sadness and pain
I was worthless.
I no longer thought
I meant something.
everyone told me I couldn’t.
and one day, that was all I believed, even when
you told me I could.
I was a failure.
I couldn’t believe
when you said I was special.
I told you not to.
but, you kept trying even though
I was a mess.
run away.
I can’t believe you didn’t
the day you first met me
(a year later, I read it backward)
the trees write in cursive roots
that you cannot decipher.
you were promised
block-letter branches.
experience never quite matches up
to the textbook,
but remember that you
are not illiterate.
life is learning to read
the messy handwriting
of the earth
when school only showed you
clear-cut letters.
fights and fears for all these years,
but maybe I’m not so insane;
my birthday cake cures past mistakes
with each blown-out candle flame.
my skin has screamed through stitches seamed,
but I woke up today; still alive.
I can hold on for longer, maybe now I’ll be stronger
for the next three hundred sixty-five.
she was radiance
shoulder blades and beaches and orange headphones
carsick saturdays and card games I could never win,
just like her heart.
but I think I’m okay with that.
at least I played the game:
poker face on, cards down.
and that’s enough.
sometimes our calves would brush
as we sat watching movies.
and that’s enough.
I was awkward and she was graceful,
I was nothing
and she was absolutely everything.
but for a summer she dealt me in.
and that is enough.
the problem was not
asking him
to complete me.
the problem was
believing I was incomplete
to begin with.
you always kept yourself
a few steps ahead of me.
I spent all our time together
out of breath,
trying to catch up.
you were the first
to fall in love.
the first
to fall out.
it was as if
there was a lag
in my version of reality.
as if
you were a time zone ahead
while sitting right
next to me.
today,
I saw that you have
already moved on
to someone else.
I guess my clock
is still a few
hours behind.
some days I’m okay,
while others pull me to the ground.
I’ll dig through dirt searching for
happiness I thought I’d found.
the darkness scares me more
now that I see a chance at light;
that flare of hope is pushing me
to not give up the fight.
they say that I am too young
to talk about love—
that I don’t understand it.
and maybe I don’t.
but neither does
anyone else.
when it comes to love,
clarity does not
come with age.
let me agonize over it
just like everyone else.
the first one,
he gave me a toy planet with a moon.
it’s funny,
because it was exactly like us:
my life revolved around his,
I was stuck in orbit.
he was spinning and spinning
and spinning out of control
and yet he was all I could see,
wrapping myself around and around
even if gravity pulled me too tight.
it took me a year
to throw the cheap thing away.
the second one,
he gave me a broken piece
of a bridge he’d built.
it’s funny,
because it was exactly like us:
snapped under pressure.
I traced the sanded design
with my fingertips the day he left,
seeing my femurs and vertebrae in every piece,
a broken skeleton of something
pushed far past its limits.
I still keep the piece on my bookshelf.
it reminds me of who I used to be.
he gave me nothing.
it’s funny,
because it was exactly like us:
empty and silent,
no footprints coming or going.
fading as fast as it had come.
for a minute, I convinced myself
I wasn’t hollowed out.
but no matter how deep I dug,
I couldn’t find myself.
there was simply nothing there.
jupiter:
the doctor rolls up my sleeves
and asks if the marks are new.
I tell her yes,
but that it was after
three months of being clean.
the therapist pulls back
my exosphere.
it’s hard for me to
let someone look at
the storms.
but I let her anyway.
I’m trying,
and maybe I’m not succeeding,
but it’s a start.
look at the mess we’ve made:
two cotton candy hearts
unraveled across the sofa.
light pink and baby blue never
quite made purple, only
melted sugar and sticky hands,
mismatched colors and
two bodies caught up in the strands.
months have gone by,
and sometimes I still find
saccharine under my fingernails.
and I hate myself for hoping
that sometimes you do too.
I never told you
how much damage you did.
my limbs were not meant
to bend in those directions.
this is me telling you
how you pulled my joints
out of their sockets.
this is me telling you
how you left me with
all my ligaments torn,
disconnected bones
floating inside skin.
this is me telling you
how you made me believe
it was for my own good.
well,
not really.
you’re not reading this,
anyway.
I’ve always
been intrigued
by hands.
how the same mesh
of bone and blood and nail
that caresses a face
cooks a meal
holds a child
can also
form a fist
grip a neck
pull a trigger.
we all have hands.
we all have the potential
to protect
and create
and love.
we all have hands.
we all have the potential
to hurt
and steal
and kill.
we all have hands.
but what we use them for
is up to us.
find yourself
in a page.
look at
where you are.
find your past
in the pages
before.
look at all that
you have survived.
find your future
in the pages
after.
look at all that
you have ahead.
this is not
the end of the book.
you are right
at the heart of it.
keep reading.
The Dawn Breaks
lost:
insecurity.
shaky voice,
loose clothing,
always sucking in her stomach.
last seen the other day
for a split second in the mirror,
telling me she was right.
if found:
please tell her
I know she meant well.
but I have nothing to hide
anymore.
a pillow is not a tissue
or a shoulder
or a therapy session.
but you can
cry into it.
a journal is not a friend
or a hotline
or a therapy session.
but you can
vent into it.
poetry is not an intervention
or a prescription
or a therapy session.
but you can
heal with it.
first steps are always
more important
than they seem.
to the one who will love him next:
he’s been through so much.
help him. take it slow.
smooth the splinters others have left.
