“
You are stronger than you realise.
You are crueller than you realise.
The smallest words will break your heart.
You will change. You’re not the same person you were three years ago. You’re not even the same person you were three minutes ago and that’s okay. Especially if you don’t like the person you were three minutes ago.
People come and go. Some are cigarette breaks, others are forest fires.
You won’t like your name until you hear someone say it in their sleep.
You’ll forget your email password but ten years from now you’ll still remember the number of steps up to his flat.
You don’t have to open the curtains if you don’t want to.
Never stop yourself texting someone. If you love them at 4 a.m., tell them. If you still love them at 9.30 a.m., tell them again.
Make sure you have a safe place. Whether it’s the kitchen floor or the Travel section of a bookshop, just make sure you have a safe place.
You will be scared of all kinds of things, of spiders and clowns and eating alone, but your biggest fear will be that people will see you the way you see yourself.
Sometimes, looking at someone will be like looking into the sun. Sometimes someone will look at you like you are the sun. Wait for it.
You will learn how to sleep alone, how to avoid the cold corners but still fill a bed.
Always be friends with the broken people. They know how to survive.
You can love someone and hate them, all at once. You can miss them so much you ache but still ignore your phone when they call.
You are good at something, whether it’s making someone laugh or remembering their birthday. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that these things don’t matter.
You will always be hungry for love. Always. Even when someone is asleep next to you you’ll envy the pillow touching their cheek and the sheet hiding their skin.
Loneliness is nothing to do with how many people are around you but how many of them understand you.
People say I love you all the time. Even when they say, ‘Why didn’t you call me back?’ or ‘He’s an *******.’ Make sure you’re listening.
You will be okay.
You will be okay."

Screaming at the moon during cloudless nights has become
the only form of
therapy that works anymore.
I'm waiting for
the night it will invite me to curl up in its craters and whisper every
childhood fear
you brought up into conversation when I told you
my memories could be used to show how words
can be sharper than the
broken bottles
your mother lusted. Sleepless nights are sobering my head and
my voice box is starting to suffer more than
the Mona Lisa, but you never liked art that didn't hand you
its meaning with open arms and
a pat on the back. I wish time did more than rust
the only things with
something of value, but
junkyards aren't good replacements for falling stars and
forgotten chunks of metal remind me too much of
the way you loved with a steel heart and
icy touch. You claimed I could find
refuge in between your
ribs, but every
cell in your body is frozen solid and I never found comfort in the way ice sculptures morbidly melt in the presence of the sun with
crossed arms and
a closed mind. I'm sorry
my walls have grown taller than your pride, but i hoped i would be something more than a quest filled with
ships meant to sink. Consequently, maps have grown to be
sly creatures, and the
darts i'm throwing at the world all end up on your
roof without a scratch. I wanted to be more than your
fading scar, and I hope you'll look at your arms
one morning and realize they could be touching mine, and until you do, i'm just stuck here with nothing but a stomach full of
conscience and
mouth full of words i'll only scream to the sky.

you love him
you love his smooth hands and his rough cheek
you love your hands in his denim shirt
and the cinematography of you together
everything else is an afterthought

the knife in his eyes that is not always pointed at you
but when it is
you kiss the fist that rattles plates
the lips that wrap around clenched teeth
melt him

fail to understand his poison tipped arrows
that are aimed at the mother who threw bottles
if he could only pick one more fight it'd be with his father
you kiss him when he knocks his brother's teeth out

he leaves in the morning for coffee and comes back a day later
welcome him with open arms and abundant questions
he will be a tower of irritation and concrete
he will point fingers that will curl into fists
but they are not fists for you
they are for the devils that dance within him
and behind his wild eyes
and in his childhood home

you will not be fooled
he loves you
you know by every sweetheart and the lips on your forehead and the way he smells in between the sheets each night

he leaves
he comes back
purple flowers that bloom around his eyes are the bouquets he brings home for you
the front porch sags when he puts his hands in his pockets
his face buried in your chest
on nights when the lamp swings a little too low
and his body is wracked with sobbing and shoulders shaking

he mourns the gentle temper he never had
he mourns what he would be like without you
he mourns what you would be like without him
this is how he loves you

your hands in his hair easing soothing shh shh
you are the mother who left
you are better than every last ex-girlfriend
for reasons he will be happy to name
this is how you love him

you came because you are drawn to the shipwrecks
but you stayed in the water for him
ancient child
furious soul
you salt his wounds
and then you clean them
this is how you love him

