You belong somewhere wholly different-
somewhere tranquil and calm

somewhere
where the lights aren't harsh
where the breeze is cool and warm
you belong where the air
tastes fresh and clean,
where mountain tops
break against the sunrise
and your hands can touch
all the softness of nature.

Where green is the color of everything
and your laugh mixes with birdsong
where you smile and a beam
of sunlight hits your face
and lights and warms you
where you know only love
and peace and happiness.

Where there is no fear,
no concept of pain
where every color is brighter,
every song is chillingly sung
and every day is good.

You belong to
the earth and her nature,
you belong to the ridges and peaks
and the branches of trees,
you belong to soft mossy ground
and sun-warmed pebbles,
you belong to everything beautiful
you belong to everything beautiful.

Ash floats around me
my hands caked in soot
the burnt match between my fingers.

Remnants of flames burning in my eyes,
smoldering rubble
smells of smoke and destruction.

I lift the match to my mouth
touch the tip to my tongue
the salty taste worth the raging fires of my sins.

My face has always been malleable
a canvas of clay the nearest set of
hands could mold into whatever
they wanted.
It was soft and pliable,
changing with pinches and plucks
at my skin.
A girl of many faces,
never seeing her reflection the same
never knowing who she was
without the influence of others.
I don't know who you want me to be.

I don't know how to look past
all of the false layers of me
my face has been remade so many times
I can't even see what the original color was
or if there even was one.
I wonder if you have been shaping me
my whole life.
Always guiding and changing
what made up me
a hand on my back, steering.
Did you even look at first
to see what you were destroying?
Did you deem my real skin unworthy
of your time and energy?
Did you not like what you saw?

I want to hear you admit
to your mistakes.
I want your hands to bleed with
all the paint you've covered me in.
I want your mind to picture
everything you took from me
every impulse and dream and curiosity
you pushed out of my reach.
I want you to know
that I see where your hands have been
your fingerprints are all over me
my soul tainted with the essence of you
you took me from myself
you ruined me.

I was a masterpiece before you even
picked up the paintbrush.

There's something special about
letting someone see you.
Really see you.

Your birthmarks and scars
your weird moles and skin bunches
your heart and soul and worries
and beliefs.

I could be completely naked
and you wouldn't know a thing about me
but to see my body and my soul
is utter knowledge of me.

I would like to
have you see all that my body is
and holds.
I want to show you how
my thighs have stretch marks.
and my shoulder blades pop out.
I want you to know the way I say
the simplest phrases
and how my tongue gets twisted
when I tell you how I feel.

I want to bestow upon you
the intimacy of showing myself.

Trigger Warning: self-harm, blood, death, suicide
These are not monsters.
There are no monsters here.
These feel like love,
and when they creep inside you
it's like something once missing
is finally coming home.
How could a monster make such
pretty pictures?
Pretty pictures,
pretty ****** pictures,
they look like everything
that is in this universe is bleeding,
like rivers of red
and pumping veins
and all I've thought about for the past three days
is my own blood leaking from my wrists
and these monsters (not monsters)
can make you feel it too.

You'll learn to make jokes about why
there's a scratch on your thigh
and why you won't be caught dead
in anything but head-to-toe clothing.
Lifting the perfectly wrapped blades
with delicate red-stained fingers
to hesitant perfect skin
and when the jokes get too cumbersome,
and feel too much like a cry for help,
like speaking up, like letting go,
learn to put an end to words,
forget what speaking is and
by the end of 6th grade
you'll know every spot in your house
where no one will look for you
blood-dripping stash.

The monsters (not monsters)
will share their secrets.
You'll learn that crayon-colored pencil sharpeners,
when applied pressure turn into a weapon
and can be easily hidden in a box of mints
the time every night when you receed into your mind
feels like a nightmare and a daydream
and you can slip
for only the cost of the rest of your life spent
worshipping
the biting feeling of metal in skin
searching up picture and picture
and dead girl and picture
you, too, can spend the rest of the day
smelling of blood leaking down
your wrists.

