My hair is quite long,
but it's longest in the shower
and you wouldn't know that
unless you were the spider on the wall.

She watches me with all eight eyes,
unravelling me as I
unravel myself. In the bathroom
mirror, inadequate.

Sometimes when I eat,
my fingers end up down my throat
but you wouldn't know that
unless you were the spider on the wall.

It's dark outside, I turn on the fan
for the noise to cover up:
the retching, the soft splash.
Quick, flush the shame.

In the shower is my razor, and sometimes
it ends up carving at my hips.
No one knows this
except the spider on the wall.

Box of bandaids, fix nothing inside
wipe away the blood, feel the sting.
SlitSlitSlitSlitSlitSlitSlitSlitSlitSlitSlitSlitSlitSlitSl­itSlit.
Once for every year I regret being alive.

My knuckles tell a story, all
mottled, acid-bitten skin.
So do my hips, and the backs of my wrists.
Oh, spider; why'd you have to tell?

Shame.
When you're on the cold tiles,
sweat dripping to the floor,
throat raw and burning,
fingers covered in bile.

Shame.
When you open the fridge door,
the contents staring back at you, white
light spreading over the room;
a taunt at your weakness.

Shame.
When you put your clothes back on,
the mirror knows your secrets,
you, in all your unfailing misery,
stare back.

Shame.

She eats you away but you won't.

On the night of my fifteenth birthday,
I cried myself to sleep.
It was ugly crying, the type of choking-into-pillowcases
that makes your stomach hurt,
almost as much as your heart.

I think emptiness is somehow the most consuming
because it takes all of you, and overwhelms it with
deafening nothingness.
Like absence somehow has substance,
and the absence of feeling had a feeling.

It was never as hard as I made it out to be,
because sitting in a house that the rent could not be paid for
was not the same as going hungry on the streets.
But I was unhappy regardless, despite, in defiance of
all the small joys in my life.

A beautiful poetry book. A glass bottle of soda.
A burning stick of incense. A bouquet of flowers.
A new set of bedsheets. A text from a friend.
All the small joys in my life,
in which I could find none.

cold tiles press against her cheek
***** on her fingers, in the toilet bowl, in her mouth
a broken promise on her lips.

shush,
don't wake them up.

how could she find the words to say it?
                                                                                                 say what?
"i need help."

                                        only people with real problems need help.

being unkind to yourself is second nature
wrap it up, in gauze and bandaids
and little lies you tell yourself,
because you can't admit you're not doing better.

admit to who? yourself?

she knows it's ****** up the way she lives
with her screwdriver-sharpener craft
and her fingers down her throat like a curse
the sour taste that never quite leaves her mouth.

but maybe ****** up is what she deserves?

I stopped reaching out for help
I thought I didn't deserve it.
I wish you had called me,
I wish I had called you.
I am at fault.

You ask me what I live for
And I tell you, "I live for you"
When in truth I live for the sea and the beach
the waves that beckon and beguile without ever asking me to hang.
Without ever asking me for time that was not their own.

They ask me what I live for
And I say "I live for love"
But I don't. I live for the drugs and the money and the ***
the human weakness in me and the easy numbing.
The things that never ask me questions too hard to answer.

You ask me why I can't stay sober
And I tell you "It's just for parties. Just for fun"
So when I sit on my bathroom floor, paper straw and credit card
I know in myself I am lying.
It is a lie I cannot stop telling.

I ask you why you love me
And you say "I love you because -"
And the stream of adjectives you pour out are a kindness to me
not your truth, a white lie.
I cannot but wonder, what else is false.