I am tearing every flower out from inside of myself

and replacing them with thorns.

I am feeling this fully, painfully, everything is heavy.

I am diving into the needles of this memory

and I am not coming up for air

until I have poured every drop of your name

out of my mouth.

There is so much bad out here. But there is also such beauty.
Do you feel safe? Hold on to that feeling. There are times out here when it seems impossible to find safety anywhere.
It’s nice and warm where you are. Out here it gets cold and it seeps into your blood and your bones and makes you feel like a plant withering beneath the frost.
Do you feel loved? You have no idea of all the ways in which your heart will be torn apart out here. There are disadvantages to loving too fully. There are disadvantages to feeling too deeply.
Do you have the strength to make yourself numb when the world is too jagged and sharp?
You will have to learn to find love from within before you search for it without.
It will take you a very long time, and you will put it down and walk away and misplace it sometimes.
But one day you will open your eyes and you will see light everywhere. Things were dark for so long but now there is light and there is love,
oh, my god, there is love
and there is so much to be grateful for.
I love you.
Do you love me?
Rest easy.
Sweet dreams.

tear out from inside all things sharp

tear out from inside all things that cut

tear out from inside all things that bruise

tear out from inside all things that hurt

tear out from inside all things cold

tear out from inside all things cruel

tear out from inside all things heavy

tear out from inside all things empty

tear out from inside all things buried

crumple it up

throw it down on the floor

walk away

don’t look back

escape

There is something dark lurking inside of me.
It has always been there,
waiting
to sink its claws
into anything
and everyone
that gets too close.

There is something dark lurking inside of me.
I have felt it moving in my blood
since I was very young;
even when the world was at its brightest,
I could see the clouds moving in
to cover everything in fog.

There is something dark lurking inside of me.
I tell myself I know its tricks,
I tell myself I’ve carried it long enough by now
to keep it contained,
to keep any of it from spilling out
around me
and the ones I love.

There is something dark lurking inside of me.
Some nights I lose sleep
thinking of when and how
it will resurface,
what will happen
when all of my demons
come up for air.

I lie awake some nights
I try to achieve some form of stillness
I listen so hard I swear I can hear the earth breathing
I wait for any answers
I wait for any sign of hope
I wait for some distant echo from a past or future self

What I hear is the wind at my window
What I hear is a great big nothing
What I hear is my own voice whispering something like a prayer

It’s okay
You’re okay
You can sleep.

Remember how the night was deceptively warm, and how you carried all the frost in your chest like you hadn’t spoken a word in a whole year
Remember how you drove to their house with a hurricane in your blood thinking of everything that could go wrong
Remember how you felt your knees crumble and your lungs lock up that summer night in the park behind the school
Remember how badly this ended before
Remember all the cruel hands you let touch your skin when you were grasping at anything that made you feel less alone
Remember the vulnerability
Remember the panic
Remember the feeling of an anvil on your chest
Remember the jubilance
Remember the nights when your bodies entwined on a bed made too small for two people to share
Remember the way their eyes lit up when they told you about all their favorite things
Remember how they cracked open their ribs and poured out everything collected inside
Remember how you wanted to drink their light like it was wine
Remember how you wanted to open their skull and swim inside
Remember how you would bottle sunlight for this person if you could
Remember how you you would swallow all their pain and carry all their fear if you were strong enough
Remember how you were too excited by their existence to fall asleep some nights
Remember how you fell in love like having the wind knocked out of you in the very best way
Remember all of this, every bit

You fall in love with everyone when they are talking about their favorite things
You fall in love with voices that rumble like the earth whispering all its darkest secrets
You fall in love with people who carry the moon in their chests
You fall in love with people’s scars, you dive into their stories, you memorize the maps of memories on their skin
You fall in love with the sorrow people cater to in their hearts, you wait to see how much of it spills out and where it goes afterward
You fall in love with a song you’ve heard since you were born but you never remember, you hear it humming in the blood of everyone around you
You fall in love with anyone who quotes Vonnegut and makes eye contact for so long it makes you feel uncomfortable
You fall in love with the way another person’s presence can begin to feel so much like home
You fall in love with the bits of cosmic dust connecting your veins to those of every living thing
You fall in love with the night sky and all its musings
You fall in love with absolutely everything
You surrender yourself
You shed your skin
You fall into love and let it swallow you whole