So the weather eventually had to warm.
The first time I wear a t-shirt in his car he is
stealing side eye glances of my bare arms.
He says, I like your bracelets and with his
hands on the wheel nods to the one
slipping down his wrist, which I gave him.
And he must think he is so clever because
What we are really looking at now are the pale,
matching, horizontal lines going up and down our flesh.
           I shake my head, I change the subject.

Later we are holding lighters up
to dandelions and watching them burn.
We are lying in a field of clovers,
He moves closer.
           He points to the damage and asks,
           What happened here?
He asks me like I could tell him a date,
He asks me like it’s history
He asks me like I might say
It was the Summer of 2014
but I can’t name what battle took place.
          I shake my head, I change the subject.


So after you pull another girl into my bedroom, after you pushed
everything off of my bed and onto the floor
to make room for what you’d do with her,
I inspect the damage.
I pull the bracelet that I gave you from the wreckage.
I leave you in the window, I never see you again.
I leave paper cuts on my legs in vain,
I never see you again.
I have scars that take the shape of your dizzy,
lazy fingers tracing my limbs.
I will never see you again.

I keep thinking about the night
he sat across from me
ripping into a pomegranate
with his hands but
I couldn’t stop seeing it as
a bleeding heart.

He put his lips on
My lips but
It just felt like he was trying to eat me.

He broke the door, not my arm.



I thought it'd be
so much worse than a hole in the wall.
I thought the Big Bad Wolf would come out
and blow this House of Cards down.

Another day spent
with my head under the covers
and the kitchen is, I swear to god
a mile away.
Mostly
I think I'm so out of it
I wouldn't even deserve
a participation award.
Little by little becoming more
passive and less aggressive.
Someone says my name wrong and
I don't correct them.
It's a game of charades where
I act out The Sadness but
no one can guess what it is.

I can't talk about it here. The walls are too thin. Some days the sheets are so heavy that I can't get out if bed. I just wallow in it instead. I just wallow in it instead.

She looked at me and pulled the scissors out of my hands. Her eyes drift towards my arms. She says she never trusted me with anything sharp.

I have serrated edges
I need someone to keep me away from high places
They read my diary pages and look at me like my guts are hanging out
She tells me I'm made of glass and she is getting tired of existing as an ambulance

Sometimes I go out too deep
I put so many holes in the ship I can't believe it didn't sink
A zipper on each wrist,
a body scratched like an old disk.
I needed a life vest
I needed bandages
I needed sutures
I needed stitches

I wound up stranded
in a doctors office
where they asks how bad
it hurt on a scale of 1-10

I came with
THE SADNESS WAZ HERE
etched into my limbs
I scar like tree bark

Maybe
I never get better
The nurses used scotch tape to put me back together

I am still angry. My therapist said its okay to still be angry, that I reserve the right to be. I never learned how to feel anger the right way...I only become reminded of my father slamming the front door and the soft sobs as my mother begs him to calm down. Anger is often justified, but where the **** do I put it? I am not my father. Even though I'd like to I can't scream at you and I can't slam a door on what you did to me. Even though I'd like to I can't go back and stop your hand from hitting me across the face, I can't kick and scream until you got off of me. You're not my father but you were so much worse. You never showed anger, you only pinned me down with your words, and with your disgustingly muscular arms. You left me crying quietly in your bathroom while I try to cover up what you had done to me. You made me never want to leave because you were the world, and I'd be dead without the world. Well, I didn't die. I became addicted to the rattling of a pill canister and I shed the weight you put on me in only a few weeks. But you left me kicking and screaming inside. And I am still angry.

I.
once you fed me a magic fungus
you wove me a hat
to keep me warm from the cold
we walked outside
the night twinkling
holding hands melding into the earth
melding into each other
we came home
you breathed into my hands
and as you ran me a bath
I saw the violence in myself
the red lines down my legs
a reminder
of how i'd been hurt
and you understood
holding me in the hot water
we boiled with our tears
into a healing broth full of hope

II.
i was so young before
so hurt
nothing's changed except
you dont feel here anymore
you feel as far as your new home
even when you're directly beside me
our entire lives by each other's side
only to be torn apart
left to my own devices
i feel you missing everyday
but not the you that sleeps in a tiny town
the you that slept next to me
when I thought nothing could take you away from me.