why does no one read my poems

why do i sit here writing

nearly three hundred, since november

half the things i write i don't even publish on here

it's too much

i think i'll publish a book of poems, call it 'why me?'

that should suffice

My love for you

Is an exaltation

Of larks.

I feel,

But frequently

Don’t show

Passion,

Which I suppose

Is like

Cold fires

Of snow-flakes,

And my love

For you

Remains a process –

Dark is turning

Inside out.

My love

Is not shown

Easily –

I feel

So strongly

Yet I cannot

Put it on display –

My love

Is like the

Vernacular

Of leaves

Or early snow,

Beautiful,

But often

Unnoticed,

But if you

Look carefully

My eyes,

Surely,

Must be kind.

Tonight,

When we’re together

We will glide

Over

Pine needle slopes.

Contentment.

Paint a hue the exact shade

of cornflower, I am besotted

without caution to evil distilled

in her movement as she walks.

What distinguishes adulation

from loathing? There is no easy

equation: love and detestation

intermingle sans logic

and I battle begrudging

desire difficult to slake.

She swaths a careless path

with each wide arc of comeliness;

she cares not what precarious

obsession she invokes or

the tender infatuations she fells.

Beauty does not beget goodness,

heaven's failing at our conception.

I know it sounds twisted

But I think I didn't mind the abuse because after a while it was comfortable. Not the bruises, or the scrapes. Not the nights I spent hours scrubbing my own blood out of the carpet. Not the 3ams puking my guts out in the bathroom. Not the headaches I got for weeks every time my head was slammed against a wall.

The comfort came in knowing what to expect. Sure, I expected my abuser to kill me eventually, but not until I was useless. If I stopped being attractive or forgiving or giving, then my fate was sealed. But as long as I could cry and scream and apologize, I felt like a few more bruises would be sort of okay.

My mind wanders back to those times quite often. I get flashbacks of myself dangling in the air with a hand firmly gripped around my neck. I can see that person on top of me. I can feel the weight of a fist on my cheekbone, and the sting of a foot plunging into my ribcage. I remember the ache of healing bones, and the trembling of my hands as I stitched my own wounds closed.

Maybe I should have gotten help sooner. Maybe I should have run, or stood up for myself. Maybe I should not have let myself get comfortable. But I did. It happened. To this day, I am afraid of falling back into that comfort. I am afraid of letting another human being control me, hurt me, abuse me. I am afraid of the outcome, or maybe that there would be no outcome.

I am burdened by my choice to stay, but I never felt like I was making a choice. It felt like I was chained to the walls of that house. Unable to escape. Incapable of remembering that there was an entire world out there. A world with bad in it, but also so much good.

You probably don't understand how I could call that comfort. Knowing that someone would nearly kill me nearly every day. It was though. The unknown and unexpected can be terrifying. If I had been a different person then, I might have been stronger and been able to leave or fight back. I am fragile, and I have always been fragile. I look strong, sometimes I act strong, but I am very breakable. I was broken. I was tamed and put in a box. I was reminded that I was not my own with every word that was spoken and every beating I took. I was not my own. I was someone's property, someone's project.

It is a comfort now, knowing that there is so much more out there. I don't belong to anyone. I am still learning to belong to myself. I am getting better. I am adjusting to the freedoms this life has to offer. I am clean, scarred, and hopeful.

-AshleyAnne

I need a name

The boy has died

His fantastical needs and shipwreck dreams have faded past slumber 

The clock hands, for nearly a minute, came to rest and now turn back 

Ticking louder, striking ominously 

Before it's too late

I need a name

That can be echoed off canyon walls

Carried along riverbeds

And drifted out to sea

You see, I was salt once

A crystalline palace in the palm of your hand 

Fragile if you knew you were crushing me

But now I'm stone, rounded by the currents of reality and tumbled along eroding shorelines of exposed and twisted mangrove roots

Little hairs being stripped bare and beaten into submission 

Left behind, it's the salt that shines, in the sun

I was a force once but I'm not the same

I need a name

I was written next you

I was called out loud and had taken vows 

Little voices could cry, daddy 

Now they cry

They shout only a void 

A hole 

I feel like a wishing well that's ashamed of the scam and if there were a way I could give all those wishes back, I would 

But I'm empty

I'm silent 

Nothing

I need a name

A name that is proud

That says I believe what I'm talking about, that I've seen enough of this world and can convince two little girls that the world is their oyster 

And they are the shiny pearls 

But who am I 

Who am I to make such grand statements 

Who am I to flip coins back into the pockets of daydreamers or take offense when life made no sense and you changed your name

Who am I, a stone, dead weight whose spent enough time on the beaches of fate a saw firsthand that we're all losing ground at an alarming rate

Who am I 

I need a name