It burns. So deathly excruciating.

It's like a never-ending, heart wrenching feeling, that separates all other emotions, all other pains, and all other scars apart.

That feeling of regret and fallen memories, colliding with each other and dragging you down so low that Hell appears to be Heaven.

Why? Why after so many years?

After so many others have managed to steal my heart, even if it was just for a moment.

Why? Even though I know those days are over, that they could never begin again, that there will always be a broken link and I will always shatter, fall, and crumble once more.

Why are these emotions still here? Why do they linger like a black cloud, suffocating me and chaining me down like a wild animal?

I know that you are only a memory, so then why are you still here?

Why do I think about you, dream about you?

Why even though I know all of your flaws and your undeniably inexcusable actions do I grip at my heart and say "I still love you"?

Even though time after time I have told myself the very opposite.

Time and time again I have banished you from my life and yet hoped there was still a chapter left of this dark story.

Why after so many countless times where I have been defeated by you, where I have fallen once more for the ****** games you play,
twisting your black fingers around my spine and seeing how far you can go until it breaks?

Why do my forsaken eyes mistake you as an angel, when you are the devil himself?

Must I continue to have hope, wishing that I could try again, even though I know you're going to once more watch as I lose all sight of the truth?

Sinister and vile as you are, relish in my delusional state, knowing you have me in your claws which scrape at my back and leave scars that not even God could heal.

Do you even know how disgusting, how sickening and maddening it feels to know that you can't even see the pain you have inflicted on me? Sure you can see the bandages, but are you really that blind to the truth of their nature?

How deep these scars truly run? How badly and desperately I screamed and begged for help inside as you dug your claws into my flesh and carved them out yourself?

Can you not see the depression, the hopeless battered soul seeping through my eyes?

I pretend I am strong. I live every day breaking at the cracks and somehow manage not to collapse into a pile of broken pieces.

Tears are dried out and the ache of a heart that has been stomped on so severely that it bleeds gray is only a small burden compared to all of the rest.

I walk on a path where there is a light just in reach, but the path vanishes once you have come close enough to that hopeful light that you can brush it with the tips of your fingers.

Do you have any idea what it feels like to look in the mirror and have to remind yourself every single day that you were never good enough?

That you are a wasted canvas, painted beautifully at first but then crumpled and thrown out because you never had a chance at being satisfactory.

You will never understand that my own emotions are poisoning me.

You have grabbed at my throat and shaken me so violently that I am unable to move, paralyzed in shame. Paralyzed in sorrow.

And yet, as I look into your eyes, I am mesmerized by your face, I fall into a trace, trapped in your spell. Trapped in this deadly cycle.

You have dragged me down into this pitiful thing. This choking, lifeless relationship where I struggle to stay alive while you climb higher on your pedestal.

And despite my previous errors, I willingly fall into your hands. Blinded by the false light you shine above your head.

Pretend
If I was accompanied
In this shallow moment
Where time shattered
And maybe surfed
Across my skin
I'd be lonely,
But not alone
I'd see a day where
The unavoidable reality
Was my own
Fortress of my heels
Something I'd never escape
*******
And unattainable dreams
Where you could
Touch all the little details
Pick them up and
Dust them
Call them
Yours
Take them home and
Shred them
Salad toppings
Ingest
And be full
Forever

I'm standing on weird edges
There's blood in the sky
There's a boy named Pi.

The night is black, so
old blood.  So cruelty,
I've had enough.

I was born with barbed-wire sickness.

Is your blood running high?
Blood is life,
don't spill it.

Watch the mind of day
become the mind of night.
Better is the house of mourning,

better the sky at night,
I can hear God better.
Blood runs from our eyes.

Are you facing the sky,
boy named
Pi?

First sound before first sight
is the spit and howl of windy sleet.

first sight the pearly water
dribbles down the hopeless window
and Cold sneaks in to hug your bones.

up into the shivering morning
two bodies leap
one earthy flesh one gossamer wisp

the faintest touch of silk
up a backbone  a thousand small soldiers
stand to attention
of the coldest kiss

next and suddenly
brisk warmth over rubbed skin
static woollen heat

the whisper of a touch
up a backbone a thousand small soldiers
slump from duty
and Cold slips and idles away

bad people do good things
and
good people do bad things
and
good people do bad people
and
on
and
on
you

open. a little. crack the spine of a bird to expand its wingspan. leave kisses along it's crown until it weeps and says: "i am a boy. i am a liberal. i'm a deist now. please believe me."
                     no. this wouldn't happen.

you open. a little. you meet up and exchange poetry. he says "what does this mean?" and your voice becomes cinders, burning in your throat. (it's about him. it's about things you can't say. it's about the bits he'd never understand even if this would happen. it's about the loathing pooling in your ******* and the dreams he'd reject, the feeling he left in you that feels a little like heartburn, the antacids you take and--)
                             no. this wouldn't happen either.

it's all wrong.

the library is open tonight, but you don't invite him to coffee. you look at your paltry sympathy and half-hearted methods of fixing things and tinker with them. you've torn up the paper. it cannot be returned. the case with him, the case with her -- this, this would happen again and again until you could get it right.