I woke up angry.
None of this is right.
It’s all wrong.
I’m done with the universe *******
with me,
giving me little hits of serotonin
only to end up smashing my face
in the dirt.
So I dealt with it the only way anyone with the same blood as me knows how.
I stopped by a gas station at 9:30 in the morning
and grabbed 2 shots of liquor.
I downed the first one and a big swig of the next.
I’m sitting in the lobby of my therapist’s office
waiting to tell her how ****** everything has been since last I saw her.
Sorry my breath smells.

I don’t know what I need from you
for me to feel secure but I know I like when you smile at me.

The devil has fake red hair
because she’s too scared to accept
the beauty of time.
The devil puts off a perfect exterior,
a seemingly perfect person.
Until she ***** the love of your life
and then pretends to be your friend
the next day.
The devil is a coward who will
never say sorry.

The pair to my peach.
I can’t be one without two.
This cute fantasy world doesn’t
exist without you.
I can barely hear the foxes mreeping,
they don’t speak much anymore.
The orchard has been left unattended,
peaches left to rot on the ground.
I didn’t know it was there
until you showed me.
But I am not enough to keep it alive

I sit very still in bed
staring at the duvet.
Not really thinking,
just staring.
It’s like I am a piece of furniture
in this quiet house.
Time drips by as families
everywhere are celebrating.
I am grieving.

I’m scared.
I always have been.
I knew from a young age that the world
was cruel and unfair and I never wanted
to be a part of it.
I never saw myself being part of it.
Until he came along and made me feel safe
like he would protect me from
whatever the great IT is I’m afraid of.
I don’t like to admit that I am so familiar
with fear, so I pretend to be brave.
But I’m scared.

I think maybe tomorrow
I’ll just stay in.
There’s too much trouble beyond
my front porch.
Land mines and black holes,
snakes and fires and too much
broken glass.
It’s better to peek through the curtains.

There’s a version of me somewhere
that is a little goth princess.
Or as a fairy somewhere pretty.
Like a bumblebee just floating along.
Or as country as a scarecrow,
homegrown and strong.
Or maybe I’d live in the city,
turtlenecks and glasses and coffee.
Hopping the train to work at the newspaper.
Or maybe I could try to like me.
A girl who’s not really a girl anymore,
and is completely lost.
Who knows who she’ll be.

It was nice in the way it felt quiet
even with the roar of the wind.
I had no choice but to wrap my arms
around him and lay my head on the back of his shoulder.
He smelled good.
I noted that it would be a memory I would think about when my hair turns gray.
I used to ride on the back of a motorcycle with a guy, and smoked joints in the woods.
It wasn’t even that it was romantic,
it felt sweet.
Gentle and kind like this man I was trusting with my life.
We’ve come and gone into each other’s lives but that feeling of comfort is always there.

Sometimes I can find joy
and peace in my small existence.
I wake up and make my coffee,
grab my backpack and head to the
gym.
I go to my office job
and laugh with my coworkers.
I come home and build a fire,
hauling wood across the yard.
I make dinner for one and have a beer.
I pack my yellow pipe
and watch YouTube before I go to bed.
And I almost eat this up.
It’s so simple and quiet,
not speaking out loud for hours.
It’s just me, and my pet fish
in this old house.

I have so much love to give,
and I give it to him everyday.
But he doesn't accept it or give it back.
I still try though.
I wrote him a poem and sent it to him,
just inside stuff that explains how much I miss him.
I don't expect him to even address it and
that's okay.
Because I have so much love to give
and I will keep giving it because I don't know
how not to.

I imagined sitting beside him.
Leaned against his shoulder,
laughing about something.
I felt like I was home again.
I don’t know how to move on from that.
I feel lonely and scared around other people
because my person isn’t there.
I don’t feel safe without him.

Life is changing as quickly
as Ohio weather.
I can feel it in the warm breeze
we have today.

Spring always brings the possibility
of a new chapter,
just depends on whether or not
I’m willing to jump.

This time I don’t have a choice,
the way back has done grown over
with thorns and fallen trees.
So it looks like I’m going to jump.

He thinks I’m pretty,
even though he fell asleep
when we were supposed to hangout.
I can let it slide this time
because he still had me
kicking my feet and smiling
like an idiot.
I read up on his horoscope
as most girls with a crush do,
and was pleased to find we are
very compatible.
I am going to be filled with
butterflies all day
because we rescheduled for tonight.

