you make me want to burn mistletoe
I hope you slip on melted snow
I’d say you’re getting coal for christmas
but you deserve something more worthless.

My grandmother gifted me a jar of buttons when I was little.
There were so many inside the jar that it was impossible she collected them by accident; impossible that she had collected them for the purpose of sewing old clothing back together.
Her button jar serves as a reminder to me, a reminder of how perfect she was that she never needed them to mend old shirts she had torn,
because she was too perfect to have torn any in the first place.
I wonder if she gave them to me on purpose, or on accident.
If she had given them to me as a keepsake of her, to show all she had collected,
Or as a precaution, because she knew I was going to need to mend so much of my future.

We all have little magics.
Maybe you can lick your elbow
Maybe you’ve never broken a bone
Maybe you can tie a perfect bow
Maybe you’ve never cracked your phone
We all have little magics.
Maybe you have thousands of rocks
Or you manage to collect buttons instead
Maybe you take care of 7 or more dogs
Or look good with no hair on your head

Because we all have little magics
Our own unique bag of tricks
Used to secure our own humanity
Our own unique way of defying gravity.

When I was 13, I learned what manipulation felt like.
I may not have noticed it,
because I was in too much middle-school-love to see that he loved seeing my jealousy,
loved to trick me,
loved to trip me down the rabbit hole over and over again,
with no end within my scope.
I didn’t even know how to cope,
because it didn’t seem like I was supposed to.
Taking a step back and analyzing is the first step of taking your life back.

Stop trying to make other people like you.
Because the only people that deserve to be around you are those who liked you before you started trying.
They like you for your raw self, when you weren’t pretending or acting like someone you aren’t.
If you have to pretend for someone, they’re going to fall for the part you’re playing, and not really you.
You can’t keep up your act forever.

Didn’t realize the length of my hair determined what was underneath.

I guess I’m not as good as her.
I guess I don’t deserve a chance.
I guess I’ll be okay.
I guess.

The bags under my eyes are so packed
that they’re ready for a two week long trip to Japan
The weights on my eyelids are so heavy
that they’re lifting 15 lbs dumbbells as a 5th grader
The crunch of my voice is so thick
that it’s driving on a gravel back road at 10 mph
My body is so exhausted
that it may as well be buried six feet under without a bell tied to my hand.

Don’t tell me my anxiety isn’t real
When I’m standing in an empty hallway listening to the same echo, each time with less appeal
Don’t tell me my depression is fake
When the mirror in that empty hallway paints tears on my face
Don’t tell me I’m okay
When I hire painters to splatter the walls with red because it makes the black go away
Don’t tell me I’m exaggerating
When even the red can’t hide that the whole house is contaminated
The poison seeps in
Deeper and deeper
Sunk into a corner
Someone call the coroner.

Don’t tell me things I already know.
Don’t tell me I’m “not like other girls”.
If I was I would have given into your sweet treachery already.
Don’t tell me things I already know.
Don’t waste my time by telling me “you only live once”;
Obviously I knew that because if I thought we got a second chance I probably would have done a lot of insane things already.
Don’t tell me things I already know.
Don’t tell me not to do drugs because you know I’m only human and I’m going to try them when I’m older anyway,
Don’t tell me to stay in school because even if I don’t it won’t affect you anyway,
Don’t tell me it’ll be alright because I know it will but I just want to simmer in sadness for a while.
Don’t try to teach me how to ride my bike if I can do it better than you.
Don’t waste my time and yours
opening doors
that I’ve already unlocked.

I see you
a preview
of a perfect blight
summer nights
with windows down
and I try not to drown
in acid rain
again

I miss not missing you
I miss not thinking of you
Go back where you belong,
Anywhere but my thoughts

If we lived in a world
Where you didn’t age a day until you met your soulmate
I would have gotten my first grey hair
When I met you

is there a reason
is it for pleasure or fun
that you mess with hearts?

Sometimes I miss you
But why waste precious brain space
Thinking about trash

We’re all just chameleons
Blending into the common trends
Nothings truly original anymore
But conforming is too boring
So then we encourage the parrots
Who cut through with their loud colors
And unique patterns
but they’re too different
even though everyone knows
Parrots are much prettier than chameleons
Soon after they arrive they are forced back from where they came
Different is good, but only if it’s the same as everyone else’s different.

drowning in honey is incredibly easy.
unless you know it’s honey.

Jesus, stop changing
whenever the lighting shifts
you chameleon

do you have any idea
how ******* good it feels
to see that smiley face
and know you might be imitating it as we type?

