A mirror reflects harsher words than I’ve ever heard,
Even if they’re slurred.

These words say they won’t grieve,
Won’t care if I leave.

I go after my veins looking to bleed
Maybe then I can be freed.

These voices continue to come in a flood-
Maybe I can escape with my blood.

I can hear them no matter how much I scream and shout
Maybe another sting will draw them out

Another sting and I’ll feel something else.
Maybe then I’ll feel my pulse.

Another sting and maybe it will mask the sting of my own words...

I reek of new living
the silence of sobriety is deafening
Can't stand my heart beating
Chest rising, finally breathing
Falling together at the seams for the lack of grieving

Jump out of my skin at the sound of my name
Hearing a whisper of enthusiasm scares my wandering brain
I am standoffish but I'm not timid nor meek
You say you're here for me but I'm not who I seemed
Am I better because of my brand new living?

No, I am not new in the least
I pretend in my imagination but I'm the same old me
Weak
Time to stop writing
Time to go to sleep

I destroyed the pretty.
It's all emptiness now, what do you expect? You can't expect me to trust you further! Why would you let me break?

I destroyed the pretty.
It's not the question if you trust me, it's the question if I still feel a needle in my arm. It's the question for love and pain; a heart attack in a field of broken Roses.
Why can't you break me further? I am done, and you took my lifesaving essence.

How may I feel betrayed today? If it wasn't you that destroyed, oh, but it was me.

I ruined the pretty, I destroy the last lovely, I broke it.
One was left, now two are shattered.

So give me pain,
pain to ban the feelings,
pain to ban my life decisions,
pain to ruin further what's already lost,
has always been meant to be lost.
God why does it hurt so bad?
It's not like heartbreak,
it hurts like betrayal
and it hurts like death.
The feeling of death, deeply sitting down, wearing me out like a broken glass of beauty.

I threw you down, Glasshouse
Pretty
Beauty
I destroyed the pretty all the beauty is what I took away.
Shattered on the glass wood floor.
Death crawls up my spine like a spider to its to be killed prey.

I can't hear you anymore, how could you???
How on this earth dare you???
You left me!
You let me break you.
Why would you want that?
Isn't one destroyed body enough?
Isn't my misery beautiful enough?

I did this to myself
and what hurts the most is that
I have no one else to blame

this world has somehow taught me
that everything is easier
when there's someone accountable
for every pain  

it's hard to let a corpse go  
without knowing who the murderer is
because isn't this how justice works;
played by the victim and the manace?

i hope you know
that i would give
everything
to make your hurt go away.

i wish
i could take it
and make it my own
so you wouldn't have to suffer it.

you're so great
you're ******* incredible
and i hate
that you suffer this.

i love every inch of you
and i wish
with all my ****** heart
that you did too.

I wish I could say something beautiful.
But all of the words I dance with keep stepping on my toes,
like the boy I danced with in 8th grade that told me
he was surprised by how graceful I was for my size.

I've always carried other people's grief and anger around in my extra pounds,
storing their feelings like I was preparing for winter
and I've never been graceful about it.

I fall and I stumble and I slip but at least I didn't step on Brandon's feet when I was so nervous about my first kiss following the Sadie Hawkins dance.

I wish I could say something beautiful,
but all of the metaphors I try to grow never bloom.
Because I overwater them the way I overwater all of the loved ones in my garden and all of the wildflowers in my lungs.

I've been told my thumb is black, and not green, because I never know when to stop piling fertilizer upon seeds that will never sprout,
and when to stop piling unreciprocated love upon the people that I care about.

I wish I could say something beautiful.
But my voice is always silent like lightning or booming like thunder
and I've never learned how to make it fill a room like the sound of rain,
without being a natural disaster.

I wish I could say something beautiful.
But I still have a hard time looking into a mirror without picking myself apart,
like diagramming myself for autopsy before I've ever even pulled the trigger.

How could I ever produce something beautiful, when I can't understand the work of art that I am?

How could I say something beautiful, when I stand in my hallowed exhibition hall and refuse to paint my walls because I'm so afraid of making mistakes?

How could I say something beautiful, when I'm afraid to frame my best qualities because what if other people think that they're overrated? Overrated like seeing the Mona Lisa in person and still not understanding what the **** she's smiling about.

How could I say something beautiful when I've never been able to appreciate the different hues and shadows and brush strokes that fill my skin and my mind and my mouth?
I've never been able to appraise and value myself because I'm afraid I'll never sell and never find a home.

How could I say or create or become something beautiful when I'm so preoccupied with imitating others' paintings instead of allowing myself to be my own masterpiece?

I wish I could say something beautiful, but maybe the most beautiful thing I could say in this moment is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder,

and kid you gotta be beholden to yourself instead of those critics in your art gallery.