it's okay to not be okay.

This isn't pretty.
This poem isn't pretty.
The black raindrops under my eyes aren't pretty.
The theme song that would play in my movie is not pretty.
The way I look when I am crying on my closet floor is not pretty.
The way I struggle for breath isn't pretty .
The way I run around my room frightenedly searching for my inhaler is not pretty.
The way my body adjusts to the fetal position is not at all pretty.
The way I dry heave on my counter top when I can't breathe is not fucking pretty.

This is disturbing.
This poem is disturbing.
The pace of my staggered breath is disturbing.
A text saying "I'm worried for your health" is disturbing.
The way I can cry from the lack of a word is disturbing.
The way I can't mechanically move the way the wires decide to weave through my head is disturbing.
The way that the knot  in the pit of my stomach that just keeps coming back feels is disturbing.
The way I can't remember the last time I was truly long term happy is disturbing.


I am so tired.
I am so tired of writing depressing poetry.
I am so tired of turning off a fight or flight response.
I am so tired of trying to pretend that I am normal.
I am so tired of the way I obsess over one person's approval.
I am so tired of the way my eyelashes have become all too familiar with water proof mascara.
I am so tired of the way I struggle to shake hands with the mirror.
I am so tired of the way my hands and wrists and arms feel so bare.
I am so tired of the way I go to sleep sweaty and weakened from defenses.

I don't know.
I don't know where I'm going with this poem.
I don't know when I'll finally be okay.
I don't know how to make things get suddenly better.
I don't know the way people can just wake up and feel happy.
I don't know the way I am supposed to interact with him.
I don't know the way to stop being so fucked up or emotionally unstable.
I don't know the way to make everybody content.
I don't know the way to love myself.

I am struggling.
I am suffocating.
I am tormented.
I am terrified.
I am done.
I am desperate.
I am anxious.
I am depressed.
I am in love.
And I am fucking scared.

I am not okay.
I am most definitely not okay.
In fact, I'm nowhere near being okay.

But hey, it's okay to not be okay...
...right?

Hero.

I'm five years old,
I'm sitting on my grandfathers lap and starring up into his glasses, as if his blue eyes were crystal balls.
He asked me, "Who is your hero?"
And I say, "My daddy."
I'm ten years old,
I'm sitting behind a rusty iron desk tapping my pen & raking my brain for what I want for lunch.
The prompt askes, "Who is your hero?"
And I say, "American soldiers. Defense, in general. Firefighters. Doctors. Legal people. People who defend. Like my dad, he always defends me."
I'm eighteen years old,
I'm lying in bed wrapped in the comfort of the surrounding silence & writing shitty poetry,
The next lines begs the question, "Who is your hero?"
And I say, "Who is my hero? What a stupid question."
Who is my hero?
See, with age that has worn my heart & already given me pre middle aged lines of anxiety,
I have learned all too well that I don't exactly have someone as my hero.
I can no longer sit here in my ignorant, optimistic view drowning in my white privilege and looking to the sharks in suits & monsters with guns to be my protectors.
Even more I can no longer even stand the idea that a man who gave me 50% of my being could be my hero.
Do you remember, hero, when you'd tuck me in at night?
You see you'd kiss my forehead and read me fairytales of knights and dragons and say "Goodnight, princess."
Well I always thought you were like a knight, my hero.
It wasn't until you breathed the fire of "We don't watch the same movies or listen to the same music, so we can't be together" that I realized you were the dragon.
Still right now I am far from sitting on a throne of genuine laughter and believing in the beauty of a morning.
Still right now I am so wrapped up in fear of betrayal and loss of trust that I can't genuinely ever motivate myself to seek a prince charming.
Still right now I am constantly picking up the debris of walls of a home you burnt down.
When you slept next to that other woman did you tuck her in?
Did you call her princess?
Did you find some appreciation in your motel sheets and missed calls from home?
Perhaps, my hero, you'd remember when I was thirteen and you pushed me against a wall?
Those were the first days that depression filled my lungs with breath and you didn't understand the balance of a normal young girls hormones.
So when I met you with subtle disrespect you met me with blaring police sirens echoing from your throat, your saliva flung to my flushed cheeks, and I felt my legs shake like they did when I was checking the scale every night and you watched TV clueless.
Everytime a man I loved yelled at me all I could hear was your voice.
Everytime my legs shake from fear I remember you pointing into my chest.
Everytime I remember when I first started to not be okay I think of the haze over your eyes when you're angry.
When she told you she was staying with her husband did you push her into a wall?
Did you yell at her as if she was a dog?
Did you feel comfortable speaking with thorns in your throat and no roses growing from your words?
Oh, but my hero you couldn't remember when I was crying on my mothers bed, searching through a plastic bag of books and cards and receipts.
You couldn't even begin to understand why I never want to wear a Tiffany's necklace in my life,
The pain I felt having to uncover who the "T" was that signed her letters I love you and google her name,
The strength it took not to call your boss and get you both fired.
You will never understand how robbed I feel from your cheapskate selfish self for the length of my entire short lived life,
How hard it is to see my mother so heartbroken and have to be strong for her when I'm dying to break down,
How pathetic and twisted of a human being you are and how you will always be the definition of a coward to me.
You made me fear love. You made me fear trust. You made me fear men.
So you know what?
I don't need you to be my hero.
My hero is the ability to wake up in the morning and go on with my day,
The capacity to block out all of the shit in the world we live in and just live moment by moment,
The potential to sit down for a family meal once a month and know you're fortunate.
My hero is the fight in me that just keeps kicking no matter how many times I long to give up,
My hero is the hard and grueling yet feasible capability I obtain of giving and recieving love.
My hero is the relationship I have developed with my very best friend and the most beautiful human being I know, your ex wife.
You are not my hero. I am my own hero.

Taking, trying, saying, changing.

Here's to a very high and healthy amount of happiness hormone levels this evening :)

I decided that I wanted to know what it felt like to be “normal.”

I wanted to understand what it felt like to wake up hopeful or

have one night where I didn't wake up wondering why I was still here.

So I take a pill.

Take a breath.

Take a sip.

Take a step back.

Take a look in the mirror.

Hope the serotonin levels in my body instantly climb my bones to find a home in my arteries and nerve endings.

Hope I can look past invisible scars carved on my face to find one beautiful thing about myself.

Hope I can chain up the thoughts of a foreign figure that can’t leave my brain for one single day.

