half of me was already gone. it was as if half of my body ran away somewhere and i was left with a sack of bones. my ribs poked me from the inside, begging to be unleashed, to be seen, to be snapped. for fuck sake, somebody make a wish. whoever gets the bigger piece wins.

i couldn’t see him. but he was always there. always watching, always waiting for me to break. i knew that’s what it was. boys love their toys, violence and broken things. but only if they break them first. put something destroyed in a man’s hands and he’ll either fuck it or toss it. isn’t that what we all do anyway? we fuck each other and create things and we either toss them or they’re taken. everything lands at the bottom of a barrel anyway.

and he knew that. and he knew just how to bait them. stick little old me in a dark alley in the middle of the night and wait for the boys to flock. and they did. some of them were drunk, some of them depraved but always ready to stick their dick in something. he knew that too.

they’d find me, skinny and rotting in the dark. almost always it was about what was underneath, what was inside and how does it feel? all women are tiny coffins living with death already inside them, you see. sometimes they rise and sometimes they kill, but none of them belong to us. and then we’re forced to live amongst them.

but some monsters have fangs and others didn’t. that was the difference between the boys and my man.

it was always the beginning of the end. the beginning of self sabotage as i knew it. and i didn’t know it until i found myself staring at it in the face.

it starts early, you know? men like you early. men like you sitting on their laps, weak and hairless. they like ruffled panties and sundresses. they like pigtails and bloomers and knee highs and mary janes. not all of them, of course. but most. sometimes they don’t even realize it’s in them, until they’re presented with it. until they have the opportunity to see you in this light. and you’ve been accustomed to pleasing the eyes of a man since you were a child. you just didn’t know it.

the little mermaid and her seashell tits and the way she was ready to give up everything she had, including her voice, because she fell in love with a man on the beach. how i think about all the women who risked their voice because others didn’t have one. but you don’t think about that back then. you don’t think about it because no one really tells you to. and as a girl, you don’t do or do unless you’re told.

that’s the part of you you have to kill. the part of you that needs it. that needs to be sexualized. do you like me like this? do you like me bent this way? how far would you like to see me go, go, go? but it lives in your for a long time. it’s like you were born with the expectation in your veins. you learn to spill it once a month and they proceed to tell you how disgusting you are. how you’re unclean. but don’t forget to shit out some babies after you let a man put the crown of a slave on your left hand.

you will always be punished. for exactly who you are. your chest won’t be viewed as something that nourishes the very children that are expected of you, no. you’ll be sexualized. everything you do will be sexualized. short hair, long hair, school girl, shaved legs, librarian, hairy legs, nun, virgin, whore. it all seems so normal to you. it’s your baseline and you didn’t even know it. passed down like dna itself. passed down to please. to smile more. to be degraded. when you fight back, that will be sexualized too.

dark eyes, dark hair, dark skin. he was a gateway drug into the rest of the chapters of my ruin. and the next one would be completely opposite of how the last one looked. some had soft hands or big calloused palms, angry eyes and wanted to fuck a girl that looked like his sister. or his mom. or his father. whatever issue he had accumulated over time. some you’d never even guessed they would’ve hurt a fly. you can stare for hours at a man you love and never really see through. but if you get close enough, you’ll realize the devil is just a human with a penis.

i didn’t realize at the time that it was never a question of if it would happen, but when. that delusion was not my first mistake nor my last. the benefit of the doubt never benefited me in the long run.

when it happened, the numerous times it did from childhood to my teenage years to adulthood, my brain shifted. it turned their violence into kinks. my mind normalized it, adrenaline fed my body what it needed to become accustomed. to transmute it, not just into fear but the combination of fear and pleasure itself. once the cream is in the coffee it will never be just coffee again.

and there it is. the lamb and the slaughter. your brain betrays your body to keep itself self safe.

there may be a day where you kill her or she will you. the woman who contorts herself like an acrobat. the mind that pretzels itself into its own sabotage at only the very expense of yourself. the heart in your chest wears a dunce cap, but it’s not you.

unconditional trust and love is something only dogs have. then you grow up to be a bitch.

all wolves salivate in the presence of meat. it’s natural. i’s normal, they say. so why does it feel like carnage? why does it feel like the dawn of our extinction?

venus is officially retrograde in aries and the petals from our flowers are beginning to shed. i plucked some myself. i’ve crushed them between my fingers until their juices bled down my wrists. i find myself stripped to nothing most nights, counting the freckles on my skin and wondering where they lead to. trying to connect dots and sever strings simultaneously. black vines under my skin buried in frost.

a crumbled castle under the veil of a monochrome nightmare always visits my dreams. a black horse plods through the snow, yet never leaves a single print. and i don’t know where i am. i don’t know where i’m seeing this from. and yet i feel this all lives inside of me, taking my life upon rest and giving me breath once the sun comes back. but that crumbling pile of stones and that raven-colored animal has more life than my waking one.

the print of the ghost on the pillow feels more alive than me. no hands claw from the dirt and the devil drinks like a king.

don’t tell me you love me. you don’t know how deeply i’d gut myself for a thread of reciprocation. for a shred of kindness. for a merciful hand. for an upturned palm covered in blood that isn’t my own. for the smell of my grandmother’s lentil soup. for the sound of her laugh ricocheting off the curves of my heart. what i wouldn’t give to meet the version of people i had in my head.

there is no one in this world that suffers more than the heart of a child inside the body of a woman. and how this mind carves through the film that my enemies hide behind, as easy as carving a cake. as easy as a hot knife melting through a stick of butter. or how the sea carves a cliff. how a violinist drawing the bow for an audience already slipping to their death. art is appreciated more in the eyes of the dead.

and art is only art in the eyes of the naked, or in the eyes of the blind. you don’t know what it’s like to devote your soul so deeply to someone who doesn’t even share your blood. you don’t know what it’s like to lay yourself on the altar and gaze lovingly at your killer. to be strong enough to tell the tale and the tale weak enough to die as a scar on your face.

they will call it devotion. they will call it love. but i will call it what it was-a masterpiece carved from marrow, a requiem in flesh. because art is only art in the eyes of the dead. and tonight, i am finally beautiful.

