If you are a suicide survivor
Inbox me your name
And I’ll add it to my tattoos of others

You guys mean the world to me
And I have my own name on my arm
Because I too, am a suicide survivor.

Cuts on my wrists
hands curled into fists
will i even be missed

Writing a note
i wrote
i love you and it wasn't your fault

That's a lie
i want to die and
its partly your fault

I can't tell you that so i
Sit and i cry

Why do i
Live like this

Will i even be missed

We cannot write silence.
The beats.
The pause.
The breath.
The way it aches
and persists

and begs that,

if only for a moment,

our consciousness is only a whisper.
our bodies,
our lips,
the air that passes through falling chests
and stillness.

A melody of emotion.
Sleeping in the quiet of a heartbeat skipped
a word lost to the wind.

The wickedness of reticence
Encapsulated in air and time.

The moment stretched too long.
Hesitation perpetuated in the grip of fingernails
pressed into palms.

We cannot write silence,
but we can try.

to find a way to immortalize emotion
to create space
in the ceaseless drone of words that speak and spin.

I cannot write silence. But I can write
tears and years
and the burn of long-stretched lies.

I can write goodbyes and hellos
And dozen ways to say
I love to hate you
Or
I hate to love you
and sometimes
I cannot tell the difference.
Silence.
The space I have upheld for myself.

I love to hate you
Heart.

I hate to love you too.

I cannot write silence.
But I know it.
and I have held it in my hand.

You wanted a love like in the movies;
rain drenched white shirts, palms covered
in daisy pollen; I love you more than--
a phone call, long distance, your fingers
curling the telephone wire like you're pulling me
towards you
like a fibre optic pheromone.
Soundtracks of a jazz piano, and old jukebox hits,
flared skirts and Mary Jane shoes, square dancing.

But most of the time, we don't get to choose
the colour of the bedsheets. In this story,
I know you're going to leave me. I can sense
the zoom of your eyes, rolling away from me.
The lighting in the room, like the ones where something
awful is about to happen: a sad, sick orange
like a cheap sunset; the music, or lack thereof,
the way you bite your lip like you're about to
break my heart.

You look to the ground, and I know this is where
the narration will start;

this is the story of the first time
someone broke my heart.  
She's going to look up at me
and say the words,
It's all over-

and in a jump frame
the thunderclap will mask the sound
of my heart shattering, the sob disappearing
into my throat.

You wanted a love like in the movies,
honey,
we all did.

But then the rain came, and the flowers
drowned in their beds.
You left your umbrella by the doorstep,
I hope you don't catch a cold.