The moment I realized I could be more than my past
I found the key that unlocked the door
that was holding back my potential,
wings made of sunshine
and a halo that burned just as bright
my soul finding the light that almost forgot its existence
old fingers turned new
and years of sorrow transformed into
something that felt more real
more alive than my own heart had felt
in 10 years
there was a change
that broke open my veins
cracking my ribcage as it
took flight towards something different
than the ash and dark it was trapped in
and a longing crawled out
past my teeth
that were no longer fangs
and that longing was for life
something that I forgot that I had
and never expected to feel again

I breathe in sadness
like an addict
who has only been clean long enough
to know how much it hurts
to lose what once made you feel
more than you had in years
each sigh brings me deeper
drowning under the pain
until all I can remember the next day
is the smell of my tears on my pillowcase
and how much my bones ached
under the idea that I would never be clean again
looking for my next escape
as soon as the weight
eased off of my veins
and let some of the light in
that burned my throat
as it tried to bring me out
I am what I vowed not to be,
an addict to my own sadness

I try to reconcile with my bones,
bargain with them to stop burning
as they touch the inside of my skin
embers falling into my bloodstream
as agonizing seconds pass
and I cry into the blood-stained
sheets on my childhood bed,
I ask my bones to stop twisting
into creatures I do not understand
seething with anger
that I cannot control
breathing hot coals around my veins
as I attempt to fight my own body,
even though I have always known
it is useless to try.
I ask my bones to give me a break
from the constant suffering they make me endure,
but they laugh at my pleading
and continue to reshape themselves
in the image of my darkest thoughts

I was born with insanity in my bones
fire burning in my lungs
with smoke blowing past my lips
cracks in every word
as if I would never be whole again
living brought the agony
of trying to understand
who I was
in a world that was telling me
who not to be
and I was everything that they
said no to
sleep was nonexistent
behind hooded eyes
and no way to realize
I was not to blame for falling apart
trying to stitch myself together
with all of the pain I felt
I only knew what it meant
to be racing against my own
biological clock
ready to escape the cage of my own demise
at any moment
if only someone had the reason
to leave the door unlocked,
hope that someday someone would
trust me with the key
until I realized that the key
was inside me,
I was just too focused on the insanity in my bones
to pull it out of my own swollen throat
and create my own freedom

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.

I’ve been trying to remember who I was
before all of this changed me,
further than two steps from a grave
fighting away demons with the back of my hand
and looking at the grey-blue sky
with something more than indifference.
Who was I
before broken glass slipped its way
into my skin
burrowed into every vein
and threatened to cut me from the inside
if I dared to move,
feet planted in the dirt
hoping not to scare what soul I had left
shattered on the side of the road
where hope left me
to fend for myself.
Where was I headed
before this pain was implanted
into my brain
pushing its way into every nerve
and screaming at me to give up
before I lost my mind,
legs buckling under the pressure to fight
for people who would never understand what it meant
to be waging a war within my body.
I had to change
before life brought me down
into the pit of ignorance
where everything is bliss
but everything is a lie,
I couldn’t stand to be there
any longer than I could survive here
as I was.
I am not who I used to be,
care free and warm
I would have suffocated in my sleep
trying to be something that
wouldn’t live to see another day,
I have changed
into someone that sees pain
but also the beauty that it becomes.

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

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.

A friend asked me
“What do fish do all day?”
and I replied
“Find a way to survive,
eat and keep moving
and hope that when it comes
time to die
death finds you
in the least painful way it can,
exactly what humans do,
but without knowing
the painful truth
that their life didn’t mean much
in the first place”

You told me you loved me
with honey dripping from your lips
and blood fell from my fingertips
as I ran back to you
guilt in my face
when they asked me why I stayed
I thought your flickering eyes
meant change
but all I got were bruises
behind my pumping veins
and a type of love
that was never meant to be real.
I only found broken lightbulbs
behind my dimming pupils
and aching bones
holding myself up.
Every day was a mistake,
bending backwards just to say
draining prayers for something more
and hoping God
would walk through the door
and save me.
It was all a lie,
feebly accepting that maybe
I was going to die unhappy
and alone
with someone who said they loved me
but only knew love as
****** knuckles
and never ending pain.

