the calm rumble
of your heartbeat
against my temple
is enough to silence
a thousand storms

can we take a moment?
pause.
rewind.
unwind.
we didn't
stumble into
this mess by
accident
and the threads
are so tangled
my fingertips
are bleeding
from trying
to unweave them.
and don't
misunderstand -
we're here
knee deep
in misunderstanding
and I've
never wanted
to be anywhere
else.

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

got a hundred
a thousand
a million
little thoughts
bouncing
around in this
broken little
brain - tell me
you don't love me,
tell me I should
feel the same.
it's hard to let
go when you're
everything
I know.
the only thing
that's ever held
me down on
these two feet,
even on the
days you knocked
me down
the hardest.

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.

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.

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

i spent much of my
early twenties
convinced
my existence could be
pathologized,
explained neatly
by an icd-10 code,
convinced i was
maybe bipolar
maybe borderline
maybe something
anything
because a diagnosis meant
answers
a plan
relief...

the years since
softened my mind,
changed me,
healed me,
revealed the corrosive
nature of pain,
how i held onto it
for years and years
because it was
all i had left.

i put it down,
i said my goodbyes.
i don't google
diagnoses
anymore.

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.

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.

how often I find myself
feeling buried yet I never
find myself a shovel.
I have two good hands
and one rabbit heart
and it's so hard to
find air beneath
water, but I try.
dog paddeling
hard enough that
I never quite sink but
always right on the
cusp of running out
of breath. I find myself
holding paint brush
above canvas but
nothing ever paints
itself the way I see it
in my head and my
words, pen poised
above paper, never
elicit the view of my
mind or quiet the tornado
in my soul.

I always
want
to  slip into you
like a dress
it's a lovely
little dress
but no matter
what i do
it's a bit
too tight
in all
the wrong
places

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.

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.

the cracks in the sidewalk
outside my window have begun
to fill with sprouts, with
little tendrils of green
stretching out of the chasms,
a promised exchange of light
for colors

and maybe i'll plant tulips in
the cracks that have splintered
inside of me, maybe i'll fill them
with gold paint

maybe one day i will be a garden
maybe one day i will be a work of art

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

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?

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

unraveling
slowly but surely
the threads spread
all over the house
you've tripped on them
so many times but
you hardly notice
you hardly notice
how the skin hangs
from my bones now
and you hardly notice
the whisper when i speak
you hardly notice
the threads on the floor
how they spell your name
and how little I have
left to give.

fingertips pried my ribs apart
invited themselves in
with malicious whispers
of belonging, the kind that
make lonely hearts beat.
made a mess of the
pretty girl, the nightmare
in a white dress.
made myself a throne,
heir to my own wreckage.
crown of broken glass
and bloodstains, and
you wonder why
my kingdom is in shambles.

do i miss you?
i miss a lot of things.
i miss the sound of the garage door
of the house i grew up in.
i miss the toughness
of the acres of yellowing
grass bruising my baby feet.
i miss the smell of chlorine early
in the morning and the
sound of the windchimes in the
late evening.
i miss the sound of the front door
of my first apartment,
i miss the creak of the wood floors
in the old house,
i miss the late nights and the
fearlessness of being 22, 23, 24.
i miss a lot of things that were
impermanent milestones,
and i left them behind
when the  time came.
so when you ask if i miss you,
the answer is yes,
in the same kneejerk
way you miss all the things that
once mattered.

i'm stuck
(again)
hoping for
something
to get better
(again)
and i'm left
sitting alone
praying for
escape
praying for
relief
praying
(again).

maybe it's different.
sometimes it feels
like an entirely
different skin;
sometimes it feels
like the i washed
the old one with something
new and bright
red, and it's almost
a convincingly new shade
but it's still got all
the same holes,
the same tatters as
the last one.

i'm so scared of
getting stuck in the
same rut, of wasting
so much of my life
i could have been using
to be happy.

but maybe i am not
meant to be happy
maybe i am destined
only for suffering
for loss and loneliness.
maybe i will only ever
find this nothingness.
this desperation for meaning.
i don't know.
i don't know.
(again)
i don't know.

my hands are empty
and I hope to fill them
with yours.

I drink my brain
into coma
so maybe
I can get some
silence
some rest in
the catacombs
of my soul
I drink because
maybe this
time I will wake
up from some
years long
dream a better
version of mysef
or someone
entirely new
I drink and
it hurts

they pried us apart with
knives and tweezers,
extracted every last nerve
and so we drift away.
what am I now?
empty vessel?
empty canvas?

I don't think vessel,
I don't think canvas.
I am an emptiness
unlikely to fill, blank
surface unlikely to
become masterpiece.

I'm something like a
balled up note, with things
like "love you" and "don't
forget the milk" written
on it, crumbled up, fallen
out of someone's pocket
long forgotten. words that
mean everything, but
all at once amount to nothing.

