"this is your kind of story. no one is the good guy-- no one is the bad guy-- the blame shifts from monster to monster and in this place everyone bares their teeth." [featured. highest ranking: #6 in poetry.]

Sometimes my voice dies in my throat, buries itself beneath waves of crippling suffocation, burns itself out as cold hands tear at my laced skin. I have smiled while my eyes have cried and pleaded, my wrists numb, my lips wobbling and blue, and stars escaping this dark night that I'm trapped in. I long for a darkness that gives way to light. But I do feel the warmth of petals gathering and scattering in my cold bones, and imagine the touch and the sweetness of a kiss, and my heart rises to the surface of this sea and finds a sky painted by passing artists remaining far above our heads. I'm breathing out all the words I've kept locked under the pages of my breaking mind. And by doing so, I'm going to heal. TRIGGER WARNINGS: depression, anxiety, self harm, suicidal thoughts, OCD, panic attacks

in which the downfall of a girl's mental health is documented through a series of poems