I might lava you
but my eruption could burn
you’re safe somewhere else

wish I could tell you
the feeling’s not mutual
give up on me now

your instagram posts
are they carefully chosen
like mine are for you?

lip syncing snapchats
lyrics that might be a clue...
but probably not.

maybe if I'm distracted by loving someone else
I won't have to learn how to love myself

it was mine
all mine
poetry was mine
my "thing"
yet you took it
i'm not special anymore

you were mine
all mine
no one else's but mine
my "person"
yet you left me
i'm not special anymore

blue was mine
all mine
only my color
my "shade"
yet you took it
i'm not special anymore

music was mine
all mine
only my chords and words
my "passion"
yet you took it
i'm not special anymore

you are sunshine
in human form.
i never thought looking at something so bright
could make me feel the delight that you do
when you walk into a room.
usually, staring at the sun would hurt my eyes,
but you are a safe sunshine;
rather than hurt my eyes you manage to widen them as i'm in awe of you,
which,
in my opinion,
is better than the sun could ever do
when my dark clouds roll through and even the sun casts a shadow on me,
you somehow manage to pull me
under your safe-sunshine umbrella,
because no matter the weather,
yours is always up and welcoming
you leave everyone else questioning
how you outshine the sun.

You used to love the beach, just like you used to love me.
Well, I mean you probably still love the beach.
When you told me you loved the ocean and the waves and how you wanted your little riptide tattoo
I vowed to you that I would take you sometime.
Even though I never got the chance to, I still imagine what our trip would have been like to this day.
I picture us building a sandcastle.
We shape it with our hands because we we’re to lazy to buy buckets.
As we build the base we talk about the dining room where our king and queen eat gluten free pizza and chocolate,
We sculpt their bedroom where they will lay and watch cheesy movies complaining about the bad acting,
We picture the bathroom where they will make bad makeup looks on one another and dance in the mirror
And when we’re done, we’ve built a castle made for the most imperfect of kings and queens.
A castle with empty hallways but lively rooms,
Except the queen’s study where she hides her insecurities in the folds of old notebooks,
Or the king’s bedside table where an old box lives covered in dust except for a few fresh fingerprints, holding faded Polaroids tucked away
In a slightly more careful fashion than the way he tucks his wife into bed.
But us building, we claim not to see the secrets
They’re too hidden in plain sight for us to notice
So we focus on the chocolate and bad acting and dancing.
And then
You complain you’re tired, even though your eyes are wide open
I say I’m hungry, even though I ate an hour ago
And as we walk away
neither of us notice the waves crash over our already flawed creation.

I had a reality where we got back together.
And I really wish that
I could have realized it was a dream
It was only my head playing tricks on me.
Unfortunately,
For you
It only helped me realize that I’m completely over my feelings
And my brain is lying to me when it convinced me that
I’m still in love with you
It’s true that
I couldn’t have been happier
I had a dream where we got back together.

(now read from the bottom to the top.)

How do you think it feels to be held hostage in your own mind?
A cage made of DNA
impossible to escape
being force-fed situations I never want to relive,
or little annoyances shoved down my throat
and repeatedly trigger my gag reflex.
There is no escape
closing my eyes only projects my suffering on the inside of my eyelids,
screaming for help is drowned out by excess noise over the loudspeakers.

I'm not sure which voice is the rational one anymore,
mine or my own.

She guarded her heart with her head
Because she’d rather have that hurt instead
It’s easier to rationalize away her feelings
Rather than actually allow herself to feel things

Her heart tries to speak
It barely squeaks
Her heart is too weak
So she keeps the key

And when her head hurts it retreats in fear
But her heart is so shriveled that no one can hear
All of her issues exposed, as was guessed
She believed them, but now doubts this was best

Unable to defend
She meets a dead end
Locked in cement
She follows the same trend
Til her bitter end.

Swimming in honey is impossibly difficult.
Unless you don’t know it’s honey.
In ninth grade I started dating this guy.
I dove into the deep end with him and broke out into a sprint.
It took eight months to reach the other side,
eight months until the sweetness seeped into my teeth,
eight months until I recognized the bitter potential of this swimming pool.
Swimming in honey is impossibly difficult.
Unless you don’t know it’s honey.
My mind has always raced and I never had an issue with it,
up until the moment I was thrown a life raft.
It’s impossible to tell how sticky your situation is when all you’ve ever known is under the nectar.
Swimming in honey is impossibly difficult.
Unless you don’t know it’s honey.
We’ve been friends for so long that’s all I’ve ever thought of you as.
Yet after my thousandth lap you dragged me out of the pool, scraped away the syrup, pointed out to the place I had been for so long and told me
“Honey, I love you.”
Swimming in honey is impossibly difficult.
Unless you don’t know it’s honey.

