once I was yours, truly.
now hate is a blanket I wrap around myself,
but despite its comfort my blood still runs cold.
I’d rather shiver in its warmth
than ever let you touch me again.

it’s worthless rage –
a feeling I use to stitch old wounds.
it never stays together long enough to heal,
but it only unravels when I am alone.
in a room full of observers,
I choke down all the names I could call you.
I put my grief in a costume,
powder its nose and paint its eyelids,
until we're not wearing the same face.

my only memory is a light.
I think you tore it out of me.
I think I stopped breathing.
I think my lips turned blue.
I woke up the next morning,
and haven't felt a pulse since.

you threaded needles through me,
hung me up and played with the strings.
a marionette never moves unless manipulated;
a marionette never speaks for itself.
once I had no choice but to be yours, truly.

you speak in soft daggers.
I put on my best performance for you.
I bleed and bleed and bleed,
throwing towels on the floor beneath me.
love is an insatiable wound that can't be mended;
an affliction that will swallow me whole.
and though I am moribund,
I'm still apologizing for the mess.
I'm still thinking about the carpet.

I catch glimpses of you in spotted vision.
I hear your footsteps head towards the door.
I remembered to keep it unlocked this time.
the same love may never come twice,
but different love always leaves the same way.

I'm jealous of the sun,
for it gets to kiss your face every morning.
it gets to caress your cheeks,
and watch as your eyes flutter open,
a sight I long to see.

and I'm jealous of the moon,
for every night it gets to lull you to sleep.
as it cradles you in its soft light,
I wonder how it would be
if it were my arms around you instead.

and I'm not sure if this is potential.
you planted my hopes in love and let them grow.
this is a garden I was hesitant to tend to,
afraid it would wither once it had my attention.
but now the flowers are in bloom -
reaching for the sky,
the way I reach for you.

my body has taught me
everything I know about forgiveness.
it has pulled me through despair,
one foot in front of the other,
then closed the wounds left from my resistance.
it has turned the light in my eyes back on;
I can see the future again.

I must teach my body
everything I know about being forgiven.
I will not pick apart what was fixed
just to prove that it was broken.
I will not open old scars
just to prove that I was hurting.
I will not walk through hell again
just to prove that I was burning.

I will exist as I am now,
if only to prove that I can.

I've set old limbs atop a funeral pyre:
hands that reach towards the past,
and legs that carry me there,
wrapped in skin too tight to wear.
I mourn with flames in my hand,
but it's either that body or mine.

so I set alight my desire to live
and it fights to burn down
my mind's desire to **** me.
I think the procession will go on forever.
I've been wearing a veil for weeks now
and that body has not yet turned to ash,
but from the fire is beginning to rise
a person I will learn to love.

the last landmine is set off in my head.
I surrender to myself.
I beg myself to spare me.
I grovel at my own feet.

I ask my body,
how can you ever forgive me
for being so cruel?
there is silence.
then the wounds turn to scars.
from somewhere inside myself
I hear a voice say,
the same way I always have.

I am my reflection's marionette,
and it has turned me inside out.

I am bones and bones and bones.
my skin has collapsed in on itself:
a body like a star that's been crushed
underneath the weight of its weight.

my world is upside down.

all the blood has rushed to my head,
forcing the illness to vacate its home.
the malignant weakness pours into my limbs
until they are too heavy to lift without the strings.
cut me open and only shame comes out.

numbers begin where I last felt alive,
and end when I do.

every year you recycle the wish
of something to wish for.
there is nothing you want
except something to want.

there is a glimmer of hope
burning above a frosted foundation.
you will extinguish it
with an empty mind
just like you always do.

next year, you won’t light a candle.
you won’t set the room aglow
and your eyes will stay dressed in black.
darkness cannot be the absence of light
if you never have it in the first place.

living in my body feels a lot
like waiting for a home to be foreclosed.
I know I must be leaving soon
because the signs are all there,
I just don’t know if it will ever feel right.
I suppose it never does.

living in my body feels a lot
like taking the locks off of my front door.
too many people have attempted to wander in,
lovelorn and lost and lonely,
and I’m starting to wonder if being open
was my first mistake.

now it’s too late to replace the locks,
to take down the signs,
to reclaim what was once mine,
because this home is inhabited
by someone else.

living in my body feels a lot
like waiting for a home to be foreclosed.
I know I must be leaving soon.
everything is in boxes
and all that’s left is this
empty space.

