Forward.

This is not art.
These are not pretty words, even when they are.
I have not written something. 
I have ripped off a chunk and handed it to you. 
Do with it what you please.
Please.

Love.

She begins in shadow. The corner smells of dust and old radiator, a smell she learns 
means morning. Each day the light seeps across the wall in a slow, golden crawl, and with it 
comes the low, steady tremor, the woman’s voice, moving through wood and air, vibrating her 
spun silk.  

The frame is her gift. Eight lines anchored where the sound is fullest. She feels it hum 
when the woman laughs, quiver when she shifts in her chair. The strands are tuned so fine that 
she can read the difference in her moods just by her footsteps. Every morning, the same: a bright 
clink of porcelain, a low sigh, a pause where the woman stays still and the whole room holds its 
air. The spider waits for this. She waits all night for this. 

 Every once in a while, the web will sway sharply, blown by a burst of air; curious and 
sudden. Small feet pound away. She reorients before anyone returns, careful to stay anchored in 
the same place. She does not know the word “safe,” but she knows this corner. She knows her. 
Sometimes the woman’s voice moves closer, so close the air smells of her skin. Once, she says 
something, a sound with rise and fall, and the spider feels the vibration like a touch. She presses 
her legs into the silk to hold it a moment longer. There is another, smaller one. Quick, irregular 
tremors. A higher sound. The spider maps these movements too. This one is funny, comes close 
often, makes the web shake for no reason, then scurries away.  

One morning, the small one comes again. No tremor of warning. Just a shadow, a shape, 
a sudden weight. Her legs fold under before she understands. The silk sings once, sharply, and 
goes silent. Later, the corner is empty. The light still crawls across the wall. The clink still comes, 
the sigh, the stillness; but the room is missing a heartbeat it didn’t know it had. The woman sips 
her coffee and says, almost laughing,  
“Guess our little roommate moved on.”

Pity.

I am not haunted. 
I am the rotten. 
The scent that makes the crows leave. 
The reason the lilies die before they ever bloom. 
I curdle. 
I congeal. 
Even truth spoils around me.  
I have swallowed too much of myself to be salvageable. 
Gnawed the bone clean, 
then broke it 
just to suck my own marrow. 
I flinch at my reflection, 
not from fear, 
but recognition. 
Yes. That is the shape of me. I remember. 
There is no metaphor deep enough. 
No drug kind enough. 
No apology loud enough 
to drown this out. 
Do not call this self-pity. 
I am not crying anymore.

Grave.

I never knew you, and yet I became you. Your face is my face. Your nose is my curse. Your eyes blink back at me in every mirror, 
and I can’t break them without breaking myself. 
I learned your shape from missing the idea of you. 
The bottle sings your name into mine. I bled my knuckles just like you did. 
I thought I was nothing like you until I realized. 
I became you. 
I hate us, dad. 
But I love you. 
I respect you. 
Hell, I worship you, 
even if the only place left for me to kneel is your grave.

Burn.

My eyes open to the lightning strike of freezing cold sweat.
My stomach turns, 
it burns, it rotates, it feeds upon itself until I can manage to get out of my memory foam casket 
and get to the porcelain throne of excavation. 
I piss and it smells like a hospital. 
That should worry me, no?
Instead I laugh. 
Because I hate the smell of a hospital. Sanitized death.  
The burn in my eyes caused and cauterized by bleach and the stench of the forgotten.
Death is real. 
Death cares not for time or elegance.
Death cares only for the script.
Follow it. 
Or follow me, and have hope, that together, we can burn it.

Boy.

I wake already mourning, like sleep told me a secret I wasn’t allowed to remember.
I want you to haunt me louder. I want you to scream at me.  
Instead, you wipe the counters as if nothing’s wrong and hum a song I’ve forgotten the name of. 
I wear your warnings like tattoos, and I’m sorry.  
My mirrors are honest,  
but not merciful. 
I’ve become exactly what you feared.

Azaleas.

