Before I was born,
My mother wanted to name her child Kaitlyn
As the firstborn,
That should have been me

Kaitlyn was my mother's favorite name
But as soon as I was born
She looked at me
I just took one look
And realized,
I could never be her Kaitlyn

Three years later  she tried again
Now her Kaitlyn was born
A beautiful,
Happy,
Innocent little girl.

My mother calls me
"The trouble child"
I cause trouble
I am not good enough
I am not her Kaitlyn

Now I am named Nicole
My mother wanted her child to be Kaitlyn
She loved the name Kaitlyn
Was I not good enough?
Why was I not her Kaitlyn?

I was encaged.

at the filligree age of 13
I told my childhood friend I had fallen
for the way freckles fell like sawdust on her teacup skin
and
the way her lips blushed around a cigarette that always burned too
close to the filter

In that town, with bleeding jaw
town like funeral bells
all were straight until proven otherwise.
in that town
ALL WERE SAFE UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE.
In 1892
the word bisexual was first used for being sexually attracted to both
women and
men.

Bisexuality does not explain
falling in love with fire.

Dry your eyes,
Little girl.
Don't let them in.
They're only words.

There, now. There.
It's just a tear.
A raindrop from your  
Atmosphere.

I promise you
Clear skies again.
Brush off your knees.
Arise again.

Dry your eyes,
My little friend.
More things begin
Where others end.

So stand and shine
Despite their words.
They envy you.
Of course it hurts.

Monsters in your diaphragm
you scream out your rhymes so loud
trying to find a spell
strong enough that will
expel these hiccups
putting spaces in your words.

Tying your tongue up in knots
writer's block has got you hooked
up to an IV flowing creativity.

Like a ****** addict
trying to forget the screams.
IV pumping fluid into his
veins repressing the memories.
Trying to dig them into the mud
but you see when you do that
they just harden over time
get stuck in your memory
like scars on the suicidal
mental patient trying to cut
her jugular.

See I've been to a mental hospital.
You share secrets of how the wet
towels give you friction burns and
leave scars deeper than
your nails can.
Like on the transgender girl,
Staff referring to her with her
former pronoun,
I swear I've never see a deeper
mental breakdown.

They all regret everything they've seen.
hid what happened to them deep inside.
But let me tell you.
I've been *****.
It wasn't in a dark alley,
I wasn't hog-tied and no gun
was held to my head.
But it was just as
traumatizing. I know that the way
he took my body and made it his
was wrong. But his abuse is mine.
What he did to me is mine.
I can hold the anger I have in my hand,
squish it like play dough. I can
shape it into a knife and stab him
deeper than he injected me with
his controllingness.

Moral of this ****** up poem
is to let it out. Understand that ****
happens and it ******* *****
and none of it was your fault.
But do not let it control you.
The situation held you in bounds for
as long as it could.
Do not stay with your hands behind
your back just because you're scared
the handcuffs are still there.
You can take the memories so deep in
your mind and make them cement
underneath your feet
as ground to stand on.
Grow bigger than you ever have.
And let your abuser know it's because
they broke you.
You just fixed your bones with
titanium, and now they can't touch you.

Oh what is life if not a thrill,
To crawl, to walk, to run downhill,
To mumble, crumble to old age,
To this end I shall live my days?

To be unseen, to be unknown,
To be afraid to be alone,
To toil to scrape a living wage,
To this end I shall live my days?

Or yet, to pillage viking halls,
To barrel-roll Niagara Falls,
To greet a shark without a cage,
To this end I shall live my days!

Oh what is life if not a thrill,
To this end I shall live my days!

Life is like a math problem--

Some people are cancelled out
So that you can find the answer

Some people are like asymptotes
It seems like they should be there
But they're just a hole in your graph

Some people are like parallel lines
Always in sight
Never in reach

Life is like a math problem
And sometimes
*There's no solution