I recently looked in my journal and saw 7 months of empty space. 7 whole months, during which the pain in my head was so great, to acknowledge it with ink would be the kiss of death. To write it down would be far too permanent, almost as though admitting pain is what gives it power.

I now know the opposite to be true. That the ink that seemed so permanent, in fact acts like a magnet, pulling the pain out and wrestling it onto the paper with all the strength of a fine point tip. The paper-pen-hand-arm-brain succession of atoms fully ready to serve you.

To them, nothing is permanent. To the pen, the ink that flows through it is as fleeting at the muscle stimulation the brain sends through the arm and hand to move. The paper, grateful for the touch of a tip before once again being left bare.  All of these things are grateful and meant to show you that good can come of something so full of pain.

please don't use my lips to forget about hers
if my hips are thicker and legs smoother  I hope you don't find yourself craving faded memories
I won't let her scars scare me away if you promise to stay when my tears fall needlessly
and God I'd love to say we found each other easily & unscathed
but my bruises are still purple and sometimes I wonder how he is
please believe me when I say he never made me laugh the way you do and I know you only want me on your passenger side
we have loved before but never like this

If you love this air,
I will breathe out everything that is in this cage, so it can be converted into fresher ones, until all of them leave this body. And I would not be at ease, until all the morsels, atoms, come into one with the particles of your being.

If you love the city,
I will build one from scratch, bare hands, stones thrown everywhere for a place of love. With these knuckles bleeding, my blood will then turn into a clear river that runs through the cracks of the town.

If you love the colour green,
I will cut through sticks and stones, to make up a whole grassland, splayed wide enough for a town to come alive, and half a space for a meadow. For the picnic we will have at every noon of every sunny day, just like the ones at the prairies.

If you love the rain,
I will learn to sit still on the pavement, to not quiver and run when it rains. I’ll play in it, regardless of the fear I deeply have for the thunders and lightnings. When it finally comes, I’ll stay closer with you, to feel like I am home— even when standing amidst the chaos that the sky brings.

And if you love me,
I will be me, even when being myself is something I despise at times, when hating myself seems most comfortable. I will start and bring good to myself, to love every piece of my actuality that is scattered like the remnants of a hurricane that stops by every 5 minutes. To be delicately in love with all I have to offer. Because you love me.

Sorry is a word.
It has sounds and syllables.
It carries meaning,
although, sometimes it doesn't.

Is your sorry empty, full, half-empty, half-full?
Do you put the weight of truth behind it to lift it up?
When you make the sounds are you just making the sounds?
Are you simply enunciating the consonants to make them resonate
with the hard "E" at the end?

Is your sorry just a word?
Or is it a feeling?
A feeling that tears you up inside so that you must utter this word
to allow your hurt and pain to escape?
Your mouth, the portal by which the truth slides free,
by which you unburden:
is this aperture the escape route of your anguish?
Or are you just creating noise?

If you are sorry, REALLY, Really, really sorry,
show me that you can put together more than five letters.
I want to feel your word and the honesty built around it.
Show me that you embody each of these letters
with all of the cells of your being.
Sorry is just a word,
but when and if you choose to use it, make certain it is so much more.

they've cut off the branches i used to hang my
self on
stubs remain
wet and crumbling
and the ornaments lay scattered on the floor
my soul quivers and folds in
to the ground
every time i return any desperate regrowth
is cut back shorter
the stubs break piece by piece to the floor
and my trachea bends in a red-knotted bow
around the stump with the largest
bump on the end
out through my rib
cage around my throat wrapping
wrapping lethally around
my soul and my
heart and under
my chin