You know
I have come to realize that
The people who care
Are easily picked out from
The people that don't.

Maybe the people that don't
Are lying to themselves
And tell themselves they do care
But in reality they don't.

I can tell.
Because when I tell someone

I write poetry.
It's an emotional release for me.
I post the poems on a website.

The people who care
Will actually go and read
My poems.

That's how I know.
I know someone cares.

You are my platonic love,
My long-lost other half.
But not in the way that
First comes to mind.
You are my soulmate
My twin, my confidant,
I could spend
The rest
Of my life
With you.

But not in that way.

Toss me into the ocean (my boat already capsized, then turtled. ****, what a summer.)

Aim a gun at my head (once, there was a guy who robbed some store with an unidentified weapon, and he lived on our street, and hid in my yard, and men with guns were everywhere looking for him.)

Run your knife down my skin (I'm a recovering cutter.)

Take the people I love away from me ( SIX MONTHS OLD AND HE'S DEAD)

Break a promise (he never came back; he never visited)

Drug me (they tossed pills at me to make me numb, make me happy, keep me sane)

Cram me into the confines of your basement (I layed perfectly still for about an hour to see if my brain was o.k.)

Bury me alive (when I was little my mom, and my brother, and me would horse around and I would end up under too many blankets and pillows and I couldn't breathe)

**** me (I almost did it myself.)

Do your worst- I've done mine.

r.c.

Her hair was like a sunset,
Dark red sand that faded
into the golden silk of sunlight.
The wind passed her cheek bones
to the nape of her neck,
touching blush skin through her
blouse.
Her eyes were hazel with specks of
sunflowers as she walked through
the night.
And like the night she walked,
With love at her side and wrath in her hands.
Her lips were smoke-- a cigar with
flames of pure madness.
A madness that comes then dances
around you in a wild blaze of
anthropometry.
Testing your empty soul and filling you
with hope,
Then dousing your feet with charcoal.
You begin to walk with her,
leaving your mark on the land.
Your charcoal feet.
Her hands of wrath.
Your empty soul,
and her sunflower eyes.

I'm scared. I'm scared of being in a relationship.
Just one word that shakes my knees
And brings tears to my eyes.
I'm scared of a relationship.
And who could blame me?
After what I consider a relationship,
No one would want to even spit the word.

I'm scared of being tied down.
Of giving everything up for Someone
Who can take what they want and leave.

I'm scared of being Numb.
Of falling so deep into depression
That nothing but sweet pain
Draws me out of the Abyss.
All of this
because of a relationship.

I promised myself I'd never let someone
Affect me like that Again.
To let him scratch, burn, cut
Deep enough to leave scars.
To give everything
And to do so freely upon the will of a
Boy.
So destructive in his own thoughts
That even I could see him fraying at the edges.

To let someone hurt me in their own Game.
To fall so deep in love that you
Can't see what's going on all around You
dying at the hands of someone you love.
yet no one knows.
Not even him.

For he is too stricken with a somber, anger, and his own demons
To notice what he does to you.
Excuses upon excuses you make for him
Until the day it all goes up in flames and you thought
It couldn't be worse.
Than this.

Since then I've just been floating.
Recovering.
Refilling every crevice of my heart with the glue of a new life
In the hopes that with the starting of every day it will hold,
Being scared still has never left me.

Please understand why I'm scared.