Watching the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Trying to remember what the peace of actual sleep felt like. Counting the seconds between each inhale sounds like small prayer, a scream of please please please don't leave. She's lost weight again and you're doing your best to not panic about it, hoping that by not acknowledging the way death hangs around her shoulders he will spare her, spare you the pain of loss.

Its been two weeks since your ex promised to call you, and you're pretending that all the hope you had doesn't lay at the feet of a silent phone line. There is so much you want to tell her, things you can barely choke out to yourself, like the fact that you are still in love with her, that you're positive if it were anyone, she was the one. The only one who ever made your heart flutter like that, the only person who would understand how terrified you are of being permanently alone.

For now you lay on the cold floor, trying not to let two years of the one who got away strangle you, sipping warm wine and thinking that this was how it smelled the first and last time you trusted someone to touch your bare skin without flinching. You're watching this body on your bed taking shallow breaths, crying because you know that soon enough you will be alone again and she's never coming back.

She's aching again, you feel it in the way your heart tugs, in the way you cannot breathe because it hurts, hurts, hurts. You're vomiting nothing into the toilet, haven't been able to keep anything down for days now. Deep down you know its because you are scared that she too will leap from the pit and wash down the drain. The kind of leaving no one comes back from.
So you're screaming now, hoping that promises of 'always' and 'you will never do this alone' hit home. Yet you have never known an always, just a lot of almosts and you are terrible at letting people in your world because you believe your destiny reads loneliness. But for her you'd be anything, anything at all to know she is here and breathing even if that means becoming something of permanence rather than the leaf in the wind you wrote yourself to be.
So you sit making promises of forever and always for the first time in your life because even though you always have one foot over the edge you'll do anything to get her to take a step back, because you love and she aches, because you love and can't help but feel all her pain.

To you, my heart sleeve, You from whom I pull my feelings like fossils to examine. You my dictionary, my reference book, who helps define and label each one with patience and understanding.

You who lets me write her poetry, who lets me drip her love into these pages just so I may find a better way to know it. You who lets me turn you into poetry like we are in love even though we are not in love. That sounds romantic but maybe its not, maybe it doesn't have to be.

Once I went to a slam poetry night and a man told me that if you write more than one poem about a person you are in love with some parts of them. I have entire forests that bleed and weep your name because I write you so often. Maybe we are some kind of in love but I do not know with what parts or if its even worth saying aloud.

You my rock, the solid foundation on which I would build a home if given half a chance. Permanence of a kind I have never tasted before you.

To you, and you know who you are. My compass, the lighthouse guiding me to shore. I am missing you, as I have been missing you for every moment since we last parted, for every fraction of a second between now and the moment my skin stopped hugging yours.

To you, the owner of a folder in my phone, full of all the pictures and quotes I am saving for when you are ready to come back to me, for when your heart stops aching just enough to let me back in.

To you, the only person who will ever see the original version of this poem where I stitched every word together with your name, even though you may never see this poem because I do not know if I am ready for this yet.

I fell in love with a girl who decided she could not handle me at my worst.
Because when she was falling apart in my arms it was different,
And when I tried to fall apart it was just terrifying.
I have no space to come undone like that.

But tell me, darling, if it doesn't hurt than do you even love?
Where is the solace if there is no pain?
Can you really be in love if you are not scared of falling?
Does it mean nothing to you at all?

I once told someone that the poison in my veins was too strong,
I am the reason that no one can stay.
Even though I so desperately need someone.
Perhaps I save lives this way.

But it is not my fault you were scared of me,
And I am sorry that you prefer something surface level.
Perhaps that will be your place,
Because I told you I was ocean tides wrapped in skin.
You told me that you loved me anyway.

If my love wasn't what I wrote it to be, neither was yours.

I'm choking on my words and they swallow like bile,
like acid burns all the way down into my abdomen.
I have to say goodbye,
push you away because I am no good, I am broken and bruised,
an over ripe fruit who is only worth the compost she can become.
I don't want to, the words haven't left my throat and I already miss what we had,
I feel the gap in my chest like open wound,
like empty airless space has entered the void of me.
Not even its stars can warm what is left of me.