Knowing your flaws confused my heart
so I only wrote about the things I liked about you.
And when words on a page are screaming good parts,
you forget the bad, and become a fool.

Knowing you had good qualities made my head throb
so I only wrote the things I hated about you.
And when thinking about how hard you made me sob,
I forgot the good, and rewrote what I knew.

Knowing the truth makes my body hurt
so I only write my versions of the people I know.
And when my poems read as if the roles were reversed,
I forget what really happened, as if the truth was always faux.

My poetry journals are history books.
Everything I write fades away
I'm too scared for you to do the same
That's why I won't write about you

I know, from your perspective, how it looks
"I'll write about you", I always say
You call out my lies; I'm to blame
But I'll never write about you

Last time I wrote about my best friend
We stopped talking shortly after
I would never want us to follow that fate
That's why I won't write about you

I'm contradicting what I recommend
I guess if our friendship ends in disaster
And there's a hole in my heart, you-shaped,
It's because I wrote about you.

My room is a mess and so is my life
The clothes on my floor are a metaphor for the
havoc in my head, weighing me in bed.
An endless supply of sweatshirts on my desk chair
remind me of the stress piling up due to
things to do, stuff to complete,
and quite honestly I’m ready to admit defeat.
Perfume bottles gathered and toppled over
they tempt me to try and disguise my chaos--
but I refuse, and then I lose them
so if I ever wanted to try, I can’t.
And instead of doing anything about it,
all I ever do is rant.

Sticks and stones
May break my bones
But words will never hurt me

And if they do
You’d have no clue
They leave no scars in reality

Yet in my head
The words they said
Are spreading like wildfire

When I explain
All my pain
They brush it off as satire

Just to prove
What they do
I paint my arms with scarlet

They say it’s me
But in reality
It’s them that are the artists.

I stand naked in the wake of the mirror,
criticizing everything about the way I appear.
Everything seems just a little off, misplaced maybe,
like a baby did a jigsaw puzzle
shoving pieces that don't belong together.
My small chest superimposed on my thick stomach makes me sick to it
My dimples indented on my cheekbones and not next to my crooked smile are anything but picture perfect
The list goes on and on
I criticize myself about everything under the sun for so long
I run out of things to say.
I wish the ugly parts of me would just go away.
I stare into my own ugly eyes with ugly tears in them and scream internal ugly words until I can't take the ugly hurt, and I cry out:
"I don't want to see my imperfections!"
My wish rattles against the glass.
I blink and gone is my reflection,
then all too quickly I beg for it back.

You shake your head
as if the truth will fall right out of your ears the same way it entered
because you don't want to believe it.
You're so caught up in your own 'opinion' that you can't even open your mind up to the possibility you might be wrong.
You are given facts, statistics, news stories, yet you are unable to listen to reason.

While the straight white male ahead of me shakes his head at the possibility of being privileged,
A mother mourns over the loss of her son, a black man shot by a cop for no reason other than fear of his skin color,
another woman is silenced by her ****** through sharp threats in a dark closet,
my own mind flips back to when my aunt was disowned by most of her family for loving a woman.

Yet you, who can drive past a cop on the highway without breaking  a sweat,
can walk down the street at night alone without breaking a sweat,
can show your parents your lover without breaking a sweat,
think that you aren't any more lucky than the other people I listed prior.
Oh, if you only knew how to open your mind, just slightly, instead of shake the truth out.
Lying to yourself only makes it worse when you realize the truth.

How come anger is so strong?
Why won’t it just let me move on?
Instead of forgiveness and understanding,
Anger is still standing in my way.
I say that “it’s okay”,
Because being mad and hurt
Only makes it worse.

If I move on,
If I step aside,
Will anger let me by?
Will it let me fly on my own
Without holding me down and
Suffocating me with tears,
With lies going into my ears
and coming out my pen.
I don’t want to love them again,
but that doesn’t mean I have to remain
dripping in anger, hurt, regret
I really want to change my mindset!
But...
          not quite yet.

Have you ever felt sad?
You’re depressed!
Have you ever been worried?
You have anxiety!
Is your room clean?
You have OCD!
Do you feel like yourself?
You have DID!
Have you ever talked to yourself?
You have schizophrenia!
Are you happy, then sad?
You’re bipolar!
Do you eat enough?
You’re anorexic!
Do you think about death?
You’re suicidal!

Hearing theses scenarios on television
Causes severe, even lethal, tunnel vision.

