After multiple traumatic relationships,
years of cynically happy single-ness,
and a series of mismatched puzzle pieces...
No gesture,
promise,
or amount of time
will ever render me accustomed to saying,
"I love you,"
and hearing,
"I love you, too."

My mind is tired
from the marathons it’s been running
around my head,
trying to make sense of a society
so hell bent on hating one another
under the guise of Christianity.
You think everything is black or white,
right or wrong,
conspiracy or honesty,
when the God I know can’t work that way.
Send me to sleep tonight
without a prayer,
because I don’t know what to ask for anymore.
For now,
I’m content with the bed I’ve made
deep within sheets of grey.

I used to do anything to drown out the silence,
a silence that cradled every missed opportunity,
the bad timing, and the ache that accompanied it.
I have tried to build many sculptures on top of the faith
that gets me out of my bed sheets every morning,
each work more beautiful than the one preceding,
but too often it’s either left a swollen mound
with a fist imprinted upon it,
or I run out of clay,
trying to cement the shattered pieces back together.

My worth is not a broken promise
nor a plea to be bargained.
I am not a locked, teenage diary
for which you have to find the key.
My skin is the cover of hardback book –
strong, durable, thick.
I may seem daunting or closed off,
but open me,
and I’ll spill countless words full of the
stories and life experiences I wish to share with you.
All you have to do is ask.

Lately, the silence feels like home,
a place where I can exist peacefully
without desires or expectations.
I used to find my enemies here;
They nearly strangled me.
Today I’m enamored with my own ability
to not only survive,
but live,
without trying to find the reset button.
For now I’ll reside here
until I can figure out how to finish a piece of art.

It’s been a rough year– especially this month and, furthermore, this week–
but there is a single, irrelevant moment that my brain has been playing on repeat:
You were making dinner in the kitchen, music saturating the room –
most likely some smooth jazz ballad you’ve crooned a million times –
and you took a break from the stove to try to dance with me.
Embarrassed by my inability to dance socially without being awkward,
I swindled my way out with an excursion to the bathroom.

There aren’t many things I would change about the last few months…
not the inebriated tears I couldn’t trap behind my eyes,
nor the hours I spent listening to you ramble on about
everything that excites you,
which is everything.

It’s the simplest moment I regret the most…
I just wish I would have danced with you.

I used to start fires with gasoline, sometimes with caution and other times in haste. Either way, the quickest light of a match could smother my darkness with light. I had myself convinced it was so much easier that way, a routine way to manage my soul. It took me a little too long to realize my burns were caused by my own explosions.

I’ve learned to appreciate the slow kind of burn, the smallest smolder that gives way for your sight, the lingering echo of crackling power, and the fragrant tenacity in a glow that grows. The beauty of a flame is that it has the ability to ignite other fires without diminishing its own. My only wish is that we as humans could figure out how to do the same.

For now, all I know is that a single spark can ignite the flame, and the smallest, most seemingly insignificant flame, can light fireworks across the sky in celebrations and calls for support. I just hope no one summons the rain clouds before then.

There are little moments
I would do differently
if I had the ability,
moments whose memories create obstacles
for me to trip over,
obstacles like
my past
or anxiety
or my insecurities in myself.
I can’t blame them for the fall,
but I can tell you
I’m learning how to dodge them.

Hi, I’m Kairee.
I have anxiety sometimes.
But am I really allowed to say that
if I’ve never sought help for it?
I googled the definition of “anxiety” today.
Google told me it’s self-diagnosable.
That reassured me.

To be honest,
I want help,
but mental health isn’t so important to our society,
and my insurance won’t cover it.
I can’t afford a hundred dollar appointment
once a week or every other week,
especially if it’s going to take months
or years
to crack me open.

Basically,
when a piece
or many pieces
of my life feel out of my control,
I can’t breathe.
I feel like everything inside me is going to explode.
I feel crazy.
I need something to latch onto
to stop my head from spinning.
That thing is usually work.

Today,
I went to work.
And now I feel okay.

I guess that will continue
until  the next time this happens.

If I’m being honest,
all I’ve wanted from my social life
over the last several years
is to have a number one
who also sees me
as their number one.

If you're going to hold a knife to my chest,
at least look me in the eyes when you press down.

I’m 28 years old,
staring 29 in the face,
and I still go to bed every night,
pretending the pillow next to me is a warm body.

