Mwah, mwah,
I'm so sorry.
Sorry, sorry, sorry -
Sorry for all the sorrys.
I have to apologize for everything I do,
For who am I if not a self-acknowledged failure?
Who am I if not a cluster of catastrophes?

My words are empty;
My apologies are emptier than loneliness.
I'm sorry,
I'm sorry.
I said I'm sorry-
I know, but I said I'm sorry.
Please, please I wanna say sorry;
I wanna be sorry.
I know, I know...
But I'm sorry.

How do I unwind my trail of sorrys?
How damp of a marker will I need
To scratch out "sorry" from my thesaurus?
Just what will I do without my precious little word?
My sorry - my keeper, my comfort,
My obsession.
Now say that you forgive me,
Come on.
Say it, please, I'm begging you.
I need it more than life itself.



I'm so sorry.

---TRIGGER WARNING: themes and references related to self harm---

I swear to god,
I'm the 13th reincarnation of Sylvia Plath,
Only I'm bad at poetry.
I write, I hide in my bedroom with the light off,
And I grow a little more absurd everyday.
One moment I'm singing a gentle song,
Nurturing the sweet daisies sprouted in my carpet.
A minute later I'm slicing open my forearms,
Cackling and painting something on the walls in blood.
Call 911 and shove the phone down my throat,
It feels good to gargle disappointment.

My writing has evolved over the years:
From naive, soft, and shallow murmurs,
To a steady, dull hum,
Then a defiant yell of a freedom.
However, it's time to enter another stage.
One of scratching, beating to the rhythm of a feverish dance.
It's tainted at the corners like an old, ruined photograph,
With a faint sour smell.
The final stage of my writing has come -
A frantic, hallowed, and rusty wail.
How long until the words I scrawl
Become nonsense?

So stay away,
Don't come through the crack in the bell jar.
Please, I'm trying to suffocate myself,
All in the name of art.
Let me stay in this vaccum of madness,
Pushing and pulling at my mind.
I'm telling you, it's going to hurt if you get too close.
My turbulent muse is ready with a match,
And I don't have the strength to stop her from burning you.

Let me revel in my obsession for a little longer.
My selfishness, my self-indulgence, my depravity,
Or whatever the hell you want to call it.
I know I'm a fool for wearing Plath's wedding band,
And swallowing her barbiturates.
I can't help but romanticize her legacy,
Writing her initials on Wernicke's and Broca's foreheads.
I don't care if I'm a copycat.

you call me your light -
breaking through your cloudy days and darkest nights,
and making the sunny days burn brighter.
if that's the case, then you're my light switch:
lifting me up, turning me o-
... okay, that's not the direction I meant to take that in.
i mean... it is tr-
alright, let's just move on.

i'm not sure whether to make this sweet
or silly.
i guess it could be both? i'm not really sure.
i'd like it to have some sort of flow, though.
i'd like to make the poem poetic.
how am i supposed to make feelings into "art"
when i barely understand those feelings to begin with?

all this talk of "feelings," feelings.
feelings are fleeting...
i'm not playing around with that *******.
i have so much more building up in me
than just a feeling.
what i have, pulling at every muscle in my chest,
is... more like a promise.
a promise to you, and a promise to myself.

but what is that promise for?
what does it entail? what does it assure?
is it a promise for the future,
to press forward together despite the wrathful storms?
or is it a promise for the present,
to keep our palms and arms open
in case we need to fall back on each other?
i don't know - it could be neither, it could be both.
i'm still trying to figure out what the promise means,
and what it's for.

but
there is one thing that's clear to me.
there's one part of that promise
that i'm absolutely certain of.
no need to build suspense...
i'll cut to the chase.

i promise
honesty.

i know, that seems like such a little thing.
i can give honesty to anyone, right?
but when i say honesty, i don't mean the bare minimum.
i'm not talking about basic respect,
and baseline truthfulness that everyone deserves.
i'm not even talking about polite humility,
or standard integrity.
i can offer that to anyone,
and i could give you that even if i didn't love you.

so let me clarify...
this is what i mean when i say honesty:
i'm promising to remove my mask around you;
to let the fake persona shielding me crumble.
i'm promising to let you into places of my conscience
that i don't even know about.
a promise of full vulnerability,
to give you a carbon copy of the key to my being.
i promise to tell you things
that i've never told anyone.
hopefully, by opening up that intimate honesty,
i can support you in a stronger way as well.

there's more to the overall promise, yes,
but i've yet figure out
what each dimension of it means.
i'm excited to further discover that promise
together with you.

wow, i intended this to be funny.
i guess it got real, huh?

