You don’t know how it feels.

When you are cut from your lifeline
like an apple being picked
when it isn’t fully grown.
When you are replaced
with hard plastic and metal
where bone should be.

You probably want to know why he hates you.

It is because he has to learn how to walk again.
Because you can’t run like I could.
Because you can’t kick a soccer ball like I could.
Because you can’t make him itch like I could.
Because you are a reminder of the infection.
The infection...
that took me away from him.

I was made with him.
You were made for him.

You took six weeks to be created
I took nine months.
I was his first step,
You were a puzzle piece
that didn’t quite fit
You had to be forced
by people in white masks and blue gloves
They couldn’t touch you and
neither can he.
So instead you lay on his bedroom floor.

And I will not feel bad for you because
I am lying in a medical waste bin.
Waiting for my turn to enter the fire.

This
is
my
hell.

I miss him,
will you tell him
that I miss him?
Let him know the feeling is mutual.

I understand if you tear this up
there is no warmth in you.
No blood will ever pump through you.
Trust me, I get it.

When the heart dies, it is buried where it belongs.
Being hugged by its fellow vital organs.
it’s just like taking a nap
they say.
But when I die,
I am surrounded
by other dispensable body parts.
We are the forgotten few.
People do not have funerals for finger tips.
It feels like I am being eaten alive.

You can’t tell me I should feel bad for you.
Or that I should feel sorry for you.
Because I was alive,
I was moving
and you
are plastic.

Just,
tell him goodbye for me.

From her dark purple lips hangs a cigarette with pink smoke, and headphones with no music play a tune inside her head, and she paints bright red words loud as a FRAGILE stamp on her skin, and maybe on yours too, but only when you seem particularly insightful. She knows every word to every song of a band you’ve never heard of, and when they play and she’s driving the car, she will literally pull over and close her eyes to absorb the sound into her bloodstream, which seems to be composed of tiny bits of the galaxy and maple syrup and diary entries she never lets you read. She will kiss you in the movies, but only in parts heavily dripping of gore and violence, a metaphor she’s explained countless times but you will just never understand. She will paint her nails with your name sprawled across the *******, hold your hand in the gas station while shaming glossy magazine covers and everything that’s just soooo wrong with societies expectations of women today (despite the fact she’s somehow maniacally maintained her perfect body in the three weeks you’ve known her), and tell you that you’re her favorite season, a thought that your mind will spin around in its head like you ran around your 3rd grade classroom when your teacher was introducing concepts of matter and announced “now switch from a solid to a gas!”
But she will never tell you she loves you.
She will curse under her breath when you climb your courage without a harness to break the cold silence of the night, while laying on your back on the street under the stars. She will whisper “I’m so sorry” and speed off into the night, running with an elegant skirt she found in a thrift shop- made in 1956 or some other far-off year- flicking like a black-and-white movie behind her, the last thing you see before she disappears into the night, before she disappears from the audience’s cares and back into your mind.
She was everything I wanted to be for as long as I could remember, a terrible destruction of the human mind, a horrific enigma that perfection was so messed up that perfection itself could never learn how to love. Manic Pixie Dream Girl was my role model, Manic Pixie Dream Girl wore shirts from France hand-painted with Swedish fables, Manic Pixie Dream Girl knew every Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros song on the xylophone but only played with her eyes closed, Manic Pixie Dream Girl hated her sister and her parents and told everyone she was a mess they didn’t want to clean up. A disgusting idea that a woman only exists to make a man happy, to cure a man of his dark cloud of spinning inhibitions, and if she dares become real then she no longer is deemed entertaining. Manic Pixie Dream Girl was my goal, and with this in mind I embarked upon puberty with a music taste straight out of a Wes Anderson movie and teal eyeliner and the idea that being broken was desirable.
Until I actually was.
Manic Pixie Dream Boy refused to listen to the radio, wanted to be a famous actor, planned days to simply lay in bed all day, and smoked over a pack a day despite asthma so bad I worried every time we went up the stairs. Manic Pixie Dream Boy wore clothes with animals on them, but said he didn’t believe in giraffes, Manic Pixie Dream Boy hated school but loved to learn, Manic Pixie Dream Boy was perfect. Until he became the thing I so desired, telling me relationships weren’t for him and he couldn’t possibly ever fall in love, he was too broken.
But now I was Manic Pixie Dream Girl, wasn’t I? Broken, just as she was? Just as I had so desired to be when re-watching The (500) Days of Summer over and over again in middle school?
I hate you Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I hate telling the kind boy with the good grades and nice intentions that I couldn’t possibly love again, I detest the enigma I now am.
But when new boy with blue eyes darker than the Pacific coast tells me to lay down with him in the gravel and tells me that he hates the number 63 more than wheat-brewed beer, I say yes and give into manic dreams again.