I want you to know I have wanted to write a book since
I was 5 years old. Since I would send short stories to
Children’s magazines I would find on the back cover
of a scholastics, just hoping they might pick me.
They never did, but I kept trying until I grew old
enough to become self conscious about what I have to say.
Is it important? I still wonder that now, and often I find the
answer is no, it is not. To anyone but me anyway.
But I’m a bit of a narcissist. I know this because I have been
in the darkest depths of depression. Like at the bottom of
the ocean, hiding under a rock like a scared crab. Paralyzed with
fear, ready to stay there forever. But yet, I don’t want to die
because without me the world wouldn’t exist, and for
some reason naive hope dwells within me still.
So maybe what I have to say is important. To me.
And to you too. Guess we’ll never know until I write
that book.

Sometimes I feel such
painful, deep sadness that I want
to scream but because I am an adult
I just scream inside my head.
That’s not crazy right?
Yeah I’m totally fine.

The sound of a passing train in the distance is so loud.
Even though he lived closer to the tracks, I used to never notice it when I was with him.

He said,
“I keep picturing you looking at yourself
in the mirror and hating everything you see.”

Maybe he knows me better than I thought.
Because when I do catch a glimpse of myself
I don’t like that girl.
Her eyes are too deep, too sad.

I drive in circles around our
hometown,
looking for you in every gas station
parking lot.
Luckily you’re never there.
I still get that feeling in my gut
sometimes because you haunt
me.
I still wonder if you ever miss me,
if you can’t get my face out of
the back of your head.
I know it’s for the best because
I don’t cry anymore.
In fact I breathe easier too.
But there are still
plenty of times
I still wish that maybe it
could have been you.

You make me feel so ******.
I don't know why I deal with it.
There is something wrong with me that I
keep doing this painful dance with you.
Lately you've been even farther away than you
already are in Florida.
It feels like lying, sneaking, and ghosting.
But I cant understand why.
Honesty is all we have in a relationship that
doesn't even involve seeing each other but...
I don't think honesty has been here for a long time.
I see you drifting farther out to sea,
and I can't hang onto you.
It hurts too much but maybe so would letting you go.

Everything is not okay.
I’ve already lost track of
what day it is,
I have no idea where
I should be or what I should be
doing.
It’s October, so my yearly
downfall into seasonal depression
is right on schedule.
I’m not even in my own bed.
Or my house because I don’t really
have one anymore.
My heart is broken,
my bank account busted,
no good fortune on the horizon.
Just another sun rise into
a day of disappointments.

I still want our’s to be the story
that could be written as a romance novel.
I still hope that 5 years from now,
when we’re both done with college,
starting our lives for real
that you’ll think of me.
And we can finally be together.
We’d buy a cute little house,
get a cute little dog and get married.
We would travel and workout together.
Do projects around the house,
have breakfast before work at the table.
I still want that.

You probably never deserved to be
loved the way I loved you.
In the most real way anyone could.
I never wanted anything from you except
you.
I don’t know why I keep
pouring myself into men who don’t care.
Hopefully you’ll be the last one.

I can’t go back and read anything
I’ve written in the last year.
I don’t know if I ever will.
It makes my stomach hurt.
So I’ve kind of quit writing;
for now.
I don’t need to remember this
part of my life.

I had a dream about you.
I know you were there although
I can’t remember your face.
But I felt it in my heart when I woke up alone.

The ghosted messages
still sit there cold and unforgiving.
I wish my brain could let me forget
let me enjoy what I’m doing now,
who cares what you’re doing now.

I try to enjoy every moment I can,
even the ones that get under my skin
because it’s for the last time.
Hauling our ***** clothes to the laundromat,
and struggling to find an open washer.
Getting a beer at Wings while we wait.
Going to our favorite pizza place for the 200th time;
hold the mushroom add bacon.
And then stopping at UDF for a scoop of
cotton candy ice cream.
The fight to get him to wake up to his alarm the first time it goes off, even though it usually takes an hour.
Every hug I hold for a second longer.
I don’t let go of his hand in the car.
I have cried to him and wished I could go back in time, I’d do everything differently so we would’ve lasted forever... somehow.
He said it wasn’t me, I was his favorite girl but everything comes to an end eventually.
And now is that time.