I want to love you like midnight-
Deep and beautiful
Familiar
I want to love you like the gardens I grew up in
Expansive and forever
As if we grew up together
Maybe we still will
I want to love you like warm blankets in the air conditioning
Cuddly and together
I want to love you as if glitter makes me more attractive
I want you to love me like a puppy dog
I want to be sweet for you
I want to be the perfect little girl
I want to be your sweetheart
I want to be everything for you

You are everything to me :)

Wake up!
Wake up!!
What?
I have a hole!
What?
Come see!
What?
Come and *look!
Sure...
...What is this?
This is my hole.
It's a notebook!
It's a stack of notebooks!
How is that a hole?
It's my rabbit hole!
Your what?
**My rabbit hole!
I jump through it, you see
And anyhing can happen
I can walk on the moon!
Or breathe underwater.
Or anything!
Do you like my rabbit hole?
What an incredible universe
That we could live in
If you could only see.

The thing that kills me is that we can't get to everyone in time
"Was found in critical condition after suicide attempt in his room..."
I wonder if their friends couldn't hear them crying
I wonder if they closed their door too many times
I wonder if they forgot to smile
It's a small failure everytime you hear,
"Teenager hung themselves from door frame with a belt,"
Every headline that reads,
"Mother of Two Overdosed on Prozac"
I wonder how everyone forgot to tell them that they are important
I wonder if I am the only teenager that woke up this morning to a story of yet another suicide
All I could tell my friend this morning on the phone was that I didn't understand
Who failed to say, "I love you."?
I remember every story I read about someone choking on carbon monoxide
I remember the day I accidentally turned on the car with the garage door closed and my mother cried:
To every single person who has killed themselves-
There is someone in the world who wants to hold your hand right now, and they can't!
I still can't understand death when I'm staring right at it!
I remember the first time I had a friend who cut themselves and I didn't do anything!
I left...
Every person is a story, and you don't need to end yours before someone can hear it.

Little girl with the big white dog
Grew up, flew away
Now drifting, unstatic
Maybe time to settle down
Don't forget to plant roots and grow stronger

I never noticed her,
But she was always there in the background
I remember the way that her father braided her hair
I remember seeing the flash of her bright green notebook for just a second
I never saw her right away
I saw her in the scenery of pictures
In her red skirt, the only one she owns
She always clapped the loudest for me

I never noticed her, but she was always there
She always left me something
A note on the wall,
Her face in a picture
Her notebook that she would never let me read
A text message the next morning;
Two words, and I never wrote back
One day, she drew me
She said she had nothing else to draw

I'm fascinated by her shadow
She is more like a gust of wind than a human being
It's like chasing after a balloon that I've let go of outside
I can't put a butterfly in a jar
But I can leave out an orange slice and let her hesitate
I can leave clues behind,
Something, just in case,
She doesn't see me.

I don't feel stuck.
I feel like there's a way out, I just haven't found it yet
Somewhere in this whole mess,
I broke my smile
My hair got caught on a branch and cut so I can't braid it anymore
The part of this maze that was supposed to be shaded is on fire,
I can still see it if I look back
And I have nightmares about lighting it and pouring gasoline
The trees are too tall to climb
And they turned off the light at the end of the tunnel
It's there, but I'm not going to see it
Sort of like nitrogen in the air
I feel it though
I feel it like the heartbeat in my feet, hitting the ground in steady rhythm,
Running because I know I could be wrong
And the next dead end could get me to crack,
God knows my skin already has
I'm holding my heart in my hands as a last resort
I wonder if the fire's catching up.

Why shouldn't people like you?
You write well, you dance, you sing,
And you know what? So do hookers.

It was terrifying how you would always turn to me when no one was looking,
When I couldn't run away
When I couldn't scream
Like how people always trap me in the corner during checkers
I'm supposed to be good at this.
I'm supposed to be smart.
We're all supposed to be something,
But you're supposed to be nice
And you're not
So let's start there.
Remember when you told me not to talk to people because we "don't know who they are?"
You chewed my pens
And you ask stupid questions
You laugh at everything about me
I reach out to hundreds of people a day,
There's nothing about me to laugh at.
You treat people like barbie dolls;
They're all perfect, if their hair looks good
And all their heads come off.

