I may have never been the light of your life but you were mine. Recently when people voice the word ‘therapy’, it elicits in me a feral sort of anger. It's a routine: rage, panic, and exhaustion.

My mother’s quaint china dishes have found a steady home on my sienna wooden floors. Please understand why I taste acid and rancid flesh when I think of your hazel eyes and strong arms. My Tracy Chapman record echoes monotonously out to me, but the blood simmering in the grooves of my brain fills my ears with a sound that displeases my auditory senses. It sounds like static from a broken radio. The wind howls through the cracks of my windows and sometimes it cajoles the door open. Somehow, my penchant for you never fails to disappoint me as my eyes flit up for the briefest second to see if you've arrived. I use my teacups as wine flutes and my heart as a pincushion, but maybe your broad shoulders and firm chest could shelter me from myself. My desk stands proudly in the corner of the room. Enrobed in dust and half-eaten pizza slices, it stands proof of what you've done to me. Mr. Teddy is taking a nap. His cottony, soft, white insides poke out in tufts from under the patchwork.
Another one bites the dust.

The poison seeps through the gaps in between my teeth and panic swallows me like an ocean. If you want, I would clad your feet in my shoes but I have never been one to chase after something so I cannot fathom how to explain to you why they have holes on their soles, much like my soul. The towel pools at my feet as I feel the heat behind my eyelids start to cool. Exhaustion sweeps over me like a summer breeze. I can hear fast cars as the put me to sleep.
It smells like petrichor; wet earth after the storm.

Hey, can we get away?
I know it's only been two weeks and four days,
But do you understand how good a mother
I would be?
The only reason I wouldn't do this,
Is because when you look
For a perfect man;
You don't want him to be more perfect than you.
I can raise our daughter to be
A better version of me
~the version you fell for~
I know it.

You see, my insecurities are
Getting ahead of me.
I will never be
As rich
As resilient
As hardworking
~maybe i'll quit when it gets hard?~
I'll never complain though,
I swear I won't.
Your mother scares me
But I promise,
That when **** finally gets good,
I'll be the daughter she never had.
I already get along with the rest of your family anyway.
I won't be the prettiest
Or the fittest
Or the funniest
But I swear to keep a stash of
Stories of stars
And moonlight sonatas
And shy hugs
And support so cosmic,
The solar system will revolve around us.
I promise to never make you feel mediocre.
Because that's all I am
And I know just
How bad it hurts.

i kept my hatches battened but that
didn't stop your love from barreling toward me
like a runaway freight train with faulty breaks.
and god almighty, did we crash.
you came to a screeching halt at my doorstep
and i didn't know what else to do but let you in.
you looked so cold. we did not start with a spark but a full-on fire.
i told myself i wouldn't fall, instead i jumped.
our sinking frames somehow morphed into life preservers,
and we managed to keep each other's heads above the waves.
we had seemingly saved one another.
you tossed your pills, i flushed my razors, and for a while that was enough.
but we learned the hard way that even the deepest love
can only keep the storm clouds in your mind at bay for so long.
eventually our cracks began to show.
missed calls and silent hours built houses of cards
that were blown down by too many miles.
we hardly ever smiled anymore.
my hands were sieves and yours were sand.
i want to break the hands of the clock
that cursed us with this bad timing.
i have mourned all the hours i won't ever have with you.
i have felt the thunder that rumbles in my lungs
when i reminisce about the memories we'll never make.
the moment i realized i would never wake up beside you
an atom bomb went off in the center of my chest.
but the radiation is what's killing me.
the life is being drained from me here in the wake,
in the ache of your absence. but i won't beg.
i will live out the remainder of my days
tormented by wondering if maybe in another world
our love is perfect and neither of us bleed.

- m.f.

i still remember the first night we fell asleep on the phone together. i don't recall why you were crying and i'm sorry that you probably do. but i sang to you. i sang to you until you were silent. and that became a ritual for us. my voice carried you into dreams and i had never felt so important before. i didn't know it was possible to think the way someone snored was cute but night after night you proved me wrong. the moments before sleep were occupied by conversations of the future we wanted to build. we talked about being together in our bed in our house someday. i conjured up countless images of memories yet to be made that served as pictures on the pages of stories you told me. those images are still stuck to the walls of my skull, clinging to them as if to say, "but he promised." every time i try to peel them off they scream. i told you from the beginning the way promises tie my stomach in knots and most of the time you were careful. but at 4am when my voice was drowning in sobs i let you tell me you weren't going anywhere. you told me to breathe, suddenly i could. and you kept doing stupid little things until i gave in and laughed. i felt you smile. promises still made me feel sick. but i needed your consistency. the nights i had to fall asleep without you were hell. they always turned into red-eyed mornings where i watched the sun rise before managing only a few hours of dreamless sleep. i always woke up tired. i looked for you in other voices but none of them fit. your promises still lingered in my head. you said my heart would never be broken again, and i know this is not your fault, but i have been picking glass from my lungs for 17 days and the bleeding hasn't stopped.

