1.) I will become engrossed in the written words of an author that grace the pages of my books and the words yet to be written as they collide over and over in my brain again and again until I am able to put pen to paper or my fingers to the keyboard and pour them out into works that flow from the very back of my brain to the (digital) ink on the paper

2.) I will strive to know your every thought and your every fear; your favorite coffee drink and your favorite store that ends in a vowel. though I will make no effort to allow you into the depths of my thoughts, to see anything deeper than the same bits and pieces of me that everyone else gets just from having their eyes scratch the service

3.) I’ll wake you up in the middle of the night with my panicked screams and heavy breathing as evidence that just because they left my life didn’t mean the nightmares did

4.) I am broken, though I won’t allow myself to seek comfort in your arms; no matter how understanding and welcoming

5.) I’ll never let myself believe I am deserving of the love that someone as passionate and affectionate as you could give

6.) I will cling to your side at all times, like a small child, for my own fear of people and my crutch to my anxiety

7.) When I somehow break and come to you, I will feel guilty; no one should be bothered with my problems but me. I could not force them on anyone as incredible as you

8.) I will apologize for every minor thing, be something that’s joked about or unspoken, for the thought that a tight grip on my waist and a name, anything besides my own, will follow

9.) I am afraid of relationships; I have a strong fear in putting my own happiness into something else. A sole beacon of hope and comfort and warmth that I have craved so long in darkness and the cold glare of my exes’ new girlfriends, for whatever they might have heard

10.) I’ll never feel like I give you enough, for someone like you will always deserve more than me

-  j. b. (march 20th, 2014)

this isn't a poem

•••

I've always been pretty good at locking people out.
and I've always been pretty good at putting up a front to tell the world that I'm okay-
and I've always been pretty good at making them believe it.
you laugh with your friends and you hide the panic in your eyes when you're in public and you pass it off to others. but that's not always gonna happen. I know it's not. I'm gonna find someone who's gonna crack me.
And I swear that it's him.
He knows I don't eat like I should. And he knows that I'll fall sick to my stomach after eating when it's been two days. He knows that anytime I come home, I'm stepping into the battlefield and I just have to pray my odds are good and I can dodge the arsenic bullets today.
And I know that this won't last and that one day, he'll know.
He'll know how I take my coffee, and that I prefer tea over coffee any day; that I can go days without eating before I crack under the force of hunger pains, but I can't go a day without soda or I'll have a full-out migraine from the lack of caffeine. He'll know what keeps me up at night and what to do if I wake up shaking or in a panic attack. He'll know how to hold me when I'm sleepy and how to hold me when I'm sick; he'll know that when I'm upset, I'll barely speak at all.
He'll know that I'll never see my writing as poetic as I'd like it to be, but he knows I'll trust him enough to read what I've written.
He'll know that I may never fully come out and tell him every single imminent detail of what's going on in my head. He'll know  that I hate being out in public.
He'll know everything that ****** me off and he'll know everything that makes me happy and he still won't care because he loves me.

I tried, x
**
something I get a lot is, “you’re too young to be a feminist.”
too young to be a feminist for you’ve yet  to witness a rhyme or  reason to believe we lived in a patriarch-fueled
society where the erectile dysfunctions of men are paid for by health care but, God forbid a
woman seeks birth control to help herself
God forbid a woman does anything to help herself
a society where women are taught to be happy with what they can get
yet to be ashamed when they get it
a society where I grew up being taught not to trust a man for he’d hurt me but
taught to have the house clean and his dinner on the table when he got home
a society where a woman in a tank top and a pair of daisy dukes is a “***** who is asking for it”
when the same woman is what’s used to market the male population who are taught that this is the woman they deserve
a society where a woman is unworthy and ***** if she isn’t a ******
but a man is a man so long as he is “getting the hoes”
a society where women are taught to protect their innocence and their virtue
and the society where they are ostracized and ridiculed for not being ready
a society where consent is hopped, skipped, and jumped around and the so called “fact” issued by
Scott Johnson that says men can’t control their issues
a society where a woman’s womb is not her own whether she wants this baby or not
I was taught *** was shameful and wrong unless you were married
but please, give him a baby and keep him satisfied
we glorify teen pregnancies and ignore the accomplishments of women
if I’m too young to be a feminist,
then it’s quite **** sad I can point out what’s wrong in the world.