From your Father,
When I grew up I lived in a small brick house that was cold in the morning no matter how many times your grandfather yelled at the fireplace, the world never let him dream, he had to earn it.
You will never meet him.
You will never be the small reminders and the soft tug on the bottom of my sternum helping me sleep at night, I will give you string and yarn asking you to weave silk and save me from the winter.
Your hands will be overflowing with apologies, the sink will always be filled with water that looks like it is pulsing at an open wound, and the gauze from your mother's gentle throat is never going to stop you from leaking out how sorry you are.
I was not raised to be what you need.
I am not going to love you the right way.
When you are 7 I am going to tell you that the way you carry yourself isn't tall enough, for your 9th birthday I will give you a mustard seed and a pocketknife and will ask you to grow cherry blossom trees throughout our back yard and in all the pastures of the city, and cut each of them down the very next day, and THEN I will tell you how to be a man.
When you are 17 you are going to cry so hard that God mistakes your mouth for the trumpets that were used to tear down Jericho and when your walls come apart I am going to color your heart with footsteps leaving the room.
I will show you how to miss a warm shower, how to pretend so hard your head cracks and your skull looks
like the coldest bowl of tomato soup I ever gave you.
You will not see that this whole time I have been staining your windows to see things in a better light, even if it is not clearer in the afternoon.
This is my blessing.
From your Mother,
I was raised with ***** hands and the only person who I ever looked at in the morning and loved back was the sun.
Your grandfather taught me how to ride a horse, and cover up a bruise, how to scrub blood stains out of my white blouses, and a whiter conscious, and how to grieve.
Oh how he taught me to grieve.
You will never meet him.
When you are 10, I am going to write down all the sins of your father on a piece of paper, slit your throat with it, and tell you that it's just a papercut, I will show you that faith does not move mountains, it simply makes them smaller.
You will stand up, shake the dust off your knees, and learn to clench your fists without worrying who will hear you.
I will try, but I will not love you correctly.
When you are 13 I am going to show you that what you see is not always on your side, you can love someone harder than you can stab them, but people are going to worry about ****** knuckles before they take a second look at a bruised heart, they're going to forget which one is more important.
I am going to tell you to forgive them, and I will never truly mean it.
Maybe I am sorry.
I am going to flirt with death until it blushes so hard that the blood from it's cheeks flows down to it's chest and gives it a heartbeat.
I am going to make you understand that GOD needs you just as much as you need Him, and there is power in prayer, in the way God might not be worth as much when people aren't giving Him their attention.
I am going to help you need less of the world, but a little more from people.
Your words will be full and deep, but never your pockets.
This is my blessing.

Sometimes I get so tired of feeling like a series of chemical reactions
Like once these electric pulses flow from my brain stem
through my wires of vessels and veins to the tips of my fingers
I am a puppet to the robotics of biology
Strung by my nerves and pulled by my emotions,
I cannot control these tears
Stupidity is merely short circuiting,
and maybe I just need to recharge
I think this taste in my mouth is acid;
my teeth are batteries leaking this energy
Onto my tongue and my lips
These are the loudest parts of this machine,
But each word, each kiss is not nearly as loud
As the programming in my mind
Maybe that's why I'm just a bunch of ****** gears and twisted cables
Because all this code of love and lust
Is a combination waiting to combust
And I feel unable to contain it