Congratulations!
You've won a nobel peace prize by punching out the judges.
You've got the most perfect smile,
When people can't see your fangs;
The fangs that you have only shown to me.

I can't take you down,
O! High and mighty mistress.
Have you noticed I'm not even trying?
Maybe if you weren't here I could forget your name:
Forget the feeling of your hand on my arm
Throwing me down so you wouldn't have to take a hit
And dragging me away from my friends & myself

Excuse me if I damage your flawless reputation
Or priceless ego
But I can't touch you,
So this is why I don't like you.

I'm learning to let my realities blend
I swear, I
Blink for a second, but minutes pass
It's like I fell asleep
My letters switch and I can't
Describe the way I see my room

It's hard to look at the broken walls
With sharp, thick lines
Like the way they divide countries
It's hard not to write a love poem
Even as I fall asleep

In my head,
It pulls apart first
Where the floor meets the wall
My window stays intact
But the floor boards are ripped up
The wall is sharp and jagged

The blackness in the middle
Is horrifying
And beautiful and intriguing
I'm not afraid of being tired
But I've typed the wrong letters
And the image is gone

I'll stay up all night to show you a flash
The empty space where my walls used to be
I wake up and it's gone
So I'm fighting to find the keys
I forget what I was fighting for

I write down everything I think
Because I'll close my eyes for a second
And then I won't remember
I wake up with ripped up drawings
And poems
That I don't remember making

I want to say one more thing to you before I go to sleep,
Like I do every single night,
But I can't find my hands.
It takes me three tries to turn off the lights
And then I am scared of the dark

My thoughts don't linger long enough to express to you. I'll sit here, peacefully, and wait for the room to fall apart. I listen to my racing thoughts silence each other and I forget what I was going to say to you. I sit there until I am too tired to stay upright and I fall asleep. Some nights are still restless, but the others-
I forget.

Pink pens on pink paper
Love notes lost in time and loopy letters
Twirls that thread their hearts together
When the sounds become distant
And the colours fade,
You can't blot them out.
They're tied together
With loopy letters
Lost in time,
Written in pink pens
On pink paper

I am your little girl
I do what you ask
I play your games
You rule me with fear,
Because you're bigger than me.
Well,
You think you are
I can't get away,
Because you are my safe harbor
(For the moment)
You flip like a switch
Faster than I can escape

"Tonight is the last pill,"
I said to myself for the nineteenth night in a row

I tried sleeping for about five minutes,
But my foot started twitching
And the lights started ganging up on me
And I swear there were spiders crawling up the trees painted on my wall to get to me
I watched the glass melt out of my window and thought,
"I want to be like that."
I want to melt into a world not dictated by fear
I'm afraid of my own skin,
Hoping that clothes will protect one hand from the other
I'm afraid of half-wit memories
Half faded
Half fuzzy
Half real
I really don't remember doing that thing I did in my sleep, but I'm going to pretend to
Sleep seems now so far away
The lights blink when I do and the spiders stop when I open my eyes

I walked right out the back door as if I knew what I was doing
The whole white dress and heels thing didn't work for me
To the point where I gave up, halfway down the aisle and took my shoes off
I'd have to call that the biggest waste of $150 I can think of
But it made a great photograph

I left glasses all over the house with little chapstick kisses on them
At first, you hated picking them all up so that we would have something to drink out of,
But eventually, you loved the way I sipped each one exactly the same.
Water or tea or champagne, doesn't matter

Wesley was barking in the back yard while you were reading with me
You paused to comment on how silly it was that I named him after a TV show character
I laughed and you reluctantly ceded that it suits him
I never thought reading was a partner activity, but here we were, together

The summer I graduated graduate school, you asked me if it had been worth it
You were ROTC turned mechanic and never really got why I needed to be picked up from the lab six nights a week
But you did it anyway
So probably not
I would have been just fine as an accountant or an insurance seller
I kissed him
"But I wouldn't be nearly this good at chemistry."

