you're a piece of trash
a misshapen forgotten thing that I kick under my bed
rotten carcasses hold more genuine character than you
and I'd rather inhale them than catch the stench of your pretentious flesh
you're a selfish troll with daggers for eyes and knives for a tongue
attending masquerade ***** with a guise so clever, everyone we know thinks you're actually a human being
they think, for some funny reason, that you're my mother

I'm six years old
trying on witch hats and scar faces
you grab my arms and shake me
you tell me the candy people will assume they're painted bruises for October 31

I'm not scared of monsters
and I'm not scared of you
I'm scared of who I'll become

this Halloween I'm dressing up
I'm a person with a chain metal suit shielding my most precious insides
and pretending to be something I've never, ever been:
Brave.

her eyes told me everything she didn't want me to know.
like the first time I whispered, "I love you", I knew she loved me too.
because even though her mouth told me to hush and her fingers got tangled while unbuttoning my sweater,
her eyes burst with this firey, glossed hue and her skin grew flushed and soft and I knew right then that staring into her eyes was the sweetest gift she would ever be capable of giving me.

quantum physicians may not be able to write out an equation
showing proof of our bond,
but the ties that bind reach across the galaxies and beyond
and biology professors at the ivy league schools may not
be able to explain why my heart thrums faster when I think
about you, but my pulse is yours and I guarantee I can feel
you in every measurable thing that I do
it's funny... multiple dimensions couldn't even keep us apart,
and my body has been frayed and fuzzy since I left you--
from the start
of this journey toward self-realization and humanization
but the one thing that no one can deny is that time exists  
a watch is not a thing to keep time;
a watch is proof of the seconds before and now and after
and it certainly isn't ours to keep
but we could borrow some and place our fate in the
hands of that fragile wristband and call it an
insurmountable thing
I would venture to say
that we could call it love,
we can call it you and me
and science cannot create nor destroy us

when you speak out of turn, the ground shakes
I sealed your lips with dried blood but you were always one to fight through the pain
holding your red face between my cracked palms, I glimpse confinement
a place I have been to... a hell I will not lock myself in again
yet the humanity in your eyes braces itself against your chest and you push and you push until I split in two
half of me igniting with a desire to save you and the other desperately begging me to save myself
I am standing on solid air and I am falling upward
defined and confined
trapped in a box of infinity
with no one to turn to but the reflection of me:
you

like ******* crumbs you're
still on my tongue the
stomach ache I can't
escape

the old haunt I missed
before ever stepping through the
door

the scrape on my knee ghost
of which still stings

and for a while still,

I  may cry at normal
things.

I am a master at the art of ashes
human cremation takes artistic commitment
once the smell of singed eyebrows
burns your nose you can never be the same again
you know, my skin grew flame retardant and at first I wished grossly to return it and buy a new shell
but I've made the executive decision to aerate my diaphragm and pump this fire out of my pores and into your palms
singing with a slow burn
branding your sweet fingerprints into my skull
see, something outside of myself must contain me or I'll spill, gritty and fine
end over end into the depths of the alleyways and cobblestones
but, to be quite frank, I'm drowsy
so I'd rather you climb to the top of the world and release me, softly letting me blanket everything I've ever come to love
instead of confining me in that ugly porcelain jar that I spent my entire life peering at
while it hovered, haunting me, above my birthing ground
sitting precariously on that wooden mantle
above my fireplace
above my home.

Momma always taught me to pull up my sleeves
Before sitting down to our evening meals
So that I'd protect my arms
From the messes I carved
While letting my salted wounds heal

Do you want to know why I stayed?
I threatened so many times to disappear before you glimpsed
the worst parts of me, through whispers and fists and biting
my lips to stop the eruptions of volatile girl from stabbing
you with my skeletons.
In the misty, early hours when neither of us were sleeping
because you were scared I'd go and I was scared I wouldn't,
I showed you the nooks and crannies of my character, the
crevices and caverns of my interchanging moods.
I did my very best to upset and cause unrest and I flung
every miserable curse in the direction I thought you'd be going.
I screamed my violence and mistakes against the front door
and told you I had proven you right.
I was unlovable.
I was a dysfunctional bundle of bones and you were
better off without me.
And I turned over to sob myself to sleep and considered
how I would also be better off without myself and as I
went to hit my pillows-
As I heaved in a shuddering breath of regret and guilt
and my lungs expanded to places I had never felt before,
You reached out and caught me and inserted yourself as
a root in my flailing, upended life.
You stroked my hair and cradled my shivering body and
quieted my sobs and told me there was no way in hell
that you'd leave this beautiful mess.
You said that I punish myself for being anything other than
what I think I should be. You said that I wreck the things
I love the most so that they won't one day see me as
a monster, and you're right. I prove how horrible I am
before you can. I sabotage so that I can say
I know. I'll let you go.
But you absolutely refuse to go,
So here I stay.

the busiest sidewalks breed the deepest secrets
yet everyone pretends that they've forgotten how to speak
if we took a moment to watch how
the truth tumbles out from crumpled coffee cups and crinkled napkins
we may learn a thing or two
about our hollow brethren