What I know about life,
which is much less than I’d like at 22,
is that hope is going to come to you
disguised as failure
in a bright crimson bow
laced with sleepless nights
that somehow lead to being alright
until one day there is a light
under your door
and time doesn’t scare you so much
anymore

How do I heal
without the memories splitting my skull,
breaking free from the prison I put them in
to protect myself from me.
How do I find any peace of mind
if I have been at war with myself for ages
when I don’t even know where I put
my white flag,
it might be under the remains of my soul,
burned black in the battle
that left me looking for my humanity.
How do I look forward
if my neck is permanently back,
looking for answers in a world that doesn’t give any
toes pointed toward sunshine
head towards pain
and there is nothing in my brain
saying, stay safe
there is nothing telling me how to stay sane.
These days I ask myself how I can heal,
without ripping myself apart again
remembering what got me here
and I am left to pick up each piece
of who I am
and tear it apart
hoping that one day I’ll learn how to
put myself back together again

A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
I wanted to say,
lock yourself in a room,
scream until you have
a poem and no voice.
Open your veins and bleed
until you know that your bones
are pure words and sorrow.
Act as if you slit your own throat
and all you can bleed
are your own regrets
and all of the darkness
you boxed up for inspiration.
Write your mom a letter,
tell her you're leaving
and you won't be back for awhile
Because being a writer is traveling
through all seven layers of Hell
and denying anything is wrong.
Forget loving yourself
when all you have is a pen and paper
fused to your wrist
and Jesus is tapping at your skull
saying turn back now.
Warn the neighbors that if they smell burning
It's just your soul
clawing at the front door trying to get in.
Learn how to be alone.
Learn how to lose everything you have
in order to feel release,
learn how to only feel deceased
from now on.
A friend asked me
how to be a writer.
All I said was
don't

When I learned to love others, I stopped loving myself. I gave all that I had to people who never cared enough to deserve it and I lost myself in the process. I became an empty vessel of who I was and was more hollow than I had ever been. I was a mannequin of what people thought I should be. You learn a lot when you become nothing. When you are empty to yourself and the world and nothing seems like it will bring you back. Eventually, you find something that teaches you that loving yourself first will always be worth your time. Learning this is how you survive.

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.

There have been many days without me
and there will someday be much more
but what has changed is the waning of
my own personal desire
to reach it faster,
instead
I am fascinated by the world
never the same at any given time
obsessed with how the light bends
around my fingers as I reach for the sky
finding new ways to fall in love with the fact
that I no longer want to die
and in turn, hoping to make the days with me
mean more than I could ever have imagined
instead of years ago when I was just hoping
for it all to end

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.

It’s not that I don’t want to love you.

It's that every time I look in the mirror I see sunken eye sockets and memories of someone I used to be. I remember the scars that made their way on to my body, on broken dreams and aching limbs and thoughts that destroyed my self-esteem. It’s the notebooks I filled with words that I read when I feel like breaking my own heart again. It's the bruises I gave myself on the skin that was never quite good enough for me to inhabit. It’s the not quite working brain that lives inside my head. It’s that fact that I can’t breathe when anyone says my name too fast, shellshocked from nervousness that wore away at my nervous system. It’s that my bones rattle in my body every time I think about the eighth grade. It’s patchwork blood stains on my comforter from the nights it got too bad. It's the guilt that continues to build in my veins. It’s that every time I look at you, I fear I will hurt you like I hurt myself. It’s permanent scars on my psyche that I don’t want on yours. It’s fearing that I will slide back into who I used to be. It’s not knowing who I am now.

It’s not that I don’t want to love you.
It’s that I don’t know how to love myself.

