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

there is something in the daily fluorescence of grocery stores that gets to me like falling apart on bathroom floors and getting screamed at by angry fathers just does not
because they have not witnessed demises like mine but they have witnessed endings of careers
lost children
the breaking of more glasses than i have hearts
and there is something comforting in reveling in the very essence of a place that has witnessed both destruction
and change in a way that results in grocery store labyrinths
being all too similar to the twisting and turning of my head.

take a shot
every time wine isn't strong enough
to drown out the memories of us
i finish an entire
bottle of *****
thinking about the way the door
slammed
shut after you left
and i still haven't forgotten
the lock clicking behind you

you have the opportunity to be everything you always needed for your daughter someday and if that isn't full circle i don't know what is

it doesn't really hit you how far you've fallen
until you are gasping on your knees
your throat raw
after shoving your entire fist down your throat
until your best friends have to physically hold you down
so you won't run the bathroom and force food
from your stomach
until you ask them, tears streaking down your face
if they will hold your hair back
until you cannot even stomach the sight of food
until being asked to eat sends shivers of anxiety
through your body
until everyone keeps telling you that you have to eat
that you aren't trying
but you can't physically make them understand
how impossible it is to eat
when your body has become your worst enemy
the cause of every aspect of enmity.

when i was five, i saw a fire bathed in countless shades of red and
the inferno terrified me.
elevens years later, the bathtub turns crimson red and i'm not scared at all, i'm throwing my hands in the air,
screaming, "look, ma. no hands, ma. no ******* turning back now."

skipping along the sidewalk at six years old avoiding the cracks
so as not to crack my mother's back,
ten years later and the only cracks i'm worried about
are snaking their way up necks of liquor bottles
and through my facade and i don't know
how much longer i can keep lying,
i'm not doing any ******* better.

measuring my growth at age seven with ticks of pen on the wall
as my father ruffles my hair and tells me i'm growing up.
nine years later the only measurements i'm paying attention to
are how many liters of blood is too many to come back from
(around 3)
and how many centimeters deep i have to cut, how many ticks i need to make in order to make sure i finally hit six feet.

waking up early Christmas morning at eight years old
but i'm not looking for presents under the tree anymore,
i'm just staring at glinting knives and imagining sticking
my head in the fireplace just like Santa.
waking up eight years later
and telling Santa to go **** himself because the only thing on my list
was to not wake up at all.

coming home with skinned knees and bruised elbows at age nine,
but seven years later
i stopped coming home at all because my mother
kept remarking on the bruises and broken bones i had
from life kicking me down
and not giving me enough time to get up between blows.

attending my grandmother's funeral at age ten, six years later and my mother is drinking in an attempt to forget mine was the previous day.

ever since i was a little girl my mother would drag me to neighbor's houses
and aunt's apartments.
where sown into pillows and hung on walls were the words,
"home is where the heart is."
i've never felt as home anywhere so much as
my bed and my bed has never felt so much like a coffin
as it has the past few years.
does that say something about me?
i've never felt at home
inside my head and my head
has never dragged me down like lead
so much as it has the past few years.
what does that ******* say about me?
there are a thousand ways to die;
a knife to the heart,
a house burning down.
a head burning itself
to the ******* ground.
every splinter in my heart feels like a knife
slamming its way through my sanity
and the flames are licking at the tips
of my fingers
like a lover's tongue.

awhile back i met a girl
a girl with a mouth all cut up
from speaking too many broken promises.
i guess i can hardly blame her,
i could see how the earthquakes
in her eyes wracked her mind.
her lips were painted crimson
from cuts on the inside of her cheeks
and she could hardly speak past
the mouthful of lies she spit
at her doctors, her parents
her sister, her brother, her best friend
"i'm okay, you see," she whispered
blood dripping past pearly whites
draped in a pained smile.
"i'm doing much better."
her words were sharp like
shattered glass and squirmed their way
past tightened lips and onto her sleeve
as she whispered to me
"we all ******* die eventually. everything just ******* dies."
awhile back,
i saw a girl in the mirror with mouth full of scars.

seeds of doubt are sown in the dark patches
of soil beneath my eyes,
the winter frost seeps color
from my once rosy cheeks,
bruises bloom on my knees from greeting
the bathroom floor too many times,
lines of red poppy flowers grace
my rib cage.

ever since your dad stopped teaching you how to skip stones
and started making your heart skip a beat in fear whenever he came close
you've been looking for a way to stop feeling so unloved
but let me tell you sweetheart, his voice isn't an escape.
just because he tells you he wants to ******* raw doesn't mean
he won't leave you with wrists slit just as ******* raw,
and it certainly doesn't mean he wants to love you.
i know you haven't felt present in three years,
but i can tell you for sure
you won't feel any less like an empty house
when he tells you he'll fill you up.
just because you're both broken on the inside
doesn't mean
your pieces are going to fit,
how many times can i tell you that?
you need someone whole to help you put yourself back together
not a boy so set on destroying himself
that you met him in the mental hospital.
not a boy so set in his ways he tells you
to stick your finger down your throat.
you need someone whole, not someone to hand you a hammer and show you how hard to hit
to
make
everything
shatter.

i reached for his hair
as if he'd jumped off the side of a building and
that was all that was left to hold onto.
i grasped at his clothes
as if he'd filled his pockets with stones and
that was the last part of him above the depths of a lake.
i looked at my reflection in his eyes
as if he'd stopped loving me and
i could make him love me again just by making eye contact.

