i never could've imagined a life
where i would be better off outside of your arms
but here i am
and there you are
a million miles away
and only inches from my memory

I am a broken bird
I cannot fly, I only peep
And hope that another will lift me up and away.

I am a broken bird.
I cannot fly, he's heard my peep
But another has lifted me up and away.

I am a broken bird.
I cannot fly, I only cry
He staggers into clouds and falters with my weight

I am a broken bird.
I cannot sing, I shall not peep
I peck until he lets me fall

I am a broken bird.
I cannot swim, I shall not fly
I will sink into this ocean I have fallen in

I am a broken bird.
I cannot swim, I shall not try
I will drown in my volition where I have been left

I feel constriction in my throat
I know it's you who put it there.
My limbs, they shake
My voice doth quake
I burn from the inside out.

I feel emptiness in my abdomen
I know it's you who wants it there
I labored til my soul went brittle
You played my heart like a broken fiddle
I collapse from the inside out.

I feel heaviness in my heart
I know it's your fault that it's there
Your treatment chained me to the ground
I ******* miss you when you're not around
I disintegrate from the inside out.

I feel blood-drops in my wrists
I know it's you who doesn't care
No matter how hard I tried for you
You refuse to see what's clear and true
I dehydrate from the inside out.

You chase your dreams
While I run far away from mine

I drag myself along by the neck to a state of delirium
Where all I can remember is the jolt from my subconscious if I start to slip into sleep
Dreams I cannot wake myself from lurk in the corners

Where foreign hands curse my skin again
And I scream myself raw.
Begging for help that never comes
Lost in the distortion of dreams.

She may have ground my bones to dust
But I took back the dust and built new bones.

Every cell in my body
From the tip of my tongue to my eyelashes to the bones in my hips
Every cell in my body burns when I think of her

I wanted to forgive her
I really did.
Even with her misplaced blame
I wanted to believe she was contrite.
And I tried to make it so
But I knew in my chest that it couldn't be real
I let her text me
But feared seeing her in public.
The sight of her sister made it all
Come rushing back.
Her memory lurks in every corner
Even though they are both long gone.

Even with her misplaced blame
She didn't /sound/ sorry.

I have gone from baby steps to mountain peaks
From building new bricks to smashing myself apart
From new stitches to crumpling at the seams
Now the peaks rise before me and I have nothing

No matter how often my heart pounds away in my chest
Or the breath falls out of my lungs
I stand as tall as I can make myself
Their love is the harness that grips me as I climb Mount Everest
And only a touch of fear will hold me back

Someday I will stand at the mountain's peak and build a home for myself
Where the air is thin and the scenery stretches beyond the eye's capacity
I may have been pushed down before
/But it was not my fault/
And I will never leave my place from the mountain's peak

Sometimes I walk through the halls in the dark and remember
Sometimes I look down into the toilet and see the pills and poison I threw up that night
Sometimes I wake up and do not remember falling asleep and I am terrified to think:

What if I did it again? I know I didn’t want to

Sometimes I want to leave the house again in the dead of night and walk back down that road
Just to see if I could find that place again
To feel the presence of God
And the cold in the air
And know that I am going to be okay.

I know there is a crumpled suicide note somewhere in the walls of this room
I have not read it
I am afraid to.
I am more afraid someone else will find it first
That they will think it recent
Because
Because maybe I didn’t date it

But maybe I did.

I don’t remember why I came back
I don’t remember the final thud of the hammer of reasons against the nail of decisions.
I remember crying
The cold seeping to the bones
The streams of messages
All from one person
Lingering by the road sign for one last goodbye
Back and forth
Back and forth.

Please let me go.

I come to the crossroads
I linger
Think about turning around
Don’t be a screwup, boy
Not any more than you already are.
Mama’s gonna **** me
But isn’t that what I wanted?

What do I want?

Mama’s gonna **** me
When I come home
How am I gonna break this
I talked to myself all the way back
“I’ll explain on the way there
Just take me to the hospital.”
I lost my courage after hurling what looked like ******* orange crush
I can taste death in the soda pop.

Driving 90 on the highway curve
I’ve lost my way
I’ve lost all sense of time and space

I’ve lost me.

08:05
Geometry
12:34
History

I have to tell them what you did
They have to know
Poor boys
Housing a freak show.

“I heard you walking around. but I just went back to sleep.”

