The following is a quotation.
"In the emergency room, they have what's called **** kits where a woman can get cleaned out."  
-Texas State Representative Jodie Laubenberg

Dear Mrs. Laubenberg,

I have never felt so betrayed by another woman before.
And I know this was your attempt at a prolife argument.
But you don’t understand anything about your own anatomy.

Unlike you, I know my own body.
The home I've created here,
inside myself,
these shoulders,
hips,
scars,
and stretch marks.

Believe me when I say - I am my own war memorial.

So let this body be ready to be broken.

I will give birth to umbilical cord nooses.

Hang myself with my own womanhood.
Blood soaked ******* and blue and black bite marks.
I will never be anyone’s victim.

I was built - hand crafted by some creator - who knew he was breeding me for war.

Let this body be a graveyard to all my past lovers.

Let it be known that I was built for destroying things just as often as I create them.
The lipstick I wear is the same color as blood.
I was made to devour.
A caged animal in my throat.
A growl asleep in my chest.
A ribcage built for holding me captive because I'm a savage animal.

Do not call me weak.
A ***** bites.
A ***** swallows her prey alive.

So don’t you dare push my knees apart into metal stirrups, and
“clean me out”.
Do not bandage my wounds.
Do not wipe me clean of this recklessness.
Do not cover these bruises.
Let me stand, a testimony to what they have done to me.
To us.
My wounds will not be silent.

I want you to look at me.
At us.

We need to carry these battle wounds with us.

On my college campus, we have been broken in like cattle.
We know the scent of fear.
We’ve been branded black and gold.  
We were told to carry mace like an accessory to this sin.
To never walk alone at night.
To travel in packs.
To carry weapons.
To carry guns.
To carry our femininity concealed because bare thighs are dangerous here.

Each week is only finished when a ****** assault paints my campus crimson.

**** is a hate crime against weakness.

So I’m taking back femininity and I’m deciding what it’s synonymous with.

And never again will submission mean woman.
Never again will girl mean powerless.
Never again will tenderness be considered vulnerable.

I am a flower on ******* fire.
I am Mother Nature,
Thousand watt lightning storms and forest fires that could turn you into dust.
You cannot break me.

Every 90 seconds a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth.

So yes, we are used to giving this thing called life, our absolute everything.

There are 400,000 untested **** kits in America alone.

So yes, I know, Mrs. Laubenberg.

I know you picture women’s bodies like machines,
cold,
hard,
metal.
Something than can be deconstructed, cleaned, and put back together.
But I am a human being, and I don’t assemble easily.

****** assault belongs to the survivor.

How dare you try to white wash your own guilt and try and file our stolen femininity under blood slides and nail scrapings.

You are a woman too, Mrs. Laubenberg.

And I know, these hate crimes look like girls in short skirts to you.
They look drunk.
They look *****.
They look like *** workers caught in fishnets.

They look deserving.

But Mrs. Laubenberg,

They also look like your sisters.
And your mother.
And your daughters.

And if something isn’t done to change this,

Maybe

**They might end up looking like you.

Six girls.
Four bunk beds.
Freshman year.
College.
We are all nervous.
Elbows and knees. Awkward.
Like being packed into a cattle car.
Rewind 6 years.
Homeless, living in the back of a minivan.
Three children, and our mother.

Sleeping together in a single motel bed
Nervous for morning.

Elbows and knees.
I am built for building.
Made to create.
Hands like carpenters, I make a home out of anywhere I go.
Learned to carry it on my back.
To take things with me.

And now, I am almost nineteen year old and I have been living out of boxes for the past two months.

Out of containers filled with my own clothing.
I feel like I can’t find stillness.
Or have silence.

I haven’t been alone in two months.
I am sleeping with the lights on.
They call this temporary housing,
For all the students who applied late.
Like me.

But I didn't think I would be here.
But I was raised poor,
remember the minivan,
so a free college education tasted like..
Like you’re starving, and your mom’s food stamps haven’t came in yet, and you’re at the grocery store,
and its Saturday,

and they’re handing out free samples.

And I feel lucky.
And I feel blessed.
And I feel grateful.
And I feel slighted.
And I feel frustrated.
And I feel tired.
And I feel angry.

Angry that I am this easy to tear down.
That I am ticker tape,
salvage yard,
construction zone.
That the four walls of the home I've tried to build inside of myself can be so easily burned down.

Can be destroyed.
A fire alarm in my chest, and a flooded basement.
That I can’t find peace in the only home I've ever had.

There are motel signs.
Blinking,
three am,
and my mother’s credit card is being declined.
And my little sister won’t stop crying.

And we are in a homeless shelter when I’m 6.

And we’re in another when I’m 8.

And another when I’m 13.

I’m 19 in a few months,
And this dorm feels like another one.

And I’m convinced they build these places, on purpose.
Temporarily temporary.

To show us how temporary we all are.
That we can’t take anything with us.

That I can't take anything with me.

Where ever it is that I am going.
Where ever it is that I might end up.
I’m just praying..

Praying there is a warm bed to sleep in when I get there.

Don’t grow up.
Grow down,
deep into this earth.
So deep you forget what part of your body your heart belongs in.
Be nothing except wet earth.
Be an open mouth. Be a seed.
Be every language our ancestors ever spoke.
Be a dialect ten thousand years old, and still breathing.
You woke up one morning and asked me,

“Am I pretty?”

Please be spring.
Be new blossoms and the way the ground smells after rain.

My mother came to me and told me we were giving you away.
Before you had even taken your first breath,
she said we couldn't do this.
Take care of another baby, when our backs were already broken. Poverty was a ***** word we shared sheets with.
I told our mother, that you were already ours.

That you could never really belong to anyone else.

And we kept you.

And when you were born, you had these eyes.
These, ocean kissed sky, and slept all night, kind of eyes.
These eyes that told me that we all come from the same place.

These eyes that said
“Ive been here before.
Ive done this already.
Get ready for this.
Watch me.”

And you’re eight years old now, with a broken leg, and you've been screaming for two months.

And I cried the day the car hit you.
And I laughed when you woke up.

And you’re eight years old, and I haven’t stopped believing you belong to me.

This cocky, loud, screaming mess.
This spaghetti stained, angry little monster.
This bully, who swallows her own meanness.
You've got a venom about you kid.
A house set on fire, inside you, kinda crazy,
sometimes I can even smell the smoke.

I haven’t stopped believing you belong to me.

And I wanna tell you,

You don’t owe anyone beauty.

You aren't in in-debt to some universal credit collector.
You don’t owe anyone make up, or 40$ worth of hair product.

You are the best kind of disaster.
You are laughing until you cry, and secrets you promise to keep but never do.
You are irrevocably yourself, and no one else,
and

******* It Little Girl,

You are beautiful.
The best kind of beautiful.

But I am afraid.
Afraid of what 8 years looks like, when it meets ten, and four more. When you’re tall enough to see your reflection in the bathroom mirror.

What you will do to yourself.

I pray to God.
I pray you meet someone who teaches you to love yourself.
Because I know you are still angry.
Angry at this world, and your life.
Its like you walked into an overcrowded room,
and no one noticed you
and you haven’t let us forget what we owe you.

I pray to God you kiss your fingertips.
Bless them for each meal they give you.
There is nothing more intimate than feeding yourself.
Baby, counting calories is no way to live your life.
There is nothing more ancient than a sunrise.
You are a horizon, a tissue papered sky,
do not cut pieces of yourself away.
You are not ******* gift wrap.

