I am tornado
Hurricane
Cyclone
Spiraling out of control

I never stopped to consider the collateral damage.

I am honestly terrified to start over with someone new

I live a life of leaving.
Half my **** is packed into my car, and to have the mindset I could leave with it all...
I live a life of unsettled, restless passion
A life full of wanting things I can't have
A life full of smiling at strangers, buying coffee for the chick that had a bad day, a life full of filling the world with just a little happiness.
I live a life full of fixing. I fix things. I fix everything. I fall apart myself, but the smiles keep me going.

I want to pack it all up again. I want to leave home again. I want to smile at all new strangers in all new cities and buy cups of coffee for all new people having bad days.

And I want to fix you.

I refuse to apologize for the things I've written.
I refuse to apologize for telling truths amongst the cacophony in rhymes, or rhythms, or word *****.
I refuse to not own this brain, to regret my depression, to swallow my anxiety with a pill.
I will not lie, as my family expands and my brain reconforms to standards I forgot, it gets harder to dig up the person that bled for these words.
She and I aren't the same anymore, but we belong to the same body.
So I call on her when I need her, let myself really feel everything, my alter ego: the poet.
As my boyfriend's family asks me what I do for fun, I try not to lie. To say that I pour words from my soul is distasteful. So I joke "I'm a poet of sorts, a writer."
And they look at me with frightened eyes, so I do not tell them this is what I want to do for a living.
I do not tell them about the razor blades beneath my bed at age 16, or the ****** assault at 20.
I do not tell them inside this head is a mess that is desperately hiding.
But I do not disown her. My mess. My poet heart.

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.

After him, I swore I'd never fall in love again. Swore it in contract and oath to God and in the eyes of the state of Ohio. After him, I promised I'd never love another boy.
I never meant to lie, to be so madly in love with someone else that it consumes my entire day. To be needed so much that my marriage might be shoved to the back burner. I never meant to be so deeply mad about someone else, to put their needs before my own; to care more about them then I care about my own life.
I never meant to love so deeply this brown eyed boy, this young soul, newly loveable. This boy with the same eyes as his father, as my husband. This boy that will someday call me mom.

Hear me out,
5 years will pass quickly and slowly.
A jumble of seconds, slow and steady to create another 525,600 minutes to close out this last chapter.

Growth comes and goes in waves, realization its steady companion. We are still so ******* young.

Perhaps Peter Pan had it right. I do not want to be grown yet, stuck between birth and death; I watch time tumble treacherously through my fingers like quicksand, no where to go but down.

Yet I can pick you up like a favorite book. I've seen all the creases and fades and lines and letters before, but it's been 5 long years and there's something exciting about you still.

If this steady crawl to the end is it for all of us, perhaps I'll meet you in the next life. Maybe next time, we can get it right.

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

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.

I probably should have healed
The part of me that is wild
Before I touched you.

The problem is, I believe that love can exist
In duality
To who we are as people.

I'll never send you this ******* poem, for instance,
But I wish you'd read it all the same.

I never meant to hurt anyone on my constant downward spiral, least of all you.
Least of all, you.

Maybe someday it can be different.
Probably not, I'm really good at ruining **** for myself.
But maybe.

Let's talk about consent for a minute
                    When I said no
                        I meant no

I did not mean
               Give me a few more drinks
                                  Or
                    Wait until I'm drunk

And I definitely did not mean
                                Yes

Let's talk about this for a minute
              Drunk does not mean yes
                   Only yes means yes
                            I said no

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 am nothing.
Full of empty hope, stolen kisses, unfulfilled dreams
Full of starlight and sunshine
But really, full of last night's ***** and wasted promise.
I am nothing. Pouring tears, wastoid of God's creation
Covered in bruises and scars and tattoos and sweat and contempt from onlookers
I am nothing. Nothingness in its truest form, the lack of soul, the lack of feeling.
Call me Robot.
Call me Wasteling
Call me Loser
Call me Ugly.
Just ******* call me.
For I am nothing,
        Without you.

