i feel better
when my bones threaten my skin,
stretching it,
pushing against it
like they're about to burst through

i love myself better
and like myself more
when i stop taking care of myself,
just like i did before

and you can call this a relapse
but i'm tired,
tired and tired of being tired,
tired of hating myself

so when i skip a meal,
don't coax food into my mouth:
all i'll want to do
is spit it back out

i won't drop as far this time,
just enough that
my shirts hang
away from my chest again,
away from my stomach

i'll be high
on self-love
when i treat my body
with the resentment i feel towards it

oh i'll be healthier
when i'm unhealthy

i'll be happier
when i'm skin and bones

sky as grey as my dreams
it's spring but winter clings
my hands are always cold,
my arms goose pimpled
and I sit in a t-shirt
doing nothing about it,
this chill that lingers
on my skin, in my bones

don't touch me with your
warm hands
I don't deserve the heat,
let me freeze over into ice
and push me under sea,
sky as grey as my dreams
it's spring but winter clings
I'll soak up the salt water
drown myself to peace

the best of men,
I know he is not.
the worst of men?
not that, either
somewhere in between
a little closer to
good
than bad
no matter how many times
he might
toe the line

you've met me.
you know me.
you've seen firsthand
how wrong
I can be.
not in sense,
not in academics,
nor even in instinct
but in morality.
you know that
he is just
a darker shade
of me.

I know that he
self-destructs and
everyone around him
is the collateral damage.
I don't think that you know this.
I know him
better than you do.
your world is
more black and white
than mine;
I see in shades of grey
and colours
a childhood of red and
purple, and
he did too.

what you see as
malice
I know to be
self-hatred.
I understand him
in a way that you cannot.
our hand grenades
are glued
to our palms;
it doesn't take much
to set them off.
do you know what it's like
to be a ticking time bomb?
I do, he does.

I don't excuse him.
please don't think me
blind,
I see perfectly well
when it comes to
matters of the
heart
and the mind.
but for now,
just for now,
when I'm with him
I am living.
he makes me feel alive.
so for now
just for now
I'd like to live one last time.

so fixated on the idea of a father, just lately;
he's got a firm clasp on his own mouth
to stop himself from spilling,
wishing he could grip hard enough to
leave bruises
without thinking "look at me, becoming him"

pathetic, is what it is
shuts himself down with bitter thoughts and cruelty.
how ridiculous to look at mother's new boyfriend—
who she isn't even official with yet,
who she's only known for maybe four months—
and silently wish, more than wonder
"will i be calling you dad one day?"

his own dad, such a disappointment
that sometimes it gives him headaches,
trying to figure out who's more of a violent failure:
himself, or his father.
he has an ego the size of the moon
that compensates for his overwhelming insecurities
and hides his vulnerabilities;
but he can't escape his own self-loathing when there's
no one
to put on a show for

and since he grew up spending most of his days
alone and self-reliant

loneliness has been the best father he could ever ask for

I know what it must be like
to deal with me;
but I assure you
it's not as hard
as dealing with being me.

I simultaneously push people away,
keep them at a distance with falsities
designed to prevent incidents
like people actually getting to know the real me

and wish they knew enough to understand
why

why it is that I grew to become this.

He says he's getting feelings,
and I'm oblivious to what he means
even as my skin prickles and itches,
like there are flies crawling over it
and leaving their grubby, microscopic footprints behind.

He gets nasty about it,
and then I get it. Funny, that:
I only ever understand things
once demonstrated with aggression,
violence.
Or maybe not so funny at all.

And it's funny, because I just
don't believe him, and yet I do
at the same time.
He's a player and a cheat, but
he has a heart as he tells his side of the stories,
and I kiss his frown away.

Funnier still: they all have words to say about
him―the player, the cheat, the *******, the guys that
leads their friends on-
they talk about him
as if he dangles bait from the end of a string
in front of starving mice
so he can snap them up in his jaws and
swallow them whole,
only to spit them out later,
mangled and broken.

Perhaps a little like him.

I think they forget he has feelings too.

Even funnier still that
I feel like I'll be the one that breaks his heart
because I'm all well and good for liking him,
but my heart belongs to another,
and my friends, they like me, think me better
than the way I advertise myself;

I know they're wrong, because I know myself.
Always without intention, though often
without remorse, too,
I break the people closest to me,
snap them like twigs,
chew them up like defenseless mice
between my gnashing teeth,
and spew them up later
with the bile-burn of self-loathing,
mangled and broken.

Perhaps a little like me.

I think I forget I have feelings too.