When I took you up to Maine for the first time to meet my parents, I don't think you realized how little time I wanted to actually spend with them
Really, I wanted to take you sailing
We road horses with your dad down in Tennessee and I looked like an idiot, so it was only fair
You had your sea legs in a couple of minutes, though, and I had to intentionally capsize us to get your t-shirt wet
The water was too cold for you

You started a garden in the backyard
Granted, it took awhile
You killed everything in it the first three seasons,
But just when you said you didn't care, the strawberries came back
The ones you thought died last summer when you went away on business and I forgot to water them
You let me have the first one that was ripe

We were going to plant a cherry tree
Even though the birds were going to tear through it and make a mess
I was wrong about a lot of things, and I needed you to fix that
So I'm still going to plant that cherry tree
Just one more thing to be wrong about

I thought Christmas lights were kinda silly
We didn't have any kids and it doesn't really get cold here
But you insisted
You put an arch over our driveway and put on silly music
I am so glad that's how you proposed
It wasn't perfect, kind of a mess, actually
But there was no pressure, and you had it figured out

The graffiti on the bathroom stalls has been blotted out by butterflies
The world is taking back it's body
Bringing back old fashioned Roman  concrete to fill in all the cracks

She's taken apart the locks just in case something beautiful got trapped inside
Every safe is a time capsule
Curiosity isn't dangerous anymore

Every time she took a step, the air shuddered
The soles of her shoes grew roots and flew away
She was humming and fixing things as she went with just the soothing sound of her sanity
Her soul leeching out like an ethereal mechanic

There were wishing flower seeds mixed in with the strawberries she was picking
I think when she ate them, she became holy
Her hands stroked the wind as they fell to her sides,
Like running her fingers through horse hair

At first, she made the mistake of falling in love with elevator buttons
Up, or down, one or the other, in constant motion
When they cut her open, she bled ivy
She invaded their circuitry and rotted their robotic
She showed them alive and showed them the door

She didn't understand wildfires
She knew passion only by its name,
Only by the monuments, by the mountains, and trenches
By the continents drifting like ice in lemonade
"You can't ruin this," she said

And if this is what burnt out looks like,
Imagine what will happen when the meteor hits
Or the bombs go off, or the oceans flood
This isn't a project we can procrastinate on
These are our wide open spaces and final frontiers

See, the world is taking her body back
Bandaging the scars we left,
Quietly, behind us, when we aren't looking
She's reinventing herself
Just like a garden,
Just like a caterpillar,
Just like a star we couldn't give up on
And we're all standing here, shouting, "We can change-"
We can change.

When I was a child, I learned fairly quickly that, "Because everyone else is doing it,"
Was the worst possible excuse
Individualism was sewn into us like tattoos
We fed off of originality like *******
But we were never that wild
I remember my father built us each a swing
And gave us a pile of spray paint cans
I remember my mother made the cookie dough, but we had to make the cookies
The first time I told my father I wanted to move my furniture, he just nodded
The first time I told my mother I wanted to stencil, she gave me paint
When I started drawing on my walls, they asked me what colours I needed
I watched my older sister grow up and dye her hair blue
She makes her own jewelry and I make my own tshirts
We shout poetry out of the rolled down windows of my Dad's old truck, on the way to get slushies from the gas station
We wrote quotes on the back of our hands when we were angry,
Shouted when we weren't.
The hunger for emotion sometimes turned my dull nails into claws
Sometimes we exist in the wind passing through the car
Sometimes we can see paint splattered on the tree the swings used to hang from
Sometimes we are so drunk on a feeling that we embody it, soaking the thread instead of holding onto it
Individuality morphed into impossibility, because
We are everything at once
Every feeling
Every moment,
Every bug smashed onto the windshield
Every colour of paint we somehow spilled on my ceiling
Every stain that I'll never get out of my genes.