Go, they'll say,
searching with sure hands, hastily covered wrists-
memorize the lines of your veins
and all the lies you could tell
spend hours in the bathroom
counting cuts
fifty
one hundred
two hundred
three.
Suddenly your skin swells and the blood bleeds
the color of spilled wine
you will learn to avoid everyone
because people mean questions
you will spend your birthday
fantasizing about burying
your blades into your throat
until your heart stops.

The not-monsters
will feed you your first hospitalization,
and your second, and your seventh.
They will leave your once peaceful skin
covered in a mass of scars,
just for you.

And when your life gets too weak,
and your mind starts to crumble,
but where blades break skin
galaxies will implode.
An entire universe will force
itself from your wounds
pushing flesh and veins out of your way
and you'll faint
but you'll be happy
because at least you're not numb
you'll decompose
until you cannot be differentiated
from all the skeletons that live in your closet.
Don't you wish you could die
don't you wish you could have that control
don't you wish you could make your dad cry
because he just doesn't get why you'd do this
you don't get why you do this
you're smart but you just googled
how many ounces of blood can you lose
before you pass out
the horrible girls
horrible bleeding girls
horrible dying girls
horrible dead girls
the parasite can be restrained but not destroyed.
But no matter.
It's a beautiful thing to be made of scars
the picture of your ****** arms in the bathroom
was worth it.

You are more
artfully created
than any poem
I could ever write.
My words,
lines,
stanzas-
they're no match for
your sheer beauty.

I see your face
and can't help but smile
your voice gives me
chills all down my spine.
Your laugh can cure
any sorrow I have.

There is no limit
to what I love about you.
My art written about you
will never fully capture
the wonder that you are.

I constantly get lost
in the ways you
carry love and light;
you hold so much goodness in your being.

It is so easy for me to love you,
it frightens you.
I've never wanted anything
as much as I want you.
The question is no longer,
"How do I love you?"
it has become
"How could I ever stop?"

I laugh harder with you
I feel more myself
I trust you with me,
the real me.
There is my heart,
and there is you,
and I'm not sure
there is a difference.

You are my love story,
I write you into everything I do,
everything I see,
everything I touch,
and everything I dream.
You are the words that fill my pages.

There is nothing
I wouldn't give you
nothing I wouldn't
do for you
nothing I don't
love about you.

Your flaws only make you
more perfect.
My love for you
is ever-expanding
never-ending.

I could fill this world
with poems for you
and even then
they still wouldn't be enough.
You are everything.
Everything.

Her eyes are full of stars
she might have even taken them
right our of the sky.
When I look into them
I see endless swirls of
galaxies and universes
colliding and shaping and molding
to fit into the expanse of her irises.

Her freckles are constellations
splayed across her nose and cheeks
and I could trace Orion,
Sagittarius,
Ursa Major
on her skin.

Her body is made from
stardust.
She's a composite of stars
and planets
and asteroids.
She's heavenly,
otherwordly
one in a billion.
I will never find someone like her
again
and I hope I never have to look.

If she,
this girl made of outer space,
leaves my life,
the night sky will be a blank
expanse
void of all its light
never to twinkle again with
gaseous stars
never to feel the pull of
planets and solar systems
never to experience a shower
of shooting stars.

I will never look up
at the sky
in wonder at the Milky Way
and all that is beyond it
if she isn't there.

She is the utmost center
of everything
the beginning and end to all.
She is a creator and destroyer
and I would rather her break my heart
than never have met her.
She is a goddess,
a living breathing miracle.
She is everything I want and need,
everything I am looking for.

I would lose my life before
losing her
I would fall on my knees
and give up everything I am
if she only asked.
I would be glad to lose everything
if only to keep her.

She is my salvation,
my every thought.
She is my future
I wouldn't want one without her.

She's made from outer space,
this girl I love.
I only hope
I am worthy enough
to deserve her.