I’m not sure if that makes me
pathetic
or just human,
but I do know
I’ll be elated
the day that pillow gets a face.

Apparently, two years ago today
I bought a home.

I lived in the same house for
twenty-six years
eight months
four weeks
and one day.
Let’s just say
I was ready
for some freedom.

I thought having my own place
would fix me.

It crushed me instead.

I never realized a dream could betray you.
I thought cheating was something only
humans could do.

You’d be surprised how different you can feel
with a little bit of time,
a moment of blind faith,
and a fresh coat of paint.

How many times
are you going to smash your face
before you realize
you can't walk through
a closed door?

I am the last step before you reach the end of the staircase,
the one you push against to climb to the top.
The grime from the bottom of your shoe leaves me filthy and dark.
Sometimes, your weight is so heavy that I crack.
I am the one for which you aren’t ready,
the one you trip over but are too insecure to fall for.
I am the one who makes you want to be better
(even though I never asked you to be),
just not yet.
I am the crutch you use to pick yourself up
from the broken bones that haven’t quite healed,
the bandage that holds your wounds together until you are restored.
I am the sandpaper that scrapes away pieces of myself
until you are left smooth.
I am the rough side of the matchbox, the one you strike to create the flame.
I am just a girl you used to know.
A meaningless,
distant,
forgotten
memory.

But I am also the phoenix,
not the ashes.

The problem
with learning how to
repeatedly
"put yourself out there"
is also having to learn
how to
repeatedly
get disappointed.

That name still stings
when it reaches my ears
like the bite of a snake
whose venom is slowly
slithering its way
through my bloodstream,
venturing to each limb,
each digit,
each piece of me,
until suddenly,
completely,
and unwillingly,
I'm paralyzed.

Time is a devious creature.
With every passing year
I am smothered by the legitimacy
of the idea that
the older you get,
the faster time flies;
Yet,
paradoxically
I feel my life move at a snail’s pace.
It’s getting increasingly difficult
to remember that
God’s silence
does not mean
God’s absence,
but here I am,
folding my hands anyway,
because if there is any chance
something better is on the horizon,
you better believe I want to be here
to see it,
and even further…
I want to feel it.

There is a heaviness in my shoulders
when I pull into the complex,
a seeking sense I can’t seem to shake.
I park but don’t move;
There must be something inside a note
or lyric
that has some answer,
but it falls short,
just like every night that preceded this one.
I turn off the ignition to hear a silence
that screams too loudly.
I journey to the door,
and the passing of my feet across the threshold
is my emotional “off” switch.

For now
it is out of my hands.

I’ve watched sunsets
over oceans,
by lakes,
reflecting off of lighthouses,
blazing in deserts,
and while resting on mountaintops,
but…
Even though the view from here can’t compare…
there is nothing like watching the sunset
from home
on a Sunday
with the evening dew beginning to wet my feet
and the buzz of nocturnal insects
singing from the trees.

The countryside has a way of slowing down time.
The crashes of each raindrop against the leaves beside me
drum a beat that silences the clatter in my head.
I close my eyes and just breathe.
The grass’s dewy aroma is the sweetest perfume
I have ever encountered,
and the absence of street sounds is deafening.
The cool draft against my skin as this swing slowly sways
back and forth…
b
    a
         c
             k
                  a
                  n
                  d
            f
         o
      r
   t
h
is the guardian angel keeping me at peace.

I had forgotten what this feels like.

I think I’m jealous of the sun.
All it has to do is spread the multicolored ribbons it has as arms
and settle over the horizon
to fill each individual who steals a glimpse in its direction
with an uncontrolled,
self-actualizing
knowledge of how small,
yet how incredibly crucial,
their existence is
to the universe.

Sometimes I whisper the words, “Are you okay?” into the empty air I breathe just to hear what it would be like to feel someone care, but who am I to change the convention of the polite and smiling reply of, “I’m good. How are you?” Would anyone really know how to react if I actually said that it depends on the day you ask me?

The truth is,
today
I’m not okay.

I don’t know what I will get each time the… (I would say the sunlight opens my eyelids, but let’s be real here; I don’t really sleep anymore.)… I know why this happened to me the first time, but now? Maybe it’s because I learned how to feel again. I guess depression doesn’t really need a reason, though, does it? At the very least there is a big difference between now and seven years ago.

