LionessAmaya

aggressive, you tell your therapist,     he's always been aggressive.     you detail the storms you weathered,     the verbal battering ram,     the hammer that kept falling until          the nail fell into place.     "he never hit me", you're quick to assure,     but you do speak, eventually,     about the threats, about the way he towered          over you, above you, through you,     the ways he threatened to hurt you &     the time you watched her fly into a wall. but, but, but, but, but     you don't want to be unfair to him.     his demons are sharper-clawed,     bigger, scarier, more sadistic.     yours are a children'

A quick list of lies to tell yourself while the sun is out: 1.     You are always this happy. Days spent frolicking in the sunlight count back to birth and stretch forwards into eternity. Joy is all you have ever known and all you ever will know. 2.     The heat is caressing you, not smothering you. It ripples over your skin like a lover’s fingers, gentle and pleasant. There is no sweat on your forehead or shortness to your breath. You sip the lemonade because it’s pleasant and refreshing, not because your throat is parched and dry. 3.     You lie still because you want to, not because you can’t get up. 4.     There is no

failure is a monster under my skin, kept in check by constant vigilance. i cannot afford the moment of relaxation that will allow it to rip me to shreds. it lives inside my chest, and i learn to take shallow breaths.

there's a place inside me where the words used to be deep & dark & alive today, it houses only failure and to crack it open is to risk everything i once fancied myself brave.

They will tell you that your words don’t matter. You can tell them that if they could only listen, They would hear everything you are in your voice. When you tell a story, and you talk with your hands, And the words rush out of your mouth like a river, Your whole soul hides in the beats between syllables. You are beautiful when you forget yourself, When you talk too loud and too fast for too long, And forget to breathe until your tale is done. What they call rambling we call abstract; It may mean nothing at all to them, But don’t ever let them tell you it’s worthless.

life is full of broken possibilities abandoned promises &half-finished hopes so open the word file type the last stanza get over yourself when you hit save you'll feel it in your bones

Our teacher, who worshipped Shakespeare as a God, and had a whole stack of tragic bibles to choose from, she scrawled our grades from I to X at the top of our work, forever stuck in the past. Our class of low-achievers looked at combinations of Is and Vs; they cheered or grumbled, moaned or smiled, and stared comparing. I never learned my roman numerals, but it didn’t matter; there isn’t one for zero. Our teacher, who bowed down to crumbling skeletons, with her brain stuffed full of useless knowledge, she drew an O Julius Caesar would have t’sked at, and this: “Plagiarism will not be tolerated.” And I, who spe

what passes for spontaneity in your world is this: a rain-drenched walk, down familiar roads, with the well-known spark of fury under your soaking wet jacket. you are not random. you are not special. you need routine the way other people need adventure. a warm house. a good friend. the same argument in the same language, the same tears pouring down your face, self-righteousness on your tongue. one day you’ll travel. one day you’ll climb a mountain, fall in love, write that novel, take a dance class, get your heart broken and move to new york city to starve. you’re sixteen. you’re already giving up on that ch

the future is terrifying. for now, as long as I know the easy rhythm of numbers and electrons and essays, life slips by with minimal effort. days are marked by bells and criteria. there is little more comforting to a person such as me, to whom structure means sanity. high school is a little bubble of safety, with few choices and fewer consequences. I don’t know what comes after this, but I suspect it won’t slip by in a haze of good teachers and bad teachers, lunch hours and late bells, giggling and gossip, all of it insipid and meaningless. I think I would be happy, if this was it. if all I needed was carefully memorized math fo