I am sorry.
I don't know how else to say this.
I am so sorry that you ever felt the burden of loving a wreck like me.
For a time I believed I could have been more than this,
that maybe I had phenix bones and I could make worth in the ashes of this. All I got was burning.
In the hardest way I learned that I am human and nothing more can come from this.
In part I blame you.
You made me - make me - feel as though there is more to this than the story I am reading.
The problem here is that I have always been bad at context clues and the words are beginning to fade wth age anyway.
Its immoral to blame you for my humanity but it hurts more if I acknowledge that you are better than anything I will ever deserve.


If it hurts less I want you to hate me. Hate everything I allow myself to become when I take on the monster in my mind.
Know that none of that means I will learn to not love you.
I just can't be strong enough in that love to be present when it all falls apart around me.
You should keep the happy memories, never learn the skeletons that haunt the empty walls of this closet heart.

My brother brushes past me in the kitchen.
I find myself offended, not for his rudeness nor the brash way he attempts to apologize.
But because on my own flesh and blood I smell him.
It has been years but the odor of his cologne still sends me spiraling.

Memory is a haunting thing.

How am I supposed to move on when every wide eyed, bro-tank wearing beef cake smells like my worst nightmare,
It feels like I am just trying to escape,
but was forced into Stockholm's syndrome via perfumed air and this sense of helplessness that I cannot bear.

This is what it feels like to drown all over again,
but this time I am perpetually a scared 14 year old girl, and it is arms surrounding me not lake water.
I could find irony in using that brand of cologne to light myself on fire,
or to inhale the aerosol into my already full lungs for a short high
Either way it would be the same as killing myself all over again.

Half of me is still on that mattress somewhere,
I don't know how to get her back, or why I want her so bad.
But, how can I make this little girl inside stop crying if I'm not there to comfort her?
How could I ever be there to comfort her?

I am so broken and bruised,
I still flinch when hit in spaces once blackened by hands I thought I knew.

Yesterday I seriously considered taking my own life. Almost exactly a year ago I wrote about how this was an exit sign, a real way out. Now I realize that it is no more than a doorway into another room, you still reside in the building but cannot see through the wall to the ones you love; those who love you.

You see suicide keeps you close enough to touch. Years will pass without healing because no words make your absence coherent, there is no easy disease word to swallow like cancer or crohns or complications. When you die by suicide you are immortalized by sadness, already depressed friends who will still mention you to their therapist in passing thirty years from now, with sadness, with cracking levee voice. Your pain lives in them now.

When my hands became more knife than weeping pen I called my bestfriend, asked 'why, why do you love me? How, how can you love me?' With laughter in her voice and heart in her words she explained and explained again,
"You are loved, you are cherished, you are worth loving. I won't give up on you. I love you."
In this she shared my pain with the first few men who did not make me fear my body, who gave an out pouring of love I still cannot comprehend. Even a stranger who still sees me faceless except for a few kind words, told me I was destined for more than this, more than a bloodied ending.
I'm holding all of this love in a lock box beneath my heart, the kind of stash I don't really need to hide or fear seeing the bottom.of.

Yesterday I was seriously considering final words. Today I am working on what I will say some future day to the friends who fought distance and depression to give me a reason to promise to stay.

Love, wherever you are, whoever you may be. Whether you are a face I know well or a stranger I have yet to meet, know that I have been waiting for you. When you find me, notice the little place in your soul where my love is aglow, already a small ember that has always lingered there, please do not be afraid to sit by its warmth.

Love, I know, I know I am a tad crazy, a little naive, but I promise if you tend to this ember it will keep you warm for longer than any flame could. I don't love much, I keep my heart a lock box with only just enough room for you but I promise that everything I am capable of will be yours as long as you are willing to ask for it.

Love, always ask. Always question. Never think that silent treatment is an acceptable method of dealing with problems. I am well acquainted with the silence of repression and I know that She solves nothing. Let us communicate so that there is never doubt, so we may never go to bed with anger and sadness.

Love, my days are not always happy, and even the good ones are often tinged by sadness but believe me when I say I want nothing but happiness in your life. I will always do whatever it takes to bring some light into the days when it rains the hardest for you, even when I cannot fathom my own sunshine.

Love, if you find yourself weary, wearing the weight of this world like a shroud you aren't strong enough to shoulder, invite me in. Let me bear the weight with you. Being by your side in any circumstance is easy for me, like I was meant to walk with you all my life. I will never turn you away when you ask for help.

