We are children .
With unkempt hair
And hearts full of wonder.
We are the explorers.
The astronauts.
We swear to god that fairies do exist.
Because we’ve seen them.
Hiding in the mushrooms.
Growing in our backyards.
And if you asked us if the boogyman was real.
We wouldn’t hesitate to say yes.
Because he is
And one day he’ll get us.
And give us heavy hearts.
And whirlwind minds.
One day he’ll massacre the fairies.
And **** the explorer in us.
One day
We’ll have to grow up
But today
Just let me be an astronaut.

I love lightning.
I love the way it lights up the sky.
For a brief moment it lets you see
Everything the moon was hiding from you.
Darling, you are lightning.
You light up my darkest places.
Even if that light is brief,
It's a lot better than the dark in me.
But we all know what follows lightning.
And darling, thunder scares me.
I mean it scares the **** out of me.
And you scare the **** out of me.
I'm not ready.
I'm not ready for the thunder.
For the light to leave and the noise to invade.
I'm not ready for the chaos that will follow you.
I'm  not ready.
I like the quite ways of your light.
I love the marks it leaves on my body.
The visual representation of where you've been.
Of where your light has caressed me.
I'm not ready for the noise.
I know what thunder does.
I know the kind of fear it leaves in me.
I know it will make my soul shake.
I know when it comes your light will leave.
And your marks will stay,
But you wont.
I know when it comes all I'll have left
Is the ringing of your thunder in my ears,
My quivering soul,
And the marks where your light once was.
But soon even those will fade.
And then I'll be left with nothing.
But my love for lightning,
And my fear of thunder.

Flags hanging at half staff
Children laying half dead
Goose  bumps invading my unwilling  skin
Soldiers invading an unwilling country

A girl telling her mother no
A woman begging him to stop
A little boy crying over his broken toy
A girl sobbing, her body and soul broken

Water gushing from a fall
Blood gushing from an innocent bystander
Grade school students protesting their weekend homework
Girls protesting for their right to go to school.

The juxtaposition of life.

I want to taste jealousy on your lips when you kiss me
I want you to know that I don’t ******* need you
That there’s another guy that lives just down the street that would love to **** me any day
I want to feel like you need me to stay.

When you hold me I want to feel like you’ll never let me go
I want to know that you’re afraid of loosening you grip
Afraid that I might slip into the arm of that man down the road.

I want you to fear me.
Fear the power I have over you
The power to leave you if I ******* wanted to

I want you to know that I’m not tied down to you
And I want that to make your body shake
Like an earthquake
Afraid.
I want to feel like I have the power to make you crumble.

You had that power over me once.
Before I remembered that I was just someone for you to ****
Your own personal Vicodin,
Something to make your heart numb to the pain of her leaving you

But now your growing feelings
Becoming attached
But the time for that is past

I've been hallowed out,
***** you’re my toy now.

I can still feel your hands
On my body
And I swear to god
It’s the most haunting thing.

He was my first for a lot of things.
      My first kiss,
      My first infatuation,
      My first night spent cuddling,
      My first lover,
      My first all nighter,
      My first shower buddy.

He was my first real heart break,
      The reason for my first cuts,
      My first night thinking about ending it,
      My first addiction,
      The first boy I ever cried over.

He was a lot of things to me.
He was my first love.
The first person I was every truly afraid to lose.

She posts a comment,
Your name
With a smiley face next to it.

I can hear my heart plummet
To the bottom of my stomach,
Disrupting the digestion taking place there,

I feel the vile
Trying to creep its way back up.
Rejecting the news
Its being forced to sort through.

My heart.
I thought it had gotten better,
I thought it was able to digest
This kind of information now
With ease.
Like a taste it was forced to acquire.

I thought it had gotten use to this,
That it had learned how to hold
This sort of thing down.

After the first time
When I had seen your ex post on your wall
She missed you,

Every time you added a new ******* facebook
After a night out
I was no longer invited to.

I thought I had gotten use to it
After you told me you only ever wanted to be friends.
But here I am,

My heart plummeting to my stomach
Trying to force itself to digest this comment
And the plethora of information it holds.

I’m no longer a friend.
No longer someone you invite out.
I hold you back.

When you have a bad day
You flock to one of the many girls
Whom you've accepted into your life
Over the past month
Never to me.

Only hearing from you when no one else wants to go out.
I’m no longer on your invitation list
For your Thursday nights out to karaoke.
I’m not longer significant.

