#jmk
fear keeps me here
stagnant and sorry
vindictive and caged
I waited for years
for an apology
or a reason, at least
I let the vultures
pick through parts of me
you left out on the street
scattered and shameful
harrowed and hungry
waiting for anything
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 10, 2019 at 9:25 PM UTC
And I will romanticize the way we fell out of love until the day I die so that I may mourn in peace. I don’t want to know you as someone who violated my boundaries and called it care. I don’t want to know you as someone who stepped into my chest and destroyed everything in sight in the blink of an eye. Without even trying, really. I don’t want to know you as someone who robbed me of a year of life and gave me two years of flashbacks and rose memories and harrowing remembrance of what was- what was so powerful and encompassing and beautiful that when we split I knew nothing but emptiness. I don’t want to admit or accept that I allowed myself to be treated like that. So I will remember the way you hurt me but leave that part out when I talk about you. I will write about you in gold to give myself more time to forget what was underneath.
Jul 7, 2019
Jul 7, 2019 at 12:05 PM UTC
This is my body
Size 12, wiggle room
Jiggly thighs, 5’2
(And a quarter. It matters)
Overgrown roots blend
Into DIY blonde,
Somewhere in between
“Well kept” and “definitely depressed”
Acne scars, decently white teeth
Scar on my brow from that time I tried
Rollerblading into the sun, I swallowed the pavement on the way down. You can still see the cracks in my teeth, just underneath my laugh lines. I always tried to stay as positive as possible. No matter what.
This is my body, it holds memories like water weight.
Destined to burst, void of drains,
Man Made pores- formed from the inside out by cries for help that never surfaced.
Porous and calloused, found out that its purpose for a year straight was simply surviving.
This is my body. Flashbacks on a marquee, survivor’s hands painted nicely, so no one ever asked me why they were so ***** and broken, and ******
This is my body
His dead skin under my nails,
Petrified.
Proof of a fight. scars on my arms
North of my elbow: survivor’s guilt in the shape of a Star, I spent last summer wishing night after night I wasn’t alive- I was so tired from pretending.
This is my body.
Latches like a leech to anything warm.
****** dry all of my loved ones in the year I spent spiraling,
searching for solace or sanity-
even safety. Found nothing but panic.
Nervous bird in a cage.
Narrow shoulders.
Boxer’s stance.
Dancing on the front line where I should have been to fight
Using my fists never worked.
Neither did screaming “no, no, no”
Present until that very day. And now I lay silent.
Absent like a soldier, staring into space.
Trying to make sense of the shaking.
This is my body.
I have my mother’s eyes, her mother’s brain.
Black and white, strict like law,
Cemented in place for weeks at a time,
Then Moving at the speed of light, I cannot stop or I will die.
Creaky chest upside down, my stomach clings to my ribs.
Stand still until the room stops spinning
Or until my head stops hurting
And my legs stop shaking
And you stop when I ask you to stop
“This is my body” I whisper behind your hands as you steal all autonomy
I am left with nothing
This is my body.
He took it from me,
Did not even have to try to ruin my insides,
Did not blink an eye in the year I spent unraveling in front of everyone I loved,
Pulled out every lash I had, lost my job because of panic attacks,
But I am commanding it back.
I spent the last 6 months building from the ground up.
Spent the last 12 taking up the space I did not before.
The last 3 learning that it’s okay to.
I stopped apologizing in January.
I started yelling again in February.
It took that long to think anyone would ever hear me,
No one ever had.
This year I took my body back.
This is my body. Size 12, 5’2. Wiggle room.
Sometimes it can’t breathe right and shuts down in big crowds.
But this is my body and it is big and it is loud.
It takes up space, it is strong, it is pretty.
This is my body and for absolutely none if it, am I sorry.
Not a single part.
May 12, 2019
May 12, 2019 at 8:28 PM UTC
Partial to a past that explained my experiences in a causal tone. Like a story that had to unfold, I made sure it made sense because I felt myself losing control. I had to have control of it. Apologies for every mistake I’d ever made because amending my wrongs was praying for one night without terrors. Tug of war with God. Cause and effect. I earned my hurt. I earned my hurt.
