You are not just a name
Lurking on the tip of my tongue
The backbone of every thought,
But a state of mind.
You’re the lace that holds my ribs together
The ribbon binding me into shape

The blood that rushes beneath my skin
Remembers exactly where your fingers
Once touched
Your lips once lay
Pressing your love into my skin
As if I am your paper, your fingers are ink
Turning me into a letter only you and I could read

And I do, I read it over and over
Anxious for the next letter to be burned
This is my skin, for you,
A thousand different love letters.

the lull, the longing,
the ache  just before sleep
and just before wake -
the quiet, rhythmic
shushing, the weight,
the heaviness.
it's too dark, but
it's too bright, too
much, not enough,
too warm, too cold.
always too something.
never quite enough.
it's the swell of the sky
just before the rain,
the stillness and the hush
around midnight just
before it snows. it's
the creeping feeling
of change, of danger,
of letting go, of giving
up - it's how the winds
change, it's the stack
of papers blowing
away in the sudden
gust. it's the boys
who promise to
never hurt you while
they're untying their shoes,
unbuttoning their pants.
it's how they sneak out
after you've fallen asleep,
the cancer in the way
they kiss your forehead
just before they go.
it's your father holding
your small hands, and
your father's weight
after he buckles under
too many beers. it's how
no matter how many times
your he disappoints you,
you'll always call him daddy
when he finally comes around.
it's your father being the first
man to break all the promises
he made you and it's your aching
little girl's heart believing
him too many times. it's your
mother telling you to be better,
but never showing
you how to be better.
it's the way your mother tells you
to be safe but never teaches
you how to say no,
how to tell the boys when
enough is enough -
how fingertips creeping up too far,
how hands slipping down too low
should never feel like a debt to be paid.
she doesn't tell you how that sudden
vacancy in your mind is a warning
sign, how it's a quiet no,
and that maybe will never be a quiet yes.
it's the teachers telling
you that boys will be boys,
telling you that girls are mean
and to get over it and handle
it among yourselves because
there's no referees in real life.
it's lies that sound like promises
and words like forever and love
and ipromiseillneverleaveyou
hitting your heart like a brick.
it's empty beds and empty
houses and empty cupboards
and ghost towns in your chest
and abandoned homes in your
head and it's the way ghosts
never leave the places that
harmed them the most. it's
how falling asleep every night
feels like the battle and waking
up every morning feels like
the war and it's the way that
no matter how many times
you fight, nothing's ever won.

You are not
The whine on my lips
Not the
Whiskey
Sitting crooked
Inside me.
You are not
The restless thing in my chest
Fighting the minded cage

You are
The violence beating in my chest
The nothingness that burns
That aches.
You are the fingers
Lifting the glass
To my lips
And the reason
I don’t
Sleep
At night.

all those little things
I believed to be fate
turn out to be
simple
coincidence.

You are alone
Hands shoved deep within your pockets
As if you search for the secrets you’ve long since lost.
The winter's hush settles over you with grey sky
And, eyes closed, you let yourself move with
The rushing sounds of the river down below
As the snow begins to pepper the earth in silence.

Open your eyes
Remove your clenched fists from your pockets
Keep walking, this water is no friend to you
And the girl you dream about,
She waits for you far along the shore
In that white dress you've grown to love so much
Don’t you worry she’s cold?

When I met you
Roses grew out of the tangled bones of my rib cage
Grew down the lengths of my body like ivy
Thorns holding on tight to skin, fed by blood.
It’s been awhile
And lonely, lovesick girls have plucked all my petals
Does he love me? Does he love me not?
A little girl in particular with dark eyes and a quiet soul
Looked at me with guilt
As she tore off my final petal
And I was nothing but vine.
She whispered, he loves me.
She smiled so bright and big, her lips cracked til they bled.
I remembered that smile, remembered the blood
Dripping down my chin, just as it dripped from my fingertips now.
I told her, baby girl,
It doesn’t matter how much he loves you
If he doesn’t bother to water the roses he left in your ribs.

it is your
two good hands.
it is your beating heart
threaded into my skin.
it is your greedy mouth
stealing the breath from mine.
it is your violent fingertips,
your vicious palms,
leaving their trace
across every *****
of my body.
it is your two good
hands.

it hits at the worst times.
the in and out flashes,
the people and the places we used to be.
it's like a pinched nerve,
a sprained ankle,
a sunburn -
the backwards ache of unrighted wrongs
and wounds that never healed right.
the constant reminders of
the loss and the longing
and the sting of all those things
I can't quite let go.
all of them. all of you.

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

I dream about you, still.
to this day. it's been months.
feels like years.

I dream about your hesitation,
your fear, your want to keep me
            away.

I dream about your melt, how
you can't resist, the way you loved me.
love me. never enough.
          always too much.

you push(ed) me away,
but still,
you always find your way back.

