i imagine my soul
deep, dark and damp,
laying in the most serene
part of the wilderness within me

i walk here -
through the mazes of towering pines
and beds of succulent moss -
each time someone
too bright,
brilliant and bursting
for this earth
is taken away

for each of them
i carry a tiny stone
tossed into the pit,
which never elicits
the sound of pebble
meeting solid ground, instead,
they just float on
forever within me

now i take the walk
again and my brain
isn’t quiet and accepting,
and the stone that i
carry is so large
that my arms almost
can’t reach all the
way round

i stumble
and disturb any innerpeace
i once claimed –
snapping branches,
slipping down slopes,
losing my breath

the most difficult thing
i’ll ever carry is
your tiny, sweet smile,
your soft voice,
your big spirit,
the way you were so
determined to keep
up with your
sisters, and how
they were determined
to never let you down

your stone will remind me
that life is meant
to be conquered,
which you demonstrated
every day of your short
six years on earth

i’ll find stillness
in my inner wilderness,
and i will cry until
the ground around
me bursts with life,
and i will smile
because you are
still finding ways
to teach me –
life is meant for living

grappling with the idea of life
who i am, who i'm meant to be, who i've been, who i will be

the answer is always there,
playing like a psa
through the loud speakers in my mind -
you are in control,
you are a part of it all,
but without constant and
conscious effort,
true self cannot be realized

freedom is such a simple concept,
but a reality that is lived by few

when I smoke cigarettes
I curse them, not myself

I'm sober,
what excuse do I have?

other than the growing sense
that my sky is perpetually falling

my therapist says
I should try breathing

today i drove 3.72 miles
to buy a single 44 cent stamp
and a woman with hair
the color of a cement foundation
forgot my name,
so i pretended not to know
hers either

i stood in a line
of people with holiday
parcels under their arms
and i looked at my phone
to check the date
because i live in a world
where the days of the week
rarely flit through my mind,
much less numbers
from a grid written
on paper

(note to self:
don't worry,
you didn't miss thanksgiving)

i meandered slowly
through the zigzags,
all of us corralled
like cows gone to pasture,
or perhaps being led
to slaughter
by flimsy pieces of
polyester we don't
dare touch

the woman
behind the desk
broke my morose thoughts
with a joke about
the government robbing us
all blind

i imagined a swat team
breaking through the glass
wall behind me
and grabbing her
before we could even
blink twice

then a man
three times my age
looked me in the eye
and told me i looked much
too tired for a 20-something
and i told him, well,
that's because i am

we stood in the parking lot
for nearly an hour
and i told him of the dreams
that pull my energy away
just as i'm regaining it,
in the fitful in-between
of true rest and eyes wide open

i spoke of leaping broken stairwells,
chasing thieves on motorcycles,
finding true love only to watch
it be trampled by a crowd moshing
to the music that defines my days

i told him of my mother's theory:
that i was working out
the issues that plagued
me by day throughout
the night

and he scoffed and told me,
girl, your mother may be right,
but that brain of yours is a
gift and these dreams are
what's wrapped up within it;
if you know what's good for you
you'll figure out a way to use them

remember the time
i lost my mind back
in college?

lauran had to drive
up and get me
because i couldn't
trust myself to be
behind the wheel

you didn't know me
yet, but you walked
me around campus
to look at the art

you were always
comforting

when i got home
i was put on meds
and back to school
i went, but something
inside of me was
empty, like someone
had been stealing
scoops of my soul
while i was passed
out after my nights of
drinking *****
from water bottles

i remember the terror
i felt while i called
my parent's cell phones
and the house again,
and again, and again,
but no one answered,
it was 2 in the morning,
and i was convinced
that i would cry myself
to death in that empty
common room

sometimes i still feel
as if i could cry myself
to death, even though
i won't allow it, and i
don't always want to
drive because i know
that i'm not to be
trusted behind the wheel,
and there are times when
i feel like i am calling,
and calling, and calling,
but there's nobody home
because home doesn't
exist anymore

isn't that a strange thought?
there is no such thing
as home

i can't write anymore
and i know it's because
i am afraid of my own
truths

it's hard to find the
exact point where i
began slipping, because
usually it's with a whiskey
bottle in hand, but this
time sobriety haunts me

i become uncomfortable
at this point in a poem -
unsure of my intentions,
of who i am as a writer,
of my own ******* self

and so begins the anger,
the masking, the quitting,
the loneliness, the bubbling
of things that were once
dead and buried

and then i sit, and i don't
write in my head, and i
question it all with the
same intensity that has
lingered for nearly
two months, and i want
to take paper with my
words and shove it
back down my throat,
because this
is not
poetry

here is the truth:

i am an insecure,
traumatized,
hopeless
child at times

a pure product
of my upbringing
and of years
living out a strong
hatred of self

i am evolving,
as we all are,
and i hope that
despite my
constant attempts
to push you
as far away
as humanly
possible,
that you stick
to me like
cement on
a sidewalk

because

you make me
want to be
the best
possible
version of
myself