& im bleeding, a rotten corpse on lace lining, lacerations like ventricles holding heart to walls          ringed knuckles wiggling down the throat of a womb ripe with choking god judgement, cutting holes into stockings to reveal a wild garden of desire           molding peanut butter & starving intestines
        
the boys told me welcome to a place where ***** makes us adore you          welcome to a place where sometimes it stops between poison dripped fingertips & sometimes it doesnt, jaw unhinged & aching, spilling chunks of love on your thighs

Don’t ask me how I feel about food
because you’ll find yourself lost in stories
that glorify pathological eating patterns.
Yes, I am a loud-mouthed *******.
Yes, I will tell you
about the time all I ate on a Wednesday
was a single mustard packet
and you better believe I held the near-empty plastic sleeve
under my desk
ripped it open
and brought the splayed-out wrapper to my lips.

How about the Saturday night my roommate left
for her boyfriend’s house.
I waited for the sound of her car
pulling out of the driveway
then spent the next two hours
eating bowl after bowl of frosted cereal
and throwing them up one after another
until I couldn’t feel my jaw.

tell the ones who put you here how you've had enough
scream it to the skies, 'til your lungs burn and tears sting your eyes
in case the one they call goodness and love is real enough to listen
hold your heart up in both hands like it's your mission
you don't have to be mormon to spread your word like it's gospel
you've just gotta have faith in your method of communication
when you open up your mouth and a storm comes out
i hope the clouds churn and the rain falls and they feel the pain you've been dealt

we can put all hope to bed but hope has a funny habit of waking up again
and i can honestly say my life would lose so much quality
if you were to go to sleep and never open your eyes again
and quality of life is a measurement of longevity, a question:
is it worth it? can i survive this? can i live when the sun burns away the darkness?
you are the sun, my sun, you just don't see it yet
because who can get close enough to the sun without being blinded?
who could hold a mirror to the sun and let it see itself before the mirror melted?
you are the sun, my sun, even if you never see it, try to believe it

we talk about depression like an old, long lost friend; hes the guy that no one can ever remember who invited him to the party, but he always showed up before the end of the night. hes in every photograph we’ve ever taken, a photobomb that we had no chance of preventing. i used to think that he sat behind us like a wave, looming over the shore, wondering when it would crash but i know now he was nestled in the waves of our hair, sat in the spaces between our teeth, lodged in our throats. he knew how to conceal himself when there were cameras around. his name sits uncomfortably in our mouths, like its too big; or maybe its just too ******. his arms always felt warm when they wrapped around my waist to remind me that i still had a waist, i didnt want to have a waist. he spoke every language, knew what to call my downfall in fifteen dialects. he was the kind of friend to hit you where no one would see and claim the battle wound for his own. he had a superpower. he was invisible, but only when he wanted to be, and only to those who he didnt want to see him. he was a magician, a jack of all trades. he dipped his toes in darkness and shook them in my direction; he knew that i dont know how to swim. he knew that i would not want to learn how to swim for him.

When the world ends,
I'm leaving.

Look ahead, not at your past.