The first time I learned what *** was, I was 10. My parents didn't even have "the talk". No. I found out from a boy, grinning as he rubbed his erasers together. I asked my mom, "Mom, what's ***?" and because *** IS SOMETHING I SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF, she said something like "You're to young". TOO YOUNG TO KNOW HOW LIFE IS CREATED?! And let's not forget the time I learned what gay meant I thought it was a bad word. The word my classmates laughed at and called each other. I watched my first Modern Family episode in the third grade, my closed minded comments spilled out and increasing got more homophobic as I watched my fathers laugh feed into my immaturity. Looking back, I'm disgusted. I was a candle, dim but had the potential to light the dark room, surrounding me. I just hadn't been light yet. The time I realized I was a feminist i was twelve. So eager to please and maintain my perfect child persona, that being told my "bra strap showing was disgusting" I cried my way through pre algebra. To ashamed to tell my friends or family. LIKE YES. I HAVE **** UNDER MY SHIRT IS THAT A ******* PROBLEM?!All I could think of was how my MALE ASSISTANT ******* PRINCIPAL CALLED ME OUT AND ISOLATED ME ALONE, MAKING ME FEEL ASHAMED OF MY BODY AND MY GENDER! I shouldn't have felt ashamed of sexuality **** I shouldn't have felt ashamed of my gender. NOBODY SHOULD EVER FEEL ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES. Here's a letter to past, present, and future self, and to all those little girls who were raised to be closed minded and ashamed, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL, EVERYONE IS WORTH LOVE, YOUR BODY IS NOT HERE FOR MALES TO GAUG AT. YOU ARE MORE THAN A *** ITEM, AND IF A MAN EVER MAKES YOU FEEL ASHAMED OF WHO YOU ARE, KICK HIM IN THE *****, FLICK HIM OFF, AND WALK AWAY. BECAUSE HONEY, US WOMEN ARE BETTER THAN THAT ****!

The only patience we had for belibers was spent in a quick game of operation and listening to the music their god produced, who may I mention is the age of *******. Let me be clear Justin Beiber the death of your belibers was no accident actually it was a genocide. Our purpose was to take out your dooncoff belibers and believe us it worked since your here to see them go 6 feet under beneath us. Don't get jealous cause you're next, yes this is a eulogy but low key this is a meeting on taking you out. First we take out the army now we moving onto the commander slash general. we're going to assassinate you, my bad that implies you're famous, we're going to euthanize you put you down like a dog but its not going to be a one and done shot, naw, ima have more arms on stand by like a centipede using the 2nd admendment to the fullest extent of the law , my bullets will be hitting on you so much that you will think they was flirting with you just like start of your euthanized dooncoff belibers club.

"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.

