Street cleaners gather beneath crisp tree leaves,
Collecting cloudy tears along the hem of their hoods,
Their oversized coats reminding me of the night
we shared a bench within the downpour of the city,
You demanded I kept my hood down,
Allowing raindrops to trickle atop the bridge of my nose
As your fingers traced the cherry red tips of my ears,
I spent many minutes contemplating how
I would explain my state to my mother,
Settling on the notion to flee to my room the moment I returned,
Soon enough sense turned hazy,
Your violet lips nicked my own,
In a sickly speed.

I don’t believe in good or evil, heaven or hell.
My idea goes-
The only true punishment for Eve’s
Alleged temptation,
Would be a forced breath, a rebirth, repeat life for
As long as humans are able to walk the earth,

That will show us.

As midnight hit, I lay in the warmth of a near spilling tub.
Silence pollutes four steamed walls, echoes of pitter-patter
From the infant upstairs, distant voices from the movie
My mother watched in another room, an occasional drip
Of the hot tap, the scrape of ink across damp paper,
A slurp of tea between my lips, are the only sounds.

I should have been washing, instead I thought of your hand
Caressing a blade across my legs, your shampoo soaked fingertips
Tickling at my scalp, your mouth pinching kisses from my *******,
Your eyes following soap suds descending down silky skin.

My chin rests upon my knee, tea leaks from wet lips
Staining a pale leg, dispersing beneath the surface,
The water browns, so I bathe in tea and sugar
The sweet stench unable to distract me from you.

I was cruelly young,
When I first pleaded for God,

A God I was unsure about,
To free me from this life,

Presenting him the
Sign of the Cross,

To follow with a demand
Of a silent, painless, escape.

To this day I count myself lucky,
That I lacked the knowledge

Of death permitted
By one's own hand.

As *** bled from your
fingertips, I could only
fall towards your blade.

Sometimes the need to grab strangers by the shoulders,
And beg-BEG- for them to hurt me,
Pretend to love but actually hate me,
Romance me, only to ignore me-

Sometimes the need to grab strangers by the shoulders,
And ask for their prayers,
Spill out my darkest confessions,
Grieve my past self to them-

Sometimes the need to grab strangers by the shoulders,
And preach the importance of freedom,
Inform them of the world’s woes,
Bore them with politics-

Sometimes the need to grab strangers by the shoulders,
And demand they save me,
Pause my loneliness before it turns foul,
Accompany me during my days-

Sometimes the need to grab strangers by the shoulders,
And scream help, so the birds flee,
Becomes ever too powerful.

So powerful I recoil from human interactions,
Until I can perform the average conversation again.