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 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

I wrote to you in hopes
that it would help me forgive myself,
so I could stop cutting down the flowers
that grew from my veins,
watering them with cyanide
and still crying when they died.
Tears haven’t stopped flowing from my eyes
since I decided to find my own life
and I left you behind with the shattered glass
that used to be pieces of your heart
I hoped that these words
would be some sort of key
that would let me leave this cage
that is rotting around me
filled with piles of unspoken words,
melodic verses of things that I should have said
when I needed to say them,
now everything is broken
and I am stuck in my own mind
with a piece of paper and a pen
trying to figure out how
I can make myself whole again.

You said,
“I don’t know if fear is a good enough reason
to lose someone you care about
you cut people out as if they are nothing,
an ingrown memory of something you were too paralyzed by
to try to explore
and you know that you are drowning in an ocean that you filled
with your own insecurities
but there are people that are trying to help you swim
you ignore every lifesaver they throw
because you are too afraid that they will drown too
it doesn’t work like that
there is a way that you can be happy and still survive
you don’t have to suffocate with the expectation
that you need to be alone
because being alone only makes you more scared
and everyone around you thinks that you are okay
with being lonely
even though it is eating you from the inside
I know that living is hard for you,
you put out the light that would guide you home a long time ago,
but that doesn’t mean that flame
can’t be created again”
I smiled knowing everything you said was right
and still,
I walked away.

The water makes me forget,
yet I remember
the waves lapping on sand,
except we haven’t had enough rain
in years for the lake to reach the shore,
this is my favorite place
but it feels just as tired as I do,
living up to expectations of the past
barely meeting requirements of placehood.
I’ve lost the special that once consumed me
dilapidated buildings and broken promises
link the memories between
place and person
deterioration reminding me
that I am not the only thing
searching for peace
and finding loss in its place.

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 have a heavy kind of sorrow
from losing something
that was never mine to lose,
mind straying to what could have been
haphazardly dreaming about
scenarios that were never meant to be,
bending to the will of some unknown force
that lives inside me
and aches for the world to be different
than it was when I ran from
the words that haunt me at night
and I am wracked with guilt
for hurting those who only wanted the best for me,
letting my stuttering heart decide
what what would make up the rest of me,
even as I am drowning in the ocean
it put me in,
this sorrow keeps breaking me
repeatedly screaming what I may have done wrong
and I am chained to my body
losing something over and over again
that I have no right to mourn

Each night I am kept awake
by this timed ticking madness
embedded in my skull
reminding me of who I could have been,
motion picture madness,
blood in the back of my throat madness,
breaking at the sight of dawn madness,
teeth bending at the notion of truth madness,
lungs filling with sadness
and beginning to drown
madness,
in every cell of my body
madness,
breaking my own heart
in the middle of another night
waiting for the sun to shine
madness

I have been told I look like my mother
in the way we laugh at the same jokes
and show love through our eyes,
emotions never quite being able to hide
and I always take these comments in
with so much admiration and pride,
yet when my mother says she hates how she looks
I begin to think that is a reflection of me.
If we are the same
does she not point these poisonous thoughts
at my chest too?
Bulls-eye patterned loathing
that strikes in the same place twice,
and I am left to wonder whether
her self-hatred is not just for one
but for two.

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

My body is made of flammable stone
a paradox in its own birth
a wooden crown atop
goddesses in dressing gowns
sleeping to the sound
of fire burning me to the ground.
I am swaying with the tears of my mother
hitting silently as they fall,
everything that made me special
also put me up in flames.
What a sight,
all this destruction
pillars of smoke around my teeth,
rosy cheeks as I’m lowered into the grave
because it is I
and I am one
with the great Notre Dame

I feel the words coming back
and I’m not sure if that is good or bad
I write and write
only when there is unending turmoil inside
strengthened by the fear
that I may be getting bad again
sad
lost
trying to maneuver my bones
in this lightless room
I was not equipped
to be in charge of my body
on another trip into the darkness

It has been four years
and I have not written a better poem
than the best poem I have ever written,
stuck in a repetitive loop
of not good enough,
never exceeding
what I was once able to do
my fingers ache for another masterpiece
but my brain refuses to provide
any sort of solace that would come with
writing a good poem,
a great poem,
something that would make me proud again