Love, if you can't stand it, can no longer bear the burden of loving me with all of my crazy, with all of the darkness I have kept, don't be afraid to ask where the door is. I don't know much but I do know that if you want to leave I will not stop you. Just be sure to kiss me before you go so I can press my heart into your hands to be sure you have my love along with you.

Love, please try your best not to leave. I have watched too many people walk out of my life and I hope you stay, I always hope you'll stay.

In the early morning hours I count the number of times you have saved my life.
Even in your collapsing frame you attempt to strong arm my demons,
Try to hold up the crumbling roof of my strife.
I do not deserve your love.

In the coming days(is it really so soon?)
You will move away.
Find a new life in quiet town.
If I am lucky you will forget.
Memories only last as long as you visit them.
And I will cherish all of my own.
Despite your wishes to just disappear, i cannot forget someone so close to me.
Family is forever, and though we are not blood what we have is definitely thicker than water.

Even on the days that God and I forget to speak,
I always ask for your protection.
If I cannot protect myself I will spill empty breaths to ask that you remain safe.
You are too great a soul to lose.

I am so blessed to hear your laughter,
Even if it is stifled by the tears you spill.
It is still angel's bells in the wind of a storm.
Such sweet music distracts from the incoming disaster.
I know your storm is more hurricane than rain shower,
And I swear that despite the wreckage, you will be safe, you will still be strong.

There will come a day that we will be permanently separated,
When that day comes know that you will always have my love.
It is not much,
But it is all I have to give.

And if you ever need a friend,
Someone to remind you that everything will work out in the end,
Look for my name in your contacts list.

I believe some poetry is best unseen, unheard, and unloved.
Not to say it isn't beautiful, but that it is so beautiful it must remain secret
For fear of tarnishing it.

I have so many poems about a girl with brown eyes,
Who told me she did not know how to love anymore.
But after getting in a relationship with a guy just a day after our break-up
Seems to be loving fine.

Perhaps its better I did not share those poems.

I have come to the conclusion that I am just hard to love.
Mostly because I need to write all my feelings,
Turn sadness into metaphor and anger to simile,
Just to be sure these emotions won't tear me apart.

When she told me she didn't know what love meant,
I wrote her a poem about the ways I wanted to get to know her.
She didn't understand it.
That my poetry was my love,
That if she couldn't see that I wouldn't know what love was either.

Its been over a month since she left me for someone with stronger hands,
But I still have managed to reign in my poetry.  
I do not write about the ways I wanted to know her,
Nor do I let mention of her smile slide into my metaphor.

If I do, it is never seen or heard.
I lock it in the remains of this black heart,
Burn it in the flames of my pride.
I will not let heart break run me.
My love is a beautiful secret.
I will not be tarnished by a broken girl who does not know how to love.

I did not intend this,
A lust for soft hands, lips like rose.
I woke with it already in my veins.
But my love is not my own; they stole my reigns.
After taking what was left of my voice.
It isn't my choice.

Slowly the fear of myself becomes too strong.
Lost in the rhythm of this sapphic song.
I was bred from the blood of a great poetess,
A Greek Goddess who loved both Zeus and Aphrodite ferocious.
Unashamed of the lust in her hips,
Born to a world who saw no difference.

Daughter of Sappho why do you cry?
Please don't lose your life to a lie.
You can do nothing wrong in love,
Pray that Aphrodite is generous from above.
May she show you that true love transcends gender.
Dare Cupid to prove the existence of such splendor.

May the Goddess in your bones,
Find refuge on the beaches of ******,
The people who disagree fear your unknown,
They cannot comprehend the grandiose.
When they demonize you,
Remind them Lucifer was once angel too.

Be too large in love for them,
Do not succumb to their strange,
Better yet prove that you will not be condemned.
Be the catalyst of change.

Am I going crazy?

Perhaps one should define the term crazy,
maybe it is these moods swings: always violent but never long.
Or my hysterical crying in the early morning though I never remember what for.

On the days it rains hardest in the black of midnight,
I rise from slumber like the undead to stare blankly at the water-streaked pane and wonder
"Why me?!
Why was I blessed to hold a mind this heavy?."
In the spirit of my family name I never talk about it,
about the insane thoughts that run like school children in summer between my ears.

