the female adolescent is beautiful
in black and white
colour loses depth
we see everything like a small puppy
isn't the what you want?
innocence?
naive little girls who can't hold their own?
who can barely stand on their own two feet?
the female is a miraculous creature
she carries herself like a feather on a cool breeze
maybe because she's so frail & the wind is so loud
oh the feeling of hunger pains on a cold winter morning
wondering if maybe im small enough now to feel the wind in my bones
freezing my enamel
wondering how many calories are in toothpaste
or the bleach we swish around in our mouths to whiten our teeth
we eat pills for breakfast
anti-depressant
Prozac
laxatives
Xanax
and hair & nail supplements
so we can look beautiful while dying
dabbling in hobbies like
shopping
buying makeup
fainting while walking to the bus stop
hunching over the toilet while top model plays in the background
shaming our metabolisms for not being able to burn through a tic tac fast enough
yelling at our doctors for claiming that our
"hearts are too big for such a small body"
boys think we dumb ourselves down to make ourselves more appealing
little do they know the number of times we bang on our heads to knock out the unclean thoughts like
food or
sleep
how our brain cells die each time we slap away our frowns & replace them with painted smiles
small dumb Barbie dolls
plastic
easily ripped apart
we hide our pain with concealer
bruised from bumping into counters
purple knees
carrying a rubber band for months till that rubber band is carrying us
slapping our wrists to warrant authority
because beauty has power over everything
measuring the space between our thighs
yanking at the skin that will never leave
measuring the space between the blade and our wrists
remembering that scars will only make it worse
measuring the space between now and never
realizing life is a thing
realizing life would be better without you
realizing you haven't weighed yourself today
gathering your fears in mason jars
collecting your tears & mailing them to places far, far away
the female adolescent is beautiful
but only in black and white

a letter came for a dead man today

and i was certain, if i looked down, i'd see a ******, mangled mess beneath me where my heart sputtered and dropped right out of my chest cavity
as  i watched, through a stranger's eyes, the pad of my thumb smear the ink of your name

the serrated p's and t's slicing open the makeshift stitches i used in vain to yank close the gaping hole left by your gravestone

five hundred and eleven sunrises I have seen without you

counting each one like I counted the letters you never wrote me

because I wrote you letters, but they never left the sweaty lines of my palms.

& i wrote you sonnets, couplets, painstaking metaphors like how my heart living inside your hands was like a telescope reaching for moons.

but that's the thing. you left mine unwound, dangling towards the ground and all that my lips held never reached your sky.

all ever i wanted was to make my stars and moons live inside your eyelids.

but my wishes were like flowers left next to tombstones, and you never brought me daisies.

five hundred and eleven mornings I’ve awoken
and found my hands disgusted with the way my body moves beneath me

and it wasn’t until you took your last breath that I started being grateful for mine

I hurt, do you see?

i could write you more than one poem about suffering, as routine as a heartbeat

the things i've done, the mistakes and places and the ways i've lost my pride and grace for the sake of sanity

i've spent too many hours weaving windflowers between my fingertips
hoping the stinging vines stealing circulation will bleed safety
hoping if I say your name enough times it’ll lose its incantation

but you were a magician
and I’ve still got too much pride to admit that I thought I could get rich on the lies you pulled from behind my ears

you told me that you loved me
you told me that you understood me
you told me that you needed me
you told me that you wouldn’t leave me

five hundred and eleven days ago I learned that the things you told me were as worthless as the promise you made to keep breathing

and now I’m second-guessing myself on the corner, begging strangers to tell me i’m worth something more than the words you imprinted on my lips

all this time I’ve spent trying to make the pieces of my shattered self fit together in the same way they did before your eyes became the reason that I opened mine

I don’t care what they say
They can’t tell me I’m wise for my age when I let you redefine the truths of my own existence

But I’ve had 511 days to rewrite this one, and I’ve got enough modesty now to tell you the truth.

when you died, you stole all the ways I ever felt validated
you had my secrets in your pockets, my innocence like an offering on your altar
when you took your own life, you did me a favor

A letter came for you today.

i ripped it up.

There will come a day
When all of the colors fade
to grey
When all of the flowers
In the garden start to wilt
When everyday is cloudy.
The headlines hold names
Of kids you grew up playing kickball with
Being killed by people who thought
That one more drink wouldn’t do any harm.
People who thought that a party
Was more important than
Everyone else on the road.

Now,
We have a four year old boy whose mama
Won’t see him graduate preschool
We have an eighteen year old girl whose daddy
Won’t see her graduate high school.
We have teachers
Who don’t know how to educate
To a classroom full of students
Who have so many questions.

But the legal limit isn’t taught in textbooks.