I'm a dried up river bed,
full of footprints and animal
corpses. I am empty, I am
devoid of life, I am...
I am nothing.

and you are gone,
fled the moment the
last tie was cut, a pillar
of relief to be free.
once, you were everything.
once, I was everything.
once.

i think
i made you
too
much
space

when i let you in

i think in trying
to let you make yourself
at home

i gave you
real property

put your name
on the deed.

you
don't live there
anymore

don't visit
don't write
     and that's okay

we've long since
gone our
separate
ways

parallel lines

different
people

but what a greedy thing
to do

leaving
like that

but still keeping
your little plot of land.

sometimes I sit
next to the river
watch the rapids,
consumed by them,
and I wish they'd
consume me too.
wash me clean.
wash me away.
either would be
just fine
with me.

it's okay
i'm still here

doodling on napkins and
writing a line or two in a notepad

never committing
to much of anything or anyone.

i'm not sure exactly when it all emptied out,
all the words, all the ideas, all of me.

nothing paints the canvas in my mind
anymore.

i can only write so many poems about
heartbreak and trauma

and all the ways i've been torn apart
the last couple years.

it gets old, even for me.
but recovery is long and lonely

and sometimes it's just wide open desert
for miles
and miles.

nothing is permanent.
but then again,
nothing is permanent.

a grief
a gift
a collision of moments

do you have any idea?
do you think they said
hello
to each other

on the way out,
on the way in?

do you think maybe
it was never supposed to be mine

always meant
to be yours?

sometimes losing
what you once thought
you could not stand to be
without
means finding
the things you never
knew you needed.

hungry little heart
thirsty for love you
haven't ever tasted

thinking it's so sweet
like chocolate and lavender

but i'll tell you this, the
aftertaste is bitter and black
and it's the only thing you'll taste

for centuries.

they gut you, sometimes.
like little fish, like hunted
deer - they don't mean to.
you were the deer they
clipped on the highway,
you were the fish too sick
to release after catch. and
they hold on, they try
to save you. but in the end
the true mercy is the true
end, and so they gut you.

do you understand? did
you see the way I poured
myself out for you? an
ocean of love and want and
need, and it was just food
for the dirt. I ripped myself
open, you ripped me open,
and now this carcass needs
disposal. I don't imagine
I'm worth a wake, hardly
a moment of silence. the
trash heap out back seems
to be a nice enough
place.

dripping
from the wrist
ink
blood

i tried
i tried
to write
to you

i swear
i tried -

i'm sorry
will never
be enough

goodbye
will never
close the
door

the blades
never sever
the ache

the pen
never
carves anything
but your
name

comes out when you're
quiet, when you least
want her - fingers. claws.
the blood drips down
your thighs. the
rumbling of your
mind become shouts,
become cries. she feels
like drowning, she feels
like trying to pull yourself
out of a cement mixer.
feels like the rain and
hail and blocks
and blocks of locked
doors and blinds
pulled tight.

this is a losing battle.
this is me, putting down my weapon
and removing my armor
because I cannot stand the
blood pooling at your feet.
this is my surrender because
my wounds are far too deep
to continue this fight.
we will never find common ground,
we will never be eye to eye.
and in this war, victory is losing you
and defeat is losing my life.
which is the nobler sacrifice?
because here, there are no victors.
there is only bloodshed and massacre.

sometimes the crows
talk to me
and I imagine
you sent them
from your little
corner of the world

I pretend they
say "I miss you"

because truth be told
I miss you
too.

chest is a graveyard
full of the ghosts of all
those that i have loved;
every rib bone a eulogy,
fingertips a prayer.
you'll find me on
my knees, begging
for forgiveness, for
rebirth - untying
every nerve, disconnecting
every bone. undress
this body, bare this
soul and you'll find empty
canvas, empty promise,
empty glass.

if i had a portrait
like dorian gray's
i wonder what it
would look like.

i do not look like
my world has shattered
overnight more times
than i can count

and while my scars have faded
quite substantially with time,

they'd probably bleed
through the portrait -

the blood running down my wrists
the blood running down my thighs.

the fear
that after all this
time, all this
mess, all this
fight

that I will only lose
you to the
war in your
mind

you tear me apart
piece by piece
yet how peacefully
you sleep

equations
where variables and numbers
and letters find themselves
meaning -
yet we do not.
unsolvable equations,
where your x and my y
never add up to z
where z is grace
and z is perfection
and z is comfort
but these are just
unreal fantasies
these are just irrational numbers
going on and on and on
far off into infinity
because no matter how hard we try
your x and my y
will never be z.

love becomes
afterthought
a heartless
endeavor,
a knee-****
response,
becoming
synonymous
with goodbye
and hello
until the word
hello fades
from memory
and the last
I love you
is your last
goodbye.

tender little fingertips
too afraid to let go -
tracing at the frail
lines of your bittersweetest
existence.

and they'll tell you
to wait it out
to let it be,
let you sink
while demanding
you rise beyond
hand-drawn lines.

a dance of sorts,
caught in a driftless sea.
fragments of memories
and the people
we used to be.

grief hangs heavy,
guilt swallows my ankles, my knees -
and sometimes i think
i'll really just let them take me under
this time.

sometimes you can't just walk it off.
sometimes you have to rebreak the bones
before they'll heal right. sometimes
you have to sew the cuts closed
and sometimes you pick the scabs over
and over again before the itching stops.
sometimes they become faint scar,
injury really only you can see. sometimes
the scars are so thick and dark that
they become the most noticeable part
of your body.

sometimes we heal.
sometimes we don't.
sometimes we say goodbye
over and over to the ghost
in the mirror, watching the
scars deepen with every
desperate breath.

maybe there are some of us
who are not meant to be
shared with other people.
we are always too something -
too much, too rough, too
quiet. maybe we are born
solid, instead of in parts. we
are born without soul mates
because we are already whole
on our own.

some doors are closed for good reason
and some doors are not mine to open

all are lessons
learned the hard way