tales of ambivalence

Here Take my worth Keep it in your belly button Chew it like bubblegum I never learned how to want it anyways

You held your life to my throat and slashed my health to its knees; Now every night I fear and pray for stab wounds. What a wicked way to ruin

When you leave him buy some new eyeliner, roll up your sleeves, get a tetanus shot. He wants to see you crumble with out him. Do not crumble with out him

I hate my body for the way it makes me feel less human. I hate myself whenever I wreck it to try to feel more human. My head is a church that slaps the child in me for wanting to feel this way. The child is always wailing. She is the loudest part of me. I have spent so long trying to turn her into white noise that my ears are always ringing.

My heart is a child in July, eating a popsicle. My brain works as both the abuse she never deserved and an apology letter she read too late.

My grandma lives out back. She gets so paranoid she leaves her porch light on all night and it creeps in through the sheer white curtains on the French doors of my bedroom. It is the only light that exists in this dark of mine. It is so faint you can't even photograph its contrast. It makes the window's silhouette look so lonely, it makes everything else look so much darker. It is the only room my head ever resembles, even the light is solemn here.

Definitely still shattered. Picking up the pieces. Definitely getting cut by them but still picking up the pieces.

We are taught to marginalize our trauma, tuck it under mattresses and in the corner of closets. It is okay to hold it in your palms instead; cup it close and learn to love the pain out of it, learn to turn it into bricks and locks and chairs. Don’t put a mask on for them, chew bubblegum for them. Don’t apologize for your sorrow, be candid about it in any way that you please. It is okay to not be okay.

I imagine scenarios of crashing into you everywhere I go: on runs, in coffee shops, the other side of my bed, sorrows dress up box, the forest fire in my gut, mad in my own head. Lately, these are the only places I go.

There were things that I had to be for you So I left

You don't love me You love the girl we molded out of me What fantastic work your teeth and my faith in the god between them did on her

Walk in and out under exit signs, scribble black holes on paper, smile. Eat something you used to like, avoid mirrors, lie to someone about your rusty day. Pretend you are oiled. Dream of driving in circles the size of Seattle, visit the graves inside your mind, place dead flowers upon them. Empty yourself at the hands of a faucet, a pencil, the music he showed you, walks on the loose bricks. Forgive the fist around your heart, blame his shadow in your nerves for all this anxiety. His bite got into your bones, his hands got into the hollow side of your nightmares. What else would it do but hurt? What else would it do but heal?

If I know one thing, it is that people who have burdened through the darkest forests of human calamity come out with empathy growing out of their ears

Depression might always walk these halls.Be there like a locker partner always inviting anxiety to change the combination. But depression will always alleviate, like a locker partner who got their class schedule changed.

The absence of someone you love tells you more about yourself than they ever can When you search for them in the negatives they leave behind you start to feel like a polaroid of yourself. I have tried to find you in the bottom of bottles; in the dreams where all of the teeth crumble out of my mouth; in other men; in the empty space in my bed; in letters I don't know yet how to write. I have tried to find you in the places I know best.

I hide my traumas in the dress up box. Carve them out like their only face is jack-o-lantern, Like the heart of them is always a candle and all I need are a couple of matches to shine my way back to myself. Meaning, you will never see the guts of this. The knives it took.

Next time you want to blame everything on me, think of us as crabs. I left you with out a shell, you left me clawed with out a body. I am sorry for what happened after the first thing. Not the second.