Stop thinking it's romantic
to **** the girl who cries
writes poetry at 3 am
has scars cascading down her thighs.
It simply isn't beautiful
when she chews on her insides
through alcohol and cigarettes
beneath artificial light.
Don't place your hand on her lower back
pretending like it's fair.
Stop telling her it's beautiful
as she tears out her hair
bites down her every fingernail
til they're just ****** stumps.
You think you'll help by listening
with artificial love.
A knock at your door at 4 am
will surely change your mind.
"I want to **** myself tonight,
please let me in, I want to die."

Heart beat- rhythmic,
Sleeping- poor.
Not even for a second did I think
we'd be less
than more.
Crack me wide open,
scream to my lungs,
bite at my muscles,
cut out my tongue.
Burn all the ropes down
keeping me up.
Not once in my own thoughts
have I been enough.
I've slept in far too many beds,
too many hands have touched me.
I've tasted far too many boys,
made love just once under the sea.
You're beautiful but I am not,
I am three-fourths used up.
I know I've lost a lot.

Bruises on my ribs from a rock beneath the floor of a tent,
bruises on my neck from your teeth and you have a beautiful
jaw line. My fingertips dip, you say. That isn't normal. And
colors in your eyes are impossible to replicate in my mind.
I'll study your face, the skin on the back of your hands and the
curve
of your bones. That word makes me nauseous. Curve
away from me, grow like a bonsai tree
I say please then whisper apologies
too often
I know exactly what I want but refuse to chase it
because I am temporary, I'll wound you and leave
a beautiful scar. You have a beautiful jaw
line.

I have whispered love into lonely quiet shoulders
and shouted from the bottom of a frozen hill.
I have tick-tick-ticked it into messages online
and kept it to myself to ensure the room stay still.
I have scrawled it endlessly onto pink paper,
it's been buried aside "but" and beneath salty tears.
I have hesitated in the Winter. By Spring it was eager.
I'll repeat it to you for years and years and years.

You were in the reflection of the car window at a stoplight,
sitting on the "rent-a-center" couches.
You are the highs in my voice as I'm screaming at the top of my lungs
the scuff on the front of my shoe.
You are dried salt at the corner of my eyes begging to be mined
used to save meat and people from themselves.
You are a blackened screen of a cell phone, you are lonely without light.
You are an empty bottle of pills, you are the scars left from a fight.
You are everything with meaning, yet you only live at night.
In the morning when I wake up you are not there.
You're a whisper from the open window, pushing in cold air.
You're a single word at dinner that I can barely hear.
You're the warmth held in the blanket from my toes up to my throat,
you're a crumpled up old letter, the word "love" scrawled in a note.
You're the biting cold upon my fingers that I cannot seem to shake.
You are everything to me at night,
gone in the morning when I wake.

There's always been something calming about January sweat with the window open
and bruises making home on every inch of my neck.
If anyone were to ask "What's the matter?" I'd like to reply with
"Nothing, it's all vibrations of energy slowed enough to be perceived,
and these marks on my throat haven't been in the shaped of fingers since seventh grade."
I learned how dung beetles use the Milky Way Galaxy to guide themselves
but I take direction from people who shine twice as bright.

When did you feel the most beautiful you've ever felt?
When it sent a lightning bolt through your bones and hit
every pore, caused your hair to stand on end
and your heart to pump more blood,
like you couldn't fit all that living into one breath
you needed the whole. When the sheets on the floor looked like the entire ocean
stretched out before you, your body is a boat, a vessel for another person's life
not a stitch of clothing on and not a single speck of dust
in the air of the bedroom. Lights wrapped around your ankles like
you're above the sun rather than underneath it,
but there are no boils on your skin and your scars have smoothed.
There are no hands on you
but your own and the ones of every person you've been before.
Shedding skin cells with every brush of a finger on your wrist
and this is it.
You promised yourself, I love you now.
I love all of you, somehow I always have. Not a stitch
of clothing
not a hand
held to your body warmth
and you're beautiful alone
you're the ocean and the boat.
I'm trying to write until I can't anymore
and it's words that flow out and it's sentences that pour
no longer about those lost, but those living,
and the ones that I strive to keep close, to keep giving
every bit of me away and I'll gain each part back
from other breathing and split ends and cells,
I don't need others to feel well.

There is classical music shaking dust from the ceiling tiles above
my bed warmed like a waffle iron, sheets lay in a disarray of the Rocky mountains
each crevice as hot as the bottom of my feet while standing on the sand of a beach
small summer shells tucked away in the top of my bikini
and you left to wait at your keyboard. Leave my head please.
I tried so desperately to write a poem without you hiding in each letter,
every word telling those hurting who hurt me before that it will get better.
I'm not lying to them, although I'd say it if I were. The music above me still plays
making colors swirl and bump together, standing side by side with my mother.
She called the other day, although I think I called her. Said thank you for
birthing me and raising me and feeding me and giving me a place to sleep
all in three words I haven't said before. Not in years.
I think I meant it. I wish I were sure.

I once read a book that ended in the main character remembering incidents she had repressed,
so all throughout Sophomore year of high school, I wondered if the abuse stopped at bruised arms.
I wanted so badly to have a valid reason behind the stains on my skin and keeping people up at night
to keep me company. The truth of the matter is, if I write what I'm afraid of I'd be writing this:
I didn't cry when my cat of twelve years was put down and buried in the backyard.
I didn't even attend her funeral. There are about three dead pet fish in my freezer
that I haven't gotten around to burying and about twenty-seven lies I've told since my feet hit the floor
this morning. I do not regret any of it. My heart is too big to fit in my chest so I wear it on my sleeve,
I'm told. But that isn't true- I crave for people to look up to me. I've met at least two boys
who have had a tourniquet around their upper arm and a needle in their veins. I love them both.
If I had to choose the one who got away, it would be the boy I could never love as a lover and still
I wish I could. My scars have no profound reasoning behind them and yet I still care that I cut off bits of my hair that you've touched before.
I confuse hardened hearts with strength.
I move too quickly and tell the other to wait.
I've kissed two girls and one kissed me.
The furthest we got was hand holding.
I should write you more poetry.

Mom, I am an alcoholic and
I've been doing drugs.
I've had *** with over twenty men,
I haven't prayed to God in months.
Dad, I can't remember when
I went to classes last.
I stay in bed all day
avoiding my future and my past.
All my friends from home,
I need to say this once and for all:
eventually, at 3 am, please expect a call.
Mom, I can't stop hurting myself.
Dad, I'm really scared.
The both of you should listen
if you ever really cared.
This is depression getting a hold
of my innocence and smile.
I'll stay in bed a few more days
and won't talk for a while.
*******, once more, just listen, please,
I'm trying to get help.
This is the last time, I'm done, I swear.
I can't avoid the pills and razors glaring from the shelf.