I hate phrases like, "bruise like a peach."
Implying that you have to be weak to feel pain.
I look at you, know that you're hurting
and think that out of all the fruit in a basket,
you are very much an apple.

I never believed in ghosts
until you lingered inside me.

I thought I knew how it felt to be an empty tank.
It's hard coming to terms that that was just the low fuel light.

I have always sympathized with the wrong people,
feeling worse for a killer than I do his victims.
It explains why I’m still able to love you and not myself.

It struck a chord in me to say the least.
Your voice filled with the hurt and pain
that I experience most nights alone in my bed.
Your eyes allowing me to peak into your window
and see underneath the layers of self-confidence
where I’d find the same marks of doubt.
I should have known we were one in the same
the day you told me I was pretty
because you saw the sadness in my arms.
But instead, I dug deeper into myself
searching for love that would never arrive
and in people who wouldn’t think twice
of sailing me out to sea.
I needed someone like you who understood
how my scalding showers shed the skin
I could no longer bear to be in
and how no matter how loud I sang
the suicidal thoughts wouldn’t go away.
I never realized I needed you,
but ******* did you need me.
You viewed me as your sunshine
when I only saw myself as shade.
I’m sorry that my words are coming to you so late.
How could I have been so blind
when you could see right through me?

“How would you feel if I killed myself?”
Well,
do you ever think that butterflies
floating from flower to flower
wonder “what’s my purpose?”
Because I never thought something so beautiful
could question its existence.

faintly I hear the pitter patter of water dripping from a leaky faucet
the unpredictable pattern that grabs my attention each time
much like the minute remnants  of you left in my chest.
blindly I fumble in and out of infatuations that have nothing
and everything to do with you.
your words seem etched into my skin, burning from a simple touch
cowardly as you are, your impact haunts my hollow heart.
speechlessness devours me as I reflect on how
something as dastardly as you can be missed.

You are what no one sees,
The secret that you get down on your knees.
“This is unfair,”
I declare, with emotions flared.
He pulls you from us
As you pull him from her.
Unity is broken
When the sheets are left soakin’.
You criticize the starlets that do the same,
But have you no shame?
And you wonder why I feel this way.
I have to ask, “when did this become okay?”
No words can describe this pain.
These feelings drive me insane.
To know where he kissed
Is something I haven’t missed.
What you’ve done is something I can’t condone,
I’m just wondering when this house will become a home.
Family can’t be replaced,
But disappears when he makes your heart race.
You can’t see what I’m trying to say
Due to the lack of attention you pay.
I know your secret,
And I don’t know how much longer I can keep it.

A dictionary tries to tell me that “drowning” is defined as asphyxiation by water,
but when I picture a mother submerging her child’s head,
I know that there is more to it than that.
Drowning doesn’t just happen in pools and bathtubs and lakes and oceans.
It’s apparent in my grades, my weight, my eyes, my sleeping patterns.
I am suffocating under my own mind,
choked by the idea of when I’ll be worth something
or if I’ll ever be worth anything at all.
I don’t need to hold my breath to feel that burning sensation in my lungs.
It happens when I look in the mirror
or close my eyes for the night.
“What is wrong with me?”
“Why am I not beautiful?”
and “Who is ever going to ******* love me?”
I am drowning, though there is no water.