These cannot be my hands.
They've killed too many men.
This cannot be my skin
That's been cut time and time again.

I glance at my reflection,
Then turn my face in shame.
Who is this freak show looking back at me,
Who tells me I'm to blame?

Whose blood is dried upon my hands,
This dirt across my cheek?
Whose gun is this that shot down lives,
Women, children, men and meek?

Whose words are these upon my tongue,
**** like soured wine?
Whose clothes are these upon my chest?
Surely they cannot be mine?

Whose sins are these, the dark and many
That fill an entire sea?
With narrowed eyes, I realize
These sins belong to me.

Today, I lied and left a room full of people
I went and hid
sitting on the cold metal stairs
Halfway to the second floor because I knew no one would look there
if they tried to find me
It was so silent I felt my heart struggling to
stop beating
To match its surroundings
The lack of sound stifled movement
Slowed thought
The ringing in my ears such beautiful music
It dawned on me that
I have done this before

I have hidden myself away from lively people and colorful noise
sitting against cold ground, cold wall, anything as long as it was cold enough to bite my skin
Retreating from life even before I labeled myself with depression
I'm not making this up
I want to cry though my voice is statuesque with the rest of me
It is sweet relief, even if only for a second I believe
I am not some twisted monster
preying on false struggle for sympathy

I hear the voices of other entering the room I've run from
I know I should go back
But the silence, the silence
I remind myself what they have taught me
Sometimes you have to just do what is needed, because there is no other option
If the others can walk back in with a laugh and a smile, so can I

It takes a long time for me to convince my legs to get up but I do it

I walk away from the steps

I'm seeing the shadows of flames when there was no fire
But there is the sun
I'm drawing patterns between people when there are none
But the poems speak the same words for everyone
I'm not close enough to hold all the stars in their place
But even the sky has to spread itself so thin you can hardly find a trace
Hold me tighter
Hold me tighter

I wish you well my friend
Wishes never save you in the end

A little girl stopped me today
By that old wooden playground
the one where the planks are falling from their swings
and the green slide is all out of place

She grabs my hand
"Who am I?" she asks
Searching my face desperately for an answer
She has ringlet curls and holds a ***** tan teddy bear under her arm
Yes, who have you become
"We could play" the girl weasels, pulling on my arm
pointing toward the crumbling playground
I can only shake my head no

"Don't forget about me, okay?" she sighs
"I want to be a doctor when I grow up, I want a pet bunny and I want to
eat ice cream for breakfast on all of my birthdays"
Her eyes are starry with dreams, she runs beyond the playground to chase a comet

I stare at the boards on the ground, and I see not the plank of a pirate ship,
but a broken swing
I run behind the girl
Frantically trying to gather up all of the dreams she dropped in her hurry
They slip through my fingers and get harder to see

I find myself repeating the girl's advice to myself
"Don't forget about me"
*Don't forget about me

How long are you going to let your happiness be decided by her actions?

This is what heartbreak looks like.

It is the soliloquies you wrote to him at midnight while crying

It is the formality a smile and the absence of warmth

It is the nausea and the ***** because this mornings breakfast just didn't have the heart to stay with you

He didn't either

This is what heartbreak sounds like.

Silence
Breaking
Static

This is what heartbreak feels like.

The burn of your concerned friends eyes into your back

The burn of the shame tinging your cheeks red

This is what heartbreak is.

You
Me
But not us

Never us

I watch the pendulum swing on my Grandmother’s old clock.
It’s three hours and twenty minutes off, and she can never fix it.
She keeps it anyways.

When I was little I used to sit in front of it
And sing along when each hour hit
Three hours and twenty minutes off.

The old clock used to wake me up at night
And I’d climb down off the top bunk
To check that it was three hours and twenty minutes off.

Now the clock is shoved in a corner,
Old and forgotten,
But still three hours and twenty minutes off.

My Grandmother’s new husband fixed the old clock.
He did what my Grandmother could never do.
The old clock is no longer three hours and twenty minutes off.
It will never be again.

Here and now is a pretty strange place
let's start from underneath-
we stand on two feet
what peculiar creatures we are forcing our weary, poorly engineered frames to stand up and walk every day

we make sounds at each other and all agree to pretend they make sense
i tie back the hair that dangles like remains around my face

we never want to change our ways but we force our eyes to the sky and conjure thoughts beyond ourselves
we pulse with electricity, chemistry dancing with consciousness

we've built structures that tower above our heads, we've built past, present, future we've built money, we've built music, we've built war

you shouldn't be able to reach me and yet here you are, present as light between my fingertips
why would any of you care for someone you've never met? for that matter why care for someone you know and love?

it's no wonder our brains stage mutiny so often with all of these thoughts

we're improbabilities
searching for purpose that isn't really there
we're so unlikely you can't help but shake your head at how we've made it so far

together, on our own, humans
we've made it this far

together, on our own
Humans

You've got to learn to love your part in life

Like the alto, always background to the soprano
must to come to love the harmony
There's a base to every pyramid
And maybe it's more fun to hit the high notes,
but in the end, the support is what matters most

Like Atlas and the sky
You can't just give up and
let the clouds crash into Earth below

even when the sky is crushing you
even when its weight is digging you into the ground

You have to learn to love your prisons
dying flesh, a cage for your mind
that box they've drawn around you in thick black marker lines
Not to be crossed out

I'm not saying don't try to break through
Coffins are suffocating, what wouldn't you do for one more gasp of air?

I'm just begging you to be careful
where you step, you don't have a choice other than to be smart with this

You can take an eraser to those lines until your fingers bleed,
but erasers won't do anything to marker
You move even an inch and the whole pyramid might come tumbling down
Even Atlas had to get someone to take his place before he could escape

You'll set off alarms and traps before you make it very far
The police will escort you back where you belong
So while you're planning your next attempt to get beyond the walls
you might as well decorate them
and buy a couch, a bed, a stove, make yourself at home

It's a backup plan for if you never make it out
an over the counter pain reliever that works a good fifty percent of the time

You have to learn to love where you are

even if it's choking you
*even if it makes you want to die