ever so lightly he lays a finger on my lips and tells me to stay quiet. he tells me that his body pressed on top of mine is what God would have wanted, he tells me that my little girl face is so sweet like a scoop of vanilla ice cream, I have no flaws yet, but he had a spoon.
'no' can't resonate from my lungs when I barely know my left and rights and my ups and downs.
lying down in an office, the therapist gives me a stress ball that has the world painted on it. our snacks are light but the subjects are not, I tune out the sessions but I hear a question out of the blur, "do you remember what he did?" I squeezed the voodoo stress ball so tightly my world starts spinning, -I reply- he taught me to keep my silver wear drawers SHUT. I'm five years old again and I don't know my lefts or my rights or my ups or my downs. Life is not a box of chocolates it's a bowl of melting dairy.
-I'm grounded- for lying. two weeks in my room and they take my blankets; that's what the doctors told them to do. While I shiver in the night all alone, I'll think about what I did wrong. We are so disappointed in you Savannah.
Im starting to feel less vanilla and more... rocky road. I'm to be seen and not heard. I have two ears and one mouth and I am to be using them in that proportion.
I've gotten so used to hospital socks and cold spoons and the mindset of 'you're the problem' and 'boys will be boys'
Later in life I'll get to tell him that I no longer have a vanilla scoop for a face, I have bags under my eyes and tobacco in my teeth, the only thing sweet about me is this menthol flavor in my mouth. I fixate on anything other than speaking so that the world can't hear what I have to say, even if the law believed me, even if my friends believed me, even if our parents believed me, a prison cell could never hold you.

you're probably the reason i wake up unable to breathe thinking there are snakes slithering around in my bed, because you did the exact same. i'll never find the words to tell you just the way you shattered my stained glass, i went to dozens of cathedrals to try and beg you to fix my mosaics and give me forgiveness, but not even the hierarchy could help me now. I went from Nortre Dame all the way to St. Paul's trying to find peace but no glass will ever be the same as mine maybe a pastiche but I will never feel as if I am as beautiful as the Troyes, so I walk around with ****** palms grasping to the remaining pieces I have from that night. I'm gasping for air now, in hysteria I'm flipping through the pages of a poor mans good book trying to find the terms for repentance or contrition or whatever it could be named, I'm not sure because I've never pleaded like this before and I'll scream to the all the gods that might listen, I'll be ****** if Im going to go down like this. I found another chapel he's got mosaics like no other has ever seen, I'm looking into angelic hues of browns and blues and greens. I'm running through the backrooms trying to find an exit, I'm in a rut to get to a comforting haven. don't waste your time on me I scream. Ive been cast out of heaven for my sins and I'm paying for my crimes -my rosary has fallen to the ground. it's just us two now; I want to run, the apocalypse inside of me is tearing me apart. I've had a martyr in my bed and I remember the taste of his lips, now I recall how your mouth resembled that of a serpent and how it tasted -of venom. you lied while your head was between my thighs, oh the stigmata of a dismal life. I've found a new savior and I am more than what you've dictated to everyone else. I've undergone apostasy and devouted myself to a new God, I might even wear white with him.

lay down and try to blink back the life into your eyes, eyes, he once asked if you had "captivating blue oceans" on your drivers license for the color of your eyes. lay down and try to blink back the life into your eyes, blink, blink 182, I miss you, the first time I heard that song my single mother was driving and she pulled over to ***** because her boyfriend didn't love her enough to say I miss you, *****, remember when your first lover held your hair after you ate a burrito that was too much to handle on your first date to try and impress him, this is, too much to handle. lay down and try to blink the life back into your eyes.

committing suicide isn't laying on your bed of lies waiting for your prince to arrive, it's wondering if you'll wake up alive or if you even want to.

What is it to be born into Stockholm Syndrome? You say one day I'll thank you, they say there's a 76% chance that children without love from a mother become serial killers; one day I'll **** you. One day I'll grow out of this fatal mold you've put me in, like the corsets you squeeze me inside because you're ashamed of what I've grown to be. Mold isn't the only way you can describe what you've made me the mildew inside of me feels like the last forgotten sock in the washing machine, you always did dampen the mood.

