her and you.

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              i’ve been thinking about her a lot this week. she’s like that scab you pick and pick until bloody all over again. you know you shouldn’t but you do. you get so engrossed you almost stop feeling the pain as an almost-healed wound is split open again. the saddest part is that no one knows her anymore. her name is a meaningless collection of five letters but they have the power to drag me under. (she was riptide.)

you see, i had three months with her. one hundred and twenty-two emails. i remember each one. i remember the day she told me she cut her skin like it was paper and the knife was a pen. i remember the day she told me didn’t want to each because she wanted to leave. i’ve never been enough to make anyone stay.

i remember the blurry picture she sent of hair she dyed with blue koolaide. she sent a heart face emoji. and what some people don’t realize about me is that i have always been selfish. i liked that i had the title of best friend and i believed she would quit. i believed my words sent digiatally were enough to make one girl see the light. and while i called it friendship her sexuality called it a relationship.

but things turned toxic when i couldn’t stop messaging her because i knew when i stopped the knife would meet her skin. i didn’t realize that i was fighting a battle i couldn’t win. i never realized she was selfish doing what she was doing. i never realized she wanted all of my attention and that my friendship wasn’t enough. i just never realized that her name had irony concidered how little faith she had in herself….and in me. the day i stopped being enough for her was the day that we met.

and i remember with vivid clarity the day she told me that she had set her suicide date. i never saw her telling me this as selfish, but i do now. i see it because when she told me this i cried for hours. i messaged her a total of sixteen times using the most pleading words i knew. i said i loved her and that she was my best friend.

when she replied her email was short and simple, and she just said she was sick of living. sick of feeling what she was feeling and sick of locking herself in the bathroom to escape her parent’s yells. and what they don’t tell you about a teenage girl living in a broken house with a broken family, is that she learns to hide her brokenness. you learns how to sloppily dye her hair to hide her sad eyes. she learns how to pull off long sleeves and jeans. she learns how to stud her clothing and dress emo just for parential attention which she doesn’t get. the day she stopped hiding her brokenness for me was the day she broke me.

and as i felt my heart shatter i told her to tell her parents. tell them she was broken and that she needed help. i don’t know if she ever did. my inbox dinged that night with her saying she couldn’t email me anymore. i still don’t know if that was her parents, sexuality or her talking. i guess i never will.

all i know is that on her suicide date i tried to contact her. i tried to sent her messages only to find all her accounts disabled and her email nonexistant. and as a girl who found herself rather broken, i blamed myself. my what’s ifs caused me to look at razor blades with a new kind of fear. and when i cut myself shaving for the first time i burst into tears as my blood mingled with shower water.

she left me because i wasn’t enough. my love wasn’t enough, my friendship wasn’t enough, and my newly broken pieces were not enough. she left the world because she saw it in all grey and as a colorful broken girl, she refused to live without color. and so she left in a splash of red.

i still cry how i never got to go to her funeral. i still cry because i don’t know were she is buried. i still cry because certain days of the year i think of her and i’m triggered.

and you remind me so much of her that it hurts. your smile is the same….sadness, hope and a little bit of joy. your story is almost the same. some days i almost catch myself saying her name instead of yours, typing her name in instead of yours. i think it is unfair for me to that to you. and i find myself  concealing how much she broke me, from you. i find myself telling you the story once and never again. i find myself holding back the memories  because you will tell me something. and you will sound exactly like her.

and i know it is unfair of me to compare you to her. but this past week all my brain has been chanting is that you are leaving me like she did. you will not be in the ground but you don’t be in my life either. and it scares me how easily i have let myself get attached to you and it makes me angry how easily you say that you are leaving.

and the biggest thing that you both had in common is that you both find it easy to leave me.

 

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i just don’t get it. i don’t get how we can still make each other happy when we are the way we are. i don’t understand how we can laugh and laugh until our sides ache but then i find myself falling apart. how you find yourself falling apart. i don’t understand that when i’m curled up crying i don’t text you. i don’t call you. because i’ve come to understand that you won’t answer. you don’t need to answer. you say that your phone died or that you asleep. i day it’s ok. and i sound mistrustful but that is because my trust has been shattered so many times that it’s barely there. and i sound clingy but when i feel jagged edges of all my insecurities breaking through my skin, i want you. and if i hadn’t convinced myself years ago that i didn’t need anyone but myself, i would say that i need you. i know you are tired of me hot and cold. i know you are tired of how I’m just not the same girl you met in that french class with your green dress and jacket. and you know what? i’m tired too. i’m tired of the nights i spend without sleep and the days i spend building people up while i’m breaking. on Monday things will be normal again. we will ignore the message i sent and we will ignore the underlying truth that you are leaving me. and i am leaving you. and it scares me so so much to think that out of all the people i have met, i think you could be the one i need. but we both know you don’t need me. we don’t have long conversations anymore. you’re too busy. we don’t sent pictures with funny captions or attempt to plan anymore. i think deep deep inside we both know that our friendship has become a habit and we just don’t care enough to break it. you didn’t steal my skittles anymore, that’s not how the story goes. i gave you a piece of my heart willingly, but now i want it back. we both know i’m selfish.

it

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it-depression

for rebecca

 

it split the barrier of my mind

and carved a cozy  cavity

a little indent in the ground

a perfect place to haunt me.

