But I cannot make you love me.
I want you to stay,
But I cannot make you hold me.
Our friends have all left us,
And our flowers are merely weeds,
The ones that are left are dead and rotting.
They were never as beautiful as you wanted to believe.
But at least they once were true.

Even still,
I would never hope to live without you.

I wish that I could tell you
How your strength radiates
It permeates every bit of my being
Illuminating my pores
As you glow through the cloud cover
That has isolated your earth
And shakes mine to the core.

I really want to inform you
That as I left your house that afternoon
Hearing the rawness from your mother's mouth
That perfectly emulated her broken heart
And the aggression from your sister
Which is indicative of her personality
As well as her pain
My body was ready to crumble
And the saline liquid that welled in the sockets of my eyes
Was too ready to fall
But I forced myself to be strong for you.

I only desire to convey to you
That watching you be the shock absorber in your home
Is too much for me to take.
As I begin to be consumed by empathy
I try to act like things are normal
Which is almost an attempt to make things normal
And I fail miserably.

I want you so desperately to know
That it is not that I do not care
When I don't talk about it
But merely that I care too much
And over think how to act
In order to alleviate as much of your struggle as I can.

I wish I could talk to you
I wish I could let you know
I wish I could tell you
All of these things that fester in my brain cells
Chew away at the tissue in my chest
Eat my flesh, my bones, my heart
Until these thoughts are all of me
And likewise, I am all of them.

Perhaps the hardest, most challenging thing to realize
Is that I have told you everything
For the past four years.
When depression and anxiety
Bulimia and abuse all covered my world with darkness
I called you every time
You were always first.

Now, I cannot.
Now, you are the one in pain.
Now, I cannot make you feel better.
I cannot tell you any of this
And the fact of the matter is
It kills me.

Dear Queen Jezebel,
Your name has fallen through the thickets of white male history
But I think you are painted unfairly.
For you were a strong female character
In a time when they were frowned upon.
No man would tell you what to do
You held power in your strong wrists
In your condescending smile
In your waterfall hips.
You were brutal
But you you showed the world that you would not be messed with
You were not merely valuable for your ***
For your ability to pop out children.
You were revolutionary
You installed fear in the men who did everything they could
To cut you to pieces.
Maybe we are not too different
As my ex-boyfriend repeatedly told me to shut my feminist mouth
And have *** with him.
History repeatedly ****** you
Paints you as a *** symbol
Rather than a strategic businesswoman and monarch.
You knew what you were doing
And I follow your lead
They will never love us
We, Jezebel, are for them to make pets out of
We are here to show them
How the mighty
Have fallen.

You are the last person I would expect
To smile with the glimmer that you have
To laugh with the excitement that you do
To talk with the clarity that you can.

They left you for dead
You watched your father die beside you
A bullet in your leg
Beats a bullet to his vitals.

Fifteen, you are but fifteen
When Daddy's telling you to play dead
They'll go away, just be quiet
He coos
So you do your best not to scream
As you lose blood like energy.

You wake up in a hospital bed
Bandages caressing your injured calf
A nurse tells you to turn on the news
As you ask where your father is.
The television set won't lie to you.
The flat screen relays the message
He's dead.

Years later, still living in the slums
That you so preciously embrace as your home
At seventeen, you're the only sibling without kids
But you have been deemed caretaker.

Yet, to total strangers of different race
Those who barely know suffering
From an affluent community, from generally "good" homes
You tell your story
And leave them with a lasting impression.

You are the spitting image of bravery, fearlessness, courage
And still,
No one's there to save you.
You are your own hero
Your driving force.
And no one will take the greatest gift you have away from you:
Joy, and the ability to grace others with the same.

You judge them
Based on their clothing
Their coping methods
If they have a lot of ***
If they don't get any at all
Their religion
Their sexuality
Their background
Their appearance
Their reputation

But what if
We looked inside their souls for a moment
And saw the broken pieces
That long to be mended?
We could start looking at them
And stop looking through them
What if
We saw their hearts
Instead of their facades?

I wish
We could stop criticizing people
Based on our own warped ideas of them
And start
Loving people for who they **are.

To my sexist coworkers
Who think this is just another feminist discourse. And that it should not be taken seriously because feminism is a joke. Well, is what he did to me at seven a joke? The way I plotted to shoot, stab, **** him every time we had a family party or dinner, the way I forced myself to snail and just be glad in the midst of planning his ******, is that funny to you? How, almost ten years later, another evil character was able to do things that were almost identical, except I was begging him to stop with every move his grimy finger made across my smooth skin, defiling it each time he touched me and ignored my pleas, do you laugh at that too? And I almost forgot, the care with which the first one was treated and the disapproval that was directed towards me after the second one, do you find that amusing? I was blamed and no one even cares how he shut out everything I said to him, how he harassed me via technology to no end, how I felt trapped and at times even felt that jumping off of a rooftop into a deep ditch where no one would ever find me and I could die peacefully was a more viable option that staying under his gawk. An owl stalks his prey, and he was ready to attack. Knowing that had I made one wrong move or said one thing differently that this would have had an even more tragic ending and I would have bore the blame. So yes, this is just another feminist rampage, but it needs to be heard. No woman or man deserves to go through the anguish of not being heard because of their status or reproductive organs as I did. I am not the first to experience this trauma and sadly, I am not even close to the last. This is my story, her story, his story, their story, and it is our duty as a human race to hear each individual and personal tale they have to tell. We owe it to our loved ones, complete strangers, our parents, our children to listen. This story of oppression and the ability to overcome it needs to be told.