My doctor diagnosed me
with restless legs
and I say:
That is my body trying to outrun itself,
my legs try to flee
when it believes my mind is already asleep,
it is searching for a way out
but only finds discomfort
and never-ending sleepless nights
in its fight to be free

When I drink coffee
I get enough energy
to think about something other than sleep,
loneliness creeps out of its hiding place
and into the light
crushing hope with every move it makes
my fingers shudder as I begin
to want to die
a hollowness engulfs my chest
and I feel more alone
than I ever did
when I couldn’t keep my eyes open
wide enough to see
just how sad I truly was
and I tell myself
that I will never do this to myself again
but ultimately I do
when the tiredness makes my bones ache
and rattle against my skin
I’ll take a sip
that leads me into a different kind
of oblivion

My body keeps buzzing
like the sound of
one thousand cicadas
reborn with the spring
and I thought they would flee
with the first frost of the season
and yet there is snow falling
from the deep grey sky
and my bones keep rattling inside me
and the cicadas never die.

I woke up to the death of my anger,
It crawled out of my chest
loose teeth
and twisted bones
that never stopped hating
the world that made it.
It took my breath with it,
familiarity gone
as I became new,
someone who felt alive
in place of the pain
that rested on my chest at night.
I woke up to the death of my anger
and I have slept better since.

One day has just passed into another
and I am sat in my bed
reading poem after Bukowski poem
trying to understand my life
but I am stuck in my head
against a door with no key
and no warden for me
to bargain with
my eyes are locked
on what I used to think
was the truth
but my body knows that
people lie
with the utmost contempt
and I don’t know
if reading all these poems
will ever make me feel whole again
but I wait for my soul
to find my body once more
and continue to move my eyes
across my laptop screen
looking for
the meaning of life

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.

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 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.

There are things they don’t tell you about getting older,
how one day you will realize
that the home you grew up in
no longer feels like home
and you’ll be yearning for somewhere else
even as you are sleeping in the bed
that you slept in as a teen,
these changes come slowly,
but hit you all at once.
They do not tell you
that you will look the same
as you did last year
and last week
but you will feel like the world
shifted a few inches overnight
not telling you that it was going to do so,
but leaving you to pick up the pieces
of the memories it left as it moved,
you will grow to understand
that some things will never make sense
no matter how much you shake your fist at God
and cry into your mother's shoulder,
they do not tell you that you will not always be able
to cry into your mother's shoulder
or call your dad when your car breaks down
or feel comfortable in the places
that used to make your eyelids relax
into peaceful sleep,
they are too busy learning these things themselves
that they forget to tell you the things
you wish you knew
before it was too late.

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

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.

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

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.

Maybe I was too much thinking
and not enough time
always trying to stay in the lines.
I was too much space,
but not enough stars
barely enough room
to keep my heart.
I was too many hangnails,
falling over guard rails
nothing there to stop my fall.
I was too many truths,
not enough dares,
who even cares
about a girl so scared.
Too many some days
not enough nows
hitting the branches
on my way down.
I've seen too many fallen
to be happy with my life,
I've seen not enough days
and too many nights.

I feel one hundred and two
decaying from the inside out
a skeleton of mistakes
and regrets of things I should have done
broken teeth scattered across my bathroom floor
and empty pill bottles lining my shelves
I feel older than I should
already preparing for death
it looks me in the eyes
and tells me everything is all right
so I will go quietly with it
into the night,
I feel my bones shifting as I sit
waiting for another day to pass
until it doesn’t anymore
and I am somewhere that isn’t here
not living but free
escaping from what I tried to be
but I never was,
fingernails gnawed to the bone
and bones jutting out from the crevices
of my own mind
I am too young to feel this old
ready to give up
who I am
to anything that promises relief
irreconcilable futures rest in the horizon
and I am here bargaining away
what time I have left.

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

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.

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.

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