Pop
Push
Use
Snort
Smoke
Shoot up.
Pass out and repeat.

Cut
Burn
Bleed
Bruise
Scab
Scar.
Cover up and repeat.

Starve
Binge
Puke
Weigh
Work
Weigh
Don’t eat and repeat.

Lie
Scream
Cry
Plead
Hide
Run
Give up. No repeats.

I know it’s not all gone
I still feel it in me
Corrupting all my hard work.

I have to
Have to
Have to get it out
All of it. Leave!

Why did I have to cave in to temptations of my organs.
Temptations of my flesh, it swells with the delight of its trickery
Making me think that just a moment of pleasure would be okay
Wouldn’t stick

It’s okay, you look alright today, she said.
Go ahead, just a bite
Now a few more, you won’t regret it
Sweet, sweet nourishment, dropping like lead in my stomach
And showing through my front
Bulging out on all sides and distorting my figure
I cried to her, You said I’d be okay! You promised I’d be fine.

She whispers back, Oops, I guess I was wrong
You’re not strong enough to just take one
You’re weak. Pathetic and weak. What would you do without me to yell
Scream, Now get rid of it.
Pathetic and groveling I crawl forward on my hands and knees, kissing her feet
My lips come back with bile at my teeth.
Not that easy though, she beats me, pummeling my stomach
Choking my lungs and nose, tearing at my throat like talons

Wiping the acid from my lips and the blood from my nose
With the back of my hand
I choke out a hoarse pleading whimper,
Can I be done yet? Am I finally done?
Mia laughs and caresses my face, leans down to whisper in my ear

I’ll never be done with you.

The whip cracks and again I crawl forward, shackles dragging behind me
Sobbing and grateful.

Anything could go wrong at
Any time for
Any one for
Usually no reason at all

That’s why I neurotically say always be careful.

Things can be
Repaired or
Replaced

But with lives there are
No do-overs
No take backs
And no telling what could happen
At any moment

Once a life is extinguished its
Gone
And you can never get them back
And you can never say you’re
Sorry
And you’ll never see them again
Never tell them how absolutely much you
I love you

Never tell them to pick up milk on their way
Home
Never tell them about a new song you heard and
Dance around the kitchen looking like fools
Until you catch each others eyes and fall over laughing
In a heap on the ground
Struggling for breath

When you wake up from a dream
Good dream, bad dream
The feeling of excitement or fear is replaced
By nothing at all
Just a sudden drop in your stomach
When you realize there’s no one to tell

No one to laugh at the absurdity of dreams
Or to comfort you from the darkness of nightmares



No one to make tea with in the middle of the night
Or an over complicated recipe for dinner
Or pancakes for breakfast
Or smores by a fire

To tell you that you look fine
Or ridiculous in what you’re wearing
That you have paint on your face
And twigs in your hair

That you are wonderful
And you are loved
And everything will be ok
Even when you’re not sure you want it to be

Tell them everyday
You love them
And believe them when they
Love you too
And ignore their cries of protest
When you say a little too often
Please be careful

In the way you stare at the sun
Just because you forget you’re not supposed to

When you let your hair fall in front of your face so I won’t see you blush
Or when you push it out of your eyes to make sure I see how mad you are
But not really because you know that I love to make you mad just so I can make it up to you with an unexpected gesture, But you have to pretend you’re mad so it will be a surprise

You love surprises

The way you try to cover up your freckles even though you know I’ll just wipe off the make-up
There’s that mad expression again, I call it your Doghouse face
Baby I’m sorry but really, that just wasn’t your color, it looked simply awful
You giggle and that was my plan all along, just to make you laugh

You might get me back later by calling me Pooky or some other God awful atrocity in front of the guys
You think you’ve won now but I take their jeering as proof of their jealousy of my silly
beautiful girl
My girl with golden hair like the essence of light itself

