I haven’t weighed myself in weeks. I have this incessant itch inside of me longing to know what numbers I ring up to be. But everyday I hear another gnawing voice say,
“You are not a number, you are a person. A number does not define you. What defines you is your kindness, your efforts, the way you live your life.”

But what happens when the way I’ve been living my life for the past year and a half has been nothing BUT numbers and scales and nutrition labels and dysmorphia. What happens when my efforts have only been reduced to reducing myself? What happens when kindness overflows towards others, but I cannot even look in the mirror and say “I love you.” What happens when you are completely consumed by something that refuses to let you consume?
-Does the tunnel end soon?

There are days when the sky is a vibrant blue and the sun expels its warmth
upon my shoulders,
then there are days when the sky is filled
with nothing but a melancholy grey,
and I embody nothing but the rain.

On those days,
I may have to drink an extra cup of coffee to pull myself out of bed and face the slight suffocation the real world places upon me.

On those days,
I may not have much of an appetite and will push away any thought of food, even though I know I should eat.

On those days,
my eyes may become heavy, filled with just as much water as the storm clouds lingering up above me.

Some days I wake up
feeling as radiant as the sun,
and some days I wake up feeling as
dreary as the rain.

But at least I always make sure to
wake up and be something.

Vulnerability is a funny thing. Everyday people urge us to be authentic- with ourselves, our peers, our passions. Yet when we cut ourselves open for the world to see, they run from us as if we are violent rip currents waiting to take them under. When in reality we are nothing but individual tide pools sometimes puddled into something so much bigger than what others want to openly accept.

But I refuse to not live a life of authenticity. So many souls become comfortable with safety, causing them to become deeply implanted in solely just the soil in which they have resided their entire time of growing. Genuine love for something other than yourself has become nothing but a fossil of a feeling. Streams of emotions have dissipated and turned into desert lands.

As for me, I took the time to disappear within myself. I discovered my flatlands and made them curved. Those rip currents everyone always runs from are big, but so am I. A vulnerable soul may be looked at as someone made up of only dainty fallen petals, but the truth is they're looking past someone with roots dug deeper than sunken teeth into bitten skin.

What's authentic to those who shelter themselves like boarded windows in the midst of a storm might as well be forgery to me. I urge you to not be afraid to put your innermost self into another pair of shaky hands. To not hesitate to whisper your deepest ridden thoughts into caverns of a mind that's not your own. To not second guess putting you're ragged edged heart into someone else's hollow chest.

Vulnerability and authenticity meet at an intersection that you must come to terms with stopping at. I hope to see you there.

I feel nothing but
riptides in my stomach,
lightning pulsing through my hands,
and sunbursts in my eyes.

Accompanied by
pink flower flushed cheeks,
cool ocean fingertips,
and slightly burnt thighs.

we
are on, but

your headlights
are off.

I always wondered why, but now I understand.
I wanted our love to be known,
not shielded by the four doors of your car.

I don’t want to fade away
alongside the tangerine dream of summer.

I thought I could shove you
to the back of my closet,
make you another skeleton with cracked
bones that were never able to mend.
But when it was midnight and my room
was as dark as the moon ridden sky,
I could still hear your blood pumping,
and the sound of your fingernails
clawing at the door searching
for the missing piece of your heart.

I thought I could ignore it,
and silence your scent that somehow
still lingered on my skin.
Until I realized no perfume could
mask the shadow you had casted on me.
So I unbox your pieces
and step back into my old life,
realizing maybe we weren’t dead after all.
The sensation of your lips touching my skin
once again was the warmest my iron lacking body had felt since the day I left.

It’s midnight again,
but I’m back in your room.
It’s as dark as the moon ridden sky,
yet there’s starlight drizzling over your face.
All this time I refused to believe that we were made of the same stardust,
until I finally saw our constellation
finding its way back together.

Take me back to the month of June, 
when my only worry was not waking the whole house
when trying to catch the fleeting beauty of the sunrise.
 
Nothing but wild locks of brunette and
gold intertwining to make a perfect wave.
Constantly being told I smelled of salt,
but to me it was more like freedom.
 
My feet always raw from burning sand,
raw from weathering shells.
Sweet feelings, new wavelengths;
lips sticky from the chocolate milkshake.
 
No closed toed, wool lined attire in sight,
but instead surf tees and ripped jeans.
Bottle caps were collectables,
Bud Light Lime still resonates on my tongue.
 
