Words don't flow anymore.
Since the day the world shattered,
Splitting beneath my feet,
Weeping lava and tsunami spray
Lurching and reaching for me.
Not the way they used to at least,
Not the way they sang and spun,
My fingers conducting them,
Swirling them, twirling them,
Endless refrains of summer and sunshine,
Molten gold and sugar thread.
I wasn't there that day,
I was somewhere else,
Mourning someone else.
I should've been there,
Maybe if I'd been there,
Maybe maybe maybe
If if if.
Words don't flow anymore,
She took them with her.

What am I?
But worm at apples core.
My soul lives at the expense of flesh,
Gobbled up as I burrow down deep.
Empty space fills empty mind,
And the chorus sings eat, eat, eat.
My soul lives on while I eat the fruit.
The expense of my flesh?
It doesn't worry me anymore.

I've a frightful conundrum,
To see, to blink,
To let myself feel,
Let myself think.

The heartbroken thought,
Of who I'm meant to be,
Is not the girl,
That's meant to be seen.

Or perhaps it's me,
A topsy turvey corpse,
Flying free,
Acrobatic hands and knees.

A comet crashing space
Friction wearing away
As I twist and burn,
My question stays.

Will I remain the same?
Trapped in this place?

I wanted to spread messages of hope,
To inspire life inside people's hearts,
Fires larger than snowy mountains
And tornados carving their place in the world.
The results would be deep chasms,
And ashes nourishing life a thousand time brighter than before.
The results would be human.
As bright as the sun and willing to burn you if you got to close
Because they'd learned that they weren't yours to touch.
Their light was a gift not a privlige
And they'd learned to stop chasing the moon because love means to live for someone.
Not die.
And they'd be deep as the sea,
Coral reef skin and raw emotion because the salt had flooded them head to toe to throats to heart.
Beneath the kelp forests and kissed fish would be their darkness,
Their loneliest place built for their loneliest self and I'd swim down.
I wouldn't be scared of this darkness,
I couldn't be because this darkness was you.
You'd learn that you could let the sun through a little deeper,
That happiness was for you to feel, not a show to put on for other people.
I'd swim down to you but you were always strong enough to swim back without help.
I wanted to help people.
But as times passed those hopeful messages have died.
And sometimes I feel so numb it's like I'm drowning at the bottom of the sea,
Buried beneath the pressure,
Struggling to breath and there's no light, no nothing it's just black and empty and I'm scared, I'm scared of this darkness because these aren't your demons anymore,
These are mine.
I wanted to help people remember they're good enough,
That they're worth saving,
But as time goes by,
I can't even save myself.

I sit
perched atop high and empty balconies,
these falsities, growing like mold, catching like crystal
on eyelashes heavy and old.

Heavy and old,
heavy and cold,
I loved once, I should be able to again
but my heart catches in my throat

and the cannibal takes a bite,
hungried flesh falling from the skeleton that is myself.
Everything is cold and with cold comes numbness,
an even worse pain.

When you're numb you can't feel the warmth
of summer rising,
her feathered hair following the migration of birds
coming home, home, home.

Her sinner skin burned and gold,
enticing you to feel, to breathe,
against god's wishes, against mine,
to cling to a life you're not living.

A dissected corpse picked apart
to my very atoms,
by the vultures feeding themselves
off my already ended life.

"Live, even if it's for everybody else."

‘You have nothing left to lose.’

His voice was calm, mellow. A velvet song whispering against her ear. ‘You act as if they’ll miss you- ‘
‘They will miss me.’ Her voice held such conviction it made him grin.
‘You hope they will,’ he corrected her, ‘and you hope they won’t forget you- ‘
‘But they will.’ She finished quietly. ‘That’s okay, that’s what gravestones are for. To remember the dead when no one else will.’ She paused for a moment, glancing at him. ‘It’s a lonely feeling to be forgotten.’
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then leant back on his hands, their legs hung messily over the edge of the building and she kicked hers absentmindedly.
‘One day,’ he began in a long distant voice, ‘all that will be left will be gravestones. Billions of cold rock slabs, billions of names, and not a soul to read them out. You’ll all be forgotten then.’
‘That’s okay too,’ she smiled at him, ‘because then we won’t need to remember the dead, we’ll all be together in the great beyond.’
His laugh rang out across the city and the sound played a melody with her cells as this ancient creature sat beside her, his face alive with laughter.
‘Such a curious creature you are,’ he breathed, looking at her again. ‘Do you have hope that your great beyond will be pleasant? Do you believe everyone’s will be?’
‘I have no idea,’ she shrugged, ‘but I have hope.’
‘Hope in a pleasant life after death but not hope for a pleasant life while you’re alive?’
She studied her fingernails as if they held the secrets to the universe and he laid a hand gently over hers, ice trailing over her skin at his touch.
‘It’s alright, we both know how this will end.’ He soothed. ‘You’re here because you’re destined to be, and I’m here to collect your soul.’
‘So you’re saying this wasn’t my choice?’ she asked, her voice tiny against the thrum of the world around her.
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘it was fate, and fate is something you can’t run away from.’
She looked at him then for the longest time, her eyes burning into his memory and her blood humming under her skin.
‘Have you ever tried?’
He blinked in confusion as she stood up, teetering on the edge of oblivion. Without thinking he grabbed her hand.
‘What do you mean?’ His brow furrowed in confusion. ‘Have you?’
She smiled at him then, really smiled and he thought he’d never seen something so bright since the day the sun was born.
‘The beauty of life and death,’ she laughed softly, ‘is that in the end, in all the possible ends, no matter how ****** a choice, it will be my choice.’
He stared at her. Was she stupid? This was her fate, this had always been her fate, since the moment her life had been woven into the world’s story he had known what would happen to her. What choice did she have? What choice did he have?
‘In this world,’ she continued, gently laying a hand over the top of his,’ I may not have had the chance of being killed in an accident, or of old age, but I’ve always had the choice of killing myself. My one last vestige of control, my parachute, my safety belt, all that jazz, you know?’
Slipping her hand from his grip she gestured to the skies around them. ‘Whether today, tomorrow, or fifty years from now, no one, not even you could make this choice for me.’
Silence sat heavily around them as they looked at each other, her at peace and him feeling something tug in his chest for the first time since The Beginning.
‘You’ll be dead before you hit the ground.’ He said numbly. It was the only thing left he could think to say. ‘You’ll run out of oxygen.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said one last time, ‘then I’ll die flying.’
She might have been an angel then, spreading her wings to the highest heavens. The cold night air burning her lungs as she breathed in deeply.
‘Besides, you said it yourself.’ The grin on her face was blinding as she tipped forwards, arms falling softly through the air.

‘I have nothing left to lose.’