- m.f

this is a series of brief letters to the pieces of my body

dear body,
we don't always work together very well,
but i swear i am trying.

dear hands,
the callouses and crescent moons in your palms
will not be for nothing.

dear knuckles,
aren't you tired of painting yourselves black & blue
every time words fall short of the fire burning behind my sternum?

dear feet,
you know better than to follow roads that lead to dead ends.
there are better places for us to go.

dear eyes,
you have sunken so far into my skull
it shocks me you see anything at all anymore.
you're fixated on shades of gray
but i promise the world will regain its color soon.

dear knees,
stop crawling.
this broken glass is from his bottles.
get up. no more blood.

dear shoulders,
it was never your burden to carry. let it fall,
and try your hardest not to feel guilty.

dear neck,
his hands will never make a home here,
and you are worth more than one night of empty bruises.

dear spine,
stop waiting to be warmed by fingers
that would reach for another body if they could.

dear tears,
do not waste yourselves.

dear ears,
you have been filled with ghost songs for too long.
stop listening for things no one is saying -
it will make life much simpler.

dear mouth,
i know these secrets have been threatening to break my teeth
but please do not open your gates. i am not ready.

dear skin,
we have never been close friends.
i am sorry for the scars.
i am trying to learn how to be comfortable in you.

dear mind,
if i could wish you into an etch-a-sketch
and shake you clean of these bad memories i would.

dear heart,
i hope you can forgive me for being so careless.
i feel how tired you are. rest is on its way.  

dear body,
you will one day see a grave,
but it must not be by your own hands.

- m.f.

sometimes i wonder if god keeps a record
of all the times i have been left,
all the times i have been unable to leave.
i wonder if he thinks to himself,
"when will she learn?"
as if he feels my heartache too.
i picture god with a furrowed brow,
hunched over a typewriter,
beginning me again and again,
a mountain of crumpled paper at his feet.
but somehow -
he always ends up at the same point in the story
where i am all ****** palms
and half-hearted hallelujahs
propped up on bruised knees.
spitting up blood & teeth at his feet screaming,
"IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?"
but he doesn't answer.
and i catch myself wondering if the silence
is his way of punishing me for making a deity out of you.
after all, the bible says he is a jealous god.
i could've sworn there was a verse somewhere
that said you weren't allowed to love anyone other than me.
but now that i think about it,
i probably took it out of context.
if i could add a parable to those already existing,
it would be how your chest
felt like church under my head,
and how i thought to myself,
"this is how it would be if he loved me back."
or how you fled my bedroom like a crime scene.
i am still bleeding.
i won't tell you how many times
i cracked my heart in half
trying to be what you wanted.
how my lips on your skin felt judas.
now i am waiting for god to begin me once more,
hoping he'll leave you out of the plot this time
because i don't think i could stand to lose you again.
see, rumor has it he knew you'd leave
and has been trying to make it up to me
since before we'd even met.
my song is one of repentance.
the wood finish from abandoned pews
rotting under my fingernails.
i made sacrifices you didn't ask for.
i have never known
whether my inability to abandon people
is more a strength or a weakness
but so far everyone i've ever loved
has turned into an exit wound,
and myself into a flickering no vacancy sign.

- m.f.

i wonder if the doors in the house you grew up in
started slamming themselves to save your father the trouble.
i wonder if you can remember the last time you prayed,
and if you had trouble unfolding your hands.
i wonder if your mother knows
about the collection of hearts you hide in your closet,
i wonder if she could tell mine apart from the rest.
i wonder if your shoes know the reason why
you keep them by the back door and not your bedside.
and sometimes, i wonder
if you ever think about that night when i told you,
you wouldn't need to drink so much if you had me.
but it seems like we only speak when you've got body on your brain,
whiskey in your glass,
your judgement is overcast,
and you know i'm too weak to ignore you.
i learned how to translate your texts
from drunken mess back into english.
i am fluent in apology, but i don't ask you for them anymore.
this is just how it is.
it's not enough for either of us
but ******* it we are not above settling.
so i will ignore her name on your breath,
and you will ignore the fact that this means something to me.
i always thought the first time i kissed you,
it would be on your mouth.
i just wanted to be something warm for you to sink into,
something that could convince you to stay a second night.
but i sneak you out in the early morning,
and you take a piece of my pride with you when you go.
i am left to nurse the hangover from a wine i've never tasted,
wondering how this is possible.
waiting for the next drunk call,
for the next time i get to pretend we are lovers,
the next time i get to live out the fantasy i am most ashamed of.
it is the one in my head where you want me when you're sober too.

- m.f.