Ragged at the ends where you tried to cut it yourself

Torn, like your memories
As frayed as the edges of your drug addled mind

I know that its not that you don’t care about me that you sneak out of my arms in the night
Just that my pleads for you to be safe are no match for the begging from your veins
And when I find you in the morning curled up in a corner I want to yell and shake you until I can make you give a ****
Then you’re eyes find mine and I melt, realizing I’ve already forgiven you
I sink down the wall next to you and hold your shaking frame while you mumble how you’re so sorry, so so sorry
You just can’t help yourself
It’s okay baby girl, I’m here
I’ll help you
Just let me
Please let me and I’ll save you.

please
please

please just

let me
let me

All I have now are these memories
A simple list of treasures
  Your stubborn need to criticize yourself
Your pale hand running through your golden hair
  A bony hand running through ragged strands
Your satin skin against mine in the dark
  Feeling a world map of scars and abuse like trying to read your broken mind with a touch
Being dragged through the same stores for hours watching your face light up when you try on anything in reach
  Being thrown out of stores after finding our pockets empty
Running through the grass barefoot and falling down for an excuse to watch you spin yourself dizzy
  Holding your hair back while you try to tell me the puking is from spinning too fast
The way you drag a cigarette too deep and try to cover a cough
The way you have to talk to everyone on the street
Old or young, rich or poor
You can’t focus
You bite your nails
You hate TV but love the movies
You love hamburgers and daffodils
Skittles but not green or yellow
The color scarlet, not red
Laughing too loud in all the wrong places
Pretending you don’t care what anyone thinks but spending hours in the mirror

How you have to fall asleep with my arms around you but kicking me bruised in your sleep
But I keep a tight hold and I don’t dare let go

Please baby girl, let me protect you
I would rather die than see the smallest piece of sadness in your emerald eyes

You couldn’t hold me back
I don’t want a normal life

Don’t do this

There’s always hope
Its never too late
If you’re broken I will fix you
I won’t ever give up

I love you Beka

Don’t do this

And I always will

So many options, so little to do.
Strike that, reverse it.
Man I’m not sure what I mean. I look ahead on a thousand scenic roads and still feel like I’m stuck on my own off-road adventure.

Except I ran out of gas and supplies long ago
And my shoes have holes in the soles
Comparable to the ones opening in my soul
And I’ve built up and torn down SOS signals
Afraid that a search party won’t ever be sent
And terrified that it might find me

Dragging me back to a civilization I no longer know how to live in

I want to spin in barefoot circles in the middle of an open clearing
Screaming out to the sky and the world and my mother and my self
Large and loud and absurd in the only way I know how to communicate
Honestly the deranged circus in my skull to anyone who’d listen.

But maybe they won’t understand
Won’t reciprocate
Appreciate
I delegate
To the stand-in I call I
Present her to the world
As I watch that world pass by
Behind the windows of my soul
And torn soles

They’ll take a passionate lunacy
As heresy
Against the Church of Social Acceptability
And haul me away to a place where I can’t see the drifting sky
And smell the colors of my beautiful off road adventure
That turned to a wandering lost nightmare
Longer ago than I’d care to admit
With my heels dragging in the mud
And a sign around my neck with my social-chosen label printed for the world to read as a caution against

approaching a broken beautiful lunatic.

I’m a train off the tracks
I’m a beat without drums
I’m strolling along tailing taxis and bums.

They know where they’re going
They know what comes next
They’re aware of the parts of the world they have vexed.

I’m motion on pause
I’m a plane with no wings
This time is only worth what it brings.

I’m a tree with no roots
A mime with no voice
The universe won’t just give me a choice.

Give me wings and I’ll fly
Give me strings and I’ll dance
Just please only please won’t you give me a chance.

I don’t know how to take these things I require
If you give me a voice I’ll shoot down the choir.

But I can find out alright
Keep your labels and shelves
People don’t know they can do it themselves.

But I’ll figure it out
I’ll write the next page
I don’t need to be better, I just need to change.

So keep your plastic wings '''
Keep your scripted voice
I know now that only I make my choice.

Keep your roots in the ground
Keep your train on one track
I’m walking away, and I’m not looking back.

