So today you started with the why's, making excuses and reasons as you have every season since I looked at you, but now I see you and you think you can use the glint from that shiny silver tongue to blind me so you can bind me in your arms until I can't breath. And while you seem pretty qualified at splitting hairs and splitting sheets that doesn't mean you'll be splitting legs, not unless you get down on your knees and join this Sunday service, my body is a temple and you will worship it.
     It is not a crime scene to be inspected, not a base to be infiltrated and not fire to be quenched. The masses have called out "Sister art thou there?" and I have replied rising from what remains of my childlike mind saying,"Yey, I am the mosque, come to me and fill me with your joy and celebrations, but only the worthy shall enter my sacred halls and learn my holy obsessions." So don't think you can break me in because I am not something to be broken, not something to be dominated or overtaken in one moment of reckless inspiration.
     I see you shaking. Whether it's in fear or lust or just from the itch of dust forming on your skin from sitting patiently and waiting for the day when I give in, but just like you, it won't come. So whether you are wide eyed or tired eyed you will behold the glory that is within me, the strength that defines me and realize that I am baptized in the dawn of a new day. And you should know that I will not be coerced and as far as I'm concerned if you haven't learned by now that I am not your outlet, not just something to help you come around when your feeling down, your living puppet, then you never will. So you will never fill the gap between my thighs with your lies and turn around and call it love.
     Preach all you want but this choir isn't listening, it will sing to drown out the deafening sound of your screeching, so after hours when my church is closed and your feeling empty and alone just remember that next communion I'll be waiting for your confessions, and then maybe you'll receive my blessings. But before then my doors are closed until you know the difference between impulse and infatuation.
     So until the day when you figure out what you need to do and say, focus on your words, and not the way my bees talk to your birds.

Your smile
never ceases to shine even when
ominous weather clouds
hover above us relentlessly.

Your presence
Is always warm and comforting,
And never do I feel so safe, so protected than
When I am in your arms.

And everyday,
Every single day,
your love for me
makes me whole.

And then I wake up.

And the cold, hard truth
hits me.

I can only dream of you now.
I can only wish
On all my stars
to have you again.

Because the stars
Have hidden themselves away
And your arms
No longer wrap themselves
Around me.
Because your smile
Still shines as brightly,
but it’s no longer for me.
And I know
that when you see me,
all you see
Is this girl who left you
in pieces.

I want to pick up
All the fragments of
you I left behind
and
make you whole again.

To make me whole again.
If only you would let me…

and at this point...
standing in a college library in the middle of an unknown (to you)
city i knew
it was easier to drink alcohol than to say no.
no one actually cares about the years you have survived here.
it's easier to drink here
to **** -fill, i meant fill- my skeleton
with buzzing poison
'cause why not?
and i haven't seen her since december
thank God
less pressure on my ears replaced
by sinus pressures.
but
i read the texts from a boy who was supposed to care about me
and i knew it was over
'parentally he was sober
yet i couldn't tell.



i could be drinking right now,
nineteen in a week,
no worries except i'd be in a corner
my hands shaking, skin breaking, his hands snaking-
and i won't let myself fall
into my own traps.
i am standing up
and leaning against my bedroom wall
head spinning but
i said no,
so many months ago.

I make hellos seem more like drawn out goodbyes and I wave to everyone who is standing still. I walk faster than my feet can carry me and I bathe in acetone to shed off the layers of therapy painted on over the years. I scream whispers of a broken home and wear broken watches to remember what time it was last time I felt alive. I keep sunglasses in my pocket but I can never put them on because the world is too dark for me. I hide feelings inside of mason jars and write "moonshine" on them so people think I know how to have a good time. The mirrors around my house are all cracked from the inside out. The books on the shelves are all tearing themselves away from the spine. Nothing wants to be what it is intended to and no one wants to be who they are when I am around. I stock tears on a shelf that was built by the hands that held me as a baby and by the same hands that have not held each other's in so long. I take long walks in circles and run trails that teeter on the edges of cliffs. I write soliloquies for all the things I should have said and I bite my lip when you come around. My heart skips two beats when you look at me and I wonder why it isn't just the one this time. What makes you different than all the rest of the world, what makes you bring a smile to a man who knows nothing short of despair? I wonder what you will do to me when you leave and I wonder what I will do to myself to try to keep you around. I wonder who else in the world could make my heart sing like this. I remember every other eventual end to a bond that I once called unbreakable. I know the pain of empty bottles and half smoked cigarettes; of broken mirrors and letters burning in the sink. I know the crunch of my knuckles on concrete and my unwillingness to try trusting someone again. I will only ask you to stay if you know what my pain is so that you would never leave me with it again.