The thunderstorm turned the sky
Orange and soft
It put my dreams a little bit closer
It took the edge off of the 97 degree heat
And it made me smile :)

My life is not poetic.
I grew up sick on the bathroom floor
I learned that my stomach was broken and it would be until I was twelve
I learned how to swallow pills
I learned the directions to the hospital
And all of my doctors' phone numbers

I grew up at four in the morning
Horrified that if I cried too loud my parents would wake up,
Lonely and isolated,
No one to reach out to,
I learned that everybody else knew how to fall asleep

I grew up in hospital waiting rooms
I learned how to spit out the same information over and over again
I learned that I wasn't allowed to cry when they stuck needles in me
I learned that my body wasn't mine anymore until they learned how to fix it

I grew up like a lot of other people
Except I couldn't go on roller coasters
And I was good friends with the school nurse
I stayed home most of December my fifth grade year
After hospital tests, my daddy didn't make me go back to school.
First grade me remembers falling asleep in the MRI
Fifth grade me remembers giving up on therapy
High school me cut herself because she was afraid of getting sick
My life is not poetic
All the stuff in between sounds pretty

But some days I still wake up alone on the bathroom floor
Out of medication and out of hope because I was the small percent that didn't grow out of my genes when I was twelve
High school me has flashbacks to the hospital waiting rooms
I remember the face of the nurse who did the ultrasound
And the one who did my second x-ray
I grew up afraid of my own broken body that nobody quite knew how to put back together

Deconstruct my body
Pull my shoulders out and wrap them around your body
I'll stand here, still like a barbie doll
I guess I was built for it,
I was taught to be polite and always keep my hair neat
I walked back to my apartment alone at night
So deconstruct me
Find all the lifeless, plastic pieces in excruciating detail

We were kissing each other’s memories as if they were scars
This is brutal
Just one big tangle of broken down cars and late nights and hating your guts

You’re holding my hands
This was all some strange dance of muscles that I’ve never seen before but could somehow execute flawlessly
You were staring straight into my eyes and I still missed you
Not like you were running too fast,
But I ached like you fell into ashes without even a fire for me to grieve

When we kissed, I went home and cried

So this hurts
This hurts like loving a child you can’t have
Or watching your garden die
Or ripping out an IV when you’re having a nightmare
I needed that IV

This time, when your heart aches
When you’re kissing me but you’re not in love
When you leave for work in the morning without saying good bye...
I’m sorry, I can’t do this

You were not something broken for me to piece back together
And I was not something fragile for you to break

When I was in love, it killed me
And now that I’m not, all I do is sit here,
Tearing my ribcage open
When I was dying, I saw angels

I was bleeding
I can barely remember, but it usually goes something like this
You were a little too late,
And just not sorry enough
So I let go of the arm of the sofa
I woke up in your bed
The only scars on my arm were lipstick stains

My fears do not define me
I can walk out where there's people and not drown
Social anxiety does not mean I can't have friends
Germaphobia does not mean I can't touch anything
(Most of the time)
I can function
As a human being
Without your assistance
So stop patronizing me
I can't control my fears
But they don't define me.
I do.

I don't understand how yesterday
I was thinking in whisper that didn't reach out
But today
I'm thinking in capital letters in the bold type face I recognize so easily
Nothing has changed since yesterday
Except maybe me,
I guess.

I like the way
Your hair flops in your face
And you get mad at me
For laughing at you
I like the way
You tend to show up when I need you most,
Even if I don't know it.
I like the way
You never listen
But you're always on que.
I like the way
We hate the same people.
I like the way you breakdown
Because it let's me know it's ok
If I do, too.
I like the fire in your eyes when your angry
And the softness of your thoughts
That I can feel
No matter where you are
So please don't worry about the oceans
I am here for you always
Because it's so simple!
I love you
And all your perfect little quirks.
So,
Why not?

this can't exist anymore

Would it change things if you were still here?
I think about that a lot,
If you hadn't left,
Would you have loved me?
Would it change things
If I weren't so tall?
If I kept my hair neater?
Wore shoes that weren't sneakers?
Would it have change things if I weren't so scared all the time?
If things didn't fall out of line?
Would you have changed?

