sigmund freud believed we all carry within ourselves
a suicide impulse, some
strange & counter-evolutionary desire
to return to that moment
of perfect, untainted stillness
before birth.

i don't know if i agree, but
i know enough to know
i want to feel that quiet
instead of the voices
in my head.

you don't need to give me more reasons
to pick myself apart; i never said
i was perfect.  
you don't need to point out
the flaws i already hate myself for.

the truth is this: i have found someone
who makes me feel like me again,
who i will expose myself to,
in uncompromised vulnerability,
& who will love every bit of ugly,
who will make me better.

my lungs do not know how to be lungs,
i am becoming bones again,
the scars on my wrists threatening to arise
as fresh again..

i have never once thought myself good enough
& now he is teaching me how to believe
just that.  everything else is falling
beneath me; it is all a ball & chain
around my ankles,
while your words rail through me,
bullets giving me just one more reason
to bleed again.

these tears are not for you,
i am not for you,
i am trying to be better,
& please, just let me fight
the urge to seek that silence
without giving me another reason
to throw myself
headlong down
the rabbit
hole.

sometimes, a kiss is not just a kiss.  sometimes, it tastes like absolution & leaves fires of desire burning in its aftermath.  i wrote in my journal that i loved you on october ninth.  three weeks before i was brave enough to actually confess that to you.  that night, you held me with your whole body & i loved you with my longing limbs.  that night, you left my eyes wet & wanting because finally, there was you.

& now there is you & i cling manic to your delicate frame.  our fingers make love every time they entwine.  you kiss me tongue deep, whisper your love into my neck, & i forget how to hate myself a little more each time.  the number on the scale is a great unknown, but i am not afraid, not when you touch me urgently with such tenderness & stroke my stomach.

all i need is you & i will give the best of myself.  put down the liquor & the cigarettes that only serve to **** me quicker.  smash the mirrors with my fists & look to my reflection in the glow of your eyes instead  to see that i am beautiful.  with you, i do not need to carve myself into something worth loving.  with you, all i want to feel is love.  & my god, all i want to have is you.

just stay with me forever and read this
writing on my walls s l o w l y without a single
pause.
here is where the meaning lies,
in someone else’s train of words.

there’s no one quite like you,
angel bones and raw beauty with a
perceptivity like something foreign.

i’ll listen; your words follow me like
lost ships to phantom harbors.
you are the tides coaxing in the sea.
maybe someday, I’ll tell you
every/thing.

here in the une ve n silences between lines,
i don’t have to be perfect; you don’t care,
and that has made
all the difference.

the great dilemma:
not becoming our parents.

but it's genetic make-up
we're ******
either way
you'll end up being your parents
you can't stop it.

it makes all the impossible
possible
things you said you'd never do
you'll find yourself sitting in the middle of

my mom is my face
and my bad knees
and my anger
and how much i cry
she's the cuts on my arms
and the shape of my fingernails
the curl of my toes
my weakness for underdogs...
my mom's inside me
like a parasite

i will cut her out

i did one thing in front of a large group of people and now i'm somehow worthy

worthy of going to leadership retreats
and christening babies
all because i managed to crack open the wealth inside four other kids.

it wasn't me.
i didn't do it.
i just helped.
i don't want the credit.

Ask me,
Ask me now daddy.
What I want to do when I grow up.
I want to be happy.
No, not happy
I want to be happiness.
I want to be joy and cheer and admiration
Confidence and peace and optimism

I don’t want to be like others, no, I want to be love.
The smile that comes across your face when they say your name,
The look that makes your heart skip a beat,
The song that makes you rethink every second you spent together.
I don’t wanna be the poem, I wanna be the emotion behind it,
Not the first kiss, let me be the nerves,
Not the dance, let me be the excitement,
Not the Officiant, let me be the vows.

When I grow up, I don’t wanna be a doctor mommy.
I want to be the feeling when someone’s told there’s a cure,
Or when a parent finds out their child will live to be a teenager,
Or maybe I want to be 3 in the morning when a mother holds her child for the first time.

I want to be affection and adoration and passion
Oh, I want to be passion.
Let me be passion.
So that you cannot do without me, because nothing without me has meaning.
So that when you are playing the final strain or scoring the winning goal,
Or writing the last chapter or finishing the last paint stroke,
You will think of me.

Maybe I’ll be allegiance or devotion or respect.
I won’t be the soldier, I’ll be the loyalty.
Or the surprise in a child's heart when their dad comes home early,
Maybe I’ll be the feeling when a father meets his baby for the first time,
And the child already knows his name.

I want to be piety and faith and worship.
I don’t want to be the pastor, I’ll be the lesson.
Maybe I’ll be the obligation behind the first baptism or first communion.
Maybe I’ll be the words when someone so low is told someone loves them.
I’ll be the salvation of the gospel,
The redemption to the guilty,
The forgiveness to the sinners.

When I grow up,

I want to be the opposite of sorrow,
The antonym of misery,
The reverse of fear,
The contradiction of rejection,
The antithesis of disappointment,
The inverse of insecurity,
I want to be the alleviation of anxiety,
The ease of pain,

When I grow up,
I want to be happy.