someone once told me
pain is like water;
you need a little
to know you're alive,
but too much
will drown you.
and now I think
isn't it funny
how the things we do
to feel alive
are the things
that can **** us?
i suppose
it's because
we just want to feel
**something

we found our
wings
but
the world saw butterflies

Again, it's a
mystery

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

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.

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.

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

emotional stakes
are changed
when a young girl,
tasked to bring hellfire,
lays off the trigger

maybe
some
promises
are
better
left
broken