I throw my voice down a wishing well.
it ricochets against the brick,
then crumbles to the ground.

repeat after me.
you are worthy.

my affirmations stumble out of my mouth,
and I wait for my voice to return to me.
my eardrums wait for the words
to knock some sense into them.
silence plays an elegy.

repeat after me.
you are loved.

you can lead your head to sunlight,
but you can't make it think.

the air being pushed back into my lungs
wasn't a second chance
because I never had a first.
I was doomed from the start
- love with conditions.
safety with escape routes.

but this is a new beginning.
the epilogue was the prologue.
disaster is no longer my destiny.

a glimpse into the past is how I found
the people who are still rooting for me:
a small child with a rope around her neck.
a teenager with an apology written out.
a 19 year old with too much poison in her stomach.
they are counting on me to show them
living was the better of the two options.
they are counting on me to be the one adult
who doesn't let them down.

I have found a reason to live,
and it's to find something worth living for.

my parents chose a name for me that means
shedding too much skin was inevitable.
they worked alongside my brain to convince me
that this body was always meant to be destroyed.

there isn't a lot left here,
but there's still too much.
I can't control how rapidly this jail cell grows,
but I can control how rapidly I shrink inside of it.
I'm starting to remember the freedom in being trapped.
I'm starting to remember the confinement in being free.
being this empty has never made me feel so full.

my head won't give me a hint.
a fog that no amount of light
can break through.
my eyes put on a veil
without knowing what to mourn.

a lock that never stops clicking.
a room that never stops spinning.

a small flame with a big impact.
a small flame that left everything charred.
in a dream you ask if I forgive you,
and my arms break out in black and blue.

the wolf actually exists.
it's hidden in plain sight.
a constant presence looming in the trees,
occasionally making itself visible.
if I accuse it of trying to ****** me,
the crowd will humor me for a few seconds.

a body covered in claw marks.
a body covered in open wounds.
a body that needs something
other than time in order to heal.
a body that begs for a tourniquet
made from twiny rope.

I cry wolf and the wolf cries liar.
the wolf cries wolf and I cry listen.
the crowd shakes their heads and walks away,
whispering to each other about how
I should just be thankful
that it hasn't killed me yet.

grief is still groveling at my feet.
grief won't stand up and face me.
grief won't go away.
grief is still groveling.

forgiveness is a heavy, hollow thing
burrowing into my chest,
gathering all my warmth.
I try to send it home to you,
but the farthest it's ever reached
is the back of my teeth.
it doesn't want to go.
I can't let it go.

I ask sorrow where it hurts
and it points at me.
I ask rage where it's been
and it points to you.

it feels like my brain has crumbled
and there's all of this empty space
to create something new,
but the only material I have to work with
is the ruins of the old brain.

I'm rearranging the pieces.
I revisited the I don't want to live part of my brain
and moved the don't in between I and want to give up.
I relocated trauma and built it next to strength.
the maladaptive thoughts revisit sometimes,
but they never manifest into action anymore.
I couldn't destroy the I deserve this piece,
so I centered it in love and kindness.

I thought the inside of my head was built to last.
once you put clay into a kiln,
it's impossible to reshape it without breaking it.
there was hesitance before the destruction.
there was a crack, a catastasis, but a calm collapse,
and in the rubble, I saw a way to heal.
I never knew a wrecking ball could be so gentle.

I will no longer be the bed you stay in when it rains.
we face the dark together,
but you embrace the light alone.
when the clouds take their leave, so do you.
when the weather breaks, so do I.

I will no longer let you use my body as therapy.
your listening ear has gone deaf;
your hand to hold keeps its fingers locked.
the shoulder on which you've cried
had a person attached to it the whole time.

there are days where I feel like you are by my side.
there are days where you run ahead
while I take your shadow's place.
and there are others where our paths never cross
—a set of skew lines that know of each other,
but do not know each other.

if I have to keep guessing where I stand with you,
then maybe I don't stand anywhere at all.

I used to stay awake until morning
because I knew the monsters under my bed
would disappear with the sunlight.
it always worked back then, but now,
there is a monster that has buried itself
under the skin of people I love.
I've been waiting for the sunlight.
I've been waiting for the promise
that this will come to an end.

when I think the sun is coming out,
the tyrant finds another person to attach strings to,
another person to throw on a stage,
forcing them to tell their audience
I don't have a problem.
sometimes there are stars littering the sky,
but there's never enough light to drop the curtain
on this perpetual nighttime.

