please don't
look me in the eye,
I'm trying to pretend I don't care
trying
to hold an empty stare
without breaking
the nonchalant veneer
I've smothered my telltale heart in

my skin is soft
satin snagged by hangnails
hung in loosened sails
to catch the wind, but go
nowhere,
nothing can rip me in two
if I am moldable goo,
yet I grapple with ghouls
who snicker at my boo-boos

boo-hoo little foolish one
no one is remembered
once their hands have
disappeared into foreign lands,
a lacerated tongues spews
sinister commands
and my brain swallows them whole,
slip-sliding into the wormhole
to become the nothing I feel so