My parents do not quite understand.
Insert teenage angsty movie title here.
Yes, I hang out with people who are older than me,
Much older than me.
But it is because I generally do not get along with people my age.
Never have, and they know that well enough.

I guess they think that is why I have been subject to,
Drugs, alcohol, ****** activity (both wanted and unwanted)
From a young age.
NO.

First of all,
The girl who really introduced me to smoking and drinking,
Is less than a year older than me.
Sure, I have smoked at work.
But that does not mean that I would not have started.

My ex is older than me.
I wanted to have *** with him.
I do not regret
Our long days under sheets,
Becoming each others' skies.
His strong arms held me,
And I wanted to be held.

Plus, PS: all guys that are even close to my age,
Their hormones are raging at record speeds.
If not him, it would have been someone else.
That does not make me a ****,
That makes me human.

And you think that I could have prevented,
The completed, or attempted, ****** assaults
That I have survived,
Had I not hung around an older crowd?
Try again.

Time one: a family member.
Sure, he was older.
But my parents and his were in the same house when it happened.
I do not think that could have been avoided.

Time two: a church member.
He was two years older than me,
In a game of hide-and-go-seek.
He sought me out.
He tried to attack me.
Sure, he was cute.
But he ended up being nothing but dirt.
I got away from that one, however.

Those are the two that they are aware of.

Time three: a friend.
A friend who is my age.
I hesitate to call it ****** assault,
Because I, initially, was interested.
I hesitated to say no until it came to ***.
However, I did say that I was not comfortable doing things with him.

He did not listen.

He lied, said we would be together.
He teased, calling me a *****, accusing me of leading him on,
Saying he could not help himself.
He manipulated, saying that he would not treat me like my ex did,
Saying that he would not do anything to make me uncomfortable.

I could have avoided this by never even mentioning the idea of us.
But I could not have avoided it by hanging out with younger friends.
He is my age.

Some nights, I want to tear my skin off.
I have tried to wash every trace of guys like them out of my body.
I have dyed my hair,
Changed my style,
Have wanted to lose weight in the worst way.
All because you make me feel *****.

So no, Mom and Pop,
Hanging out with an older group does not cloud my vision.
In fact, it has proved itself to be a safe place for me.

"Don't purge"
they say
"It only makes it worse."
Oh, if only they knew.

That rush,
that physiological sensation
that accompanies the mental one
is all I need to breathe.
So why must it be wrong?

The calming motion
of sticking your fingers down your throat
until you gag
until you cannot breathe
until you feel that acidity
crawling up your throat
as a demon emerges from Hell's depths.

It is as if you are allowing a well-kept secret
an abundance of pain
to be released
to meet catharsis.

So necessary,
from an inside perspective.
So beautiful,
from an artistic one.
So cold,
from any sane person looking in.
They can never understand
how crucial it is in fighting the breakdowns
that plague my life under stressful circumstances.

I know,
it is hard for you to believe
or comprehend.
But this
painful yet pleasing obsession
is keeping me calm, keeping me okay.
And, quite possibly,
keeping me alive
month after month
week after week
day after painful day.

They say
"Old habits die hard"
In reality
The only way to get rid of
The beast of addiction
The monster of obsession
The serpent of temptation
Is to
****** the **** thing
Before it can **** you first.

A wise tale, an old saying
One that old people, whether in spirit or in body, say is
"If you can't stand the heat
Get out of the kitchen."

What they fail to mention
The details they leave behind on the floor
Is that sometimes the kitchen
Is everywhere you go
Outside forces trap you
And it gets hotter, suffocating every whim you have
That may let you escape.

You pass out before you can leave.
Or the flames engulf your body
Your mouth fills with thick, black smoke
As you fall to your knees and beg for your life back.

Everything you have, stripped away.
Everything you love, gone.
Everyone who loves you, weepy.

They don't tell you that sometimes the heat
Turns into a fire.

I thought it would be hard
To remember a person who has passed
As sick.
Luckily, I will never think of you
As anything less than wonderful.
But what if
You cannot remember me that way?

I was ill
The last time you saw me.
I was addicted
The last time we got together.
All I want
Is for you to see me recovered.

You never knew
What I was doing to myself.
It kills me inside
That the last time I was at your house
I spent half the time in the bathroom
Purging.

I was never happy
And you must have seen that shift in my character.
It makes me want to pull my hair out
When I think about
Who I am
And who I was
When the eating disorder monster
Had me in her jealous claws.

Sticking a finger down my throat
Never made it better.
And I wish you could remember me
In recovery
Not in the throws of addiction.
I wish I could leave a legacy
Like the one you left with me.

When I was nine
I saw a punk rock band preform for the first time
On American Idol.
I asked my mom,
"Why do they hold the microphones so close to their mouths?"
She smiled simply sighing
"It's their style. They're not trying to sound good."
She kissed the crown of my head goodnight
And that was that.

When I was ten,
I asked my mom how she met my father.
She told me of their late night chats
Tangled up in phone lines
Currents of love flowing through the receiver
Currents of his whimsical charm
And her shy glow.
Something seemed wrong with the fact that they met
Talking through hard plastic
Not matching faces
But I didn't ask
And that was that.

