Do you remember the day my collar bone cracked?
The sound was so jarring, it echoed through me like my skull against concrete
It was the sound of a toy maker tinkering in the night
Creating his dolls, the ones that don't move unless he breaks and bends their arms at will
Yes. Cracking bone. The sound of my creation.
I'll never be the girl my mother made again, I'm something between yours and hers and not at all mine now.
Just metal and flesh. None of it my own .

I paint daisy chains
On sharp edges
Roses in my hollows
Starvation in full bloom
Is lovelier than death
So I'll throw bouquets
On my own casket
And dig shallow graves
In my tummy
Bury yesterdays love
Resurrect today's doubt
At least skeletons
Are not afraid to die

Maybe I needed you to walk into my healing
In order for me to let you walk out of my wounds

My shower won't stop dripping
My bed tips to the left and the bed springs stab me while I sleep
My closet growls at me when I open it like an unfed dog in the shelter
You said you'd fix this all for me, I said no, and no, and no - it's okay.
If you fix the shower you might want to fix the emotions that leak out of me in the middle of the night
When you remove the bed you might want to remove the memories of the man that ruined me for you
I growl like the closet door when I open open myself up, never willing to show you my skeletons dangling from their hangers
If my home isn't good enough for you, maybe I'm not either.

I gave you the list of reasons
Of why not to love me
You heard them all and said
"But those are why I do"

I'd rather cut the cord
Than hang myself with it.

It breathes memories into my charcoaled lungs
The calluses on my palms
The ever lingering self doubt following my every step
Its heart beats in the herb garden on my balcony
Pulses through my broken alabaster skin
And quakes in the grooves of my cracked ribcage
It sleeps on the folded fitted sheets in my cabinet
Stirring restlessly at the smell of stale beer and fresh tobacco
It awakens with a jolt whenever it smells blood
Its stretching into my pinned back colony hair
Weaving its way through the secret stories
Into eardrums saying "you must **** yourself to get out"
This ghost of my family
Whispering commands into my ears
I am only now hearing it's voice
Because I always believed it was mine
This goodbye is not reconciliation with the voices
It is a resurrection of my own.