My life has taught me one lesson, and not the one I thought it would.

There is nothing in this world that could prevent me from loving you, except maybe being both drunk and gay. I know that I am a very strong woman because each day I have existed within Mother Earth's grasp I have successfully overcame the urge to tear these photos off the wall and strip soul from body. Just because you do not want to believe something does not mean it is not true. What idiot has you convinced that truth is beautiful? The children know the king will not end their misery, so an endless reelection remains. My only desire is to be a part of this new wonder because how awful to simply accept fate, how awful to not rise up with fists and fight, how awful to sit stagnantly. And it is a failed day if I have spent more of my day within a bra than sans brassiere.

Mama cried when I put ink on my ribs. I am ruining my body and the damage seeps into my soul. Age is a restriction we have placed upon ourselves for centuries, but I own your emotions, and pass the revolution via kiss. I suppose everything has a purpose, and from her perspective, mine is to sit still, and kindly abandon my angst, adorn myself in kitschy apron-esque frocks and slick pinned strands. So, unsatisfied I forever remain, tarnished and broken.

Oh, what is comfort if not a change in perspective?

Spitting Blade Memory Regurgitation

When I proclaim the creativity seeping from your pores is to blame for the dampness of your skin, you dispute me with a claim that no beauty could have come from you. "It's just the rain," you say while locked within a dry bolt room.

My fingers trace across a slightly sloped spine, dreams have been weighing you down, chase them and watch yourself bloom. Turning, I can no longer fit myself into such a paradoxical juxtaposition. Your faulted desire to be taller accompanied by a lifetime spent between dope-tinted lens crammed within the corners of heart-shaped boxes.

Open your mouth, invite me inside to greet leathery cheeks and absorbent tongues. Unused dull teeth who nowadays exclusively chew misery and regret hors d'oeuvres. Each attempt to escape the depressive clutch that is yourself is met with an ever increasing tighter squeeze as we cram together like last season's garments, my world, an overstuffed clothing rack. How can there always be less of you? And how do so many ideas sleep forever dormant coiled within such a slender frame? Venturing, bitter but sweet, I am drowning, but you would still describe the water.

Sitting within me now I hate the way life besides you tastes. A sly reply of misery pours down my throat only to rest in my stomach for eternity. I know you would end me, if it meant you could remain a coward. Chokes frame our faces like smiles, everything blurs, melting into a voodoo realm, she's gone, I'm here, but you are live from nowhere near.

Refusal to recall hello or goodbye, but when you split yourself into a planned pattern I felt my face crack into a series of streams. Letters that long ago have grown foreign, spill out the optimism we once clung to, struggling veins softly crying to stain a shy pale skin I once naively believed was capable of reality.

Mother and child, cop versus criminal, broken china, how did we cascade into such opposing forces? You absorb into me, blemishing my soul. My inscribed name together with yours, it was goodbye for sure, I just wish I knew for whom.

High Fives for Low Lives.

Grunge is an addiction and you're worse than nicotine. Scratch that. You are worse than the black tar I would kill for. Two years sober and I swear I'd tear flesh from bone and drink blood like wine off the nearest junkie who was as sick as I was: as sick as I still am.

But, what if you are real? Eat acid. See God. We could meet up next weekend to eat pizza and complain. Your cells contain the universe, but I'm afraid you're growing up. Giving up. What's the difference? Fuck pizza. What the world needs is a group hug.

In a search for something higher I found only trash. Began a search for myself just to pass time. We all burn hotter in the end, so with a Marlboro hanging from my lips, I'm here to tell you how to live your life.

Two pills a day to calm my brain, but it's my mind that chooses not to behave. So, did smack steal your appetite or did some monster of a man? A lifetime spent trying to wash away the dirt entered through windows you remember locking and a summertime spent underneath a pear tree making a love sweeter than that blessed fruit's nectar.

Flashback. We're in your old bathtub on 42nd, shampoo in our hair, only water in sight bred from the nipples of my face and absorbed into the fabric of your flesh. I'd love to be back in that place in your head, but you're just too good at being alone.

Bragging now, "My first time was with a grown man," you'll recreate memories only needles can erase as I am left seasick in an endless epiphany of implications. The witch who gave birth to me no longer bothers to call, so when I'm shipped home like a Russian mail order bride, the paramedics scream, "Everybody back up, she's still alive."

Track marks - not hieroglyphics - so you read me like braille. Perhaps I'm too busy being the needle in someone else's arm to belong to myself. Perhaps I've seen too much unknown through another's dope-tinted lenses. If that last line left you confused consider yourself lucky that such men are not archetypes in the plot you call life.

We plan for life but only live in binge and purge moments. Inside two star motel drug holidays, there's no love, only words to obtain what you want. I'll walk alongside the nervous laughter of the girls whose arms are only filled while their man is around while secretly lusting after such a bourgeois luxury.

Pet snake sleeps on my arm like a childhood bracelet while seventy two hook and eye closures led to bolted legs unhinged. Sans man. Voodoo realm entrance accepted. Am I more of a woman? Baby Jesus and the devil are fucking inside me. One more sick without you.

A Quick Word on Why Blogspot Matters.

It was senior year, I was slowly shutting the door to high school and tugging open a new one. I found myself anxiously burdened with the personal crisis cliche when "What do I want to do with my life?" transitions from a thought exercise in English class to a practical question. Bored, alienated, and craving an outlet, I convinced myself that the best way to answer that treacherous question was to go public about who I've been and who I now was. Shortly after, TheOnyxClam went public. Going public forced me to stop worrying, take a stand, and have a freaking opinion.

My writing for TheOnyxClam, not my Blue Ribbon wanna-be prep school background, taught me how to develop interesting angles for posts, emphasized the extent of my passion for writing, and proved I could follow topics with consistency and do my research. Most importantly, however, my blog writing, has taught me I am capable. It serves as my first glimmer of hope that the sum would be greater than its parts when I merge my writing skill and personal experiences with my political beliefs.

TheOnyxClam is the first public online space where I truly felt my opinion mattered. Before, I'd been one of two young women, either guilt-stricken and whimpering "Aw, I'm not smart like those women. I don't know enough about this" or, angsty and cynical with statements like, "Who the fuck cares what I think?" TheOnyxClam proves that I do know and people do care. Learning that has been more influential than anything else in regards to me becoming whole again. My blog strengthened my self-efficiency, serving as a springboard for the acquisition of resilience and courage.