When I was thirteen,
I asked my mom why all the boys picked on me
Why they strung my emotions across they're tongues
Like popcorn on a wilted Christmas tree
Or why they played connect-the-dots with my face
Using it to spell the word
"Ugly"
Why they teased me so much
I came home with acid tears corroding my cheeks
My mother had told me one other time
When I was about five
And a boy hurt me
Pulled my hair like he was gutting intestines from fresh meat
Her answer:
"It's just because he likes you."
And that was that.

Hello, old friend
I am in a haunted house
Banging on the ceiling
Breaking glass walls that suffocate me
The shards pierce me beautifully
An elegant ribbon of blood tangles around my body
Like a kitten, I watch as I unravel
Unable to escape as you watch me bleed out.

Different night, same dream again
I want to know if someone can deliver me
Bitter venom that can save my sanity
The same principle that if you **** on a jellyfish sting
It hurts less
Desperate times call for desperate poison and muck
Sinking.
Baby, could that be your kiss?

I wake up, and remember
They think I might have Stockholm Syndrome
For everyone that abused me, it seems
I have the utmost respect for
And I love them every day with all of my being.

The waves of my love will not run dry
Eleven years after being molested
I still draw your name on my tongue
Sing you rather than spit you
"Alan"
Sweet harmony
"Alan"
You have a girlfriend now
And she looks an awful lot like me
At least that's what I have discovered by stalking your Facebook page
Was I that good that you modeled her after me?
Do you even remember?

You visit me in my dreams
My own pillow jumps from my bed to smother my face
I leave purple sticky drool marks on my arm
A bruise for every time I am in that glass house
I've seen you take me captive
I've seen you hold me in every position imaginable
I've seen you have a baby girl
And her eyes look just like yours
All from a distance
But none of its real
This is no part of my molecular makeup
As my atoms do not collide with yours
I am a fish, swimming through air
I cannot breathe because I am being taught how to drown elegantly
Which begs the question:
Did it ever really happen at all?
Did I ever really happen at all?

Sincerely, me
The same one whose face may have traveled below your belt
Who you may have violated
I wish you had strangled me with that belt at that very moment

PS: I swear I won't be angry, darling
Just please tell me
What I need to know to sleep soundly again
After all,
You are the only one who remembers
Correctly.

Some say
The pain I have been subjected to
Can take a toll on a person's psyche.
I say
It just makes for better stories.
And thus is life.

Did you ever know me?
We were inseparable
Walking through flourishing fields
I was always "your girl"
But we began to drift.

Did you ever know me?
I never let you see
The heinous parts of the
Life I really led.
It was like specks of dirt stuck underneath fingernails
And I could never get it out.

Did you ever know me?
I would have gone to the moon and back
Just to see your face one more time.
Why do I feel so guilty
That you're flying high?
I couldn't have stopped it
But I could have said goodbye.

Did you ever know me?
The last message you ever sent
Was to my mom, talking about me
Getting sick at work.
"I hope Sarah feels better"
"She must be embarrassed."

Did you ever know me?
If you did, you never knew this side
The "Life After Grandpa" has not bode well
With the an emotionally damaged me.
Crying every day
Being afraid to be by myself
Fear that everyone will pass away
Before I can say goodbye.

Did you ever know me?
I know you're watching over me
But you are also watching me do stupid things
Like talking to various men
Who want me for one reason.
Having a physical relationship with my ex
Who was horrible to me.
Smoking until my lungs go black
And my brain goes numb.

Did you ever know me?
Well, even if you didn't
You do now.

Oh, my dear
Why do you still come around here?
You remain unwanted
By all those who reside in this town.
You never were a very good neighbor
Always screaming louder and louder
Until someone would give in or give up
And it happened nearly every time.
You convinced the entire area to do terrible things
Causing unrest between previously coexisting vessels
And now everything is a mess.
You did this, oh Great Destroyer
Mental illness,
Why do you linger here in my head?

I've always hated hospitals.
White walls, plain and bare
With those glaring, unforgiving linoleum floors
What am I doing here?
I am not ill
But my parents always used it as a threat
When I panicked
Or when I was just upset as a young child.
It has been embedded into my brain that
"This is where the bad kids go."
And I'll just get passed from doctor to doctor
Because no one wants to handle me.
So now the stench of sickness
Smells more like a jail cell.

Water falls onto my hands
Its fluidity saturates my pores
Its gentle flow breaks my spine
I am on my knees now
*I am yours, alone.

This is
A poem for the late nights
Or are they early mornings in disguise?
A song for the lost girls
And the petty details in which they are lost
A letter to the ones who
Spend nights, days, weeks, years
Agonizing about the future
And running from their past
A few stanzas blended together
For the lovers that float in limbo
The ones who can't let go of some scattered connection
That is seemingly unknown to the rest of the universe.
This is
A couple of words bleeding onto paper
That don't tell the whole story at all
*The spaces, however, do.

I was a curious child, as most are. What's for dinner? Who's the mail from? How old is she? How much longer? Questions poured from my mouth as though it was a faucet and, as is the norm, my parents blew off the questions I asked at four years old. But as I grew further in my developmental life stages, my parents still refused to answer me. I was taught not to question so much so that when I was fifteen and failing algebra I did not know how to ask for help. Now suddenly it was expected of me to know what I was even though my inquiries had been dismissed along the way for years upon endless years.

