• Instructions

Gather your mistakes, rinse them with honesty and self-reflection,

let dry until you can see every choice and the regret becomes brittle,

cover the entire surface in forgiveness,

remind yourself that you are human

and this too is a gift.

• I’m loud in places

where I should be quiet, I’m quiet in places where I should be loud, / People say it feels like I’m trying to escape. Sometimes it’s because I am.

I get really nervous every time someone gets close enough to hear me breathe. / That’s also why I fall in love with women

who will never love me back. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s actually much easier than it seems

• I promise

I will love you as if it’s the only thing I’ve ever done correctly.

• Sinking

I held you the way a boat holds water.

I should have left when I felt us sinking.

• Mess

On the day you couldn’t hold yourself together anymore, you called for me, voice cracking like two sets of knuckles before an altercation.

I found you, looking like a damaged wine glass. I hugged your shatter. I cut all of my fingers trying to jigsaw puzzle you back together.

When it was over, you looked at the stains on the carpet and blamed me for making a mess.

• Why Did You Leave?

Because you wouldn’t let me love both of us at the same time.

• Loving you

was the last thing I felt really good at.

• You wasted my time.

How dare you linger on my lips and then kiss me like a stuttering apology with excuses stapled to the roof of your mouth?

I still remember you like a dream tattooed to the inner walls of a long-term memory, but some days I wonder if you existed at all.

And of course, you want to know how I got these scars. I’ll tell you.

• Museum

No one ever asks a museum if it’s doing okay.

So when you choose to spill like this, bleed like this, cry like this, your pain becomes an exhibit.

You hang your trauma on the wall, ask patrons not to touch, but only half of them respect the signs.

When you choose to be a poet,

you become a place that people walk through and then leave when they are ready.

• Haunted

On days like this, I am the house and the ghost,

responsible for my own haunting.

My brain is a revolver with “Am I good enough?” in every chamber.

So I turn into a factory that only makes the word “yes” and I say it until it can easily be mistaken for the truth,

but my voice shakes and the answer still sounds like a question.

• the difference between

a garden and a graveyard is only what you choose to put in the ground.

• Most people have no idea

that tragedy and silence often have the exact same address.