You say I'll never amount to anything, do you mean like your bank account? you can't stop buying ***** to try and bring yourself to slaughter the daughter you never wanted. she was poisoned 10 years ago by a mother that always had her hands around her neck but her face looking towards God. Just because the bible says you should taste the flesh of your sons and your daughters, doesn't mean you should actually do it. Never fall in love with your kidnapper, you're not worth her love.

You say that I look like a slob, but don't you know that being plastered off your own shame is a little messy too? I find it a little sloppy that when things don't go your way you throw objects around the room like your own chaotic thoughts, dents were always something you were good at. Will I ever fill your void mom?

You say to stop singing. You killed my little girl dream, the only thing I ever wanted was to be a singer, you turned my melodies into loathing; so I became a slam poet. Will my voice ever be loud enough to make you shutter mom!

You tell me to do the dishes but do you really think that scrubbing your leftovers will make me forget the years of going hungry? My hunger wasn't just for food, it was for a taste other than copper when sent to bed without dinner. Can you ******* decay mom?

You say that if I called myself pretty it would be a lie but didn't I come from you? but I think you're pretty too and if I told you that this poem was filled with hate that would be fabricated because I think you're jaw dropping, not in the sense that you've broken mine but you'll always be my kidnapper, why don't I hate you? The worst part is, I'll still say I miss you. I love you mom.

when your child comes out stillborn, they give you 24 hours with him.
24 hours of bleeding lips, 24 hours of fragile skin, 24 hours of cold toes.
they bring you food every three hours with the knowledge that you won't eat it, but the comfort of it there is.. sort of nice.
things like this aren't supposed to happen this far along is what they will whisper while they think you are sleeping
24 hours of he's getting colder, 24 hours of a lifeless, still rib cage, 24 hours of come on baby, just open your eyes for mommy.
making your way to the hospital, you hoped to come home with a bouncing blue boy but instead you come home to a cribless room.
they say it's easiest if people get rid of the reminders for you but his empty things are the only way i will ever feel whole.
then they start asking you the hard questions as if you didn't just press the button enough times to tame an ocean with waves full of guilt that will swallow your lungs.
24 hours of limp limbs and unreturned breathing patterns, 24 hours of there's some more flowers here for you, 24 hours of please just leave us alone.
we have 1 more hour together and your unresponsive nerves are growing colder. they made molds of your hands for me like they didn't know i would hold them forever.
we have 1 more hour together and the nurses will never be more apologetic in their whole lives than they are the moment they have to take a sleeping child from a mourning mother.
we have a little under an hour and as you wail, people watch from afar wondering if they'll ever be able to understand that sort of pain, the pain that makes you feel god has ripped your body open and left you for dead, the pain that makes you feel that this life really isn't worth living, the pain that there is no or might not be any god at all.
hours, minutes, seconds, days, time can't even begin to describe how long these panicky flashbacks of the moment they told me they found no heartbeat go on for.

this is how it starts
I remember the sound of my stomach tying itself when I saw your text response that consisted of a simple "of course"
stumbling out your front door with streaks of muck on my face I replied; this will be fatal.
a million footsteps away but you're still stomping on my toes so. i made it out of that town but [why am i still in your bed [why can't I get away. is it because I gave you my cerebrum? my muscles aren't moving.
there's a record player in my living room, is this the end- it plays a symphony to me. it's talking now, the music notes are animated and walking towards me, this isn't living. there is no room for me inside of you anymore.
it was a while in, we're from different worlds, my clothes were off, but I wasn't naked, at least that's what I thought and what I wanted. I look to the left and there's a syringe, I realized you've ripped my wings right out of my back but it took me two years to understand, it wasn't you.
it's 7 o'clock and I'm gritting my teeth to keep down the words I never said but little did I know I was suffocating myself.
there cannot be love without self hate, don't you dare compare me to still water when you know I'm the eye of the storm. I hear the clicking, [like a constant reminder of my teeth chattering when you said you were going to leave the page blank. they'll use your damp mascara as ink to permanently type X's into your wrists.
my preference of Russian roulette is your tongue and I never understood why you tell me that Im prettiest when crying, maybe it's because your ******* is the one that makes me seem beautiful to you but not to the others.
the ruby slippers to take me home, the ruby river flowing out of my nose, you gave me both.

