We are hydrocarbons
We all burn
We are all laughed at
And we all get our turn

We produce our own enemies
We almost smother ourselves in sadness
We all release CO2
When we die from this poem's badness

We all want to be superior
We all want to be the equalizer
We want to be leerier
Without being the sympathizer

We smite and are smited
We hurt and we heal
We spite and are spited
And have a tenuous relationship with what's real

We are hydrocarbons
We are equal despite what we aspire
And if you don't agree
I'll light you on fire

The Gazelle, forced down to the bed
Her cries, filling inside her womb
Her crimes, fester over her body
painted like an open wound.
What crime is being prey—
What sin is weakness,
to be smited by The Lion?

The Gazelle, pinned across the bed
Clawing — shrieking — kicking —
The Lion is stronger still.
Thoughts of God bring thoughts of repent.
And today — tonight — tomorrow, The Lion leads her sermon
The Gazelle pleads mercy.
The Lion consumes her.

The Gazelle, lying vacant on the bed
Apologies fill the stagnant air
Regret — wrath — sorrow stains the sheets.
The Gazelle knows not what made the full lion feast.
Her blame is hers, pointed inward and not out
The Lion leaves.
The Gazelle — torn — seeks The Hyenas.

This year has been... So hard. It's been so ******* hard. There were times when I didn't know if I would make it. Times when I didn't think I had it in me to keep going and going after what I want and what I need, when they're always such long shots. Such dreams. Such ambitious dreams... I wanted to quit so many times. When **** left, I wanted to quit. I wanted to crawl under the blankets and stop being. I spent 3 days on Angela's couch after that night. I can never sleep in my own bed when I am truly broken down. I lose my home when I am raw inside. Couches, empty rooms, it doesn't matter where I hide but it can't be where I live. I wonder why that is. She couldn't have picked a worse time to tell me she loved me as much as I loved her and that it didn't matter. And then you... you were off in another world, off in another country finding yourself and your footing and everyone but me. You stopped answering my How Are You's. You didn't tell me happy birthday. Neither did ****. That was the first time I realized why holidays are the hardest for people who are sad. If you love someone and you are waiting for them to forgive you for being who you are, birthdays, Christmases, every holiday becomes a ticking clock: She has to say something. Will she say something? Will she really ignore me TODAY? Today, when the person who hated me most in high school said "Happy Birthday!! :D" on my wall on facebook? Today, when even my neighbor who grumbles about us being too loud grumbled a Merry Christmas? It becomes an agony when you realize that the answer is yes long before the day is over. Then you have to watch the hours tick by, trying not to hope, and by the end of it you just want it to be over, you don't even care anymore- you just want her not to have a reason to speak to you again, so that it won't mean QUITE so much that she is silent.
I had a lot of special days like that this year.
I wanted to quit when they told me I was small. When they told me I was quiet and bland, like vanilla icecream. The beast that lives behind my ribcage shook the bars that day and howled. (I spent a lot of time with it this year. We still hate each other, but we have uneasily realized that we are all we have.) That was the day I truly broke. **** was gone. You were gone. And the only thing I had to truly count on was suddenly in question. It was now or never, it was be better than your best, and I was barely hanging on. It was be a hundred and ten percent, when the past few months had whittled me down to a shadow of a person who barely remembered what it was to be fifty. It was push harder than you've ever pushed at the moment you are about to collapse and you thought you were going to be able to rest.
Those days made me. I hate that they made me. I hate that the biggest parts of me come from the days that eviscerated me, but they do.
I wanted to quit when **** came back and saw what I'd become. "You're wearing fake eyelashes?" she said, because she always did notice any weakness. She didn't say she saw my sunken cheeks, and the fire behind my eyes that meant I was afraid to die. "PROMISE ME you'll stay this time." I said, and I grabbed her shoulders. "But only if you mean it."
"I promise." she said.
She didn't mean it.
I knew, though. Somehow I knew that the girl I loved had left her behind, a changeling, a stranger. I tried to believe, but when she left the shock was only surface: I was too tired to be rocked to the core.