So I try to be positive.

Try to find things to look forward to.

Try to meditate my mind and relax my body.

Try to be thankful for the gifts life’s given me.

Try to force myself to smile and eat.

Hope that I won’t see pictures of my father so my lips might forget how to say his name.

Hope that something bad might happen and I may not collapse by weights of frustration pressing down on my shoulders.

Hope that someone will ask me “How are you?” and read through the lies of my flushed skin and grit teeth.

So I say no to the shortcuts.

No to different pain to mask what I’m feeling now.

No to talking to people that will only hurt me or the people I care about.

No to making my grief somebody elses.

No to finding happiness in sweat and poison.

Hope that I can continue to control temptation that’s as alien to me as the way his door knob felt in my palm.

Hope to find gratitude in my self that I've been clinging to XY's to fill me with the past four years.

Hope to learn how to stop being such a screw up.

So I change my mindset.

Change the time my alarm clock serenades to me “A Land of Opportunity”

Change the normalcy of my fingers in texting out someone's name and good morning.

Change the pattern my stomach has become familiar to with eating.

Change the way I used to always allow negativity to trump a portrayal of bare teeth exposed.

Hope that I tell my fight or flight response that nothing is chasing me and I can stop and breathe.

Hope that I can walk to class by myself and that those three minutes don’t fill me with loneliness.

Hope that I learn how to say the word love without wanting to cry.

So I am here.

Taking, trying, saying, changing.

I say I love you, Brooklyn.

It’s unfamiliar not to hear an I love you too from a deeper voice inches above me.

It’s weird to think that somewhere deep inside some honesty has built a nest in those words.

It’s invigorating trying to control your life instead of letting chemicals and tears and fear control it for you.

Because I am tired of being helpless.

I am tired of being sad.

I am tired of being scared.

So I am here.

Taking, trying, saying, changing.

For now, I hope that’s enough.

For now, I hope I stay so driven.

For now, I hope that I can keep hope.
Is this normal yet?
Am I normal yet?
So I am here.
Taking, trying, saying, changing.
It's not normal to lose four father figures in one year.
So I am here.
Taking, trying, saying, changing.
It's not normal to be so scared and so desperate.
So I am here.
Taking, trying, saying, changing.
It's not normal to want so damn badly to be normal.
So I am here.
Taking, trying, saying, changing.
I don't need to be normal. I just need to be happy.

love thyself and speak out.

You know, I wanted to stop putting my pen to paper because of you.
I no longer had the urge to make parallels or metaphors of broken hearts to broken bones.
I was done with pouring my vulnerability and anger and pure, unadulterated sadness into something so beautiful.
I stopped writing poetry for you.
But now as I look at these yellow lines once vacant and now filled by letters and tears I have realized something.
Your word is no longer shackling me to anything.
I am no longer going to censor myself to spare your feelings.
I love you, that's true.
I care about you, also true.
I never want to hurt you, undoubtedly true.
But I also need to worry about myself.
I am choosing to stop basing my self worth on your hollow glances or sugar drooping words.
I need to start loving the way the sunshine chooses to cast a spotlight on me,
the way my eyes sparkle when I'm performing,
the way my legs fall from under me when I'm nervous or high on laughter and chocolate chips.
I need to choose to love every imperfection on my pale, average, confused body.
To choose to accept the way I hyperventilate and sweat and pant when the stress is thicker than the blood that runs through my veins or I'm crying so hard from a broken heart I don't want to stop to take a life altering breath.
To choose to cherish every smile through tears, every valley that leads to a peak, every good day followed by a bad night.
I am choosing to say, "Fuck expectations and wasted words. You are beautiful and there is no single person in the world like you. That's pretty fucking special."
Love is the prettiest form of expression in the world to me.
 But instead of basing my view of the allure of life off of your love for me, I'm going to base it off my love for myself.
Because you know what, I fucking deserved to be loved.
I deserve to have an actual best friend.
I deserve to not be defined by the chemicals in my brain or a doctors diagnosis.
I deserve to not be afraid to kiss someone or look in the mirror.
I deserve to not be nervous to have someone put their hand on my thigh.
And I deserve to know what it's like to truly be happy with who I am.
I loved you so hard I forgot what it was like to actually love myself.
Well, why on Earth would I give broken promises the satisfaction of red lines and teeth grinding stings?
Why would I steal a metal flower from my kitchen to fulfill all of your empty words?
Why would I allow a hammered out broken heart to break more by faulty band aids?
I am not my depression.
I am no one's  fucked up perception of me.
I am not the trust I gave you every time I called you crying.
I am ready to feel worthy.
I am ready to feel sufficient.
I am ready to feel magical.
And I can't keep depending on your temporary healing apologies or random chocolate covered small talk to make me feel special that day.
So here's to my first love.
Making me realize how absolutely exhilarating it is to fall in love.
How earth shattering it is to be lied to or deceived or manipulated.
How incredibly difficult it is to transition from the love of your life to a friend.
Here's to my best friend.
For begging me to look in the mirror and cherish the unfamiliar reflection of fear.
For forcing me kindly to let sores heal and keep me from making new ones.
For wanting so much for me to believe in myself half as much as I believed in the tenacity of your heart.
Here's to my current....?
I don't know what you are.
I don't know who I am.
But I do know I need to attempt to fill part of the gap in my heart that was filled by you with pats on my own back, kisses in the mirror, and a little self appreciation.
I'm ready to be dependent on myself.
I'm ready to be fulfilled by myself.
I'm ready to do whatever the fuck I want, and look good as hell while doing it.

Alternate language.

