Crinkling, sizzling
grey, listful energy
always
waiting for the collapse,
perhaps it can hear the discordance
in your voice
when you tell me
it's over.

If you lied
and he lied
and everyone's lying
then what am I doing here
listening to everything
when I could be damaging my ear hairs
another way?

Loosened tie,
loosened dirt,
one's gonna **** you
one's gonna hurt,
what's it gonna be boy,
when everything's turned,
suffocated misery
or the underground resort?

Parts of him,
Everything
Was broken into parts
Of him.

I was told the story
Of when his boy lungs
Couldn't hold another gasp,
And his father found him
Five
Or was it ten? Minutes later
And they had to bring
A dead boy back to life.

They were told a story
Of how his mother drank
A bit too much, often
But they musn't, he musn't
Speak another word of it,
There are parts of stories left untold.

There are parts of him
So many parts
But never enough parts
To make a man whole.

Disgusting,
tongue stuck out,
nose closed;
she always hated it,
and no matter what
we’d press and press,
forcing her to stomach
things she never wanted,
smelling that sourness,
those vinegar troubles
and tangy juice
covered in coercion;
we’d ask her time and time again
and never once did we respect her wishes.

Why must I consume?
is it not enough to exist,
is that not enough consumption?
How greedy it is
to expect me to take
more than I desire,
to force me to eat another
out of house and home.
That’s kind,
so very kind,
a sickly kind,
the sort of “kindness”
that destroys marriages,
uproots families and destroys psyches.
I’m not like that,
I don’t want to be controlled.

But we kept on shoveling
these aged, old traditions,
those nasty pickled ideas,
those greedy, grubby hands
of control over her,
and she could never let herself forgive.

Wasteful breaths,
a hyperventilating accordion of pressure,
my heart compressed
like extra pixels in an image, a squeezed lemon,
but unfortunately no lemonade,
only hazy vision.

I can’t move.
Moving only makes me
step closer to death,
or so I imagine,
as my heart spikes thorns inward,
every dagger ever stuck in my back
shoots down my throat
and returns to the heart it aimed for
originally.

I’m so broken.

Clammy palms, cracked nails,
dilated eyes all a mess,
and the shakes,
oh, the shakes,
an earthquake from within
brings much devastation again,
and just like every weak building does,
I collapse to my knees,
barely gripping onto the counter,
praying that if God pities me enough,
he’d let me go.

I saw your name
again
in an old file
and I was told to dispose of it.

I couldn't help but feel so empowered
and yet oh so very vulnerable;
I'm a soft clam inside a hard shell,
but every time I think of this past you,
you've already pried me open and prodded
at my fleshy underbelly,
my most private spaces.

I was given the control
to take away another memory of you
from a place, we used to inhabit
together
and as much as I should've enjoyed that,
it only made me sad.