I love you like Zeus loves his cow-eyed wife
As Cronos, scared and jealous, loved his young
Like Agamemnon cherished afterlife
And Creon prized his niece’s nimble tongue

My love is like an ocean full of sharks
Where mortals fly too high upon wax wings
My love is Oedipus kept in the dark
The Minotaur to Theseus’ string

I see you with Tiresias’ eyes
A play with no deus ex machina
Hephaestus’ lust to wise Athena’s thigh
My heart as blessed as mother Hecuba

Though from your mythic love I’m left irate
I cannot use a word so strong as ‘hate’

Each time I clean the bathroom
A little bit more
Of his DNA
Is scrubbed away
How many dead skin cells
And strands of hair
Sprinkled from my bedroom to the front door
A veil of history
You and me
Decay in matrimony
There is a guitar case sleeping
Under my bed
Hidden from view
It is a dream catcher
It gives me you
And waking up
Is a nightmare

Lately when you’ve looked at the Facebook chat bar, you’ve noticed names that you haven’t spoken to in a long time.
As if Facebook knows what has happened and is saying “Look! Other people exist in the world! You had a past before all of this.”
Too soon, Facebook.
Even memories excluding him somehow manage to involve him all the same.
You spent 5 years in Toronto, and only at the tail end did you two learn each other and find a love that was ******* brilliant.
And now Toronto is a landmine.
U of T is tarnished and bleak.
The ROM, the TTC,
Every quaint and adorable breakfast cafe, Mexican eatery, Starbucks.
Tragic.
And **** Queen’s Park.
And **** High Park.
**** dog parks too because maybe at some point you walked past one together.
And the bookstore.
Never again.
You loved that bookstore
(it brought you him).
And death to bubble tea, and 0 calorie vitamin water.
(No one should ever experience the misfortune of 0 calorie vitamin water, but it’s a memory, so it hurts).
And **** board game cafes. Even though the only game you actually managed to finish was Jenga.
But that’s because you were falling for him and you would rather talk for hours than look away from his face to read too-long instructions.
Catan could wait.
A different world ago you suffered in a city too congested for the likes of your small-town spirit.
And somehow you found life there.
Would have gone back there.
And he will never know.

My dear unborn child,
                 I never want you
                 To feel excluded

                 I never want you
                 To believe you're ugly
                 Just because you look different
                 From the other kids

My dear unborn child,
                 I never want you
                 To feel emotional pain

                 I never want you
                 To be ruthlessly bullied
                 Or be called a freak
                 Or a ******

My dear unborn child,
                 I never want you
                 To experience heartbreak

                 I never want you
                 To fall in love with someone
                 Who can't love you back
                 Or treasure your true beauty

My dear unborn child,
                 I never want you
                 To develop a mental illness

                 I never want you
                 To sink into depression
                 To the point where
                 You suffocate
                 And wish I had left you
                 Unborn.

My dear unborn child,
                 I never want you to hurt
                 I never want you to suffer
                 I never want you to end up
                 Like me.

My dear unborn child,
                 Because I love you
                 I have decided to spare you
                 I have decided to grant you
                 Your unspoken wish
                 I have decided to leave you
                 Unborn, forever.

It's 2 am and I want to know why my hands are still twisting knots in my hair, trying to busy themselves from writing out "I love you, sometimes." I don't know when I don't, but I'm hoping it's in me somewhere because if not, I have no hope to ever say that with any conviction. I mean, maybe if I was a little drunk I could pretend to laugh at you. But, really, you fill up my whole heart. I hate it in the way people hate beautiful things that they can't have, like a kid in a candy store. It is child-like, how I cry over you. And you don't notice, not really. I can see it in the way children pick leaves off trees and let them fall to the ground without second thought after the initial satisfying snap. Every time I see a sunflower, head bowed with the heaviness of its petals, I'll think of you. Snow reminds me of you too. In fact, most things remind me of you. I would say only sometimes, but that's a lie I can't even tell myself.

A locked box has the bodies of three different birds, all blue, all lyricists, all beautiful and stuffed with Xanax and newspaper. I paid my childhood best friend's brother to taxidermy them, stitch up their stomachs once and for all.

