Can you come a little closer?
Let me undress your wounds
And let your wounds bleed and bleed
Let me help you find some release

I know you’re not used to
Letting others sit in your cult of pain
But I feel your pain too
Please let me feel it with you

Don’t push your pain to the shadow of your mind
Embrace it, reveal it, you deserve to feel it
Please stop smiling with your misty eyes
Please don’t cover your wounds with bandaid lies

He asked me to paint him
With the blood on my lips
So I began to kiss
All the broken parts of him

And just like that
You had me undone
Pulled apart all the stitches that were just
Barely holding me together
Reduced all the “you are beautiful”s and “you are perfect”s
To another thing boys say just to f**k
Because god forbid anyone actually thinks
That I am beautiful
God forbid anyone sees anything other than a body to use
God forbid anyone thinks I am lovable

It took the gift and loss of love
The joining and breaking of hearts
To come to the realization
That feeling is an art

I mimic your hands
Clawing my stomach and back
But I have a knife instead
And blood spills from the cracks

It flows when I call out your name
And paints my bed and sheets
If only you’d come back
Then you’d see my masterpiece

You call me beautiful like it's my name
Play with my hair, twisting it around your fingers
Kissing my soul, but never my lips
You draw me in like magnets
Priming me until my skin is raw,
until my heart is vulnerable
And then you strike
Shredding the idea of what could've been
With your razor-sharp tongue
Setting my soul on fire
Burning me down, and you won't let me out
Please just let me out
If this is what your love is
I don't know if I want it
But call me beautiful one more time
And I'll fall at your feet

He loves me, he loves me not
Since when were those two things
Mutually exclusive?
To me it seems you both love and hate me
Sweet sweet honey drips from your fangs
As you drain me, why do you drain me
There was a time where I would believe
That I was the one to blame
When you stuck a blade in my gut
But look where I have come now
To know that I deserve consistency
And passion and respect and love
To know that I deserve more
Than you could ever offer me

Do you still feel me loving you?
Heart pounding, soul grounding
Do you feel my love surrounding you?
Maybe so but maybe not because
My smile is all I have for you
You’re moving on, I’m hanging on
I’ve nothing else to offer you
Tell me once, that my love’s enough
To let me take all of you

I wonder if the moon
Stares at her reflection in the water
And tells herself
That she hates the places where she’s incomplete

A growing pain takes over slowly
Squeezing the breaths out of me
Heart racing faster, my head is spinning
Everything else has lost its meaning

Now it’s only you, the ghosts of your hand
Gripping my heart till I can’t stand
Scaling my body, touching me slowly
I forget your hands have never known me

I forget that you weren’t ever mine
But I spent my days looking for signs
That maybe you loved me even just a bit
And honestly, I even thought you did

I was convinced you did but wasn’t sure of it yet
That we had a connenction from the moment we met
But I forget that you were always somebody else’s
And I realized that it was not you, but I who felt the connection

Yet I can’t help but hold on to the last stage of hope
That maybe you only said you loved her just for show
Maybe you say it because you feel it’s your duty
Maybe you don’t really love her and instead love me

But I’m tired of holding on to hope worthlessly
I’m tired of waiting for you to love me
Because I don’t want to be second choice not just an option
I’m not a pit stop where you can periodically stop in

I’m a woman, a storm, a chaotic mess
The ocean, the skies contained in a dress
And the hands that will take place of your ghost in me
Will not grip my heart but help it beat

I love the way your lashes are laced in tears
That are just barely hanging on
That are just about to fall
Please just let them
Please

You let me fall so easily
Into the little space between your arm and chest
You knew that I was drunk
Intoxicated by the music, the dancing,
the *****, and you
My lips brushed against your cheek
My fingers traced your lips
Then my lips replaced my fingers
I was too drunk to realize
Until I pulled away
You pulled me back in
Passionate, passion I've yearned for
Passion I had never received
Now as reality displaces fantasy
I know that I was just another girl
A convenient option, a pit stop
That you periodically stop in
When did I become like this?

I could never risk
Pouring myself
Into hands that couldn’t hold me
But here I am
Spilling out of my cup
Hoping that you can catch me
With the holes of your heart

Oh how the world forgets the harshest truth:

Friends can break your heart too

The clock breaks my heart beat
Into hours, minutes, seconds
It reminds me to breathe
Let my heart beat
One, two, three
Just make it through the next sixty seconds
Through the next sixty minutes
Through the entire day
Four, five, six
Until you're in your bed
Staring at the ceiling
Breathing, breathing
You made it through the day
But how do you make it through the night?

Once a month my body bleeds
My body aches, my body grieves
The pain makes it hard to breathe
The pain is immobilizing

But I can’t complain anymore

Because now my moms body no longer bleeds
But her heart aches, her heart grieves
Her pain makes it hard to breathe
The pain is immobilizing

I still can create a life inside of me
I am cancer free
My mom wasn’t so lucky...

But mom can I tell you please?
It doesn’t make you less womanly
You haven’t lost your identity
You still had the power to create me
You can ache and you can grieve
Even though you feel like you lost a part of yourself

You’ll never lose me

I was drunk
On ***** and on you
You took me to that place
Where I first felt my heart beat
Where I first felt my heart break
And I think you knew

I was drunk
On *****, but mostly on you
The lights on the hill
Looked like lanterns in the sky
And the city far away
Looked like escape

I was drunk
On ***** and on you
And I shared my escape with you
Now when I run there,
I'm running to you
But now that you're gone
And you found someone new
The place that was my escape
Now trapped me too

When I’m happy
I can’t find words to say
And when I’m sad
The words never stop
I think it’s because
Sadness has soul
And happiness does not

How did I let you convince me
That who I am changes
As your perception of me does
I am who I am
Regardless of what you think
And who I am is enough