We are stronger than our greatest enemy
a fear that we lie alone in bed
We are late night burning candles
waiting for headlights to shine through the window at 2am
We are window gazers during rain storms and puddle splashers when it stops
We are strong like an oak tree and yet you keep pulling splinters out of me
Remnants from a life hidden so far down in my roots that you need an ax and a full bottle of Jack to see what I am made of
We are rain drops collecting in an old mason jar
tear drops falling on cold hands
Lovers caught in the vine of thorns that they call home
Two broken photo frames later with suitcases sitting by the door
there is no liquor that drowns this out
nothing strong enough to help you forget that you are the reason the door still lies open
We are now a discontinued item only existing in photo books you told everyone else you threw away
You are the last item on a shelf full of things that I should have returned
We are forgotten like rain that doesn't fall on an aluminum roof
like the pitter-patter of our footsteps coming home together
now we are no more than whispers to ourselves after midnight

"Nina, why do you always date *****?" questions my best friend in the way that implies an answer is not needed nor wanted in the warm light of his front porch in the car that belongs to me but he offers to drive when my stomach is sick and a new ****-up is laid like fresh paint on my mind.
The question itself spins like a coin in my head that will never lay flat, like a bad autotune job, like a Rube Goldberg that will never halt, like it has too much truth to it.
"Why do you always date *****?"
Because they don't seem like ***** when our eyes meet and the ***** of their smile makes my nose crinkle with an incessant desire to smell the warm scent of their chest as my head lays pillowed on it in the early morning calm before the loud realization of what events transpired the night before, before flashbacks of mixed bodies and sweaty whispers, before he decides he's seen enough of me, devoured his piece of meat, he's not hungry anymore.
When will I be his favorite food? The one he can have for breakfast lunch and dinner and still crave, the one he will always ask for seconds of, the one who is home to him. Every time I meet someone I call all of my friends and swear he's the ever so infamous "one," and every time I fall for the ******* lie that he "will not break me," YOU WILL NOT BREAK ME?! Then why am I shattered, laying in pieces on the cold tile floor, my mind a messy oozing disaster? But maybe my heart has always been just a taped up broken mess since Paula left, maybe when Aaron and Spain and Mitchell came along it was all too easy for them to pull at the poorly tied knotted strings I had sewn into my heart, maybe my soul was just a little too welcoming, maybe my mouth was a little too eager to feel theirs against it. But I can swear that when you "made love to me" it was really just *******, or else why would you take the one piece of me left only to complain after that I hadn't shaved. Well I've shaved every day since, cut bleeding patterns into my mortified anxiety, ripped tears from my eyes before I dare let them fall, and watched you kiss her over and over again. But if you asked me back I'd still say yes, rip the shredded heart from the box I've tended to keep it in and place it back in your hands to wear like a new notch in your belt, a new trophy for your collection.
"Why do you always date *****?"
Because some wretched inner part of my being believes I deserve it.

The first step to living
was cutting my hair.

I cut it so I wouldn't have anything to hide behind when I'm scared
no more waves to sink into no more lake to drown in.
I was slowly pulling myself out of the ocean of anxiety but still rocking back and forth in a boat that had a leak in it. I kept trying to cover up the hole but no matter what I did it still reached me.
The ocean was always cold, no matter the weather. It only seemed to carry sharks that circled my boat day in and day out.

I went to the beach once for a week and every time I'd try to have fun in the ocean the waves pushed me down and almost ripped my bikini off at least 5 times, I can still taste the salt in my mouth just thinking about it.
The best part about the whole trip wasn't being with the sharks, it wasn't falling down in the ocean, it was simply riding a bike through town, having the wind whisk away all my worries.
I wish I could ride that wind. Ride that wind until I land on the moon, where I could be alone but still having the most attention. I am that girl who craves love and affection but is confused as **** when it is given to me.
Maybe that's why I pushed him way; not just because he was a bad kisser. Or maybe it was because every word I said went through him like it was nothing, I ended up repeating myself time and time again only to hear the echo of my voice.
this time it's different, though. when he kisses me I kiss him back with as much force as he gave. I touch him when he touches me and boy, I cant keep my hands off him. he listens to me and his takes every word I say and puts it in his pocket, ready to bring it up later. he's the only boy that loves my hair as short as it is and knows that I hate the ocean. He is like the cave that sits near the ocean, ready to take me in and hold me in his arms for as long as I need him to. He shelters me from the ocean spray.