Because of my socio-economic standing as an upper to middle class kid with clear problems in my head that my parents failed to address, I was told to be silent. When I questioned the rules, my society, my religion I was told to be quiet because I was just a little girl. I was just a girl. And that mindset is what teaches us exactly what role women should play, subservient to their male counterparts. Even when he is the fisherman with his subject sprawled out on a board being heinously gutted of their very existence, having their insides drained into a bucket and their eyes lifelessly roll into the backs of their heads and yet she is the one being blamed for just being a fish. She swam into dangerous waters and should have known that he would catch her and pick her scales and flesh from the very bones to which they were attached. But still, she never questions it because being born as a fish means reaping the consequences.

You taught me never to question authority. So when the first man to tell me he loved me used the phrase as a barbed weapon to get me down on my knees, I never thought twice. When the first man to tell me he would never hurt me as my ex did, I didn't worry that he would end up taking my "no" as fuel for his engine and allowed him to go harder. I didn't think twice when my cousin who was seven years older than me told me to kiss him in awful ways and touched me in ways that were worse. Authority, ladies and gentlemen, has beaten me to a very exhausted pulp.

You taught me to never question my feelings. That I was doing just fine on my own, I didn't need any help, help was just an illusion. If you must, discuss it with your therapist. You're not sick, you're just troubled. You'll handle this on your own. Just like I handled it so well on my own two years ago when I grabbed a kitchen knife off the shelf and dug it into my arm sitting on my bedside, praying I wouldn't wake up the next morning? Just like I handled it so well on my own six months ago, when I was crouching over the toilet seat made of cheap plastic 4-7 times per day, sticking a stealthy finger down my throat and making myself throw up so I wouldn't have to feel how much I hated myself or how much grief I was in? Do you know how it feels to have stomach acid burning up the inside of your organs and gradually eating away at your esophagus on the regular? To put it simply, it hurts. But I was fine with it. And just like I'm doing just fine now, where I'm having panic attacks in front of teachers because I see my friend Briana's strawberry blonde hair and freckles, the person she was before she became a ****** addict, everywhere I go? I'm sorry, I guess that was too many questions.

Do not try to silence me. I am almost eighteen now, and asking what matters. Which means each and every one of my questions. Stop telling me my questions are not relevant, stop telling me I don't matter. I am never going away because I am important. I will not accept that I can be splattered and gutted and thrown away simply because I am just a little girl. This little girl will continue to question everything, and she will be heard. I will be heard.

Tell me what's really bothering you*
Well, if you would really like to know
How petty and pathetic I really am
Then here it goes.

You see,
I'm afraid of being alone.
I don't mean without a partner
Even though that may be a long term fear.
But I am currently concerned with
People not accepting me.
Losing all of my friends.
Even losing myself.

Perhaps it stems from
My father telling me I have no social skills
And ridiculing me for it daily.
Maybe my own self-image
Has destroyed the hope that anyone could be okay with me
Because I am not.

Either way,
It has caused me to refuse any compliment that comes my way.
I never expect love
And luckily I am seldom surprised
When things do not work out.
Why would they?
I do not deserve to be happy.

I wish I could explain this to someone
How I am lost with no direction
No GPS or map telling me
How to love myself
Or how to accept it from others.
I cannot function like people around me
Because they probably hate me anyways.
And the mere thought of that scares the hell out of me.

So, as for what's "truly on my mind"
There you have it, my dear shrink.
And you can shove it up your self-righteous ***.

No one begins purging
In hopes of becoming an addict
In hopes of falling from grace
In hopes of having every bit of control
Stripped from your being
Caused by the one thing
That you hoped would give you control.

I started
Because everything was being taken away
I was out of coping skills
And I needed to get a handle on my life again.
The stress was unbearable
And still is.

I did not expect
That I could not stop
That even if I wanted to
Holding my meals down would not only
Present a mental challenge
But a physical one as well.

My mouth waters when my body wants to purge
Everything I eat
I think of how it will feel coming up.
I have lost friends, have isolated myself
My voice has suffered
My grades have slipped
My emotions are not in my control
I do not sleep through the night.

Who is this person
Or lack there of?
As if I was not already a vacant ruin
Of a once pleasant human being
I have now managed to be the reason
That she is losing everything she ever loved.

I see you and my heart stops.
You are cold as ice
And you think you're that smooth.
You freeze me
And frostbite plagues my extremities.

My panic attack goes something like
Loneliness in a crowded room
Shivering when I'm burning up
Dizziness when I'm sober
Nausea on an empty stomach.

It's the feeling of wonder.
Looking off the edge and thinking
"What if?
Considering the plunge.

My paper skin feels as if it is tearing
And my glass bones are breaking.
My porcelain nails want to scratch
Rip me out of my body
So I don't feel this way.
So I don't feel at all.

How did I let this happen?
I shut myself down
And this is all I have left.

The smog in my lungs
The blade in my grasp
The bottle on the floor
The finger in my throat.

They keep me numb to your glare.
They are an effort to make sure
That I continue to lose feeling in my soul.

"You'll regret it after it happens"
They always say
"Once you break up,
"You'll wish you had waited."*
So why don't I regret a thing?
The loss of such a sensual part of my being
My body's innocence
Shouldn't I be more upset
That I simply gave it to you?
I didn't make you work for it.
Shouldn't it make me go crazy?
Or maybe
I was just that crazy from the start.
Maybe,
I was never really innocent
At all.