This information is not something
My heart, or mind, or stomach
Can digest.
Trying to reject it,
while I keep trying to force it down.

To you.
I no longer matter.

Nights
When I cannot see the stars
Are the most tragic.

To see their beauty
Covered by the clouds,
          As if they are jealous,
Unwilling to share the joyful twinkle
Of the stars with anyone else.
          They cling to them,
Withholding their beauty from me,
Leading me to yearn for them.

Becoming addicted to that twinkle
I conclude that I am willing
          To travel as many miles as it takes,
          To discover the most secluded area around,  
          To hike the tallest mountain I can find,
Just to see those bright stars
Shine down on me.

They remind me of your smile,
          You know?
How it illuminates me,
How it brightens up my darkest days.  
          Or your eyes,
How they twinkle
When you talk about something you love
          Or even when you laugh.

I would go miles to see your eyes,
Cross the ocean to see you smile,
Climb the tallest mountain to hear your laugh

The nights she comes back into your life
          Are the nights that I find so tragic,
They're the nights my stars
          Are hidden from me,

The cloud of her presence
Covering the stars that fill your face.
Your smile hidden beneath your taut lips
          Formed in an impenetrable frown.
The twinkle in your eyes
          Hazed with over-thinking.

These are the nights I find most tragic,
The nights that I vow
To do whatever it takes
To see my stars shine bright
Once again.

You make death seem like the ultimate thing to wish for
                   On a shooting star,
                   Or at 11:11
                   Or on whatever it is people wish on these days.

You make slicing my thighs seem like the ultimate prize
At the end of a long day.

You make death seem like it’s the only thing I need to aim for.

I don’t dream of what my life could be anymore,
                    The job I could have,
                    The family I could love
Rarely crossing my mind.

When people ask me where I want to be in 5 years,
                    Or even 3,
I hesitate.
Wanting to be 6 feet under the stars,
                    Maybe in 5 months,
                    Preferably in 3,
But these are secrets you dare not speak of,
So I simply reply
                    Happy.
Maybe in Washington,
In a port town,
Or in Colorado in the mountains.

I don’t dream about love anymore,
                     Or at least I try not to,
But my god do you make it hard
Because,
Well,
                      I love you.

Instead I try to dream of cars,
Crashing into me,
It gives me the same sensation as dreaming of you,
                      But it doesn't hurt as much,
                      Or as last as long.

I find it hard to find the thrill in living.
Maybe I’m just not doing it right yet,
But right now I find a certain thrill
                       In hiding my scars,
                       In pretending to be fine;
I like to give others enough information
That if they tried hard enough
They could figure me out,
To see if anyone thinks I’m worth the effort.
                       Update: I’m not.

Late Night Writing:
I am a journal
I am a journal. Those around me are the writers. They come to me with stories to tell.
She comes to me to write about her, the girl she loved, the one she’s not quite over and the one that’s not quite over her, she writes about her family life sometimes too. She comes around seldom, not quite sure if my pages will be read by others, or if they will keep our secrets. He writes about his past love, the one that didn’t work out, the one before me that he’s not quite over, the one that left him broken, with issues I cannot help him solve, she is the one who moved on and left him behind. He comes to me at 3 am, often after a night of drinking, sometimes not, and I am there my pages ready. She comes to me often, at many times of the day, and she has written many stories. Some of which I never did want to hear. She writes about boys, not men, they are immature, not deserving of her time, her pain or her love. I know this, but she has yet to realize it. She comes to me often, to tell me about the boys who are talking to her, the ones she responds to although she never really wanted to talk to them anyway, and I can’t help but wonder why she does this. She writes about one boy in particular, the one that really broke her heart; the one she’s still not over, the one she spends hours on before a party in hopes of making him jealous.
Like a journal I have no words to say, seldom any responses to give, and if I do they are weak. Instead I listen, I let them vent, I let them spew onto me their self-loathing and I soak in every inch of it, like paper gulps down every drop of ink. I carry their self-hate with me; I absorb it into my skin so they don’t have to carry it. This is all I can do for them. I have never experienced true heart break. No one has ever loved me, I have only loved others. No one has ever left me; because I have never been anyone’s to leave. I have no way of offering advice, so instead I let them pour out their feelings, I soak them up, I hold them in for them, I lessen their burden, assure them that everything will be okay, and then they leave. And I am left there, alone, so full with self- hatred, some my own, some of it theirs that I am ready to burst.
There is little room left in me, my pages are running low. Soon, I will be full, soon, I will be left unable to absorb any more, unable to let those around me use me as a journal, soon, I will be unable to help those who need me the most. Soon, I will become useless, people will stop coming to me, people will leave, and then what will be of me, but a journal full of hatred and a saturated sponge?