I’m sure a few of mine are
still embedded in his skin.
when it comes to suicide,
we like to talk about
how the person died:
a gun to the head,
an overdose,
a rope hanging from the ceiling.
but people do not die
from a rope
hanging from the ceiling.
people die from depression.
a person dies from suicide—
from depression—
every forty seconds.
I am only one person
with one life
with one story.
but everyone has their
stack of stanzas.
some people just don’t live
long enough to publish them.
while you were reading this,
someone committed suicide.
this page is for them.
fifteen things you should know about me
one.
I keep my ringer on when I sleep, just in case.
two.
I love the feeling of a hug (though I’ll never admit it).
three.
I’m a hopeless romantic.
four.
I pick around my nails when I get nervous.
four.
you make me nervous.
four.
you’re bad for my nail beds.
five.
I love figuring things out. seeing things. knowing things.
six.
I never understood why they called the romantics “hopeless.”
seven.
I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I was a kid.
I’ve always been amazed by the sound of a live, beating heart.
eight.
words mean a lot to me.
eight.
I wish you’d use more of them.
nine.
on the first day, we introduced ourselves,
laughing and wondering how we had never met before.
I’m still wondering.
ten.
I want to stop picking at my fingers in case you try to hold my hand.
ten.
I’ve thought about you holding my hand.
ten.
I want you to hold my hand.
ten.
I’m scared you’ll try to hold my hand.
eleven.
I’m not comfortable in my own skin.
I’ve been told there’s far too much of it.
twelve.
you make me less hopeless.
twelve.
I don’t think you want romantic.
thirteen.
this is my favorite number. always has been. always will.
fourteen.
I’d be okay not being beautiful, as long as you thought I was.
fifteen.
I wrote this list instead of messaging you.
fifteen.
I wrote this list instead of picking at my nail beds.
fifteen.
they’re raw anyway.
. . .
fifteen.
I don’t want to stop typing. maybe it’s because I know you’re reading.
fifteen.
I hope you’re reading.
this
is a metamorphosis.
not in terms of butterflies,
where a tiny caterpillar hides away
and emerges as something beautiful.
but in terms of change.
recovery.
human development.
adolescence does not
come with a cocoon.
there is no grand transformation
to hold out for.
just growth.
ninety-nine percent
of every atom in your body
is empty space.
ninety-nine percent
of this page
is blank.
our existence
(our poetry)
(our universe)
relies
on nonexistence.
I cannot write flowing poetry
about the color of his eyes.
I cannot form haikus
about the curve of his lip.
I cannot mold verse after verse
about his skin,
or his hands,
or his words—
for the fact of the matter
is
he is not poetry.
and maybe that’s okay.
maybe this time,
I can fall for a person
instead of a human-shaped stanza.
I want to be a doctor.
maybe a surgeon.
how nice it would be
to go from cutting my own skin
in order to harm,
to cutting someone else’s skin
in order to heal.
love is a chemical reaction
I can’t make any references to god
or the heaven I found when I met you.
I can’t talk about fate or a uniting of souls.
I am a person of science,
a long-practicing atheist
with a textbook as my bible.
but something in the way
my feet feel lighter on the pavement
when I walk next to you—
how your arm brushes mine
and sends electricity through my bones
(even though I know
it’s not scientifically possible)—
something in all that makes me
second-guess
my denial of something outside
of the scientifically proven.
because maybe,
just maybe,
you are proof enough.
don’t tell me
my brokenness
is beautiful.
this
is not beautiful.
this
nearly killed me.
this
is not something
for you to romanticize.
I am beautiful.
this
(depression)
(anxiety)
(pain)
is not.
it’s okay if some things
are always out of reach.
if you could carry all the stars
in the palm of your hand,
they wouldn’t be
half as breathtaking.
there is comfort
in the stillness.
in the moment between
the end of one stanza
and the start of the next.
in the freeze in a glance,
in the pause of a tongue.
the inhale,
waiting.
you don’t look like
a complete thought.
you are paused at a semicolon
placed by a careless author.
I’m waiting for
the second half of the sentence
when maybe there
isn’t even one at all.
but our eyes lock for
an infinitesimally small moment,
and I am calm.
I do not know
if this is the end
or the beginning
or nothing at all.
so for now
I just inhale,
and wait.
lighting a flame is exciting
and lovely and warm.
you,
you are exciting and lovely and warm—
but so fleeting.
there will never be enough
kindling for the both of us.
the happiness
will come slowly,
the way light filters in
through the window
in the early morning hours.
so slowly
you don’t even notice
the night is ending,
until you wake up
and see the sunlight.
I shy away from
calling myself a poet.
emily dickinson is a poet,
I say.
john keats is a poet.
I am a person.
I am barely eighteen years old.
I think too much,
I feel too much.
I write to soothe the ache
in my heart
(or my head)
(or my lungs).
poet comes with
a pedestal of papers,
with a crown
presented by old men
in dusty libraries,
poet comes with
every word
under scrutiny.
then
I begin to picture
a young girl named emily,
sounding out words on paper
and tracing over letters,