How are we allowed to grow
When our silences are spread thin,
Our cheeks forever touched
By strangers on trains.
When our eyes are glued to
The girl crying in the bathroom,
And a child following
His mother carefully along the crowded street.

How are we allowed to grow
With the shouts from parties next door
Break down the bedroom walls,
When that boy who you used to be friends with
Walked down the other side of the street
And you hope he doesn’t see you,
When the man starts yelling obscenities
From the corner of the park
And you want to believe his words.

How are we allowed to grow
With all of the pain,
With our brief glimpses of joy,
With our arms outstretched for a better future,
With our minds stunted in the past.

How are we supposed to grow
When our very bones are torn apart
By questions we can never answer.

Our worth is granted to us
By the sum of our lovers,
By how many times we have craved
Or been craved,
By how much our skin longs
For another’s touch.

We are taught to withhold,
And to not take for granted
The immense altruism of company.
Where do we belong
If not in the arms of another?

How dare we for a minute
Accept our own love as enough.
How dare we seek comfort
In our own searching minds.
How dare we think of ourselves as anything other
Than a half in search of the whole.

As women we are conditioned to love what breaks us
Because unconditional love isn’t a skill to be cultivated,
It’s an expectation we so painfully fill.

As women we are told that there is meaning in our silence.
That our beauty lies within what stays untold,
That our voices limit our inherent value.

As women we must mold ourselves
Into one of a hundred cookie cutter
Versions of the same person that
We deem an acceptable form of femininity.
They tell us that this is our identity
When really it’s a way to make ourselves
Palatable.

As women we must apologize for conformity
And we must apologize for breaking away.
The female population lacks the luxury
Of confidence without judgement
Because we fear it won’t make us as simple.

As women we are tailored to please the world.
The burden we carry aches with all of the moments
We wish we could have done something different and didn’t.
I am tired of the rules.
I am tired of the chains.

He tried to remember what they looked like as he saw
Where her nails had sunken deep into the comforter
And where his sweat had flattened the sheets.  
And felt ***** just for looking,
Afraid that their memories could see him in the empty room.

How ******* dare they
Indulge in each other when all it becomes
Is a mess for someone else to notice?
Selfish, entitled, lucky
*******.

And he was ashamed
Because he was happy that he noticed what they did
And because he felt like he was there.
Something so **** about imaginary inclusion.
Is that what they wanted?

Changing the bedding felt like desecration,
Like tearing down the set of a Broadway play.
The show was for him,
The show was for the other,
Who taught them how to act?

It hurts to think
About their hollow bodies
Mashing together.
They’re fake-*** moans that the other customers
probably complained about to their
silent spouses.

It hurts to think
That they whispered the moment away
In their insecurities and
in-the-moment-living.  
Jesus, all for nothing.

And he started to cry,
Thinking about the heat that filled the room.
Letting his heaves mirror their motion, and
Then left,
Their passion still damp.

In the end of everything,
When the skies make peace with the sea,
My mind will have left long ago,
But my thoughts will not desert me.
My head and heart have no connection;
I will weigh my feeling with good judgment.
And when the skies turn dark again,
I will seek out some replacement.
But even with broken bones,
I see a great light in the distance.
My head and heart may be far apart,
Yet I would have to be a fool to resist it.
Now the night recoils
And the day has fled
All should stay is light
And yet all I see is red.

The breath of the past was light with normalcy,
Not yet soured by the fear and the hate
And the gusty bruises.
What would you do to feel
The wind again?

Sometimes I remember the soil beneath my feet.
When I do my bones ache for static ground,
For the hot dew of summer morning.
After it collapsed from under me,
I walk with the tenacity of a bird,
My footing always a step behind.
Have you ever
Walked against the earth?

When I heard the screams my lungs would swell with water.
I’d grasp the blade under my pillow
In shallow hopes of repair,
But I knew if I tried I would only float,
Since the ocean does not forgive.
When did you teach
Yourself to swim?

She felt the heat when she saw you,
But she never saw the fire.
We danced around it and pretended
That we knew each other.
And we smiled,
And we laughed,
But your corneas ignited.
In the deepest black the sparks flew
And the heat twisted the corners of your mouth upward like scorched wicks.
I would ask you why you watched us burn,
But to you
We were all just ashes.

A woman, hunched over
Shaking with sobs

A boy, probably her son
patting her back
And asking the receptionist for an ice pack

I felt the tears

How are we supposed to be happy
With the bruises

How are we supposed to be happy
When we forget how numb we are.

