Future me is reaching back guiding me closer to her

The dark forest in my mind
Ash falling from the night sky
Pieces of burnt pictures

Large spiders ****** their strong legs into the limbs of the trees
They gnash their teeth
Angry, volatile, desperate

All of the monsters inside are unhealed feelings
The anger, a coping mechanism
A reaction to hurt

Love in comparison is the warm seat in the coffee shop
In a comfortable sweater, wrapped around my waist like a second thought
While I drink the rich deep flavoured coffee
Smiling at you from across the table
The thread between our hearts golden, laid across the table between us
Warm fingers, joy
Cinnamon and milk

Putting iron stints in my sides to stand up alone

I’ll braid your hair and kiss your cheek
Smile at you and tell you that you’re doing just fine and you always have
I think you’re amazing and capable

I wish you gave me enough space to be proud of you

Look at the self respect I made for myself
Even if unfortunately that looks like slamming the door in your face

The complexities sit in my stomach like a poison my body doesn’t know how to digest
A puddle of multiple strains
Just sitting like a lump that I want to throw up

******* for making me choose myself

You knew **** well how I felt.. but you still said you wished I’d told you

The smell of liquor on your breath brings me dread
Mixed with a low passion deep in my belly
I know that you’ll lick me extra nice
But also lie to me, be inconsistent, and in no way like the person I created in my head for you

Before you reconsider:
Remember how it feels when he comes home when the sun is up
How it feels when hours go by and he says nothing to you
When he tells you he’ll try so hard to be better and then takes you to buy cigarettes
How the smell of liquor on his breath brings you dread

Clovers
Bike tires
Gravel

Paint
Rocks
Good cooking

Fleeing
Eyes closed
chased by a philosophy
Rather than a lion
I think I’d prefer the lion

Like ash in my mouth
Like battery acid in my veins
Skidding along the ground
Metal on metal
The burnout

I hold the knife,
I always hold the knife
Ready to cut

Two people,
Two energies
Two different paths
Two different points of connection

So much anger. So. Much. Anger. It burns. It boils over and spills all over everything. It breaks like a whiskey bottle. Glass flying everywhere. It lives in my brain and it eats there. It eats at my heart until it bleeds.

Over time, the rain could no longer bring joy. the car rides were only to work. To responsibility. Food became necessity. No fun in necessity. Shared, but not. Satisfied, but not.

Everything we loved together became grey. Everything we shared became pain. Responsibility. Burden.

Behind the computer screen it eats your brain like a caterpillar on a leaf and tells you you like it. You like it. Hours, days, months. You like it. Outside the world is burning but your eyes are transfixed, your soul mind heart body eyes ears attuned to only one thing. The thoughts can’t reach you there. The fire can’t burn you here. But the fire is burning you. You are burning but you don’t care. You like it. It tells you that you like it.

When I ground myself in reality sometimes it’s jarring
I’m talking to myself, I’m alone in my own head
Sometimes it feels like everyone I’ve ever known is in there

I play different narratives in my head sometimes so that I don’t have to face reality
I pretend that people care about me the way I crave to be cared about
That I’m desired and seen and made to feel important
I think about it so much I don’t think about too much else
I forget to think about myself and other things because I spend so much time in my own stories

For being raised by a misogynist I have some really ******* large claws

A professor enjoying my individual creative work
And a boss recognizing my ability to work with little support
Two men appreciating me for my brain

Life is the bag of colourful Knick knacks that my nan picked off of the street
Like putting your hand in a bag of jax blindly
Drawing out different and new unexpected things

Sometimes it’s so okay
It’s in the past
Others I remember sitting with you
Feeling not so alone

You came over last night
We laid together in the dark and it felt like you never left
This morning I made you coffee and you kissed me goodbye
I went to sleep again because I didn’t need to be up and when I woke up again it was like I changed timelines
You were there and we were together and then you were gone and I was alone
It was nice while it lasted
But it was like itching a mosquito bite and now I’m aware of it and I want to itch it again and
It’s annoying
More than anything it’s annoying
But loving you is so sweet and so beautiful and I’m not ready to let it go and I don’t know if I want to

I’ll be here building my foundation
So that I’m strong enough to carry myself and the ones that I love

Nothing is going to change the fact that you’ve stabbed me
But I’m taking away the knife.