This isn’t whether or not you feel
That the law applies to you.
This is life or death.
This is Russian Roulette with a bottle.
This is driving blindfolded
With the music on too loud.
This is a four year old boy
Who still doesn’t understand
What Heaven is.
This is an eighteen year old girl
Who’s wearing her graduation dress
To her father’s funeral.
The dress that her father helped her pick out.
He said,
“You know, sweetheart, I always loved you in black.”


This is crying for someone
You never met.
This is military homecomings or
Babies smiling for the first time.

Except in reverse.

This is military homecomings in a box.
This is babies crying for a mother
Who cannot comfort them.
This is empty spaces in a poem
Where words should be.
This is “I just saw them yesterday.”
This is “I’m sorry for your loss.”
This is...
not knowing what the right thing to say is.
She still had clothes in the washing machine.
He had a T-Time for next Thursday.
We had a dinner reservation next Friday.
This is knowing that he will never have a birthday again.
This was not something I was expecting
I mean, who would?
Photographs can’t capture a lifetime.
They may be worth a thousand words,
But you my dear are worth so much more.

When you open up to your parents
about your crippling anxiety
and unbearable depression
do not expect them to be okay
expect them to turn into fire
expect their skin to boil at the thought
of their precious child being miserable
how dare I have an imbalance
in my head that makes me
want to blow it off
how dare I have in imbalance
in my head that makes me
feel like I would be
better off in a place that
wasn't Hell
how dare I give them such an inconvenience?
do not expect them to hold you
and tell you that you will get through this
expect them to make you have
another panic attack
and make you feel like it's your fault
expect them to make you feel
like everyone else has it worse
expect them to spit on everything
you've confessed
expect nothing
because that's how you're going
to feel afterwards
you will shed some tears
in the vast emptiness of your head
that is at the same time
triggering your depression
to scream
but you will feel empty
you will feel hopeless
even though no you're
getting therapy
you'll still feel like
anything besides a
human being
so when you open up to your parents
about your crippling anxiety
and unbearable depression
hopefully you'll have
better luck
than I

Corner curtains close to encircle
souls bearing poems
scratched on manila pads or
formed on computers
to await a reading

amid clangs of ceramic cups
stainless steel utensils
and cream pitchers.
  
Carlo’s throat cracks while
he recalls running his fingers
over dry scaly skin
tolerating the heat rising in his body
as he befriends  
snakes coexisting in his camp

Mokasiya narrates adventures 

along rock mesas
formed and shaded
red, orange and tan
and how grasses turn brittle and dry
nearly dissapearing
amid enormous grasshopper swarms  .
.
A young woman sings and plays poetic
lyrics of struggles
lamenting that she should have
given in to the hot rage in her throat
to shoot and **** the *****
who corrupted her father’s marriage

Corner curtains open
as words and phrases
remain to die
among the chairs
mixing with the sawdust
on the hardwood flooring
unlikely to become
reborn, reread or recorded

There's an F on his forehead but it doesn't represent failure. It represents the Y chromosome his father didn't pass down but by some cruel twist of fate he so desperately need to be comfortable in his own **** skin. But this isn't about that. This is about that little girl you raised realizing that she was always meant to be a little boy but can't tell you because you'd kick him out regardless of how he'd plead for you to just understand so instead he hurts himself to let the feeling out. Dozens of little lines that relieve his pain for just a moment each but it is just enough to keep him going. And then he comes back to the constant fear and sometimes he can't take it so he buries himself in a reality where he can be who he is. The wrong pronouns that taste like acid on his tongue and sound like screams in his ears and just add salt to the wounds that he's given himself. He wants to tell you everything but you'd throw him to the dogs and watch as he was torn apart. So he filets his skin instead, and for sixteen years he's held it all in. Sixteen years of pain and suffering and not knowing and hurting. How many times does he need to bleed before I feel like he's had enough? How many times will he scream before someone comes to help? To save him? Because he might not be able to stand it much longer. I won't be able to.

November 4th, 2011, 12:57am.

I 'like' myself.
I like my eyes,
How they resemble a forest
After the rain,
But I don't like how they get red and bloodshot
Whenever I cry:
A forest fire
That's out of my control.
I like my hands,
How they can create art out of nearly anything,
But I don't like how they are covered
In scars
Made by pencils and pens and words that were too sharp.
I like my legs,
How they are strong,
Dependable,
A best friend,
But I don't like how they're stretched out,
Or how they rub together,
Or the way they jiggle when I walk.
I like my arms,
How there are constellations of freckles buttered over my skin,
But I don't like how no matter how hard I try,
I can't seem to pull myself up
Off the cold,
Concrete ground.
I like my hair,
How it trickles down like a waterfall,
Into the valley known as
The small of my back
But I don't like how it's made up of split ends
From staying in the hot shower for way too long
Dreading the morning sun.
Nevermind.
Maybe I don't like myself.

March 31st, 2015, 3:00am.