Love.
Four letters
A syllable
That can transform a shattered heart
Can soften a warped mind
Can twist and bend separate lives
And mesh them into one.
Lack of love can
Destroy nations and civilizations
Cause a body and soul to frost over
Until the entirety of its spirit
Is left lifeless and icy.
So why is love so often confused with
Insults that are thrown like bad pitches?
Psychological abuse that infiltrates a vulnerable mind
And causes its owner to falter?
Phrases that are tossed around the dinner table like
"You're so annoying"
"You're fat"
"What is wrong with you?"
How can that be love?
How can we teach children that they have to respect their parents
Because they love them?
How can our daughters discern love from abuse in romantic relationships
When they hear this daily from their fathers?
How can our sons know how to treat a woman with dignity
When their dads act this way towards their moms?
And we wonder why the statistics
For violence among relationships
Are the way they are.
We wonder why girls are promiscuous
Well why the hell not?
We wonder why boys do not respect their female counterparts
Well why the hell would they?
Why can't parents just respect and accept their kids
As they supposedly agree to do
From the day they are born?
Maybe then we can teach the latter generation
That love and respect
Go hand in hand.

My worth is not found
In thirty tablets of Tylenol Extra Strength
Chased by several shots of Everclear
Or inside someone else's body.
I used to immerse myself in this lifestyle
Until I realized I was going to waste
The feeling in my bones went missing
My desire to find that passion sank like an anchor
No search party, no Amber Alert
I was on my own
Missing an integral part of me.
I like bridges now
And I never used to.
I like flying now
I used to hate it.
But now, I look down
I don't want to plummet into the blanket of water beneath me
I don't want to hit the ground without living first.
My mind still takes me to the ruins of my past sometimes
It still holds me hostage with a gun laden with dark thoughts
But I will stay alive.
I have every reason to be dead
I have one reason to be here:
I deserve it.
Now, I drive over the George Washington Bridge
Keep my hands steady on the wheel
Sing my heart out to my favorite X Ambassadors song
Now, I sit strapped in on Delta airlines
The pilot talks about ascending
And I allow myself to rise.
He says,
"We are at fifty-thousand feet"
I smile
My spirit is now immersed in my own body
I let my tears wash over me like a monsoon
Because I am alive, darling
I do not want to jump, or fall this time
I deserve to stay soaring.

For whom would I write a love poem?
I fall in love (or is it lust?) too quickly
But I am thrown out just as swiftly.
And right now?
I'm happily drifting
Down a river on which I live
Fast and loud
Carelessly, fecklessly
But for no one but myself
Maybe that could turn into a trend:
"An ode to the one I love
The only one who can change my life
Me."

She has dated boys before.
Boys who beat her
Boys who ***** her
Boys who did nothing wrong at all
But still did not feel "right."

One of them made fun of her
Told her she must be some kind of lesbian
(As if that was an insult)
If she did not want to have *** with him.
She smiled something sad on the outside
To deflect
To forget
To hide behind.

She thought
And what if I am?
What does that make me?
It's a question that wanders into the unexplored ruins
Of an unkempt mind.

A boy meets boy love story is next on the list.
They both play football
And think that means they must both be "players."
Really, they're falling for each other
With one swift and concise movement.

Boy A cannot tell his parents
As he comes from a rowdy and traditional Italian line.
Boy B is getting fed up
And yet waits, patiently
For his one and only to express this flaring emotion
A love, unexpressed.

Their families, churches and culture
Thinks they can change who they are.
They use different, cruel tactics.
Beat the gay out of him
Excommunication
Force her to have ***, and she will turn straight

You tell the world that they are an
Abomination
Atrocity
Mutation

And yet, I ask this.
If the Bible was a Holy deity's, a God's message of eternal love
As any good Christian, as I am supposed to be, would proclaim
Then how can it be used to justify
Acts of such hate and genocide?

"I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak"
(Matthew 12:36)
I hope you are prepared for your Judgment Day.

You keep me safe.

I am the locket held close to someone’s chest, cherished by the illusion of being. Should I be opened and unhinged, the exposure will make the picture dry out & fade away.

An administrator at work sees the shallowness of my breath & the pools surfacing in my face. I am left alone with 200 students bursting with beautiful & untamed energy. His arm around my shoulder, he says, “Hide.”

Everything is dizzying here, but somewhere, this alternate world gets me to stop apologizing.

My grief flows, a creek spilling over its edges from small floods. I let the air hold me still.

Before I report, I cannot see through the smoke I become.  “What if no one believes me?”  She says, “I do.”  I sink back into my body, but at least I have returned home.

