Jadite

lately, she's been running out of words, like a violin whose strings haven't been tuned but somehow survived the seasons. yet, unlike an instrument, she can't tune herself back up, and remember what it feels like to create something. she's looking for a family, strangers with no relation to her, except a story written in cuts. there's no salvation in self- destruction. yet, she's searching, looking between the scars for answers. for some reason, she's got herself convinced if she could hurt more than wildfires and weapons then she'd be worth more than her desperate attempts to tell her truth. for some reason, she thinks

yesterday, i ate fudge so sweet, it burned my throat. water welled in my eyes like the tears i haven't shed in over two months. i don't think i remember what crying feels like. today, i had salsa several degrees hotter than usual. i let it sear my throat, let it linger on my lips. it didn't make me cry. there are less dramatic forms of destruction, and i have yet to find them all.

The curtains are closed tight, she thinks, wary of the boogie monster since age eleven. She hides under the blankets at age seventeen, ocean tears slipping from under her dirty brown eyes. Her mind is racing, simple things turning into complex events. She wishes for the silence to go away, the silence louder than her mother yells from outside the door, incoherent ramblings about clean dishes and a dirty report card. She knows she shouldn't care, that she should just let the knife slice right through, but the voices gather into a cult, chants unguarded and menacing. Soon it's the only thing she ever hears, even over her fathers growl of disapp

put me under, cover my face, stuff my lungs with your chemical lies. if they were to take me apart, slice open my chest, peel back the skin keeping me whole, they would find: a. one heart, slowly ticking. (they would not find anything, but they would have to say they did. after all, girls can't live without a heart. they forget that i'm not the first: a score of girls walking even though they should have faded long ago.) b. each rib curved so perfectly, a shield around my lungs. (a cage, keeping my breath from bursting out of my skin. know that this is just me, held together by nature, unable to lose control of myself.) c.

if i wrote you a love poem, you would never see it. it would hide, like a heart hidden beneath raincoats, protected from the elements. i would keep it hidden, pale and beating in the recesses of my journal. if i wrote you a love poem, it would be the first step to forgetting you.

darkness, welcome. cross the threshold, a groom carrying his bride, marry me to fuck-you-very-much sentiment. hold your hands over my ears, ignore the way i ask you to leave. i'm only serious when i'm conscious, and i've been dreaming since i met you.

i held my wrist over a candle, imagined my nerves screaming. they are the only ones that listen to me. i wonder, if tangible signs of destruction would be enough for them to look closely at the millions of lies that swim side-by-side with my blood cells. those little oxygen carriers, they don't know i'm suffocating myself slowly. they are fighting a losing battle. i held my wrist over a candle, long enough for it to hurt, but not long enough to leave a sign. i imagined myself slipping through my fingers, each drop a part of me i lost since gave up.

she spilled across her bed, an oil-spill of excuses why. they promised they would mop her up, but how could she possibly believe them when none of them could see the oil that dripped out of her? they were all blind to the stain eating her up, polluting her insides. the pain, the ache, the never ending cycle of pretending she was okay. if only to prevent a national disaster.

you left me dangling, like a baby's forgotten mobile. you grew up, i hung. we no longer meet. communication must be established by you. i can no longer move.

i faded away, like a wraith. was i ever good enough for you?