just-get-over-it

and oh, darling, how many times must i say this- i am caught in a web of doubt and the spider is reeling me in- how many scars must i show you before you believe i am not perfect? there are dark marks of kisses on my neck and collarbones but somehow it feels that the canvas of my skin is so empty still- late at night i long to paint my limbs with crimson life but i remember your smile and sit on my floor like a child, dry-eyed, stringing shiny beads onto elastic cord and trying not to give in. it is such a story, love, and we are hans christian andersens desperately cobbling together sentences and hoping we make sense. it seems forever and a

a monster sits in my belly, clawing at my thighs, never ever slowing with its unrelenting growls and howls and oh god am i dying is this the final day and how long am i holding on and how can i ever stay? my femurs are close to breaking, my fucking legs are weak, and somehow still i'm expected to stand up on my feet, and how the hell do they think i can live like this every day and why the hell don't they understand that things aren't like they say? i'm stronger than i seem, they say, but the x-rays show the truth; they can hide behind their web of lies but still i know that you fuckers, can't you see that i'm not in this chair for kic

june: i date a boy with flowers in his eyes and tears in his sideburns and i love him. july: i collapse trying to walk up the stairs and he says i am strong. august: he doesn't eat for a week and i try to kiss the hunger off of his lips. september: i can't walk but he says he loves me no matter how thick my arms get from wheeling myself around. october: we are both close to giving up.

when i was three, i dressed up as cinderella. it was a warm october night in the hills of south carolina, where scorpions basked in the garden and daddy once killed a rattlesnake in the kitchen. i remember momma tying a bow on my dress and taking sixteen pictures. i was a gap toothed little blond with a plastic tiara and dreams in my eyes. i made my friend mark be my prince charming. i remember looking over, suddenly shy, and wondering if we would get married one day. when i was five, we moved away. that was my first little taste of heartbreak. it didn't last long, though. my next memory is standing on my new driveway, peering past the movi

i am a dysphoric mess of dry eyes and clenched fists and lots of nights beating the hell out of walls and the punching bag in the basement and scabby knuckles and aching muscles and oh god i really just really wanna get straight to sleep this time because what the hell am i am i a girl am i a guy and now my knuckles are bleeding and i miss you and a week isn't long to wait really but for me it is eternity because i am a fucking mess and i wanna go home and sleep but sweetheart you're already at home my mother says and i shake my head and say that's not what i mean, mother

i lately, the curve of your shoulderblades has been tattooed on the insides of my eyelids, and the weight of your heart has settled alongside mine in my chest, like it's found a home. your eyes would fly if they could, just grey enough to make you think pigeon and just blue enough to make you think bluebird. if my feet were lighter and i weren't weighed down by the chains of sorrow and tiredness and scars, i would follow you into the sky. ii i made you a dreamcatcher with bluejay feathers on it. a gold (not really, but it looks pretty) key charm hangs from it, flanked by beads and feathers and fluttering ribbons. its intricate design remin

have i ever told you that you make me smile? high praise, i know, coming from me, it's high praise indeed because i have a jumbled up head and you make me smile and i maybe even found someone who will stay this time and maybe i even found someone who will love me as much as i love them (it slipped out that night you almost gave up, almost threw in the towel, almost took the pills you've been saving) and i know i wouldn't be able to live without you and i know i may have to and darling, it scares me it fucking scares me. just listen to that... my heart is racing like millions of butterflies are trapped and running around a ferris wheel screa

she never saw it coming at all. well, maybe she did, she was the one that held the knife but she never thought it would really happen. she was the kind of girl that drank the stars with her eyes, flying away on wings of paper and dreams, and during the day held her screams in behind carmine lips, keeping her nails wrapped in band-aids so she couldn't hurt herself. it's all right it's all right it's all right it's all right all right all right because nobody can have it all and sometimes the only time she thought she could smile was with the help of a knife. all she wanted was to be happy but somehow her psyche always worked against her. open

i have seventeen dreamcatchers hanging in my room. i suppose it's overkill; i'm never going to achieve my dreams anyway. but i keep making them. looping the yarn tightly around the small hoop, tying it off, then taking the needle and thread (black for despair, white for hope; my room has shadows and black lace cast over it now) stitch stitch stitch with looping swirls like i'm sewing the pieces of my mind back together. i tie off the last loop when the lacy stitches have knitted closer together than often-broken bones in a hospital bed. i hang the latest dream above my bed. when i wake up, bolting up from a nightmare with monsters on my tail,