she's one of those girls with
painted eyes and
long sleeves in summer,
a vacant stare
and nowhere left to turn,
long red lines
slashed over years of cross hatched moon white scars.
she'll tell you dying is an art.

cigarette filter ringed with red lipstick,
she pursues her death in slow steps,
still hoping in some hidden secret place
for someone to kiss her wrists and tell her she did okay,
to fall in love with her beautiful tragedy.

and she is beautiful,
but not for the reasons she's assembled in her head.
there is nothing lovely or romantic
in her quest for self-destruction,
but there is beauty in her strength.
the glory is not in her pursuit of death,
but her ability to live.
she does not need you to save her,
and you cannot,
as much as she'll beg you to try.

kiss her lips instead of her scars.
love the breath in her lungs and the life in her veins.
treat her body like something too precious to destroy.
give her love to hold onto
while she learns to create her own.

it is up to you to love her,
should you choose.
it is up to her to decide
that death can wait.

less than one month into the new year,
and already i have made and broken resolutions,
quickly abandoning the poorly planned promises
i made myself.
i don't know what i was expecting.

i heard somewhere that it takes thirty days
to break or establish a habit.
thirty days.
five sets of six,
three sets of ten,
three sets of five sets of two.
you can't get four from thirty.

and i meant to go somewhere else with this,
draw it into extended metaphor,
but now the girl next to me is chewing gum,
and i want to cry.
i don't want to be a person
who freezes up at the sound of
saliva and substance.
it is far too easy to make my skin shrink tight
and start to itch.
i can't just pull it off,
and i hate feeling trapped.

i hate you now, too, for doing this.
i know it's not malicious or intentional,
but i will still resent you for as long as i know you
because you made me feel this way.
isn't that ridiculous?
but you know what else is ridiculous
is that the mind and body that have survived nineteen years
(despite my best efforts)
spiral out of my control
every time someone decides to chew.
i wish i could not be controlled
by something so simple and small.

(i think maybe the metaphor wrote itself.)

This year,
I want to follow through,
But commitment has never been my style.

i want to let my hair grow long and tangled
and weave flowers and moss between the strands
so i can feel like i'm a part of something living.
i want to learn to love my broken vessel
the way i love the wild.

i want to sink my hands in rocky riverbeds
and feel every kind of earth between my toes.
i want to learn the constellations
so i can point at pictures in the night sky
and not feel so alone.

i want to paint myself
in mud and freedom
and scream in my own voice,
triumph ringing through the trees.

i want to bask in the sunshine and radiate
light and strength and wholeness,
absorbing beauty and reflecting it back into the world
in new arrangements.

i will climb high and
sing loud and
march on and
fly,
until at last i can sink back
in well-earned exhaustion,
hallelujah seeping from my skin.

it hurts to know that my Temple is of another faith than you care for
and it hurts to know that my Temple
                                                  might be burned to the ground
                                                  by your zealot hands
but this fear
and pain
and sometimes rain
can only last so long.

i think maybe i only love you because
you're older, because you have large hands
that have held more than mine ever will

(or maybe it is because instead of choosing to
hold the world, you chose to hold me)

the wrong body sometimes touches me in my sleep
in toothless dreams and
quiet scenes.

i have to talk
      constantly
or i'll forget the sound of my voice and
lose myself inside
this vast vessel of bodies
in which i live (that is so
                                                              ­   filled with viruses
                                                         ­     there's no room for my thoughts)
and if i can forget the sound of my voice
how could you not?