i started calling myself a poet my sophomore year

of high school, when the lines and stanzas became as real

as the blue veins in my wrists

even still, even still

it was all for aesthetics

though i longed for it to be real

it was colour-graded insanity,

a shell of an identity

poetry, once a hobby, became a sort of anesthetic

tied a ribbon 'round my pain for the beauty of it

let's make panic attacks more poetic

sorry, lost myself to the numbered hearts for a minute

i even found that i'd avoid some things

that maybe didn't look as pretty in ink

sifting through the twisted thoughts that i think

but you don't want to read

about what's really underneath

the metaphors and similes

i know you like to believe

are all there is to the girl with the pen

there's more to see

you see

this writer is an ugly crier

hates the world but burns with desire

to see it all, take it in,

live forever but meanwhile

she's suicidal

without the action

loves her life but worships distraction

in lesser things

computer screens

loathes herself most days

a self-taught expert in acting

like she cares, even though she doesn't

there are no feelings even if she wanted

to feel something for you

some sympathy, "poor you"

a chronic romantic scribbling haikus

from friends to strangers in one afternoon

she bears the weight of her own unbelief

it gets heavy, all the prayers and white teeth

knowing mom can't sleep

because of me?

is it because of me?

i wish i could cry at night

and it not be about you

for once in my life perhaps,

i wanted to feel something too.

i wonder why i must carry with me

all the mistakes that you made.

nobody but us know, these scars are signed

with the letters of your name

and how do you explain to a child

that her mother can’t be saved?

i’ve got so much love to give

but the truth is,

it’s yours that i craved.

I met you in a church

Even though you never believed in God.

You were so young then, you were so young then.

Clocks made our monsters real.

I had never been in love before,

I listened to my name sung on the radio.

Life was far away, unrealized.

People never looked at me.

I wish for a lot of things,

And not one of them was you.

You licked your life off the floor,

You thought about death more than I did.

Babe, I know, love is a funny thing.

Heretic Jesus lays with his Marys.

I was alone once, and I will end that way.

Understand that angels will bid goodbye.

You will eat your words,

The first and third should taste of you.

You came dancing through the telephone.

I just can’t be alone, I just can’t be alone.

A metamorphic paradise,

Clearly I’m a contradiction,

I lost myself out there, so don’t ask me,

I’ve gone insane.

I can’t do the things I do,

I don’t want to do them.

I can’t breathe without my lungs,

I can’t live without you.

I want to go home even when I’m home,

I want to be safe from everything.

Held in your arms, the night doesn’t feel so cold.

The hole in my head grows whole.

there's no opinions. we exist no matter what. whether or not you decide to be angry about our existence is up to you. but what's the point? why be angry when you can feel just as much potency in love? why is there supposed to be one way to love, one way to present yourself, one way to exist? there isn't. we are not sick. we are not new. we are not going through a phase. we are not existing to force the "gay agenda" on the world. but even if we were, what's it to you? My existence does not harm you in any way. There's no option to have an opinion on my existence. I will exist no matter what you think. I will be gay and queer and proud no matter what.