I want to experience what it feels like to wholeheartedly love who I've become. To realize that one day the only person I need to keep sane is myself. Independence isn't about doing things on your own as compared to realizing what can be accomplished by yourself. If as if you are surprising and surpassing your own high expectations. And if what they say is true, that we ourselves are our own worst critics, then so be it. But when I wake up in the morning I want to feel proud that I  made it through an eventful dream, unlike the nightmares that still scare me even when I'm awake. Or the gloom that hangs over my mirror every morning while I cake on powders and gloops of color toning make up in order to be suitably eye catching. My push up bras don't even push up my lack of chest fat but in turn let my self confidence sag. I'm not always short enough for the boy I like to be a picture perfect couple. Nor am I tall enough to enjoy how the skyline kisses the horizon. My **** doesn't sway the way my steps take me further and further down judgmental halls with eyes that can shatter someone's assurance of themselves. My skin isn't naturally glowing due to the dull lighting guiding me way through this dim settled life I have set up for myself. The natural hair on top of my head isn't constantly in place; and alike the baby hairs, I myself am flowing wildly by which ever the wind blows. And I wish I can say I will someday appreciate the small things that I believe are physically wrong with me. Like the way my freckles become more noticeable in the summer. Or how my hair becomes darker in the winter. Or how my birthmark on my leg reminds me of South Carolina. Or how my fingers are allowed to touch everything beautiful.
*That's the way I want to be. That's the way I will be.

general t'so what the ****'s this meat made of?
the fluorescent room gleans
off the sheen of fake food,
***** this weak pay stub,
this buffet too
and living off food court food.
hors derves served to
a bunch of augustus gloops
who'll soon sport tubes.

I hope the line short fuses.

I'll be giggling,  
at these wiggling
greedy,
feeding
frenzies
still feeling empty
with stomachs of drains
they feign being friendly
not a morsel of moral thought,
their brain's busy picking
food from the troth
pointing with pickeled pig feet
ruder than all hell
marvelously stinky
laid back in booths
soothing their sweet tooths
mouths oozing drool
drippin onto bibs
turning solids into goo

“and it is all so clear, and everything is liminal
but i'm okay with that!
i am finally so so happy
and i love you and love you and love you,”
a tied tongue loosely mumbles my first name
and then the call drops out.

under a daze, i gather a
stranger’s hair back behind her ears.
her dainty neck cups her head,
and hangs it over the gutter.
she is beautiful and blind
and wreaking of daffodils
and spearmint
but her voice sings of ginger beer.
she acts numb to her ****** knee
dripping on the pavement in gloops.
but she looks right through me,
her arms hover around my neck
“oh, thank you!! i love you!!!”
she doesn’t know my name but
she speaks tenderly
from an acidic tongue,
and wipes her mouth,
on the sleeve of my denim jacket
and staggers back into the hall.

i see an animal at the centre of the road,
it’s leg bone white and pure,
to protrude out from torn brindle,
waiting for the midday sun.

You make cookies in the night time, as the sky goes from dark to black.

You take out your ingredients: your flour, butter, sugar, salt;
you measure them less carefully than you should
throw in an extra touch of cinnamon for flavor.

You look at the consistency, at how much (too much) butter there is,
at the way chocolate melts on your fingers,
oven heat wafting in your face.

You mix and match ingredients, crack an egg,
try not to think about how you've been here before.

Your first batch goes in, eight gloops of batter in what should hold four,
and you pace around, make yourself another cup of coffee.
Try to avoid the fact that you're only hurting yourself.

You're on batch seven, cup five, when you switch to water,
when enough batter has been made you can start to wash the dishes.
And still, here you are: late at night and washing dishes, alone.

(And the familiarity is making the hole in your chest sink down,
lower and lower -- like it wasn't low enough already.)

If there was a checklist, it would go:
  1. Have you been eating consistently?
       (No, not proper meals. But I'm trying.)
  2. Have you been sleeping well, or enough, lately?
       (No, not really. But it's inconsistent, so at least there's that.)
  3. Have you recently had a panic attack?
       (Yes. Yesterday. Twice.)
  4. Have you been feeling miserable or unspeakably sad, lately?
       (Yes. I've spent the past three days on the edge of tears, but that's fine.)

You finish the dishes, and you arrange them, neatly,
pull on the oven mitts again and take batch eight out of the oven.
Your podcast has ended so you take out your earphones, one batch left,
and the silence of the air around you is
stifling.
              suffocating.

(You did this for a year, once.
You had an abundance of baking ingredients,
                      an empty house,
                            an inability to sleep.
You asked your friends what baked goods they liked,
and then you'd give them as birthday presents.
Because you had the time.
Because you didn't have to think about buying a gift.
Because it gave you something to do with your hands.
Because seeing your friends' faces light up, even just for a moment--
                            it thawed the misery, just a bit.)

Your eyes sting, but you don't cry, as you turn the oven off,
start to stack the cooled cookies into tupperware containers.
You scrub and scrub at your cutting board turned cooling rack,
until only a hint of chocolate imprint remains,
look at the creations you've made,
and try to feel proud.