i'll tuck this into all my darker nooks
crevices where i hide the deeper thoughts
brought on by years of worthless prying
and scrapes left by the hounds at my feet
i'll let this sit until it putrefies and flies gather
and the sun declares moldy death on its corners
so much will change and warp
and hopefully i won't recognize my own pain after this
i'll feed this to my ugly dying cat
watch vicariously as he chokes on my guilt for me
laugh as wooden conveniences scrape my throat
and my eyes begin to well up with hysterical tears

this is better than the ulterior;
oozing over with muddy emotion.

i remember my fingers in sweaty yours
breath against the glass of separate existences, our bubble of dark air, knowing all that is for us to keep and nothing more
and the way it felt to trap myself in the curves and tapers of your brain
if just for a few moments
just to be aware of your awarenesses
validity eschewing my darkness for that short sip of ticking and tocking
you called it 'time' but i called it 'existing'
and we were shouldered into the corner that day
tongues split and bowed under the slow texture of obedience
and for once my ****** sea was calm,
for once my sea was calm.

you know my secrets. tell me yours.

gory truth fizzles on your tongue, and i'm watching your eyes
for some becoming hint of understanding. you taste winter
on your breath. i wait, have waited, and will continue to wait
until the sun is bleeding like oxygen from your pores. please
find happiness. please find happiness.

you know my secrets. tell me yours.

gory truth hums in your veins, but you refuse to meet my eyes.
drumbeats like hearts pumping all in the air around us. we spare
a quiet moment for our mutual sickness, our shared desperate
sadness. i am interested to see you cry.

you know my secrets. tell me yours.

i feel like i've kind of
exhausted every emotion possible
and my ribcage can't hold it all in anymore
i'm a striped kite with a lack of destination
i'm a ******* ripped up ****** kite
begging you to let go of my string
when you say my choosing to exist is not up to me

i like to turn inside out sometimes
i like to pinch the shoulders of the demons i fight
a harmlessly masochistic life
living just to let myself die
like to think that counts as trying

shoving against the plans you made
half-blind and trembling every time i wake
there's so much more
than what i'm willing to speak towards
so much less i'm letting them see
yet somehow my death is not up to me
dying would break His consistency

i like to turn inside out sometimes
i like to pinch the shoulders of the demons i fight
a harmlessly masochistic life
living just to let myself die
like to think that counts as trying

i say to God why don't you just let me throw myself away
i doubt i'll make it another day, anyway
i could disappear and no one would know
considering i destroyed myself all on my own
but my roots are planted in concrete
you made sure of that
why are you letting this just happen
it's like you don't want me to understand

all wooden, all repetitive nature, all shadow-burnt eyelids
me and myself and everything else that makes up sadness
obsessions and repercussions and empty rhymes
nothing that should make you want to plant your feet on the floor
and demand some sort of compromise
dust swirls around this poetic frame, hugging it taut, embracing it cruel,
and i am the picture of polished apathy that glitters under the glass
lifting heavy breaths
and demanding a compromise
between me and my self-taught accusations.

what is this adolescent sickness?
i have seen it in those accidental urges, those
presupposed just-one-more-go purges,
in that cold apathetic glow you're cultivating
through the pathological kiss of cancer our
culture is motivating,
in the eyes of girls who gave their sickness
one more sorry shot because they believed
the reason boys couldn't seem to please them
was on account of the uneven legs and knees that
they pleaded on,
and i have seen it in the insomniac pressure of
my own suicidal thoughts and depression,
pressing me into obsession, making a
profession out of my pain without my discretion.

what is this adolescent sickness?
i observe it in the edges of my best friend's
beat-up sense of self-preservation, saying
she has no place in a society that constantly
emphasizes why we need to be something
pretty for others to see,
and in the all-consuming hallucinogenic glitch
that we call home, our social media niche,
humming at an unendurable pitch that pierces
our sanity with every flick of its virtual switch,
and i watched it wrangle my friends in a
wrestling match between giving up
and grappling with the godless reality of
never really being enough.

what is this adolescent sickness?
i have stumbled upon it in alleyway girls and boys,
always sickly sidewalk prophets, society's toys
bruised by the persistent palm of poverty;
in thin hair and the thick of female skin
restless against a visible ribcage,
girls chancing a preference of death to
being unworthy of personal praise,
treating a wrongly angled glance
as if it somehow equates.
in the abuse brought on by our *******
personality binary, boasting about being
more consistent than the lies we
believe regularly, like 'our worth is set
in wealth and accomplishments' and
'benevolence feels good but believe me, you'd
look better with superficial confidence'.

what is this adolescent sickness?
i have witnessed it in this professional
sadness, carried like a coat on the
shoulders of those certainly undeserving
of a misery akin to madness,
and in the worried and calloused hands
of those who work to ensure their bloodshed
outnumbers the seconds they have left,
just to find their clock stopped going around
the moment they made a choice to stop counting,
and in the sickening shine of blades on innocent
skin, pleading for this persistent sin to take place
in place of the regrettable face of a sadist's grin.

what is this adolescent sickness
and how do we get rid of it?

i hold this minor truth inside my head: either i hold onto hope or i mope till i'm dead.
this is where i frequently find myself, fearing the truth in the frequent lies i tell,
with my anxiety like wanderlust, searching, seemingly unworthy of a holy luck
i'm leering over all-too-cautious fears unspoken,
thinking that if my brain is a train then my emergency brake is broken.

but i don't know yet
whether or not my pupils are snow-capped
because every waking minute i spend wishing my life was finished i find another dead friend's decision to begin this deadly reminiscence -
and i am finished.
finished with the act of letting go
everything i guiltily promised God and swore i'd always know,
finished with feeling like my constant state of trembling and shaking is simply doing nothing more than taking time out of another worthless day of the week,
and i am finished picking up after depression, even when swears he's definitely learned his lesson, "this time i'll be better, this time i'll feel less or you can check out of life's queue just like i taught you to do."

this, all so unfortunately, is where i have found myself.
frightened, paranoid, depressed. stewing in my own personal hell.
so convinced i've done this all on my own that i can't even fathom the idea of self-help,
since surely i can't seek solace from the same demons that oppress my conscience for no good reason.
and even when i'm friends with them, it's a matter of time before they turn fiendish again, and i am left
rotting my own brain away with unrighteous distractions, risking my own life just so i can feel real again, realizing that this feeling will never really truly end.
so here we are, still, gazing at hope with frozen-over eyes, counting down every torturous second till i finally die - this isn't right. this isn't right.

maybe you can make this better. maybe you can help me.
but you should know that no amount of attitude suppressants can medicate the trauma left by past eras of depression,
and there will be days when i wake up thinking i'm dead, shaking when i remember there's another dreadful day ahead,
and you should know those tantalizing voices i talk about will still tell me to count every step you take, so don't doubt that i am just as loyal and true to them as i am to you.
it's just that there are some parts of the darkness i can't stumble through.
not without you.
so tell me that you can make this better. tell me that you can help me.
because with every passing second i am grinding down my teeth, romanticizing death, letting these vicious thoughts rule my head. this is all that i have left, this jest - this forged facade, covering the blemishes made by all that i've become,
so maybe we can **** it together, whether or not our bond is a strong enough tether to the strangled bits of happiness in me i know are there.
we can do this together.
so now i hold this minor truth inside my head: either i hold onto hope or i mope till i'm dead.
just please understand that it's either this or a self-imposed death, just please understand -
you are all that i have left.