This time, I know my worth. This time, I’m fighting back, instead of drowning in it. This time, I am strong. And this time… I don’t want to die.

This time, I am actually reaching out for a hand to silently hold mine just to comfort me for even a minute. The only problem is everyone else has a life too. People love to say, “I’m here for you,” and, "I’m praying for you,” but they are too busy to actually to that.

Every day I get up just before the crack of dawn to lace my running shoes and pump my legs long enough to replace the stale state of my lungs to something fresh and clean. It’s the one thing I feel I have control over in my life.  It’s my chance to get out and feel like I’m a part of the world before the rest of the world wakes up and reminds me that I’m just a tiny piece of it.

For most of my life, I’ve felt like I am the missing piece to a puzzle that I can’t find. I’ve always felt different in a way I don’t know how to put into words. It’s just a sense of myself I don’t feel I need to explain. Not long ago, that feeling started to go away, but I think God may have misplaced me when he tried to fit my pieces together.

There’s a silver castle on my way to freedom, but I can never quite reach it, and there’s a silence that swallows me whole each time I steal a glance in its direction. Today, I am not okay. Tonight, I just pray that the next time my feet step out of bed and onto the soft carpet of the home I finally found for myself, I will feel a little bit better.

I suppose that’s all I can ask for at this point.

There’s a note
hidden in the melodies
that sing to me as I drive.
It is faint,
but I hear it
louder than my morning alarm.
I can almost feel God’s embrace
wrapping me until I’m warm again.

A smile envelops my mandible
as weary laugh escapes my teeth.
This is what they call clarity.

Sometimes,
you don't need words
or phrases
or prayers.

Sometimes,
you just need
someone to sit with you silently,
stripped of cliches,
and just be there.

I put a photo of my grandparents up in my house today.
They were married almost sixty years before my grandmother passed away.
I didn’t appreciate their love until I lost my grandfather last December.
I guess as hopeless of a romantic as I am,
I haven’t been able to grasp the possibility that it’s ever in the cards for me,
at least that kind of love,
And my problem is that I will settle for nothing less.

I was afraid of you the moment I met you,
and the more I learned about you,
the more I knew you would have the ability to hurt me.
I can still feel the way the heat of your arms enveloped me
the night I realized I was letting you into my heart.
I quietly rolled away from you and sobbed the softest but sweetest tears
I have ever tasted.
As terrified as I was,
I didn’t think you would ever break me.

Perhaps break isn’t the correct term;
Let’s just say I’m perpetually bruised.
I don’t think you can really be broken by someone
who didn’t even give you a chance to love them.

I’ve been avoiding writing about you for three months.
You see,
I didn’t think my words could do you justice,
I didn’t think my brain could describe
the knots,
and the butterflies,
and the confusion,
and the heaviness,
and the complete fury
that sometimes overwhelms me.
And every time I finally feel like I’m starting to get a grip,
every time I finally have a second to breathe,
someone pushes the fastest setting on the treadmill beneath me,
until I tumble backwards into the wall where I started.

I have so many words I want to speak,
but I hear nothing every time I open my mouth to scream.
Class isn’t a fun quality to have sometimes.

You don’t even deserve my words right now,
And I gave you the ones that mattered anyway.
I guess you just weren’t paying attention.
So let me leave you with only this,
but please make sure you memorize
every curve
of every letter
that forms every word
that means more to me than I will ever let you know:

You
are
better
than
this.

You
deserve
better
than
this.

­And
once
you
figure
that
out,

Don’t
you
dare
ever
forget
it.

Have you ever woken up from a dream
where you didn’t realize you were asleep?
Where one minute,
you think you are rolling around in bed,
frustrated that you’ve woken up at 4am,
wishing you could magically get the screams in your head
to diminish to a whisper,
but an alarm grasps at your eyelids
until you realize that you’ve awoken
and were asleep all along?

Is that what this life is right now?
Am I going to wake up one day,
and suddenly the insecurities,
the unimportance,
the nothingness,
and the apathy
will be gone?
Will I wake up and stop being an afterthought?
Your I’m-here-for-you’s,
I’ll-help-keep-you-busy’s,
and I’ve-been-praying-for-you’s
don’t mean anything to me anymore.

I finally have everything I have been awaiting
for years,
but it's not enough anymore,
and yet,
here I am – again–
realizing the only friend I can trust
is myself.

