I'm ready
I'm ready to fall in love with the smell of the grass
And the sun peaking through the leaves.
I'm ready to feel the same growth as the daisies in spring.
I'm ready to feel the weight of the Earth moving beneath me,
Slowing time.
I'm ready to feel the burn of the sun and smile
Because I know
I've taken so much worse.
I'm ready to feel the cool cement on my back.
I'm ready to fall in love with those old songs
And the passing of time.
I'm ready to appreciate moving on the same way that
Birds appreciate the wind that carries them forward.
So I suppose it's fitting
Being born amongst change, mid-May.
I'm designed to evolve.

You look at me with disappointment and ask if I’m hurting myself again.
For a second your grasp on my cigarette burnt wrist turns into
Her hands pinning me down with the most loving and gentle hold imaginable
Before I’m brought back to the reality where she doesn’t love me and
She never ******* did.
Yeah, I hurt myself.
But these burns spelling out her name are nothing compared to the tears
And gashes and scrapes her absence left me with.
How is it fair that someone can destroy me in my entirety,
But as soon as I try to make my body match the rest,
I’m labeled a danger to myself?
Nothing is more dangerous than
Loving someone who doesn’t give a **** about you.

I’m trying to erase the marks you left all over me,
But every time I get those three words down to just smudges,
You come in, pen in hand,
Tracing over old songs and phrases,
Smothering me so I can no longer stand.
You hand me my eraser, whispering three words,
But never again
The ones I want to hear.
“Get to work”, you say, and walk away.
I look down, eraser in hand, prepared for nothing but
The absolute worst.

Your hands are not the first to trace along
Those parts of myself that I hate.

Embracing the discomfort of the backseat,
Protected by foggy windows and songs played
Just loud enough so
That you can't hear my uneven, nervous breaths.

They're not the ones that I want or miss,
But they're the only ones brave enough to touch me
In the last four months.

The scent of your hair isn't the one I want
Clinging to my fingertips as I lie in bed
The fog on all six windows is there because of
Your heart and my hands,
But the rest of me is missing.
I left it with someone else, somewhere else
Barely visible walls and a low off white ceiling.
I'd like to say I'm thinking with my head
And not my heart,
But neither is true when it comes to you.
It's that one part of me,
Selfish and cruel,
That I never wanted to be
That I want no one to see

I am a person tragically unfit for solitude
Yet I can’t get the feeling out of my chest that
That is precisely what I am designed for

I am not clean.
I am torn up nail beds.
I am bruised knuckles.
I am smoke curling around bleeding fingers.
I am tired eyes that lost their shine.
I am cracked lips forming disappointed smiles.
I am the loose tobacco at the bottom of the pack.
I am dried up old pens.
I am all the words I’ve left unsaid.
I am shaky knees.
I am the discomfort in your chest.
I am trying my best, I promise.
I am hastily scribbled words you’ll never read.
I am not the stability that I need.
I am not what anyone needs,
And it is not beautiful.