Scars
     Reminders not of my suffering
     But of my survival

I've only ever been good at ******* **** up for myself

Who needs a faux pas when your mouth opens and you should bury your head in the sand?

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

I hate to be that girl
But I'd really like for someone to just
Actually pick me for once.

It's waiting on the sidelines of every ******* dance, praying that someone would see the brilliance of my soul,
Under this ******* skin suit
Forever and ever

Repeat, replay, again and again
I just hope that the stars or the moon or whatever Gods I believe in today will just,
******* have faith in me,
Like I try to have faith in them.

If the lesson is that I need to be comfortable with being alone,
Then I'm unwilling to be the student. I'm unchanging and unwavering.
I just want to be ******* loved,
The way I ******* deserve by someone that I actually want to be loved by.
It's really not that much to ask

You, my muse, my love
My beating heart won't still now
Give me one last chance

This place, with its cold white walls and it's sterile gray speckled floors.
The nurses take my mouth that cusses far too often as a sign I'm on some kind of drugs, I guess. When I answer the question about what kind of medicine I take they look at me with questions in their eyes when I say "none."
I know that the bruises on my body look bad. I'm malnourished, okay. I don't have time to eat. Need more potassium. I don't shoot up ****** or snort pills. I just take ibuprofen like a normal person.
My head is spinning. But not like normal. Like it's taking me twenty minutes to write this ******* poem. I feel like passing out.
And the doctor will see you now, at the cost of 1,000 dollars to sit in this dumb bed.
I hate our healthcare system.
Why do hospitals feel so much like your trapped in their walls? And so little like they're actually out to help you.

No, no
Shh honey, it’s alright
I don’t wanna fight, don’t wanna do
Anything
But hold you and make all the scaries disappear

Yes, it’s fine
I know what it’s like to live inside
Your own head
Fighting
Tornados of chaos peeling at your
Sanity

Shh,
the world is big and we are small
But there is nothing to do
But hold each other
And face it

We went our separate ways half a year ago now, and it's funny that today my brain stopped on you.
I'm wondering how your mom is, how your brother is. I'm wondering if the alcohol has finally swept away the last good bits of you with its bitter bite and all of the things I saw in you have drowned in the wretched agony of the depression you refused help for.
I would say that I have prayed for you, but I think God even knows that's wasted on both of us. That's a lie anyway. I didn't pray. I stopped and thought of you twice until today.
I just wish I could have had the apathy you desired, that maybe you could have basked in it for long enough to feel better. I wish that I hadn't started needing you like I did, that your voice didn't bring justification to my long, lonely days.
I wish that the insane amount of love that I had for you could have glued the parts of you that were worth fixing back together, could have dug the alcoholic a new grave and brought back who you were before the bottled ***** betrayed you.
Betrayal is what you're into, I guess. I see it now a little more clearly than I did then.
Just know, I don't wish you poorly when I say I  wish you the best.

The truth just is:

Happy people make **** poor poets.

I miss my parents more than I thought I would at 30.

That's not to say I forgive them, or want to speak to them, or want to actually see them.

Maybe I don't miss my parents, but I miss the thought of having parents at all. The safety and idealism of being able to fall back into someone's loving arms.

Except, what I experienced wasn't love at all..  wasn't familial bonds, wasn't safety, wasn't security, wasn't the basic needs of my childhood being fulfilled...

I often joke I was raised by a wolf pack. But only if that wolf pack was a lone wolf, myself, by myself always as leader of a pack.

I still hoard canned goods like the apocalypse might happen, like I might not have money, like I might have to throw a couple things in a pan and make it edible for three kids

I miss my parents, or what should have been parents but was instead a cold dark cave with nothing but the growls of hungry bellies.

I miss the wolves, oh wait, my parents, oh wait, when I look in the mirror I see her cheekbones and his eyebrows and I can't help but want to push my fist right through the glass.