A slam poem


Your contact picture was taken the day you forgot to buy me a Christmas present
And when I scroll through my phone and see your name I remember crying until my pillow was painted black with streams of dashed hopes and childish mistakes.
On our third date you took the clip out of my hair and put it in yours and I haven't worn it since. Now I keep that clip in a desk drawer and try not to remember the way your voice cracked when you whispered my name and breathed your secrets into my mouth before trying to rip them back out through my heart when you decided you'd had enough of laughing over clips in your hair.
At night I lay awake and command my mind to conjure up any thought that's not you in your grey tuxedo, you in your painted skin that you outgrew when you smoked your first cigarette, peeling layers of who you were when you still filmed ghost hunting videos and touch-ups of who you are now, with your tears like rare prizes I wish I could collect in bottles and auction off to every past girl you've ever loved. And ****, there's a lot of girls.
But in the grand essay of your every past love I am the typo on the third page that knocks down your grade two points, the ****-up you would do anything to hit backspace on, the messy extra letter that somehow is overlooked by your meticulous eye because it's 2 am and you stopped giving a **** at 10. I am the coffee stain that gives away your procrastination like a badge worn across your chest, like a bruise on your forehead she may notice when she leans in to kiss you, like a tear in your favorite tie that she will see when she slides it off your neck and slips it sensually onto her own, not knowing I think about hanging myself with that very tie 1036 times a day if only I thought for one second it would awaken you from the slumber you fell into when you found whiskey and me that one December night on the countertop that wasn't even our own.
And I awake every morning drenched in heartache and heavily breathing out the rhythm your heart would drum as I lay at night with my head on your chest and my heart in your hands and my body in your mind. I was the glass sculpture you couldn't resist playing with no matter how many times you were warned not to, I was the wet paint sign you couldn't resist testing, I was the fire alarm you just had to pull.
But I would burn my tongue on coffee watching the sunrise with you again and again and again if it would resurrect the Christmas lights that burned like dying stars in my stomach in the fleeting moment where I truly believed you could love me, your kisses like butterfly wings that became bats all too quickly, your love like a fever that broke too fast- sweating and crying in bed at 2 am-I MISS YOU AND I HATE YOU AND I NEED YOU.
Yet maybe I knew along that this would happen. Yes, maybe I saw you as an opportunity to rekindle my old romance with anger and pain and depression, maybe when my friends told me you were bad news, I rejoiced in the idea of my old friends returning so much so that I opened the door and said "come on in," arms opened wide, play dough mind in their hands.
Or maybe I just really loved you.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
I am assured by my loving mother as a child
I believe her because the beauty in everything flow’rs and flourishes
when you’re young
The world is yours to take, everyone is yours to meet, everything is yours to do;
and I believe her.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
My first friend at school proclaims,
and I believe them.
We’ve tackled ***** training and preschool, now onto the playground and phonics!
We run and run together, taking the world like we’ve
whispered once before;
and I believe them.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
The middle school test scores announce,
and I believe them.
Primary school is in the past and I’m ready for responsibility!
I put on makeup to feel pretty, care about my grades more than the teachers believe and flash my smile to the boys who spit “compliments” at my feet;
and I believe them.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
but.. I don’t believe them anymore.
I’ve gained just enough confidence to smile at everyone in the halls in case they are having a bad day.
Suddenly my youthful euphoric vision is graffitied with hateful words and violence.
I run and constantly chase the innocence of the world,
being surrounded by darkness.
My self esteem has hit an all time low. Why is the world this way?
My friends and I chase what we used to believe and end up in deep holes;
and I don’t believe them anymore.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
And it doesn’t matter.
I have lost all hope of finding that beauty.
My heart is an aching mess of “I love you”’s
But all I hear is “you are meaningless”
Slowly these phrases of deep hate sear into my soul
I hear them every day and every night
You are meaningless
You are not worthy
You could not possibly be good enough
Until I wake up one dismal morning to realize that I have been defined by the ones around me.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
..and enough!
Because even my friends who say I’m worth something turn around and sneer at others like they can’t too be loved.
Because while the world screams “I hate people” I whisper
“but I don’t”.
But that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things
because we’ll find someone who loves us, right?
No.
Our words between just us mean nothing if we spin around and
spit in others’ faces.

And we know we hurt because we’ve been hurt but we don’t stop, none of us stop.

I dream of a world that screams a vulnerable
“I love you”
out into the world instead of a pulsing
“I hate you”
And a world that remembers that we are all worthy of love and not only the kind that makes you blush.

