i feel quite insignificant

like a small, frail, broken-winged bird

cradled in the hand of a man who does not know I am fragile

i am made of glass and ribbons which bind my feet to this wretched earth

they are chains around my beaten ankles

my sin is the floor beneath where I stand.

my wings were once whole, beautiful, unbroken things

but he held them too tightly

they crumbled in his hands

into dust

they will try to tell you I tried to **** myself.

I swear, it wasn't that.

It's just that the weeds were growing through my ribs and down my back and into my lungs, and no one likes weeds.

so I tried to drink **** killer.

instead it just burnt my throat and made my skin feel like sandpaper

it ripped out my taste buds and numbed the bridge of my nose

and it didn't even get rid of the ******* weeds.

maybe if I stay in this bed I'll be able to wilt like the flowers on my nightstand

my petals will fall off the edge of the blanket, smooth and graceful on the bedroom floor

maybe I'll waste away into the covers,

diving into duvets and curling my toes into the edge of the covers

i just really wanna die

and I want it to be in this bed so it can be pushed down the river like a casket

holding my temperance and my sin in the palm of my hands

as the water drags me and the pillows deep under

deep

deep

under

it's quiet, there

i do not know what i write poetry for
there is something missing in the hollow of my chest
but i can not say why
i don't know how long it's been missing
or if i've always been like this
but i am aware
conscious
awake
and hurting.

Not good enough
Four syllables
Three words
Two seconds
One meaning
Zero pain
Numb
Where have I gone?

There are words in my head
and the words make sentences
and the sentences make paragraphs
and then the paragraphs form stories that
are incoherent and jumbled like aphasia and
I'm drunk with this pain because there are too
many words too many words too many words and

my heart is so thirsty

my mind is so quiet

my hands are so still

he calls me love when he's mad

his sweetheart when he's sad

he calls me a wilting flower in the sun

a fragile broken piece of glass when we're done.


He brings me blossoms in the spring

in the fall, always nothing

in the winter he leaves my toes cold

but my heart is always a bit too bold

and in the morning it reaches out

and is left to wander home a different route.

I lay in bed, lost at night

not knowing if his love for me is right

for when the morning comes and all is light

I never miss him, or his plight.

my soul is poetry.

the inner linings are the stanzas
strong and protecting against the white barrier of a page
or the inevitability of time

it flows like free verse
or runs like rhymes
never stopping, never starting, endless against the hourglass
which is my beating heart

the hollows of my chest are the words I never say out loud
but I spill out on paper like the confessions of a sinner
it is there they are finally allowed eternal rest
and are free from damnation

I am the twists and turns of a sonnet
a side stepped soliloquy
a dead end didactic

I am this
the words i write
the things i feel
the being i am

and i am poetry

Poet: be gentle with yourself
never compare yourself to the coffee house across the street
the one that looks so lonely and wise with it’s brewing tales
and tea leaves
do not forget that you are a magician’s tarot cards, fate
holders and dream menders and plot twisters
poet: be gentle with yourself
you are a small wind hiding from the storm
but trust me your calm will come
remember that you are made of the stars and the universe
and that every atom inside of you is alive just like how
your words are
poet: be gentle with yourself
I know how it feels to hold back from writing
because you depreciate your own self worth
but trust me
the sun shines every day
just to catch a glimpse of you
and the moon cherishes your
fluttering eyelids the way I
cherish you.

you are seventeen and he is younger but so much bigger. you feel like a doll in his palm. you are unaware that his hands between your legs is a contract. He lays you down on your back, and you turn your heard to the TV. Moana is playing.

2. he pulls you to his chest and you whisper, "promise me I won't regret it." he smiles and kisses your forehead. the next day, he tells you he doesn't know if he loves you or not. you regret it.

3. you are almost asleep and his hands keep wandering. you close your eyes tighter. you wish you were dead.

4. he tells you that you don't have to do it if you don't want to, but you know that it's the only way to keep him from leaving. Afterwards, he wipes the tears from your chin and holds you close to his heart, so gentle and soft. you almost feel at home.

