At 12 years old
you learned the majority of stars
were already dead.
They are masters of deception
giving you hope that beauty
is permanent
and love is forever.
You learned that love
is too often a lie
and promises find themselves
shattered on linoleum floors
that you step on in the night.
At twelve,
you learned that your bones are fragile
paper thin like the birth certificate
you’ve never seen,
buried under other things
you never really cared about.
You found truth
at 3 am in your bedroom
followed by rivers of tears
and open pill bottles.
You saw life
and you saw death
and sometimes those nights
when you were twelve
are the only things that make you feel
like the world is real.
When you were twelve
you found out the stars were dead.
When you were twelve
you found out that you were not.

One.
I am broken
fully shattered by myself and others,
trying to pick up the puzzle pieces
I’ve been left to find.
Worn into a two edged sword
that has cut my skin and left me unloveable.

Two.
Some days it will seem like I am cured.
I will look whole,
as if a miracle came from heaven
and fixed my aching skin
and wrapped me up in something that will never happen.
I will seem okay as if everything before was just a phase,
but I need you to know that tomorrow
I will be me again.
Jagged lines drawn across rainy skies
that never quite made a connection.

Three.
I am trying.
Can’t you see from the bags under my eyes
that this is eating me alive?
I was two steps from Hell,
but now I am four,
trying to dig my way back to sanity.
There is peace in giving up,
but I have opted for chaos.

When I was thirteen
I thought that I wouldn’t make it through the year
birthdays felt like due dates
that I was never going to make
and each day brought me closer
to my ultimate fate of nothingness.
My bones felt like they were
filled with lead
and my eyelids sank as if they
only knew how to fall
like the rest of my body
into sleep.
I thought each moment was
a ticking time bomb
that was going to blow up
and leave my family to mourn
the life of someone who chose not to live it anymore.
I was so broken by my own brain
that nothing seemed worth it
and the easiest thing would have been
to step into the water
and let my leaden bones
pull me down.
When I was thirteen
I saw nothing but emptiness
within my own chest
and a body that would soon be useless.
When I was thirteen
I did not know what the future held for me
with laughter and love
and everything I would eventually dream of.
When I was thirteen
I was wrong
about most everything,
especially that I would never make it
through the year.

I thought my catharsis was death,
slowly falling into a hole of darkness
rotting against soil
that would bring life again,
giving up eternity to be happy
for one single second
I thought death would bring me closer
to peace.
Six feet under sounded like
an inevitable place
found too early by my fate
of unhappiness within
tired eyes and cracking bones
it was too late to turn back
from the future I was building myself
with glass and dirt.
I thought relief would come
right after the pain
left my body,
singing songs of who I used to be
but destroyed in order to be whole again,
memories of what could have been
but became impossible when I chose
to look for release
in a damaging
damning place.
Instead,
I found catharsis
in killing who I was at the time
and becoming someone new,
painting a picture of rebirth
and taking it out on the page
instead of my skin,
looking beyond an inevitable demise
and seeing light.
I found catharsis
within myself,
begging to be created new
in the image of someone
that was happy
and believed it.

Your love was like a car crash
my entire body numb
to the moment
impact inevitable in the face
of what we were,
all twisted metal
and twisted arms
each part holding the other tight
as the world collapsed around us.
We were just teens
driving at eighty three
reckless in the name of freedom
moments passed like bullets
on the battle ground
we didn’t know was coming,
it was all broken phones
against yelling
and no way to understand hearts swelling,
crying eyes against night skies
and two wrecked cars in between us.
This love broke me
lying in the backseat
waiting for us to get home,
trying to apologize
with blood stuck in my throat,
and expectations that never made it
left totaled against each other
in the dark.

I sit on the floor
of my newly carpeted room
searching for answers
in the white crackled ceiling
and find nothing
but imaginary shapes of hope
in the bumps that preside in it.
There is no meaning to this,
broken hearts laying down
final words as they rest easy,
hardly trying to find love again
in the things they lost,
criticizing every act of affection
and disowning the thought of recovery.
I imagine the sky
changing past the roof above where my eyes meet
the ceiling
while I sit here decaying with the thought
that no one will ever love me
like I want them to
and no one will ever want me
if I don’t even want myself,
how do I get through a life
where there is no affection to be found?
I sink into the carpet,
eyes red against plush blue
wondering if I’ll ever accept
that some people aren’t meant to be loved
and maybe I am one of them.

I look at you
eyes red with regret
and longing for the someone
that didn’t love you like you wanted.
You shift under the world you are holding
with your shaking hands
as you begin to fold under the pressure
you weren’t meant to endure.
I see you lock the doors to your heart
pushing everyone away
like you are TNT
that is waiting to explode.
Satisfaction loses meaning
when all you wanted
was never allowed
and you still taste
what could have been
but wasn’t.
These days you find nothing
in a world that is trying to save you,
you chop away open arms
like branches from your favorite trees
and you lose yourself in loneliness
and self prescribed misery.
You stopped seeing beauty
and I am trying to understand how
I could make you love yourself again
even though he couldn’t.
When I look at you
the glass in my bones shifts
and open new wounds
because you hurting is synonymous
with me drowning
in all the ways I wish I could save you.
So I just sit here
hoping you make it
through ground shattering pain
like I did,
but I cannot tell the future
and all I can do is wait.