My father once told me he would love to see a psychiatrist just to sort some things out but I have to wonder how much a man with a family history of hiding yourself behind intellect and avoidance tactics could mean it.
My grandmother still doesn't call to tell us she's sick,
just mentions it as an afterthought,
a hey-I-forgot-to even as her husband slowly forgets everything he thought he knew.
Maybe I was born with this shame in my blood,
or maybe that is where this sickness came from,
My ever present thoughts and their not so secret toll on my wellbeing.
But since we don't talk about it I have to wonder:

is this just me?
Am I going crazy?
Is this why all good poets write?
Is this why they all **** themselves?

I just returned to the place I call home and I'm already planning on leaving again.

And I know you're thinking you were only away a few days, a few more can't hurt but you see this is just what I do, this is that vice I cannot seem to kick no matter how many times I promise I'm quitting. Even the alcohol and cigarettes that stole the best years of my life don't compete with this leave-leave-leaving.

For some one who needs stability, who writes poetry in repetitions of three because her heart stutters compulsions, like embolism, like maybe it could **** me, like I don't wanna die, I have a funny obsession with making my life unstable. Always turning my world on its head, finding solace in strange places surrounded by different faces.
It never makes me happy, whether moving or stagnant I feel like I'm missing missing missing a part of me and I have no idea how to find it. It is the ghost that haunts me.

So I'm grabbing the bag I never bother to unpack, add to it my melancholy and the frightening 'what if' of my failing health, trying to not feel like a liar for promising I'd go see someone about it, trying not to feel failure in the fact that I don't know if I can stay long enough to see someone about it, trying not to feel like this is my way of kissing this life goodbye. Hopefully this isn't how I leave you.

When I talk about suicide it isn't for attention,
this is not my exit sign, no easy way out.
This is me seeing sky for the first time after minutes of drowning,
this is survival mode kicking in,
a need to taste the air again with water filled lungs.
A feeling so familiar to me,
it is the closest thing I know to home.

I wear trinkets around my neck,
memories of all the reasons I cannot leave yet.
My necklace holds the smile of a young boy who knows exactly what I need and how to get a laugh from my lips without words.
On the same chain lies the spirit of a girl who with heartfelt conversation and the conviction of God reminded me what life tasted like.
I keep these things close to my heart,
praying to always be reminded of what good life holds.

But so easily do we forget, and how often we are forgotten.
Some days I worry that my reasons could never be enough.

I'm staring down the barrel of a loaded gun,
and the weapon strangely looks a lot like my two hands.
There is sunshine on one shoulder, a cyanide pill strapped to the other.
Now I don't know which one sounds more beautiful,
but a blind decision could make it my last.

The more I think,
The better off I am alone.
These thoughts of mine are the only things that do not leave.

I have watched best-friends turn to dust,
At the hands of boys they said they'd rather be with than to be friends with me.
Just as I have watched exes return to the people they called poison because the first time did not work out.

I guess I am the poison,
And the people who hurt them were the antidote.
Because god forbid I ask you to take care of yourself,
Drop the cigarette, this metaphor isn't cute.
Flush the needles, your soul is already covered in track marks.
Toss the razors, your heart has too many scars.

I am sorry I wanted you to live,
And I'm sorry you wanted to die.
But you can't hang around anymore.
And neither can I.
Please get out of my life.
Just leave me alone.

Don't try to come back,
I'm better off here on my own.
Its easier to fight heartbreak,
If I remain alone.

This isn't me anymore.
These limbs, this body, all broken, all useless,
know not of my life nor how I live.
These lungs don't know my breath or the way it sounds to lose it.
I don't want to be reduced to this waste of blood and dust.
The scars across my hips exist to prove myself separate,
If the body bleeds it cannot possibly be mine.

I am goddess, I am infinite,
I exist in the sound of fireworks shooting off long past the 4th of July,
Loud, wild, and constant.
The 4th star from the moon is where my soul lives,
especially on the days that I cannot bear to see this planet's sin.
They forget that I don't belong here.

My teeth are made of sparklers and the fire I speak when angry makes you think me beautiful the way I crackle and glow.
I am cracking, and the dull color of my own demise is stealing the beauty from my skin.
The way they speak to me, like I am eggshell, so white; too pure for this life, leads me to believe that I cannot stay here.

