I had only tasted wine twice in my life
once it was from the bottle, stolen from my fathers fridge
it tasted like bitterness sliding down my throat
it tasted like unhappiness bottled up
stupid stupid stupid boy
i was as sweet as a candied grain of salt
who told me i was special?
a vulture sat on my bony shoulder
it's claws dug into pale flesh
i sat happily
singing
always singing
it leaned over and whispered things that made me crack a smile
we sat on the edge of the couch with blood between our legs and blisters in the shape of hand prints where he touched us
i was happy to have a piece of cloth wrapped around my mouth

the second time i tasted wine
it was the flavor of her sugar coated lips
i could smell it
i could taste it
i didn't care
she told me it was backround music to the taste of her
like it was always lingering
i was drunk off the way my heart thunked
it sent a beat of nervousness throughout my ribcage
she slid her bony fingers under the back of my shirt and told me it was supposed to be this way
she whispered that love was supposed to feel this way
i nodded and went pliant
i thought love was supposed to be like that



i ******* hate the taste of wine

i wait and wait and wait and wait

and wait
i sit with skinned knees turned up toward the fluid membrane of the sky

wait

my mouth is supposed to be a pretty pink like you drew me out to be

it's a devastating gray

waiting waiting

how may fingers do i have to count on before you come back to me

stop stop

i don't beg for anyone

except for the voice in my head to
SHUT
UP

i told myself that beauty is subjective

i want to be subjective

stopping

blood flows through the space behind my eyes
i can't see any color but a brilliant red

shut up

how high do i have to jump before the force of the landing breaks both my legs?

my heart beats to no one but the idea that I am superior

do i have the capacity to hate myself?

no

***** ***** ***** dishes
scrubbing dirt off them like they have somewhere to be
why do they have to be so clean
what do they have to prove

FAKER

I never dreamed I could know somebody like you
How dare I think I was allowed to breathe what you exhaled?
How dare I believe every touch from you was gold?
They were bronze at best.
I can’t believe I fell for the starry look in your eyes
I knew you were fake.
I knew your heart has long been in cased in a firm block of ice.
The cold didn’t bother me, I guess.
I drank slow to feed the lost boy inside me
New clothes, ****** nose.
Nothing made the ice inside of you thaw out.
I let you leave bruises on my heart and skin
My friends giggled
Why do the bruises from your fingers wrapped around my throat look so much like love bites?

I take a storm and make myself swallow a hurricane
It gets stuck on the way down and rips me apart
No one ever told me not to take on too much
MORE MORE MORE
Take in more
I can handle it
Swallow it down
There is no need for breaths of air in between
I can take it
My back is cracking evenly down my spine
Eyes all over as I start to bend
Straighten up
I will take it
They pile on me like bricks and sandbags, thrown off your shoulder and onto mine
As you tell me you don't want to burden me
You untie the weights on your ankles and strap them to my wrists
MORE MORE MORE
My arms are open and bleeding
Pins hold my lips to the corners of my eyes
I am being crushed under the weight
I have to take it
Hooks connected to strings nestle into the exposed skin on my hands, holding me up as my knees snap and bend
Give me your weight
I'll take it down with me as it drives me into the hard soil
I can handle it
I can take it
I will take it
I have to take it

