You were always loving me "despite"
I needed you to love me "because"

This wasn't the first time
But it will be the last time
I create an identifiable pain
To numb the persisting wounds,
That I let my hollow stomach
Swallow all of my sorrows,
That I go to bed hungry
Struggle to wake up again,
Just to Pace around my kitchen
Afraid to open the refrigerator,
I promise this is the last time,
It's always the last time,
Please let this be the last time..

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

Am I trying to help you
Because your pain
Is too much for you to bear
Or because seeing you like this
Is too much for me to bear

They stamped out your fire
Only to burn you to ash
Too unclean to rest
Beneath their dirt
The salt of the earth
Nothing more than a pillar of salt
To them

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

You are what pushes me to grow and become better.
You are what warms my heart when it grows cold.
I cannot imagine living in a world where you don't exist, it would always seem dark.
I think the entire Sun is wrapped up within you and shines through your eyes.
To me, you are daylight.

I would have told you
About the way I wake up every night
About how some things
Just don't get better
How that is life
On life's terms
Healing doesn't make
The memories stop hurting
Healing make us
Stop hurting ourselves
That's all
The world will still hurt
But we could have laughed
At the brighter things
Together
Had you stuck around
Another day
We could have talked
At 2 am
If you'd have woken up
Just once more

Someone asked me what it was like doing speed
If you're wondering, it was a lot like love
I loved it the way some people love playing guitar
The way some people love their mothers
The way some people love their God
I used it to express myself, to unleash my creativity
I used it to find solace and comfort, to make me feel all better
To put a bandaid on my scraped knee and tell me to keep trying
I used it so I would have something to believe in
Something better than what I was, something that believed in me too
I loved the way it made me to soar to new heights
I always forgave it when I crashed down to new lows
I loved the way it took my fear away of talking to strangers
I forgave it when I became afraid of people who weren't even there
I loved the way I made love so confidently when I was on it
I forgave it when I had to go to bed with strangers just to afford it
I loved the way it made me love myself again
I forgave it when I couldn't recognize myself anymore
Yes, I think it was a lot like love

Some times
I think about how
The word
Alphabet
Means Alpha
And Beta
And how that
Implies a
....
Like the
Alphabet
Doesn't really
Ever end
So now the
Letter Z
Raises questions
In my brain
And I wonder
What comes
After it
That is why
I cannot
Sleep.

It's in the moments
Before I fall asleep
When my body
Isn't real anymore
And my life
Never really happened
It's in those moments
I find you again
But you never stay

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

I carry your wedding ring
Around in my pocket
The weight serves not as a reminder
Of your love
But as a warning
That even you
Could show such softness

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

All my life I have kneeled down at your altar
Sacrificing my innocence and self worth
A lamb who's blood would gain me favor
"the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist"
Yes, I worshipped you like a God I was afraid of
Old Testament wrath brewed in our home
And I readied myself to **** what I loved
As Abraham would, as sheep do for their shepherds
For I knew my creator loved me, and called me love
"For he disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child. "
By the stripes inflicted upon me I would be freed
Of this shame and unworthiness you bestowed

But it turns out "Father" does not mean "God"
Sometimes it just means "alcoholic"
Sometimes discipline just means abuse
My faith is now placed in me, and the God that made us both.

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

I would die 1000 different deaths
If only to be sure
That I could wake up just the once
To you knocking at my door
I would live 1000 different lives
Suffer millions more listless days
For just the chance
That I could wake up to your face

You see, I have this habit
Of building bridges
When I should be making moats

The crow said to his lover
"Do not be afraid,
The farmer only has one stone"

I keep coming home
To visit you
But you are never there
Oh old man
Where did you go?
I see your body in the chair
Your cup is still half full
But you're eyes see someone new
When I'm sitting
Where I used to
I introduce myself each time
But you ask again before I go
I keep coming by
Just to see you
But old man
You're never home

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"

When I was small,
I picked out an Aquaman action figure
Out of a bin at the secondhand store
He was missing a leg
Most of the paint worn off at his joints
But he was brand new to me
And what my mother could afford
I made up a story
About how his enemies had hurt him
How he'd defeated them
Became stronger
Was world reknowned for his powers
I loved him and this love fixed his brokenness
One perspective change made all the difference
I am like this.
Not broken, just reimagined.

I am not this kind of girl
I say to myself, to you, to them
I don't do these kinds of things
To myself, to you, to them
I swear, I swear
I am not this kind of girl.

We looked into the darkness
You said it was bright
I trusted you
And thought myself blind
We stood out in the cold
You complained of the heat
I trusted you
And I removed my jacket
We were submerged in water
You said it was land
I trusted you
And I stopped swimming
Trust is not truth.

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 didn't die
Why am I still so angry about that?

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?

Loneliness lingers
Where your touch once
Scorched.

I pick up the pieces
Gently, carefully,
Place them down
In my bathroom sink
Wipe away debris
Collected and caked
Onto your being
I meticulously clean
Each part of you
Warm you up
Pat you dry
Give you back
To the world
And hope you
Don't return here
Broken and filthy,
Yet again.