5. he leaves. You have to begin picking up the pieces somewhere but you never really find out where to start. a year passes. It has been twelve months of rain but the sun begins to peak out behind its curtain of clouds. you rest.

there is a song inside of my chest it
begs to be born from my naked breast
it comes to me in lullabies and keeps me from rest i find the goddess of earth in my dreams
a quest of solitude that only the soil can give me i feel
unraveled at the spine and
crave the blessing of death not for
the fear of life but merely the romance of the unknown
i speak words of love to all who
cross me i whisper intimacy
to my familiars all those whom are
dear to me are my soulmates
i was made
to love to be crucified
for sharing my body
*** is a gift
my body is communion
my divinity comes at the expense
of knowing myself
the sacred earth whispers to me words of mourning i cry for its
plants
body
and sacristy
and share myself to sacrifice
for the land which built me

it's been thirty seven days
since we last spoke and the
only reason i know is because
that's how many packs of cigarettes
I've forced into my lungs

i drank an entire liquor store out
just to feel your bitter kisses burn
my lips and dehydrate my heart the
way you would rip me apart and leave
me to wither away in the dark night

i've gotten an inhaler just so i could
pump your heartbeat into my chest
to feel alive because this feeling is
so **** ******* suffocating and im
dying im dying imdyingimdying

please send help

please don't leave

please love me



please

I am inevitable
you can’t stop me from
tearing up your life and
destroying your home
I am invisible
it’s like carbon monoxide
a slow gas leak
a silent ******
you cannot stop me from
becoming a part of you
I am indiscreet
I am microscopic
you will probably fall
in love with me
and we will write poetry
and braid flower crowns
and probably **** a lot
and you will love me
and I will love you
I am ethereal
I am vaporous
I am gone

there is no way in hell that im going to tell you about how i'm in love

no way in hell that i'll tell you about that smile

hidden, private, just for me

his fingers, soft yet firm on the dimples of my back

combing through my hair

brushing my neck

there is no way I'll tell you about his silence

strong, assertive, present

or his eyes

deep, dark, daring

but I will tell you this

he is every empty spot in my heart

every broken rib in my chest

every smile on my lips

there is no breath in my bones
Their crevices hollow with water
Their creaks silenced with snow
It sits in my knees
Low
Lost
Lackluster
It hides from the wind
(It forgets it is the wind)

A myocardial infarction, also known as a heart attack is caused by a blockage in one of the coronary arteries

Heartache is caused by ghosts swimming in your lungs
There is no breath left in me
I am
Never whole


There is no breath in my bones

You are the perfect medicine
To my bleeding rib cage
And aching monochrome bones
The lies I hold
Under my skin are too much
For me to carry
Alone

Did you know
That girls are more likely to
Commit suicide by something
Slow
Like a bottle of pills
Or a slash at both wrists
So they can wait in the last minutes
With their last breath
For someone to rescue them

A boy however
Is more brash
Crashes his car into a building
Takes a gun to his head
Jumps off a bridge
Because his anger
Leaves no space for hope

I find it interesting
That I want to die
Yet look both ways while crossing
The street
And still quake in fear at the idea
Of someone breaking in
Is this because I'm secretly
Waiting
(What a boring thing)
To be saved?
Or am I just too stubborn
To die
If not at my own hands

Whatever it is
I know that you are the same

You are a car crash waiting to
Happen
And I am an empty bottle of pills
Orange and cracked on the
Bathroom floor

Dead butterflies on my right arm
Monochrome colored and
Pathetically stained with
Regret and lack of self control
You were so young
With wings as tender as a blooming
Flower and color as bright
As the ocean floor
I didn't mean to crush your
Little wings
But now you can be set free
Cut from this
Aphrodite in chains

not many girls have to fear becoming their mothers

i did not know the breath in my lungs would stop

i guess the funny part is i kind of like the burn

i like the self destruction

the pain and the wounds

i never realized the poison that seeps from my skin would get to me too

you see god had made me pure

but i dipped my hands into the liquor of the devil

and for that i had to endure

six years of pain, twelve more of self infliction

i never realized it was an addiction


but


my lungs are so ******* empty

they inhale the toxins of my past mistakes

the love and passion and trust i dropped in the mud

i inhale purity (not mine of course)

i exhale poison (it stems from my core)

always poison

always poison

i am poison

i have poisoned you

but don't worry

it'll always get to me first

i can't write anymore.
i go fishing for words in a dried up lake
and lose the thoughts at the sight of you.
you.
you envelop even the empty spaces, of course
when i can't write i think of you.
i think it's because I know it will never be as beautiful.