According to Christian tradition
Lucifer was once God's favorite angel
Until he believed he could control things
A pride which turned disastrous.
Studies show many human addictions
Start this way too.
It started out as an almost healthy desire
To trim the extra fat from my bones
I was called disciplined
Told it was so good that I was finally taking care of myself
It went from eating healthy
To crunching numbers in the food I was eating
To stuffing myself like a taxidermist
To ripping every inch of stuffing out of my gut
I realize I have a problem
When I can't recognize myself in the mirror
When I can't eat a meal without going to the bathroom afterwards.
They never told me I was sick
Say "you look so good, honey
Have you lost weight?"
I tell them I'm suffering
Say "you don't look bulimic."
Every other girl who got my kind of sickness went to the hospital
I was told to smile
As they made an example of me
See, they thought everything I touched turned to gold
But it was only skin deep
When I stuck that finger out
To touch the back of my throat
It pulled a trigger.
My esophagus was rotting from the inside out
Am I still beautiful?
Will I still be beautiful
When the only thing left of my body
Is its ashes?
No matter what size my body is
There will always be a coffin small enough for it
My clavicle wants to catch my tears
Until I will not let myself cry
Because the brine in my eyes
Increases salt retention
Causing my face to swell and look pudgy
You're doing this to yourself anyway, darling
I evolve from a hawk to a dove
Go from dominating to meek, in the background
My wings are so small I cannot even fly well
Can't see food without feeling sick
Even now, I want
I want to scrape the back of my throat
Until my body releases its bile
I want to layer my inside walls with magazine covers
Say look what you could've been been!
But you failed
You were a bad bulimic
But at the time
You were never "good" enough to get into treatment
The backwards logic of an eating disorder
As it feeds itself with the subject's insecurities
It's like a token economy
I put coins in
My inadequacies solidified
And I become motivated to get skinny
Notice, I didn't say healthy.
Then, I remember
I am worth getting better
My veins, the nerves in my teeth
They nearly collapsed and gave up on me
But I will not give up on me
I will recover
This is not a health conscious habit
It is writing my obituary for me
I am recovering
I am progressing
This attempt to look like Reece Witherspoon gone awry
Is no more.
I am becoming myself again
Falling back in love with my thighs and my mind
I am healing, everyday
The devil in my brain
Will not hold me bound
I have created an equally powerful God against this
I keep praising her
It is my own name
She is my better self
My real self
And she is watching over me.

Just last week,
I started making room for the queer in me.
I've been rearranging the furniture
Redecorating the interior
All because I like women.
I have been taught to make room for things all my life
But those things have always tried to **** me
Like diets, exercise that always went a little bit too far
I need more empty space than fat
So they tell me to expand by shrinking my frame down?
Oh, and boys on the street who stitch my mouth shut
Because I have been told to create voids for the words "yes" and "sorry"
Now, the house is finally becoming mine
I am painting the walls the color I want them to be
No one is going to tell me my new living area is just a phase
I can finally hear my own voice and it is saying her name
Like a skipping CD
It can't stop
It doesn't want to
Lost somewhere between her amber eyes
And the ocean
There is an ocean between us dear
The world will try to make it permanent
But I want to close the gap
Between my body and my identity
I will make room in my life
For you.

I usually fall asleep with the light on
Because in the morning it seems like the darkness never came
My body is a perpetual light switch
Always swept up in a rapid shift from darkness to florescence
Giving someone like me mania after long spells of depression
Is like giving an alcoholic a shot of whiskey
I need it to feel like I am worth something
I need it to feel like I can get anything done
Why did God, whoever the hell they are,
Decide I needed the super power
Of dragging myself out of the pit of my bed
Only to be blindsided with some sort of dangerous drug
See, most of the time I only reach an abridged version of that mania
But when it peaks it is just that:
Dangerous
It is my favorite brand of tequila
And the last drag of a cigarette
The one where the backlog from the filter gets lost in your throat
But it keeps you buzzed for a while
You see, mania sends you spinning
A trip only a certain kind of acid can take you on
You are constantly carnival
With lights and sound and fire
That no one can calm down
You are never quite at home in your body
Which might be why others can make it theirs so easily
Most days you binge on ***** and **** and ***
Are manic days
Manic depression is like losing control of the car
And other days, forgetting how to drive
Mania is like ****
You don't need to sleep when it's got you
Mania after depression is an abusive lover who knew you were coming home
Knew you would be back for more
It was only a matter of time
Before you collapsed into their arms

To my fake nails
That flaunted a pastel color in the fall
I don't remember why, exactly
I only recall ripping you off, one by one
Like petals from a daisy
It hurt, but I liked the sound of glue
Tearing off dead skin
Plunk you into the trash can
Because you didn't scratch his eyes out
Like you were told to
You didn't react
Like you were told to
Your body didn't fight back
Like you were told to
Instead, body break body shatter
Like glass on wood floor
Now, I watch her fall as smoothly as I did
When will she shatter for him?
Now, my real nails dig into my wrists
Holding onto everything you took
When you - I don't know what to call it anymore
Call it ****** assault
Shatter
Call it revictimization
Shatter
But that makes it seems like it was never his fault shatter in the first place
When your life becomes nothing
But sharpened nails and broken glass
You forget what you are made out of.
I see his iron bar face
But I am composed of diamond
Because the only thing that can break one
Is itself.

Hating yourself is such a funny way to die
As your words like daggers cut into the limp skin behind your kneecaps
Or the electricity in your back
They know exactly how to make it hurt the most
Before your demise.
Your thoughts become the finger in your throat
The "don't eat, you're always fat" mentality
The "I'm not hungry, but thanks" facade
Then in the bathroom, alone with your disarray
All the grief you give yourself is tied in the shape of a noose
Perceptive perspective ******* is clouding your vision
Until the face in the mirror becomes someone else completely.
You're wish is its command
Because you are no longer you
But isn't that what you wanted?
Be careful what you wish for
Because becoming someone else completely
Can chip away the pieces of the sculpture
Until there's nothing there
At all.

