The burnt out fibers
Of my stretched and stained heart
Have just become taut,

Like sparks behind my eyes
And electricity at my fingers,

The world flickers into place
Like a Polaroid winking into existence,

My breaths may be shallow
But I can breath again,
And though my lungs may be rusty,
The air is clean,
The leaves are crisp,
And Winter may have just begun

But I'm feeling warmer already.

Last week I told you
That I was drowning
Thinking that you'd jump in after me,

But to my surprise,
And by the way you cried, your surprise too,
You held my head under the water,
Just below the inky waves.

It was cold and muddy
And I choked on it too,
My eyes were burning
And my whole body shook
And I grasped for your hair
To try and pull myself up
But you cut it with a quick jagged slash,
And pushed me down deeper.

And soon my eyes began to hollow
And my lungs forgot to struggle
And I swear,
Through the water I saw your velvet lips part
And let out a final thought
Haphazardly tied to a sigh,

Because when I tried to tell you that I still loved you
You just let us drown.

The holes in my lungs,
They peer around like beady eyes
Searching for some glimmer of light,

The air that flowed through them
Used to whistle when I breathed,
But now all they do is creak,

Clotted and dead,
Black and rotting,
I'm drowning from the inside out

You lit a fire in me,
And I know,
That's a really stupid way of saying it,

But nothing compares
To the way that you've melted
The ice that's frozen my insides,

A mushy pink slushie,
Unsure of where I begin
And the frost ends,

And I used to hear it
Every
Single
*******
Day,
Slushing and slurping
And flowing between the bones of my ribcage

Like an ocean of organs
That wanted nothing more than be to warm again,

But now I'm on fire,
And I can feel everything dripping,
Solidifying back into place,

And I swear to god,
Today I felt my heart beat again.

Autumn,
Where the sky dulls
And the grass quivers,

Where the ground stiffens
And the birds abandon their treetop posts
That scratch the sky like brittle fingers,

Where the clouds huddle together
To soak up the distant sun
And the where wind whispers against my skin,

Where the world starts to die,
Life falls back into me,
And the char in my lungs chips away,

And the leaves on the ground
Pad the pavement
With a crunch that breaks the monotony of these dry days,

And I'm home,
In the wake of the color before the white,
The warmth before the decay,

Falling forwards again into a rhythm
Of something old,
But entirely brand new.

Here I am again;
The sky has opened
And I'm ready to see past these cloudy days,

I'm doing this for me,
Just me this time
Because if I don't my feet might get caught again,

And I don't think I can stand drowning anymore.

I just woke up
in the beginning of the evening

And suddenly became aware
that before this moment I was not aware.

And everything I did
and everything I said
I did without control,

And it feels as though today was lie,
this week was a sham,
this year has been false,
and my life is slipping away

Because I feel myself sinking in again
and I feel my fingers drifting away from my mind,
and it's starting again
and oh God please help me
I want to live
I want to live
I want to live


But here I go, down the muddy hole again.