I pray to God you listen to your own voice.
See strength in the way your body never gives up.
That you are Iowa,
illegal fire *******,
set off in our backyard.
You matter to me.
That you are red and blue police sirens.
You will make people nervous.
Get used to it.
You will shake the ground with your voice.
Get used to it.
You are powerful, the way the ocean is powerful,
the way it devours cargo ships,
air craft liners,
churning up lost Atlantis’,
turning stones into sand,
and swallowing this planet slowly.
That you are meant to exist.
Remain.
Endure.
That you are beauty.
That you are billions of atoms.
My solar sister.

You belong to me.  
But baby, you belong to you.
Own this.
Take it,
like a testament,
and write it.
Put it in a box and save it.
Mail it back to your own house, and read it.
Be it.
Breath it.
But please,
please,
don’t ever forget it.

This is for Barbra Harris, the founder of the ‘Project Prevention’ program, a foundation based around paying poor, drug addicted women to sterilize themselves.

I have lived 18 years, and I’ve never been angrier.
I was raised to believe that white is an absent of hue, a lack there of, an identity that pigment hadn’t given me.
A sense of self, who was still running from me.
But today, I think I finally found my color.
A shade, an identity the color of gritted teeth and hell fire, jaws snapping, I haven’t stopped seething.

I was brought up inside the walls of narcotics anonymous meetings, on stale oatmeal cookies and burnt coffee.

I have seen scalding cobalt, empty indigo, and every single color of self destruction the spectrum has created, wrapped in ultra-violet - nick name them disaster.

Torrential rains and hurricanes, volcano hearts with lungs made of wildfire.

No one chooses to be a drug addict.
No one decides, as a child - that their spines were meant to bend backwards into question marks, body contorted around chasing something that will destroy them.
Born to slit ivory in two, and bleed black like the stars do.
They were children once.

Daughters who were beaten by fathers, and sons who watched their mother’s commit suicide,
children who were too young,
whose skin bruised around the fingerprints of trauma.
They were shaken, born vibrating, their bones have never stopped craving silence.
So if a needle brought it to them, or a pipe, a second of stillness, it became the only thing that mattered.

Using, drinking, snorting, shooting, swallowing, smoking, inhaling an answer to the questions their spines were asking.
Maybe you’ve never heard the sound of a body betraying itself, but this is it.
There will be a skylit shades of remorse they will turn themselves waiting for the answers.
An explanation for all the
“whys”
and “yous”
and the “I would quit if I just could,
but I can’t,
and I don’t know how not to,
when the only time the world stands still is when I’m high enough to look down on myself.”
Drug addicts use because they are broken people trying to mend broken pieces, swallowing shards of broken glass that end up slitting their own throats.

If you have these shattered shrapnel pieces wedged inside yourself for long enough, its hard to remember existing without them.

I watched my mother, break in and out of sobriety like a jail cell she had swallowed the key to.
No one realizes the cage we’re all trapped inside of, is our own ribs.
She created me, took all the best piece of herself and made me. Like a patch work quilt, my edges didn't always come together easy.
But I thank God, every single day for it.

Each Christmas spent in a homeless shelter,
every hour I spent shoving notes beneath the bathroom door, begging her to come out,  
every relapse, recovery, overdose, hours waiting by the phone for a hospital call, every midnight I couldn't sleep without her by my side,
Every twelve step program, a serenity prayer for seven days sober, key chain necklaces and chips she'd always kiss and say “this ones it, baby”.
Every ****** up, angry, starving, man and woman who carried a story in their lungs, and let me hear it,
Every plate full of co-dependency she fed me,
Every ounce of anger and sorrow she gave me,
Every time I asked her, why,
Every moment she disappointed me.
Every time she'd say she was sorry, and tried to mean it,
Every time I wore her mistakes like battle wounds
She destroyed me
But ******* it, I am so ******* grateful she did.  

Because she broke me, into a thousand pieces.
But its true what they say, bones always heal stronger the second time around.
I’ve been given this opportunity,
this legend in my blood, this authentic, “I’ve been through hell and back” mentality,
this dedication to myself.

And I will not let you, or anyone else take that away from me.

I’ve got a born and bred monster, asleep in my esophagus, brimstone and fury, I am whole-heartedly dedicated to my own ambition.

And this climb, upward through the wreckage of my own existence, has given me more than you will ever understand.

Allowing privileged white people to discuss the nature of poverty, doesn’t find answers.

But I have mine. And I will tell you, there is value here. Inside of me.
I am that child,
I am that statistic,
Alive still born and still screaming,

You can not get rid of me.

You,
apple core thin, mannequin faced girl at the check out, -
You are wearing your boyfriend’s bruises again.
I wonder if you asked him to apologize afterward.
But instead he wrote it out on your skin, with black and blue ink and the thing is they don’t make a cover up strong enough to blend blue into bone and your angry yellows into ivory again.

I’m sure they tried to market it though.
“For those days when his knuckles say yes but you said no”.
Eyelids the color of ****** flowers, soft pink hues, a shade of human that you shouldn't be able to buy in a bottle –

but do.

You memorized the taste of red dye number four.
Synthetically manufactured -
Made to remember how easy growing up was,
and how default growing old has become.

Fed off a ******* diet, I’m sure you were spoon fed it.

Nurtured by nature, you started caving yourself into pieces when you learned how liquid the definition of beauty can be.

Scalding one moment,
solid still the next.
You’ve grown used to leaving bits of it behind.
Taking hot enough showers to wash away the scent of your own shame,
self loathing is meal served at the supper table.

With Mommy’s plastic surgery endeavor and Daddy  bench pressing the weight of a childhood his parents never gave him,
and you’re left home alone watching
infomercials –
every single thing that’s wrong with you – they've got something for it.
And all for the low price of your dignity on a dotted line.

Skin,
eyes,
lips,
nose,
hips,
waist,
brows,
teeth,
knees,
stomach,
feet.

Stand beneath an alter made of reflections.
Circle all the parts you are told you’re supposed to change.
Be naked.
Be nothing but stain.
Be imperfection and dishonesty, be one thousand times more cruel than candle light,
be antagonist,
be soul trapped in body, be body trapped in self,
be twenty pounds to heavy, and 100 too light.
Be you,
but not be you,
be fake,
be plastic,
be touchable,
be fuckable,

be anything except for yourself.

Hair extensions,
dye, blush,
powder,
lipstick,
corset,
bronzer.
Be nothing except product. Be sculpted from silicon, be shallow, be empty.

Be pretty.

There can’t be anything wrong with you, if you don’t exist anymore.

Selling young women the concept of hating themselves is a multimillion dollar business.
They are liars and they work on commission.
For five year old girls today there is a 0.003% chance she will become a lawyer, but a 42% chance she will wish she was thinner by time she reaches third grade.

They've left cigarette burns on the backs of your hands, Marlboro menthol lies they've scorched into your skin.  

We only call it a system because it must be broken.

It only works for them.

So do not fix yourself, girl.
Sit before a mirror and number the things you atleast don’t hate.
Repeat them when no one is listening.
Meet a boy,
who doesn't hate any of you,
who's voice is forgiveness for hating yourself.

Have a daughter and remind her not a single thing about is wrong with her.

Kiss her fingers and her toes.

Mold your paper heart into a love letter to yourself, for once.
Remember you are constellations and star dust, sunflowers and sea shells.
Do not cut pieces of yourself away, for anyone, do not lose any of you.

