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.

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.

You're dangerous when you walk towards me
But you're the apocalypse when you walk away.

You're more concerned with finding out who drew blood first
Than you are with the fact that I'm still bleeding.

I tell you I'm in pain and you ask me where it hurts
So I point to the packed bag that is sitting by the door.

The day that I told you I don't like liars
Is the day that you stopped telling me that I am a good person.

I am
a multitude of selves
determined to find
the one
that you wanted.

I am
more safe than sorry
and I
have always been
more sordid
than saintly.

The softness that resides in me
is scarce
but it's yours.

This softness is
the storm cloud over your head
and the ache
you've been drinking about.

This won't **** you
but it'll make you
bleed.

This is
the tiredness that sleep
can't fix,
this melancholy,
this melody,
the holes in butterfly nets.

We are
faulty dreamcatchers.

I can't tell
if this has been calculated
or careless
or which thought makes me more
sick of myself.

But there is something to be said
about a hope
that refuses to die
even after you've shown it
where it is to be buried.

Sometimes I'm not even sure
what I'm sorry for,
but I've learned to say it
just in case.

I was never your baby,
we were just
killing
time.

My apologies are like offering medication to a patient
Who's illness has already been deemed untreatable.

Let me try to explain
Why I'm obsessed with words like "shatter"
And the notion of something intangible breaking in half;
It is just the outpouring of all of my brokenness
Disguised as poetry.
I spent so much time watching the blood leave my body,
Thinking, "This is what it is to be humbled",
That I didn't realize the difference between my heart and a house fire.
It is simply what you are able to replace after everything
Has finished burning.
Lay back and let me show you all the different ways
That I have learned to say I'm sorry
While you blow your smoke into my mouth.
Don't throw hope away,
Gently set it on the floor and ask it politely
To take away your wallowing and self-inflicted misery.
Realize that expectations spell out heartache
In the strangest ways
And that I am still unlearning self destruction.
See that I am trying to wear my anger out,
To exhaust myself to the point of surrender for both of our sakes.
Let your pride crumble, let your knees give
Let's be something good for me to write about.
You can tell the next one that there was no hope for me,
Tell her that there is no redemption for arsonists who cry for their victims,
But remember that my intentions were good
And if you had bothered to kiss me you would've tasted the ashes
And you would've known better.

If everyone's always pretended to love you
Maybe you've learned to play along too.

I am a hole
No substance
No matter
Nothing matters.
"You matter."

The only thing that has any weight to it
Is you,
It's you who holds me down
And stops me from floating away
Into the abyss of
Stoic thoughts
That tumble through my mind.

My lungs are shrinking with the pain of missing you;
You seem so far away
Even though you're beneath my fingers,
And the only thing running through my mind
Is your voice
Saying, "You can't be a child forever."

When he holds me, I become small.
When he looks at me, my confidence disintegrates.
When he kisses me,
I can feel the weight of his lips
Holding me down
From everything.
"Yes I can," I reply.

Drive your sharp words into me like daggers
And watch me bleed excuses for you onto my bedroom floor.

They told me to paint what I felt
So I left the canvas
Blank.

Sometimes the feeling of loneliness becomes so tangible that the void seems to swallow you from the inside out, emanating from the stomach and reaching out, engulfing the body like a fist closing around a tumbler of whiskey.
This void takes on a weight; light at first, bearable. The tumbler of whiskey with a resting hand around it. Then the fist begins to close so forcefully and the cylindrical glass of the tumbler has no choice but to shatter from it. The glass shards scatter and the whiskey flows and the fist still keeps closing. Always closing. Never resting.
Never resting.
Sometimes when I miss you, when I feel like a tumbler of whiskey enclosed in your fist, I imagine your voice inside my head singing along to your favourite song. I imagine your arms around me, your hand spreading warmth up my thigh, your tongue dancing along my collarbones, up my neck, and tracing the bottom of my earlobe. I am not beautiful but your mouth has me almost convinced that I could be.
Sometimes when your arms are around me, I feel like that tumbler of whiskey encased in a fist. When you kiss me, I feel myself shatter and I feel the whiskey run. But it's not whiskey, it's love. It pours out of me whenever you sing the wrong lyrics to your favourite song.

