the magnified, mascara applied
                                                    eyes of my skull
burn holes in my thighs
                                       mulling over the size of this hull

i chunder my lunch and wonder of
                                                          everyone else
and if they're also laser beaming love
                                                               i­nto themselves

or if they're boundlessly born with it
                                                              unstained smiles, strained bites
maybe they're just born with it  
                                                   no pained bile or insatiable appetites  

either way, i hardly
                              can infer
if my stomach is
                          half empty
                                          or half full

i will continue sleeping
and the wild horses will keep on running
with each gallop of their hooves
they'll match the clap of my heart
until they trip over themselves
with exhaustion
breaking their ankles
and never rising again

nineteen years,
238 months,
1,034 weeks,
7,238 days,
of my life.

i can compress my existence
into numbers.
lay them out like statistics.

tell people i am made of days, hours, minutes.

numbers.
they are easy.
finite.
simple.

but will i ever be able to translate my existence in words?

will i ever be able to speak such complexities?
or only count?

i carry my mother’s rage
in every part of me;

i am never without it

i carry my mother’s rage
just like her mother did,
and just like her mother also did


if destruction is a form of creation,
then my mother
was never an inventor.

Don’t call me pretty.

I am not a delicate
Rose to be plucked
At your fleeting desire.

𝘕𝘰.

I am
Visceral
Venomous
Vibrant.

I am not a willow
Bending in the time
Of your gusts.
A pastel shade
Of pink, meant to be
Seen, but not noticed.

𝘕𝘰.

Don’t you realize?

𝘸𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦.

Step 1: Get out of bed
Step 2: Look in the mirror
Step 3: Practice your smile
Step 4: Eyedrops to hide the red eyes
Step 5: Conceal the dark circles
Step 6: Breathe
The curtains are almost up
Step 7: Lock down the pain
Step 8: Ignore the weight on your chest
Step 9: Silence the screams inside of your mind
Step 10: Choke down the sobs
Step 11: Ignore the stinging in your eyes
Step 12: Swallow past the tightness in your throat
You’ve put on this show a million times
Step 13: Don’t let them see
Times up. Curtains up. Camera rolling

Sometimes I think of killing myself
How the end would be so nice
How the darkness would swallow me up
And how the numbness would suffice
My need

For all the voices of the feelings
That constantly keep me reeling
To softly slow to a hush
As my brain starts tur-tur-turning into mush

How wonderful it would be
To have that powerful silence
Not even grasshoppers would bother
To wake me

My cells would stop dividing
My brain would stop the lying
Myself would stop denying
What I truly want

But but but
This is just a reckless fantasy
A way to elude one’s own reality

Because as I sit here on the floor
Tears drip drip dropping
I realize there’s those who care for me more
Cherish me more
Love me more
Than I love my own self

The crickets chirp
I put the pills down

You stand there in a field
Of gentle grass and daffodil

The butterflies gossip in dances
The breeze sweet as honey
Haloed sun on your head

And I feel you smile at me
So soft, so wanted
Cradling in your hands
My heart

A gory mass of muscle and tissue
Pulsating and twitching
like a nightmare struggling
To tear it’s desperate fingers through its
******, oozing womb

And I lay under you
skin gorged, ribs cracked
Wheezing through smoker’s lungs
clinging on by a few dripping strands
of fleshy tubing

And my hands claw the earth
nails mangled and nerves ragged
But my eyes fix
Enraptured
despite these things scrabbling
at my irises
As I strain
To catch a glimpse
of
your


face

(read forward, then backward, line by line)

I ran.
Not knowing what else to do
There was so much blood on my hands
It was mine
The kitchen knife
Caught in my chest
Guilt
Consumed by
Fear
I was heightened by
Adrenaline
But running on
Wasn’t enough
While trying to stay calm,
Losing control
It was me that would end up
Dead. Because
He was
In front of me
The whole time
It was too late
Trapped
I found myself
Locked in chains
My fate was
Death.