there are no classes you can take, wiki how links you can read up on or people you can seek for advice, to prepare yourself for walking in on your lover consuming a bottle of pills.
hypothetically i think we can all come up with some things we say we would do to try to organize ourselves for a situation such as this, but when you walk in the bathroom and the lips you love to kiss are blue, i think we all forget procedure.
they mumble "i am sorry" as the light is flickering on and off in their eyes and there is no ******* way that those can be their last words.
your lover lay cold in your lap as you cradle them, you're comparing them to summer when they would sit in your passenger seat and rejoice silly songs, to now, while they are shivering with deaths voice playing like a music box behind their eyes.
she looks like a gutted building you think to yourself. you forgot to pay the electricity bill and the lights are going out, she's not breathing.
you plead for them just to stick their fingers down their throat, to get rid of the pills, to live.
this is the part where they stumble out a sum of words that maybe form a sentence of something that sounds an awful lot like "did you really mean all those hurtful things you said?" and you can't help but sink so deep inside of your own body that the ringing in your ears seems to stop, but it doesn't, it's just hollowed out by the sound of your own absence.

•watching people's hair move in the wind
•the way the washing machine rocks
•light shining through my window
•clean dishes / warm clean clothes
•James eyes scrunch when he laughs
•watching the wind blow things around
•a tall glass of cold water
•watching what people do in their cars
•seeing other people's graffiti / street art
•other people's hand motions

Red  
do you remember the way his words were like the plague on your skin, and how you compared yourself to burning wood; crackling and ashing all around you. can you remember the combustion in your eyes that was put out by the sprinklers from your face; he's chasing you around the table with hostility in his fists; there's red on the ground. Ring around the rosy isn't as fun as it used to be.

Orange
do you remember loving the way others laid their hands upon you? but it will never be quite the same as the sweet taste of  his knuckles, kisses- are what he called them. when he finds another has laid his hands on you, he kisses you with great passion and rage. sprinting after you, come out come out wherever you are. tag, you're it.

Yellow
can you remember when you woke up in your closet, hide and seek is so fun with him. there were yellow lilies by my bedside, I just know he loves me. he left me a note, "another round?" I pick the petals off the flower and lay them around me, covered in yellow sugary pollen they whisper to me "he loves you, he loves you not" don't worry, he'll find out soon enough.

Green
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, get down from there they yell. it's going to take a lot to put her back together they say in a clamor. you jump down and stain your white pants from the puddles and the grass waiting at the bottom for you. all the kings horses and the kings men could never make her smile again.

Blue  
rock a bye baby you sing to me, please oh please don't put me to sleep. these black and blue kiss marks are screaming out, others might hear, what should I tell them, should I shout? I pace around the room, he says to you, hush little baby don't you cry, your bough did break and your cradle will fall.


Indigo
there's a time where we try to reclaim our youth because of overwhelming nostalgia, dreaming in children's games and nursery rhymes. things are not always as they seem in the dollhouse, this is a sadness much deeper than any other, if you asked me to name it I would tell a story of a deeper shade of blue, an indigo of sorts, but people are not toys and I will not be your puppet anymore.

are you scared of the dark? when we were younger we spent so much time checking under our beds for monsters, looking in the basement, running to our bed after shutting off the light or hiding under those cotton blankets for false protection. we spent so much time running and checking and looking, and hiding, but from what? as i grew older i started to understand, i checked under my bed because i couldn't bear the fact that the monster was in mine and I was too scared to look in the basement of my subconscious, running from whatever that was in the dark then pulling the cotton over my eyes, the darkness might have been you, I mean sometimes when I would look into your eyes they were the deepest of browns, I could have sworn they were black sometimes, and you would creep around in my basement as I slept, looking for a clue that might give away my fears, but you did a pretty good job figuring it all out on your own. it might have been you, my eyes are the brightest of blues, but when you were done with me, so was my heart. after all you were sleeping in my bed stealing my every breath, but I didn't know that, and
in the hospital bed, you were there, with those black eyes, you like to come and visit sometimes, I don't miss you. we spend so much time trying to figure things out, the unexplainable, but sometimes... it's just better to leave it that way. I'm not scared of the dark anymore.