I am fragile and strong all at once; nobody knows which side of me to rely on for fear of being the reason I crumble.
I am crumbling.
I fear that there is no cookie-sweet deliciousness to distract from this decay, yet no one seems to notice me.

I am as trapped as I am free.
Earth the place I can no longer be.
This nonexistent existence is my skeleton key.
Death my locked-door opportunity.

A body was found in my home town.
They are calling homicide.
People I know are scared,
More than that,
They are paralyzed.
Worried that it could be them,
Danger lurking around every corner.

We lost three highschool students earlier this year.
It feels like life times ago.
I watched a whole city mourn together.
Even the streets seemed to weep.
And street lamps gave hugs.
I was sick from all the crying,
Sick from watching people break down.
Sick of the sadness that hung around.

I haven’t seen my own city streets in two weeks.
I don’t think I’d recognize them if I did.
They are shuddering in shadows,
Anxious for salvation.
But here I sit,
Wondering the age and race of the victim.
Desensitized to the reality of it all.

When three of my peers died this year I did not mourn them rationally.
I wondered what their corpses looked like.
If they had become gaunt with rigor mortis,
Or if they were still soft and supple as they had been all the times they did not acknowledge me.

I am sitting miles away from everything I grew up tracing in my mind,
Wondering how a nameless corpse looks on a cold metal slab.
Laughing at the people chasing ghosts over their shoulders.

Small towns are too easily rocked by tragedy.
I think I could knock mine over with a pinky finger.
This year has proved to me that the good die young,
And the young die loved.
I wonder who loved the man they found in the park.
Will he be just another ghost to haunt these grounds?

If I were to die right now,
They would find my body stiff in the morning.
I would be all rigor mortis,
Less soft girl next door.
I wonder who would have loved me.
Am I bound to just be another ghost haunting this town?

I have starved past the point of hunger,
and continued til hunger came back only to leave again.
I have tried to slit my wrists until my sanguine blood wine poured like tears, like fountain, like waterfall.
All I have ever wanted is to make myself smaller, to shrink away from these haunted memories, from my tainted past.
Sometimes wishes come true.

I am dying.
I don't say that lightly,
this isn't a hearty joke to laugh at later.
I am dying and doing nothing to stop my personal decay.
They all pretend to worry,
ask if I'm losing weight,
Ask why I am so tired all the time but I never respond with any truth.
I've lost near twenty pounds in less than a month while still eating with consistency,
Yesterday I threw up nothing and saw blood.
My skin is so weak it is no longer a barrier between inside and out,
More like a ribbon at the end of a race,
one last thing to run through before the finish.

I am afraid that there is so much I will never get to reconcile with,
like the fact that I threw away someone I loved for the high,
The fact I may never really get to say goodbye.
I don't know what is the sickness to fear,
The one who won't let me breathe,
or the one who keeps love from me.

"I smiled, you forgot to respond."

Today I went outside, took in some ‘fresh’ air.
(Not sure I’d call anything in this smog infested city fresh.)
I breathed, and breathed, and breathed.

I took in so much air until I wasn’t sure there was room in my chest.
(Though with my heart missing its half full at best.)
When I finally felt like bursting I released all my waste,
exhaled it so forcefully I felt my lungs leaving too.

When the little boy handed me that day lily,
I didn’t mean to spend time breaking it. But I had to pull out its center.
Because like me, it looks prettier empty.
The core of it all is unnecessary.

When I found a spider living inside I gasped.
Not for fear, but because how beautiful is it, to find another creature like me. Living inside of beauty, hiding from the animals outside.

The smog in this city is filling my lungs. Each inhale burns my core,
the one I emptied so long ago.
Today I finally felt it filling again.
For once I think I felt whole.

The last year of my life has been one massive panic attack,
some kind of nightmare without need for the night.
But in some things we find restitution,
the soul is returned to the vessel and the body begins a small sort of healing.

On the worst days,
when the noose winds its way around my neck,
when the 10 story fall doesn't seem so far anymore,
the little things keep my feet in the dirt,
keep my blood from leaving these tired veins.
When death opens its arms to welcome me,
to pull apart my wrists just to see how i bleed,  I seek solace in knowing that out there exists arms that feel like home,
that a heart beats that my anxious mind does not hesitate to trust,
that there is a body who is the safest place I know.
I have never known a purer human love  because it comes without want,
without need to be reciprocated,
But it is: it always is.