Today I finally started to understand the language you live by.
I decoded your dictionary and found this:
Sad means manipulable.
Love means lust.
Confused means take advantage.
Trust means convenience.
I am stuck in this in between.
See now, at 1:27 PM, I would typically be riding in your passenger seat with your hand on my thigh.
So to me it feels natural that I should be talking to you, my thumbs long to type your name out.
But what to say?
Hi.
Hello.
I love you.
I hate you.
I miss you.
Fuck you.
Can we be friends now?
Do I want to be friends?
Do I even want to be anywhere near you?
Are my organs turning inside because they can't stand to be in the same vicinity as yours?
Do they crave for the school to peel into two and spread like the red sea so I can be farther from you?
Because I have never felt farther from you.
I have never been so confused by you.
See to me, you are the epitome of a best friend.
You are husband material, you are sloppy watermelon juice laughter, sky blue hellos, soccer mom support, compassion so true as crimson as blood on a rose.
But you are beer bottle screams, you are headboard punches, you are thunderstorms of shame and pain.
You loved me like America loved Marilyn.
You put my judgment of my own self worth under a magnifying glass and told the gremlins in my mind "Stop. Look at yourself, you're being ridiculous. You are remarkable."
You took my purity and innocence on midnight neighborhood adventures and showed them the crooks of church parking lots and Texas highways.
You were the reason I locked up metal and cut my nails and sewed my lips together to conceal my teeth to flesh.
You raised hell for a kiss goodnight or blue hearted tied words or fingertip grazes.
Now, here we are.
I lie here. Pissed. Defenseless. Hurt. Confused. Frustrated beyond belief.
I am begging the Universe to send nothings and somethings and everythings to your tall, lengthy, misunderstood and misguided self, just to curl the ends of your mouth and dry your eyes and ice your wrists.
I am praying to some being who I don't even know exists to protect your fragile, cracked, wary heart.
My kidney jumps everytime my phone vibrates and my eyes are torn between hope for and against your elongated name to appear.
I have changed your picture.
I have changed your tone.
I have changed the music you used to sing to me of bruises and lines.
My eyes share a similar confusion to that of my heart.
Because to be honest, I don't know who the fucking love of my life is.
I don't know who you are.
Because all I see is a contradictory coward who lied to himself and me out of panic.
All I see is a man who made up his mind and still played bridge with my body as his deck of cards.
All I see is an unfamiliar and foreign figure trying to hold my hands after telling me that I made him unhealthy for two tears.
Now how the fuck am I ever supposed to try to love someone ever again with that fear in my mind?
Is this true? Because even through your anger coated esophagus apologies and denial I still find some honesty seeping from your words.
Am I truly that toxic?
I am so sorry I was given the gift of misery.
I am so sorry that anxiety attacks have became a regular aspect of my week.
I am so sorry I fell broken hearted by the man who gave me his genes and the person mimicking my movements in the mirror.
I am so sorry that my consistent seek for your approval and surprising gestures and little tries just to make you chuckle were over consumed by the pace of my breath or the scars on my ankles.
But I tried. I worked. I loved. I did absolutely everything I fucking could to be the light of your life and the wonder woman of your own pristine fucked up paradise.
So I don't know.
I don't know where to go from here. I don't know whether to be pissed or get over the fact that after three years I only got one birthday present, that you never sized my promise ring, that you broke your word, your promise, your swears made upon the lightening in my stormy night sky.
I don't know whether to be pissed at you or myself that I feel grimy, ashamed, dirty with my own body because of tainted words and cameras and jaws.
I don't know whether to scream or cry because you broke my heart and left me a wreck and you still texted me seeking my comfort when I am exploding or that you apologized that I didn't change your mind when I never asked to see your name, read in your voice, cry for your pain, or in any form try to change you mind.
Damage is done.
But it is so hard to think about losing you.
I am looking forward to a friendship of complications that will always be us but I don't know how to be your friend, I don't know how to start, and I don't know whether to wait around for you to figure out who you are or adjust to this new selfish, hypocritical, weakling for my best friend.
Still, as I sit here translating English to your dictionary, I wonder, what does the word friend mean to you?
Because to me all it means is
Guarded.
Scared.
And confused.

"Probably. I love you."

The innocent crave to remain breathing ignorance for oxygen.
But you see, I am not one of the innocent.
I am not ignorant.
I am not blind or dumb or an average daily victim to being used.
But how I fell weak by the grasp of your palm, how the gears in my brain stopped turning by your reassuring words.
"Probably. I love you."
I let you seep your sad, hollow, discontented and dishonest soul into mine.
I let you allow chemicals in my body to swirl and rekindle with the familiarity of yours.
I let you grab my skin as if it were the fur of a dog, kiss my lips as if I actually meant something, bring me physical pain because what I thought the outcome would be was far more fleeting than a lapse of pink turned to red and ice-healing soreness.
"Probably. I love you."
You told me it was okay.
You told me I was so beautiful or hot or sexy.
You told me "God, I love you."
And fuck, aren't I such an idiot for believing in you.
Aren't I so fucking stupid for thinking things may actually work out.
Aren't I so horrifyingly ignorant to truly trust you.
God it seems as if my trust meant nothing to you.  My trust was the dog shit on the bottom of your shoe, the slam shut of the backdoor after a fight, the bags under your eyes resulting from a late night adventure.
"Probably. I love you."
In a state of anger and fear you allowed yourself to think from the south and not with your beautiful heart or crazy incredible brain.
You penetrated my morals with temptation and promises of a better tomorrow.
Because of all of this shit:
I am damaged.
I am broken.
I am struggling for breath.
I am struggling to eat.
I am struggling to cope with the idea that the knot in my stomach will continue to remain entangled.
"Probably. I love you."
I never knew to this extent what it felt like to be used.
I never understood the pressure that could come collapsing down onto me, because you have never felt heavier.
The primal urge is no excuse to feed on the weak and drink their body away.
I feel my skin fading and my being has become overturned by shame.
Because to you, I was just a body. 
To you, I was just a doll. 
To you, I was just a way to get what you wanted. 
But now that you don't want me you string me out on country laundry lines. 
The clothespin security of surrounding sheets and pillowcases only make me more remember the unbearable pain.
"Probably. I love you."
Well you know what, I fucking loved you.
I fucking do love you.
But my love is as meaningful to you as your broken promises and blue sapphires sitting on the bottom of my purse.
Because now, I don't owe you comfort.
Now, I don't owe you sympathy.
Now, I don't owe you advice.
Yet I continue to be there for you like a dog to a master but you are not my master.
I am burning up in the external hell you have sent me to.
I am starving from my fast away from happiness.
I am dying because your words only betray me more with each fleeting day. 
"I promise"
"Forever and Always"
"Probably. I love you."
Well, fuck your empty words.
Fuck your spoken or physical symbols of promise.
Fuck your dishonesty, your betrayal, your continuation of using and abusing my emotions and body.
Fuck that you're dying right now.
Fuck that I wish I could be there for you.
Fuck that we can't talk except for when you need my help.
Fuck the fact that my help isn't enough for you.
I am truly, truly, truly sorry I couldn't be enough for you.
That you're "Probably" mindset didn't end up working out.
That loving me just couldn't fulfill you or make your soul feel sufficient.
I'm sorry you learned from me all too well how to hate yourself.
But I am not sorry for trying to make you happy.
I am not sorry for trying to love you for as long and as hard as I could.
I am not sorry for taking risks to try to make you, and I, and us healthy.
I am not sorry that now I am seeking any possible way to smile since you stole that away for far too long.
"Probably. I love you."
Well thank you.
Thank you for letting me know that probably is not yes.
That probably is not a promise.
That probably is not forever.
That probably is not good enough.
That probably is meaningless and not a true answer.
That probably is not a reason to let your guard down, to put your heart on your sleeve, or engage in lustful encounters you thought were driven by love.

