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Home is a word used to describe the place you feel the safest.

It is often said that a house is not a home.

My home is in between the pages of a book, hiding between the lines, soaking in the words like water.

My home is in the wild, running and jumping and climbing and BEING for the first time in months.

My home is in my moirail's arms, shaking and crying for all I'm worth as I spill out every emotion pent up from anger and frustration to fear and sadness. It's in her arms, cuddling and providing each other with a warmth we couldn't achieve on our own.

My home is behind a keyboard, chatting to people I have never met face to face, enjoying the feeling of letting someone know exactly what's wrong when my world seems to be tumbling down, or exactly what's right when I feel as though I couldn't possibly be any happier.

My home is where I find acceptance of who I am and what I believe and am able to accept others in return, where each of us can be who we are, if only for a moment, and feel safe in that.

Rectify

My name is I am not afraid.
My name is I am not crazy.
I suppose when at 10cm
My mother didn’t have that name in mind
And her fingers might have scrawled something else on the birth certificate
Naming my existence.
But she was wrong.
I think she didn’t take into account
The words “I am not crazy”
Would be formed at my lips
So much more frequently than my own name
I felt the need to rectify that mistake.

My name is stop trying to fix me,
I’m not broken.
Stop feeding me poison
And expecting me to drink it with a smile.
My name is playing Russian Roulette with the wrong revolver
One that is fully armed and poised to kill
But a jammed bullet is an accident of fate
The judge that filed the wrong man a death penalty
And sentenced me to another day.

My name is I didn’t mean to.
My name is look away, don’t talk to me
My name is social pyromania
Because I will burn whatever love you present me with
And watch the promises smoke away
And I will set aflame your secrets
Let me go
I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.

My name is the contempt stitched onto my wrist
And cigarette burn holes to let the light into my eyes
My name is don’t look at me
I know I am hard to look at
And even harder to speak to.

My name is forget him
My name is forget that night.
My name is forget his face and his name,
Forget about my lipstick smeared on the mouth of the tequila bottle that was smashed on the floor
And smudged on his hand when he finally let me go
And forget, at all costs, how it feels to be torn in half
And to be afraid because he’s taking one half with him
And I’m worried I won’t see it again.
My name is forget that I am scared
My name is no, wait I am not scared
My name is I am not bleeding
My name is no, I swear it was an accident, I didn’t even realize there was a cut on my thigh
My name is I don’t need stitches, I don’t want stitches, let it bleed
My name is leave me alone
My name is Unafraid
My name is please, please, believe me, I am not afraid.

My name is Don’t Bother.
Stop looking at me like you expect me to break
Stop rewriting the stitches to overshadow my shame
Stop trying to hold me together
Take the needle away
I don’t want a tourniquet
Let me bleed.

My name is I’m not afraid.
My name is I’m not afraid.
My name is I’m sorry.
My name no longer belongs to me,
I gave it away when I lied to you
And told you I am no longer afraid
And I am sorry.

Year of the Dragon
(in memory of A.K.)


I.
I am love and riots, soccer, daisy chains, and tie-dyed t-shirts, rock music, poetry, and summer camp.
I am daydreaming clouds that graze upon the shallow horizons, I am drug store comic books, dreams of superheroes that too easily fall apart, sweet, cool sodas heavy on caffeine, barefoot dances on carpets of clover and war, sun-warmed pavement with the spines of dandelion dragons rearing their spiky heads into the pollen-riddled golden air as they shoot through the cracks.
I am cigarettes that a fourteen year old smokes without inhaling because she thinks it makes her look so damn cool, steamy lavender-soap scented baths, and passion, lemonade, vodka, and prophesy, lonely stars in the warmest skies.
I am tin cans blooming with flowers of splotching rust and searching for treasure amidst weeds and depleted newsprint in parks, so certain I would find a diamond in the rough.
I am light bouncing off of sidewalks, dazzling in the shards of a broken jar on the street, tiny rainbows in nameless prisms beauty no one bothered to see; shards of beer bottles I imagined to be amber that would live as gold, mica speckled gravel on lonely driveways that could burst open into crystals of every color in my mind.
I am swimming pools and chlorine-tinted bleach-blond hair, spray-on suntan lotion and feigned innocence.
I am the smells of coffee, gasoline, heat, sweat, and sourness, the squat magnolia tree in all of her slutty, excessive glory, trouble brewing and beauty's mask cutting off her corners, slowly coming apart at the seams.
I am biting my lip and holding it all in, white knuckles, rosy cheeks, eyeliner bruising along the soft lines of my lashes, zippers and spikes on every surface imaginable, maybe if I keep myself closed off in this land of ebony, houndstooth, leather straps and silver, I won't be broken again.
I am hot sauce, methamphetamine, pickles, warm lemon-lime soda spiked with speedballs, alcohol, sweet marijane, tattoo guns, razorblades, scarred wrists and bloody noses, trailer parks, crack pipes, abandoned motels, weed in the alley behind the library, fistfights in the parking lot, sex in the grocer's storage room after hours, sleeping in the barn with my beautiful dragon next to me naked and succulent.
I am the starkness of my dragon, her porcelain skin and endlessly soft waterfalls of dark curls, her eyes with the darkness of charcoal but the intensity of the embers at the base of the flames they were born of. I am the dragon within her that fights to outshine her lovely face, her fiery taste, the violent passion that roots us together and refuses to let go, this ancient animal connection, harder than stone and colder than ice…two women together.
I am anger, purity and raw power, I am illusion, delusion, disillusion, and solitude, I am magic that speaks but is never heard, I am the beating of your heart and mine melting away.
I am of bullet shells, of art, devotion and initiation, of classic punk and metal, of motorcycles and memories, of broken bones, bruises and backaches, of silence, of being hit but getting back up again, of being hit and just getting back up again, of being hit and just getting back up again. Some things will never change, but I already have.