You
You make me feel
    Alive
More alive
Than the pain from the razors
Ever could
You make me feel
    Loved
More loved
Than I ever knew I could be
You
You make my nights bearable
And my days bright
You
You make me feel sane
Thank you

I remember when your words were warm,
When your smile shined down on me,
And when your touch kissed my skin,
To me you were like the sun in the middle of summer, you were my light.

I remember when the sparkle left your eyes and they turned dark and sullen,
Like the sky before a storm.
I remember when the tears started to fall, like rain,
Slowly at first, but soon they poured out,
Unstoppable.  

I remember when your touch turned to ice,
When your smile transformed into a permanent frown, frozen in place.
When your tears stopped falling and your voice became harsh,
Cutting into me like the winter wind.
I remember.

I remember when I said goodbye.
You never asked me why, or begged me not to go.
You never cried because you knew.
You knew it was coming, that we could never last,
Not like this.

I remember when you whispered to me that it was okay,
Because you knew that “no one could ever love someone so dead..”
But I did. I loved you.

I pray that soon my sun will start to shine once more.
That the darkness in your eyes will fade, revealing the light that lies behind it.
That your touch will thaw and become warm, with life and love,
Like it once was.
That your smile will return and shine down on others like rays of sun, warming them.
I pray that you will feel alive once more.

Grade school:
Doing anything to become popular.
Hurting those I would later find out were my true friends.
Uttering words that would
Cut deeper than any blade could.

Depression:
Something I now claim was just a phase.
(What a farce)

High school:*
Struggling,
                                             To give a ****,
                                             To find new friends,
                                             To keep the old.
Struggling,
                                             To hold onto those I loved,
Watching them slip through my fingers.

Depression:
No one knew.
My mask?
Perfected.

Social anxiety:
My mask starts to crack.
The crazy starts to show.
My friends,
They start to leave.


College:
Finally, I am myself.
                                             New job.
                                             New friends.
                                             Understanding.
Life is good.

Forgetting:
                                             The obsessions,
                                             The anxiety,
                                             The depression.
You:  
Slowly deteriorating.
Obsessions,
Creeping back.
                                             What are you doing?
                                             Are you with her?
Did you even care for me?
                                             Yes,
                                             No,
                                             Only for a short while?

How to become better,
To look better,
To think better,
To act better,
To be more talented,
To be more like her,
To be better than her,
To be good enough for you.
You.

The anxiety:
Consuming my mind.
Jumbling it up,
Unable to think,
Or rather to many thoughts to think through.  

Depression:
Sinking in.
Ideas of ending it all,
Surfacing,
(Once again.)
Mask starting to form.  

And I thought I was getting better.

The words you share with her
They cut into me like a blade.
          Deep.
So I don't have to.
I bleed for you.
        Slowly.
I am afraid,
I soon will bleed out.

Dear ****,
*******.
******* for being prefect for him.
******* for being all around perfect.
******* for being everything I wish I was.
                       Talented.
                       Pretty.
                       Loved.
*******.

******* for playing with his heart.
Only to stomp on it.
                      Over.
                      And over again.
******* for leaving him a broken mess.
Then coming back.
Only to break him once more.
******* for fooling him.
For hurting him.

******* for taking away my sanity,
My salvation,
My peace of mind.
******* for rubbing it all in my face.

*******.
I loathe you.

Kiss one:
And I’m left thinking,
“Have I found him?”
The one
Who can love this mess that I've become?
Have I found the one
Who can repair
This broken vase
I call
myself?
                                          No, it can’t be.
                                          He’s only drunk.
                                          There is no way.
                                          Not me.
                                          No.
                                          No.
Kiss two:
And I’m left thinking
"Was I wrong.
Was it not
Just the alcohol.
Have I found him.”
                                           Yes.
                                           I have.
                                           He can love me.
                                           He can.
                                           He is the kind of man
                                           That can care for something
                                           So broken.
Cold December night:
I discovered
He was no man at all.
He was a boy
Who made a broken girl fall.
                                          Fall.
          ­                                  Fall.
                                              Fall.
Until she hit the bottom.
And then buried her.
And her hope.
And her love.
6 feet under the ground.
Because he was a boy.
Who found it easier
To go back to what he knew
Than to try at something new.
So he buried
That broken girl.
6 feet under.
That cold,
Hard ground.