I have been silent for several minutes and you are polite enough not to ask why. You know by now that I will speak if I need to. You know by now that I can’t answer questions when I’m like this. I am trying to tell you that I am suddenly inexplicably deafeningly sad. There was warmth in me ten minutes ago and now there is nothing and I don’t know how to say that in a way that will make sense because it doesn’t make sense. All I know is that it takes a little more work to smile than it used to and I can’t quite get it to look real and I want to talk to you but it doesn’t seem like there is anything of interest in the world and god bless you for trying to pretend that nothing is happening but I am having a hard time hearing your words and it feels like everything is being felt by someone else a couple blocks away from me and I just can’t bring myself to care about them the way that I know that I am supposed to and I am trying to tell you that it is not your fault. It is no one’s fault. This is an effect without a cause. We were fine and then I wasn’t. We were fine and then I broke and now I can’t smile for you and this is not the story of how months of glacial erosion robbed me of my joy this is the story of 20 minutes in a kitchen that were fine until they weren’t. I am trying to tell you that I am mentally ill. I am trying to tell you sometimes this just happens. I am not saying anything because I can’t find words just yet.


“Does it bother you? When I get like this? Do you even notice?”

“I figure you’ll say something when you’re ready. You’d talk about it if you wanted to. It scares me sometimes, when I don’t know what’s happening or if I caused it.”

“No. You didn’t cause it. I’m not sad about you. Or anything, really. This is just a thing that happens sometimes. It’s not really about anything, it just is.”

“Okay. That’s all I need to know. Come here.”

You pull me in. You wrap the blanket around us. You bury me close and stroke my hair and don’t ask me to explain or justify my feelings you are content just to let them come and I feel like crying but figure you have dealt with enough already. I am trying to remember a moment in which I felt this safe. I am trying to remember a time I was allowed to be gentle and weak and raw and open and honest and

I am trying to love you the best way a broken thing can and I am not very good at it but you are patient and soft and this will have to be enough.

This is the first time in years that I have felt like poetry.

we played games to see how many marks you could leave and how long they might last

I believed my skin was only worth something when it was colored with your mouth

Sometimes, when you know they’re leaving, you need scars that will stay.

you were drunk when you traced my tattoo and told me it looked like three of yours tangled together

it took me a year to see that it was because I contain multitudes of you

If you give me half a chance
I will destroy you.
I will wretch myself into the cracks of your being
I will feed on the very essence of you
I will pry apart everything that makes you feel like yourself
And it will seem like divine intervention
All you need to do is take control
Tell me no
Please. take away my power

may not look like your blue but we can both go to the beach and think to ourselves ‘jesus christ that is a lot of ******* sand’
the human experience is complex and wonderful

'You were an adequate mother in that I technically survived to adulthood so thanks, I guess'

'I know you and you’re in the hospital and it’d be cool if that last part wasn’t true because I’m tired of having to pick up your extra shifts at work'

'You accidentally made a baby and this is me pretending that you’re not going to **** up that thing’s future'

The greeting card industry lacks.

I thought you might at least have the decency to hatefuck me
Seems I am not worth your rage

I listen
I am safe and comfortable
I can make it better
laying on my breast reminds you of your mother
This is not love.
This is understanding, comprehension, acceptance
You are not used to this, I know
but loving the way I make you feel about yourself is not the same as loving me
I am more than what I am to you

the universe is filled with empty space because we are made of play-doh and paper and
everything we touch destroys us.
We are piles of scrapes and bruises and no amount of healing in the world will save us god forbid we have one more atom to bump into

As it is
Is as it was
Is where it should be.
Nothing arbitrary, nothing haphazard
Helter skelter
Skittered
gone.

Set
path
plan
placed
perfect

Valhalla
Zion
Nirvana’d Welkin Blue Yonder
Paradisiacal Elysian Upper Empyrean Celestial Sphere
All very fuckingineffable.

We are everywhere we have ever been.
We leave ourselves behind

Thoughts
      Words
               Flesh
               ­       Skin
                           Hair
                                 Sweat
                                         Oil
Traces immeasurably small, permanent
We are in the cracks between floorboards
Smeared onto walls. Stressed into upholstery.
We are microscopically ever present. There is no getting rid of us.
Breaking down. Rotting out of our casings.
Daily decomposing.

Your DNA fills your home. Every place you have ever visited.
Let this be a comfort.