I think you're a lot like the Moon. Not in the spherical, grey, dusty way, but in the sense that somehow, when you're near me, I feel waves beating inside my chest. You have caused the rising and falling of a tide inside me. It's inconvenient at best, and infuriating at worst, but I have nothing else to do but to follow the ocean inside before it erodes my shores into nothingness and sends my soul is drifting off alone towards the unreachable horizon, where the sea finally kisses the night sky. 

     You are always there, or the Moon is at least, waiting and watching, and dare-I-say, loving to do so. The people must seem so tiny and busy from where you are, like trails of ants on their pathways to and from their hills of dirt. It's lucky that I am the ocean then, because that means I'm the most noticeable thing on the globe, being seventy-five percent of the thing. You always say that I'm the only one you see in a roomful of people. It's a sweet lie; I appreciate the sentiment.

     I guess you're wondering by now why I bothered to write this. It wasn't because the Moon was orange tonight (although that did remind me of the badly done spray tan you got last summer before your sister's wedding), or because I'm planning some romantic seaside trip. It's just to remind you that you make me feel things, mostly nice, and usually unfamiliar and strange and exciting, and I hope I make you feel like that sometimes. I want to make poetic things happen inside you, like being lost at sea and wanting to be an astronaut. I guess that's what love is, or maybe it's just movie love (which is hardly real), but then again, maybe I just really like outer space.

I've been sitting with a box cutter in my hand

For four hours, thirty-two minutes, and seventeen seconds

I'm thinking about how easy it would be

To glide the glinting edges across my arm

My wrists

My thighs

My stomach

To feel the rush of watching the crimson strips appear

To feel the sting of the metal

Four hours, thirty-two minutes, and forty-eight seconds

I push the blade in and out with my thumb

Methodically

They don't put trigger warnings on box cutters

Or commercials for knives

Or razors for shaving

They don't warn you, warn you that every time you see the blades

They don't warn you of the urges you begin to feel

A hunger that should never be satisfied

Four hours, thirty-three minutes, and six seconds

They don't put trigger warnings on words

The questions that are asked

The excuses that are made

To cover up your scars with sleeves of lies

I twist the box cutter in my hand

It wasn't supposed to be here, the box cutter

It should be locked away with my other tools of weapons

Weapons of self-destruction 

Thirty-three minutes, and fifty-eight seconds

I pull them out, one by one

A sharp nail

A thumbtack

A shard of glass

A broken coffee mug

I run my fingers over them, barely touching, just enough

Four hours, thirty-five minutes, and nine seconds

I want to embed them into my skin, every single one

I want to feel the pain, to mask something far worse

I want to drown my demons' screams

Even though I know they can hold their breath

Waiting for as long as it takes for the scabs to fade away

Into pale streaks of hatred

There are no trigger warnings for your own arms

Reminders of the times you were strong for too long

I put them back into their box, my weapons

Their sharp ends mocking me, screaming my name

Beckoning me closer

I close the box tight

Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and as long as I can hold on

I throw the box in the trash

This time, I will not fish it out in desperation 

This time, I will not give into the frantic cries

This time, I will not succumb to the addiction

This time, I will not let my own body become my trigger

This time, I will free myself from this prison

I am better than my pain

I am stronger than my pain

I am more than my pain

I am worthy 

I am resilient 

I am free

The baby's breath blooms drying on my windowsill have been there for months. I imagine that if I picked them up and squeezed one, it would crush and crumble between my fingers, making a dust of sorts. I could put it on my tongue, and it might dissolve, and then I could see more stars than other people, although I could never test the theory. Or I might just end up with a bad taste in my mouth, sweet and stale and papery. But they might bloom inside me if I swallowed them. Wouldn't that be lovely?

I could have flowers growing through my organs, and you could see the faint outlines of them in my arms, all the way up to my fingertips. That would be very pretty. If I happened to die, they could take my heart out to look at it, and it would be filled with little white flowers coming out of the aorta, or maybe there would be roots. I don't know if the roots would be in my heart, brain, or stomach. Any of those would make sense to me. But before I died, I could have a garden inside me. And if someone asked, "Why does it look like there are flowers inside your skin?", I alone of all people would have the privilege of answering, "Because there are."

I would be so lucky.

But I guess it would get tiresome, like all things eventually do. The flowers inside me would have to die, just like the dried flowers that I put on my tongue and swallowed to birth them in the beginning. They would wither away until you couldn't see them under my skin, and you wouldn't see them coming out of my heart, only fine white dust like an addict, which I am.

Which we all are. To beauty, and to nice things, and to feeling special.

Oh, how we love that. I would have my fix for awhile, but then I would itch for more.

Maybe then I would dry lavender flowers on my windowsill.