some goodbyes are easy. a hello and goodbye the first time you meet someone. a small deal in the grand scheme. some goodbyes jerk your heart off until your eyes come. some are a whisper. some goodbyes are complete darkness. they leave us at a loss of what we did wrong, what we don’t have. other goodbyes will be the last time your hand touches theirs. the last time your lips lock into an official DNA swap that triggers your mind to overdose in memories. you won’t even know it. you won’t know it’s the last time.

a goodbye is not always so simple. it leaves a sour taste on the tongue. it leaves a bubbling poison in our bellies while revenge knocks at our door. the goodbye proves to us what we’ve known all along or what we didn’t. love with conditions is what most of us have. everything’s conditional, transactional, conceptual. sometimes our goodbyes come with dark clouds carved with a blunt axe. chiseled storms cultivate themselves in our chest showing everyone how strong we are. and it waits. it waits for the perfect moment to show everyone how heavy our heart actually is, to show everyone that we are flawed. that we are angry. that sometimes intrusive thoughts win. but whatever has been carved has the ability to crumble.

if i could take back anything, it would be how i said goodbye. too many goodbyes to count. too many goodbyes slither through my hollow bellied hands. all the things i should have said are always in the ring with the things i didn’t say. but nothing wins a gloves off tournament like the things i shouldn’t have said. no one can take that trophy. no one can throw a punch quite like the mouth of a heavy weighted heart. no one can defend the heart like a tongue with talons tucked behind flesh hungry fangs. it goes down like milk and comes back curdled in our throats.

regret is a slow blooming bruise, spreading beneath the skin long before the goodbye has left your lips. some people i wish i could hug again. or kiss again. or fuck again. like i mean it this time. in my heart, i know. in my heart i understand why people leave, why people die, why people seek revenge. oh god help me, i want my heart made for understanding. my heart fights to cleanse the thoughts an ancient mind rather defile. a mind digs a grave that the heart must bedeck in love-laced lily of the valley. my heart visits the dark place where many have rotted forever in the back of my mind. she dances on their graves and makes love to the soil. she sits on their tombstones and tells jokes of past times.

“hey, remember when…”

i will set your sails with a smile. i will shake your hand and tell you there are better sirens in the sea. i will understand your purpose in my life with unconditional understanding and i will try my hand in unyielding love. i will wave my hand from the shore, and see you off with greatness. i will pour our ashes into the ocean and let the waves wash us of our wicked hearts. i will spill our remnants into the moon’s blood stained mirror and let the waves tear us apart one last time. forgive me for the salt in my throat and i will forgive you for the venom in yours.

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My innocence is gone. Most of it has been taken from me before I really started giving it away. Because I got to the point where I figured it was easier to give it. It felt easier to offer it as opposed to someone ripping it out of me. I was forced to smell their stench. Forced to be touched. To be stolen. She was stolen from me. I miss her so much.

I was just a child the first time. Still in diapers. Barely learned words. Words that meant no. Words that meant yes. Words that meant ‘ice cream please.’ I wonder if I was too young to say it. Or if I was just too young to understand what was happening to me.

As for my second experience…

When I was just old enough to have a period, he climbed through my window and took it from me. This time I knew how to say no. It didn’t matter. He left out of the front door. The audacity to leave out of the front door you weren’t invited into. And how I cried with a tummy ache in my bed for the rest of the night. And how I let him chip away at my self worth till it was just a pebble in his shoe. Even that was an inconvenience for him. He broke me down so low, I began giving in willingly. And no one knew. When they did know, I was a slut. And I was too broken to tell the truth.

A year had passed. I wasn’t a legal adult. But drinking became the crutch and the disability at the same time. I loved the feeling of what could kill me slowly could keep me alive. And then she came. She was twice my age. The alcohol on her breath smelled sour, putrid. Her red lipstick smeared from napping earlier in the night. I remember trying to push until my back was against the couch, trying to angle myself enough to get away. When I was finally able to get away, I locked myself in the bathroom until someone showed up and put her to bed. I never told anyone.

My first long term relationship was a year after that. He locked me in closets, beat me, tortured me in many different ways. He was cruel to animals. He was cruel to the homeless. He was cruel to himself. And everyone was too afraid of him to speak up. He devoured me. My body and my threadbare innocence. He hid my shoes in the trunk of his car every time he left the house so I would have a harder time escaping. And he would always have his friend come over to “babysit” me until he got back. I developed stockholm syndrome and PTSD because of it.

More things happened between this time, but the most prominent after that was my boss who drugged me in my late twenty’s. I was too stupid to take notice that bringing someone Vodka in a foam cup was uncommon. I remember taking two sips and that was it. I didn’t remember anything. Just woke up with him on top of me. I had never felt this feeling before. It was like waking up from a weird dream that I couldn’t remember. He had his way and I had to see him at work a day later. Eventually, I had my Mom call and tell them I would no longer be working there. I never told her why.

Once the can is cracked, there’s no cracking it closed. I began to hate myself. Then to prove my narrative, I created more ways that affirmed that narrative. Put alcohol or drugs into the mix and you don’t have to feel anything about it at all. I developed the unhealthy mindset that if I just start giving it freely, it can’t be taken from me. The false sense of power I have tried to get back my entire life. I am now 38 and I miss the little girl I was.

I miss who I was before they made me who I was. They touched my body and the way I tortured my own soul because of it. Please don’t tell me to pick a better man. I have gotten to the point where I truly hope they don’t pick me at all. I don’t want to be picked. Once I learned I can simply pick my own flowers without feeling obligated to spread my legs, why go back? Now that I can sleep peacefully knowing no one is abusing my love behind my back, why sleep with another? I can cry loudly without someone blaming me for my reaction to their abuse. One more withdraw and the check will bounce.

I am now five years alcohol and nicotine free and I will never go back. The things I have endured. The amount I have tried to self medicate. The light has left my eyes. I swear, my heart beats slower. And I have to forgive myself for dealing with it the best I could. I will never get her back. And neither will they. But I am still here. And that’s something they can never take.

