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.

Rumor has it
That if you turn the moon upside down
And shake the change from its pockets
You'll almost have enough
To buy back the time that you lost.

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.

Pressing my hands into the asphalt is the closest that I'll ever come
To holding your hand again,
And I'm still sorry for using your heart as an example
Of how some things
Can shatter noiselessly.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Aren't you tired of painting yourself black and blue
Every time words fall short of the fire burning behind your eyes?

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."

One day my life became a book
Written in a language I couldn't understand
And I'm still learning how to decipher
The pages I keep finding sprewn about in the dark.

I curse at the rain
And all the miles in between us
And the way the silence seems to swell
Without your heartbeat to fill it.
I used to never get angry
But since you've left
I've been unfurling rage from my mouth
Like an endless magic scarf.
What am I supposed to do
With all this love in my chest?
Where am I supposed to put
All these poems that I wrote you?
I know the rubble at my feet says otherwise,
But I swear I have the capacity to be gentle,
Let me prove it.
I have been so many different people in my life
But I keep trying in vain
To find the one that you loved momentarily.
I want to be the storm raging in your ribcage,
I want to be the secret you can't keep to yourself,
I want to be the only shape that you pray to,
And I want you to tell me to breathe
So maybe I can find the breath that you've knocked from my lungs
So many poems ago.
Wrap your hands around my throat
And claim sanctuary like you mean it
So that this hell can become home to me once again.

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.

I wonder if she knows about the collection of hearts you keep inside your closet
And I wonder if she can tell mine apart from the rest.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

When you are not looking
Someone will quietly step beside you
And the air will change
And your blood will course redder
And time
Will slowly
Stop.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

Poetry loses it's gravity
When you realize that there's nothing
You could possibly write
To make someone
Love you back.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I want to hold you,
Much like the way spring holds a flower,
And kiss your petals
In the same fashion that the rain
Kisses the ocean
While you bloom in my arms.

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

No matter what I write
Or how I write it,
Nothing will sound as beautiful to me
As the sounds you make
When I touch you.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

I'll stop pretending
Like I know how to love something
Without making it bleed
If you stop pretending
That you don't practice leaving.