wait
flows from my
body like
blood
skin left ragged
asking why
as if my
shallow pulse
needs more than
desperate mouth
to mouth
whispering to
each other what
is the point?
but there's only
silence left
longer than a
lingering *how
are you still
like this?

sometimes i ache to be mild,
clear skies and sunshine.
other times i am at peace
being less a girl and more
a natural disaster.

it hits at the worst times.
the in and out flashes,
the people and the places we used to be.
it's like a pinched nerve,
a sprained ankle,
a sunburn -
the backwards ache of unrighted wrongs
and wounds that never healed right.
the constant reminders of
the loss and the longing
and the sting of all those things
I can't quite let go.
all of them. all of you.

I cleaned my own
blood off your knife,
mended the wounds,
you gave me.
still kissed you
goodbye
when you left.

the trajectory overlaps
suddenly, inexplicably -
asteroid to planet.
the collision is loud,
volatile, permanent
alteration.
the planet continues
to rotate on its axis
a little sideways, never
really recovering
from the explosion, while
the asteroid continues
on its albeit altered,
but never halted,
trajectory.  

we are planets, like this.
turning and turning
in the same universe,
never crossing. it's like a
hand to hold, the moments
before and the moments after
nearly identical: at one time
we hadn't ever touched,
and afterwards it's like we never
did.

but you are still scar.
there's still the ground zero
where we collided, brutally,
beautifully. once, never again.

knock down one wall
just to find another.
i am no architect
but i have managed
to build myself a fortress,
the initials of all my pain
carved into each layer.
it'll be a miracle
if i ever find myself free.

so we tangled ourselves
up in this weird nightmare
do you remember? sitting
on that couch, inhaling all the
air around us like smoke and it was
smoke but it was different -
thick and heavy like it was going
to choke us, but we kept
breathing it in like it was
oxygen and you watched me
bleed out, watched the tendrils
drip from my lips, slip out my
eyes - you would have
let me die there. and i did.
part of me did, listening to your
simpering neediness of
how much you needed me
how much you loved me
how i kept you going but
i wasn't i wasn't
i was drowning myself
for someone who couldn't
swim, someone who found
contentment in the mouths
of other girls and i was that
girl who blamed them and
hated them when i should have
hated you

you fed me that smoke. i thought
we were breathing together
but you were poisoning me
had me on a slow boil,
never knowing my own
mortality til it was too late
and you didn't mind.

the abyss holds the
bared, screaming chasms
of my very soul - *******
the edges of unconscious
memory I can't bring
myself to touch. every
color on the spectrum,
colors I can't name,
the vibrating pulse
of very existence creeping
in through the soles of my
feet, the palms of my
hands and I still can't
find the meaning I crave.
I saw the bottom of my
soul and it was empty for
me, scraped bare by hungry
mouths and desperate
hands. I saw God and
he told me what I am
and I am not. I am a
shapeless vessel, an empty
canvas, energy designed
to serve the hearts of those
I love, those who mean to
love me. I looked into the
magic mirror, and I saw
nobody looking back
at me.

I think about the pieces.
the way we scattered them on
the floor, the collage of unfinished
pictures in every room. we
never picked them up, never
put them back together.
does the picture remain
the same when it's never
really painted? that vision
in your mind, does it ever
become art? or is it the whisper,
the thought, fleeting and never
again? the single melody
in your head, played over
and over and over and over
but ultimately forgotten,
becomes the soundtrack
for things that could have
been but never were. becomes
the body on the bathroom
floor, sometimes she's naked and
sometimes she'd in that white
dress. she never wakes up,
though. she's the body of
everything you could have
been, never were.

drop the ashes
from your cigarette
on my grave -
your white lighter
hangs out of your jeans
pocket, drag a hand
through your messy
black hair -
you are the embodiment
of every poetic cliche.
all anger and angst
and lost love and
all the women who
fall at your feet
and fall at the phone
desperate for you
to call them again the
morning after.
I wanted to be the
only girl you ever
loved, really loved-
and maybe I was.
but old habits are
hard to break, and
**** if I didn't try
to break you of your
cigarettes, **** if
I didn't try to get you
a haircut, new jeans.
throw away that lighter.
for awhile I had the
privilege of kissing
your mouth when it
didn't taste like
smoke, and **** if you
didn't wear those jeans
for awhile. but my
mother was always right -
you can't change the broken
boys anymore than you can
save them, and they
certainly don't save
you.

