I just started a load of laundry
In hopes that it will wash away
The discomfort around expression
From my identity.
I imagine little people
As they run up and down
My pant legs
My shirt sleeves
My bra straps
Steadily scrubbing the internal
Abuse from the fabric.
They peel off the fine layers
Of self hatred and grime
Only to leave behind a shell
For my body to fill once more.

And, with no doubt,
I will climb from bed tomorrow
To don these scraps and
They will become one with me again.
My self doubt
and insecurities will
Stain my shirt pits
and my pant cuffs.
The devil raging inside me will,
More than likely,
***** my underwear
Leaving me in my own filth
Until I find time again
To do the laundry.

Fill my lungs with flowers
I'm not used to coughing
but I'd gladly produce for you the seeds
So that you may see.
You can plant them in your
garden of regrets and
I'll keep a few for my own.
Who would have known?
Somethings perceived as good
in reality they were weeds
crawling up my throat.
Perhaps my little garden is comprised
of dandelions and dayflowers and
other things too small
for human adoration.
Maybe I am too too small.
Pluck the petals from my hair,
count and see-
Undoubtedly, she loves me.

There is an imprint of a frog on my back
From a poem by Mary Oliver.
It is sticky sweat oozing down my spine,
Leaking into the small of my back
Screaming, "You do not have to be good."
My own skin whispers back,
"But don't I?" and sears the grime.
I don't know what to do with my own badness.
Punishment for my "sins" seems necessary,
But so does radical acceptance.
All I can do is close my eyes,
Hoping for a better tomorrow where
My brain requires less dopamine
And more compassion.
Slowly I will rise from the grave I dig once a night.
I will claw my way out by my fingers
And into the light.
Shame that no one will be near
To see the resurrection.

Heartbeats are not meant to be regular.
They're meant to sputter, wet and dark,
Underneath too many layers of skin.
When broken they must be robotic,
Rhythmic, monosyllabic and
When loved, they must pulse against
The lips of your lover at the neck.
Hearts were never meant to be
Unattainable, undesirable,
Detrimental.
But rather they exist to be heard
Through your shirt and skin
And commitment issues
And to be felt in moments draped
In fear and strength.
But here we stand, you with your
Steady pulse
And silly me, with the taste of comfort
Once again on my lips and
The smell of you in my messy hair,
My own heart reminded of the past.

Hellacious men roam these walls
Even once the barmaid gets them off

Reason with yourself a little, sweetheart.
At it again with your silly paranoia.
Pry open your eyes, darling.
Everything is always alright.
Don't find me guilty until proven so.

"Make me happy," she screamed and
Eventually the glass shattered.

I thought maybe this was it

I found you in in chartered territory and I prayed you would answer me

You showed up in my dreams this week and she saw you and she told me and you reappeared

I thought maybe this was it

But I guess we couldn't do it

I'll be honest.
It isn't because my mother can't commit
I'm not dependent on her idiosyncrasies or her
BeatenKickedMurderedWays

It isn't that my future is too bright
To be shaded by love
Or poetry OrartOrmusicoranythingatall

It isn't the way our hearts just don't beat in time

It isn't you. It isn't me.

It's been two years, and it's still her.

She's still in every sip of the coffee I'm too cowardly to drink and sh
E's in the words I conjure up when I try to be romantic b
Ut I'm all out of wor
Ds to use beca
Use I used them all on her lips

I can't help it. She makes appearances in shopping mall windows and in the steam from my skin melting showers. You want a forever, well so do I

But mine was stolen from me and god I wish I had purple sheets.

I wish you could have stayed

I wish you would have fixed this 2 years ago

I wish you could'veshould'vewould've come home to me

But I've heard you're straight now

Or that girls with their burnthandstongueslegsfakelies couldn't keep you at bay and broke your "heart"

But they couldn't have done that
Youleftitwithmeisntthatright?

I hope you're straightnow and that you never actually love someone again. I hope you sleepwithboysthatcanneverbeenough just because you miss me.

I hope I broke you. Just like you did me.