It has been a long road.
I have crashed
Gotten back up patched.
Added and subtracted
The Weight
The Clothes
The Hair
The Makeup
To get my answer
To a complex math problem;
A complex life problem
That I'm sure you've all encountered
On that one pop quiz
From the first day of school
That you took before they even knew your name.
#1. "What do they all think about me?"
#100. "Do I like myself?"
And with all I've experienced
And learned through self love and so
Much
Patience,
My answer is this:
I don't like myself,
I ******* love myself
And I hope you can all learn to do the same
Because nobody deserves to be caught under their own shadow of
Self Doubt.

If I go to a party, and see at least one girls ***, that day will be my best day of that season.

I’d drink myself to the point where the toilet could be advertised as a painkiller. But **** standing up, It’s not that I don’t trust my aim, I just like to keep things as clean as possible.

I often find myself apologizing for actions the morning after inebriation. It’s weird. I’ve grown old enough for understand consequences but not enough to try and and avoid them.
Old enough to regret the relationships I’ve destroyed then still find time, to break down a few more.

I’m still scared of commitment. I’ll spend 2 years learning to love all of your facets and flaws, but spend so much more of that time looking for a cause.
Exploring why I bother to love anyone when I feel so insecure. You’re affection may grow but I’ll never feel sure. It all becomes a chore. Asking you to outline whatever good in me you thought you saw. But sometime or later I’ll be asking for a redraw.

It’s a funny word ‘insecure’. It’s funny that even with all the nightmares we’ve been through. The experiences we’ve accrued. The places we’ve had to get to, Your deepest fears will always be about you.
You and your expectations you feel you must attain.
You and your image you present to those who judge.
You and your aptitude for keeping those you love happy.

Even now. I’m only saying this because I’m scared I’m far too immature for life I lead,
and I know anyone else in my position would want to hear these words.


Mistakes are as natural as breathing.
With both it is imperative that at some point you must let go. You must exhale and exorcize what is unnecessary from your body. You must learn to forgive yourself.

2. Unsurity is the siamese twin of certainty.
Before you come to a decision you must be comfortable in the knowledge you will never know what the future holds  but if you ever want to move forward, it requires that all important first step... so put your best foot forward.

and 3. Bolster yourself. Be proud in the understanding that your 2 feet hold a place in this world that no else can fill. That everyday you live is your opportunity to bend the universes will. That live may not be a continuous thrill but boy is it scary!
You have a lifetime of wishes to fulfill.
So settle down. Life is a series of small discoveries. No one expects you to find everything.
All we ask is that you don’t ever stop looking.

Sometimes it feels like I’m looking a stranger or maybe even a ghost in my mirror. Dark eyes with no sparkle stare back at me and part of me wonders when I started looking like a corpse. Meals get skipped more often than I actually eat and my body starts feeling like it’s made of glass that people keep breaking while she tries her hardest to put me back together. And when I get sick, because it always happens, it’s like my bones rattle as I shiver and each cough feels like my throat is being torn apart from the inside out and after each fit I try to be surprised that there’s no blood. When I’m asked about medical history I have to tell them I don’t know because I really don’t. I’m so stupidly afraid of getting some preventable but hereditary disease because I never knew it was in my genes. I find myself turning the same words over and over in my head while I lay in bed every night: they didn’t want you and they didn’t love you and it’s your fault. It’s gotten to the point where I believe the lies my anxiety-ridden subconscious tells me. The logical part of me knows the lies aren’t true but how do you console yourself in those lonely hours when you’re alone and no one can hear you cry yourself to sleep? Six nights a week it’s all fitful sleep and when I wake up I’m still so exhausted it takes everything I have just to haul myself out of bed to take the pill that makes it so I can just barely scrape by during school and even then it’s not good enough so I find myself failing and then I realize I just don’t care anymore. There is no in between for me, I can’t just kinda care it’s all or nothing and ninety nine percent of the time it’s nothing so I lose myself in my video games and ignore the screaming in the back of my skull that tells me to get up and do something productive with my life but I just can’t. It’s not that I don’t want to try it’s that I physically cannot make myself care enough to do anything and it’s almost like I can ******* feel my muscles begin to atrophy.

I understand you don't want me to go That's fine.
But I can't watch you dig through your car
For money for tonight's numbing.
You can't call me names
And still call me your daughter
And just because you offer me a cold one
Doesn't mean I'm playing your game.
I tried to give you a chance to prove
That your words were worth an ounce of truth
You may have been sober for months
But it's been two weeks of slurred speech
And several days of you
Not leaving that door
For anything more than a bottle.
Why the **** would I want to stay?
You keep saying that
No one here will hurt me
Too late dad, you've made your mark
In the form of six packs and cruel words.
I was better off without you for 10 years.
You have never been daddy.