i don't wanna worry about what you can and can't do

i want you to love freely. and live freely. and experience freely.

i want you to freely exist. to have that luxury. because it's not something you've gotten to do honestly yet.

not something you've freely done

and you deserve it

you who is so authentic & so giving & has so much endurance,
deserve that

you deserve nights in her car where endless is the only way to describe your journey

you deserve mornings in hole in the wall diners where your order becomes her order and vice versa.

you deserve saturday afternoons lost in her head and her sheets

you deserve love and someone willing to learn how you like your eggs

you deserve good *** and better intimacy

you deserve more than the world because the world can be bought and goddesses own heavens by birthright

i don't wanna write about what you deserve because you should already have it

Silver foxes are better than young bucks

2. Love is the answer to everything

3. Jill Scott can evoke any emotion

4. Romantic comedies are horrible but sometimes they are necessary

5. Praying is a release whether you're religious or not

6. Art is more than paint on canvas

7. Hurting someone doesn't mean you don't love them

Just because I can doesn't mean I should.

2. Honey will get me farther than sass.

3. My worth isn't in how many boys have told me I'm beautiful.

4. He won't change.

5. Friends shouldn't treat you like ****.

6. I'll probably always have a little pudge.

7. It takes me an hour to get ready.

babies

2. biracial hair

3. seeing my mother in love

4. the smell of nail salons

5. praise & worship

6. ny-is-thegoal

7. perfect execution

seeing my mother cry

2. people that can't let go

3. anxiety

4. lies

5. thinking about the people I've lost

6. unblended eyeshadow

7. careless people

sat in a dark room today

just me and the light from my laptop

and i felt calm

for the first time in a long time,

i wasn’t worried

and i didn’t think once about the things that worried me

and i realized something

just because you don’t believe my anxiety is there

doesn’t mean it isn’t

i live with it everyday

my fear of people

my fear of failure

my fear of saying the wrong thing

or doing the wrong thing

my fear of everything

my fear of losing the relationships i worked so hard to build

my fears aren't yours

yours aren’t mine

and that’s **okay

I don't know where beauty lies.
Maybe it's in my great-grandmother's black & white photos.
Maybe it's in baby giggles.
Or maybe it's in my own giggles.
Sometimes I think it can be found in the things we don't see.
The little things.
Like the way eyelashes look when you're lying in someone's lap.
All the little things that make up a person.
Those are the beautiful things.
Those are the things to be celebrated.
The things that make up the little things.

I once read a poem about change.
How we have the ability to change anytime.
How we're the only ones in our way.

But on my path to change, I discovered that I wasn't the only thing in my way.
I discovered that old habits die hard.
I discovered that your old friends won't always take kindly to new friends.
That your best friend can become your worst enemy.

And those things will stop you from changing.

Being afraid of losing the people you know best.
Being afraid of letting new people know the most intimate parts of you.

And while that may seem like you stopping yourself, it isn't.

It's a whole other cavity.
It's fear.
And fear isn't something we can control.
It is however something we can eventually overcome.

You have to overcome all that fear or else your change will just turn into an even worse version of you.

I once met a boy so bad for me, he was too good. He was everything I never thought I wanted. He didn't love Jesus like I thought he should. He didn't love the things about me that I wanted him to. But he made me feel comfortable. He never made me feel unattractive or unloved. But he took parts of me. Parts of me that I needed. Parts that I couldn't get back. It wasn't fair because I didn't stand a chance. That smile, the way he held me. It left me defenseless. And I still don’t know why. Every time he looked at me a certain way or touche my waist in just that right spot when we hugged, it was like magic all over again. No matter how long it had been or how much I told myself I was over him, it didn't matter. All because he had those eyes and those lips, and that. one. touch. Mm. And even though I don’t crave it all the time like I used to, sometimes I look at him and it starts to bring back those memories.

sometimes, I miss your love.

sometimes I miss it so much it hurts

today was one of those days

I sat & saw things, stupid love texts on twitter, that reminded me of you.

but the crazy part was, they were about letting go.

letting go so that they could be happy without the love they had thought they would stop breathing without.

and I realized, it's been a whole year since I needed your love to breathe.

