Give me the shaking knees and sweaty palms.
I want the sad and angry. 
I love the stress.
I get drunk on disappointment.
I like the suffocating feeling.
I know I have to talk myself into doing anything involving human interaction but I like that.
I want my anxiety.
I want my feelings of dizziness and overwhelming fear of impending death.
I'm fine with my inability to stay calm.
And even if I didn't want all these things what do you offer?
Hour long sessions of breathing techniques? 
No. 
I'll keep my muscle tension.
I want my insomnia.
I like my anxiety.
It is a part of me.
I like me. 
I want me.

I hate my acne,
How it blemishes my cheeks,
Leaving scars for you to trace in the dark
as you kiss away my skin

2. I hate my weight.
The rolls of fat unevenly proportioned around my middle
so that my jeans will never
fit "just right"
and my broad shoulders reminding me every time
I pull on a shirt that I'm not built like a woman

3. I hate my appetite.
My stomach's never satisfied with a salad or a soup.
No,
I need the whole **** steak.

4. I hate my laugh,
how it crescendos through deep rolling hills
starting in my belly and ending in my soul.
It's infectious, because
once I start
you can't stop

5. I hate that I'm beautiful,
because I know that I'm not,
but ****, when you look at me like that,
I outshine the stars.

6. I hate my honesty,
"No, I'm fine," why the hell can't I just say that,
but no,
I have to go bare my whole soul to you in hopes that
you don't bare it right back

7. Man, I hate that I'm faithful.
I hate that I'm never gonna throw in the towel
when things get tough,
and that every time you leave, I'll stay

8. I hate that I believe,
believe all the lies that you feed me,
hoping, maybe, by God's grace.
It's different this time and you'll stay

9. I hate myself.
I'm too good for you,
and not good enough for you,
and I'll never
ever be what you need,
but I keep trying and changing to become
bad enough for you,
and good enough for you,
and to somehow attempt to be what you need.
I hate myself because I have lost myself.

But 10.
Mostly, I just hate that I give a ****.
I hate that I care about myself,
my weight,
my height,
my face,
my attitude
I hate that I'm not happy being me.

The pain

Inside my brain

Is slowly driving

Me insane

I still can’t see

What leads

The way

I might be leaving you

Today

Although I might be gone

Please know I won’t be long

We’ll meet again one day

This is the last poem I will ever write about you.
Seriously.

I spent 367 days trying to pluck your name
Out of the spaces in-between my teeth.
I got so desperate that I picked up recreational flossing.
The taste of dish soap coats my tongue
As I think about being seven again
And having my mouth scrubbed with Dawn because I said a bad word.
It was much easier learning my lessons back then.

Baby, I loved you like a child locked out of the house during daylight.
Wildly, freely, without any underwear on.
Your voice echoed within me like a million cicadas
Dancing and singing.
Keeping me up at night.
You were summer sweat and tangled hair.
You were sand spurs and ant bites in between my fingers.

When I was little I domesticated a pool full of toads
So I could train and use them to take over the world.
No person should ever be allowed that much power,
Especially a child.
But the point is,
At a young age I learned how to love
Things that could never love me back-
The bugs I found underneath rocks,
The slimy, sticky creatures that have no
Understanding of nurture, just instinct-
The animals that only know how to be afraid
And survive and ****,
And I guess that's why I loved you so much.

I gave you a handful of earthworms and
You told me I had dirt under my nails.
You never asked me about my scars,
Your hands skipped over them like words
You didn't understand the meaning of.
While you choked on your silver spoon,
I used plastic forks to dig through the earth
In hopes to find gold,
But I found China instead.

Sometimes I wish I never came back.

Since this is the last poem I will ever write about you,
Seriously,
Let me clarify,
Very Clearly,
That I was never your honey.
Baby, I am the entire bee colony.
I am an intricate network of flower dust and star particles,
Gardens grow at my feet.
I am a force of golden, powerful life,
One that carries the weight of the entire universe, unfolding.

You see,
My Papa used to tell me a lot of stories about bees.
Like when a hornet invades a bee hive,
The bees swarm and rub against each other
Making their tiny bodies so hot
That the hornet dies a fiery death full of horror and chafing legs.
I'm not ashamed to admit
That I like to think of that as a beautiful metaphor
For me being way too hot for you, anyways.

Baby, what I'm trying to say is that
This poem is our initials carved into a tree
That I will never fall out of again.
This poem is the end of a thin, red string,
With nothing else attached.
This poem is the eulogy of the childhood I am about to forget
And the prologue of my adulthood I haven't written yet.
I never lost you.
I only gained myself.

I spent 367 days trying to pluck
Your name out of the spaces in-between my teeth,
And it was only until I found China again,
That it fell out of my mouth
And into the dirt
For the earth worms to eat.

Shhh!
I'm straining to hear
(I admit, this is my greatest fear)
thundering, rolling silence
boulders loosened
parched from a dry spell
not able to find the words to tell
nor a drop in the hollow well
a writers ramblings that freely clutter
thoughts, ideas, those clever lines I mutter
All taken for granted, perhaps there's just nothing more
needing to be said, it never before felt like a chore
Comfortable as clockwork, like a heartbeats drum
Absent, broken, chaotic ideas now that make me look dumb
A river of words, a waterfall of passion, that carries me
taken by the current now lost at sea
Dry and dammed, a beavers work,
also called 'writers block', a place where evil idleness may lurk
Reassured by friends and family to not worry
it will be back and come in a flurry
But they don't hear the voice
or comprehend inspiration is not a choice
Yet I should confess
I am responsible for this lazy mess
It's not as though I haven't tried
"I wrote a little today," I lied.
Sterile white paper mirroring my thoughts, blank stares
inky shapes, pixels, sans serif, no one cares
Interrupted by any distraction
Even the most tedious jobs holds some attraction
Mopping, scrubbing, fluffing, dusting
Acid in those scribbled notes on torn paper rusting
**** in chair with rolling fingertips like the roll of a drum
Waiting for that muse, my writing voice to come...

A thousand screams
fill me up inside
I swim upstream
trying not to collide

Make it stop
I'm getting bad again
My hopes I drop
This battle I can't restrain