The factory will devour me
With its hungry mechanical
Guttural, industrial heart

Machine beating out
Perfect plastic product

The metal monstrosity
Pounding out heat
Creating hard heartedness
Beating and feeding on
Human sweat and flesh
Self-sacrifice to fulfill
Your family need
Eight to twelve hours

Life becomes cheap
Ate up by the factory beast

to wound me with an arrow
take a lurid one
you're high on the barrow
watching how scare I run

burst out of usual shadows
like one-eyed albino ghoul
only to see changing weather
by unintelligible rules

sick of Gulliver's syndrome
from living in a wooden box
where's my abandoned kingdom
I'm fed up with these rocks

so try to aim, warden
I'm not that beast of burden

I'll show you we had a spark
Even if I have to burn us down

You don't express love in the ways that I want you to,
But you express it in the ways that you know how.

i am not a flower
i do not need your sunshine to grow.
i am trying to be fine on my own.
rain or snow
do not get close.
i’ll be fine on my own.
although
I won't sleep most nights,
not because I'm lonely
it will be because
I'm scared when
time swallows me whole
and forces me to remember
how it stung in the shower
last December.

i had a dream last night that there was water in my lungs.
i could feel the ocean wrapping careful hands around my limbs,
caressing my thighs with soft seaweed,
my hands with gentle current.

i could taste salt on my lip,
the way a first kiss with a new lover settles and stains on the skin above your tongue,
i could taste the care the water was taking in taking my life.

taking it's time, the ebbing ocean snaked across my midriff,
hands on waist, wasting away at skin with salty touch as sandpaper
scraping away at my sense of self

i dreamt the water changing pace from calm glass coffee table top,
held flowers and coffees and your feet and mine,
overlapped and intertwined
and into
undertow,
pulling your hand from my waist
and your salt from my mouth

i dreamt that i saw nothing,
felt nothing
but your salty sandpaper hand scraping skin across my collar bones
as you pulled your coral reef body away.
the glassy water turned to pavement
and you left me in rapids under black ice.

i had a dream that i was trapped under ice,
with children skating on top
and i couldn't hear or breathe or scream
but i could feel their skates on my insides
they cut my hair with their blades
and as they spun in circles above me
i spiraled further into the depths of an ocean
that felt more like a fire.

i had a dream last night that there was water in my lungs,
and it hurt less to breathe then
than it does now that you're gone.

i never thought about how it would feel to cough the water back up,
until i realized how much it hurt going down.
and i was never scared of the ocean
until i saw it's vastness unescapable
it's arms
unrelenting
and it's love
everchanging
and i realized nothing's everlasting.

i was never scared of drowning
until i woke up puking the water i drank before bed.
and realized there was nothing more in my stomach
but salt.

If you were to read our story backwards
It would tell the story of how you held me as we slept
How happy we could be with nothing but empty time and a bed
How we kissed, but only a few times and only  real quick
How we ignored how we felt, how we brushed it off
Or how we would talk on the phone until one of us would nod off
How we first met, how silly you must have thought I was
Until one day once upon a time, a long time ago
You forgot about me forever, I wasn’t someone you’d ever know.