I think you are a wonderful human being. 
I hope one day you could be extremely happy. 
I loved being your everything and best friend. 
But "Probably. I love you." is not an excuse to use me because of your own selfish desires. 



Probably...... Not. But I still love you.

When love met a bruise.

I never knew what it felt like to be special,
Until I met you
I never knew what it felt like to be beautiful,
Until I met you
I never knew what it felt like to be good enough,
Until I met you
I never knew what it felt like to be hit,
Until I met you
I never knew what it felt like to be thrown,
Until I met you
I never knew what it felt like to be torn apart,
Until I met you.
I met you and my world's oceans turned to land.
Water traded his tint and free flowing personality for the stability and hardness of rock.
I met you and felt a golden coated sphere stab through my heart, the shine of a flattering exterior melting  into rough ragged reality.
I met you and I thought my midnight encounters had become my daytime truths.
I met you and I thought my poor virgin emotions had been given a gift, and maybe it was.
But when I met you, I got a black eye from getting upset too easily.
When I met you I busted my lip from genuine jealousy.
When I met you I broke the bones of trust by asking too much of you.
When I met you I received a beating for every late text, eye roll, unreciprocated kiss, or frustrated sigh.
When I met you my body turned black and blue from loving you too hard and from holding your arms too tight.
When I met you I was destined to a hospital visit  for a broken heart from contradiction and hypocrisy.
I met you and I learned your scripture was translated in fear and your God was a Coward.
I met you and realized being myself will never be sufficient.
I met you and I knew that love so true was equivalent with a death sentence.
So here I am, bloody and bruised on your kitchen floor.
Kicked the breath out of me and my soul is replaced by terror.
Slapped pink with the familiar shade of my fluttering blushing flesh.
Punched hard with mapquest guided desperation that refuses to recalculate.
I am broken by the touch of your hands and the pitch of your voice.
I am beat by clarity of the water  your crystal blue balls shed.
I am battered by your stolen whispers and tormenting screams and steering wheel punches.
I am bashed and bopped and banged by you and everything you tried to make me believe.
My body slithers along tile defenseless because you blame me for the reason of your fist's force,
My final breaths begin to shake because you aren't allowing the subtle self inflicted pain I crave.
And I crave because of you.
And you have denied my cravings.
But you see when I met you, you made it clear that my legs and stomach belonged to your being, that a comforters secrets were a priority to attachment, that your temporary portrayal of teeth could only be activated by palm sweat and eyebrow raises instead of the love in my voice.
When I met you I never knew what cuts you could kiss my shoulders with.
When I met you I never knew how hard I'd fall in love or weak on your blood stained counter.
When I met you I never knew what promises or bodies you were capable of breaking.

*****This poem is a metaphore*****

I am more.

Listen readers, for this is important. This is not a poem for another being. This is a poem for me.
I am more.
And as you read, I hope you know, sincerely, that you are more,
And you are worthy,
And you are important,
And you are absolutely, unequivocally, positively good enough.

I am more than my body.
I am more than chipped nail polish and my grandmothers ring.
I am more than entangled ivory sheets.
I am more than cracked lips and cherry ChapStick.
I am more than distant, cold kisses.
I am more than light switches and volume knobs.
I am more than that certain time of night.
I am more than passenger seats and bent over backs.
I am more than a hand grabbing my hand grabbing fabric.
I am more than lace and your uncontrollable lust.
I am more than trying to make you smile.
I am more than safe words and not nows.
I am more than a final desperate attempt.
I am more than being in the mood or it's been a bad day.
I am more than my misconceived perception of love.
I am more than please babe.
I am more than It's okay.
I am more than you're so sexy.
I am more than fuck yes.
I am more than fuck me.
I am more than sex.
I am more.
I am special.
I am beautiful.
I am unique.
I am interesting.
I am worthy.
I am worth conversation.
I am worth love.
I am worth consent.
I am sick and tired of feeling inadequate internally.
I am absolutely done with flexing my stomach in the mirror because of your harsh words.
I am infatuated with the idea of being asked if I want something.
Because guess what, world?
I am something.
I am someone.

You are someone.
And everyone deserves to be felt like they are more than pressure, desperation, or force.
We are more.


We are more.

Want.

This is silly and naive. But this is real and this is the result of my romanticized outlook on pain:
I want to hear your text tone.
I want to see "Loser" pop up on my Snapchat feed.
I want to spend the night at your house after the tournament, per usual. Just cuddle up and watch a movie or binge eat with your friends or just sit their while you watch woodworking videos.... anything to be closer to you.
I want to kiss you before every class.
I want to look for your car during lunch.
I want to see your face every morning.
I want to wrap my arms around you when I'm sad: like right now.
I want you to force me to eat when I'm like this because you worry about me.
I want to bring you body wash in the shower when you run out.
I want to give you an arousing simple surprise.
I want to use your toothbrush in the morning.
I want to kiss you so hard you'll never be able to forget it.
I want to lay in bed doing homework with you.
I want to hold your hand when it's chilly outside.
I want you to tell me I'm beautiful when I feel like shit.
I want to sit in a passenger seat with your hand on my thigh.
I want you to tell me you're proud of me no matter how well I did at anything.
I want to wear your sweater because it's cold out.
I want to catch up on MasterChef Junior with you.
I want to watch Kill Bill 2 with you since we just watched the first.
I want to experience every first I ever have watching Pulp Fiction with you.
I want to spoon with you when I wake up.
I want to get in arguments with you until I scream or laugh or cry because I know that passion will be consuming the room.
I want to make fun of you for how many trophies you have and spend the next thirty minutes stroking your ego in return.
I want you to annoy the shit out of me.
I want you to make me sob.
I want you to make me cuss out at you out of pure frustration.
I want you to hold me in your arms and whisper "Shhhhhh" in my ears when I'm crying.
I want you to tell me "Deep breaths, babe" when I can't calm my anxiety.
I want you to randomly text me I love you.
I want you to tell me I love you every morning, before every class, when you go to sleep at night, after I do something kind, before we kiss, when you look into my eyes, after you mock me, just because.
I want to make you keep loving me.
I want to play ping pong with you even if I dread it.
I want to go on magical adventures with you.
I want you to ask me to prom.
I want to spend the entire Summer together.
I want to go to college together.
I want to get engaged with glow sticks.
I want to get married one day to those beautiful blue eyes and that crazy, intelligent, fierce, loving man.
I want you.
I want you to want me, too.

