Multiple Sclerosis is the name that the doctors told me.
I was seventeen years old.
"Unfortunately you have Multiple Sclerosis"
As if it didn't need explaining. As if I was just supposed to know what it meant.
"It's not really life threatening"
But I will have it for the rest of my life?
"We should start medication immediately. Injections are three times a week and oral medication is twice a day everyday"
For the rest of my life?
"The sooner we start the better. We don't want your condition to worsen"

My condition? Can you hear me? What's happening? What's going on?

I felt invisible. Burdened by a disease that cannot be seen.
Because my body sees itself as the enemy.
I am the enemy.
They tell you that you are you are in this world alone and that all you should lean on is yourself tell me what happens when it is yourself fighting the self. When my battle is coming from within.
When it is my body that is failing me.

And I am faced with doctors who call my sclerosis a condition, who tell me it's not serious, who rush me out the door to welcome their next patient and they tell me to be patient when I am asking questions as if I am not patiently waiting for my body to implode against itself because my self is fighting a war everyday and I am tired.

Mommy, you told me I was made from stardust, you told me that inside of me their are little soldiers who ensure that my body is working
but mommy you forgot to tell me that they are fighting me
You forgot to tell me that when I stand up for too long pins and needles will claim my body and force me to sit
You forgot to tell me that sometimes I will wake up and I will feel normal, life will give me a taste of what it feels like to be free.

And mommy I forgot to tell you that today I didn't even feel like getting out of bed.
I forgot to tell you that it wasn't my shoe that slipped on the stairs that made me fall, it was my legs going numb

Maybe I don't have a One

This isn't meant to be depressing
although I agree it may come off that way
I just want to be realistic

Maybe I don't have a One

People die for no reason all the time
I don't mean to be somber
these are just facts
do think they had all fallen in love?
do you think their lives were fulfilled?

Maybe I don't have a One

We're force-fed fairytales
peddled parables of Princes and Princesses
love is just a product
no different than chocolate
or straight to DVD CDs of Dumb and Dumber
Not everybody has a bicycle

Maybe I don't have a One

Don't get me wrong
I'm as hopeless a romantic as the next guy
I'm sure people do find love
and a couple consists of two people
so they very well may make up the majority
but as obvious as it may sound to say
50 is not 100
some is not all
and everybody might not have a somebody

Maybe I don't have a One

This wasn't meant to be sad
I just feel like we're all fed a certain narrative
that may or may not be true
which is fine
I just don't think it's crazy
to admit that
perhaps
possibly

Maybe I don't have a One

fourteen.
fourteen and I am alive.
fourteen and yet I feel like I am five
fourteen and my poems still aren't that good
fourteen and my skin still scars just as often
fourteen and I don't talk to my mom as much I used to
fourteen and I still hate my body
fourteen and I still hate my body
fourteen and I never liked celebrating my birthdays
fourteen and I never liked waking up on my birthdays
to a stranger who looks like me and sounds like me
but isn't me because I'm fourteen and that's
supposed to make a difference
fourteen and I feel like I am too young to be writing
about the things I do but my cousin's fourteen and she
does the things I am afraid to write about
fourteen and this is probably the only honest
poem I've ever written in my life
fourteen that's probably why it isn't that good
fourteen and I feel like I'm running out of things to say
fourteen yet there are so many things I haven't said
fourteen and I miss the way people used to love me
fourteen and I feel like it's ****** up that I don't miss the
way I used to love me because fourteen was when I stopped
remembering what that feeling felt like
fourteen and I don't hate school as much as I thought I would
fourteen and there's nobody in my school I'd celebrate my birthday with
fourteen and I haven't talked to someone I love in months
fourteen and I have more regrets than my age
fourteen and I realize that means nothing but it feels like it means everything
fourteen and I used to dream about doing impossible things but
fourteen is the number of dreams I have that died
fourteen and I don't blame the people that have given me love
and then tossed it aside because it's been a year and my tears have dried
fourteen and I have learned my heart is an abandoned garden
that only grows weeds and that planting flowers in it is useless
fourteen and it took me a long time to realize that I am more than just my age
fourteen and I wish I was still five, with my hair curly
and my mother's soft singing the only tune in my mind
but I am fourteen and life is supposed to be better
in ten days when I turn fifteen and
yet I have a feeling everything will be the same

(h.l.)

sometimes i think
that if, perhaps,
i could shrink myself down into something a bit more beautiful,
then maybe you would love me.

in the ugly, unafraid, truth-telling part of my mind,
the part i seldom dare to visit,
i know this is not true,
know that you could never love me,
not now.

i can make myself,
as much as i like,
into wood to be whittled,
but i cannot make you crave those carvings.

you can lead a horse to water,
or whatever it is that they say.

but i fear i will always be a well run dry in your eyes
(or perhaps one that never had water to begin with).

so i combat this fear in the only way i know how:
by turning away from it,
pretending it does not exist.

by shrinking.

and sometimes,
sometimes,
when you don't seem as far away,
i think that if, perhaps,
i could shrink myself down into something a bit more beautiful,
then maybe you would love me.

(a.m.)

ne pensez pas de moi
j'ai besoin d'oublier
même si c'est juste pour une minute
une heure
un jour

this is an alphabet of all the people
who have dug holes in me,
and of all the people
who are still digging.

this is a gardening guide
for would-be lovers and pretty faces
who do not even realize
that they are carrying shovels.

this is a weather forecast written
from past experience,
a reminder that winter
is not kind on crops,
no matter how firmly you pack the dirt.

this is me,
reflecting on seeds planted.

this is me,
reflecting on seeds left to die.

A,
i suppose it is fitting that the first letter
is also the first person to show me what it is like
to have seedlings sprouting up from inside you,
the first person to show me just how deep you really have to dig
to make the sting last.
you never came back to water what you planted.

H,
i’d like to say to that i ripped out your roots with my own two hands;
i’d like to give myself some credit in all this.
you don’t look as lovely as you used to.
you say i’ve grown distant.
i’m sorry.

J,
you always feel like being on the verge of something big.
you feel like summer, like a deep purple,
a bath of darkness.
you are everywhere that plants do not grow well.
and i have always felt — and still do feel — 
that that is such a grave injustice.
still, though you cannot speak the word “devotion,”
i beckon for more seeds.

P,
my greatest heartbreak.
heartbreak, though, is but a flesh wound when seen from afar.
and so i thank god for the miles between us.
i can feign forgetfulness when you are far away.
after all, what is a shovel in your hands if those hands cannot reach me?

S,
you are but a bud waiting to bloom.
and yet again i find myself so very afraid of growth.

(a.m.)