I am not perfect,
nor do I wish to be.
I want to fall in love
with every single flaw
and I want to fight
relentlessly to shape
this tiny moment of
existence I've been
given into something
meaningful and emerge
from this bottomless pit
an unstoppable force,
fearless and beautiful.

felt it in my bones,
the day I met you.
felt the air around us
vibrate a little bit,
like the universe
whispering in my ear,
welcome home.
swept me off my
feet, swept me out of
my mind. took me too
many silent screams,
too many apologies,
too many scars to realize
the universe wasn't
welcoming me, but
warning me. run, babe.
get out of there while
there's still some of
you left. took me
years to realize I wasn't
swept off my feet but
pulled down by the
undertow.

one morning
in our kitchen
over coffee
i told you
you were the love of my life
and you didn't say it back
didn't really say anything

and i don't know why it
took me so long to realize
i was never yours.

salt in the wound
twenty seven and
still unsettled in a

permanent detachment,
the only kind of
permanence

i've laid hands on,
an emptiness that
never fills -

salt in the wound
still here, still here.
unsettled.

love like crime scene,
***** sheets,
blood smeared walls.
swallowed promises
like broken glass but
you're just an exit
wound that refuses
to heal.

the wandering kind
adrift and heartless
looking for a place
that's something like
home.

sometimes it's four
walls, sometimes
it's a mouth and a
heartbeat.

you always want me
to find home in you
and i am a tireless sea;
always drifting away.

always leaving
some of myself
behind.

always leaving you
wishing I'd
stay.

he'll wipe the blood from your
chin, tell you you're beautiful
even when your smile splits
from ear to ear. he'll sew your
cheeks back together, tell you
it's okay that your lungs
occasionally collapse and it's
okay that sometimes you
can't breathe, because he'll
fill you with life when you
can't do it yourself and when
you apologize for smearing
your existence all over him,
when you apologize for what
a mess you are, when you
apologize for not being
better, he'll gently take
your face in his palms,
he'll tell you what a beautiful
thing you are, that you're his
mess, and god, baby girl,
you're so worth it.

I am so tired
of only ever feeling half
alive.

you carved a cavern in my chest,
a hollowed out tomb for
every ghost you ever loved.

thank you
for everything.
thank you for all of
our greatest moments,
thank you for our triumphs,
for our growths, for our victories.
and even for our losses, thank you for
the injuries. thank you for loving me, and for
destroying me. because in the wake of you, I have
learned more than I ever could have imagined. I am more
myself than I have been my whole life. you showed me what love
can be, and what love should be, and definitely what love isn't. you
showed me that I could break away from the things that
wreck me. that I can still grow and change and
become a more perfect version of a flawed
and broken girl. thank you for giving
me that strength. thank you for
loving me. thank you for
being the first, and
but the most for
not being my
last.

Let the girl I once was see a photograph
Of the girl I have become.
Tell her what led to the darkened eyes
Shredded lips, ****** nails.
But tell her the good things too
Tell her about every kiss and every
I love you, the gifts, the hope.
Show her the ugly, the awful, the beautiful.
All of it, every last moment.
And then ask her,
You want to do this to yourself?
You want to become this girl?
And she told me to tell you
It's easy to swear you won't regret
What you once wanted.
But she also said if
I knew then what I do now,
I don't know if I would have wanted it
In the first place.

the rhythm something
like drunk dancing
on the edge of a cliff
lit up by moonlight -
afraid maybe you'll fall;
afraid maybe you won't.

he tells me I am beautiful
as if that is my only value.
I am a body, I am a soul,
I am a heart that beats for
more than a face, more than
a shape. I am a mind that
aches to be loved after the
curves roll away and the
face curdles and I wear the
life I've lived proudly - I ache
to be more than a physical
treat, I ache to know that
once my beauty fades that
my heart and mind will still
be valued as much as the
vessel they exist in.

Check your pockets –
No, not those.
Not now.

Someday,
When you’re cold
Or nervous, or bored
And your fingers find their familiar way
Into the pockets of your jeans or your jacket,
You’ll find I’ve left something for you
Little notes I wrote
Over the years
Thousands of them

Every time I thought of you.

between the lines of us,
affection dissolved –
I love you I love you,
I do.

but what happens when
love blends with anger?
what happens when loyal eyes
wander?

what happens when lonely
ships drift into distant shores
because the other islands
have long since emptied?