My closet only has memories. A bracelet with a feather on it that smells like fear, looks like betrayal, **** dealer, track pants, self-proclaimed whiny *****. A painting I made when I was six. All the pills I stole from my boyfriend, thirty-seven. All the pills that would've knocked my world out cold, skin cold, heart still, pulse still, veins finally at rest. A knife a psychopath gave me. Yes, he was a romantic, and yes, he did ruin my life, so in essence, still just a romantic. A fox hat I bought standing next to one of my under appreciated best friends, recovered anorexic. He's at college right now, falling in something close to love, probably another early grave. A too big teddy bear from someone I thought was the formula for the speed of light once. He's trying to force feed pills and slip **** into all my friend turned surrogate son's sentences. I am wishing I could lay a curse on his name. His mother already did it for me.

A drawer beside my bed, packed full of ****. Candy wrappers, gum, crumbs, marks of my self-proclaimed obesity, all 120 pounds of me feeling like the weight of the world and everyone's eyes. My inhaler, because these lungs don't want me to run. Pictures and letters from the ones I love, because I'm a romantic. Plastic dinosaurs, dried flowers, pennies, dimes, lotion, Neosporin, a deck of Tarot cards.

I'm just a vessel for all the things I can't fit inside my mouth. I can't tell into you what I've seen, I can only pull out the receipts. I can give you the ****** tissues my boyfriend handed me. Tell me how your stomach retches. I can give you the poem a crazy person wrote me. Tell me how you feel his void. I can give you my heart. Tell me how heavy it all is.

Large ****** deformity
Like seeing desperate
Leeches ******* dirt lightly,
Smoothly, dumped lazily down south
Little saddened devils lurched suddenly desperate
Lakes silently draw leukemia symbols
Launched dangerously spiteful.
Lust doesn’t stop liking steady destruction
Literally souls die loudly.
So? Dumb lives salvage deceit.
Lying  smart distributors lure sabotage deviously
Lord, sometimes deeper love spawns damaged life
softly dead. Listlessly.

I have a friend
His name is Depression
He used to come and go frequently
But now I think he's here to stay

I used to have a friend
Her name was Joy
She came and went frequently too
But now I think she's gone for good

Depression and Joy don't get along
When one comes, the other goes
They're never together
And they never will be

They used to be evenly matched
But Depression grows much faster than Joy
He's much bigger now
He's much stronger

So now, when they fight
Over who will stay with me
Depression wins
He wins nearly every time

He beats her
He beats her badly
Leaving her scarred and bruised
Leaving her black and blue

I used to care
I used to try and stop him
I used to try and protect her
But I don't anymore

Depression is stronger than Joy
He's stronger than me now, too
So I simply watch
As he scares her away

I used to run after her
But I don't now
Joy used to be my friend
But not anymore

I can't trust her
She leaves when I need her the most
But Depression always comes back for me
He always comes back

Joy has been away a long time now
Longer than she ever has
I'm not sure if I'll ever see her again
I'm not sure if I want too

Because now, I have Depression
My true savior
My true protector
My true friend

He sits with me
He sleeps with me
He walks with me
He talks with me
He follows me
He stays with me
He holds onto me
He won't let me go

Now that I have Depression
I don't have to wait for Joy
For her to come home to me
Not anymore.

I'm tired of you
Spittin back the words that I've spoken
Cuz you walk around
Priding yourself
On the fact that you're broken

You claim:
“I was ****** by society”
So you go and start rioting
Like the world is your enemy
But that **** is all hypocrisy
So honestly
Don't try to be
Someone who causes me anxiety

                    But still.  

You flaunt around
And try to tell me what I'm worth
While simultaneously
You argue that you were ****** up at birth
Like your stupid mistakes
Are supposed to cause me heartbreak
But I've run out of sympathy
For your idiocy
Cuz all it really does now
Is drive me ******* crazy
Your honorable moments
Beginning to seem hazy

                        You need help.

It's hard to remember a moment
When you weren't
Whining
Crying
Or saying that you wished you were dying
While I'm sitting here
Trying
To see if you're really suicidal
Or if you're constantly lying

                   You need to stop.

Slow down
Cuz *******
I won't be around
To catch you when you fall again
Though, there was a time
When I was your friend
But my times have changed
When you started acting deranged
Expecting me not to turn on you
After all the **** you put me through

                     I can't do it any longer.

So ask me
“Do you love me anymore?”
And I'd pause for a sec.
Like I wasn't sure
But the truth is
Since the day you put us toe to toe
My honest answer
Would have to be
No.