I'm liable to forget
That we all have phantoms
Hollow spaces
Dug and never refilled
And it was only last October
That I began wondering
Whether you miss your baby brother
Who never breathed
Your parents named him John
And I began wondering
If
Like me
You sometimes fell
Into the caverns and abysses that gaped
From the expectant space
In every family portrait
And whether you occasionally lost yourself
In the pregnant air inside your house
That anticipated an un-breathed child
An unused bedroom
And grew thick and stale
In it's emptiness.
I'm liable to forget
That we all have dropped stitches
And voids
And holes in our favourites scarves
Our brothers slipped down the plughole
But I mostly forgot about yours
Because mine was blood
And yours was always
As fickle as water.

This is not a poem. This is a series of events that has happened in the past months.

Starting with last Summer:
I ****** over 20 people in just 3 months. I was ******* anybody who gave me even a second glance. It was usually random guys on the internet, and one day one of those guys held me down in my own bed and choked me. But that didn't scare me off from doing it again. Every day I had a new person in my bed, and it felt so normal to me considering I have already slept with over 60 guys and I'm only 17. But towards august I started to want a relationship. I found a guy I liked named Brandon and I tried everything to make him like me, but soon as we had ***, he never talked to me again.
At the end of September I was finally getting a little control over myself when I met a guy named Erik. He was 18 and graduated, more accomplished than half the guys I have been with. We talked for a couple weeks and on October 3rd he asked me to be his girlfriend. I laughed so hard and was even a little angry. Why the **** would he want to date me? He knew about my tendency to self harm and he knew I was unstable. He said it was cute when I laughed, and when I finally understood that he was serious, I said yes. That night after he left, I cried for hours. I couldn't help it. All I could think was I did not deserve a nice boy like him. As the days went by, things were great. I wasn't cutting and I had somewhat stable moods. But then bad things started happening again.

In the middle of October, Brandon died in a car crash. The last time I saw him was the day he ****** me. It was raining when he drove me home and I told him to slow down, but he looked at me and said he is the safest driver I could ever meet. But I guess he was wrong because now he is dead and his car is in pieces.

When Brandon died, I felt so ******* guilty. I found out about his death like literally 5 minutes after I finished having *** with Erik. I was starting to get bad in my mind again but I didn't tell anyone.

About a week later, my ******* cat died.

Erik and I had started to argue a lot more by then and on my birthday, October 21, he gave me mono. What a ******* way to celebrate my birthday right. I was throwing up for weeks and unable to eat. This went on until early November when we got some even more ****** up news.
I was pregnant.
They said I would have been 3 or 4 months and based on the dates, the baby probably wasn't Erik's. We fought every single day. He got kicked out of the Navy and suddenly it was all my fault. He said I was selfish for keeping it. I was so excited to have the baby and be a mother, to grow the **** up and move on with my life. The second week of this month I announced that I was pregnant. And yet again, more bad things happened.
The day after I told people, I started bleeding really ******* bad. It hurt more than anything I have ever experienced. I went to the ER and they couldn't give me any direct answers, so I waited 3 days until I went to my OB/GYN. Erik and I sat in the doctors office waiting to be treated, when soon as the doctor walked in he told me I had a miscarriage. I held it together and fought back tears until we started to leave the building. I was crying so ******* hard I couldn't breath. I feel like a part of me has been taken away and I can never get that back. I feel incredibly betrayed by my own body. My heart shattered as Erik had no emotions towards the situation. All he would say is "I'm here for you." or "You can get through this." After the miscarriage, he got put back into the Navy. By the end of the day I started to realize, I am the only one who can feel the pain of this loss, and I am going to be in this constant battle with nobody but myself.
People started to think I lied about the pregnancy because I lost the baby a day after I announced it.

I was a ******* mess for all of last week. I didn't go to school or even get out of bed. I only went to school last Friday, finally starting to feel a bit better, excited to see my best and only friend. But as you probably guessed, that didn't go well as usual.

My best friend got kicked out of school and sent to the alternative one in another town. She was all I had, she was my support system. I was upset about her leaving me and it hurt pretty bad. But I made it through the day and didn't have a complete break down.

The next day, 12/13/14 , was Erik's birthday. We went to Minnesota for shopping and it was actually an overall ok day. When we got back home I checked my Facebook and my entire body froze.