To the drunken slob who tried to get his way with me at a wedding
To the pig who called out "Mmm, get a load of that body."
And to the total idiots who came into my workplace and hollered
"I'll take a cheeseburger, with a side of you."
*******, I am not a side order
I am the whole ******* meal
I will unhinge my shut jaw
And swallow you whole
With my feminist outcries
With my pleas for the reform of a broken body
A system in which all the parts are not in tune
The arms work against the legs
The heart works against the mind
The cisgender male works against all else
And like all broken things
Most do not intend to be sexist
Most do not understand that what they are doing
Is incapacitating an entire group of people
That it is diminishing them to anything but
We are not equal
Because my body is seen as a play thing
My body is seen as something a man can take and toy with
My body is seen as parts, but not a whole
While his body is composed for him.
He lives in a society that teaches him to take, take, take
But that society teaches us to give, abide, be good
All of which do not work in harmony with each other
Because according to this logic
I cannot make ****** choices
Because mine are made for me.
But I cannot give in to the choices he makes for me
Or they work against my father's wishes.
I am either a **** or a ***** their is no in between
When my entire existence is reduced to what a man thinks fit for me
So to these men who seek to manipulate, control, and take
I am not conforming to society's standards set for me
And I am not your side order
Or for men to pick and choose the parts they want from me
I am my own woman, my own hero
I am my own meal.

My childhood was measured
By smushed handfuls of red raspberries
That stained my clothes methodically.
By counting sports cars instead of shooting stars
After all, we have enough in the suburbs to last us a while.
By "don't touch this" that comes with the affluence
Of one of the most prosperous counties in the country.
By butterfly T-shirts that were stitched together with secrets
By people picking and prodding at my size
By "if only I was skinny" vibrating my eardrums
As I had heard it from so many people before I hit the age of 12.
By being different
As at thirteen, I had no interest in make-up or push up bras or jocks
But punk rock music and a boy who was a little bit more dangerous than I anticipated.
By unwanted touches from uninvited men
Who took it upon themselves to show me womanhood
Before I could identify it myself
By the way my father stopped looking at me
As though I was his little girl
Because he began to find out where my skin has wandered.
By how my father had stopped looking at me quite some time ago
Because I was never his skinny spitting image of perfection
By the way he criticized my clothing
Told me if I wanted people to make fun of me for my size
If I wanted people to call me a ****
Then I could wear whatever the hell I wanted.
When I replied that I, in fact, did not give a flying ****
My mother chimed in
"Well you should."
And by the way complete strangers have told me to go on a diet
While others have screamed from passing cars
"****, baby, look at that body"
As though my body is my worth
And as though my worth is something to be measure
I have been taught that my worth is something tangible
That can be compacted into a little box with a pretty pink bow
Stuck on a scale and weighed
And that the number I see on that scale
The number of pounds that my body physically contains
Directly correlates with my worth as a person.
Do those strangers that hound me about my weight even stop to think
That I spend hours in front of the mirror
Pinching my skin into too-tight jeans
******* in my stomach because I just want to look my thinnest?
Do they even wonder about my past
How I have tried to diet and that is the only time I can remember my father
Treating me like a decent human being?
Oh, but I didn't lose much weight
In fact, the only time I really lost anything significant
Was when I was bulimic.
But they don't question that either.
And to the strangers who catcall me
That "body" has been abused by men I have trusted
That "body" has lost all control on a bed when a man took it from her
That "body" is strong, healthy and beautiful
It is not just a door mat for you to wipe your paws on
It is not just a *** toy whose sole purpose is to satisfy you
And then be thrown away
Is this what it means to be a woman?
To have your personhood and purpose in this world
Be quantified and made so it can be held in the same small palms
That smushed raspberries at six years old?
I hope that my worth can someday be more
Than a measurement.

A life spent in the comparative
Is a life spent searching
Desiring something more, something better
A thing that will meet society's approval
Everyone's approval.

If you only knew
How perfect, how flawless you seem to me
How I would never criticize you
The way I browbeat myself.
Yet you find every little thing to pick at
But you would say the same thing to me.

So why does it frustrate me?
When you complain about your hair being out of place
Your smile being crooked
Your thighs being too large
Or your nonexistent muffin top to the rest of us
But to you its omnipresent

Because I have all those things.
They are wrong with me
Not you.

Because you, by definition
Are skinnier, prettier and more likable than I am
I strive to be like you,
So maybe I could be happy.
And yet you want to change it.

Because I fear that you see me
The same way I see myself.

I will never measure up to you
But I wish you could meet your own requirements
For better than good enough.

I wish you could see yourself
Through the same lens that the world views you through.

Why did you take me off medication?
I said I was feeling better
You thought that meant ready
But just because the symptoms begin to dissipate
Does not mean the disease has been cured.
I never used it as a crutch
But now I start to feel as though it was one.
Something to keep me balanced
To keep me at a flat line
Rather than constantly spiking up and down
Left and right
In different directions.
I don't think a person can just stop being
Manic depressive and anxious.
PTSD doesn't simply
Go away.
That mood disorder, similar to bipolar,
That I cannot pronounce does not just
Fade out over time.
It is always there, it is just managed.
Now with no medicine
No therapy
No help from those who are supposed to be there for me
What am I to do?
I purge
I drink
I smoke
And that is the best of it all.
Shortly after I begin to sink.
You may think I am being melodramatic
But this is the life of a self-medicating person
Who has nowhere else to turn.

Late night kisses
Sneaking around
Hiding from our parents
Driving lessons
Cheating on each other
Cheating with each other
Heartbreaking
Love making
In the worst places.
How we fought
Getting caught
And having
The toxicity of our romance
Boil over
And reveal itself
To the world we thought we knew.
These are my
Horrible
       Wonderful
Tragic
        Beautiful
Memories
     Of
        You.

