I want you to imagine fixing a watch, all the tiny little parts
And I want you to imagine fixing a watch with broken hands
An overly involved metaphor for the idea that you can’t fix someone else when you yourself are broken

I fell in love with this image of drugs and ***** and rock and roll
And the reckless way you lived your life despite the fragility
When I found myself broken I spent years picking up shards of glass and trying to put them back together
You swallowed yours with a bottle of whiskey and marched on

I think you’ve always seen me as someone who could fix you
I’ve never been able to do that
And that’s why you come back whenever you feel like killing yourself or you’ve finally decided that you want someone to come home to that doesn’t live inside a bottle

I’m still picking up glass
I wish I could love you enough to fix you
But I won’t ever be waiting for you at home
There’s too much glass
There’s not enough time

Even if I could find a way to go back and fix that watch I can’t use it to turn back time
We’re here right now
And my hands are broken
Everything is

My hands have a mind of their own
Melt down all my doubts to fill molds of jail cell bars
Of locks with no keys
I’ve built a cage around my heart made of all the things you hate about me and the things I hate about myself
I know the weight of living is heavy love
Place it on my chest until my lungs cave in
I’ll find air in the spaces between our fingers and in the distance I’ve put between us

My minds become a road map full of roundabouts
From an aerial view you can see the loops of my neural pathways
They look a lot like “I’m sorry”
Made of dead ends and clovers and things my therapist says are out of my control
It goes around and around and around on repeat
But I’ll apologize again anyway even if it keeps you here longer than you wanted
In the maze
In the cage

Ive met people with keys
I don’t know how to ask for them
Even just for a second

Ask me about my past
I'll unstitch every seam
Tear everything out and lay it all on the table
A scrapbook pulled from a house fire
I'll romanticize every bruise
I'm interesting

Ask me how I've made it this far
I'll show you every "I'm fine"
How I've welded it into an armor I can't take off
I'll turn every "I wish you were never born" into the reason you fall in love with me
I'm a liar

Don't ask me who I am
I'll try to tell you something from the heart, I will
But if you close the scrapbook and look up
You'll see that there's nothing left
I'll try to be something I'm not for you

But I'm nothing

One small step for literally ******* anyone else
One large step for you
The depressed
The first real trip you’ve made outside your room in six days
Not really used to how the gravity feels when you’re standing on two feet
The terrain foreign
Things change when you aren’t aware
Surrounded by those spots you see when you go out in the sunshine for the first time in a long time
You can almost pretend they’re stars

You told him how hands on your body make you feel like you're 18 again
The word no coating you like tissue paper armor in a thunderstorm

You told him how you stayed
Because you can't accuse someone of breaking and entering if you forgot to lock all the windows

You told him how one of the last firsts you had was torn away like old wallpaper in a house you weren't ready to remodel

He let himself in one day when your guard was down
And trust grew like dandelions
Wild and uninhibited  

And it's hard to tell which hurt worse
Being broken into
Or letting him in
Allowing him to tour your wounds like a museum
And adding his work to the exhibit before leaving

I've filled the hole you left with empty kisses from boys whose lips taste like ash trays and whose bodies aren't yours but fill the space you left in my bed anyway

I've filled it with smoke as I sat on the edge of a bathtub, bowl in hand listening to a stranger talk about how he still calls his dead mother by mistake sometimes

I've filled it with recipes of sleeping pills swallowed down with cough syrup and ***** and chased with a flat Diet Coke I might've opened last week

The you shaped hole in my chest just gets bigger

I could hear my name being called above the noise
I went and sat with my anxiety
Over by the exit, just in case
We took shots for every possible negative outcome that could arise from this evening's outing

Before I could collect my thoughts, see how I was feeling
I was led over to the corner
Where my depression was sitting all alone under a table
We took shots for every reason no one would miss us when we're gone

Once the alcohol soaked in, they became silent
And it's funny to me to think that the only reason I drink with them
Is simply because it's the only time I can pretend they aren't there

I love when it's cold outside
And you can't tell where the cigarette smoke ends
And your breath begins

We're all so ******* toxic

Jail cell walls made of messages in bottles sent to people who would never see the words therein
Love has always felt like a prison sentence

Set to the impossible task
Of being yourself
When you have been taught
To have a heart full of mirrors

The only time you wanted me
Was when you had tipped back so many bottles
You couldn't tell the difference between their lips and mine

I still have that bottle of Jack you never finished
(Don't worry, I finished it for you)
And that empty bottle of beer you left by my bedside the night you took one of the last firsts that I had
And now that you've left
I'm starting to see similarities between myself and the bottles
Empty
Maybe I keep them around for like minded company
Empty

Or maybe I keep them around to remind me of your heart

Nicotine and a slow suicide

My thoughts have turned into white noise
The kind that you find when you accidentally hit the channel button on the remote control
Covered in a static that hurts when you touch them
I don't really know what their purpose is
But I do know that the simultaneous and indistinguishable sounds
Of everything
And nothing
Are driving me insane

My heart
Is a happy drunk
A little too open
A little too optimistic
It's over in the corner of the bar
Playing poker
Screaming at the top of it's lungs
I'M ALL IN
When it's never
To this day
Had a winning hand

My heart
Is a sad drunk
A little too lonely
A little too caught up in tears
It's over at the counter
Forcing the bartender to take its keys
Because it would rather not go home
Than go home alone again

My heart
Is a reckless drunk
A little too unbalanced
A little too impaired
It's over by the door
Making everyone nervous
A little too good at scaring people away
A little too far gone

Like you
A little too far gone
Turn your head
Shuffle away and pretend you don't notice
The breakdown of a heart
Too drunk on feelings
To know when to stop

My parents
Tell me to look upward
To find god
My therapist
Tells me to look inward
To find a cause
So I'm left here
Answering every multiple choice question
With "C guys, I'm fine"
Because it's easier to pretend
That life is perfect
Than deal with the fact that their efforts are worthless

I know those thin white lines on your wrists
Hold stories that need to be told
If only your mind would open as easily as your skin
Let someone in other than the voices that tell you
You're not good enough
Trust me
I know it's hard to breathe
When you're drowning in waves of inadequacy
I just want you to know that every "flaw"
Makes you who you
Wonderfully
Beautifully
*are