Your lips taste like wine but I miss when they tasted like water
and your eyes stare back like a sign indicating a cross road when you don't know where you're going
and your hands trail my skin like you're looking for home in all the wrong places

Did I forget to tell you that I have never been home either?

Did I forget to tell you that I am less home,
more motel room?
Less forest
Less evergreen
More woods
More dark and deep and quiet.
Quiet like the nights thick with emptiness
Quiet like the nights spent in this cluttered room
filled with all the empty bottles
you've held longer to your lips than you've ever held me
but I stay because I understand
and I stay because I wish you'd change your mind
and I stay because I wish that maybe you'll change mine

there's blood drying under my nails and i can still taste the blood in my mouth
i keep scratching and clawing at myself
a self-induced appearance of leprosy without the actual disease
i'm biting my lips, my mouth, my nails
there are strips and chunks of my own flesh sticking in my throat
i guess you could say it's a bit ironic that i'm choking on myself, that i'm slowly turning myself inside out
maybe if i just scratch harder, scrape faster
(scratch and sniff but with flesh and blood)
god i need to see open wounds I need to open every single bump in my skin
i yank out my hair and eat the skin off my fingertips but it's ok i don't need it
i claw open the side of my face and i don't need it, i don't need any of it
i need to smell blood, to touch it, taste it
i tripped and scraped my knee open and let me tell you i savored that moment
i hate getting hurt but i love the aftermath
sore throbbing fingers and blood in my mouth that's what i live for
jesus bled from every pore and i envy him
i'm a monster but the only one i'm killing is myself so it doesn't really matter
i don't really matter
maybe if i scratch enough i'll dig a better person out of this skin and maybe they won't smell like death
maybe they will be whole and maybe they'll be able to stand it
one, two, three new scabs on my shoulders, my neck, my face
one, two, three scars on my arms, my legs,  my back
i'm no vampire but i still need blood on my hands and it's sure as hell not innocent blood because it's mine
one of these days i'm going to fall apart and i mean that literally
gnawing on my own bones will take it's toll i'm going to collapse in a pile of my own organs and i'm going to enjoy it
it will smell like blood

something snapped in me earlier this month
i think it was the bough that held most of what was rotten inside of me
but it could've just been the breath i was holding ever since the day i declared that your absence was never permanent, but i realized that this time it is
but this is not a poem about hoping that what goes up must come down, and what leaves you has to come back around
it's about how the clouds are looking more like laughing children
and i hear the birds in the morning without mourning you at the sight of an empty chair
i have found truth in a kind of beauty that has nothing to do with you

two weeks ago, all i thought about was what kind of person you have become and if they are anything like the person i fell in love with, but

if i've learned anything about love from you
it's that sometimes it means screaming until your voice shatters and other times it's found in silence
or growing out of old ways and apologizing despite only having fallen so hard, you left a crack in the cement

i've learned that the only reason anyone could ever replace me is because i left a hole big enough in their chest to need replacing
and by the end of it all, i got to laugh and cry and *** and be the truest, most human version of myself in the presence of someone else
i have a whole lifetime to do it all over again

