I am a mess of habits, scooped with shaking hands like rusted pennies.
I breathe more nicotine than I do oxygen.
I bite my nails like that is the only way I can keep from clawing my skin off my bones.
The liquor bottles under my bed far outnumber the books on my shelf.
I am constantly shrinking myself, making room for the people I place around me,
Like a computer program running in the background.
I am shaping myself like clay around the space of those I hold dear.
Making myself small and building up everyone else.
The smoking and the drinking may **** me young,
But not before I shrink myself so small, I disappear.

It's been a while since I've had skinned knees doctored and bandaged
But you've always been good and patching me up in other ways.
Lately I've been tripping over my feet and falling to my knees
I've been craving letting my veins unzip themselves like my favorite red sweater.
As it turns out, most of the things in my life that make me feel better, also make me feel worse.
You keep me sane but you make me crazier than anyone else.

Fear kills everything.
It sweeps through the soul like a wildfire, setting everything ablaze,
And leaving nothing behind but the ashes of what you used to know.
I can feel my love beginning to smolder and my hope for
This is hazed by a thick layer of smoke.

I cannot believe in something I have not seen or felt.
This is what I've told my mother on the occasions she asks me to go to church.
I'm trying to learn to believe what you've told me
But words without actions are like book covers with no pages.
And after all this time, I still haven't learned not to
Sail over oceans for someone who wouldn't even jump a puddle for me.

How to whittle my anxieties into shapes more suited to your ears is not a lesson I was taught in school.
Your presence in my life has left my heart dripping nectar, full to bursting with sweetness I can't contain.
But there are razor blades under my skin that will cut you before anyone can predict.
I'm trying to get them all out but you've found so many of them first.
I'm sorry for the scars knowing me will leave.

The way your smile hits your eyes could stop wars,
And if the sound of your laughter was wine, I'd start drinking again.
The way you move is like animated poetry
And the low song of your voice is enough to cure the saddest of days.
There is nothing about the way you were crafted that doesn't make my heart sing,
But when I think of how I'm better when you're around, my feet won't touch the ground.
I could get lost in everything you are.
So when you ask me what I see when I look at you,
I will just show you this poem.

I want to sink my hands into your chest,
Pull all the splinters from your heart,
And plant my lips down on it.
I want to stitch up all the rips and tears,
Mend all that has been broken,
And lose my fingers  in your veins so you always know I'm there.
But I'll have to settle for the surface.
I cannot sit inside you with a needle and thread,
but I can hold your hand and kiss you when it hurts
And help to heal you from the outside in.

I have grown up more in the last few months than I have in the last few years.
I used to think that real love meant kisses on the lips and making excuses.
Sometimes I find myself making wishes on eyelashes, hoping to find your hand in mine.
But I learned that cake is still cake, no matter the shape it's baked in.
You don't have to kiss me on the mouth or stick a label on me to know what love is.
I don't have to make wishes because I've grown up more in the last few months
Than I have in the last few years.
I have learned that real love is loving every bit of that cake, no matter its shape.
Sometimes, real love is holding your hand with no real expectations
Other than knowing you're going to keep it there.

I remember when we had phone calls until little girls got up for school.
I remember the drunken laughter, peeing while talking and spilling beer.
I remember hearing the sleepy giggles of your own flesh and blood,
And when you told me you couldn't wait for us to meet.
I remember showing you my soul from two hours away,
And trying to keep my tears quiet over the phone.
You always heard them, though.
You always heard me.
And you let me hear you too.
You let me past the stubbornness and the walls around your heart
And that was better than being heard.
Sparse text messages aren't as good as our late night calls, but I suppose it's better than nothing.
I fear we're dangerously close to nothing.
I remember when you told me you'd always be here.
Where are you?

