I am pulling weeds from the garden and I want to scream "there is nothing wrong with you there is nothing wrong with you there is nothing wrong you"
I am replacing you with something beautiful and hard to maintain because I value appearances more than growth
There is nothing wrong with dandelions i swear, please do not develop a complex, I just cannot love you unless someone else does
My father spent years weeding me and trust me it gets easier
it hurts less if you learn to hate yourself the same way
There is nothing wrong with you I just have to do this he is coming over later and he might remember he doesn't love me if he sees you here
There is nothing wrong with you but I will **** you still
Like my father
Commended for everything I grow in the wake of what I ****
There is nothing wrong with you I scream but I will throw you away and you will wonder what is wrong with you anyway
He told me I have room to grow before hugging me goodbye
There is nothing wrong with you he said
I just don't want you here

I knew I was good
I felt it when I looked down
Reveling in the work I'd done,
Yelling and proclaiming
So that you would know too
That I was good.
Oh, how small I was,
How small a thing to make you so angry.
I didn't know yet
How to make my joy quiet
For your bad days.
You would have loved it
If you'd have taken the time
To look at it.
To really look at it,
To look at me.
Would you have looked?
If I was good?

You sounded just like someone
I've spent the last 5 years burying
I wondered how I could have
Risen the dead yet again
My very posture a seance
Welcoming the past
Like the welcome mat
The ghosts pass over
On their way in
I never opened the door
I swear
I guess I just left it unlocked
I begged you to leave me alone
But the exorcist said
It's so impolite to ask the ghost to leave
If you're the reason their dead in the first place.

I wish this was about what is missing
I wish they'd have stolen all of me
Buried it somewhere
Pushed it out of a truck
Speeding down a highway
Too fast for
My mother to notice
Too quietly for
My father to care
It is what they left of me
For everyone to see
Out in the open
Ugly, marred
Screaming, biting
Foaming at the mouth
So unlike a daughter
The prodigal son
Is welcomed home
The feral mutt
Is drowned

Skinwalker lover
Call my name again
My heart a peach in your fist
Dripping
Ever longing
More, more, more
Lapping tongue
Starving dog
Cannibalize me
Again
I'll never notice
My pieces missing
Begging for scraps
While your meal
Grows cold

The unknowing of you
Will take a lifetime
Sea salt and sage
Music in the mornings
Softness of skin
Roughness of hands
Coffee cold and sweet
Like loving you
Like losing you

And I never really knew
I had to want them back
I thought I could be owned
Just by being wanted