Do not be left overs for his hammer shaped hands to hold.
Do not let media, nor men abuse you.
Be brave like an 11 year old girl and fight back.

Lipstick and blush like war paint.

You are no small thing.  
Be earthquake weather,
be the necessities of your own disaster, but never destroy you, girl.
Nothing before this mattered.
Please,
Have an affair with yourself & write your own name at the bottom of the page.

Girl.

Love yourself shamelessly.

I passed a girl driving home - All midnight and silhouette.
She was ten seconds, or maybe it was just forty feet from goodbye.
Forty to the pavement.
Forty from crushing, and bone, and twisted up, legs bent into angel wings. Maybe it was forty feet from hello.

I watched the police cars surround her.
Red and blue lights screaming into the night sky, I can still hear their silence.
I parked near the bridge and waited.
Felt like these hands of mine could catch something, maybe a baby bird who leaped from the nest too soon.
Tell her she was important.
Tell her she mattered,
to me,
to this,
to something more than Iowa winter and the leather interior of a police car.
Tell her she had living to do.
Constellation ancestors to make proud.
And boys to fall in love with.
New born daughters to hold, ones  to tell they were important,
and mattered,
to her.

When I got home I couldn't stop shaking.
Hands made of glass and rose thorn, I wasn't meant to hold anything, not even myself.
A repeat, a never ending loop, a film strip set on fire in the back of my head, watch the blinding white destroy it from my memory.

It could have been me

It could have been me

It could have been me

It should have been me

I’m a match.
Not a kerosene lamp.
Burning up quick.
I’m not built to last.
I promise.
Two parts destruction and one part **** up.
There are mornings where walking across six lanes of oncoming traffic seem easier than getting out of bed.
There are evenings I spend begging my fingertips to leave my wrists alone.
I've got a sob asleep in my chest, and it will never leave me.
I wrote it out on sticky notes, on my ceiling, asking what ever is above me,
God,  
or maybe someone more kind than him,
are normal people this self destructive?
Were all the parts of me, even mine to begin with?
Am I in-debt to this.
This feeling.
This quick stick, explosive dynamite blood.
I was afraid of my shadow at eight, and here I am, afraid of myself at eighteen.
Afraid of what I could do to myself.

I’m the open wound and I cant stop the bleeding.

But there are good days.
Good weeks even.
Weeks where I stop counting my heart beats, where I stop being afraid that they’ll run out.
I will turn my assignments in on time, and stop crying on the drive to school.
I will pay for dinner and laugh at jokes.
I will feel strong enough to catch her. Bridge jumper

But there will be weeks where I am forty feet from the ground.
Forty feet from being six feet beneath it.
I will be the baby bird and she’ll be the one to catch me.

Or maybe we'll meet one another

And we’ll both only be forty feet away from knowing that this isn't the end but the beginning of something better.

When We ****
You Won't Hear The Sound
Of A Coffin Opening
Because
I'm Not Dead Inside Anymore.

I... Wanna wrap my hands around a thick pole

of a carousel ride on our first date at the carnival.

I wanna swirl my tongue swiftly around

an ice cream cone when we take a trip to the ice cream parlor.

I wanna ride hard and *******

when we go horseback riding at your cousin's ranch...  

I wanna feel it pounding into me,

your heart when we dance close.

I wanna feel it on my face,

I'm talking about sunlight!

Why are you laughing?!

If you're too uncomfortable to hear

and I'm equally uncomfortable to say,

then why are we here, this is poetry, isn't it?

If I was a boy talking about banging chicks would that make this easier to swallow?

Does femininity have to keep me bound & gagged, I've heard my mother tell me enough times to act like a lady
But what does that mean?

Legs crossed, eyes open, voice low, mascara stenciled eyelids with crimson scarlet lips,

They'd say she tastes like innocence-  isn't that why we dress up like school girls?

Pigtails and short skirts.

Call me naughty one more ******* time

Every video labeled with triple x's is marketed to the opposite ***, but we deserve to feel good too.
Even if that means inviting men into the hotel rooms of our bodies, ill scale the sheets to find myself between them if I have to.
The pursuit of happiness belongs to us too,

and if that means ******* a couple of dudes, what's it to you?

Harlet,
stumpet,
****
*****,
*****,
****

It all comes down to what we keep between our thighs:

All I know is that we turn against each other, each article of our unclothed bodies is like at crime scene wrapped in yellow tape, call me a massacre because I've been killing boys since the day they tasted my breath and called me pretty.

Beautiful
Gorgeous
Stunning
Perfect
Plastic

Carved from silicon, I'm developing cancerous distractions, the world painting my body and it's actions side show attractions. They were ring leaders in this carnival of distortion. Grotesque and picturesque. All they wanted from this was a contortionist.

They asked for this
And It was always them,

Obsessed and hell bent.
They asked to see us naked, stripped down, hollow eyes, expected innocence, pretty mouths and closed lips, didn't want to hear the echo of their screams in our own voice, dignity they told us to have,

Didn't mention the stacks of playboys they kept beneath their beds.
Just the images, never the women inside the pages.

They always want a girl who's good with her mouth

But they want lips sealed when it come to where she got the practice.
Shattering their images of their impossibly perfect
Barbie girls
Bottle blonde
bubble gum pink and baby blue eyes.

We must be a commodity

Carved up like a good piece of meat and subservient served up for your judgement. Size me up like I haven't memorized the contours and calculated the curvatures; the kind of scrutiny to make your heart weep.

A masterpiece, but Mona Lisa kept all her clothes on, I think? Shallow but we stretch miles in all directions, I keep seeing mirror reflections, in every store window, if manikins can't stand up on their own, how can we?

I have to tell myself we don't have to stand up to stand for something.

And don't demean others with the word *****, because what I keep between my thighs is nothing weak.

Keep trying to maintain my innocence. Shame anything that might just be our liberation:
bare  knees, shoulder blades, and bra straps.

Written in the composition lines of our stretch marks it will tell us what provocative really means, but we haven't found it yet.

So how could you attempt to define what parts of us are too distracting?

I will paint my body honey harlot, summertime scarlet, and streak in the streets. A stark **** liberty.

I wanna be the type of women who is comfortable enough to take her clothes off.

Dance on stage if it means feeding a family, if it means taking money out of the hands of those who don't deserve it, if it means paying for an education I can't breath without.

I want to be the type of woman who opens the temple of her body, for tours if she has to

To resort and regain the kind of dignity they write stories about,
I want to be the type of woman who lays down her life, for her own children when their mouths are empty,

I'll take it like a *****.
No, daddy won't be ashamed because how could he be?
He bred a warrior, a fighter,
and he always said, it's not how big your muscles are, tough is how much you can take and get back up.

**And women always get back up.

If You Were To Ask Her..
She Would Tell You It Wasn’t A Suicide Attempt .
She’d Say Her Blue Lips And Limp Limbs Were Just A Side Effect Of The Pills.
Like An Entire Bottle Of Oxy-Cotton Would Make Her Chase That High Even Higher,
It Was Hard Enough Learning To Walk On Shattered Souls.
She Was Trying To Levitate.
Hover Above The Ground, She Was Begging The Sunrise To Call Her Skyward.
Body Wrapped In Shades Of Ultra-Violet,
Scalding Cobalt,
Empty Indigo,
The Perfect Skylight Shade,
The Taste of Ocean Waters,
She Was Trying To Drowning All Her Those Scars Inside Of It.
Swallowing Them,

Some Beautiful Disaster.

She’ll Tell You It Was An Accident.

