I see a collard shirt,
but I feel sweat stains.

I push my glasses up on my nose
when they fall to the tip,
and take my glasses off
when it rains.

It pains me
when I see another
human being just the same.
One who spits their toothpaste,
and watches it spin
down the drain.

One who
puts too much thought
into texts
they never send,
and ones who talk
all night long
with no one on the other end.

A friend told me
that I look like
a man who
rarely speaks,
and I told him
Id rather not,
and broke
my silent streak.

I feel like the cardboard sleeve
wrapped around a cold cup of coffee
Brown stained light brown
Slipping off but staying there
when the cup is placed on the table

I feel like the lid
stained with lips
Buttons pressed by boredom
White impressions on white plastic
telling you to recycle

Driving down the highway,
There are a few more exits
Until I’m home
But without realizing it
I end up
At the door to my real one.
I memorize his face
Watching the happiness in his eyes
I start to swim freely and unafraid
In an ocean blue,
I’ve always had a phobia of swimming
In waters like the ocean
But not in his.
My frail body wrapped in him
Like we’re a present
That’s just for me.
It’s like Christmas morning
That feeling you only get once a year
But I get to feel it
Every day.
I never thought
That two twisted minds
Could entangle
So well together
That two complete strangers
Could suddenly submerge into one
And I never thought
I could finally admit
That I deserve this.

This is how you get thin; this is how you get even thinner; this is how you tell yourself to be skinny is to be beautiful; this is what you eat; this is what you don’t eat; this is the proportion of food you are allowed to eat; this is the proportion of food you are not allowed to eat; you can have one serving per meal a day; unless you have the bracelet, of course, that allows you to eat as many meals as you want for being underweight; this is how you cook a healthy meal; this is how you cook an unhealthy meal; this is how you work out; this is how you don’t work out; this is how you use the weights; this is how you do not use the weights; remember not to use more weight than you can handle, work your way up to the top girls; this is how you go to boot camp every day to work off those extra pounds; this is the voice of your mother telling you that this is what you need; you’re getting heavy and need to control your weight; this is how you try even harder on that soccer field even though you absolutely hate soccer; this is how you tread water in a deep-end pool for as long as you can without drowning; this is how you work hard as hell just to make weight that coming Sunday; an empty room; the director, co-director, yourself, and a scale; how many pounds did you lose this week?; Two? Disappointing. Some of the other girls lost 10, 12, 13 pounds, as if I haven’t ******* noticed; this is what it feels like to not “make weight”; this is what it feels like to work, and keep working but never feel thin enough; this is what it feels like run drills as hard as you can just for the adrenaline; just to run for the hell of it even though you’ve always been a terrible runner; this is the constant sound of your mother on repeat; you’re getting fat; this is what it’s like to be there in spite of her; this is how you put walls up; this is how you break them down; this  is  how  you  gain  more  insecurities;  this  is  how  you  shut  them  out; to be skinny is to be beautiful; and this is  how you eventually  realize it never should have mattered at all.

Provided you with love and affection, someone to need, to hold
but leading,
always leading
to a shuttering, cracking cold.


Speaking with hollowing eyes
I had a feeling you were danger
You were always in crisis
Left me with so many sacrifices, but I didn’t care


Carved into my bones is the jagged edge of you
your smile, your face
racing in my blood, mutating me
like cancer, but I need to know, what made you change?


Gave up my pride, to keep our strings tied
you pulled them apart
now so far gone but I swear I tried
defeated, and blinded from the start


When oxygen, it doesn’t exist, as this is what I call hell
You repeated your last words to me
while I was silently, quietly,
praying to God
as you abandoned me for her…


But look at what I did for you.

I used to hear her in the night, screaming from her nightmares, wandering around downstairs, watching TV with her mixed drink(s) on one side and her orange salt rock lamp on the other. That salt rock lamp was supposed to give off “good energy”, but I wasn’t really sure how much of that was true considering the circumstances. A salt rock lamp can’t free you. Neither could medication. She used to tell me; survival, is just getting through the day. I listened. I tried to save her myself, but alcohol is more powerful than I am. It’s more powerful than anything I could have said to her. It was a year from last semester, when my best friend started spiraling out of control. I had lived with her for the past three years, this is my fourth. We became instant friends when we both saw each other at UVM. She always seemed so happy on the outside, but I soon started to see the hollowness inside of her. She had gone through so much in her life, and I thought of her as strong. I still do. But for her it wasn’t that easy to call herself strong and just let it all go, she didn’t know how to handle it, until alcohol became her way. I never understood why she did the things she did that year. Did you know she drank a whole handle of Rasberry Smirnoff in two days? It was sickening. I didn’t know what to do, because at a certain point I couldn’t even look at her. I know that sounds harsh, and maybe I shouldn’t have left her alone in the apartment to be swigging even more of yet another flavored handle of *****. I just couldn’t talk to her without hurting her feelings. She is really sensitive, like an open wound and everything hurts her. I wasn’t trying to, but she was so uncovered and vulnerable. Everything I said either went one ear and out the other, or stung her like salt in a deep cut. It got hard to live with sometimes. I love her so much yet I was uselessly sitting there watching her drown in her invasive misery, destroying herself and leaving me to watch her ashes build up more and more in front of me. She isolated herself on purpose, lost a lot of friends for a while. I tried but I couldn’t stop her, no one could. She was so far gone, like I lost my best friend whom I couldn’t recognize anymore, and I missed her. It became a routine, coming home to her drunk and sometimes crying hysterically on the floor or on the couch, or in her room, whether there was even a reason or not. She fell apart. I told her my thoughts, gave her my advice, but if words helped everyone all the time, no one would feel the pain that you sometimes have to feel. I wanted to tell her it was okay, but then I didn’t know how to anymore. All I could do was shove my phone in her face already calling a school therapist for her. At first, she looked at me with a blank stare. With tears dripping down her cheek, I knew she didn’t want the help, but she knew she needed it. She didn’t deny it. To my surprise, she didn’t fight it. She took the phone, made an appointment, and started her journey to recovering.

I have memories abandoned
They no longer have a home,
They are homeless in a mind
No longer in need of this
Wondering thought.

They only wish to be an idea
To have a purpose, in a mind
That ignores them. Looking
Down on them as they don't
realize that it could be them, a
Memory abandoned no place
longer in this mind.

But as the fading is almost
Complete, a recollection of a
Past thought brings this
Memory back. To pictures,
Of smells, and a place nearly
Forgotten. Once again a memory,
Now with a home in this place
Called the mind.

turn me off(in your body there is a switch
which
ignites the pale frame of flowers


                                     To bloom,