My poetry is always written
In the heat of the moment

The big picture is often neglected
It is but
One moment in all my life

The perspective might be messed up
And the feelings exaggerated
But it's nice to have that moment captured

dear grandma

it has been a year and a half
since you left
i am so lost
god
i am so lost

im empty
im numb
i can barley cry anymore

i just really miss you

miss our girls sleepovers
miss running away from lifes problems
hiding away at your house

you always knew when i was starving
you always knew how to get me to eat
you always knew how to make me feel better
you always knew how to make me laugh

you were the only one who really knew who i was
even when i did not know who i was

god
i miss you

visit me soon

i wanted
so badly
so *******
badly

to open up
to you
to talk about
my past
to talk about
the trauma
to talk about
the nightmares
that still haunt
my mind

you were
the first person
i openly wanted
to talk to
about it all

but all you ever
were focused on
was

y o u

what is PTSD they ask

it’s not knowing which
way is right or left
it’s not knowing how
to maneuver your own mood swings
it’s trying to find your way
through a dark maze during the night
with not an ounce of light to guide you

it’s suicidal tendencies
it’s never thinking you’re enough
it’s thinking you’re *****
it’s thinking you’re useless
it’s thinking you’re used
its thinking you’re undeserving

it’s icing people out at the second
you start to feel emotion
it’s numbing yourself to the world
it’s laying in bed
it’s not being able
to move your body
for days on end
because the pain
strikes to the bone
it’s aches

its going a year out of treatment
and you were strong
until the anniversary month roles around
and suddenly you are a glass house
with stones being pelted to the core

it’s lost years
years of life I may
never fully remember

it’s nightmares
the gut wrenching ones
that night replaying
over and over and over

but most of all

it’s guilt
for not being able
to save my 7 year old self

My name is Erin
and i was *****
at the age of 7

it has taken me
14 years of my life
for those 13 words to escape
my hollow mouth

the only questions i come to now
is why
why lock me in that room
why take everything from me
my innocence
my purity
my childhood

in that room
where my family trusted you
where i trusted you
the night terrors i have to this day
still haunt my mind

like a never ending
drive in movie that plays
over
and
over
only the moon in the night sky
isnt made to be found here
there is no light in these terrors

i cant sleep this time of year
because every time i do
its you
in that room
locking the door
shutting the windows
******* me
yelling at me
every single night
i close my eyes

it has taken me 14 years
to accept the fact that i was taken by you
i have been numb ever since
left in the dust
rotting away at the core
thinking i was nothing
thinking i deserved nothing
because you took everything

but not anymore
i will recover from this
i am strong enough
i believe in myself
i believe in my own happiness
and i promsie
that when i have children one day
i will never ever let them rot at the core
i will find happiness
the darkness will not take over this time

My father walked me down the aisle,
But my mother held my arm.
He went with me,
But we went not towards the altar,
But towards the door.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And the ***** rang through the church,
Humming through the elaborate crown molding,
Carved by my ancestors.

He went,
Not beside me,
But before me,
And I watched,
As he was illuminated by the bright,
Overbearing,
Texas sun.

My father walked me down the aisle,
But I did not wear white.
My father walked me in silence,
And I shed tears not for a man standing at the altar,
But for the one I would never see again.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And no veil obscured my face.
All eyes were upon me, but not for my pristine beauty,
Instead for my clenched jaw and furrowed brow,
Severe and fierce to distract from my glassy eyes.

My father did not leave me at the end of our walk to sit beside my mother.
She clung to me for support and sobbed breathlessly,
Loudly,
Unavoidably,
And I carried her with one hand,
My sister the other,
And walked towards my future.
A future family,
Not one person more,
But one person less.
I walked,
One final time,
With him.

My father walked me down the aisle,
And I will never forget it.
Hundreds of eyes isolating my family from the crowd,
Slow and muffled sounds drowning in the deafening beat of my heart,
Blurred faces staring,
Black heels clacking against the cobbled path from the church,
The anguished wails of my mother,
The whimpering of my sister,
And the wooden box that glided before us,
Pulling,
A string tied to our patriarch,
The pin key of our family,
Pulled taut and then snipped with the slam of the hearse doors.

My father walked me down the aisle,
Before I had a chance to grow up.
He walked me,
Out of the church,
Away from the altar,
Never to be walked again.

Once when I was young,* I was told you could swing so high you'd be able to just *fly away.  

   I learned early on
               That not everything we're told is true
               The fantastical can sometimes amount to a pile of plastic bags scattered in the wind
                    The end isn't always happy and there's not always closure
      Punctuations are more often question marks than definitive periods
                And looking for a definite explanation took prevalence over allowing our imaginations to fill in the blanks.
         Play time was replaced with study time,
             And before we knew it, it was time for work
                      We strayed from the playgrounds of our youth,
      Never returning to the top of the slide, we'd hit the ground a bit too hard to keep the enchantment of seemingly endless possibilities going
                                              Carriages became pumpkins long before midnight,
              And the school bell rang before we could finish our fun
                       But to tell the truth, sometimes,
     When everyone else has gone inside, back to the real world, full of logic and banalities,
         I sit on the old swingset kicking my feet
    Hoping it will let me *soar

"i don't wanna have to be the one to tell you this,
but you're no foodie; you're just a fat-***
who's too cowardly to take an honest look at yourself.

It's okay to be whatever you want,
just don't lie to yourself proclaiming to be a foodie
to justify late-night trips to Jack in the Box four days a week,
or eating a whole jar of Tostitos 'Salsa con Queso' every two days.

Are you trying to mummify yourself with all those preservatives?

Y'know,
just because you blow most of your paychecks
on gasoline, **** food and overpriced coffee
pulled to the most pretentious of standards
doesn't at all begin to mean that you've got any class, taste, or style,
let alone that you're a foodie.

At least recycle all the paper products your pseudofood comes in.

Moreover, your thighs aren't ******* gluten,
they're all that other junk you eat habitually
while watching your oh-so-edified selection of films
before sleeping it off until 3 in the afternoon.

No wonder you're so full of ****:
you are what you eat, I suppose.

Pull your head on out your ***.

All that fat and cholesterol isn't for the faint of heart."

sometimes i go off
about these worlds
that i make up
in my head.

because when the world
is so messed up,
don't you
want another?

i spend
so much time
just living
in these worlds,
     just thinking.

about
trivial things

     like:
how come clouds
get to be so high
that it's like they're flying,
when all they do is bring rain?

     or:
why do we spend
so much time
obsessing over the fact
that we don't have much time at all?

but i think
that maybe
in these worlds i make up,
it's not so bad.

sure,
there are bad guys
but when are there not?

the thing is,
in my world,
i'm not one of those
bad guys.

i'm the one
with the cape
and the mask
and i am the one
     who saves the day.