His rosary repeats every chance
the means collect in pocket of his
well-torn jeans held up by a busted
leather belt, destroyed by bicep
binding and makeshift holes.
His meditation is medicated,
his god is chemically composed.
The stigmatas rise in elbows
covered by long sleeves in
July’s heat. He says he can see
heaven, not in glints of white light,
but in clandestine calm. In his
induced repose he repents
to the soft hum of Tuesday’s
sun, and once again,
he wakes.
A.M. Davis
Sep 1, 2017
Sep 1, 2017 at 11:08 PM UTC
“When I was younger, I thought all I wanted was to be alone. Cramped in that two-bedroom house with my parents and siblings, with no space to think or to even take a **** without someone knocking on the door. I wanted to go to college just because I thought I needed space–space to breathe and to become my own person.”
“And now?” Mallory asked. Each word that left her mouth wrote itself across the pitch black of December and I stared at each letter until I could not only make sense of the question, but to realize the answer.
“And now I realize that my own person is someone that I don’t like very much.”
The words were as unkind slipping off my tongue as they were sitting in the back of my mind. Now they’ve materialized, holding an undeniable presence and their heavy aftertaste made my stomach turn.
I don’t know if I was looking for sympathy. If I was waiting for her to reassure that I was in fact not a terrible human being. That her company is not a polite obligation. But she sat there saying nothing, and that was louder than anything she could have said out loud. I looked to my right, at the woman I wordlessly fell in love with. Her blank stare into the dimly lit street below pushing me farther and farther away and suddenly I felt the need to say anything to anchor me to her before she drifted too far away.
“I left. And I get that it was my choice, but there was no way I could be satisfied staying in this town for the rest of my life like everyone else. Moving to a city where I knew absolutely no one; it was a change. I went from speaking to the same people everyday for four years to not saying a single word for multiple days in a row. I couldn’t be gentle anymore; I couldn’t be vulnerable. And if that makes me a bad person, then I guess I am. But I did it to survive. You can’t criticize me for my methods to survive knowing you.”
Jul 17, 2017
Jul 17, 2017 at 12:39 AM UTC
he’ll take his whiskey off a drip
yet still winces with each sip.
says he’s got things instilled that ought be killed,
but this pain he can never rid.
he says he dreams of god
maybe that’s why he spends so long
with a drink at hand between one night stands,
catching each hour as they run.
he sleeps less each night,
spoon and needle at his side
as they rock him to sleep with a mother’s ease
kiss his head then turn the light.
he’s got no plans and too much time
counting each minute until he dies.
says his years’ been filled with tears and pills
it would be nice to just unwind.
his friends are concerned
but don’t say a word
they can spot a lost cause and what are the odds
that he’ll be successful this time?
May 29, 2017
May 29, 2017 at 10:40 PM UTC
I’m not sure where this path will go
but I will cling to this chosen road.
there’s no turning back now
the bed is made and the secret’s out.
I feel detached every now and then
that my life is some work of fiction.
the written ink is bleeding through
pages torn, my spine in two.
I can’t breath now,
walls are closing on me now.
whiplash of the ups and downs
take a toll on my mind.
if I draw first
it’ll be on my own terms.
kiss cheeks with the traitors
that were friends of mine.
watch as their words break
shattered mask they made
revealing the teeth of snakes,
hidden the whole time.
the next steps are predictable
cut hair and written notes.
medication to concentrate, but
with broken means there’s none to make.
I can’t breath now,
my chest caved on me now.
they tell me to calm down
but I’ve lost my place.
can you find me a center?
stone to place my feet first
before I slip even further
to the ‘no escape’.
will this fade with age?
cover the walls with paint
that were stained in blood?
from the second that I was born
my lungs cried with remorse
of the sentence begun.
but now no one’s by my side.
will you know when the deed is done?
my name a whisper off strangers’ tongues.
there’s no turning back now
the bed is made and the secret’s out.
May 29, 2017
May 29, 2017 at 2:23 PM UTC
When we first met, it was almost like a movie. And you were kind, and warm, and loving and all the unidentifiable qualities that I’ve always known that I was missing but that I couldn’t quite name. You brought me so close to the sun that I nearly lost my footing. Oh, but the view! An adventure—you were the unknown yet the assurance that you were, in fact, what I’ve been waiting for. You became a virus—in the most romanticized way. My dear, I did not wish to be rid of you. You were all I could see, a scarlet fever casting rosy shade. And the doctors all told me that I would lose myself to you, but I only almost heard their warnings. You see, when you are that close to the sun, it is hard to tell between a sunburn and seared skin. From that height, everything is small, detached, and insignificant and it became my only sense of reality. But even you, yourself, became a challenge. Blistering scars behind elbows not quite completely covered by long sleeves in July heat and the collecting makeshift holes marking your belt. I almost asked, but you see, then it would be our problem. And I wasn’t quite ready for that. I knew we were on the edge of something great, and I didn’t want Her to cut us short. You disappeared with Her for weeks—sometimes I wished that you were in the arms of another instead. Cause when She whistled through the needle, into your veins, She always took more and more of you away. She carved you hollow and you stood as a ruin of the temple I once worshipped. I almost didn’t recognize you and from this height, I couldn’t see how you slowly began disappearing. I still think about you often, and what name you would have, carved into stone above the relationship gone bad. You are my Almost. Because we were on the edge of something beautiful, but we fell short. Almost—the name sat on my tongue as your mother asked me if I had known, and the words almost made it out of my throat but even I was not ready to admit that you slipped through my fingers. Almost—as in I almost made it to your apartment in time. And maybe I could have stopped Her from taking the last bit of you. Maybe I would have caught you before you hit the ground.
