I've been gnawing off my nails
faster than I learned to chew as a child..

I don't bleed as heavily as I used to,
thick callus has replaced the skin
that's been opened time and time again

after each lashing of your tongue
I was stronger than before.

I choke on the word victim
like strong alcohol spit it up in the bathroom sink
and set aflame like a molotov cocktail; it feels like war in my chest.  

I picture her as something unknown to most;
something you run from in nightmares.

In the open, she was nothing to fear,
harmless in front of the eyes of another:
behind closed doors she was a titlewave and

I was always facing the wrong direction..
not a surprise, but I was never expecting.

If this is reality i don't wanna be a part anymore;

take me to a place where bones don't rattle
like tin cups against prison cell doors when you're alone
on your sofa questioning when the right time is to end it all.
A place where teeth don't grind like subway car
wheels when coming to a sudden stop.
My anxiety is swallowing me like a storm out at sea,
the saddest part is I'm letting it,
submitting to it's foul tongue like it will feed
instead of eat away at me until I'm rail thin
and no longer have the desire to eat,
because, why beat a dead horse?

Every coping mechanism I've created over the years
fails to keep my breathing even now,
my reflection screams failure and busy streets
look like exit signs. I don't want to live like this.
Getting high just to get by isn't cutting it anymore.
I keep trying to tell myself I'll be okay,
but the silver slivers and dashing headlights
are so enticing I don't know how long I'll last.

It's funny, how we make it our life's work
to knock down trees, but still, all we see is green.
The American dream just isn't what it used to be.
The bible says love thy brother, and I'm not trying to preach
but it seems like all we care about is cashing checks
and making bread; gotta climb higher up that ladder.
Materialistic and sadistic;
it's ridiculous how much money is spent
on things we just don't need.
We've become less about helping others,
less thoughtful in general, more self centered.  

Sad to see homelessness running ramped through our streets,
but we can't spare a cent because we're more interested
in feeding our own unnecessary habits, or just
keeping the cash in our pockets
instead of giving to someone who truly needs.
we've become corrupted by our own dreams.

Get an education, go to college, they say,
but when it comes time to pay
they can't help you, so you sacrifice an arm and a leg
break the bank and your own back
for a piece of paper that won't really help you get a job anyway.
and I'm not saying don't invest in your own future, I'm just sayin
work to help others along the way.
Why not work to change, rearrange, make tomorrow a better day,
if not for ourselves then for the next ones to come around

are you picking up what i'm putting down?
because it doesn't seem all too complex to me,
live simpler, stop worrying about getting
a bigger bang for your buck  and help a brother out.
So caught up in getting rich quick we turn a blind eye
to the guy that doesn't have a dollar to begin with.
They say you gotta spend money to make it,
so pay it forward, instead of hoarding for your own benefit.

We've got politicians lying through perfect teeth,
but how did they get them so white and clean?
You guessed it, your tax money,
and now we're following in their footsteps,
led like sheep, buying things just because
we were told to by an ad on the TV,
and calling it freedom.

We're becoming exactly what we said we'd never be
and I don't think I could make it any easier to see,
can't rhyme my way through all the idiocy.
We strive to be more everyday, its the american way,
but for every step we take in the right direction
we're skewed off course by another unreliable source,
they say the illuminati's just a conspiracy theory,
but look try and look past what they want you to see.
We're puppets, dangling on the strings we chose to sew
through our own skin,
because we'd thought it would take us higher
than hard work and dedication.
21st century, and still living in a world where people
have the color of their skin held against them,
still living in a world where love is believed to be gender-specific,
but we're not prejudiced. We're not biased.
Won't admit we've got our heads in our *****.

I mean, come on. I know it's hard to admit when wrong,
but it's about **** time we wise up, isn't it?
About time to open the eyes that have been
glued shut by our oppressors
and see that we're an abomination in the making,
we should have been raised to do more giving than taking,
but somewhere along the line the script was flipped
and now those with good hearts are made a mockery of
for having a different perspective.

