I miss writing
I miss the way it felt to hear keyboard keys clacking
and the way it felt to hear my heart
emptying
I miss being able to get out of bed
being able to go out with my friends
depression has a way of turning a person
into a shell and taking
everything away
the ink in my blood
dried to nothing
perpetual numbness
where once was thought, emotion,
something
at least I think there used to be

Pull yourself together
           Stop scratching at your wrists
Please just get some sleep
                          I know you want to die
But know's not the time
               Decide in the morning, you're too tired now
      stop crying
                  stop crying
                         Stop crying
Deep breaths and count to ten
    "One
          Two
     Oh God, I'm going to die
               Three
                     Four
Oh God, I can't do this
Oh God, I want to die
                          Five
                              Six
         It's all over in the morning
                                   Seven
                                         Eight
           Oh God, what if I can't die
                                               Nine
                                                     Ten
                         I need to sleep."

Rain falls like silence
            Crushingly gentle and then
So suffocating

My nails are yellowing
And my skin is sagging
At 16 I already look like I’m dying
I’m only 16, why do I look like I’m dying
I’d tell you it’s not fair
But I’m the one who built my life to be like this
Like a supernova
A dead star that no one on earth can see for years
Sometimes centuries
I’ve built my life so I won’t be recognized until years later
But I’m not dying for the recognition.
Like Van Gogh
I’m dying because the no matter the meaning I create
I can’t feel it anymore
He would eat yellow paint to feel sunshine on the inside
And I’ll swallow fire to feel something warm
I’m tired
I’m tired of people pretending any of this is beautiful
What I’m feeling is the furthest thing from beautiful
I’m tired of it raining while the sun’s out
I’m tired of people asking me how am and not waiting around for the answer
So I’m telling you right now
I haven’t been good in awhile
Thanks for asking.

I don't say much
  I don't want to
I never have much to say
     I don't want to ruin the sanctity of words
                   by speaking them out loud
I don't want to lose my words forever in the air
                   I write my words down
   so I can blanket myself in them
                                    when I get cold
so I can be with them
                       when I get lonely
Only spoken when there is meaning behind them,
                                    words are too beautiful to be wasted

If I ask you what to write about
            Don’t take it lightly
Don’t laugh and say something clichéd
Don’t say, “I don’t know”
I know you know
         That’s why I asked you
If I write about you
                Don’t take it lightly
I love you enough to let you be a part of my being
    You’re something very interesting
Don’t blush, don’t be embarrassed
         Don’t thank me,
Thank yourself, for being the way you are
Good or bad, you inspired me
      And if I don’t write about you
If a single word never leaves my pen with the thought you behind it
    I’m sorry

I open the news
and expect to see a shooting
the fact is I am more shocked when we go a day without one
maybe I am desensitized to the violence surrounding me
It seems normal
to be suspicious every time a boy reaches
into his backpack in my classroom
I have worked out a game plan in case he does
what I’ve always expected him to do
I know all the exits
If he does it at lunch
I know where I’ll hide
There is a seizing fear inside me
when the band plays their drums
unexpectedly
when a car backfires on the street outside
I get dizzy with terror
slamming doors
have this same effect
I am ready to shelter in place
at any provocation
I have chosen
the five people I would save
over and over again in my head
sometimes not even including myself
and yet
my father says guns
are not an issue in this country
maybe if he saw the battleground of this new war
or if he knew
it was where he sent his child
every day to learn
he would feel differently
I look forward to summer
not because of the break from learning
but because I no longer have to worry
“Will today be the day
  My school finally makes the headlines?”

You told me you were suicidal
and I wanted to tell you how much it hurt to be a person
how my skin and bones ached to part of infinity a never ending spiral of never again having to say
“I’m sorry”
after coming out
You told me you were suicidal
and I wanted to tell you I wasn’t qualified to give advice on the matter of life and death
I have seen too many bare mattresses to understand
what home really is
am I just an ever changing notion of how a problem student might look like
some futuristic idea of the changing tides
being pushed and tormented by the moon
no I am not qualified to tell you to keep living
You told me you were suicidal
and I remembered the page in my ninth grade diary saying the same
followed by the words
“I don’t know what my name is,
not the one they gave me,
but the one I’m going to give myself
The one they won’t put on my grave,
but the one I’ll put on my heart,
the one God will call me in heaven
and the one mom will deny I have.
I don’t know our name,
and I think I want to die.”
You told me you were suicidal
and I typed and retyped messages,
playing in my head the ways you had already left
and didn’t want to make this one about me,so  I said
“Call a hotline”.
You told me you were suicidal
and my bones ached remembering the pain of what it is to be a person.

Every color besides blue or pink
is not purple
so stop trying to color me that way
as though I am a midpoint
on an unchanging line
a spot that only slides
forward and back
not a fluid point
constantly moving
up and down
A changing person
with many thoughts
capable of more than
either,
or,
and inbetween
Everything and nothing
all at once
I am more than boxes
definitions
M or F
neither
not both
I am not a shade of purple
on a line
between pink or blue
I am every color on the spectrum
and some still not listed
I am not yours to define
I am mine

Onto the dark horizon it falls
It enters your ears
        It enters your soul
  It enters your mind
               It    controls     you
It leaves you breathless
                      incapacitated,
overjoyed,
           angry,
     sad,
                  not alone,
not yet,
                  but wait
it will
                   but wait
                            one more
                                         day
                                             week
                                                 month
                                                        year
                                                            lifetime
  and you'll be gone

I want to tell you a story
but I haven’t learned the words
I know it’s out there somewhere
and I know inside me it burns

I don’t know if I have a secret
but I have an idea for one
I’ll make it up and say it to you
so you can load your gun

I have a lot of excuses
but never none for you
I want a reason why
I let myself see this through

I don’t have any thoughts
I’ve thought up on my own
I just let other people tell them to me
Until they’re engraved in my bones

I wish I had a story
one to make you stay
but I know in my heart you’re not real
but I think I’ll meet you one day

I finished you in class today
           I cried when I read your last word
Your author so cruelly ended two dreams
    both yours and mine
"Calm down", they said to me
           "It was only a book."
Only a book? I wish it were true
so neither of us would have felt the pain
         of the back cover
                                  closing
and even as I lament my sorrows now to you
      I must also say farewell
to our hours of laughs and tears,
    and while it ended as I feared:
with you gone and me still here
            I must leave
                                  for there are more books to start
and more still
                                                           ­                                                                 *to finish

My dad has started speaking the tongue of the mentally ill
he is living the life of a man I don’t recognize
I am afraid of my own father
I am afraid he will **** me and my mother when my brother leaves
I miss the man who used to live in his body
but I know he is dead
because my father smells like death
he can’t take care of himself
I am so worried
for all of us
for him
I love my father
now and for what he used to be
but I don’t like him anymore
not for what he’s turned my family into
not for the disease I think he gave me
I don’t think my parents love each other any more
but I am afraid of our our safety if my mom tries to leave
I just want my family to be happy again
but I don’t think we can
not like this.
I miss the way we used to be
and watching my parents be an example for what love should be
I miss wanting my friends to come to my house
I miss feeling safe
I don’t know what I’m trying to accomplish with this
I don’t think anyone will really read it
but I don’t have any other way of getting this out
I just want it to be okay again
but I know it won’t ever be
at least not the same okay it used to be
but most of all I am afraid
that I will turn into the man my father became

"I knew a girl
who spoke like ink flowed
so my ink flowed through her
and everything I wrote was in her voice.
      Her dress moved as fluidly as her laugh
            like waves in the ocean
                            Her name sounded
          like everything I had ever thought
But what was it
                  what was it?"