I’ve been trying so hard to find my old self,
until I realized I had sadly let it slip away;
just like the sun does
beneath the horizon on those endless summer days.

But,
I know the windows will soon be down
and the sun will rise again,
just as I will.

tangerine and pink flying through your eyes.
Sending flames to not only the sky,
but my heart as well.
They engulf my soul.
Keeping me warm through the night
when the colors have faded to nothing but smoke.
Skin wrapped up in the magic of your fingertips,
the wild flower you tucked behind my ear
blown free in a spiral towards the blistering clouds.
I ran and ran to the edge of the field, grass tickling my toes.
Only to feel the warmth on my back and realize it’s time again.
There will be a million wildflowers, but only one golden hour.
I wouldn’t want to miss it.

Hot breeze, 90 degrees. My shirt was soaking wet, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the sweat between my ******* or condensed beer bottle dripage falling from above. My days consisted of no work, all play. Vomiting out every ounce of fluid my body could hold once the clock struck 2AM, only to refuse the water and replenish myself with champagne in the morning. Filling myself with bubbles, hoping it’d make me more bubbly. For it was the season of the sun, of life, of vibrance- but I only seemed to be able to drag myself out from under my drunken mistake ridden sheets once night time arrived. I thrived in the darkness. It made it easier to put my tongue in places it shouldn’t have been, whether that be on a random salty neck or a burning bottle of tequila. It was the same cycle everyday, my goal to forget more than the day before. Until I didn’t remember anything anymore. I desperately wanted to find my way back to my old self, but it was left on the side of a road less traveled. A route with winding trails littered with shards of broken whisky bottles, and with every step I took more blood was drawn. But I was finally letting myself feel the pain instead of forcing its head down to drown in the overflowing liquid in my throat. Hotter than hell, late August brought a new fire to my eyes. I still don’t know how I survived the sweet, sweet summertime.

Marigolds overflowing in the garden, captivating bursts of yellows and orange. Thriving for only a season, it's a shame to see something so beautiful die just as quickly as it blooms. But everything is meant to have an end, at least that's what I like to believe. The beauty in things can't last forever, no matter how much you want it to. There's a time and a place for everything, including us. We were meant to be planted side by side, and help each other flourish and thrive. But you must realize that the falling of petals is inevitable. You can try over and over again to paint our lackluster leaves with the colors of the marigolds, but it seemed that there was just one too many rainy days where the clouds covered up the sun, and I knew in my roots that our time in the garden had ended. We've lost each other amidst the changing of seasons, busy searching for the greener patches in life. They say to bloom where you're planted, and that I did. I hope you never forget whose roots you first intertwined with.

Pieces of myself that I gave away
came back to me shattered
in every which way.

Something is changing and
I don’t know what,
but I don’t feel the same.

So many thoughts I’ve never said,
I’m beyond tired of holding my breath.
The things I’ve been feeling deep within,
I don’t ever want to feel again.

The water is rising in my lungs,
and I am drowning from the inside out.
I can’t ever seem to find solid ground
but I always make sure to keep kicking,

constantly searching for the coast.
So pour a glass, make a toast.
Because here’s to recovery,
the thing I’ve searched for the most.

The soles of my feet,
raw.
Mile after mile, i run
To clear my mind, but deep down it’s to see how far away I’m able to get from this version of myself

My spine,
bruised.
Sticking out like thorns in a garden, piercing the skin
Every sit up brings me closer to pain.

Fingers and toes,
cold and brittle.
The blood does not flow fast enough anymore to keep me warm.
Once iron filled, now ghostly pale.

But
don’t you dare try to write me off 
as if I am completely broken
when all I am is cracked.

I will learn how to fill the missing pieces,
the parts that slowly dissipated behind closed doors.

Trust me,
I am worth salvaging.

Body on the shower floor,
I’m bathing in my own tears.

Water drips, heart skips
I cleanse and cleanse,
yet I never feel clean.

I am a flower drooping in the soil,
a wet leaf clinging to a shoe.

