I feel sick to my stomach and I can't close my eyes to sleep
I can't get away from this feeling.
You know, some days even when it's too cold to feel my fingers and I don't want to breathe in the cold air,
I still feel like if I just keep going I'll find it. I'll find the better place and I'll keep going and nothing else will matter because I will be okay. That's all I want, to know that if I keep going it will be okay.
But it's 4 in the morning and there are blood stains on my shirt and it hurts to breathe. My eyes are hell from tears, but I still don't see God. I think and think and overthink of ways to slip away from my mind, find a better place. My silly brain tells me that the easiest way to get to the better place is by slicing lines across my veins. I freeze from the bitterness of the blade and my mind is blank.
I see the crimson lines forming and I see the lines from the day before and The day before that
And I see the faint lines underneath from months before. They're painting stories within me and I've been staring at my art gallery for forever. The red shines bright and I see myself spilling out.
My mind is oozing and I cannot think.
I don't know how to speak.
They say art is escaping, maybe this is the better place.

Here’s something you seldom hear: don’t always listen to your heart. Because if your heart is like mine, it’s often fickle and confused. Emotions aren’t always true, they may come and go with the wind. Feelings trick us into believing lies. You look in the mirror and feel inadequate. You hear something so many times that you start to believe it’s true. You take a situation and manipulate it till it’s something completely false. But it’s time you start listening to your head: you may not be in control of what you feel, but you are in control of how you handle those feelings. Look in the mirror and tell yourself, “I know I am beautiful.” Refuse to believe the lies. Remind yourself of your many wonderful qualities. Don’t read too far into things, take them as they are. Worrying doesn’t change tomorrow, it just makes today more troublesome. Decide to be happy. Decide to be okay. Don’t believe everything you feel.

i don’t want to be someone who writes in pencil
and eats too slowly and walks with eyes that
are glued to the sidewalk and tops of strangers’ feet
i’ve been underwater for so long that
i’ve forgotten lungs are meant
to be filled with air; exhaling seems
more like something found
on the second star to the right, rather
than a process that is meant to be
done twenty-three thousand times a day

i feel like an old woman who
looks in the mirror and all she can see
are wrinkles and white hair and tired eyes and
the absence of who she used to be

but i am not someone who turns away
from sunsets and pretends
that darkness is all i’ve ever known;
someone who thinks
the sun will never rise again

because the sun will rise again—
the words hiding inside of me will
find their way out, because
i cannot hold my breath forever

i am not someone who writes in pencil
and erases the bits that are too
honest and too imperfect and too real
to claim as thoughts of my own

i cannot keep my lips pursed and
hands tied behind my back,
i cannot keep pretending i am
a shadow of who i used to be

my tomorrows hold suns much
brighter than ones that have risen
over horizons of my past;
i have not reached the summit yet

there is so much more me
for me to become

each day, i am new.

i’ve never had feelings for anyone who could be good for me. i’ve never been interested in someone where a good, healthy relationship could’ve resulted, and maybe that’s why i’m so jaded, because everyone i’ve ever liked has just been a distraction or a house on fire— someone i know i shouldn’t be involved with, but i’ll give myself just a few more days to run around frantically with my hands over my eyes, peaking through the cracks between my fingers, searching for things i know i don’t really need, and then i’ll dash out and run down the driveway and the smog will linger for a little while, and the neighbors will complain, and i’ll sit on the curb with my forehead on my knees, holding nothing but intangible regret. next, i’ll either get over it, or obsessively think about him and the ashes smudged on the inside of my eyelids for longer than my sanity. i’ve never really liked someone and been able to daydream about the real possibility of us turning into something greater; of tire swings and painted mailboxes and overgrown, green lawns. it’s always been pretending and fake hope and melodramatic doom. i think it’s messed up my perception of having feelings for someone, because i can never take it seriously— either i know he’s not right for me, or i know the circumstances prohibit the possibility of us. it makes me never want to give anyone a chance (i can’t even see anyone worth chance-giving) because i know how it ends. i don’t like having this closed off heart so early on; i’m too young to be this bitter.

i want to dissolve into the sky
without a sound
without anyone noticing my empty space
in the most gentle and subtle way possible
i want to go away from here
i want to walk backwards and save myself
from what inevitability is ahead
i want to leave
i want you
to wish i’d stay

I am slowly learning to disregard the insatiable desire to be special. I think it began, the soft piano ballad of epiphanic freedom that danced in my head, when you mentioned that “Van Gogh was her thing” while I stood there in my overall dress, admiring his sunflowers at the art museum. And then again on South Street, while we thumbed through old records and I picked up Morrissey and you mentioned her name like it was stuck in your teeth. Each time, I felt a paintbrush on my cheeks, covering my skin in grey and fading me into a quiet, concealed background that hummed “everything you’ve ever loved has been loved before, and everything you are has already been,” on an endless loop. It echoed in your wrists that I stared at, walking (home) in the middle of the street, and I felt like a ghost moving forward in an eternal line, waiting to haunt anyone who thought I was worth it. But no one keeps my name folded in their wallet. Only girls who are able to carve their names into paintings and vinyl live in pockets and dust bunnies and bathroom mirrors. And so be it, that I am grey and humming in the background. I am forgotten Sundays and chipped fingernail polish and borrowed sheets. I’m the song you’ll get stuck in your head, but it will remind you of someone else. I am 2 in the afternoon, I am the last day of winter, I am a face on the sidewalk that won’t show up in your dreams. And I am everywhere, and I am nothing at all.

It hurts to breathe
and oh my god I thought I meant something to you
But I can't sleep at night
There are puddles in my eyes.
You opened up a book full of mysteries and pictures of better days
And I fell in between the pages
Mesmerized and lost in the clear skies and dark shadows
I was amazed and intrigued by this new world you opened up in a matter of a few pages
I never wanted to leave
And I wanted to have a thousand forevers in that paradise
But soon the clear skies turned into gray and it started to rain
The rain turned into hurricanes and it never stopped
I thought I had found my better days
but it turned out that I was just in the eye of the hurricane.
The raging winds and roaring storms left me breathless and torn
Now I don't know how to make myself better
I don't know how to be whole
I don't know what I've become
All I do is play the clear skies and the parts where it felt like I mattered over and over in my mind
When your words and my heart intertwined like our fingers, inseparable by any storm.
I thought your words were the only truth I needed
You held me close and I was so lost in the haze that I didn't realize you put me in the middle of a storm
You crushed my mind, my sanity, and my heart
You ******* crushed me and left me to glue myself together
I can't find all the pieces
They must have gotten lost in those winds
I don't paint clear skies anymore
It hurts to breathe.