i never understood people who liked those who weren't good for them.

then i met you.

i fell in love with the version of me you created.
when you left it was two heartbreaks in one.

i am a small girl and many think i am harmless. i am disarming. i am smiles and laughter and the way your eyes look when you feel understood. i am the light in your irises.

i am a small girl and many think i am harmless. i am charming. i am small touches on your cheekbones and feeling your fingers interlacing through mine. i am the warmth of a lie.

i am a small girl and many think i am harmless. i am alarming. i am your heartbeat when it falters in your chest. i am regret. i am the shaking of your voice and your hands when the anger inside you coats your lips and tongue in red.

i am harming. i am salt in a wound that i created, the only cure that keeps disease aggravated, shards of glass in the water that keeps you alive.

you thought i was harmless. i lied.

i'm scared of you. are you scared of me? my fear replaces your face in my dreams. does your body ripple up and down like acid is eating your bloodstream? the ribbons in my arteries ache as they're trembling. i wrap my ribbons slowly and sweetly and tightly and they're trembling. are you scared of you? i'm scared of me.

i can see you hurting but i see myself
melting and i can't look
away. the fire
mesmerizes me and also the
pain. i know i don't speak like i used to. i see you
hurting. you reach out to touch me and i
recoil
not because i don't see you hurting but because
i am on
fire. can't you see me
burning?

manic!depressionmanicdepression manic.
shhhhh her mind sleeps slowly and breathes
she doesn't think her fingers need time to bleed her breath
bleeds she
takes a breath and beats time back into his box.
he rattles.
no no that's me , that is me again. rattling.
ribs are useless. maybe i have three lungs and no heart. i feel only breaths and no beating,
only the beating of time in his box and
he screams. no
no that is me.

my fists are beating themselves again and i dont feel .

why would i bother trying to make my words appease you? we are two equal wholes of this and i still look for you to complete me.

come back to me when you finally realize
you can't find peace within yourself

i'd love to talk.

i'd give up a lot to be neurotypical

i have found a hole of hurting
but my heart is whole besides
it seems the rivers still keep turning
and no love controls the tides

i have seen a little moonlight
i have loved a little less
i have watched my sisters fistfight
i have seen my mother kiss

i have held a hand in mourning
i have seen a girl in love
the differences aren't striking
when you're looking from above

i have told the truth at some times
and at others told a lie
i have felt a beam of sunshine
i have seen my father cry

i have found my hollow heaven
and it isn't far from home
i have lived a life of living
i will die at last alone

i have seen a thousand endings
i have felt a life begin
i have far preferred beginnings
but this is at an end.

you ask too many questions
as if i know my mind
i don't know anything but the way
your name rests
on my tongue.

if you hold his hand and he doesn't love you,

i mean,
if you hold your own hand
in his
             if you love him and he doesn't love you
are you holding your heart together? is this
hard for you
yet

      i said never hold the hand of the boy who
cares
in all the wrong ways

i said these things
i said

be loved

have you seen the way she holds them? she holds them in her eyes.

our last wish died and we didn't even mourn her

only romantic when i’m alone in bed

“why would you intentionally allow someone to wield power over you? you step perfectly in place for them to checkmate you.”

“yes,” i say with a smile. “that’s the point.”

she scowls. “losing?”

“giving enough of yourself to another person that you have something to lose.”

“i kissed you because i wanted to kiss you,” she says. “isn’t that enough?”

no! i can’t bring myself to honesty. looking her in the eyes is like dancing with fire. dangerous. “i kissed you because i want to be with you,” i offer, looking away.

she tenses. it’s the most affected i have ever seen her.

can't go back. talking to you at this point feels like trying to unshed a skin. uncomfortable and discontent, i think i am better off without the feeling of you looking at me like this. as if i planned it, as if i knew the taste of you would bend and snap, like an unwrapped ******* that sat too long. i knew people sometimes got stale like food but who was to say it wouldn't be different with you. unfortunately nothing is different; you are only you and i am only me, a girl with a thousand shed skins
at a loss for how to proceed.

i stand at the doorway and know where it goes.
i keep knocking and i wait for anyone but this ******* self.

who is my self? different people held together by a string? a shelf? a suitcase of forgotten touches and bad health?

i forget myself over and over again.
where are you?

we wait. together on the doorway, opposite sides.
no plant hangs from me.

freedom lays where you left her. bring her with you next time.
i wait at the doorway and stop.

knock.
hello me.

stop DRIVING me INSANE
i ask for NOTHING and you still disappoint.
i just want you.
you just want destruction.

