One Line of Poetry

You stole the sparkle out of my eye

You took my big dreams
Shoved them into a box and told me how little I'd done

People tell me I think big, like its a compliment
Only because they never saw the giants that used to be my thoughts
Before you strung your "can'ts" together, made a rope and brought my giant to the ground
Now only a shadow of what it once was

You stole my wings and taught me how to walk
Taught me to think I'm better for not flying so high
There's so much less pressure if you stay on the ground, right

I wish I had known how afraid you were
How I could handle failure but you were more afraid to think of the possibility
Than to let me try
And sometimes I swear you want me to say thank you
You look my disgraces in the eye and say
 "Aren't you glad that was a big fuck up instead of a giant?"

I should be flying
Should be letting my giants free
Shouldn't be blaming you because I let you get to me

I shouldn't be putting my fear into strings of words
Hoping they can pull down the walls of my heart
One line of poetry at a time

My Pride

I ran over my pride

With my car

Repeatedly

I cleaned my tires

I ran over my pride again

Repeatedly....

I took it to the backyard, threw it in the swimming pool. A few hours later I went back out, fished my soggy, beaten up, useless pride out of the pool...

I hung that useless shit up to dry.

I'm finding new things to build my life on.
And it's terrible.

Time Doesn't Change

I wrote a poem 7 years ago

It was titled "Contradiction"

I'm partially embarrassed that there isn't one word in there that isn't true today
I guess there's only so much time can change

I am still a 18 year old girl
Freshly broken and bruised and ice
With sarcasm that can shame a grown man
Hoping that there are more beautiful things that what she can see
Laughing loudly trying to freighten her own ghosts

Believing that she was made for more
Than the life she's living

Painting

Lifetimes are paintings

And sometimes I feel like my scenery was chosen for me
That these colors swirled into a battlefield before I was done cleaning my brushes
And mixing my colors
Imagining a life that I knew I could have
... if I just reached far enough
Kept my arms open wide enough to suffer the pain and catch the love

Because they're never too far apart

I knew my life wasn't going to be easy
That no one was going to give me anything
That like everything else my love would be found dodging bullets
And that the most important relationships would be lived stepping over landmines

Because someone taught me to distrust everyone
Before I realized it and there were moments when that felt like a fortress
Like the only protection in my painting

But now
It pisses me off

I have been fighting for a lifetime
I am hiding behind things too tired to think of offense
I'll settle for this hole
Where I tried to dig enough space to heal from the last bullet

War is confliction

It is uniform and chaos and freezing between episodes of being trigger happy
It is fear and panic and unbreakable bonds

And I am all these things

I am uniform
I am fear and panic and unbreakable bonds
I am excitement and laughs because I might be dead by the morning
I am love and hope even when that mostly looks like devistation
I am bullets and knives and trying not to break

I am so many jagged edges that everyone who gets close to me snags their life
Or gets a wound that may never heal
I am sharing my shards under pretty dresses and flitatious smiles

I am still hoping to throw this all away and paint a new life.

Separated

By the time I realized that I've had too many lovers 

It was too late to take it back

There's a reason that my most intimate relationships have been lived in celibacy 

Because there is a canyon between my heart and my body 

Nothing reminds me of the distance more than hands on my skin 

Speaking of the distance it takes to get to my heart

The barriers between my body and the whole of me 

I couldn't stomach the thought of the first two being the only people

Swirling around that place in my life

I found 3 in a haze hoping he could at least take a third of the space 

Give me something else to think about 

The same way I felt with 4 and 5 and 6....

Until I realized that stacking blazed disappointed on top of tragedy 

Doesn't make anything better 

It just makes it harder to think 

Gives more pieces to sort

And further separates me heart from my body

Sorted

I carefully stacked the thoughts in my head
Afraid that they would climb the walls, seep into the paint, and start moving closer
That they wouldn't have a home

And it's getting cold outside

I carefully stacked the thoughts in my head
I laid out a plan
A 12 step program to stay away from Lexipro
And I was on task
Minus a few people I didn't know where to put
Or dreams I didn't know if I could believe in anymore ...

A few kinks to work out
A few smaller piles to sort
It felt manageable
... Like I might know a few things I want for the first time in
Forever it seems

I perfectly stacked my dreams
Most important on the bottom
I'll get to it later if I think I can handle disappointment again

I stacked people
Sorted more like
Into piles with labels
Future and Past
Closer to who I need to be
And keeping me down

I moved people between positive and negativity and asked myself
... How much more if this can I take

I'm trying to live intentionally
To love unafraid for the first time
In forever it seems

But your surname broke me

My life is not sorted quite as well as I want it to be

Seat Belt

My heart is walking the line between numb and bad days

I can't bring myself to wear a seat belt
I'm tired of walking or crawling from these collisions
With but mere bruises ... and bumps... and what appear to be surface wounds

Because it really does get easier
Not to feel
But I fear my apathy most because there lies no future
No hope
Which seems to take the most energy and I have none
I'm at the end of my rope and I can't figure out what I spent it all on
Or if I just don't know how to take care of myself

I do not know if you also vacillate between need and apathy

Skeptic

I never intended to love your laugh
It all happened by accident
And your eyes are the fear that drives me mad

I didn't mean to forget the world when I'm with you
But I did
And realized I didn't want to come back down to earth
Never wanted to think through my doubt
But just get caught up in the moment when I realized how your arms force me to relax
Give me rest I've been looking for
And with you it was impossible to fight back
And fighting is the only thing I've ever claimed to be good at

I don't know how to combat the unpredictability of your love

I don't know how to live day to day with you and not lose myself

I don't know how to trust the heart of a skeptic
I don't even know how to trust mine

I Knew You

You taste like salty kisses
It was the first line of the first poem I ever tried to write for you
Thinking I would look back on you fondly ...

The salty kisses used to remind me of the past
I always remember the way that your sweat felt on the palm of my hands
While I touched your back as you lay on top of me
The years went by and I still remembered
The salty kisses on your shoulder while you lay on top of me
Unknowingly symbolizing most of my life...

I know your skin like prickling discomfort and fleeting pleasure
I knew you as a predictable lover and a temporary drug

I knew you as death and forgetfullness