i hear the whispers of you in everything.
every grey cloud bullying the sun and every stray sound echoing its hum.
lying bare beneath the trees of sleep and waking to an itch without relief.
i believed knowledge equaled belief
but faith was a dry and dying seed.
how can you water what you cannot see?

stretched and pulled a tendon
left on read, it’s open ended
just elipses when i sent it
never ending “just depends..”
dead before it just begun
i wish i kept it in my head
this whole stanzas overdone
just wanted someone to come home to

still nestled in the night before
I dreamt of you driving
me wild

you feel different, my love
you feel like remembering a password
you thought you forgot
pushing on the ceiling above
wishing it would all just cave in
maybe it’s the pavement i felt
erasing a welt, a bruise replaced
by embers just waiting to melt
my heart and my face
you pulled me away
from my personal hell

if i had a second chance
i’d move more devoutly
there’s dead chickens in my
neighbor’s pen, this state wanted
more power to the trains that
own men, more fuels
to start our own hell
i chatter too much smack
no time to improve
brain’s on the loose
if i look away for a second
another recusant friend’s gone
everytime i think of that purity ring
i just crack up
why are there nothing but young women
and old men in this small church

tell me how to break an addiction
when nothing’s solid green
even though the land is flat
the water’s laced and they know i know
and i’ll do anything for more bands

lalala cockpit's cracked
losing oxygen
I died in LA went straight to hell

put a price on my soul
for a bad man's consumption
trusted no one but it's cheap

gate's closed anyways
who am I to you baby?
don't care if this city sinks in the ocean

going back to Ohio anyways
maybe I'll use the pliers to escape the trunk
bite down, sizzle off the tar like a lost soul

the amount of times i cried,

and you could not hold me.

the amount of times i cried,

and could not hold myself.

the amount of times i cried,

and could not hold myself together.

the amount of times i cried,

and could not hold you.

I have the worst habit:

swallowing life experiences
instead of savoring them

then afterward,
when my teeth are clean,
thinking, “That’s it.”

And wanting ever more.

i cannot birth the sadness from my body,
as many women do,
and disregard its existence entirety

it exists as me,
feeding from within,

my desire to free it,
the will to move past,
does nothing.

having no escape from myself,
i must harbor the baby of my own wretchedness,
forever nursing a violent sickness