i wonder.
if i stand in the rain
for long enough,
will it wash away
my identity?

i don't want to look there anymore for fear of the clockwork ****** that i make of my own memory every time i pass that house on Sheridan Circle. it is filled with the ghosts of childhoods well spent but long past and i can't help but think how the rope by which the old swing used to hang looks like a noose, which it may as well be. maybe one day i will swing from it for the last time.

i think the reason why i fell so deeply and helplessly and utterly in love with him was that he was not broken. i thought that maybe loving him would somehow unbreak me, make me a little less shattered than i was. i have seen and felt and fallen and broken and aged and heard and been more than i ought to have but there's nothing i can do about that now. and so i was drawn to his innocent, unbridled naïveté, which may as well be the last thing that has been left untouched by the bitter darkness of this world.

maybe
some
promises
are
better
left
broken

There is a nest of birds inside my body
Trying to peck and claw their way out.
I can feel their wings beating
Bruises onto my insides

Their ever flapping wings
Stir my stomach into knots
That I can’t hope to untie.

Every time I try to speak
My mouth fills with feathers
And I have to swallow hard
Again and again
To keep from choking on them.

They’ve pecked holes in my mind
These restless creatures inside me
So that I can’t understand anything
The way I used to.

I know they are trying to escape
That they are trapped inside me
They mean me no harm, really,
still, most days I feel
More like the caged bird
than the cage itself.

hearts are wild creatures
that's why our ribs are cages
but maybe that's why
they sing so often