I want you to kiss me
until the liquor on your breath
burns my tongue,
to hold me so tight that
the smoke on your clothes
rubs into my skin, and the hiccupping beat
of your tired heart is all I can hear

Soon I will begin again
With an entirely new skeleton.
One whose ribs will never know
The ache of laughter;
Whose knuckles won’t know
The tender brush of your hands.

I’ll have a new body
With lungs that will never be
Torn to shreds by screams,
And cheeks that won’t know
The familiar burn of tears.

It’s staring at your pain and thinking
About how you’re gonna hide it this time.

If you need someone to talk to, just call me.

Sobbing into your pillow while playing
The happiest music at max volume, so no one asks questions.

You can call me if you ever need someone to listen.

It’s sleepless nights tossing and turning
The thoughts of suicide churning in every corner of your mind.

I understand, call me if you need to get your mind off things.

The thing is, I find myself in all of these situations and I realize that
I do need someone to talk to;
Someone to listen;
Someone to get my mind off things.

But then I go to dial a number and I realize that
As much as everyone’s promised, I
Have absolutely no one to call.

As much as people like to pretend,
No one understands.

The air feels different here, I mean
nothing on the road ever feels the same
but this wasn’t like that.
It makes my lungs feel weak
and the taste of menthol lingers on my tongue.
Maybe it’s some kind of phenomenon,
perfectly explainable by science
like the humidity or something,
but I'd like to believe that it’s because
I'm here with you.
Before you, I hated the idea of there being anything
outside of this grungy town, but with you;
with you, life seems to have so much more potential.
There’s so much to see and do-
so many new people to meet,
new music to hear and most importantly,
new air to breathe.
So maybe I’m crazy,
making something out of nothing, but maybe this-
the sharp air and tinge of coolness in my mouth
is just what I needed to show me
that this was all worth it.

The throb of blood coursing through my ears
tells me my heart is still beating.
It shows how far I've come, though
you'd not guess how often
I'd say my goodbyes
because I wish
that it would
cease to
beat.

Countless times I’ve spent pouring out kerosene
in the form of words,
attempting to lessen the flames roaring inside
but only fueling them in the process.
You seem to be the only one that will listen;
then again how could you protest?
It’s a relationship that’s hardly symbiotic.

I’ve learned that most times I am the lit match
igniting a room full of fumes,
tearing down the walls around me as quickly as I built them.
I am the one scorching the palms of those who seek comfort
and searing the tongues of those who offer it.

So go,
stay far away from the flames,
and know, that soon I’ll burn up all I have,
Maybe then I won’t be a threat anymore.

I dreamed of home last night.
I wish I could tell you of a place so overflowing
with love and happiness
that even you, a complete stranger,
would yearn to experience it.
But, I can't.
It was never a place but a feeling
that resided only within the corners
of my own sick mind.
My home is an Epitaph
written on the decaying walls
of a shattered psyche,
in memoriam of something long past.

There is sadness woven into my every thought.
Worries and fears shout over each other,
both demanding they be heard first.
My memories whisper amongst themselves
in the corners where they think I can’t hear them.
It’s a chaotic setting that I’ve grown all too familiar with.
But if you were to ask me,
right now,
What is on my mind?
I’d spin you a tale of a quiet room
with fleeting mumbles like nothing ever lingers too long.
Of course, that isn’t true.
My mind has fashioned trinkets out of my tragedies
and displays them with pride.
It’s found sanctum in the somber solitude
of a late night’s crying session.

I’m not even the same person anymore.
The old me,
The happy me,
is confined to a box, long forgotten
on a cluttered shelf behind every mistake I’ve ever made.
Sometimes I’ll remember
what she was like;
Small flashes of bright eyes,
Pink cheeks warmed by the sun
and a wild, toothy grin that never cracked.
I wish she could’ve stayed longer.

God, what I would give to bring her back.
To give her a world
that wasn't so loud,
one that would never beat her to her knees.
She didn't deserve what happened to her.
She only ever wanted the best,
she only ever deserved the best.

My own skin feels ill-fitting.
Like maybe it belonged to me
at some point in time,
But now it sloughs off my shoulders
Like a hand-me-down
given too early…

I'm losing my mind;
not even slowly,
almost like
An onslaught of insanity.
Peeling away at the façade
of a body grossly overrun.
Melancholic.

But it is a peaceful sadness.
There is no anger and
I am no longer at war with myself.
The battlefield is barren,
the weapons have been laid rest
and all the soldiers have gone home.

There she had stood,
hundreds of feet up in the cold, thinning air.
The clouds tangled themselves around her ankles like chains;
The wind was nothing but a low, cynical whisper in her ear.

As tears relentlessly roll down the girl’s face,
She begs to be encased in the lulling voice of the city below,
To ignore the wretched murmurs of the rain
That pelted her skin like bullets.

But, the thud of hands around her middle
Ripped her body back into the wall of his confinement.
His breathing felt heavy and diseased on her neck,
Her own hair became the rope she’d be killed with.

Barely a slice through the air,
Her screams merely dissipated
Out into the black of the bruised world around her,

She was alone now
And no one was ever going to find her.

I never quite figured out why he was always there,
lingering just beyond the light’s reach.
Whispering words I could never understand
though I don’t believe they were for me to hear anyway.
Rarely, I’d catch a coherent word tumble from his lips
‘Alone’, ‘worthless’ and ‘disgusting’ were most common.
It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before.

Sometimes I‘d find myself telling him about my day,
rambling on and on about things that didn’t matter.
Though he’d never respond to me,
he never seemed disinterested.
Some days the things I said to him
were the only words I’d speak at all.
He was there for me when no one else was.

One day, I asked if I could see his face.
He’d pondered for a long, silent moment
before stepping past the line between light and dark.
The sun almost dripped down his seemingly macabre form.
He wasn’t displeased by my curiosity,
But I could tell he was off-set by being beyond the shadows.

I don’t know what I was expecting to see,
but nothing could’ve prepared me for the soulless,
hollow eyes that seemed to sink deeper
into the foul-faced creature behind them.
His presence seeped a feeling of desolation
that solidified in the cracks between my bones
and atrophied the surrounding muscles.

Staring into the solemn being stood before me,
I’d felt a heaviness settle on my shoulders.
The weight left me gasping, choking from lack of air.
When he realized what he’d done his face distorted
into one of genuine regret and sorrow.
He reached out to console me but quickly recoiled
as if remembering who he was, and why he was truly there.

How could I have told him that I’d wished
he’d have grabbed me anyway?
Pulled me into the melancholy embrace of his arms.
Or how I’d longed for the darkness he bore
to swallow me whole.
Why would I jeopardize the only one who cared for me?

what am I
but a reflection
of all I should have been
the things I never did,
the chances I never took
the sunsets I never watched.

I feel I could have been more.
I'm still young;
why do I feel like this.