Plants seeds inside my rib cage
Makes sure to water daily
Until I am more wood than person
Already weaving my own casket in my chest

I am a constant train wreck waiting to happen
Always on the verge of almost not being here
There is never enough space to breathe
Never enough room to move
This world is my casket and I am frighteningly claustrophobic

Your hands feel like forest fires
Erupting on my skin
Each graze
A new scar
I will take
To the shallow grave of my heart

These parts feel like a lie I am giving to this world,
but it doesn't throw me back a sneer,
it pretends it doesn't know.

I am carving my skin with questions,
but it bleeds back no answers,
only trophies in the shape of these scars.

I am clawing myself out,
but the pit feels like quicksand,
the more I want out the more it takes me in.

I am half a person, half a ghost
already burying myself
inside the casket of my own skin.

If these gods were real
they'd have made us of sturdier stuff
than hearts that break apart at the slightest whisper.

When I was fifteen years old I came home from school one day and wrote a poem instead of cutting myself.
The next day I didn't write a poem.
Eighteen only wrote poetry in red.
Nineteen crawled under their desk with the lights turned off.
Twenty had panic attacks.
But thirteen still loved the world.
And ten only cared about going out to play.
And nine never thought growing up to be a gender would hurt so much.
But twenty-one can't breathe in this skin anymore.
And twenty-one doesn't want a twenty-two anymore.
And nineteen tried to pretend these feelings weren't real.
And fifteen tried to eradicate all the feelings altogether.
And seventeen just cried a lot.

My years have come together to unfold me into a disaster.
I am broken even in my most whole parts.
I am empty even on my most alive days.
If you send out a SOS into my chest the sound will ring off into its empty chambers and only answer itself.

The weather's like summer and rain
And I'm just looking out the window
Seeing you in vain
I've only heard you speak
And some pictures all 2D
But I've traced the lilt of your laugh
And it's nothing like some graph
Been trying to keep you off my mind
But you're just there all the time