when you tell me I'm in love with all our friends
I know it's a joke and I laugh along, but really, it's true.
I can't help but love so many
five
ten
twelve faces
Girls are so beautiful and boys are so beautiful and all others are so beautiful
I don't love you any less, I don't love them any more, but sometimes it overflows, dripping down the sides of my form
cutting through negative space
I have always been the one to sit in the attic, always been the one to savour the cold, always been used to metallic rattles and the feeling of coughing once more before I can pull away from from the back of my throat
and sometimes when I'm surrounded
by beautiful people and their conditioner words,
it just glows

It feels as though
There is a tightrope beneath my feet
A blindfold surrounds my eyes
And in my heart, a heavy beat

I am not sure how long I have been walking
Or how much farther I have to go
Nor if I fall,
How many lifetimes it would take,
To hit whatever's down below

There are days I feel like wings
Have sprouted from my back
And I feel like I am light as air
Running swiftly down this track

Sometimes I feel like falling
Just to see what's underneath
That maybe on the ground are your arms calling
I haven't the faith to take the leap

Most of the time, however,
I am trying too hard not to shake,
My balance is the victim here
When my time, I choose to take

This tightrope I've been walking
Has been braided so carefully
By all the words I ever think
And let out
So carelessly

Perhaps I am too heavy
To walk a rope as thin as this,
Weighed down by burden, lies, and stress,
One wrong step,
Would I be missed?

Someone else's illness
won't make your cold any better

Someone else's tsunami
won't stop your wave from pulling you under

Someone else's hurricane
won't stop your thunderstorm

Someone else's novel
won't make your sentence meaningless

Someone else's depression
won't make your sadness go away

Someone else's excitement
won't diminish your happiness

Someone else's better
won't take away your best

Someone else
won't be you

just to get
so far,

and I just
want to be
right where
you are.

I am me. I am the girl crying on the bathroom floor wishing she never existed. I am the boring sister, the unwanted daughter, and the distant friend. I am the bitter insults from my mothers mouth. I am the guilt from my chest when I bite back too hard. I am the music I rely on to survive. I am the dull foggy days and the long lonely nights I love so much. I am the one no one can hate and the one no one can love. I am the the broken but the not broken enough. I am the tangled collection of thoughts, weaving through one another in my mess of a mind. I am the hopeless future, I am the high expectancies. I am the too-pretty-to-be-ugly and the too-ugly-to-be-pretty. I am the 3am figure stuck to the couch. I am the weight in my chest. I am the hard mornings. I am the restless nights. I am the lost humour, the lost smiles, the lost joy. I am the lost cause.