1.
Turn off the bedroom lights,
Because it's easier to be brave in the dark.
But remember to breathe;
Night won't change who you've become.
2.
He'll tell you he loves you. Over and over again.
Breathe it, whisper it, carve it into your skin with bleeding fingertips.
Do you hear him?
He loves you the best he knows how.
It's still not enough.
3.
It takes time to erase the scars that have glued your soul to the concrete.
4.
When they push you to the ground
Rub the dirt into your wounds
Fill your pockets with stones
So that the next time they try
You can tell them I've already been to bottom
I've made it home.
You can't be hurt by something you've already learned to love.
5.
He'll tell you he loves you  and you'll turn off the lights
You'll pretend the scars don't exist, that you are air and he is fire
And that neither of you have a home
Dirt, stone, or otherwise.
He'll tell you he loves you, and you'll let his breath rebuild your synapses
You'll let his skin rebuild your nervous system.
You'll love him back.

6.
You don't want to be alone tonight
But there you sit, tracing the veins of your hands, your wrists, your thighs.
You're learning to be alone, you're learning to love yourself again.
Find home, turn the lights on
You can make peace now with who you've become.

when you finally let go of me,
let me go with grace.
remember that I loved you.
remember how much.
remember the exact
cadence of my voice
each and every time I said it,
the feel of my palm
against your cheek.
the taste of my lips
on yours. don't forget
how I held you,
and how I held you up.
remember my courage,
remember my strength.

understand this:
letting you go was so
unbelievably hard -
so distressingly painful
that I almost couldn't.

but remember all those nights
you weren't there.
remember the words of those
girls you chose over me,
again and again.
remember the taste of
every lie you ever told me.
keep in mind the company
you kept, and how rarely
you went to me first.
think of my loneliest nights
where all I wanted so
desperately was you -
and how you always wanted
for something else.

and when you sit in anger,
thinking that I gave us up on a
whim. please, hold in your hands
the weight of me and the weight
of my hopes.
because my god, I wanted it to be
you. but everything you ever did
unraveled that boulder of me
until all that was
left was the barest grain of sand.

all the time I loved you
I was digging my own grave -
and you were kind enough
to lend me your shovel.

I was on fire, burning alive -
you emptied your glass
and asked if I needed another match,
or maybe a lighter.

the roses
died. little
shriveled
petals made a
path out of
our garden
and into a
graveyard.
our names on
the stones,
love me,
love me not.
an undoing,
of sorts. a
****** in
another.
said goodbye
too early,
buried the
bodies too
late.

your shirtless anti-christ
the cigarette hanging from
the corner of his mouth

while he tells you sandpaper
sweet nothings he leaves the black
smears of his tobacco fingertips
left along the curve of your hip

and you breathe him in like
divine, let the smell of him
settle in your lungs like cancer
he is love he is life he is
here only to destroy you

sometimes the broken pieces don’t fit,
they don’t go back together
like perfect puzzles made of glass.

sometimes you try to put the
pieces back together, and you come
away with ****** fingers

and jars full of jagged edges
and missing shards,
nothing like the pieces of art they once were.

I spent the better part of our
four years wishing for a miracle
so we could have our happy
ending

how funny to find my miracle
was waking up to realize
I deserve better

and to find that my happy
ending should be much
more than an ending

and that I need no one's
company for that
but my own

her hand is on your chest,
small and wanting. your
heart beats beneath it -
slow and steady. you can't
feel hers, but it's running
like a wild animal. right now,
right here, it beats for you
and only you. but yours
is steady. the heart of a man
in a moment of certainty,
or the heart of the man
whose heart beats for
no one at all. she doesn't
know which, and neither
do you. you feel her small
hand on your chest, you
feel her desperation but
the question hangs in
the air between the both
of you -


                         he loves me
                                                                       he loves me not

wash me out of
your sheets;
I never
belonged in
them
in the first place.

she lay down her bones,
she tells him,
"these are all I have,
they are all for you."

he inhales.
he exhales.
drops his cigarette on
the asphalt.

"I don't want them."

darling little dolls,
suspended above the stage,
the scuffed toes of their dance shoes
just barely reaching the floor
and I watch you make
them dance, watch their
painted smiles and sad eyes
and their undying loyalty
to the grace of your fingers,
the turn of your wrist.
they dare not ask if you truly
love them, or if you love the
applause at the end
of every performance.

I could tell them, could tell
them about the night I
snuck into the empty
theater, long after the
crowd had emptied and
the lights had gone
out. I saw them lying there,
lifeless without your
careful direction,
left in a heap - unloved,
useless now,
and I'm sure you were off
somewhere, those fingers
bringing some other girls
with painted smiles and
sad eyes
to life.

at the end,
i burned the village
to the ground,
every bridge in,
every road out.

i made sure there was
nothing left, still found myself
weeping in the wreckage

wondering why you didn't
try to save us
why you didn't
stop me -

and the guilt
and the anger
and the love
and the longing

a brutal cocktail
when i was already drunk.

in the years since,
i cleaned up the wreckage,
built a nice little memorial.

i don't visit much anymore.