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

Sometimes I forget
My own handwriting
And my "A"s come out wrong
Not looking at all like me
So I have to look back
At poems from yesterday
And forge my own signature
If I manage to remember
Where I set my pen down

If you were to ask me what I am looking for,
I think I'd only tell you what I've found
I found love in a bathtub I lived in
My body soaked in gin and glitter
He loved me like he'd love me more
If maybe I just wasn't me
So when he moved me out of my bathroom
Into a hardwood floor home
Changed my clothes and my hair
But not my habits
He decided it was my fault
For not being what he wanted to love
And not his fault for telling me he loved me
Instead of telling me that he might one day
And if I didnt try to leave him
He wouldn't have to lock the door from outside
And if I'd just remember to do the dishes
He wouldn't need to break them
And if I'd just say yes
He wouldn't have to make me.
I found love in a basement with a guitar
Hair pulled back in a ponytail
A pipe that never stopped burning white
Crystalline eyes and cheap wine
Slow dancing in the early hours
When we wouldn't wake up, but we'd get up
And that was enough to call it morning
Until I stopped turning our pipes
And he found veins he didn't know he had
Invited death into his bloodstream
And asked if he could share it with me
In a letter written in crayon
Sent to the rehab he'd begged me to go to
And was now begging me to leave
He tattooed me on his back
So he can pretend I didn't leave him
So I'll be a part of him when he leaves.
I found love in a room full of addicts
His head bent down making art out of sorrow
I wondered if he could make me beautiful
Like he did everything else
When he met my family they found love
In the lack of bruises he left
And in the way his nose was clean
And he slept at night
And we called that enough because at least it was more
But it was nothing at all when he left
While I did laundry and cleaned
Stared at a wall because nothing was beautiful
If he didn't make it so
And I remembered too late
That people like me love everything else
More than they love those who love them
I became the one counting minutes
Believing that tonight didn't mean in a few days
Believing it was my fault
For not already being beautiful
Or maybe for loving someone at all
So if you are asking me what I am looking for
I'd say that looking got me lost
And do you please have a map

I speak
About hating
How I speak
I have feelings
About my extreme
Lack of feeling
I find myself
In all the ways
I've lost myself
Machines gain souls
Once they've realized
They are machines

I weigh 1/4 of a blue whales heart
I am as tall as Napolean Bonaparte
I am as old as Oprah's Book Club
When I do not like myself
I think of these things
And suddenly, I look very different.

I will not say to you
"In another life"
It should have been this one.

I had no filter
I said what
I was thinking
Like I was talking
To my walls
I ran in messy
Spoken circles
With no
Conclusions
No concise plan
No destination
And you, you
Followed my
Footsteps
And thanked me
For the walk
You'd never seen
Such scenery

Scour the mountain peaks
Find somewhere no one knows
Scatter me in caves
Older than any bones
Long before the age of teeth
Where nothing ever grows
No jaws to gnash away my form
No men to seek a final blow
Leave me to dissolve there
The dead are safest all alone

Sisyphus finally at rest
Finds himself restless
It is better to desire
Than to have.

You have been looking at a broken clock for years now
Always waiting for the right time to come

You took a match to the expectations
I had for falling in love
And walked through my door
On fire

And if you wish to hurt me
Do it in the ways I hurt myself
I am the only one
Who still gets away with it

He loved me unconditionally
As God does
Promising me hell

I could tell you honestly
That I love you
But your laughter just
Sounds out of tune
And even his screams
Sound like a symphony
To me.

I have dreamt of this many times
The warm hand resting on my ribcage
Rolling over to find love sleeping soundly
Gentle calls of frustration about running out of cream
Rushing out the door, late due to too long kisses goodbye
Simple little dreams of simple little pleasures
Yet when I find them I feel like a ghost
Hollow and never quite present
Seeing it all unfold but it passes right through me
I have never belonged in my dreams
Because I dream of being someone else.

Dripping honey
On my teeth
So I speak sweetly
You lap it up
Then shove
Salt down my throat
When you kiss
Me goodbye.

I know what it is
To want revenge
To believe that
Killing my own
White Whale
Would give back
What I've lost to it
I know what it is
To lose all of myself
To the things
That only wanted
Parts of me

There is more than one way to skin a cat
And there is more than one way to break a heart
I'm surprised you don't know this by now
You don't always have to rip it into shreds
With your bare hands tensed in rage
Intentionally destroying the pulsating thing you hold
You do not always have to spill it's blood
Watching the thick red liquid congeal on the floor
You need not always fill it with shame
Ridiculing it's nature, the way it beats, it's purpose
Until it's too small to believe in itself
All you need is to be loved by that heart
And every time you walk away it will follow
Pieces of it sewn into your jacket pocket
Or dangling proudly around your neck
And when you leave that jacket in a haunted house
With a haunted soul that robbed you of safety
I will not get that piece of me back
When the bright and beating pendent resting on your clavicle
Is torn off and lost in someone's couch cushions
The same place you lost your dignity and self worth
I will not get that piece of me back
My heart is sewn onto yours like a patchwork quilt
And whenever your heart breaks, mine does too
Wherever your blood is spilt, my heart is stained red too
There is more than one way to skin a cat
And there is more than one way to break a heart.

******* tilt his head
And inspect pupils too large
And breaths to shallow
******* scoop *****
And rot out of his mouth
While he lays there immobile
******* dial 911
While he spews hatred
For you, his rescuer
His family, his only friend
******* turn a key
Locking a door for the last time
Leaving you behind.

There are words
Tumbling round
This brain
Like heavy rocks
In a washing machine
Watch them now
Tumble out
They will pummel you
As they have me
You will see
What you made
Inside of me