Then came the days when I truly didn't have a plan. I spent a few weeks on the couch. Anyone who reads this will not have seen me with ***** hair, in week old clothes, skinny and sleeping all the time. I make sure they never see. But for a few weeks, I had no one to pretend for and no reason to pretend and no reason to live. I only knew I WANTED to. Even then, from the couch, with my show babbling in the background, I thought, "There's gotta be something. A reason will come. I just have to wait." And a reason did come. It wasn't a very good reason, but it didn't have to be: Reasons to live are not really the reasons we live. The truth is that if you want to live, you will FIND a reason, every time. You will create one. My reason didn't mean a thing in the details. All it meant was that I was ready to rejoin the world, and live again.
I spent a lot of the in between months living on the surface of myself, just getting my feet wet. I went to work. They didn't know me there. Didn't ask. I liked that, it was simple. I waited tables, I cleaned up, and if I quietly did what I did, nobody bothered me. The biggest thing I could **** up was somebody's lunch. It was comforting. I chatted with customers as if I wasn't who I was. I was their smiling waitress with her hand on her hip, a hot *** of coffee, and a clever quip. That was a part of learning to live again, too. It was hard to stand there all day and listen to the radio. Memories would hit me and I would be unable to run away from them the way I could elsewhere. I learned to breathe through the pain, and discovered that it became muscle memory to endure it. It was almost easy by the end. The only deep thing I did with this time was to read Girl, Interrupted. As with most life changing books, I hadn't thought much of picking it up. I hadn't expected it to change me. But reading it, I could have wrote it myself. I knew how she felt, every moment, and the things she said stuck with me, stuck to me- the raw wounds that were still healing  inside me scarred around her words.
Then came the reckless stage. I was waking up. I began to listen to music again. I began to drive without knowing where I was going. I began to make choices just to see if they'd jar me enough to snap me back to my old self. They didn't. I didn't find myself again until just before school started.
Poor Giles (my car, the car that saved my life) was the cost of it. A rainy night, a loud song, and too much grief. Things really do slow down when you crash, you know. I thought they just did that in movies to be dramatic, but they don't, it's real. When I went off the road I knew I'd lost control. My mind was way ahead of me. My body wasn't in the place I thought it should be, and I remember distinctly but calmly wondering why it wouldn't listen to me and do what I wanted (it was, in fact, being thrown around by the force of the crash, and the signals from my brain saying "Move your arm!" couldn't compete with whiplash.) I woke up with the car crunched against a tree, on the driver's side, and the frame 6 inches from my face.
I didn't feel anything.
My body cried and shook as they strapped me to a stretcher, but inside I wasn't in control. I was sitting back quizzically. The moment they got me out of the car I knew I was unhurt. They cut off my clothes. My favorite bra was another casualty of that day. Cut right in half- the leopard bra I wore in the first scene I ever did in front of the UConn faculty for midterms last year. While they were wheeling me from test to test, I wondered if that was somehow symbolic. Flash forward to being in bed in a tiny room, a doctor giving me back my bellybutton ring, me asking where the pentagram necklace that **** gave me the night we met was, getting it back, putting it on. The IV in my arm was cold. I hate IVs. My mom cried, and I cried, but I still wasn't scared or sad. I cried because tears came out. It was a surreal experience, crying like that.
I didn't wake up fully from my brokenness until the nurse came in and said, "I'm so sorry, but we need your room. I'm going to have to put you in the hall." I shrugged, and they stuck me in the hall just outside. I watched them wheel a bedraggled looking man in. He was muttering. He reminded me of my uncle, the alcoholic, the one who had died the previous fall. I had a hunch that they probably had a lot in common. Interest piqued, I eavesdropped as they bustled around and talked to him. He had tried to **** himself.
That was when I woke up. I didn't really know it, but that was the moment. It was the first moment in months that I remembered my real reason. I asked my mother for a piece of paper to draw on, and she dug in her purse to find it. Ten minutes later I faked having to go to the bathroom so they'd unhook me from my tubes. I had a feeling my mother would think it improper if I told the truth. Before she could object, I slipped into his room, and handed him the paper. I said, "I made this for you. I hope you feel better." I wish I remembered exactly what I'd written. It was a simple little note and a doodle of a rose, and it said that he mattered, and that I cared about him. I got back in bed, sheepish, and my mom was as nervous about my infringement on someone else's life as I'd guessed she'd be. Five minutes later, though, the nurse came over with a piece of torn paper. He had written back to me. His handwriting was shaky and simple, like a child. I have that note hung up in my bedroom at home. He said, "You have touched my heart. Thank you! I will keep your rose in my heart. This is a life changing moment for me... Thank you!" I wondered if there was a plan, then. I wondered if all of that, the sadness, the crash, everything, had led me to be in that hospital and say something to that man that changed his life. And maybe it didn't change at all, I don't know. But I know that that moment changed me.