I rose from dark water,
untethered from the collapsing
kingdom hidden deep down
at the bottom of the ocean.
my fingers like brittle branches
from grasping onto you for
so long, but my lungs fill
with this fresh air and the
toxicity of your prison
seems to drip from me like
ink. my insides are putting
themselves back together and
I hold the hand that finally
rescued me, and he will wait
until I am clean again.

i hope
when you kiss her
all you taste is
me.

trace lines of poetry
into your skin
with my lips
and the barest touch
of my fingertips

the last time
I felt you slipping-
I felt you slip like
ocean through my
fingertips.
I felt the shift,
and I knew
I'd lose us somewhere
along the line.
I knew the last time
I kissed you,
standing in the rush
of cars and departures
and arrivals,
I knew as I held on
to you with fevered desperation
I knew it was the last time.
I couldn't say it then,
I couldn't say it for awhile,
but somewhere in there
I always knew.

and I'm sorry.
I'm sorry you're
not what I want.
I'm sorry
I can't be what
you need.

I had to let you go,
and it was the hardest
and most freeing thing
I've ever done.

the way I love you-
kerosene to flame,
poison for disease.

it comes in waves of loss and longing -
the bitterest taste of realizing
I will always be this way. I write
letters of apology to the ones
I love, because I will always be
this way. letting go is a battle
of blood and arms, and god
sometimes it takes years. they
still don't see my scars when
I think about all that I've lost
and all I've had to let go, and
the graveyards of all those things
I was so desperate for but
never quite got to hold on to.
when I lay alone, in my quietest
moments, all I can seem to grab
onto are barbed wire thoughts
and I know it shouldn't be like this.
I am a whole girl, I worked so hard
to put myself together, but it still
feels sometimes like I put myself
back together with tape and
I feel those pieces of me starting
to drift apart again and I wonder
if I'll ever actually be whole, if
I'll ever see the version of myself
with the golden veins of glue
that hold me together - she was
broken, but she still fills. and I'm
sorry I can't help but fall apart.
these days it happens less and less,
but god I gave away so much of myself
and I got back so little that it's like
starting over and over and over again,
and I'm trying so hard. I am, please
believe me: I am trying to be whole
for all of you, because you've loved
me so kindly and thoughtfully and I
want to be whole for the sake of us
all. I don't want to be the ******* the
bathroom floor falling apart at three
in the morning. I hate her, I hate
that she still lives in me, I hate that
she still thinks of the boy that broke
us so uttery and completely that he
stains everything I continue to touch.
I hate that I have something here
in my hands so wonderful and new
and all I can think about is how
soon this, too, will ******* break. I don't
want to live this life looking around
every corner, waiting for my next
ruin. let me live, let me be whole,
let me that broken girl who still
shines in golden puzzle pieces
because *******,
she is whole.

swallow the metal of my bones
because the taste of their weight
is a recipe from your own hands.
severed the paper thinness of my
skin because you wanted to taste
the nerves, learn the taste of my
undoing.

I am nothing now.
I am the spare parts
you didn't care for.

when we collide
it will be something
like irate ocean pulverizing
the rocky cliffs, pulling
the earth to its knees.
it will be the silence
when it snows for the
first time around midnight,
the muted air and the
peaceful silence.
it'll be our hands
and it'll be our mouths
and it will destroy entire
universes, and quietly,
afterwards, it will
build them up stronger
than they could have
possibly imagined.

flesh and fire
blood and stitches
I've said I feel
nothing
but time changes
everything
it's so hard
to get closer
it's so hard
to find home
and there's a
blank space
where you're
supposed to be
but it's a
temporary fix
slow high can't
let it go
and I'm sorry
I'm so awake
wide awake
but this is hell
hallways of
mirrors and smoke
laced with nerve
endings drank
the black honey
here we go
here we go

more questions
than answers.
existing somewhere
like that layer
of fog that
wraps a cold
morning after
a too warm night.
we can't breathe
here, but we
try, gasping.
we fumble
forward, caught
up on invisible
things. we are
desperate for
peace and solace.
the satisfaction
of solitude. it's
lost to a sea of
discontent and
the all too eager
hunger of need.
I can't hold my
hand. I can hold
yours, though.
even when I don't
want to. as long
as you'll let me.
I won't have
answers,
but we'll
keep climbing
on
anyway.

palm
to skin
mouth a
wandering
expedition
hollow of
my throat
valley
of thighs
fingers
plucking
the rhythmic
verse of
my hips
taking the
breath
from my
lips
undone
unwound
untethered
skin to
naked skin

i am not sure what this
possession is, what
unholy demon has
taken hold of my skin,
my bones, my everything.

choking me, pushing me
out of my own body,
telling me how wrong it
is, how selfish that i won't
share such a vessel, that
i won't give it to those
who need it more.

she whispers in my mind,
she laces my blood with heavy
hatred and misdirected longing.
she tells me hope is a fallacy
and need is a crutch. she tells
me this life i live is a waste.
that i am waste and oh,
what a shame.

