I love not gently,
subtle my heart is not.
Aggressive
Unwielding
a force,
but not a storm.
[it does not pass]
Spring, declining to wither,
as winter settles in our bones.
Vintage in nature,
but too fragile to be traded
between hearts & possibility.

I've been thinking,
about the rising up, call to arms, out of the ashes way,
in which living is supposed to go.
The battlefield,
on which we are meant to leave our hearts and say we won the war.
Strength is always seen in the conquering, the moving on, the getting over.
We've given no regard for the staying, the breathing, the choosing.
Things that are not accompanied by charismatic victory.

I would sever Every. Last. Inch.
of the 100,000 miles worth of veins
coursing through my body.
If I dared to ask the same,
you wouldn't even pick up the knife.

I've been spending time,
in the space between what you say and how you feel.
Dusting for prints left behind by thoughts you'd never share.
Chasing down secrets in hopes of getting a confession.

From your reckless heart.

This body and I, we don't get along.
I look back at old pictures, and remember how I felt.
Body turned, chin down, stomach in.
Hoping, in those brief moments between the flash and capture,
that I would be frozen in time as a smaller version of myself.

I'm perfectly ordinary.
And perhaps that needs to be all right.

I could write sonnets about the way my heart feels,
when the earth comes alive again.
It smells like hope.
It feels like laughter.
My soul sings songs I thought it had long forgotten.

Put on your armor,
Slip into your high heeled shoes.
Wear them with everything.
Wear them as long as you need them.
Wear them to feel safe.
Wear them to feel powerful.
Wear them to feel important.
And go about the business of living.
Figure out who you are.
Figure out what's important.
Figure out how you're going to put your "weird" to use.
Don't build any walls to high.
Don't try to get out with your heart intact.
When something hurts you, let it hurt.
And after all of that is done.
I hope you no longer need that armor.
I hope you can look yourself in the eye.
I hope you find a way to help the next "weird" girl in line.

I would reach into my chest
And wrestle my heart back into rhythm
Because only beating hearts can take a beating,
And maybe you don’t know it
But if making me bleed, leaves you wanting more
Then each time you disappoint me
I’ll keep a little life in my veins
So I can be resuscitated.

I’m five years old,
Sitting alone at my aunt’s kitchen table with a bucket of crayons
Slowly turning an elephant lime green
Because my best friend doesn’t want to play with me.
I don’t know the word rejection,
But now I know the feeling.

Fast forward three years,
It’s my birthday.                                                        ­                                  
I can’t wait to go swimming and eat too many popsicles,
But my mom pulls me aside before the party.
To make sure I know,
That I’m too much person for an eight-year-old body,
To be liked, I need to be less.
And that’s how I found out, a mother’s love can be wrong.

At fourteen,
My sister almost killed herself.
And every day  after that I called her,
As if my voice could uncurl her finger from the trigger of a gun.
Or if I cared enough,
I could put the blood from a hundred cuts back in her veins.
She’s still alive, but my belief that love saves died.

Seventeen-year-old me,
She mistook insecurity for depth.
And thought the smoke from our Black & Mild’s mingling together Was a metaphor for love.

After nineteen years, I talked myself out of love
And into the idea of men who looked at me in pieces.
I still can’t see myself as whole.

At 21,
I learned the difference between wanting someone and wanting Him.
He drew me a blueprint of his flaws,
And I saw a map of how to fix him...

I’m still 21,
And I listen to heartbreak songs.
They don’t sound like I thought they would,
Because I still don’t know how I feel about that one.