I hold poetry in my hands

Scarred from the cold grip of obsession

A need to be the undeniable winner in a game only I know how to play

I can’t follow something without reason

Can’t try without instantaneous success

My notebooks and journals are filled to the brim with crossed out stanzas

Metaphors and similes that make little sense

Comparisons to prison cells

My words of glass shattered by guards of my own making

A need to scream outweighed by a need for perfection

Because I am nothing if not perfect.

So I hold poetry in my small cold hands and I pray

To some sort of god

Not God of course

He is prestigious in his own right

A maker and giver

He spouts words like rivers

And turns his scars into tricks

Like wine from water

“He failed so we could succeed” says my mother

“He died so we could live”

And how selfish must you be to reject such a gift

How ignorant are those who do not cling to life like a childhood blanket

Who don’t strap themselves to this mortal plane

Fearful of the day they are forced into His grasp

And yet they are consoled by the facade of heavenly favor

Golden gates that block all who question his “love”

“How can a killer be kind” I’ll ask

And how stupid is the question of a child.

So I hold poetry in my small cold hands and I pray to some sort of god

Who is merciful and needn't be loving

I don’t want love from a being who loves all

I don’t want this pitiful affection that tells me I can do no wrong

Some vile means of endearment like rotting apricots 

If you love all always how can you consign some to hell

How dare you tell me that you are incapable of hatred 

In the same breath you declare that I am a mistake

I accept that I am not holy or even good

I don’t expect someone to save me 

From wounds of my own making

It’s confusing

Being selfish

I blame someone else for every problem I’ve caused

Yet I condemn those who believe in some higher power

A being for which I can blame all my suffering

But I refute for my own pride

Please don’t blame me for wanting to be better than a god

Please don’t judge me for wanting to be smarter than my mother.

So I hold poetry in my small cold hands and I pray to a god that doesn’t exist

To please stop taking everything that I need

Please stop stealing the smile from my teeth

And give back my mind full of wonder

I’m tired of my knowledge

Tired of knowing this reality of desperation and greedy desire for things we don’t need

I want to return to dancing with raindrops

Mud seeping into my clothes

Bugs crawling in my hair like the birds with their precarious nests

A home they’ve built after being

Thrown from their mother’s with nothing but broken wings and broken dreams

I want to return to running with my brothers

From fake monsters

Flying from footstep to footstep

As if nothing could touch us

As if the world was a playground not a battlefield 

Now my brothers are the monsters

Who fight and scream 

When did their hatred become all our feuds

I’m so tired of fighting a family that will never again be my own

I’m so tired of fighting strangers that I used to know

For a chance to be needed as they need each other

Because even after the lies and the theft

My mother will never miss me as she misses her golden birds.

So I hold poetry in my small hands

Because that’s all I will ever have

My hands and my feet and a body not made for me

But for some other girl with long hair and a long life

Who doesn’t fight for something she knows nothing about

I am as much of a girl as she is a mistake

She was a necessity that I stole away

My parasitical actions have shattered this family

Their expectations of a soaring songbird 

Ruined by a warbler without wings

I will always be a little girl with small hands 

And I can’t fight that without fighting her

She has been grappling too long for a chance I stole

I can’t again hurt her when I am all she’ll ever be

So I hold poetry in my small cold hands

Freezing with loneliness 

I cry for another

Some soul as broken as my own

Whose tears are shed without end

Like there is no one else to judge

I need connection without empathy

You may not feel what I’ve felt 

These broken parts are mine to hide 

Mine to cover up with half-sewn lies

Smiling away screams of pain and longing

I need love without that connection that keeps us close

I can’t have you close

Don’t you know I ruin everything I touch?

My love is not beautiful and I cannot lie through that

I can’t cover myself with roses 

Can’t pretend I’ll ever ask you to marry me when I can’t even hold your hand

I need space but I never want it

I can’t be near you but I love you in a sense of something real

I don’t know truth but I swear it was love

You couldn’t be an obsession because you haven’t yet hurt me.

So I hold poetry 

And I keep it close

Like a photo in a wallet in a pocket of someone important

Someone worth remembering

If I can’t have a love worth keeping

I will cling to this ecstasy of real words leaving my lips

Untainted by filters in need of validation

I’ll ruin everything I touch

Only poetry can’t be ruined since it already tears apart my soul 

I might as well use it to stitch myself back together

And of course I’m the one holding the needle

Piercing my own flesh with the disguise of blocking blood

Who else would stand so close

Knowing what I am?

Who else would undergo the tedious task of helping me heal

With the knowledge that the stitches will be snapped by morning

If only a needle and a thread could sew me up and keep me closed

These words spill out of me like a torrent

Sweeping me under 

Drowning my lungs

If I cover them up is that what I’ll become

If I am never true to myself

Am I really anyone at all?

So I hold poetry in my small cold hands and I pray for something I do not need

Because like every other lonely heart

That names itself broken because it is too lazy to piece itself together

It’s too tired to become something recognizable 

So instead it claims unlovable as a title, because truly it is not my fault

That you will not love something ugly

I pray to a god I don’t believe in for something someone else needs more

And even drowning in guilt can’t fix me

For someone else needs that water

It is not simply my selfish nature that has ruined me

But my inability to admit my faults

There is always another to blame

I need to be the victim because if there is no word for what I am

Then maybe none of it was real

So I hold poetry in my small cold hands and I ask to be fixed

Not by a god

Or some semblance of one that claims to be true

But by myself

For me and only me

Because if I am not fixable

Am not able to be molded like clay into whichever idol best suits my needs

If I can’t bend and break and snap myself into someone worth keeping

What am I but a creature of mistakes?

Held together by strings of my own insanity

With my desires held close and my obsessions held closer

Lies of humanity twirl across my skin

Painting pictures of a person attached to life

As if my failures don’t follow me like hounds

Waiting for a falter in my step

The stutter of a breath

And if this is really me

In all that I will ever become

How can I live with that?