nakedness is not just the absence of clothes.
be naked with your soul.

I'm eighteen years old and I don't understand ***.

I don't understand how people undervalue the thing that is literally one of the most important actions in this life.

You shouldn't bare your body, if you aren't willing to bare your soul. You should be comfortable naked.

And by naked, I mean, you should be okay with telling them all the reasons you hate yourself and let them tell you it's okay. You should be naked with the fact that your family hurt you and you grew up feeling lonely.

Be naked because you grew up with so, so many saddening secrets and now you find it so, so difficult to be naked with your soul.

I am trying to be naked
and I struggle with openness.

There is no point taking your clothes off to only hold the weight of life on your chest.

It breaks my heart to hear stories of friends that haven't grasped this concept. They're too embarrassed to share their secrets and the first time they made 'love' they wore a t-shirt.

don't miss out on the best things in life, get naked.

please understand.

it isn't that i don't trust you.

it's just, i've been hurt so much and i hold so many things inside my chest, things that i have no idea how to let out of my shut throat.

and i am so very, very afraid sometimes, so very, achingly lonely inside of myself.

please show me how to open up.

I'm ashamed; posting
these awkward poems; expecting
you'd read this and smile.

I guess you could call it poetic how by the age of 12 I had no recollection of what happiness tasted like on my tongue. Some would say it was tragically beautiful.
But it was not poetic, nor was it beautiful,  but it was tragic. It was so very, very sad, and that sadness is only doubled now that people see sorrow as glorious.  It is not glorious. It is not strength. It is a lump of iron in your chest and stomach and it eats you from the inside, out and you have no right to think that blood stained wrists are anything other than tragic. So very,  very tragic.

sometimes the navy hue
of 3 a.m. and the patter of
raindrops sinking  into
cracked concrete is enough
to console me into sleep. sometimes

it pains the bruises on
my heart slightly too
much that it aches to shut
my eyes; you always loved
the scent after rain, and i always
loved you.

you don't taste like heartbreak.

i.* tell me one thousand things you hate
about yourself. tattoo your face with flaws,
and i will correct each and every one of them
with my lips brushing lightly against your
bruises.

ii. we sit underneath an empty sky and you
are telling me about your parents' divorce and
it's times like these when i have to remind you
that you are not your mother, or your father,
or any of their mistakes, and you just nod but
your eyes tell me everything you've been
hiding from me and i bit my lip until it tastes
like ancient rust and melancholy.

iii. you were the one who told me that stars
shine brightest before they fall, and if that was
the case then you and i are shooting stars
flying in opposite directions, just waiting to
hit the ground and leave a crater in each other's
mangled hearts.

iv. my twisted heart strings wrap around my
my chest to leave an unwanted reminder that
i love you, and i loved you, and i'll love you,
and it hurts. you shined like sunshine,
i burned.

your old socks haunt me
as they linger in my drawer

Touching all my innocent matched pairs.

you had slipped them to me
one frosty night when the cold nipped at my toes

An act of a gentleman.


but now what am i to do?
you're gone, but your socks remain

Each opening of my drawer kindles the coldness I feel.

you and your socks betrayed me
none of you comfort me anymore

*But at least the socks decided to stay.