That Her Body Had Laid Down Beside Me.
Rested.
Heavy Hearted And Empty.
Between One And Two AM, Sixty Minutes Of Silence Between Us, I’ll Promise You
I Was Just A Child Then.
All I Knew Was That I Couldn't Sleep Without Her, She Had Fed Me Plates Full Of Co-Dependency, Curled Tight Around Me, Told Me It Was Her And I Against This World.

I Believed This.

Her Addiction Was Chasing Her.
Angry.
Like A Storm.
She Was Self Medicating, Hiding Under Box springs, And Bed Sheets, Inside The Basement Of Her Own Depression. She Had Pulled Me Through Rooms Filled With Lost Eyes, Laced Fingers With Enough Hands,
Repeated The Serenity Prayer So Many Times, It Was Stitched Into My Cerebellum.

I Was Raised in The Play Rooms Of Churches, On Sunday Night, Narcotics Anonymous Meetings, A Novocain Numbness To The Same Voices, On Burnt Coffee And Stale Oatmeal Cookies, Sponsors And Sobriety Chips, Seven Days Sober, With Some Applause.

They Told Us To Always Keep Coming Back.
That It Works If You Work It,
If You Pulverize It, Break it Down, Devour It. And Destroy It.
And To Always Destroy What Destroys You.
So She Was Tearing Her Own Body Limb From Limb, Separated Skin And Bone, Shedding Her Skeleton.

My Mother Would Tell You She Had Wrapped Her Body Around Me.
Half Human, And Almost Gone.
I’d Tell You He Had Woken Us Up Too Early In The Morning, Somewhere Between The Bleakness Of Dusk And Dawn, And They Had Taken Us To The Hospital.
The Smell Of Bleach And Newborn Babies,
Pumped Her Stomach, Pulling Out Every Ounce Of Self Depravity She Had Tucked Inside Of Herself.

If You Were To Ask Her, She Would Tell You It Wasn’t What It Looked Like.

But I’d Tell You She Had Overdosed On Self Destruction, Smothered By The Box She Had Trapped Herself In.

And I’d Tell You She Had Laid Down Beside Me.
Allowing Herself To Leave Me, Always So Alone.
So Know This Destruction By Name, Press It Against My Palms, And Wrap Me In This Honesty. Baptize Me In This Salt Water, Sting My Open Wounds, My Burned Flesh, Like Branded Skin,
Scared For The Rest Of This Eternity.

I’d Tell You She Hadn’t Left A Suicide Note.
Didn’t Need To.
Just Remember What Kind Of Depravity She Had Written Out, Spelled Each Stanza On The Bed sheets Between Us, When Mommy Fell Asleep Beside Me That Night.

I’d Tell You That I Could Have Woken Up Beside Her The Next Morning. And She Wouldn’t Have Been There.

Taken, Savagely, In The Middle Of The Night.

At Six Years Young, Could Have Threaded My Fingers Into Her Hair, And Begged Her To Wake Up.

I’d Tell You She Wouldn't Have Been Able To.

She’d Tell You, Atleast She Had.

There Is Something Impossibly Impulsive About The Body We Wore.
Like A Costume On Stage, Every Change Felt Like A Quick One.
We Were Ripping Layers Of  Cotton and Silk, Away.
Never Naked, Just Feeling Like Maybe You Might Of Left With A Little Less Than What You Came With.

We Stood Back-lit, Like Stage Props.
Held Frozen By Spot Lights, Unable To Reach Out And Touch Each Other.
Afraid.
Like We Might Break One Another.

The Ridged Lines, Hard Pallor Skeleton, Like Road maps, Through Broadway, And The Whites Of Our Eyes.
We Were A Balcony Away, Dusty Velvet And Aged Satin.
Palms Prints, Like Sheer Silk Gloves, Elbow Deep In Our Own Self Obsession, A Hallway Of Mirrors, One Thousand Watt Bulbs.
A Cast And Crew of Only You.

We’d Turn Down The House Lights, Dim The Emptiness Behind Our Eyelids, A Box Office Value, Of The Number Of Souls You Couldn't Keep Captive.
Always Realizing You Were Alone, An Underage Tragedy, Ad Libbing Our Way Through The Only Auditions That Mattered, The Ones We Needed To Make Something More Of The Masks We Wore.

There’d Be A Black Out, Long Enough For You To Get Your Bearings.
Realize This All Didn't Have To Be An Act.

There Would Always Be Red Glowing Exit Signs, Easy Outs.
But We’d Learn That You Can’t Be The Understudy In Your Own Life.
There Would Be The Curtain, A Dozen Gold Tassels, To Raise.

Break The Fourth Wall, And Divide Your Insides Apart.
Draw A Line, A Call For Places, A Dress Rehearsal, A Last Chance To Get This Right.

You’d Come To The Sound Stage Reaction.
You’re More Than A Performance.
A No Longer Tried And True Type Cast.

Please Take A Bow, Darling.

Make This Stage Worthy, Standing Ovation,

Say It.
Over rehearsed,
Side Scripted Lines,

Welcome To The Masquerade.

I Have This New Problem.
This New Self Crippling.
Self Doubt.
Slithering It's Way Inside Me.
You See I Have This New Problem.
This New
Tick,
Tick,
Tick
This New Something - Standing Sidewise In The Back Of My Mind, That Makes Me Insane.

I
N
S
A
N
E
Instability Like Crumbling Cinderblocks.
Convinced That My Muse Will Leave Me.
Get Fed Up With My Messy Bedroom And 5 Hour A Night Sleep Schedule. Decide I Don't Appreciate Her Enough. She'd Write A Love Song About Leaving Me. The Red Lipstick She'd Wear And Yellow Cab That Would Take Her Away.

Nauseous.
Like Sick To My Stomach.
Like Dizzyingly Drowsy, Like Taking Four Hour Naps Between Work, School, Homework,
And This Thing Called Obligation,
This Thing Called Obligation,
This Thing Called Obligation.
Obligated To Myself.

Redefined By A Number On A Score Sheet, Let it Tell Me I Wasn't Worth The Effort Anymore.

Let It Tell Me To Give Up.
Let It Wake Me Up At 3 am To Write This.

Sanity, Like The Thing I'm Sure I Must Have Misplaced.
Like Anxiety.
Like This Inability To Stop Eating Myself Alive, Separating Fingertip From Skin, Biting Down To The Quick, So Everything I Touch, Hurts Me.

Like Telling Myself No.
Like Staying Awake Seventeen Hours, And Seventeen Assignments Later, Like Seventeen Years Of This.

Like Enough Already.


** I Said Enough.

I Met God This Morning.
He Was Sitting At A Bus Stop. I Sat Down Beside Him. I Was Convinced He Was Was Part Of Some Devine Intervention, Thinking If He Could Find Silence So Close To The Street, He'd Finally Be Able To Say He'd Seen A Miracle.

But I Wasn't So Sure i Had Seen Anything  Because I Wasn't Raised On A Diet Of Bread And Wine, Oh Excuse Me, Body And Blood, Wasn't Cannibalized By The Holy Spirt. Now Don't Get Me Wrong, I'm Not The Sanctimonious Sacrilegious Type. But I've Placed My Hand,  To Enough HeartBeats To Know We're Placed Here For A Reason.

And Then I Met Him Again, In A Convenience Store On The Corner Of Locust. He Kissed The Palm Of My Hand, And Told Me To Pray More Often.

