You're a teenager again
and of wrath you are full
so you always complain.
Why can't you be grateful?
You're small,
you lose your voice
to the yelling in the hall.
When you speak they just hear noise.
All that's bad feels like home.
You find comfort in depression
and you're longing for a fight.
Isn't that what love feels like?
Burn what you had.
It's not you-
they're the reason you're sad.
Hurt yourself
is what they want,
not too much
but just enough,
to stay underground,
so they can censor your words
and you grieve your home
for it became a house.
You don't go back.
I've lost enough.

You broke my vase
and water filled the room
at an alarming pace
all you left behind was gloom.
The room is empty now
but the water holds me in a cage.
I live with tide lines on the walls
of my heart-
I mop, and mop, but it won't stop.
I don't know how
to forget his wreckage.


Years passed before
he showed up at my door,
in his hands a vase like mine
the roses blooming, still with spines;
he placed it gently
on the spot of solitude.
I am scared he'll break it too
or he'll leave without a trace.
But I can't live without love
even if it breaks my vase.

My world shatters
and I pick the pieces apart,
put them together
get cut.
I want to be nice. I want to be safe.
Greet, wave, smile.
Stay, nod, cry-
you have to survive
but at the end of the day
it always ends up the same.
You lose your peace.
I wanted to be kind. I wanted to be safe.
Drowning in a sea
i didn't set my foot in.
Learning to swim
The waves crash in.
I gasp for air
but it's not there
it pulls you back at the beginning.
Can you see me?
It's dark
empty
alone-
like a void
you lose control
but you're free,
it feels like home.
I am safe.