I'll **** this up.

I'll say the wrong thing. I'll make the wrong comment. I'll wear the wrong thing. I'll make the wrong silly face at exactly the wrong time.

I get annoying. The quirks aren't so fun when they're really my personality. The weird isn't so cute when it bursts out of the seams of my existence.

I'll inevitably **** you off. It's not that I'll try. It's that the brain to mouth filter needs replaced at best, is absolutely irreparably broken in truth. It's that social cues aren't my forte. It's that I see the world through a lens that it's hard for others to share.

And yet, I'll battle against the self doubt every day. And yet, I have hope that I'm wrong. And yet, I believe I can still be loved.

I wait for the footsteps up the stairs
Heavy, familiar, you'll say your back hurts
As you wrap me in your arms

And the times that you fell short will not matter
After all, we all have growing to do, right?
And I'll take you in my arms

I've waited for you to come around a long time,
Familiar, lover, and we'll say we missed this
As your hands graze freshly shaved legs

We'll both pretend we're not lying to ourselves

Is this another lesson?

How to rip my insecurities open one by one
Dig into the wounds and twist the knife
Examine just how much I squirm under
Scrutiny

I thought this would be healing.

Finally, a cure to a problem I never caused,
The answer to a question I forgot I even asked
The years of searching for a reason nullified
Real

And instead

I’m questioning reality, if I learned anything
At all

It is Friday night and the only ***** getting licked is Loki, the orange tabby at the end of my bed.

I’ve gotten used to the monotony of sleepwalking through life, graveyard shift be ******

Every time I reach for a flicker of something of anything
All I get is burned

So I trudge and ignore the glances and find my chargers and cry in the shower.
So I blister and bruise and bend and break time and time again
Just to be wrong
Just to always be wrong

“It’s Valentine’s Day, that’s why we don’t have school.”

“Nobody actually gives a **** that it’s Valentine’s Day, kid. I love you, but it’s not a real holiday.”

I used to write love letters. Now I don’t write at all.

I've been chasing the feeling of being alive for longer than I can remember being happy

And there are moments, of course, where I glimpse it,
Where the monotony of life doesn't drag me under in its endless depths
But it seems so fleeting lately, that it's hard to remember.

And I know, I know, I put all of this energy in seeking it in all the wrong places. I should probably got get on a ******* roller coaster or something,
Instead of riding...
This ******* downhill battle

But the funny thing is, I do love and value myself. It's not that I don't. It's not that I don't know my own worth.

It's just that the two sides of me are a double edged sword. And I'm always ******* myself up in the end,
It's just too sharp.

I say too much, I try too hard. I'm a ******* mess. And I probably always will be. I don't know how to put the mask back on anymore.

I didn't realize that it would hurt to see your name.
Why do I always open my stupid ******* mouth?

I told you before, I'd shut it all down
Because it's better to not feel anything at all
Than constantly be hurt.

I selfishly hope that when you look up and see how not okay I really am,
while I'm pretending to be for your sake,
It rips your heart apart.

Sleep would be a literal dream
But I play it over and over and over again
Sitting in the dark, staring at the ugly pattern stamped into the ceiling
It just doesn't make sense.

How can you tell me to take up space,
But get frustrated when my feelings get
Too big, too chaotic?
I guess I'll always be too much.

I grew so big, I guess I'm the one that somehow created
This canyon between us
Where there was once mere centimeters.

I thought I knew who I was,
But that's just something I tell myself
When I need to feel better I guess
Because I've never known who I am
Without loving someone else.

So the minutes tick on, and I'm not sure whether or not to text you.
So the sun goes down, and minutes turn to hours turn to days.
And I blink again, again. Beg sleep to find me.
Call out for the sandman.
Or any man, I guess.
It doesn't seem I know how to choose.

I was never allowed to be damsel in distress.
Not allowed to be swallowed by terror and misery.

If I wanted something done, if I wanted to break out of the dungeon, if I wanted to fight for my life,

I had to do it myself.

For a decade, I swung wildly, beheading friend and foe both, screaming through the noise in my head and the blood in my mouth.

And then he came. And then he saw. The bodies, the mess, the blood and tears.

And he put his hand on the scabbard, disarming. He puts arms around me, disarming. He whispers away the demons, disarming.

I was never allowed to be damsel

Until a knight appeared.

******* if it doesn't hurt to be used again
Washed up and bleeding and wildly confused again

Why do I let myself stab my own heart?

And **** if the smoke isn't clearing the room, my head or my heart or my impending doom

Why can't I stop myself falling apart?

Just, you know,
How desperately I yearn for human connection
Or how impossible I think I am to love
Or how I find the best in absolutely everyone
Or how I'm out to heal every broken person I've ever touched

Or maybe how hands look like necklaces in just the right setting
Or how I yearn for someone to just take my breath away
Literally, figuratively, all of the above
How I wish to be claimed, marked

Or how the wild side of me tames in the mundane
And I loved being a wife, I just had a husband that never loved me
That I would lay the world open for the right man, that I would create a thousand universes and souls for the right man...

But no. We keep those things to ourselves.

You ooze that good boy persona just a little too well,
And people whisper about how I am defiling you
But the pressure of your hand at the small of my back
Is enough to remind me that I really don't care.

