I check for hours to see if you responded.

i've never been to
a confessional but i
told you i loved  you
while you held me in a
dark bedroom and i
think that's close
enough.

Dear Talia,

I don't want to be a tortured artist.
I don't want to be depressed and I don't want to be anxious.
Competitive sadness and disorders treated like accessories disgust me.

The world glamorizes mental illness, and I don't understand why. There is nothing romantic about being mentally ill just like how there's nothing glamorous about a broken wrist or a torn medial collateral ligament. There's nothing romantic about constantly being afraid that the world will fold in itself and **** you with it. There's nothing romantic about feeling like you could break down and cry at any moment.

This is the first piece I've written while being medicated.

I want it to be Christmas already.

The world dreams itself a halo, but can only attain horns. The halo is an illusion and the horns are an idea.

I'm due to take another Lorazepam. Would I look cool to the kids who idolize dysfunction and misinterpret pain as style, if I were to take one of these, with water and a distant glance, in front of them? Geez, to have their approval would to have everything and nothing at all.

I'm not sure why I've written as much about this as I have.

You.

It is 2:48 am and all I can think about, in this moment, is you.

I can't wait to spend Christmas with you. I can't wait to wear bad Christmas sweaters, and be the couple everyone hates, as we sing Christmas carols and spread holiday cheer.

I wrote this poem a few minutes ago. Sometime around 2:30 am. I'm not sure. I'm exhausted:

I sat on the edge of my bed, and on the edge of my life,
medicated to the point of pointlessness. Soft.
It was the nineteenth, not the twentieth,
and I wished I saw the fireworks with her fifteen days earlier.

My gasps tore the shingles off of the house.
And they hung suspended above the hole in the roof.
And God stared down into my room, as the shingles swirled skyward.
"I see you," I said, "but I don't believe in you."

I left home and ran until I was a dream that had passed itself.


I hope that was okay.

I love you.


Yours,

Joshua Haines

My dad dug his foot into my back like a shovel breaking soil.
If I do enough push ups, can I put a smile on your face.
If I move the earth for you, will meteors stop me.

I carried sparklers in my hands while cannon-kisses erupted in the sky,
and my cousin swore that I'd hurt myself.
But I explained to him that history repeats itself,
and that my hurt is unavoidable.

Like the hug of a grieving grandmother,
and the staring off into space,
as her tears stain my white oxford lie.
There's no way to get out of this place.
Finding new ways to live in death.

I don't want to be cool. I don't want to be cool.

And her fingers left a ******* on my back.
And my mouth melted onto hers.
I love her until my eyes **** in sleep.
And it's deep. And it's deep.

The swirl of the ceiling sank down
like a child being drowned by his mother.
And I missed my brother, and I missed it all.

I don't want to be cool. I don't want to be cool.
No, not anymore.