I refuse to tell anyone about the dreams where I am reading bedtime stories to you, where each is a different way you die and every way I will never save you.
I don't think twice of letting anybody know that drinking Clorox could potentially **** the what once were butterflies inside of you.
I won't tell anybody that my love for you is like perfecting the stringing of the beautiful chords on a harp ( for someone who is [deaf. I [can't tell anybody that when you told the doctor you weren't sexually active, I couldn't stop thinking -"so my party favors meant nothing to you?"  My body was like an instrument and your words were the very melody that tuned it, unfortunately your vocal chords were that {of Lucifer's. Maybe you loved the feeling of tying me to the coffee table and making home movies, then creating a party once the confetti burst from my eyes, I heard once you die that you watch your life replay but I found it hurts twice as bad the second time around, now that I think about it, I think my heart exploded into confetti as well and [maybe that's why is feel empty and there are no more butterflies, just year old rotting confetti. My ribs never really echoed until you came around, I don't think I had anybody take my breath away quite like you, you did it a tiny bit different from the others, you knocked the wind right out of me and used it as air to blow banners and silly string around for your pity party.
Do you remember when you told me how cliché my poetry was on my birthday? well I do not love you like the everlasting affair between the sea and the sand & I don't miss you how the Sun misses the Moon. For I fear you as if I were alive in Pompeii during 79 After Death, And my hate towards you is as strong as the believers during the time of Crucifixion and I am as devastated as when the families of Jews found bodies upon bodies unnamed in box cars.
>I remember the taste of your mouth and your cravings for cigarettes, I was your ashtray. I remember your passion for watercolor paintings, I am your cup of brown water. I remember your undenied addiction for sweetened coffee, I am the leftover stain on your teeth. I remember your love for street racing, -I am the skid marks left on the street.<
Maybe one day you'll think back to the girl that you said you loved, maybe you'll realize that she was not the burns marks in your brain from the bleach you drank to try and ruin the confetti that is now in [your] rib cage, maybe you'll pay more attention to abandoned buildings on the side of the street, now that you realize that's what you've made her become.
Maybe you'll remember which cabinet the chemicals were in and at the point maybe you'll realize that her dreams from your bed time stories came true.

In a few years I'll think back to that time that you tore me down in the church attic, I'll think back to the day that you took me to a house of brews and took me dancing, I'll think back to when I fell in love on the moon and in the clouds.
You disemboweled me , leaving nothing but the ***** that lets me exist, while you saved every other part of me. You brought sleeping with enemies to life, but didn't they always say to keep your enemies close? I guess you took that literally , I guess you took my metaphor literal when I told you I wanted you to eat my heart out. You were clueless to who the enemy really was. You have no idea of the threats I posses. I warn you every day, and every day you tell me the same thing. You assure me of our future and liberate me from the past. I let people use and abuse me, simply because it does not hurt. I thought you would be one of the many to use and pass me by. I remember when I asked you to hurt me, I begged you to help me feel, I pleaded for you to leave bruises, instead you filled my heart with warmth, something I've never been use to. Affection is not something I've been taught, love is not a word often heard to my ears, when people hug me I shy away because it does not feel right. But you make warmth feel like home, love is not just a vocabulary word with you and vulnerability is something that I am indefinatley okay with if you are by my side. I told you that people that fall in love fast are kind of like the lighting of a match, they fall out of it just as quick, but you said promptly, that's for people who don't know where to put the flame. You look at me as if I put every shade of blue in the sky just for you, and you told me I did, informing me that blue was your favorite color , letting me know that I would never feel the color of the sky again.

maybe it's just something about moms who smoke, maybe their lungs are just too clogged to say I love you. the aroma of smoke stained walls and stale furniture smelt just like home to me but unlike the stickers on the wall, love is not found here. people tell you it won't be like this forever but when you try to sleep it off hours feel like years when all of the mattresses in your house smell of rotting lungs. she's taught me what it was like to feel like the tree in the forest. hospitals have become the only home my mother actually welcomed me to, sticky socks and open backed dresses, is this really what you call stable? backwards isn't your firstborn direction but with a family like mine you would see me go backwards and think it was magnificent. they say you can get out in two weeks but mentally you never really leave. I used to joke and say that I loved it here, I showed you how much of a joke it was when the second day after I got out I was writing prescriptions for myself again. when I arrived they took a photo with the flash on and I told them to title it "a breathing irony"  they asked me what my real name was and I told them "vacant baggage" or just Vannah for close friends.
restraints feel so right when you can't even trust yourself. endless hours on a cold ***** floor, this feels like home.
the same questions, the same answers three times a day
no I'm not a harm to myself
no I'm not a harm to others
I'm calm cool and collected
no I don't want to go home
nobody seems to understand that having the emergency brake on is a good thing.
I slowly realized that the girl inside of the plastic mirror is only who my mother wanted me to be.
Fast forward and it's a girl, I'm due in 4 months, I pick up my mothers legacy and light.