this will be my downfall
the thunder in my head
has struck the trees
and the leaves
fall to the ground
from its quake.

it disrupts every
******* aspect of my
life. my spine
shakes at your power,
my shoulders slump
at your warmth. your
hands have stripped every part of my
identity. you rebuild
me again. I cannot
write because your eyes
don't allow me.
your lips are
my prison and my liberation

your hand around my throat is your claim and my closure
i know you never wanted to posses my and my ***** soul
but truly i am nothing without your tightening grip
just a pet to your words your voice your body
yours.
it is all I am.
I cannot write for I am no long a being.
Just the creation of a God.
just a babydoll who listens
a girl who obeys
a child with closed eyes

is this love
or is this rebirth

I am afraid.
I am afraid that I am just a single drop of rain
and not the entire ocean
I am afraid that I may be a tiny little burnt out star
and not the entire galaxy
I am terrified that i am a single thorn
and not the entire bouquet.
I am ******* frightened by the fact that I will die
and that the world will continue to spin
the waves will continue to crash
the birds will continue to sing.
I am scared that my voice will remain silent.
I am scared that I am nothing.

this is what heartbreak looks like.

you looking at him

him looking at you

me, absent.

I know what love looks like.

this is what heartbreak sounds like.

your promises you would never do this to me

my heart breaking more when you did

this is what heartbreak is.

the smiles you two share when you know he is not free

still caged, still wings flapping,

and me

wings broken.

left behind

to fend for myself

weak and tattered on the floor

I've given a lot up for you in my short life of fifteen years. I've given up blowing out candles and making wishes and sleep over someone who doesn't even give a **** about me. So, when you, someone who is way past my years yet more of a child then I ever will be, came to me like that yesterday, on a day for women and men who deserve to be praised for being loving parents, all sloppy hugs and cold kisses, I couldn't let you get any farther. For too long have you pushed me aside for alcohol and bruised lips and cigarette smiles and I'm sick of being the one who has to die for your smoking breath. I am so **** tired of having to pretend that what we have is still there, when it never existed. Thank you for the years of abuse and hatred and abandonment, mom.

But the funny thing is that I Can Capitalize Every **** Word and yet you will still never understand what you did to me. With a growing tumor and a shrinking heart, I can't stand the thought of forgiveness. And it's okay because I don't need you. Before, I was just the shell of a scared girl but now it's just my daddy and I and we. don't. *******. need. you. Because we are strong, and brave, and we have learned to love ourselves again.

So I am thankful of you, actually. I'm thankful that you showed me who I can be without you, and you showed me that the person who I am now, never wants to change because of a person like you.

Home sweet home
Fifth avenue to the right
Dads home baked cookies and
Pink Floyd

The summer of 2002
My brother let me dance on his
Toes while my mama hummed
And braided flowers into my hair

Home turned sour
And those flowers died
Mama stopped humming
The radio was shut off
My brother moved out
Said he had to get away
But that he'd come back to me

Daddy's home baked cookies
Started coming from the box
And mama moved out
From the red house on
Fifth avenue

My brother visited weekly
But soon only stopped by
Once a month
Bills got high and he only
Celebrated holidays
Before he got away again
He promised he'd come back to me


He didn't.

my
soul is
thirsty for the
dawn of your heartbeats

Some days are hard.
I wake up with weeds growing in my chest,
rooting me to the bed beneath me. They are
chains, constrictions on my breathing and the
butterflies in my stomach, and those moments
remind me that I have never felt more caged
than I do right now.
There are picket fences in my ribs, sporting
chipped paint and broken wood, and I find it
comforting that something is as damaged and
destroyed as I am. I do not cry. I have not cried
for six years and yet every time you look at me,
I feel the tear drops pool in my lungs, drowning
me with romanticized suicide and bleach. You left
me for alcohol and cigarette butts and I think that
is what hurts the most. Every third degree burn on
your arm takes away a part of me, stripping me
of my own ambitions and identity. I do not find comfort
in the fact that this is what you have always wanted.
I sit on a swing that is older than my veins and I wait
for you to come. You do not, and I do not cry.

