Oh Child

1. The first time your heart broke you were eight years old and you didn't know what was happening. Oh child, do you still believe your own hand wielded that sledgehammer?

2. When I see you, I have two thoughts: you are the strongest; you are the weakest. You are beaten down but parts of you remain unbroken and you hold your bloody head up with shameful pride.

3. If you're going to break, shatter the walls around your heart. Love is not the enemy for all that it keeps you here.

4. Maybe no one ever told you, but you're allowed to feel, even if all you feel is darkness and pain. No one told you you don't need fixing, perhaps; maybe all you need is those shattered walls, broken from the love hurled like explosives from those around you.

5. Oh child, let yourself feel.

My Apologies

- I'm sorry you had to take five seconds out of your day to read a Facebook post telling you I'm sad

- I'm sorry that made you sad for five whole seconds

- I'm sorry your fingers stutter on the keyboard because you don't know what to say when all you have to say is "I love you" but all you say is nothing

- I'm sorry I imagine belts and nooses, not kittens, when you say "hang in there"

- I'm sorry my accumulated years of pain became too much for you after a few months or less

- I'm sorry for not seeking help, for some reason I thought that's why I was talking to you

- I'm sorry I made you cry with that poem I wrote; I shed tears of a more sanguine hue while writing it, but sure let's talk about you

- I'm sorry your attempts to cheer me up make you feel like a failure

- I'm sorry for resisting your efforts to make me feel like a failure so you could feel better

- I'm sorry for working really hard to be my own genuine self, I am obviously doing it just to hurt you

- I'm sorry my presence makes you feel uncomfortable while I'm worrying I'll be shot this time as I attempt to pee

- I'm sorry I don't fit in your boxes, because after all all your other children grew up to become who you wanted them to be

- I'm sorry it hurts you when I want to die, your pain is obviously far more important than my own

- I'm sorry I unfollowed you on Facebook, I didn't realize you wanted me to pick fights on your posts full of vitriol and lies about people like me

- I'm sorry I keep talking to you; I've tried to stop but this thing called love or something keeps getting in the way

- I'm sorry I'm learning to be happy without Jesus

- I'm sorry you were wrong

To My Brain, You Asshole...Love, My Fingers

I wish I could do without you sometimes.
Without your dumb thoughts dropping pitter-patter from my tips in ink...and sometimes blood.
I wish I could turn you off and caress the keyboard only to slay fictional monsters and demons.

But only sometimes.

Because I know the words that bring tears and healing to others also come from you.
I know the darkness staining every inch of me some days is thanks to you.
I only move where you bid me and though so often what flows from me is pain I am grateful you give me the method to express that pain, whether that means picking up a pen or a marker or a scalpel.

Alternate Names for an Ex (Me)

1. Still on fire with no longer returned love

2. No longer rooted in past faith

3. Struggling to regain past brilliance

4. Boy with his breath still stolen by pain

5. More stable, and yet that razor's bite

6. Made in the likeness of the universe

7. Rejecter of summer's warmth

8. Still haunted by the spectre of other's beliefs

9. Needing only a spark to call back the darkness

10. A firework in the midst of exploding