I never knew why grey skies
became my favorite, until I realized
that when rain drops fall
I am no longer crying alone.

eat-ing dis-or-der
/ēdiNG diˈsôrdər/
noun
1. Waking up every single morning with the same thoughts you’ve had for the past 9 months. How flat will I look today? Are my ribs poking out any further? Does my spine look any more sickly than before?
2. Weighing yourself before you go to the bathroom. Then after you go to the bathroom. Proceeding on and on throughout the day, as followed.
3. Being so hungry, you’re simply not hungry anymore. More so, just exhausted. (Being exhausted is a good thing, because that’s when you can finally fall asleep. That way your mind doesn’t have to keep nagging you about the hunger pains you feel in your stomach.)
4. Wearing 2 sweatshirts & 2 pairs of socks under 3 blankets, yet still feeling the icy pain running through your veins. You try anything to stay warm. Coffee helps, but only for a few minutes. Steaming hot showers are nice for the time being, but stepping out into the cold air, feeling your already brittle hair turn into shards...it’s hell. (Ironic, right?)
5. Not being able to walk past a mirror without pulling up your shirt to check your stomach for the 20th time today. I’m not vain, trust me. Far, far from it. One of the last things I’m capable of feeling right now is love towards myself.
6. Longing for a way out. Laying on your bed in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, just wishing that there was a ******* off switch to all of this. Every ******* morning to every ******* night. You know what you’re doing is wrong, but at this point you don’t know who you’d be without it. That voice, I mean. That voice that never goes silent, even when you politely beg with tears brimming at the eyes. You try so hard to push it away, and to remember a time in your life when you were “normal”. When you could wake up and actually enjoy breakfast. It was your favorite meal of the day.

Now, you can’t even fathom a “favorite meal”. The empty plate, the clean spoon, the untouched napkin. Everything except the food- which is now harrowingly the perfect vision of your “favorite meal”.

I could not survive you again. 
Your storm ripped me limb from limb;
I was strewn about, losing pieces of myself in the wind.
 
Lightning struck: the blow of your hand on my cheek.
Black and blue cloud-shaped bruises,
thunder rippling underneath my skin.
 
I used to like the rain, but my heart was sopping wet and
you were mad because I needed the sun more
than I needed you.
 
I was ready for flowers
to be planted within me,
not to be constantly uprooted instead.
 
I gained strength and freed myself from you, 
but that also meant I finally gained the strength to let go of the worst parts of myself too.

He’s never good for mouth play,
is only skin deep. Same old, same.
His heart, his tongue, his sweat
don’t come every night and day.
Is the sweet smell worth it?

I lie and wait,
you pick and choose.
But in the end,
there is no I in her.

I can feel rivers running through me, all leading back to you. Your fingertips coming and going like waves. They say you can make a home out of anyone, but if that were true then I would’ve made my place in someone new a long time ago. I would’ve put my heart into someone else’s hands, letting them mold it into whatever they wanted. I would’ve broken down the walls you forced me to build. I would’ve cleaned up the mess you created, making myself seem pristine, when in reality I’m a hurricane nobody wants to get in the path of. But I realized, things that come back to you are things that never truly left. So here we are, standing outside of my car with our feet glued to the gravel, your overgrown hair loosely moving with the wind. The streetlights are glowing on our skin, and there’s stars trapped in the corners of your hazel eyes. I realize I’m okay with drowning in these rivers, as long as they always lead back to you.

You left me with open ended letters
and hand written promises.
Your words were always too fine,
too far and few between.
You were a genre of your own kind.
An enigma of words, always
tattered and smeared.
Coffee rings and cigarette ash
seem to ruin every last page of a chapter.
Things got ****** and I could no longer
read you, my eyes unable to pick up what
was left to discover between the lines.
Hard cover, when I was always paperback,
bending in any way you wanted me to.
I tried so hard to keep you with me,
crumpled up in my front pocket,
but the jaggedness of your ripped out edges
did nothing but draw blood.
I’m so tired of getting papercuts.
I’m running out of bandaids.

I can’t unwrap myself
from your finger,
heartstrings thinning
as my clutch tightens

I’m afraid that if I let go,
even just a little,
the wind will blow
and like dandelions
dancing in the sky,
I will never be able
to find my way back to you.

Back to the place
I fell in love,
while still learning
to love myself.

Back to safety,
where nothing could touch me
other than your fingers of sin.

I’m starting to forget
the sound of your steps,
and everyday I hope
that I’ll soon be reminded.
But I’m slowly realizing that hearing “I miss you”
doesn’t always mean they’re coming back.

how can i have peace of mind,
when i can’t help but feel like there are
missing pieces of my mind?

i gasp for air and realize I’m no longer whole, feeling the winds of regret
through and through.
my lungs feel as weak as the
late November leaves
that are left behind
during the changing of seasons.

i am reminded of the times i gave
the worst people
the best parts of me.
words they didn’t deserve to hear,
skin they didn’t deserve to touch.

i can’t turn back into my old self,
but in its absence,
i felt presence.

recognizing that
i was once just a flame,
but now i want nothing less
than to be a forest fire.