The people I love have bigger problems
Than just me.
One thousand sixth days I know
I am worth loving
Tendencies have a way of allowing us,
Especially me,
To forget that solemn fact.
Always
Between my consistent need for most
Inconsistencies
And a dire need for answers on
Someone's part
There must be something said of indecision
Amongst a lack of decision
All I can truly vouch for would be this:

I have a complex
A condition as it may
To call nothing mine
For what is mine
Tends to want to fly away.
They dream of knives
And perhaps a little blood
Beating senseless
What I call nonsense
Like no one else ever would.
I call them dreams
As simple as it may look
Because they prosecute
And search for all it seems
That I have once took
To the cages and the burrows
They whisper of home and
I hear a little shouting of lies
Falling down and down here
Once more.
Nothing is mine.
Nothing is all of yours.

I have the overwhelming
Desire to scream your name
Down empty hallways
In hopes that your ghost
Will hear me and at least
Take to haunting something
Other than my mind.

Who
Will
She
Be
Buying
A
Rose
For
This
Year?

Did anyone ever notice
That you only started to get
Really bad
When you didn't have me
To talk to every night?
And when you were forced
To not speak to me?
Did no one make that connection?
You were crushed and beaten
And taught to hate me
Because it was all my fault...
But when you broke,
I wasn't even around to pick
Up the pieces.

A coward, if only I could change it
To create the letters given to you
By a shrew and the punching bag he hit.
You called it worthless, yet I had no clue.
They came to you with slight hesitation
Yet no amount of love or light had power
To stop your fear of the situation,
And to keep you safe locked in their towers.
I watched you hang in their arms, no fighting
Glare in your eyes, but an "I love you" spilled
Silently behind closed doors, more hiding
Even when we had been exposed and killed.
I will see you soon, but where could I start?
You've forgotten how much you stole my heart.

I've never been one to turn a serious card over, especially only after barely a month.

Much less after four days.

Beauty and bliss
My heart is flying
Clarity and a kiss
What is this?
I'm beating my chest
With all my strength
And I'm giving my best
With all I've been
I'm not sure I can do this.
Hurt and pain
Love and hate
Man I love the hit
That comes with you
And that look in your eyes.
Just a glimmer of peace
And a pinch of rest.
I could get used to
The thumping
In my worn out chest.

I'm not wanting
Inhibitions
Or conditions
That make me hang
By a thread
I can't handle
All the scandal
Propaganda
That injects me
With such dread
I'm not ready
For addiction
Or convention
That makes me feel
Like I'm dead
I may be lost
But it's my choice
And if I'm tossed
Or lose my voice
I'll just remember
What I have said

cm

I have a lot of pictures
And notes
And quotes
Saying that we would not
Be able to live without
The other.
We wouldn't be able to function
Or handle it.

But then we had to.

I miss the type of poetry that
Stirred fire and beget rage upon me
And those who happened to stumble
Upon the things I've carelessly
Strolled into when the weather got cold.
Cigarettes who once kept me warm
Now hold stones at my grave
And oh they laugh for it is not me they
Seek and I envy
The next patron over.
That is the type of words I miss.
I'm sick of that little girl
Sneeking her way into my soul
Even when it's bright outside
And I'm hidden in my own sort of
Shadows.
I yearn for her to disappear among
The midnight movie goers and
****** who just need a little extra cash.
If it weren't for the ***** I'd oblige.
Alas. She once spoke of me in tongues
Known only to me. I think.
Pathological lies dont, never have, done well during
December parade marches and streets.
But that was just me.
I miss poetry that doesn't make sense.
I miss it and yearn to retrieve it.
But she has my head thinking
In block formations.
I have to get out of this town.

I could go to our messages and read them over.
But I'm too tired tonight.
I think it's the first time I've just
Sighed
And said no to myself.
I'm tired.
And I'm not sure of what this time.
It's familiar,
The exhaustion I feel.
But there are no blades
And no more lover's stares.
Just sleepiness and lonliness.
So I won't revisit
You again tonight
But only out of exhaustion,
My dear.
Forgive me.

What is stopping you?







Her.

My past is etched into me
With a needle and thread too thin
To escape the gaps between
My bones and skins.
She still has a grip on my throat
With a laugh and bruise
Hidden behind
Makeup and purple sheets.
She's in my sleep.
She's my ghost
Weeping inside my soul
But what am I to do?

I think I've lost it.
My god
It's been 7 months.
And I'm crying myself
To sleep because
She won't answer me.
She can't.
And I'm praying to god she
Will respond.
That she will come back.
I've lost it.
I can't stop crying.
Anna please come back.
Please.
Break a rule.
Don't fall in love with
Some one else.
No.
Please.
Please.
I miss you and I love you.
Come back.
Please.

