This is the white light you've heard about, the one you're supposed to see at the end of the tunnel.

This is the apology owed to you, the one you were begging for when they dragged your knuckles across the asphalt.

This is the fresh air filling your lungs, after years of spitting up water hoping to make room for it.

This is your reflection, the one you avoided by shattering every gleaming surface.

This is your favourite poem, the one you read every night like a prayer.

This is everything you wanted, everything you swore you needed to be better.

So why are you still picking at your ****** knuckles?

Why are you pretending you haven't memorized that poem?

Why won't you look your reflection in the eyes?

Why are you holding your breath?

Why won't you be better?

Was it ever real?
The way we felt about that person?

Or was it a projection of something we needed, or something we wanted regardless of their emotions?

Filling the void is a task best left to the emotionless.

I, myself, had always had a complicated relationship with emotions. I either felt it all, or felt emptiness/blankness/nothingness.

Frighteningly, it was mostly the latter.

I want only to fill it, terrified that it'll destroy me, eat me alive. I fear the annihilation. The silent erasure.

But to fill it, I have to sacrifice another. I have to offer up the warm blood of a lamb to the cold gods of my chest.

I've watched his heart break. I've seen his eyes go dark. I've felt the winds change.

I'm so sorry.

But I love myself more.

I think the place to start isn't so much about asking whether it was real, but to question if it was love I was looking for initially.

I wish I could accept the nothingness and be satisfied without having to put anyone else in it.

I'm so sorry.

I feel as if I'm a fluid.
I have no real meaning, other than to follow the current or to fit into the spaces where the cracks need to be filled.
I have no body, no mass, no substance.
I have no heart, no brain, no skin.
I smile when I'm told to and I flow where I'm needed.

I am a mirror image of the person I once was.
A reflection of a girl who once thought, felt, and spoke.
The girl I once was is long gone, buried below the surface, with her rays of light snuffed out.

My flower petal skin is now brown with decay.
My crown is now rusted.
I am no woman king.
I am a ghost.
An imaginary girl.
A reflection in a shattered mirror.

Don't get too close.
You may be cut by the edges.
Or caught in the current.
Or see the ghost of what once was.

But I promise my smile will never waver.
I promise I'll do what I'm told.

Every poem I wrote,
I wrote for you;
To try and erase
The wounds you left.

Today
I am writing for me,
Because I have realized
That these wounds will never
Disappear.

They will stay.

They will scar.

And they will be beautiful.

They will be gashes
In my flower petal skin
Sealed with gold,
Lacing me back together.

They will spill sunlight
And music
And all the venom
That you have filled me with
Will dissolve.

I will be new.

I will be fresh.

I will grow new
Flower petal skin.

There is no more whiskey
Left in my blood;
There is no more reason
To beg you to come home.

I am not a child,
I am
A woman king;

A flower who has been
Whiskey dipped.

And, regardless,
I have bloomed.

Let my arms only ever be for holding.

Let me live with open hands,
Let the skin on my palms stay soft,
Let me not hold too lightly to anything in this life.

Give me a heart full of light,
Let me love what I have when I have it
And let me smile when it goes.

Let my heart be full of gratitude
When my arms are around you,
Let me accept when they are empty.

Let me press my ear to the hollow of your chest,
Let me hear the ocean between the heartbeats.

Let your bed be the Garden of Eden
And let my stray hairs be fruit in the sheets.

Let my moans be hymns for you.
Let us be sinners made clean.

Let us be healed,
Let us be beautiful.

Let this stay.

The cold is playing gently
With the hairs on my head,
Letting me know that it is coming
For me and everything I've built.
I am starting to empty,
Becoming a glass waiting to be filled
With anything, anything.
Just keep the emptiness away.
I've been here before,
empty and cold,
When I was lost and he left me
To find my way on my own.
What a time that was,
Filling myself with anything
and everything.
What a person I became,
nothing like the person I was
Or wanted to be.
How far I've come,
How much I have to lose,
When the cold emptiness comes for me.

I don't know how
To save myself.
I don't know how
To keep warm.

I'm so tired of sitting in fireplaces,
Trying to avoid the inevitable.

I keep seeing myself running towards his arms
And crashing into his chest
Like a wave spilling onto a beach,
A mess of salt, seafoam and sand.

To feel the warmth of his chest on my cheek
Would calm all these storms
And soothe all these waves.
Oh, to just feel his flesh.

When I reach for him, I find only empty spaces,
A wave spilling back into the ocean.
No sand, no flesh; only space.
I expected you to stay.

Expecations spell out heartache
In the strangest way.