you feel like bursting through hospital doors.
repeating names, rushed hands all over my body looking for signs of distress.
you feel like dialated pupils,
like throwing tequila back and standing gutter-in-the-street still until you feel every drop of poison fall down your throat and into your stomach.

you feel like waking up the neighbors,
like throwing wedding shower vases,
like turning on neighborhood streetlights and calling for backup.
you feel like the anguish that sticks onto places you cant reach in the shower;
how im not sure i will ever get your smell off of me.
you feel like chaos, like burden, like a level of wretchedness that takes two hands to control.
you feel like showing up unannounced,
heart racing so hard i feel it bounce along to a chorus of ringing in my ears.

and maybe that's why i can't get rid of you.
because you have replaced impulsivity with spontaneity,
you have taken the fear out of failure and you have made the way danger sounds so easy off of your lips
you feel like the "speak now" instead of the "forever hold your peace."
you feel like the selfish "wait," the last desperate pleading case;
you feel like the passion infecting my lungs in breaths of smoke and dancing dandelion seeds in my ridbcage like a magic show.

like an age-old story, some different form of you all strong women must endure,

you feel like the irresistible situational irony they whisper about when they say "it is not love if it is not torture."

i have tombstones growing in my chest.

adjusting to the numbness of shadows.

for months,
not a single sentence have i written about you
but not writing about you
and not thinking about you
are two different things

a poets graveyard is full of song
that's why they are buried apart
from those who refuse to sing.

The more I connect myself to the universe and the Earth.. the farther I fade from the human way...
Starting to feel more alien
And outlandish
Every excruciating day.
Trying to collect my tribe
and find which lane to travel.
But my wheels
Keep turning.
And I'm moving high.
Far from the gravel.
Try and pull me down,
I ******* dare you.
But no way.
No ******* way you're taking
Away my crown.
You can watch from down there
with envy and defeat
Or you can take my hand and allow me to show you
How darkness can be sweet.
I'm a *****
In my own corner.
Love me or lose me.
Either way,
You'll be a mourner.
But don't let that scare you off now..
For it isn't cold here.
I can show you,
That the universe is you
Inside a mirror.

9/15/16

i have survived
storms.
i have survived a father's voice like thunder;
handprint lightning flowers petal over my skin
like i am a garden to sinners-
adam and eve call my grassroots their home and hum lullabies-
i have survived
anger.
pros and cons of
clock-ticking therapy sessions where money is thrown at my gaze,
fixed on the wall,
dollar-a-second drumming fingers
screaming so loud that heaven shuts the blinds and hangs a "closed" sign on the door.
pros and cons of
stumbling home,
under a murky peerless crowd of smoke,
slurring words trail around and behind me like moths to a porchlight.
morning headaches,
angry adults
damaging drywall and breaking family portraits
exhausting search for answers
exhausting search in a silence that lengthens the disconnect from child to mother
where your mind goes red and the honest truth that stays stuck to the roof of your mouth falls out
where you become an overflowing mailbox and your hands shake
the absence of parents who never taught you to hold your tongue
i have survived
hurt.
i have survived the specific type of loss that you feel in the pit of your stomach
the one that lies next to you
when you stare at the ceiling and your face hurts from crying
tears scrub your eyelids raw and you promise,
"if i ever make it through this,
i will never be here again."
i have survived giving up,
taking it all back, throwing it all away,
parallel structures of contemplation and decision
i have survived
lonely.
angry storms of abandonment, melodies of the lonely and the hurt
i reprise to the ones that add injury to insult,
you are not the worst thing that has ever happened to me.
i echo choruses to the people that force me to grow up at sixteen
i have destruction embedded into my neurotransmitters
i have shooting post-traumatic pain in my memories
i have survived
a hell that your hands are not stained enough to touch.
i assure you,
my love,
i will survive
you as well

Go ahead, saunter up and down the aisles
Run your finger down the shelves where I carefully placed all the fears I hold
But nowhere will you find that I fear walking this world in solitude
For I am a King inside the mansion of all my 206 bones

I am a shelter for myself
I seek only myself
I harbor love so passionate for myself, that I may burst like the death of a Star
I sometimes gift wrap the World and place it on a silver platter, just for me

But sometimes,
when the Universe trembles and the angels cry
I put my hands over my ears
because the quiet gets a little too loud
And when I sit on my throne and glance over my shoulder

Your absence,
I feel it a little too much