This is not a poem
it is a thank you
that is breathing in my chest
as tears flow from ducts
that haven’t seen happiness like this
since the sun started going to sleep earlier
and settled into the sky with my heart,
this is my gratitude
as I look at the words that you say
leaving comments for me to read
that brighten my soul
as nothing has been able to
for at least five days,
this is my love
for the love that you feel
for the words that I shared,
thank you
for taking my tears
and making them happy again

It’s Thanksgiving
and I’m drinking wine with my mother
mystified that my story could have ended
any other way
not laughing on the porch with my parents
head swimming with love
fingers dancing on keys
as I write another poem
about loving my family
If things had turned out differently
I would be buried in the ground
my parents weeping at my grave
only bones and pain
left in my final resting place
instead, I am resting on my couch
dog snuggled up beside me
lost for words
as to how I can apologize
for almost making this holiday
and every other one that followed
somber and dimmed
by one decision
that would have changed everything

There is poetry
that rubs on my bones like sandpaper
I am waning under the weight
of losing myself
to mediocre creative expression
as I write with my arthritis fingers
pieces of who I am
drop to the floor
leaving loneliness to fight
with the happiness my mind is trying to find
as my bones become ghosts
of what they were when I was born
fragile to the touch
of everyone I ever loved
God looks at me as his only failure
He never expected for me to fade
this quickly
beside the guided worries
that I was never meant to be alive
these words change my mind for
a moment in time
but I am still left with
a self destructing body
and a decaying mind

I wrote poems for a boy
that didn’t know words flowed from my veins
that a mountain of bones
made up my brain
neural pathways that could only be described
as broken branches from a tree
that saw too little sunlight
and overdosed on rain.
I put my soul on paper
for a boy who didn’t realize that it was cracked
that the sun didn’t shine through my broken parts
and love wasn’t a band-aid that could fix
the damage that had chipped away
at my ability to feel.
For longer than I have the ability to remember
he couldn’t see that these words
meant more to me than living
and when I wrote about him
it meant that I was even more broken
from thinking about how
he couldn’t fathom a world in which
I couldn’t understand my own thoughts
until they were ink
drying on a page next to my tears.
I wrote poetry for a boy
who didn’t understand
the words that ached to be released
from my bloodstream
and it hurts me that
he probably never will

The first time a boy told me he liked me
I was 19
I had never heard those words before
foreign to ears that endured
nineteen years of crosshatched scars
on my self-esteem
from broken records screaming
things that made my knees weak
years of you’re not worth it
made me think that no boy
would ever see me as anything
but ugly written repeatedly
on brittle bones.
What was worse
was when I told him we wouldn’t work
afraid that no one could ever love me
when they saw the disease growing in my mind
self-hatred against darkening rage
for a world that never understood
what it meant to be less than its expectations
it was letting myself down
denying sunshine into my mind
that spread lies like stars in the sky
whispering things I misinterpret as truth
wondering why there is a war against
my brain and my body
rotting with the thought
that I would die alone
against black landscape
that would someday swallow me whole

My mind thought it was dead
for five long years
living a life under clouds of medication
raining blues on my forehead
I did not know what it meant
to be awake
I only knew what it meant
to not want to die
I look in the mirror and see surviving
as if survivor is my only worth
bleeding thick black lines
onto paper so thin
it disintegrates as I write
my bones are awed at the thought
that maybe it didn’t need to be this way
smoking lungs deciding whether to
keep putting out the fire
or let my body burn
burn with my own inspiration
love that buried itself in my ribcage
and made itself a prison
worried about the hurt that would
crush my hands to powder
like it did before I learned
how to silence my mind,
it is deciding whether to be broken
or swimming in my own head
learning to think again
against my body’s wishes
it’s being okay or creative
finding light
finding life
or finding nothing in return

I let the darkness
seep into my skin
as if it would stop
my bones from rattling.
Babbling sirens pierce my ears
forgetting what the morning brings,
I hear nothing but the psychoanalysis
of my own lips breathing out nonsense.
Expectations dangle from the ceiling
blocking out all the light from the moon
enlisting its own doom
into my growing pores.
They reach for sadness like sunlight
a direct way to feel again,
despite my echoing cries
they continue to try and be something.
My body aches of its own type of arthritis,
derived from the weight of surviving,
years of looking for a way out
wore on my joints like sandpaper.
So I erode,
tiny flecks of golden dust
fall to the floor as I walk,
glowing in the hue of dusk reclining
itself into my chest.
I am left with the dread of failure
and regrets I know best
waiting for the dawn to support me,
but the darkness lasts for days.
I wait
and I wait,
and eventually the sun will rise
and I will be okay.