II.
Tomorrow marks a year without my dragon, a story that sketches past the beauty of a photograph's proud smiles and showiness into the heart of the image—all those details you never noticed, like the morning glories tipping their proud faces into the sun and the oak that hung her leafy skirts to dry at noon, all those daylights and sunsets that will never be the same, all the colors that will never be so bright again.
Tomorrow marks a year since that night in the hayloft of the barn, nesting between the two bales of clover rich and sweet, hearing dark bodies, torturous statues of frost in the dull iron light, shifting below us in their discomfort with the warmth, her lips pressed together into a tight line, the only roses I saw were her breasts and the only ones she felt were my cheeks.
Tomorrow marks a year without my dragon, who fell in love with color, who made me realize the beauty of an urban mural and a child's birthday cake were bright and rich just the same, and the color of my eyes reflected whatever I was wearing, and the color of her shirt was never the same two days of the same week, and yet all I saw was the black of my prison and the white of her skin.
Tomorrow marks a year since I heard her whisper to me, one last time—"What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?" one last time—"Why do I feel like your hand isn't on my back, it's somehow slipped through the gaps between my ribs and touched my heart?" one last time—"I love you." one last time—"I love you." one last time—"Never let me go." one last time—"Never give up." one last time—"Never, never, never give up."
Tomorrow marks a year without my dragon. And I still haven't said goodbye.


III.
Dragons are a beautiful creation of the mind that everyone experiences, a melding of the species of beyond, a creature who transcends time, culture, and imagination to touch us only to disappear, proud in their freedom and sometimes loneliness, never doubted for a moment that you were here for a reason, never doubted for a moment that you were my dragon, you were my soul's enlightened quest, I had to find you.
My dragon, I'm with you in madness, where you have never doubted that I would remember you.
I'm with you in madness, where shadow puppets dance with your memory in the hallway and you've left without your key but somehow you remembered to lock me away, and I'm still alone and you're still on the outside wishing you could touch me again.
I'm with you in madness, where passion is guts and glory and desert sunsets and stars, more than anyone's ever seen in their lives out here in this winter sky, and passion is the sourness of premature fruit and wars that are fought in silence and enemies who don't know they are sisters, and passion is a dragon-demon-girl and the lady who loves her and passion is grabbing a shovel to unearth your sins rather than bury them.
I'm with you in madness, where your only captor is the land and your prison is your soul.
I'm with you in madness, where we stumble down sandstone cliffs, trip over our shoelaces, smoke rolled-up pages of the bible stuffed with fruit peels because there's none of those cigarettes that made us look so damn cool when we were fourteen, fall in love with dreams of escape and then turn around and try to climb back up those cliffs again.
I'm with you in madness, life is moving too fast, my hands are shaking and now my fists are shaking and now a deep, powerful tremor is working its way back up through me through the depths of my paralyzed soul and now my heart feels the shockwave and kicks into overdrive, hyperventilate, laugh out loud just so that you don't ******** scream, just so that you don't ******** scream, don't scream, don't cry, just keep your mouth shut or I'll give you something to scream and cry about and then you'll really shake.
I'm with you in madness until day breaks and I'm in that abandoned ******** barn next to you, curled tightly around you like the serpent clung to the innocence of his pray and I don't want to let you go but I have to and I love you so ******** much! but day breaks and I realize we're not in the barn anymore the memory is gone and you are still running and you are still running and I don't know where you are, I was with you in madness until you stepped off of the train without me and left your skin behind, and then I was laying at the foot of the icy hill, wondering why.


IV.
Dragon, what have I not said,
What have I left to the wind to clutch at, what have I left behind
When I left the barn that last time and you were still asleep and so damn beautiful
How was I supposed to know? What have I not said
That you would want me to say?