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They pinky-promised under the street lamps, swearing they’d never love anyone else, then they screamed at each other in the rain an hour later. But God, they sure knew how to kiss in front of raging waterfalls. They’d blow pinwheels hard enough to make them spin. Their lungs were always empty, either from yelling at each other or trying to make the wheels twirl. But they were never empty enough to say, I love you. How his hands would get stuck in her mouth from feeding her too much cotton candy. How her tummy ache became a performance that everyone had to endure. Big feelings, fragile hearts-their love was the kind that spun like a ferris wheel, never quite touching solid ground. And he always got blamed for the tummy ache.

But he touched her gently. He held her in the crook of his arm like she was an egg. Picture a little boy with curly hair tip toeing across the linoleum. He did everything with one hand. He took a little bit longer to turn off the lights. A little bit longer to carry her plate to the table. A little bit longer to comb his own hair. She’d watch him with big eyes and blushed cheeks. In him, she saw a willow tree with tendrils stuffed by cotton clouds. She saw her favorite flower dance between his tongue when he spoke, like the little ballerina in the music box her Mother used to play for her.

Sometimes, his arm would start to droop, but he never dropped the little egg in the nook of his arm. She’d curl into him as tight as she could-tighter and tighter until she started to crack. And the whites of her eyes spilled onto her cheeks, wide with the fear of losing it all. Their pinwheels stopped spinning-frozen in the dead of winter in 30 mph winds. And waterfalls ran down the cheeks of a girl with tummy aches and a crack in her forehead.

The boy still held her in the crook of his arm. He let the whites soak into the threads of his shirt, her yolk still jiggling in his elbow. Many years went by. The boy had grown even more tired, his arm had lost its feeling long ago and the girl grew sad. She could see him turning to an old man. A beard had grown, baby patches of gray smiling down at her. She pinky-promised him all the love in the world, swearing she’d never leave his arm. And his smile no longer reached to his eyes. And again, the girl was sad.

One day, the little thing in his arm wriggled and wriggled and wriggled. But the boy barely noticed anymore. So she kept wiggling and she squirmed and twitched. Until finally, she slipped from his elbow. She squinted her eyes tightly until little lines formed at the sides of them. A sweet slow motion fall from the top of the little ferris wheel they rode on together. Where they held hands and argued. Where she promised him a million kisses every single day and where he promised he’d always be her best friend. She could taste the cotton candy on her tongue, she could feel the sugar melt and the phantom tummy pains. Someone should kiss their lover under my falling tears, she thought. And the flavor of pinky-promised memories came to a halt as she hit the ground.

Everything was over in a moment. But death was cushy. It reminded her of cotton bunnies and downy marshmallows. Thoughts of sugar clouds and candy rain ran through her little brain. And the rain came. And the rain started to spill over her like a shower from God. The wind blew her hair into a thousand rollercoaster vines. And when she opened her eyes, all she saw was a drenched beard with galaxies of gray pushing her into the boy’s hands with a reverse-switch million pinky-promised kisses. She found herself on the pillow of her boy’s palm. And she never quite hit solid ground.

Because love is never meant to land. It’s about the fall itself. The tumbling, the spinning, the blur of cotton candy skies and pinwheel hearts. It was the space between the fingertips of a pinky promise that held a million words.

And that is all we ever are in love. Two souls caught mid-air, suspended by the fragile gravity of an almost forever, floating endlessly in the crook of an arm that never quite let go.

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everything around me became too real. the days after my sobriety were some of the hardest. nothing to cling to. nothing to fall in, fall on, fall over. just me. my veins drew breath. like breathing plants into my skin, where only sunflowers and freesia and sweet peas could grow. but with that the weeds clung to my throat.

i found it harder to speak. my courage was buried somewhere where sobriety was planted. the awareness became haunting. the self awareness felt predatory. it creeps up on you. you try not to look, but you feel it following you like a beast with an empty stomach. and you miss who you were when you didn’t know who you were.

you found me. i held your face between my hands and let your face droop between my fingers. your freckles, little galaxies splashed inside a big old art gallery. you seemed to hold the frames like a kid at show n tell. and i was at every exhibit. i had something new to look at. something new to get drunk on.

but your mind is a funhouse and my heart is a paper weight. and the more shows i would attend, the more paintings you made, the more colors you played with until everything became a splat on a canvas. i saw killers and dead orcas, you saw jesus and the future. and art is an opinion. and sobriety is a perception.

you stand on the stage and no one else is there. i always sat in the audience smiling, clapping as loud as i could, but i am not the hands of a thousand people. and you feed off the breath of many thanks. and i can’t watch it. and my heart becomes a rock you cannot lift.

but a funhouse is only fun if there’s someone to laugh with. and a paperweight only matters if there’s something to hold down.

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The first time I saw myself, I was standing at the edge of the ocean, ankle-deep in saltwater, holding a cigarette like it was the last thing keeping me tethered to this world. I didn't smoke it. Just held it between two fingers, watching the waves gnaw at the shore. It was late. Too late for someone like me to be alone, but I had the look of someone who had never been afraid of the dark, only of what waited in the light.

And nothing ever came. And no one did either. And sometimes no one is all there is when everyone shrinks you down to a no one too. I am no longer bothered by the whether or nots of someone wanting to be my friend. Forget me nots, echoes, ashes—all just embers from hell. But they’re never as long as the pencil shaped residue growing on the end of a silly girl’s cigarette. A friend to all has gotten me to no friends at all, and isn’t that the way of it all? Isn’t that the joke of the Gods? The way of the waves. When you stand there cradling a cigarette between skin and bones, begging for the waves to take you. And they never do when you need them to the most.

It’s only when the sun tattoos the freckles on my shoulders and my mouth is open free. It’s when I can taste the salt under my tongue and the sand between the crevices of my thighs and the love of my life is kissing me in the rain that the fucking waves want to take me.

But never when I ask.

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Nothing could keep my enemies from banging at my door. No deadbolt was strong enough. I could hear them shouting on the other side, demanding to be let in. Who knows what they wanted—sex, warmth, company, or something more. More often than not, they could infiltrate my home with one carefully chosen word. One "please forgive me," or a couple of "I love you's." The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the couch with one of them. I was cooking for them. I was sleeping with them. The call was coming from inside the house.

No one else unlocked that door but me. No one else wrapped their sweaty palm around that metal knob but my hungry hands. My fingers desperate to touch something besides my books and my tarot cards and myself. This was only a reflection of how my heart had allowed me to be beaten down by life, people, love and how parched my body was because of it.