I look at your pictures
And it's all dream like

Your kisses
Your skin
And smiles

They're dreams


I never want to wake up
When I allow myself to remember.

You left and you became a ghost
For all of us.
Not just me.
I see you swimming in their eyes.
And it's sad
We all still think of you
When we shouldn't.

I keep looking over things we wrote
And I feel the flame from when
You burned the heart
I poured out for you.
I feel the paper ignite and the
Redblackwhitehatredblueorange
Collage take place on my
Penmanship.
I keep crying over you.
I can't hear you anymore
But I've resorted to shutting off
Your voice and becoming,
As a conquest called me,
A lying ***** with little self respect.
In a week or two,
Your voice will be back
Screaming "I
LoveHateLiedKilledWantedSkillfullyPlayed
You."
And I'll yell some more
Through poems you may or may not
Read.
And I'll cry some tears
Which soak up the bed we first
Kissed on.
I'll beat something senseless
To drown you out.
Because I don't think,
Even if you could
(For all I know you could),
You would speak to me.
We are just ghosts to the other.

I'm weeping.
I can still feel you.
But only in the dark.
I miss you, Anna.
Sunday will be a year
Since you first told me you loved me.
Will you remember?

Plans and plans and plans.
I give you a month
To sleep with her
And then you'll be okay.
You'll be fine.
Like Josh said,
"We have to get your
Face in a girl by the time you graduate."
You've got to get it done.
So you can stop being
Tormented by her
In your dreams.

The hardest part of you being gone
Is the fear that I'm
Never going to find love again
Because all the interest
In the world can't keep me
Captivated like you did.
They aren't unpredictable
And **** and spacey
And mature
Or anything like you.
They bore me.

They make me sleep
And all that sleep brings me
Is dreams of you.

I spent years
Climbing walls that
People built up against me,
Using the rocks I brought down to
Build my own.
Locked inside a cage
I panicked.
So I had to stop climbing.
I had to stop building.
I had to face the fact
That I got thrown off of her wall
Into my own
And mine tumbled to pieces
And she was gone before I could
See the damage I made.

Girlie, if you are reading this,
On the 14th
(Oh that dreaded number),
A year after we started,
They are going to take a peak
Inside of me.
You can guess what they'll see
You've seen it too.
The black tar building inside,
Overriding my everything until
It is some sort of dust.
The slashslashslash of the scars
And the sticky hatred
And disbelief disguised as
What can only be called walls.
But will they see you there,
Sleeping between my ribs
And breathing in and out of
My heart beat,
Which hasn't been regular for six months?
Are they going to see your
Fingerprints in my throat
From where I keep screaming
Your name a little too loudly in
My best and worst dreams?
Will they see the warning lights
And the color of your bed sheets?
I'm convinced they are only
Venturing into the darkness that is me
To find the light that is you.

Despite everything I
Know
I still have a tiny bit of
Hope
That I will get off this bus
And she will be there waiting
To kiss me in the darkest
Corners of my mind.

"The future is even harder to hold onto
When you have no chance of living it."

Do better.

You badbadbadgirl
I know how wrong you have done
And you won't stop
stop
stop




stop.
You think you are right
Badbadbadgirl
When all you cause is hell.
Hell on wheels
With your hurricane at your side.
Wrongbadstupiduglybitch
badbadbadbadbad
You have done too wrong.
And there is nothing I can say
To get you to

I'm out of line again,
1 2 3 4,
the tiny little steps,
But somewhere my feet grew
Two sizes too big
And I'm already in the teens,
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
The thirties are now behind me.
I'm out of step,
I'm out of line,
And I'm not sure I want to stop.

Oh dear god,
Why must you be you?
It shouldn't even be a question.
Why, oh my dear god,
must you be you.
You could have been a girl
With straight teeth,
And an upper lip that curved
In the middle.
You could have had good hand writing
That didn't rip me to the core
When I looked at your name
On a sheet of paper
I shouldn't have noticed.
But your name, all 8 letters,
They stand out to me.
And each line you write,
It's a slap in the face
A kiss on my cheek
And it reminds me of you.
You could have left me alone.
You could have decided you
Hated clarinet when you were
In middle school,
And you wouldn't have been
At Scott Lang
And you wouldn't have fallen
In love with the way I was,
the way I just had to be me.
You wouldn't have made me love you.
You wouldn't have made me fall in love
With you again today.

Even after almost five months,
You have my heart,
Just by a look.
Why must you be you.
It shouldn't even be a question.