I am stuck at a funeral procession where bodies
are being rotated in and out of the casket.
I don't know how to let go of this grief.
it is said that exposing someone to a fear
is the best way to help them overcome it,
but that never taught me to be less afraid.
it only taught me why I am.

I'd say I feel like a confessional.
I am nothing but a voice behind
a wall of woes and worries
layered on top of each other.
it is hard to differentiate my pain from theirs
because the paint is all the same color.

I'd say I feel like a product
that keeps getting put back on the shelf.
the signs advertise
blow up doll: therapist edition!
you can stick your emotions into me
without the stress of worrying about how I feel.
no reciprocation necessary.
you can project yourself onto me
until I look too much like everything you hate.
note: you may return the item,
but we cannot refund wasted time.

I'd say the only difference between
being replaced and being disposed of
is whether or not they want to remember me.

I have always been afraid to say I'm better.

what if they think I didn't suffer enough?
they don't know what it took to get here.
I remember the blanket confining me to a bed,
the meals that spoiled while waiting to be made,
the self destruction I dressed up with humor.
maybe that doesn't meet their qualifications,
but suffering is not a job I applied for
even though it still feels like work.

take the depression away and what's left?
remove the dark and you get light.
remove the thick skin and you become raw.
remove the walls and you get rubble.
I can rebuild from this.
I can build a home instead of a prison.
take the depression away and you become alive.

I don't know if there is such thing as 100 percent better.
I don't know what better is supposed to look like,
but this is what it looks like for me:
it looks like getting out of bed
and setting reminders to take medication
and not canceling on my therapist
and not wanting to **** myself
and not killing myself
and not killing myself
and not killing myself.

maybe that's only 80 percent better,
or maybe 70 percent, but that's still okay.
maybe not I do yoga and run 5 miles okay.
maybe not forced positivity okay.
just okay.
that's really all I need to be.
just okay.

you keep taking until my hands are empty,
and then you take my hands.
if I start to cross your mind,
let me keep walking.

you don't get to be both
the shipwreck and the lifeboat.
you don't get to be both
the storm and the disaster relief.
the hurting used to come in waves,
but it won't pull me under anymore.

your apologies died behind your teeth.
you're just spitting out the remains.
somewhere there was once sincerity,
but I'm done being the archeologist
digging through excuses to find it.

I don't miss the person I thought you were,
or the person you could have been,
because at their core,
they are both
still you.

this is a game of russian roulette
where all of the chambers are empty.
I don't know what would happen
if I didn't hear the click before
the next chamber greeted me.
I don't know what would happen
if I actually felt something.

on a good day, I'm the target
that keeps getting missed.
on a bad day, I'm the one
who keeps missing the target.

I don't remember when this
sadness became so cyclical.
I don't remember when I stopped flinching.
I don't remember when I learned to be afraid
that there was nothing to be afraid of.
I don't remember what outcome
I'm supposed to be hoping for.

the longer this goes on,
the more it looks like
happiness and losing the game
are the same way out.

at the crime scene of my anger,
there is a chalk outline
of our bodies lying side by side.
they copied that blank expression on your face.
I don't remember fitting in those frames.
forgiveness can wash away the evidence,
but it will still rub salt in our wounds.

I'll try to tell you I'm happy for you.
I'll try not to mention that I woke up on fire
and mistook it for the sun coming back.
I'll try not to mention that the light
was at the beginning of this tunnel.
I'll try not to mention the calendar I kept
where every yesterday was crossed off,
and I'll try not to mention how I always knew
we wouldn't make it to today.

there is an unmarked box now,
and every day that follows is empty,
but it wasn't the end
of the world—
just mine.

I had been counting up to 10 until today
when I finally opened my eyes
and saw you hiding in between
the numbers that led to this moment.

when it was your turn,
you counted backwards from 10.
you kept your eyes open.
I thought you didn't understand the rules,
but when you reached zero,
you looked at me and said,
"ready or not, here I go."

you don't search for me
in everyone you meet
because if you found me in someone,
you would abandon them too.

you wanted the universe,
so I started building the sky for you.
I hung up lights so when the dark arrived,
you had glimmers of hope
—one for every time you thought
it was living with you
instead of just visiting.
I once brightened your nights,
but you tore the stars down
because the sun was here to replace them.

I chased clouds away so you wouldn't
be caught in a downpour.
I became a shelter when they sought
their revenge and hit the ground running.
the wind was breaking me down,
but I held you despite the pieces it stole.
when the storm passed,
all you saw was the rainbow,
and didn't notice I took out the blue.

