I am cutting cherries into halves, the first of the season
I'm baking, we're going over to a friend's later
Sunlight fills up the kitchen, I hum softly to myself and
All is as it should be

The cherries are red, I notice
Their juice marrs my fingertips
My fingers slash across my wrists
Red lines over my wrists
I wish I-
I want to-
I could

The knife in my hand drips with the cherries' blood
But my heart aches for it to know mine instead

I hold knife to my skin
Smiling
I close my eyes and all I see are
Red lines
Red lines on wrists
Like the mark of a demon's claws

I draw the lines gently, rhythmically
Giving each serraded edge just a taste of my skin
Making my ears ring
I wish I could-
I want to-
I can't

I drop the knife to the cutting board
Clutching the side of the counter with my hands
My legs tell me that they're giving up
My brain tells me it's tired
My heart, beating in triplicate
That it is keeping the the red stream of my life on course
Inside

I push a smile on my face
I am in control
There's sunlight in the kitchen, I'm baking
And my knife never strays from the cutting board
All appears as it should, and when people walk in seconds later
They'd never even guess

They could never even tell
That all I can think of is
Red lines on my wrists and
My heart giving up on itself.

She said to me hold on tight,
And don't let go.
It was a dark and stormy night,
*And she let go.

I keep one hand pressed against the ledges of my collorbones
Their solidity, my savior
The other hand
always clamped over my mouth, for I know that
When I smile
The secrets I ate as lunch will try to crawl out between my teeth

My tongue holds the truth prisoner
But I have underestimated the truth's ability to get out
Through my pencil, it sets itself free

Even my drawings do not eat enough

I erase her before anyone can see
I erase the girl sketched between those blurred graphite streaks
But I cannot erase the fact that my own bones are a comfort to me
And that, someday down this path,
I will be her
Beautiful only in the way that all dying things are
And I, like her, will be eraseable

I can only hope for my pencil to draw me a new path
A way out my prison and, like the truth,
I pray for my pencil to set me free.

Ask me
I dare you
Don't you care to know my heart?
When I'm gone,
Won't you wish you had?
My hand outstretched,
I will show you where mirages are born
Where rainbows- the sky's greatest lies- begin
All you have to do is just cross the river, jump the stepping stones
Never mind how slippery they may be
Don't you trust me?

*Ask and you'll recieve