Imagine you’ve been walking through a desert for three days. Your throat feels like sandpaper, your gut is a hollow cave, and the baby hairs on your forehead are stuck to your skin through sweet, salty sweat. After being on your own without food and water, a strange traveler finds you in a desolate space. This person is riding a camel, looking down at you with a bottle of water in his hands. You beg, “Please, sir, may I have some of your water?”

He replies, “Yes, but only under one condition.”

“Yes, yes, whatever you want!” you say. “Please, just give me some water.”

He smiles upon your sun-beaten face and warns, “This will quench your thirst, but it will also make you sick.”

You are more likely to eat from a poisonous hand when your belly is a ravenous monster. I kept trying to build boundaries outside of myself. I would tell a person what I wanted, what I didn’t want in hopes they would abide by these rules. Unfortunately, these are just wind, these are just words, these are only whispers against a roaring sea. These are white flags waved at werewolves who arch their backs to the moon and laugh. Spoken words mean nothing to a pair of claws. Boundaries built on breath alone crumble before the hunger of those who never planned to honor them.

My heart is a beautiful thing. Pumping all of this red juice into and through my veins, filling me up like a proper Koolaid pitcher. It’s the juice of addicts. It’s the smell that attracts a hundred sharks circling around you like ring around the Rosie. It’s the thump, thump, thump a vampire hears on the other side of the door. And she has been my worst nightmare. The heart is the dumping ground for what the mind refuses to carry. The heart will willfully endure what the mind deems silly, useless and infantile. The separation between the two is the nothing but a tale of siamese twins. One wants one thing and the other wants something entirely different; both attempting to live out what they find to be most beneficial. You must refuse the heart to build boundaries within. Just as you must refuse the mind a certain strain of thoughts so you remain in control of your actions.

To refuse the heart and tame the mind is to lock the door and throw away the key, to keep the call inside silent, no matter how sweetly it pleads. Refusing the heart means holding back the hand that reaches for poison. Refusing the mind means silencing the whisper that says, ‘It’s all you deserve.’ Together, they learn to listen, not lead.

There was a man in my life that I loved very much. I still do. I realized that I couldn’t say no to him. I hated how I could easily bend at every whim, take every call, forgive at the first, ‘Sorry.’ Waving the white flag wasn’t working. I had to build the boundary with myself, not him. I didn’t have a set of rules that I lived by. I had to set these rules as the fence that surrounded this metaphorical restaurant.

My Rules:

1.) You are not allowed to open the door if they call you names.

2.) You are not allowed to open the door if they don’t do what they said they were going to do.

3.) You are not allowed to open the door if this person lies.

These are just a few examples.

I had to make rules within self. And then you would show these set of rules to said person and give them back the control.

Example: “If you refer to me in that manner, you will not have contact with me. It’s up to you on how you want this to go.”

I had to give the “control” back to them. But my rules never changed. And if their behavior didn’t either, then I was not allowed to open the door. These rules became immovable. They were etched in stone, and no one could change them-not even me. What I did was I tricked my brain to treating the relationship as a metaphorical establishment. It has rules, code, a dress code and if someone can’t follow these, then they can’t come inside. It was almost as if I was taking a third party approach, working for myself as another entity.

“Sorry, buddy. I don’t make the rules, I just work here.”

I’m not saying I will never break them again. I’m not even saying I’ve perfected them. But while on a mission to implement these standards, these are the ones I have set. Not for anyone else, but for myself. It’s not about your relationship with other people. It’s about the relationship you have with yourself. You are your own boss. You have employed your brain to make decisions. It has not employed you. And if it feels like it has, then it has enslaved you. And you will never get a metaphorical paycheck this way. The kicker is you’ll never get fired, but you’ll have to live with the patrons that eat at your restaurant and your boss will always resent you.

When you have low self worth or people have treated you less than, you subconsciously, allow your boundaries to be taken advantage of because it’s that parched throat that keeps the poison in business. You can trick yourself into acting as almost a third-party employee for your heart. You will be pushed to find other ways of quenching this thirst besides drinking the water from the guy on the camel. I’ve learned that not every knock deserves an answer, not every thirst needs quenching, and sometimes the greatest strength is in letting the door stay closed.

i was almost her. almost smart. almost soft.

but it would take an axe to the skull to crack a head made of fuck you’s and do not disturbs and why i oughta’s. and i almost don’t care that they’re mean to me.

because my mom came with a built in switchblade underneath her tongue so i learned how to dance before i learned how to tie my slippers.

speaking of slippers, i was almost a ballerina. but apparently you can’t pirouette your way out of a fight when the stage is a kitchen and the audience is waiting for you to slip.

and i almost did.

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Spoken word version here:

you held it there. for me. then for us. sometimes you held it for you, if only to help find your way back to me again.

and you always did.

without you, it fades. it gets dark. it unravels, piece by piece, until we become a shadow of what we were, until i become the shadow that steals from myself.

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Everyday feels like a one minute hourglass. I’ve barely drunk my coffee and I need to be out the door to take the kids somewhere. There’s a few lines needed on the last of my poem, but I need to work. How desperately I want to romanticize my life, but when I look out of my window, the view is nothing but a huge brick apartment building right next to me. Brick walls and train tracks. A dog shits on the lawn, the cops bust a drug deal literally in my parking lot. So I found myself creating a world within my bedroom, hanging those stupid little fairy lights in the corner to give it some false sense of ambience.

I have so many interests but can’t niche down to follow just one path. If I did, would I get somewhere faster? Am I going nowhere slower because of how many roads I’m traveling at once? I am so busy with work, I had to decide against taking my second fiction class that I was really looking forward to. Writing is the drink of water in the desert. It’s the time that is just for me. No one else. I feel starved of it. Am I a spoiled brat to be so entitled to think I deserve this? Or has life made me believe that my days should be spent on the things that pull from my spirit? It takes from me. It feels like it’s supposed to.