Out on a drive with me
It all starts out the same
The second that I turn the key
It turns into a game.

First, on the radio:
The song has to be just right
Especially not advertisements,
Sometimes they keep me from sleeping at night.

After that, I sit and think
And think and think some more
But the more I think, the more I ask
What is this all for?

Hey! No time for crises!
Let’s play games!
How many cars can you stack?
Anything to keep my brain tame.

But I’ve already thought of that game
So many times
I don’t want to play that game anymore
Repetition is what I most despise.

So I think my thoughts again
They’re even louder now
Stop stop stop stop
But how how how?

My pressure increases on the gas
Zoom zoom zoom
But it’s not because I want to go fast
It’s my head: boom boom boom

It pounds with the same thoughts
Over and over— yet
I can’t just think about something else
I can’t let myself forget

What if I crash the car?
What if I die tonight?
Stop stop please stop
Filling my head with more fright

I take a different way home
I’ve taken that one too many times
Even though it’s a little slower
And there are way too many lights

The water dripping down my neck
Is Chinese water torture
So wipe it off quickly quickly NOW
before you subject yourself to more torture

Torture torture
Driving like this is torture
Stop grinding your teeth, it hurts
You’ve been doing it since your departure

Honest to god, I want it to stop
The repetition is too much
I hate it
I hate it
I hate it
Make it stop.

“We both know how you are with reading into things.” Well... yeah.
I’m a ******* poet;
How else am I gonna figure out what to write about?

If you love me,
Or ever did,
I beg you to stop.
Usually it would be the opposite
But as much as I hate being broken,
I hate being the one to break even more.
Before, I encouraged you to take the leap—
As long as it’s not me,
Be my guest.
I know how much loving in silence hurts,
But if you love me so much you’d understand why I value your silence.

Writers block is just a giant wall
blocking an even rockier path than the one you're on
Once you find a topic,
you can't find the first word,
the first rhyme,
the first line,
the first stanza,
and I throw my hands up in anger
because I end up writing words in order random
or words to make the lines rhyme sandal

My search history is 99%
"words that rhyme with this or that"
Search results: sat, flat, cat
well that doesn't make sense within the context
but ***** making sense or metaphors or deep lore that you have to analyze,
why can't I just write out my feelings without the right rhymes?
I thought poetry was my remedy,
but it's also my demise.

When that specific person calls your name
and you hope it’s not actually you
That’s what wanting to forget feels like.

When they hand you pictures
taken in a different dimension
That’s what wanting to forget feels like.

When they randomly message you
over some stupid **** you said
That’s what wanting to forget feels like.

When you burn every note
that they ever wrote you
That’s what wanting to forget feels like.

When you tear down every picture
you two ever took together
That’s what wanting to forget feels like.

When you delete all of the posts
on snapchat, instagram, facebook
That’s what wanting to forget feels like.

When you unfollow them
on snapchat, instagram, facebook
That’s what wanting to forget feels like.

When you hate yourself
for still drinking and eating their favorite things
That’s what wanting to forget feels like.

When even though you’ve gone through all this trouble
they still somehow find themselves into your head,
then your conversations,
then your poetry,
That’s what wanting to
(but not being able to)
forget feels like.

Knock,
And you will be called in.
Talk
If you are prepared to listen.
Every

Action you take creates friction.

Draw me closer
Paint my scalp with your fingertips
Sketch my outline with your palm
Color in my smile with yours
Glitter glue our hands together,
Intertwined forever.
Use your most vibrant shades to shade in our eyes—
Trace the way they look when we gaze at one another—
Wild, excited, loved.

You may not be the artistic type,
But everyone can draw to some extent.

Even when the moon is new
And absent from our vision
Fear not; it is merely hidden
Please don’t be misconstrued

We have phases, too—
Maybe good, maybe bad— who
Eventually will end when the universe decides to do so.
Whether happy or sad,
Your cycle will renew
and you will be ****** into a better place,
At the hands of fate,
Towards your ultimate destiny.
You’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Wherever you are, everything happens for a reason
Even if right now you’re feeling defeated
The phases will come and go as they please
But ultimate happiness is the guarantee.

The moon has phases
In and out of the same cycle
Always orchestrating a reprisal
Over a number of days

I have phases, too
Yet they seem more like mazes, who
Don’t know where they lead to.
Unlike the moon,
Who is settled in his ways,
I bounce back and forth in this pinball machine,
Forwards, backwards, sideways,
Through different replays with the same ending: heartbreak.

I never know when or where they’ll start,
But I’m always the one with the broken heart.
The phases come and go as they please,
And always end up blaming me.