His rosary repeats every chance
the means collect in pocket of his
well-torn jeans held up by a busted
leather belt, destroyed by bicep
binding and makeshift holes.
His meditation is medicated,
his god is chemically composed.
The stigmatas rise in elbows
covered by long sleeves in
July’s heat. He says he can see
heaven, not in glints of white light,
but in clandestine calm. In his
induced repose he repents
to the soft hum of Tuesday’s
sun, and once again,
he wakes.


A.M. Davis

“When I was younger, I thought all I wanted was to be alone. Cramped in that two-bedroom house with my parents and siblings, with no space to think or to even take a **** without someone knocking on the door. I wanted to go to college just because I thought I needed space–space to breathe and to become my own person.”

“And now?” Mallory asked. Each word that left her mouth wrote itself across the pitch black of December and I stared at each letter until I could not only make sense of the question, but to realize the answer.

“And now I realize that my own person is someone that I don’t like very much.”

The words were as unkind slipping off my tongue as they were sitting in the back of my mind. Now they’ve materialized, holding an undeniable presence and their heavy aftertaste made my stomach turn.

I don’t know if I was looking for sympathy. If I was waiting for her to reassure that I was in fact not a terrible human being. That her company is not a polite obligation. But she sat there saying nothing, and that was louder than anything she could have said out loud. I looked to my right, at the woman I wordlessly fell in love with. Her blank stare into the dimly lit street below pushing me farther and farther away and suddenly I felt the need to say anything to anchor me to her before she drifted too far away.

“I left. And I get that it was my choice, but there was no way I could be satisfied staying in this town for the rest of my life like everyone else. Moving to a city where I knew absolutely no one; it was a change. I went from speaking to the same people everyday for four years to not saying a single word for multiple days in a row. I couldn’t be gentle anymore; I couldn’t be vulnerable. And if that makes me a bad person, then I guess I am. But I did it to survive. You can’t criticize me for my methods to survive knowing you.”

he’ll take his whiskey off a drip
yet still winces with each sip.
says he’s got things instilled that ought be killed,
but this pain he can never rid.
he says he dreams of god
maybe that’s why he spends so long
with a drink at hand between one night stands,
catching each hour as they run.

he sleeps less each night,
spoon and needle at his side
as they rock him to sleep with a mother’s ease
kiss his head then turn the light.

he’s got no plans and too much time
counting each minute until he dies.
says his years’ been filled with tears and pills
it would be nice to just unwind.
his friends are concerned
but don’t say a word
they can spot a lost cause and what are the odds
that he’ll be successful this time?

I’m not sure where this path will go
but I will cling to this chosen road.
there’s no turning back now
the bed is made and the secret’s out.

I feel detached every now and then
that my life is some work of fiction.
the written ink is bleeding through
pages torn, my spine in two.

I can’t breath now,
walls are closing on me now.
whiplash of the ups and downs
take a toll on my mind.

if I draw first
it’ll be on my own terms.
kiss cheeks with the traitors
that were friends of mine.

watch as their words break
shattered mask they made
revealing the teeth of snakes,
hidden the whole time.

the next steps are predictable
cut hair and written notes.
medication to concentrate, but
with broken means there’s none to make.

I can’t breath now,
my chest caved on me now.
they tell me to calm down
but I’ve lost my place.
can you find me a center?
stone to place my feet first
before I slip even further
to the ‘no escape’.

will this fade with age?
cover the walls with paint
that were stained in blood?
from the second that I was born
my lungs cried with remorse
of the sentence begun.
but now no one’s by my side.

will you know when the deed is done?
my name a whisper off strangers’ tongues.
there’s no turning back now
the bed is made and the secret’s out.

When we first met, it was almost like a movie. And you were kind, and warm, and loving and all the unidentifiable qualities that I’ve always known that I was missing but that I couldn’t quite name. You brought me so close to the sun that I nearly lost my footing. Oh, but the view! An adventure—you were the unknown yet the assurance that you were, in fact, what I’ve been waiting for. You became a virus—in the most romanticized way. My dear, I did not wish to be rid of you. You were all I could see, a scarlet fever casting rosy shade. And the doctors all told me that I would lose myself to you, but I only almost heard their warnings. You see, when you are that close to the sun, it is hard to tell between a sunburn and seared skin. From that height, everything is small, detached, and insignificant and it became my only sense of reality. But even you, yourself, became a challenge. Blistering scars behind elbows not quite completely covered by long sleeves in July heat and the collecting makeshift holes marking your belt. I almost asked, but you see, then it would be our problem. And I wasn’t quite ready for that. I knew we were on the edge of something great, and I didn’t want Her to cut us short. You disappeared with Her for weeks—sometimes I wished that you were in the arms of another instead. Cause when She whistled through the needle, into your veins, She always took more and more of you away. She carved you hollow and you stood as a ruin of the temple I once worshipped. I almost didn’t recognize you and from this height, I couldn’t see how you slowly began disappearing. I still think about you often, and what name you would have, carved into stone above the relationship gone bad. You are my Almost. Because we were on the edge of something beautiful, but we fell short. Almost—the name sat on my tongue as your mother asked me if I had known, and the words almost made it out of my throat but even I was not ready to admit that you slipped through my fingers. Almost—as in I almost made it to your apartment in time. And maybe I could have stopped Her from taking the last bit of you. Maybe I would have caught you before you hit the ground.

Sometimes, I know you only
as your absence, hanging in the air.
I befriended her, she knows my name.
I learned to love her, or to love
the gift she gives: a pain to call my own.
A knife in my back is inherently mine, after all.
On the days where the sunlight
seems to vanish she is there, waiting
to embrace me. She’s more beautiful than you,
her skin shines like gold, her youth preserved
like a stained-glass saint. She is the only
thing that withstands time, a monument.

You are more than aching arms outstretched to
the empty air, than the frustration of beating the
same dead horse. You are the sound of
shattering glass when you walked into
the bar with someone new after you canceled
our plans once again because you were ‘busy’.
You are the noose around my neck, looking down,
smiling at the sight of me strangling to escape you.
You are words written on fogged glass,
vanishing before being read. You are
the cold beds of strangers and my tear-
drenched plea for you to stay, just this once.