If you make me beg for it
I will make sure
You will be begging me to stop.

Whiskey keeps my heart alive,
But disintegrates my mind.
Its a fair trade, I guess.

People 'round here only leave town
To be buried somewhere quieter.
I hope you understand why I run from them.

You have skin made out of steel
But that's a good thing, I guess,
Considering how the pressure of your hand feels on my thigh
And how it holds the weight of the entire sea.

I want to break into your liquor cabinet
And write my name on the bottoms of all the bottles
So you can be reminded
Of why you're drinking in the first place.

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.

Due to the graphic nature of the universe, creative expression is advised.

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

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

The same day I was born,
God started writing you a long winded apology
For all the things I would do to you
That I would not have the guts to apologize for.

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.

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.

When you broke
The paramedics couldn't tell the difference
Between my hands
And the shattered glass I was clutching,
Because the rainbow shards
That made up my heart blended with yours
And they laughed at us for being foolish enough
To think that letting the light shine through
Our impure glass hearts
Was a good idea.

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.

Isn't it ironic that
The feeling of abandonment
Doesn't know
How to leave you?

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.

When I was younger, I longed to be beautiful. To have shiny hair, soft skin, collarbones poking through my flesh.
Now that I'm older, I want to burn hearts with intelligence and warm souls with compassion. I want to boil blood with wit and spark imaginations with creativity. I want to soak up the rays of sunny praise for my artwork and poetry rather than my eyes and lips.
I am not programmed with a self destruct button, but calling me beautiful for the wrong reasons is the second best thing.

Rumor has it that the light between your teeth still asks for me by name
But I am trying to let go of the things that have long since left me.

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.

Dissect me;
Rip me apart and examine my pieces.
Leave open the holes you cut,
Look at the gaps and claim you can only love me as a whole.
And if you ever miss me,
Look closely at the cracks in your lips,
The bottoms of your shoes,
Between your forefinger and thumb;
You'll find me right where you left me.

You can get tattoos removed
And that in itself is proof
That things that you thought would last forever
May not be so.

I like the way the light reflects from your shattered heart,
Kaleidoscoping without repeating ablaze
At the edge of luminescence.

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.

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."

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.

She leaves a lump of emotion in your throat,
A string of topaz around your neck,
And a sense of wonder in her wake.
She is a collection of faults,
Sweet imperfections,
A series of dents in a smooth surface.
She smokes her cigarettes as an apology
For breathing
And loves the feeling of holding hands,
But with a wine bottle.
Her blood has been replaced with whiskey
And bad decisions
And she'll touch you like poetry,
Sweetly, making you feel like
You're not alone.
She is drenched in honey and holy water
And you want to lick it off her,
Craving the taste with every fiber of your being.
She is violently beautiful,
That honey drenched dreamer.

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.

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 woke up with ****** knuckles again
And I think it's my body's way of saying
What my pride won't let me.

Generally speaking,
You're like the moon
Because you both just come and go
As you please,
Despite me begging you to stay.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

Some people only live vicariously through danger;
Others, like us, are curious enough to participate.

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."

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

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.

You
Are the sum
Of your experiences,
And it's how you respond
To those experiences
That define you.
But boy,
You better be relentless with me
Because our desires do not define,
They confine.

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.

I am nothing but a carcass,
Gorgeously corroding,
A mind that slowly decays over time
And flesh that mimicks my insides.
And within a couple short centuries
I will be nothing but dust,
memories,
And a cracked headstone.

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.

I feel nothing but a heartbeat in my head
When your hands are doors closing around my throat,
Trying to force your name from these lips.
Instead I bite my tongue and pretend to enjoy
The taste of the blood filling my mouth.
I much prefer the taste of it
To the lie you so desperately want me to feed you.
I'll keep my liquor lips from you,
I won't allow you to get drunk off of my kisses.
I won't allow the blood flowing through my teeth
To pass from my mouth to yours.
True love is biting your tongue
And pretending you don't mind the taste of blood.

Did you know
That if your lover cracks your ribs
Just right,
You can almost hear God softly saying
That he's sorry?
The bruises on my torso
And the "Get Well Soon" cards
That are arranged on my mantel
Are proof.

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

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 like to call
The blood dripping from my mouth
Poetry,
But everyone can see
The scarlet drops
For what they truly are;
A death wish
And a drunken kiss.

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