Peel back my wounds. I’m digging my fingernails under a scab to understand it better. I want to feel why pressure makes my knees buckle. I’m so many versions of myself that I don’t know which one to choose. Please tell me the secret to reading over scary parts of a story without ripping out the pages. When I put my fists up, they’re rock solid. They’re made of concrete. They’re as quick as a bomb. No one ever told me that when you have to punch, punch really fucking hard. So now I’m throwing my hands around every corner- I’m waiting for the glass to shatter underneath me. I have scars along my legs to prove it. Falling was quite lovely, you know.

So, here’s how my world ends, then blooms from the ashes. Heres how the scar tissue rises unevenly from the old wound. Here’s how my fists finally start to shake. It’s everyone leaving me, including myself. I miss parts of me that I’ve never met, but she’s there. She’s holding hands with a stranger and leaning her forehead against the nape of their neck- and if anyone were to see this, they’d see a lonely girl dancing alone. I love my ghost like a crutch. Its my muse. It’s my words that set fire to everything and everyone and every space I occupy. It’s the bandages that soak up the infection- I eat the thoughts and wants and ideas and wishes and heartbreak of everyone else and wonder why I feel so fucking sick.

It’ll get better once mourning ends. It comes back around each day, but it always ends. It lets the moon reach out its arms, past my fingertips, and holds me closely til the chaos ends.

I eat stars like the embers I watch in the distance from a town I burnt alive in my mind. It all rises with the heat until I’m left on the ground where it’s cool- I practice my breathing. Stretch my arms out and feel the aches pang through my bones. I laugh with tears in my eyes and say “oh, how I’ve carried for so long”. I peel back those old wounds and start over again and again and again and again. AMT