at dusk
the lights went out
and never came back
left my earthly husk
through the lips
the whiskey spoke
and it sounded nice
easy party trick
broke into your medicine cabinet
and saw my face
in the bathroom mirror

stay awake
and we'll stare at each other
until we become familiar.

Sometimes I feel like
I am not the me I'm
Supposed to be.
In the mirror there are eyes
Looking back at
A disguise someone
Else molded.
Even though you
Held me together
My soul was still
Severed and I can't find
All of the pieces
To make me remember
Who I was.
Before the scars on my
Heart made its beating
Erratic and before
Every song that I heard
Went from lyric
To static.
Before the touch of a hand
Made my blood run cold,
Before the sight of you
Started getting old.
While the thought of
Living without you
Makes my smile fade
A smile that I made
To oust the darkness;
Sometimes I wonder
What happened to the
Younger me that
Yearned to be free.

It tickles when my hair brushes my neck
Sending shivers down my spine
To keep me in line and I forget
What the sound of my voice is when all I can hear
Is the echo of my thoughts
And I forgot to tell you about the day
That I lost my way and how
You helped me find it.
Sometimes I wish I were a bird
With fragile wings and a song to sing
Each morning, to sound the alarms of
Spring and make it known that I am in fact alive.
I have a tongue that cuts through lies
A blade honed by truth
But it's no use when my words fall
On deaf ears and my smile is met by
Only fear of reality.
It is by this name that I walk the earth
Desperately trying and crying out for the souls
Of the forgotten sons and daughters that
Have no names only graves and stones
Washed clean of an identity by the rain and the
Pain of years that have passed.
In a shell of a soldier I pick up the guise
Of a man on crusade for his faith in what once
Was a trance and now I can
Stop pretending that I have the answers
Before I even know the question.

Every queen must have a throne,
but mine is cheap and flimsy.
A plastic chair made in China,
worth less than a dollar,
swaying under my weight.
To stay from falling,
whenever I sit,
I keep myself light and fit.
I stay perched in reticence,
balancing the paper crown
upon my jaded head.
As tendrils of brown hair,
fall to the floor in plain.
Hands and feet crossed,
bound in leather and chains.

My forehead is high (looks alien)
My eyebrows dark (like anger)
My eyes are slanted (too small)
My cheekbones sharp (terrifying)
My skin is pale (Boo Radleyesque)
My nose is bold (Broken?)
My lips are full (Infected?)
My hair, cold and smooth (Death)

So why do they lie to me, tell me I'm pretty.
Tell me to be happy, just 'cause I'm pretty
Say I can be anything, because I am pretty
Say just forget everything, remember I'm pretty

But I grew up with Truth.
I'm alien anger too small terrifying Boo Radleyesque broken infected death
That doesn't sound too pretty.

And even if on the outside
my shell can be called pretty
Truth stands.

1.When you walk, don't look in the shop windows. There's nothing really to be seen except a disappointment you've been hiding from and a sense of self you're afraid to feel. Sometimes you'll get curious, you know, and that's okay. We all slip up from time to time. Just remember those deviations from the plan will knock you right back to where you were. You will remember then, and you won't slip up again for awhile. Bring music, or have a song stuck in your head. Never let you mind wander.

2. While you're shopping turn around so you don't have to watch yourself change and struggle into the new clothes. Instead, just turn around to reveal your new look. Then, while ******* turn again. Once more, you will slip from time to time and think perhaps the worst is behind you and you can handle this sort of thing now. It's just you after all; the you that you've fed bathed and breathed with for your entirety. There's no secret that lies in your skin you're presently unaware of. But this slip will cause a prolonged stare, a staggered heart beat, and a couple sniffles. You won't deviate for awhile after. Pro tip: just ignore reflective surfaces in general

3. But if you must look in the mirror, use one that only reflects the shoulders up. Sure your face has gross, brown spots and plateaus all over but that's nothing an unmatched Neutrogena foundation can't fix. You'll feel pretty good. Pretty great actually, as long as you don't let anyone touch your face, or hug anyone's white shirt. It'll begin to feel like that's what you actually look like and your confidence will exceed its greatest peak in the past, before you begin to feel you're fooling everyone around you.

4. And then you'll forget all of these things and you'll go to college and you'll believe in love still--for some reason-- even though every single moment in the past 18 years has told you otherwise about its existence, and because you believe in this thing and you love to write and you love to love you'll start to believe someone could love you and this feeling will eat you alive when it never arrives
5. Soon after you'll begin to realize how mundane you are and how much you blend in. You're not that girl that catches someone's eye and they think about it for days at a time
5. You're the girl blocking that girl


6. So you stop wearing makeup because what's the point you know
If you can't get someone to care about you in a heightened, better state it doesn't matter if you look like your worst, natural you
7. So you walk in the rain and listen to mitski and don't care about the fact that your hairs getting wet even though black girls are supposed to care about that sort of thing
8. And you look in the shop window of that café and feel a sense of self you've been trying to avoid
9. And you start the cycle over again

maybe we dont believe
we're beautiful
because those who have
told us that
have hurt us

Living in a city where the trees have names
And blank walls and bus stop benches
Have a language of their own,
I wonder who I am
And wonder who will read the lines I pen
And if I'm writing in an unknown tongue.

Wandering among the spray paint
                           proclamations
That declare existence
And 'my gang can beat up your gang'
I try to fathom the kind of emptiness
That only tagging can implete,
But I was never, at my worst, so hollow

i want to crawl out of my skin,
out of my body,
and leave it all behind.

farewell to the flaws,
to the walls,
that have kept me so confined.