we were just small children so we didn’t quite understand what father meant when he said

“mother is sad”

we continued our games and make believe stories and waited for mother to be happy

and when we were young, sad just meant someone stepped on your picture

or they ruined your sand castle


and in 2 seconds it was over

the deeper I fall into my depression I find my mother
I find her ghouls and her ghosts
her corpses

I find her dark eyes in my dark eyes every time I look in the mirror
and I find her hatred for everything, including me

I find new ways to torture myself
my mother

“you have your mothers eyes”


we also have the same disease

the only difference is, her demons won
mine don’t stand a chance

So here I am.
    Within your heartstrings.
     I like to think I flow through your mind like blood flowing through your superior vena cava.

Constant;
And non-chalant.

And there you are.
                    Rolling and rolling and tumbling around the empty train station in my mind.

Like a tumble ****.
Where did you come from?
Were you ever really mine?

What is the color of my eyes?

Grey, like the clouds.
At least that's what they tell me.

But you aren't here very often and only sometimes do you come around with your talent of using words to your advantage even though I'm the only person who sees through your fake persona and too long brown lucious hair.

But this one's for you.

Just like the one I wrote when I first started but that was a different story.
That had a different meaning.
A different message.

That one said;

"I love you."

This one says;

"I still do."

I want to have dipped my fingertips into eternity and fingerpainted my heart with it.
2. I want to have shoved my fingers down my throat enough times to rid myself of self-hatred.
3. I want to nail the palms of my hands to the Big Dipper. I want to sleep among the stars, and allow their light to cover me like thick blankets. I'd like to learn the simplicity of the galaxy's effortless beauty.
4. I would like to create a vaccination to save children from the growing plague we call "adulthood."
5. I would like to create a vaccination to save adults from it, too.
6. I want to fill syringe after syringe with glitterglue and stab them so far into my veins that my heart becomes a disco ball.
7. I want to become the temple that you come to to pray.
8. I want to become what I will be without fighting to the finish line, and I want a canopy of fireflies hanging from the bone of my skull.
9. I want you to tell me that you are in love with my ears, so I can cut one off, become Vincent Van Gogh and make you miss my ear like I miss the twinkle in your eyes when you tell me you love me.
10. I want every freckle on my skin to become small islands you can lose yourself on.
11. I want to change the views on "skinny" and "fat" and remind the girl made of only bone that once upon a time I was made of only bone too. Then, I found cupcakes.
12. I want to spin the world upside down and yell "Look ma! No happiness!"
13. I want to pass on my DNA and create something that I am actually proud of for once.
14. I want to make my life worth more than just a poem, or a picture, or a forgotten memory.
15. I want to stop the hands on a clock from ticking past midnight to preserve the saying "There's always tomorrow!", because once that clock strikes twelve another tomorrow will be gone.
16. Most importantly, I want to have filled the hole in me with something other than ***.

And I want to fill the hole in you with something other than half-fulfilled broken dreams.

liquid
substance

rocks
substance

smoke
substance

can’t remember
substance

which substance?

abuse
abuser
abusie

abooozie
*****
abuse

fill up my cup
abuse

fill up my pipe
abuse

fill up my syringe
abuse

fill up my veins
abuse

fill up my heart til it’s beating hard enough for me to feel alive
abuse

feed the mermaid in my kneecaps with glitter liquid
abuse

any kind
abuse

to make me forget
abuse

just want to use
abuse

to make me forget the pain
when he lays hands on me
lays his own
abuse
on me

someone once told me, substance abusers are weak
face your problems head on
why do you need to see stars before you wake up
why is coke your coffee
why is whiskey your orange juice
why is **** your pancakes

and I say
if I am weak
then how come I can cling onto the clouds

perhaps, if I could live to be 1000 years old
I will have clinged to the clouds long enough for them to get sick of me

but for now, those clouds are my demons
and I’ve never loved the color red
so much

i have not tried to crash my car in nearly three weeks,
so i guess you could say i'm doing better.
my mind sometimes refuses to resist
the need for liquor that my body screams.
my lips are constantly searching for yours;
with every bottle i press against them,
i can never seem to find yours.
all of my jeans are too big now,
my ribs are prominent and my collarbones
sticking out like they are misplaced on my body.
i guess a diet of popcorn and stale cigarettes will
do that to you.
i find myself constantly tempting fate in the worst ways possible,
in a desperate yearning
to find you again.
i have gone absolutely mad from missing you.
i write poem after poem,
they are all unfinished.
hours later, i will read my words,
repelled at how they fail to do what i want them to.
i still sleep on the left side of the bed,
refusing to touch your side in fear that i will wake you up.
i swear sometimes i will wake up to the sound of you in the shower,
and then realize it's simply
the rain battering at my window,
mocking me.
i remember asking my mother
three weeks after the accident:
"will i ever laugh again?"
"of course you will sweetie,
when something is really, really funny"
that was the first and only time my mother ever lied to me,
and i know she didn't mean to
because she genuinely thought it to be true.
two years, three months and fifteen days have passed.
some things are really, really funny.
i do not laugh.
i only feel guilty that you are not there to laugh
with me.

