A little girl raised by ocean waves
Could never understand the flames
the power, the heat, surrounded by pain
how even in the rain, they blazed

I tried to find the answers and I tried to play along
wanting to know how the fire got so strong
all I wanted was to see
but my eyes stayed closed
because I wasn’t free
I was just exposed

I built the cage so slow
While the fire burned my skin
I didn’t know it was my fault
so I locked myself in

I tried to hide and to fight the flames
to find the source and bring the rain
but even the rain wouldn’t stay
because all the embers were ignited by rage

I loved but I lost
and never knew why because
I built a cage, I built a cage
And I forgot how to escape

the words that came from a hum

My insides are burned and black but the world he creates outside of me is full of love.

I’m very lucky. “to receive the prize that was promised by all those fairytales that drugged us.”

I hope the color seeps in eventually and cools my aching heart

Sometimes, when devastation is all consuming, the worst thing someone else can do is act normal

what happens when you become less human? is there ever a true rewind, or am i stuck being half a person forever? It all happened so fast. My fathers death, living in quarantine.  I think I've been losing my hair and well, I wouldn't blame my body if I am, not for all its despair-fueled failure. If only i could learn how to talk to it.  but somehow i cannot. 

So i spend each day blaming my consciousness. Hating myself and holding all my pain like a statue. Putting it down and letting it dry out. Before i add water to the clay and mold a smile. As if part of me didn't die in January. As if my father didn't die. As if i got to say goodbye. As if he left any words behind. As if he was ever part of me at all. Or just a painful hole i spent 31 years trying to close.  I always knew i’d stay broken by his lack of love. but i never imagined it being so sudden and that he would leave without even a letter or a word or a thought. In death i knew him no better than i ever did before. How could there not be a letter? Im miserable. thats the truth. My heart fucking hurts and they may never understand the depth or the poetry that molds the clay.

I think sometimes, needing sympathy is okay. It can be healing. Having someone acknowledge your situation and pain. Isn’t that all we really need sometimes? Someone’s hand on our back?

Why is it so quiet

I’m learning a sort of deep and stabbing peace, I don’t worry about small things as i once did. I’ve been like that for a while I guess

I have an intimate relationship with pain, why can’t I feel this loss?

Why can’t I access it?

I’m so frustrated

The loss of my dad while he was still here was somehow more painful and more real than the real physical loss of him now.

I spent so much of my life walking on eggshells, what am I supposed to do now? Just let my feet down and listen to them all crack? Is that all there is? A mess to clean up?

Putting on my human suit and wandering aimless through the day

Maybe this is my medicine working. Evening me out. Maybe I spent years so manic and depressed that I am used to the fluctuation of my feelings and this steady hand feels frozen. I feel frozen sometimes. I don’t recognize myself in photos of the times before I got better. The times when faking it was shiny and included bursts of manic creativity. Now there is reality, it feels foggy and beige. No rebel no rage. Colorless, the red is gone. the red of the flames that burned me and the ones that fueled me. I miss that intensity. The intensity which drove me insane.

I don’t know who i am anymore. Before i got better I carefully constructed a beautiful mask to hide the utter misery below the paint and that mask became me. And now ive discovered that under the paint was only skin. No sunshine or freedom. i am colorless, the painter disappeared. Everything is linear. i am blank. Monotony is invading and i just want to scream to break the spell

maybe everyone was right. maybe medication makes you someone else

I’m having trouble keeping my mind straight
Each thought I have I instantly forget
I want to reach out my arm and pull it back
“Don’t float away!” “Please stay!”

Walking to work
I’d never remember to write this if I didn’t do it right now.
Some lame and desperate attempt to even myself out.

I want to go somewhere this weekend. But I won’t remember to plan. Even though it is something i really want. If I don’t do it right now, this very minute, the thought gets overruled by opening the door, or the movement of my mouse. Each thought is momentary. I’m taking so many notes these days

It’s driving me crazy.

I’m clouded and wondering how the hell I can defrost

days are good and long. Nights are tired and short

I feel blind sometimes, like I cant see what is right in front of me
I know its there but still I feel that I cannot convince myself
Maybe my heart is too damaged to every really feel the strength and wild sides of love

I love bare bodies,
I love art on my skin
Knowing when I find it and making it permanent
But these days
All I feel are shades of beige
No rebel no rage
I remain without a face
Love creates order
Love in my heart
But theres a mess in my soul
Is this what it’s like, to have some control?
I thought that’s what I wanted but my chaos is mine
I can get up and breathe but is that being alive?
What am I saying? of course this is life
I’m alone with some wine and I miss the lack of light.
Do I feel whole? Controlling my pain
When my hands wave and I smile without strain?
I used to hide, creative and bold
Now I hide a little less,
Love stays, and days still go
But was I better when I was alone?

