my roommate likes to play dress up.
sometimes, she will look just like me;
other times, she looks like fragmented bits
of my worst weeks thrown together
in old calendars I've tried to lose.

you tell me this is a cry for help,
but "help" is a foreign word
that will always sound funny
coming from my lips.
keeping myself together
is a language I never learned to speak.

a merry-go-round of feeling bad
about feeling bad
about feeling bad.
I can't remember the opposite of sick.
my stomach is hurting
and my head is spinning
from all of these circles.

I've been avoiding my reflection
because I'm afraid she'll be disappointed
to see what I've made out of her.
I don't want to keep running from people
who once loved me.

if I could sever the bridge that connects
these thoughts to my mouth,
I would without hesitance.
these sentences derail before I finish speaking,
and the only thing you notice
is the crash.

each time you leave,
you take another piece of me with you,
and leave all of these open wounds festering with guilt.
you were never the missing part of me;
you made yourself my other half
by tearing holes in my words,
and filling them with apologies.

I was only a body to fill the empty space
you thought she would occupy forever.
I was only a hand to fill the gaps
between your fingers.
you held onto me,
and I thought it might have been love.

when the truth and a lie come from the same 26 letters,
how can you expect me to know the difference?

“antidepressants are for people
who are too weak to handle sadness.”

the typical equation:
depression = sadness,
excluding all other variables that may lead to that solution.
because depression does not just equal sadness.
add occasional good days,
subtract all sense of self,
multiply the amount of people you hurt,
divide yourself into two parts:
the person you are,
and the person you want to be.

maybe I am weak.
I could never quite fall into death’s arms,
only tripping and landing at his feet.

maybe I am weak.
the only knots I was ever good at tying
were the ones in my stomach at the thought
of having to go on like this.

maybe I am weak,
but weakness is part of the equation:
solve for why I am alive.
add my name to the list of things I love,
subtract the guilt and anger and resentment,
multiply the hands that hold mine,
divide myself into two parts:
the person I am,
and the person I once was.

maybe I am weak,
but I don’t need to be
anything else.

1997
the roots of my family tree
are shallow and malnourished,
breaking through the Earth's skin as a reminder
that it cannot always keep the ugly
hidden underneath.
my DNA is a life sentence for a crime
I never wanted to commit.

1999
my father called my brother a king
before he even left the womb.
a solar eclipse that has lasted years
because of my inability to escape his shadow;
though, I'm not sure I ever will.
the world will always be his stage,
and I, just a poorly constructed backdrop.

2005
my skin has turned
black and blue back into flesh.
I hope, one day,
my mind takes a lesson from my body
and learns how to forget you.

2011
they call him the all merciful god,
and I can't help but to laugh,
because the only thing he promised
to those who hurt me was forgiveness.
I prayed up until the day
god changed his phone number.
atheism is a learned behavior;
I only wonder when god stopped
believing in me.

2015
I live my life in reverse.
I drink coffee at midnight,
read the epilogues first,
go to bed in the morning.
I spent my childhood in this grave,
now it is time to dig myself out.

I have never been good with words,
so forgive me for my jumbled thoughts.
I’ve been sorting through them
and tossing out the infected ones,
but my lack of immunity has taken its toll.
I’m not sure if I’ll ever get better,
but, for you,
I will try.

I don’t want to hurt you when I shy away,
so I’ll take the time to scrub out
the fingerprints they’ve left behind.
it may be tedious,
but my body is not their crime scene,
and I don’t need to keep the evidence.
I have never been comfortable with intimacy,
but, for you,
I will try.

I have never been good with coping,
but my hands have forgotten how to tie a knot,
my legs suddenly unable to jump,
my lungs insistent on allowing air in.
I have never been good at dying,
but, for you,
I won’t try
anymore.

as he sits in the pews between his alcoholism and his wrath,
I wonder if he feels more at home among those sinners
than he ever felt with me.

they say the tongue is the strongest
muscle in the human body,
but his locked jaw has wounded me more
than any weaponry he contains behind those teeth.

a phantom limb I am plagued with:
sometimes, I feel like he cares.
sometimes, I hurt at words he never speaks,
like have a safe flight,
or you have always been enough.

in church, we were taught
that the words god and father were interchangeable.
when I stopped believing in god,
I wonder if he watched his bloodline run thin.
I wonder if it ached.