I forgot how to breathe.
learned how to fall,
never learned how to land.
the tangle of arms and
legs and the murals of
bruises. all the well meaning
friends asking if I'm okay,
watch me skin my knees,
don't understand how much
harder I've skinned my soul.
my lungs haven't tasted
fresh air for so long, and my
poor heart hasn't gone a day
without crashing violently
into my rib cage over and over.
I whisper apologies to myself
in the mirror every single night
and swallow the tainted air
and fall asleep to the poison
I feed myself while my masochistic
mind dreams up a world where
you still love me and I still know
how to breathe.

the flesh peels apart
find your name carved
into the bone
find me in pieces
on the floor

there's almost a punishment
in healing, an unraveling
a relief and an unrest
in the weaving
in the rewriting

settling old wounds,
finding new ones
hidden in the outskirts of
thigh sized bruises
in puddles of blood
spreading out wider than
dinner plates, oceans

it's just the way pain seeps into
the bones, the cartilage
seals itself into the veins,
an unwelcome teacher,
a treacherous friend.

i just imagine some other version of me
out there in some other universe
a soft, silly girl unmarred and whole
and i am so, so envious of her.

I dream about you, still.
to this day. it's been months.
feels like years.

I dream about your hesitation,
your fear, your want to keep me
            away.

I dream about your melt, how
you can't resist, the way you loved me.
love me. never enough.
          always too much.

you push(ed) me away,
but still,
you always find your way back.

(wait. have waited. will wait.)
(loved, have loved, will love.)

it was a saturday, slow,
an early dark
dripping in my boots
i was a fool
to believe this
might simply end
with a whimper
when endings, for me,
are typically punctuated  
with a bang
a forest fire
a collapsed galaxy

i remember the
ripples of time
spreading out from
my fingertips
and i thought i might die
and it was terrifying
and then it was

silence
peace
a pool of
luxurious
nothingness

and then i was awake
left to wonder how survival
could feel like
such a punishment

if i were really honest
i'd tell you about the rage
the angry little girl howling inside me
begging to be let out
how i'm afraid she'd never stop
if i did
i'd tell you about the apologies i'll never get
the apologies i'll never give
all the unsaid things living in my bones
i'd tell you how my friends
drifted away when the Trauma
made me unpalatable
how pulling myself out of the rot alone
was almost more painful
than the Trauma itself
i'd tell you about the days the girl in the mirror
looks so unfamiliar
how words don't seem to fit in my mouth anymore
how the space between
worse and better starts to feel like
an unscratchable itch
but not nearly as unbearable
as the girl living in my skin five years ago
and how i miss her and how i hate her
how she probably hates me
buried under years of therapy and medication
and deep breathing techniques and
have you tried meditation?
yes ma'am, i have meditated myself into a
near constant state of TV static
and once in awhile that girl
tries to change the channel, remind me
of the weightlessness of giving in
to the doom spiral, to the drinking, to the drugs
to the boys who will do nothing but
destroy what we've built

but to tell you the truth i wouldn't go back
not to that girl, not to the girl we were before
she mutated into existence -
not even to keep the most painful things
i've ever lost

sewn together with
scrap pieces
no one wanted
and cheap thread.

but sewn together
all the same.

tiptoe
just to hope
to ever tip
the scales
into that
uncharted
territory
of enough.

that rocky
cliff,
those jagged
boulders...
they are
the danger
of your
disappointment -
easy enough
to miss
but i still
catch skin.

