All these broken kids, want a parent's pride
But once you hear those words
They still fall short, in the void so wide
Spent your whole life, questioning why.
I can't blame me, you barely know me
And for every night that I felt incomplete
I did my best to try, try so hard to never be you
If only you knew, I hope some day you see.
The only real conversation we ever had,
Was me having hard times, you said you're in therapy,
Even then you didn't care for me.
You felt bad for a moment, but I've spent 15 years in a moment.
For every chance you're given you drop it.
Time for a game, time for a job, time for a second marriage.
Time for your children? Those washed up excuses are getting lame.
Forget it, I'm healed, here's for the rest of us.

For the mother, getting beaten and bruised
Don't stay for the kids
Leave for the kids
A marriage is the least you have to lose.
No matter the hobby, the job, the passion
For the kids, try to match their excitement.
My generation isn't lazy, we're outcasted.
An Internet of people saying your dreams can't happen.
For the kids, build them up, make hope outlast them.
For the mother, verbally bashed to feel useless
It's simple, you aren't useless.
For the father, stay active, protect your family,
You do matter.

I'll cut the poetic verse to tell a short story and I hope it gets passed around. When I was ten, my sister was fourteen. My parents split up and while I was young, I remember a lot. I remember struggling to get by with my mom and sister. My father was quickly in a new relationship. His soon-to-be new wife and he would spread a million stories about how she talked badly of him which even got around to my teachers in school. It's funny, she never said anything bad about him, we didn't want to go with him on the weekends because he was pushing for us to sleep at his new girlfriend's house. It got to a point where when we would call my father, the new woman would pick up the phone and tell us not to call him. So many years later, my sister and I still keep an open door for him. We are facebook friends and whatever (I don't have his phone number, I messaged him a few years ago for it and he ignored it). Occasionally, I get a message asking how I am and I always respond, he reads my response and never writes back again for months or a year. He wishes me a happy birthday and father's day on my Facebook to keep up appearances or something but truthfully I don't know him at all. My sister got a house a couple years ago only a short distance from where he lives and even after many invites, he still hasn't  visited. This is the same guy that to strangers seems like such a fun guy, I've never met. And every part of this involving me really doesn't matter but, I wish he would see where my sister lives and I wish he gave a **** about her becuase she actually cares that he wants nothing to do with her. And to any part of this that is called fabricated, I remember everything and so does she.

loneliness sits like an island of cold feet;
loneliness stirs like a maelstrom
of hot knives;
when I am touched
either gently,
or forcefully,
all of my ‘heart’
flees the blanket of intimacy.

It is much easier
being alone.
It gets much harder
most every day;

but today
a stranger
with a face like an alabaster rose
walked past me, smiling coyly,

and I wept,

unraveled

to be ravaged,
to be loved.

She was lost and couldn’t find herself,
and none of her empty words could hide it.
Just a typical ****** plain and simple.

She died alone on the road at twenty eight,
but everybody saw that end coming.

In a tragic twist of good luck her son never knew her.
Although a part of him had always secretly wanted to.

Those years without a mother’s warmth was a pure frigid hell.

You called her beautiful, but that’s not what she was.

She was fire and flood. her words pounded against the sand like waves.

Her hands created art from pain, each stroke a painful stitch.

Her thoughts were flames from a wildfire, taking the world by smoke and ash.

She was not beautiful, and anyone who called her that felt her wrath.

I’m the most complicated person when it comes to saying what I want. But I know exactly what I want. Although getting that is beside the point what I want is to move at my own pace. There is so much pressure in there needing to be a decision and rushing into a commitment before there's even a true connection. I'm looking for any excuse to not fall for someone because deep down I'm not ready and the loneliness will never be as strong as the respect I have for myself. A body next to me at night will never fill the void. There's something bigger than a chance at love that is holding me back. It could be that my heart was broken enough to break me, my body used like a lifeless blow up doll without a choice time and time again by too many, by giving myself to only one and be taken by one, two, three, four, five. To be beaten for half of my young life and held down, degraded, ashamed of the skin I lived in and voice I spoke. The numbers are too much to fathom but I am worthy of love but not before I let go and love myself… #MeToo

We were drinking coffee when
depression showed up at the door of the home we built, pounding.
Eviction notice in hand,
your soul parceled out into donation bins.
Foreclosure sign,
caution tape around the chest that I slept on for a year.

I sit out in the sun
to bleach the tan line from my ring finger.
I hold cold cups and shake strangers’ hands
to erase the mould of your grasp from mine.
I want to sear off my palms.

I miss even those nights when you looked at my fire and laughed.
So I make you coffee (but I know I make it wrong);
your ghost in this house still criticizes.

I made you coffee every day because it was all I could do;
my only way of getting into you, a vector.
As the hot brew flowed past your heart, I watched,
like a child at Christmas, hoping you’d feel my love.
Hoping the glaze would clear up from your eyes.

I only wish this were a bond that stayed,
that stayed when your mind put plugs in your ears:
when I screamed and screamed that I loved you,
that I’d rock every little thing you regret to sleep.

I went to the doctor about this dizziness.
He checked my ears, he asked why my eyes were red.
This vertigo--a hurricane made by the page turning in my life.
I am a bag in your wind.

The day you left I wrote you a recipe for how you like your coffee,
because you don’t know, but I have it memorized.
My handwriting changes halfway down the page, as I change,
as you drive farther and farther away.

Our love is a child I’ve carried,
now I’m bent over, sick.
Loss took your place in our home,
but it’s unsteady on its feet;
I have to walk it from room to room.

My name has been yours, possessive.
And although these days I correct myself and say ‘I’ during speech,
My thoughts are still ‘we.’
I still think about your lungs when I cough.

So I still make us coffee every day (but I know I make it wrong).

I fell for a fairy,
She was flower
Daughter of the sun.
I worship the moon,
I live among fungi.
A fairy that was fire
I am a rat,
Soaked by the moon's tears.
I don't know why,
But she kissed me,
I dreamt of being a creature like she was,
I dreamt of living in the sun
Among the flowers of her back,
Her wings,
I dreamt.
She didn't like my sadness,
My insecurity,
The spores growing on my skin.

We've kept our secrets
For far too long
We've let you win
For far too long

It happened in high school
"Friends" grabbing me from behind
"You've matured faster than the other girls"

It happened in college
Pushed me against a wall
"Don't you want a kiss?"

It happened in college
Cornered me in a room
I escaped to a bathroom
"You're seriously over reacting!"

It happened in college
"My friends have a blunt upstairs!"
No one else showed up
He ripped my shirt

It happened after college
Dancing at a bar
Started feeling me up, moving under my clothes
Was able to hold me there in the chaos
"We were just dancing!"

My father warned me
My father gave me pepper spray
My father taught me how to fight back
It still happened

My guy friends tried to protect me
My guy friends stuck up for me and other girls
My guy friends went with us to parties and random houses
It still happened

Ladies, stay strong
We will not go backward
Only forward