The world around me is silent.
I can see the leaves floating,
in mercy of the crisp wind.
I see the children playing,
too young to know the pain that
drips from the intentional wounds in my flesh.
I see those who were once my friends,
holding hands and kissing the one's they love.
All this life goes on around me,
still I hear nothing.
Nothing but the sound of my old self screaming;
locked away in that special place inside of me,
to which I've seemed to have lost the key.

I will not raise my head today
For I must keep my eyes fixated upon
The tiny shadow in the crease of my own arm

If I blink, it shall swallow me whole

And send this body through a gauntlet
Of heaving breaths
Heaving breaths
And the blood in my skin shall course through my veins
So bitter and foreign,
Carrying lightning bolts of pain
Cold, but burning tremors of pain...

Healthy blood should not behave this way
I'd swear this was something injected...
But my bruiseless arms say there is no way

This is my body
I am this body
I am this waif, this witch, this wraith,
Drifting through these streets of nowhere
Moving left and right,
Left and right
Hither and thither...
With the breeze of the evil man's breath
And all I can hear are my toes on the pavement
Reminding me that
I am completely alone

Dream of nightmares,
close your eyes to darkness.
Surrender to this madness
as you fall in to the void.

Those nights when
All you can feel is
The self pity drowning your
Entire mind
You're so alone and
Can't find any reason at all
To stick around
I'd be better off somewhere far
Away and nonexistent
Because that's all that I
Truly deserve

Its usually happens during the day,
I will catch myself laughing,
radiating genuine joy instead of the usual fraudulent happiness.
I'll feel the relief wash over me like a wave,
carrying away every dark thought i've ever had.
Leaving me feeling weightless and euphoric.
And in that brief moment
I can finally see the rays on sunlight
shining through the murkey waters of my mind.
I will be overwhelmed at the concept
to have finally made it.
To finally see the significant beauty of life
through untainted eyes.

Yet at 2am,
when the worlds asleep and i'm all alone.
The only company being
my bedroom walls.
The air will begin to thicken in my lungs,
and I will forget how to breathe.
The silence will scream at me as the empty
walls start to close in.
I will feel the numbness sink in,
and it will consume me,
as I let the tears fall begin to fall.

I will cry for myself,
and i'll cry for everyone I love.
I will cry for the ones who betrayed me,
and for all the people I have betrayed.
I will cry because there is nothing
I can do to stop the feeling of nothingness
and imense sadness hit me
in these early hours.
Tearing away my sanity with it's
claw like nails.


And only in the early hours
will I curse myself for being so niave,
foolish to think I could ever
escape my mind.
To think that I was ever ok.

i'm writing this letter for you.
you in the other room, i hear you through the wall,
talking
to yourself,
telling yourself secrets you never believe.
i have some i'd like to spill,
but every time i try,
the walls soak them up like
white cotton and
black ink.
i'd like you to hear something other than your own voice
and maybe you can hear me when
you read.
you brought me here.
took me with you when you left like
a trinket,
a memento of home,
something to hold in the night when regret is like
a knot of snakes
in your gut.
ibd driving you
to tangle limbs with another;
a facsimile of love
driving me.
i think now it was less love and more addiction.
less love and more stockholm syndrome,
a disorder i cultivated
to have a reason to stay with you, with you,
the most beautiful sledgehammer
i've ever seen.
euphonious dynamite.
you are thumbtacks in my eyes and dry clouds above my desert,
you drop through me like lead:
you are a pneumatic drill and i
am a porcelain doll,
a quail's egg
you shatter me and i know
i never had a chance -
who bets on a dead horse?
who spends all their faith on a pantheon
that rots as they watch.
you desiccate me decimate me and i let you.
you are a world war in the body of a girl,
and i am naught but
cannon fodder
and cotton mouth i read you poetry but the walls swallowed my words
and all you heard was breath
(isn't that enough that should be enough,
a gust of wind
a breeze;
and the spirit is nothing but air,
pneumatic:
cavitied and consecrated.
the walls swallowed its manifestations,
but you
felt my spirit on your skin)
but i am not
enough
you are tire tracks on my abandoned road and you
brought me with you whenever you ran and
never believed me when i told you that
(not every problem can be solved with a map
spread on the dashboard).
you don't care about solutions,  
though,
just avoidance and denial and
distraction,
you treat every vagrant
like god in disguise
you take every hitchhiker into your heart and carry them like tumors,
infirmity is contagious.
a gift the bodies share.
from you i received
an atrial septal defect;
a hole in my heart,
leaking  blood.
from you i received dysthymia and
a martyr complex.
from you i received knowledge:
[one: nobody is strong,
but some have reinforced their bomb shelters
with their own bones.]
[two: a baby doll, baby girl
thick wrists,
sick recurring pain in the form of mirrors,
bathroom stalls and naked form]
[three: a gasmask can't protect you from the poison in your veins.
believe me,
i tried]
[four: the gaps between your bones
will one day be filled
and you will feel whole]
[five: the blue lips of a deep sea diver
should not be idolized.
the only surgeries you perform should be on your own heart
so you wound no one but yourself
when your hands
shake.]
[six: i tried, i promise,
i tried,
i tried]
you are false sermons and i am a believer you are thumbtacks in my eyes and lightning flowers on my back.
when i perform self-surgery,
i will bisect my heart

take it with you when you run
i will stay behind
and speak to the walls.