I did everything I could,
but I could not do everything.
you wanted the universe,
but I could only give you the world.

I don't ask if it's over
because I don't want it to be,
but I had to think about asking
so it already is.

I am standing at a funeral
reading my depression's suicide note
in front of a crowd that is smiling.
it does not feel right.

this is my own death.
this procession is for me.
the person in the casket is dressed in guilt
—an outfit she grew out of long ago,
but still wore everywhere.
one hand is intertwined with pills,
the other is still trying to find
something else to hold on to.

when the sky becomes overcast
and begins taunting me with rain,
I contemplate digging her back up.
there is a moment where
I want to resuscitate her.
I have never been able to survive
a storm without becoming a part of it.

I will not take shelter in that body again.
I will not wear her skin as a raincoat.
I remind myself that she is where
she always wanted to be,
and so am I.

the hardest part about knowing an addict
is knowing them.

there are only two explanations:
either you have made
a graveyard of your own body
and the addiction is living for you,
or you are still alive
and living for the addiction.

we paint this portrait with white out.
we place it in a frame too small
for the whole picture:
only half of your face shows.

hope less each time
until you are hopeless.

I waved to you from the timeline
that runs alongside this one.
we made eye contact and saw
what could have been.‬

this infatuation follows me everywhere
—a ghost that does not realize it is dead.
it is still convinced it has some life left,
it is still convinced it is welcome in the home
you let it thrive in until there was nothing left to feed it.
it is still convinced you wanted it to live;
it is still convinced you cared enough to try.
the difference between our graveyards
is you never had anything to bury.

I still put flowers by our potential.
I still water a garden of wilting plants
that look like the first time you didn't say good morning,
that look like the waning smile on your lips,
that look like the hesitation when I asked
if you ever felt anything at all.
they keep withering
until the only remnant of our relationship
is a headstone that reads
here: lies.

my laughter has been waiting to meet you
—a withering thing in a hospital bed.
all of the flowers and cards littering the floor
couldn't bring it out of its coma,
but all you had to do was introduce yourself.

you feel like coming home
after spending so many nights sleeping in beds
of people without names.
you feel like a warm light
after spending so many months trapped
underneath a gray sky.

I never felt like I could live
in the sound of someone's voice,
but now, I'm realizing it is the address
to the place I've been homesick for.

abuse is a picture that I am forced to paint
with colors I have never seen.
if I draw fists into open arms,
if I sketch an apology in between berating,
if I fill in every empty space with love,
no one will come running for
the child who cried help.

abuse is a phantom limb
still covered in bruises.
white coats and clipboards wonder
how it can still ache when it is no longer there,
infecting me with their doubts.
sometimes it feels heavier
than it did when it was a part of me.

depression eats at my weight until my skin is taut,
boarding up my eyes and locking my mouth.
blame has found solace in this blood,
guilt mutating my thoughts.
my potential used to live here,
but abuse has a reverse Midas touch
where everything that could have become gold
withers in its hands.

my body is a phantom limb.
sometimes I can feel myself
being the person I wish I was.

my love is a reverse Midas touch.
one day, your eyes will stop lighting up.
your sun will stop trying to break through
the cloud that is my melancholy.
your forgiveness will wither
underneath all of these apologies;
nothing can grow when it is
being watered too much.

one day, you will stop getting your hands *****.
you will stop searching for good intentions
in the ruins of everything I have destroyed.
you will stop searching for me
like I'm the survivor of a shipwreck
and not the shipwreck itself.

one day, you will understand why
abandoned buildings are demolished
when they cannot be saved.

if the eyes are the windows to the soul,
then dress them up nicely.
keep all of the anger
threatening to pour from you
behind a locked mouth.
nobody asks the person living
in a well kept home if she is okay.

wear every apology like a thorn.
let them stare at the resentment
that blossoms from those roots,
and let a garden grow from each puncture.
they'll let you talk about your pain
if you disguise it in flowery metaphors.

love is the wide eyed child
that beckons you to this address.
forgiveness is the 12 year old girl
dusting off his promises to change.
you have outgrown these faces,
but you still put them on
because naivety has more to offer.

releasing a bird into a bigger cage
is not freedom.

every 28 days,
the human skin replenishes itself.
my hands are tired of building new homes
on top of old eviction letters.
I am aching for a body
that treats me like a cure,
and not the disease that needs it.