Some people spend years trying to find what they really want.
Nobody really knows if they are content with being content.
Married by twenty-five and three kids by thirty-three.
A nice suburban house with double doors and everything you've ever dreamed of in the hard wood floors of your newly renovated kitchen.
Your house is littered with toys that you don't even remember buying.
Constant arguments over why you spent two hundred dollars on a purse but you swear to God it's designer and completely worth it.
Your children are sneaking out at night and you snoop through your daughters diary because you say you think she's on drugs but really you are just nosy.
You have boring, repetitive missionary *** every other Tuesday and you are sure that *** didn't used to feel this dull.
Your children leave and you are left with a near empty house again.
You spend your time with golf and knitting class to try and fill the gaping hole left in your heart…
*******! There is a senior yoga class at the YMCA.
Your every breath is laced with worry of your offsprings in the real world.
You think back to when you were in high school and how you dreamed about being a ballet dancer.
Where has your life gone?
You can barely stand without the help of a cane because your knees are too old and creaky.
You can't even remember your old street name and your children stick you in a home because they can't manage with crazy old mom around.
They visit you once a month and eventually
you forget you even have children.
Your last couple of breaths are panicked and regretful.
You have your memories knocked back into you with the fear of a reaper.
You realized you never actually lived and you want to go back.
You dwell on every mistake and missed opportunity
You regret not following your dreams.
You want to go back.
You want to go back.
You want to go back.
You want to go back.
You want to go ba--

I can cling to a golden thread of desperation if you put it within my reach
I can wrap it around my fingers and toes
I hope to cut off circulation until every breath of mine is a beautiful violet
I can twirl on the tips of my toes until the world around me turns faster and I am standing still
I'm not in wonderland
My teeth are made of glass but no matter how hard I clench my jaw, they refuse to break
My eyes are growing blades of grass within them but my ******* lawn mower won't start
Why do I always expect to be cared about?
Why are you always the martyr?
Why is it my job to take care of you when I still have to learn how to take care of myself?
Why can't you let branches grow from yourself and be your own **** person?
You follow in my footsteps like you are afraid of making your own imprint on this earth
Dig your feet into the ground and stomp
Create earthquakes with the impact
Shake down every brick building that was built up to block the sun from reaching your eyes
I was not put on this earth to be your protector
Your protector is within the thread of the leash you tied around my neck
I'm choking on air and you pluck it out of my mouth and swallow it whole and still complain of not being able to breath
Stop walking behind me and start running beside me
Gold is only found where you look and so far, you pretend to be blind
Stick legs don't bend but they break pretty **** easily
The flowers sprouting out of my ears are wilting
Recycled ideas should not fill your head
Your own ideas should
The thread tied around my wrists is yellow and black
I can't find the strength to snap it
I'll spend my empty days unraveling it, only getting it tangled up again

i was born with a sickness that dripped from ***** blood bag
she was born with gold ribbons tying her skin together
i wish i could have pulled a little harder
unraveled her from the outside in


she said i was small and insignificant


i told her to water me
give me incisors
sharpen them like the knives in my kitchen drawer
you won't recognize her  


can you drown in the forced love of yourself?

i love me i love me i love me i love me i love me

is that why i can't dig up the old roots that she buried inside my chest?
i am filled to the brim with artificial self love
where does the love for other people fit inside?
im a broken puzzle piece that only fits inside itself
i thought i had found all my pieces but really
it was an ampersand
trying to make a bridge to cross from one life to another
smooth sailing


oh mother

oh father

you created something that looks like how scratches on a chalkboard sound
i am
so
so

sorry

pretty pretty girl
all wrapped up in pretty pretty ribbon
like a gift

an object

wrapped like an object
stuck in a pretty pretty box
a pretty pink box
dance on your tippy toes
raise higher
higher
higher, darling
break your pretty pretty pink toenails

i want to hear the snap your bones make when you bend backwards trying to please the people all roughly wrapped in blue

pretty pretty boy
all wrapped in pretty pretty ribbon
can you hear the whistles?
can you?

that high pitched squeal that shatters your ear drum
it beats like the bang of a drum
march, soldier
march

open your pretty pretty eyes
all sewn shut

shove purple paint down your own throat if it helps you

pretty pretty pretty girl
pretty pretty pretty boy

pretty pretty people don't exist

i lay awake at night
and
listen to the sound the rain makes.
it spatters onto the ground with such purpose
that i can not help but feel jealousy in the pit
of my empty stomach.
the rain knows where its going and where its been.
i wander, confused at who i am and who i'm going to be.
i crave the feeling of certainty.
to know if i'm going to pull the string attached to my lips
and pull it into another forced smile another day.
i lay awake at night and
wish to be a drop of rain.

he whispered his affections like an apology
cooling down her heated skin with the chill of the winter inside his chest
he gave her words of gold
she was bronze at her best
he placed sandbags on her shoulders and demanded her to take flight
she didn't think love was supposed to be feel like a bear trap
he tells her his knuckles were a paintbrush
the black and blue were his colors of choice
her skin was a ever healing, walking canvas of pale colors

me: adds a poem
you: thinks it's beautiful and heartbreaking
me: poem is about stevebucky
me: aaaahhhhhh

!