I am the queen of stutter.
There was a time every creak and crack in my bones resonated between every slur of a word and every pop in my vowels.
I was a young girl with a white picket fence and yet there were still moments when words mixed and broke and-and-and-and
kids thought it was weird.
So I hid the voice with lollipops and suckers because I was
"That kid" and the "Freak" and I started to believe it like I believed my mothers bedtime stories that rested in her cheeks.
I was a broken jar and no matter how many times you tried to put me back together I always broke again and again and again.

There was a time where words came out together,
like a butterfly hatching from a cocoon and instead having feathers. I spoke with a voice of the age of four and before I was five I spoke no more because ****, vowels came out like clicks and grinds and everyone told me they paid no mind but I knew that they hated it liked I hated consonants. And I think the reason I hated it so much was because it reminded me too much of her and it made me feel like I was turning into her and all I could see was her standing over me like a murderer stands over a corpse and for a moment I forgot what it meant to be cradled to a chest, fluttering with a beating heart.



The first time my mother left, It was June.
She gave me a kiss on both cheeks and said she'd be away for awhile but that her love for me was longer than any mile that she would have to cross. I kissed her on both cheeks and it wasn't until she left that I realized that I was the one pushing her out the door. So when my dad came home from work he found an empty house and nothing more, he knew where to find me. I sat out in the pouring rain on a swing set that was older than my veins and waited to be saved to be rescued to be heard to be found to be be be be be be
I, was the queen of stutter.
And I had dropped that off when I moved from the city and I started a new life, carving it out of the trees outside with motivation and a knife. I did not yet understand that life was difficult.
But then my mother did not return and my father got scared because she had been the only one to ever love him the way he needed to be loved. And I did not understand so I started to carve life out of my palms and wrists and every **** kiss and nothing was ever good enough. I was the kid that turned to pill bottles and drugs but it was a metaphors for my dying bones and cracking lips. I breathed air that was blue and told my dad lies that were true and I was lost in a lost world, where being found was something that happened when you were dead and God, I wanted to be found.

So the story continued on and I wrote poetry to encompass my heart and my lungs and I painted over myself, scribbled all the mismatches and righted out all of the wrongs. Life seemed to continue and my dad had been injecting life into his veins and had been living at the doctors and had been tired all the time and had been lonely and sad and had been gone. He promised me a graduation and maybe even my wedding if he was lucky. I took these words with me everywhere I went and trust me if I could marry now I would in a heart beat.

I am fifteen.
My marriage has not yet come but I feel like I have all the time in the world and the doctor is only a place my dad goes to visit now. I can make words come out of my mouth the way they appear in my head and I now know the meaning to carving life into my bones and into the hues of the sunset. I am no longer afraid of every click and grind and twist and churn in my brain because it reminds me that I am alive and breathing and that my veins are filled with blood and that I breathe air like every other person does.
I was the queen of stutter.
Now I am the queen of hope.

I can wash my bedsheets a thousand times and yet this bed is no longer ******* mine

She, with her eyes wide and far searching, and her
palms to the space above her reaches out, and
tastes the bright new world and the blue sky.
It is like sugar in lukewarm water, sweet, and
envious of her ability to breathe in the oxygen
and smell the perennial flowers and feel the wind
across her cheeks. She, who although has lived many
years, is once again taking her first steps, incorrigible
and timid. God, in code places his palms on her back,
and gives a gentle push, helping her along the path she
was destined to take. I, who am that girl at 4 am know now
that He, who unlike any other, is beside me, pushing me to
that path. And the darkness is only a temporary obstacle that
has been teaching my blind eyes to see and my deaf ears to hear.
The lukewarm sugar has now run cold. I think I like it better that way.

blossoming love and blossoming flowers
the nights are sweet, smelling of
lavender and cherry lipgloss
this may just be skinny love
but it’s summer and I want to kiss
under the stars and drown in the
undercurrents of our affection
I want to dance freely at 3 am
with friends in the backyard
playing our mixtape and forgetting
curfews
I want to be held under the mist of a
waterfall ( we can spill all our secrets )
and I want to make this summer last
skinny love only lasts a year
but the summer is all I need

"I'm sad. will you cheer me up?"
"Babe it's your birthday. You're getting really old."
"I bought you a cake."
"But then I ate it."
"I love you."
"I'm sorry I haven't text you for awhile I've been really busy."
"Please forgive me"
"Forgive me please i can't live like this **** im dying over here"
"oh. Sorry."
"I miss you."
"I love you."
" hope ur doing ok"
"I have a date tonight."
"With you and the tv am I right?"
"Get it..cause I'm funny."
"I love you."