I fear if I lean on my creativity, I will lose my footing. Maybe I won’t be able to make rent. Maybe I won’t be able to buy my daughter that thing she wants. I won’t be able to pay the electricity or whatever else I feel like my life depends on. The sacrifice of soul to appease the survival feels like a death sentence. A different kind of death. The kind that kills you slowly, and one day you look in the mirror and your hair is gray. And none of your paintings have decorated the walls of an art gallery. All of your poetry is half written in some Barnes & Noble journal in the nightstand. Your inner child has given up tugging at your pant leg, or your shirt or your heart strings. Robbing myself of a hearts necessity to honor the pride of pocket change.

I hope she doesn’t hate me. That little blonde girl. I hope I can find time to honor her in my smallest moments. I want a life that is mine. And I understand that the world still spins even when I try to stand still. But I do wonder, if I could find my balance, would the world balance with me? Maybe if I shot for the moon, the sky would give me time to count the stars. And if I counted the stars, the sun might take his time to rise-just to give me a few more moments. And just maybe when the hourglass turns on its head, I’ll learn how to outrun the sand.

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I read an article today about a man explaining that men need sex. He went on to say that sex is a man’s version of love, it’s the fountain men drink from. He didn’t say that women need to just enslave themselves to men and get nothing in return, however, there was a comparison between animals, babies and men. That when a baby cries, you don’t get mad at it, you just give the baby his or her bottle.

And that is just the issue. Us being humans, is exactly what separates us from animals. We have a sense of self control, of empathy for other human beings and somewhere there should be morals that God pushed down into the depths of our souls before we were born. Comparing a man to a baby is truly putting men’s standards for themselves at the bottom of the totem pole. If I view a man as an animal or a baby, why would I want to sleep with him? There has to be a desire for some type of human evolution beyond “sexual instincts.” If there’s not, then rape happens. And this is why men are usually the ones to commit such acts.

I have, unfortunately, dated more men than I’d like to admit and have certainly had my fair share of sexual encounters with them. And being completely honest, I can only think of one that was worth it and that’s only because we had children that I love dearly. Other than that, wasn’t worth it in the slightest. Nothing is ever enough. When they get bored of you, it’s either off to porn or physical interactions with other women. Then when they get tired of that, sometimes they resort to other men. Sometimes they resort to goats, farm animals, babies, a hole in a tree (true story) or emotional cheating (girls on twitter, instagram, someone at work). Nothing is ever enough, it seems.

The amount of rape, physical, financial, verbal and emotional abuse I have endured from men ruined me as a person. They have beat the child out of me. The sparkle has left my eyes almost completely. As a teenage girl, I was so traumatized by this warped perception men have given me of myself, I resorted to massive amounts of alcohol abuse. And in turn, engaging in sexual acts that should have never been happening at such a young age. It’s usually the men you know. Even relatives. Some of them don’t care if you are their daughter, granddaughter or niece. It has a hole, right?

I know this is off-putting. It was certainly off-putting experiencing it. But I don’t see how much has changed. If you want a woman to sleep with you, and I say this with all the love in the world, …evolve. Because guess what? WE WANT TO SLEEP WITH YOU! Yes, that’s right! We WANT to. At this point, I’m begging for a reason. But no one owes you shit. And that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

The Red Pill community has completely ruined your brains to make you believe that treating a woman like shit is the best way to get her under your thumb. And guess what? The Red Pill community would be right. Because most of us have been so far beat down by one, two, three or more of you that we don’t have much fight left in us. So is that who you’d like to be? The lion who goes after the wounded gazelle? Nothing is impressive about that. If I punch a toddler, that doesn’t make me a good fighter. It makes me a piece of shit. Do better. Have some discipline. Develop self control. Watch some videos on establishing emotional intelligence. We’re tired of teaching you empathy. And for God sake, stop lying. It’s called a woman’s intuition for a reason.

Some of you want to bring sex up on a first date. If you feel comfortable enough to bring that up, then you should be comfortable enough for me ask you to pay a bill. If you don’t want tacky, don’t be tacky. A woman is a multiplier. Whatever she becomes under your care is exactly what you are. We are receivers and creators. You are givers. So what are you giving that we can multiply? Because whatever that thing is, is the seeds you planted-the seeds you will sow.

Marriage was supposed to be the best day of a woman’s life, but from every woman I have spoken to, it ended up being the worst years of her life. She was asked to pay half, but still remain submissive. She was expected to give full access to her body while cooking all of the food and cleaning the entire house all while still going to work. If you want a “submissive” or “feminine” woman, then I suggest you learn how to create that space so she can naturally fall into that. There’s nothing worse than being in a situation like that and be expected to still look up to and respect your husband/man/boyfriend. You want women to pay for you to cosplay head of household. You want a submissive provider. You are becoming the punchline.

We want you. We want you bad. But we NEED to want you. Give us a reason. Give us true confidence. Beating a woman down physically, emotionally or mentally is not a win. You are teaching yourself that others must be small so you can feel big. You must become big enough to uplift those around you. Because that is what a LEADER does. And the only way you’ll build confidence is through courage. What are you afraid of? We are looking to you with hope. And many of us still believe that some day, it will happen. But how many of us will die alone while waiting? We are there now-where we’d rather die alone than die with you. Be the change that you want to see in us. Be the leaders God intended.

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There’s lovable menace by the name of Arlo that lives at my parent’s house. He has a coat made of the most ostentatious brownish-red fur you’ve ever seen and has eyes that could strike the Devil dead-one blue, one brown. Arlo is a mischevious one year old puppy that loves to drag inanimate objects to the living room and rip them apart until he finds his next unsuspecting target. One time, he even brought a turtle from outside, brought it in the house and continued to roll it around in the afternoon hours until I caught him and saved the turtles poor life.

Though my one of my relatives truly adores Arlo, she’s the one who yells at him the most. In truth, someone’s always scolding him for something. But I don’t think he quite gets it yet—he seems to interpret it as playful attention, always assuming the best of everyone. But when you constantly hear people frustrated with him, it makes you wary. You start dodging him like a little tornado of chaos, assuming the worst in him. I’ve even found myself rushing to my parent’s guest room, quickly shutting the door behind me, sometimes locking it, as if he’s about to barrel through and wreak havoc at any moment.