“You are worth more than the marigolds”
The phrase I’ve heard since I was in my mother’s gentle hold
can only mean so much when you think you’re crumpled.
Stashed away until you’re needed
always feeling so defeated
but the truth
not told enough
to our weakened souls
We are all worth more than the marigolds

I’ve been conditioned
like freshly washed hair
for years
do not offend
unless the end of the sentence is “im sorry”
let the shoes and boots and heels of many make indents on you
like blueprints of demurity swaddled in insecurity
kept alive by the blurry ideas i once held about femininity
because i couldn't be a girl if the words that flew from my chords
were anything but rosy
ring around the Josie, pockets full of suppose he was to compliment your ****
when walking down a thorough-fair
busy people back and forth and grandmas with wrinkled sweaters
thank you
muttered from chapped lips and an even more chapped psyche
why must i keep my wits about to not risk making him angry
that was not complimentary but i am fearful he might spit my words back onto me
in the form of fists and slurs and honestly
im tired
of being the sidewalk beneath the feet of creeps
i am the sky and the trees and the moon
but i do not speak with the wisdom of travelling seeds
i speak with the warmth and subtlty of freshly microwaved milk
like soft silk i wish i could tatter
i wish venom soaked words could be spit in response to your “compliments”
but i would rather let you diminish me for the few moments it takes to objectify me
than to risk angering your inner beast and suffering the consequences of meninism or masculinism
whatever the word is this week
i will not be another number
ink soaked paper red with the monthly bloodshed of the sisters
every second is another unspeakable act
i see women
with tongues as round and large as planets
and tonsils the size of solar systems
birthing new galaxies in the words they speak
and shooting comets like fiery ***** of comebacks
when that slack-jawed fool sat and wished and drooled
into his monthly issue of mens rights magazine
she tore down the even minuscule belief he could have had that he had the right to comment on her body
in three seconds his pride, and entitlement
shifted into shame
and embarrassment
and i envy these women
because the only time i can take back my power
is when i am standing in front of a room
speaking rhymes and metaphors preaching independence and strength
to a group of people who now think i am a hero
i am not a hero
i put my shoes on one foot at a time
and i still manage to forget a couple days of birth control here and there
and i cant stand up for myself
in the moments after an attack i retreat into my latte and pray today will not be the day the male dominated society takes my power away
because i am small
and though i am growing every day
i still can only pray
that one way or another
i will be able to be as strong a woman as my sisters
my mother
and take back my power
and speak not with the beauty of a flower
but with the sharpness of a bumblebees sting
and one more thing
your compliments
are not complimentary

Because the definition of beauty isn't something as simple as your face
It's your very soul and mind  
The way you look at things with such childlike curiosity
Your mind an ocean of untapped creativity  
Your heart forever expanding, fueled by love and joy
And yet you still look in the mirror every single day, hating the person you've become
So you twist yourself into something ugly and fake
Don't tell me nothing's wrong when I can see you slowly dying inside and letting society  chain you up and break you down  Until all you can hear is; "Skinny, pretty, skinny, pretty, skinny, pretty,-"
You see the size of those jeans. Doubting, criticizing. Esteem thin as paper.  
Posting a million pictures to get likes from complete strangers. Wanting, craving, needing people to tell you that you’re beautiful. Looking for anyone else’s opinion but your own.
Because you refuse to look into that ****** mirror and even associate beauty with that person staring back at you.  
You judge your self-worth by weather or not a man finds you attractive.
Because that’s the only thing that matter right?
The definition of beauty that others set fourth for you.
A path that you don’t dare stray from.
It wasn't always like this
Being young, being free, meant being you
Laughing as hard as you wanted to
Smiling with your teeth  
And wearing that cute dress you've always loved.  
Getting older, getting bullied, getting shamed
Your laugh was obnoxious  
Teeth were just a bit crooked  
That dress, not as cute anymore
We shouldn't be wasting our lives trying to impress people
Don't look to others to tell you you're beautiful  
Look inside of yourself
And if you don't see anything worth wild
You're not looking hard enough
You judge yourself by looks alone. Not factoring in who you are as an individual.  
Whether you want to believe it or not you're beautiful, inside and out
I think it's about ****** time you stop listening to someone else's definition of beauty
And start looking for your own