These past few weeks I have been making new friends,
People who already know more about me than the walls I grew up with,
more than the hands that kept me alive all these years.
And its because they understand what its like, to hold instruments close to find peace,
to use them to cry the tears your body cannot release,  
to scribble your feelings into a notepad hoping that in someway it could dull the ache in your soul.
These people have only touched my life for barely two day's length,
yet I know that I would do anything and everything to keep them safe.

I am slowly learning how to feel again, how to give love without ripping myself apart, without bloodying the knuckles of my heart.
And i know, I know; I Know
One day I won't wake with this blood under my nails from crawling out of my nightmares.
And i know, I know; I Know
That day I will wake and know somebody loves me
The secret I'll learn is that they always did and I was just too stubborn to see.

I wonder if she knows she's losing me,
My best friend reads my messages and forgets to reply,
Just as I scream out 'I want to die'
And I wonder if she knows how close she is to losing me.

I swallowed a box full of pills,
Swished a glass of whiskey in my mouth.
Still I haven't been allowed my easy out.
Every message I send feels like rocks in the pockets of the drowning,
I only sink ever deeper into this dark.
If I felt joy maybe I could smile at her jokes, her attempts at distraction,
But all I feel is this weight in my chest,
The weight of a heart that can never rest.

She tries to remind me of God,
of the love I should let surround me,
But I am incapable of comprehending an ethereal kind if love when even human affection remains a mystery to me.
How can I feel His love when I don't even feel worthy of human love,
When I reject the love of creatures that are here and palpable to me?

I wonder if she knows she's losing me.  
Can she see how hard I'm trying to let go of the dark parts?
Can I still have a best friend if I have no soul or heart?
And I wonder if she can tell that she has already lost me.

The beds of my nails are slowly turning lavender, 

cyanotic they call it. 

I want to whisper to them, 

promise that we will learn to breathe again.
But my lungs are uncertain of that truth,
and the blood does not tell where it hides precious oxygen from me.

I spend my nights laying on the floor. Feeling my heart beat,

the flood of blood through my body.
No one can explain why it races, 

why it thunders like derby horses from head to toes and back again. 

Insomnia sounds like an engine trying too hard to keep us alive, 

like heavy rain beating against capillary walls.

I’m purging liquid poison into the toilet, 

whispering your name like holy, 
like gospel, 

between gasps of breath even though you are far from me, 

And I know that you’ve long since forsaken me. 

Thats why I drink,
to swallow down the pain of missing you,

to slow burn deep in my stomach, 

to turn poison to blood, 

to turn myself numb. 

I wish this didn’t hurt,

even when I know I deserve this. 

The only good thing in my life has been reduced to memories, my tears, I tear into my flesh.
Maybe if I spill my poison blood I could create cure, 

or in the very least drain myself of this vicious viscous fluid and make amends.
I want to be the best I could for you
but I couldn’t even handle being myself.

The early morning after the holiday, after the fireworks fissle out, after the ***** dies down, I pick up the bag I keep in the back of my closet, packed with what little I own, evidence that I do not know the meaning of the word 'stay'. The fact that I never seem to need to unpack it only solidifies to me that I am not somebody who will ever know a true sense of home.

I am riding to a place I used to think I could consider a second home, with a sweet boy laying against my arm and I know that I should love this, two years ago I would have loved this. But everything just feels like a shadow of what once was, what I once was. I can't shake this sense that I may be missing something. That maybe I had a purpose but it was exploded into the night sky the minute that last firework sang its praises.

Holidays should not feel like funeral rites, they should not feel like sad goodbyes but I do not know how to be happy with the fact that another year has gone by and I am still here, still at the same crossroads between death and the rest of my life like some kind of suicidal vagabond.

All I want is to go home and not feel empty inside.

You call yourself a poet to make yourself seem deep.
Sweetie, poets are shallow pools in human shells.
There are no oceans in the heart of a poet.
If you want deep call yourself a musician or artist, never a poet.
There is nothing beautiful about being someone who bleeds unto paper,
attempting to write some sense of the life they live.
Trust me, do not be a poet if you can avoid it.

A poet lives in hell,
just empty space between stanzas.