I want to write about what hurts because I think it will
Stop me from hurting. If I put these words on
A page then they will be easier to digest.
Poetry isn't curative by creation, it is
Just confession. Still, these remedial
Lines are what I turn to when I am holding
Too much in my hands. Right now, I feel
Like I am overflowing onto the ground below me.
For the first time,
I don't want to write about what hurts. I want
To keep it inside of me and let it burn me. I want
To carry it in my palms for as long as I can.
I should write
About how we've said goodbye so
Many times that it turned into a threat, a weapon
We made with our tongues.
I should write
About how I lied and got away with it,
How you got caught with
Your hands tied and no one to blame.
I should write
About how it was over before we waved the white
Flag, and I know what it means now
To hold onto a sinking ship.
I've never had anything to die for.
I should write about how I've never wanted
Something so much that I devastated it completely.
We loved in harsh conditions, under sun and darkness and
I don't know how to write about how
The love didn't save us.
I don't write about letting go as much as I write about
Holding on, and I want
That to change.
I don't want to write hurt just to feel it.
The next poem I write about you will be
About me. About how I held on and how I let go.
It won't be about your love, it will be about
Mine. It won't stop me from hurting, but
It is how I make it out
Of my love alive.

Here is what I want to tell people about the ghastly
the grim the macabre the morbid
the grinning skulls we draw on pages
at desks far from fields of skulls set rigid:

You cannot negotiate with silence.
You can only
look at it

however
you like.

There is no sanctity dead or living.
Though, for all of us, I would wish it so
(we never cease in making monuments to swear it is so)
(look at these monuments--
and see it is not).

A natural law requires no belief.

You don’t listen.
I said:
Let go.

Sometimes,
you don't need words
or phrases
or prayers.

Sometimes,
you just need
someone to sit with you silently,
stripped of cliches,
and just be there.

I lost a will:
to write,
to life

it's gone like
an unimportant
memory

misplaced
or erased?

what made
a clean slate?

brain bleached like
whites in laundry

Do not look her in the eye
she will snare you
with her falsehoods
that seep like
oozing wounds
from those festering eyes

she is traitorous
do not look at her
when she cries
she is crying for
your attention
she does not need
help
she is crying
because she is
drama

she is queen of
elegantly saving
herself last minute
if she wants
to die
then let her
not like she
will
its all
just
fake

she's
fake

don't look at her
she will scrabble
under your own
bleeding skin
we all have problems
ignore hers
its not
like there's
no one
there

someone will look
it doesn't have
to be you

please
she is
only a
child
she needs
to be
taught
a
lesson
in humility
crying kids
don't get
hugs from
their mothers
crying kids
get locked
in dark
rooms
until they
stop crying
and start
bleeding on
the
inside

she isn't crying
anymore
just screaming
just screaming like a
banshee
she's disrupting
the peaceful
facade we have
constructed

silence
her

do it
she is
lying

do it

don't listen to her
pleads
she is not being
hurt
she needs to
stop
this
madness

please
hurt
her

see if she
cant take it

she is not a real girl
you know
she can take it
you know
its just words
you know
no marks but the ones she leaves
you know
no tears but the ones she brings on herself
you know

when she cries
its just for
silence
which makes her
stupid
because her room
is a
quiet and
lonely place
before she
starts to
make a sound

listen to that
its gone

she's gone

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.

It’s getting harder and harder.
And now I am crying.
And now I am laying in bed the entire day when it is beautiful as hell outside.
And *******.
When does it get easier?