We've gone from land of the free, to a place I don't wanna be,
and so far, we aren't doing too much to change it.

Sometimes I drag you down.

Can't handle it when you go out
because your freedom unintentionally mocks
my caged-in state, clanks a mug against the bars
of my prison. I didn't pick this.

Didn't pick an age that came with limitations,
but I guess I'm stuck with it
and **** you're stuck with me,
stuck with my shaky words that come from
shakier hands. Stuck with breathy phone calls
when I'm sad and don't have the heart to tell
you that no one actually has the power to fix it.

Stuck with these eyes that imitate thunderstorms when I'm being just
a tad bit melodramatic.
What do thunderstorms look like
through those kaleidoscope eyes of yours?
I bet they look like depression in a bottle,
ready to be forced down like shots of anything
that'll make me forget.
I'm beginning to understand why people
become alcoholics and that's terrifying.

You're stuck with everything I've ever been
and everything I'll ever be. Truth is I've ruined
every good time you've tried to have since you
got together with me. And I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for being a buzzkill. I'm sorry for worrying. I'm sorry for wishing I could just go with you and I'm sorry I can't.

You swear my age doesn't bother you but I'm
afraid sooner or later it might begin to.
Your age means freedom, mine means
nine o'clock curfew on school nights
and eleven o'clock ******* bedtime.

I'm an adult in a child's body. Betrayed by the number of years I've been alive.

Have you ever had so much to say, but no way to say it?
Every answer you've sought to find is true and tried but still,
to no avail, you're tongue tied.
Like the words behind your lips are in knots
and they're not as simple to detangle as earbuds,
(ha, what a laugh, even that is like rocket science)
Do you see the point I'm making?
It's like your own thoughts are encrypted
and you're forced to try and crack the code.
Like you've just self medicated with poison, and now,
you're trying to create the antidote
with shaky hands and eyes blinded by confusion.
It's like walking down the street with your shoelaces tied together
or sitting on a not so metaphorical bed of nails
Difficult, to say the least,
hell, even painstaking,
to want to scream every word at the top of your lungs,
but have no words to produce.
betrayed by your vocal chords, you're left mute,
and feeling stupid.
To have such a valid point but no way to make yourself understood,
It's like putting together a puzzle without finding the corners first.
Do you ever have something to say, but no way to say it? because I sure as hell do.

I want to write you a trilogy on the stages
in which our relationship formed.
The first book would be solely based on the day
that I stopped treating your text messages
like active landmines. Stopped tiptoeing.
No longer being afraid of what your affection
would do to me once I submit to it.
It would be based on the first step I took to
stop being so **** afraid. From that very day
you've helped me in ways I'll never be able to fully explain.
Helped me let go of fear and trepidation, and open
my heart to the greatest thing in the world; your love.

The second would revolve around the first time you kissed me.
I don't know if you noticed, but my knees buckled
like seatbelts and I shook like glass window panes in torrential rain.
That day you awoke something inside me that I didn't know existed
but I'm so glad you found it. Like a stray kitten I was lost
and you brought me back home without questioning where I'd been,
and I'll never fully understand why, but I guess it doesn't matter.
You've taught me not to overthink things, to just revel in the moment.

The third would be set in here and now. Every forehead kiss
and stolen glance sums up to another page, every loving gesture
is another chapter. We are creating something people wish they
could create for themselves. A love that belongs in museums
to teach the world what it really means to give yourself to someone,
with no fear, and not a single ounce of regret.  To say that you changed
my life is an understatement. You altered my way of thinking.
Took a broken thing and made it new again. Made me, new again.

And with every word that slips from your lips I am reborn.