People that believe in karma drive me ******* nuts. Plagued with guilt from my childhood because I got ***** at 21 and I thought maybe if I had been nicer to Cassandra B on the playground at 9 maybe I could have kept my dignity that night in my dorm room. But it doesn’t work like that.
I have survivor’s hands. ***** calloused, jealous hands. I am not innocent, I am vindictive and manipulative and when I argue with the person I love I get mean. When I talk to myself in the mirror, I am cruel. I am not innocent. I was a bully as a child. I thought all of these things were a part of the reason why someone took my body from me when I was 21.
May 2, 2019
May 2, 2019 at 8:02 PM UTC
I don’t know exactly when I lost you.
Somewhere in the middle of me
Falling apart on a perfectly timed cycle
And blaming my sadness on your apathy,
I remember you told me you couldn’t handle it anymore.
I don’t know when, I remember the way you walked out the door.
And how when I chased after you, peeling paint cracked off where the handle was
Before I started trusting you and started leaving the door open
I remember when I gained you,
Everything went silent
When you told me you needed me
I called your “I love you’s” filler words
And you called me paranoid
I remember hibiscus kisses, stumbling
Over broken pavement outside my apartment
Where we made love on the couch
And I felt the blood in my veins
Make its way to my heart
And I finally felt that feeling
I waited my entire life for
I felt you and my favorite record playing
And I thought that was what it was like to be alive
And to be happy about it, for once
And then you left and now I drive in silence
Music makes me sick
Six months after you left I learned what it meant when people
Told me I had to get over it or it would **** me
Because I tried to **** me and the pictures that flashed across my face
As it started to fade,
Were all of you
Apr 17, 2019
Apr 17, 2019 at 5:45 PM UTC
Tell me what it’s like to fall out of love
So beautifully and with ease,
You walked away, me still on the street
And still managed to make it look like art,
Our love was never movie-like but the ending was,
Alone and grey on the pavement, begging for your patience
So I could prove to you one more time that I was worthy of being with
But you never wanted to hear it
Apr 17, 2019
Apr 17, 2019 at 5:42 PM UTC
i let you haunt my halls every night until the floors caved in
i grew to want and need your harrowing prescence
in the spaces between walls, i kept three flares and my keys
convinced i would have to fight my way out if i were to ever leave
but i never did
i'm sorry that i let you linger
four months since that family dinner where you told me you
could no longer hold me up on your shoulders
i was your burden to bear and you wanted the guilt to eat me alive
i would be lying if i said that it did, you cut yourself and held the blood up for the world to see''
i grew cold, entangled in apologies you pulled out of me
i was always scared, i was never sorry
Apr 12, 2019
Apr 12, 2019 at 7:38 PM UTC
Next week would have been our anniversary.
Tomorrow marks 3 weeks since you’ve smiled at me, and 2 since we’ve laughed together.
But next week would have been our anniversary,
And just a month ago we were so happy.
Isn’t it crazy?
Nov 29, 2018
Nov 29, 2018 at 1:34 AM UTC
I was never going to be happy the way we were going to be but I made myself believe I would so I had something to grieve.
Nov 27, 2018
Nov 27, 2018 at 5:11 PM UTC
I forced myself to stop loving you
Because holding on was suffocating
Urban ivy, forgiving fists
I forced myself to stop loving you
Until it worked,
until I hated you in every way I never wanted to
Nov 26, 2018
Nov 26, 2018 at 9:12 AM UTC
I will let you go
So that we can grow
Separately on our own
It hurts to pull you through my fingers
But I need them back, I’ve seeds to sew
Nov 7, 2018
Nov 7, 2018 at 11:19 AM UTC
heavy in my chest
where you used to lay your head
shaking in my hands
where we used to play pretend
where forever was tangible,
it was your lips on my forehead
it was my laughter imprinted on your bed
now nothing feels right
without you here by my side
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 6:07 PM UTC
Yesterday
We kissed in sunlit woods
I felt my soul latch onto yours, again
Wind and your lips on my skin
Paralyzed with happiness again
We ****** on the living room floor
After hours spent convincing ourselves
We couldn’t, we wouldn’t
I don’t regret a thing
Oct 14, 2018
Oct 14, 2018 at 9:55 PM UTC
I miss
The parts of you
That made me, me
But i am Whole,
I am an entirety
Oct 14, 2018
Oct 14, 2018 at 9:30 PM UTC
I kissed every inch of your body this morning, except for your mouth.