May 27, 2017
May 27, 2017 at 11:17 PM UTC
Sometimes, I know you only
as your absence, hanging in the air.
I befriended her, she knows my name.
I learned to love her, or to love
the gift she gives: a pain to call my own.
A knife in my back is inherently mine, after all.
On the days where the sunlight
seems to vanish she is there, waiting
to embrace me. She’s more beautiful than you,
her skin shines like gold, her youth preserved
like a stained-glass saint. She is the only
thing that withstands time, a monument.
You are more than aching arms outstretched to
the empty air, than the frustration of beating the
same dead horse. You are the sound of
shattering glass when you walked into
the bar with someone new after you canceled
our plans once again because you were ‘busy’.
You are the noose around my neck, looking down,
smiling at the sight of me strangling to escape you.
You are words written on fogged glass,
vanishing before being read. You are
the cold beds of strangers and my tear-
drenched plea for you to stay, just this once.
May 27, 2017
May 27, 2017 at 11:09 PM UTC
Suddenly I am a wildfire.
My warning rolled off my lips,
as you threw matches at my feet,
retreating from the angry burn.
A smile on your face, you knew
the game I was unwilling to play.
I was your martyr, and you,
the sword through my throat.
Baptizing me in my own blood,
painting me every hue, yet still
I was not the right shade for you.
This is more than flint and friction,
this is arson by your hand. It was
your breath that gave life to the
immaculate inferno that I am.
Suddenly I am a wildfire
and I am out of your control.
I am more than your narcissism,
a maelstrom of malice to the blistered
fingertips that had scared
this sacred skin.
Hear the sirens sing my name
while no one whispers yours.
The damage is done and out
of your hands, nothing more
that you can say.
I am the fire that will never
truly die, see my essence in
the embers and how even when the
heat subsides, cleansed charred
grounds give new life and you
will realize that while you were
merely the fuel, I was the force.
May 27, 2017
May 27, 2017 at 10:55 PM UTC
It has been 10 years since I’ve first seen your face
and, around your ankles, the weight of generations
of blood that bit their tongues behind silent lips.
It has been 10 years since I accepted that I was
never going to be just as ‘happy’ as other girls,
I was an observer behind the windows when all
I really wanted was to go out and play.
I hated you—no, I loathed you--but that could not
be true because you didn’t let me come close
to feeling so human. You stole birthday parties from me,
you stole my mornings as I laid in bed, unable to
move, crushed down by the burden of you.
It has been 8 years since I detached myself from
this body, when I decided nothing could destroy me
quite like you. I threw myself from tall buildings,
hoping that someone would care enough to catch me.
The ground hurt worse and worse each time.
You taught me that being suicidal does not have to be
an active effort. That its undertones lie in the
carelessness of crossing the street without looking,
That it is in the silence of distancing myself from
every friend I had because ‘it just makes it easier’ if I was alone.
It has been 4 years since I allowed myself to admit
that I simply could not carry your body alone.
I refused to be ashamed of you because you
were never my choice. I can still remember the
way my mother’s eyes rimmed with tears as she
realized just how long you have been residing in this
household. Since that day, you began fade. You disappeared
the way the monsters under the bed retreat from
the flashlight. Your presence was much more overbearing
breathing down my neck than when I looked you in the face.
But even now, sometimes I find your fingerprints pressed
against my window, and your glazed eyes gazing back
at me in the mirror.
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 11:44 PM UTC
Indulged me in its golden glow,
traced its light across my face,
trailing freckles in its wake.
It hung in the sky for the
world to see, prideful in its praise,
entranced in its illumination,
I strayed, held at a safe distance.
Long hours embraced in your heat,
your company inevitably consuming me.
Hypnotized, I came too close.
The warmth that wrapped
around my skin pulled me in
and now I burn to the touch.
Fever catching like flames,
suddenly I am a wildfire.
The days collect and seasons run.
Your light diminishes to dusk.
Winter creeps into my bones,
gray-scale shaded the home
I once found comfort in. Your love
lingers for shorter hours now,
chasing its shadow on the ground,
I grasp with fingertips as we drift
further and further away.
It leaves me longing for summer days.
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 11:29 PM UTC
let the edges blur,
easier to see
muted silhouettes
with your amber hair.
your words, once easy
to swallow when you
stained my lips crimson,
leave a bitter taste.
like the aching in
my outstretched arms,
clung to expectation,
fallen in defeat.
Jan 19, 2017
Jan 19, 2017 at 9:24 PM UTC