When I met you, I never thought I’d be that girl again
Fallin for another man’s tricks and bein another **** puppet
The difference here is now I know a thing or two.
My honesty came from a bottle or five of Blue Moon
In a dark hometown parking lot. In the play of my life this is a familiar scene.
I always fall harder and I always care more and ******* I have run my fingers to the bone
And my heart to the ground and my bank account to the negatives trying to keep you here.
And when people ask, I will deny that after all this time my face still lights up when your name
Hits my phone and I’ll jump at the chance to hang off your lips like the Camels in the door of the truck
We spend so much time in the back of because we claim there’s no reason to have to miss the way
We fused so well and fit so perfectly.
But after so many of those nights, I realized I know you better than you think I do.
I know you like I know the scars on my arms and like I know how I have my daddy’s skin but my
momma’s mind.
And every ******* time you pull me into that back seat and you press your forehead to mine as you
Press the rest of yourself into the rest of me, I feel it and I know you feel it too and don’t you dare
******* tell me you don’t love me too because we both know what those silences mean.
Between kisses, when we just stare at each other; one always asks, ‘what?’ and without fail,
The other will always reply, ‘nothing’ because we’re both too weak to say how we feel in that moment.
The difference here is that you know a thing or two because, between bottles of beer, I told you.
And if I know anything too, it’s that I can read you like my favorite poem, and behind the aggressive
Façade and the smoke you’ve inhaled, you’re just a scared little child holding a beer living a life
You do not truly understand.
And if I want anything in the world right now, I want you to hand the beer to the man I know is inside
You and let him become drunk on the words he needs to say and let them find their way to my ears.

If I could say anything to who I was as a teenager, it was to maintain a safe amount of careful skepticism.
When you fall for that boy, pay careful attention to the way his parents are behind closed doors.
You will not be surprised when he tries to keep you for himself and not even your mother may have you.
When he tells you that you cannot talk to the boy you’ve been friends with since middle school,
You will learn to listen to him, be that wrong or right.
You learn to listen to him because defiance becomes a ****** nose or a bruise to hide.
You will try to stand up for yourself and he will beat you into the grain of the wood floor
But from the skin of his knuckles he will teach you to be strong.
When you give him what he wants in his room to avoid another black eye,
Each ****** will teach you what it means to be indestructible.
Every punch, kick, knock-down, drag-out screaming match will suddenly pop into your head years later
When you learn to tell the next man that you will not put up with anything less than the magic you’ll
Find at nineteen.
And you will learn to believe, after slicing and starving and keeping so quiet, that you are too beautiful
To let anyone convince you that you aren’t any longer. Not even yourself.

You have never known my pain
Until you have to cover every inch of yourself,
Tugging sleeves and pants in the heat;
Tape on a smile to mask the anxiety in your eyes,
Longing for the intimacy your flawed skin won't allow.
You have never known my pain
Until the shower cleans more than sweat and dirt.
It becomes a hiding place that cleans the shadows from your soul.
Until you fear every pair of eyes, even your own.
You have never known my pain
Until you have carried the scars I do
And hidden yourself away from the light in your life
Cowering in the darkness, somehow you don’t deserve the light that tries to find you

If you do know my pain, my god, how my heart aches with yours
If you bear these scars, my god, how my soul weeps with yours
If you do share this pain, my god, feel my hand in yours
But before you jump, open your ears and listen
My god, my heart sings for the future I know you hold
Because I finally saw mine
And my god, don’t you know that you don’t have to jump to fly?

The night I met you, you put your hand to my chest.
I sunk to the bottom of this hole,
And alone in the dark, I pulled myself apart,
Tearing skin from skin and prying out the bones.
When I reached the heart I thought was long gone,
I found a familiar set of fingerprints.
Like a crime scene I didn't know existed,
I keep finding traces of you I never expect.
I couldn’t believe I let myself fall so far,
I didn’t realize it til we’d collided so hard
I keep finding debris, so many of your little pieces and parts
Embedded deep inside me like a pair of crashed cars
Even after we’ve separated and cleaned up the wreckage
I still find pieces of you in the caverns of my heart
And I’ve never been so grateful for falling apart
Because sometimes you get put back together better than you were at the start.

Before I begin, let me make one thing perfectly clear:
Everything I’ve ever given a **** about, I’ve been unabashedly critical of.
So believe me when I say that I appreciate ever word out of your mouth I’ve spanned the distance to hear.
You have all these years that you hang over my head, dangling them, subtly mocking from the end of a thread.
Yes, darling, you’re well aged and well-read but I’ll be ****** if I will let my experiences be invalidated by a few years and your fiery, well-meaning arrogance, let that be heard as it’s said.
It’s true that you know me better than most but don’t get it twisted. You sure as hell don’t know me better than me.
Pretend all you like that I’m buttered-up and convinced that your life lessons and late night calls have set me free, but you know as well as me that’s a lie fed through your precious mind’s teeth.
I boil and I freeze so I know I can stand the heat, but just remember one thing:
You’re intense and addictive but baby, the scorpion still stings.
And one twin will **** well bite while of your praises the other sings.