But I Wasn't Prone To Midnight Awakenings, My Tongue Didn't Speak The Same Language The Almighty Savior Did. Everyone Called Him Father, But I Was Told We Were Better Off Without Daddy Around. Hadn't Learned The Right Hymns, My Lungs Not Strong Enough To Hold A Breath Deep Enough For The Two Of Us.

And Then I Saw Him Again. Working A 100 Hour Week, On No Sleep. This Time He Was A Single Mother Of Three, Whose Hands Had Stitched More Wounds Then They Could Care To Count. They Didn't Call It An Emergency Room, For Nothing. Two Hundred Thousand Dollars In Debt Over School Loans, And Still Had The Capacity To Smile. Thats How I Knew It Was Him.

I Wasn't Baptized In Anything Except For Maybe Hell Fire And Brimstone, Seven Shades Of Sin, Out Of Wedlock, With No Shot Gun Wedding Procession. I Didn't Have A Pastor To Preach Me Into Submission. Wasn't Thumbing Any Bibles, No Prequel To My Older Than New Testament. They Called It Faith, But I Wasn't Prepared To Walk Down Any Pitch Black Hallways In Hopes Of A Light Switch.

And Then We, He And I, Crossed Paths, For What Seemed Like Should Have Been The Last Time, He Was Quiet And Collected This Time. Made Weak From His Seventh Round Of Chemotherapy. His Body Was Decaying Around Him. His Spirt Was Practically Screaming To Be Let Out Of The Cage That Was His Ribs. He Passed Me A Note, & All It Said Was “I'll Remember You.”

No One Ever Fed Me A Concoction Of Deity, And Diet.  Religion Wasn't A Silver Spoon In My Mouth. Afterlife Sounded Like A Bad Daytime Soap Opera.

But I Know The Creator. She Left Hearts On Notes In New York City Subway Stations. She Tattooed Your Name Onto The Bottom Of Her Foot, So Wherever They Took Her, You'd Be There Too. She Wore Her Heart On Her Sleeve, And Thats Why She Forgot It In So Many Places. She Was Obsessed With Shorelines, And Sunshine. And Shes Convinced We're All Natural Disasters, Happening Naturally, Falling Into Each Other, Against One Another, Like Dry Lightening Storms, Recklessly Stupid, And Always Too Young.

I Know God.

He Was Holding The Umbrella, And Told Me That No One Can Tell The Difference Between Tears And Rain Drops Anyway. He Was There The Day I Almost Drowned, He Pulled Me Out Of The Lake, And Held My Hand Until My Mother Came.

So Maybe I Wasn't The Church Pew Type, Hadn't Spent Hours At Sunday Service, Passing Around Empty Collection Plates, While Plates Else Where In The World Sat Empty. Didn't Know Scripture Like The Back Of My Hand, Two Freckles, Like Constellations, And Five Knuckles Hungry To Be Broken,

But I Know God.
I Know Him Like An Old Friend.  
He Kisses  My Forehead, When The Monsters Inside The Contours Of My Skull Got Too Loud.
He Holds My Skeleton, In The Early Hours Of The Morning, When I Was Desperate To Leave It Behind.

I Think Some People Might Have Called All Of These A Religious Experience.

But All I Know Is He Was There When I Was Born.
In The Room.
And I Swear His Voice Was The First One I Heard.

I'm Stripping Myself Bare For This One. Every Layer That I Meant To Impress, Down To My Bones. The Collection I've Come To Keep Is Now Not My Own.

I Am Now Pages.
Letters.
Ink.
Paper.
Charcoal.
And Pencil Lead.

This Is About What It Means To Give Up,
To Give In,
To Be Empty,
To Be Lonely,
To Be Fragile,
And Broken.

Every Story A Letter Carved In Your Skin, Something To Take With You, The Lyrics You Wrote Down On Bar Napkins, Book Quotes In The Margins Of Notebook Assignments, Love Letters Folded Into Hearts And Stashed Behind Your Eyelids,

It Isn't Just One Story, Its Every Single One Of Them.

Its Why Daddy Is Never Coming Back, And Why We Run Ourselves Bleeding Into A Tissue Paper'd Sky, Wondering When We'll Hit Home.

Chapter 103, Third Paragraph, Sentence 4

She Uses Rusted Razor Blades To Part The Lines Of Her Skin, Open Up Her Veins, Call It A Donation, But It Wasn't For The Collection Plate On Sunday. She Was Trying To Trace Deep Enough Into Herself, To The Point Where She Could Differentiate Between The Surface, And What Part Of Her Makes Her Human.

She Never Got An Answer.

Chapter 1, First Paragraph, Sentence 3

He Can't Pull His Body Out Of Bed In The Morning. No Matter How Many Hours He Sleeps, Its Never Enough. He's Spent Too Many Hours Connecting The Constellation Patterns In The Ceiling Above His Bed, Now He Can't Remember What The Real Stars Look Like, And He's Not Sure We Wants To Any More. Every Morning It's Like Gravity Is Working A Double Shift Making It Next To Impossible To Lift Himself Off The Mattress, He's Tired Of All This Pillow Talk, His Vocal Cords, Folded Line Over Line, And Left Out To Dry.

Hes Always So Tired.

Chapter 214, Last Paragraph, Last Sentence,

She's Bent Over Porcelain Coffins, Emptying Herself Out, Setting Her Esophagus On Fire. Someone Once Told Her Beauty Is Pain, So She's Hell Bent On Smiling Until It Hurts. Determining Her Self Worth In Calories And Pages Of Magazines Stapled Into Her Skin, She'll Only Be Happy When- She'll Only Be Happy If – She'll Only Be Happy When – It's A Never Ending List Of Self Proclaimed Requirements, And She's Never Been Good At Following Any Rules, Except For This One.

She Hates Herself.

Chapter 48, 4th Paragraph, Sentence 6

He Keeps A Bottle Of Absolute Under His Bed, And It's Why Everything Else Means Absolutely Nothing. He's An Engagement Ring Resting At The Bottom Of A Lake For One Too Many Sleepless Summers. Worthlessly Drunk On His Own Sorrow. Some Days Its The Only Thing He Thinks About, Pushing Himself Into The Only Kind Of Darkness He Can Dream In Anymore.

He Can't Remember If Its Worth It.

Chapter 17, 7th Paragraph, Sentence 2

She Can't Stop Giving Herself Away. So Many Hands To Hold Her Already Bruised Flesh, They Call Her Baby, Sweetie, Honey, Love, But None Of Them Stay Around Long Enough For Any Of Those To Stick. She's A Notch In The Bedpost, Face Down In The Mattress, And Sometimes She Doesn't Even Know Their Names. She's The Raven Haired Beauty From The Wrong Side Of The Tracks, And She's Told Herself Its Worth It, Because It's Twenty Minutes Someone's Arms Are Around Her.

She Lets Them Use Her.


This Is The End To Every Book You've Ever Read.
This Is Our Body's Last Stand To A War We've Been Fighting In Our Bones.

We're Asking Every Part Ourselves Why We're Here.

We're Running Out Into The Storm. One Made Of Words, And Weapons, And Sorry Stained Goodbyes. Paperback Regret, Prolog Pretenses, Epilog Broke Back Empathy.
  
We've Got Jaws Bared Tight. Asking  The God Our Parents Pray To, To Give Us All The Answers To All The Questions That Keep Us Awake At Night.

So Here We Are. So Here I Am, Afraid of My Shadow At Seven, Afraid Of Myself At Seventeen.

Afraid Of What I Could Do To Myself.