I live as a counterfeit version of myself;
I am a kleptomaniac who steals the breath
from people that would have found a use for it.
tell me how to refund
what I didn't buy.

my veins are a breeding ground for despondency,
my bones a shelter for malaise.
to try to be kind to myself
is to cauterize a wound
after the infection has already spread.

it is hard to love someone
while you're grieving
the loss of the person they used to be.

my brother hasn't spoken in weeks.
a headstone reads,
here lies the brother you once had,
and the flowers I placed there are barely living.
I've spent all of my time digging him out of one grave,
only to discover there's an entire cemetery left to unbury.

my mother hasn't smiled in days,
and exhaustion has become
the guest that has overstayed its welcome.
misery usually loves company,
but I am anxious for it leave.

I am homesick for a house
that I once lived in.
I am homesick for a place
where only love grows
from this family tree.

you had made this bed too quickly,
not realizing the sheets weren't fitted
and the blankets were tangled around our limbs.
you were so used to lying in it,
you didn't know how to be honest.

don't reach for me with hands
stained from the ink you used to rewrite your stories.
don't speak to me with words
that should have rotted out your teeth.
don't look at me with eyes
that I once saw my happiness in.

I will not play nice.
I will not worship
the storm that destroyed my home.

in the future,
my life will be so full of love,
you won't be able to look beyond it.
I hope it leaves you blind,
so you will never see the person I'll become
without you.

in one universe,
I wake up as a child,
sunlight pouring through the heavy curtains
and embracing me in warmth.
my mother knocks softly on the door,
and tells me good morning.

in another,
I am driving down a highway
in the middle of the night,
holding the hand of contentment
as we let the radio drown out the silence.
I pay no attention to the exit signs
because I know I am already home.

but today,
I woke up in shambles.
I tried to rebuild myself from the ruins,
but I can only seem to create a hollow outline
from the pieces I have.
like a child's toy,
happiness must have been sold separately.

today,
the exit signs seemed to glow,
advertising familiar names, but foreign places
―destinations I've never reached,
but always seem to be approaching.

they tell us darkness is just the absence of light,
but they never say when the light comes back.

in some universe,
I am rewinding my happiest moments
and experiencing them for the first time again.

but today,
I killed what I wanted to be
and buried her beside what I almost was.

I seem to only measure time
in units of when I last saw you.

black holes only devour what you feed them,
but I still try to fill this cavity in my chest
with your words,
with your love,
with your presence.
sometimes feeling whole is only
the homonym taking its place.

I gave up the sunlight
to lay in this grave.
I turned my back on life
to continue courting my demise.

but now,
I give up my grave
to bask in your warmth.
I give you the words of love
I used to save for death’s ears.

I give up parts of myself to fill in your blanks,
and though so much of me is missing,
I am better when you are whole.

the person you are
and the person you want to become
bear the same roots.
you are already her,
you just haven't learned how to be.
putting yourself back together is treacherous,
but you don't have to do it alone.

your very existence is rooted in worth:
the 12 percent of carbon in your body
is the same carbon that creates diamonds under pressure.
the .2 milligrams of gold in your blood
is the same gold people spend a lifetime trying to earn,
and having you in my life makes me richer
than I'd ever be with money.

broken is not synonymous with useless.
no matter how many pieces
make up a mosaic,
it will still reflect light.

secrets don't make friends,
but they do make war.
a battle between my pacifist mind
and the pieces missing from it,
from all of the words I have yet to speak.
I try to keep the peace,
but I only know how to give it away.

what do you do
when you've become the skeleton
in your closet:
the one that will still be in tact
when tranquility crumbles;
the bones of a sinner found in the ruins
of a home that tried to be pure.

what do you do
when you've become the monster
your father searched for in your childhood:
the one he tried to scare away
with a bible verse and a visit to the confessional.

what do you do
when honesty is lodged in your throat,
but you rearrange the sentences
to fit the script you've been handed?

when the bible verses stop working,
when what you've built is merely rubble at your feet,
when the ink on the script begins to run,
you are left with destruction,
but you are left with the truth.

they say that every 27 days,
the human skin replenishes itself.
how nice it is to think, every 27 days,
I have another chance.

this is not the end.

this is the beginning of the next few weeks
where my skin will turn
bruises into flesh,
scabs into scars,
hurt into healing.

where my words will change
apologies into appreciation,
anger into tolerance,
hurt into healing.

where my mind will change
imbalance into equilibrium,
and bury the person I am now
underneath the person I will become.

I just have to be here to see it.
I just have to keep waking up
one more day.

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.