You thought that I’d forgive you
When you slipped through the night like a black handkerchief in the wind
When you held your lips tight

But I didn’t

I felt something new
I felt community
And joy
And ease
I felt like I could speak like myself
That I could connect with sounds and movements beyond words
That I was funny
And I fit without needing to try

I looked at you and I saw the stars
I looked in your eyes and I felt a raw, oozing wound, ready to bleed if you asked me to

One hour car ride

His head on my shoulder
Sleeping peacefully beside his two best friends in the world
The people who love him the most

They’re talking about how they’re happy they know you
How happy that you guys could all make a family
How lucky we were to find each other and how excited we were for the future

His head on the pillow
In his best friends bed,
Safe,
Happy,

His girlfriend comes in crying
His best friend tried to look up her skirt
His best friend

Pack up your things
Fold your heart neatly into a cloth
Nurse it
Keep it warm
And keep walking
Everything else is just beyond the horizon of your perception

Crying into my bathwater
Wondering when it’s all going to end
Wondering what’s beyond the next doorway
And what the journey is going to look like getting there

Your soul and my soul have known each other for a long time
We were placed here
You had to hurt me to grow
And I offered it to you
I offered to feel every ounce of pain for you so that you could grow
I hope it worked

Poke, ****, and scrape
The world doesn’t happen to me I happen to the world

Someone’s wearing a cologne that I’ve smelt and I don’t know where

Im so happy to remove you from everything
To pick you out of every piece of my life
I hope you know I won’t find you between my toes
I hope you know that in a years time you’ll only be a name on paper

how do you hold onto me
how am i your rock if my edges can be so rough they bite into your skin
you give me so much love it pours over the sides
and i take what i need and the rest is wasted
but you still keep pouring
my heart is like a stomach in the way it expands
slowly
i am learning to love
you have shown me that there are people in this world that will touch you so deep
people who will love you knowing that there is light for them at the end
understanding that there is dirt and dust and boulders that could be in the way
blindly loving
with no promises

my tongue bites
my face, my voice, cold with carelessness
we speak with savagery on our tongues,
the taste of reckless entitlement
you think we are the same

but behind this cold mask
i am warm, kind
and completely touchable

i am conflicted..
am i the prey that you can sink your teeth into in the end?
or am i the acclaimed innocence?

i have blood on my hands,
i want to see men like you crumble
i find you, i make myself the victim
then i tear into your skin

am i a sheep in wolves clothing?
or am i a killer of killers?

when im alone
i clean the house.

i spend hours scrubbing the white counter tops i just put in
with a lemon scented wipe

i lay on the sofa in the sun

i am full of pride

and then i let them in.
i'm selective,

but why do i let in the ones with the dirtiest shoes?
why do i let them mock the white cabinets and replace them with black?

its not like i dont have options
there are people who will take off their shoes and leave them outside,
people who promise to keep my house clean

i am a terrible decision maker. and at the end of the day when im alone again i must go back to cleaning

its a vicious cycle

there's nothing wrong
my heart is beating normally
my body isn't heavy
i feel normal, fine even- which is where i'm confused
there is something wrong
but i cant find the source

you don't know it, but the fire i pull
out of your stomach
is a talent of mine
your passion mirrors mine
you respond
to me

i hope he can't get enough of me
even though i shouldn't want anything to do with him

the intimate feeling of my lips slowly caressing your skin
makes me crave a feeling
makes me crave to show love
lust is like a storm
but so is my love

fingers latched onto a cliff, slowly slipping off
even when i fall
i never die

i've done the dirtiest things with you but i've never felt so clean

like my bodies submerged in cold wet gray sand
It's not night nor nowhere near it
it's the middle of the day but the sky is gray, lifeless, there is no sun
the water is crashing against some distant rocks and
the birds are screaming

i hope that you don't hold a grudge against my selfish heart
we all have our self-sustaining behaviors
i hope you can eventually see it the way i saw it even if you also see all of the err, the same err i drown myself in when i feel low

but in order to get to the places you want, sometimes you have to pull some strings
you were just another person that i ran over in my unclear path of (de)construction
i didnt mean to treat you like a marionette -even if im sure thats what it feels like in your heart
i guess behind my own eyes i am a demanding puppet master that uses real human beings as her toys

they make me want to bite my lips raw
put my hands in my hair and tug
that's not me, that person making all of those terrible decisions
I didn't know better
let me go back in time