Afraid Of What My Fingertips Might Feel Like, Turning The Last Page.
But I Always Do, Don't I?
We Always Do, Don't We?

Because We're All Just A Bunch of Self-Destructive Mother-*******, Aren't We?

So This Is Why.
She, He, We & I Are Why.
This Story Is Why.

If Someone Ever Wrote Us into A Support Group, We'd Heal Her Wounds. Not With Bandages Or Stitches, But With Soft Words And Ribbons Around All Her Old Scars. We'd Shake The Dust Off Of His Bones, And Pull Him So Far Out Of Himself, He'd Be New Again, More Alive, More Awake Than He Had Ever Been, We'd  Tell Her She Was Pretty, Beautiful, Stunning, Cover Her in Copper And Sunlight, Tell Her She Didn't Need Anything Except The Skin She Was In, And That Would Be Enough. We'd Empty His Veins Of The Alcohol Poisoning His Blood, And Tell Him Life Is So Much Better When You Can Remember It, We'd Hold Her, How We Should, And Promise Not To Let Go, Hold Her So Tightly It Hurts, And Remind Her How To Love The Right Way.

And There Would Be That Storm. Brewing Inside All Of Us.

And We'd Go Back.

Go Back To The Pressed Flowers We Had Kept Between Encyclopedia Pages.
And We'd Feel The Thunder.
And See The Lightning.
We'd Be Held Tight In Book Jackets, And Leather Bound Binding,

And We'd Promise Each Other Not To Let Go.

My mother would have told you I came in the dead of winter, on the coldest night of the year, and hit like a storm, if she had remembered it.

But she hadn't.

Asleep for several more months before my heartbeat would wake her from her deep sleep, I was born screaming.

Overwhelmingly solitary they called us. But your voice sounded like raspberries and honey, you smelled like summertime and love, I couldn't tell the difference between the two anymore.

Our cousins in Asia tell us this kind of infatuation is unheard of, say I must be going mad. The Northern family say I need someone to keep me warm at night, and I knew it had to be you. Mother said I was a late bloomer, six years into my life until I could love you the right way, I was tired of destroying all the things I touched, with more claw then palm.

I would swim oceans for you, over the coldest currents, paw over paw until my body sand. I would eat a diet of creatures one' one thousandth my size for you, all year long if it meant making you mine. When I thought I couldn't have you, I waded, restlessly to my stone swaddled basin and slept for so long when I awoke I swore months had past.

I would shed every inch of skin, every single hair follicle, 9,677 per square inch, make myself naked, for you.

But you left. Almost as soon as you came. Like a thief in the night, far away for far too long. But you said you wern't the type to mate for life. But I've expanded my rage, a 60 mile radius around the length of my home, and I'm waiting for you.

You'll be mine again.

I Decided That I'm Going To Write A Love Poem About You.*

Something I've Been Battling With For A Long Time, Like A Empty War In My Chest.
I'm Not Sure Who Brought The Trojan Horse Into My Heart And Defiled Me From The Inside Out,

But I Know That I've Decided On The Final Solution..

Some Nuclear Weaponry To End This Once And For All.

I Had This Idea In My Head That Writing A Love Poem About You Would Somehow Make Me Less Of A Poet. Instead Two Quarters Sell-Out, One Half Wannabe, One Seventh Cop-Out, And Now You're Probably Laughing At Me Because There Is No Way That Adds Up To One Whole Of Anything.

But This Is What You've Made Me Into.

We Used To Make Fun of The Girls With Their Boyfriend's Name Tattooed Across Their Collarbones, But Now I'm Sketching Out Your Initials On The Cover Of Every One Of My Notebooks, Wishing It Was My Skin.

And When I Can't Answer The Next Question In Class Because Of You, I Can't Help But Laugh, Because Suddenly I'm The Ridiculous One Now.

And That Makes Me Love You Like I Love Concerts. Being Smashed Against Seven Hundred Screaming Bodies, To Get A Glimpse At The Heartbroken Hero Who Is Singing Just For Me. The Next Morning, Every Single Part Of My Body Is On Fire, And I'd Tell Myself It Was Somehow All Worth It.

Because You See, You're  Somehow All Worth It.

Worth Being Called Every Single Cliche I've Been Battling.

I Pledged When I Was Twelve Years Old That I Would Never Cry Over A Boy. But I've Shed More Tears Between Us Then I'm Capable Of Counting. And Even Openly In Front Of You, Which Is Something I've Never Been Very Good At.

And I've Written Apologies Letters To The Both Of Us, For Not Being Everything I Could Be.

And You've Made Me Want To Make A List Of Our Every Occurrence, July Seventh, 2010,  August 14th 7:53pm, January 19th, October 29th 3:14pm, March 10th, Like A Date Book Of Every Important Moment Because I'm Afraid I Might File Them Away In The Back Of My Mind

And Then Forget Where I Put Them.  

And By Now You've Probably Noticed That I Haven't Been Able To Stick With One Single Metaphor During This Entire Poem And I'm Several Shades Of Scarlet, Because Somehow You Make It Impossible To Be Anything Except A Mess.

And That's Coming From The Girl Who Color Coordinates Her Underwear Drawer.*

You've Also Probably Noticed That My Usual Over Emotional, Polished And Perfect Poetry Of Pretty Words Has Completely Gone Missing In This Piece. And Instead All I'm Left With Is This Awkward Imagery Of Something Much Less Honorable Then What I'm Usually Referencing.

But Somehow I'm Still Smiling.

And I've Been Wearing My Heart On My Sleeve For So Long Now That I Can't Remember What Part Of My Body It Belongs In Anymore. I've Been Listening To Your Voice On Repeat So Often That It Has Became My Soundtrack.

I've Decided To Give My Empty Parts, My Fingertips, My Shoulder Blades To You As Gifts, Make-Shift Wrapped In Newspaper, Because I Didn't Have Anything Else Left.

You Took Them As Yours
Took Me As Yours

Now I Spend Every Night Connecting The Constellations In The Spackle Patterns Of The Ceiling Above My Bed, Wondering What Stars You're Staring At.

And Suddenly This Love Poem Doesn't Feel So Terrifying Anymore.

Because You've Scared Away The Sorrow, Put Hello-Kitty Band-Aids On All My Old Scars.
You Make Me Want To Make You Chocolate Chip Pancakes In Bed And, And, Read Shakespeare For Fun!
Because If I'm Sally, Then You're Jack, Rodger To My Mimi, Princess Buttercup And Wesley, Hermione Granger And Ron Weasley, Allie And Noah..

And Now I'm Rambling.

And You're Probably Smiling Again.

What I'm Trying To Say Is That I Want You To Know That I Will Spend The Rest Of The Forever You Give Me Listening To Your Voice.

Singing In The Shower, Humming In The Back Of My Mind, Whispering It To Me Late At Night, All Those Songs Of Longing.

I'll Lay Wide Awake And Listen, Repeating It Myself How Incredibly Deep You Are.

So Deep I Could Throw Myself Into You And Drown Inside You, Before I Ever Have The Chance To Come Up For Air.

And That Aching In My Chest Would Somehow Make Me Feel Like I Was Finally Home.

I Guess She Must Have Been Starving.**
Wasn't Well Fed Enough To Keep Her Skin And Bones, Her Silk And Gold, More Than Just Skin And Bones.

Momma Said She Was Hungry For Heart Ache.
It Was The Echo Of Her Own Voice, The Empty Callouses On Her Palms And The Way She Had Written Hell Bent Across Her Knuckles, Loved By So Many She Was Worn Out, Worn Down, Like On Old Pair Of Shoes.