We created boundaries, to keep us from hurting.
I waited until I got into the car to start crying
so you would not have to watch me understand, again,
what I was losing.
I saw my pain in your eyes,
we spent the weekend trying to undo the hurt,
It didn't work.
Oct 3, 2018
Oct 3, 2018 at 7:39 PM UTC
My brain has a funny way of expressing love for someone or something
My brain denies it for months, finds a way to sabotage it,
My brain then flips around and craves the chase,
My brain fixates on it entirely without any sort of sign of slowing down or stepping back
My brain seals cracks in its synapses with compliments from men in ripped tshirts
Who think that the body my brain is inside of is “just too ******* **** to be sad”
My brain takes it, my brain takes it
and molds itself around their steel wool hands,
And molds my hands around steering wheels that mold themselves into 180 degree turns
That turn cars into tree bark, on fire, lighting up pieces of my clothes throughout the air
Of the town that I grew up in, and empty in, burning out carrying the reasons
Why I tried to silence the constant screeching in my chest with a guard rail,
Going 90 miles per hour instead of just talking to someone,
But they burned up and fell in love with the sounds of the forest
Before anyone else but me was able to hear them
Aug 25, 2017
Aug 25, 2017 at 1:07 PM UTC
How to conquer the world when you are manic and preserve it when you are depressed.
I had a close friend send me a text a few weeks ago
Reminding me how to breathe and that I had to get out of bed,
I thought if she could have read my mood from the west coast
As I rotted in cotton comforters in the east, I must have been pretty obvious
Maybe it’s because we have been friends for ten years or because
I plaster every up and down online to vague audiences, I cast out my emotions
Like frayed fishing line, trying to catch even a glimpse of someone who relates.
But when this friend texted me she said something that might help balance out
The high-highs with the unbearable lows is writing how I feel when I am both.
I did my best to put the feeling of flying at 100mph upside down with wings made of silken sheets into words but the minute I did they turned into wings of concrete and I lost my focus again. And so I went to answer my friend and I said ‘here is how to conquer the world when you are manic”
I am caffeine therapy,
I am engulfed in energy
I am yellow, I am green
I am everything all at once,
I feel everything all at once.
I’m gonna save the world,
All of it.
Today.
try and stop me.
I woke up at 4am to watch
the sun swallow the indigo horizon
One last time before I go out and save the world,
Waking up early always gives me so much more time
To save the world, and I want to save the world.
I am yellow, I am green. I am everything at once.
I wash down amphetamines with coffee and I am
Narrow energy. I am traveling a perfectly paved road
Home to a messy room but that is okay because I’m
Going to save the world today.
I am a math equation stuck inside the text book
From the semester I dropped out;
I am heat energy dancing inside shattered beakers,
I am potential energy ready to become kinetic,
I am energetic and today, I have the heart to save the world.
I started by reenrolling in school because you need a degree
To save bees. That line might have been a joke but I did sign back
Up to finish my degree and this time I won’t ever feel low again,
How could I when there is so much to be happy about?
I am laughing so loud my neighbors are asking questions
And my friends think I am doing better and I tell them I am.
I feel it in my skin that I am better and recovery feels like
Holding hands at sixteen and iced tea in the summer,
And this is easy!
I am yellow, I am green. I feel everything all at once.
I am floating between causes and altruism is an ideal
Slithering its way through my veins, and today I am going to save the world.
After signing back up for classes I spread out my day like magazine clippings
I might never put onto a dream board because I will most likely forget about them
And my dreams make better notes in my iphone where I can see them
As I obsessively check my contacts to see who I can talk to today.
I am yellow, I am green. It is noon and I am flying.
Here is how else I will save the world.
I will clean my room and I will go to the gym
And work off three weeks of sweets with three hours on the treadmill,
I forgot how good it feels to run and I know that this is the last time I will ever give up.
I run on a track that loops back in on itself because I know that if I were to run outside,
I would get lost because I am everything all at once and there is just so much to look at.