And that one time you said that there were butterflies but I never saw a butterfly
And you know what she said was
that there was string on the apples
But I never saw a string on the apples
And then he said the grass was green but all I saw was red
The times the grass is green when all I see is red
To remember and fool and love and play
But all I see is red
Then she goes to another place
But all I see is red
Because she said that my shirt was white but all I see is red
And then she said I once had sleeves but all I see is red
When they clean me up and think im whole again
The red comes back the same day
Because even when my skin is soft
All I see is red
When you see a smile open onto my face
I quickly close up my head
Because even though you see pearly white.
All I see is red
When I stand,  I sway, it drips and runs
Onto the grass below my feet
They say it was green
But ive never seen
It because all I see is red
Before I leave I can see the dream
Then walk out the door and trade
It for a ride, that leads me home and into the dark
My hands move my thoughts remain

why do I find it hard to write when I feel better

When things are good suddenly im speechless

maybe I think if I write about it it will come apart. that somehow putting it on paper throws me into an abyss where memories are all I have

another half out in the city

My heart is racing thinking of you and the miracle of knowing you're thinking of me too
all of the love stories i ever wrote, the ones that i lived and the ones that were broken
confuse my mind and dont let me feel because sometimes i just dont believe this is real
for the first time i dont need to work to be happy but at the same time its harder than ever when im free
for years and years i fell in love with the pain. It was how i lived and it kept my mask sane.
But the truth is, all those years, i was out of control
I had lost myself in it all

Your the one that i have known to be the first one on the phone yeah, you ran all the lights to the hospital

This morning I lay in bed waking up past my first alarm. That’s why I set the first one, so I can sleep to the second.
Joey was on my bed still sleeping, the sun hadn’t yet risen but the slightest shades of pink were appearing over Harlem.
I fell back asleep only for a minute and dreamed of the sunrise and the different people I have stood there and watched it with
How close we felt then and that most are strangers now

One thing I have learned growing up is that no matter who, where or when, someone you trust with your life can be gone in the blink of an eye. Strangers
I feel as though I should write down the specifics of each person I stood there with, so I wont forget, so I can remember and to make the moment last even after it has passed

 I have stood there with Raquel, still drunk after playing all night, watching it and silently questioning our lives but feeling them to be infinite in that moment, that moment before we part ways to pass out and the feeling ends. But as the sun rose, we felt it.

 I have stood there with Dennis, coffee in my hands and his arms around me, both undressed and dreaming, pointing out little things outside and being as close as two people can be without being close at all

 I have stood there with Nick, naked both holding coffee staring out at the world. Observing the beauty of life but also its fleeting nature

 I have stood there with Cat, still drunk having been up all night and only realizing it was morning with the appearance of the light.

 I have stood there with Max, drinking heavily and seeing the world as our playground. Choosing where we want to go, knowing we can go anywhere.

 I have stood there alone, many mornings, watching the beauty of the world creep up in subtle shining light. Unable to feel, but to watch all the same.  I have stood there weak and lifeless, stone cold and tight fists, weary and crying, silent and sinking, smiling and scared, wasted and worried, rushed and relaxed, deciding to start the day, deciding to end it before it starts.

i drowned myself this week
but not to die
its for my own protection
and so i cant cry

Listening to the rain
on each sunny day
thunder blocks my brain
from the storm i became

I no longer want it all to end

8.18am

a dream i had one night

He saw her in the fire. Blazed and Blazing

We sat on the curb in the middle of a steep road. One side of us was a daunting storm, so gray and black that it made the whole world dark charcoal gray. In the middle of the storm was a yellowish break. It would come and go, never getting large enough to make a difference. Only to fuel the fear. The other side was gold. Golden skies with a glow so dense that all you could see were the street side lights. The light intensified the eerie golden glow. We had run here, to what felt like the end of the earth, to escape from the prison we grew up in. This slanted street high above a massive green park. The park was barely visible through the conflicting weather when the two sides came together. We knew that the green below us, the wanting world, the color green, was no different than the fire and wind pushing us in every direction. Only more universally beautiful and landscaped to provide sheep with false clarity We sat on the curb. Skateboards in hand and stared at the world’s rage. We sat there for days, maybe months. Never choosing between the two hells. There was no sound, like a horror movie on mute. As we watched our impending fate, we sat together admiring a world we would never know. Taking in the one we did. And feeling more free than we ever had in the clean stubborn city from which we came

If my feelings could be seen outwardly it would be shaking with my hands in fists. it would be begging and repeating “i dont know!” over and over and over while kneeling on the floor and pulling at my hair. All this is inside. its trying to come out, its hitting every wall of my being. it lives in my throat, it lives in my hands in my stomach. i imagine a person pushing pushing so hard everyday with their fists against my stomach that they eventually break through the skin and blood explodes out, that’s it. Blood. all the feelings are still there. I dont want to do anything. at all. i feel like my jaw is going to start locking and i will start visibly shaking because there is so much anger and frustration boiling up. every single thing around me pisses me the fuck off.