I’m at my parents' house now, just Arlo and me, sitting outside in the sun. At first, I was a little nervous being out here with him. Oh God, what’s he going to do now? Is he going to attack my laptop, or jump all over me until I lose my mind? But none of that happened. He laid his head in my lap. He licked me quite a few times, looked up at me with those big, gorgeous eyes and sat with me here. This is the most relaxed I have ever seen him. No destruction on his mind, no turtles in sight, and no one around to yell at him. He’s taking a good old fashioned love bath via all these hugs I have to give.

Arlo is most of us-when we don’t feel loved, when we feel forgotten, when we feel like the ones we love are too busy for us. But instead of chewing a turtle shell, we drink ourselves into a coma. Instead of desecrating a tennis shoe, we destroy our relationships, our jobs and ourselves. Sometimes we don’t have the guidance, the love or the proper upbringing to understand how to appropriately maneuver through life.

Without the proper tools to understand, we become misunderstood. We are all Arlo.

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And it better be worth it.

I've had acne scars for many years. They're a huge insecurity of mine. So is my past. So is the way I handled my past. Someone touched me in ways I didn’t ask for, and people told me I looked weird, even without the acne scars. No use whining about it. I’m certain there are others less fortunate than me, with hearts bigger than my head. But the way I coped with these events was through self-punishment. This hurts me, so let me hurt me in the way I’d rather hurt.

I grew up in a family where there were always drugs and weed—I had easy access to it. The heavy drinking started at 17 (10/10 do not recommend), which led to even more traumatic experiences, which in turn led to more drinking. And round and round it went. All of it just aging me prematurely and creating more acne.

Now I’m nearly 5 years sober after a long time of self-inflicted abuse. And now I’m on the never ending journey, trying to reverse the damage I have done-physically.

Perfection was a lover I created in my mind, one that did not exist—not living, nor dead. There were no crossovers or veils to lift. It doesn’t exist for us mortals. It was a vision where the sky was the ocean and the ground was a starry sky you could walk on—one I would never touch.

I take bites out of life from the meal of self-improvement, but unfortunately, I always seem to be hungry.

I’ll keep you posted!

Nothing leaves a taste in your mouth like love requited as the granules of artificial sugar. Sweet sand, dissolved between the folds of your gums, a crunch between a mouth full of bones. A handsome face behind a veil made of shadows and a shadow made of a billion hungry hands. Scraps of a three trillion tiny stars melted under your starved tongue, shooting microscopic holes inside of your unsuspecting heart.

You poor darling. You’ve never known the difference. You only know that what tastes good on the tongue is torture for what the tongue can’t tell. A pacifier in the mouth, rotting the ridges of a glitter filled tooth and again…how would you ever know the difference, dear girl? For you have never tasted your own love to know what raw really is. And why not? Your heart is a chalice spilling from the hands of an orphaned child, yet it cascades down the throats of thirsty wolves. And you give it away like spare meat on a bone to be gnawed and gnarled. To try a bite for yourself, you would call it cannibalism. You deserve to call it love. Don’t you think you deserve to call it love?

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He was angular—sharp jawline, pointy nose arched like a curved bridge, and a tall stature that I’d climb like a tree. I was just a girl, looking up at a lovely man in a flannel button-up and a cowboy hat. He wasn’t affectionate towards my grandmother, but he made up for it with duty and a crooked smile. Three novels he wrote were pinned and stacked together in a box inside his office. I was amazed.

"Teach me, teach me!"

I’d clap my hands and jump up and down. He’d pick me up by my armpits and sit me on his lap, revealing the tap-tap machine in front of me. A world was inside his fingertips as I’d watch him tap-tap-tap-ching, tap-tap-tap-ching his way into the start of a story. The tiny black letters always punching assertively against the white pages. And no big deal if he made a typo because there was a petite bottle of white-out in his drawer awaiting its noble duties.

Behind me were canvas after canvas, a melting pot of various deer, woodlands, and prairie houses—all the things that come from a cowboy’s mind, painted by sun-spotted hands. And how he’d tell me stories of riding horseback across the country at ten years old, making money helping out on various farms that were sprinkled in hay. He told me about the time he became a professional bull rider at the ripe age of eighteen and how he got to be John Wayne’s ranch foreman as he pulled the pictures from his shelf to show me. And how he was reluctant to tell me that his mother died giving birth to him—all the lives an old man has had the pleasure and tragedy of knowing.

My grandma was always swallowed by purple rhododendrons. I’d hear another Italian opera song sung in her German accent from the other room as she’d put prop more rhododendrons in a vase. The kitchen always wafted with the smell of lentils and onion. And as the sun would set, a couple of flowers would begin to bow their heads in descent. But when he’d wake up, he’d walk me out to help pick another one. A day was never missed. And God, I hate him for it.

I was never much swayed by fantasies of marriage and a tall-statured husband parading around the house, but he made it look like the juice was worth the squeeze. Because if this is how it’s supposed to be, why wouldn’t I want this? How happy my grandmother was, swirling around, singing all of her favorites, cooking his favorites. She’d giggle and joke, and her laugh sounded like little angel bells ringing throughout the house. He believed everything she did was magic. Not because he said it, but you could see it in the way he looked at her, like the Earth chose to plant itself inside her heart and only grow from there.

I was fourteen, sitting at the coffee table with a pen in hand, writing him a goodbye poem. His skin was colored in shades of daffodils, his eyes just the same. And the man that used to stand tall like a tree was laid down like a pile of crumbled October leaves. The back of his hands were pure bone, his skin painted on like papier-mâché. When he’d move his mouth, his jaw was as sharp as the cliff of a carved mountain.

The sunset would come, and another rhododendron would begin to hang her head to descend on the kitchen counter. He could barely open his eyes anymore, but he requested to speak with me. They rolled him out on the back porch so he could sit next to me on the bench swing. The sun was getting to its final resting place, the gold plated clouds painted his skin colored in farewells. He wore that yellow like a crown of glory, I’ll be damned, that yellow never wore him. We didn’t say much. We sat there quietly for some time. The light was nothing but a silent burn that lit my eyes on fire until I cried into his shoulder, wrapping my teenage arms around his dying body. He lightly grabbed my hand, laid a kiss on top of my golden head and said, “Grab one for your Omi, will ya?” nodding his head toward the purple cloud of flowers in the backyard.