I am yellow, I am green. And today I am going to be a wildlife photographer,
And an artist, and when people ask me what I want to be I tell them
I am going to work for the United Nations and that I am going to save the world,
And they believe me and it’s almost funny for a minute until I realize
I have yet to start saving the world. I woke up at 4 to save the world and I was sure today was the day, I felt it in my heart like poprocks the very first time or your first real kiss, I felt it and it was real and I lost track of that feeling and now I am scared that I might never save the world,
What is happening?
I am yellow, I am green. I am potential energy locked inside a pendulum
Hanging from a chemical tree that only grows each time it loses a leaf,
I am staggered progress dressed up like empathy,
I am yellow, I am green.
I am fleeting energy
The kind you watch spark a few times
On telephone lines turning pink behind July sunsets
And its gone before your friends can see it too.
I am yellow, I am green
I forgot to shower every day this week but
I am too tired to get out of bed,
What is happening?
I was supposed to save the world today
I’m so sorry.
I am drinking as much caffeine as I can without
Making my heart feel like it will push its way
Through my bones and out of my chest
Though being able to feel in my chest again
Might not be so bad. I am stuffing smoke inside my chest to fill it up
I am doing my best to keep feeling inside the skin I wear when I can feel it
Going numb
I wish
You could inject caffeine right into your veins,,
I reread texts from last night where transitioning
Felt like fist fighting recovery, her having one up on me,
I am crimson, I am silver, I am fleeting energy.
I’m so sorry. I thought I said that before
And I might have but I forgot, today I feel cloudy
And I stumbled through steel wool tall grass to make it
Out of bed today and the weight of every single mistake
I have ever made feels like it is going to break my spine
Right in half, I don’t know if I will make it through today.
I wish someone would save me today.
I am crimson, I am grey. I need someone to save my world today .
Jul 19, 2017
Jul 19, 2017 at 5:01 PM UTC
No one is ever gonna feel bad for you
The way I swear I won’t but always do
It’s always a war, it's two against two
Me, the truth, the truth and you
Jun 15, 2017
Jun 15, 2017 at 3:54 PM UTC
You broke my ribs
And bruised my lungs
When you left without warning
I hated you for burying me
Under the weight of your problems
While shaping mine into small white pills
And turning a blind eye when I choked
I spent a year alone
Because hate has a radius
No one can withstand
Or bear to be around for too long
And I could not lift it off my chest
I did my best to let go of the anger
Blisters scarred my trekking feet
I hated you for burying me
I could not see the poison of my ways
Until I hated you so much that I hated me
Jun 10, 2017
Jun 10, 2017 at 1:26 PM UTC
there is a time and place for sorrow
there is a time and place for anger
there is a time and place for laughter
there is a time and place for withdrawl
there is a time and place
to let your heart really break
so you can put it back together
but neither one is with him
Jun 8, 2017
Jun 8, 2017 at 11:29 AM UTC
do not say sorry
for being human
your forgiveness
is not a crutch
for him to lean on
it is a conduit
for the you
that can swim
across an ocean
alone
while he still hangs
on your ankles
do not say sorry
for being human
while you are still
learning how to do so
Jun 8, 2017
Jun 8, 2017 at 11:26 AM UTC
love is not patient
love is not kind
love is leaving
the very first time
he puts his hands on you
in a way other than to
worship the skin
that fosters your soul
love is knowing
you are worth more
Jun 7, 2017
Jun 7, 2017 at 12:16 PM UTC
use his words as tinder
in the fire that drives you
each and every lonesome morning
bask in solitude,
discover you;
every sight and sound
you are not too much
to keep around
he was not enough
to hold on to you
use his fearful words
the ones that used to sting
as the very thing that drives you
to be bolder than you were before
he dulled you out
don't stop now
Jun 7, 2017
Jun 7, 2017 at 11:59 AM UTC
wait until it hurts to write
and when it hurts don't stop
it's okay to feel everything,
all at once, scattered on paper,
it's okay to give your heart
the right-of-way, it's okay
wait until it hurts to write
and when it hurts,
heal with words
Jun 7, 2017
Jun 7, 2017 at 11:33 AM UTC
do not use another's hands
to **** your own gardens
when the time comes for your flowers to bloom
you will gaze upon each petal in liberated peace
something you must do alone
do not use another's hands
that man is not your home
Jun 7, 2017
Jun 7, 2017 at 11:07 AM UTC