I am so sick of the crashing cars
The intersections don't make any sense anymore
Everyone's going at the wrong time and it never stopped
I was smiling until I saw smoke
I thought the glass was rain, or fire hydrant had popped, I
Didn't here the sound until I saw him
When they hit, his tire exploded
In a straight-on collision, he pulled over to put his head in his hands
Exasperated relief, he almost made it home
The man on the motorcycle flew over the stoplight
And in that split second we all prayed he sprouted wings and would never come back down
But his vehicle was in pieces hitting my windshield
I was nearly sick at the sound
Dead weight on the road still breathing
I am so sick of never slowing down
It's so impossible
He may never walk again but I couldn't tell you what colour that stoplight was
And the other man won't make it home for dinner
He was so close, did everything right
I hope he kissed his kids before he left that morning
Because he almost didn't make it home
He will. He'll be late but he's coming home.
She isn't.

1)To my therapist (4 years ago)
When I said, "I don't like my little sister," the proper response was not "That's ok. You have to love her"

2)To my first grade teacher
Thank you for spelling things like colour and favourite with a U. I can't break the habit, and I get made fun of a great deal now.

3)To my student teacher (this year)
You are the first person who changed my life. I still have your notes on my assignment.

4)To the old lady who yells at me for walking my dog down your street
Stop

5)To you
Gosh I love you,
Please come home.

Point your toe
And smile dear
Add sass to every step
Don't you dare forget to stretch out first
And always look up
Turn out
And flex
And bend
And leap

I'm so glad
That that's not *me

I'll listen to the end of my favorite poem
While I undo my hair
And get ready to sleep
And then it's over
But I do it back up again
Because I'm not ready to go to sleep
I am so afraid of the nightmares and no one will listen anymore
I think I lost some friend today
Three or four
Out of seven
Seven people who I know
But who don't know me
Seven people who I'm not afraid to talk to
Because I don't think I'll ***** it up
But I think I ******* it up today
Why don't you just throw my efforts off a cliff?
I'm not ready to go to sleep and face todays mistakes
I'm not ready to start making mistakes tomorrow
Before most people are even awake
I want you to show up right now so I can apologize and maybe be asleep a few seconds sooner
Maybe I won't sleep at all tonight
Because I don't want to wake up with no friends
I really messed this up.

Forgive me for my absence
I love you
And I shall write you soon

After all that, I still had my eyeliner on
My mascara-
After all that screaming
After you left
I feel like I'm in the waiting room at a hospital
My heart is in surgery
And it's not going to make it
I keep waiting for you to come back through the door but you're long gone
You're running away to Maryland, I'm waiting to turn 19
I messed up the nail polish on my toes in the same living room where it all shattered
I fell asleep hanging upside down off my bed with the lights on
And my eyeliner in place
And my mascara

Terrified
Written in cursive
Behind your eyes

The messy braided hair
Is all that's left of you
Standing in a white dress

It was seventy degrees outside
You shut the window

"I'm sorry,"
Your handwriting just vexed me
Your pen had too much ink

Your toenails were broken

The white page turned to gaping black
As you crossed out the words
I closed the door and walked away

You said you felt some sort of chill, and I believed you
Must have been a gap between the stark walls and the blanched window frame
I found you a blanket

I vow to love you
Forever and ever
When the stars stop shining
And the suns burns out
When the earth stops spinning
And the people give up
I will never give up on you
For as long as I shall live
I will protect you
To the best of my ability
I will catch you when you fall
And stand you up again
I will dance with you
The way my father taught me too
And sing to you
Straight from my heart
For as long as we both shall live

If I had a car and $100, you would never see me again

If this is what she considers "feeling alive," I think she's got it a little mixed up
See, I understand skydiving, once or twice
But she's driving too fast just to get to work in the morning

She would have done anything to get high and not lose her job
And that is the exact reason they drug test dead-end cooperate desk jobs
So instead, she stays up late watching cooking shows
She tried painting her nails and cutting her hair but she's still exactly where she started