That’s all you’d hear him say to everyone weeks before his passing.

I’d never seen clouds part for the moon the way they did the night he passed. I’d never put a flower in a vase so delicately. I’ve never met a man like my grandfather. Opa, I’d call him. I wish I would have. If I did, he’d be here now. He’d be setting another flower in one of my vases in the kitchen, and I think I just might be singing my own versions of my own long-loved melodies.

I hope you know you’re worth it. You are soft and kind and lovely. I bet you’d sing beautifully, and I bet your laugh would sound like little bells, and I bet a man would see the world in your heart and plant as many flowers as you needed to feel loved. I imagine you’ve been left as a not-enough kind of girl or a too-loud or too-ridiculous kind of girl. Storms are named after you in a parallel universe, and lightning only strikes when it rains. You don’t need flowers; you are a woman of magic and soil and seed. But oh, I wonder how you’d grow with a rhododendron man.

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I still think about you. Some nights, I sit by my bedroom window in my underwear, staring at the train tracks, watching cars blur by on the freeway. Thoughts of you spin silk webs of what could have been, a poisonous spider dancing between my knuckles. How pathetically delicate I can be with monsters that don’t know how to love a dead girl.

The lies I had to tell myself to make that answer "yes" were endless. I teetered between the sterile walls of a padded room and the unforgiving grit of the sidewalk. Countless times, I stood at the edge of delusion, ready to jump, praying for the will to do it. My heart would encourage me whispering, “Go ahead, you’ll see! It’ll all be the same. You’ll see him again, just the same!”

I pushed her away—many times. Not for me, but for her. The heart can’t bear what the mind already knows. Intuition, always one step ahead, never hesitates with the truth. The ego, desperate to protect, spins its fairy tales of self-preservation, weaving delusions to shield us from our mortality.

This web is black, tarred, unbearable. The web we’ve woven drowns out the hum of the train tracks. I sit on the edge of my headboard, my toes brush against the black silk pillowcase you once rested your head on. You're here, but I can’t touch you. If I’m being honest, I don’t think I ever did.

trigger warning

It was heart wrenching watching her crawl back to him every time. He’d ignore her like a dog. I just sat there and let it happen. There was a point where I was certain she’d develop a bark, sit on the floor at the dining room table begging for scraps. I hated it. It was everything I stood against. But I think she liked it there. God help her, I truly think she liked it there.

I caught her taking a glimpse of herself in the mirror. It was as if her reflection wanted to leap out of the glass, shake her by the shoulders and shove her out the front door. She’d run her fingers through her hair until they melted like wax down the sides of her body. He eventually removed every mirror from the house, until she relied solely on him to tell her what was becoming and what was not. I could see the hesitation in her eyes when he would give her an answer, slowly tracing her fingers around her facial features to verify his validations. Honestly, I was grateful for the newly empty walls. The light had left my eyes anyway and my cheeks were nothing but sunken crates from the moon. The flesh always wins.

And she was long gone - wearing a flowy white house dress with no makeup on, spinning around his finger like a fucking dreidel. There were always critiques. He didn’t like that shade of white. She should wash her face. She should speak softer. Until one day, I found myself straining to hear her, her voice reduced to a murmur beneath the roar of a violent ocean. I might’ve been better off putting a seashell to my ear to catch what she was saying.

Our time together started to diminish. And I hated him for it. He was taking everything from her. The way she used to dress up her face, her fancy fur coats and heels, her loud cackle you’d hear from across the house was now nothing but a mere giggle. She was being stripped to nothing. I tried to mobilize my thinking - maybe it wasn’t so bad. She seemed free, twirling around his index finger in the sun, laying in his crotch like a lap dog. And boy, did he despise me.

We used to resemble one another, but there were far less similarities now than there ever were. I paraded around in bleached blonde hair, long colorful nails with faux eyelashes to the moon. Once in awhile we’d pass each other in the kitchen. He’d take a quick side glance and scoff, slurping his coffee as loud as humanly possible. As if we never shared a moment of intimacy, as if he had never kissed the back of my hand or cradled me on his lap once before. And every time he kissed her on her forehead, he smiled at me from behind her golden brown hair. A fox in a rabbit hole, a wolf in a fox hole.

I tried to convince her of what he was, what she would become if she stayed. I’d pass whispers into her ear the moments I got her alone, which wasn’t often. He knew. He knew everything. One day, he figured it had gone on too long. He convinced her that I couldn’t be in her life anymore, that I was a bad influence. I knew he wanted to kill me, but she convinced him to let me stay.

‘As long as we can lock the door, ‘ he suggested. And here I am.

Watching a part of myself abandon me wasn’t the worst of it. It was I who protected her all this time. How I can hear them giggling and dancing around, her making him dinner in the kitchen, hair frazzled and beautiful. Sun kissed, bare footed bunny hopping into his little trap. How I missed her. No God could ever know the empathy she was capable of holding. She was a fuzzy pink glove around a polished blade. She was a comet amongst a sky of dead gas bombs, a luminary amongst a cosmos full of planets, a black rose in a field full of sunflowers. And he knew it.

The day finally came for me to be shut away forever. I was fixing my morning cup of coffee only to be cut short, sugar left on the countertop. He yanked me by my arm and shoved me behind a massive oak door that led into the basement. It shut behind me and the light left the room. I heard the key in lock, the little metals clinking together to trap me forever. It took awhile for my eyes to adjust, but when it did it wasn’t worth the wait. A miniature hopper window decorated the concrete wall in front of me and cobwebs connected by the work of a spider draped across the corners.

I leaned against the door, feet propped on the second-to-top step. The silence was a weight on my heart, the dust swirling around me like a tornado in heat. There was almost always a tiny slice of sunlight cutting through the tiny basement window that nearly met with the ceiling. The concrete walls and floors emphasized whatever weather it was that day. If it was humid that day, it was hell fire in that room. If it was cold, it was polar bears tit in there. Everything, everything, everything felt bigger. Except me.

Some nights were worse than others. I could hear him make love to her the way he made love to me. How I’d bang my hands bloody on the other side of the door until the wood was soaked in cherry stains. I could hear them dancing in the kitchen, the music splitting her rib cage like a pair of wings. The sides of my hands were deformed with tiny broken bones and bloody knuckles. My screaming boomeranged off the basement wall and smacked me back across the mouth as punishment for my consistent outbursts. There were no amount of tears sustainable enough for me to drown it all away.