 

it flourished in the darkness

finding nightmares to feed on

and each day i woke up with a prayer

that it woudl be gone.

 

but it had settled in to stay

and stay it surely did

but when people made me smile

it ran away and hid.

 

it hated me with painful thoughts

and i hated it with chalky pills

because a lot of people have an it

and an it kills.

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she left again just yesterday

said this time it’s gonna be longer

and i know better than to ask

if i can go with her.

 

this city just isn’t for us

she told me one night

i want to be back in that old town

where we couldn’t see the city light.

 

she doesn’t ask me to come along

and i don’t ever ask her to stay

because together we only hurt

so maybe it is better this way.

witch

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swirl your pencil like a broom

and write your magic spells

 

isolation became my friend, as i wove  spells with graphite. all my life i was told, witches burn by firelight.

 

don’t listen to what they say

gathering together a witches hunt

 

hiding in silence stuffy and stiff, i heard the crowds pass by. i could tell them i wasn’t a witch but that would be a lie.

 

stir the pot carefully

don’t let it boil over

 

the first spell i ever brewed, was a casted charm of invisibility. but i’ve gone too long without writing, so now they’re gonna catch me.

 

i was branded with a witch’s mark

for casting a spell on him

 

i never wrote a spell for him, he fell all on his own. but for all the witch hunters, i was destined to me alone.

 

one less witch

one more light in the world

 

stories never told how i gave in willingly, realizing the differences i had wanted to make, could be made by just being me.

 

they gave my ashes to the king

and claimed that the witch had burned

but the stake was empty that day

because as a witch i burned up from the inside out

(unwritten spells are magic of their own)

until the fire was afriad of me

 

they

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they-the monsters inside of my head

for faith, i will always believe that you are now one of my better angels

 

i told them i was afraid of the dark

they said to turn on a light

i told them i was always so angry

they said to get into a fight.

 

i told them boys wanted things

they said to give them parts of me

i said i was always resiting

they said to give in willingly.

 

i told them i was sick of living

they asked why live at all

i told them i was at the edge of a building

they asked why not fall.

mermaids

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(for the girl who used to wonder if bathtubs were deep enough to drown in)

 

there used to be mermaids in the world

until hate fished them all out

luminous girls with iridescent tails

growing legs because of doubt.

 

but what no one tells you about mermaids is

without water they will not survive

so all the landlocked mermaids

are struggling to stay alive.

 

all these used to be mermaids

try to drown themselves in bathtubs

sneaking out with true land people

to guzzle liquor at the clubs.

 

if you ever meet an unhappy girl

remember what she could be

because almost all sad girls are

tailess mermaids from the sea

 

proxima centauri (star closest to the sun)

MW3 Comments

 

 

she skips family dinner to run away from the abuse

a mother born flawed turned perfectionist early

a father working too late to spare but a smile

and two sisters who left as soon as they could

pursuing medical degrees for success which guarantees them praise

While she gets none.

 

and she calls me on the phone

her voice only slightly scratchy filled with the usual irony and skepticism

she asks

hey//can you meet me//at the record store//at a quarter past ten//because i’m tired//of a never-ending critic//who’s supposed to my mother//but all i get//is salt instead of sugar//tears instead of treats//and waiting hours//in the school lobby//because she forgot//about me again//  (am i really that forgettable?)

 

and i say

hey//yes i’ll meet you there//heard a local band is playing//wanna catch the subway there//new york city has never seemed so pretty//right along there with you

 

we met at the radio room

throaty music and old coffee smell

and she loses herself in the music

fingers strumming her scratched guitar

 

dear mother of hers//can’t you see// she is worth more than// a medical degree// she doesn’t wear dress//so what//i like her jeans and sweatpants just fine//because of your abuse//she’s turned hard//not trusting people//and scared to come home at night

because of you// she is afriad//and plugs a straightener into the wall//because of you//she plays classical//until her fingers bruise//while singing secretly along to journey//and mother of hers//while you don’t call it abuse//we all know//that she has scars in places//you cannot see//because you are too busy//trying to make another perfect daughter//to your perfect mother//that you don’t see her