crack it. my Finger stiff of cold. she doesn't care but i do, typing pop pop on keys too soft to snap. I'm full of **** and **** faced of me, praying for A New Thing to come along, any new thing works for me. hm. Wild Thoughts and yikes a little too much Love From Me. affectionate failure is still Bad when I am pretty.

bad things come here when i Say More Words than for me. Hold trinkets of apathy. Drop me.

i'm forgiveness alone in the booth. Ten cards from the deck of promises, two glasses mirroring my own. French. fingers shaky but on the inside, she holds her own hand. old. wood and wooden tables People talk. they hold their eyes and legs and wish they were not talking as they do. The talk is more, the talk is less. Words forget and for the Window Booth sit. alone. forgiveness.

two statues in red as the bird growls. the small chatter of a bear in flight, chattering and the clouds fall into it. fairy light toads pop into the windows of her sweater. she is alone! and the popcorn sizzles. cooking another tea bottle, another burning cup! she eats it and her fingernails grow. contentment in the soul comes with leaves. soup them together! grow his hair! wrap yourself in shower water and breathe outward. the inward air grows stale and forgets its leaves. remember.

two deer walk together in the Deep Sea. neither better or alone. she holds them until her fingers bleed. red dowries.

these days feel like the crumbs you get at the bottom of the cereal box. not half as good but i’m still reaching my hand in and scraping them from the folds at the bottom of the bag. dust in my fingernails and the gross feeling that comes with too much sugar and wishing i had another day, another bowl of cereal to end on, wishing i hadn’t taken so much already. i’m going to have to buy another box soon. too soon.

i like the old days.

you’re the only person i feel safe talking to and somehow even that scares me.

safety. terrifyingly illusory. i wish i could pick and choose my fears, decide for myself what was worth my anxiety, worth hours and hours of tears and self-lies. i don’t know how good i have to be to have made it, how far i have to go to feel at home in myself.

sometimes i think you might be
a crutch
but without you it's a bit
too much.

yesterday you said i'm the best thing
but if that's true
why do you say i'm bad for you
when the sun goes down

i keep telling people
i'm bettering myself for myself,
to be the type of person
i would like,
someone i can be happy being.
really i'm just lost
and looking for anything
that could make me
worth loving.
i'm not enough on my own.

"esmeralda."

“it certainly slides off the tongue, doesn’t it,” i say. her eyes are the darkest shade of blue i’ve ever seen. remarkable.

“no,” she says, chin up. “but neither do i.”

“i don’t understand you, esi. you claim to be unaffected by trifles of love, but i see the way you look at a sunrise. how can you love one dearly yet abandon its twin entirely? romance is the sister of the sun.”

“what good does it do me to believe in something i can never achieve? i know myself and the intricacies of my inner being. i am not the sort of girl who falls in love.”

“why are you so afraid?”

one hundred fleeting thoughts run through my head and i can’t seem to hold onto any of them because none of them compare to how much i want to kiss him in this moment.

“i am tired of dreaming about you,” i try desperately to sound indifferent, but my eyes are watering and he knows he knows he knows--

he smirks, closing the gap between us with only a step. “i am the only thing you will ever dream about,” he murmurs.

you keep asking me why i'm trying so hard this time and i don't know what to say because there's not a beautiful way to tell you that i'm scared to death of my own nature, scared of my innate inconstancy but even more afraid of the intimacy i crave. living on a pedestal isn't as fun as it used to be and now even the sky feels like another corner.

turns out i'd rather be in a corner with you.

i think our souls will wrap around each other forever.
every moment we spend together feels like
dangling on a precipice and
coming home.
i think our souls will wrap around each other forever.

she begins speaking and the words flow smoothly. the language is seductively soft, like a snake's hiss before it sinks in its teeth. the fear in their eyes is justified but i am too familiar with death to fear it. death is an old master.

she’s new.

i think perhaps one day
i will write poetry
the way happy people do.

no inconstancies, the little blips
and commas in places they shouldn't be,
just so.

does this bring hope?
is joy found in predictability?
is contentment in life a reality?

just so. flowers in rows,
the old woman bending over
plucking weeds between her toes.

a period at the end of every
line i wrote. not literally, for lines
and sentence rhymes do not always coincide.

i must break off my thoughts mid-stride
to conform to this three-lined rhyme
forced melody is no poem to me.

yet see how this flows so innocently.
like the little ribboned pigtails of a girl
who has never seen anything bad on t.v.

she isn't me, but neither is this,
coincidentally. but how coincidental
can we be? another few commas and this is over.

not to me. fitting periods where commas
were meant to be is the only skill that comes
naturally.

that, and ****** poetry.
happy people pen happier words that
fit together intuitively. not me.

the fear is still here. i feel it, rising
when you look at me.
when you love me.
each of your words string together like
rope
entangling and
erasing me. i wish
i could crave affection even
when i have it.
the things i cannot reach for
drive me away.