I can’t imagine how I got here
With nothing left of me at
Least I’ve lost my fear
But is it finally having the
Courage
Or is it finally
Giving in

I look around at the midnight sky
Searching for answers though
I hardly know why
When the pavement staring
Up at me says my soul
Needs no baring
And the world isn’t sharing
With the likes of those who
Give up after only
Trying for a few
Years to make it

So I can ask the stars all I please
And I can go to my knees
To beg the heavens and earth
To take back my birth
I can stand on this plaster edge
So they can witness my pledge
To work next time around
After I hit the ground
But I can never get
What I’ll always regret
The answers I need
The forgiveness I plead
So I’ll leave this ledge behind
Or above
And I’ll leave you without
Looking back

Today I went to a hundred funerals
Today I wept a thousand times
I saw a million faces
All ready with their lines

Today I waited through
Ten thousand people
Claiming
To have known you

Today I lit a hundred candles
I wished a hundred wishes
I thought a thousand times if
Only I were the one
Sleeping with the fishes

Today I wore a hundred dresses
Some with lace
Or ribbons on the back
But I never noticed the design
'Cause all of them were black

Today I followed a hundred processions
Leading steady past a thousand graves
And a thousand grieving faces
Looked up to meet my eyes
As if to say “I know you”
And I know the pain that you have faced




Today I walked for miles and miles
In a procession that sometimes
Had horses and sometimes
Had shiny cars
And I walked in front to lead them on
Or I walked in back so nobody could see too closely
The decisions racing through my head
Should I stand?
Should I leave
Should I wail in agony into the sky
Or just burst out into hysterical laughter

And today
A hundred times
I finally rose to speak
As I always knew I would
At a hundred different podiums
In a hundred different dresses
In two hundred different shoes
To a thousand different people
Sometimes a small intimate gathering
Sometimes a haunted silent crowd reaching as far
As the eye can see
Past headstones
And tombstones
And flowers with their grieving faces
I looked out across this a hundred times
And yet I never knew just what to say
I burst into to tears
Or fits of fury
I stood silently hoping
That I’d never need to know what to say
Except maybe one day
But far in the future
After our dreams are reached
And our goals are achieved
And we are proud of who we are

Not sitting and waiting
For the test results to come back
As in my head strolls a party
All dressed in black

Today I went to a hundred funerals
I sang a hundred songs, true
Today I went to a hundred funerals
Every one of them for you

It’s like, I can do everything exactly right
Do everything I’m supposed to do to get
What I need and still the earth crumbles beneath me with every step I take
Forward

Open myself up to someone, and there’s a target beneath my chest
Walk out my front door with the intention to do right
By the world and its waiting for me
With a cliff to walk off of
Stop feeling sorry for myself and the universe gives me
Something to feel sorry for
Spin the wheel of fate and I just can’t win

But sit in the dark and give up on risks?
That’s something I’ll never condone
Whatever the risk, whatever the price

I’ll keep walking on and if that cliff is waiting for me,
I’ll take a running start and dive into the sea
And maybe next time I’ll just grows wings

Even if I don’t,
If the waves are tossing me back and forth
Up and down
And ******* me six ways to Sunday
Well that’ll be just fine
Because I know
Deep down, sometimes deeper than I care to venture,
I know that someday
Someday

Someday I’ll make it across the ocean
Whether the weather is against me
Or on my side
I’ll make it to the drifting continent of Life is Okay
Where I here they always have work
And the mirrors there don’t bite
The country of Bills Get Paid
And you don’t hate your reflection
The very inflection of your voice
Where your body ain’t broke
And neither is your wallet
Where things get done
And the heat is from sun

A place where people can sleep

Yeah I’ll get there

Someday

Hear me
Hear me cry
Hear me and
Cry back
If you feel
Anything at
All please
Listen.
If I cry so loud
If I yell
So loud if I scream
So high you
Can hear it from the
Sky where you wait where
You stay since you
Left me since
You left so
Long ago I
Can barely remember your
Face your voice your
Hair your smile your
Smells your sounds
Your feel under my
Hands your hands
On me can
You hear me
anymore