I will severe the arms that know not
How to hold you
And replace them with wings
That will teach us to soar.

This is the song
That makes you cry every time,
The one you play on repeat
To punish yourself.

This is the pattern you've trapped yourself in.

This mantra,
This melody,
"This is what you get"

These scars you wear,
The heaviness you harbour
"This was never what you wanted"

How many symptoms
before it's
a sickness?

Stay still,
Keep quiet,
You are shattering yourself
Inside.

You may have took my ability to belong to a person
And cracked it in half
But I'm better at bleeding whiskey than I ever was
Before.

There's something about how you treat my heart as a doormat,
As a place to wipe the mud off of your shoes,
And how the floors are always spotless.

There's a poem in here somewhere,
Buried under all my bitter,
That will not make up for the damage
But will maybe help to explain the cause of it.

I've been down so long
That I'm beginning to confuse ceilings
With night skies.

I am
The insatiable sea
And the rolling tide,
I am what gets buried under the sand
And how long you take to find it.

I'll be whichever type of sorry
Speaks the loudest to you.

I'm always searching for things to be sorry for
And I'm always coming up with ways
To avoid saying it.

I am only delicate under certain kinds of light.

Take me to your dark places,
To all the thoughts that make you cry,
And let me kiss you there.

Show me your darkness and I'll swallow it whole.

"Do you ever think about
How much lighter your heart was back then?"
"Do you ever catch yourself wondering,
'What happened to me'?"

I've been down so long that all my shooting stars
Are just dust bunnies.

I'm just trying to get to a place
Where breathing easily
Doesn't feel like
A luxury.

There's something to be said about a courage
That's been diluted by silence.

I am
The insatiable sea
And the rolling tide.

There's a poem in here somewhere.

Life is a pill that I find best to be swallowed with hard liquor. I felt God-like when I first discovered alcohol; how sweet a bird it was to keep the world at such a distance. I could talk about all the ways I feel like the world owes me something, like it owes me repercussions for all these storms that I've weathered. I am graceless and ***** and bitter. I am teeth and nails and broken smiles. I am a wreck in search of a ship. I throw punches without knowing where they'll land. I act now and I apologize later. I am messier than you wanted. I won't pretend there's anything special about my suffering, I won't pretend it isn't self-inflicted. I tell you it's fine and that I'm used to burning in the fires I start and that I'm not scared of scars or sleeping alone, but my mother says I can't carry all this hurt around inside me forever. She says one day I'll just collapse. One thing I've learned about reality is that it does not have the decency to remove its rings before it hits you hard, so you might as well learn to keep it at a distance.

After what you did to me
I have too much proof
That it is entirely possible
To shatter
Already-broken glass.

I am out of the words
To describe what I feel.

The well is dried up,
I'm all out of poems,
And it is probably better
This way.