She Cleaned Her Plate Every Night, Her Mouth Full Of More Teeth Than Her Jaw Could Hold.
She Told Me, After Supper, She'd Find Palm Prints That Match Her Own, But She Was Always Too Tired To Go Out Looking

There Were Street Corners, And Fish Nets, She Told Me That Were Meant For Catching Men, She Always Wore Her Skin Too Tightly, Like It Didn't Fit Her Right, Like It Had Been Handed Down To Her, From An Older Sister With Broader Shoulders, And A Thousand Watt Smile, That Her Teeth Could Never Generate.


She Told Me She Had Tasted So Many Flavors.

Said That Her Tongue Could Contort, To The Taste Of Memory. The Lavender Eyelashes Who Kept Saying Sorry, The Butterscotch Fingertips That Wouldn't Look Her In The Eyes, The Honeycomb Heart Break Whose Lips Felt Like Regret, The Cherry **** Knuckles Who Painted Her Flesh Purple Under His Palms, The Cotton Candy Wrists Who Wouldn't Stop Swearing, The Elderberry Shoulder Blades That Were Always Shaking.

I Think They Called Her Man Eater.

Capable Of Unhinging Her Jaw Like A Python, Swallowing Her Subjects Whole, It Wasn't That She Was So Hungry, It Was That She Had To.

I Think Someone Printed Prey Across Her Hip Bones, Made Her Feel Like Where Ever She Was Going, She Had To Run To, Eyes Too Big, Too Bright, Too Empty For The Planes Of Her Face, She Was Use To Being Hollow, Her Stomach, Wound Tight Around What Was Left Of Her Insides.

She Had Regurgitated Every Ounce Of Herself Back Up To Them, Stripped Down, Every Layer Of Her Skin, Until She Was Naked. Bare Like The Back She Had Carried Me On.

Her Bedroom Didn't Have A Lock On The Door. I Could Find Her Bent Over Porcelain Coffins, Emptying Out The Fill She Had Eaten That Night.

Said It Never Tasted As Good The Second Time Around.

I'd Hold Her Hair, With Small Hands That We're Always Grabbing Things They Shouldn’t, And Listen To Her Body Betray Her.

She Was Cellophane And Cheap Lip Gloss, Born Screaming, Ravenous For Rejected Remembrance, I Was Always Trying To Be Enough For Her, Shoving Home Cooked Meals Under The Bathroom Door, Said Soul Food Could Save Her, Said Sunlight Could Unshackle Her, But The Lines Of Her Body, The Road Maps Behind Her Eyelids, Said She Needed More Then Empty Calories, More Than The Taste Of Her Own Sweat.

Love Wasn't A Flavor Anyone Had Ever Fed Her.

All She Knew Was An Appetizer Of Angry Words, A Dessert Of Bad Goodbyes.

In The Morning, She'd Hold The Small Hands That Were Always Grabbing Things They Shouldn't, And Tell Me “Baby Doll.”

“A Girl Has To Eat.”

They Are Lost Love Letters. Written & Sculpted, Imprinted On The Palms Of Praying Children.

They Are Hauntingly Beautiful.

They Are The Silence Of The Storm, They Are The Emptiness Of Shallow Graves.

All She Left Was “I'm Sorry” On The Bathroom Mirror In Red Lipstick, She's Said It So Many Times Her Body Is Now Bent Into A Permanent Benediction Of Regret.

He Wrote Five Drafts Of His Suicide Note Crossed Every T, Dotted Every I.

Now They Wear Self Inflicted Scars, Like Road Maps To Their Own Insanity.

It Was Her Palm Across The Diner Table At 3am. Her Skin Like Rose Petals Pressed In Submission, Smiling, Teeth Pulled Taunt Across Her Chapped Lips, Smiling, Telling Me She Hasn't Eaten In Three Days, Says The Sounds Of Her Body Eating Her Alive Helps Her Sleep At Night.

His Eyes, Angry And Blue, Told Me He Put A Down Payment On His Coffin Today. He'd Been Saving His Pennies For Five Years Now, Don't Tell Me This Wasn't Premeditated.

It Was The Way Her Body Vibrated Aching In Every Joint, Throbbing, Screaming Into Herself So Loudly Her Palms Shook. On The Way To Work In The Morning, Says Sometimes She Can Hear The Wind Whispering To Step In Front Of That Train, Says She Can Lick Her Lips And Taste Heaven.

The Way He Wore A Crooked Half Smile, Pouring GunShot After Gunshot Down His Throat. The Sting Reminded Him Of Wintertime In The Midwest, Told Me Could Feel The Tubes Clawing Their Way Down His Throat. Someday He'll Met A Heart Monitor With The Guts To Tell His Mother Sorry For Him, Because He Never Could.

She Filled Her Bathtub With Ice, She Fantasizes About The Layers Of Flesh Shes Been Suffocating In For So Long, Finally Being Numb.

The Way He Begged The Stars To Call Him Home, Closed His Eyes, As His Right Foot Craved The Gas Pedal, Screaming Through This Red Light, So He Can Finally Come Face To Face With The Angry God So Many People Pray To.

She Wanted To Trace The Lineage Of Her Family Tree Deep Into Her Veins, Up The Length Of Her Riverbed Skin, Until She Can Kiss The Underside Of Her Own Touch.

In The Early Hours Of The Morning, He Finds Himself Crawling On Bruised Hands & Scraped Knees, Cradled Against Train Tracks, He Liked The Constant Thunder In His Ribcage, The Promise Of Something So Much Bigger Than Him Dwelling Inside The Body He Has Been Calling Home.

She Wanted To Wrap The Tether Of Regret Around Her Throat, Ring Her Lungs Breathless, Tighter, Tighter, Until The Time Between The Rise And Fall Of Her Chest Felt Like Centuries.

He Stood Face To Face With A Motionless Sky, A Shade Of Grey So Empty He Could Feel It Ache Inside Of Him. It Begged Him To Step Forward, Just Inches, The Call Of The Void, Bridge Jumper, Harlequin Lost Lover, So Close, So Close.

She Held The Barrel Of Life Between Her Lips, A Fine Line Between Here And There. Shes Walking A Boundary Built In Her Blood. It Doesn't Hurt Yet. A Trigger Happy Hand, Palms Sweating, Shes Counting Down In Her Head, 3, 2, 1,

He's Got “Wide Awake” Written All Over Him, The Bottle Says Take One, But He's Got 53 In The Palm Of His Hand, She's Got Gasoline Seeping Into Her Skin, The Smell Of Smoke Has Never Been This Strong.

They've Been Journaling Their Lives Deep Into Leather-bound Notebooks For Someone To Remember, They've Swallowed Their Own Self Pity, Call It Poison.

She  Never Knew I Would Have Used My Fingertips As Windshield Wipers For Her Tears. I Would Have Placed My Open Palms Against His Chest, And Told Him He Mattered, At Least To Me, In This Moment, Brash And Reckless Healing,

They Told Me They Found A Muse In The Lost. Hopeless Melodies, Kurt Cobain. Sylvia Path With Stones In Her Pockets. ****** With Cyanide Tablets And Silver Born Bullets. Anne Sexton With Carbon-Monoxide Lungs And A Padlocked Volkswagen. Marilyn Monroe Silver Studded In Sedatives, Pulled Down Deep, Until There Was Nothing Left. Hemingway With Shotgun Shells Littering His Skull.