i loved the things that you would do when you were you
that is enough for me

and now i dont even ******* know how to care for myself because i was never told this could happen to me,
i wasnt supposed to get sick. i wasnt supposed to get sick.
all my clipped nails, my chipped teeth piling up like letters at an empty house,
spilling from the mailbox, a papercut waterfall.
the car sputters & stops. the pen scratches without ink and i try to read what a different version of me wrote,
what a younger self thought was poetry.
my mouth is empty but my pockets are full -
pepper spray/my tía's ring/a lighter i never use.
a lighter kept for strangers, for burning dry leaves, old letters,
my own tongue because blisters make it feel fuller, less hollow.
skinny lips, strong teeth, black tongue sharp and sleeping.
never had a cavity.never broke a bone.bandaging my feet before the blisters form, what do i do now?
you took my hand.
you took my hand.
you took my ******* hands. in a california summer,
dry golden grass like a wildfire dare, you said please don't leave me,
it's drought season and i'm choking on my spit,
you're taking all the rings off my fingers. you're swallowing my tía's ring.
does it taste like her cigarettes?does it taste like my sweat?
ive been thinking about you, you've been on my mind:
how do you burn a sunken bridge?
its broken but the the pieces lie heavy below the water,
twisting the current.
how do you open a letter five years unread?
avoided/ignored/forgotten as it slides onto the floor.i'm so afraid that ill never respond,
lay here till i petrify, a living thing turned stone.macerated in my own ******* self-pity,
dripping blame from gaping pores. you did this to me, you broke me,
you poured lead in my ears you left me deaf and afraid, i just want to feel absolved,
it's not my fault im sick. its not my fault i cant fix myself, its not my fault i dont try -
to try and fail is worse than to surrender before it starts.
excise the shame, cauterize the wound.call it a battle scar,
a mark of bravery and survival,
not a coward's brand, not the mark of cain.
killed your brother. slaughtered your counterpart, your mirror image,
an alternate you where you made different choices,
the ones that made you a good person and not a tumor,
bloated scourge in what could have been a healthy life.
empty fortress decayed behind the walls, i didnt build these to keep you out, i swear,
i just wanted to flesh myself out.
boundaries building up an empty breath,
making me appear more than i am, feel greater than i could ever be, but when you get inside there's nothing.
that's not my fault.thats not my fault. some people are born forests,
vast expanse of redwoods, moss softening the air;
some people are born exhales.
breathed out and dissipated.  
less than a lack.taking nothing; making only a still room,
stuffy air encased like innards; its funny how just a sigh can make me feel like im faking it
even though im the only one there,
even though i can still feel the ache in my skull,
eyelashes stuck to the palms of my hands.how does it feel not doubting life?
how does it feel to know in five seconds, air will swell your chest again?im on unsure footing,
a crumbling ***** (i know its just me.i know im being paranoid,
chill out you said i held my breath while you climbed dont fall dont fall oh god)
when did this happen?who poured fear into me like
swampwater in a wineskin,
never feared falling when i was young.
i just want to not hate myself but i guess thats a pipe dream,
******* stupid, ******* useless ******* incorporeal ******* fake laugh when theres no one to hear,
fighting spiders for the right to sleep. (do your friends know youre a liar?
******* traitor, dropping love from burning hands: your silver tongue is tarnished,
youve been vomiting again,
stomach acid eating your throat from within. can you stop?)i just want to stop.
theres a ******* burning sun in my chest and god i know i should feel lucky but i dont wanna ******* live i just want to SURVIVE,
what ******* good is living if i just burn myself out by the time i reach 25?
im scared to die but im ******* killing myself and i cant ******* stop,
i just want to sleep but theres still a bite mark on  my wrist from my own ******* teeth there are so many people i feel sick,
they talk so loud,
i feel like i could ******* disintegrate
******* degrade into dust please i just want to leave but i dont want to be alone, let me stay dont let me burst,
i want to be so skinny my bones bruise my skin,
i want to be so strong i could ******* rip myself apart, dont lie to me.
dont love me just sit next to me touch me tell me im alive.
im alive, right?im real im here im not a dusty phantom,
gasping ghost ripping oxygen into incorporeal lungs,
god i want to SCREAM just so i know im not ******* DEAD past the skin is there any sensation past the surface
i want to wear my ******* throat raw tear my muscles to shreds to know i can feel something that isnt shallow surface nerves, PLEASE!GOD!
make my lungs burn make my bones crack i want to feel something that i know is REAL prove im real prove im not an empty shell please im still alive but bites dont go past the skin,
i want to see my ******* heart pulse like the realest part of me,
proof i need proof i want faith i want to believe in unproven things, how can i ******* believe im real?
im ******* faking it just like everything else,
bluff till its true but i never ******* learned how to be TRUE I NEVER LEARNED TO LIVE PAST THE SKIN and if you peel it back all you'll ******* find is
rot,
gangrene, necrotic flesh and electric fear, dont ******* touch me i feel like i could ******* explode,
i feel crushed compressed into a space too small for my body and itll crack any second.
please ******* punch me in the gut. please ******* crack me open i dont ******* trust myself to keep my heart beating,
please rip it out im ******* faking it!!
faking laughs for an empty space faking fear for phantom spiders and thoughts of death, im ******* faking it but how do i ******* STOP
I DONT WANNA LIVE LIKE THIS BUT IM SCARED TO ******* DIE