Wisdom acquired from my 29 trips around the sun:

Make your own signs for change,
Stop searching.

Always bring a sweater

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

Love and love and love again

Do what feeds your soul, the time will pass either way.

Don’t forget about the healing powers of Mother Earth.

Use your support system,
For the good, bad, and ugly.

Growth is not always pretty.

Be your own soulmate

Don’t forget to change your sheets.

I could not save you from the fire inside yourself.
I was fuel to the flames.
Was I fascinated or petrified by the scars you wore?
You brightened and burned
In a single breath.
You have always been an illuminating inferno.
I cannot help that I was drawn to your warmth.

To the body that houses my soul, mind, and matter:
I am sorry that I have never considered you enough.
You have always been:
Too much of this, too little of that.
As many times as I detest this disease
I think I secretly love its company.
Throat burned from the nothingness left inside of me,
Lightheadedness makes me loveable.
The only way I am digestible is when I have nothing left to digest.
My thoughts flow just like this poem
Self-loving to self-loathing in the span of seconds.
I'll start again tomorrow.

What was it like before comparison was compulsory? Who was I before self-hatred was so embedded into my being?

I am used to love in abundance.
Big and plentiful.
All-encompassing,
Immoderate.
The thought of balance has rarely appealed to me.
I want piercing or nothing at all.
I have always been gluttonous
And I don't imagine that changing.

There is scaffolding all around me
And there are holes in places where holes are not meant to be.
I am dusty,
Soot-covered,
from the renovations of my former selves.

The concrete is still wet
And the porch isn’t done yet.
My roof is weathered
And the leaks are recurrent.
I told you there were holes in places where holes were not meant to be.

I can’t stop letting weather shift me,
For my foundation is shaky to begin with.

But today I stripped the leaves from the gutters
And finished the front door.
I promise the bare bones are good.

I am a work in progress
And I have come to learn that that is a wonderful thing.

I replaced you with more coffee - Less milk, fewer sugars.
I kept it dark so it could mimic you.
Unapologetically bitter.

It was a Wednesday and you were sorry.
I had found that coffee stopped tasting as good and rain became oddly ugly.
Puddles, which once held a sense of charm, lost their grandeur.
Apologies were routinely part of our dialogues.
Slowly they stopped making sense.
Like alphabet soup, the letters lost their meaning when they were jumbled in such chaos.
I do think you meant them, but I stopped wanting them.
I just wanted coffee to be rich again, and rain to bring gladness.
I wanted a full-bodied life back.

And when I cannot do I write.
I write to the past, present, and future versions of me.
Imparting wisdom that I know I will likely not follow.

I can't stop thinking in metaphors.

I sidestepped mid-air bird **** just this morning,
and I think it was destined for me.
A sign from the divine:
Stop taking ****.
Stop confusing excretion for love.

On Monday I’ll write of mundane things.
The broken escalator, the paperwork that awaits me, or the way the door creeks as you come home.

Tuesdays are dedicated to tomorrows.
To aspirations and the good fortune of yesterday's broken dreams.

Wednesdays are all about weather.
My god the symbolism
Of rain and sunshine and Mother Earth.

On Thursdays I’ll write of thinking of you.
How I find you in everything,

How really it’s you who I’m writing for all the days of the week.

Fridays will be for forgiveness.
This is the day that requires the most work.

And Saturdays will be about sorrow.
How even when it’s not hurting, it’s hurting.

And Sundays will be about startovers and fresh beginnings.
Not because I want them but the world keeps handing them to me
Even when I am too stubborn to ask for it.

Here I dwell,
Embedded in the memory of you.
I reside in the there
of which you once existed.
I am inferior,
Delirious in the concept of your being.
Far from where you are
I question the complexity of this madness.
I ponder aimlessly at the thought of your return.
Sluggish and hopeless I find myself waiting,
May we ever be again my old friend?

101 days since I breathed your being,
Attempted to grip your fleeting words
Of love and melancholy.
2,400 hours of wilting and restoration;
Growth, nonlinear.
I contemplated the meaning,
My fault, yours, neither.
I pleaded with the was, thens, and hads.

In aisle eight at Key Food,
Somewhere between the challah bread and canned vegetables.

Sitting on the church steps on that 101-degree day,
Introspecting alongside the infamous Glennon Doyle.
Soaking in the sun and her sanity.
It was well worth the blisters.

On the E train after I had dropped an airpod.
The sound of Olivia Rodrigo in one ear
And the discourse of two love-bird tweens in the other.

The day he left me.

That time we locked ourselves out of my car and nearly missed the baby shower.
The way we laughed until our stomachs hurt.
We could always find humor in the unexpected.

Have we not worn enough masks?

How many poems about broken people will I write
Before I realize that I, too, am fragmented.
Equally, if not more liable for the war zones I have called love.

Hello,
body,
who has always required taming.
Soft belly who I have grown so averse to.
You have always been a squeaky wheel that needs fixing;
An obstacle to be grappled with.

Lower belly pouch,
This is a toast to you and the pocket of repellence you have been interpreted as.
You are, my love, a gathering of experiences and nourishment
A congregation of pleasures in this rich life.

I have grown exhausted of making alterations to my exterior.
Writing daily dissertations so I can simply tolerate you.

I am so tired of being hostile to my home.

I always take pictures on the day they leave.
To remember the strange feeling
of loss and freedom
in a single moment.
Funny, how the sky is always bursting with blue
and the birds chirping harmoniously.

As if even nature is trying to remind me
to look outside myself.
"I'm right here", it screams.

It tells me
I musn't look far to come across artistry.
The cardinals, the bluebirds
The vibrant hydrangeas lining the streets.

The black-eyed susans are liberated and free,
and so am I if I wish to be.

I bask in your sun while it shines
Revel in all its glimmer and glory.
I do my best to bathe in all its beams.

For the nightfall will follow.
I will do my best to make peace with your apathetic disposition.
Accept the silhouette you embody.
I'm not sure I will ever be accustomed to this twilight.

At first:
sharp,
skin-puncturing,
persistent.

But now:
dull,
faint,
aching.

There, but less.

I lay next to you
Rhythmic movements Between your chest and mine.
Hello perfect hair on your head
Sometimes I get jealous of the way it gets to follow you everywhere.
Attached yet tensionless.
I hope to be that for you someday.
Have you seen the perfectly circular mole on the back of your neck?
Do you think it feels as loved as the front of you?
I will be sure to kiss it more often,
Make it feel seen as you do for me every day.
Do you think the sunrise knows what love is?
Pink and orange hues lay a backdrop alongside your perfect face.
I think it knows when it glistens in a room full of fondness and devotion.
It feels intentional when it finds us, laying in bed, holding one another.
Sometimes I think about the way your head is shaped like a potato.
Or the way the valley between your nose and upper lip is soft underneath the burly-ness.
Just like both of us,
Rough on the surface but soft on the inside.
I hope you don’t hate the potato part.

I assume we’ll always be at war,
Brain and body
Flesh and thoughts.
They’ve convinced you that your worth is in your womanhood.
Wider waist, tighter tummy, apple bottom ***.

It is not simple to unlearn the unbecoming bits of me.
Toxicity is in the title.
Self-assurance has seldom met me.
Envy, my closest friend.
Ill-temper, a close second.