i've worn out
every iteration of
i'm sorry
but we still
can't learn to
swim.

i knew how.
before you.

clawed my way
up and out,
****** and
exhausted,
just for the ground
to give out
beneath me.

yours is the
unwelcome ghost
i cannot bring myself
to banish.

i'm tired of the triage.
i'm tired of bandaging
the wounds of those around me,
i'm tired of the shrapnel and
the pain and the feeling of
helplessness, watching
them burn and bruise
and bleed while i can
only offer bandaids
and well wishes. i'm tired
of sincere apologies that
don't mend the losses
and i'm tired of the tears
that never dry and the
need and the ache and the
void platitudes will never fill.

the irony in loving
cold hearts is
one day becoming
the cold heart that is
loved

one morning
I will wake up
and it won't hurt
anymore.
I will make coffee
and the open windows
won't welcome in
the ache of hazy
daylight.
the ghost of us
will finally be put
to rest and everything
will be alright.

between your anger
and my grief
we'll scorch the planet,
flood it
all over again.

help me out
swallowed up
by oceans and arms
and pulled under
by the weight of
need and want and
guilt and sinking and
each little finger loops
around me like the
rusted metal of years-
old chains and i am a prisoner
of this translucent
wasteland of regret
and longing

the white light isn't
savior, it's hot burning,
melting away the layers of
everything that warps

quietly, another year
added to the tally,
somehow too many
or too few,
depending on the
company.

a passive reminder
of every absence,
for better or worse,
all the things i never
became, all the things
i've never done,
the lone day a year
i hear from my father,
a three word message
no more
no less.

another year,
any other day. just once,
it'd be okay to hear
"neutral day of birth.
hope it's
fine."

you love me,
you love me.

you love me?

you do not destroy
the things you love.

i have built a home in myself
after all these years
and what peace it is to know
that no one will burn down
what i call hime
ever again.


(and what a quiet pain it is
to still crave the home in you.)

the thirst
the hunger
the echoes
of thousands of voices
screaming for relief
for patience
for salvation
home
permanence
the secret
wishes of the
mangled hearts
the wrecked spirits
the ones who have
given up
who have made friends
with the shadows
in the corner
made art of the
dandelions in the
sidewalks and the
****** fingerprints
on the window panes

i wish i could remember the
day everything popped, the
day the fissure ripped me in
two - broke me into pieces of
Feeling and
Unfeeling.

or maybe it was just like
poison in the water, not
enough to destroy but enough
to sicken - to warp the
sensations, the perceptions -
hot, cold, hate, love.

how happy and empty
seem to be the ends of the
extreme with no in between.
how it can change in a moment,
how the turning of the planet
manages to yank the ground
right out from under me.

how quickly the fruit sours,
the heart hardens.
the gardens turn graveyard
and i am left once more
with the wreckage of all that i
once loved, burned to ash.

maybe i am the villain.
maybe i am the virus
infecting all that i touch.

i'd like to take apart all
of my pieces, unstitch
the skin, untangle the veins,
dismantle the bones -
let them clean, air dry.
let all the dust and the
ash settle elsewhere.
maybe then, when i
wear a body you've
never touched, will
my grief begin to
untether itself, only
then will i unshackle
the anger, only then
will the wall you've
built between me
and everyone else
come down.

not dead, just
cold - the absence of
life. like the
ghosts of trees,
in winter,
blown bare of
leaves -
all that remains
the silhouette
of an existence.

sometimes
the answer
to the
"what if"
hurts more
than never
answering it
at all.

i hope you think of me softly,
not the discordant storm i was
the last time we spoke.
i hope you are not
who i left you.
i hope you keep the
love and space for me
i forever keep for you,
but i certainly understand
if you do not.

i hope you forgive me
for letting hope die,
for letting my heart hate you
for an indeterminate
amount of time.
i hoped for
different things
but it seems
you did too.

how lovely
it must be
to never
drown
in the
well of
your
own
destruction.