Here I am.

Here I am the usual time of day
where I'd be sitting in your car.
Or your coach.
Or your kitchen counter.
Here I am sitting at school alone.
Here I am trying to distract my mind from the ever present reminder that you're watching Master Chef without me.
That you're lying in bed, your body entangled with thought, instead of me.
That you're making a lunch for one, and you grabbed two drinks before you remember our party of two divorced and suddenly you're not thirsty anymore.
Here I am begging my mind to stop remembering the way you taught me how to play ping pong or appreciate music so foreign to my ears.
Pleading my body to stop longing to be cuddled between sheets,
My hands to stop longing to be held in our exact way,
My head to stop longing to share a pillow with you.
Here I am knowing I need to grow.
I need to think for the long term.
I need to learn to be happy.
I need to allow you to smile.
I need to try to be good enough.
I need to stop attempting to live in ignorant bliss.
But god, this pain is unimaginable.
Everyday I think it will be better and
Everyday I think it will cross my mind less and
Everyday I pray for an alternative form of pain.
Here I am, continuing to crave to build anger towards you because anger is so much less powerful than sadness.
Hate is so much easier than love.
Fighting is so much kinder than a total cut off of communication.
Losing a long term love is as hard as a baby's first steps,
Losing a best friend is as difficult as the first day of kindergarten,
But losing both is like losing a piece of yourself.
Here I am, trying to think of solely me.
But for so  long it was WE.
I don't remember a world in which it was solely I.
I was obsessed by your attention and driven by your approval.
I am still constantly seeking to make you happy, and even though I know I deserve my own happiness,
I will still be wound tight to urge your jack and the box of joy to pop and sing like the star spangled banner at a soldiers funeral.
Here's a thought: Why didn't we get a funeral?
Why doesn't our loss deserve a celebration of the beauty it was?
Why doesn't our pain grant a field of mourners dressed in black?
Why doesn't our overwhelming thick amount of tension and unspoken words merit a casket of tears and poems and lost kisses?
There was a death in our goodbyes.
Here I am hoping one day you wake up and understand how hard I worked to be who you wanted.
And how much I fucking loved you.
And how dearly I cared for you and your admiration.
Here I am praying that you could have an epiphany that I, my dear, was the best thing to ever stumble into your life.
Although I lust after such thoughts to bloom and sprout from your beautiful little mind,
Above all I will learn to be perfectly content,
As long as your days are filled with sunshine dances and chocolate hearts and earth shattering laughter.
As long as you can be a fraction of as happy as I once made you.
My poetry is not toxic.
I am not toxic.
Our love was not toxic.
Here I am breathing in the toxicity of the way the wheels of my brain turn and the voice of a fucked up insecurity telling me:
You can't do this.
You can't go on.
You're doing nothing for him.
You aren't good enough.
You're a piece of shit.
You'd be better off dead.
That is something, my sweet darling, you have wonderfully tried to understand and unfortunately never can.
I have these monsters who have found a home in my faulting organs.
Tiny beings consumed by their nature of hate and pain.
Their names are depression.
Loneliness.
Anxiety.
And now....heartbreak.
My heart is undeniably cracked by the force of your crying voice.
And all these little savage creatures guided a blade to flesh in desperation.
Forced an inferiority complex to camp out in my heart when it's decaying bud begins to blossom.
Compelled panic to send fleeting shocks down my spine.
Obliged itself to create storms from my eyes and tornados of my breath.
Here I am worried the strength I built up like an aging willow tree,
will blow down in the rain.
That monsters will spawn weakness inside of me.
Terrified of living my life without a mans love because I fuck things up out of terror that every man will shape shift into my father.
I am a strong woman.
You were my loving companion.
Now I mourn for the death of us.
For the decaying body with our broken hearts and flood of tears and nosebleeds and mucus,
Because love is not always pretty.
Love can not be defined in a couple of words or shown in a single picture.
Love is supplying me with the greatest of pain right now,
because it gave me the closest view of happiness my body would allow me to feel.
Here I am, right now.
Reminiscing on our greatest of memories and all of the never agains and used to bes.
Here I am, loving you completely.
Here I am, doing everything I can to try to know what it's like to be happy.

Internal war.