"Why did you have to die?"
"WHY ARE YOU DEAD WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME"
"YOU'RE SO SELFISH"
"I NEEDED YOU AND YOU LEFT."
"I needed you."
"And you needed me even more."
"I love you."

to my mother who never cared

i.  Thank you for becoming the woman
    you promised that you would never
    become.
ii. I never got all my stuff back, and
    I'm starting to lose myself in the
    stuffed animals and photographs
iii. i don't need you
    i don't need you
    i don't need you
iv. dad still cries and so do i but
     it's alright you never loved
     either of us anyways.
v.  thanks for forgetting my birthday
     and Christmas
     and that you gave birth to me
vi. i don't need you
     i don't need you
     i don't need you


     I don't need you.

I saw your eyes for the first time in a year

and for once my heart did not stutter

yet I returned home and washed the sheets

merely to rid myself of clutter.

This is heartbreak.

I thought I was over you. You treated me as a remedy, a medicine that did not quite sate your hunger. You went to her. And I thought I was over you.

This is.

this is not what I wanted. I never asked for the nights of sleeplessness, the depressive episodes, the lack of eating. I never asked for this half-assed suicidal ideation. Who would have known that I would be lazy in the face of death too. Coward.

this.

this is what my dad talked to me about. This is what he meant when he said the tears may never stop, the heart may never start pumping again. And I never believed it would happen to me.

this.

this is heartbreak.

This is what heartbreak looks like.

It is the soliloquies you wrote to him at midnight while crying

It is the formality a smile and the absence of warmth

It is the nausea and the ***** because this mornings breakfast just didn't have the heart to stay with you

He didn't either

This is what heartbreak sounds like.

Silence
Breaking
Static

This is what heartbreak feels like.

The burn of your concerned friends eyes into your back

The burn of the shame tinging your cheeks red

This is what heartbreak is.

You
Me
But not us

Never us

i. he was three am coffee
   and an orange pill bottle
   cracked and lifeless on
   the bathroom floor tiles
ii. he was poetry and no
    lies and animal rights
    and current events &
    wow he was beautiful
iii. He Was A Tidal Wave
    That Crashed My Heart
    A Total of Seventeen And
    A Half Times And I Loved
    Him Like I Loved The Sun
iv. number four was myself and
     it had never felt so good to
     smile at the beauty of your
     self because you are the stars
     and the moon and you are you
v.  She was thunder and rain and
      the calm after the storm. She
      tasted like caramel and smelt
      like cigarettes. I thought that
     she would be my last first kiss.
vi. he was the liquid in my lungs
     and the stars in the sky. we
     ******. a lot. and then he
     would kiss me and hold me
     real soft and real tender
     and i was home

i leave behind residue in beds
i am grimy and saturated from dirt
my muddy footsteps follow you into the bathroom and i smudge the mirror with my fingers, crusted and cracked from the heat

i follow the shadow of the sun and trail their streaks of death
it drips down my thighs and stains your carpets
i am vermin i am disease i am death and decay
my stench sullies the walls and my greasy hair sours your stomach
you pinch your nose as i pass by and i cannot find it in me to blame you. i would too.

to think that your first hard grip on my wrist wouldn't be the last

to think that i don't know what love should taste like

to think that your yells were out of care

to think that my hurt felt like home.

my home was hurt because you supplied it

your voice brought me back down to the earth

the bitter taste at the tip of my tongue was a gift from you

your hands a reminder of where exactly I belonged

this body is no longer mine

my knees are empty

my chest hollow

my eyes vacant

i am not me

and I sit here waiting for the words to come,
spring back to life like the flowers that once laid in my rib cage did
and I pray to a God I've never even believed in to just give me back
the numbness that made words spill from me like water does when
cupped gently in your palms. I have become a metaphor of poets
and romanticism and it has stripped me of who I have ever been
willing to become. It has ripped out everything that has ever created me
and has destroyed anything that could ever be.
and I sit here waiting for the words to come
and I sit here and they don't.

Write about the morning you
wake up to the steady
rise
      and
fall
of a lovers chest,
      eyelashes fluttering,
             sweat resting on their collarbones
                             like dew in the early morning.