I told God about you
and I cried
tears that refused to fall
finding heartbroken symphonies
in between my bruised knuckles,
I sang your name to him
with quiet melodies
that never made sense.
I told him about the times
you saw me,
more than just a poet
with a bag of regrets
slung over her shoulder
like a tool kit.
You saw me as me
big eyes and healing scars
and everything you shouldn’t love
but you did anyway.

My body rejects the writing
because writing
is like an I.V. in my veins.
It clears the venom
out of my body
and dries up
the river of words
in my mind.
I do not want to be
a skeleton
with pretty bones
and no substantial thoughts.
Writing polishes my soul
but I lose the piece of me
that made me fight.
I have so much to say
but I am slowly
chipping away and
all I can do
is watch my brain decay.
Every time I write
my fingers crack under the pressure
that maybe after this poem
everything will be ok.

There are days that I feel that I can no longer help anyone,
my words are trapped under layers of regret and uncertainty
and my love is buried too far underground
for even grave robbers to find.
I want to fix everyone that I love
with understanding and commitment
but too many times my skin has been ripped to shreds
by people who are happy with being broken.
These days it is impossible for me
to take more than one panicked breath
before submerging myself in icy water
that I could easily stand up in and walk out of.
I see potential in every crack and scar
but sometimes things should be left shattered,
because sometimes things are not ready to be whole again.
I find myself too often fighting for change in the unchangeable,
looking to heal whatever I see,
but constantly fixing has led me to be broken
and I have found that somedays the only person I can help
is me.

Here I am,
sitting in my new old room
drinking coffee to keep me awake
writing new old words
from ideas that are recycling in my brain.
There is nothing but
hand-me-down sounds
reclaimed by my slowly failing ears
that lend nothing but
thoughts that will eventually lead to
my new, but never unthought of demise.
My new-to-me street
sings lullabies of past goodbyes
that may someday be echoed
by my own lips.
I breathe air from trees
that are much older than me
and have seen the passing of time
through the years.
Other people
with their new and old ways
break in new and old habits
that will stay with this place forever.
While I sit on this bed,
my head spins with the thought
that someone may soon
be sitting in this new old room
and think the same thoughts
as I am right now.

I say,
this is insanity
as I rake hot coals
onto a page
and forget the pain they caused me.
This is a mess,
broken bones and crumbling homes
too many losses to count
on each failing hand
and we have no say
in how this ends.
This is a tragedy,
people falling like half crimson leaves
to the sound of shattered dreams,
glass screaming to the ground
like death itself.
This is life,
I did not ask for this,
but words find solace
when they are shared
and we are in need
of something other than
pain and destruction.

I’m sorry to all the people
I hurt while I was hurting.
I know my skin
felt like shards of glass,
and no one could get close
enough to touch me.
My fingernails were caked with blood,
and I am so sorry
that I don’t know whose it was.
I am sorry to those I broke
with my razor words,
they were my own regrets.
They were used to cut open
my own insecurities
when I thought I had run out.
I was lost
in a forest of my own doubt,
the trees were too dense
to believe
in myself.
The only way to find my place
was with a paper cut trail
leading to my home of denial.
My brain was shreds of late reports
and missed deadlines,
and I was just an inkblot of a person,
all I could see was my own skeleton in the pages.
I do not know how to send this apology
without it soaked in my tears,
but I am sorry,
I
am
so
s o r r y

There are nights you feel as if
no one will ever love you,
your bones are too fragile
to be kissed to sleep
and you only find tears
in the bed next to you.
These nights find words written
across your eyelids in pen,
prose of self loathing
breaking up into radio silence
cracking numbness
and misunderstanding of breath.
You look to the stars
but they have been dead
for longer than you have lived,
unloved and straining under weight
you never asked to carry,
broken with scars
too permanent to bury
behind car wrecks in your mind
and feverish dreams.
You feel hopeless in yourself,
because no one will ever
want to be around when you are broken
and crying yourself to sleep
on nights like this