I’ve always had a fascination with bones. The skeletal system was taught to me in my fourth grade year. I learned the name of each bone that laid just under my thin layers of skin. I read books on how they were made, how they were broken, how they fixed themselves. I saw them as self-sufficient. I gazed at the plastic skeleton that lived in the corner of my classroom. I tried to match his bones with mine. ******* in my stomach to pinpoint each individual rib. Stretching my skin to watch the edges of my bones appear. I remember narrowing my eyes at the plastic toy in front of my face. It was like he was mocking me. He was showing me everything I wished I could see on myself. Staring at me with such contemptuousness in a sneer of his plastic teeth. I walked away in a mood that rivaled a hurricane, tears that felt foreign against my soft cheeks and a boiling pool of disgust deep inside my body that was covered in too many layers of skin.

I spent my first two years of middle school in quiet distaste. I forgot my fascination with the bones inside me. I never quite existed anywhere but in my own head. I was content. When my father pushed us away the first time, we fled to a different home on a different street. The second time, he shoved us into a different house in a different state. I started a new school with new people that inhabited new sets of bones. In my biology classroom, another plastic skeleton took up home in the corner. I went back to my new house everyday to my mother who I only saw once a day if I went to seek her out and sisters who had to take the blows silently. I trailed behind them, gathering their missing pieces and using the glue holding me whole to stick their parts back together. I scrambled to feed the zombies wandering around my house, shaving off layers of skin. I had to stand by and watch my own body turn into the skeleton I envied. I could peel back the skin I had left and finally see the sharp edges of milky bone.

We were pushed again. To another house in another state. I panicked to hide what was festering inside my chest. I tried to shield it from the eyes of my sisters, trying to keep them pure from fear of death or something just as scary. I pulled a veil down over my face, building a wall between the people I loved and myself. I watched as girls my age twisted and smiled and matured. I felt uneasiness as I tried to be like them, taking note of the way they flicked their hair back and tried to replicate it in a mirror. I painted my face with powders and rimmed my eyes in black to cover the red. I grew out my hair long enough to cover the bones trailing down my back, trying to bend in a shape that I didn’t want them going. I spent nights trying to find something that could bring my bones to life. I danced around death, grinning like a maniac when I dipped my toes into the ******* I had found. I watched the blood drip from the cracks in my skin as I stared by at my own face that looked like a ghost to me now. I didn’t recognize the person in the mirror. With white around their nose, red around their eyes and with features almost parallel to the skeleton that had mocked me so long ago.

I came back from myself in the months following. I tried to rip off the veil over my eyes. I worked to carefully dismantle the wall between me and everyone else. I let my skin grow and grow until I couldn’t see the bones I used to find beautiful. I let myself dress how I knew I wanted. I let myself be who I wanted. I took the pain I had nurtured in my chest since I was a child and bundled it up, pushing it away because it was a friend I didn’t want to be around anymore. I had to learn how to hold my sisters up and climb up with them too. I started scribbling a new name on the canvases I have poured my heart into. I stopped trying to carve my own bones into the shape I wanted them to be and instead, I painted the way they grew. I molded creatures out of clay. I drew beautiful things. I made beautiful things. I began only drawing the things I saw most beautiful. I drew flowers and animals and the people I had allowed to help me. I drew architecture and waterfalls and insects. After my bones had disappeared and the smile on my face wasn’t pulled up by the thought of being non existent, I drew myself too.