I chore by woozy by smoking everything in sight
I chore by medicating and letting the sides affect me
crying at roadkill by owning taking up space not taking care

I burden by poetry by reading you poetry
talking too fast remembering too little
by walking alone     unsafe

I chore by panicking at white trucks and appetite suppressants I didn’t ask for
crying (always) at eight years at five years at 24 months
at the always that keeps shrinking away from me

Now I chore astoundingly
by decluttering by choring myself cleaning and painting and feeling alive alive alive!

Though touching is not a burden to you. Groping is not a burden.
No-chore kissing and hands on my ***
whenever and too much to be frank
give me my boundaries my no's

But you should know
I am not a burden a task to complete dead weight snag hitch knot Loving
me is not a chore.

I wrote in a poem once that you didn't understand about a no one that you saw as yourself.
I felt your beating heart then and knew you now it's true
I can't touch you but it's no matter.

When something dies
We are bombarded with nevers
Never touch, never smell, never feel
Never kiss, never hold, never see
When I lost my something
My never was: happy again
Oh was it true

I used to be hollow and broken and gone from the world
but I found things and people and you
and those things helped me grow new parts
and those people mended the wounds in my head
and you made me want to be

Folding pizza boxes is my favorite part of my job
partly because it's simple
and partly because despite my messed up hand
I can still do it
And not just barely like I do everything else
I can do it like there's nothing wrong with me

When I was in the third grade
I made a list of things you could do
To someone you like.

My mom found it
And gave me the talk
And said, "I don't buy you these journals so you can write things like this."

I still write things like that but
I buy my own journals now.

I emptied myself to make room for more beauty
More loveliness and grace
More feminine glow and fragile perfection
And tight skin over protruding bones
But I lost all my kindness
And my compassion
I emptied my sympathy for others
And now I'm full of rosy allure but not much else.

There comes a time
When you check your blog more than your messages
Because he hardly ever texts anyway
And everything starts to look like him:
Your purse is unbearably heavy all the time even though you take things out of it everyday
And old shoe boxes show up out of nowhere and you run out of places to put them
And the things in your house keep piling up until everything is covered with something  and that stuff is covered with something
And you can never find anything but it's really too much to handle anyway
So you sit in your room and calculate the hours you've lost looking for things
Because it's 9:30 and you were ready at 6
He promised to text you but he may be lost under something else.