day 227

When you describe a tree without saying leave or Autumn, you are reminded of sweet Spring and the surface of brand new skin. You start to realize how love will begin to blossom after a long cold and you find yourself warming up to the idea of painting yourself onto the limbs of someone new. I am still stuck between a bitter December and the lust of June, July, and August heartbreaks, but I have found home in April and learning to make a home out of someone else's house. I talk with weary eyes often, but I hover my hands over your skin with fingertips imploding a short stop of shy. I will watch you blush, plant your roots into a homecoming parade made for the birth of Spring, and hear you talk about love. I don't know anything at all about it. I just know how Autumn makes me feel and how close to home you are becoming.

day 226

Maybe I just like the attention

manic pixie girl/ 8

I live like
i am running out of air and you are getting by with gills. we swim through fake conversation and temporary highs just to spend some time with each other. last night i could've sworn i saw you sprout wings and let them grow. you are trying to find ways to fly away from me. i touched them with the skin on my back and i wished they were mine to keep. sometimes i want to find a way to eat the clouds and lay on orange skies and just be so warm. i touch my stomach and it's hollow. i empty out my emotions before bed.


I don't even have anyone to call my own.
and no one has the right to call me theirs.
Loneliness has never felt so lonely.

day 225

Completely re-edited and ready for performance

***

In 1888, the streets of London became the heart of Jack The Ripper’s search for salvation.

These are the women he loved:

The first time I had ever felt so broken was after falling in love with a prostitute.

She was the first woman to ever tell me that I was unlovable

She said I was insane

I am just a little too brilliant

And fascinated by anatomy

I love women who are open to being open.

The second woman to tell me I was unlovable was Miss Mary Nichols

I let her go easily.

Just a hole in her throat and an open chest inviting me to take a look at her heart

And the third woman to tell me I was unlovable was Miss Annie Chapman.

She wouldn’t let me hold her

I placed my arms around her being and she just shrugged

So I made her wear her intestines like her hair

Curly, and slightly off the shoulders

Something to keep her warm until she found warmth in a coffin

Then there was Miss Elizabeth Stride, the fourth woman to call me unlovable

The grocer sold us grapes that day. She was nice. We walked together like man and wife

Until she started walking away

It became man and knife and a bag of grapes that would never become wine for two lovers

The fifth woman to call me unlovable was Miss Catherine Eddowes

Oh what a woman.

She wanted nothing to do with me

But I didn’t have time for a drunken housewife

She squealed a little, but I got the job done

Opened her body up like wings

Showed the streets of London how high she was capable of flying

This is not the kind of woman you play dress up with

She will hurt you in heels and a mouth of broken homes

I kept her ear as a souvenir.

A reminder

That someone out there will always listen to me

The last woman to ever call me unlovable was dear Miss Mary Jane Kelly

Sweetheart would never stand a chance as a housewife

Being six weeks behind payment is not what a real lady does

I drained her of her sins.

I painted her death bed with her own blood.

It was a masterpiece at best.

A chest as a pillow and the other by her foot

Her drunken liver before her step

Intestines by her right hip and her spleen by her left

Chopped off her eyebrows

Chopped off her nose

Chopped off her ears

And chopped off her prose

Oh what a wonderful exhibit

Miss Mary Jane was the definition of naked

They didn’t call me Saucy Jacky for fun.

I emptied out her entire abdominal cavity

I’ve learned that a good whore should never possess any amount of sweetness

The salvation I’ve needed all along was through

the broken wings

the bedroom blood baths

and the brush of a knife

day 224

the youth in me wants to dance

my mind shouts with the intensity of a million broken meteors
at times, I wish for my thoughts to spill onto the page like lit matches

I want the spark to mean something for once

day 223

(quick side note:
dear "justtocomment216",
thank you for being so sweet.
I truly appreciate it. :)

Today-

The girls who took my poetry workshop slammed tonight in front of their parents. They performed like they had a purpose, a passion, and they loved to tell their own stories. I was so proud.

They came up to me afterwards and told me they learned a new kind of strength, power, and confidence from me. This is the biggest of rewards. Educating has become a new interest.

***
I came out of the poetry closet to my mother tonight. After 2 years of silence. I told her about mars speaks 365, How to Fold Paper Planes, nineteen, my international support system, my hard work, my community work, Brave New Voices, Louder Than A Bomb, teaching youth, being published, being on all 3 Lowell slam teams at once, being the only American on The Messengers Slam Poetry Collective, my graphic design career...everything. Mother replies with a huge smile, a sparkle in her eyes, and a "I'm so proud of you."

day 222

This is for the lovers I will never learn to love. This is for the transparent smiling and the see through hand holding. This is for the I'm looking at you with my peripherals but I will never willingly give you my point of view. This is for the slight sense of jealousy. This is for every perfect being around you and it scares me. This is for the past lovers you will never get over. This is for the nights you spend with a past lover thinking about someone else. This is for the nights you wish you were in love again. With the same person. Whichever person made your heart stop the longest or skip the farthest. Whichever one you think of when you see two lovers dancing on the middle of a dance floor, and everyone is looking at them, wishing they were in love. This is for the thoughts and the righteousness of knowing they don't love each other like everyone thinks they do. This is for the perfect couples because they don't exist. This is for my firm belief in broken promises, broken hearts, and broken lovers. This is for the confessions in the middle of the night but not being able to tell someone you still love them. This is for still wanting to believe you are in love, but you force yourself away from it. This is for still wanting two summers ago.

day 221

A woman came up to me and told me that I am a very powerful young woman.

She said,
"I can just feel your strength radiating off of you. You are so beautiful."

This was the first time I've felt like I've been doing right for so long.