chronic insomnia keeps the shakes coming steady
blunts steady the coming shakes

this world can't handle the whole
portion myself into fractions

i need you because you give me someone to be
your hands around my neck give me room to breathe

this comfortable pain
this questionably sane
these schizophrenic musings
my amusing bipolar bruisings
these anxiety retches
my borderline sketches

you are the words that breathe through me. lift, move me. the item for a shopper's perusing; for use and abuse-ing. i'm your bend over barbie doll, your late night *******, the push over & the fall. i scrape myself off your boot; keep waiting for trees to bear fruit. it's funny how you can **** me til i'm lame & i still believe i deserve more pain.

how can i believe i'm worth your while when i know you don't care about proving it to me? it's so much sexier for you to see me beg, watch me grovel & worship your **** as if you are my only hope (for all intensive purposes, i mostly believe you are; you save me from facing myself at night. seminated distraction as masochistic salvation).

leave me mangled gasping hair tangled in your fingers grasping & you're lingering by the door, contemplating whether to leave me or take me on the floor. this is all i am to you: tested tried wrong used. bleed me until you stop seeing red, drag me willing or indifferent back to your bed.

swirling clouds of exhaustion wrapping themselves around my brain, colored ever so closely to those of funeral shrouds. i inhale fumes & hold them in my ribcage, hoping for cancers to form, praying for a physicality to the sickness in me, for a tumor i can point to: "there!" i would say, "this is where i hurt." but my cells only hold my bad memories as fibrous proteins. they clutch condescending looks & carry them in the illusioned hope they will motivate me forward: to prove them wrong, to rise above the insults, to use the weight they hold to propel myself further. instead, I sink beyond previously charted depths. my toes know the silt of a sandy bottom (rocks so broken apart they aren't even considered pebbles anymore; insignificant alone & incomparable heartaches uncounted or uncountable together). i anchor myself in this remorse, this hurt i can't point to. i yearn for selfish suicides & scoff at salvation.

i'm broken spaces,
unnamed multitude faces:
see wholes as fractals.

i'm rubbed raw and sore,
i'm ***** waves on the shore:
rampant and rascal.

lost in the spotlight,
yet so defensive for fights:
though impractical.

i'm wanted by you,
yet i question what is true:
you falter and stall.

need you like the summer rain
the blood in my veins
I'll sift my tears from the soil
reap bounty from toil
you & me in every dream
audible anguish in our every scream
press my fingers to the glass
I'll clutch yours when we get the cash
there are reasons we don't sleep
like men who push too deep
& drugs to numb
& obsessions with ***
or needing the drink
just needing anything to stop the think
really, we're not crazy
our realities a little lazy
at keeping us up to date
clarity always comes too late

you are a fool, Sophia. As I look up at these city lights, every neon sign seems to advertise you; they all remind me of what I'm missing out on. I pass strangers and hear them whispering your tender mercies: "so?" "fee" "ahhh..." I may be being quite forward so early on in our correspondences, but the theory that you are a scrap of paper that someone would allow to slip through their fingers is ridiculous to me. I say that because even after only meeting you once, by such a fortunate and faithful chance, I wanted to write screenplays, novellas, and entire manuscripts only based on how beautiful your name sounds when I say it. I will be absorbed in everything you admit me to learn about you. I only hope for your amusement when you discover my own scorched trails. I'm stupefied by your compliments, and I will catch every drop of your defrosting heart on my tongue. I felt so stupid but I beamed in pride seeing I could make you blush as pink as the roses on the bush behind you... such a delicate, feminine, sensitive color; white blossoming into red, purity blooming into passion. How I wish I could be the one to awaken a passion in you. I'm terribly sorry if I'm smothering, but you've an expert pen dipped in ink of naivety... in meeting you I crossed the border between respectable me and questionable sanity: the Sophia Line (your kiss would be turpentine, **** anything I used to be to become anything, everything you need from me). Ah... fee so... you've given me a lot to live up to. xo. Josephine.

someday, you'll understand. the way you don't know how to brush your teeth anymore, or when it's time to bathe. they way you look at others and they seem too fast, their clocks running on fresh batteries. the way you have to psych yourself up for days to mop the floor, or how you need a day or two of rest after 'changes in plans'. the way normal noise seems hap-hazardous and it panics you, heart hammers, teeth grit, and you rocking, murmur ssssssshhh... as if this house was a baby too big to soothe; you standing on the edge of that wavering lip, saying ssssh into that dark expanse of empty, needing mouth: it's hollering and doesn't hear you, doesn't hear you but hears the torment of a needing stomach. You: you stand there with your ******* not big enough to nurse, too empty to satisfy....

....someday you'll understand.