the kind of girl that can't go out in public without people taking a second look;
but not at her face they look at the lines of destruction
trailing her arms and legs,
the void in her eyes,
the hollowness of her soul nearly stops them
in their tracks if they bump against her,
she is a walking black hole.

i have been living in an age
of constant pain,
and the clock ticks down endlessly
with a bladed pain;
cuts streak my wrists from its sharp tip
and i am forever bruised from beating myself
against the walls of this cage.
it seems to me that the only way to unlock it
is to lock my lungs
let loose my blood
set free my organs
cut open my throat
until i am choking on the metallic taste of finality.

three years since i got so scarred up
from beating my head against a wall
and a blade against my wrist
and i've still not quite figured out how
to hit rock bottom with a ladder
instead of a shovel.
it's all i've ever known how to do,
i've been in a steady decline like the
***** of a line and
i fear the line will go on forever
unless i end it myself.
i could end it with a gun to my head,
a noose around my neck,
alcohol poisoning my liver,
anything to **** the thoughts inside my head.
i wish i could say i've survived this onslaught
of thoughts
but it just keeps battering against the walls
of my head,
slamming into them in a way
that leaves me all too ******.
maybe that's why i live so recklessly,
because these walls of my head
have only reflected what's inside and even
when i turn all the mirrors around i can't escape.
i don't have to look in the mirror
anymore to be well acquainted
with the demons inside my head,
i know they're sitting on my shoulders
holding a knife to my throat and
a gun to my head.

several stories above a concrete street
is where i feel the most alive
the emptiness of a bottle makes me complete
and i am just five
five, when i start to feel this sickness
overtaking my mind

"i hate when people say they aren't giving their best effort. today, your best effort was coming here, or letting someone bring you here. your best effort was letting someone help you. that's the best you could do. it's the best you can do for you."

it started out like ashes floating down from the sky,
landing on my tongue with the color of snow and the taste of acid.
i can feel the flakes in my throat,
can feel it burning,
can feel it creeping down my windpipe and into my stomach and my heart and my head.
it starts out as ashes and then it is a spark landing on my skin,
a spark reflecting off of so many drops of crimson hitting the floor.
and before i can quite catch my breath it is a wildfire
it is burning me
it is melting the skin off my bones
with endless thoughts of ledges and bottles of pills and taking a ******* gun to my head
and
i
am
still.
everything inside me, the inferno burning me up is still.
i have tried to fill the hole it left with so many shots,
so many pills,
so many drags of smoke and so many cuts to my skin.
i am nothing but an empty void to throw myself into,
a walking black hole,
a corpse above the ground.

i am standing in front of a mirror painting my face so as to cover up the hollowness inside
like my long sleeves cover up trails of sadness covering my wrists

she wears her hospital bracelets like jewelry
to cover the scars that adorn her like
red-inked tattoos.
she pops pills like soda tabs
ignoring the dangers of overdosing
on caffeine highs and the sickly
sweetness of sugar.
she cannot recall the last time she didn't
wash her
antidepressants
anxiety meds
sleeping pills
mood stabilizers
down with alcohol in the hopes
someone would notice the heavy imbalance
wasn't just in her head.
she hasn't believed in god since
she crept downstairs on her ninth birthday
to stare at her reflection in the kitchen knives
and didn't see Him staring back at her.
there was nobody telling her to go
back to bed.
she hasn't gotten on her knees for
anything holy since she started
inflicting pain upon herself;
leaving traces of sadness on
her ribcage
her wrists
her thighs
her stomach
her hips.
she has been living in a grave
and her thoughts never stop playing hide and seek
she only ever searches
at the bottom of a lake
or if they're mixed in with the stones in her pockets
or hiding under the train tracks near her house.

as we grow older
our hearts grow ever colder
the thermometers of our souls
dipping ever lower
and soon the shards of broken
glass
and
hearts
are the only things that phase us
so we start slitting our wrists
in an attempt to bleed out sadness
within us

clinks of razor blades
against each other sounds
far more like church bells
tolling
than i would like it to
and it has been this way
since i can remember

I have grown sick of the same beat inside of my head; of picturing myself lying on the floor in a crimson pool of my own making, of picturing myself finally silencing my thoughts with a bullet to my head or the cool kiss of concrete. The thoughts never stop pounding on my front door, they use the splinters of my sanity to drive stakes into my head like plots in a graveyard. The frantic knocking has the elegant rhythm of knees clacking, knuckles cracking, thoughts crashing, and swords clashing against my skin. My thoughts are beating against the shore and the tide is rising. It is choking me to death, but I hardly notice, for I have been holding my breath too long. Perhaps this is a sign it is time to greet Death with wide arms instead of palms held open as I have for so long. Maybe it is time to accept I have become nothing  more than Death's ***** *****, to resign myself to a life of  being ****** when for so many nights I have been ****** over and ****** up. Perchance the hands of  the clock have crept down to the moment in which I greet Death with a wide-eyed grin of infatuation when for so long we have spared each other but the sidelong looks of star-crossed lovers. I ache for the day when Death and I's mouths may finally meet and I may at last stop worrying about choking on the black waste of my mind and body. Life caught me up in its arms and held me so tightly I lost my grip on reality, and I know one day Death will claim me once again and hold me to its heart six feet underground.