I've gotten so good at being alone
now it's a great time on the couch
surfing the web on my phone
singing with a wide mouth
letting random melodies pour out
throw in a shout or a laugh
chilling with myself like a *******
but it's fun, acting exactly how I
want to act, patting my own back
I'm glad I didn't let myself as a best friend
slip through the cracks.

I built a Berlin Wall around my heart.
Not to keep others out,
but to keep myself in.
I built the walls higher
until no light could get in
and I stayed there.
I may have been alone
but at least I was safe.
Safe from you and your sugar coated words and electric touch.
Protected from the lies that seeped from between your lips,
and god, just your lips.
I kept myself away from your impish charm and devilish smile.
I had to,
I couldn’t let you in
Because when you broke me the first time
I could hardly manage
to pick up the fragments
and build them into something that at least resembled the girl I had been before.
A shell of what it was.
I added armour.
Heavy chainmail to keep me away from your beckoning embrace.
Was it worth it?
I’m not sure.
But the over flow of emotions
that I swam through every time I saw you
was drowning me.
So I built a raft and let it take me away.
I put myself here but now I’m trapped,
stuck in my own mind and stuck in my own heart.
It’s a terrible place to be.
Trust me,
you wouldn’t want to be here with me.

She spent her whole life dreaming. Everything and everyone she encountered told her
to stop. “It’s a waste of time” “It’s not healthy” “Grow up” they’d say. And eventually she
started to believe the things people said. She wanted big things - for herself and for
others, but it didn’t take long for her to realize the importance of settling. It made things
easier and she had the tendency to complicate them without even trying. She felt
isolated from the world just outside her door but she didn’t know how to change that or if
she even wanted to. The best things in life tend to waste away after a matter of
moments. They pass away as if they’d never existed. Maybe she’d imagined them all.
She began to condition herself to expect disappointment. It worked for a little while, but
hard as she tried to shield herself from the pains of everyday life - the bullet always
seem to find her. It always came, without fail and pierced her heart with little regard for
the repercussions. She longed for the day she would be good enough for the people
she loved. Maybe you had to earn it, and she hadn’t yet collected enough gold stars to
pick out of the treasure box.

somewhere there's a graveyard
with unmarked tombstones
and a distinct absence of bones
and the space under each headstone
is filled with all of the words that were never said
all of the tongues that were bitten and held
and all of the mouths that stayed shut
all of the thoughts that danced around the periphery of consciousness like shadows flickering in the firelight
a mausoleum of missed trains and missed chances
an ardent arrangement of alternate realities
a collection of the opportunities and objects that slipped through the cracks.
an obituary of What Could Have Been.

I’m afraid of the ocean when its waves rush forward,
its translucent arms wrapping around the impressions of my feet..

The ocean is a mother giving birth,
life surging forward and then receding in the swirls of salt and sun.

Measureless
Its belly has captured the souls of sailors and broken ships.
Ghosts drag on the bottom floor choking on their entrails.

A 15th century wood-hulled ship is their playground,
And they gnaw on the golden coins that flutter down onto each floor
as the wood shrivels with the weight of plankton.

She is the undertow
And she is the rip current.
She surrounds us
And we will never escape her.

Childhood stress is not living in a two-story home
when your best friend does,
even though your mothers are the same. All day long we talk
about weeds and leaving our husbands for each other.

Then, you go on to ask
why should anyone wear clothes if they just leave scarlet
dents on our skin, then you will answer,
someone’s branded us with barcodes like cows.

I once cut my ******, the right I think, while shaving my legs -
cried for weeks afterward wondering
if I would be able to breastfeed twenty years from now,
thought if I could not, I would be less of a woman.
This was before I met my girlfriend who has a ***** and is
just as much as a woman as I am,
this was before I learned that womanhood is a fine powder in
your soul, like *******, but not only white, brown too
and black and mine is pink, and womanhood is
every color of the rainbow and gender is fluid fluid fluid.

Childhood was ignorance of ignorance,
adolescence taught you everything you needed to know on
hating the unique,
but in adulthood, that can change, we can know better.