I have blood drying in the pit of my throat
from all the words I ache to say yet swallow down
and black-bitten lips from holding back sobs as the thoughts scratched on their way to the boiling point

There's annoyance in their gazes
The contempt burns holes in my skin
My hands are bleeding from the places where my fingernails ripped them apart and held me together

I exist in the wrong place
Shouts more like slaps
But the sting feels okay
More comfort found in the pain they inflict
Than in the sighed rolled eyed apologies that follow

a girl with moon-silver skin
and bruised craters under her eyes
an IV
drip
                drip
                                      ­ dripping
sugar water into her star-frayed veins
because that's what girls are made of right?

your words are so sharp
i'm still shocked that
blood doesn't stain your lips every time you speak

yet there is no surprise
in the way your spoken thoughts
wrap around my throat
(necklace/noose)
((i was never quite sure))
and pushed me off the pedestal

we started out as awkward friends
with no clue what to say
tiptoeing around the other
trying not to step on any feelings in the dark

but you found the light switch
and the words that had lain in wait in your throat
poured out in a black wave
down your chin

i want to eat you alive*
you say it so soft it's like a whispered prayer
i would let you
you can break my skin with your teeth
(partake of the flesh)
you can drain the color from my veins
(partake of the blood)
so long as you keep the faith
in your new-found religion

this is what you call life
wasting minutes in front of a mirror
to make sure the fresh ink on your eyes isn't smudged
and the time melts away as you search
for your second skin in your closet

showing up an hour late
to a street you've never been
to a house at fire capacity
to grind to music you hate
with people you've never called your friends

wiping a spot of powder from your upper lip
as you get thrown from the bathroom filled
with moth girls only attracted to the
harsh light above their reflections

pouring ***** down your throat
as a chaser to someone else's prescription

stumbling into the cool air
with a warm body pressed up next to you
and huddling together in the back of a cab
with their mouth on your neck

waking up to the frost blue light
in a strangers bed
and choking back a sob
with only the memory of perfecting that
black line on your eyelid

writing a note to apologize
for the mascara smear on the pillow case
as you try to find your second skin

this is what you call life
but are you really living

kiss me in the middle of the crossroads
like you're the devil
and i'm a sinner not worth saving

even with our thighs pressed together
it feels like you're on another world
the purple under your eyes proof
that gravity takes it toll on ethereal beings

i can feel words rising in my throat
but i don't know how to string them together
to let you know that you are everything

you are the sun and the ocean
the moon that keeps everything in the balance
the sun and the stars
every crumpled-paper poem
and the ink blots on the pages

the one who everyone is talking about
when they let the word love carelessly fall out of their mouths
the girl in every love stained poem

you are the church and the deity
and I'm on my knees
praying to you

we talked about escape like it could free us from the darkness in our veins
and you spoke of drowning in a way so beautiful I ached to be the ocean

I didn't mention the red lines on your wrists
you pretended to ignore the purpleyellow bruises on mine

we reached for each other in the dark
the shining of blood the only light we could find