I’m ****** in the head.
It’s like cancer.
Not cancer of the brain but cancer of the mind.
It sits dormant, eating away everything in sight like a teenager that just got too high.
My chemotherapy doesn’t pump in my veins, it’s choked down my throat, like a shot that’s far too bitter to ever be chased.
Wellbutrin, Xanax, Lamictal, Z-O-L-O-F-T
To hell with the bar, it seems my only cocktail is right here because these ******* doctors tell me that
If I loosen up more than these milligrams untie me,
I might die but what’s the difference between this shot of whiskey and the game of
Russian roulette I play without this bottle of pills?
There are only so many months of grinding teeth and tense jaws and sore necks
And skin that feels like a wildfire that one person can take before the cocktails stop coming
And you’re trying to figure it out yourself between figuring out how to get the blood out of your sheets.
There’s only so much restlessness and trembling hands one woman can take before
The skill of swallowing a punch bowl of pills turns into the skill of performing a plastic
Surgery on that innocent disposable razor.
But then winter rolls by and you realize it’s too hot for those pants and sleeves to hide you.
And even when you stop there’s always questions and eyes that silently judge you.
Brain cancer is easy. Brain cancer garners everyone’s sympathy. Brain cancer is understood.
But mind cancer is a ******* enigma and those scars on your arms, your legs are harder to explain
Than the nausea and vomiting from the cytotoxic car bomb that went straight to your veins
Just like that trusty silver blade did.
The twisted truth is that you’re just as ashamed of those white lines as they are.
And then you learn to say “I’m done with the shame” and realize that
We’re all ****** in the head in our own way.

I always knew I was made of stone,
hardened and scarred by the weather
But with the very weather that tarnished the surface,
The slow erosion is made visible with patience.
These rainstorms eroded and shaped me,
Stripped me down bare and brought an evolution.
Somewhere between the thunder and lightning of the mattress
And the downpour of our hands intertwined
And the gale-force winds of the miles between us,
I cracked.

People always tell you to do what makes you happy, that nothing gets in the way of true joy.
What I've learned is that people will tell you what you want to hear, what makes it easy.
Nothing is ever that easy.
The worst things in life come free to us.
The good things in life all have consequences, there's always a price to pay.
We're all just wandering around, hopelessly hopeful with a veil over our face,
On our knees in front of our saving grace.

You are born into this world, screaming, covered in blood; a fighter.
Day after day, you fight, step by step, word by fractured word.
You fall and scrape your knees, wounds mended by time and a motherly hand.
You lose your teeth, come inside after dark, covered in dirt,
But there is always growing, cleaning, and a lesson learned.
There are bad grades and planning for someday, someday far away.
There are late nights and growing old, aching for a hand to hold.
There is skin between teeth and empty, desperate grasping in the dark.
You will give up pieces of yourself out of fear and let even more be taken.
You will bear bruises and scars and lie awake with someones fingers tangled in your veins.
Your heart will be shattered, met with a flame and reduced to ashes.
You will be broken in every sense of the word and you will have to pick yourself up out of the dirt.
Some days will be sunshine, a good nap, and your favorite song.
Some days you will want to die.
The beat to every life is just this: Fight.
Every day is a struggle, a newcomer in a prize-fighting ring.
But the fight goes on anyway.
Leaving the womb, taking your first steps, speaking your first word.
Your first day of school, losing those you love, losing all you have.
You came into this world a fighter.
*******, don't leave this world giving in.
Fight and go down when the round is over.
You came into this world a fighter.
You should leave it just the same.

Lovers and strangers, we've been both before.
Lately things just aren't the same
And I'd sooner turn to the bottle to find a familiar embrace.
Lately you're just not the same
And I'm not sure where to turn anymore.
I painted a picture of what I thought my life would be
But the colors are running and it's far too gone.
I never learn a lesson but I've memorized the broken stares
From those I used to know and that will always include
You and I.

I don't need to find a reflection to tell you
Where the shadows have settled beneath my tired eyes,
Or where my hair has thinned
Or where my skin has paled.
I can feel this exhaustion deep beneath the sullen expression.
I feel it in my bones, creaking with each movement,
In my stomach, churning and angry.
This is far beyond yesterday's smeared makeup and creased brow.
I have memorized anxiety's poetry on my body like my favorite song.
And while I can never forget the lyrics,
I can take the track off repeat and listen to a new one.

There are fingers tangled in my hair, pulling, grasping.
I breathe, the fingers have moved to my throat, pressing.
Skin on skin; heavy, weighted breaths.
You are the map and the territory.
I feel you under my fingertips, warm and radiating.
A stolen kiss, a pinch of teeth.
I have been here before,
But this is unfamiliar.
I have done this countless times,
but I have never felt so close.

