That’s the funny thing about pain,” she said. “You suffer through it. And looking back, you’ll remember that you had it. But you’ll never be able to remember exactly how it felt– only how huge it seemed to be. You’ll remember that you were hurting, who hurt you, and how. But once you overcome the pain, your heart callouses. You won’t be able to feel the knives in your lungs anymore, or the way every word they said was a hammer to your ribcage. Eventually, it becomes a black and white memory of something you had experienced in color. And in some ways that is so beautiful,” she mused, “because it allows us to try again despite all we’ve been through.

somebody once told me you can’t re-feel past pain

Water & Fire

You spat fire,
but I pretended I was made of water
so you wouldn’t know you burned me.
Slowly, you evaporated me
until I was nothing– a puddle
on the sidewalk that
you stepped in on your way to
somewhere.

Thinking of Summer

my heart is a mix
of the butterflies that have escaped
my stomach and
too much coffee, and
my mind is growing green grass
by the ocean shore where we’d
go skinny dipping
at night.
the air in my lungs is a shot
of hot summer sand, sunblock,
and newly pollinated flowers
chased by freshly mowed lawns
and sweat.
sweat that slides from my face,
down my spine, and in between my
bikini top.
sweat that slithers down your chest
and pools in your
belly button.
sweat like ocean water,
sweat like tears.
sweat that makes me
shiver.

Even When You’re Here

language fails to express
the most profound darknesses of the heart–
the small cracks between the fertile soil of the
soul where only God goes.
There is no one where I am,
seeing through these eyes or
hearing through these ears, or
feeling the darkness in my stomach.
In all that I am,
I am utterly, darkly, alone.

You Only Stayed While You Were High

You rolled me up
and lit me on fire.
You kept me burning
until I dissolved in the
wind and collapsed
into ash–until
I was small enough
to pinch between your fingers;
my ebbing embers smothered on
your skin.

Hitch Hiker

One day
my heart skipped a beat
and I realized you’d made your home
in the caverns between my ribcage.
You treaded on my heart
while it was still soft,
skimming your hands along
the white walls.
You filled
the empty space,
you left nothing
untouched.

Autumn

Fuck.
I’m falling again.
It’s funny how even after the millionth time,
my stomach still tries to escape
through my mouth.
I’m unattached and
the wind cradles me, rocking me
in her arms.
For once it is just my veins and my skin
and my stem:
just me.
When the ride is over and
her hands slide me onto the ground,
I am destined to become
dirt.

Sleep talking

Prose rises
from your lips while
you sleep. I wish I understood
what you were saying, but
you mumble
in a language I will never know–
you whisper secrets
to me I will never hear.

Blood Is Proof I’m Still Alive

At dinner parties, my parents still laugh
and tell their friends about how
I used to bite my toenails as a child– as if
it is cute that my fingernails and cuticles constantly
resembled a war zone. As if
the fact that a four year old had enough anxiety
to resort to biting her toenails
once her fingernails ran out, was funny.

Five thousand eight hundred and forty three days later,
the skin around my thumbs has learned how to heal
when it is uprooted from it’s home.
Five thousand eight hundred and forty three days later
and I’m sitting in this chair, small flakes of my skin accumulating
on my thigh. I try and hide them,
brush them off onto the floor.
Five thousand eight hundred and forty three days later
and she asks, Why
do you pick your thumbs?
and I think: To feel something.

Because bloody thumbs
are a lot easier to brush off
than the scars on your inner arms.
Because you can pick your thumbs
without having to discretely pack
blades and gauze pads and tape and bandages
in your backpack.
Because you don’t have to hide
in a bathroom stall between classes
just to feel something.

Some days the anxiety
is so bad my fingerprint
reader on my phone cannot read
my thumbs.
Some days my fingers are so raw
I cannot hold
my pencil without cringing.
Some days my fingers look
like they’re wearing bugle hats.
Some days my nail beds are
a war zone.

I’m picking at myself to feel something
because being numb isn’t enough to prove I’m alive.

‘If you hate your scars, why do you do it?’ he asked.
‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘the only way to get rid of all the pain in my mind is to feel it on my wrists.’

excerpt from a book i’ll never write #2