I cannot get up, cannot move.
My body is limp and shaken
I am clinching onto things I never had.
Take my freezing hand
Pretend you know how I feel.
I want to roll over and sleep again.
I do not know if I can make through today.
This
Is
Not
My
Day.

A cup of milk
Three egg whites
One broken heart
A splash of inspiration
A dash of a cutting addiction
A few years of a mild eating disorder
But recently, it has aged and become stronger
A hearty helping of low self-esteem
A handful of ****** childhood memories
A pinch of restlessness and insomnia
A lifetime of battles

The end result will be worth the fight.

To grow up fat is to go without
I do not gorge myself on compliments
But rather savor the taste of hearing my mother say
How only stick-thin people can wear bikinis
As if fat people have needles instead of skin
That stab those who stare at our bareness
As if it wasn't a reflection of her own self-image.

To grow up fat is to go without
I give my body
I leave no trace
When I was sexually assaulted by a date,
No one believed me.
Tell me I should be happy to have someone who wants me
Tell me I love the attention
Because when I stare into the water at my reflection
And see his hands covering my face
Still love the attention.

To grow up fat is to go without
The word ugly becomes my name
It is repeated so frequently that I forget my own
"Sarah"
I speak, and somehow it shocks them
A scapegoat like me can breathe intelligence
Can be brilliant, ambitious

To grow up fat is to go without
We, we are told we must venture to the land of milk and honey
As our words become bland
And our souls become sweet
Both liquidized into a seamless mold where we look thin
We go with our bodies wide open
As others feast on our flesh
****** and raw
All give, no take
Yet we continue to hear about our laziness.

To grow up fat is to go without
Because I binge on self-confidence
I get called a ***** and a ****
When I am starving, I am weak
But when I am not weak, I am arrogant
When I am not weak, I am nothing
The world fosters my dependence
For when I learn I no longer need to hide my body
I sabotage the machine.

To grow up fat is to go without
The expectation of being worthy
To grow up fat is to learn
How to find your worth alone.

You think I want to be this way?
Lonely, afraid and depressed.
The muted light cannot shine through the window anymore.
You think I blocked it out.

So I'm asking for it then?
According to you, I'm petty and whiney
Like a lost dog or a child.

And speaking of children,
It was my fault that he touched me then too.
Seven years old, but yet, I should have known better.
As if by some gift of God, I'd know to resist.

These are the elixirs society has force fed me.

Remember when you were little
And the boogie man made a home for himself
Right underneath your sleeping place?

A bed was supposed to be a safe haven
And yet, right below said fortress
A community of demons dance and devils play
While you try to calm your mind.

Noises used to scare me when I was a child.
I was afraid of banging, squeaks, screeches, taps
Even if I knew there was nothing outside my window.
Now I am afraid of something else that comes with the night:
Silence.

Our safe havens get riddled with demons too.
Addiction, death, brokenness, self-hate
They seem to infect us
Right after we have reached our prime, or peak
Right when we are teetering on the brink of perfection
Something sends us tumbling down.
We were not far off when we were children.

Monsters do exist,
But they reside inside of us.

My friends discuss the most effective ways
To inhale the dust of broken lives
Into their brains.
When I tell them
"I tried to **** myself several years ago"
With the same substances they try to get high on
The room goes silent
The response, it's never pretty.
It is about as beautiful as the river I wanted to drown in
About as messy as the blood stained sheets
I try to bleach them clean now
Maybe if I pour bleach into my mind
The thoughts will not be there anymore
I try to pretend it isn't real
That dangling from a bridge like a young girl's earring
Doesn't still sound appealing some days
But I am learning to swim with bricks tied to each ankle
I am learning to wake up
And not fear my own reflection
Because I am still here
And the survival makes my life
Even more beautiful than it would have been
Because I am in this moment
Even in the ones I wish would, like mist, dissipate into thin air
Sometimes I wish I could dissipate into thin air
When I no longer want to be
I remember that I must
When I no longer want to be
I remember the look on his empty face
When he removed himself from the story
And it had an abrupt ending
When I no longer want to be
I remember that I am
I remember that I am
I remember that I am here
That this moment loves me
Even when I don't love myself
That this moment is more beautiful
Than the way I decorated my body in scars
That I am a mosaic of broken glass
And soon the picture
Will be one that I want to look at
Soon the picture
Will reflect the love I have for myself
Even when I want to reject it
Love, do you recognize yourself?
You survived
You are still here.

Everything is moving
But I'm standing still.
Bouncing, up and down
Tilting, side to side
Spinning, in circles
I think I'm getting motion sickness.

Everything is moving
But I'm standing still.
Slowly, as if it's lagging along
And the world's passing me by.
Quickly, at speeds of 100 miles an hour
And I can't keep up anymore.
It's leaving me behind.

Everything is moving
But I'm standing still.
Now the motor's getting louder
And I can't shut it up.
Fast, slow, silent, deafening
When will it end?
I am ready to get off this ride.

You lived next to a mushroom field
The smell was pungent and distinct
It reaked of sewage and sulfur
I never understood how anyone could
"Just get used to it."

I hate mushrooms now
Moreso that I ever did before.
I mull over the things you did to me
And made me do to you.
All I can remember is
The smell creeping up my nasal passage
Strangling me
Choking me.

Since that day,
My life has resembled that place.
So much junk to deal with
Such a despicable scent
People wonder how I deal with it.

I don't even know how I stand the stench.
But I find it funny, oh the irony
In how I have come to simulate
The place I detest the most.