Goodbye

With your eyes of summer coolers and warm winter eggnog heavy on the brandy
With your eyes of drunken lovemaking and passionate dreams
With your eyes of staring back at me out of that damn picture frame
With your eyes of Asia
With your eyes of the third Year of the Dragon
With your eyes of wisdom
With your eyes of ember
With your eyes of ashes
With your eyes of wilderness
With your eyes of trains and horses, so we longed to run wild across the sky
With your eyes of secret soundtracks
With your eyes of stained-glass church windows
With your eyes of lovers that didn't love each other enough to live for one another
With your eyes of dreams that didn't live enough to keep you here
With your eyes of color
With your eyes of charcoal
With your eyes

Goodbye

With your lips tightening into a fine, crooked line
With your lips warming into a smile
With your lips slowly forming words that I drank like gospel
With your lips pressing slowly against my face
With your lips holding gently to my breasts
With your lips moving lovingly across mine
With your lips that were always chapped
With your lips I loved so much
With your lips and I'll never feel them again

With your hands of chess and stories
With your hands of gentleness and sometimes rough tenderness
With your hands of pianos
With your hands of paintbrushes
With your hands of peonies that bowed into their graves
With your hands of English voices
With your hands of white knuckles and black nail polish
With your hands of scars

Goodbye

With zippers, black combat boots and motorcycle jackets
With the moss of your skin gentle over hard muscles
With lovemaking that came so easily to us
With Rubix cubes and hot chocolate
With ice and red clouds slowly entering into daylight
With silent fragments of beastly rage in each steaming breath
With glistening footsteps
With a fragment of hay in your hair
With two grass-stained kneecaps and a tattooed shoulder
With unshaved French arms and a rough pubic beard
With frost that shows fire how destruction's really done
With death metal songs and needles quick and light
With fingernails digging into the smooth plain of skin on my back
With bruises
With treetops
With lilies

Goodbye

With daisies
With hope
With silence

Goodbye

With ravens balancing the sun between their wings
With divine jugglers holding all of the planets in balance
With your suicide
Your soul
Wait you left your body behind!
—goodbye

Forever your soul
My dragon
Goodbye
Goodbye

When you're sick.

The doctor told me that even little kids go to school when they've got something worse than I (might) have. I sat there and thought to myself, Yeah, because their parents make them. I'm too old for my mother to make me, so when I stay home because my anxiety is stronger than my thirst for knowledge, don't tell me that even little kids go to school on days like this.

Little kids don't quite have the language to express why they feel like s**t. They just feel like s**t, and when they say so they're told they're overreacting to something their guardians don't know jack s**t about.

Little kids generally don't have problems sitting in class, because the teacher keeps it interactive enough they don't have time to think about the fact that they don't really know anyone in their class, because they do! They spend five days of every week with those same kids. I spend two or three classes a week with people who already know who they want to talk to, and it sure as hell ain't me.

The doctor told me I was smart, and that I shouldn't waste my intellect by staying at home. What he didn't realize was that I am smart enough to know my own limits, and I'm smart enough to pick up where I left off and catch up to my peers in five minutes because I actually listen to the conversation and make inferences like I was taught to, despite the fact that he seems to think I don't.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but you're wrong, okay? You stuck up, green-horned excuse for a physician, sure you can diagnose and prescribe and operate and examine, but if you completely ******** ignore my mental health or brush it off as insignificant, you're only seeing half the problem, and you will fail at ever finding a solution, because when I say I can't go to school today. I'm saying <******** WHY CAN'T I GO not I think I'll stay home today or I'm lazy and ungrateful and deserve a good scolding and no second chance at the work my peers where there for or any other bullshit like that.

It's like being told to walk on glass because someone else thinks it's not broken. Guess what? It's broken.

It's like hitting a wall someone else can't see. Guess what? It's still there.

It's being criticized and looked down upon for something I cannot control, and cannot yet help, but am spending the majority of my energy trying to fix.

That's why I'm tired all the time. Not because I stay up too late, not because I spend too much time with my friends, not because I think it's boring, but because trying to function 'normally' when you're anxious and depressed isn't ******** easy, and anyone who says it is has never been depressed or anxious in the truest meanings of the words, and they can go ******** themselves, because they have no ******** clue what it's like to be me.

The Last Poem

I told myself that this would be the last poem I write about you;
that you would not longer sneak your way into these small diaries of the heart, seeping between the lines, soaking and saturating the thoughts until it was nothing but you ad my words were drowning in your school-fed religion.

I told myself that this would be the last poem I wrote about you;
that you would not longer punish me with angels and demons and a god I can't believe in.

I told myself that this would be the last poem I wrote about you,
but poison is not that easily treated. I should know by now.

The last poem I ever write, shaken out of my genes and onto the page will still be drowning in you...

And I will be too.