I spend so much time staring at blank canvases
hoping beauty will appear before me instantly
that I forget how the right brain works.
I forget how art doesn't come, it simply is;
you either have it or you don't.
These are talents you don't learn, can't learn.
You're born with the instinct to string words into sonnets
and mix paints into masterpieces, and most of the time,
no one else is capable of understanding just how you got them
to be what they are; it's your own personal daydream
that you can choose to get lost in, or lose in the crevices
in the back of your mind. That's why I write until
my hands go numb and my mind is in shambles.
I figure the more I do it, the better it will become.
The brain is more than an *****. It's a muscle that requires
constant manipulation to keep it in tip-top shape
and I don't ever want to fall into the background.
I want to spend my life tip tapping on keyboards and
scratching at paper with fine tipped pens as if my life
depended on it. To write of things unknown to the
not-so-artsy types. Because I've come to find that
a math or science major isn't usually capable of creating
crescendos with wordplay, or letting syllables shimmy
and shake off the tongue like they're doing the merengue.
It's a song and dance that takes more than simple muscle-memory:
it takes heart and soul and usually a little bit of pain along the way.
Starving artists aren't sad because they're hungry,
no, it's usually because they've experienced life in a way
that no one really wishes to. They've felt emotions rip through them
like tidal waves and that's how they came to write so **** beautifully,
or paint with such depth. Now a day's with depression levels
shooting up like rockets, outlets are hard to come by
but if you can source that pain into something beautiful,
you must be doing something right.
It's come to a point in my life where I believe half of my blood
is infused with the ink I've used to label my hurt
and ease my pain.
It's all about what gets you by; it's become a lifeline.
If it keeps me breathing for another
second, another minute, another hour, another day,
then I might as well let it grow like wild fire. Let it blossom into something beautiful.

instead of dancing in the rain we
let it chain us to the bed post
and i don't think i'll ever forget how
your hands felt at two am when
you should have been home but instead
our legs became tangled and you abandoned
the idea of sleep and took the time to devour me.

the truth is i want to live long enough
to find sustenance in the roots of trees
and the green of grass.
live long enough to see a flower sprouting
in the middle of an untended lawn
and find a metaphor for my own life
within it's growing petals.

i don't know exactly what it is i want to live for
but i know that whatever it is will be beautiful
and i will drown in it's relevance.
it may take me years to find
and i may be old and gray by the time that day comes
but as soon as my eyes lay upon that certain thing
everything that has ever tried to knock me down
will be left dead in dust for a grave

humans are like stones in the ocean
tides turn us over until smooth, if we're lucky
if we're unlucky, the tide rejects us,
rough around the edges
and we face being buried under hot sand
that represents our mistakes.
choices made in moments where thought
was not a process, but instead a rejected idea.
like the many balled up pieces of looseleaf
that live in the garbage pail
next to a dissatisfied writers desk.
it overflows like our own regret.

i can only pray that i do not end up settling
for anything less than the smooth perfection
that i've worked so hard for years to accomplish
i did not pick the hand i was dealt
only made do with the cards in my hand
i am tired of settling
too compulsive to deal with anything less than
what i am capable of changing
i am not saying that i am mansion bound
or set on owning a private jet
but a white picket fence would be nice
maybe a black lab guarding a red front door.
there will be daisies in the flower beds
and red wine in the fridge
i'll make dinners made for kings and our pillowcases
will always match, no matter what.

My body is a temple; equipped with
hollow spots in-between each brittle rib.
Say hello to the gaps that were left when you did,
I've dedicated them to your very existence,
growing daisies in the spring time
within them to try and distract myself from
the absence of your fingertips on my skin.
With lips that sometimes take on a shade of periwinkle
when trying to remember what air tastes like,
trying to remember how to breathe evenly
trying to remember how to breathe
I mouth my regret at ever letting you in.
You are the stray hiding under the porch that
I don't have the money to feed, but can't seem to get rid of;
a leech that's come to like the taste of my blood.