Headache of a girl
stepping on sobbing floorboards,
rusty pipes and lonely nights.
I start my own fires,
tend to sweat out kerosene.

Rinse myself with ***** water
dripping from cracks above.
Break open a window-
smoggy air love, right hand slug.

You’re still sound asleep,
yet I stand in the city
interrupted by sirens
and memories of you.

What a pity.

You asked,
what’s the point anymore?
Of us, of everything we’ve been through,
and in that I found I was so tired of being
inside of goodbyes.

I’ve been driving in circles searching for brighter days, when everything that embodies them has only been 2 miles away. I’ve spent so much time hiding under my own eyelids that I forgot my waking moments aren’t supposed to solely consist of whiskey moonlit nights. I tried so hard to block out the white noise, but I couldn’t help but hear your voice, whispering in the sway of the sprouted flowers emerging in the cracks of sidewalks. I became complacent with rainy days, but still couldn’t help but see your face in the subtle beams that break through greyscale skies.

You asked,
what’s the point anymore?
And I realized the point is us,
nothing but a linear pair.
And as much as we try,
our lines can’t help but intersect.

Air flowing through my lungs after forcing myself to run five miles.
Bottles of champagne.
Coffee shops owned by locals.
Dawn.
Eating disorder.
Food freedom, praying;
God, make me whole again.
Hellos, from the boy who holds my heart.
Intimacy without ever having to undress.
Jelly, smeared on homemade
kneaded dough made by my grandmother.
Laundry that I will never do, but my
mom always will.
Nights when the fireflies are abundant.
Ocean swims just as the sun is breaking.
Pinky promises.
Quietness of Sunday mornings.
Robbie.
Singing my favorite songs with the windows down.
Thin. Too thin.
Umbrellas not doing their job of keeping me dry.
Vanilla ice cream dripping onto my thighs
while the sun burns my back. I was too afraid to eat it, so I just watched it melt.
XI at night. I hate the darkness,
yearn for the morning sun instead.
Zoloft in tiny bottles.

You, the dead of winter.
I, the reincarnation of spring.
You’re my gospel, yet
you’ve never believed in faith.

You, the stinger of a honey bee.
I, sunshine and lemon trees.
Always giving you enough sugar
to make life sticky sweet,

but the lemonade seems to remain sour.
I still pour a glass and see it half full,
but you seem to look right past and
view the world half empty.

I experience life through a wide
angle lens, full technicolor.
But you always have tunnel vision,
my monochromatic lover.

I’ve been dipping my toes
into his daydream.

The one where silhouettes
dance across the walls,
and unzipped dresses leak off shoulders
like guttered water finding its way
to the soil after a downpour.

The floorboards become puddled silk,
and I realize I wouldn’t mind drowning
as long as it’s in his endless stream of lust.

spent every summer there with you.
the water, so much brighter and blue.

Two minute walk from
the doorstep to the shoreline.
The stars flooded the black sky,
we sank into course sand until the sunrise

the people i love may be here,
but i refuse to call this home.
home is defined by tiny splinters
in my feet from the pier,
and feeling the shifting sky of the
oncoming thunderstorms in my bones.

salt flows through my blood,
faster than the night we ran
from the red and blue.
cause you knew if i was going down,
so were you.

300 miles away,
I can still smell hibiscus flowers in full bloom.
The cocoa coast,
I’ll be there soon.

I love the way your voice sounds at night.
Raspy whispers of the drunken moon.
Asking for the slow and stale
out of bed kisses.
I reach for your lips,
picking up the tastes
of all the dreams we never got around to.
Connecting the dots on your skin,
Little Dipper on your back.
Scars are slowly turning into stars,
and I’m realizing that healing
is easier to do in the dark.

Sunburnt skin, I’m on fire.
Dripping in the sweat of my old self.
Always chasing after something to sink into
rather than facing the smashed mirror,
shattered out of anger,
I was aiming for myself.

Thunder clap of glass,
startling blow to my right cheek.
I think to myself-
straight teeth, fuller smile.
Crystallizing bright white,
everyone loves a fake happy, right?
I search for the sticky ruby red,
but soon realize that plastic can’t bleed.

-Who am I if I can no longer feel a thing?

I can still feel you
when I’m all alone.
Trapped in my bones,
you were a home.

My veins pump,
blood still blue.
I remember,
the cascading of hands in your room.

