i want to nurture the little girl inside of me
the one that held my mothers hand when she crossed the road
and asked for my aunt to play katy perry from the back carseat

i come from a family of women
who fed me girlhood on a silver spoon

sometimes it was hard to swallow
sometimes it was bitter to the taste
but i clenched my fist and allowed myself to bathe in the flavor

i watched my grandmother smile, and i could still see the little girl inside of her peering out through her kind eyes
girlhood has not destroyed her,
girlhood has made her strong.

i hope i age just as beautifully as her,
and that the skin lines around my mouth tell stories to my children about all of my laughter throughout the years,
that they can see how many times that my palms have been held,
that they can see the endurance of womanhood through my body just as kindly as they see the endurance of girlhood
i hope they can see that the little girl inside of me still looks out into the world with innocence and purity, rather than with anger and resentment

i watch her, and i welcome age with a sweaty palm, for hope that when my years have passed, i will glance into my vanity
and see a resemblance of her
and a resemblance of all of the strong women that i come from

for womanhood and girlhood are one in the same, and i open my palm to reach for the silver spoon.

people often say that i resemble my father
and sure i might have his nose and his crooked smile

but she is who i see in the mirror
when my hands fall against my waist and push inwards
i see her
in my hands
when i am cleaning up the messes that the men i love created
i see her in my lips when he is too drunk or ****** to comprehend a word i just said
i see her in my bones when they crack under the weight of a man
i see her i see her i see her

i
am
her.

maybe its because my father was never home enough for me to take after him that i began to mimic her actions instead
i spent far too many hours watching her back down from a fight than to ever turn into the instigator
but ******* sometimes i wish i took after my father instead
i wish i knew how to be the rock thrown at the window pane instead of the ******* window pane.
but im not.

i didnt grow up watching him in the reflection
in the mirror

and when i look in the mirror
i finally understand why no one has ever loved me in the ways that ive loved them.

i am just like her.

who would ever buy a shirt with stains or a mirror that is fragmented.
who would ever eat a meal half-cooked
or live in a house that has collapsed
and these all seem like such meaningless questions but what i'm trying to say is who could ever love a soul that is bruised.

so i understand.
i understand that everyone needs a valve. everyone needs a pump of oxygen into their lungs, a pump of air from mouth to mouth. everyone needs a life source.
you wanted me because i fit the job requirements but i guess you are starting to realize that you can't steal a heart beat from someone who is far past dead.

you cant steal a heartbeat from someone who stole their own from their mother

i picked your grief out of your garden like fresh strawberries
and let them rot in my stomach
i inhaled every rotten word you spoke to me,
and swallowed them like shards of glass down the back of my throat
i spared every last breath
attempting to console you for the parts of yourself
that you damaged me with

what right do you have to tell me that i was the one who cared less

i forgot to place a return address on all of the love that i gave you
could you send it back to me please?
sealed with your saliva in a heart shaped envelope
i need to inject it back into my skin

because i dont remember the girl who fell in love with you
i know only of the one who begged on her hands and knees,
pleading with god
to learn how to hate you

and now she is a bag of rotten bones pushed into the back corner of your closet
collecting dust and dripping out remnants of infatuation;
infatuation that you scoop into a jar and leak out into any open ear that will listen

could you please send me my love back?
seal it in a knapsack and tie it with a bow,
scribble  your apologies on the outside with deep black ink
i need to inject them into my mind.

i cannot swing by to pick it back up
for there will be beautiful girls lingering outside of your door
with smiles that scream much louder than mine
and hearts without bridges built around the rim

and i am jealous of them because you were able to touch their skin
without having to slice it open first
and they got to walk away unscathed and unharmed
and if your palms ever tried to touch me with that same delicacy,
i would still feel the pin pricked knives of your fingertips  

yet i would still bathe in that blood once more if given the chance
because you can’t reopen old wounds if they never healed in the first place

could i please have my love back?
before you give it all away
throw it at my doorstep and watch it trickle all over the sidewalk
shout sweet nothings at me as you finally waltz away
i need to inject it into my skin

you are hallowing me out and turning me into your ghost
i can’t walk away if you don’t return all of the parts of me
that you so graciously stole
i gave you all my flesh and bones without ever knowing
that you were a crematorium
and now what is my body if not yours to hold



could you please send me your love back
could you spare a drop or two?
drain it into a medicine bottle
and feed it to me on a silver spoon
i need to remember what its like

i’ll wrap it in a box and tuck it away in a cabinet
use it for misconstrued comparisons
for the next false sense of security that walks in the room
because what could be great now has once always been better
so now nothing can ever be great again

could you forget to place a return address on all of the love
that you send me
because when it becomes mine once more
i dont think i can send it back again

i am shrinking myself to give you more room
i will stop eating
i will stop talking
i will undress myself with delicacy
to give you more space

ive been straining to grow flowers
back in the places of myself
that i set on fire so long ago
but now all the roots are charred with ash
and i keep scraping away at dust-
a hopeless endeavor to clean up the asphalt that i poured upon my own skin

and the people keep clogging my ears with clamor
of who i am now
and the parts of me that were consumed
in the deterioration
relighting embers that have sunk deep down in my pores

and i wish that when i became ignited,
i had disintegrated into nonexistence

i cried in your car remembering the ones who cast me aside
you told me i wasn’t ready
perhaps
you were right