I don't even need an inhaler from time to time like I used to.

hell sometimes, I even run now & it feels so good.

but every once in a while, I sneak a peek in the back of the drawer where I keep the inhaler & then I remember,

I can breathe on my own now

the grey just comes sometimes

other times I think myself into it. I wish I could think myself out of it just as easily.

I loved her and I love him because of every way they are different from you

every way they love me differently and better than you do. than you know how.

father's day shouldn't be like this. it shouldn't be a time like this. I don't want it to always be like this.

I don't want my kids to grow up in a house knowing there are days in a year mom won't be able to get out of bed

knowing those days are connected to a man that is nothing like their father. a man not capable of growing up enough to teach his children anything intentionally.

I don't want an anxiety attack to be forever hanging in the shadows for me exact days a year. I want to love and be loved without feeling like you're in the room telling me I'm doing it wrong.

I want you to be my daddy. that's all I've ever wanted.

but instead, I've gotten Anthony.

and because of that, I will always be the 5th grader you bullied. the one you made to feel less than. the one you showed over and over again that she couldn't be herself in your presence.

and now at 19, I deal with the consequences.
I face the realities.

I will never come out to you.
I will never run to you when my heart is broken.
I will never get to ask you if your grey is the same shade as mine.
I will never get to ask if you've ever gotten so far into it that it seems like a shade of black. I won't get to ask how you got out of it. how I get out of it.
my children won't know you in the ways I want them to.
my children won't understand. I won't give them a father who would make them understand.

sometimes I want to wish you away. other times I am grateful for the lessons you have taught me. I wish I knew what kind of time this was.

you don't know hurt until the people who claimed they would be their for you, avoid you like you're an awful plague
until the people that said they would never judge you, take everything you do & make you feel like you're under a microscope

watch them replace you

watch them block you out of every point of their lives

that's hurt, that's heartbreak

when the people you used to tell everything to, don't even care what you ate for breakfast

you'll walk through the halls as a ghost, the shell of what you used to be

and you'll wonder "why don't they like me? what can I do to fix it?"

nothing. you can't do anything except live
live like you never have before

be happy

show them that you have things to stick around for

make them see that they aren't the end all be all to what makes you who you are

and most importantly, realize that you can be happy.

you are allowed to be happy

sometimes the people we love do things that hurt us.

it's not always intentional,

it's usually a giant mistake.

we don't always realize that the person did it because they care.

because we scared them.

because they want to make sure that we're okay.

and they don't know how to solve it themselves so they have to ask for help.

and even though he may have upset you,

**he was trying to do the right thing

"what's the worst thing someone's ever said to you?"
"I can't love you like you need me to."

why do we play along in the demise of others? is it because we think we're helping the people we love? or do we have ulterior motives? because I think that the latter is the answer more often than not. and whether we allow ourselves to believe it or not, those ulterior motives control us more than we can ever imagine.

You told me to touch you.

So I did.

It was warm and it felt weird in my tiny hands.
But you told me it was okay.

You said to rub it.

So I did.

You moaned like I hadn't heard before.
You let it all out.

Then you asked me to put my mouth on it.

So I did.

You said it was like a lollipop.
It was the worst lollipop I'd ever had.

It took me 7 years to tell someone.

It took me 2 more years to write this.

But in that time, other boys told me to do it to them too.

So I did.

But I am consciously making a decision that next time,
**I won't.

I want to spend my mornings photographing you when you wake up but you’d blush & tell me that I think too highly of you and to save my film for better subjects.

I want you, and you. But I miss him, and him, and oh god do I miss him too. I want you the most though. I have for a while now.