is it too soon to say this?
is it too soon to ask you
to stay? I dreamed about
you again last night,
fourth time this week. it
was hardly worth mentioning,
except the way you looked at
me, like maybe I'll never
have to ask you to stay,
because you'll do it anyway.
I don't want you to be a passing
ship, making quiet waves in
the middle of the night, only
to sail away sometime in
the early morning without
saying goodbye. I want to be
your harbor, I want to be the
place you land and realize
this, this place here, was always
meant to be your last stop.
ship becomes house becomes
home. is it too soon to say
this? you know I didn't mean
for this. everything tears
me to shreds, wanting something
so tenuous rips me to shreds
but god, there's something about
you that makes me want anchor.
it makes me want to hold on
for dear life, even if it means
sinking and drowning,
becoming yet another
skeleton laid to rest on
your ocean floor, miles and
miles deep and irretrievable.
it's just that when I close my
eyes, I smell you on my skin.
it's just that when I close my
eyes, I find myself still getting
lost in the bottomless abysses
that are your eyes and I could
stay there forever,
in that dark and beautiful
abyss.

is it too soon to say this?

every quaking breath,
every flash of memory,
every little puzzle piece
I could never make fit -

absence, too, is a gift.

there's a perfect version
of us
in some far
away universe
and in another
we've never
even met

and there are days
I'm uncertain
which pair
is the luckier

do you miss me?
the girl I was before
my lips turned to ash
and my fingers left
black tar smears on
the furniture?

soft. sweet. haven't
seen her in years,
not since the blonde
curls went dark.
so did the eyes.

you.
you left a
bad taste
in my mouth -
your name,
remembering
the selfishness
of every kiss,
the greed in
every touch.
your poison
will not leave
my system -
I cannot forget
you, and that is
not sweet sentiment.
I cannot forget you
in the way someone
can't forget losing a
limb. I can't forget
you in the way you
look at a scar and
remember how the
wound ached and
bled. you're not
scar, though -
you're festering
wound that will
not heal. you're
bone deep infection,
spreading cancer,
airborne disease,
harming every facet
of my life. I can't
close my eyes without
remembering your
fists, without hearing
the sharp tenor of your
yelling voice. I can't
think of you without
shrinking into myself.
you were never
supposed to have
this power over me.
freeing myself from
you was supposed
to free me,
and ******* it
I am free, you are
no longer destroying
my life. but *******
you for haunting me,
******* you.

while I sink into this
empty bath
the air is at a dead silence
and I wonder why you left me
here and
the water slowly
fills all the empty spaces
and I wonder
I wonder
how long before
it swallows me whole

his fingertips graze my skin
and those few moments are enough
to touch every little
corner of my existence

I don't feel real anymore. nothing does. I saw myself deep in the throes of unbridled unconscious and it was terrifying. shapeless, worthless, needless. I can't stop seeing that. it's been hours and hours and I am haunted by that drug-induced vision of nothing. I have been pushed around and forcibly given and taken from for so long that I don't know where I end and everyone else begins. I am what they made me, and I allowed that to happen. I let people hurt me and change me and warp me into this terrifying mess. I feel like it scrubbed me clean of all emotion. I'm empty today, an unfeeling monster, and I can't get push myself out of it. it's made me realize that I don't actually know what feelings actually are. I don't feel them, I feel what I've been told feelings are supposed to feel like. I don't know how love feels. I don't know what happiness is. anger and fear I'm familiar with, but those aren't really emotions per se, just the mask deeper emotions wear and god forbid I ever have the ability to identify those. I am sick. I am lost. I hit that brick wall that holds everything back. the wall that separates me from unremembered trauma and the onslaught of emotion and the shell of a person that I've become. I don't know if I can break it, and I don't know if I want to. depression is already starting to slip back in, and I'm so afraid that if I push against that wall, I won't survive it. I won't come back from it. I'm so afraid of all the things I saw and what I am and I don't know how to fix it. or if I can. or if it'd even be worth it.

I am not worth it.

i'd give anything
to have you back
but i'd give anything
to never want you
back

the inevitability the inevitability the inevitability
the pushback
the loss
the grieving the anger
the inevitability
the distance
the wounds
the healing
the wounds
the hands the harm
the scream
the whispers
the whisper
                                                                how are you still like this?

our little hearts break
under the weight of hundreds of years
millions of expectations

and I ask you
will we ever survive this?

our minds are empty
like draining sinks
like dry river beds

and you ask me are we
gonna weather this storm together?

we have nothing – we have I Don’t Know,
and we have
Maybe
If
Never
….why?

it’s never real

it’s an empty sink
it’s dry river beds and
grey soulless stones

it’s holding your hands out to the storm
and coming back emptier
than you ever were before.