I had known a guy named Ben for about a year, he was the sweetest guy I have ever met. Last winter we were both lonely and desperate to fill some type of void within ourselves. So I guess we thought if we ****** all the time then we might start to feel a little less numb. As the seasons changed and summer approached, we realized that having *** in a cemetery parking lot was far more draining that fulfilling. Ben was the kind of guy who would do anything for anyone. He has been there for me whenever I needed him, no matter the time of day. I just really wish we had stayed friends...

Because the first thing on my Facebook news feed was the announcement of his death. Ben, the guy with a heart of gold, committed suicide. I have cried every night this week. He had told me he was suicidal a few months back, I tried to help but he shut me out and we never saw each other again. I didn't go to the funeral and I regret it more than anything. I should have said good bye. I should have never stopped talking to him.

So far this week I have held it together pretty well. Until today at least. While sitting in class I got a message from my best friend. She told me she wants to die. In august she had tried to **** herself and nearly succeeded. That message just ripped me to shreds.




Everyone is giving up, and there isn't a **** thing I can do to save them.

Mama always told me that he was a no good,
rotten, lowlife
son of a gun

And everybody knew to stay away from him
when the alcohol was running
through his veins

Really though
It was all my fault
For tripping down the stairs

And miscarrying the baby
A bright blue baby boy
Came out silent, so ****** quiet

He was still and tiny
It broke my heart in two
seein' his tiny blue hands

We buried him under the oak tree
In the back yard
right under the swing

I loved that swing

My husband loved his alcohol
and hated my incompetence
and liked to leave some marks on a woman

But I loved him
with all of my aching heart
even with all the bruises that shaded my skin

He was the best thing
that ever happened to me
I took all the beatings and the nasty words because of it

But when he brought home that woman
Well, you'd guess I was pretty upset
But I refused to go down without a fight

So that night I lit a few candles
Put on my best nightgown
Waited for him in the bedroom

Even managed to clean all the dirt
out from underneath my fingernails.
I was in the garden all day

After all it was hard work
digging myself up from under
the old oak tree

Can they see,
As it grows inside?
Do I lie,
Can I cower and hide?
I want it, need it, love it so...
If they only knew, would they really know?

It stopped being, bitterly I cried.
A heart no longer beating.
A flame flickered and then...
Just died.

my aunt miscarried in october.
i remember thinking: strange, her
baby died in the
month when the dead were supposed to come back to
life. her
face sags more now, it's almost as if the
baby tugged at every inch of
her on its way down to the
underworld. my
uncle has gained a few pounds, too. the
weight of absence sits heavy on his once muscular
shoulders. i
thought i tasted true
sadness when he left
me, but i didn't account for the
bitterness of having to sell baby
shoes never once
worn. my
aunt still has her list of favourite baby
names hanging on her bedroom
door, but she turns it around
some days when she's feeling extra
sad. my
uncle doesn't talk to my
aunt much anymore. i
wonder if he blames
her. i
wonder if he blames
himself. i
wonder why the world takes things from you too
early on, and if you
complain you're thought of as a bad
person. i
wonder if you stop living when part of you
dies.

Miscarriage

If I hadn’t stepped outside, I would not
have seen the cloud buried deep in the approaching
storm I vaguely remembering hearing about. I would
not have seen the hole in the mist, the darkest
blue splot of our baby, blasted against the
lightning heavens. I would not have heard
the coyote howl or the neighborhood dogs
bark back, bark bark barking, as if you
would eventually return their perilous cries.
I would not have had to bite my tongue
from interrupting their noises with my own one—
a single scream—all out-stretched to you as
the windy sea blew a blue cloud into
you, crushing you into the embryo, the egg,
the moment before you did not exist. I
would not have stood there on the grass,
head tipped up to where you once bud – a
cutout memory in already drifting fog – and I
would not have let the rain fall into my
open mouth as I thought about how easy
it would be, how easy it could be to finally drown.

Flow.
Red.
Pain.
Sick.

Heavy sigh.

Ache.
Dark.
Mess.
Nature.

Clean the spills.

Emotional.
Bleach.
Death.

I wonder if you would’ve had your fathers nose, 

And my eye lashes.
I wonder if being a little happier could’ve kept you around a little longer.

I wonder if you would’ve made sense of things,
like babies are supposed to do

And of course I wonder all of the little things that mothers are supposed to wonder,
like how it would’ve felt to feel your precious kicks,
to hear your heartbeat for the first time and know it was real.
I wonder if you would’ve been a rambunctious little boy
or a boisterous baby girl.
And I wonder if he could’ve bared to hurt you, too.

In some ways
I’m glad you didn’t stick around long enough to find out

In other ways,
I wish I had someone to love more than myself
again