(wait. have waited. will wait.)
(loved, have loved, will love.)

sometimes I can't help feeling this
is the dream, the one where I relive
my entire life, just before I die.

push us together
                                  pull us apart

fell asleep,
woke up to a blank TV screen,
to “contact is now offline,”
to no new messages,
to an empty house,
cold and alone.

there is only me,
and god, I hate me.

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.

between your anger
and my grief
we'll scorch the planet,
flood it
all over again.

This is how a girl will go mad
Waiting for a world that will never come
Devouring empty smiles and false promises
Made up to be shiny and beautiful
Hungry for what she cannot have.

This is how a girl will lose her mind
Watching an entire world
Coil down the drain in tendrils
Laced with blood and hope
Praying for the cuts to hurt this time

This is how you will watch her
Wither away quietly
Morbidly curious, slightly disdained
You will be a step or two removed
Certain she’ll be better on her own
That she does not need you.

This is the guilt you will feel
When you find her at your feet
And you realize a single word  
A whispered promise, though it would go unkept
Could have saved that little girl
Gone mad.

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.

how awful goodbyes are.
do not mistake this as easy -
do not mistake my relief
as happiness in the act.
breaking your heart was
the hardest thing I've ever
done, and I will forever
feel your grief in my bones.

I'm sorry I loved you until
I didn't; I wanted you to be
the permanence etched into
my very blood cells but
nothing ever happens
the way you want it to,
and the way things happened
with you took every last
ounce of me and destroyed it.

so in a way, please understand
that you crafted this undoing.
in breaking my heart over and
over again, you set the foundation
to break your own - and you may
not understand that now, but
I hope someday you look back

and understand the way you broke
the girl who loved you steadfastly,
unconditionally, unquestioningly.
remember that I didn't wake up
one day and decide to love you
no longer, understand you chipped
away at my love until it wasn't
anything anymore. understand
I wanted more than anything in the
world to never hurt you, but you
left me with no other choice.

remember it wasn't me
who wrecked the house we
built together - understand
that you set fire to our bed
long before I left it.

if  
this  
is
all   we   ever   get
I   want
*o u t .

there's a trail of my blood
that runs from one of this
town to the other, right
up the steps to my front
door.

this town has seen
all my ugliest moments
and yet I am still here,
sleeping in the same bed
cooking at the same stove,
living in the same house
I have already grieved
so many losses in.

this town is home and hell
and I want to escape just
as much as I never want
to leave and it depends
on the sky and it depends
on the day and it depends
if I see your faces, or my own,
in all the memories it carries.

I keep trying to fix myself
by destroying everything
around me and I'm still
surprised every time I
find myself alone in my own
wreckage.

I used to know how to be alone.
Before you, I knew how to sit quietly
I knew how to handle the dark on my own
I knew how to be alone.
In the aftermath of falling in love with you,
The night holds an emptiness when you’re
Not here with me. My bed is no longer a
Safe place because there is a two foot
Void you’re supposed to occupy.
Even my skin doesn’t know how to be
Without you, so accustomed it became
To your lips and your fingertips
And the feel of you wrapped around me.
You ruined my solitude. With your voice
And your heart and your love,
You ruined my alone.

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."

the abyss holds the
bared, screaming chasms
of my very soul - *******
the edges of unconscious
memory I can't bring
myself to touch. every
color on the spectrum,
colors I can't name,
the vibrating pulse
of very existence creeping
in through the soles of my
feet, the palms of my
hands and I still can't
find the meaning I crave.
I saw the bottom of my
soul and it was empty for
me, scraped bare by hungry
mouths and desperate
hands. I saw God and
he told me what I am
and I am not. I am a
shapeless vessel, an empty
canvas, energy designed
to serve the hearts of those
I love, those who mean to
love me. I looked into the
magic mirror, and I saw
nobody looking back
at me.

Tuesday mornings on the front porch,
Sipping dark coffee and watching the world  pass us by.
The sky will bleed a thousand different colors
But you will still be the sun.

float away on the low tide
in my little empty boat
because all the birds have flown away
and my feet have begun to chafe
against the land beneath them
because I've begun to sink into the sand
and the sea is the only body that could hold me

finally found your portrait
(dorian)
hidden behind your veneer
and your charm
and it is far uglier
than I could have
ever imagined

and all at once
letting you go was the easiest thing
I've ever done.

i'm trying to walk
on eggshells with feet
still bandaged from
walking on broken glass
and you wonder why
i step so delicately,
why i turn and run
every time they
start to sting
again.

soul deep,
by heart
by love
by soul
by mind.

you feel me,
and you
wait.
you push.
but you feel
me.

I'll hold
on while
you can't,
I'll wait
til you
can.

in the absence,
the vacancy,
i am alone
with me
and we are
learning how
to sit in silence
together, how to
make dinner for
just us, how to be whole
again.

i am feeling less like
a caricature of myself,
less colored outside the
lines and haphazard
and the more i cut
away at the things which
do not serve, the more
i am my own for the first
time in so long.

to be tethered to no one
but me, i am finally,
finally free.

we waited.
we waited.
we fought like
hell to find
our power,
to live our life
standing up straight.

they cut us down,
died on our knees.
they laughed
at our
black dahlia
smiles,
helped us
tie
our columbian
neck ties -
they wanted us
to look nice,
you know?