I didn't know hurt on a first name basis
until you made me shake his clammy hand,
with eyes like black saucers and a tea kettle to match,
we indulged in scones and questioned anything that
didn't fit into our understanding of fire and brimstone.
Self trained nihilists, life was a game and we didn't
quite understand the point of playing
so we sit with our hands in our laps,
thumbs circling each other like it was some sort of race
and our lips parted ever so slightly,
waiting for the magic to happen.

The thing is, I wasn't trained as a magician.
there is no deck of cards, no magic curtain,
only a girl with lips, hips, fingertips,
all taught to sway in your presence. I don't know if it's magic
but if your breath stops short in your chest I must
be doing something right, right?
A song and dance I know all too well,
the smile, nod, giggle,
twirl your hair between ******* and stand in a way
that accents the attractiveness bred into your hips
by ancestors taught to do the very same.

The most haunting thing in all this,
is that I water the daisies in my chest daily
not because I can't forget, no,
but because I want to remember
want to live the rest of my life setting examples
of everything women shouldn't have to be
shouldn't want to be
shouldn't be bred to please
shouldn't sing crescendos in response to cat calls
and black and blue expectations. If you want perfection buy a barbie,
we are flesh and blood and sweat and tears
not your ******* play thing.

You cannot set fire to our hearts and then expect us
to bat our eyelashes daintily,  
whisper sweet nothings into the neck that creaks with contradiction.
Our love is not a force to be reckoned with
remember, sweet child, from whence you came
a woman herself carried you for nine back breaking months
to bring you into this world
a woman can just as easily take you out of it, maybe even easier.
Not many would open their mouths to relay this message
I suppose maybe I am a blip in the fabric of ancestry.
Somewhere in the makeup of my DNA, I gained a voice
and I fully intend to use it against idiocy.
Today I am throwing out my gardening tools,
these daisies in my rib cage no longer need tending
I have finally learned to know my worth without attaching
someone else's name to it.
Maybe it's time for you to do the same.

If this hasn't occurred to you yet,
I am not your average cookie cutter, barbie doll type.
I do not swear to wear pink on Tuesdays
or any day for that matter because pink reminds me of innards
and that isn't exactly something that compliments my complexion,
it only accomplishes making me seem more dead than I already do,
and who wants that?

In reality I am manic pixie dream ******* crack,
one day with dreams of  hair down to my navel,
the next I can hear the hair clippers calling my name.

I cut my hair not because I was looking for attention
but because I do not wish to seek approval,
do not wish to meet stereotypical versions of what girls are
"supposed to look like."
If you tell me I look like a lesbian, I will promptly thank you
for the compliment and send you on your way,
because lesbians are people too, whether or not I am one is irrelevant.
I do not wish for other people to view me as attractive
only for people to view me as I am
whether that is flower child or train wreck
because it changes weekly and sometimes it's both.
my identity is not a fixed point, it is a spectrum
and if the idea of that scares you, just imagine
how much it terrifies me. Some days I am sunshine
and other days I'm a cyclone looking to rip through
anything that's in or even surrounding my path.
The truth is I am the epitome of confusing.

I cut my hair because I am at a pivotal moment in my life,
a point in time where I choose who I wish to become.
I know hair doesn't seem like that big of a factor,
but this is the first of many crucial decisions that I will be forced
to make on my own, and I figure if I can figure out how to
wear my hair, then balancing a checkbook will figure itself out.

The truth is I am horrible with decision making,
and many times crack under pressure
don't know what essay topic to tackle
go back and forth on the topic of college majors,
and while one of those is short term
the other is monumental and keeps me from sleeping sometimes.
I'm usually the neutral one,
the one who agrees to what everyone else wants.
But I need to break that habit before it becomes unhealthy
and i'm pretty sure it already has.
I'm a few steps late in the process,
but the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem
so I'm headed in the right direction.

