stranger: Favorites

Clothes have outgrown me many times over,
but this sadness never does.
One size.
fits all.
There should have been an obituary for cancer, not you.
Wishing these slits within my skin could have been
replaced by a reality check from you, “You chose to exist.”

My name causes a sigh to escape from lips,
that do not feel like they belong to me,
the girl,
whose words always had to be special.

The schematics of hospitals like a birthmark in my brain,
born into sadness, a gut feeling as a child.
Never trusting time
due to what it delivers.

Death, being the only thing I desired.
But you,
who I love,
endlessly-
robbed by it.
Whose ebb for life glowed so feverishly.
Stopped comparing depression to lace,
restricted the belief that suicide is poetic,
seeing things as they were.
More often than not, applauded for feeling emotions deeply.
Every second that dies, the shift of my heart quakes.

This world is not tender.

II. Sad.
I have known the flowers I wanted at my own premature funeral,
knowing how many bouquets honored you that day.

split open my veins like a dimension
reminiscent of days where I anticipated deathbeds.

My family wondered,
can we make it through another day?
Death scares me for what it has taken,
yet, I’m not afraid to die-
it’s all I deserve.
So I await the day pain erupts
from my throat,
acknowledging the days a soul
lived inside of my body-
footprints that walked,
belonging to me.

But I learned so well.
How to suffer with a smile,
dreading the beating of my heart
how unfair—
I don’t want to take these deep breaths
You deserved,while I masquerade as a member of the undead
Never outgrowing the desire to rot with the phantoms residing under my bed.

III. Jokes played by the universe.
punchlines delivered,
how could anyone to stand to be in the same room as myself?
How could anyone look over skyscrapers and sunsets,
and not be infatuated with concrete consuming them?
How I shared a sigh of relief during the thought-
of knowing people would thrive without me,
or the power of a belly laugh,
resembling a laugh track audience
drowning out 3 AM suicidal thoughts.

I wrote this in pink gel pen, maybe, that’s another joke.

#ramblingssadlonelydepressedidk #pain #sadnsss

Jan 2019 stranger

this is actually horrible i need to stop trying to be artsy

Jan 2019 stranger

idk

this is actually horrible i need to stop trying to be artsy

i.
between adjectives and history, math and PE, school never taught us that colors lie.
welcome to your new education.

ii.
yellow is a happy color.
in school they teach us about vincent van gogh, and how he ate yellow paint because he thought if he had a happy color in his veins, he would be happy, too. the paper-girls who exercise fake distress think that’s romantic. it’s not.

iii.
secretly i wonder if i washed out all my tears and replaced them with acrylic, if i opened up my rib cage instead of my broken bleeding heart they would be only yellow.

iv.
yellow is the color of broth in aphabet soup, you make for me when i am sick. today i’m not sick, i just couldn’t bear to go to school- feel the stares of all the golden children on the back of my neck.
you are nowhere to be found, there is just the yellow broth beneath the letters in my soup. i can feel it staring up at me and now i really do feel sick.
there is only yellow.

v.
yellow is the color of the record you play when you don’t want to talk. you turn it up so loud that i can feel it in my bones. i go to my room and shut the door just a bit too hard, where yellow sunbeams light up my room like lasers.

vi.
i am conflicted.
yellow lights up the world and sunshine lights up my body. i used to think that’s romantic. it’s not. yellow is supposed to be a happy color. the broth in my soup and the record you put on and vincent van gogh play in my head like mice when the cats away.

vii.
i wonder i can falsify to prying eyes that i love sunshine because i am happy.
i wonder if i can prove to my dying mind that i love yellow because it is a cure?

vii.
i wish inside of insides, i was full of sunshine.

Jan 2019 stranger

Crush

Jan 2019 stranger

jl

Crush

Late night texts
Sleepy eyes
Small smiles
Butterflies

Stolen moments
Held inside
Beating heart
Stupefied

~

Left alone
Tear filled eyes
Chapped lips
Scarred thighs

Empty promises
Cast aside
Broken heart
Terrified

~j.l.

there's a reason why its called a crush

#crush #terrified #hurt #empty #alone #anxiety