It's not enough to say I'm over it,
it's not enough to see you with her

Apparently I enjoy torturing myself via the heart

I've never been an adrenaline ****** or one to look for adventure in the bottom of a bottle,

but I have found myself searching for a bit of life within other people

Pushing my emotional boundaries, seeing how close to a breaking point I can get

Seeing how close to someone else's emotional boundaries I can get

That's where the high comes from,
watching the surface crack under the pressure I've caused but not quite break

Revealing where the weakness lies in people is the beauty of it

Because cracks reveal the weakest points of people and as they say,
*"you're only as strong as your weakest link"

i haven’t eaten since you left
i can’t even look at the food in my cabinets without thinking of the night you made me dinner
i can’t eat a sour patch kid without thinking of the night i broke you
the only thing i can keep down is coffee
you hate coffee, you said it's bad for you
but i love coffee
it’s my escape and my happy place

She sat in her ladybug costume, waiting. He said he'd be there at 10, it was 10:45. She knew it was too good to be true. A senior boy wanting to be with a freshman was something everyone had warned her about. As she was walking away she heard someone call her name. She turned around and found herself looking into those familiar, emerald green eyes.
"Cute wings."
"Thanks." She could feel herself turning bright red. She could hear her mom in her head, boys are just girls that haven't matured yet. They are no reason to turn red.
He tucked her chin into his hand and smiled that perfectly white, just crooked enough toothed smile. He pulled her face up to his and kissed her.

It was everything she'd ever imagined.

timing is a delicate thing. it's the difference between life & death. it's the difference between a sure yes & a strong maybe. it's the difference between a friendly glance & a look held too long.

timing's never really been my thing. I'm always too late. too late for appointments, for chances, for people. I never know how to show up at quite the right time. and I think I wanted timing to mean less than it did. because now you need the time. because your time is valuable and while I know it's not being wasted, I know it needs to be acknowledged that you need it. and that be the end. and there be no other place we go for then. and I need to accept that this could be a road I looked down and walked past. and just because I don't want that doesn't make it not what it is. or what it could be. because it is what it is. it is.

It's funny how we think love should be easy
How it should come with no work

Love sometimes means fighting in a bedroom, or stairwell, or even in the middle of the street.

I'm convinced the movies just get the endings wrong.

Because love doesn't always mean you'll kiss them passionately at the end of the fight.
It sometimes means you'll just walk away.

Sometimes it just means you tell them it'll be okay so you don't break down yourself.

someone asked me what the worst thing ever said to me was
my brain didn't go to all the times I had been bullied
the day I got a voice mail from a group of girls ripping apart my appearance
it instantly went to the day you told me you didn't expect me to understand

"I love her, I don't expect you to understand"

but I did understand, because I've loved before
...I thought I could love you

someone once asked me what made me happy & I realized that I don't know anymore

pictures of vanilla skinned girls with honeysuckle hair that has been made messy by life, adventure, unmade sheets, & reckless boys

sometimes I look around and wonder when everything got so bad

when did school fall so low within my priorities?
when did my happiness fall to the bottom of the list of things that are important to me?
when did I decide my dreams weren't good enough?

more importantly, why?

why am I not who I wanted to be?
why did I change so much?

what happened to the party girl in me?
what happened to all the fun I used to have?

what happened to the brainiac?
what did I do with all those smarts I used to have?

when did she disappear?

when will she come back?

*will she ever come back?

I can’t remember the last time I had someone worry about me in a way that didn't make me angry. In a way that didn't make me want to immediately hit them for giving me that much space in their life.

But tonight, when I walked out of that bathroom & saw the look on your face and forced myself not to cry as I told you the truth about why I didn't want to go home, I realized worry is okay.

I’m a worrier so I know what it feels like & I don’t want other people to feel that way about me for some reason.

But you were worried, genuinely worried, and it made me feel an emotion I have yet to put my finger on but.. it wasn't something I've felt before.

I've never had a boy or a girl worry about me like that. Ever.

But you did & for some odd reason, I want to thank you.

Thank you for giving me that place in your heart, thank you for allowing me to mean that much to you. Thank you for not letting me push you away & just giving up. Because otherwise I would be lying in a cold basement sleeping instead of sitting up at 5:05 am in my warm bed, writing my first piece of poetry about you.