Despite our muddy backgrounds,  
we congregated all the pureness and
reached out for the sun.
Promised that we’d stay untouched
from impurity.

Then nightfall alongside torment came.
You closed down,
submerged back into the mud we bloomed out.
And I heard you lament, submerged,
“I will live through this until it takes my life.”

Alone, I remained in the gloom.
The darkness of isolation crept up,
with muck jerking at my roots.
Within above, I told the moon,
“I’ll open for you another night.”

Inside myself, I suffocated
remembering who I was.
From the dirt we came,
grime that nurtured us,
the smite that we blossomed from.

Yet you shoved yourself back in,
took the filth as your selfhood.
Kept shut to the moon, believing
you are a facade
since no one knew your roots.

If anyone was ****, it was me.
The roots of yours could be ripped out.
Reflected in the sunshine,
still you’d be observed as clean.
I’d die a martyr for that belief.

The sun rises as you remerge,
the stains you’ve collected fall off.
You are left pure, intact,
despite it all.
You are my lotus.

Lying, exposed,
I've made myself
A sacrificial lamb
On the altar of
The unmade bed.
Time and again
I offer myself
To a merciless, wrathful
God, a wolf, a serpent
A blasphemous act
Against my unclaimed heart.
These are no Gods
Towering over me,
Only vultures picking me
To scraps.

there once was a happy family that lived in a cottage at the end of a long and winding road.

once a week, in the morning, the mother walked down to the town square to trade at the market. sometimes she brought the children along, if they promised to be on their best behavior; they always crossed their hearts and hoped to die.

every week the last stop they made was at the butcher's shop. the butcher was well known in this town and several towns surrounding it. everyone came to them for their meat, which was prepared and wrapped right in front of you.

the best part was their price: all they asked was that you watch as they carved slices of flesh from their own body with expert precision.

I’m addicted to you
The very act of talking to you sends toxins through my brain
Some may call them oxytocin,
I call to poison

They say that talking to you sends an oxytocin rush to the brain,
The happy hormone
And with that I’m addicted.

Stuck with thoughts of you
A lasting memory coursing through my veins where you one ran through

Blood replaced by you

You sustain me

I don’t want to stop this addiction
It’s the only thing that keeps me living

It’s the finest act of self destruction
Choosing to get addicted to you

Knowing that I am and yet doing nothing to stop it

Breathing in the sweet toxins I’ve grown to love

You’ll be the death of me
As addiction takes its victim
So will you too

I take my prescribed pills with an energy drink
Monster energy if your wondering
And it's always the zero-sugar version
Because the sugar will rot my teeth.
I’m constantly on the verge of healing and destroying myself
Like a seesaw that's perfectly balanced
I am fed up with breaking my hand
And then bandaging it up myself.
I am my own executioner and doctor all in one body
The healing in the midst my own self destruction
I am the silence before an explosion
The calm before the storm.

i was too tender and well-meaning in my youth to understand why each petal plucked from a flower felt so powerful. the way it tugged, the resistance. like a stop sign colored in a light rose pink. it was softly forbidden, you weren’t supposed to do it — but it wasn’t impossible. i didn’t understand power, but i felt it that day.

the flower was my first conquest. i made confetti of anything i could get my hands on — leaves, fruit, toys — i couldn’t stand to see anything whole. to the untrained eye, i was just messy and curious. i was, and i am.

but somewhere along the way, i was the one that was ripped to shreds. someone felt that power i did in my mom’s garden and graduated to people. so did i.

and i so wish i could say i cascaded softly to the ground with a whisper like a petal and not a resounding thud that echoed in the bottom of every bottle of alcohol i drank, in the cramped back of cars of strangers, at the edge of the pitch roof of my house. i wish i had that much grace.

i now understand how the flower petals, the pieces of fruit, the dolls without heads or arms must have felt — to be unwilling participants of a mosaic that didn’t even make a very pretty picture.

but at least i’m sharp if you dare to pick me up and put me on your wall.