You have this line up of steps
And here you are
One two three four
But your toes are out of line
With the calories you shouldn't have eaten
And by the way, everyone noticed,
Everyone judged, when you
Bit your tongue to keep from
Feeling what she does to you.
You messed up your
Seven and your eights
And you are out of step with the beat.
Catch up, girlie,
They're leaving you behind.

Oh, my darling,
You may be a hurricane,
But I am still
Hell on wheels
And even your silence
Will not stop me now.

I need to get out of here.
I need to get away from my stomach problems
Caused by a girl who is working for herself.
I need to get away from the self harm
Everyone around me seems to commit.
I need to move on and let myself get better.
I cannot wait until I get to Boston to be okay.
I need to get better now because I was meant
To be okay and to be alive and happy.
I don't think my friends quite agree
With that fact.

You had me wrapped up inside of you
And it was the closest thing I've ever come to
Hating my world and what I do inside of it
And inside of... I guess my everything.
I made the wind blow throughout you
And this is how you repay yourself?
You have this way of wanting to forget
And I don't think you understand why.
Forget me.
Forget her.
Forget your own name and let yourself be happy.
I think that you believe that you have to forget
To be okay with what you are.
You are hell on wheels and
You have this tendency to be overwhelmed
By the absence of yourself
That you cannot change.
Let me explain and be quite plain
Forgetting is pain
And forgetting is too tall
Skyscrapers in cities and cop
Cars that showed up for no **** reason
Because you aren't going to jump
And forgetting is letting go
Unwillingly
Of everything you have ever even
Lied to to tell it that you loved them
And forgetting is lies.
You can never forget.
Because forgetting would mean
You got out and you never will
Because the torment you feel,
It lives inside of you
And it is never going away.

My hair my hair
Oh my pretty pretty hair
Once so shiny and fair
Simply beautiful
As I was a girl
Stuck in a world
That seemed a little too big
For my hair my hair
And the pretty pretty locks
And the pretty pretty box
They stuck me in
When my hair oh my hair
I cut it off
And lost just a little too much
For everyone else's luck
Because she cried over
My hair oh my hair
And its pretty pretty locks
But forgive me if I ask
Did she cry when they
Set me in the
Pretty pretty box
In my pretty pretty dress
With my pretty pretty cuts
And my pretty pretty scissors
That I used to cut off
My pretty pretty hair
When the world became too much?

The only thing
I seem to be able to express
Is how much
I want to fall in love again.

You were walking on broken eggshells
It wasn't like you were some kind of
God (I made sure to whisper that
So only you could hear me)
You paraded around and it was like
You were deaf to the shattering
Beneath your feet and to my
Pleading to go back into hiding
Could you not see the guns, my darling?
They shot us down and only because
You know how to break hearts
Without picking your
Feet up from your natural
Day to day destruction.

I'm not quite sure
Which I hate more:
The day you left
Or the day I
*Agreed to all of this.

in case you are not aware,
another month has come and
soon, i guess, it will be gone
you'll be left stranded again.
i'm tempted to, just for now,
to indulge myself on you
with what i have and
i'm wondering how you
could have possibly made it
three months with no piece of me.
maybe you haven't
but i hope that everytime you
hear or see or stumble stupidly
upon the number fourteen,
you think of me.
and how we hit nine months
and i still want to be your longest
relationship when you
get back here.

You're always caught on the wrong end of silence
Disposable
Isn't that the word you used
To describe yourself to her?
But you know you are not trash
Just a piece of hell wrapped into a skin bag
Who always ends up on the wrong end of silence
Part of me, a big part of me,
Is waiting for you to realize that love is useless
When compared to the silence that drowns you
Look around.
Two years of silence from that boy.
Two years.
An abundance of silence
Because
"I had hoped you would have handled this yourself by now."
Until it became convenient for her to tell
And open her mute mouth.
And silence because
What you do is just
Too horrible to speak about
So you, they, shut it away
And look at you now.
Can you even breath under that water?
But people say sound moves slower
Under strong currents and especially in the
Blood like density of this water
Can't you see that no one is coming?
That you are drowning?
No words are coming out towards you.
She's gone.
The silence is real and you
Won't wake up from the dream
Two years later and forgive him.
Won't have to hear her tell someone and
Get what you do on record.
Won't have to listen to a woman
Tell you things you already know.

Anna is gone.
And all you have left is this silence.