear Earth.
I want her back.
I'll even trade places with her if you'd like.
Let her give life to you again.
Let me go under
and never come back up.

I see metaphors from broken hearts
and wish my heart would break into
something beautiful.
I spend my time making love to pen and paper
in hopes of producing
something acceptable.
I wait at my desk for hours,
crying and trying
to purge something useful out of me.
But no matter how hard I try,
no matter how much my fingers bleed
and my heart aches
I will never be a Poe, Hemingway or Dickinson.
I'm just a fragile little girl wearing her heart not on her sleeve but on paper.
Hoping,
praying,
that will be enough.

Today*
I held your shaky hand in mine
and wondered
what it would be like to hold your heart.
And if we'd ever trust anyone again.
Today
your fingers touched my skin like I was something delicate
and your eyes scanned my body not like curiosity
but like patient admiration.
And today
someone told me the birthmark on my neck was cute
and I didn't correct them because that day was the most
alive
I've ever felt.

Every night
before I go to bed,
I scroll through your pictures so that when I close my eyes,
I'll see you staring back at me.
And for the next few hours, I will live in a land where
you can hold me and still call me yours.
And every morning at 6:16 when I have only fourteen minutes left before I go,
I spend four of those minutes staring at myself in the mirror and wondering
how you did not see a flaw in me.
As my day goes on, the minutes pass slowly
as I try to pinpoint
the second I let you down.
I search the faces in the halls,
seeing which one looks most like yours
and admiring it for a fraction of a second
before I realize it's not yours.
I used to call you and we'd spend hours talking about nothing
but it was time worth spending if I got to hear your voice.
The way you said my name drove me crazy,
like it meant something more to you than any other person I'd met.
And you called me baby like I belonged to you.
Your laugh made me smile and I tried my hardest to make it never stop.
You hated when I did that.
Still your blond hair hits me every time.
It never gets old, looking at you.
I wish I'd told you more, how beautiful you are.
Your eyes are so blue,
I got lost in the them, searching for the clouds.
The way your lips curled into a smile made heat spread through my chest.
Every curve of your body made my heart swell and my fingers ache for your skin.
Sometimes I listen to the music I know you love and
I wonder what it meant to you to have these lyrics remind you of me.
And how it feels now, listening to songs that I know were written just for you.
But somewhere along the way I lost myself
and I lost you.
I watched the world tear at our limbs.
The words flew like bullets,
each one aimed straight for the heart.
But I know we didn't mean them, not really.
With each blow, we took a step back.
Now, when I reach out for you in my dreams,
you're not there.
And it burns.
And every time I get tired of life and feel like closing my eyes,
drifting off into oblivion,
I remember that it's just life and everyone's got their hell to deal with.
My smart little angel,
you're right.
Life. It *****.

Chin up.
Nose high in the air,
That arrogance they always admired.
But they hated how
sometimes
I didn't want to look in the mirror.
Their voices ring in my head,
as I stand before this ridge.
My toes curl around the edges,
clinging for dear life.
Though I have no desire to stay.
My heart is waiting for the moment it will find rest
It pounds through my chest as if to give me a little
Push.
My mind is reeling.
Too many thoughts, voices, noise;
so much noise.
Enough.
I spread my wings,
bend my knees and take off.
Watching day become night.

She is not your soul mate.
Your soul mate is crying in the dark because
She doesn't know
You are her light.

He is not your soul mate.
Your soul mate wears his robe to an early graduation.
His wits won't take him far away
But your kiss will.

She is not your soul mate.
Your soul mate draws death on every surface because
He hasn't seen your face, yet.

He is not your soul mate.
Your soul mate looks in the mirror and smiles because
Love is a dangerous thing.

Today*
I asked her
who *he was
and her eyes went cold,
hand fell limp in mine.
I felt her palm warm
and her mouth twitched at the edges.
The silence was deafening
as she tried to slow her breathing.

She said,
"No one."

I am a girl.
I like boys
And that’s okay.
But I also like girls,
That isn’t okay.
Love is only
Love when it’s
Opposite genders.
That isn’t fair.
I love her.
That’s wrong.
Why?
“The Bible says so,”
“It just is,”
“You can’t reproduce.”
I’m not a Christian.
You’re wrong.
What about adoption?
“You don’t really
Love her.”
My heart knows,
Not you.
Gender, race, religion,
Age, height, weight,
Distance, looks…

Why does it matter?
It shouldn’t.
Only personality should;
The character.
You love who you love,
I love who I love.

My love life
Shouldn’t involve
You.
Stay.
Out.
Love is love.
I make my
Own choices.

She is unstoppable.
Send a mountain her way
And she'll climb with avidity.
She doesn't even blink
In the midst of a hurricane.
Her words are love.
They envelope you in warmth.
Keeping you safe, she does.
She's a fighter.
She is strong.
She can bend your will
With a cusp glance.
She's overcome more difficulties
Than you can imagine.
She is unstoppable.
She is.

Pick your battles,
They said.
Well,
Most of my battles
Turn into wars.
I rip myself apart,
My demons grow stronger.
The opposing side makes their battle cry
As I brace for defeat.
Fear.
Loneliness.
It's all inside.
Pick your battles,
They said.

The choice for me sits awaiting.
My indecisive mind, still debating.
The choice is mine to partake,
Forgetting the things that are at stake.
Life as far as the eye can see,
I stand at the door of immortality.
The alluring position beckons me in.
I take a blind step and forget where I've been.
Forgetting my home, forgetting my lover,
Forgetting the life I'll trade for another.
My mind is stripped of all things I used to know
But still engraved is a word called Home.
I look around this gruelish hell
And forget the reasons that I fell.
I get a feeling that I was wrong,
So I turn back to the road traveled on.
I see the door is closed, sealed so tight.
The fear that has struck me, I cannot fight.
I hurt for my family, I hurt for my friends,
I hurt for the knowledge that this is
The End.

Sometimes,
When you've been burned,
You learn to be cautious with fire.

Sometimes,
When you've been scarred,
You learn to stay away from the blade.

Sometimes,
When you've been played,
You learn not to play the game.

Sometimes,
When you've been made weak,
You learn to be strong.