I don’t know how much time passed. I did, however, have a spider in the corner of my room to validate the torment. One evening, when the crickets were in symphony and the moon tucked herself behind the clouds, I heard a deep bellowing from upstairs. I pressed my cheek against the door, my ear against the seashell listening for the shipwreck. There were moments of silence. Oh, but his sinister voice I would recognize anywhere. Even a whisper could escape his lips and it would find me through the crack of the door, blowing mini dust clouds off the top step.

A few moments passed. Something scraped across the floor. Rustling followed. I stumbled back down the stairs. A sliver of moonlight cut through the tiny window, draping my shoulders in silver. I stood by and watched the knob anxiously, my hands to my sides, prepared for anything. The old knob started to turn, it’s locks passing each other inside the oak shield. The door, decorated in ancient blood stains like a medieval flag, opened and the light from the kitchen nearly blinded me. The silhouette of his shadow didn’t even appear human anymore. Her body tumbled down the stairs, and before it could reach the bottom, the door slammed shut, the lock sealing the act with finality.

She was so still. Not an ounce of life left in her. Even her breathing was as soft as her voice became, nearly nonexistent, the purr of a kitten. I knelt down on the cold basement floor and observed her lifeless body. She still wore the same white house dress, the bottoms of her feet slightly unkempt and her hair covered her face in thousands of brownish gold strands of hair. I carefully tucked one behind her ear and she lightly flinched from me. She had no obvious bruising, no black eye. She wore no bloodstains nor chipped teeth. Everything about her looked the same, except the eyes. The sparkle that used to send beams through those little blue droplets were now murky puddles of reflected obsidian. A darkness, a zombie, a goner. She looked just like me. Younger, more frail, not dead, but nearly.

Her hand gripped my wrist like the snap of a rubber band. My breath became immediately more rapid. I tried to yank my arm away but she prevailed, victorious. Her eyes widened like black saucers against a dark cloud. Rain poured from them and spilled down her hollow cheeks. Her cheekbones were now so sharp, watching her tears spill off of them was like watching a waterfall nosedive off of a cliff.

‘He wanted to kill me,’ she whispered. ‘But she begged him to keep me in the basement.’ I glanced at the door, then back to her wilted face.

‘Who?’ I asked gently. I tried to stroke her by the hair, but she shook me off, a sense of urgency on her face. I could finally see her, see her for what she was. I remembered her hands—slender and long, without the swollen knuckles from years of cracking them. Her arms, free of tattoos. Her teeth, without the tiny chip in the front. I grazed my fingers over my own dented tooth like a deer caught in headlights.

‘Please. Tell me.’ I begged. Her voice was caught on the hook of a cry, but she fought through it. And her finger pointed towards the door, as a little girl’s giggle rang throughout the house upstairs.

My body froze. Hummingbirds fought till the death in my chest. A sheet of cold air blanketed the both of us on the concrete floor. I looked down at her. She laid like a wet noodle in my arms, her pretty gown tear stained and moonlit. I don’t think anything could have stopped our synchronized weeping. I was mourning her, while she was mourning her.

I grabbed her wrist and kissed her fragile knuckles. I held her, cried into her hands said I was sorry a million times. I begged for forgiveness, I prayed to God, I cursed him, I prayed to the devil and cursed him all the same. My lives had been a hard knuckle fist in the mouth with sprinkles of loving moments. The tender meat around the hard morsel of bones.

‘I’ll get us out of here.’ I looked around frantically and before responding, she let out a gentle cough.

‘If you’re down here, you’re already dead.’ She tried to crack a smile, but was forced into a painful grimace.

‘I should have protected you.’ I cried, pressing my tear stained face into the back of her hand.

‘Silly, how could you protect us? You weren’t even here yet.’ And another giggle echoed from behind the old oak door.

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God forbid I ever paint our conversations in the same color he did. I’ve counted our fights like I’ve traced the lines in my hands—roads to nowhere, tunnels to oblivion. Not enough letters for all the things I wanted to say, sometimes too many for the things I didn’t. My thoughts became a tangled wave of poetry, assaulting the neurons in my brain. In pieces, in puzzles. In all the ways I couldn’t solve them. But I could feel. The blessing. The curse. The best. The worst. All the reasons he thought I was crazy—and all the reasons he couldn’t find enough of them to leave. Because where does one go after me, but into a lukewarm bath of boredom, drowning in a porcelain rectangle of shit?

I was jealous of him—not like girls are jealous of their friends, but in the way he got to experience me in ways I couldn’t. I wanted to live inside his eyes, with my mind backing the perception. I wanted to show him what vision was. Where a mind goes when it stops wandering. How the girl in front of him was born with a world inside her.

I wanted to touch myself through his hands. I wanted to squeeze my breasts with his hands, pinch my nipples between his fingertips. The freckle in his palm pressed against the soft skin of my inner thighs, leading to the ripe fruit of desire. I’m no better than a man. Except through his eyes, I saw the things he didn’t have the courage to see. The things he was too afraid to touch. You can’t make a woman come until you’ve learned to be her hero through the art of villainy. The perfect twist of words to make her brain spill inside itself, filling her skull with pink liquid, like tomato soup in a bowl.

And when you can’t do these things, when you bring no peace to a girl’s imaginings, this is what we do. We fill the empty spaces, impregnating the void with worst-case scenarios, “what-ifs,” and “who-done-its.” Because that’s all it ever was, wasn’t it? Many “I love you’s” roll off a man’s tongue if there’s somewhere else he can put it. But it takes from you, like a withdrawal, a purchase at the checkout line. And you never keep the change.

I see them in my face. The ones that took me backpacking through Hell. The fire has warped the details of my features into the likeness of them. They’ve burrowed into my skin like fleas, skipping and bouncing beneath my pores, contorting my face into the shape of their souls. I could claw my eyes out for how long I’ve stared in the mirror, trying to pick them from my reflection. Digging up their graves only to discover they’re still alive somewhere, knowing a part of them died inside of me.

Can anyone else see them?

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