Back at school, I had a few blissful moments with you. A few nights of hand holding, a few beautiful kisses. I slowly taught myself not to run from you when I felt the gravity of my love separate me by the molecule. I found that I did have the courage it took to be in your arms, and that is when you lost the courage to hold me. Still, I'd take all of my grief and more for one moment with you, and I'll keep you in my heart till the day I die, whether or not you stick around.
In class, I was the first to break. To cry. Over months, I cracked open and a lot of the tears that fell were very old, and scalding. I hadn't known I was suffering until the cracks in me were widened and focused on. One day after a particularly raw moment, I walked across the street to the tattoo parlor. I didn't stop, I didn't think, and I got a tattoo that very moment. My butterfly, on my shoulder, to remind me that changing hurts, growing hurts. I loved how much it hurt. (Nobody said I was recovered fully.)
Suddenly then there was a choice before me. An opportunity and a challenge. Do something to make them remember why they chose you. Fight. Win. I dug deep. I thought, what can I say that I mutter to myself in the shower when I am not thinking about anything? What words have stuck to me? I dug, and I found Susanna Kaysen again. At 3 in the morning I sat in a chair, in the dark, in the center of the bare rehearsal studio and tore myself open.
I found the girl who, this past summer, in the thick of everything, had called McClean and tried to get a bed. Who for a week had begged to be somebody else's problem. I called a hotline. I wasn't suicidal, but only because I don't have it in me, no matter how bad I feel. I called and got a voicemail. Desperate, I called UMASS Memorial. I remember they told me that if I wasn't a physical danger to myself or others they couldn't help me, and I remember this phrase tumbling out of my mouth before I could filter it, "Should I just go slit my wrists and call you right back, then?"
I had asked for help, and the answer, resoundingly, was no. And so I spent those weeks on the couch, and then I got up and dealt with the fallout. There was no other way.
I found her and I invited her to say something. And what came out was... The biggest ******* to the things that had beaten me down those past months. I kept the lights off. I put on Bleed Like Me and danced without looking where I was going. I held myself to the chair and tried to escape. I screamed into a pillow until no sound came out. And I found Susanna Kaysen. And I freed the part of me that wanted to talk with all those wiser than thou gods who toyed with the thread of my fate, teasing it with blades- I found **** this. **** being hurt. **** being broken. **** being judged. **** anyone who looked at me and thought they knew what was inside, because Susanna was inside, no, someone different, even, than her- someone, something, angry and wild and powerful and dangerous, and she laughed, and I laughed, and we began to plan just how to say "**** this."
I spent a night with you, during that time. You held my hands. You said they were beautiful. You told me about yourself. You kissed me. You wrote, "Galaxies" on my thumb. I didn't write it on my ribs until I was sure that I'd want it there whether or not I was mad at you. I didn't have long to wait- you ran away again, and I tried to love you anyway, and I succeeded. I still try. I still succeed. It's not getting much easier, but if I know one thing it's that if I
Just
Don't
Give
Up
SOMETHING will happen. Something will come to me. If I know one thing it's that I can keep going even when I have no reason to, even when I have no fuel, even when I am utterly empty. If I just take the next step, and the next, one by one, I will end up SOMEWHERE new, and I will find SOMETHING to love. That is what I learned this year. By all accounts.... this year kind of ******. Although I had scattered moments of utter joy, I had long, smudged months of misery. But having gone through it, I am almost nostalgic. Because it proved to me, even more, that I am not fragile. I'm emotional, I'm intense, I'm unstable, but ******, I am NOT fragile. Like iron being smited, I went through the fire, I was hit over and over in my weakest places, but... in the end I have emerged, and I am not gone. And I am not fragile. Welcome, 2015.