"Girlie"
Get better soon
The flinch in my tired heart
Her teardrops and a lost embrace
Mama’s in the backseat

“My baby tried to **** herself”

I still have those clothes
I could have died in
I think I'm wearing the pants
As I write this past one in the morning
I know exactly where the shirt is
Crumpled in the drawer.
Just a stomachache. Back to school tomorrow. Then someday I’ll come clean.

Sometimes I wish I’d said yes
I wish they would have known to coddle me
To treat me like a broken vase
A tortured child who’s seen to much
That’s all I was.

But now I’ve superglue.
And I'm healing.
In order to see the truth within
Sometimes I have to turn around.

My ghost is still tied down to my body
For she has no place to go
Time passes by
She still resides
In the fragments of my soul.

My ghost is still tied down to my body
For I have no place to go
But to wander
Down memory lane
The place where dead roses grow.

My ghost is still tied down to my body
For it has no place to go
While the forest calls my name
In the dark
And pouring rain.

My ghost is still chained to my body
For I know not where to go
Another's hands have stained my skin
This reality is
Not my friend.

My ghost is forever chained to my body
For I will never truly forget
But I can bury your memory
In bright embers
And faded ash

They'll tell you you can do anything you want to
But that's not the truth
I can't fly to the moon
Or **** the demons that live in my chest

I can't rid myself of the dark clouds that surround me
Or quell the fire of anxiety that burns in my stomach

I live a life enslaved by her wounds on my psyche
It is a chasm I am afraid to cross but cannot afford to stagnate

If you look down, you will falter
And into the jaws of the monsters you shall fall

Only to be lysed away and forgotten.

Your smile will be the first to fade
Then the shine inside your eyes
You will go gray, and cold
Wrapped in infinite sweaters; a body in hiding

You will forget how it feels to laugh, to grow
Then the warmth across your skin
You will forget how life feels without the bites
As your cells fall apart

You will fall and crumple to the red dirt
Unable to find the strength to lift yourself up and clean yourself off

Eventually you will become nothing
But an abstract coil of love and passion
From a body that is no more

But your heart shall bear the damage and never cease to beat again

Even after the beast has swallowed you up
And you've become one with the monster's jaws

My body doesn't feel like mine.
I feel skin on muscle
Muscles that move on bone
But I am not truly present.

My body doesn't feel like mine.
I feel hands on skin
Skin that quakes beneath wicked touch
But I am not truly present.

My body isn't mine
Without the tightness in my chest
A tightness that I deeply crave
But I don't know what's real.

This body isn't mine.
I feel a brushing of elbows
Elbows of strangers awakening the memories
But I /don't/ know what's real.

This voice isn't mine.
I speak stories of others
Other things I hope can allude
But none read between the lines.

It's days like these
And girls like her
That make me think I could be okay to stay
Inside my shell.

It's days like these
And boys like him
That make me almost want to stay
To avoid association.

All I want is one day
Where my veins don't itch below the skin
Where I don't crave the bites

All I want is one day
Where I don't have to think about it
If only so I could clear the hair from my skin without temptation

All I want is one day
Where I don't have to fight with myself through every moment
To indulge in life's simple pleasures with an undistracted mind

All I want is one day
Where the spiders don't crawl beneath my skin
And I cease searching for scars that have since faded

All I want is one day
But I would take an hour-
Or even a minute...

Simply to be free of the spiderwebs that splay across my skin.

I am not pure.
I threw it away
So I could choose where it landed.
I wasn't safe in my skin
I thought it could happen again
I didn't believe that I could get away
Escape, for real.
I thought her presence was permanent
And in a way, I was right.
But not in the way that I feared.

You say support for us is “collaborating with madness”
I must really be nothing to you
Someday I will wake you up
The alarm clock will not come with a snooze button
If you want to quiet me, you will have to throw the clock
Against the wall
Let it smash into a million pieces
But you will always hear a faint phantom ringing in your ears
It will grow louder
And louder
It will never truly be silenced.

You think I’m crazy
A queer little copycat
Let me let you in on a little secret
The world moves on, with or without you
I will move on, with or without you
I know that it is likely to be the latter
In a way, I almost want it to be
Black cannot become white without first having specks of grey
You are the deepest, darkest black of night
I am a myriad of colors

“Have I gone mad, Alice?
“I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But let me tell you a secret. All the best people are.”
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
We’re all mad here.
Some of us just refuse to see
People hide behind their bibles
Yet speak of things that aren’t even written in them
Where does our God say, “Thou shalt not be transgender?”
You use the book as an excuse
As a shield for your bigotry
You may as well spit on the cover
Or light the pages ablaze with your disrespect.