You trace your thumb across my palm and God clears his throat. This is free therapy, this is the moment where we take a breath at the same time and our faces are so close that I can taste heaven in the space between them. What would you do with my hands if I gave them to you? Do you have an answer for that? Do you have the answer for everything? What would you do with my heart if I gave it to you? Think carefully. Be careful. There's no use in pretending that we're not going down with this ship, so honey hang on tightly. Because I'm waving the white flag, and you're standing on the shoreline with your palms up. What would it look like if we both surrendered? I imagine your hello on my lips and it tastes like sinking underwater. So what if I want the misery? So what if I've given up on trying to save us from destruction? Maybe I like how it feels to have something to die for. To die for. God clears his throat.

We lock eyes.  
Thats how it starts. With a look.
You can see through me and there's nothing there,
There is no hurt to cascade my shoulders and no
Pain in my voice. It is sweet. It is light,
I invite you in.
Thats how it starts. With a touch.
You can move through me and there's nothing there,
There is no anger to wash over me and no
Wince when your hand meets my skin. It is calm.
It is calculated.
I let you in.
And that's how it always starts, right?
When the other shoe drops. And it hits the ground
with a thump like our bodies on the bed. But it's not
Over yet darling, the lights are still on
And there's still blood on the sheets. Can you help me clean
Up this mess? Can you help me fix this?
We lock eyes and it feels like a reminder,
like ive been waiting for you
The other shoe drops and I'm on my hands and knees
Scrubbing my old memories clean for you.
You deserve better than this, you deserve that much.
You deserve someone who is sweet. light. calm. calculated.
You open your mouth and say my name and it sounds like
"come home"

you asked if you could touch me.
if you could cover me with your hands,
warm like you just buzzed back to life
under my skin.
and I said, "you can do whatever you want
as long as you don't leave."
I guess I should've been more specific.
What I meant was,
I have no respect for this body.
It holds me like a
creaky old home, dripping pipes and wind that
moves the ceiling tiles out of place until they crash
Into the floorboards.
It has never felt like me, it feels like a midnight bus stop
on the long journey to something softer.
something calmer.
What I meant was,
you can hit me if you want to.
Over and over you can leave bruises on my
hips and
my neck.
But don't tell me you love me in that voice I've almost forgotten.
It bubbles inside of me and suddenly
I am sitting on that bus,
going who knows where.
running to your home,
running away from mine.
Looking for where I found this body.
I feel like a guest in this body.
So it doesn't matter if you paint my walls black.
It doesn't matter if you grab my throat too tight or you
destroy me completely,
I die each night and then live again in the sunshine
of the morning.
Because I have never even been there to begin with.
Does that make sense?

This is my apology.
it is my apology for how long I held onto you,
for how long I refused to let you go,
I loved you too long and it felt like my fault.
This is where I leave you, darling,
cold wet body sitting at the bottom of something dark.
Id like to step into the light now.
I loved you too much and didn't notice when you
Stopped loving me back.
I try to be gentle now,
I try to be all of the things I couldn't with your
Hands around my neck.
This is my apology, because
I would've died for you if you had asked.
I'm ready to live now, darling.
In this new life I've created out of what you left me with.
You left me so many times that it felt like my fault.
But love is faultless, it is ageless and nameless.
I've apologized to my love, I've held it back to life
and I've laid next to it in bed.
I'm sorry, for loving you so hard you felt like there was no way out.
This is my apology, my big red EXIT sign.
I'll let you go now.

The art of being lonely,
Something I've perfected after years of
Screaming and pounding. The act of being
Alone, the verb of it as it trickles down your face.
I cry when I'm scared.
I cry when I'm happy too.
The word alone slips away from my cheeks,
It falls out of my mouth.
A new lover I have found in a bed that looks
Like mine, but sideways when I can't pick my head up.
I cry when I'm angry,
And the lonely clears its throat.
It pushes against
The walls of my chest like a drum, like a beat pulsating
Out of my sobs.
A new taste on my tongue,
still here,
but if I lose my mind
In my own lonely,
will there ever be anyone
Around to notice?

my therapist says, it's time you write about your psychosis
I show her a journal full of names, and some dreams
That I may or may not have had.
Inside my journal, there are pieces of my body and flowers,
There is a to-do list with nothing crossed off,
There is a hidden script for a medication I never got filled;
There are pictures over every word, disguised in a metaphor
I can't remember the language to describe.
Expression makes the most sense when you are
Expressing the bad.
This is eruption, compulsion that is combusting from my pencil and into black ink.
I point to the bugs that crawl over the page and say,
I don't have to. My psychosis is in every line.
It is in my eyes darting back and forth.
I write so much the page turns black and I have to erase it.
My psychosis is the shadow trail behind every letter.
It is the blood coming out of my mouth when I say I'll Do Better,
The scratches on my hands and feet are from holding on too tight
To demons that know how to fight back.
It is my teeth, and the holes inside of them, spit onto the page.
Spit onto the floor of my therapists wooden office.
I wince. I turn the page.
I try to say it so many times it becomes meaningless.
You wouldn't believe me if I told you.
I spit again.
My mind looks like a ******* minefield and these words are just the smoke.

I never understood when people would tell me,
“You are just like your mother.”
Always with a tone in their voice I didn’t quite comprehend.
I run back to my dad at the grocery store
After wandering through the aisles alone and he rolls his eyes.
“You are just like your mother.”
I thought he meant always getting lost and I wonder how
Many times he had to lap around the store to find her sniffing candles
With someone she hasn’t seen in five years,
Laughing like a joke shes told over and over.
See, I always thought I was like just like my dad.
We have the same eyes, and we don’t like to approach people
The way she can so easily catch an audience.
But when I make a joke a little too loud at a family reunion
My cousins laugh,
“You are just like your mother.”
I wonder what arguments she has invoked with her words.
How she has said what
No one wants to hear, but always like she picks it out
Of the middle of the air it was sitting in.
When I get upset and my ears start ringing, and I hold onto
My stubbornness like it is my last breath, my older sister tells me,
“You are just like our mother.” I figure she has better eyes to see
How shes grown,
How shes learned patience at my hands and taught to extend
Love in all directions as a choice.
Love is not always a choice, but loving yourself enough to see that you’re wasting it
Looks like my mom picking me up from my worst day and standing in
Line to buy me a milkshake as I cry in a chick-fil-a.
She told me about a story of a time she held on too tight to someone even though
She knew it was the wrong thing to do.
“I think you’re a lot like me. You always want to see the love.”
Just like my mother, I learn the hard way. And sometimes I do it more than once;
The way she will teach a nine year old how to read over and over again
Until he stops sounding it out and it rolls off of the tongue.
I know that I’m capable of sharing, of teaching, of patience,
Of honesty and love because my mother
Taught those things to me.
I think of everything I love most about myself, and all of the possibilities
For what I can become in the reflection of my mother helping me curl my hair for the prom I’m not going to.
When she needs to remind me I am quick witted, I am eloquent, I am smart, I am beautiful, I grin and say
“I am just like my mother.”