And so I cut my hair.
watched it as it fell from my head like sad little tendrils of despair,
and formed into a pile that resembled a cat by the time I walked out.
In doing so, I found a new part of myself,
a part that was always there but never really announced itself
When I cut my hair I officially labelled myself as a risk taker,
because the truth is I don't think I've ever been more scared
than I was when those clippers hit the back of my neck
and the weight of my hair fell off my shoulders.
Taking such a huge risk made me feel alive,
and that, is something I'm okay with.

If I could've taken you on that
futon upstairs without knowing there was a chance
of someone walking upstairs to catch us,
you would've been mine. Remember that.
There will always be a next time.

Welcome to the place you’ll find me sitting
helplessly trying to find a way out.
The place you’ll never want to visit again,
you’ll run, at full speed wishing you’d never
said it would be okay for me to
open up and let you see the insides of my
horribly damaged head,
and instead, never brought up the subject
but only find yourself back where you started in this maze
of desperate uncertainty,  
because in this place lies carcasses of dreams
abandoned but never forgotten,
my knobby knees and shaking fingers
just haven’t yet found the strength
to put them back together again.
I've arranged them in patterns that resemble broken things
like china dolls with cracked smiles
and butterfly amputees, this is no picnic.
I am sorry for the horror you will see
in the depths of my cerebral cortex,
I never imagined you’d actually step inside,
and now here you are clawing your eyes out
right beside me screaming at the top
of hoarse lungs and pleading with sad eyes
now just barely bleeding, for a way out,
with a tone just below sad whisper I tell you
I’ve yet to find a ship off of the island of misfit toys,
and for now, you’re just as hopeless as you
found me to be in the beginning.
Just remember you provided the gun and ammunition,
I only loaded it, and gave you a taste for
the possibility of an ending.
I never tempted you with the idea of destruction,
only provided you with its breeding ground
and that's not something I can help or even change.
you've now seen the depths of hell
and men have said it leaves one blind
even if it does come in the shape and size of panic attacks
pain killers, ***, and a heart rate that laughs at the word fast,
races beyond it, bearing sharp teeth and a smile,
swallows me up like the ever raging sea.
My body was not built for this type of misery,
my skin cracking and my kneecaps knocking
like a sort of secret police to tell me
that it's getting out of hand again.
Marionettes sewn straight into skin,
dancing just like all the other puppets
we live a life of lavish lamentation and hold up
bronze metals just for showing up and sticking around.
How much does life mean now?
Do not tell me I am not suffering because now
you have seen it and it will never leave your memory.
I bestow this upon you because you chose not to take me seriously.
This is a message from the island of misfit toys,
I may seem like I'm keeping it together just fine,
but beyond every door lies a secret,
beyond every shining light, a shadow
and beyond every smile, someone is broken.

It’s scary as hell how last week you held me
right before I said goodbye,
and in my head I was screaming ‘I love you’
hoping so badly that you didn’t see it in my eyes.
Because I know it’s too soon for such weighty exclamations,
and the last thing I want to do is scare you away,
but you make my mind race and my heart ache
and the soles of my shoes always seem
to point in your direction
the way a plant grows toward the sun.
You are my most significant source of light.

Today you told me you were scared.
Because you like me so much,

All I could say was "i know that feeling"
because even though I've given up on impending forevers
I'm doomed to believe that forever would
best be spent with you.
You won't read these words for a long time
because it won't be the right time, for a long time
I'm just fast forwarding because
my heart doesn't know patience,
my heart knows bed sheets and now, now, now.
Rushed beginnings and painful endings.
You are neither. You are kind and respectful,
and won't pass boundaries, even though realistically
I never set them. You are a new kind of amazing
and it is exhilarating.

I woke up with stale wine on my breath, 
remnants of New Years spent at my cousins and making a friend. 

He opened the bottle and it wasn’t long 
before I started sneaking small doses 
into my Red Solo cup,
hoping the other 
adults wouldn’t notice, and if they did,
 that they wouldn’t care. It was twenty 
minutes
to midnight and I had moved 
on to a wine glass. All the other adults 
had
already had so much to drink that 

they forgot to care. 
It was fifteen minutes to midnight, and 
what was a full bottle was now empty
,
my head swimming, though my footing 
still sure and steady.
Between the two of
 us, two hours was plenty of time to 
**** a bottle of wine, even if it was only
 by ourselves. 