i sat down on the bench at the bus stop on 24th and 3rd, next to a girl with a black long sleeve tshirt on in 93 degree sticky august weather. she looked about 17 years old, not much younger than i. i noticed her small, elegant fingers holding onto a black leather sketchbook and i found myself yearning to know what was inside of it.
i looked at her and smiled, commented on the weather;
"i would be sweating buckets if i were wearing that shirt."
she looked at me with such repugnance, it was as if i had told her that i killed her puppy and ate it for breakfast.
i looked away into the distance and watched the hustle and bustle of new york city on a tuesday. i held my gaze on a window of a large office building, 17 stories up and 4 across from the left. i imagined the cubicles; small, cramped and disgustingly humid, and the people inside of them; lonely, fed up and hungry.
"i would love to not be wearing this shirt. unfortunately my skin isn't pure and unmarked like yours."
the girl stood up, and looked at me with such sadness in her eyes that i could not unsee them. she walked down 24th towards the subway. she left her leather sketchbook sitting beside me, an unopened treasure chest full of unknown secrets and dreams.
i watched the girl walk with her arms crossed, bag thrown over one shoulder down the street, expecting her to turn around realizing what she had left behind - but she didn't. she kept walking and walking and walking until i could not longer see anything more than a small black dot.
i was brought back when i heard the large bus screech and halt to a stop, the black woman driving stare at me as if she had been waiting three and a half years for me to get on the bus. i picked up the black sketchbook and climbed the steps, popping $2.75 into the fare box.
i sat down in an empty middle seat, and leaned my head against the hot window. i felt the sun beam down on my face through the plexi-glass as i looked down at the black leather sketchbook still in my hands. i found myself holding it as if it were a very important document given to me by a secret agent to bring to the CIA.
i made it home to my stuffy one bedroom apartment with the sketchbook still unopened, still in careful hands. i set it down on my kitchen counter beside my yellow sticky note to pick up eggs, ketchup and lemon juice. which i forgot. again. i stared at the beautiful black leather of the sketchbook for a good ten minutes before finally flipping the cover to reveal two words, written with pencil in the most beautiful calligraphy i have ever seen;
"tragically beautiful"
i was so taken aback by the juxtaposition of these two simple words that i wished i had never opened the book at all, but somehow i felt myself flipping page after page looking at sketches drawn by an amazing talent whom i don't even know the name of.
i sat down at my desk after analyzing each and every sketch and put a fresh piece of paper into my typewriter. i entitled it
"tragically beautiful.

scars do not make an individual beautiful. scars simply add to the tragedy of the beauty shown by that individual. tragedy and beauty are two things that can not seem to be more opposed to each other, but somehow they can not exist without one another."

i wanted so desperately to know how to reach this girl, and tell her to wear her smallest tank top. i wanted her to know that her scars did not have to be covered up by unforgiving cotton. i wanted her to realize that her tragedies don't define her beauty.
her sketchbook is still beside my typewriter, bringing me back to that day on the bench.
if only she knew how impure and marked up my skin really is, that would truly be,
tragically beautiful.

A small girl came up to me today.
She looked up at me with her big, blue, honest eyes and simply said;
"Hi, can I ask you something?"
She didn't even give me time to respond before asking, quite matter-of-factly,
"What does love mean to you?"

Well, I guess I had to think about that one.
"Trust." I said.
"Love, to me. Means trusting that your love for others will be taken care of with careful hands."
She looked up at me, not knowing at all what I meant. She just told me,
"Thank you miss." and walked back to the playground.

I found myself thinking about what this little girl had asked me. And I found myself thinking, I am so dumb.

Love is a lot of things. Love is a color. Love is a type of dessert. Love is sweet as ice cream, and it can be just as cold. Love is the scars on my wrists, and love is the bruises on my knees.
Love is the way the sun shines on every single one of us. There isn't a person that the sun refuses to shine on, so, I guess love is honesty? I don't really know.
But I know our love was infinite. We lived in infinity for a year and three days. Our love was also tears at 3am, and 9 hour phone calls with no sleep.
Our love was no secrets, we learned to spell love as Y-O-U and never as I-O-U. Your love never owed me anything. My love never stopped giving.
Love is non-judgmental.
Love is blind.
Love is deaf, love is irresponsible.