If I told you my house still burns  
where we once lit matches to see each other’s faces,  
would you believe me?  
If the wind flowed through the curtains  
like your laugh used to through me,  
and the flames grew high enough to scorch the sun,  
would that count for anything?  
If the garden, untended,  
still bloomed azaleas the same shade as your lips,  
could that mean some things stay?  
I’m not asking to turn back time.  
Just,  
if you walked past this door again,  
and saw the light of the flame peek through the threshold,  
would you knock?

Advil.

I shove the Advil down my throat, 
regretful that it isn't a grenade.
I pull the pin from the real one in my hand and throw it in your direction,
regretful that it is.

Shitty God.

You’re a shitty god, 
but I am a faithful, shaking little thing. 
Sometimes you paint me pretty. 
Sometimes you pull the truth from my mouth. 
But mostly you just make me forget 
how long I’ve been trying not to become 
my parents. 
And yet, here I am, 
still filling and raising my glass 
with their hands.

Dark.

Stars do not have eyes. 
The brightest never see their own light. 
But the real tragedy is that they never see the light of their peers.
They illuminate the worlds around each other,
but live and die convinced they're alone in the dark.

Living.

You knew. 
The entrance and the exit wound. 
You lived in the same cozy cabin built on a blood-soaked burial site. 
You knew the cost of living and loving. 
You sang to me anyway. 
And now I sing to those who listen, that same warning, 
the unbearable proof. 
I will never be okay. Nobody real will be. 
The wound does not close. 
But I am grateful that you showed me how to walk with a hole in my chest 
and still call it living.

Piano Keys.

I dream the same dream most nights. 
I'm face-down, breath trapped in the pillow, and I reach back with hands I don’t feel in control of. 
I dig. Not soft, or careful. 
Like I'm clawing my way out of a grave. 
I rip my skin open down the spine and it welcomes me. 
Like it’s been begging for this. 
I pluck bones out one by one. Small piano keys in my hands, each one singing its protest before falling quiet. 
Sometimes I stack them beside me. Sometimes I throw them like dice, and try to read the future in the way they land. 
Always, 
I wake before the last one comes free.

Thank You.

I love you. 
It’s the only thing that survived either one of us. 
We never grew old enough to see your hair silvering, 
or to know the feeling of being friends instead of mother and son. 
But I carry you, as if I still have a heart in my chest. 
I love you. 
It’s all I needed then. 
It’s all I have now. 
It was always enough. 
Thank you.

Responsibility.

Everyone thinks it is rare. 
That it lives in golden rings, 
In trembling hands beneath candlelight, 
In whispered vows on borrowed time. 
But it is not shy. 
It isn’t hidden. 
It saturates. 
The sky blushes with it at dawn. 
The dirt sings it into every root. 
A stranger gives you their seat on the train. 
A child waves at a bird like its family. 
An old woman clutches a photo 
like it’s the last star in the sky. 
That’s love. 
Not the performance. 
The pulse. 
The one you were born with. 
The one every creature carries 
like a soft bell ringing behind their ribs. 
You, me, 
the prisoner and the priest, 
the addict and the architect, 
the cruel and the kind; 
we all carry it. 
We are all knit of the same thread. 
Patterned differently, but woven still. 
Even the ones who don’t know how to give it back, 
they were loved once. 
And that love does not die. 
It echoes. 
It stains. 
Love is not a gift. 
It is a constant. 
Like gravity. 
Like light. 
It is the universe, caring for itself 
through our fleeting hearts. 
So love boldly. 
Clumsily. 
Foolishly. 
For it is your only responsibility.

Stop.

It waits for my mouth like a child at a bus stop. 
A small, innocent promise. 
The first sip is a choice, what follows is simple gravity.  
I drink until my self blurs,  
until the glass feels warm in my hand and the room stops holding its breath.  
Tomorrow, I’ll call it weakness.  
Tonight, it’s the only thing that still feels like mine.

Not Like This.

