i clung so hard because i was so sad
i’m sorry i never told you
well it probably wouldn’t have changed anything
when you stop moving, you’ll notice the shakes
so fight it
never go home, never stop being around people you have to smile for, never pause
because it’s still there regardless, so you might as well try to run
don’t fall into that trap-
you’re happy, you’re happy, you’re happy
remember that.
i was like a flower who was afraid to grow because it meant the sun might stop loving her
but the sun set anyway and that sounds sad, except that when i saw the light again, i stretched my stem and bloomed
do birds feel that to fly is as monotonous as we feel it is to walk?
i have been loved as a substitute
as a stopgap for a hole i know you still haven’t filled
a girl that ripped you up
so you ripped me up
hands on necks
heads on beadposts
everyone after you just an unswung fist-
do you know that every day i thank you for making me fall so hard?
i have been loved as a cure
as an all purpose panacea for your own poison
as a doorframe for your earthquakes
a warmth you couldn’t drive away with your strongest winds
a medication,
you threw me away once i stopped working
a few more milligrams from mending, maybe
couldn’t you have just upped the dosage?
and now? now i am loved as a puzzle
as something you are unable to figure out
an enigma
a creepy confusion that sits in your thoughts
a little too heavy for the time i own,
you’re a little too lost in what you think i am
what happens where my smooth skin goes sharp
when my wit runs out?
yes, i have been loved as a substitute
a cure
a puzzle
but i have never, ever been loved
as a girl
i’ve been loved as a substitute, as a cure, as a puzzle
i have never been loved as a girl.
struck with a midwestern pallor, we’re the frozen knot in the heart of the midwest.
an elk-ridden arrhythmia, a minnesota nice blood clot blocking blood flow to where we need it most.
the heart of our heartland, home of the odd blue state scattered among the red. a step above the south. maybe a step below because where is progress when we hide our hate and our bigotry beneath our beds, beneath a thin skin of “i didn’t want to say anything, but…” and “those people” and we’ve got the passive aggression of a pent up PTA housewife, nowhere near the passion, but, hell, at least we can hold our liquor twice as well.
just stop preaching morality when you still whisper beneath your breath when a black family moves in, when you still kick quaking fourteen year olds out of sanctuaries because screwing up and getting scared is a sin. because i am sick and tired of stuck up suburban “acceptance”, just a more politically correct way of saying “we don’t want you here” and when you preach equality but legislate difference you’re just as bad as the fuckers shouting “fag!” on the street because actions speak louder than words, and if you hate me, at least be honest. there is nothing worse than not knowing your enemy.
and you, too, stuck in the haze of quiet moderate politics, the feel good faux-liberalism, social equality without all that damn hard work. equality with barriers…
you too, are the enemy
it seems that, stuck between the two big bookend coasts, sometimes we lose ourselves in our own prairies.
i would have slit my own wrists if it had meant yours could be healed, and i tried. i tried to suck the venom that runs though your veins out through your roughly hewn wounds into my own and i tried, to complete the cliche, to save you
but all i succeeded in doing was knotting my own guts up and i’m sorry i shot you one too many concerned knowing looks and i’m sorry i never made good on my threat to let them in on your clutches and shakes.
how many times can i try to turn my ribs into a question? let the hollows in, the aching cold that spreads to the tips of my fingers?
there is a certain shame in sustenence
a weakness in the need
because if i can’t even stop myself from rapid expansion, what good am i? you are what you eat, what you keep, what you seed
you are the weakness in your knees
365 days ago i was
7 days from a suicide attempt
1200 calories away from healthy
10 months from alone and
12 months from happy