Second loves, are different.
Second loves are awkward, because they try to fit themselves in places where only the first loves should fit.
He tried to fit his kneecaps behind mine, but they weren't shaped the same as yours. My body before you hadn't been, imprinted. But the first time we spooned, yes, I just said spooned, your kneecaps created crevasses in the bends of mine. So when he tried to fit his fingers in the spaces between my own, I think he found your fingerprints still etched where they should have been washed away long ago.

Love, is a crack in the sidewalk.
Love turns your heart stone cold.
Love loves to see you suffer, and love loves the see you go through all the pain of broken-ness.

Be careful who you give your love to.
Be careful whose hands you drop your heart into, because some hands are too big and too strong and too unforgiving to hold your heart with the tenderness and care that it deserves.
Love will kick you in the stomach, and stab you in the back. Love will twist your words, love will make you lie.

Love is a pen and piece of paper.
Love is in every poem that I write.
Love is words, that sink into your blood and travel through your arteries.
Words that make your heart pump.
Love is your heartbeat.

Today, I walked up to a little ******* a playground.
I asked her, "What does love mean to you?"

And she replied, with absolutely no hesitation.
"Love is how when you fall off the monkey bars, you get back up and try again. Because even though I keep falling, I really wanna get to the other side."

your moustache is ******* disgusting. do us all a favor and get rid of that ****

2. your “I don’t date” **** gets old really quickly. you’re not “avant garde”, you’re just a ***** who hides his feelings. good luck with that in the future.
3. *** is not an obligation. my body is not a commodity. I do not owe you a *******. my lips are sacred, my tongue is a queen, my ***** is a ******* throne. your peasent ***, is not near worthy

4. you can not buy happiness. unfortunately your daddy taught you at a young age that a new car can fix any problem. unlike you, when I’m 40, ill be earning just enough to get by, but won’t need gin to fill the gaping hole which your money can’t fill

5. karma, is a *****. in fact, karma is the biggest ***** you will ever meet. 

6. I am not weak because of my depression. I am not weak because of my sobriety. in fact, my sobriety is the reason my depression is gone, it is the reason my wrists are clean, it is the reason the train tracks I had on my arms have faded to a weird looking tan line.

7. I loved you. 

8. loved. past tense.
9. I thank you. you have rid me of darkness. you have emptied me of hate. you have filled me with nothing but the sweet, sweet taste on my tongue from cursing your name.

10. you will never, find anyone who will treat you as good as I did. I opened my fists for you. I let the flies that were lodged between my fingers free. I made you laugh. *******, did I make you laugh. 
11. you made Chicago my favorite city. the wind whispers your name at every moment and I’m forever reminded of the person I left behind. 

12. I memorized your lips like the keyboard I type on.

I’m forever wondering if you bothered to memorize mine.

all I seem to write about is you

you, with your big smile
big attitude
big personality
big heart

and all I can do is love you
I never want this to end

I'm so in love with you that my heart races with every kiss you lay on my lips
my neck
my pulse quickens
with your voice
your scent
your breath

I love you.
you feel like he did.
but a thousand times better.

I love you.

immensity scares me.

some nights I will dream of being lost in the ocean, seeing nothing but immense bodies of water for hundreds of thousands of miles.

I will wake up in one swift breath to an empty bed and remember that you aren't there.

the immensity of that statement is enough to make me lean over the porcelain bowl and rid myself of missing you.

you make me write half-finished poems.
you fill my head with juxtaposition.

you feel like a black hole that I keep reaching into to find something that I lost long ago.

I seem to keep trying to fit the whole ocean into one dusty old wine bottle, although I know it is physically impossible.

I know one day the glass will shatter.

a million shards, cutting flesh and spilling feelings.

I do not want you.
I want him.

I want everything he has and I want him so immensely that his immensity doesn't scare me.

he doesn't scare me like you do.
he comforts me in every way possible.

and I love him.
not you;
never you.

it's a big world
and i'm such a tiny person

and then there is you,
and you are so big and magnificent
the moon envy's your beauty

he gives me butterflies the size of pterodactyls.
he makes me feel as if my name is safe within his lungs.
I don't know how to explain it, but there's something about him.
how cliche, I know.
but I love the way he breathes.
the way he holds his cigarette.

it didn't scare me when he told me he loved me after barely 3 weeks.
he was 16 drinks in, babbling, slurring.
but when he said it, he spoke so clearly.
sober thoughts.