the last thing i want to be is away from you.

i can't write these things to you like i used to. you are ... less desperate than you used to be and i am
increasingly inconsistent and brimming
with the desperation i used to see
in you and
i love that, i swear to god i love to see you happy
content, at peace, at least, but
i think you were a crutch
or something
too much
but now that it's gone it's not enough.
all of this
to say
i miss you
and i miss you missing me.

we're all scared of something. heights, caves, clowns, darkness, flight
the way your heart beats mid-fight
the light
in your eyes
fading

degrading,
becoming the person you once hated,

i have those fears,
i do
but i also know that these
material things don't last, don't
affect us as much
as the things
we touch
with our minds,
our forgotten
and rotten
desires

snakeskin folded in our arteries
everyone i don't ,wanna please
and between it all
death

in a thousand
tiny
flicks
of your wrist

                                      is this
                               my disease?
.

do the fingernail marks in my skin make me tough? enough? do
they prove anything about me, prove my worth, prove that
maybe
pain inside me
exists
               am i
                   enough
                           for you  
                                   for once?

today i realized that it might not matter how hard i try. i might not be able to fix myself. i don't know how to connect. everything and everyone gives me anxiety and bores me and confuses me and i don't know what type of interactions and words to select HAGSDJUSKRVYEURSYBEISEVBRKHVFDJHJ

sitting on the corner of depot and main and i'm staring into the forehead of a bleach tan middle ager with a plaid shirt that looks like easter died. im good except i thought summer was like a door with an exit sign but i forgot it's not always greener at the end of the ride

are there ends to these rides? the speed fluctuates faster than i'd like sometimes, i don't know how to adapt to
anything, really.

coping is hard i'll give them that much. no one to call. no one inside me feeling like trying at all.

i always rhyme by the end of these
spreading wings at the end of it all
but i was never too good with estimates
and fast
we
fall

it's the clutter that gets me
down
i can't stop seeing
it ev
erywhere
its here
there
in the place between
the bed
and the
chair
i want it to be gone gone gone gone
i'm always waiting for th
god i wish i didn't
do a
nything
wrong
i want to be purged of
every
memory hanging
from my head
i never
wanted
this
never thought
they'd still be here
i'd still be here
nothing's as temporary
as we need it to be
and
permanence
scares me.

“i’m sorry,” she screams, tears running down her face black and glitter-gold, mixing and sticking in her lipstick. “i didn’t know! you didn’t warn me, didn’t tell me how this was going to go down. this is on you, i swear to god, all of this is you.”

his knuckles are bruised and swollen and his hands shudder slightly as i brush my fingers across them. i feel the pain radiating off of him as intensely as the sun on my neck, and it leaves me with a weight in my chest i can’t seem to shake. i can’t look at his eyes when i whisper

“why do you do this to yourself?” i know, i know, i know,

“every time i am harsh with myself,” he says, turning his hands over to grasp mine, “i remember to touch you more gently.”

“i have wanted many terrible, beautiful things,” he says. “the purest thing my hands have touched by far,” he tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear. “is you.”

i think we all have that one person we know
could have changed us

i know i do. i know every time i see your picture i think that could have been mine and i know when you see me you see a missed opportunity but there's no going back now and sometimes doors only open once. and it's not that i want that life, i didn't want it when i lived it, didn't want the place or the people or the rules but i always wanted you.

i think if i kissed you just once maybe i wouldn't regret everything else. maybe then it would be worth it.

i know you think of me sometimes.
please think of me sometime.

are you ever scared of the people you won't become

nick grabs my waist and pulls me closer to him, and there’s a light in his eyes i haven’t seen before, a manic spark brighter than the neon spotlights above. bodies and sounds rage around us, the temperature and beat rising as one, my own heartbeat echoing in my head. i’m not a dancer and if it weren’t for his hands in mine i’m sure i would have been lost, tossed and trapped in the gyrating mass of limbs and smoke and screaming.

but he isn’t lost, the lights blinking rapidly and reflected in his smile, he’s smiling, and i can’t hear him but he’s laughing too.

magnetic.

hm. somehow i missed you,
anxiety. i feel
more myself, this is
familiarity in a
nutshell, i know the
buzz
in my chest cavity
better than i know
myself,
it seems.
i guess i'm not the epitome
of health, these days
late nights
droughts and self-doubt all
seem to take out
the part of me that used
to dream. or think. or
do anything at all
really.
i guess that's okay,
i guess
between loneliness
and fear there's
an alleyway, home,
a place you don't go
until you're there,
realizing more
and more
how easy it is to stay
and how hard it is to care.