Blankets,
tattered.
Sunshine,
scattered.
Felt in love on a saturday morning,
now i just feel numb on a saturday, mourning.

seasons come and go, just as you have. i dig my nails into my sweat stained palms every time I wonder if the July heat was just too much for us to handle. The sun is starting to set earlier with everyday that passes, and I can’t help but realize that we’re fading away alongside the beauty of summer.

// there’s nothing i can do to stop it //

flash flood warning,
I’m bursting at the seams.
you can’t outrun my thunder.
once you hear it
you’re already close enough
to get struck with the aftermath.
there’s no escaping a storm
that embodies you as a whole.
i am a hurricane, trying to break
down the walls i forced you to put up.
but I’m begging you,
please don’t be afraid to touch something
that causes nothing but chaos.

-or should i say hericane?

All I ever yearned to do was grow.
But sadly, I never got the rain I deserved.

Instead,
I shriveled up.
Inside and out,
body and soul.

Lustful greens
turned to hopeless browns.
My roots dug deep,
only to be planted in
the darkest places possible.

Tell me,
what is worse than seeing the sun
but feeling no warmth?

I’ve learned that everything that defines me is nothing that I actually embody, except for creating magic with the stroke of a pen. Maybe that’s a red flag. Maybe I’ll ruin you with the wonderings of if you’ll simply just be my next project. Or maybe I’ll help you finally see in color, showing you how to paint pictures with euphoric colors even when using just black ink.

The thing about poets is that we’re always searching for inspiration. I won’t hesitate to take your flaws and turn them into art on a page. I will try to figure you out through pen and paper, rather than speaking my mind. Because maybe in the midst of discovering you, I’ll discover myself. Maybe if I write enough, I’ll finally figure out who I am.

I used to consist of so many
different rhythms and harmonies.

But I wasn’t free,
I wasn’t me.

A drop kisses my cheek.
The rain, sharing whispers
of the way things used to be.

Now I am restless.
Mouth pursed against
another pair or another bottle,
I let my lips lead the way.

They give,
I take.
Too much liquor,
too little modesty.

Velvet summer skies,
skin sticky to the touch.
The air feels far too wild
for breathing.

This is the season
of second chances.

To be free,
to be me.

I don’t have the right to miss you,
because you were never actually mine.
You were just a passing day,
a place and a time.
Your eyes burned through my skin worse than
the sun does in mid-July.
Your fingertips lightly imprinted my neck
and lit me up brighter than the early summer fireflies.
But this thing we built collided into nonexistence
when the cold came.
Because without the heat I was now nothing,
but a lifeless flame.
Soot covered branches, burnt and cracked.
All I felt was tears, when all I wanted to hear
was your laugh.

But I didn’t just lose you,
I lost all of the best parts of myself, too.

You had taken my warm June heart and
somehow turned it into a January afternoon.
I yearned to be painted a shimmering gold,
no longer a toneless blue.
So I started caring for myself the way
I used to care about you.
I tried my hardest to scrub my wine stained soul clean.
I woke up, realizing there’s so much life to live,
I was only nineteen.
The seasons changed and so did my mind,
and I finally felt myself let you go,
after all this **** time.

Dead flowers in the empty wine bottle
I chugged last week.
It was a Thursday, nothing special,
but I was glowing.
Cheeks vibrant with a buzzed rose.
Eyes half closed, but who cares?
I’m living.

Living in the moment,
spinning on the hardwood floor.
A place where I once sobbed
over things that I still can’t wrap my brain around.
The floorboards can still feel my pain,
but tonight I dance to their creaks.
I’m living.

Remember when I lost my grip a year and a half ago?
I was my own best friend and
emptiness was my favorite feeling.
But I can’t seem to keep hold of everything at once.
It’s either me,
or it’s you.

Like the flowers in the wine bottle,
I can’t keep watering something that’s dead,
when all I want to do is keep touching, feeling, growing.

Don’t pull my roots tighter to the soil
once I’m finally living.

Are we long gone? I ask myself, when there’s still traces of your freckles etched into the walls of my mind. I close my eyes, and can still feel your wet lips pressed against the sweaty crook of my neck. I can’t help but want your tongue, but I’m too busy biting on my own instead. I reach for you, only 7 minutes away. I take the long way home every time. There’s still a lingering of your scent that’s packed in drawers, crumpled to the back. I can’t seem to wash you away. Drunken spillage of red wine comes out easier than you.

-I’m about to hit send. I’m sorry for ******* with your closure. // 9pm