Once upon a time, you called me beautiful
You called me your everything
called me the one.
but now, after all we've been through, what do you call me?
Idiot? *****? ****?

Go on, say it then.
Tell me what's on your mind for I can't see it.
you won't let me see it anymore.
and yet you blame me, but my dear I was handing you back your heart and you slapped it from my hand
Then you say I never loved you
but your wrong.
I did love you, once

I loved you when you were my protector
when all I needed was to speak your name because I was a frail child who didn't know how to run away or disappear completely
  I love you when you were kind
when you stood behind me with your hands on my waist laughing with your friends.

I didn't love you when you yelled at me over frivolous subjects.
I didn't love you when you were so paranoid I would leave you that I couldn't let my phone for for fear of you being angry.

now that we're said and done I can see how you affected me
because I don't journal like normal girls
I journal within my poetry.
and without you by my side I can see what kind of poet I truly am

Im a heartbreak poet.
im a crisis poet
Buut most of all
I'm a happenstance poet.

I take what I see and barely twist it for my creations.
and after all we've been through

After nine years of being there for me and not receiving credit
see why you were my protector.
because if you weren't there to teach me these things
never would have become the poet I am.

Cute
Pretty
Beautiful
****
While most women love hearing these words from the lips of their lovers for the evening,
I don't.
They aren't simple complements, they're ways to make me vulnerable.

Now I just sound like a white girl with issues, yeah I know.
But the truth is that everyone who has told me those words as only wanted what's between my legs.
And half the time, when they got it, they left.

I'm tired of men seeing me at 8am with no makeup or heels
Looking at me as if I had lied to them
Because I'm obviously looking for love* in the wrong places

One night stands don't make hoes into housewives
But they will certainly turn housewives into hoes.

I can't begin to tell you how many times before closing my eyes
That I have asked the darkness
"WHY HAS MY HEART NOT STOPPED BEATING?"
The truth is that I have become a beacon for some, and a mother to most
Though I want nothing more than to slit my own throat

I can't say I want to die
But I can't say I want to live either

As I lay in a room with no windows
I have to contemplate the meanings of my own writings
Why do I throw my emotions here, to live in a heap?
A girl who cried wolf would be better to compete

In a world so lost
I can never be found
I guess my only option left
Is to be put
In the ground.

I must simply be doing something wrong,
For if I'm worried where my track will end,
Surely that means I don't trust myself one bit.

Sure, I've haulted my existence to grab a taste of recklessness
But how far will the road take me,
Until I'm breathless?
Lying in roads ****** off greens
Jumping in cars without gasoline
I've become the very thing my mother tried to keep me from being.
I want to stop from this parade of self destruction and maybe get my life together
But that too is hard to do
When all you do all day is drink, smoke, and waste away.

Dad spoke of his father today.
I listened with Friday
Beer breath and keen
Ears, as he said:

I hope to God your brother
And you won't remember
Me as a ****
Fool when I'm gone,

Then coughed that gurgle-rasp
That promises significant
Changes in a son's
Life within

Not too distant a
Future.
Those **** cigarettes.
Half a lung gone, surgery

Scar a part of that back
That I remember I thought
Would carry me
Forever.

We never spoke too emotionally.
He does it more and
More, and all I can do is
Prepare,

And to speak such truths as:
Dad. You've impressed our
Friends, charmed our women,
Driven us through snow storms

And late nights
To get us to -or home from- either.
Fed us, chopped wood through
Summers to keep us warm through

Winters.
Taught us languages and carpentry,
History and poetry,
Classical wrestling and chivalry.

You've made us laugh since
Before we knew how to.
I think of you whenever I smell
Sawdust, new guitar strings, and smoke

(Only minutes old, his cough
Was the first sound I reacted to...)
Your memory is safe.
Whenever your time comes

To leave us to the strength of our
Own arms and souls,
Trust that your rest is well earned.
He laughed a little,  

Eyes wet from coughing
And whatever.
I could die content tomorrow,  
Having told him.

Some giants don't fall.
They just lie down.
Not to wither away and die.
But to retire,

The way oak trees,
Mountains, revolutionary ideas
And gods
Retire.