Everyone keeps telling me
how lucky I am
just to be alive.
They say, "If the car
had been going just
2mph faster."
or
"If it had just hit your head
an inch to the right."
They say, "You should be dead!"
And all I can think is,
*Yeah, I should be dead.

You're such a loser.
You rode your bike into traffic
and didn't even have the
decency to die.
You pretended to be modest
in the hospital so that
they wouldn't raise the gown
above your knees, so that
they wouldn't see your scars.
You etched I'M STILL HERE
into your skin,
and you don't know whether
that's a good thing or
a bad thing anymore.

*I'm such a loser.
I couldn't even die.

I tell my friend as I burn alive,
"please remember me as
I left. A form of insanity."
He adds more gasoline
to my hands, to my eyes
which reach out to him
begging him to revolutionize
with me.
He tells me it's my fault
that I chose to be like this
that I chose to burn.
He screams that I
had no right to lose my mind
to leave him in reality
to leave him pathetic
--lovely
--hateful
He hates me.
I tell him that when he
makes angels in the snow
of my ashes
to think of when he
kissed me.
"******," he whispers
into my ear
and I know he still loves me.

And as we kissed
and lay in my bed
she pulled up my sleeves
and saw the grotesque scars
from years of sadness

For the first time
I felt nothing when I
looked at my arms
It didn't look like mine
it didn't fit how happy
I felt with her

She pulled down
my sleeves
and walked out
the door

I am having a love affair with sharp objects.
I look in the mirror and all I see is
the blood, the scars.
Makes me sick, makes me hate myself.
And yet, I can't stop.
I shake with the need to tear myself apart
and watch as the pain inside me
trickles out in the form of blood
and all that's left is the physical.
The pain reminds me what is real
as I struggle to win the war with my mind.
I have been held hostage for so long
I seem to have forgotten how to live
so I have been driven to this.
The pain lets me out like a
breath held too long.
I am not numb, not sad
and when I am
I am not so for long.

When I was a kid
I used to wonder
how many people would
cry if I disappeared.
So I ran away
for two days.
Nobody even noticed.

I'm scared to write poetry.
I dig too deep, I go too crazy.
It's like alcohol--drugs.
Poetry will **** me someday,
one day I will realize just how much
I hate myself.