To Them It Seemed Like A Right Of Passage. A Last Attempt To Leave This Planet Screaming. A Better Than Goodbye. Something Poetic To Carve Into Your Skin, Or Flip Top Wooden Desk, So Someone Somewhere Would Remember The Name, Because They Were Told Legends Never Die.

I Am The New Age Villain. No Masked Maccasurer, I Carry My Blades On The Inside.

More Terrifying Than Any Clown, Or Ghost Faced Monster With A Butcher Knife. I Am The Teenage Girl With Daddy Issues.

I Will Swallow Your Sons Whole. I Will Pull Them Under The Covers Until All They Can See Is Black And Blue. I Will Carve My Name Above Their Still Beating Heart, And Turn Them Ugly. I Am Their First And Last Love, Wrapped Up In Old Christmas Bows That My Mother Could Never Bring Herself To Get Rid Of.

With A Tongue Piercing And A Bad Tattoo Of A Rose On My Ankle, I've Got Problems With My Identity, Seems To Me I've Lost It On The Assembly Line Of  You What You're Supposed To See On  MTV , I've  Never Been Given Anything To Really Stand For.

So This Means I Fall In Love Easily.

I Fall Into Bed Easily, Between Layers Of Needing To Be Needed, And A Bottomless Appetite For Hands Across My Flesh. Bruises Make It That More Much Worth The While, Because Hours Later The Marks Will Still Be There To Remind Me Of Just How Badly You Never Wanted To Let Me Go.

He Places His Palm To My Chest, Mine To His, Says "Baby We're Making Love." But How Do You Make Love When You Hate Yourself?

I Have Learned The Hard Way That Your Mother Doesn't Want You To Bring Girls Like Me To Christmas Dinners. I've Felt My Stomach Curl Up Around My Insides, Chewing Me Apart, From The Inside Out, I Am Empty.

So I Beg Them To Fill Me.
Pour Promise Between My Sheets, And Breathe Into Me. I Am Broken.

I Know You're All Afraid Of Me, And Thats Why You Hate Me. I've Seen The Sneer Across Your Lips, Spark Starving And Growling. You Want To See Me Fail. You Probably Don't Know How Often I Cry Myself To Sleep At Night. I Was Bred, Not Built, I Am Human Too. But So Much Less Real Than You, Because This Hollowness Is Like A New Anesthetic.

But Like Every Good Comic, The Villain Was Not Always The Villain. Some Sick And Twisted Past Has Ripped Him Apart At The Seams, Left Him Begging Desperate, Lonely And Fragile, Chasing Down The Kind Of Sweet Revenge That Rots Your Teeth.

I Wasn't Always This Way. I Was Delivered Into The Mouth Of Temptation, And **** Did The Bite Hurt.

Like Any Good Story, It Had A Begging Middle, And End, But Not Necessarily In That Order, Because My Beginning Was My Mothers End, And My Father's Story Seemed To Happen Without My Existence. Without My Permission

Because He Walked Out. Like Backlit Silhouette Of Shadows Against My Bedroom Walls, He Was Always Leaving In My Dreams.

He Met A Girl With A College Degree, Called Her 'Babydoll' And 'Lover', And She Gave Him The Gift Of Three Sons, Who Search For The Thread Of Meaning In Their Father's Speech When He Kisses The Tops Of Their Heads At Night.

He Made This Way. He Tore Our The Seems Of My Storybook And Left Me Screaming In My Sleep. This Lost And Angry Abandonment Couldn't Rest Any Longer, I Now How Streets To Chase Away And Hours To Destroy, And This Would Be The Time For Our Rib cages to Meet, In Hot Heat, And Spark Into Something Bigger Than Me,
So Yes, Call Me Your Villain.

Because Like A Villain, I Am Chasing A Revenge Deep Into Myself, Down Highways Called Veins, Where I Once Wrote The  Word 'Happiness' In Blue Ink For An Older Me To Find Someday. I Am Waiting For A Redemption To Thread Its Fingers Into My Hair, And Tell Me I'm Literally Worth Fighting For. I Am Exhausted, Because I've Got Blooded Knuckles, And Broken Battle Hymns.

The Only Hero I'm Fighting Is Myself.

I’m Writing An Apology Letter To Myself. Its Been A Long Time In The Making, Cause You See I’m Not Good At Saying Sorry To Anyone.

So.. Dear You, I’m Sorry For How I Dressed You In 6th Grade. I Know, I Know, We Both Regret The Knee High Socks.

I Hope You Still Smile As Much As You Used To.

I Can’t Believe Some Of The Things I Said, I Know I Shouldn’t Have.

You’ve Been Tearing At Those Stitches Long Enough, Haven’t You? Where Did You Leave Your Fingertips This Time? I Know You’ve Been Destroying Yourself From The Inside Out, And Watching Saturday Night Skylines Vanish Into Darkness.

I Heard You Like Keeping Yourself Busy. Are You Sleeping Enough These Days?

I Saw You Downtown A Few Weeks Ago, You Had Your Head Down, I Think You Saw Me, But I Was Too Afraid To Ask.

I Still Have Your Number, You Know. I Still Think About You Sometimes, Between Dusk And Dawn When The Sun Is Calling Me Skyward.

In My Imagination I’ll Greet You With A Fistful Of Black-Eyed Tulips, Butterflies In My Stomach & Two Tickets To Tomorrows Sunrise. We’d Hold Hands The Way We Used To, With Fingertips Laced Together, And Our Mouths Stuffed Full With Swallowed Pride.

We’d Wait For It To Rain, And We’d Strip Off All The Layers That At Meant To Impress, And Beg The God Our Parents Prayed To, To Take Us Home.

I Picture You Tangled In Christmas Lights, Bought With Intent To Make A House A Home. You’d Smile At Me, Across A Broken Abyss And Remind Me Of All The Things That Don’t Belong, Like The Way Babies Are Born In Prisons, Or That There Are Christmas Trees In Homeless Shelters.

You’d Place Your Open Palms Against Stained Glass Windows, And Look Away From Me, Afraid Of What I Might Say In The Wake Of The Silence, Kissing The Walls.

I’d Finally Tell You I Was Sorry. Sorry That I Had Left You, Curled Up Most Nights, Crying Yourself To Sleep, Chocking On Swallowed Phrases, Hollowing Yourself Out Until There Was Nothing Left.

I’d Tell You I Was Sorry That I Hadn’t Been There To Kiss Your Forehead, And Tell You Just This Once How Proud Of You I Was.

In My Memories I Try To Convince Myself That All Of This, All Of Us, Had Happened For A Reason. But That Excuse Is So Cheap, It Leaves The Taste Of Awful Rotting Regret On My Tongue.

It Would Be The Moment When Fingertips Would Could Reach Out And Meet Across A Spot Light, And I Promise You I’m Not Romanticizing This Devastated Conjugation Of Where Past Meets Present, But Only The Taste It Left In My Mouth.

I’d Hold You, And Take You As An Empty Canvas. I’d Promise You That I Meant It, When I Said I Loved You.

I’d Grab You By Your Broken Wrists, And Say “You’re **** Beautiful”, The Way People Say It In Your Dreams.

I’d Let My Knees Go Weak, And Find Tangible Forgiveness In This Gravity, And Put My Monsters To Rest.

I’d Heal The Heartbroken Hero, I’d Sew Shut The Gabbing Wounds, And Swear My Promise Into Eternity.

I’d Tape My Eyes Open For The Oncoming Storm, And Finally Say It.

Baby, I Am So, So Sorry.