Your passion blooms yellow,
Like the smile of a rising sun.
The wind blows and the daffodils bellow -
They echo a crescendo.
Their spring has begun.

Their song flows across the ground,
Blooming budding emotions in its wake.
The nectar, mixed into the soil mound,
Has enough oxytocin to make a soul ache.

These daffodils grew over the snow in my lawn,
Melting the cold as their roots gripped the earth.
I kept warm among the blossoms as the hours rolled on.
My mind gradually defrosted - like a cerebral rebirth.

My winter has mostly ended, indicated by each perennial.
I have you to thank for planting the first bulb out there -
Double digging the stubborn dirt, yet remaining congenial,
Despite the unfit sod and icy air.

I owe it to you that I've recovered whatsoever:
My cognitive crime scene, solved with your empathetic luminol.
Perhaps young love is a foolish endeavor,
But if that's so, then I'm the most foolish fool of all.

So I'll unabashedly listen to your daffodil crescendo,
And resonate with the joy in your living rhythm.
I'll plant you some chrysanthemums to match in yellow,
So we can sit together with them.

---TRIGGER WARNING: themes related to ****** trauma.---

On an evening alone, dark and dismal,
I laid upon my crisp floor rug.
Stomach down, back up,
Thinking about the one I love.
I mused and mulled over many things,
Such as how I cared for her so,
Or when we'd next meet,
And what I'd even say.
As I continued to think and think,
My mind settled on other kinds of things.

I bit my lip; I stalled for a moment.
I hovered a thumb over the enter key,
And with a single exhale released my hesitation.
"How to figure out my kinks," or
"How to ask about her kinks."
I felt like a child, sneaking onto the home computer at night,
And finding a timid sort of delight
In googling "*****."

So I continued...
Taking a quiz here,
Reading a page there,
When something stopped me in my tracks.
Something cold ran down my back,
Like a spectre tracing my spine with a finger -
An otherworldly shiver.
Not a shiver of excitement or elation,
But rather one of danger,
Signaling an unholy presence hanging over me.

I could see them as I glanced up.
His eyes:
Smiling
  Laughing
      Singing
                       Feeding
                                                   Growling
                                                        ­                                       Burning
                                                         ­     Knashing
                                Decaying
        Wa­iling
                                               Devouring
                                                       ­                                       Bloodcurdling
Looking, seeing right through me.
My ceiling fan stirred his viridescent hair;
Pulled at the petals of the rose between his teeth.
His grin grew wider
As the stem's thorns grew longer,
Piercing his raw, red gums.

He came to remind me, it would seem...
Remind me that he still existed.
He wanted to remind me that
He still haunted the sides of my head -
Stirring, kneading my temporal lobes.
Searching the gaze in his eyes, I remembered.

I remembered feeling more worthless than dirt.
I remembered the validation I thought I needed.
I remembered the guilt, shame, and fear.
I remembered feeling like a disgusting, useless ****.
I remembered trying to avoid sending him photos.
I remembered staring at my ceiling,
Sobbing quietly in the night,
Silently screaming within my chest
For help.
To be saved...
By someone, anyone.

But most of all...
But most of all,
I remembered why I couldn't be loved.
Not in that way, at least.
My demon, who for some reason I still cling to,
Reasons that I don't even understand,
Won't allow it.
I blinked, and all but his eyes vanished,
Leaving me with a small thought as opposed to immense fear.
Maybe it's okay that I could never enjoy a partner that way?
Perhaps I could learn to be complacent with that.
Perhaps I could learn to be content with that.

I yawned, chucked my phone aside,
And closed my eyes to sleep.