It was midnight and we were toasting to the life ahead of us, if not out loud 
then surely in our minds.
 I don’t think being happy is too much
 to ask for, when the clock strikes 12.

Even if just for a moment,
I want to touch the most intimate
parts of your soul with my tongue
and taste what its like for you
to be with me.

You make it hard to sleep.
I'm tucked under comforters at 3 am
with the image of your face in the absence of moonlight stuck in my head and I have never been more comfortable than I am
when you hold me up in the air as if
you're trying to show the
whole world my apparent beauty.
And then, you kiss me.
And smiling mouths kiss better
than ones that frown so I pray
that I can keep that grin plastered
on your face just long enough
to connect lips like constellations
yet again.
God I am a mess but I wouldn't have it any other way because
you are comparable to the
shining light that leads me
out of the gallows,
and brightens all the corridors
in my gloom filled head.
I wish I could whisper all of this
into the curve of your neck while you hold me but I can never find words
and form them into correct sentences,
rather than incoherent gibberish
while under the trance that is
the feel of your fingertips
I'm tucked under comforters at
3 am thinking about how lucky I am
and that's why I was late for school this morning.
I overslept dreaming of all we could become.

So this is what it's like to feel alive
it's nice to finally meet this feeling again,
after months wrapped in a cocoon of self-loathing.
When he touches me, my skin shutters like a tsunami just
rolled onto the coast of Jersey,
shaking the whole **** state.
Heart pumping electricity into my veins,
leaving the ends of my hair sizzling,
and a smile on my face.
Awestruck by the way he says my name.
It sounds like poetry.
He is poetry.
Hands caressing hands and
lips touching gently,
I couldn't dream up a better piece of art
if I tried for years.

I feel like I'm thirteen again,
staring into that same pair of
amazing eyes.
He makes me feel euphoric.
His smile is a sunrise that I
want to see every single morning.
The feeling in the pit of my stomach
hasn't changed.
He is still my kryptonite,
even four years later.

You were my first, and last love.
I took you for granted
forgot that building blocks only last
as long as their makers do
and we were doomed.
Fragile enough to shatter
under the weight of a single atom,
foolish of me to think you wouldn't
be crushed under the sheer mass
of impending forevers.
Sometimes, we just aren't happy
with what we've got.
Now as I burn,
so do our bridges,
and what we are left with,
merely ashes.

it's getting cold again.
not only outside, but in my head.
in my chest.
north-east October sits heavy
on my shoulders.
i've lost the warmth
of the sun and
that of his arms span.

I am not so much afraid of falling
as I am afraid of the sound my bones
would make against unforgiving pavement,
if you were to neglect to open your arms.
I apologize if I don't immediately
trust your charming smile, but in past
experience, behind a charming smile
lies an appreciation for liquor bottles
and the art of a good disappearing act.

If I seem wary of your good intentions
know it is only because I have experienced
abuse and neglect, and it isn't quite as easy
to get over as the self-help books say it is.
Because of this, sometimes I am distant.
Sometimes I create a spiny shell around
myself to keep from experiencing more of
what i have previously had to run away from.
or even suffer the loss of.

Sometimes I put more thought into my writing
than I do into my relationships because
after a countless streak of falters,
you begin to think that is all there is to expect.
I am sorry that I am damaged, and I
am also sorry that I would never expect
anyone to have the power to fix it.
As time has passed and I have been wrecked,
I lost the expectancy to be put back together again.

Though I hate to be alone, I will probably
push you away, trade you for the solitude of my
tiny bedroom. After being left time and time again,
I have been forced to leave, myself because
I would rather experience loneliness than heartbreak.
Funny thing is, I'm learning they are close to the same.