See, we were wrong about how many of us would grow up to be doctors
Some of us were relieved and some got bored
But almost none of us could afford med school
She goes for runs, eats too much ice cream, takes vacations
But she's never coming back

I've got this great idea for a love story.
It takes place in far away places
It's a little bit odd
And very complicated
And difficult, to an extreme,
But I love you,
So
**Let's write it together

Wild wasn't quite the right word,
I don't think there really is one
But here she is, dragging me three steps behind her

My heart tried to tug itself out of my body half the time
But my ribcage held fast
Seriously, this was the worst time and place to be kissing a girl
There were police on either side, and her sign in between us
But our picture made the front page

I didn't know that girls could look this good in dresses
But there she was, long leg peeking through a slit
Long hair gently gracing her shoulder blades with its presence
I was suddenly part of her body
I was in the ballroom, I had her spinning around to the entire orchestra,
Just her and I,
And all I had done was touched her hand

Her toes melted seamlessly into the grass
You couldn't tell where the earth ended and she began
I saw all four seasons on her lips
Like she was falling backwards into a pile of leaves in her best floral dress and sunglasses and scarf
I held the side of her face, gently as if she would crumble at my touch but fly away at her release
All I could see in her eyes was freedom

She was humming in the kitchen, making some sort of fruity frozen iced tea
And I remembered every second I had ever spent with her, all at once
All of the high school dances and the years of "keeping in touch,"
(And all of the years that we didn't...)
I had never felt so genuine as standing there, basking in everything I could have ever wanted
Taking her in as if she might melt and water the flowers with her sincerity
This
Is why we invented kissing

I think I'm a porcelain doll that fell off the shelf
I need someone to pick me up and dust me off,
Straighten out my arms and legs
Maybe they'll repaint my eyes
Something dull, grey with a dull finish
I think they'll take away my red dress
Replace it with something Victorian and lady-like
They'll force shoes on my feet

I don't really know where I went wrong... Maybe
They wanted calligraphy instead Comic Sans
They wanted the hundred instead of the ninety-nine
They wanted to name me something simple, like a number
I wanted to be named after the wildflowers on my old dress
If I drew them on my arm, they would wash them off with a scratchy sponge and harsh words
I wanted my walls to be yellow but they made them white,
Sat me on a shelf I couldn't reach
With my legs crossed and my spine straight

When a mother came in to buy a doll for her daughter,
She chose me
Because I am an example of a lady
Lifeless pale skin
And shoes that would break my ankles if I could stand
But they didn't teach me to stand by myself
They told me that I had to be held
My mouth opens only when somebody wants me to speak
My eyes close when you tip me backwards

When I tell someone how I was forced into submission, they say
"No! You were manufactured that way."
I have a number printed on my back, just like everybody else
No matter how hard I try to rub the ink off
The only marks that rub off are the ones I make

They gave me one pen and said,
"Don't worry! It's washable."
As if I were afraid of the impact I might have with a permanent marker
As if I were afraid of having my voice heard
My voice wouldn't be graceful
I couldn't put a child to sleep using lullabies
But I could start a revolution with a single sentence
As if I were afraid of a revolution

Maybe it would crack my perfect skin
All of the hairline fractures he painted over would become chasms or even tattoos
My Victorian dress would catch fire and become red again for a second
Just before turning black
Something bold
Maybe the grey would chip off of my eyes and somehow-
They'd be green again

I regret the snow
It didn't make any sense to hear from a girl who hasn't known anything but the Northeast, but she wasn't done
I miss the grass

She was listening to country music
It ripped up her insides and forced her to spit them out
Hiraeth- homesick for a place you've never been
She stitched ankle bands that looked like Grecian sandals but had no souls
She went out and stood on rain soaked wood
I would have kissed her if she wanted to be kissed but she just wanted to be warm

I don't blame her, I guess
Seattle radio shows don't talk about the rain because it causes mass depression
But I gave her something to love
Something other than jump ropes made of hoses and raspberry thorns
I don't melt when the sun dissipates
I could have held her...
She left yesterday.