Not Your Year

I think back to a time where the sun kissed my lips, my cheeks as red as your lips after a game of love and be loved. My hands shake, reaching down to silence something that never should have been silenced in the first place, I can't tell if this is reality or not. If you were to cry, the world would drip from your cheeks. Women and children and dogs would stick their tongue's out and hope with the love that's wrapped in smiles that it could fix them. Needles, blood, and tears were all I had and while I looked at you, you transformed into a winged creature, your nose hooked and long. You appear and reappear like a drum beat, coming and going as you see fit. Your love fades and comes back as strong as a fingerprint in the sand. I wish I could collect pieces of your body, looks you've given me, the way your hand flutter over my back, barely touching me. I feel the flow of energy the most in those moments.

He slit his skin like he's filleting a fish with a blade he found hidden deep within the remnants of a dream I'd forgotten. There were bodies strewn over muddy earth when the levvy finally broke, and we used them as clothing to hide ourselves. My eyes bled soft reds and pinks, and you licked the blood from my eyelids as if it were a delicacy not to be forgotten.

Is this the way to feel? Am I doing it right?

I Was Young When I Left Home

It was the sound of fingers moving across old guitar strings. A hollow man sitting on a stool with his legs open, the instrument resting on his right knee, and his voice as rickety as a wooden rail station as he fumbled over the notes. He smiles and there are fragments of happiness stuck in between his teeth and a feeling of misplacement in the air.

Keep Yourself Warm

would you be offended if i told you that you are beautiful? you whispered in my ear and your hands clasped around my belly, pulling me closer, and my arms reached up to hold the back your neck so our cheeks could touch, and I cried soo hard the windows broke and icy air filled the room with something more than pain. red toes and cheeks and noses and i can't feel my legs what happened to silence and dreams of good and happy, now i just feel so used all the time. nausea every time of the day, i've made myself sick with worry and stress. i've regurgitated every piece of food i've tried to eat the past two days i wish i were a new born and i didn't care so much, but i dont know how else to live. i looked down and there were toenails scattered across everything and my feet bled the the blood of someone not real. fangs and fucked up girls hiding their naked skin under layers and layers of pills, alcohol, and weed,

you wanna kill it or you want me to?

you peeled away layers and layers of dust and grime and old habit like an old trade you'd learned once. i sleep where my feet were so i can let my head hang off the end and feel nothing hang from my scalp but old memories and the will to live. there's a warmness in my fingertips i did not warrant and a coldness in my toes that chills everything. if you smile again everything in the world will settle itself back into the right rhythm and maybe i can sleep again without fretting about the past.

Loud As Hope

you've reattached that yearning in me that i couldn't get right the first time. there's no more coffee and cigarettes a 3 a.m. or that quiet resentment that always pulsed my life out into something unmanageable. her eyes are like glass and her teeth are sharpened to a point. i planted the memory of love so deeply, i forgot what it was like for my stomach to sink and the veins in my cheeks to swell and expand, blood swirling. i forgot that it's not bad or wrong or weird to still feel like my chest is going to explode when i think of love. the harder i press into you, the safer i feel, and i guess it's kind of the first time i've really felt that without feeling pressured into something. i didn't mean for this to be a love letter, but nine months go by and there's something greater than all the flings and late nights with boys of the past. trust, warmth, comfort, sleep, smiles in dark rooms while our fingers traced the curves of each others cheeks, necks, shoulders, and backs.

and all of it is so terrifying.

being able to look at myself, my face, and the silhouette of my body in a mirror and say to myself you are beautiful, you are loved, reinstalling a confidence that i thought i had once but had covered itself in fear and hate.

Honey Bee

I really want these plates for when I go to college. I don't know if it's a nesting thing, or what, but I've been searching for dinnerware and silverware, and other things.

Off the Record

sleep whispers to me, speaking softly into one ear while Samuel Beam sings into the other. warmth radiates throughout my body, filling me from my navel out and my vision blurs. my fingers fill with euphoria at three in the morning while my levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and seratonin find their balances in my body and there's always going to be some memory of it so why can't i find the girl i was two months ago? he spoke and his words painted themselves on my palm like he was reading the wrinkles left by some other time, some other memory. scars on my hips, eyes wide, love plastered on everything. emotions swirled around me in circles meant for someone with better tolerance and knowledge of how the world spins.

blue fingertips, bleeding hands, the way his face looks while he's relaxed. her hips were all bone and ground teeth as she looked through the mirror at me and there's nothing i want more than to sleep a night without a dream. blissful darkness is the only thing i don't have. my day doesn't end, it just picks up in incoherent ramblings in my dreams.

The Burns Anxiety Inventory

At any one time, I feel: anxiety, nervousness, worry, fear, that things around me are strange or foggy,that I am detached from all or part of my body, sudden unexpected panic spells, apprehension or a sense of impending doom (especially while driving), tense, stress, "uptight" or on edge.

Most of the time I have: difficulty concentrating, racing thoughts, frightening fantasies or daydreams, feelings that I'm on the verge of losing control, cracking up or going crazy, fears of passing out or fainting, of illness, heart attacks, dying, or that something terrible will happen.

Without doing anything I make myself feel: skipping, racing or pounding of the heart, pain, pressure or tightness in the chest, tingling or numbness in the toes or fingers, butterflies or discomfort in the stomach, restlessness or jumpiness, tight, tense muscles, sweating not brought on by heat, a lump in my throat, dizzy, lightheaded or off balance, headaches, hot flashes or cold chills, tired, weak, easily exhausted.

2 Prozac, 1 Ativan, and a Klonopin later, I feel like I've destroyed my brain. I feel as if my thoughts are choppy and don't run together, like I'm going to drive myself insane and one morning wake up with the cats, squirrels, and birds out to get me. Things that aren't even logical seem real and like they could happen at any moment in time, and I scare myself so easily into thinking ridiculous things.

When I was little I would wake up screaming because my dreams were so real and frightening that I couldn't sleep. This disorder, anxiety, it's like a dream. I don't feel attached to the world, even though I know it's here. I can speak in complete, coherent sentences, and I know I'm sane, but my brain feels so foggy and dead, it's like someone put an opaque cover over everything I experience in life. I've thought about so many things: exercising, meditation, medication, leaving my comfort zone so I don't become an agoraphobic. I just need to do things that aren't normal. To be away from my mind.