Sometimes when I think of you, my lungs feel like they're shrinking and I imagine your voice in my head
Telling me that you still think about me in that dress.
Sometimes when I'm kept awake at night, I imagine you're having trouble sleeping too
Because the weight of my hand is not holding you still.
Sometimes I get so tired of waking up alone with the lights on and my heart in my throat,
That I can't help but imagine a million ways to tell you that I love you
Without using the actual words.
But did I ever tell you about the day I woke up as a fire?
Or how the voice that echoed in my skull once told me, "This is what you are now"?

I am burning alive,
I am screaming, "Fire",
And I am holding the lighter.

Some days I get so scared that I feel it throughout my entire body
And I feel too heavy to move.
I've been trying to retrace my steps for years,
Trying to recall where I buried the body of the girl I once dreamed of becoming,
But I am paralyzed with terror when I realize how gentle you are
And that I want to fill your lungs with whispers of poetry, your ribcage with hand-picked wildflowers, and your mind with thoughts of me in that dress.
If I could just make you feel a fraction of this war in my chest then maybe
You could see why I am in love with the sunlight that is pouring out of your mouth
But I'm too busy chasing shadows to admit it.
Some day all this pain will be so beautiful to us,
But until then,
Don't expect to show up at my doorstep with your heart in your hands and have me cup your face and welcome you home,
I have a terrible habit of locking the door.

Lately there have been days where I catch myself looking for you in the strangest places;
In train stations, sanctuaries, the corners of your room that you never set foot in,
And there have been days where I feel so small that just leaving my bed seems like the bravest thing I've ever done.
I blame it on the way you seem to swallow my darkness without absorbing it,
The way my chest tightens at the thought of your touch,
The way I cradle the ashes of what we once were.
We ruined each other with passion and fire,
And there are days where that fire still burns in my chest, migrates to my head,
And my skull begins to feel like a whiskey glass in a bar fight.
These days no one ever tells you about the difference between heat and warmth,
You learn it yourself when his hands scorch your skin and his fire burns through you
While he pours lighter fluid down your throat.
I wake up as a stranger in my body these days and I whisper to the mirror, "I just want to go home"
And thoughts of you remind me of how to get there.
It seems like we're straddling the line between love and Stockholm syndrome
And it's automatic for me to call you by your sins rather than your name,
But these are the days when I need you to lap up this nectar and hear this truth,
As well as all the blurred intentions behind every "I miss you."

Tell her in another world you're close enough to hold her
Tell her about your affinity for that which is not manmade but is still breakable
Tell her she's malleable in a way that makes things afraid to touch her
Tell her how you misspelled "perfection" using the letters of her name
Tell her you don't want to drink unless it's from the dips of her collarbones
Tell her she's your favourite China shop
Tell her you knew she liked it rough
Tell her she'll shatter under the weight of your softness
Tell her she's not like the other girls before her
Tell her she's the question and the answer
Tell her she's more light than tunnel
Tell her she's art
Tell her she makes you believe in God
But just don't tell her you still call me when you're drunk

I wish I could sink my teeth in,
Become lockjawed,
Deadbolt,
A parasite,
Anything known to stay
Beyond its welcome.
I will carve my name on your heart
With a blade
Rather than write it in lead,
So you cannot simply erase me.
You'll never find my fingerprints
But you can be **** sure
I'll leave a scar.
I will teach myself to be permanent
Even if it means being painful.

I'm sorry for all of the nights
I would go swimming in bottles
and not your eyes.

I am the poem
On the roof of your mouth
Caught in your throat,
I am whirring in your stomach
In the soles of your shoes
In the ground beneath you.
I am everything you wish to say
To bring to the surface
And make tangible.
The whiskey in your hand makes you brave
Maybe this time you'll let me loose?
Maybe this time you'll open my cage door
And be honest with yourself?
Maybe not.
Imagine what we would be like
If we knew how to be honest
Without being drunk first.

You said you'd love me til the end
And I constantly find myself wondering
When it all ended for you.

His compassion disgusted me.
I thrived on the **** of the Earth
And he just wanted to fix it,
like scrubbing the poetry off of bathroom stalls.
I told him, "Baby, love me violently,
See my soft spots and sink your teeth in.
No point in trying to fight my demons
When they've already won."