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

yours is the
unwelcome ghost
i cannot bring myself
to banish.

every so often,
we lose the fight.
the night sky disappears
behind thick cloud,
and we lose the light.
and the rest of the world
seeps in like thick smoke,
and we can't ignore
the raging fire out there
anymore.

you ask me a thousand times,
please take my hand,
and even though
you're within reach,
I let it go.
I won't mean to, but I
let go.

My mother tells me I'm not broken.
She tells me I'm whole and perfect
And that she loves me.
I stopped arguing a long time ago
Because there's no way to tell her
How the pieces of broken glass inside of me
Collide sometimes, like storm-stirred
Oceans and barges, how it sinks ships
And shreds lips. There's no way to tell her
How my thoughts slide against each other
The way a serrated knife slides so easily
Against the skin. I can't tell her how my
Hands shake when I think of all the ones
That left me so easily. I can't tell her how
The coldness settles in my bones when
I miss them, no matter how hard I try
to forget them. I can't tell her about the headaches,
The ones that radiate through my jaw
Because I clenched my teeth all day to
Hold in the screams of frustration.
The headache from all the screaming
I do in my head because I don't know
How to breathe, how to speak, how to
Describe all the ways I feel broken.
How I look in the mirror and I see
The outlines of a thousand piece puzzle
Drawn all over my body and the pieces
That are missing, the pieces that they took
When they left me without looking back.
The bite in my belly when they say
"I'll call you." Half because I know they won't,
Half because I desperately hope they will.
My mother doesn't see the puzzles,
The broken glass, the bleeding lips when
She looks at me - she's so desperate to believe
That all the time she spent trying to put me together,
To make sure I was a real girl, a perfect picture,
Was worth the effort. And I'm so sorry, mommy.
I'm sorry it wasn't.

burn this house to
the ground if it meant
keeping you out

sink the whole ****
ship if it meant
watching you drown

take this ground away
like an earthquake or
an atom bomb

just to spare the surface
of your existence that feels
something like slaughter.

the trajectory overlaps
suddenly, inexplicably -
asteroid to planet.
the collision is loud,
volatile, permanent
alteration.
the planet continues
to rotate on its axis
a little sideways, never
really recovering
from the explosion, while
the asteroid continues
on its albeit altered,
but never halted,
trajectory.  

we are planets, like this.
turning and turning
in the same universe,
never crossing. it's like a
hand to hold, the moments
before and the moments after
nearly identical: at one time
we hadn't ever touched,
and afterwards it's like we never
did.

but you are still scar.
there's still the ground zero
where we collided, brutally,
beautifully. once, never again.

no matter what happened
we were going to have an ending.
dry forests burn quick
and lightening will always strike,
and we were always going to have
an ending.

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

there's this moment after happiness has settled into every crevice of your body where panic sets in because

everything must fall eventually.

somewhat like a condemned house. once, it contained love and family and happiness. there's that word again.

eventually, everything settles.
everything unsettles.
happiness is fleeting -
and so, too, is sadness.

but at least, in despair,
there's is only better to come.
happiness is not so kind.

sewn together with
scrap pieces
no one wanted
and cheap thread.

but sewn together
all the same.

help me out
swallowed up
by oceans and arms
and pulled under
by the weight of
need and want and
guilt and sinking and
each little finger loops
around me like the
rusted metal of years-
old chains and i am a prisoner
of this translucent
wasteland of regret
and longing

the white light isn't
savior, it's hot burning,
melting away the layers of
everything that warps

tiptoe
just to hope
to ever tip
the scales
into that
uncharted
territory
of enough.

that rocky
cliff,
those jagged
boulders...
they are
the danger
of your
disappointment -
easy enough
to miss
but i still
catch skin.

i've worn out
every iteration of
i'm sorry
but we still
can't learn to
swim.

i knew how.
before you.

he plays my nerves
like piano
tense but pliantly
plucked because
his hands are a rhythm
of skin, warm and
tender and he
tells me me he loves
me with a mouth
like honey as
if he has never
swallowed a graveyard
as if his heart isn't
an empty chasm of
rot and cobweb.

how lovely it would be to say
hello

without the heavy weight of impending
goodbye.

it runs in circles
around my head
can't let go
can't breathe
can't say it
can't take it
the carousel
never stops
turning

the hurt you gave
the hate you carry
the mess you made
the lies you taste
the story you tell
the guilt you swallow

poison me,
paint me the villain
because it suits
your pain  

I have become your
worst masterpiece
your ache,
your undoing.

shade me if you must,
leave yourself the wounded
while you hold the knife.
tell your lies, but you'll always
know the truth.

take issue with the
light of my eyes
the need that
bleeds from
my skin
tell me how
every little
part of me
ruined you