I've never seen someone look at me like they've been waiting for me their whole life.

but his eyes have a certain innocence in them, and he can't hide from it.

his laughter whispers love letters.
the wind picks up his scent.

just how crazy young love can be.

somehow, I wish he were my first.
I wish I had never had feelings for anyone else,
because I have wasted feelings on other men when he deserves all of it.
all of me.

when I die, I want them I dust off my heart.
and only find his fingerprints.

that song you wrote is beautiful
it hurt a bit to listen to, but it's beautiful
2. I wish it could have worked out for us - maybe in a different lifetime
3. I hope you find someone as amazing as you are
you deserve someone who understands you
4. I'll always love you
I am only realizing that now
but even while I'm in love with someone else
you have taken a piece of me
5. move
get away from here as fast as you can
go be successful
6. you have the most amazing hands
let them do the work
7. your words have always been better than mine
please use them for good and not evil
I'm trying to do the same thing

your obsession with your hair
2. the optical illusion that water looks solid but is really not
3. the sunrise
4. the pitch black of night
5. ice water
6. beautiful black girls
7. autistic children
8. a good beat
9. the number 9
10. the color grey
11. spelling grey as "grey" not "gray"
12. the smell of schools
13. stars
14. floating in water without getting wet (air mattresses, boats, etc.)
15. the cold comfort of the night
16. my laptop
17. a deep conversation with someone who understands
18. chemistry
19. simply sweet style
20. cool sneakers

I used to keep my poems a secret.
I guess I still kinda do.
But I keep them to share with you.

Because, you
listen.
There isn't a word I can't say.
There isn't a sentence I can't string together
even if it sounds like nails on a chalkboard
you listen.

There's a way you look at me.
When I speak these words,
I swear
you look straight into my soul.
Like you know what I'm about to say, and you understand.

There's a way you touch me.
When I practice in the mirror, shouting out the same line over and over and over
trying to make it sound like I didn't write it when I was drunk.
You touch me with your fingertips and spell out the words as I speak them, as if
you don't want me to forget what comes next.

There's a way you hold me.
Like you're holding a dictionary whose binding has come loose.
As if when you let me go, I will breakdown into a million words.
A puddle of mismatched letters on the floor.

Because that's all I seem to be.
A ticking time bomb of words.
And sometimes, they don't come out just right.
I say the wrong thing with the right intentions.
I say black but I'm thinking white.

Your patience, is more than a virtue.

Cause there's a way I look at you.
When you paint, I look at you as if you already are the painting.

When I touch you, I touch you as if I will smudge you.
Smudge the perfectly placed shadowing that God seemed to shape with his fingers.

When I hold you.
I hold you like you are the Mona Lisa, and I am the Louvre.

Because that's what you seem to be.
One of the worlds wonders.
Worth more than anyone could ever put a price on.

And as you paint my words into your pictures, I will write your paintings into my poems.

the rest of our lives is a very long time

are you sure you want to be with me all that time?
are you sure that you want to kiss only my ******* for the rest of your life?
I have a hard time believing that you will never kiss another person again

not because I don't trust you, but because I can't imagine someone wanting only me for the rest of their life
only me

it's a strange concept to me, I can't seem to grasp it

that I am enough for you
that I am enough of a person, that I give you enough love, enough satisfaction
enough *******

because you are more than enough for me
I find it unfair that I only get one lifetime with you

I would find you in any lifetime

the other night, I read my love poems about you from somewhere in the distant past
I read the words of desperate love back to myself, but somehow they were unfamiliar
I do not remember writing them
I do not remember the person I used to be when I was with you

I got to a line, it read
“there’s no place i’d rather be, than here with…”
I couldn’t read the next word, a tear had blurred the ink

It was then that I realized I was sobbing
The pages flooded, overflowing with emotions I had forgotten were there
Soon, the whole notebook was ruined
A boat filling with water and I don’t have a bailer

My words about you blurred, ruined by a tsunami of tears that had no warning of showing up
My body did not warn me to take shelter or to tie down my belongings

I slip into my old heart, the room that I had been avoiding
The locked door has busted open from the storm
My body rocks, shakes, as if it is finally trying to rid me of you

I cling to this heart space, memories clouding my vision like fog on the highway
I’m only able to see what is right in front of me and right now that is you
But you look unfamiliar
Your voice is one I have never heard
My words repeat back to me over and over but they sound like a language I do not understand

I force myself to open my eyes, as if I’m trying to awaken myself from a nightmare
I get up and I light a candle

I set the flooded ship away into the ocean of forgotten

Part 1: The making of a big man

1. I feel small beside him. I’m a cloak of pride that he wears; when asked where he bought it, he claims to have made it himself. I’ve become so comfortable being worn by him that I no longer know how to wear myself when he isn’t around.