The wolves, I mean black sheep, I mean parents that begot me always haunt my reflection, always come through in the worst ways as I reflect on my life, how do you reflect on this and feel gratitude?

I miss my parents, or the idea of having parents, I guess.

Hearts have brain cells. They know. They warn you when **** is about to hit the fan.

That sinking feeling in your chest? That's intuition babe. It always has been.

But when that sinking feeling feels so much like that flying, falling feeling, it's hard to unravel which is really which.

So I'm done. I'm done. I give up. I can't trust myself, can't trust a man, can't trust the words that someone says, can't unravel the "I love you" from the "I don't know what I want."

I am chambers fully loaded, blood pumping, always ready. So willing. Send me into war for you, I'll come back a victor.

Send me away?

They'll write back home about my efforts and valiant attempts, but I will be nothing more than a story someone tells someday, disintegrated bones, sticks and stones, she who didn't need love anyway, wanted it so badly, didn't need it... But only ever got herself.

One of my co-workers has scars on her wrists, covered by tattoos that do no good to hide them.
Not if you know what to look for.
I know what to look for.
I wonder her past, the ghosts hiding under the beautiful face, the blonde hair with the pink strips, the smile.
I wonder if she had an abusive upbringing like I did. If, as a teenager, she hid against her door bringing a razor blade to ****** skin until the ghosts bled out.
I know what that's like.
I would never glorify selfharm, never wish upon anyone the hell of feeling the need to release your mental pain in a physical manifestation.
But the relief it gives me to know that I am not the only one hiding scars under tattooed skin and long pants...
The relief is enough to make me hug her at night.
Tell her I'm glad that I work with her.
She is 36, 15 years older than me.
But our souls seek each other out, the broken souls know other broken souls so well.
I am glad she survived her demons.
I'm glad I'm surviving mine.

Once upon a time, there was a man who wished to be an ice sculptor. He took a block of ice and a chisel and got straight to work.
He sculpted a woman, as beautiful as any other. He sculpted her to be his perfect complement, the woman he wished was real. He sculpted her with a smile and open arms, with kind eyes and a perfect body.
After he was finished, she was absolutely lovely, and absolutely everything that he had ever wanted his ice sculpture to be.
But then he went on to sculpt other things, and she started to become a further and further thought, distanced from his mind as his other projects became more important.
One day, he realized he'd forgotten all about his first piece of work. She'd started to crack and melt in places, but she was still almost perfect.
Instead of fixing her, the sculptor broke her in pieces with his chisel so he didn't have to worry about fixing her.

I'm the safe option, it's why you want me.
Because I'm the option you don't have to invest in, or change for,
The option that's easy because it's the one that can't be real.

You want me because I cannot leash you, I cannot go through your phone, I cannot tell you what you should or should not do. I can only hold midnight vigil and revelry for the darkest parts of your soul.

You want me because you always have, maybe a little, impression on a different version of you, 23 was a little easier.

But none of this will ever be all of it. None of it will ever encompass the entire truth. None of it stops the pull that never made sense anyway.

But it doesn't matter. We both know 400 miles is a gap we won't bridge. We both know at the end of the night, we're still going to be lonely.

But if it helps you sleep, the knowledge I'd burn it down for a chance to fill myself up with you? Take it, take me and empty yourself into me.

Don't dwell so hard, dear one.
I won't actually off myself if you disappear.
It is what it is.
I'm just a ****** being in need of release
Don't let me ruin you

Four Marines lost their lives to what is being called domestic terrorism.
Some sicko with a gun shoots these guys. One of the dead is just 19 years old.
I did not cry because I was sad that four American men lost their lives to violence.
I cried because for the first time, I'm so glad that you're in Japan, so glad that you're so far away.
I'm so glad you're alive.

The tendrils creep up slowly
Icy cold wraps up smooth thighs first
Sinking into the pit of my stomach
The dregs of anxiety unwavering

"You'll always be alone."

Don't I know it? I tell myself,
Fighting off the fear again and again
The clutching cold at my throat
Vines of breathlessness encroaching
On my ability to live
This ******* rock on my chest has to let up

"You'll never be good enough."