And maybe I don't know if this will last two weeks
Two months
Or two years
Or maybe two lifetimes

The most selfish part of me hopes I never have to find out

And I'm still trying to keep ahold of my feelings,
          I'm better in writing, anyway
And just when I think I'm going to squelch it
          I'm better at writing, anyway
You stretch and just a strip of your skin shows,
Leaving me lost in the thought of your hips against mine, your lips against mine

          God, I'm awful at goodbyes

And you wonder why you're a distraction

I miss my dog.

I definitely don't miss you. Or your ******* or your lies.

I miss the stability of keeping my life together in a familiar hell.

I definitely don't miss you, or the Tinder account you tried to lie about, or the friends you let disrespect me to my face in front of our son.

I miss knowing exactly what my day was going to be, even in monotony.

I don't miss you, or being screamed at, or being told I'm not desirable because I wear yoga pants to clean the house.

I miss having more free time.

I don't miss you, or being bullied for my hair color, or sleeping alone in a bedroom meant for two while you found solace in someone else's bed.

I miss what you could have been, but I don't miss you.

How strange, bitten lips between old friends
A juxtaposition from the reality that was

How intriguing, something familiar
Yet entirely different from what we could ever be

How worrying, the truth of it
The people we know will never see this coming from us

How delightful, the strange newness here
I only hope that this doesn't end with us lost at sea

When I walk with Mary, **** doesn't seem as bad
She doesn't judge me harshly, in fact she makes me laugh
And yeah, she's a little harsh around the edges,
not everyone's particular "Cup of tea"
But none of that **** matters when it's just Mary and Me.

A *** drunken man
A Bed full of tangled sheets
I may fall again

No one ever sees when my soul is cutting its own tether to this earth.

No one ever notices when my eyes fixate far into the abyss.

No one ever holds me when I'm ripping myself apart to shreds.

But everyone will show up at my funeral telling everyone how they never knew I felt that way.

All anyone had to do was open their eyes.

Humans weren't meant to be alone
I know this in the empty pit of my soul,
I know it in the desperate ache in my chest
The burning in my eyes as I stare into the ever after

I fixate on it, so much, the empty darkness,
the last gasp of breath with no comfort,
the burning in my throat as I struggle to breathe
My one true fear is drowning in my own lungs.

But this, reaching for someone who isn't there,
who may never be there
This terrifying yearning to connect,
to feel like I won't ever ******* connect.
This is my damnation.

I want so much, much more than I deserve

I want your time, and your energy. More than you're willing to invest.

I want your opinions and your flirtations and your humor and your giggles and silly noises, not that I am even worthy.

You see, I want. I covet. I wish. If I could, I'd take without a second thought. But I cannot be that person, I am not that person.

So I want. And yet, that is still a sin.

So I burn, I writhe, I want, I need

my heart beats so fast whenever you're near me, my body temperature rises, my face flushes... of course I'll go to hell for this

I want to tell you how much I want you. But fear leaves the words ash in my mouth.

Forever seeking a feeling of acceptance I've only gotten skin to skin

A person can only take so much damage, and when the lights turn on they turn away

I am not a haunted house

But the draft of emptiness looms here, and acceptance is hard to find

The powers that be will keep me locked in, love was always my biggest sin

I know that you are not much for fate, or illogical conclusions or soulmates or any of that silly metaphysical stuff

And you know I’m not much for luck, or chance, or optimism or breaking legs or any of that silly superstitious stuff

But maybe that stuff is just the same stuff
And our things are just the same things
And we were a thing
That was meant to be

And maybe I’m crazy, that’s probably true
But only for you love, only for you

Never me, questioning if the giving up is worth it
                             I **** well know I'm worth it

Never me, questioning if the fire really is as hot as I think
                             I can't and won't be burned again

Never me, questioning if this is really what I'm meant to be doing
                             Flee to the woods, girl, run yelling

Never me, pretending my feelings are erasable and mundane
                             Scream, let it out, you know you want to

Never me, logic and feeling arguing past the point of insanity
                             You were meant for bigger things, girl

Never me, trying to fuse all my feelings into a cohesive thought.

My body is not a burial ground for
someone else's wasted potential
and I really wish men would stop
assuming that it is.

I find myself biting down on the words so hard every time we say goodbye

I try not to let them escape,
I fear letting them escape…

why do I fear letting them escape?

Is it the worry that the mirror is cracked? That I won’t hear what I want to hear back?


And yet the space that fills the emptiness, where I open and close my mouth like a fish,

Feels like enough to fill canyons,
Craters…

I could fill the **** ocean with the words that express how my heart beats just for you


I just want to stop being so scared
That you don’t love me back.

I hate the anxiety.

I hate the worry that no matter what, I’ll never be understood for who I am.

I hate the comparison.

I hate when people tell me to look at where I’ve been, and how much better off I am now.

I hate the feelings.

How can I tell you that it’s like I was being hanged and I was on fire, and maybe the fire is out but I’m still choking?

I hate the feelings.

“But you’re not on fire anymore,” you say, ignoring me clutching at my neck and my flailing legs, “so it’s a better situation than before, right?”