a sadness

that wraps around my heart and squeezes so tight

i can hardly breathe most days

it’s a snake that lives under my skin and moves

with sloth-like speed

i don’t talk about it because

there’s nothing to talk about,

there’s nothing to complain about,

there’s no real reason

to be this sad.

i don’t want pity

i don’t want questions

i don’t want attention

i don’t want affection

i don’t want to have to want

anything at all.

i may look pretty to you but i feel

oh so ugly living with this

snake under my skin

it takes all feeling right out of me and leaves me

alone with my tired heart that somehow continues

to beat.

there is a certain comfort in having no one left in your life

to lose

there is a certain consistency in my gaze

but i don’t want to talk about it, no

there is nothing to talk about because

the snake will ruin you

if you dare sneak into my heart

if you dare creep under my skin.

Your words, so pretty they enter
My brain and flood it with dopamine butterflies
Triggering thoughts and memories and I missyous and I love yous and
I hate yous and where are yous and I want yous but I cannot
Digest them anymore. I refuse them. I cannot do not believe them for more than
A few seconds.
Even now, I train myself to cringe. I train myself to deny. Reject. Avoid.
Love, a temporary season for you to give me
I am nothing more than one of the many melting ice cubes down your shirt.
I am melting,
Melting. I am
The puddle at your feet
You are knee-deep in spewing your
Words are what I longed for, for so many years
Had I had them then I might have swallowed them thoughtlessly.
Now I am closed up. Afraid. Your words are tempting yet
Your actions piercing evermore. I seem to attract people of the most intense,
Most compassionate, most real, most ****** up.
Most likely to be inconsistently there. Your fire breathing words melt me
I am
Melting
Melting
I am
Nothing
More than
The puddle at your feet, it's growing now
You are knee-deep in it

I want to give you all of the good parts of me,
The ones you deserve
The parts that are whole on their own, the silent parts
The ones that fall asleep with ease
The parts that have never rejected
Goodness or entertained the notion
Of an early death.
I feel crazy most days, I wake up and I'm someone
And by the time I get to work I am someone else entirely
Some days I get home and snap at my little brothers
Some days I get home and I'm giggly and jumpy and full of life
Some days I cannot focus on anything else
But my pain, my suffering, my illness
Some days I am nothing but completely
Consumed.
You do not deserve to have the bad parts of me,
But if you love me,
Then won't you love them too?
So when you ask me who I am
I will only tell you the truth of who I am
At that exact moment
But be aware, that person will have bolted
Fled into another life
And be replaced
By another person entirely by the time
You've hung up the phone and said, i love you, i will see you
Later. But who exactly will you be seeing later?
So take the good parts, while they're still here
Because by tomorrow I may have sinned
I may have taken all the goodness out of my chest
And burned it with your heart.
This has happened before and if it happens again, I'm sorry in advance
I just don't know how to make all of the
Flying particles of myself
Stand still.
How to make the goodness and the badness fit together to make
Something that might have the potential to be
Everlastingly beautiful.

If I could be anywhere
Right now
I would be in your living room
Enveloped in your scent
The sky would be crying snow
All would be dark
Save for the glow of a candle
Our bodies would move
In a gentle sway
To a tune that would define
That very moment
All would be simple
And full
Each sad spark,
Amalgamated.
We would be held
In the palm of
An imprinted angel
All would be pacified
And possible
All we would ever know
Would be that
Swaying moment of warmth
Haunted by
Togetherness.

I don’t want to be put on a pedestal

I don’t want to be a trophy or a prize

Hanging onto somebody’s hand as if to say

“Look at me! Look at me! Aren’t I special! Aren’t I rare!”

I don’t want to be with someone just so that they can say

I’m theirs

Because I don’t belong to anyone but myself

And the sooner the next person who chooses to love me can realize that,

The better off both of us will be.

I don’t want to be with someone who’s addicted to something

Because it will just be a repeat of my childhood

And I know for a fact, I don’t deserve to come second.

I deserve to be worshipped and loved unconditionally

I deserve affection and attention and honesty

I deserve admiration and space and understanding

And most of all, I deserve compassion.

I don’t want to be with someone to fill in the other person’s blanks

Because I am not a puzzle peice

Or a drug.

The next time I fall in love, it better be with someone

Who knows what the **** they’re doing

Who knows the fragility of who they’re dealing with

Who won’t tell me they love me

And change their mind the next day.

The last time I kissed you

I could taste

The burn I left on your tongue

From the time I kissed you

Before that

It was small and pink and blistered

It was the kind of burn that never goes away.

I gasped and said

“I’m sorry I didn’t mean-“

You stopped me midsentence and said,

“It’s okay, it doesn’t hurt. I rub off of some people

The way a match rubs off of a rough surface.”

We swam around our fishbowl of silence for a while

Until you mentioned the time and how

You had to go back

To work.

We parted ways,

Me in my secret pride,

You in your unpublished pain.

I quit a lot of things that day.

I haven’t seen you since.

I suppose I had always wanted you to give up on me

I was always testing you to see if or when you would.

Finally, you did.

But it’s not all entirely my fault - you also put yourself in the position

of the antagonizer,

of the predator and the prey.

I was always just waiting for you to pounce on yourself

accidentally thinking you were pouncing on me

but I have long since given up on

falling for your traps. I set my own and fall for my own

and that is how it has always been.

Put me in a vulnerable straightjacket and I will talk you into trying it on for yourself,

Swiftly and seductively.

Dare me to tie you to a train track for the thrill of it and I will laugh and kiss you on the forehead and whisper goodbye

as the sound of a moving train will be heard in the near distance.

Blame me for disappointing you, because taking responsibility for your own feelings

Is always hard and close to impossible.

But I will always know who disappointed who, I will always know what kind of damage we willingly caused ourselves.

I am a mermaid that has fallen out of longing for legs

The only light that guides me now is that of the moon

And her unequivocal yet ghostlike offer

Of reprieve.