A note I will hopefully send in 2 years.

I've found myself and my very own happiness, but fortunately this "family" will never be a part of it. You always did say we put the 'fun' in dysfunctional but I never understood how disappearing once a year on the very day that you released the biggest mistake of your [life could be a functional relationship.
You say that I fill the very hole in your heart but [why are you digging one in mine.
You say that we are just like any other family, but other families hug each other, weird I know. You say that everybody deals with their pain in different ways, but I don't remember any of my friends telling me that their parents would take their paroxysm and give it to them as birthday presents.
I still quiver with fear when I hear the word love because I link it with pain.
"I hurt you because I love you"
"It is only because I love you"
"Love" is not an reassurance to hurt someone.
I have found out that breaking a cup is not an actual reason to hit a kid.
I have found out that telling someone that your parents words are sharper than shards of glass is not a reason to have liquid soap [poured down your throat.
I have found out that calling emergency services is okay when you do not feel cleansed after drinking PalmOlive, they might have mistaken it for cough syrup demanding to purge me of this sickness but needing to be rushed to the hospital, but it's okay because you love me right?
when they asked what had happened and you said I did it to myself and I was astonished but it's okay because you were doing it for me, -right?
I have found that when you leave tragedy from those shards of glass on your legs that your parents will disregard it and mistake it for comedy but I am not a playwright.
You forgot to notify me that the bedtime stories you use to tell me were fantasies of me {dying.
I have learned it is not normal to send your child to a madhouse when you simply do not want them to go on vacation with you.
I have learned that a trip to the sanitarium is the only vacation I'll get  and if you inform your child that they have shattered their family against the very ground that holds them, it will almost always engulf them in their very own straight jacket.
I have finally learned that love does not mean tight knuckles and I have learned that happiness is not painful.

don't smoke all of those cigarettes they say it'll stain your teeth.
they'll tell you that you have play dough for hands, that you conform to the others.
stained teeth for walls diagnosing me insane.
they'll tell you that when others squeeze your hand too hard you fall apart but you insist it's just a creative way of making yourself become art.
stained teeth for walls diagnosing me insane.
they'll try to train you to be fit into cookie cutters but when you can't seem to fit all of your pieces they detach you anyways but when you inform them that your limbic system has fallen behind they don't tolerate your disconnect.
stained teeth for walls diagnosing me insane.

There may be dirt on my knee's but don't think for a second that he thought of your name, the only words that escaped from his mouth were mine and no, it wasn't "that *****" Doesn't it become a little repetitive when they all turn to me?

I'm sorry if I resemble a broken home, but contrary to the Mormon mother stickers on my wall, it is not a gathering place and love is not found here.
you'll push me away and hit me if I try to give you hugs or kisses on the cheek but then have the audacity to ask my why I'm not empathetic or why I can't connect with other people that well.
you tell me they'll make fun of me if i wear that, but aren't you the one that's suppose to make me feel better if they do? and if you tell me i look disgusting in this dress one more time i might explode out of it.
you try and tell people that you were there for me when i was little, but where were you through all the cuts and scrapes and broken bones? forget that, where were you when i needed a mom, now I curl my hair a little different than the others and I still don't know how to braid, I don't know how to properly apply my blush or how to match my clothes.
you tell everyone how well you know me, but I don't ever recall over the 16 years of my life you ever sitting down with me and having a conversation, never civilized at least. you've been vicious, you kick people when they're down but for some reason I've always been the target.
{you tell me} that I filled a hole that you had in your heart but why are you {digging} one in mine?
I'll tell you I'm stressed but you'll tell me why your day was worse than mine. you'll tell me that when I fall I have to get up and you're not going to lend me a helping hand -you tell me that you'll give me something to cry about.
I've never had the love that I wish for, I'll see other with moms who will hug them and kiss them and hold them when they're weak. but you always tell me that I am so lucky to have you, that you will make me strong.

(deleted poem)