I thought I’d be smited, right then and there

The red gravel spilling into the dugout

Was now plastic aquarium rocks

I was in a bowl, drowning underwater

It felt like drowning a lot of the time I was out there

Mostly because I was easily distracted and couldn’t play softball for ****

When Paige kissed me, I cried

Now, those pieces of red dirt
were a hellfire beneath me.

My religious upbringing was the kind that’s secretly stifling. The kind that permeates so deep that to act against it is to act against yourself.

This generational inherited catholic guilt.

The idea that I should be unimportant and unassuming and sinning was important in a bad way.

I knew I would only get one trip to the bathroom per service, I planned it carefully each week

So that it would take the most time

So I could stand in the great hall and twiddle my thumbs

As we were  forbidden to re-enter the chapel while the father was speaking

I am forbidden from many things as a child.

I’m forbidden from tears as if I’m not important enough to have them.

I am not stone and my tears are not blood. I am not a miracle. I am not a sight to behold. I am not a message from god.

I am not the prophetic ****** Mary in my mother’s dreams the night a relative passes.

I am not allowed to love without meaning.

When Paige kissed me I cried.

I had to tell everyone in t-ball that I was 5 when I was only 4 because my mother wanted me to start a year early.

I hid the sign up forms they gave us at school each year, but my mom would register me in person.

Every year she’d tell me, just one more year, this can be the last one.

This went on for nine years.

After I made my first communion. I asked to quit

I had to study five more years to make my confirmation sacrament, effectively promising I’d stay in the church,
before my mother would let me leave.

The irony was lost on her.

When Paige kissed me I cried.

What a cruel way to hurt someone. This was worse than the tripping, the taunting, the terrorizing.

Her tenderness.

I often wondered why she treated me as she did—I was already an ugly duckling, a left fielder, a loser.

Her mom was the coach, and she was the best on the team. They all listened to her, which meant they all hated me.

She’d call me a **** and pull my hair.

When paige kissed me, I cried

Why couldn’t it have been anyone else, why not natalie johnston

I never told anyone else, I decided it wasn’t my secret to share.

But I am tired of keeping secrets of what people who hate me did to my body.

Retrospectively, it’s easy to try to be flattered. I’m sure it was hard and weird for her to have those feelings.

I’m sure she expressed them as well as she could.

But I didn’t want Paige to kiss me.

I WANTED Paige to stop calling me a ****.

I wanted her get hit in the face with a softball

and I wanted it to shove her nose into her brain.

And I wanted her to die.

And

I prayed for her to die.

The twigs and branches of her charred wings remained motionless as her head hung heavy
Criss crossed and and worn, behind rainy willow leaves
two watering celestial spheres swirled
until they sat fixed at her feet
a frayed hole, at the tip of her shoe
sailed at the bow, propelled by grass stains and dew
a hard working crew: refreshed from the sky, displayed for the gods
Were smited there on the seas by her whispering angelic frauds

Reached for the ax
angled it right
one fell swoop shall set things right

hand full of vines
she looked back at herself
Through the black holes in her eyes

but even this wasn't good enough

nor the fallen leaves upon roof tops

You're beautiful

Her heart leaked though sweat soaked pores hardening into
black fragmented biotite to hold her in the prison of her own piousness

Feldspar crystal kneecaps vine intertwining into the lost rock city
Rita was your lascivious sin worth stitching your soul with
Zizyphus Spina Christi to the barren waste lands of your repentance

He kissed you while standing in death's door with sickened veins
You grasped hold and pulled him back from the shadows of the valley
He loved you by the alter of your Father as you bled your tongue in silence

You vowed to lay with no other man than Him almighty
But your vow broke like straw in the sweet summer heat
Now your head remains bowed waiting for your soft breeze of forgiveness

As the ground shifts, as the wind blows
Your body shudders, slipping fragments of your nose, ears, arms, feet, *******, eyes, and fingers slide from you
As your lips crumble to rest upon your thigh
You cry out, vibrations leading to your demise.

Screaming for the ones who have forsaken, weeping for Him who has smited you by turning your soul to stone.

Though it all with in your eternal poignancy, and never ending rage

You're still magnificent.
I don't believe that shall come to pass.

What should you do with a second-hand muse--
inspiration spent, and by his mistress abus’d?:
Feed him some grapes under cliffsides and clouds,
sit him under a tree;  read him verses aloud.
Make him a spectre of love unrequited,
tell him of enemies that you’d like smited.
Recount  transgressions, and triumphs and losses;
ponder Cruel Fate and the luck of coin tosses.
Tell him of all of your sins now excused--
how the Judge and the Jury have been recused.
And that any dream, urge, or whim can be used--
but you simply cannot go on as a-mused.

