steps to getting worse.

1

Sheared. His milkflower skin did nothing more than stay a pale
shade of white. The blue
rivers of ice. Clear enough to watch them, rushing down his neck,
his wrist, softer then the space between his lips.
They said he wasn’t real. No one is real enough to hold
me between the haloed rings of their eyes, clutch me together
in those minutes before day break like a prayer,
settling me down like something fragile.
Lord, how I wish I wasn’t fragile.
2

Say hello, say mellow.
Say better, say believe it anyway.
Say healing, feeling, worlds more distant then before,
say numb. Say none.
Say sage, honeysuckle, and the tweets of a young bird’s song.
Stay.
Say lilies, iris, shed like remorse.
I shall walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
Nevertheless - Stay
3

In the shadow of sleep, I watch my father take a knife to his throat and slice. His eyes seeping sap like a tree overgrowing with whatever might be considered as rejection. I remember him reaching forward, pleading almost for a saviour, in the same way I had begged for return. Yet – The fear became apparent, as clear as a nightmare in slow motion- He could see me, me - a tapestry of scars.

In the bathroom of a stranger’s house, I vomit up my feelings like apologies, praising the fact that a man drenched in surrender, is the closest thing to a honeyed reflection I have ever had to accept.
They tell me to try and get better.
4

I had kissed him solely to prove that I could.
that my heart could beat for anything besides regret yet still, I lost him anyway.
Like a hair pin stuck between the pillows of a couch, his smile
dangerously red.
A week later I was told he had held a girls hands
behind her back and forced his mouth upon hers
until she was shattered, like a mirror whose reflection he bared not see.
I had wondered if I had felt forced by the parts of me desperate to remember
the phantom menace of feeling.
That perhaps I am my own aggressor, my own victim.
A body, ready to dispose of.
5

Say sorry, Say end, Say it’s over,
say amend.
grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change-
There’s a black ghost running through the sound,
growling, like the words holy enough to be remembered.
The courage to change that which I can -
I still do it sometimes, when I feel low enough to force
my body into a restrained question mark, asking, is it really worth it?
And grant me the wisdom, to know the difference…
6
I have the grace of feeling lonely in a room covered with
the presence of people.
To feel empty, no matter how much I try to fill…
8
He holds me larger than life. The only large I have no worry of being.
I wake up, and suddenly the world is darker:
his eyes were there staring, disgusted.
Blazing, like shredded lilies set on fire.
I close my eyes and somehow -
I forget how to breathe.