Have you ever felt your identity shrink?
It comes and goes
Like a thief in the night

Withering away each time
Another one removes your shirt, your pants
"Shh don't stop"
It is you in this room
Alone

He is stripping you bare
He tells you you're good with your mouth
They all do
But they never listen to you speak

I swear you were all just a spark
In the flame I've been keeping
And
I swore to all of the holy things in my heart
That I would not let you burn me
And
I am brighter now
You cannot keep me in the dark
--
Dust to dust
Ashes to...
The flicker of me
Leaving you be

Do you ever wish you could be a flower?
Something that people only see beauty in
I think if I could choose
I would remain as I am
A flawed and imperfect example
That this world can be cruel
And we still survive...

Because
Even the flowers die

Sugar, salt, and all of the old pain
I put them in the bottles of wine you'd leave behind
You used to say that I made you feel like cinnamon and honey
My kisses soft as velvet
Fingertips like drip coffee brewing in your bones
I was the poet
But I found salvation in your words
You spoke freely and eloquently,
Like the way your mouth moved all the way down to the tips of my toes

My language is the sea and you took me closer
Where you could add salt to all of my wounds
And I thought, pick flowers and he will see the sweetness in you
But you never saw the sweetness in me
Even when you called me sugar
Even when I was the honey that made your cinnamon sweeter
You said I was like coffee, but that was before you made me bitter

I picked flowers by the sea today
Sea glass crackling beneath me
A remedy crackling inside me
Sugar and salt and the sea,
I made a boat out of your bottles
And let them take the pain away.

I could go to bed with him
But my heart would still be aching
And I could try to write words about him
But my heart would still be aching
Instead of you, I could choose him
But my aching heart
Aches for you

As a little girl
I wondered about God and love
And if they were one in the same

But God took shape
In other ways
She was nothing I had been taught

God became me
I grew holier with age & each year
My grace was lessened by
Him or him
Or him
My God was becoming
A man who had no idea how to love me
I saw God inside his evil eyes
And I thought that God
Was not love at all
Love was not supposed to leave
But he left
And I faced myself
I found her, I found God
Inside my pretty eyes
And it was love.

If you took dirt and leaves
River water, old dust on books,
Tears, bold coffee, mossy green,
Yellow love,
And all of the questions
On life and love and maybe even God and pain and whatever makes you
wonder why you end up in a bed alone with him
Or why he ended up here with you;
Fear, aches, wasted time,
Lavender, dusk, another one...another
Shake all of this up with sunsets, hope, failure, cravings, light, a list of things you never put your faith into...
It makes you into this person who has done wrong and loved gentle and loved hard...
Became soft, rooted herself
Became fire from water
Shouted thank you's to loneliness and cheersed a sky raining down
Stood tall and held her own