2. When asked a question, I know what the answer is; but I’ve been trained to look at him for confirmation in my response.

3. I’ve become quiet. When my mother asks why I have let him take my voice box out of my throat, I respond with a roar. The only time I speak up is to defend his honour.

4. I’ve become frail. I shrunk myself to make him feel big. A result of him ordering salads for me at restaurants; I can tell the waitress looks at me with disdain. I do not look back at her. She doesn’t know one thing about making a man happy.

5. I ignore the texts, the calls. The tinder notifications. When I do bring them up, I speak kindly. I take the blame for not ******* him off enough, of course he needs to seek it elsewhere. But please don’t do it again? (He does. I begin to choose my battles with this one).

6. I no longer fit into my jeans. He tells me it’s a good thing; they’re easier to take off that way.

7. I cry. I cry, and let him hold me, to make him feel like he is fixing me. I tell him that he’s holding me together. I tell him that it’s everything else, never him. He’s like a toddler squishing an ant: what are good intentions become fatal all too soon.

8. He cries. I hold him to feel like I am fixing him. I feel like I am holding him together. He tells me that it’s me, that he feels trapped. I’m like a leech on his arm: what is nourishing me is draining him.

9. He is so big. I am so small that he forgets that I am there. I have done my job. I leave in the middle of the night, he doesn’t notice that the bed is empty. My imprint was so little that he rolls over to my side, where I should have been, and snores.

10. I am small beside him. I am small without him. When he made me feel small, he made me small, when he made me feel weak, he made me weak, when he robbed me of my voice box, I lost my voice. He grew.

Part 2: The making of a strong woman
1. I feel whole beside you. I’m a cloak of pride that you wear; when asked where you bought it, you give credit to me.o

2. When asked a question, I speak clearly and honestly. I never look at you for confirmation.

3. I’ve become outspoken. My mother tells me that I must have found my voice box. I tell her you removed the lock.

4. I’ve become strong. I stand beside you in equal proportions. You make me mac and cheese for dinner and I lick the spoon.

5. I **** you off all the time. Because I want to.

6. I bought a whole new wardrobe. I don’t ask for your opinion. Your friends compliment me and you tell them you love what I wear.

7. I cry. I cry, and you cry, and you hold me. You are holding me together, you are gluing me back together with your tears. You are like the binding of a book: holding together a masterpiece, while still allowing the book to open.

8. You cry. I hold you, and we sail off into the night. Your tears are the ocean, my arms are the steering wheel.

9. You are so wonderful. Your presence is all-encompassing, and I feel all encompassed in love. When I leave the bed to go ***, you ask me where I’m going. The only time you roll to my side of the bed is to wrap me in your arms.

10. I’ve grown, and so have you. You’ve put me on a cloud, and I’ve put you on a throne. Your words have blossomed flowers in my lungs. I’m golden. I am loved. I am love.

i have never woken up at 4:45 a.m. just to drive someone across town
2. but i would drive across town at any hour of the day to see you
3. your smile is the most wonderful thing in the world
4. seriously, you smile like the city lights
5. you are my city - i could draw a map of you (my location would be at the heart)
6. i thought i had loved before i met you. i now know i haven't. i now know what people mean when they refer to their significant other as their "better half"
7. you make all of the numbers good ones
8. i have never been looked at with such eyes as yours. i feel wanted. it's nice.
9. don't ever leave me
if you have do, please dig me a grave
10. i don't want to live without you
it's pathetic, i know
but i would be a dead girl walking if you ever stopped looking at me the way you do
11. thank you
12. i'm bad with words, speaking them, at least

I never saw it coming

I only saw a happy ending, a fairytale that I was lucky enough to receive

But as we sat on my bed that night, the memories flooded to my head and heart

"I don't want to lead you on any longer" says the man who I had envisioned children with, had written vows for

How foolish of me, we were only 21

I think back to the day I tried to get you to go to Mexico, and you told me you couldn't commit to a trip with me so far away

Yet I had committed my whole entire life to you
My children were yours

I begin to realize how pathetic that is
That I would place my future in your hands
That I would place my future in yours

And that you would place your future far away from me, creating a life of your own where I did not exist

How strange it can be to be living in the same time zone, and yet experience different realities

Perhaps there is a parallel universe where I am exactly what you need

And I am the one who is leaving you behind