I cannot drink the milk anymore
And I don’t remember it’s taste.
Memories coagulate together,
But only in my mind.

I think it hurts them
Remembering the bright-eyes
And seeing their friends have babies.

She once said she missed
My silent days
And I think she really missed the days
That made things easy.

Why do I feel guilty
When put at the mercy of time’s
Arrow?

I think it hurts them.

My first memory,
Our dog, Maxine
Trying to jump up on to my changing table.
She couldn’t breathe,
She was laughing so hard.

It was Take your daughter to work day.
She got to peer from the side of a Skyscraper
And imagine what all the people were doing
And imagine Herself grown up
And doing important things too.

Her parents were split up
But when She turned eight they spent the day together.
They went to the restaurant She liked and
Visited the Smithsonian.
They all laughed at dumb jokes
And She went to bed feeling warm.

When She was in Middle School
She didn’t like her parents anymore.
She went to a sleepover with strangers
And watched Titanic and made a friend.
It felt like how the teenagers must have felt
In the movies.

Before She left She felt like a kid again.
Not the same, but with the same potential,
Peering ahead at life’s possibilities.
She got drunk with Her friends and
Laughed and recounted all of the
Beautiful nights.

I sit and I try to remember
All of the times I was happy.
Then I feel all of the weight
Of my entire history
The past that is gone
And the future I can’t achieve
Plundering like sand through my hands.

How dare she be allowed to laugh?

You ask me if I’m okay
And I want to yell at you,

To tell you how I sat up at night
And counted the lights in other buildings,
Just to know I wasn’t the only one alive.
To tell you that sometimes when I see you
I want to punch you in the face
Since we’re starting to look so similar.
To tell you how when my mind wants to hurt me
It uses your voice.
To tell you how you peeled off my skin
And made me dance through flames.

And of course I don’t.

Because I know you did your best.

i see the trees sway and silhouette the dusk
and breathe my air
and it feels like there is something i’m missing

i’ve been wasting away down here,
reading the news and watching videos
and keeping away from myself
i guess i don’t know what i have to say

each day is flows like milk and
between each moment are prayers for
the future and i’m so ******* scared

when i feel like my feet are made of lead
and the drip of time aches with every tick
and nobody is even looking at each other
it’s easier to imagine when the fruit will blossom

when we start living like its a movie with
bokeh city lights crying in the rain
seeing a stranger across the room
feeling the pull of your hand behind me
sun beams on a hungover morning

and i know it really doesn’t make any sense
but i’m starting to think that we’re
never going to feel the way we want to

we’re never going to see those trees at dusk
and feel like we deserve it

and someday i am going to die and
my last thought will be if there was
really anything more.

With every hot breath I can hear the song
Of the sublime Mother.

Her nails longer than the cold that
Drips off of the faucet,
Her milk purer than the pavement
Beneath my feet.

She taught me to fear the future and
I taught myself break her grasp.

Together we sit, arms crossed,
Bound by family ties,
Fading into her melody.

I feel like I haven’t actually felt what it feels like to be happy in months, maybe a year. No mater what I do, no matter what I realize or figure out about why I am feeling the way I am, the fact of the matter is that this feeling has been here my entire life and its only getting worse as time goes on. I know one day its going to **** me and that makes me so ******* sad because I think somewhere deep inside me I’m still this little kid who thinks I have all of this potential and I can live this great life and be happy. And i really want to listen to that kid and not hurt myself but every other thing around me and inside of me is constantly telling me that nothing is ever going to get better and I wont be able to be that person because there’s something wrong with me, specifically, like I’m built wrong.
And it really doesn’t help that my thoughts are always racing and maybe if they slowed down for a second I would be able to hold onto something that could make it better but I can’t because my head can’t do that, because I’m built wrong.
And its not like I’m this apathetic teenage mess, I really am ******* trying to do all of the things that are supposed to make me better but all it does is keep me distracted, which I recently discovered is different. And it’s not like I have this terrible life or I’m suffering in this immeasurable way, I’m just built wrong.
So what do I do? Jesus, I wish I knew.
I think I used to take some solace in the fact that I was hot, at least by the standards of the occasional catcaller, so maybe the fact that people wanted me made me seem like I had some value in just existing. But now all I can think of every moment of every day is how the fat splurges out below my hips and how my neck looks when I lie down and how the skin puckers around my thighs and how I’m built wrong.
And I think the thing I am most afraid of, the scariest thing in the entire world is that any time I think of the thing I want to do more than anything, that sad little kid voice stops me— and I know that some day, one day down the line, it won’t. Because I’m built wrong.