I dread that moment.
That moment that I will see you face to face for the first time-
that I can't greet you with a kiss.
I thought for so long I was dying.
But if I thought that pain I felt was death than that must have been the most painless, peaceful slip into slumber.
But this shit?
God this is torture.
Like rotting away.
Like you stabbed my heart but it wouldn't let me die,
it would make me wait,
like I wait to see your ocean balls of sight.
Let each and every body part take it's time to slowly wither away and settle into dust.
This is actual death.
This is me drawn out for everyone to see,
begging for some ease of pain.
But I am done begging you for something.
I have groveled for your acceptance, appreciation, sympathy, and above all honesty for too fucking long.
If you insist on making a joke of our commitment,
Insist on disrespecting me and taring out my insides and eating them for dinner,
Insist on moving on and convincing yourself I never meant that much,
Then go ahead.
I'm disgusted to see who you have become,
Who you really are behind your mask of love,
Who was lying behind my best friend and the love of my life.
God, do you even realize how much I gave to you?
I gave so many tears, so much thought, energy, time.
Does that not mean anything?
Does that really hold no weight?
Does that completely warrant you to not even wait a day after to fancy another strange being?
Well, good luck darling.
Because what you don't realize is how good I was to you.
How special I made you feel.
How much I built you up.
How good I was for you.
You say I was the best thing to ever happen to you.
Maybe I was.
I certainly tried.
Not that me trying was ever good enough for you.
Well have fun with these girls,
I hope for your sake you receive half as much of what I gave you from them.
Because the fucking truth is that no matter how shitty I feel without you,
No matter how fine you try to make yourself seem,
You miss me.
You love me.
And you can try to lie your way out of that,
Wouldn't be the first time you lied to me.
Oh darling dear, don't forget that as you bathe in your self righteousness.
The tally marks of dishonesty that sprouted from your faults are longer than this poem.
But who remained there for you?
Who looked past your faults in the name of love?
Who was there for you in a moments notice?
That was me.
The sad part is, that always will be.
You can break me down and tear me apart and rip me to shreds and
I will always be longily infatuated with you.
I will always be there to talk to you.
And I will always, always, always love you.
And that's fucking awful.
But the truth....is absolutely awful.
And I hate myself for missing you so much.
I hate how much you cross my mind,
How much I long for your kiss and touch,
How much I waste all of the water in my body on tears over you.
I hate how much I care and how little you do.
So when the cloud comes and rains on your motherfucking parade,
Let me know.
I'll still be here, mourning, missing, and loving you.
But if you think I won't be ecstatic that you've finally broken and opened your eyes than you are so wrong.
As wrong as I may be, I am only that way because of what have you done to me.
You have filled me with sin and anger.
I can't eat.
Maybe it's because I am fasting myself from you.
Or because I can't allow myself the simple pleasure of food because I am still stuck with the notion that I don't deserve life's basic gifts.
I hate that you were my forever and always.
If you think I have forgotten that you are so incredibly naive.
You know, you are some coward.
You were scared and you couldn't handle not to be in control of something so you allowed yourself to hurt.
You said things out of fear that I didn't agree with but
Who was I to argue when I agreed with the end result?
But here I am.
A hole in my body.
An empty stomach filled with memories of our beautiful late night conversations.
A brain filled with confusion.
The constant:
Is this what I want?
Is this what is right?
Is this what will make me better?
Is this what will make him better?
Because I am not better.
I am far from better.
I thought I was in pain then.
Well that pain is simple disturbing heart burn.
This pain is an organ jumping out of me, palpitating, and begging life to rid the existence.
Anyway to remove the pain.
If only death could be an option.
Then maybe you could mourn.
Could miss me.
Could cry.
Could actually give a shit about everything beautiful that was us.
I long for so many things I miss about you and I.
Long for our past memories and future endeavors that are all just wasted dreams now.
Long for the one day we could be like wait....maybe this was a mistake. We could try again?
Long for some closure out of this shitty awful situation.
Long to not feel so bad about myself.
So ugly.
So stupid.
So pointless.
So worthless.
So useless.
So much like a piece of shit.
God and even after that it all comes back to you.
You terribly absolutely amazing human being.
I hate how much I am undeniably in love with you.

Darling.

Who the fuck are you?
Who the fuck were you to tell me you loved me?
What could have possibly possessed you to find inside yourself a truth in those words?
Who the fuck were you to make me love you?
What all self righteous being granted you that kind of power?
Your self?
Well, here's to you, darling.
The most selfish, egotistical, wonderful son of a bitch around.
You played ping pong with my heart one too many times.
You'd make me laugh and then cry and then smile in a nanosecond.
You'd parade on my emotion as if it were concrete when you knew I was made of glass.
You sat in your smug little way and told me I was beautiful.
Who the fuck were you to call me that?
Who the fuck were you to actually make me feel special or good enough for someone for once in my life?
Oh, but you didn't just build me up, darling
No my heart was the twin towers and you strung those down as quick as you had built them.
See I didn't worship you in the way you fancied.
I wasn't willing to expose my full self to you at any given time.
I shared in you things I wish I never did because now I see the compassion I saw in your eyes was just a thick layer of "You can trust me, because It's convenient for me"
Convenient for you.
That's all that fucking mattered, right?
And here, even now, you'd call me a hypocrite.
Tell me I was wrong.
But I think you're so wrapped up in your own vision of yourself you don't see the damage you've caused.
Because, darling, you were a hurricane to my soul.
A fire that lit the match in my stomach and spread out through my entire imperfect being.
A tsunami to my heart, who was dry and naive.
And worst of all, you cast a tornado upon my head.
Moved all the little pieces around.
You caused me confusion above any I'd ever known because you liked being the one to call the shots.
Well guess what darling?
Here's a fucking shot I'm calling.
I will never, ever, allow someone to take advantage of me and bruise ever inch of my skin the way you did.
I will not permit my walls to come down the way they did for you because:
Who the fuck are you?
To sit there and not cry.
To smile all of the time and laugh that stupid fucking laugh when I'm twenty miles away wrapped in a blanket of sorrow starving from pain.
Fuck you and your stupid happiness.
I had a chance of that, ya know, I tasted a fleeting glimpse of it with you, I thought I knew what it was like.
Then you snatched it up as if there wasn't enough.
As if you couldn't breathe so you suffocated me to get enough oxygen.
Well I can't breathe. Or eat. Or forget about the way the world turned when I was in your arms.
Who the fuck are you to make me feel so shitty and alone?
Who the fuck are you to be carrying on in life?
I gave everything I had in me to you,
I changed myself because I figured my life path could alter itself so you could be pleased with who I was,
I worked so damn hard to put a fucking smile on your face,
I gave you all of my time and my mind,
I thought about you more than what any doctor would describe as healthy because my infatuation with you was alive as ever.
Who the fuck are you right now, to where I still can't get you out of my mind?
Do you think of me?
When you wake up do you have that same knot in your stomach?
Do you wish you could walk over to the next room and consume me in your arms and kiss me like it would be the last time?
Who the fuck were you to kiss me for a last time?
God, do you realize all of the fucking shit you put me through?
You think now you're being decent?
Take a good look in the mirror, darling,
because you are poison to me.
I will never stop loving you.
Two fucking years isn't enough for a simple tear.
Well go ahead, darling, feel numb.
Let your body tingle with nothingness.
When you realize how you tore me apart and rained on my purity and took away every first I could ever have then go ahead and ask yourself:
Who the fuck am I?
Because I'm still trying to figure that out myself.

Paternal.

