fear keeps me here
stagnant and sorry
vindictive and caged
I waited for years
for an apology
or a reason, at least

I let the vultures
pick through parts of me
you left out on the street
scattered and shameful
harrowed and hungry
waiting for anything

And I will romanticize the way we fell out of love until the day I die so that I may mourn in peace. I don’t want to know you as someone who violated my boundaries and called it care. I don’t want to know you as someone who stepped into my chest and destroyed everything in sight in the blink of an eye. Without even trying, really. I don’t want to know you as someone who robbed me of a year of life and gave me two years of flashbacks and rose memories and harrowing remembrance of what was- what was so powerful and encompassing and beautiful that when we split I knew nothing but emptiness. I don’t want to admit or accept that I allowed myself to be treated like that. So I will remember the way you hurt me but leave that part out when I talk about you. I will write about you in gold to give myself more time to forget what was underneath.

This is my body
Size 12, wiggle room
Jiggly thighs, 5’2
(And a quarter. It matters)
Overgrown roots blend
Into DIY blonde,
Somewhere in between
“Well kept” and “definitely depressed”
Acne scars, decently white teeth
Scar on my brow from that time I tried
Rollerblading into the sun, I swallowed the pavement on the way down. You can still see the cracks in my teeth, just underneath my laugh lines. I always tried to stay as positive as possible. No matter what.

This is my body, it holds memories like water weight.
Destined to burst, void of drains,
Man Made pores- formed from the inside out by cries for help that never surfaced.
Porous and calloused, found out that its purpose for a year straight was simply surviving.

This is my body. Flashbacks on a marquee, survivor’s hands painted nicely, so no one ever asked me why they were so *****, and broken, and ******.

This is my body
His dead skin under my nails,
Petrified.
Proof of a fight. scars on my arms
North of my elbow: survivor’s guilt in the shape of a Star, I spent last summer wishing night after night I wasn’t alive- I was so tired from pretending.

This is my body.
Latches like a leech to anything warm.
****** dry all of my loved ones in the year I spent spiraling,
searching for solace or sanity-
even safety. Found nothing but panic.
Nervous bird in a cage.
Narrow shoulders.
Boxer’s stance.
Dancing on the front line where I should have been to fight
Using my fists never worked.  
Neither did screaming “no, no, no”
Present until that very day. And now I lay silent.
Absent like a soldier, staring into space.
Trying to make sense of the shaking.


This is my body.
I have my mother’s eyes, her mother’s brain.
Black and white, strict like law,
Cemented in place for weeks at a time,
Then Moving at the speed of light, I cannot stop or I will die.
Creaky chest upside down, my stomach clings to my ribs.
Stand still until the room stops spinning
Or until my head stops hurting
And my legs stop shaking
And you stop when I ask you to stop
“This is my body” I whisper behind your hands as you steal all autonomy
I am left with nothing


This is my body.
He took it from me,
Did not even have to try to ruin my insides,
Did not blink an eye in the year I spent unraveling in front of everyone I loved,
Pulled out every lash I had, lost my job because of panic attacks,
But I am commanding it back.
I spent the last 6 months building from the ground up.
Spent the last 12 taking up the space I did not before.
The last 3 learning that it’s okay to.
I stopped apologizing in January.
I started yelling again in February.
It took that long to think anyone would ever hear me,
No one ever had.
This year I took my body back.
This is my body. Size 12, 5’2. Wiggle room.
Sometimes it can’t breathe right and shuts down in big crowds.
But this is my body and it is big and it is loud.
It takes up space, it is strong, it is pretty.
This is my body and for absolutely none if it, am I sorry.
Not a single part.

Partial to a past that explained my experiences in a causal tone. Like a story that had to unfold, I made sure it made sense because I felt myself losing control. I had to have control of it. Apologies for every mistake I’d ever made because amending my wrongs was praying for one night without terrors. Tug of war with God. Cause and effect. I earned my hurt. I earned my hurt.


People that believe in karma drive me ******* nuts. Plagued with guilt from my childhood because I got ***** at 21 and I thought maybe if I had been nicer to Cassandra B on the playground at 9 maybe I could have kept my dignity that night in my dorm room. But it doesn’t work like that.

I have survivor’s hands. *****, calloused, jealous hands. I am not innocent, I am vindictive and manipulative and when I argue with the person I love I get mean. When I talk to myself in the mirror, I am cruel. I am not innocent. I was a bully as a child. I thought all of these things were a part of the reason why someone took my body from me when I was 21.

I don’t know exactly when I lost you.
Somewhere in the middle of me
Falling apart on a perfectly timed cycle
And blaming my sadness on your apathy,
I remember you told me you couldn’t handle it anymore.
I don’t know when, I remember the way you walked out the door.
And how when I chased after you, peeling paint cracked off where the handle was
Before I started trusting you and started leaving the door open
I remember when I gained you,
Everything went silent
When you told me you needed me
I called your “I love you’s” filler words
And you called me paranoid
I remember hibiscus kisses, stumbling
Over broken pavement outside my apartment
Where we made love on the couch
And I felt the blood in my veins
Make its way to my heart
And I finally felt that feeling
I waited my entire life for
I felt you and my favorite record playing
And I thought that was what it was like to be alive
And to be happy about it, for once
And then you left and now I drive in silence
Music makes me sick
Six months after you left I learned what it meant when people
Told me I had to get over it or it would **** me
Because I tried to **** me and the pictures that flashed across my face
As it started to fade,
Were all of you

Tell me what it’s like to fall out of love
So beautifully and with ease,
You walked away, me still on the street
And still managed to make it look like art,
Our love was never movie-like but the ending was,
Alone and grey on the pavement, begging for your patience
So I could prove to you one more time that I was worthy of being with
But you never wanted to hear it

i let you haunt my halls every night until the floors caved in
i grew to want and need your harrowing prescence
in the spaces between walls, i kept three flares and my keys
convinced i would have to fight my way out if i were to ever leave
but i never did

i'm sorry that i let you linger
four months since that family dinner where you told me you
could no longer hold me up on your shoulders
i was your burden to bear and you wanted the guilt to eat me alive
i would be lying if i said that it did, you cut yourself and held the blood up for the world to see''
i grew cold, entangled in apologies you pulled out of me
i was always scared, i was never sorry

Next week would have been our anniversary.
Tomorrow marks 3 weeks since you’ve smiled at me, and 2 since we’ve laughed together.
But next week would have been our anniversary,
And just a month ago we were so happy.
Isn’t it crazy?

I forced myself to stop loving you
Because holding on was suffocating
Urban ivy, forgiving fists
I forced myself to stop loving you
Until it worked,
until I hated you in every way I never wanted to