Unpack my heart with words

twodefenestrate:

misandrypls:

coffeewithants:

**TW: SUICIDE**

riseabovethemadness:

“The Nutritionist” - Andrea Gibson

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables.
Said if I could get down 13 turnips a day
I would be grounded, rooted.
Said my head would not keep flying away
to where the darkness is.

The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight.
Said for 20 dollars she’d tell me what to do.
I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling.
You will find a good man soon.”

The first psychotherapist said I should spend
Three hours a day sitting in a dark closet
with my eyes closed, with my ears plugged.
I tried once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.

The yogi told me to stretch everything but truth.
Said focus on the out-breath, said everyone finds happiness
when they can care more about what they can give
than what they get.

The pharmacist said, “Klonopin, Lamictil, Lithium, Xanax.”

The doctor said an antipsychotic might help me
forget what the trauma said.

The trauma said, “Don’t write this poem
Nobody wants to hear you cry
about the grief inside your bones.”

My bones said, “Tyler Clementi dove
into the Hudson River convinced
he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poem.”
The lamplight. Considering the river bed.
To the chandelier of your fate hanging by a thread.
To everyday you could not get out of bed.
To the bullseye of your wrist.
To anyone who has ever wanted to die.

I have been told, sometimes, the most healing thing we can do
Is remind ourselves over and over and over
Other people feel this, too.

The tomorrow that is coming, gone
And it has not gotten better
When you are half-finished writing that letter to your mother
that says “I swear to God I tried,
But when I thought I hit bottom, it started hitting back.”

There is no bruise like the bruise of loneliness kicks into your spine
So let me tell you I know there are days
it looks like the whole world is dancing in the streets
when you break down like the doors of the looted buildings.

You are not alone and wondering who will be convicted of the crime
of insisting you keep loading your grief into the chamber of your shame.
You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy.

I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside
Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes
for some people to just walk outside.

Some days I know my smile looks like the gutter of a falling house,
but my hands are always holding tight to the ripchord of believing.
A life can be rich like the soil,
can make food of decay, can turn wound into highway

Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says,
“It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.”

I have never trusted anyone with the pulled back bow of my spine
the way I trusted ones who come undone at the throat,
screaming for their pulses to find the fight to pound.

Four nights before Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge,
I was sitting in a hotel room in my own town,
calculating exactly what I had to swallow to keep a bottle of sleeping pills down.

What I know about living is the pain is never just ours.
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo,
so I keep listening to the moment the grief becomes a window.
When I can see what I couldn’t see before,
through the glass of my most battered dream,
I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.

So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin,
don’t try to put me back in
just say here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better.

But knowing as bad as it hurts,
our hearts may have only just skinned their knees,
knowing there is a chance the worst day might still be coming,
let me say right now for the record:

I’m still gonna be here,
asking this world to dance, even if it keeps stepping on my holy feet.

You—you stay here with me, okay?
You stay here with me.
Raising your bright against the bitter dark
Your bright longing,
Your brilliant fists of loss,
if the only thing we have to gain in staying is each other,
my god that’s plenty
my god that’s enough
my god that is so, so much for the light to give
each of us at each other’s backs whispering over and over and over,
“Live”
“Live”
“Live”