I am self-deprecating. always discouraging myself.
The words "not enough" etched into my skin.
A minute too late from saving myself.
Doubt routinely prys words from my mouth.
I am a thread in my own sweater.
Inhibiting my adrenaline constantly.
I dwindle due to my own forgetfulness to water my flowers.
I wither in the company of compliments.
I wish I wasn't. I wish I were the type to step into a room instead of slink into it and hover the edges making minimal conversation.
My thoughts are loud, but muted. A tv turned to static.

My legs like twigs.
My arms much smaller.
My petiteness warns you not to hold me harder.
These tiny hands grasp for larger meanings
This heart though, of my longing, swells.
Hell hurts.
Not like gasps of air you make me take. Breathlessness oozing from my lungs.
I want strength, friction, and endeavour
I want love. Acceptance large enough
to swallow my wandering mind and its extremities.
Strong enough to ward off the hurricane of fleeting worries. I'll wear it like an overcoat on windy days. Shoot up schools with love-like bullets, pierce their fears, and let them hope;
I want to be full.
For once I want to be a glutton, despite my size.
I want large orders of forget-me-nots
I want something that doesn't make me feel so small.
I want something the sun is jealous of,  
flares flickering out like a candle.
something that will shrink the moon.
I want it whole and real and tangible.
Engulfing.
And a little tiny part of me, knows it won't be anytime soon

we degrade ourselves and then expect help.
we fuel our sleepless bodies with chemicals in hope of relief
our hands tremble like tectonic plates under pressure
we watch the clock, studying it like a face we want to remember.
stride for greatness
collapse in fear
dance with monsters
act out our parents solilquies of marriages unravelling into a single thread
a routine
we look overhead, eyes filled with smog and proclaim everyone else is at fault
human condition
is a disease
we estimate minutes of sleep for hours of travel.
anything to fall away from the busy city life
we idolize others and disregard ourselves
and then we ask why aren't we happy to strangers, getting paid hourly to offer suggestions that should be habitual in the first place.

Some days will be bad.
You will want to rip apart your ligaments
You will want to rupture your lungs
You'll no longer want to hear the bird sing.
You'll douse yourself in gasoline and strike a match at arms length.
but as the clock wrings it's hands, the nights of lonliness will morph into comforting evenings by a fire
the ligaments you wanted to rip will grow stronger, the gasoline will become inflammable.
The wisps of horsetail clouds will spin across your horizon
and you will be okay.
The instances or decades of pain you feel
will fade into the wallpaper of the new ER you build yourself,
a sanctuary, a haven. All of it will dissolve, a pill in water, bursting and then dispersing, scattering to the edges of your memories.
It will get better.

I want to see my muscles and bones
I want to see the tissues that make up
this fractured body
I want to write my favorite
poems on the insides of my eyelids
so I see beauty when I blink
I want to unzip my skin and shake off the dust
gathered from years of being
unused and untouched
I want to inspect myself on the inside
to see my body work together when my brain sleeps
coauthoring my breath
instructing me to keep living.
I want to see the make up of me
and try to retrace my muscle memory into something new
string my tendons into bows
wrap my veins into vines around my mothers' garden
so she sees the tattered reasons why I can't help her bloom.
I want to see if there's more to me
or less of me
most importantly I want to see if you're still carved into my stomach
knots leaving scars.
I'm curious
if my insides are more beautiful than my outside

there's a beauty to ambiguity
a certain comfort to vagueness
that only I seem to find,

because within the dark, I reach out.
Feel the air swim through my outstretched piano-fingers
and give myself a reminder
and a hope
that someone, somewhere
is reaching out for me also.

IT DOESN'T MATTER TO ME WHAT YOU DO FOR A LIVING.
I want to know what you ache for., and if you dare of meeting your heart's longing.
IT DOESN'T INTEREST ME HOW OLD YOU ARE.
I want to know if you would risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dreams, for the adventures of being alive.

IT DOESN'T INTEREST ME WHICH PLANETS ARE SQUARING WITH YOUR MOON.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shriveled from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain - mine and your own -
without moving to hid it, or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine and your own;
if you can dance with wildness and ecstasy,
fill the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic,
or to remember the limitations of being human.

IT DOESN'T INTEREST ME IF THE STORY YOU ARE TELLING ME IS TRUE.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the causation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"YES!"

IT DOESN'T MATTER TO ME WHERE OR WHAT OR WITH WHOM YOU HAVE STUDIED.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.