We swallow these pills
And we swallow our pride
And we swallow our tongues
And we swallow the truth,
All the while pretending
We don't feel the burn
As they slide down our throats.
Choke down this nectar,
This sweetness,
I want it to set your tongue on fire.
You need to take it all
In unrecommended doses.
All these pills,
All these lies,
All these hearts;
Swallow them and taste the heat
And watch as they crawl
Back out of our mouths
And set our lives ablaze
with melancholic thoughts.

A girl like a wildflower in the way that
You picked her and brought her home
But your mother still insisted
That you wash your hands.
A girl like a forest fire in the way that
She is uncontrollable, without direction
And you know you should
Avoid the inevitable destruction.
A girl like the moon in the way that
She is too far for you to stretch out
And reach her with your hands.
A girl like a love letter in the way that
She was something to smile about
On the days where you were
A prospective bridge-jumper.
A girl like a galaxy in the way that
She was full of wonders
But there were far too many
To fully explore.
A girl like a cigarette in the way that
no matter how bad you knew she was
For you, you just
Couldn't quit her.

I apologize in advance for spilling my boiled blood on the floor of your bedroom
But I am running out of ways to show you the wax and whiskey running through these veins.
I'm sorry for showing up at your doorstep with every watch I could carry
But I needed to show you how the clocks laugh every time you tell me "forever".
I may not be pretty enough for you but I promise
I can shatter every mirror until I look like something Picasso would stutter at.
It seems like I'm down to my very last petal but if you give me a moment
I could gather the fallen ones from my feet and arrange them on your mattress
And pull you down to it by your hips to show you how much I adore you.

One day you'll grow up
And your eyes will stop reflecting galaxies
And start reflecting the weather.

The holiest places have graffiti in the stalls
The most sacred alters are surrounded by bar stools and covered in half emptied glasses
The most beautiful hymns sound like your breath in my ear as you tell me you want to take me home
The sincerest of "amen"s come in the form of me fixing my lipstick as you pay the tab
There was never a place for wild children
So now we just worship in bars.

Do you know what it's like
To live a life
Shoved to my knees,
Begging a dysfunctional God
To condemn me always
To the darkness
To the silence
To the numbness
Of a life without a heart?

I want to feel the build at the tip of your tongue,
I want to feel you move through me in waves
That detonate the pleasure running through my body.
I want to feel the bubbles skimming their way
Up my blossoming body,
Creating pathways made for your palms,
For your perfect fingers,
For your uniquely possessing touch.
I want to feel your lips linger on my sunbathed skin
As I trace patterns with my fingernails into your flesh.
I want to feel your love scorch me inside and out
While your fingers burn,
Destroying me
In the most beautiful way I could imagine.

Thoughts of loving me aren't so hard
With a gun barrel in between your teeth
But I guess I just wasn't meant
To be loved up close.

How many people can jump before a bridge begins to hate itself?

Do you know how many times I've begged someone not to disappear?
Do I need to show you the burn marks on my throat?
I'm tired of being all bitten tongues and twisted hearts and
Keeping shovels in every room of the house in case something needs to be buried.

We are children with skinned knees and hope for tomorrow
Tucked into our back pockets.
Children with selfish wants who are blindly stumbling.
Children of the sun, children caught between the cracks.
Children who are sloppy in love with people
Who don't love us back.
Children with hands stretched out like daggers towards the moon.
Children begging for the ability to weaponize our words.
Children carved from granite and marble,
Laced with gold and stardust
And we just want to be heard.

He so desperately wishes
That he could be
A storm cloud,
For I have learned
That I am no good
At hearing whispers.
You must come at me
With the power of a hurricane.

You kiss me with her name hidden under your tongue
And I pretend that I can't taste her.

Draw forest fires into my skin
Set me ablaze with your fingertips
Ignite me with everything we've ever been
Burn with me

Unfamiliar sounds,
The scent of a city
Where too many people have
No place to go.
I have been here before
Standing at the edge,
The edge of a place
I am unable to name.
I am homeless with them,
And as they pray for change,
I pray for arms
That once made me feel
Like I belong.

You wake in a crowded room
Filled with versions of yourself that have died
Because they were never loved,
And suddenly you realize
Why you're there, too.