When I grow up, I want to meet a man.
Fall in love with him the way that I fell in love with the way my grandmothers perfume mixed with the smell of cigarettes.
Know a man and all his honest and indecent cracks and nooks and crannies better then he knows them himself.
And marry him, holy matrimony, vows, rings, all of that ever so sweet lovely shit.
And then I want to make that man a father.
See, here's the twist.
This is the part of the poem where love starts to decay, rot, stink.
Where I look at life from a birds eye view of a shanty town in Haiti or a war-torn village in Pakistan.
This is not beautiful.
This is not polite.
This is ugly and real and perfectly haunting.
When I grow up, I want my children to have a father.
But not any father, you see, no he can't be marked by dust on any other day than Ash Wednesday,
 or sing at the gospel every Thursday instead of Sunday just because he feels that way.
No, this man's truest love can not be himself.
This man's biggest accomplishment can not be his own ego.
This man's most promising aspiration can not be written in greed.
You see, he must be a friend of sacrifice.
We together, must grow like new borns, in patience and acceptance.
Let a single gold band covering only a thick inch of skin be a symbol for eternal commitment.
I will not let him exchange his "I do"s for " I did my coworker"
I will not let him exchange a flower delivery for divorce papers on valentines day.
I will not allow myself to have kids who will resent their father.
Some people change and that's the problem,
Sometimes the problem is that they never really changed at all.
It is the innocent who mistake the infidelity of ones soul for purity.
His wit, a clever snake, offering true love, a future, the ideal life all squeezed into a juicy ruby sphere.
But allowing myself to bite into the fruit could be the deadliest mistake I'd ever make.
Because of the selfish sick I must be forever cautious,
So here I am:
rarely playing black jack with my care and trust,
hardly looking twice into a creek rumored to contain cottonmouths with lies for venom,
barely looking to a bar or church for a being so incorrupt.
When I grow up, I long to hear my children cry as least as humanly possible.
To have family dinner several times a week.
To go to every soccer game, ballet recital, theatre show, or rock concert.
To never make my own offspring question whether they want their mother or father at graduation.
Divorce will never be a word in my vocabulary.
Husband will always be associated with forever.
Love, eternal.
Father, altruistic.
Family, united. Unseparated. Together.
When I grow up, I want to give my children a father unlike the man my father turned out to be.

/////My entry for the NSDA's Spoken Words Contest////

Friend?

Your high pitched text tone has distanced itself from mine ears.
I've defeaned myself from the same familiar sound that had filled my cheeks with roses and curved my lips like a crescent moon.
Your laugh grows far from that of mine jokes and your Kodak pixel perfection has paused itself in mid-air transfer.
I know that your name is synonymous with poison and toxicity,
yet I can't help but mutter it in my dreams,
doodle it in my lined sheets of contemplation,
 hunger to call it aloud.
Your history deepens my furrowing lines of worry,
Aging me visually for years.
The wrinkles arguing fiercely with my uncontrollable smile.
Yet, I question, can I override your future?
Can I be the football game my dad recorded over the wedding tape?
Can I be what changes pattern, rhythm, status quo.
What changes you, what changes us.
It's odd going from nothing to something to everything and nothing again.
Call it the circle of life,
I call it a pity.
Call it sin,
I call it human nature.
For Christ sakes who longs not to be called beautiful?
To have the daily reminder of what specialities consume you.
The sun reminds each planet everyday of what makes them worth living.
Shining his every present admiration onto their shallow faces.
The sun reminds me of your eyes.
Of your lips.
Of your words.
Of the way you made me feel justified, remarkable, good enough for you and anyone who may cross my path.
It is a true question, however.
If I miss you
Or the idea of you.
Maybe that's just an idea of something itself.
An excuse to pardon my confused emotions.
Because I fell in love with your being, your humor, your body, your creative compassion.
Make no mistake I was not undoubtedly in love with you as complete love can take years.
There are parts of you, still, that made me crazy with infatuation.
I longed for your skin to seep into mine and sing to me gentle tones of sorrow life.
I ache to know your lips in an alternative way.
To be held with appreciation and tenderness,
excused from passive remarks of disdain.
What a thrill it would be to experience something so new.
Your black hole eyes you hide,
fasinate me.
You were that four leaf clover.
That sole clover in a field of dandelion weeds.
You stood out to me, you were.....
different.
I couldn't contain my intrigue in you.
Even now, through our silence and blind interaction,
I cannot help but be utterly aroused in curiosity about you.
Who are you, you kind mystery?
Your intricacy puzzles me more as I continue to understand you.
Love me, friend.
Or get the hell out of my mind.

Big Woman & Perk.

I is a one letter word

I felt the soft, innocent, blush petals as

I placed another flower on your bedside table,

The sea of their colors brightening the room.

To protect your droopy eyes from

The gloomy shadows of machines and men in white coats

I looked at you,

I felt your pain,

I felt for you,

I felt my own pain,

The pain of having to see a beautiful person be torn apart

And I felt for us

Us is a two letter word

Our dozens of empty jello cups,

Our laughs when the doctors voice would crack one too many times,

Our empty smiles that appeared but had no meaning behind them,

When visitors would talk to us

And made us still believe there was and will always be an us,

We felt a little love in the pills and Dixie cups

That let us be us.

That let me love you.

You is a three letter word

The way your hope shown through crow lines by your eyes,

And the way your furrowing lips were a kiss to my heart

Showed me that you were strong.

I saw in you a kind of tenacity,

A courageous vigor so full with conviction

That nothing was going to tear you from me.

Nothing in all the many discoveries of science

Would keep us apart.

No amount of words in the English language

Were going to drive our love astray.

Love is a four letter word

Love is everything we ever did together,

Love is when you got diagnosed with a lesson in misery,

The same misery we stand hand in hand everyday conquering

The hand of hardships you got dealt

And every day is a new card that we play

The cards of your life we hold our very faith in.

Faith is a five letter word.

I saw faith in the letters people wrote you every day,

And in the dozens of roses and hydrangeas clouding the melancholy room,

Faith followed you in every MRI, X-Ray, and blood lab.

And faith filled me every time a man in a long white coat strolled up to me,

His clipboard in hand detailing my fate.

I still held faith the first time I heard “Rick” and “Cancer” in the same sentence.

Cancer is a six letter word.

But Cancer can’t be spelled without can.

And we can make it through,

if you are willing to continue to hold my hand,

And conquer any mutation that dare to tear us a part.

And I can and intended to spend the rest of my life

Making billions of other words for you and I.

7:43 A.M.