I finished high school a decade ago;
I thought I was too old for this now.

There’s a strange satisfaction
in the tranquil pounding of feet on pavement
against the quiet whispers of the sunrise
over a morning’s dreary eyes,
when the world is about to rise,
and your unaccompanied flesh is its alarm,
like the soft ripple of a rock
skipping against the water.

I came here to stop feeling,
but instead I feel everything.
The hum of the wind beneath my eardrum
is a lullaby for my loneliness,
and the cotton candy sky is begging
for my mercy.

A few months ago,
this was the key to my fulfillment,
but somewhere along the way,
you went and changed the lock.
I tried to call a repairman,
but my throat froze
and my chest burst
the moment he stopped by.

I’m not sure what brought me here
or why,
but eventually
I’ll breathe again.
For today
I’ll simply close my eyes
and pray that the light that floods my corneas
when my lashes meet lid
brings brightness to this twilight mood,
and someday the repairman will allow me
to lift this weight from my chest.

My stomach is a series of knots
slowly suffocating my breath
so my brain can’t focus
and my mind starts racing.
Salt water fills my eyes
until it overflows and spills
out onto the skin that’s crawling
over the anxiety that I fear
may scare you away.
You are the fresh air
in the bland, stale world
to which my life became.
My heart isn’t ready to lose you
before it even has you.

This is me.
I'm not perfect.
Take it or leave it.

I don’t remember how it’s supposed to feel
when you’re falling in love.

If it’s an unrelenting need to lie beside someone
whose touch tingles every inch of your skin
until goose bumps lift each hair follicle so high
that you get chills down your back,
where their breath’s embrace so sweetly warms the chill away…
then I’ve got that.

If it’s also an incessant fear that you will mess up so badly
that you feel all insecurities race through your vessels
until they reach whatever lobe of your brain
that controls your emotions
and cause you go completely insane
until the moment you get to speak again…
then I’ve also got that.

Deep in my gut is a chest of secrets
I thought I had buried
beneath the hushed cries of a young 20-something’s
most regretted decisions…
give-ins, rather.

Those cries choked me until I finally had the sense
to close my eyes and stop breathing for a few seconds.
And these eyes have stayed dry ever since.
When you don’t give yourself the opportunity to feel,
there isn’t much that can tear at your seams…

…Until one day
the purest of phrases
and the most genuine gazes
slowly un-sew the web wrapped neatly around
the cavity I filled with dirt and bubble wrap.

It may only take one more smile
for me to hand over my shovel.

When you hear the metal collide,
I’ll guide you to the key.

Your breath
against
my back
is the comfortable embrace
I never expected
to envelop
so quickly
and never expected
to feel
so safe.

My throat is on fire tonight,
a cold kind of burn that threatens your soul.
I can’t help but wish for a time when I felt normal,
healthy,
me.

I just want to breathe again
and have it last for more than ten seconds.
I yearn to push every bit of this stale air
out of my tired, unfit lungs
until fresh oxygen can reignite
the passion I felt for this world
just a few months ago.

Every week a new ailment,
a new pain,
a new tiring dagger
of reality
pierces my core.

I don’t have a metaphor for how over it I am.
I want to live again,
instead of just being alive.

There is a stillness
in the absence of the television’s
jarring advertisements,
lethal dramas,
and fast paced sitcoms
just gnawing away at what little time we have here.
The last hour has been a week
of the relaxation I pursue daily.
Stuck in a world where the constant
is a sprint on a treadmill,
meaningless because I’m moving nowhere,
as others move about a steady change of scenery,
I am beginning to feel hopeless.
Will I get to climb my mountain?
Will I get to trip and skin my knees on the rugged earth?
Will I get to lay on a cliff,
enamored with a view I never thought was meant for me?
Will I feel pain?
Will I feel triumph?
Will I simply get to feel?

These years are getting old.
This faith is turning cold,
fickleness growing bold.

I remember six years ago
like it was last week
but another lifetime.
I can still see the office
and the corner chairs in which we rested
as I interviewed for what would later become a home.
I can recall the nerves that buzzed in me
over the unknown territory in which
I was about to step foot,
and I can hear the voicemail
that made me giddy for the opportunity
to have three weeks outside of my lifeless desert of a brain.
But this out of body experience
confuses me when I consider the fact
that I can’t fathom who that girl was,
because she wasn’t me.

