i have this sinking feeling that i will never write again.

that all of the hurt
that i used to infuse into poems
has run dry.

i let the blood sit in my body,
simmer around my bones,
force myself to bottle
the trauma until it burned.

each time i wrote i rationed
out a little of the overflowing pain,
let it trickle,
and drip onto page.

but all at once i poured
crimson so now poems
exist - flooded red.

poems, whose words were so
deeply engraved in my soul
that nothing exists there now.

because they are living,
outside of me.

there is no life to feed the art.

just this emptiness.

and it should be freeing,
the purging of all this pain.

but it's not,
because i can not write
with any form of brilliance,
now that this thing has been
written out of me.

(should i have held onto the pain,
sacrificed living,
just to give art?)

they are the air
in between.

breaths of comfort
and clarity.

and so frequently
i found myself gulping
and gasping
for more.

(please shoulder this burden with me,
it is lighter when you are near.)

wine glasses nestled between
almost frozen fingers,
sipped by months sore from smile.

laughter warms
and makes the stomachs of
friends long familiar ache.

time can not steal the comfort
found in the stitches of
each others sweet company.

i want to run my fingers
along rock carved
thousands of years ago.

i want to feel the same cold
that ancient hands did
under my own.

i want to stand
where history happened.

let it shiver through my body.

feel the ghosts of people
long buried.
long forgotten.

find phantoms
in cobbled streets:
old and hidden.

to listen to tales
lost and buried
beneath city stone.

someone could light this body on fire
and it still would not be warm enough
to cure the coldness caught in the bones
that were formed from my mothers blood

worry about you.
                               now.
                                        get through this.

focus on surviving.
                                  on making it through.

the rest is just dust.

                                       and i promise,
                                                                ­  one day,
                                                                ­                  this will be too.

what if my walls are too difficult
to knock down?

what if my ribs are bulletproof,
will you still aim your gun?

what if i am shooting
and the distance is only there

to protect

you.

will you still love me
if i am slowly killing you?

will you still love me if all of my darkness
is in your hands
as if saying,

“here. here is your death.
let me **** you”?