when i was a little girl
i thought my daddy hung the moon
he worked a lot
but i had the best daddy in the world

when i got a little older
i started to go to my friends' house to play
and i saw their daddies
their daddies were home every day and night
their daddies loved their mommies
their daddies had time for their little girls
but maybe
my daddy just worked a lot. . .

when i was barely a teen
my mommy died
a week later
my dad brought over a new mommy
(but daddy loved mommy)
my dad started telling me lies
(i don't think daddy lied to me..)
my dad has more time for his girlfriends than he does for me
(daddy's only girls were mommy and me)

in my last year of high school
my father left and bought a house
1,102 miles away
he still thinks he's daddy.

It's been four and a half years since I took my dog, and left the rainy little state of Washington. At seventeen, you never expected me to make a life for myself. I was just your incomplete daughter, whose name you cringed saying. I shouldn't like girls and I shouldn't smoke ***. Music is only a dream and poetry is no real goal. Abigail. You gave me a beautiful name, one I used to cherish. On my birthday, when you (in your drunken stupor) sat me down, over a bottle of wine, I never thought animosity would come from your heart.

I was never empty before, under the misconception of love. You called me hollow, and that word can never be retaken. So I have taken that name, and with it I will pave my own existence.

I am Hollow, nothing else, nothing more.

I am a shell, void of life, lost in the sands.

I can't settle down, because I am cursed to emptiness.

Who wants me?

After all, I am *Hollow.

Lately poetry has been
scraped off my consciousness
and smeared across the page
like a three year old
playing with watercolors
forcing shades together
that were never meant to be blended
in hopes of seeing some pattern
or understanding
in the blind expression

She stopped eating until she was nothing but right angles and sharp edges. It was if she couldn’t understand the math of the world she lived in, so she sought the neat geometry of the curve of her hollowed hips, the bend of her wishbone elbow, and the measurements of her rag doll ankles.

dear dreamcatcher,
i thought you were supposed
to take away the nightmares
not get them *out of my head
and *into my life

Darling I adore you
You put me to shame though