I know that too, that's why
I continue to fight, continue to learn
Continue to make mistakes and repeat
Them just in case.

I ******* know. I know my faults. I know my hangups. I know.

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

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 can't sleep anymore
      If only everything
               was the same.

You know what you should do? You should bite the bullet

And send me that text.

And depending on the honest answer to the question "are you seeing anyone seriously?"

I might spin the chamber

And send nudes.

I inhale poison on a daily basis
The taste never quite dissipates, always reaching for more even when I've had my fill
Expenses are no worry for me, I can make do on little, make do with less
Do more for me
I am needy, I need you
****, do I need you
Now more than ever, inhale, exhale
It's as natural as breathing
This intoxicating *******
What is love but another addiction
Another high amongst the lows

I wonder what is truly worse for me
Cigarettes, or you

In between drags from a cigarette I can barely taste around the metallic punch of anger, I glare at you.
This fight, that fight, words we don't really mean thrown into the pile with other words like "blame," and "fault" and "whatever." Repetitive jabs meant to engulf and inflame sore scorch marks from past spats.
Between me and you is this smoke, fanned across my line of sight in a way that almost blurs you. Sometimes I wish I could blur you, sand down your harsh edges and pull you back into this calm reality in which I live.
But drag after drag, night after night, the same old fights and the same old cigarettes,
I guess it's the only reality I've ever known.

Time is the thing that ruins us all, I think.

We hold too much faith on a timeline. "You can't text a boy until after 3 days," "don't have *** with someone you just met," "you barely know each other, don't get too close."

But time has never stopped to look around and cease what its doing so I could collect my ****, why should I wait for time to collect his?

We all live until we die, but with a false timeline narrative in place, keeping up with Mr. Jones and his wife, watching my friends have more babies around me, are we really living if we're in a constant battle that resets every 24 hours?

525,600 minutes and I want to spend them all crushing and rushing and running towards my goals, towards my dreams, towards my love.

"You don't love him, you barely know him, you haven't spent enough time together."

Time is just an illusion of your making, a figment of our shared consciousness. And I have always been a little off beat, a little out of sync.

Move in. Share the bed. The smell of coffee in the morning to wake. The sound of footsteps to the shower.

I'm not giving away any of my minutes with you.

Is "I love you"
      Not enough
          To make you stay?

I am lovable yet crazy
     The stigma there is overwhelming.
          Like, you have to pardon her for her panic attacks, she's still lovable underneath this
          Like, she's worth it I swear, but the nightmares that keep her up at night have left circles under her eyes.
          Like, she might be a little rough around the edges but she's cool for the most part.

I am not crazy.

I am not asking you to heal me, darling
I need to do that myself

But if you'll wait patiently while I do, I'll help heal you too

We are a collection of our own experiences. A destruction of our own making, we undo ourselves with what we've learned, unlove ourselves with what we've learned.

I have looked in the mirror to a stranger too many times for my liking. The girl that I became mirrored back in agony to the girl she wanted to be. She wanted to be a poet, she wanted to be a portrait. She wanted to be stronger.

My experiences have become me. But I don't want to be defined by broken hearted and tormented by my dreams. I don't want to be defined by the dark circles under my eyes, the heart beat in my ears. I wanted to be stronger.

I have looked in the mirror too many times and seen stranger, seen liar, seen a girl who kept too much bottled up and my demons creep behind me like the horror movies I'm so akin to watching. They wave hello like they belong and I have to break my stare.

The poet in me says this is another experience, another lifeline, another tether to the earth that I love so much. An earth that I love so much that it broke me.

The poet in me says this experience will make me stronger.

I genuinely didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but don't disrespect me or degrade me and think there are no repercussions to your ego or livelihood,
That is not the way this goes.

You may not have realized, but though I go through Demon phases, I am a living, breathing Goddess that you will either worship or fear.
Whichever seems more to your liking.