He told her

It is the beauty on the inside that counts

Her response

Then why do my insides continue to find themselves in the wrong place
Lifted into white porcelain gods
Asking anyone to compliment my withered self
Please make love to me
Tell me I am better than the acid on my tongue
The regret powering my mind as I struggle down my dinner
Inside is where I find these thoughts
Thoughts powering my actions
Into a spiraling pit of self loathing
Tell me I am pretty one more time
And I will show you my insides to prove it

I'm not one for words
and yet, your words are wanted
Actions are louder.

i hung myself
from your lips
the first time
we kissed,
a transcendent
moment, shining
effervescent
as the sun.

love was the rope
i wound into a noose
on that rooftop.
an audience of stars
looked on, voyeurs
lightyears beyond.

years have lapsed since then,
but i return invariably
to those moments we spent
absorbed to the point of ecstasy
as if time were a flat circle
and i was meant to live eternally
caught between the fragments
of those seconds.

fixated by the temporary transgressions
we permit ourselves
every few months.
revolving like a planet
tethered to its star
by the insistent arms of gravity.
we're partners in crime, stealing borrowed time,
trying in vain to recreate
the first fissures
of a friendship
that fractured our lives
like a fragmentation grenade.

consistently,
i become convinced,
as time moves on
and i remain transfixed,
that maybe i was meant to love
but not be loved in return.

live through revenge
not an innocent to blame
everyone loves a victim
a pathological liar
without ever opening their mouth
everyone loves a criminal
on the television
never beyond it
everyone loves an underdog
with possibilities of hope
restoring faith unto humanity


Oh, everyone loves me
*but it wasn't worth it

I don't look like me, I don't sound like me,
I don't feel like me.
Sometimes it feels not like I'm in the present,
But like I'm from the future sent back too far into the past,
And I'm impatiently waiting, playing catch up
Until my body grows into its brain.
Please, god, let me grow into myself.
My skin feels stretched too tightly over brittle bones,
And my muscles are so itchy,
I want to rip away my flesh just to reach inside.
My heart clamours incessantly, hurling itself at my rib cage
With such ferocity that my entire chest shakes with its beating.
Please, god, let something quieten it,
And if it can't appease it, please, god, let something silence it for good.