Dear God, why do u love me, why did u create me, why haven't u smited me yet. Dear god, I don't deserve to live, I keep messing up,  and I always say im going to change but I don't. I just go back to doing the same bad things, and I don't know why? I guess I'm just addicted, afflicted by temptation, and it got me feeling sickly. God I need u to heal me of these deeds, I admit that am caught up in this selfish ambition. I think I may need rehab God because I'm just stuck in this eternal circle and can't get out of it. The guilt and shame is getting to me, I don't want to go to hell, yet I keep up with this dark secret of mine. People think im so holy, that I can't do anything wrong, but they only see the mask I put on, to hide what's on the inside. I fake myself, I'm such a hypocrite, I judge but don't want judgment. God this is my confession, and I know that this life u gave me is such a blessing, that I should not be wasting. I was lost in this darkness of mine walking blind, till u found me, and gave me a sign. God I need that sign again, because I'm back to my darkness. Dear God please forgive me for my sins, even though I don't deserve it.

see to me
god doesn't make any sense
why would someone anyone
higher being..
put us here to live a happy life..
or a bad one
or a sad one
or a psychotic, messed up one..
to just have us die..
like literally have no meaning on earth
to have eternal happiness in some other dimensional plane..
why, would he forgive ALL sins..
how do you forgive someone for killing a child
how do you forgive someone for molesting their own children
how do you forgive someone for going against your teachings
and throwing away everything you've strived to make people not do
just to forgive them when the say
"please god forgive me"
how does a god let small children suffer cancer and sickness for no reason?
how does god take the lives of the innocent with car crashes and drug abuse?
free will?
because he "needed" them where ever the **** "he" is??
maybe if he does exist i'll be smited for thinking this..
i'll be banned to the all eternal fire pit that is hell..
but how can he think that someone like me wouldn't think like this??
there is after all no proof of his existence..
the only proof i have that I exist is that i can see myself..
that's it..
i can't see him..
i can't feel him..
i don't know him..
prove me wrong..

Just want you to know that you can all go to hell. Everyone wants to taste, gives the chase, everyone wants a piece, a slice, for no price. no one really gives a s. My exs forsake me, my mother never forgave me, my father forgot all about me, they tell my brothers that I'm crazy. Once a girl who wore her heart on her sleeve, jaded from being Amongst Thieves. Can't trust nobody, cuz they all just want to be me. No one sees the pain, the hurt, jus listen to the lies, as my name is **** through the dirt. The Asians hated me, the blacks steal my guys, my name, and my pride from me, they say they want to support me, but they don't realize they just degrading me. The whites smile in my face, as they stab me in my back. Living everyday with the lies they put forward, it's harder than reaching for the stars untoward. This cross is too heavy, it's too much to bear, every Rock they throw is more wear and tear, my body barely drags on, everyday is a different challenge yet the same with this cross too much to wear. My exs forsake me, my mother has never forgiven me, and my father forgotten me, while they tell my brothers that I'm just crazy. The other day I was just verbally attacked by another, all she tryina do is smother, my last will, my last Flame, is smited by those who smile in my face, and talk behind my back. Her white devil coming out, yet im The one still left out. In the rain, the cold, the dark, all i need is one spark. The wound in my back grows, I feel like I'm bleeding out, in this Darkness, I'm lost with no way out. Some Say buy a gun, you have to fight for your right, stand up tall. Well I feel like I have done all, I spit into the wind and it smacks me in the face, left in shame and disgrace. I fight this fight alone, unarmed, and unprepared for the battles thrown my way, so my shoulders slump, as I try to give jump, and I end up just a big pile of nothing, a lump. People walk over me, kick me when I'm down, then ask why do I frown? I Ask myself how long was the score, how long must this go on, but they say it's just begun. You must suffer, you must take it all, for you brought this on, the squall. It is you who beckons the evil from others within, and it is you who must bear this Smite and Smothers, for in the end you will grow stronger my dear. I am called out, cussed out, stabbed in the back, and this wound will not heal. This mental mind-f has left me empty inside, and just trying to hide. Everyone believes that these demons that haunt me are my own, but they play blind deaf and dumb to those that taunt me. These bullies throw out harmful threats, but that's not what scares me, it's how those react around me, who are not there for me, to love, to support, to believe in me , when I am in need. When they're nowhere that's what gives the scare. How much longer is this beating, they look at me and ask what beating?