This morning I woke up with the same shitty realization I'm still in purgatory.
The same hideous three inch knot of yard weaved into my stomach.
I remember the minutes it's been since I've heard your voice.
The beat of my alarm makes me think of the beat in your step and the rhythm that your hands would move along my back.
And it makes me miss your touch.
I miss the subtle contact of your hand on my thigh in the quaint bliss of your passenger seat.
I miss feeling at home in your annoyed stare because I knew you could never stay mad at me for long.
But I don't miss your vacant eyes when you're mind is on more important things than me.
I don't miss every time your mouth slipped a "fuck" or "shit" and they crawled through a tunnel in my whole being and pricked every organ, bone, and ounce of flesh.
I don't miss the nearly unforgivable heartaches you served me on a platter and I ate them, with hardly any struggle, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for weeks.
I can't tell you what it's like to be your friend.
I have never known you in a non complicated, rubber band ball of conflictions and emotions and devotions.
Because I will always be the suffering, shockingly undead fly entangled in your web.
A web of love and contradiction and passion and agony.
And no matter how hard you try to feed on my loneliness, fate will not allow my withering wings to stop their attempt at flight.
I've lost my voice.
So long has it been since I've been influenced solely by myself.
Five months into the complication of us and my voice deepened with an accent of you.
My body stiffened the first time you kissed my shoulder and has stayed that way.
Like week old bread that can be made to have purpose but is no longer so manipulatable.
I am now flexible under only your influence, your guidance, your approval.
I can only stretch in the idea of your smile but I miss the feeling of my free flowing body in dance.
I was a spiral now constricted to a line.
But as my line begins to curve out, I feel as though my bones have been replaced with bricks.
The weight is suffocating and I struggle to move out of this bed. The constant collapse of my head on the pillow makes me question any urge in myself to continue to curl.
I feel a foreign comfort in between the sheets and perfumed blankets.
Perhaps it's because they remind me of your warmth, your furnace of a body that heats my limp fragility every winter.
But it is 7:43 AM.
And it is 34 degrees.
And I am cold.
And I am lonely.
And the only words I can muster enough to see my breathe in the air are your name.

I'm sorry.

I’m sorry.

Seven letters. Two words.

It’s simple, concise, short.

So then why is it so hard for us to say?

Why doesn’t it just roll of our tongue?

Is it because we’re scared or in denial?

Why couldn’t they just say-

I’m sorry I was disgusted by you.

or wasn’t the parent I should have been.

I’m sorry I couldn’t accept you for being who you are.

and I threw a bottle of whiskey at you when you told me you were gay.

I’m sorry I deserted you when you needed me most.

But no. I got disowned and communication cut off.

Well, you know what I’M sorry that I wasn’t who you wanted me to be

and now you will live the rest of your lives without your beautiful baby girl.

So, I’m sorry for you.

Or you know, I’m sorry I betrayed you.

and wasted our marriage.

I’m sorry I ruined your life and psychologically screwed with our child.

or that I lied to you and deceived you.

I’m sorry I gave more to someone else than I ever gave to you.

But no. I got divorce papers and a custody battle.

Well, you know what I’M sorry that I wasn’t enough for you

and now you will live the rest of your life without the person who gave up their world for you.

So, I’m sorry for you.

Or how about, I’m sorry for giving up.

and that I didn’t come to you first.

I’m sorry that I have left you utterly alone.

and because I was scared and thought this was my only outlet.

I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye,

But no. I got an empty bottle of pills and a casket.

Well, you know what I’M sorry I wasn’t there enough for you to stay

and now I will live the rest of my life without the best thing that ever happened to me.

So, I’m sorry for you.

Apologies are hard.

But do me a favor.

Next time you cross the line

or hurt someone's feeling

or just make a simple mistake

hugged your loved one and just say-

I’m sorry.

June 6th.

June 6th.
It all comes back to that.
The giddy anticipation that sizzled in my whole body.
The French fries couldn't make their way to my mouth that day.
My hands shook with tiny nerves and my eyes dropped low as I saw the fry slip my grip into the pool of ketchup.
I boxed the fries and drove home whispering say anythings to myself.
The innocent kind.
The kind you get when your cheeks turn pink when a boy hands you a note with a check yes or no box in fourth grade.
The kind you get when a semi-stranger calls you Manhattan instead of Brooklyn to make you giggle.
The kind you get when you bump noses on your first kiss and it's missing that sparkle but his lips still feel so right with yours.
The kind you get when rainbow glow sticks spell out the holiest question of your youth on the front yard.
The kind that makes you feel ripe like a fresh peach, with breathy joy, juicy and tart yet beautifully sweet.
Time rolls on like credits at the end of a shitty horror film making a cricket out of you with jumps and belly busting screams.
You're hungry so you scower the fridge and you find that nearly year old boxed up fries from June 6th.
And you push them to the back of fridge and let their soggy salted selves continue to rot because you can't bear to toss them away.
The miserable scent is easy enough to disguise.
You see, once you throw those away, the trashcan won't allow you to take them back.
It closes it's ends up and walks itself to a black hole of dirt and nothingness.
Suddenly that pool of ketchup turns into a pool of salty wet sparkles.
Tears, really.
Lying in your bed.
I wipe away the puddle on my cheek with your comforter thinking of how distant your kiss felt.
Like a punch to a pillow you entrusted your comfort to.
Our face to face contact a full map between.
I'm in Seattle and you're in Miami.
I'm in rain and you're in sun.
I'm in green and you're in blue.
I'm in hell and you're in life.
I'm in....thought.
On top of thought on top of realization on top of analysis on top of denial on top of rejection and I'm trying.
I'm trying to squeeze all 125 pounds of my weak, soulful being through your dog door because I crave the chance to get your attention in a new way.
I'm trying to scream even though God has exchanged my teeth for metal and my gums for rubber and my lips for glue and those don't work in the way flesh mechanically can.
I'm trying to march. I'm trying to make it until march. I'm trying to make it until next march and next April and next may and next June.
Next June 6th.
Just another June 6th.
Maybe then I can finally whisper instead of yell.
I can struggle to eat instead of force myself to.
I can run out of my door and jump in your arms saying yes instead of begging you to come pick me up.
But not everyday can be June 6th.
At some point you've got to ask yourself:
Have you got to open life's doors.
Dig deep down.
Grab the box.
And throw away the French fries
Or, can you make it another June 6th?