When we place our non-callused feet
on the floor for the first time as kids,
there’s no way of knowing what terrain
life will throw their way.
Six years ago
my feet were fresh off of burning coals,
blistered and overly delicate to any palpable sensation.
I kept walking on those coals for several years,
too stupid to turn and direct my own path
into something less excruciating.
One of those years is so far down in
an ocean of my own despair,
I could never dive deep enough
to bring it back.

In these circumstances,
you are faced with two options:
Keep stabbing your blisters,
or wrap your wounds to let the healing in.
Well, I wrapped, and I wrapped,
and I wrapped so hard that I cut off my own circulation…
but feeling nothing felt a lot better than anguish.

Eventually,
I loosened the bandage and let the blood back in
to continue on my way.
With my mountain before me,
there was nothing left to do but climb.
Every day is spent clawing my way through rocks and rubble
as the wind tries to knock me down,
but my muscles have swollen with strength,
and my blisters have roughened to callus.

I am still climbing,
but at least there’s a hell of a view from up here.

I’ve never quite lived up to the expectations
that bombard every millennial these days,
the ones knocking and gnawing at my skin
until they find their way in
and search through each crevice in my brain
until they find the right residence to lay their bed
and plant the insecurities that end up
destroying my self-confidence
and gifting me with the inability to succeed
until I have to scrape every piece of residue from the inside-out
just to get myself to a place where I can breathe again.

Yeah, I don’t let those in anymore.

I’ve always been a little bit of a question mark,
a strange child who danced to my own beat,
even when I tried to walk in time with those surrounding,
and there is a small piece of me that -
when a new life event of someone my age
visits my newsfeed -
wants the same, tired story for my own life...
and then I remember
I wasn’t made for this.

Sometimes
I’m not sure what I was made for anymore,
and I just keep waiting and waiting
until it’s my time to be on my own,
or catch my heart on fire,
or simply take a step forward,
and, yet, it
never
happens.

There are things I know about myself
that I will never explain,
and I shouldn’t have to.
I have a key-shaped hole in my soul
that aches to find its perfect fit,
but I’m not allowed to twist it yet,
though my fist has been ready for years,
and all I can do in the meantime
when someone asks me
why
is answer with one simple phrase
that stings each time it passes through my lips:

*It’s not my time yet.

When I come home from a hectic, loud day of teaching all evening,
I let my iPod play on shuffle,
hoping God sends whatever song I need that night
as a conversation with my soul.
I like to think music is His way of talking to me.

Looking up at the previous sentence,
it occurs to me how stupid that sounds,
but I do it anyway.

Sometimes,
God doesn’t talk.

Sometimes,
I don’t listen.

Sometimes,
I’m overcome with the strangest sense that He is telling me
I am exactly where He needs me,
difficult as that may be at times,
and the steadfast anticipation I have in my picture of the future
couldn’t possibly compare to the painting
He is gracefully and meticulously creating for me.

I sit often in my bed,
wishing for inspiration to melt its way from my heart
into my fingertips
which click against the keys on this machine
to form words that get jumbled in my brain,
that I may untangle their knots
and loosen their grip
just enough that the ache in my forehead subsides,
and the weight on my chest is lifted even a little.
Most of the time,
whatever reactions are supposed to happen in me,
whatever connections are supposed to form
don’t,
and I continue to ache until the numbness sets in.

I handle emotions alone.
I don’t seek attention.
I don’t want the weakness.
I don’t reach out,
because I got sick of the sting
of each slap that shouldn’t have surprised me.
I love being alone;
In fact, I crave it,
but I miss the social sense of belonging that used to balance me out.
I want to grasp a hand that is stretched out to me
for a change,
but the air is always empty.

Even as I type this
I am running out of words that explicate
the cause of the dyspnea that overwhelms me
at abrupt, random moments,
and my ability to form lucid, complete thoughts
is lost.

How do you wipe a wound that isn’t even bleeding?
How do you heal a bone that isn’t even broken?
How to you fix a muscle that isn’t even torn?

I am not fragmented.
I am not cracked.
I am not damaged,
yet something in me is still leaking,
seeking something more.

I am not standing in the darkness;
I am just waiting for this sun to shed light
on a soul that knows
when to reach out
and when to let me be.