There are the darkest corners of my soul,
And the shaky hands and 3am tears and panic;
The tense moments and the bittersweet memories.
You have seen all of these and more.
And even though I've given you the key to the front door,
You managed to bust in all the back windows as well.
You've taken me by surprise and burglarized my soul.
And when you lean in to kiss my forehead,
You're really pressing your lips to my heart.
And when you wrap your hand around mine,
Your fingers entwine with my veins.
And when you look at me,
The scars inside me start to fade.
*The scars of my soul start to fade.

There is a moment that will haunt you,
That will break everything you've built up.
When you realize you were born to fly
But your feet are chained to the ground.
And somehow you're living a dream
But you still feel like dying sometimes,
And each day hangs on the edge of a blade.
Now the sun is shining and the birds are singing
And there are pieces of yourself that you will never get back.

You are not your body.
You are not your scars.
You are not your relapses or wide-eyed fears.
You are more than the razor blade.
You are more than your bones.
You are more than your hunger and choked out tears.
You are a soul, a heart, and a light.
You are a friend, a lover, and hope.
So though I may not know you,
I will hold your hand and carry you.
You will win this fight.

I love you.
I hate you.
Leave.
Please don't go.
I am black.
I am white.
I am unbearable hunger
And excruciating fullness.
I am good and evil.
And in my mind, so are you.
Forever one or the other.
I walk the fence between happiness and self hatred.
Between life and death.
I love you.
I hate you.
Leave.
Please don't go.

A chill cuts me to the bone
I shiver before the pale, cold sanctuary.
I rid myself of every feeling of guilt, inadequacy, and almost the sadness.
Ribbons of all shades around my wrists masked by those of red
Secrets that have become all too easy to keep
Scarred knuckles and beads of sweat
A sense of control always wavering on the edge
I fight this war alone.

A million enlightened religious men have said that there is no need to suffer.
That suffering and pain aren't necessary.
But how am I supposed to believe them
When my suffering begins in my own mind?
How dare you tell me I am wrong I my suffering when I am helpless to it?
Sometimes I feel like a fallen leaf in autumn.
Half dead, fragile and on the verge of crumbling,
And always with someone trying their damnedest to step on me,
To hear my crunch under their boot.
It is no fault of mine that I have dried and fallen
Nor is it for the painful crushing under the feet of others.
It is simply my sad misfortune that for some, our very nature is just that:

*Suffering.

She sat tight, attached to her strings,
thinking hard,
She wanted to disappear,
She wanted to break away from these restraints
Holding her back from her freedom.

How long would it take?
How far could she go?
Nobody knew.

She lie helpless,
Watching others pass her by.
I will be there someday, she thought, dreamily.

She walked through blank whiteness,
Then fell into deep darkness,
Gone forever.

Nobody knew where she had gone,
Wondering how she could just disappear,
Being there the day before.

Only I know where she has gone and I must not tell you.
She remains gone today,
The disappearing ******* strings.

I've done my best to hide my pain from you,
Because though I know I've done nothing wrong,
I don't want you to feel guilty.
Don't look at me that way, love.
I know my logic's thwarted.
I've tried my damnedest to hide my tears from you,
Because though I can reason that I'm innocent,
I feel I'm to blame for all this.
Don't turn around, bury your face in your hands.
I know this isn't my fault, but you make my feel so bad.
I've reached the end of this bridge I've crossed so feebly.
I've come to a crossroads where I have to decide:
Do I light the match and let this burn?
Or do I keep pacing back and forth, hoping against my better judgment?
Don't look at me that way.
We both know you're to blame.
You're not the same man I put on that pedestal.
You're just a broken, old soul, submitting others to pain.

I've learned a lot of things in my life.
Now, I haven't lived a long time, but I've gained a lot, all the same.
Sure, I've learned things like math and how to use my grammar properly,
But the things I've learned that are most important
Can't be taught by any teacher in any classroom.
See, what I learned is that life stops for no one.
You'll experience things in your life that will tear you down.
But you can't let that hold you back.
Experience everything.
Get too drunk one night, fall for the wrong person, lose something important to you.
Take the bad with the good, because too often,
Life's greatest lessons come with a negative experience.
Live.
Because life stops for no one.

I pick up the telephone, pick up my heart & pour it out.
I just wanted you to feel that way.
You make it really hard for me to breath, you know.
I suppose it's pretty pathetic for me to want this way,
but I also suppose I probably don't care.
I pull the keys out of the ignition, and watch.
I just love the way you move.
You're vulnerable, I know.