I broke again today.
The earth shattering at my feet
became a mountain beneath my toes
of all the things I should try to hold back.
Hold it back.
Deny yourself the freedom of expression
because it will linger upon your wrists.
Stop yourself here.
I try to stop myself in my tracks
but I end up getting stuck in the mud
and there's no one here to help me out
so I end up sinking again.
As the waste reaches my mouth
I am silenced.
The will I had to bring myself out of this mold
has vanished and I am a sinking ship once again.
No one ever tells you how to cope.
How to trace your fingers across scares you've made for yourself-
how to turn this madness into something so beautiful.
No one knows what it's like.

I was 17 when I discovered I had manic depression-
the words left my therapists lips like they were an execution notice.
"This isn't a diagnosis" she muttered
"This is who you are, who you've always been
it's not a death sentence".
But why did I feel as if I was being sent to death row-
to be hung by the noose I had made myself
out of tragedy and molestation and abuse.
There were no flowers at this burial.
Just a long awaited sigh of relief.
I always knew I wasn't like everyone else.
She drew me a picture of what it was like-
there were five stages of the imbalance living in my bones.
Major depression, dysthymia, normalcy, hypomania and mania-
she drew me a picture like she was trying to map me out
like she was drawing a Ned's declassified Bipolar Survival guide-
She explained it well.
How the days of normalcy tend to come and go again and again
but the mania and the major depression
pack their bags and stay awhile.
The major depression is like
a visit from a mentally abusive family member
that makes a point to tell you what the **** is wrong with you
when you already know, you tell yourself the same things everyday.
But the mania is like you're fun aunt that buys you beer
and tells you it's okay to **** whoever you want.
Get that piercing, dye your hair, who gives a ****?
The world is yours and the endorphin high you're on-
yeah that's your best ******* friend.
That's the aunt you wish you could be-
and sometimes they take you out on dinner dates-
they'll tell you how horrible you are and remind you
of all the things you have to be worried about.
They fill your head with nonsense and anxiety-
they convince you life would be better without you.
But then you remember what the mania feels like
when it's just the both of you bonding over ice cream
and spending too much money on thing you don't need-
you don't ever want her to leave..
"The mania is why most people don't get help" she said.

Mental illnesses are like actual illnesses-
they're a chemical imbalance in your brain
and you don't tell someone with diabetes
"Oh hey, just think that you're insulin is fine and it will be"
It doesn't ******* work like that.
See the Norepinephrine ran away when I was young
and the lack their of decided to hangout with serotonin.
They became best friends-
so I became the third wheel
and suddenly they both just stopped coming around.
I found a journal from when I was seven-
It said, "I don't want to be here anymore."
Most seven year old were taking care of furby's
or watching saturday morning cartoons-
But me? I wanted to end my life
like it was another ******* rerun
of the same episode you ******* hated
and all you want to do is turn it the *******
but there's really nothing else on TV
so you watch anyway.
Idly sitting there as you're hating every second-
But I'm still alive.
And these hands have dealt with more than just cuts
and pills bottles that became empty with mania that became worse-
I'm staring blankly at this page she drew for me.
Mapping out my mania like it's roller coaster tycoon
I think I'll call it Avalanche because ever since
I was labeled as having "Manic Depression",
I've been climbing my battles ever since-
even though some days, they try to fight back.  
There was a word to the way I was feeling
and a map to express it.
I felt like when I was young and I led Dora to the correct place-
all because of the map guiding her to her destination.
My therapist gave me the map-
she drew my way into understanding.
I haven't found my way home quite yet-
but at least I now know where I'm going.

Insignificance comes in waves,
and then departure is imminent.
Not gravity, but pressure, keeps
us on these tracks; tension pulling
and pushing with the force of a magnet.

Hope is the host and we are the
leeches, latching on and bleeding dry.
Emotional rollercoaster;
Riding blind and oblivious to
the hill looming ahead. We always
loathed the risk, but we enjoyed the thrill.

This imbalance, it comes in waves;
when weakness is most accessible.
Free fall from the top of the world with
no forewarning, no safety device.
Just breathless lungs from a fearful swan dive.

In a way, you are the host and
I, your parasitic lover. Your
affection is my safe haven;
your love like a salve for the wounded.
Today, I feel myself drowning, but
don't fret, this submersion comes in waves.