sigmund freud believed we all carry within ourselves
a suicide impulse, some
strange & counter-evolutionary desire
to return to that moment
of perfect, untainted stillness
before birth.

i don't know if i agree, but
i know enough to know
i want to feel that quiet
instead of the voices
in my head.

you don't need to give me more reasons
to pick myself apart; i never said
i was perfect.  
you don't need to point out
the flaws i already hate myself for.

the truth is this: i have found someone
who makes me feel like me again,
who i will expose myself to,
in uncompromised vulnerability,
& who will love every bit of ugly,
who will make me better.

my lungs do not know how to be lungs,
i am becoming bones again,
the scars on my wrists threatening to arise
as fresh again..

i have never once thought myself good enough
& now he is teaching me how to believe
just that.  everything else is falling
beneath me; it is all a ball & chain
around my ankles,
while your words rail through me,
bullets giving me just one more reason
to bleed again.

these tears are not for you,
i am not for you,
i am trying to be better,
& please, just let me fight
the urge to seek that silence
without giving me another reason
to throw myself
headlong down
the rabbit
hole.

Most people have scars that run in
perfectly
              straight
                           lines
                     but
             mine
        are
hopelessly crooked
because
I hated myself too much
to be that careful

I hacked at the paper-white skin
that was my wrist
and drew
               thin
                      red
                           lines
that didn't seem to know
where they were going
or even where they wanted to go

Today
when I touch them
the pain is still
                        so
                            raw
­                        so
                  real
I can almost feel the tears
rushing down my face
and onto my arms,
mixing with the blood
trying in vain to heal me

When my arms were open
I didn't see blood
I saw
         hurt
                hopelessness
                               ­      fear
                                           insecurity
                               despair
                      doubt
              pain
       hate
anger
The pain is hidden
underneath the layers of skin
that rushed to cover the ones
that I had pierced through
but sometimes
I think
           it
              might
                         still
                                be
                        ­              there

in autumn
less leaves will
fall
from trees to the earth
than the times i will
fall
for you

Last night
I felt your warm breath
Oh my neck
And your body
Close to mine
And it was the best dream I ever had.

Drowning myself in a sea of nostalgia,
Flooding my brain with thoughts of the past,
Waves crash around me as slowly I’m swallowed,
Nothing remains, but the memories last.

I sail upon a turbulent sea
unsure of where I'm going.
The waves crashing all around
the wind above is blowing.
My men, well, they're all hiding,
frightened of the storm.
How tough and brave they did seem!
But how fast men can transform.

So I am alone up here,
left to bring this ship to shore.
I long to end this nightmare job
and to be on land once more.
To feel the grass beneath my feet
and to see the flowers bloom.
To see your face again, my love,
as I enter in the room.

But alas my safety is yet unknown
I am unsure of my fate.
I do not know when or if
I'll walk through the front gate.
If I do not make it back this time,
please wipe away the tears.
You'll hear me whisper soft and low
"I love you so much, my dear".

i will give to you a piece of myself that will attach itself to your heart.  no matter how meticulously you carve with a scalpel, no amount of time spent playing self-surgeon will remove this part of me from your organs & flesh.  it will evade your every attempt to erase me.  you will never erase me.
2. when i said i loved you too, it wasn’t a reflexive gesture said only to complement your whispered ‘i love you.’  i said the words because i couldn’t bear not to.
3. the coffee i bring to you every morning & the goodnight-kisses stamped ceaselessly to your forehead will tell you all the things i cannot say.
4. by some fated or perhaps coincidental quirk of the universe, we became us.  i will clap a hand across your mouth any time you question how or why because it is irrelevant.  
5. i will bend until i break for you.  i will bleed rivers & hurt until i gasp with pain because you are allowed to see me at my ugliest (no pain like this body).
6. there will be bad days & good days.  you will wonder if i am worth the work & i will try desperately to prove you wrong.  i will push & shove & scream, but beneath it all, i will wish i could be selfish enough to ask you not to leave.
7. never will i ever learn how not to love you.

i’m not supposed to try and write to you or contact you or even think of you as often as i do, but i miss you.  i ******* miss you like winter & nighttime smoke fixes & pure unadulterated bliss.  it hurts to care for you as much as i do because we are an impossibility, the insolvable equation with no easy compromise.  you aren’t supposed to think about me either, but i must cross your mind sometimes, if you meant half the things you said.  i just want you to worry about me, to care for me, to wonder about me.  i need to matter, because i’m worthless without someone to pull me from disaster time after time.  i’m  bleeding again & this time it’s deep.  caring for my body has been pushed to the sidelines in favor of oblivion & self-destruction.  the weeks after graduation, i spent them in a ****** blur of mindlessness & self-hatred in the lucid moments that were few & far between.  i wish i told you why i wrote all that poetry, that it was all personal, that i lied when i said i was okay.  i need a friend, a body beside me, anyone to talk to at three in the morning when i’m crying & don’t know why.  this hurts like everything else, but you are a strand of something wishful, because maybe you care more than you said & you want to save me as much as i want to be saved.

there’s a reason for the way my heart quivers
when you speak, when you are silent,
you are here, you are not here.  but your name stills my lips,
courses through my ebbing veins, i feel you
igniting my bones all the same.

i love with the whole of my being: give my all,
give you my everything, with the knowledge
that it might never be enough.
you may realize
i am not worth the work.  i will give you
the potential to ruin me & if you do,
every second will be precious
because this means you will have meant
to me.

what matters is this: you make me feel
like a person.  your smile never ceases
to scrub my soul soft & clean
with light & i want
all of you, your every insignificant
thought, your slightest
expressions, your seething
hurt.  give me
your goriest depths &
i will believe them beautiful.

& if you leave, when
you leave, there will be nothing to
forgive.  i will watch
your lovely, retreating form with
a smile smoldering my lips because
you happened to me,
you mattered,
& this will sometimes be difficult
to recall to memory, but i will not
forget.

you have taught me to be brave,
brazen, unabashed, unafraid.
the wanting you is worth the probability
of losing & failing.  you are worth it.  
i give you myself, i give you
my love.

the future is your fingers threading my hair.
my manic hands clutching at your t-shirt
to desperately hold you closer. your breath
becoming my breath. the deathless
entanglement
of our more-than-selves.

[i dive within the catacombs of my heart
for an answer & emerge with
youyouyou]