I'm sad like taking six sleeping pills instead of one in an attempt to escape and sleep for a little
sad like looking into a cereal bowl and
crying, crying, crying
because I can only see reasons I shouldn't eat
it's creeping up on me in the night, this sickness
and I'm afraid to even touch you because what if you start to see the world in shades of gray
what if you stop seeing the blue of the sky and only see clouds even when the sun has been shining for a week straight
or what if this exhaustion that never leaves me walks into your body
and rests on your bones
keeps you up at night until you can feel its fingers wrapping around your wrist and dragging you down
crunching the bones in your arm and whispering,
“you are worthless. you are worthless. you are worthless.”
what if you wake up one morning and look in the mirror and your forehead is branded with all the reasons you don't deserve to be alive?
I'm so scared that's going to happen to you.
please don't touch me I am rotting inside and I am so afraid that if your fingertips sweep the hair off my face or if you press a kiss to my nose
then you will be buried along with me where nothing grows anymore

i listen to my parents argue about what made me break this time
debate whether it was the way I started counting calories again or the way even when it's bright outside I don't feel warm
but I can't tell them that even when I plaster a smile on my face
it's only covering up the hole in the wall
I kiss goodnight with my knuckles.
when the tar in my heart seeps into my stomach
and my mind
poisoning my thoughts

but it doesn't matter
can't even make myself care that my parents think I'm more likely to smoke a blunt than drench myself in gasoline and light a match
my own father pays more attention to whether or not my tongue is stained with wine
than the crimson stains on my sheets

I've been lying,
I'm not any better.
i apply makeup in my mirror and I am reminded of the way
I often drown flowers in water after they have already died of thirst
trying to make up for the holes in my smile with pink lipstick and blush
i keep acting like the color in my ******* face is natural but the only time i ever lift my lips in anything other
than a grimace is when
cannabis seeps through my lungs and takes the weight off my shoulders

and i can drape scars on my body like tattoos as often as I like
drown the butterflies in my stomach with *****
knock back pills that eat away at my stomach lining and balance in my mind
throw a smirk in god's direction and act like it's all a ******* joke
taunt him like starving myself isn't some attempt to ruin my body like
depression ruined my mind
maybe once the bags under my eyes match the holes in my eyes,
once the gaps between my thighs match the bones sticking out of my hips,
I can finally look god in the face and step backwards into hell
where I belong.

i should have known that when your hands crept around me and i did not pull away
i should have known when the particles in my neck yearned to have your fingerprints tattooed upon them
that you could not possibly wash over me as anything more than acid
for my eyes have always sought out people that have cliffs inside of them and empty auditoriums echoing full of a thousand empty ***** and a habit of leaving things void
objects in the mirror are more broken than they appear and the car wreck that is the mess of my heart burns white hot
in the aftermath of the inferno that was our time together
i was left blinded by the sight of a closed door and the sound of the lock clicking behind you
robbed me of my hearing and i wish for once i could have a love that did not leave
i wish i didn’t caress the mouths of broken bottles i find on the beach like i was looking for a pair of lips i could put a name to
and kiss the lips of glasses
filled with whiskey and regret
before letting a man’s breath pour over me like liquid courage
and yeah, the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else,
so is it really a surprise that my attempts to get over my ex lover depression and my
drunken **** suicide and my friends with benefits anxiety are usually a direct route to a city
whose bulbs are not broken and whose skyscrapers will hold me tight enough to squeeze out the insanity
if only for a night
because the only times i can forget my ex lovers face is when i’m gazing into the bottomless eyes of a bottle
and the only time my hands stop squeezing my own throat is when someone holds them tightly enough that i cannot break away so i may break
the only times my old friends with benefits does not knock on my door with a shaking hand
and clanking knees is when someone else is already inside

I'm just digging my way through a bag of pills trying to find ones that will keep me out of it until there's enough in the bag to leave completely

I've been to the emergency room
three times
not because the bones in
my arms are broken but because
the locks that are supposed
to keep out the shadows in my head
have been smashed
to bitter pieces
I've been to the emergency room
three times
the first time I couldn't stop
crying and tears
choked me to death with the
taste of salt
like blood
and I went home that night
and sliced my wrists open
with the bitter irony that my
parents have told me countless
times that they will be the ones
always there
and they are there
it is their hands guiding silver
to make red
I remember when they used to
brush my teeth for me
and now it is my fathers rough hands
driving me to shove a toothbrush
down my throat
I've been to the emergency room
three times
and on the second time I didn't
shed a single tear
not even when my father said
he didn't think
I was trying hard enough
and I certainly didn't cry when
they said they were doing the best they could
I didn't cry over the fact that I didn't go home
for two months
maybe because home has never
been something I long for when I'm away
and on the third time I went to the emergency room
the only time tears threatened
their grasp on my throat was when
a doctor told me this sickness
has been eating away at my mind since I was in third grade
it has been picking the locks in my head
and smashing the windows with rocks
sending shards shattering to the ground
reflecting back hatred and an inability to appreciate sunny mornings and good cups of coffee and warm pools in the summer and eating an entire meal,
eating three meals a day without feeling shame roiling in my stomach
this chemical soaked monster
has been decaying my sanity
like acid against metal
leaving nothing but a trail of
emptiness behind

i cannot recall the last time
I could utter my thoughts without
being tripped up by undercurrents of terror and guilt and anxiety
surrounding my parents
my father can hardly even stand
to look at me anymore and perhaps
that is why I've smashed so many
mirrors and used them to hurt myself
instead
my mother throws words at me
like blows
and when I'm not supposed to be listening
the sounds of their voices creep
up on me and i am on my hands
and knees begging a god I don't believe in
to strip me of my hearing
because hearing my own mother
say that if I'm going to starve myself
it's a waste of money to even try
and feed me
eats away at my insides far more
than the hunger clawing at my stomach
and my thoughts are tripping over themselves trying get out from underneath the cloud of blame that storms on my parents
and I spend days upon days trying to ease them through this and be okay and I wind up with bruised knees
and a pale complexion
and an black tar heart