Girl
I wanna *******
In your glass house
As we skip rocks
slipping our tongues
into something more comfortable

something less cynical
than the effect
we have on ourselves
in a mirrored conversation
constantly
reflecting back
our insecure subconscious

So come on
let's get physical
Feel the frustration out
It's hijacking your
central nervous system
don't let it control
coax me to the back bedroom
and I'll show you how to ground yourself

Break glass
In case of emergency
We just need a release

"How can someone love you
If you don't love yourself?"
The words of therapists trying to help
Won't go away

They're right
I'd been thinking about it all wrong the whole time
There's
         Nothing
                     To love*
They didn't want me to be happy
They just wanted to put me out of my misery

The motherly figure
Locked away in fumes
Smelling of skunk
The green smoke taking her away
To anywhere but here

The man of the house
Glass after glass
Of wine
*****
Beer
Even Listerine
If that is what it took
To get even a slight buzz

I sit alone
Adding another mark to the tally
Behind the mirror
Only a few more
Before it is accepted
For my life to end

The youngest
Unaware of all of the despair
In her family
The only one
Who truly smiles
In our family portrait

smoking is bad*
preaches the teacher
as he bites his nails
in anticipation
of his next
cigarette.

You’re a flood, seeping through the cracks of my resistance
and wrecking the ships I built to send my memories of you out to sea.
You swallow up the shore and I’m left drowning in your waters.

You’re an earthquake, annihilating what I once believed was stable ground.
The floors I walk on disappear when you do.

You’re a tornado, showing up out of the blue, uprooting any sanity I have left.
The way you leave makes it seem as though there was never anything else before you.

You’re an avalanche.
One wrong move and it all comes crashing down around me.
Overwhelming, suffocating, and all at once.
You consume all that you touch.

I’m more of a car-crash. A careless incident that could have been avoided if someone had just paid closer attention. Or maybe there’s no such thing as an accident, and you were always meant to destroy me. Perhaps in a simpler fashion, like a slow-working poison, infecting my dreams and eating my sleep. I was always meant to be destroyed by you.

what are you doing to me?
these marble figures
crashing at my feet
like chips of flint
begging to catch
fire, to catch a
breath of air
but my god,
my lungs
heaving,
I ask
you

what are you doing to me?
permeating stone and
teaching me what it
is to bend, when I
once stood my
ground and
said, you
cannot
move
me

and what are you doing to me?
your feet are padding around
in the dark tunnels of my
temporal lobe, hanging
lanterns where lights
went out in storms
of crazed chaos,
and don’t you
know that I
am often
a ghost,
( don’t
you? )

what are you doing to me?
I feel the sun’s light as
it shines into my rib
cage, and I find I
am drunk from
this warmth,
and I ask,

what are you
doing to
me?