I do not doubt your arms. 
You have carried heavier. 
You still carry me. 
And yet you say, 
“This is what love does.” 
As if love should be a back 
bent just enough not to snap. 
I believe you. 
That’s the worst part. 
I believe you’d crawl through hell 
with my name behind your eyes, 
and the wreckage of me 
clutched to your chest 
like I was something holy. 
But I have seen 
what you look like 
when you think I’m not watching. 
I’ve seen your hands 
after they let go of me. 
Shaking. 
It’s not that I think I’m unlovable. 
It’s that I do not think love should hurt you. 
Not like this.

The Ground.

Letting go feels like flying,  
until you remember 
the ground.

Demolition.

I don’t drink to forget. 
I drink to come back 
to the body, the breath, 
to the soft knock of the blood behind my eyes. 
Mornings smell of shit and vomit, 
like the world's most dreadful tea was steeped too long. 
The glass on the desk winks at me, 
half-full of a night I didn’t earn. 
I tell myself: just enough to stop shaking. 
Just enough to make the mirror stop screaming at me. 
But the liquor knows my name now. 
It sings it low, like a lullaby through hungry teeth. 
By noon I’m orbiting the sun, 
half-piss, half-vinegar, 
holding my ribs like they might cave in 
if I remember too hard. 
Everyone thinks it’s demolition. 
They don’t know it’s scaffolding. 
That without it, 
I might not stay built at all.

Acidic.

I am not your debate.
My limbs are foreign.
My own mind speaks in a language I do not know.
I am not your theory.
My blood is acidic and dripping from my lips.
My bones are too large and ready to become dust.
I am not your punchline.
My tendons are harp strings played by dead cherubs.
My fingers exist as an exit, only here to pull the trigger when I want out.
I am not your perception.
My eyes are tired of you.
Fuck off.

Welcome.

I built my dwelling inside the beast. 
Made a hearth of its ribs.
Hung my regrets on the walls of its veins like decor. 
Turned its snarling throat
into a doorway
and left the light on.
For you.

Sacrilege.

I burn the places I prayed, with intent. 
I smash the mirrors, because 7 years of bad luck really just means 
7 more years. 
I love you as much as I hate you. 
I fear you as much as I envy you. 
Not because you would, or could, destroy me. 
But because I would still do it for you.

History.

Tongues were not designed with grace in mind, 
only survival. 
And we were dying. 
You chewed the moment. 
I swallowed it. 
It was spit and cliché. 
The wet mess of history trying to write itself again. 
Our noses collided like trains. 
I apologized. I didn’t stop.

Armed.

My body is a cathedral built for war,  
all tendon and tendon and tension, a scaffolding of poison,  
a threat wrapped in the apology of perfume.  
You call me brave, but you stare at me like I’m armed.  
You say “I see you,” but that's because I'm too large to ignore.  
I am too much. I am not enough.  
I am never what you mean.  
I am tenderness, mounted to your wall.  
And for one thing, you were right.  
I am armed.

Home.

Let my pain be the thread 
that sews shut the seam of my life. 
Let my breath be the wind 
that fills the sails of others’ dead dreams. 
I am the door. 
I am the key. 
I am home.

Cheers.

Here's to the ghosts.
The ones that taught me the taste of regret, 
and showed me the sweetness that comes before.
The ones that I still write for, 
even when I tell myself I've forgotten the shape of their face.
Damn the sun.
This is a day for haunting.

Cherry!

I do not wish to be saved. 
I yearn to be seen. 
Witnessed once in truth, 
on this ball of fucking rock. 
Give the one with eyes the sight to see what came for me. 
A final act of love, 
to crown a life of anguish. 
Like a cherry!

Fuck You.

I am not your redemption arc.
I am not your quiet, trembling girl, whispering into the void for salvation.
I am the void.
I am the blood you smell in the hallway.
I am the silence after the impact.
I am the reason your stomach tightens when the room goes still.
This is not a cry for help.
It’s a declaration of war.
I am love.
Not the kind you hold, but the kind that burns your house down.
I am the horror you flinch from and the hand that still reaches out when you’re cold.
I am life, barefoot and gnashing.
I am death, not as the end, but compassionate.
If you’re here,
good.
That means I’ve finally won.
Fuck you.
Read it again.